Esther Press

102


From Rodrigo Toscano's To Leveling Swerve (the first page only of the following poem):


MEDITATIO LECTORIS


Caucus how fun to get it going and done.

How simple to be it done dumb.

How simple to be it done not dumb.

Simple to be it begun and done and re-done complex.

Complex to be it begun and done and re-done simple.

How done to know it beginning not done.

How undone to know it not done to begin.

And guy baldest ego rolled in to get it done gravely and won it.

And gal baldest ego rolled in to get it done sprightly and won it.

Raucous how fun to rip it apart soon.

Raucous how fun to rip it apart soon and slap.

Back.

Later.

Freighter.

Together.

Now that you know when you're done. Doing.

Now that you're doing what you didn't know. Begun.






101


The insistent, obvious, heterosexual (?) understanding (yet new how?) that when one sleeps with a woman one is sleeping with a half-man, the father in her, and vice-versa for her with the mother in him.



100


James: named after my father.

Jude: named after a pedophilic priest and, by extension, the patron saint of lost causes.

Wagner: named for my ancestors' seeming employment of choice or necessity, i.e., a driver of wagons or someone who fixed them.

*

None of these describe me. My entire name is all about others and their choices. It's very odd to go around telling people that this is, in fact, who I am, when it obviously, logically, isn't.

99


For a writer, there is nothing, to me, more important than confidence in one's world view, one's writing, whatever it is, even if it is one that is questioning everything. Without confidence in one's writing, which is the extension of ordinary self-confidence, writing will almost always be limp, uninteresting, muddled. It is when one, as Charles Simic said, "cultivates one's own obsessions", that one moves closer to the hopefully peculiar self that one is, or one hopes to be. This is a challenge that some aren't up for, as it is easier (and awful) to merge into a collective delusion of "everybody else". It is a cruel kind of ironic knowledge that walking the plank of who one is (or seems to be) is of the utmost importance to one's creation of self, one's noticeability in "the world", but also to becoming a writer with something new to say.



98


Saint Jude, whom Father Jude was named after, is the patron saint of lost things and lost causes.

96


My middle name is Jude. It is ridiculous, like most things, that that was once such an embarrassment to me I would never mention it to anyone. Perhaps my discomfort arose because it wasn't something common like Joseph or William. Perhaps, too, there was a tad of homophobia in my uneasiness, as I may have thought it too close to being Judy. I was named after a Catholic priest, Father Jude, one of the two pastors at the church that my parents attended. He was a kind man, as I remember him. Yet I was told, fairly recently, after about 20 years of not seeing him, that he had been a pedophile since the beginning.





95


From Heidi Lynn Staples' Guess Can Gallop:




Another Story with a Burning Yarn in It
_______________________________________________________

I was on a fragmented seeming toward
like a little child with no documents inside.
We’d just fallen through place, the far one,

the way, the was. I’d never seen it so everything,
so firstling everlasting, so before and after.
They say getting started must be innumerable

or at once also, so I referred to my connection
guide, I waited in acute between the two.
Usually, I. If not, the house from zero.

The zero was where anyone is. None by none,
worlds grew off, and that should have told me
somebody. Letters are mad and broken. I

from what I understand. I guess this is all
I can remember. This is it for the time being.






94


To be natural is such a very difficult pose to keep up.

--Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband





93


Whenever I read a book of Buddhist thought, philosophy, I take it in fully (?), and my reactions toward others usually change immediately. I become more tolerant, and it does bring me some kinds of relief. At the same time, I feel like I'm lying to myself with these new, easily gained reactions. I begin to feel like I am conning myself. Perhaps it's merely that I haven't become an initiate completely. However, I don't think I could ever be an initiate of any religion again, after the years of Catholicism. I would guess that Skepticism is my religion now, which is helpful in many cases but also a con onto itself.

92



Is there anyone not on anti-depressants, anti-psychotics, anti-MFA medication?





91


Is the gift of gab actually a gift?

[L'affaire Maliszewski, the BookForum/NY Times squabble, regarding Michael Chabon, about mistaken identities, mistaken writing, why Dave Eggers is commenting on something that doesn't have anything to do with him or McSweeney's, the unfortunate reading comprehension skills of Mr. Mindlin, and much more, via interview, at Moby.]

90



From Fanny's Howe's Gone:




Coal is the first sign of a wreck

that your face may blacken
with bliss of the night

Recognition

You can hide
from whoever is red enough

with force or sex to make you sad





89


The diaries of Witold Gombrowicz, the three volumes in their latest incarnation, were knowingly written for publication. In Paris, as it turned out. This fact always interested me for what it would do to one's level of comfort in WHAT could be written about. The publicness of the Diary seemed to have narrowed the frame considerably. As I felt, suddenly, in the second volume, how odd it was that in a Diary there hasn't been one mention of any sexuality, any of his loves, his feelings towards a loved one. Does anyone do this in a real Diary? The inherent fiction of the frame appears again and again.



