Works in Progress, 27
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.
unpacking after the last long/short journey
saying goodbye to the dead
finding trusty pocket tools for indoor use
pleasing others in letters
25.
recouping ancient losses
moving data from there to over here
scanning the text as rapidly as possible
keeping Kandinsky in mind
26.
replacing old maps with new ones
preparing the cat for summer camp
paying the bills in advance
brushing up on our Spanish
27.
stealing stones from the temple
building a nearby church
stealing stones from the church
building a nearby bank
28.
Thursday, July 7
Friday, June 10
Paragraphs from Stein, 3
"First anything exciting in which one takes part. There one progresses forward and back emotionally and at the supreme crisis of the scene the scene in which one takes part, in which one's hopes and loves and fears take part at the extreme crisis of this thing one is almost one with one's emotions, the action and the emotion go together, there is but just a moment of this coordination but it does exist otherwise there is no completion as one has no result, no result of a scene in which one has taken part, and so instinctively when any people are living an exciting moment one with another they go on and on and on until the thing has come together the emotion the action the excitement and that is the way it is when there is any violence either of loving or hating or quarreling or losing or succeeding. But there is, there has to be the moment of it all being abreast the emotion, the excitement and the action otherwise there would be no succeeding and no failing and so no one would go on living, why yes of course not."
fr. "Plays" in Lectures in America (1935), [repr., Boston: Beacon Press, 1985]
"First anything exciting in which one takes part. There one progresses forward and back emotionally and at the supreme crisis of the scene the scene in which one takes part, in which one's hopes and loves and fears take part at the extreme crisis of this thing one is almost one with one's emotions, the action and the emotion go together, there is but just a moment of this coordination but it does exist otherwise there is no completion as one has no result, no result of a scene in which one has taken part, and so instinctively when any people are living an exciting moment one with another they go on and on and on until the thing has come together the emotion the action the excitement and that is the way it is when there is any violence either of loving or hating or quarreling or losing or succeeding. But there is, there has to be the moment of it all being abreast the emotion, the excitement and the action otherwise there would be no succeeding and no failing and so no one would go on living, why yes of course not."
fr. "Plays" in Lectures in America (1935), [repr., Boston: Beacon Press, 1985]
Works in Progress, 26
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.
unpacking after the last long/short journey
saying goodbye to the dead
finding trusty pocket tools for indoor use
pleasing others in letters
25.
recouping ancient losses
moving data from there to over here
scanning the text as rapidly as possible
keeping Kandinsky in mind
26.
replacing old maps with new ones
preparing the cat for summer camp
paying the bills in advance
brushing up on our Spanish
27.
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.
unpacking after the last long/short journey
saying goodbye to the dead
finding trusty pocket tools for indoor use
pleasing others in letters
25.
recouping ancient losses
moving data from there to over here
scanning the text as rapidly as possible
keeping Kandinsky in mind
26.
replacing old maps with new ones
preparing the cat for summer camp
paying the bills in advance
brushing up on our Spanish
27.
Monday, May 30
Paragraphs from John Cage (c. 1966)
"When in the middle 1940's I was searching to find out why one would make a work of art in this society, I was thinking not in terms of theater, but specifically in terms of music. My search for a reason for making art came about because of this.
"I had been taught in the schools that art was a question of communication. I observed that all of the composers were writing differently. If art was communication, we were using different languages. We were, therefore, in a Tower of Babel situation where no one understood anyone else.
"So I determined either to find another reason or give up the whole business. Lou Harrison and other composers joined with me in this quest. At the same moment, a musician came from India alarmed over the influence that Western music was having on Indian traditions. She studied in a concentrated fashion with a number of teachers of Western music over a six-month period. I was with her nearly every day.
"Before she returned to India, I learned from her the traditional reason for making a piece of music in India: 'to quiet the mind thus making it susceptible to divine influences.'
"Lou Harrison, meanwhile, was reading in an old English text, I think as old as the sixteenth century, and he found this reason given for writing a piece of music: 'to quiet the mind thus making it susceptible to divine influences.'
"Now the question arises: What is a quiet mind? Then the second question arises: What are divine influences? One of the things that is happening to society now is that the East and the West no longer are separated. We are, as Fuller and McLuhan point out continually, living in a global village.
