Monday, March 28


Paragraphs from Stein, 2

"A creator who creates, who is not an academician, who is not some one who studies in a school where the rules are already known and of course being known they no longer exist, a creator then who creates is necessarily of his generation. His generation lives in its contemporary way, but they only live in it. In art, in literature, in the theatre, in short in everything that does not contribute to their immediate comfort they live in the preceding generation. It is very simple, to-day in the streets of Paris, horses, even tramcars can no longer exist but horses and tramcars are only suppressed, only when they cause too many complications, they are suppressed but sixty years too late. Lord Grey said when the war broke out, that the generals thought of a war of the nineteeth century even when the instruments of war were of the twentieth century and only when the war was at its heighth did the generals understand that it was a war of the twentieth century and not a war of the nineteenth century. That is what the academic spirit is, it is not contemporary, of course not, and so it can not be creative because the only thing that is creative in a creator is the contemporary thing. Of course."

--Gertrude Stein
fr. "Picasso"
in Gertrude Stein: Writings 1932-1946
[New York: The Library of America, 1998]

Thursday, March 24

Poems from the Book of Nanoseconds, #31

when the autumn
would be able to feel
properly discharged

Poems from the Book of Nanoseconds, #30

when he brooded
he did so with a chill,
the hot anger

Works in Progress, 23

1.
maneuvering around car-sized potholes

designing legal strategies
speaking solely in terms of racial justice
examining burial pits and naked skulls

2.
sticking to issues that directly affect them
bemoaning the cautiousness of today's athletes
co-opting the arguments of their opposition
tracking Latino immigrants at the border

3.
supporting any effort to unionize
failing to generate meaningful responses
feeling the centipede in oneself
getting some good poems out of it

4.
rewriting the country's labor laws
seeing a psychic map of our obsessions
building electoral coalitions that will win
emphasizing the overlapping interests of the affluent

5.
slumbering until nightfall
setting this brain of mine afire
reaching irritably after fact & reason
shunning easy consolations

6.
subsidizing extinction industries
helping women victimized by male violence
doubling the sign-up bonus for volunteers
supporting the troops while doubting the war

7.
naming the dead
waiting for him to break silence
descending the steeps of the soughing twilight
assimilating foreign cultures

8.
freeing the slaves
admonishing those who do evil
stamping out political brushfires
democratizing the US

9.
getting in touch with the cable guys
swinging the birches
testing the waters
pushing radical music agendas

10.
getting out the vote
fetching water from the well
educating the masses
confessing to our personal demons

11.
clearing minefields from past wars
laying them for wars yet to come
staying executions, pardoning the innocent
blurring the boundaries, the borders

12.
reading maps in the dark with the top light off
folding them all back up rightly
cramming them into the glove compartment
getting moving again in the right direction

13.
cooling our heels
voting early and often
keeping our fingers crossed
paying full-price for our journey

14.
assembling a glossary of oft-used phrases
keeping silent while the tea is poured
maintaining an inventory of our beliefs and belongings
finding time to clean up around the house

15.

making the world safe for plutocracy
clearing the minefields and cow pastures
converting analog files to digital
rereading An Anatomy of Melancholy

16.
fighting the high cost of prescription meditations
comparing the works of Proust, Gide, and Sartre
putting something aside for a rainy day
asking for another user's name and password

17.
scanning the shelves for news
cleaning up after the latest tsunami
taking care of our parents
looking forward to end-of-life decisions

18.
reassessing works already completed
exterminating the brutes
removing the snow from the car
rebuilding the old road from Fredrikstad to Skjeberg

19.
getting more bang for the buck
setting something aside for that rainy day
worry about what to really worry about
getting back to the Bang, the Big One

20.
teaching the Chinese how to speak English
learning more about Purim
cashing in on Homeland Security
making that list of things to make lists of

21.
deciding whether or not to escape to Canada
enhancing revenue without raising taxes
learning more about hematology
mapping talk-free zones in public parks

22.
making the punishment fit the criminal
recovering our senses
fitting the glove to the hand
dialing for (four) dollars

23.
laying mines at the Prose/Poetry border
celebrating the rebirth of death
transferring data from www.blogger.com
counting the years from start to finish

24.

