Dearest I Cannot Loiter Here in Lather Like a Polar Bear

• New from Earthgirl. That's Stanley (named after Elkin) on the left, Rosie (named after Tremain) on the right. You can see more of her work here. Mocomofos, she has a show this coming April. Details TBA.
• Tremain, as opposed to Trelane.
• Who the hell does sillyass Star Trek jokes and allusions?
• See blog header.
• Language of resistance: Such slander campaigns could make the secret police in totalitarian regimes look like literary workshops. For what they do is create characters; they make people up and release them into the world. When, years after the collapse of communism, Müller gained access to her secret police file, she discovered that in the archives she was not one, but two distinct people. “One is called Cristina, an enemy of the state, who must be taken on.” Except for the name, this character looked familiar to Müller, a version of herself as reconstructed by the regime’s spies and scribes. The second character was pure fiction. To compromise the real one, the secret police created a fake Müller, Cristina’s “double.” This literary product had all “the ingredients that would be most damaging to me—hardened Communist, ruthless agent, party member.” Working for the Party—or for its “Shield and Sword,” as the secret police was endearingly called—was often seen as a dirty job, something that could rob you of social respectability. Apparently the inner Party knew this better than anyone else.
• Easy Make Totalitarian Salads!
• Today's healthy dose of duh.
• Bartleby, the president.
• LitCrit Wars, via Melville.
• [He Lived - Childhood Summers]
• Short films of Diana Rigg?
• Bleggalgazing and a request for blogs. Glad to see I'm not the only one.
• The Librarian.
• Bleggalgazing: yes, I'm over myself, at least for today, thanks.
• Lordy, downloaded this album last night, holyfuck:

HOME AFTER THREE MONTHS AWAY

Robert Lowell

Gone now the baby's nurse,
a lioness who ruled the roost
and made the Mother cry.
She used to tie
gobbets of porkrind in bowknots of gauze--
three months they hung like soggy toast
on our eight foot magnolia tree,
and helped the English sparrows
weather a Boston winter.

Three months, three months!
Is Richard now himself again?
Dimpled with exaltation,
my daughter holds her levee in the tub.
Our noses rub,
each of us pats a stringy lock of hair--
they tell me nothing's gone.
Though I am forty-one,
not forty now, the time I put away
was child's play. After thirteen weeks
my child still dabs her cheeks
to start me shaving. When
we dress her in her sky-blue corduroy,
she changes to a boy,
and floats my shaving brush
and washcloth in the flush. . . .
Dearest I cannot loiter here
in lather like a polar bear.

Recuperating, I neither spin nor toil.
Three stories down below,
a choreman tends our coffin's length of soil,
and seven horizontal tulips blow.
Just twelve months ago,
these flowers were pedigreed
imported Dutchmen; no no one need
distinguish them from weed.
Bushed by the late spring snow,
they cannot meet
another year's snowballing enervation.

I keep no rank nor station.
Cured, I am frizzled, stale and small.

Keeping a Kind of Thieves' Kitchen for the Things Sequestered from the World

         
I read a post on Dangerous Minds, I said at Thursday Night Pints, it mocked Palin for saying something Palin stupid and then mocked Mark Levin (who I've never heard of, he's a rightwing radio host apparently) for saying (I told K and L, see you next week, hopefully, D, that I was going to quote directly from post): Law enforcement and national security agencies — they play out multiple scenarios. They simulate multiple scenarios. I’ll tell you what I think they’re simulating: the collapse of our financial system, the collapse of our society and the potential for widespread violence, looting, killing in the streets, because that’s what happens when an economy collapses. I love Dangerous Minds, I said, they provided a Peter Gabriel video I'll use as part of this gag, but who doesn't think, I asked K and L, that law enforcement and national security agencies are planning multiple scenarios in event of the inevitable collapse of our financial system, a system built on value that doesn't exist? Ironic, said L, Bradley Manning's trial starting the same day as your brother's birthday. I said,                                                                                                   .                 ,                                            . K said                                              and Aaron Swartz too. L said,                                                                ,                                   :                         . I said, there was never a chance Obama wouldn't win reelection. L said, the Obama Austerity Offensive... hey is that a fly or a mini-drone, waving a hands at what I think was fly but can't be sure over her needed to be refilled tumbler of ridiculously priced amber Nyquil.





