"But in these times of global madness, as World War III perhaps gets underway, who really cares about Language Poetry being to the Academy of American Poets what Stravinsky is to Brahms, or what Cindy Sherman is to Edward Weston?"


War pigs. (via Juan Col*)


"winter moon
taking all night to cross
so small a pond"

--K*n Hurm, in: Haiku Mom*nt ed Bruc* Ross (1993)



   "BAT-GEODE

Bat-geode, the
geode has a bat inside it.

Fine inlay work, gold
and brown for the wings and peak ears

fuzzy russet blot face.

Upright phoenix bird
out of a grey sun, an iris, an orchid
without a name...

no, it
is a bat, crystal bat

split, spread flat
its guts

yellow quartz.

When I look inside
I see layer and layer of cracked ice, long
plains of ice, nothing on them, the plains

crazed, nothing on them, cold plains of nothing.

Only the wind
moves over them, the wind

and one crystal bat looking for another."

--John Tagg*rt, Prism and th* Pin* Twig (1977)

A not long ago pic.

Original, anci*nt music at Civilization On* dot com.


OuLiPo links. (via wood_s lot)


"...the most influential online zine for American poetry is published by John Tranter in Australia."


'CASIDA OF THE RECLINING WOMAN

To see you naked is to remember the earth.
The smooth earth, swept clean of horses.
The earth without a reed, the pure form
closed to the future: confine of silver.

To see you naked is to comprehend the desire
of the rain which seeks the feeble form,
or the fever of the sea when its immense face
cannot find the light of its cheek.

The blood will resound through the bedrooms
and arrive with flashing sword,
but you will not know where the heart
of the toad or the violet hide.

Your belly is a battle of roots,
your lips are a blurred dawn.
Under the tepid roses of the bed
the dead moan, waiting their turn.'

--F*d*rico García Lorca (tr N di Giovanni), in: S*l*ct*d Po*ms (1955)

(via tropicalisland dot d*)


"I hear the waves on our island shore
They sound much louder than they did before
A rising swell flecked with foam
Threatens the existence of our island home.
 
A strong wind blows in from a distant place
The palm trees bend like never before
Our crops are lost to the rising sea
And water covers our humble floor.

Our people are leaving for a distant shore
And soon Tuvalu may be no more
Holding on to the things they know are true
Tuvalu my Tuvalu, I cry for you.

And as our people are forced to roam
To another land to call their home
And as you go to that place so new
Take a little piece of Tuvalu with you.

Tuvalu culture is rare and unique
And holds a message we all should seek
Hold our culture way up high
And our beloved Tuvalu will never die."

--Jan* R*stur*


Shadowplay.


tarragon · waft prolong iron
harrows Ogpu · forlorn Angkor
swimming rat · afflict still up
grow polyps floss · portal into
ogham mists · iron torturing inch
   what raw hronir · crouch

Strang* Statu*s. (via Lisablog)


How living still is good, amidst anxious chaos.


"I have always been convinced that jeeps killed about as many people as any other weapon in World War II." --Bill Mauldin, Th* Brass Ring (1971)


   foggy moon · again
ago syzygy · umgang
   for torturing · ink
sandcoil · ignorant random
winds anvil · wailing ago


Gr*at Maya Droughts.


"The hour is starry, and the airs that stray,
Sad wanderers from their golden home of day,
On night's black mountain melt and fade away
In sorrow that is music."

--B*ddo*s


On Mahfouz.

Hidd*n Citi*s.


"We had fed the heart on fantasies,
The heart's grown brutal from the fare..."

--Y*ats


"...the holocaust
of the poorest of the poor..."


This azury pink dawnlight, swiftly lost.


affadavit of off · salt
adorns · patchouli avowal
without utmost · pools afar
doors of affadavit · asking
raucous slalom · storm basilisk
adjourn · pools crystal


On my victrola- F*rnanda Maria Canta F*rnanda Maria

Mid-road arbow row on Royal, cut out for truck roofs to pass.


   "In Love For Long
 
I've been in love for long
With what I cannot tell
And will contrive a song
For the intangible
That has no mould or shape,
From which there's no escape.

It is not even a name,
Yet is all constancy;
Tried or untried, the same,
It cannot part from me;
A breath, yet as still
As the established hill.

It is not any thing,
And yet all being is;
Being, being, being,
Its burden and its bliss.
How can I ever prove
What it is I love?

This happy happy love
Is sieged with crying sorrows,
Crushed beneath and above
Between todays and morrows;
A little paradise
Held in the world's vice.

And there it is content
And careless as a child,
And in imprisonment
Flourishes sweet and wild;
In wrong, beyond wrong,
All the world's day long.

This love a moment known
For what I do not know
And in a moment gone
Is like the happy doe
That keeps its perfect laws
Between the tiger's paws
And vindicates its cause."

--Edwin Muir


Soci*ty for Art of Imagination.


"...in the Mexican version of Abbot y Costello contra La Momia there is a sub-plot uncannily like the Fockers. The name of the family is Focas, or Los Focas. Cantinflas plays the part of the male nurse. Moya Focas being the name of the character."


On my victrola- Utr*nja

"...one feels that in Iran the masters just mentioned had finally, after several centuries, reached the point where they had exhausted the belles-lettrist possibilities of Arabic and were now very busily burning up its resources. How much further can one get in perfection than al-Hamadâni? He could compose a book on a certain theme, beginning with the last line and working back, line by line, to the first line, and it would be a marvel of rhetorical artistry." --Th* Cambridg* History of Iran, v. 4 (1975)


"My dream that Ratzi would go into a conclave and emerge to announce that it was all a mistake, the papacy was dissolved, and good Catholics should all embrace an enlightened materialistic naturalism hasn't come true just yet."


"War shrinks everything. It means less time, less tolerance, less imagination, less curiosity, less play. We cannot read the leisurely wasteful masterpieces of the past without being irritated by the amount they take for granted. ...Yet we must remember that the life which many of us are now leading is unfriendly to the appreciation of literature...In these philistine conditions it is as unfair to judge art as if we were seasick. It is even more unfair to blame writers for their action or inaction in the years before the war, when we still tolerate in office nearly all the old beaming second-rate faces, with their indomitable will to power, and their self-sealing tanks of complacency." --Cyril Connolly, in: Writ*rs of World War II


"It is important to see that fascism is a disease, as catching as influenza; we all when tired and disillusioned have fascist moments, when belief in human nature vanishes, when we burn with anger and envy like the underdog and the sucker, when we hate the virtuous and despise the weak, when we feel as Goebbels permanently feels, that all fine sentiment is ballyhoo, that we are the dupes of our leaders, and that the masses are evil, to be resisted with the cruelty born of fear. This is the theological sin of despair, a Haw-Haw moment which quickly passes, but which fascism has made permanent, and built up into a philosophy. In every human being there is a Lear and a fool, a hero and a clown who comes on the stage and burlesques his master. He should never be censored, but neither be allowed to rule." --ibid


"After several e-mails of discussion, she asked me to do a renga with her about peace without mentioning the word."