A Weedy Speech, a Marshy Retainer

Feargal Sharkey is 55 today. We're driving to Ohio today to abandon our daughter at college Thursday morning. I'm driving a rental while Planet drives her car, she tells me she drives as fast as me, I'm glad Earthgirl will be in her car for that reason, glad too because I've music - listen to this blog's last week of songs, yo - I can listen to on the way out but won't play on the way back: the world is large, and Earthgirl loves Pere Ubu and lots of stuff I love for the seven hours back. Expect lots of Lampchop here the next few days: they are always part of this trip's soundtrack, here's your aargh, for instance. But, on abandoning my daughter: though it hurts to drive away, it's hyperbole to call it abandonment. Obligatory sentence: when Planet is my age it will be 2047. I'm told movies with top box-office stars are in movie theaters even as I type this that are conditioning her for that world. Anyway, what to say, and over and over? That takes care of angry links and their metaphors and overtones, nothing but songs, poems, photos, perhaps some non-angry links, travelogs until at least Friday, I can hope if not promise. The above song always reminds me of this Delays song:








[HE LIVED - CHILDHOOD SUMMERS]

Lorine Niedecker

He lived—childhood summers

    thru bare feet

then years of money’s lack

    and heat

beside the river—out of flood

    came his wood, dog,

woman, lost her, daughter—

    prologue

to planting trees. He buried carp

    beneath the rose

where grass-still

    the marsh rail goes.

To bankers on high land

    he opened his wine tank.

He wished his only daughter

    to work in the bank

but he’d given her a source

    to sustain her—

a weedy speech,

    a marshy retainer.

And in Places It Seems That a Large, Now Absent, Animal Must Have Passed the Night

• There will be aargh today and tomorrow, I'm going to try to get it out of my system, none (or at least that's the plan - see, I leave myself an out) Wednesday and Thursday (when I'm away, there's a clue where in this post though most of you can guess), I'm almost certain it will return Friday but hold out a thin gleam of curiosity.
• Let me try it this way: Obama does use incrementalism, moving to the right at the inch by inch pace calculated to not alienate his Democratic base.
• Let me try it this way: Obama does move incrementally to the left on social issues he knows he enjoys majority support on to the precise amount he moves to the right on the issues he's truly cares about.
• We're not smart enough to appreciate Barack Obama.
• Surveillance society.
• Bet a pint Obama will nominate this fuck. Not that, in terms of policy, it will make a difference whom Obama chooses.
• The smart boys.
• Political corruption as duplicitous exclusion.
• Of course they were lying.
• A social history of wiretaps.
• Hillarian inevitability.
• The fake shop and capitalist nostalgia.
• New Inquiry's Sunday links.
• Not written in the stars.
• Written in the stars:

• Speaking of inevitabilities. Yes, the whole post for that.
• The boy with spirograph eyes.
• Best Kensington road construction sign ever.
• Research says cats have healing powers.
• Beyond narrative.
• Szymborska.
• Szymborska. Click on Szymborska tag for more poems.
• Sun Ra, for those of you who do.
• Jim's latest playlist. This is true: I can conceive of loving teams, I can conceive of hating teams, I just can't - never could - conceive of giving a fuck one way or the other about the Atlanta Braves.
• Who is Harry Nilsson and why is Van Dyke Parks talking about him?

HEAVY SUMMER RAIN

Jane Kenyon

The grasses in the field have toppled,

and in places it seems that a large, now

absent, animal must have passed the night.

The hay will right itself if the day

turns dry. I miss you steadily, painfully.

None of your blustering entrances

or exits, doors swinging wildly

on their hinges, or your huge unconscious

sighs when you read something sad,

like Henry Adams’s letters from Japan,

where he traveled after Clover died.

Everything blooming bows down in the rain:

white irises, red peonies; and the poppies

with their black and secret centers

lie shattered on the lawn.

words reach and visually fail to tie audibly retire the pieces of the opening collision, and the reaches of turning aside remind

   
Yesterday morning on 270 south, on the curve to the left at the split at the spur, the Matrix hit 200K miles. I always liked the car's dashboard looks like a United uniform. The transmission is starting to go, and I'll not sink more than a few hundred dollars into a repair, and the CD player has been busted the last 50K miles and Dvorak's American Suite was what was on WETA at the time, but I gassed it up and Jiffy Lubed it yesterday, it's been an exceptionally reliable car needing just standard maintenance, I feel an obligation to run it into the ground, or at least sensible abandonment.

• More songs for long quiet solo drives over mountains.
• Another person asks, Does Obama think we're stupid?
• Obama on imperial power and total surveillance: If I tell Michelle that I did the dishes — now, granted, in the White House, I don’t do the dishes that much, but back in the day,” Obama said, “and she’s a little skeptical, well, I’d like her to trust me, but maybe I need to bring her back and show her the dishes and not just have her take my word for it.
• So it's come to this: two links from Politico. Thanks, Obama.
• The surveillance is not about terrorism.
• Police state tango.
• On Lavabit.
• Fine print as capitalism's surrealist masterpiece.
• Privilege and the rhetoric of austerity.
• Maggie's links of the week.

• I walked into the living room yesterday, Planet and Earthgirl are watching some TV show, Captain Janeway is undercover as a old fat Russian inmate in a California prison. No sign of Seven of Nine or Jameway's First Officer Chipotle.
• Potomac drowning machine.
• Watkins Mill interchange!
• { feuilleton }'s links of the week.
• A Language.
• Album - A Runthru.
• Beckett, for those of you who do.
• Celan and Beckett, for those of you who do.
• Malone Dies.
• In the marvelous dimension.
• Seven pieces of HOLYFUCK! 