88


Boxing books to move, remembering when I bought each one, if I can remember, other experiences involved with the particular book, if any, and the writer, realizing I have to get rid of some of them but feeling like I can't. Knowing full well that I will not read many of them again. "The Age of Napoleon", for instance.

87


From Michael Palmer’s Company of Moths:


Finisterrae


The eye on each wing, for example,
many have mentioned this.

That it sees nothing,
no one has mentioned this.



86



I was speaking to a writer the other week and we discussed many things, including the trajectories of this writing I’m doing here on this weblog. I maintained that the specific issues I wanted to pseudo-investigate were beginning to become like a cinch, a noose, and breaking outside of them seemed more difficult the further I went into them. I said that I didn’t trust my motives, and that something lighter had to counterbalance the darker themes. I stumbled in my thinking as to what this might mean before joking that this ongoing writing should have at least one post with the word butterflies in it.




85



One of the things I didn’t like about the first version of Foetry.com was the anonymity of the people involved. That said, it is one thing to start a campaign based on unmasking fraud in this way, but when another website, Whoisfoetry.com, is critical, among other things, of the anonymity of the Foetry site, and then plays the anonymity game itself, that’s just wink-wink preciousness. The anonymity issues the detractors of Foetry had with it or Alan Cordle himself is one thing, but to start a web-site using the same methods you criticize is ultimately self-defeating, as it maintains a sarcastic relationship, a false one, to its core principles. Anonymity, in the case of Foetry, was one of its core principles from the beginning, however wrongheaded, to me, it may have been. And, yet, with all of this said, I do understand very deeply how difficult it is to be one’s self or selves. It’s almost intolerable at times.

84



To finally be moving out of Syracuse...how I wished for this for so long many years ago. Now, however, when it is going to happen, I feel like staying.





83


From Michael Palmer's Company of Moths:


I


Can the
two be

told the
two bodies

be told
apart be

told to
part can

the two
be drawn

the two
be drawn

apart




82


Pornography is enjoyed not so much for the arousing sexuality--though this has its tributaries--but for its simplified depiction of human interaction and the range of human emotions in general. The woman robotically drops to her knees. The handyman removes his bandanna in the sun. Pornography, its usage, also puts power in the hands of people who might not feel they have any sexual power in their daily life. Or those that have an abundance of it. He/she can buy it, watch it, consume it, whenever he/she wants to. One needn't get a date to somehow convince another that one is desirable. There is no need to speak to someone, to worry about dinner conversations, to dress one's self. Pornography is a sexual fantasy, certainly, but it's also a desire to simplify things, life, people, in order to partake in it with them, while still being apart.

81



Ever since I woke up about one hour ago, the word disputatious has popped up in my head at least eight times. I have no idea why. I have never used the word in anything I've written, and I really doubt that I've ever used it in speaking. Makes one wonder who's in charge of one's brain.

80


I am not sure what it is about my countenance that makes people I don't know come up to me and tell me some of their deepest pains. I mean, I understand it can be so alienating and confusing to be alive, especially with all the insidious fictions in the United States, but I still am left wondering. One 70-year old woman spoke to me for twenty minutes about how her ex-boss had her fingers cut off because she knew he was having an affair. Fifty years after that episode, she holds up her hand for me to see.




79


Is the regularity of tone, the pressing for such, in a book of poetry or fiction, the final Absolute that needs to be assaulted?



78


There is an elector from Vermont named Violet Coffin.

77



With this week's revelation of Alan Cordle being the head of Foetry, what's also been unveiled is a glib circus of petulant defensiveness, acute aggression, and the emotional falsehoods implicit in sarcasm. Where the Foetry site seemed/seems to throw light on damning conflicts of interests from the judge to the submitter, one doesn’t hear much at all of the other way around. For instance, why would a person submit to a competition—among all the dozens of competitions to send to—where one's friend/lover/teacher/etc., was judging? Isn’t this where at least the majority of the shame lies? I could never put a friend of mine in that position, to choose me over others who have paid, simply because I know the person. And what, exactly, is the prize of this? What was won, really?

