2013/08/31

Burrow the Coil









  • Actually there is three more requirements of holiday weekend bleggalgazing traditions to uphold: first, the acknowledgement on the futility of blogging on holiday weekends, the second to point out that there are numerous new members of blogrolls left and right, please check them out, third to thank you for reading, if you are Kinding me but me not you please let me know.
  • This week in water.
  • Since I botched the link yesterday and though it's fixed now, on the distinction between scifi and fantasy, for those of you who do one or the other or both.
  • Coetzee's new novel reviewed by Joyce Carol Oates.
  • Seamus Heaney interview.
  • Some Heaney poems. Walked up to the Fifth Floor stacks yesterday, the rereading has commenced.
  • A poem on Heaney's death.
  • Serendipitously to the already planned Coil cascade I opened one of the books and read the poem typed out below. All praise to Serendipity.
  • Casualty.
  • Now (from the Truth Game). 






NORTH

Seamus Heaney

I returned to a long strand,
the hammered curve of a bay,   
and found only the secular
powers of the Atlantic thundering.

I faced the unmagical
invitations of Iceland,
the pathetic colonies
of Greenland, and suddenly

those fabulous raiders,
those lying in Orkney and Dublin   
measured against
their long swords rusting,

those in the solid
belly of stone ships,
those hacked and glinting
in the gravel of thawed streams

were ocean-deafened voices
warning me, lifted again
in violence and epiphany.
The longship’s swimming tongue

was buoyant with hindsight—
it said Thor’s hammer swung
to geography and trade,
thick-witted couplings and revenges,

the hatreds and behind-backs
of the althing, lies and women,   
exhaustions nominated peace,   
memory incubating the spilled blood.

It said, ‘Lie down
in the word-hoard, burrow   
the coil and gleam
of your furrowed brain.

Compose in darkness.   
Expect aurora borealis   
in the long foray
but no cascade of light.

Keep your eye clear
as the bleb of the icicle,
trust the feel of what nubbed treasure   
your hands have known.’



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2013/08/30

Raise One Eyebrow





Woke up with Throbbing Gristle in my head. Have spam from Poland

piecznie spośród budynku. Pagina personale esterna dell'autore... Trzymając się cienia zszedł po pochyłości podwórza. W pobliżu kostnicy zachował się tudzież rozejrzał dokoła, otworzył http://www.polskieslicznotki.waw.pl kolosalne, drewniane przejścia i wszedł wewnątrz.

Stosownie aż do charakteru pokoje panowała tędy głucha ani mru mru!. Saracen zapalił przestrzeń niezadrukowana. Przy bitwy poruszył luźno osadzonym w ścianie wyłącznikiem tudzież na podłogę posypały się kawałki tynku. W najsampierw.

Unfortunately my Polish colleague started her vacation today so I've no idea how I'm being praised or what's being sold (I've killed the link so if you copy/paste it and get a blue screen it's on you). In any case, that takes care of my required Labor Day Weekend bleggalgazing. Yes, Coil cascade up next.







  • Once upon a time (2007, actually) Joe Biden's case that waging war without consent of congress is an impeachable act: Absolutely. I want to stand by that comment I made. The reason I made the comment was as a warning. I don't say those things lightly, Chris. you've known me for a long time. I was Chairman of the Judiciary Committee for 17 years. I teach separation of powers in Constitutional law. This is something I know. So I brought a group of Constitutional scholars together to write a piece that I'm going to deliver to the whole United States Senate pointing out that the president HAS NO CONSTITUTIONAL AUTHORITY to take this country to war against a country of 70 million people unless we're attacked or unless there is proof that we are about to be attacked. And if he does, I would move to impeach him. The House obviously has to do that, but I would lead an effort to impeach him. The reason for my doing that -- and I don't say it lightly, I don't say it lightly.
  • Nancy Pelosi urges bombing Syria.
  • Jonathan Chait stamps foot, says Obama better not be lying this time or else.
  • Miley Cyrus, Syria, war as consumer item.