"Formerly, we thought that the Orient had nothing to do with us; that we had no access to it. We know better now. We learned from Oriental thought that those divine influences aare, in fact, the environment in which we are. A sober and quiet mind is one in which the ego does not obstruct the fluency of the things that come in through our senses and up through our dreams. Our business in living is to become fluent with the life we are living, and art can help this."
--John Cage
reprinted in *John Cage: An Anthology* ed. Richard Kostelanetz [New York: Da Capo Press, 1991]
"When in the middle 1940's I was searching to find out why one would make a work of art in this society, I was thinking not in terms of theater, but specifically in terms of music. My search for a reason for making art came about because of this.
"I had been taught in the schools that art was a question of communication. I observed that all of the composers were writing differently. If art was communication, we were using different languages. We were, therefore, in a Tower of Babel situation where no one understood anyone else.
"So I determined either to find another reason or give up the whole business. Lou Harrison and other composers joined with me in this quest. At the same moment, a musician came from India alarmed over the influence that Western music was having on Indian traditions. She studied in a concentrated fashion with a number of teachers of Western music over a six-month period. I was with her nearly every day.
"Before she returned to India, I learned from her the traditional reason for making a piece of music in India: 'to quiet the mind thus making it susceptible to divine influences.'
"Lou Harrison, meanwhile, was reading in an old English text, I think as old as the sixteenth century, and he found this reason given for writing a piece of music: 'to quiet the mind thus making it susceptible to divine influences.'
"Now the question arises: What is a quiet mind? Then the second question arises: What are divine influences? One of the things that is happening to society now is that the East and the West no longer are separated. We are, as Fuller and McLuhan point out continually, living in a global village.
"Formerly, we thought that the Orient had nothing to do with us; that we had no access to it. We know better now. We learned from Oriental thought that those divine influences aare, in fact, the environment in which we are. A sober and quiet mind is one in which the ego does not obstruct the fluency of the things that come in through our senses and up through our dreams. Our business in living is to become fluent with the life we are living, and art can help this."
--John Cage
reprinted in *John Cage: An Anthology* ed. Richard Kostelanetz [New York: Da Capo Press, 1991]
Wednesday, April 27
Works in Progress, 25
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.
unpacking after the last long/short journey
saying goodbye to the dead
finding trusty pocket tools for indoor use
pleasing others in letters
25.
recouping ancient losses
moving data from there to over here
scanning the text as rapidly as possible
keeping Kandinsky in mind
26.
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.
unpacking after the last long/short journey
saying goodbye to the dead
finding trusty pocket tools for indoor use
pleasing others in letters
25.
recouping ancient losses
moving data from there to over here
scanning the text as rapidly as possible
keeping Kandinsky in mind
26.
Wednesday, April 13
Thursday, April 7
Works in Progress, 24
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.
unpacking after the last long/short journey
saying goodbye to the dead
finding trusty pocket tools for indoor use
pleasing others in letters
25.
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]
--Gertrude Stein
fr. "Picasso"
in Gertrude Stein: Writings 1932-1946
[New York: The Library of America, 1998]
Thursday, March 24
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]
=====
"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]
--Gertrude Stein
fr. Blood on the Dining-Room Floor: A Murder Mystery
[Berkeley, California: Creative Arts Book Company, 1982]
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.
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
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
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)
=====
"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)
Thursday, February 24
Q&A: Philip Levine goes two for two
Interviewer: Do you know your own poems by heart?
Levine: No, I make an effort not to learn them by heart. I know a
lot of people memorize their poems and give readings from memory,
but I try to forget mine. I find that makes the readings more interesting
for me; I'm often actually surprised by the phrasing, really quite
delighted by it. Also, I don't want to sit down and write my own poems
again; I want my mind clear of them. At my age the big danger for
a poet is that he's going to rewrite his own work. One can feel very
secure doing another version of what already worked.
Interviewer: Do you feel a split between your life as a political person
and your life as a poet?
Levine: I'm cowardly. I should stop paying my taxes. I know that the
government in Washington is full of terrible people with terrible plans.
They will murder people here and abroad to gain more power. Those
who have dominated our country most of my adult life are interested
in maintaining an empire, subjugating other people, enslaving them if
need be, and finally killing those who protest so that wealthy and
powerful Americans can go on enjoying their advantages over others.