ARGUMENT OVER, AMOUNTING

Clark Coolidge

In edges, in barriers the tonal light of t

the one thing removed overemphasizes tonally

and you could hurry it, and it vanish and plan

You go out on an avenue, but may be taken in despite

your chordal list of hates, overcomings banished ready

receiving you from a darkened cone, the one a beat

behind the one you there are

Then the I not part of the you equation, but the

spider trying to build where it is written

vibrates tentative

I don’t want to talk to you about it anymore

crystal region in its light, there are failures and

there are failures

But it’s imperative, abrupt catch, that you sink the

final catch, trounced morning

this is awful but none other available, words reach

and visually fail to tie audibly retire

the pieces of the opening collision, and the reaches of

turning aside remind

I am hopefully

this is position

of the world overcome by

and by the wind takes our voice

the collateral one voice

We Were Entering Dark Houses, Always More Dark Houses, Hushed and Abandoned

                 

• Dance!
• Non-aargh links seem to be far less read than the aarghful links.
• Have this aargh one: The Obama years have given us an America that looks something like a bad Kurt Russell movie from the 80s: a weird, garish dystopia, where the president runs a death squad out of the White House, wages robot wars in foreign lands, operates a techno-panopticon sucking up every message, musing and secret desire of the populace, and lets tens of millions of citizens sink into poverty and despair in their gutted communities and crumbling infrastructure while he doles out trillions of dollars to rapacious elites gleefully bleeding the country dry... Add to this such things as the corporate-backed ALEC movement stifling the ability of the people’s elected representatives to pass measures on matters of vital importance to their communities, such as gun violence, pollution, collective bargaining, etc; the return of Jim Crow laws openly designed to rob the dusky races (and poor white trash) of access to the ballot box; the incarceration of a greater percentage of its own population than any regime in human history; the reckless sell-off of public services, public lands and the environment itself to frackers, venture cap vultures and other corporate profiteers; and the relentless persecution of any government employee who dares to inform the people of even a few of the sickening crimes being done in their name. It ain't incrementalism, and it ain't to the left.
• Found it looking for something else, started rereading for WTF, been a decade or more, the horse killing dream of Raskolnikov, lordy. And it's been such a while since I've read something that's beams and pillars and joists are so right-squared and obvious, is weird, like discovering a new form. Anyway, he's just axed the pawnbroker and her step-sister. The pages and pages of polyphonic splaining are coming, I'll see.
• OK OK OK, one more: Martin O'Motherfucking O'Malley (trademark claim) campaigns for Cory Motherfucking Booker.
• UPDATE! OK, one more: Obama thinks you're stupid.
• Ornery.
• Fortunately I sat down to consolidate the blogrolls and realized fuck that. There are a couple more new places that were added.
• A hubristic flea.
• Creative tyranny.
• What you can buy me for my birthday. 
• Summer at Blue Creek, North Carolina.
• I like Tanya Donelly's new song better than Neko Case's new song but it's nice to have both.
• On Benjamin Britten's new biography. 
• Gubaidulina.
• Summer Song.

THE WHITE ROOM

Charles Simic

The obvious is difficult
To prove. Many prefer
The hidden. I did, too.
I listened to the trees.

They had a secret
Which they were about to
Make known to me--
And then didn't.

Summer came. Each tree
On my street had its own
Scheherazade. My nights
Were a part of their wild Storytelling.

We were
Entering dark houses,
Always more dark houses,
Hushed and abandoned.

There was someone with eyes closed
On the upper floors.
The fear of it, and the wonder,
Kept me sleepless.

The truth is bald and cold,
Said the woman
Who always wore white.
She didn't leave her room.

The sun pointed to one or two
Things that had survived
The long night intact.
The simplest things,

Difficult in their obviousness.
They made no noise.
It was the kind of day
People described as "perfect."

Gods disguising themselves
As black hairpins, a hand-mirror,
A comb with a tooth missing?
No! That wasn't it.

Just things as they are,
Unblinking, lying mute
In that bright light--
And the trees waiting for the night.

There Are No More Cigarettes in This Letter

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At the End of August, When All the Letters of the Alphabet Are Waiting

Periodic posting of the Blegxistential Anthem, summoned to spare me (and you) writing about it, plus three more songs for long quiet solo drives over beautiful mountains and a playlist from Prunella and a playlist from :-p and two poems, it's all I've got, it's the middle of fucking Blogust.







THE BEACH IN AUGUST

Weldon Kees

The day the fat woman

In the bright blue bathing suit

Walked into the water and died,

I thought about the human

Condition. Pieces of old fruit

Came in and were left by the tide.

What I thought about the human

Condition was this: old fruit

Comes in and is left, and dries

In the sun. Another fat woman

In a dull green bathing suit

Dives into the water and dies.

The pulmotors glisten. It is noon.

We dry and die in the sun

While the seascape arranges old fruit,

Coming in and the tide, glistening

At noon. A woman, moderately stout,

In a nondescript bathing suit,

Swims to a pier. A tall woman

Steps toward the sea. One thinks about the human

Condition. The tide goes in and goes out.

MIST VALLEY

James Longenbach

At the end of August, when all
The letters of the alphabet are waiting,
You drop a teabag in a cup.
The same few letters making many different words,
The same words meaning different things.

Often you've rearranged them on the surface of the fridge.
Without the surface
They're repulsed by one another.

Here are the letters.
The tea is in your cup.

At the end of August, the mind
Is neither the pokeweed piercing the grass
Nor the grass itself.
As Tony Cook says in
The Biology of Terrestrial Mollusks

The right thing to do is nothing, the place
A place of concealment,
And the time as often as possible.