  • On Kindness.
  • New to me: Marzanna Bogumila Kielar.
  • On the Thomas Pynchon trail: Let’s get a few things straight. First of all, it’s pronounced “Pynch-ON.” Second, the great and bewildering and, yes, very private novelist is not exactly a recluse. In select company, he’s intensely social and charismatic, and, in spite of those famously shaming Bugs Bunny teeth, he was rarely without a girlfriend for the 30 years he spent wandering and couch-surfing before getting married in 1990. Today, he’s a yuppie—self-confessed, if you read his new novel, Bleeding Edge, as a key to the present life of a man whose travels led one critic to reflect: “Salinger hides; Pynchon runs.” Now Pynchon hides in plain sight, on the Upper West Side, with a family and a history of contradictions: a child of the postwar Establishment determined to reject it; a postmodernist master who’s called himself a “classicist”; a workaholic stoner; a polymath who revels in dirty puns; a literary outsider who’s married to a literary agent; a scourge of capitalism who sent his son to private school and lives in a $1.7 million prewar classic six.
  • Laziest literary link ever?
  • Cyberpunk, for those of you who do.
  • A distinction between scifi and fantasy, for those of you who do one or the other or both.
  • RIP Seamus Heaney. I confess he never sang to me, which reminds me to speculate again (elsewhere, don't worry) why by and large contemporary non-American/Canadian English poetry, especially non-American/Canadian English poetry by men (Les Murray and Robin Robertson are the only two currently working poets whose new volumes I immediately seek out) doesn't sing to me. Suggestions on who to read pleaded for.
  • New York lit circle Royal Rumble.







HOW TO BE A LAWYER

Jordan Davis

My father taught me how to play the beer bottle. It was Schlitz, and I was three or four. " You tuck your lower lip under, then blow air over the top of the bottle." I produced a tone, and we laughed. He paused. "You can make a different sound if there's less in the bottle," he said, motioning for me to take a sip. I did, then blew another note. We laughed again.

"Do you want to learn something else? Here's how to be a lawyer. Raise one eyebrow." I did so. "Good. Now hold it for a few seconds, turn to the jury, and say 'I see.'"



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2013/08/29

Sensible Bourgeois Wild-Cats Working with Furred Impudence of Those Who Don't Pretend to Be Other than Whores




  • Charlie Parker was born 93 years ago today. Playlist graciously provided by Hamster.
  • The payload in Wednesday's launch is thought to be "a $1-billion high-powered spy satellite capable of snapping pictures detailed enough to distinguish the make and model of an automobile hundreds of miles below," the LA Times reported.
  • US remaindered clusterbombs sold Saudis.
  • Interesting coincidence, just days before bombing Syria, the announcement of that arms deal.
  • If this is true: One U.S. official who has been briefed on the options on Syria said he believed the White House would seek a level of intensity "just muscular enough not to get mocked" but not so devastating that it would prompt a response from Syrian allies Iran and Russia, it would tend to suggest a friend's belief that Obama isn't evil, he's a wussy playground bully, though of course it's not an either/or.
  • This would support that contention, though I think we all can agree Obama just follows orders.
  • Has got the NSA off the front page, the bomb Syria debate, yes?
  • UPDATE! Scratch the above, cause BOOM! and by BOOM! I mean it's back on the front page.
  • David Cameron's go-to-war checklist.
  • It's not a bug, it's a feature.
  • Me: Reads this obamadoration, sputters furiously, incoherently, points, See? See?
  • UPDATE! Indeed, if we are -- as the president asks us to be -- honest with ourselves, we will see that we have elected a president who claims to oppose racial profiling one minute, and then flirts with inaugurating the country's greatest racial profiler the next. If we are honest with ourselves we will see that we have a president who can condemn the riots as "self-defeating," but can't see his way clear to enforce the fair housing law that came out of them. If we are honest with ourselves we will see a president who believes in particular black morality, but eschews particular black policy.
  • UPDATE! How Obama demobilized the anti-war movement?
  • Trump University. As opposed to fraudulent, legal, deceptive conduct.
  • Fired by Starbucks for eating a sandwich out of the garbage.











CAT ISLAND

Thom Gunn

Cats met us at
the landing-place
reclining in the sun
to check us in
with a momentary glance,
concierges
of a grassy island.
(Attila's Throne,
the Devil's Bridge,
and "the best Byzantine
church in the world",
long saints admonitory
on kiln-like inner walls.)
And lunch in a shady court
where cats now
systematically worked
the restaurant, table
by table, gazing into eyes
pleading "I'm hungry
and I'm cute", reaching
front paws up to knees
and always getting
before zeroing in
on the next table, same
routine, same result.

Sensible bourgeois
wild-cats working
with the furred impudence
of those who don't pretend
to be other than whores,
they give you not
the semblance of love
but simply
a look at their beauty
in return for food.
Models, not escorts.
They lack, too,
the prostitute's self-pity,
being beyond shame.
And we lack
what they have.        