Wednesday, March 16

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN

=====

"The only moments I have when I play that are worth
anything to me are when I can blissfully ignore the people
I am supposed to be entertaining. No me; no silly public
to amuse; only the heart and the soul, the world, the birds,
storms, dreams, sadness, heavenly serenity. Then I am
an artist worthy of the name. . . . Until it happens, or if it
doesn't happen, I am miserable. . . ."

--William Kapell, pianist (1922-1953), writing to Shirley Rhoads

as quoted by Michael Kimmelman in "The Undefeated"
[New York Review of Books, Vol. LII, No. 5, Mar. 24, 2005]
Paragraphs from Stein, 1

"The next morning on coming to the desk to write a letter it was noticed that hair and dust had been scattered all over. This was not an accident and it was mentioned. Then some one went out to start a car. The owner of it naturally. It did not start. Then some one else went out to start another car. Once more naturally the owner of that one. The car did not start. Telephone to the garage in the town, they called out to someone else, the telephone is not working, was the answer. The telephone was not working that was a fact. There was another telephone nearby, of this fact as it happened no one in the house was aware except the person who telephoned to the garage. Soon two mechanics with two cars came. They found that one gasoline tank was filled with water and that the spark plugs of the other had been broken. The telephone man came and he found that a little wire had been detached and the piece of cotton that is wound around the wire had been screwed in instead. The mechanic spoke to the man servant at the request of the owner of the car, and said this could hardly happen by itself, and the man servant answered nothing. Just then more guests came and just then in the middle of everything there in the dining-room was a very sweet young man giving someone a very lovely painting. How had he come there, but that was not surprising, everybody knew him, but everybody thought everybody had quarrelled with him. Well anyway everybody kissed him and he left. The man servant served the lunch very well and then he and his wife were sent away. The garage man said send them away and forget them and this was done."

--Gertrude Stein
fr. Blood on the Dining-Room Floor: A Murder Mystery
[Berkeley, California: Creative Arts Book Company, 1982]

Fragments from Thoreau, 6

one of the surprises
for the traveller in the forest--
eighteen miles of water
Works in Progress, 22

1.
maneuvering around car-sized potholes

designing legal strategies
speaking solely in terms of racial justice
examining burial pits and naked skulls

2.
sticking to issues that directly affect them
bemoaning the cautiousness of today's athletes
co-opting the arguments of their opposition
tracking Latino immigrants at the border

3.
supporting any effort to unionize
failing to generate meaningful responses
feeling the centipede in oneself
getting some good poems out of it

4.
rewriting the country's labor laws
seeing a psychic map of our obsessions
building electoral coalitions that will win
emphasizing the overlapping interests of the affluent

5.
slumbering until nightfall
setting this brain of mine afire
reaching irritably after fact & reason
shunning easy consolations

6.
subsidizing extinction industries
helping women victimized by male violence
doubling the sign-up bonus for volunteers
supporting the troops while doubting the war

7.
naming the dead
waiting for him to break silence
descending the steeps of the soughing twilight
assimilating foreign cultures

8.
freeing the slaves
admonishing those who do evil
stamping out political brushfires
democratizing the US

9.
getting in touch with the cable guys
swinging the birches
testing the waters
pushing radical music agendas

10.
getting out the vote
fetching water from the well
educating the masses
confessing to our personal demons

11.
clearing minefields from past wars
laying them for wars yet to come
staying executions, pardoning the innocent
blurring the boundaries, the borders

12.
reading maps in the dark with the top light off
folding them all back up rightly
cramming them into the glove compartment
getting moving again in the right direction

13.
cooling our heels
voting early and often
keeping our fingers crossed
paying full-price for our journey

14.
assembling a glossary of oft-used phrases
keeping silent while the tea is poured
maintaining an inventory of our beliefs and belongings
finding time to clean up around the house

15.

making the world safe for plutocracy
clearing the minefields and cow pastures
converting analog files to digital
rereading An Anatomy of Melancholy

16.
fighting the high cost of prescription meditations
comparing the works of Proust, Gide, and Sartre
putting something aside for a rainy day
asking for another user's name and password

17.
scanning the shelves for news
cleaning up after the latest tsunami
taking care of our parents
looking forward to end-of-life decisions

18.
reassessing works already completed
exterminating the brutes
removing the snow from the car
rebuilding the old road from Fredrikstad to Skjeberg

19.
getting more bang for the buck
setting something aside for that rainy day
worry about what to really worry about
getting back to the Bang, the Big One

20.
teaching the Chinese how to speak English
learning more about Purim
cashing in on Homeland Security
making that list of things to make lists of

21.
deciding whether or not to escape to Canada
enhancing revenue without raising taxes
learning more about hematology
mapping talk-free zones in public parks

22.
making the punishment fit the criminal
recovering our senses
fitting the glove to the hand
dialing for (four) dollars

23.