76



I generally get some unintentional humor and associative interest out of re-reading my journals, especially with the notes following one another, as they are from different contexts, different days, but suddenly they seem to be part of a larger narrative, one almost outside of my understanding, of who I am (or purport to be). That is, why these observations instead of others? Why this litter? Why did this need to be jotted down, thought about? In one section of a current notebook, I was looking into the meanings of the German surnames that my forefathermothers carried with them. My surname, Wagner, seems to point to Waggoner, someone involved with driving a wagon, a wagon driver, or to one who fixed wagons, a wainwright. On my father's side, it is mostly a connection of Schmitz and Schneider. Schmitz being a smith, someone who worked with metal. Schneider refers to a tailor. In the notebook, I continue onto my mother's side, Funk. I make a note, stating Funck is the Old German form of Funk. Dropped the c in the U.S. Then the following occurs on the page:

funck
funke
___________________

liefdesgrot--"cave of love" from the Dutch--poetic reference to cunt.

some 18th C writers referred to "cunt" as "the monosyllable".
from M.E. cunte--female genitalia


echoic--a word that sounds like what it means.

priv. Privatire, indicating negation, absence, or loss, such as the prefix un- or the suffix -less.




75



Variously amazed, nonplussed, drearied...how Poetry Magazine, even in its supposedly "updated/hip" new face, is still being read...read by itself (and others?) as now edgy...yet it's about as edgy as gout.

74



Working with younger people--19 to 26 years old--and seeing and hearing all the same insecurities I had then. Save the exhuberance.


73


How many different fields of study can this quote refer to?: "The history of psychotherapy abounds in healers who were effective, but not for the reasons they supposed." From The Theory and Practice of Group Psychotherapy by Irvin D. Yalow.




72


Another dream. This one is occupied with the idea of eating Americans. Cannibalism. Must be something to do with how fat we are. The gluttons eaten, living off the fat.





71



In a dream, passing an obscure man, who doesn't seem concerned about anything. As I approach, the man suddenly turns to me just as we pass, and says, very seriously, hissingly: "No one really loves you, you know?"

70


Never wanting to be known as a poet, only a writer. I don't like fitting into too specific of categories, or I'm merely vain. Which happens.




69


L. chiding me on my seemingly unhingeable seriousness at times: to stop being "priestly".



68


Of course, the famous line from Robert Frost about Good fences make good neighbors. But I liked much more the other thing he said about fences, that one should know why a fence was up in the first place before taking it down.



67


With a chronic bad back, aching, and a bout of some viral affliction, drowsy from muscle relaxants, anti-inflamms, antibiotics, in the rain, under the daylong, gray skies, in the rain, with a bad back, stooping, thinking, in the rain, I may have suddenly become Job, as I use steel snippers to remove a dead woodchuck, in the rain, in the gray rain, from a cheap wire fence the poor thing caught itself in, in the winter.

66



There is a street called Meadowbrook in Syracuse. There is no meadow anymore. There are a few England-derived street names as well. Cambridge, Kensington, Cumberland. None of which are in Syracuse. So much is palimpsest and mystery. The people who live on the streets are palimpsests, too, with various disguises on display to trick themselves into themselves.





65


In a note from an older notebook, a part of an e-mail quoted verbatim, but I left off who it was from. The entry: "Do you remember the dream I told you about...the one where I was walking around in my body and an organ spoke to me? Remember?"




64



L. about OCD and looking at a deer at the zoo and feeling that she had to look at it again or things would go badly afterward.

I have to turn the backdoor's doorknob seven times after I've locked it. Not six. Not eight. Seven. But not all of the time.

63


The drunk cannot understand the non-drinker. The non-drinker cannot understand the drunk. Only the recovering alcoholic understands both sides, but rarely speaks to either.



62


On considering the various areas in which one could live, my NY/NJ friend concluded the mental journey by saying, "The South would be okay...if there weren't so many southerners."

61


Technology and the human body seemed apart not so long ago--at least I remember that. One went to get the telephone, meaning it was somewhere else than on one's body. There were videogame arcades. There have been wristwatches for a long time now, but this is just another example. Of being invaded by technology, of the attachment/attackment to one's body. The belt pager. The criminal's ankle bracelet locator. Steel pins for broken limbs. I think of the wonderful film Tetsuo: Iron Man and all its severe implications. I think of the documentary Crumb, remember Robert Crumb's drawing of a street, a street corner, through time...how it was sparsely inhabited in the first panel, then powerlines and phonelines, then a little business shows up, asphalt/concrete, then gas stations. The final image is of a sky strangled with wires, cars choking the street, traffic lights, business. For some reason, I have that same sense of dread when I see a person with a headset while driving his/her car. The loss of the sky is also why I really can't stand being in midtown Manhattan. Sometimes I wish a giant hand would come in and knock all those buildings to their fifth or sixth level (no deaths intended). So it would look more like Brooklyn or parts of Paris--i.e., more tolerable, somehow.

60


At 13, I was certain I knew who I was. At 21, the same. At 30, I doubted mostly everything about myself, etc. At 35, going on 36, I am certain I will never understand all the masks that I put on or had put on for me. "Sit still".




59


In reviews, always amazed at the sureness of the reviewer that his/her explanation of the poem/story is exactly as the author intended.




58


In Syracuse, have felt out of place. As if there is a place somewhere.