I'm not doing a thing about it. I'm not a man of action. It finally comes
down to that. I'm not so profoundly moral that I can overcome my
fears of prison or torture or exile or poverty. I'm a contemplative
person who goes in the corner and writes. What can we do? I guess
we can hang on and encourage each other, dig in, protest in every
peaceful way possible and hope that people are better than they
seem. We can describe ourselves as horribly racist people, which
we are, as imperialists, which we have been and are, but we can also
see ourselves as bountiful, gracious, full of wit, courage, resourceful-
ness. I still believe in this county, that is can fulfill the destiny Blake
and Whitman envisioned. I still believe in American poetry.
fr. Paris Review 107, Summer 1988/
Tuesday, February 22
"Scriabin came to believe in a final harmony that
would undo the world, spell an end to existence.
Play the right chord at the right place at the right
moment, and the whole shebang would collapse.
"And he was preparing to play that chord, when
blood poisoning struck him down.
"'What a disaster,' he cried, and no one knows to
what those last words referred--whether to the fact
that he himself was dying, from a pimple under his
moustache, or to his being balked in the great work
of ending the universal scheme of things."
--Keith Waldrop
fr. The Locality Principle
[Penngrove, Calif.: Avec Books, 1995]
would undo the world, spell an end to existence.
Play the right chord at the right place at the right
moment, and the whole shebang would collapse.
"And he was preparing to play that chord, when
blood poisoning struck him down.
"'What a disaster,' he cried, and no one knows to
what those last words referred--whether to the fact
that he himself was dying, from a pimple under his
moustache, or to his being balked in the great work
of ending the universal scheme of things."
--Keith Waldrop
fr. The Locality Principle
[Penngrove, Calif.: Avec Books, 1995]
Wednesday, February 16
Works in Progress, 21
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.
Monday, February 14
Thursday, February 10
Works in Progress, 20
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.
Monday, February 7
Live Feed, 2/7/05
In NYC it's 1:05 pm and 50 ° F
It's still burning in Centralia,
but people still use coal--a dirty,
dusty fuel. And yet I still manage
to write everyday. Funny how that works.
So few Americans remember that those
who attacked us on 9/11 were Saudis.
Pitching in now may help shorten our pledge
drive. Hillary Swank is now playing
in theaters, nationwide. She's our million-
dollar baby, baby. Hi! It's good to be
here, where there are tribes of various
stripes and the central valley extends from
the Red Sea to the Persian Gulf. Big
congratulations to Danny in Bergen. Log
on for details on Black AIDS Day.
Great to be here. Let's start with your
guiding principles. Chicken nuggets?
Surely you must be jesting, Doctor.
We've got mini-vans and SUVs both
in stock. Tune in now for our expanded
edition for Science, Health, and Healing.
Subscribe now and get Dr. Ali's packet
for a $100 contribution. We're not
hostage to pharmaceutical or any
corporate entities. Thank you
for your call.
Q&A: Pablo Neruda hits one out of the park
Rita Guibert: What are your working hours?
Pablo Neruda: I don't have a schedule, but by preference I write
in the morning. Which is to say that if you weren't here making me
waste my time (and wasting your own), I would be writing.
tr. Ronald Christ
fr. Paris Review, Winter 1971
Friday, February 4
Live Feed, 2/4/05
In NYC it's cloudy and approx. 39° F
employability skills are flowing downward
facilitating silver bullets among those workers
in need of such
if it doesn't do what it's
intended to do, continuous improvement may
not help us with entry-level jobs
students psyches are in danger
when it comes to reading, mathematics
and other career-ladder skills,
which they must learn over time, throughout
their lives I should also add that human resource
research operations are developing non-profit
well, sorry, we're running of time
our community-advisory board is open to new
members, Andy's sitting on the toilet with
the lid closed, flossing his teeth,
we're listening to the radio
getting it together for the day, we just got
word of Ossie Davis's death, a little
bit of time should be devoted to tributes to
and memories of him, we'd like to hear from you
Ossie grew up in New Rochelle, down the street
from Louis Farrakhan, one of the court
cases relating to prisoners at Guantánamo,
touched my heart around the globe
a great loss, an inspiration to us all
Q&A: Russell Edson fields a grounder
Mark Tursi: Is the choice to be a "hermit," at least in terms of the
poetry world,a political choice? That is, what are your reasons for
largely disengaging from the contemporary literary scene?
