All our vehicles are armor, armor against our travelling’s attempts to change us.
"widdershizzle"
the glum glamour
of gluey brew
polaroid pill
pulls us drooling
rancid to rinse
or roam chromeplate
typewriter tarp
towed to yodel
let darg's digging
double our flub,
nothing known there—
benighted plight
“For Harvest
The year turns to its rest.
Up from the earth, the fields, the early-fallen dew,
Moves the large star at evening, Arcturus low with autumn,
And summer calls in her many voices upon the frost.
I who have not seen for weeping
The plum ripen and fall, or the yellowing sheaf,
Am not unmindful now of the season that came and went,
The hours that told off freshness,
The bud and the rich leaf.
Though I turned aside before the summer
And weathered but a season of the mind,
Let me sit among you when the husk is stripped,
Let me tell by the bright grain,
Those labours in an acre of cloud and the reap of the wind.”
—Léonie Adams
On Tom Phillips: I have a paperback edition of his treated work. I don’t open it very often, but i keep it close at hand. When i first started making books, i instinctively knew i wanted to have as much image as text, but i didn’t know how to do it. The problem, in fact, is to balance, so to speak, the centrifugal & the centripetal, which is identical to the epic poet’s task. On one end of a continuum, there’s the regular text with square windows cut out (i used this for Mysteries from Forgotten Worlds); on the other, is making a landscape in which words appear, in a constant flow (perhaps this can be said to stem from “Un Coup de Dés”), & the trick is to avoid actually illustrating the text literally (as a children’s book would). A Humument, being composed by covering up all the words but a few that are then used in that order, introduces both a random element & a forward impetus. Phillips turns the latter into sheer lyricism. –Then it becomes necessary to avoid copying his solution (as in my second edition of Star Grope)…
“The plan was as simple as it was daring. [James Whitcomb] Riley would fashion a knock-off of Edgar Allan Poe and pawn it to the reading public as a recently found, unpublished work by the dead poet. When the piece received critical praise, Riley’s case would be made. Riley’s 'Leonainie' appeared on August 2, 1877, in the Dispatch, a Kokomo, Indiana, newspaper edited by a man in on the hoax. It was printed under the heading: ‘A Hitherto Unpublished Poem of the Late Lamented Edgar Allan Poe.’ To provide cover, one of Riley’s ex-medicine-show-Iocal-sign-painter pals, Will Ethell, found a facsimile of Poe’s 'The Bells’ and, approximating Poe’s handwriting as best he could, set out to copy Riley’s 'Leonainie’ onto the flyleaf of an old Ainsworth dictionary. If anyone asked to see the original, the Ainsworth would then be trotted out as evidence. Here’s Riley’s faux-Poe:
'Leonainie-Angels named her;
And they took the light
Of the laughing stars and framed her
In a smile of white;
And they made her hair of gloomy
Midnight, and her eyes of bloomy
Moonshine, and they brought her to me
In the solemn night.-
In a solemn night of summer,
When my heart of gloom
Blossomed up to greet the comer
Like a rose in bloom;
All forebodings that distressed me
I forgot as Joy caressed me-
(Lying Joy! that caught and pressed me
In the arms of doom!).
Only spake the little lisper
In the Angel-tongue;
Yet I, listening, heard her whisper,-
"Songs are only sung
Here below that they may grieve you-
Tales but told to deceive you,-
So must Leonainie leave you
While her love is young.
Then God smiled and it was morning.
Matchless and supreme
Heaven’s glory seemed adorning
Earth with its esteem:
Every heart but mine seemed gifted
With the voice of prayer, and lifted
Where my Leonainie drifted
From me like a dream.’
…A slew of national newspapers swept up the story, notably including the New York World, Tribune, and Post. Some were enticed, others merely wary. But the poem instigated enough literary ruckus to arouse well-known Poe biographer William F. Gill of Boston, who petitioned to review the original and verify its authenticity. Gill suggested his depositing a large sum at a Boston bank as security so the Ainsworth containing the poem—a forgery just completed by Riley’s pal Ethell—might be shipped to him for study.“ —Poetry’s Afterlife
"If the Beowulf manuscript had been destroyed in the fire, all we would know of it would be the forty lines Wanley cited in his catalogue of 1705 and his brief and misleading summary..." (via @lilithsaintcrow.com)
“POEM
I fear an alias abandoned
At birth awaits to name me
After life, an ID I must
Assume again, a prior self.