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Born Eighty-Four Years Ago Today





CONSIDERING THE SNAIL

The snail pushes through a green
night, for the grass is heavy
with water and meets over
the bright path he makes, where rain
has darkened the earth’s dark. He
moves in a wood of desire,

pale antlers barely stirring
as he hunts. I cannot tell
what power is at work, drenched there
with purpose, knowing nothing.
What is a snail’s fury? All
I think is that if later

I parted the blades above
the tunnel and saw the thin
trail of broken white across
litter, I would never have
imagined the slow passion
to that deliberate progress.


MY SAD CAPTAINS

One by one they appear in
the darkness: a few friends, and
a few with historical
names. How late they start to shine!
but before they fade they stand
perfectly embodied, all

the past lapping them like a
cloak of chaos. They were men
who, I thought, lived only to
renew the wasteful force they
spent with each hot convulsion.
They remind me, distant now.

True, they are not at rest yet,
but now that they are indeed
apart, winnowed from failures,
they withdraw to an orbit
and turn with disinterested
hard energy, like the stars.


YOKO

All today I lie in the bottom of the wardrobe
feeling low but sometimes getting up
to moodily lumber across rooms
and lap from the toilet bowl, it is so sultry
and then I hear the noise of firecrackers again
all New York is jaggedy with firecrackers today
and I go back to the wardrobe gloomy
trying to void my mind of them.
I am confused, I feel loose and unfitted.

At last deep in the stairwell I hear a tread,
it is him, my leader, my love.
I run to the door and listen to his approach.
Now I can smell him, what a good man he is,
I love it when he has the sweat of work on him,
as he enters I yodel with happiness,
I throw my body up against his, I try to lick his lips,
I care about him more than anything.

After we eat we go for a walk to the piers.
I leap into the standing warmth, I plunge into
the combination of old and new smells.
Here on a garbage can at the bottom, so interesting,
what sister or brother I wonder left this message I sniff.
I too piss there, and go on.

Here a hydrant there a pole
here's a smell I left yesterday, well that's disappointing
but I piss there anyway, and go on.

I investigate so much that in the end
it is for form's sake only, only a drop comes out.

I investigate tar and rotten sandwiches, everything, and go on.

And here a dried old turd, so interesting
so old, so dry, yet so subtle and mellow.
I can place it finely, I really appreciate it,
a gold distant smell like packed autumn leaves in winter
reminding me how what is rich and fierce when excreted
becomes weathered and mild
but always interesting
and reminding me of what I have to do.

My leader looks on and expresses his approval.

I sniff it well and later I sniff the air well
a wind is meeting us after the close July day
rain is getting near too but first the wind.
Joy, joy,
being outside with you, active, investigating it all,
with bowels emptied, feeling your approval
and then running on, the big fleet Yoko,
my body in its excellent black coat never lets me down,
returning to you (as I always will, you know that)
and now
filling myself out with myself, no longer confused,
my panting pushing apart my black lips, but unmoving,
I stand with you braced against the wind.
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2013/08/28

What Can We Expect from Personism? (This Is Getting Good, Isn't It?) Everything, but We Won't Get It.













   
PERSONISM: A MANIFESTO

Frank O'Hara

Everything is in the poems, but at the risk of sounding like the poor wealthy man's Allen Ginsberg I will write to you because I just heard that one of my fellow poets thinks that a poem of mine that can't be got at one reading is because I was confused too. Now, come on. I don't believe in god, so I don't have to make elaborately sounded structures. I hate Vachel Lindsay, always have; I don't even like rhythm, assonance, all that stuff. You just go on your nerve. If someone's chasing you down the street with a knife you just run, you don't turn around and shout, "Give it up! I was a track star for Mineola Prep."

That's for the writing poems part. As for their reception, suppose you're in love and somebody's mistreating (mal aimé) you, you don't say, "Hey, you can't hurt me this way, I care!" you just let all the different bodies fall where they may, and they always do may after a few months. But that's not why you fell in love in the first place, just to hang onto life, so you have to take your chances and try to avoid being logical. Pain always produces logic, which is very bad for you.

I'm not saying that I don't have practically the most lofty ideas of anyone writing today, but what difference does that make? They're just ideas. The only good thing about it is that when I get lofty enough I've stopped thinking and that's when refreshment arrives.

But how then can you really care if anybody gets it, or gets what it means, or if it improves them. Improves them for what? For death? Why hurry them along? Too many poets act like a middle-aged mother trying to get her kids to eat too much cooked meat, and potatoes with drippings (tears). I don't give a damn whether they eat or not. Forced feeding leads to excessive thinness (effete). Nobody should experience anything they don't need to, if they don't need poetry bully for them. I like the movies too. And after all, only Whitman and Crane and Williams, of the American poets, are better than the movies. As for measure and other technical apparatus, that's just common sense: if you're going to buy a pair of pants you want them to be tight enough so everyone will want to go to bed with you. There's nothing metaphysical about it. Unless, of course, you flatter yourself into thinking that what you're experiencing is "yearning."

