69
From Jennifer Moxley's poem "Enlightment Evidence":
give me a breach of belief that you could care for
or i could cater, but of course they died aghast
and you never came home, stayed grief awaits
the vocal while we excite the controversies,
I'm writing to tell you I miss the world
in which we slumbered our vision,
so fraught in laying awake the lost
aggregate persons estrange,
the nation is foreseen for fear
we are will ingrained by reason
*
This is a beautiful section. But I think we're also ingrained with unreason. A feeling of something jarred awake is created by the syntax and line breaks, which create a collage of very slight disjunction and greater emotional worth. The ease of a line like "stayed grief awaits/the vocal while we excite the controversies" is so tossed-off here, one doesn't realize at first the depths of it. So much of my (I won't include others) cognitive states, of walking and talking and remembering, is summed up very nicely with this.
68
Retreaded Weldon Kees by Anthony Lane...another person who thinks that people suffering depressive or dystymic episodes can just, 1-2-3, snap out of it, as if there is a switch on one's arm. Just get out more often, you know. Kees suffered from a lack of "moral levitation", Lane assures us.
June 30, 2005
67
Recent "poems/places/spaces":
TERN
Light-sized pain in the face, of
amperage plotted in internal
drifts of secluded nuisances.
The you in the future a verbed
inconstance, done with time
tri-parted. There is was will.
*
AYI
No moon for the non-
cowardice of saying
one doesn’t know a
shell is a shell of a
woman is a woman
a loneliness often.
*
RECISE
Day-stained allowable hollows feeding
Imprecise pulmonaries,
a grave edging to a foreign
lotus-laughed adornment,
as in the kingdom of never-said,
across the illusion of where she was.
Recent "poems/places/spaces":
TERN
Light-sized pain in the face, of
amperage plotted in internal
drifts of secluded nuisances.
The you in the future a verbed
inconstance, done with time
tri-parted. There is was will.
*
AYI
No moon for the non-
cowardice of saying
one doesn’t know a
shell is a shell of a
woman is a woman
a loneliness often.
*
RECISE
Day-stained allowable hollows feeding
Imprecise pulmonaries,
a grave edging to a foreign
lotus-laughed adornment,
as in the kingdom of never-said,
across the illusion of where she was.
June 29, 2005
66
Reading Thomas Frank's What's The Matter With Kansas?--How Conservatives Won The Heart Of America. A brilliant book about how working-class and poor people--traditionally Democratic--have been hoodwinked into voting Republican. The insanity of the situation is brought to light again and again as Frank talks about his native Kansas, acting here as Symbol and Fact for all the traditional blue states going red. He speaks of the slick rhetorical moves of the "Two Americas" employed by Republicans and how it's been used to completely confuse people to the point where they are voting directly against their own social and economic interests. Explaining this, Frank writes:
For the most part, however, the way the "two Americas" image is used these days, it incorporates all the disillusionment, all the resentment, but none of the leftism. "Rural America is pissed," a small-town Pennslyvania man told a reporter from Newsweek in 2001. Explaining why he and his neighbors voted for George Bush, he said, "These people are tired of moral decay. They're tired of everything being wonderful on Wall Street and terrible on Main Street." Let me repeat that: they're voting Republican in order to get even with Wall Street. (pages 23-24)
*
It's a great book about perhaps the greatest con job ever pulled.
65
Steve Timm's poetry shows up in Tarpulin Sky.
Reading Thomas Frank's What's The Matter With Kansas?--How Conservatives Won The Heart Of America. A brilliant book about how working-class and poor people--traditionally Democratic--have been hoodwinked into voting Republican. The insanity of the situation is brought to light again and again as Frank talks about his native Kansas, acting here as Symbol and Fact for all the traditional blue states going red. He speaks of the slick rhetorical moves of the "Two Americas" employed by Republicans and how it's been used to completely confuse people to the point where they are voting directly against their own social and economic interests. Explaining this, Frank writes:
For the most part, however, the way the "two Americas" image is used these days, it incorporates all the disillusionment, all the resentment, but none of the leftism. "Rural America is pissed," a small-town Pennslyvania man told a reporter from Newsweek in 2001. Explaining why he and his neighbors voted for George Bush, he said, "These people are tired of moral decay. They're tired of everything being wonderful on Wall Street and terrible on Main Street." Let me repeat that: they're voting Republican in order to get even with Wall Street. (pages 23-24)
*
It's a great book about perhaps the greatest con job ever pulled.
