Friday, February 19, 2010







Sheba: the Seductive Russian Spy.


Lana Turner--the zine.


"R.A.W.R."

Henceforth no shelter ever on this earth
for any living creature, not even Man;
a predator we've made of the weather machine,
the elements, their flow & the very air.
Now we are sullen in this sable mire.*


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*Longfellow's Dante, Inferno VII. Interestingly, L. uses a word in Canto VII. line 103: "The water was more sombre far than perse..." and refers back to a footnote to V. 89: "In the original [translated as "the purple air"] l'aer perso, the perse air. Dante, Convito, IV. 20 defines perse as 'a colour mixed of purple and black, but the black predominates.' Chaucer's 'Doctour of Phisike' in the Canterbury Tales, Prologue 441, wore this colour:--

'In sanguin and in perse he clad was alle,
Lined with taffata and with sendalle.'

The Glossary defines it, 'skie-coloured, of a bluish-gray.' The word is again used, VII. 103. and Purg. IX. 97." [--so much more elegant, than eggplant]

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