Past the Blackset Noctilucent Clouds

 
More songs for long quiet solo drives over beautiful mountains.  Hey! is Rush the most hated band ever? Elric (who no longer reads this) played Rush and has praised Geddy Lee's bass-playing (Elric was a bass-player) as superlative, says Geddy Lee plays keyboards with his feet while singing and playing bass. I didn't mind hearing Rush though at parties I mostly heard the same few songs the Rush zealots always played so the songs got old. Every band has it's zealots, say Pere Ubu or Guided by Voices or XTC or Archers of Loaf or Roxy Music, those zealous fucks always annoy non-zealots to the respective bands' unfair detriment. I'd heard anti-Rush sentiment but not nearly as much as I've heard anti-Steely Dan sentiment. Dr Z loves Steely Dan, I really like some Steely Dan tunes, and the deep disdain for Steely Dan by some friends always surprises me. Other than Dr Z, I haven't talked with anyone about Steely Dan in more than a decade. Posed the most hated band question last night on twitter, responses there and by email, got real Rush hate, real Steely Dan hate, real Steely Dan love.

• But no, I don't feel like posting a Steely Dan cascade, it's just been awhile since I thought about black licorice bands.
• Just to clarify, I don't believe Elizabeth Warren is a progressive savior - there are no progressive saviors - I think she plays one on TV. I'd like to be wrong, I bet you any number of pints you specify I'm not. I'd love to see, for my selfish entertainment, her piss off senior Democratic Party leaders and freak out the Party establishment as the apparently and avowedly sincere progressive savior she plays on TV with a deep run into the 2016 primaries (and even then the freakout wouldn't be about her policies but about the Party's rites of succession), but it's not going to happen, I'm betting pints it won't. It's the progressive savior thingee I'm noting, having been infected with it before myself.
• Pissing off friends is a doomed strategy.
• Sharing science is a crime.
• The Toobin Principle.
• Petulant fuck confirmed. Not that it needed confirming.
• Petulant fuck goes on Leno?
• Fred Hiatt's views on the Purple Line, which will never be built. 
• Arguing over Jesus.
• This week in water.
• Hey! I have tickets for Bonnie Prince Billy in Annapolis at Rams Head for late November, a week before Thanksgiving. Looked at Rams Head ticketing this morning, looks like I didn't need to pounce the minute the tickets went on sale yesterday.
• Hey! Some new sites added to the blogrolls, check them out. I may do some maintenance on them over the next few days, consolidating a few to make my browsing easier. I may not. As always, if there's someone you think I would enjoy reading please let me know, as always if you're Kinding me but me not you please let me know.

• O'Donnell's closes. Haven't eaten at O'Donnell's in decades but remember when it was a mainstay on Wisconsin in Bethesda. There was a competitor seafood place in Bethesda, they were near if not directly next to each other, I can't remember it's name.
• UPDATE! Bish Thompson's.
• Corridor City Transitway!
• A British take on Dempsey's move to Seattle: 1. American footballer fights from a tough upbringing to become one of the best 50 footballers in one of the top leagues in the world. 2. He battles for playing time each season and proves himself to new coaches and new teams. 3. Told for the sixth consecutive time that his services are surplus to requirements, he finally says: "Fuck it, I'm the star. I'm not getting a Champions League shot, except as a squad guy at a discount. I don't need to prove anything else. Why should I go down or make a move across to Sunderland or Everton for less money? To prove what?" 4. An MLS club wiggles a massive paycheck, four-year security and a chance to settle his family back in the States. And validate him – more than Europe could or would at this point – telling him that he is the star.
• Philosophy and its double.
• Blockbuster movies will still suck in 2015. (h/t Walter)
• Americans turning against beer?
• Geilivable!
• Reflection.
• RIP George Duke.
• Cat-whisperer!

