More song covers i forgot: Melanie's amazing "Ruby Tuesday". Juice Newton- "Angel of the Morning". Elton John- "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds".

"Tennyson's 'Fatima' (1832) is a cross-dressing poem, in that it speaks from the woman's point of view." --Margaret Reynolds, The Sappho Companion (2001)

And what about Sonnets from the Portuguese?

The forgery of a Dickinson poem by Mark Hofmann is the subject of The Poet and the Murderer by Simon Worrall: "The Bible is an antique volume--/ written by faded Men..."

"Intermezzo: Venetian Nights.
I. Veneta Marina

The masts rise white to the stars,
White on the night of the sky,
Out of the water's night,
And the stars lean down to them white.
Ah! how the stars seem nigh:
How far away are the stars!

And I too under the stars,
Alone with the night again,
And the water's monotone;
I and the night alone,
And the world and the ways of men
Farther from me than the stars."

--Symons

Heteronymy as the Olympic drug scandal of Poetry.

Geometric Nubian Orator.

Harry Partch's World. (via Click Opera)

"I don't feel anything for the Democrats other than the total fear of them losing. Kerry not being elected is the full moon that will allow Bush to werewolf completely into Scott Stapp of Creed.

President Stapp. That'll be a sweet ride, eh?

Monkeys will be declared unconstitutional, the state mandated petticoats will only come in blue, and Michael Moore's upsidedown crucifixion will only be available on Pay Per View." --Dong Resin

Cho on Eminem.

"A Cento from Pale Fire"

No furtive light came from their involute
Snails leave on flagstones; this good ink, this rhyme
The crowding gulls insufferably loud,

But always present, ran through me. One day,
Part of your shadow near the shagbark tree.
And then there was a kind of travelog:

Spied on it yet. Now I shall cry out as
Who's climbed the Matterhorn. The other piece
A hint of angels, and a glint of stained

08 17 04

Tauchnitz.

A Concrete Renga.

"...the real, not the calendar 20th century ended yesterday too."
--H G Poetics

Napoleon the Novelist.


"A cento from Glenaveril"

Caged in a topaz with a blazing dome.
Nor was it from that visionary grot
His vast vicarious journey over seas
Of those illimitable realms that rest
(For the Subjunctive Mood's an autocrat)
Too late to be repaired. As his distress
Of dainty bells? Who knows? in every scene
Along the hedge the honeysuckle flings
And who is injured if it chance to fit?

08 16 04

Heavy Metal in Iraq. Iraqi Popular Poetry. (via Cursor)

An ocean's phantoms surge
Bellicose in my mind
A sort of dreamy dirge
By all the lurking things that crawl
Behind the light

Verily i would purge
Myself of these unkind
Accompanists who merge
With fathoms in the crystal ball
To bind the light

But i must still indulge
Or else my shores are blind
And hurl me only bilge
And leave me as a wizard thrall
Maligned by light

08 17 04

Listening to- Aida (Zubin Mehta, 1967).

"Flippancy, the most hopeless form of intellectual vice..." --New Grub Street

Finally got to see "Europe After the Rain". This was my favorite painting when i was twenty or so, & when i went to Europe i looked for it in all the great museums i visited. I never suspected it was in Connecticut!

At the same show i discovered Florine Stettheimer. (I also saw a great portrait by Salvador Rosa, but that doesn't seem to be online anywhere.)

We ARE lost--what's scarce is clues.

Hats Are Coming Back. (via Languagehat)

Timeline. (via Miekal)

"It seems to me that the modern public prefers its poetry sung.

That doesn't surprise me, anymore than that they also prefer movies in color with sound, to silent ones in black and white.

I myself like silent movies on their own merits, but I have no illusions that there are going to be great artists practicing this medium ever again.

In the light of this argument (to which I can find no answer) the squabbles over verse or free verse seem rather petty." --Ernst Kipling in Eratosphere

Meanwhile, in Najaf...

Reading- Maus I & II.


Translation: driving a truck when you're used to a car.

A Cento from Stevens.

This looks interesting: An Intimate History of Humanity by Theodore Zeldin.

Transits. (via A Voyage To Arcturus)

"A few days ago her startled eye had caught an advertisement in the newspaper, headed 'Literary Machine'; had it then been invented at last, some automaton to supply the place of such poor creatures as herself, to turn out books and articles? Alas! the machine was only one for holding volumes conveniently, that the work of literary manufacture might be physically lightened. But surely before long some Edison would make the true automaton; the problem must be comparatively such a simple one. Only to throw in a given number of old books, and have them reduced, blended, modernised into a single one for today's comsumption." --George Gissing, New Grub Street (1891) [I have it on good authority that movies are already being written this way...]

Titles i like from the Sports section: Planet of the Umps; When Working Out Isn't Working Out.

Who is the Grandma Moses of pop? The Jackson Pollock of Haiku? The John Webster of Chamber Music? The Michael Jackson of Sumi-e? The Laura Riding of Surrealism? The Joan Baez of Imagism? The Wendell Wilkie of Langpo? The Salvador Dali of Film Noir?

More cover songs fall into my hands:

Harmonicats- Scheherezade
Banjo Barons- Georgy Girl
Johnny Puleo- Stars & Stripes Militaire [Sousa on harmonicas!]
Sammy Davis Jr- Hey There
Hootie & the Blowfish- Drift Away
Phranc- The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
Tracey Ullman- Life is a Rock (But the Radio Rolled Me)

Other music sites i like: Minty Fresh Records; Emperor Norton Records; Circledelic. Middle Pillar Distribution. Putumayo.

Halau.