Abstraction in poetry, which Allen [Ginsberg] recently commented on in It Is, is intriguing. I think it appears mostly in the minute particulars where decision is necessary. Abstraction (in poetry, not painting) involves personal removal by the poet. For instance, the decision involved in the choice between "the nostalgia of the infinite" and "the nostalgia for the infinite" defines an attitude towards degree of abstraction. The nostalgia of the infinite representing the greater degree of abstraction, removal, and negative capability (as in Keats and Mallarmé).

Personism, a movement which I recently founded and which nobody knows about, interests me a great deal, being so totally opposed to this kind of abstract removal that it is verging on a true abstraction for the first time, really, in the history of poetry. Personism is to Wallace Stevens what la poési pure was to Béranger. Personism has nothing to do with philosophy, it's all art. It does not have to do with personality or intimacy, far from it! But to give you a vague idea, one of its minimal aspects is to address itself to one person (other than the poet himself), thus evoking overtones of love without destroying love's life-giving vulgarity, and sustaining the poet's feelings towards the poem while preventing love from distracting him into feeling about the person. That's part of Personism. It was founded by me after lunch with LeRoi Jones on August 27, 1959, a day in which I was in love with someone (not Roi, by the way, a blond). I went back to work and wrote a poem for this person. While I was writing it I was realizing that if I wanted to I could use the telephone instead of writing the poem, and so Personism was born. It's a very exciting movement which will undoubtedly have lots of adherents. It puts the poem squarely between the poet and the person, Lucky Pierre style, and the poem is correspondingly gratified. The poem is at last between two persons instead of two pages. In all modesty, I confess that it may be the death of literature as we know it. While I have certain regrets, I am still glad I got there before Alain Robbe-Grillet did. Poetry being quicker and surer than prose, it is only just that poetry finish literature off. For a time people thought that Artaud was going to accomplish this, but actually, for all their magnificence, his polemical writings are not more outside literature than Bear Mountain is outside New York State. His relation is no more astounding than Dubuffet's to painting.

What can we expect from Personism? (This is getting good, isn't it?) Everything, but we won't get it. It is too new, too vital a movement to promise anything. But it, like Africa, is on the way. The recent propagandists for technique on the one hand, and for content on the other, had better watch out.



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2013/08/27

Theme Song August 2013



             
It's true: I've a beginning of the semester bad mood and I was toying with the idea of naming the permalink something along the lines that could cost me my job (then chickened out), but I never intended to close comments and have no recollection of doing so. Open now.

As long as I'm here have a Dead Can Dance song plus: Thom Gunn's birthday is day after tomorrow so Gunn poems today, tomorrow, day after:


MOLY

Thom Gunn

Nightmare of beasthood, snorting, how to wake.
I woke. What beasthood skin she made me take?

Leathery toad that ruts for days on end,
Or cringing dribbling dog, man’s servile friend,

Or cat that prettily pounces on its meat,
Tortures it hours, then does not care to eat:

Parrot, moth, shark, wolf, crocodile, ass, flea.
What germs, what jostling mobs there were in me.

    These seem like bristles, and the hide is tough.
No claw or web here: each foot ends in hoof.

Into what bulk has method disappeared?
Like ham, streaked. I am gross—grey, gross, flap-eared.

The pale-lashed eyes my only human feature.
My teeth tear, tear. I am the snouted creature

That bites through anything, root, wire, or can.
If I was not afraid I’d eat a man.

Oh a man’s flesh already is in mine.
Hand and foot poised for risk. Buried in swine.

    I root and root, you think that it is greed,
It is, but I seek out a plant I need.

Direct me gods, whose changes are all holy,
To where it flickers deep in grass, the moly:

Cool flesh of magic in each leaf and shoot,
From milky flower to the black forked root.

From this fat dungeon I could rise to skin
And human title, putting pig within.

I push my big grey wet snout through the green,
Dreaming the flower I have never seen.


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2013/08/26

Until the Bracts Have Mauved Up





PRESS RELEASE:
Ubu Projex, the art and business directorate of the American band Pere Ubu, can confirm that notice has been received this weekend from the United States Customs & Immigration Service (USCIS) rejecting the visa petition for British band members Keith Moliné and Graham Dowdall (aka Gagarin).