65
Steve Timm's poetry shows up in Tarpulin Sky.
June 25, 2005
60
Finished Jennifer Moxley's Often Capital. From the very first page of her poem "The First Division of Labour":
here is a great leader, a lullaby
to be kept
if and Narcissus straddled the lake
*
I'm not sure if that "if and Narcissus straddled the lake" can really be touched for simple declaration of the human world. The endlessness of "Not knowing" in "if" and loving one's self endlessly in "Narcissus", to the exclusion of all else. And the "straddled" is a good choice for the engendering over the lake.
Finished Jennifer Moxley's Often Capital. From the very first page of her poem "The First Division of Labour":
here is a great leader, a lullaby
to be kept
if and Narcissus straddled the lake
*
I'm not sure if that "if and Narcissus straddled the lake" can really be touched for simple declaration of the human world. The endlessness of "Not knowing" in "if" and loving one's self endlessly in "Narcissus", to the exclusion of all else. And the "straddled" is a good choice for the engendering over the lake.
June 24, 2005
59
From Elizabeth Willis's poem "A Fisher King":
O hero of the leafy mind
you're out of reach
in parabolic lamplight
its burning eye
whatever you wanted
*
From Daniel Bouchard's poem "Surburban Unnecessary Vehicle":
When the elliptical rhythm is like a mill wheel dipping
deep, deep into the lazy gray water and spinning while
water falls from its carrying, or is poured, remember
that this is only a sign and that the days are upon us.
*
From Taylor Brady's poem "THEY STORE IT UP":
I have learned in all my isolation how
to cultivate my own mute leaks. This
is one atom of a generalized new sense.
We'd have grown the organ for the tortured
legible noise floor of compulsion
in all our single acts of strangled babble
had you put the question to us thus.
58
Remembering during most of my late teens and twenties pretty much only using literature/poetry as a metaphoric guide to see life, mine, others, until L. came along and pretty much made me see, for once!, that literature/poetry/art was just a partial strand of life, in which to move through it. The metaphors of other fields, hers being social work [and mental health particularly], coalesced at times but mostly didn't. It's all I could talk about for some time, talk through (as if a filter), as it seemed to be almost my sole mode of experiencing and understanding life.
From Elizabeth Willis's poem "A Fisher King":
O hero of the leafy mind
you're out of reach
in parabolic lamplight
its burning eye
whatever you wanted
*
From Daniel Bouchard's poem "Surburban Unnecessary Vehicle":
When the elliptical rhythm is like a mill wheel dipping
deep, deep into the lazy gray water and spinning while
water falls from its carrying, or is poured, remember
that this is only a sign and that the days are upon us.
*
From Taylor Brady's poem "THEY STORE IT UP":
I have learned in all my isolation how
to cultivate my own mute leaks. This
is one atom of a generalized new sense.
We'd have grown the organ for the tortured
legible noise floor of compulsion
in all our single acts of strangled babble
had you put the question to us thus.
58
Remembering during most of my late teens and twenties pretty much only using literature/poetry as a metaphoric guide to see life, mine, others, until L. came along and pretty much made me see, for once!, that literature/poetry/art was just a partial strand of life, in which to move through it. The metaphors of other fields, hers being social work [and mental health particularly], coalesced at times but mostly didn't. It's all I could talk about for some time, talk through (as if a filter), as it seemed to be almost my sole mode of experiencing and understanding life.
June 23, 2005
56
All of this makes me want to read Kafka's The Judgement again. The ending in that story has haunted me fairly consistently over the years, and I'm not sure why. Also, how one interprets the tone of it is interesting. Is it intensely tragic? Comedic? Serio-comic? Everything all together? I think, more and more, that it's typically, for me, usually the last option. Never one thing, never two things, never three.
All of this makes me want to read Kafka's The Judgement again. The ending in that story has haunted me fairly consistently over the years, and I'm not sure why. Also, how one interprets the tone of it is interesting. Is it intensely tragic? Comedic? Serio-comic? Everything all together? I think, more and more, that it's typically, for me, usually the last option. Never one thing, never two things, never three.
June 22, 2005
June 20, 2005
41
Frustrated a few times to fully explain the parameters and background of my manuscript Trilce, I have coined/employed a kind of catchall term to explain my work and what I see in the works of others operating in similar spaces.