HYMN

A.R. Ammons

I know if I find you I will have to leave the earth

and go on out

     over the sea marshes and the brant in bays

and over the hills of tall hickory

and over the crater lakes and canyons

and on up through the spheres of diminishing air

past the blackset noctilucent clouds

           where one wants to stop and look

way past all the light diffusions and bombardments

up farther than the loss of sight

    into the unseasonal undifferentiated empty stark

And I know if I find you I will have to stay with the earth

inspecting with thin tools and ground eyes

trusting the microvilli sporangia and simplest

     coelenterates

and praying for a nerve cell

with all the soul of my chemical reactions

and going right on down where the eye sees only traces

You are everywhere partial and entire

You are on the inside of everything and on the outside

I walk down the path down the hill where the sweetgum

has begun to ooze spring sap at the cut

and I see how the bark cracks and winds like no other bark

chasmal to my ant-soul running up and down

and if I find you I must go out deep into your

    far resolutions

and if I find you I must stay here with the separate leaves

Listen as the Fireflies Organize

I've no idea why Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post nor do I know what it means. I'm guessing (a) that not much will happen short term while Bezos' management teams figure out what's broken and how they think they can fix it and (b) I doubt Bezos guillotines every fucker on Fred Hiatt's scribble page which I would pay to see. I post this particular article about it because, if you scroll to the bottom and look at the author photo, there seems to be a consistency in Andrews' face-mullets. OK, here's another one, the column's key bullet: Bezos has enormous political interests in Washington. How much will the Post’s editorial operations become a megaphone for his libertarian views and for Amazon’s business interests? Oh dear. Oh, have another theory why Bezos bought the Post, the most logical I've seen. In the meantime, Fuckface Hiatt says the Disposition Matrix and Tuesday Kill Lists prove Obama isn't serious about the War on Terror. Frank Rich has his obamapostasy? No, though he's angry, gosh darn it. He also bumps the Elizabeth Warren as savior meme. I earnestly hope Elizabeth Warren gains enough power by disobeying/fighting the Democratic establishment to seriously frightened the Democratic establishment into trying to break/demonize/demolish Warren and she continues to fight back. I can't see it happening though it would please me to be wrong, to watch the carnage. (UPDATE: Cilizza jumps on Warren train.) And Rich once bumped the Obama as savior meme too. But look, I don't have a solution. I'm told I need restate my Tug-of-War Theory: I don't buy my Tug-of-War Theory anymore, or I buy it but refuse to tug, I'm expected to tug, my tugging is built into my tugging's defeat as I'm tugging my double not the puppeteers. The blimps of Aberdeen. The vote was 6 yay, 0 nay, on the new header. I confess I like the way it seems to bleed and soften a line I never liked. Still, Momcat will return now and then, sometimes but hopefully not often when I need activate the Momcat Emergency Signal. All three ferals now are always in the yard we when pull up, there's construction in the neighborhood nearby so there are strangers and loud noises so they are often spooked, but they also need more food in the summer while they bake and sleep all day than they do in dead winter when it's below freezing, seems counter-intuitive, oh well. SeatSix sends me word that DC United is raising our ticket prices 15% for a team with three wins. United is raising prices on all LOUD SIDE! seats except for the supporters groups. United must be sure the stadium deal is sealed, it's starting before shovels hit the ground to destroy LOUD SIDE! - the supporters groups will be shunted to an end zone in a new stadium, the sections currently behind the supporters groups will be the highest priced in a new stadium, this is the beginning of the weeding out of those who won't pay. It once would have saddened me that I wasn't more anguished at how easy this choice will be. Oh, and Fuck United. Early indications from Landru and SeatSix suggest they will adopt the Fuck United. Also, I should mention MLS' contribution to my growing Fuck United sentiment. Actual drunkenposten (as opposed to this which reads as if drunkenposten but isn't). But since I'm here, in the battle between fuck it and fuck this, fuck this is pushing out to a lead (readers may concur), though the aim of this post's format is to give each equal opportunity. If you're happy and you know it kick some butt. Also, PTOOFF! A reminder that the proposed Purple Line pisses off the Columbia Country Club. Half a mile from the house I grew up in. I've read six of the books on this list of modern technology and fiction, which I post mostly to ask, has anyone heard of anything new in the pipeline from Richard Powers? An autistic perspective in novels?  Confidently inept at blackjack. And what about Sopwith Camel? No one has yet claimed my second copy of Vollmann's Fathers and Crows so those few of you who have claimed books recently can now put in your claim. American fiction's racial landscape? Hamster emailed, Bonnie Prince Billy tickets for Rams Head in Annapolis on sale today! I read he doesn't get poetry in an essay by him Poetry Magazine. Pascal Dusapin etude. I never got the Elliott Smith bug but some of you did so have some songs for his birthday. I am enraptured with the collected Ceravolo, I know myself, I know it's not an accident I write a paragraph like this in response to his spare, taut lines.

   




SPRING IN THIS WORLD OF POOR MUTTS

Joseph Ceravolo

I kiss your lips
on a grain: the forest

the fifth, how many do
you want on here?
This is the same you
I kiss, you hear
me, you help:

I'm thirty years old.
I want to think in summer now.
Here is goes, here it's summer

(A disintegrated robot)
over us.
We are mortal. We ride
the merry-go-round. A drummer like
this is together.
Let's go feel the water.
                   Here it goes!

Again and it's morning "boom"
                             autumn
"boom" autumn
and the corn is sleeping.
It is sleeping and sweating
and draws the beautiful
soft green sky.

Walk home with the
animal on my shoulder
to the river, the river gets
deeper, the Esso gets
deeper; morning,
              morning,
              cigarette,
family and animal
and parents along the river.
Oh imagination. That's how I need you.

A flying duck or an antler refrains.
The small deer at the
animal farm walks up
to us.

A waterbug comes into
the bathroom.
The north sky is frozen over
like a river.
Like a pimple a waterbug
comes into us
and our lives are full
of rivers. Heavy waterbug!

This is the robot and he
continues across the street.
Looking at a bird
his penis is hanging down;
a wind for
its emotions.
      I don't want to sleep.
The cold around my arms.
Like an iron lung.
As sleep comes closer to the robot's
emotion. Iron.

Spring. Spring. Spring....
                      Spring!
Spring down! come down!
There is goes! There it goes!
Arm belly strike.
Press friend push.
Teeth cruel arrow. I cannot
do without,
without do I cannot, Spring.

Chrome gladly press.
Between me, my wings. Listen as
the fireflies organize.
O save me, the Spring, please!
Before I hurt here
             I hurt her only life
             too much
and it carries in this
iron bug crawling all around.
             Is this Spring?
and it carries me,
iron bug, through the Spring.

Marooned Like a Polar Flower

• Header photo taken yesterday at Sycamore Landing on the canal west of Seneca. I like it. Momcat will return tomorrow.
• US engages in strategic display of cowardice to show resilience and resolve in face of clumsy PR stunt! Best to close those heavily fortified, triple-ringed concreted fortresses for show.
• Also, funny how the talk of boycotting the Winter Olympics in Russia died a quick death. Capitalism over national pride! Though Obama, the petulant fuck, is going to cancel a summit with Putin. 
• Police state.
• Your Fucking Washington Post.
• Militarized vision.
• But no, I have no solutions. See poem above.
• Allegheny, Carroll, Frederick, Garrett, and Carroll County rightwingers want to secede from Maryland. Seeya!
• New Inquiry's Sunday links.
• Maggie's weekly links.
• { feuilleton }'s weekly links.
• NEW ROBERT COOVER SHORT STORY!
• A wine-dark sea.
• Vellichor.
• Dubliners.
• Tom turned me on to Joseph Ceravolo, and wowee. See poem below. Expect more.
• A day on the Big Branch.
• More Melville!
• Night Flight.