Migraine angel whose crimes
Include the nail ordeal of hands
And the toe torment of feet.
When a chessboard meets
A crossroads face to face,
Is their contest foregone, lost
The sinuous routes we win?
Uncloaked by the light heaven’s
Decryption sends to none,
I come coven to your command.”
—Bill Knott
"And the pineapples roll. Sometimes they detonate." (via feuilleton)
"ashwaganda"
scattered frogs
slain where fascist cogs flattened
free speech in its final throes
wine of violence, creature-crutch
this vague creature · reaches versts
its passage gravelly · gorp swilling
cannot be named · by the near gazers
no inside or out · but its feet march
& takes what · all of us stand on
"Maybe prayer and electricity are fighting a war."
To me there is a palpable difference in the light from August/September to October, & i'd been sublimally clued-in to that for some time without realizing that it wasn't just the range of temperatures that was altered for me. It's like a key-change in music. The same notes mean something else.
“No matter how cynical you become, it’s never enough to keep up.”
– Lily Tomlin via @jacobwren.bsky.social
Autoimmunity
Irony-
flower, only
grows on graves, and
how you re-
gard is vision
too, but the
guardian
never knows what’s
under,
garbage or pure alluvial
matter:
even the flowers, wise beyond
words, don’t.
“The Captive
When gloaming droops
To the raven’s croak,
And the nightjar churs
From his time-gnarled oak
In the thunder-stricken wood:
When the drear dark waters
‘Neath sallows hoar
Shake the veils of night
With their hollow roar,
Plunging deep in flood;
Spectral, wan
From unquiet rest,
A phantom walks
With anguished breast,
Doomed to love’s solitude.
Her footstep is leaf-like,
Light as air,
Her raiment scarce stirs
The gossamer.
While from shadowy hood
In the wood-light pale
Her dream-ridden eyes,
Without sorrow or tear,
Speculation, surmise,
Wildly, insanely brood.”
—de la Mare
I prefer lyrics i can't understand because most musicians are pretty bad poets.
"When I was your age, searching for a phrase in quotes returned results for that exact phrase" —@weeder.bsky.social
"So how's our fourth quarter looking?"
Thule because Poe did
whose geography awry
at a certain flagrant season
finds employ
Thule because Poe did
whatever by it he might mean
this used map i gift you
& inordinate terrain
The Plot of Scarcity, Empire, Ongoing.
“Alexandrines
Knowing the weariness of dreams, and days, and nights
The great and grievous vanity of joy and pain;
Frail loves that pass, where languors infinite remain,
Fervors and long despairs and desperate, brief delights;
Knowing how in the witless brains of them that were,
The drowsy, wiving worm hath prospered and hath died;
Knowing that, evermore, by moon and sun abide
The standing glooms made stagnant in the sepulcher;
Knowing the vacillant leaves that tremble, flame, and fall,
The sweetly-wasting rose, the dawns and stars that wane–
Knowing these things, the desolate heart and soul are fain
Of the one perfect sleep which filleth, foldeth all.”
—Clark Ashton Smith
"His Maud is narrated by a madman: he must often have wondered whether he was or would become one himself." (via aldaily)
"I like how the news will be like 'while the President claiming Portland was ruled by a giant skeleton named Mr Nibbles is not strictly true, it does speak to the anxiety of many Americans' "
—@brendelbored.bsky.social
"Won’t some dice decide most now?" —@anthonyetherin.bsky.social
Another Look at the Mesozoic
You can dance the night if day waits, unafraid,
for this understand-
ing that feels so fine at nighttime then to climb
up to where the brain
has its lonely dome of bone home, and explains,
not without some pain,
that the one whose dancing takes place, in the dark,
supervised by none,
is the world instead of mad-man… will it work?
try it on your next
moon’s noon.