Parasitism, Parasitic Literature--work/s that feed/s on/off the original work/s to become an original work. a second work based on the various components of the originary text--image, diction, syntax, sounds, representation, description, narrative, rhetoric, structure, and others. often to the point where the originary work is no longer discernible in part or whole. as seen in the work of Tom Philips (in A Humument) and Ronald Johnson (in Radi os). but this goes beyond visual parasitism to structural usage as in James Joyce's appropriation and reworking of the structure of Homer's The Odyssey in his Ulysses. other examples are many. Barnesbook by Jackson Mac Low comes to mind. Louis Zukofsky's renderings of Catullus. Perhaps Day by Kenneth Goldsmith.
This is, really, what my mostly homophonic remaking of Cesar Vallejo's Trilce is. A parasitic work.
Frustrated a few times to fully explain the parameters and background of my manuscript Trilce, I have coined/employed a kind of catchall term to explain my work and what I see in the works of others operating in similar spaces.
Parasitism, Parasitic Literature--work/s that feed/s on/off the original work/s to become an original work. a second work based on the various components of the originary text--image, diction, syntax, sounds, representation, description, narrative, rhetoric, structure, and others. often to the point where the originary work is no longer discernible in part or whole. as seen in the work of Tom Philips (in A Humument) and Ronald Johnson (in Radi os). but this goes beyond visual parasitism to structural usage as in James Joyce's appropriation and reworking of the structure of Homer's The Odyssey in his Ulysses. other examples are many. Barnesbook by Jackson Mac Low comes to mind. Louis Zukofsky's renderings of Catullus. Perhaps Day by Kenneth Goldsmith.
This is, really, what my mostly homophonic remaking of Cesar Vallejo's Trilce is. A parasitic work.
June 14, 2005
38
Finished Tom Clark's Charles Olson
Finished Gary Snyder's Turtle Island
Reading Kobo Abe's The Ruined Map
Reading The Audobon Society Field Guide to North American Birds--Western Region
Reading John R. Soares's Best Short Hikes In And Around The North Sacramento Valley
Reading Antennae, Issue 7
To Follow:
Roland Barthes's The Eiffel Tower and Other Mythologies
Bjorn Kjellstrom's Be Expert With Map & Compass
American Indian Myths and Legends, Selected and Edited by Richard Erdoes and Alfonso Ortiz
Finished Tom Clark's Charles Olson
Finished Gary Snyder's Turtle Island
Reading Kobo Abe's The Ruined Map
Reading The Audobon Society Field Guide to North American Birds--Western Region
Reading John R. Soares's Best Short Hikes In And Around The North Sacramento Valley
Reading Antennae, Issue 7
To Follow:
Roland Barthes's The Eiffel Tower and Other Mythologies
Bjorn Kjellstrom's Be Expert With Map & Compass
American Indian Myths and Legends, Selected and Edited by Richard Erdoes and Alfonso Ortiz
June 13, 2005
36
TIME is the organizer of what gets said and when----
how it is said----it is
under the syntax,
within it.
syntax accepts a notion
of time, as consequential~~~~~~~~~~~
What one must get to
is one's understanding of
TIME, how it happens,
how TIME is arranged
and how it arranges
us.
TIME, in writer/reader relation, though, is the ultimate
Domain of the reader--
TIME is tranferred--
in words But
putting them down
enlists TIME----the
Writer's Timing----and
the Reader's Timing....
Collage--parataxis--etc--is
one way to disorient/orient
remake TIME, but the
Reader still reads it
sequentially, as in
any narrative. one and
one---
TIME is the organizer of what gets said and when----
how it is said----it is
under the syntax,
within it.
syntax accepts a notion
of time, as consequential~~~~~~~~~~~
What one must get to
is one's understanding of
TIME, how it happens,
how TIME is arranged
and how it arranges
us.
TIME, in writer/reader relation, though, is the ultimate
Domain of the reader--
TIME is tranferred--
in words But
putting them down
enlists TIME----the
Writer's Timing----and
the Reader's Timing....
Collage--parataxis--etc--is
one way to disorient/orient
remake TIME, but the
Reader still reads it
sequentially, as in
any narrative. one and
one---
June 12, 2005
35
One's friends are interesting because they are one's.