The sole grounds for rejection is the band’s refusal to seek approval from the American Federation of Musicians (AFM).

“The AFM are the antagonists in this affair,” band leader David Thomas said. “They have no business telling me who can and who cannot be in the band.”

Details can be found in previous press releases, www.ubuprojex.net/press/ubuvisa.pdf.

Cleveland guitarist Dave Cintron will join the band for the September US tour and provisions are in place for Moliné and Dowdall to link remotely for one of the songs in the set.

There has been much disbelief and incredulity about this not-uncommon example of the obstacles international bands now face when seeking to tour the US.

“The whole process has been going on since May, with several delays and absurd complexities,” Thomas said. “The Cintron version will be magnificent, I have no doubt. If I cannot put a band together without government interference and without a pat on the head from the AFM, like a grateful dog, then so be it. I have no interest in frittering my life away with campaigning.

“We will proceed with our music. Nothing will be announced from the stage. We won’t be writing ‘protest’ songs or haranguing audiences.

“There are visions and ideas to pursue. There’s too little time to waste it on fighting stupidity. In the words of the MGM lion, ‘Ars longa, vita brevis.’” [Yes, we know it was Hippocrates.]













RETRO

John Ashbery

 It’s really quite a thrill
when the moon rises above the hill
and you’ve gotten over someone
salty and mercurial, the only person you ever loved.

Walks in the park are enjoyed.
Going to Jerusalem now
I walked into a hotel room.
I didn’t need any name or anything.
I went to Bellevue Hospital,
got a piece of the guy.
As I say, it’s really quite a thrill.

Quite a thrill too to bend objects
that always return to their appointed grooves—
will it be always thus? Or will auto parts
get to have their day in the sun?

Got to drone now.
Princess Ida plans to overwork us four days a week
until the bracts have mauved up.
Then it’s a tailgate party—
how would you like your burger done?

A little tea with that?

I saw her wailing for some animals.
That doesn’t mean a thing doesn’t happen
or only goes away, or gets worse.
What’s the worst that could happen?

The midnight forest drags you along, thousands of peach hectares. Told him I wouldn’t do it if I was him. Nothing to halt the chatter of locusts until they’re put away for the night. He edges closer to your locker. Why did I leave it open? I’ve forgotten the combination. But it seems he’s not interested in the locker, maybe my shoe—something unlike anything he’s ever known. Sensing the tension he broke the ice with a quip about the weather somewhere, or maybe—maybe an observation on time, how it moves vastly in different channels, always keeping up with itself, until the day—I’m going to drive back to the office, a fellowship of miles, collect some of last year’s ammunition. Then I’m definitely going to the country, he laughs.



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2013/08/25

The User Interface Has the Following Format




  • New Robert Pollard. Yes, there's always new Robert Pollard.
  • David Thomas interview.
  • Pere Ubu US tour is on despite visa problems.
  • Listened to the new Pollard on way to and from hiking on Sugarloaf w/Earthgirl today, just saw the Thomas/Ubu links now, I'd gathered the links below over coffee this morning, was going to save them for tomorrow, but two of three of the permanent members in My Sillyass Deserted Island Five Game in my head, I'll not be able to listen to anything else today less I post this now.
  • Sometime in my early 20s Park Mrebelic and Willy Bayne and I were drinking pitchers and shooting pool in a bar on Wilkins off Parklawn when a boatload of bikers rolled in. We were told the table was theirs, don't bother finishing our game. OK, finished our pitcher at the bar, poured quarters into the juke box, punched Linda Ronstadt's Blue Bayou thirty-two times, left. Nonetheless, wouldn't wish Parkinsons on anyone.
  • You'll have to go find them since I've used up my free views in August for both the NYT and WP and fuck if I'll give them money, but both have articles today in which the ledes I can see suggest liberals are asking her to leave SCOTUS now because they fear (a) a Republican will win the White House in 2016 and (b) then she'll die.
  • Tarzie's interrogation of The Guardian continues.
  • Vanity and venality.
  • Maggie's weekly links.
  • New Inquiry's Sunday links.
  • The best vegetarian restaurants in DC area. (h/t SeatSix for these two)
  • The seven best vegan restaurants in DC area.
  • { feuilleton }'s weekly links.
  • Borges, for those of you who do.
  • Borges, politics, and the postcolonial. 
  • Debord, for those of you who do.
  • Lovecraft, for those of you who do. I confess, I never did, though I know some of you do.
  • Melville, for those of you who do. 