Eliane Radigue is now the House Band of this shitty blog. Played lots here before, been a couple of months, holyfuck. Fabio played two Radigue pieces yesterday, hear them there, lots here as I find it, including rebroadcasts, my faith is indulged. Today is a High Egoslavian Holy Day. I can't improve on yesterday's post for today's celebration other than noting Nemerov was born on February 29, 1920, so I can only defer to March 1 three out of four years, and at that I respect Lowell, born 96 years ago today and admire and respect and love like an uncle Richard Wilbur, born 92 years ago today, and that if reading Nemerov, born 93 years ago today, reminds me more of the bridge he was to how I read today than of the poetry itself, I am blessed. In praise of minor writers. Joan Didion reads Bob Woodward. Motherfucking Obama: President Obama and a host of administration spokespersons have condemned the Sequestration, explaining how it will cause catastrophic damage to hundreds of vital government services. Those of us who teach economics, however, always stress “revealed preferences” – it’s not what you say that matters, it’s what you do that matters. Obama has revealed his preference by refusing to sponsor, or even support, a clean bill that would kill the sequestration threat to our Nation. Instead, he has nominated Jacob Lew, the author of the Sequestration provision, as his principal economic advisor. Lew is one of the strongest proponents of austerity and what he and Obama call the “Grand Bargain” – which would inflict large cuts in social programs and the safety net and some increases in revenues. Obama has made clear that he hopes this Grand Betrayal (my phrase) will be his legacy. Obama and Lew do not want to remove the Sequester because they view it as creating the leverage – over progressives – essential to induce them to vote for the Grand Betrayal. Just to reiterate the duh. Here's how cynical I am - it's not an accident Obama chose yesterday to do this, fellow rubes. Snark redux. We aren't the world. Offered for consideration, since the subject is out there amongst friends: Prayer of the Anarch. God's resignation letter. Choreographic, chiropractic. Capitalism and inequality. Is Brave New World actually here? Kristol Shrew Persuasion. Late afternoon of the academic elite. Re: the financial crisis at Illtophay - I said,                                            . I agree, said K, but
                                 .  L said,                                                             , so fuck them all. Maggie's boatload of links. Melville, for those of you who do, or don't but should. Nocturnal resolutions. Knausgaard, for those of you who do. I hate the conceit of the novel, on multiple levels, forgive me, better bleggalgazing than novel-naveling, the first is poorer but honester. Josipovici, for those of you who do. Because you asked about the line between poetry and prose. Prunella's latest playlist. No, I said when K asked, no one will comment on yesterday's Nemerov/Wilbur/Lowell post, only a dozen will read the poems. I'll kill comments when I wake up Friday morning.





POCKETS

Howard Nemerov

Are generally over or around
Erogenous zones, they seem to dive
In the direction of those

Dark places, and indeed
It is their nature to be dark
Themselves, keeping a kind

Of thieves' kitchen for the things
Sequestered from the world
For long of little while,

The keys, the handkerchiefs,
The said and vagrant little coins
That are really only passing through.

For all the locate closest to lust,
No pocket ever sees another;
There is in fact a certain sadness

To pockets, going in their lonesome ways
And snuffling up their sifting storms
Of dust, tobacco bits and lint.

A pocket with a hole in it
Drops out; from shame, is that, or pride?
What is a pocket but a hole?