34
So much of daily American popular culture, popular cultural psychology, popular mores and shushing customs revolve around, "Don't offend the babies, our babies!" Expecting everyone to live their life to save the minds of infants. The poor kids.
33
Olson so dogged, complex, humorous in his enthusiasm, his bumbling into puzzles of his own making, or so it seems via Clark.
32
Scenes of Chico:
"Has anyone seen any cycling gloves?"
--in line at local coffeeshop
31
Central New York clouds and their effects on mood and, therefore, character...aka not so easy and not so fast.
One's friends are interesting because they are one's.
34
So much of daily American popular culture, popular cultural psychology, popular mores and shushing customs revolve around, "Don't offend the babies, our babies!" Expecting everyone to live their life to save the minds of infants. The poor kids.
33
Olson so dogged, complex, humorous in his enthusiasm, his bumbling into puzzles of his own making, or so it seems via Clark.
32
Scenes of Chico:
"Has anyone seen any cycling gloves?"
--in line at local coffeeshop
31
Central New York clouds and their effects on mood and, therefore, character...aka not so easy and not so fast.
June 10, 2005
30
Reading further into Clark's Olson, the desire, once again, to read all of Melville. I have had this desire a few times before, but it never materializes into actuality. This is just one instance of this initial thrill, momentary schedule setting, inspiration, and then defeat of same by various terrible nuisances, like finding a job.
29
In the Home Guide for Northern California in our mail, there are the typical real estate things as everywhere, except for one almost not noticed description of secondary lodging on a property...known now and forever as a "mother-in-law trailer". The requisite realty exclamation point finishing the mention.
28
Scenes of Chico:
STOP BITCHING!
START A REVOLUTION!
--on the bumper of a Benz
Reading further into Clark's Olson, the desire, once again, to read all of Melville. I have had this desire a few times before, but it never materializes into actuality. This is just one instance of this initial thrill, momentary schedule setting, inspiration, and then defeat of same by various terrible nuisances, like finding a job.
29
In the Home Guide for Northern California in our mail, there are the typical real estate things as everywhere, except for one almost not noticed description of secondary lodging on a property...known now and forever as a "mother-in-law trailer". The requisite realty exclamation point finishing the mention.
28
Scenes of Chico:
STOP BITCHING!
START A REVOLUTION!
--on the bumper of a Benz
27
Finally, part of a day spent reading for a little bit. Purchased following books at a local used bookstore:
Lost Body by Aime Cesaire/Pablo Picasso
My Father Was A Toltec by Ana Castillo
ARK: The Foundations by Ronald Johnson
Charles Olson--The Allegory of a Poet's Life by Tom Clark
Turtle Island by Gary Snyder
It's not a great bookstore for poetry, but I expect I'll find a book or two each time. I finished Castillo's--a confident, angry, sensitive, smart voice. One feels a presence in the work, a vitality.
Read around in Johnson's work, veering, doubting, becoming intrigued, then not, and back again. I am going to withhold commenting further until I've read more.
Began Clark's Olson. Already very fascinating, only two chapters in. Clark has a perceptive eye for psychological development and adaptive mannerisms.
Read a few poems in Turtle Island. Snyder's "real work" push very much appreciated.
Also placed an order with SPD today.
Yesterday's News by Taylor Brady
Turneresque by Elizabeth Willis
Alien Tatters by Clark Coolidge
Some Mountains Removed by Daniel Bouchard
Often Capital by Jennifer Moxley
Radi os by Ronald Johnson
Brady based on Silliman's recent mention. Willis's based on Steve Timm's recommendation. Alien Tatters because I buy a book of Coolidge's now and then (have eight of his, I think). Bouchard's--not sure. I received a postcard of its pending publication from the publisher when I was still reviewing books here on Esther. Moxley's mainly because I have her other books. Patiently specific, determined, intriguing writer. Johnson based on various sources, including mine own, to see changes re ARK.
Finally, part of a day spent reading for a little bit. Purchased following books at a local used bookstore:
Lost Body by Aime Cesaire/Pablo Picasso
My Father Was A Toltec by Ana Castillo
ARK: The Foundations by Ronald Johnson
Charles Olson--The Allegory of a Poet's Life by Tom Clark
Turtle Island by Gary Snyder
It's not a great bookstore for poetry, but I expect I'll find a book or two each time. I finished Castillo's--a confident, angry, sensitive, smart voice. One feels a presence in the work, a vitality.