DODGING 1985

Philip Nikolayev

The user interface has the following format. Upon accessing the URL,
the user sees a welcome message with some explanation of the service
provided. The user is prompted to enter his or her name, date of birth,
When everything else fails, try something new. and email address,
For instance, try the central mental hospital, then to left click on the
sit back and mumble enjoying the belle vue submit button. Based on
until the nurse has counted you all. this information, the CGI script
Our group files in fresh from the courtyard walk, generates “on the
a pageant of male flesh in ugly dress. fly” an appropriate horoscope
There’s bundles of excitement but little talk. reading for the end user,
The chess-players are breaking out their chess. or displays the logs
No one to mention the Afghan War. The state, and user Statistics if
crumbling, buys me my sparse and forkless lunch. the current user is
This latest novel fails to kill my worries, the site admin. Parse CGI
The Plexiglas window withstands a teenage a punch. variables (or
God, I must prove completely nuts, by fate lookup logged record) to
unfit for active military service. obtain user’s birthday. Parse user’s
stats, verify and save to log file. Compute user’s Zodiac sign based on
birth date. Print personalized greeting. Generate a horoscope reading and
send it to user’s browser} else if (user   ==   administrator)  {compute stats.



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2013/08/24

Something of a Clock Glimpsed in a Dream





Borges born 115 years ago today. Dig these. What did you think ESPN would do when Helmetball said JUMP! said L to K at a special Friday Night Edition of Thursday Night Pints when K offered the story as shuttlecock of a friendly rally. It's the times, I said to K, bruised, everybody's pissed at everybody but mostly pissed at the people they most like and agree with 99.94% of the time. L said, I see what you did there. My phone chirped. A blog friend emailed me, she asked - this is true, she can vouch, or choose not to - and I paraphrase, what the fuck is the Kind? I texted my bud bleggal and existential context in one or two sentence each. I loved With, said L - the Donald Harington novel where Kind has Borgesian onion layers of meaning. If you and me are Kind - I'm talking to you now - I'll buy you a copy of that amazing novel. L's lending K the one I gave her. I've been promising you, I didn't say last night, I'm talking to you now D, love, the traditional Bonnie Prince Billy cascade.











  • Yes, posting on Saturday's in August is proof of compulsive and futile attention sluttery. 
  • On DC history and equality by a friend of mine.
  • BRT.
  • BRT.
  • What you can buy me for my birthday.
  • ZOMG! The Vegans! An argument for. I'm not near, I'm working on in, not to worry, long-timers and loyalists, I'll not be documenting progress towards or retreat from, but I do have a goal.
  • Vegan Symphony #9.
  • 100 free classics. I just finished Silas Marner last night, I forget to bring Vollmann, in the college book store was a Dover edition for $2.50, 150 pages later I remember what I like about Eliot (for intance, her brilliant use of English in her exquisitely constructed aphorisms of moral scolding) and what I didn't like (for instance, the moral scolding).
  • The rage for order.
  • Raskolnikov in Afghanistan?
  • I am alive.
  • Monk, not Meredith per usual, another one.
  • Julianne Barwick interview. Yes, the Evening Planet post will return when one or both of us need it.
  • On Caberet Voltaire.





A COMPASS

Jorge Luis Borges
translated by Robert Mezey

All things are words belonging to that language
In which Someone or Something, night and day,
Writes down the infinite babble that is, per se,
The history of the world. And in that hodgepodge

Both Rome and Carthage, he and you and I,
My life that I don't grasp, this painful load
Of being riddle, randomness, or code,
And all of Babel's gibberish streams by.

Behind the name is that which has no name;
Today I have felt its shadow gravitate
In this blue needle, in its trembling sweep

Casting its influence toward the farthest strait,
With something of a clock glimpsed in a dream
And something of a bird that stirs in its sleep.



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2013/08/23

Ballads of Long Nights Lifting to Starlight, Songs of Bones, Turds, Conquests, Hunts, Smells, Rankings, Things Settled Long Before Our Birth





Chelsea Snowden, Edward Greenwald, Glenn Manning, fuck those distractions, today's hottest debate is on the casting of Ben Affleck as Batman for a movie to be released in 2015. My twitter timeline is fierce with it, such passion! Fine metaphors abound as always. Songs and a poem.








DOG MUSIC

Paul Zimmer

Amongst dogs are listeners and singers.
My big dog sang with me so purely,
puckering her ruffled lips into an O,
beginning with small, swallowing sounds
like Coltrane musing, then rising to power
and resonance, gulping air to continue—
her passion and sense of flawless form—
singing not with me, but for the art of dogs.
We joined in many fine songs—"Stardust,"
"Naima," "The Trout," "My Rosary," "Perdido."
She was a great master and died young,
leaving me with unrelieved grief,
her talents known to only a few.