POLAR FLOWER

Joseph Ceravolo

Poverty needs us in
this riot
of our body,
driving the jobs of the helpless to
the grainless without weapons.
Our hopes
our bodies stay awake
in the light.
Positions, interventions, work,
riots and leaves around us.
O the hungry body
of our souls
marooned like a polar flower.

Each Withered Pitcher Moves as His Considered Dignity Behooves Down the Worn Path of Earth Where August Flies and Sheaves of Air in Warm Distortions Rise, or: United 3, Montreal 1

     
United won at RFK last night. Didn't go. I'll not lament too much my fallen fandom again and spare you mostly another recitation of the existential meaning I assign it other than to say that SeatSix had a social engagement and Landru (here hating on DCU before resorting to bunnies) is still recovering from lung-trauma and I no longer give enough of a fuck about United to go to a game by myself. I was curious how I'd react to the news of a new stadium that actually seems to have a reasonable chance of being built judging by the relatively slight pushback by citizens groups and lack of easy political demagoguery by ambitious alderman compared to previous stadium proposals. United is on the cheap now - ownership is not going to invest in the team until new revenue streams are guaranteed (and they are not yet guaranteed) - and the cheap little shittyass cost-cutting ownership has implemented (the crappier packages for season-ticket holders both in swag and in games - for more than a decade we got three non-MLS regular season games, this year one, on a Friday night against an opponent scheduled to draw the opponent's fans, for instance) pissed me off in addition to ownerships refusal to spend in the off-season to improve the product. As of yesterday morning I was 50-50 I'd go regardless whether Landru and SeatSix didn't, but news that Vince McMahon Garber, head of Major Rinkydink Soccer, routed Clint Dempsey to a league flagship combined with a weather forecast of torrential downpours (which turned out true) plus other gah that will go undocumented here and I said fuck it. And there are the echoes in my fandom here and elsewhere. In 2010 we went to Philadelphia for United v Philly in Philly's first home game ever. United truly sucked in 2010. We loved them. On the way home we stopped at one of the Houses on 95 in Maryland to grab something to eat. We were sitting at a table when Santino Quaranta walked by, saw us in our United black, he came over and thanked us for making the trip to Philly, yapped with us a few minutes. Last night, a United that truly sucks, that isn't loveable, started a midfielder wearing Santino's old number, the name above the number was Jeffrey. Fine metaphors abound.

Link-farming returns tomorrow. Have more songs for long solo drives over gorgeous mountains and a poem that looks like us.







OLD MEN PITCHING HORSESHOES

X.J. Kennedy

Back in a yard where ringers groove a ditch,

These four in shirtsleeves congregate to pitch

Dirt-burnished iron. With appraising eye,

One sizes up a peg, hoists and lets fly—

A clang resounds as though a smith had struck

Fire from a forge. His first blow, out of luck,

Rattles in circles. Hitching up his face,

He swings, and weight once more inhabits space,

Tumbles as gently as a new-laid egg.

Extended iron arms surround their peg

Like one come home to greet a long-lost brother.

Shouts from one outpost. Mutters from the other.

Now changing sides, each withered pitcher moves

As his considered dignity behooves

Down the worn path of earth where August flies

And sheaves of air in warm distortions rise,

To stand ground, fling, kick dust with all the force

Of shoes still hammered to a living horse.

At Last We Decoded the Terminal Message Only to Find the Pattern We Had Expected Was False

   
We're driving to Ohio middle of week after next, two cars on the way out both so Planet has a car there and we can pack all her stuff, one car bringing Earthgirl and me back. I'll be driving alone on the way there, I like the time alone and I don't begrudge Earthgirl wanting the hours with her daughter, so I spent last night building the playlist on the iPod of all the music I won't be allowed to play on the return drive home. These are for the long quiet beautiful middle third of the drive Cumberland to Waynesburg out, Waynesburg to Cumberland back (stretched on either side, from Hancock east of Cumberland to Washington north of Waynesburg), have some the songs for a dead Blog Days of Summer Saturday.

• Quite possibly the lamest Obama stunt ever since the last until the next.
• Deitungshoheit.
• Various forms of radicalism.
• Jim's Hawaiian adventure continued.
• Clouds.
• MLS = WWE.
• As I look at The Guardian's soccer page just before typing this sentence there is no mention of Dempsey's transfer. Interpret as you please.
• I actually think that if I type LOOK! Glaxo Babies! LISTEN!  people go, Hey! Glaxo Babies? Hey! and will click through.
• What conceptual poetry lacks, what its got.
• The art of the phony.
• Anarchic intentions.
• Betting on book prize winners.
• Obscure Sound's Best of July.
• RIP Fernando Grillo, listen to three hours of his music.

THE BIG BAD

David Orr

At last we decoded the terminal message,

Only to find the pattern we had expected

Was false — a false trail of false bread crumbs

Designed to leave pitfalls undetected.

We found a new pattern. We found a hand

Moving pieces we had thought were only

Part of  the board, and shifting them to vantage points

We had ignored. We rewrote the battle plan

And reconfigured the satellite array

To show our progress from the very beginning.

The fault should be traceable — and hence correctable — 

And once we found it, we’d be winning.

We found a new pattern. We followed its track

To a forest beside an abandoned tunnel

Diving wide as a boxcar into the rock.

A stale breeze blew over rusting shovels

And all of our instruments confirmed a hit.

