Esther Press

This post will be it for some time to come.

Bush is now concerned his detractors are rewriting history, while not worrying that his active writing of history--his wars and his threats of war--is really the thing about which he should be concerned.

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Ma mère--watched this tonight. At once, overwritten, ridiculous, and somewhat interesting. Watching flirtation and its avenues, and the boredom involved. I think it might have been more interesting had the boredom been pushed a little more. It seemed too fantastical for me, and yet not imaginative enough.

Dear NRDC BioGems Defender,

Fantastic news! Late last night, after months of intense pressure from millions of pro-environment activists like you, the House leadership dropped its plan to allow oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge as part of the budget bill.

In the end, they were forced to retreat after some 22 courageous Republican Congressmen stood their ground and promised to vote against their own party's budget if it sacrificed America's greatest wildlife refuge. With every single Democrat also opposing the budget, the leadership blinked. It was the kind of showdown at high noon that restores one's faith both in democracy and the sanctity of America's natural heritage.

Make no mistake: we must now remain vigilant. Senate and House negotiators could still revive the Arctic drilling provision when they hammer out a final budget measure next month (the Senate version of the budget includes Arctic drilling).

If that happens, we'll be calling on you to shore up Republican moderates in the House who have promised to oppose and defeat any such last-ditch ploy to sneak Arctic drilling into the final budget legislation.

But last night's development is a stunning setback for President Bush, for Congressional leaders, and for the oil lobby -- all of whom vowed that 2005 would be the year they finally pried the Arctic Refuge out of the clenched hands of the American people.

And it is a huge -- and I mean HUGE -- victory for all of us in the environmental community.

Just one year ago, Washington insiders were saying that Arctic drilling was a done deal. President Bush was claiming a post-election mandate to industrialize the Arctic Refuge, and the pro-oil contingent of the Republican Party had just tightened its majority grip on both houses of Congress. You couldn't find a pundit anywhere who would give us a wisp of a chance.

But millions of people like you did the impossible! Petition by petition, phone call by phone call, contribution by contribution, you helped us turn the tide in one of the toughest uphill political battles of the past decade.

Although this battle may not be over, yesterday was a red letter day for the Arctic Refuge -- the greatest day since it was first protected by Congress 25 years ago -- but it is much more than that, too. It is a triumph for America.

November 9, 2005 was the day that nature prevailed over corporate greed, that beauty triumphed over a dead-end energy plan. It was the day we reminded Washington that preserving wilderness is a core American value -- and that we intend to keep it that way.

I know we can count on your help next month if Senate and House leaders dare to bring Arctic drilling back to the floor for a vote.

Sincerely,

John H. Adams
NRDC Action Fund

The tell-tale sign of a female presence are window sills adorned with trinkets. This is the bifurcation line.



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The sentimentality of any school of writing exists in its obsessive need to see in the way that its school needs to see.


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Stripped of his pretensions toward theory, of just naming names and a few dribbles of thought, stripped of his mawkish (and, therefore, suspicious) sensitivities, his to-be-expected coordinates of writing, his prepackaged civilities, his tightfisted morals, his inability, so chastened by Decorum was he, to say anything unusual, one was left with an irreducible suck-up.

"Pretty" people shouldn't be in movies. They're almost always either miscast or too distracting.

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I wonder what McCain (tortured in Vietnam) was thinking when Cheney talked about wanting to be able to torture people more than currently allowed.

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When some people speak they speak with such assurance in their ideas that one wonders if they've found a book in the earth that provides them with the correct answers to Life, which they then cross-reference against the responses of others, noting when someone is off and when one is not.

Goon Squad News: Cheney asks senators for CIA Torture Exemption. When can we put this entire administration out with the trash?

An exemption! These people have been providing such horrifying illogical constructions for five years that we've now come to the point that Cheney just mildly puts across, "Hey, you know, just this once, cut us some slack on torturing people." In a suit and tie, no less.

And people worry about psychiatrically-labeled people being monstrous.

