Here's the SunnO))) cascade I promised. Reiteration of duh. I have moved to the next stage of my obamapostasy: I can't imagine myself neener-neenering emotionally devastated Hillarmy's (go register Hillarmy.every extension at GoDaddy, I name it and relinquish claims on trademark, yo) moral outrage over the Democracy-threatening secrecy of the Christie administration. I read Jennifer Rubin for the same reason I watch natural disaster porn, here is her sloppiest, laziest, no doubt she thinks her most brilliant trolling on wapoblog ever since the last until the next. Yes, more politics today than recently. I'm going to a wedding in Norfolk this weekend, a cousin I wouldn't recognize if introduced but a son of my favorite aunt and uncle, want to bleed any excess aargh-fluid out of the political spleen just in case Earthgirl and I decide to get shit-faced and politics, as they inevitably will among the shit-faced, come up. For I swear I am keeping my mouth shut regardless. SeatSix can vouch I succeeded or failed next Sunday or Monday.
- The state versus John: Last week I had the unusual experience of being cross-examined at length by the State on the content of many of my blog posts here, in the course of a post-conviction proceeding. Although this line of questioning was objected to on grounds of relevance, it was not unexpected, and the State justified its inquisition on the grounds that my “credibility” was at issue. It was gratifying to know that at least one person was still reading this blog. And it would not surprise me if in the near future other authorities take an interest as well, as a result of this prosecutor’s interest. I think I explained myself, for the record, as well as could be expected in that format and environment, and as well as Heresy is ever able to justify itself to Orthodoxy. Nevertheless, this is as good a time and opportunity as any to summarize the views I’ve expressed here over the last few years, which have evolved some but not much since the last time I posted.
- Event Planner.
- Obscure Sound's Best of November, with sound.
- Bodah reads another Hejinian poem on his weekly radio show.
- E-Literacy and the Social: It often seems that autopoiesis and self-reference play a crucial role in the basic understanding of e-literature, which the established scholarship (e.g. e-literary criticism) considers first and foremost in terms of its new media specificity. This practice is distinctly contextualized and embedded in contemporary society and its paradigm shifts. In the present time, defined by capitalism, which does not leave anything outside of its influence, there is also no point in leaving the e-literary text outside, i.e. without any references to "the social" and to theories that deal with new social and cultural paradigms. The challenge of broader social theory application in this field is therefore the current topic of interest in this essay. To emphasize the specificity of an e-literary piece (as a performance, event, procedure, program, ride, textual instrument) directs us to its materiality, which is a very historical, changeable category. The requirements for full autonomy of this field as separated from the social (the claim of modernist aesthetics), have passed. Today we recognize that software is also a cultural and social tool (Galloway, 2012). In this essay, we are going to discuss some key theoretical notions on the issue of "the social" at the present time and their application in the field of e-literature.
- The most horrifying sentence you'll read today.
- Three new Ashbery poems.
- Flowers of Abeyance.
GRADATIONS OF BLUE
Matthea Harvey
The scent of pig is faint tonight
as the lime trees hang their heads against gradations of blue,
looking at the lone suitcase in the middle of the farmyard
with a sense of solidarity. Also forgotten.
Its owner never once looked up at them and exclaimed
I was still soft-fingered when I planted you.
In the plane, her gaze rests on a flock of cloud-birds,
pinkish purple with elongated necks, rests
on the plane’s wing-tip colored pink by the sun.
Her head is heavy with this childhood cargo,
like the hawk that usually flies between or above their branches,
found skimming the ground with its catch of mouse or mole,
or the barge that passes every day at four, its metal nose
just out of the water, while empty at eight, its sleek sides
flash signals to those on shore. Later, on the highway
a row of trucks lit like orange squares in the setting sun—
a colony of ants each with a piece of chrysanthemum
on their backs—begins to reassemble memories;
the petals become lining, the shape of the flower is lost,
so that years later, looking at an old photograph,
she will not remember the names of cousins and uncles
but the exact bend in the river behind them, the pattern of trees.