"home skillet"
thresh shadowy · most lights out
suffer mildly · this silence
forlorn stream · in runespace
the last honey · a poem with a diagram
"Antifa, like Steely Dan, is not really a group." —@frankconiff.bsky.social
The Idea of Order at Key West.
"I am frail, lazy and unsuited to doing anything except what I am paid to do, which is sit by myself and type with one finger." —Joan Didion in Sharp (Michelle Dean, 2018)
“Four Screens I Don’t Cherish”
Fumigant farce · fester stone
in the changed light · we look for continuance
songs of before · ferocious fuse
nil proceed · nothing prove
the bard bickers · with his bad self
afraid like a fraud · frazzled to hold
to the one stance · stereotype
of one who waits · for a wrenched whisper
beauty of innuendo · ornate chasm
to get lost in · as the lessons burn
& this road rankles · even the rulers
of a small coign · or smothered calm
we know nothing · we need so much
more than these mists · of a chill morning
have never faced · the bold fascist
have never flown · flaunting the sun
only this dim · delegation
of golden glimmers · & gladsome oblivion
Concerto in E minor for Bassoon.
"gibbous zugzwang"
in this blast heat blurry
bling frequency census
stern narcissist nonsense
nags idiot Eeyore
munch tulpomancy
mug impetus fret-none
killer in me catnip
spoons-cost of the moon's peace
October light—tombstone
trance foraging edgelords,
not September natheless,
nard builded on spill-dunes—
or Fillmore's flerd truncheon
redbrick fetch of hedgehogs
"I truly don’t know what’s triggered it, but this phrase from Tacitus keeps coming to mind today:
'They make a desolation and they call it peace.' " —@colinsmith.bsky.social
“The night before she dreamed she had won the Nobel Prize for Despair.”
—Fanny Howe, The Deep North via @jacobwren.bsky.social
“Nonlocality”
Shells fall where
Shrapnel is far
The eye-gloze
Glister harries
And we are one
One with the torn flesh
O believe
In your lurking
The traceless
Of truce-armies
And we are one
One with the torn flesh
Particles
Join pawn to king
The lifting
And loud falling
And we are one
One with the torn flesh
It’s gospel
Not to go there
Left hand blind
To right’s blunder
And we are one
One with the torn flesh
The gurgle
Of a gorged drain
The screaming
Neighbor a-scramble
And we are one
One with the torn flesh
So foolish
Is this failed chant
No tame clown
Can heed if told
And we are one
One with the torn flesh
Torn flesh and its song
"effigy"
tonight Nosferatu
never to find living
cross shadows shaping
shibboleths of absinthe
scope out how to hike there
ahead fields of raddle
tonight Nosferatu
anoints brass insects
Even writing a long palindrome didn't do it for Murnane.
In which Hannah Montana is invoked.
"tyrannosaurus high-five"
splash on Jupiter
of a comet collision
our far spectacle
these things we watch mesmerized
as if we could alter them
"Be warned that some of the visual-acrostic poems are not typeset correctly in the paperback editions."
"The floodlighting was gaining on the cathedral, chopping it into alternate vertical sections of void and glitter; it was a cage for some gigantic prehistoric bird. Beyond the cage, the traffic on the motorway could be heard, snarling untiringly." —Aldiss
"While conventionally we count five senses, the English Baroque librarian Robert Burton, in 1621, to give one example, counted eight senses in his encyclopaedic treatise The Anatomy of Melancholy (his Arab precedents in the anatomy of the mind need to be named – Ibn ’Arabi, Ibn Rushd [Averröes] and Ibn Sina, or Avicenna), because, following the philosopher Ibn ’Arabi, he included in his sensual anatomy the internal senses – memory, imagination and common sense. Or even eleven senses, because the three internal senses function differently in wakefulness and sleep, Burton[ ] points out." —Lisa Robertson
"Melancholy days,
traveling, filled with longing—
if I could not hear
the lonely cry of the crane,
it would be too much for me to bear."