Monday, March 14


"The canon is an idealistic maze and should ideally prefigure a range
of meaningless mood musics, from elevator Muzak to New Age
music, to ambient sound construction by Brian Eno, Soundlab and
others, to endless TV soap operas and, most of all, to mid- to
late-'70s disco with its emphasis on monotonous rhythms, its
superficiality, and its blatantly unsubtle sexual innuendoes. The
best way to listen to prerecorded voices and background music
is to listen carelessly and accidentally, as if one were reading a
poem by John Ashbery, T.S. Eliot or Charles Bernstein. Rod
McKuen makes you care, unfortunately, and the last thing one
wants to do while reading a poem is to care. Reading is too selfish
for that. That is why the most boring and long-winded writings
encourage a kind of effortless non-understanding, a language in
which reading itself seems perfectly (I say this in a positive way)
redundant. One needn't read through great novels anymore like
one did in the nineteenth century with Balzac or now with someone
like Tom Wolfe whose works are basically dull repetitions (realism)
that function like a nineteenth-century version of the Nynex Yellow
Pages or Page Six of the New York Post. They work to destroy
that thing known as chance and probability and they replace it
with that thing known as humor. Humor like that, especially in
outmoded forms such as the novel, is always terrifyingly obvious
because it tries to include everything. Unlike the overdeterministic
exercises of Wolfe, the truly great works of the twentieth century
are works that should remain unread, and Gertrude Stein is the
most important writer of the twentieth century who ought to remain
completely unread. One need read only a sentence and sometimes
only a word to imagine the rest. I have never read more than two
sentences of The Making of Americans at a time (they put me to
sleep or make me want to eat something like pizza or hot dogs),
and in that way I have read the book many, many times. I have, in
a sense, never been able to put the book down and I hope that in
the future I will continue to never put it down until the day that I
die or stop eating. In other long-interlude disco-oriented works
there are increasing possibilities for loss of recognition, that
patterning of sounds we all speak to each other and upon which
a host of social conventions depends. It is not an accident that
disco has strong gay undercurrents and that the four-on-the-floor
disco beat is totally canned and compared to the bluejeaned rock
n' roll--unauthentic, mechanical and machine-based. Turntables
replace the live voice. The dance floor replaces the stage concert
pit. Two discs on two turntables, spinning simultaneously, replace
the long-haired rock star. Synthesizers and drum machines replace
the realistic. Disposability, superficiality and ephererality rule. Except
for Donna Summer and a few others, most disco performers never
became stars. Poetry should be like that. It should not be permanent,
it should be very impermanent. It should aspire to the interminably
pure moment of an interlude."


--Tan Lin

from "Ambient Stylistics"
[Conjunctions 39, 2000]

Thursday, March 10


A List (partial) of Poets (mostly American) Born in 1926

Robert Creeley
Frank O'Hara
A. R. Ammons
Allen Ginsberg
Paul Blackburn
W. D. Snodgrass
Robert Bly
James Merrill
Christopher Logue
Alastair Reid
Stanley Moss
David Wagoner
Jaime Sabines
Lew Welch
Ingeborg Bachmann
James Reaney
Nikos Karouzos
Roy Kiyooka

and, as a bonus, a couple musicians

Miles Davis
Morton Feldman

Tuesday, March 8


Poems from the Book of Nanoseconds, #29

an uncritical admirer, blind
to every shortcoming
jealousy playing its part
TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN

=====

"The farm brook ran down from the mountain in a straight
line for the fold, then swerved to the west to go its way
down into the marshes. There were two knee-high falls in
it and two pools, knee-deep. At the bottom there was
shingle, pebbles and sand. It ran in many curves. Each
curve had its own tone, but not one of them was dull;
the brook was merry and music-loving, like youth, but
yet with various strings, and it played its music without
thought of any audience and did not care though no one
heard for a hundred years, like a true poet."

--Halldór Laxness, Independent People (1946)