We set a perimeter. We sent in a scout.

From the interior, nothing looked back at us.

No tracks indicated a force had come out.

But we had a pattern. At dawn, we dispatched

A team of our best, our trackers and stone killers,

To see if  the signals were finally a match

And if so, to counterattack. And now we wait.

And now we wait. The tunnel gives nothing back.

The trees are revealing the first signs of gold

But the air is unmoving. The air is still.

It is quiet here, and getting cold.

How Beautifully I Fake!

• Last night I sat in a house I won't identify at a dinner party with people I won't identify and I participated in conversations whose details I won't reveal here (though I''d like to).
• Today I'm at work at an institution I don't directly name (though I'd like to). It's in flux, both within the micro but especially the macro, some of it fascinating, the dire speculations about the future, which I won't discuss here (though I'd like to).
• There's the unfortunate death of a popular blogger I won't name (though I'd like to) who did me an unKind that I won't describe (though I'd like to) (it was years ago, though I remember the incident like a fresh wound, he no doubt promptly forgot if he noticed at all), plus subsequent indulgent bleggalgazing I won't post here (though I'd like to), bleggalgazing just slightly more popular than an unread post full of quotes from the novels and letters of an 18th C American novelist.
• I've a photo of a dad and his kid I'd love to post here, but I won't, though I don't feel cowardly about this one since the dad asked me not to post it.
• All won'ts in the prior four bullets were first can'ts. I can. I won't.
• I will say on twitter yesterday I was reminded - I am such a dope - that tics and allusions I assume others get others don't. Thanks. I need constant reminders to Fuck It. 
• Yes, I understand the tics and allusions are in service to my won'ts, are proxy Fuck Its.
• So, have yap about my reading slump. Another review of Gass' Middle C. I started it twice, quit early, recognizing my mind is still too blocked to engage it. I am 3/4s through an unsatisfying reread of Mason & Dixon, I have the new McElroy and see the above comment about Middle C, but I'm surprised I find myself thinking about about Vollmann's Ice Shirts, I'm attempting a reread of all the previously released volumes of his Seven Dreams in anticipation of the Fall release of the next. Fathers & Crows is my favorite. It concerns the first interactions of the group that founded the institution I won't name with Native Americans and the mutual carnage that ensued. I have an extra copy, you have three days to claim it before I send it to one of the two of you who claim most of these.

• What, google didn't do it? What the fuck am I going to do with the 35 pressure cookers I ordered online yesterday?
• Feel free to laugh.
• In defense of leakers.
• Un-Manning.
• Libertarian Democrats search for a leader! Or something.
• On the State monopoly on sanctioned violence.
• UPDATE! I soooooooo call bullshit.
• Texas running out of execution drugs.
• Purple Line.
• Even littler eyes.
• The five most sinister things about Disney World.
• One hundred years of nosebleeds.

I AM AN ATHEIST WHO SAYS HIS PRAYERS

Karl Shapiro

I am an atheist who says his prayers.

I am an anarchist, and a full professor at that. I take the loyalty oath.

I am a deviate. I fondle and contribute, backscuttle and brown, father of three.

I stand high in the community. My name is in Who’s Who. People argue about my modesty.

I drink my share and yours and never have enough. I free-load officially and unofficially.

A physical coward, I take on all intellectuals, established poets, popes, rabbis, chiefs of staff.

I am a mystic. I will take an oath that I have seen the Virgin. Under the dry pandanus, to the scratching of kangaroo rats, I achieve psychic onanism. My tree of nerves electrocutes itself.

I uphold the image of America and force my luck. I write my own ticket to oblivion.

I am of the race wrecked by success. The audience brings me news of my death. I write out of boredom, despise solemnity. The wrong reason is good enough for me.

I am of the race of the prematurely desperate. In poverty of comfort I lay gunpowder plots. I lapse my insurance.

I am the Babbitt metal of the future. I never read more than half of a book. But that half I read forever.

I love the palimpsest, statues without heads, fertility dolls of the continent of Mu. I dream prehistory, the invention of dye. The palms of the dancers’ hands are vermillion. Their heads oscillate like the cobra. High-caste woman smelling of earth and silk, you can dry my feet with your hair.

I take my place beside the Philistine and unfold my napkin. This afternoon I defend the Marines. I goggle at long cars.

Without compassion I attack the insane. Give them the horsewhip!

The homosexual lectures me brilliantly in the beer booth. I can feel my muscles soften. He smiles at my terror.

Pitchpots flicker in the lemon groves. I gaze down on the plains of Hollywood. My fine tan and my arrogance, my gray hair and my sneakers, O Israel!

Wherever I am I become. The power of entry is with me. In the doctor’s office a patient, calm and humiliated. In the foreign movies a native, shabby enough. In the art gallery a person of authority (there’s a secret way of approaching a picture. Others move off). The high official insults me to my face. I say nothing and accept the job. He offers me whiskey.

How beautifully I fake! I convince myself with men’s room jokes and epigrams. I paint myself into a corner and escape on pulleys of the unknown. Whatever I think at the moment is true. Turn me around in my tracks; I will take your side.

For the rest, I improvise and am not spiteful and water the plants on the cocktail table.

Born One-Hundred Ninety-Four Years Ago Today, or: In Short, Did the Wish Never Occur to You to Feel Yourself Exempt from Knowledge, and Conscience, and Revel for a While in the Care-Free, Joyous Life of a Perfectly Instinctive, Unscrupulous, and Irresponsible Creature?