Edson: "Hermit" is one of the ways of life one naturally falls into
without even noticing it. A giraffe doesn't think of itself as a giraffe.
It just happens to be a giraffe without having to think about it.
Tursi: Another related question I've been thinking about has to do
with your fairly significant "underground" or "cult" following. There
are a lot of other poets, students, and literary-types that read your
work, and perhaps even more writers today who are clearly
influenced by your work. Yet, you are still largely marginalized by
the wider academic and literary community, and often not included
in the so-called canon. Why do you think this is?
Edson: If my work, as you put it, "is still largely marginalized by the
wider academic and literary community," it's probably because they
don't care for it. Being, as you suggest, somewhat of a hermit, I've
never thought of myself as marginal or mainstream, just happy to be
writing. Of course the literary community is very much a social club,
and I'm really too distracted for organized fun.
http://www.webdelsol.com/Double_Room/issue_four/Russell_Edson.html
Works in Progress, 19
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.
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.
Saturday, January 29
Q&A: Donald Barthelme chases down a deep one--
J. D. O'Hara: What about the moral responsibility of the
artist? I take it that you are a responsible artist (as opposed,
say, to X, Y, and Z), but all is irony, comic distortion, foreign
voices, fragmentation. Where in all this evasion of the straight-
forward does responsibility display itself?
Barthelme: It's not the straightforward that's being evaded but
the too-true. I might fix your eye firmly and announce "Thou
shalt not mess around with thy neighbor's wife." You might then
nod and say to yourself, quite so. We might then at lunch at the
local chili parlor say scurrilous things about X, Y, and Z. But it
will not have escaped your notice that my statement has hardly
enlarged your cosmos, that I've been in the largest sense, respon-
sible to neither art, life, nor adultery.
I believe that my every sentence trembles with morality in that
each attempts to engage the problematic rather than to present
a proposition to which all reasonable men must agree. The en-
gagement might very small, a word modifying another word, the
substitution of "mess around" for "covet," which undresses
adultery a bit. I think the paraphrasable content in art is rather
slight--"tiny," as de Kooning puts it. The way things are done is
crucial, as the inflection of a voice crucial. The change of em-
phasis from the what to the how seems to me to be the major
impulse in art since Flaubert, and it's not merely formalism, it's
not at all superficial, it's an attempt to reach truth, and a very
rigorous one. You don't get, following this path, a moral uni-
verse set out in ten propositions, but we already have that. And
the attempt is sufficiently skeptical about itself. In this century
there's much stress placed not upon what we know but on
knowing that our methods are themselves questionable--our
Song of Song is the Uncertainty Principle.
Also, it's entirely possible to fail to understand or actively mis-
understand what an artist is doing. I remember going through
a very large Barnett Newman show years ago with Tom Hess
and Harold Rosenberg, we used to go to shows after long
lunches, those wicked lunches which are no more, and I walked
through the show like a certifiable idiot, couldn't understand
their enthusiasm. I admired the boldness, the color and so on,
but inwardly I was muttering "wallpaper, wallpaper, very fine
wallpaper but wallpaper." I was wrong, didn't get the core
of Newman's enterprise, what Tom called Newman's effort
toward the sublime. Later I began to understand. One doesn't
take in Proust or Canada on the basis of a single visit.
To return to your question: if I looked you straight in the
eye and said, "The beauty of women makes of adultery a
serious and painful duty," then we'd have the beginning of a
useful statement.
--Donald Barthelme interviewed by J. D. O'Hara, 1981
in Donald Barthelme, Not-Knowing: The Essays and
Interviews [New York: Random House, 1997]
Thursday, January 27
Works in Progress, 18
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.
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.
Wednesday, January 19
"Rauschenberg is continually being offered scraps of this and that,
odds and ends his friends run across, since it strikes them: This is
something he could use in a painting. Nine times out of ten it turns
out he has no use for it. Say it's something close to something he
once found useful, and so could be recognized as his. Well, then,
as a matter of course, his poetry has moved without one's knowing
where it's gone to. He changes what goes on, on a canvas, but he
does not change how canvas is used for paintings--that is, stretched
flat to make rectangular surfaces which may be hung on a wall. These
he used singly, joined together, or placed in a symmetry so obvious
as not to attract interest (nothing special). We know two ways to
unfocus attention: symmetry is one of them; the other is the over-all
where each small part is a sample of what you find elsewhere. In
either case, there is at least the possibility of looking anywhere, not
just where someone arranged you should. You are then free to deal
with your freedom just as the artist dealt with his, not in the same way
but, nevertheless, originally. This thing, he says, duplication of
images, that is symmetry. All it means is that, looking closely, we see
as it was everything is in chaos still."