Now I have a small dog who does not sing,
but listens with discernment, requiring
skill and spirit in my falsetto voice.
I sing her name and words of love
andante, con brio, vivace, adagio.
Sometimes she is so moved she turns
to place a paw across her snout,
closes her eyes, sighing like a girl
I held and danced with years ago.

But I am a pretender to dog music.
The true strains rise only from
the rich, red chambers of a canine heart,
these melodies best when the moon is up,
listeners and singers together or
apart, beyond friendship and anger,
far from any human imposter—
ballads of long nights lifting
to starlight, songs of bones, turds,
conquests, hunts, smells, rankings,
things settled long before our birth.


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2013/08/22

Simple Buttonhook Patterns in Football



     
  • Claude Debussy was born 151 years ago today. It's love. Here's last year's post with playlists from both me and Hamster. The above chosen by the poem below.
  • 35 years. 35 years won't be half of my life for another 16 years. Three days ago 24 years ago I started working at Illtophay, it's eleven more years to 35.
  • Chelsea Manning was sentenced to more time in prison than all the perpetrators of the Abu Ghraib murder, rape, and torture COMBINED.
  • Free Chelsea Manning.
  • Fuck the Guardian, part two. Excellent debate.
  • UPDATE! On the above by the author of the above.
  • William Vollmann uncovers his FBI file.
  • William Vollmann was suspected of being the Unabomber?
  • William Vollmann was suspected of being the Unabomber? Reading one’s FBI file is rarely pleasant,” Vollmann writes. He discovered that someone — Vollmann gives him the codename “Ratfink” — turned him in to the authorities as a possible Unabomber suspect because of the content of his fiction. His file claims that “anti-growth and anti-progress themes persist throughout each VOLLMANN work.” In this case, his accuser was referring to “Fathers and Crows,” a novel “set mostly in Canada in the seventeenth century.” Even more conclusive, the FBI observed ominously that “UNABOMBER, not unlike VOLLMANN has pride of authorship and insists his book be published without editing.
  • UPDATE! I've a scan of the Harpers article, email me if you want it. Provided we're copacetic, it's yours.
  • I'm - serendipity is awesome, and I mentioned this a couple of weeks ago - finishing up my rereading of Fathers and Crows. I've an extra copy. You know the drill.
  • UPDATE! Three claims so far. I'll buy you one if you want one and let me know by morning. Provided we're copacetic, it's yours.
  • Vollmann's article in Harpers (subscription required).
  • Glimmerglass.
  • Well and truly fracked.
  • Capitalism.
  • The privilege paradigm.
  • The party goes on behind elevator doors while the elevator plummets.
  • Maxims for apolitical artists.
  • A world without feeling.






8/22/08

David Lehman

Today in 1862
Claude Debussy was born.
I remember where I was and what I was doing
one hundred years and two months later:
elementary algebra, trombone practice,
Julius Caesar on the record player
with Brando and Antony, simple
buttonhook patterns in football,
the French subjunctive, and the use
of "quarantine" rather than "blockade"
during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
It was considered the less belligerent word.
Much was made of it in 1962,
centenary of Debussy's birth.
And if today I play his Rhapsody
for Saxophone and Orchestra
for the ten minutes it requires of
my undivided attention, who will attack me for
living in Paris in 1908 instead of now?
Let them. I'll take my stand,
my music stand, with the composer
of my favorite Danse Tarantelle.


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2013/08/21

Analysis Too Is a Style of Affect Since the Scale that Rends Me Vulnerable Has Cut, from Abundance, Doubt (Not that Identity Shunts Civic Ratio or Consequence)