Read around in Johnson's work, veering, doubting, becoming intrigued, then not, and back again. I am going to withhold commenting further until I've read more.
Began Clark's Olson. Already very fascinating, only two chapters in. Clark has a perceptive eye for psychological development and adaptive mannerisms.
Read a few poems in Turtle Island. Snyder's "real work" push very much appreciated.
Also placed an order with SPD today.
Yesterday's News by Taylor Brady
Turneresque by Elizabeth Willis
Alien Tatters by Clark Coolidge
Some Mountains Removed by Daniel Bouchard
Often Capital by Jennifer Moxley
Radi os by Ronald Johnson
Brady based on Silliman's recent mention. Willis's based on Steve Timm's recommendation. Alien Tatters because I buy a book of Coolidge's now and then (have eight of his, I think). Bouchard's--not sure. I received a postcard of its pending publication from the publisher when I was still reviewing books here on Esther. Moxley's mainly because I have her other books. Patiently specific, determined, intriguing writer. Johnson based on various sources, including mine own, to see changes re ARK.
June 7, 2005
20
A glimmering loneliness, even among others, perhaps especially then. To not be afraid of walking the plank of who one believes one to be. Some bottles of water. Loneliness. A Mexican folk mask, meant to ward off or to bring (I can no longer remember) spirits, above, on a shelf. A dead violinist and a dead guitarist playing music, still, on this imbicilic afternoon.
19
She had no idea why she was loved. Among other things.
18
There is a local Chico artist named Weston Thomson. I saw three of his drawings/paintings at one of the many galleries here. Disturbing transfigurations, long people?, swirls thin and abstract...black...rust orange...blues in another. The inevitable call of what I don't know about myself greets me in them. The paintings pull me toward them somehow. An odd reflection, within.
17
Django Reinhardt & Stephane Grappelli--why do I associate this music with Iowa? No answer.
16
Some sense of something new to occur. Some new way to write. I have these very lowlevel what? inklings that another turn is coming.
A glimmering loneliness, even among others, perhaps especially then. To not be afraid of walking the plank of who one believes one to be. Some bottles of water. Loneliness. A Mexican folk mask, meant to ward off or to bring (I can no longer remember) spirits, above, on a shelf. A dead violinist and a dead guitarist playing music, still, on this imbicilic afternoon.
19
She had no idea why she was loved. Among other things.
18
There is a local Chico artist named Weston Thomson. I saw three of his drawings/paintings at one of the many galleries here. Disturbing transfigurations, long people?, swirls thin and abstract...black...rust orange...blues in another. The inevitable call of what I don't know about myself greets me in them. The paintings pull me toward them somehow. An odd reflection, within.
17
Django Reinhardt & Stephane Grappelli--why do I associate this music with Iowa? No answer.
16
Some sense of something new to occur. Some new way to write. I have these very lowlevel what? inklings that another turn is coming.
June 5, 2005
14
A writer, at some point, has to move around, through, above, under, beyond one's mentors, one's "heroes", to be taken seriously on one's own terms. Anything else is shadowwork.
13
Don't put it off for tomorrow if you can put it off today.
12
Can one be an immigrant in one's own country?
11
Listening to Musafir's Dhola Maru...transportation...carvings...soul-intensity...physicality...
10
The near-impossibility of watching a movie/television program or reading a book that depicts the psychiatrically-labeled as violent. The simple fact, the one that never gets told, is that the general population is much more likely to be violent than anyone with a psychiatric label.
9
There is a tree with many purple flowers and beyond that a chestnut tree and beyond that a palm tree.
A writer, at some point, has to move around, through, above, under, beyond one's mentors, one's "heroes", to be taken seriously on one's own terms. Anything else is shadowwork.
13
Don't put it off for tomorrow if you can put it off today.
12
Can one be an immigrant in one's own country?
11
Listening to Musafir's Dhola Maru...transportation...carvings...soul-intensity...physicality...
10
The near-impossibility of watching a movie/television program or reading a book that depicts the psychiatrically-labeled as violent. The simple fact, the one that never gets told, is that the general population is much more likely to be violent than anyone with a psychiatric label.
9
There is a tree with many purple flowers and beyond that a chestnut tree and beyond that a palm tree.
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