—tanka by Takayasu no Oshima
translated by: Sam Hamill via @evecastle.bsky.social
"bibliomancy"
wheedle dense the whirlwind
whitecapped the cryptmouth
hungry in its season
"Dolly Parton could’ve written Das Kapital, but Karl Marx couldn’t have written '9 to 5' and it shows" —@landbeforetim.bsky.social
"One of the best parts of driving up to Salem is the reminder of how many actual witches hate JK Rowling." —@erinvachon.bsky.social
"Has any actor ever chalked up a year as creatively and as commercially bountiful as Sellers in 1964?"
"THE PRINTING PRESS (Palindrome)
Repaper:
I snap, my tone placid.
A rare vellum knits art,
no coil of fires....
Midst no felt tome,
we gape, we gage, we page,
we mottle fonts.
Dim serif,
folio,
contrast,
ink,
mull ever a radical pen....
O, tympans!
I repaper."
—@anthonyetherin.bsky.social
"The earlier, rocky-planet model was utilized as a setting by Hal Clement in the story Exchange Rate" (1999). Novella not included in any of Hal Clement's compilations to date. Published in Absolute Magnitude. Collected in The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Seventeenth Annual Collection and The Hard SF Renaissance (2002).
TELL HIM THERE'S HEAVEN
tell him there's Heaven
for liars, cheaters, rapists;
say that we love him—
say there will be an outcry
like the world has never seen
Down on Dimidium. Or this.
"I’m not terribly concerned about machines displacing human artists—this is limited to a specific conception of what 'artist' means—because I don’t believe mere imitation of what humans do by machines is all that interesting. ...I am excited, however, by the possibility of new forms of art that could be enabled by human artists using AI." —Ken Liu via
"A night saturated with spectral tension: shadows of self brush against shadows of other, desire pulses through the void, intimacy hangs by a thread, ghostly pleasures haunt what is both held close and endlessly slipping away. And then there’s Time, coming forth from its lakes." —@dreamsofbeing.bsky.social
"negative sentiment toward ICE"
Arrokoth
crisp fringe borrow
skirl lower
stay where scoffs drowse
"Arrokoth
Insomnia shoots
across the roof
like an already dead star,
and I keep thinking
how the farthest object
ever visited looks
like a crippled foetus—
a stillborn dream.
It means sky
in an extinct language,
just like her name,
now bleeding into
my fallen future
buried with my youngest
when the evening air strikes
started tearing the sunset—
so innocently pink
that I wanted to rock
the sky
in my empty arms."
—@lenaozge.bsky.social in cataloguing poetry magazine
"breakfast and move things" —@j-tkelly.bsky.social via @jordandavis.bsky.social
"∴ boar-gods brew'ng
butter'd beere bubbl'd—huzzah
howlkin bow to none
·
bracken-born þe tune
wildlings clash on barrel'd hides
heeds plenilune
·
fogdew glimm'rs, gleams
fang & paw drink her relic
nighte's feast fed full ∴ "
—@wordingway.bsky.social
"street terrorist"
foreign uranium · render path
trapdoor over ocean · orc protocol
coolth · thoughts that won't conclude
crossing tree shadows · with a weary trudge
Autumn Morning in the Blue Ridge Mountains.
"count not as news"
sharkbreath of the shadows
resumes shape it blooms in
bright disk of a derne lot
now & dismal power
lunch if you count lessons
to crawl a long hallway
sharkbreath of the shallows
to hope shiver-ropetrick
"defy vs deify" —@geofhuth.bsky.social
"I leave a white and turbid wake; pale waters, paler cheeks, where’er I sail. The envious billows sidelong swell to whelm my track; let them; but first I pass." —@mobydickatsea.bsky.social
"shadow fleet"
moon of some harsh harvest
hints elegy dudgeon
i ride the old rustheap
round flickering furlongs
ev'rywhere stern still-lifes
starch mannikin fictions
the curb that is cast here
calls hollowly holy
the ones who were wedged first
wield ultimate trimstilb
Elephants react fondly to music.