--John Cage, "On Robert Rauschenberg, Artist, and His Work"
in Silence [Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1961]
Sunday, January 16
Works in Progress, 17
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.
Wednesday, January 5
Saturday, January 1
New Year
Cardinals fly up
from the edge of the near
field, another
year's luck.
The haiku poet gives
us a morning gift:
Starry night:
she squeezes in between
her husband and her ex
A road, a fence, a field.
A table on which a book
lies open: History
of the Great American
Fortunes by Gustavus Myers.
A glimpse out the window
of gray and white
cat. I open the door
and in it comes.
This is the first day,
unlike any other.
--Halvard Johnson
Tuesday, December 21
Works in Progress, 16
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.
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.
Saturday, December 11
Friday, December 10
Jackson Mac Low (1922-2004)
Unmanifest
What the maker of a manifesto does not comprehend or acknowledge
is the basic unmanifestness from which and within which each manifes-
tation takes place. It is this neglect or ignorance that calls forth repug-
nance when a manifesto is proclaimed or published, especially one
regarding art. As if what comes to being in and as the work of art
could ever be totally manifest or even manifest at all without its abiding
steadfastly in the unmanfest! A work of art is a manifesto only insofar
as it is its own antimanifesto.
is the basic unmanifestness from which and within which each manifes-
tation takes place. It is this neglect or ignorance that calls forth repug-
nance when a manifesto is proclaimed or published, especially one
regarding art. As if what comes to being in and as the work of art
could ever be totally manifest or even manifest at all without its abiding
steadfastly in the unmanfest! A work of art is a manifesto only insofar
as it is its own antimanifesto.
21 June 1983
New York
fr. Bloomsday
[Barrytown, NY: Station Hill, 1984]
Sunday, December 5
"After the Goldberg Variations--'superessential music,'
to employ the mystical jargon--we close our eyes, giving
ourselves up to the echo they have raised within us. Nothing
more exists, except a plenitude without content, which is
indeed the sole way of approaching the Supreme."
--E. M. Cioran, Anathemas and Admirations
Works in Progress, 15
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.
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.
Tuesday, November 30
Tuesday, November 23
"I placed one word beside another and finally with a great deal
of effort managed to create a whole sentence--naturally not one
that 'meant something' but one that was composed of word-
nuances. It was the hidden meaning that I was seeking--a kind
of Alchimie du Verbe. One word has its meaning and another
has its own, but when they are brought together something
strange happens to them: they have an in-between connotation
at the same time as they retain their original individual meanings . . .
Poetry is this very tension-filled relationship between the words,
between the lines, between meanings."
--Gunnar Ekelöf, tr. Auden & Sjöberg
Friday, November 19
Friday, November 12
Thursday, November 11
"After a long and arduous journey a young Japanese man arrived deep
in a forest where the teacher of his choice was living in a small house he
had made. When the student arrived, the teacher was sweeping up
fallen leaves. Greeting his master, the young man received no greeting
in return. And to all his questions, there were no replies. Realizing there
was nothing he could do to get the teacher's attention, the student went
to another part of the same forest and built himself a house. Years later,
when he was sweeping up fallen leaves, he was enlightened. He then
dropped everything, ran through the forest to his teacher, and said,
'Thank you.'"
--John Cage
fr. Silence [Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1961]
in a forest where the teacher of his choice was living in a small house he
had made. When the student arrived, the teacher was sweeping up
fallen leaves. Greeting his master, the young man received no greeting
in return. And to all his questions, there were no replies. Realizing there
was nothing he could do to get the teacher's attention, the student went
to another part of the same forest and built himself a house. Years later,
when he was sweeping up fallen leaves, he was enlightened. He then
dropped everything, ran through the forest to his teacher, and said,
'Thank you.'"
--John Cage
fr. Silence [Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1961]
Works in Progress, 14
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.
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.
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