From Moby Dick:

Is it that by its indefiniteness it shadows forth the heartless voids and immensities of the universe, and thus stabs us from behind with the thought of annihilation, when beholding the white depths of the milky way? Or is it, that as in essence whiteness is not so much a color as the visible absence of color; and at the same time the concrete of all colors; is it for these reasons that there is such a dumb blankness, full of meaning, in a wide landscape of snows- a colorless, all-color of atheism from which we shrink? And when we consider that other theory of the natural philosophers, that all other earthly hues- every stately or lovely emblazoning- the sweet tinges of sunset skies and woods; yea, and the gilded velvets of butterflies, and the butterfly cheeks of young girls; all these are but subtle deceits, not actually inherent in substances, but only laid on from without; so that all deified Nature absolutely paints like the harlot, whose allurements cover nothing but the charnel-house within; and when we proceed further, and consider that the mystical cosmetic which produces every one of her hues, the great principle of light, for ever remains white or colorless in itself, and if operating without medium upon matter, would touch all objects, even tulips and roses, with its own blank tinge- pondering all this, the palsied universe lies before us a leper; and like wilful travellers in Lapland, who refuse to wear colored and coloring glasses upon their eyes, so the wretched infidel gazes himself blind at the monumental white shroud that wraps all the prospect around him. And of all these things the Albino whale was the symbol. Wonder ye then at the fiery hunt?

Via Brad:

"Poor Hoffman — I remember the shock I had when I first saw the mention of his madness. — But he was just the man to go mad — imaginative, voluptuously inclined, poor, unemployed, in the race of life distanced by his inferiors, unmarried, — without a port of haven in the universe to make. . . . This going mad of a friend or acquaintance comes straight home to every man who feels his soul in him, — which but few men do.  For in all of us lodges the same fuel to light the same fire.  And he who has never felt, momentarily, what madness is has but a mouthful of brains." (Correspondence)

"
"[I]t is often to be observed, that as in digging for precious metals in the mines, much earthy rubbish has first to be troublesomely handled and thrown out; so, in digging in one's soul for the fine gold of genius, much dullness and common-place is first brought to light.  Happy would it be, if the man possessed in himself some receptacle for his own rubbish of this sort: but . . . [n]o common-place is ever effectually got rid of, except by essentially emptying one's self of it into a book; for once trapped in a book, then the book can be put into the fire, and all will be well." (Pierre)

"
"I forgot to mention, that last night about 9 1/2 P.M. Adler & Taylor came into my room, & it was proposed to have whiskey punches, which we did have, accordingly.  Adler drank about three table spoons full — Taylor 4 or five tumblers &c.  We had an extraordinary time & did not break up till after two in the morning.  We talked metaphysics continually, & Hegel, Schlegel, Kant &c. were discussed under the influence of the whiskey." (Correspondence)

"
"We incline to think that God cannot explain His own secrets, and that He would like a little information upon certain points Himself. We mortals astonish Him as much as He us. But it is this Being of the matter; there lies the knot with which we choke ourselves. As soon as you say Me, a God, a Nature, so soon you jump off from your stool and hang from the beam. Yes, that word is the hangman. Take God out of the dictionary, and you would have Him in the street." (Correspondence)

""Dolt & ass that I am I have lived more than 29 years, & until a few days ago, never made close acquaintance with the divine William [Shakespeare]." (Correspondence)
""Dolt & ass that I am I have lived more than 29 years, & until a few days ago, never made close acquaintance with the divine William [Shakespeare]." (Correspondence)

From: The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade

"I am pleased to believe that beauty is at bottom incompatible with ill, and therefore am so eccentric as to have confidence in the latent benignity of that beautiful creature, the rattle-snake, whose lithe neck and burnished maze of tawny gold, as he sleekly curls aloft in the sun, who on the prairie can behold without wonder?" As he breathed these words, he seemed so to enter into their spirit — as some earnest descriptive speakers will — as unconsciously to wreathe his form and sidelong crest his head, till he all but seemed the creature described. Meantime, the stranger regarded him with little surprise, apparently, though with much contemplativeness of a mystical sort, and presently said: "When charmed by the beauty of that viper, did it never occur to you to change personalities with him? to feel what it was to be a snake? to glide unsuspected in grass? to sting, to kill at a touch; your whole beautiful body one iridescent scabbard of death? In short, did the wish never occur to you to feel yourself exempt from knowledge, and conscience, and revel for a while in the care-free, joyous life of a perfectly instinctive, unscrupulous, and irresponsible creature?

Via Ed (lots of Melville there):

But not yet have we solved the incantation of this whiteness, and learned why it appeals with such power to the soul; and more strange and far more portentous—why, as we have seen, it is at once the most meaning symbol of spiritual things, nay, the very veil of the Christian’s Deity; and yet should be as it is, the intensifying agent in things the most appalling to mankind.

Is it that by its indefiniteness it shadows forth the heartless voids and immensities of the universe, and thus stabs us from behind with the thought of annihilation, when beholding the white depths of the milky way? Or is it, that as in essence whiteness is not so much a colour as the visible absence of colour; and at the same time the concrete of all colours; is it for these reasons that there is such a dumb blankness, full of meaning, in a wide landscape of snows—a colourless, all-colour of atheism from which we shrink? And when we consider that other theory of the natural philosophers, that all other earthly hues—every stately or lovely emblazoning—the sweet tinges of sunset skies and woods; yea, and the gilded velvets of butterflies, and the butterfly cheeks of young girls; all these are but subtile deceits, not actually inherent in substances, but only laid on from without; so that all deified Nature absolutely paints like the harlot, whose allurements cover nothing but the charnel-house within; and when we proceed further, and consider that the mystical cosmetic which produces every one of her hues, the great principle of light, for ever remains white or colourless in itself, and if operating without medium upon matter, would touch all objects, even tulips and roses, with its own blank tinge—pondering all this, the palsied universe lies before us a leper; and like wilful travellers in Lapland, who refuse to wear coloured and colouring glasses upon their eyes, so the wretched infidel gazes himself blind at the monumental white shroud that wraps all the prospect around him. And of all these things the Albino whale was the symbol. Wonder ye then at the fiery hunt? (from Moby Dick).