Laura Sims reads three poems--"Winter In You", "Your Second Head", and "Spin":

After Derek put up the Vallejo originals, I went through a few of them again, hearing my poems inside them. I hadn't looked at the originals in probably a year, so I didn't recognize many of the constructions, or how I got to them, how I "translated" (mauled?) the Spanish into English. I had always stated that there was some German playing a part in it as well, which I knew, but I never actually went back to find where I was playing with German, Spanish, and English, both denotatively and connotatively. But I grinned mildly when I found a particular representative in the last line of Trilce XIII, for which Vallejo ends the poem:

Odumodneurtse!

Clayton Eshleman translated that non- and sensically as:

Rednuhtetum

I translated it as:

O them on the new earth see!

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Now, the German is in this primarily as German-English. I grew up--did I?--in a largely German-American community, where many of the older citizens still spoke English with a German tinge, so often one would hear, "Where'd you get dem? Dem meaning them. And also one would hear words like "tirty-touzand", which was "thirty-thousand". My grandfather's daughter is named Ruth, and her middle name is Ann. I remember my brother and I having a good-natured laugh one time after hearing my grandfather say, "Root Ann, pa da potatas" or "Ruth Ann, pass the potatoes".

So when I read Vallejo's Odumodneurtse! I heard, in multiple readings:

O dem on da new urt see.

I forgot to add that the expression, O, or Oh, is not really the classic standard poetic usage, like O Love, but a bit more the usage of many of those with whom I grew up, with the casual, Oh, as in "Oh, ya don't say"? But this may be something only a Midwesterner would understand.

Derek White and his Calamari Press will be publishing my second book of poetry, Trilce. He has put up a page with my audio recordings from Trilce and his visual interpretations of three of the poems. He explains all of this as well, right here.

I am deeply suspicious of my interest and/or loyalty to prose.


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Miro, Walser, Kafka, Lispector, Reinhardt, Berrigan, Burkard, Ashbery, Vallejo, Creeley, Pynchon, Hejinian, Cioran, Erickson, Joyce, Scalapino, Howe, , , , , Barthes, , , neighbors, cattle, doors,,,,,,
important forgotten comments, THE SOUTH, , Language Poetry in a communist country, chihuahua, motion detector, migraines as frequently and as a car comes, no mirror, sullen pollen, Kim Novak, gyration complex, libido quotients, hex mex, Jesus as a boy who blinded a child, Gaddis, Fuentes, Stein, .

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Selfhood not as internal environment but as internal apparel.

Lara Glenum's book of poetry The Hounds of No is newly out and can be had here.

First published in SleepingFish, this is a recording of Trilce X:

First published in BlazeVOX, this is a recording of Trilce LXIII:

First published in BathHouse Magazine, this is a recording of Trilce LVI:

At the Halloween party at the house of L's friends, I sat watching, infrequently, the football game, while infrequently eating candy, drinking a highly sugared beverage, and watching people interact with one another. The two people I somehow innately felt connected with, without really much being said, were a doctor who stood off to the side, much like I was doing, and a woman from Tahoe--didn't hear (music going) what her job was--who was originally from Kansas. I wondered why that was. What does that "internal" "feeling" of "connection" mean? And it seemed to go both ways, in this case, as the Tahoe-Kansan, another L., asked both of us to visit with her and her husband there, and she gave her phone number to us, after just a small conversation that I somehow also knew would be enjoyable, just by watching her interact previously with others. I sound like a ridiculous psychic, I realize, but I do have these feelings. And, conversely, I don't with other people. Why is this? It reminded me of another time, when I met a 79 year-old Japanese woman, A., on our dog walks. I instantly felt a connection with her, with barely anything said. Weeks later, at her house with L., I spoke with the woman about this feeling, and she said she felt the same thing. Of course, we are constantly getting information from "outside" and I believe non-religiously that our encounters with others are there for reasons. We may not know why, but it's always best to listen, both to the other person and one's self in the moments. It's not a test, I don't think, but more of a place for development, even if a quizzical encounter, that, if one's awake, can be quite powerful emotionally.


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Laura Sims' book of poetry Practice, Restraint is now available right here.