Though We Cannot Conceive of an Undreamt Thing, We Know to Our Cost How the Dreamt Cloud Crumbles. or: Egoslavian High Holy Day Eve

LIFE CYCLE OF COMMON MAN

Howard Nemerov

Roughly figured, this man of moderate habits,

This average consumer of the middle class,

Consumed in the course of his average life span

Just under half a million cigarettes,

Four thousand fifths of gin and about

A quarter as much vermouth; he drank

Maybe a hundred thousand cups of coffee,

And counting his parents’ share it cost

Something like half a million dollars

To put him through life. How many beasts

Died to provide him with meat, belt and shoes

Cannot be certainly said.

                                     But anyhow,

It is in this way that a man travels through time,

Leaving behind him a lengthening trail

Of empty bottles and bones, of broken shoes,

Frayed collars and worn out or outgrown

Diapers and dinnerjackets, silk ties and slickers.

Given the energy and security thus achieved,

He did . . . ? What? The usual things, of course,

The eating, dreaming, drinking and begetting,

And he worked for the money which was to pay

For the eating, et cetera, which were necessary

If he were to go on working for the money, et cetera,

But chiefly he talked. As the bottles and bones

Accumulated behind him, the words proceeded

Steadily from the front of his face as he

Advanced into the silence and made it verbal.

Who can tally the tale of his words? A lifetime

Would barely suffice for their repetition;

If you merely printed all his commas the result

Would be a very large volume, and the number of times

He said “thank you” or “very little sugar, please,”

Would stagger the imagination. There were also

Witticisms, platitudes, and statements beginning

“It seems to me” or “As I always say.”

Consider the courage in all that, and behold the man

Walking into deep silence, with the ectoplastic

Cartoon’s balloon of speech proceeding

Steadily out of the front of his face, the words

Borne along on the breath which is his spirit

Telling the numberless tale of his untold Word

Which makes the world his apple, and forces him to eat.

                             

                                     

ADVICE TO A PROPHET

Richard Wilbur

When you come, as you soon must, to the streets of our city,   

Mad-eyed from stating the obvious,

Not proclaiming our fall but begging us

In God’s name to have self-pity,

Spare us all word of the weapons, their force and range,   

The long numbers that rocket the mind;

Our slow, unreckoning hearts will be left behind,   

Unable to fear what is too strange.

Nor shall you scare us with talk of the death of the race.   

How should we dream of this place without us?—

The sun mere fire, the leaves untroubled about us,   

A stone look on the stone’s face?

Speak of the world’s own change. Though we cannot conceive   

Of an undreamt thing, we know to our cost

How the dreamt cloud crumbles, the vines are blackened by frost,   

How the view alters. We could believe,

If you told us so, that the white-tailed deer will slip   

Into perfect shade, grown perfectly shy,

The lark avoid the reaches of our eye,

The jack-pine lose its knuckled grip

On the cold ledge, and every torrent burn

As Xanthus once, its gliding trout

Stunned in a twinkling. What should we be without   

The dolphin’s arc, the dove’s return,

These things in which we have seen ourselves and spoken?   

Ask us, prophet, how we shall call

Our natures forth when that live tongue is all

Dispelled, that glass obscured or broken

In which we have said the rose of our love and the clean   

Horse of our courage, in which beheld

The singing locust of the soul unshelled,

And all we mean or wish to mean.

Ask us, ask us whether with the worldless rose   

Our hearts shall fail us; come demanding   

Whether there shall be lofty or long standing   

When the bronze annals of the oak-tree close.
                     

 

EPILOGUE

Robert Lowell

Those blessèd structures, plot and rhyme—

why are they no help to me now

I want to make

something imagined, not recalled?

I hear the noise of my own voice:

The painter’s vision is not a lens,

it trembles to caress the light.

But sometimes everything I write   

with the threadbare art of my eye

seems a snapshot,

lurid, rapid, garish, grouped,

heightened from life,

yet paralyzed by fact.

All’s misalliance.

Yet why not say what happened?

Pray for the grace of accuracy

Vermeer gave to the sun’s illumination

stealing like the tide across a map

to his girl solid with yearning.

We are poor passing facts,

warned by that to give

each figure in the photograph

his living name.