Via Flowerville, from Pierre, or The Ambiguities.

From these random slips, it would seem, that Pierre is quite conscious of much that is so anomalously hard and bitter in his lot, of much that is so black and terrific in his soul. Yet that knowing his fatal condition does not one whit enable him to change or better his condition. Conclusive proof that he has on power over his condition. For in tremendous extremities human souls are like drowning men; well enough they know they are in peril; well enough they know the causes of that peril; -- nevertheless, the sea is the sea, and these drowning men do drown.

and

But is life, indeed, a thing for all infidel levities, and we, its misdeemed beneficiaries, so utterly fools and infatuate, that what we take to be our strongest tower of delight, only stands at the caprice of the minutest event—the falling of a leaf, the hearing of a voice, or the receipt of one little bit of paper scratched over with a few small characters by a sharpened feather? Are we so entirely insecure, that that casket, wherein we have placed our holiest and most final joy, and which we have secured by a lock of infinite deftness; can that casket be picked and desecrated at the merest stranger's touch, when we think that we alone hold the only and chosen key? 

                         
From Moby Dick:

Though amid all the smoking horror and diabolism of a sea-fight, sharks will be seen longingly gazing up to the ship's decks, like hungry dogs round a table where red meat is being carved, ready to bolt down every killed man that is tossed to them; and though, while the valiant butchers over the deck-table are thus cannibally carving each other's live meat with carving-knives all gilded and tassled, the sharks, also, with the jewel-hilted mouths, are quarrelsomely carving away under the table at the dead meat; and though, were you to turn the whole affair upside-down, it would still be pretty much the same thing, that is to say, a shocking sharkish business enough for all parties; and though sharks also are the invariable outriders of slave ships crossing the Atlantic, systematically trotting alongside, to be handy in case a parcel is to be carried anywhere, or a dead slave to be decently buried; and though one or two other like instances might be set down, touching the set terms, places, and occasions, when sharks do socially congregate, and most hilariously feast; yet there is no conceivable time or occasion when you will find them in such countless numbers, and in gayer or more jovial spirits, than around a dead sperm whale, moored by night to a whale-ship at sea. If you have never seen that sight, then suspend your decision about the propriety of devil-worship, and the expediency of conciliating the devil.

Oh, you read down this far? Thank you. Have I ever mentioned that I love Melville? Oh, and here's a totally unrelated song that's been stuck in my head for three days, I was waiting for a post that it fit but I got to post to make room in my head for next one:

But I'm Not Altogether Evil, There Are Also Times When I Will Refuse to Lick or Swallow Anything That's Not Generally Available to Mankind

Jerry Garcia was born 71 years ago today. Something else I say once a year: that 4/12/78 Durham show, one of the five best nights of my life, the buzz, the girl and that week, the intimacy of the venue, the Dead on. Saw dozens of dozens of shows, others who have can vouch too, there were stinkers, there were the many meh minus to meh plus shows (though, with few exceptions, BLAST was had), then there were the shows when the band clicked, as infrequent as a come-from-behind walk-off home run home game, and made all the mehs and stinkers worth it.

• One thing I remember: in the late 70s, early 80s, there were always Talking Head shirts at Dead concerts, Dead shirts at Talking Head concerts, I was always pleasantly surprised and delighted at the overlap.
• But yes, loved them, lost them, have gained them back.
• And always the best album covers to sift seeds on. We used to have to sift seeds, youngsters.
• Slapping Toobin: We wouldn’t be having this discussion if it wasn’t for him (Snowden). Why do you think–I mean, that’s the thing I don’t understand about the climate in Washington these days, is that people want to have debates on television elsewhere, but then you want to throw the people who start the debates in jail.
• Hola NSA.
• @firetomfriedman has a blog. Who knew? Looks like he forgets about it from time to time too.
• "It's your moment, Obama. Don't blow it." 
• Obama losing his poise?
• Larry Summers and the end of political shame.
• Obama a fucking dick?
• Cat signs.

• A partial list of things John Berryman found delicious. I've been thinking about my Sillyass Deserted Island Game not including poets, more later (or not (or not here)), but Berryman is on the short list.
• Coetzee, for those of you who do.
• Beckett, for those of you who do.
• But how far do I have to go.
• The Ballad of Big Star. I have still not seen the documentary, if it's been in the area I've missed it, I was told on the radio I can stream it through Amazon, FUCK AMAZON! I'll see it somehow, sooner than later I hope.
• Julie had a Kate Bush set earlier this morning.
• It's a Bobby song, but this Dead song was requested.
• Bertha.
• Dire Wolf.
• He's Gone.
• Not Fade Away.
• Cold Rain and Snow.
• Black Peter.
• Althea.

EATING FRIED CHICKEN

Linh Dinh

I hate to admit this, brother, but there are times
When I’m eating fried chicken
When I think about nothing else but eating fried chicken,
When I utterly forget about my family, honor and country,
The various blood debts you owe me,
My past humiliations and my future crimes—
Everything, in short, but the crispy skin on my fried chicken.

But I’m not altogether evil, there are also times
When I will refuse to lick or swallow anything
That’s not generally available to mankind.

(Which is, when you think about it, absolutely nothing at all.)

And no doubt that’s why apples can cause riots,
And meat brings humiliation,
And each gasp of air
Will fill one’s lungs with gun powder and smoke.