- Got my Giftmas presents to myself yesterday, BOATLOADS of Zoviet France (replacing most of what I owned dubbed onto cassettes years ago, now useless), while listening to Zoviet France for hours last night I did some link-fishing since I while I can hear music and scan books simultaneously I can't listen to music and read novels or poetry at the same time (plus I did some link-fishing this morning over coffee).
- Epic fail: a New Year's meditation.
- Bait and switch: the heavy price of social progress.
- Just as vile as the TSA.
- Fifteen feet of pure white snow: a New Year's meditation with news of another bleggal suicide and the Nick Cave you'd expect by the link's title.
- Harryette Mullen interview: If our attention is limited and if poets are valued according to the needs or preoccupations of each generation of readers, then cycles of memory and forgetfulness may be inevitable.
- Silliman's always generous litlinks.
- Fiction without holes.
- Zoviet France is in the inner circle of musicians/bands for the two rotating spots in My Sillyass Deserted Island Game.
SLEEPING WITH THE DICTIONARY
Harryette Mullen
I beg to dicker with my silver-tongued companion, whose lips are ready to read my shining gloss. A versatile partner, conversant and well-versed in the verbal art, the dictionary is not averse to the solitary habits of the curiously wide-awake reader. In the dark night’s insomnia, the book is a stimulating sedative, awakening my tired imagination to the hypnagogic trance of language. Retiring to the canopy of the bedroom, turning on the bedside light, taking the big dictionary to bed, clutching the unabridged bulk, heavy with the weight of all the meanings between these covers, smoothing the thin sheets, thick with accented syllables—all are exercises in the conscious regimen of dreamers, who toss words on their tongues while turning illuminated pages. To go through all these motions and procedures, groping in the dark for an alluring word, is the poet’s nocturnal mission. Aroused by myriad possibilities, we try out the most perverse positions in the practice of our nightly act, the penetration of the denotative body of the work. Any exit from the logic of language might be an entry in a symptomatic dictionary. The alphabetical order of this ample block of knowledge might render a dense lexicon of lucid hallucinations. Beside the bed, a pad lies open to record the meandering of migratory words. In the rapid eye movement of the poet’s night vision, this dictum can be decoded, like the secret acrostic of a lover’s name.