  • Joe Strummer was born 61 years ago today. The Clash were never the only band that mattered, but once they mattered to me. Was looking for Clash songs, and meh. It saddens me how grandpa The Clash sound to me now. I'll take the blame.
  • I'm told I often don't yodel enough what I think I yodel too often and yodel too much what I don't think I yodel enough, so to restate in response to one question: of course I know that while the NSA sweeps up my verbiage it has no interest in what I say or intention of using it against me until and unless I give them cause, which admittedly is unlikely (though less so than yesterday, hopefully not as much as tomorrow). I may or not be inching towards some forms of civil disobedience, but the train wreck of the clusterfuck is rushing towards me, I'm not running towards it. I'm not sure how the fact that I'm an insignificant blogger of no interest to the NSA means I shouldn't worry about the NSA sweeping up even my crappy voluntarily self-incriminating verbiage. To yodel: the spying is not about terrorism, it's about intimidation, control, and fear. It's to keep me docile and not worth viewing my surveillance by my overlords.
  • True of my face, for the moment, too. So I shouldn't be concerned. And will it be against the law to wear a Groucho mask while walking on a public sidewalk?
  • Whenever I type in one of my senators names I get scrubbed by a US Senate bot. I've never been scrubbed after naming my congressman or governor. I have a regular reader from Ortfay Eademay and a regular reader from OJDay, though I'm convinced they are just folk who occasionally read this blog.
  • Obama's Department of Education monitored Diane Ravitch.
  • Obama administration blacklisting Muslims.
  • Re: Greenwald. Saying he shouldn't be part to the story doesn't make him not part of the story. I don't know what his take is; I don't know what his take of his take is. I don't think him a thoroughly honest broker though I think him more honest than the majority of his attackers, especially those who were fine with him when George Bush was in office. But the visceral hate directed towards him IS part of the story no matter how much it shouldn't be. Which is my prejudice, the enjoyment of watching people get apoplectic over Greenwald. It's fascinating. This is on me: my apologies for indulging the giggles.
  • For instance, drug mule.
  • UPDATE! on the fucker in the above link.
  • UPDATE! Lisa invites you to have your photo taken by undercover policemen tonight at the White House.
  • Fuck the Guardian, part one.
  • I am in complete sympathy if not total agreement with this comment to the above post: I like the theory that they are literally trying to mop up every physical copy of the files, and that the evidence for this is that they have to mule the shit around on flash drives. This is a very dangerous way to operate, as it really does risk the destruction of the files. Which leads me to my second point: I am in complete disagreement with Snowden and/or Greenwald’s argument that the leaker has the right to dictate the terms of the release of this information to its rightful owners: the public. Yeah, cheers, thanks a lot for breaking it out, but if you think you now get to tell me how I’m going to consume this information, eat shit. They’re not going to attack him MORE for dumping it — if anything, he’d then be irrelevant. And all along, Snowden has said some of the files he showed Greenwald for context really shouldn’t be released to the public because they really could damage what I can only assume he considers the “legitimate” intelligence gathering capabilities of the United States government, something for which I am utterly without sympathy. Dump all the files NOW, end this silly sideshow involving the shitty Guardian and the irrelevant personalities of Snowden and Greenwald, and remove the possibility that the empire really could regain control of this information and subsume it back into its body of secrets.
  • Why progressives are lame.
  • FBI visits anti-fracking activists in Maryland. When driving through Washington and Greene counties in western Pennsylvania recently saw LOTS of anti-fracking bumperstickers, even a couple of billboards, so I expect the FBI is visiting those counties too.
  • Throw Arthur the coins in you pocket. And I understand you not reading me, I don't understand why you're not reading him.
  • What you can buy me for my birthday. If you haven't read The Kindly Ones, obtain and read The Kindly Ones.
  • Anthony's lit-links.
  • The test of fantasy.
  • Penderecki.
  • Three and a half minutes of unabashed ear candy?






ENVOY

Lisa Robertson

I have tried to say
that, although Love is not judgement
analysis too is a style
of affect
since the scale that rends me vulnerable
has cut, from abundance, doubt
(not that identity shunts
civic ratio or consequence) Sure —
I would prefer to respond to only
the established charms (and forget inconvenience)
but her hair was also a kind of honey
or instrument.
All that is beautiful, from which I choose
even artifice, which I hold above nature
won’t salve these stuttered accoutrements


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2013/08/20

Does It Shift with the Ringer's Will?











FIELD EFFECT

Joshua Clover

For 8 months he lay in bed over the

difference between “the bell rings” & “he rings

the bell.” Did those 2 “rings” SOUND

DIFFERENT? The invisible disturbance which

is the bell’s vibration beating at the air—a

FIELD EFFECT—does it shift with the

ringer’s will? This, he thought, was the

smallest difference between things which the

human mind could hold (or almost hold, the

thought-of-it falling away from the thinking,

a penny rolling to the horizon & so to

sleep . . .). He couldn’t get up. It became clear

that he was the murderer. Everyone knows. A

man standing at a podium reads from notes.

In the audience people nod in immaculate

suits, women & men. When I am done

someone will transcribe what I say into speech.

It will not resemble my notes. He is just THE

THING between his notes & his speech. This is

only fair, that he be the air. Some of the

women wear hats with feathers in them, wild,

candescent. In the audience is a boy named B,

not the letter, not the note. Another sound,

neither letter nor note—



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