( via / via )

A Distance from the Sea.

"pale saffron skylight"

that far bridge at brillig
brumous with smog, nog rattling
   over the scurry
somewhere else's island
aileron flap clap-smiley
   not for the drivers

"At the end of the class I sent Professor Hamby a little parody piece, a rebuttal from the nightingale’s point of view to the moping poet sitting underneath its tree." A Parody Anthology. Also here. I go into widerruf here, as elsewhere. This & this just turned up. Another new one to me. This was for the General's poem. I can't think of any better than Phelps Putnam's.

My comment on "Horace and Friends": Fascinating stuff, & if i ever returned to my onetime idea of writing a book on poems that answered poems ("the art of the widerruf") i would certainly mention it. (The term is Celan's.) Everyone knows about Raleigh's answer to Marlowe, but what about this:

Ogden Nash wrote a widerruf once:

"Lines Written to Console Those Ladies Distressed by the Lines 'Men Never Make Passes' etc.

A girl who is bespectacled
Don’t even get her nectacled
But safety pins and bassinets
Await the girl who fascinets."

(um, you have to pronounce it "neck tickled" (ouch!)

Victoria added: "Thanks! There are absolutely tons of response poems in this period, it's an artefact of manuscript culture I think. Sometimes you get massive long strings of them and sometimes they are v. international -- the Pope replied (in a Latin poem) to a Latin poem by Herbert. For years people thought the response was Herbert pretending to be the Pope, and even commented on how it was very gentlemanly of him to give the Pope the best of the exchange, before someone spotted that the Pope's poem was actually included in his (the Pope's) collection of Latin poems as well."

POSTSCRIPT

I found out, Heraclitus, how long you hád been dead;
you weren't that sad philosopher, but a satellite of the Pleiade.
Unless there's lurking, somewhere in the desert, bits we've missed,
your "Nightingales" are gone as though they never did exist.

3 13 86

Dream Song 76.

( via / via )

Omnipresence.

"Within this temporal body composed of a hundred bones and nine holes there resides a spirit which, for lack of an adequate name, I think of as windblown."

Matsuo Basho
The Knapsack Journal, 1687 via @dapowell.bsky.social

Godzilla vs Destoroyah poster.

"too many villains in this story"

blaze barricades · the blunt trauma
of a day hurled · in your face like slurry
but the car's calming · hum takes over
   blur sharpens to shape

of a day hurled · in your face like slurry
detours & deranged · riot of newsreels
   blur sharpens to shape
   & you comprehend the curve

detours & deranged · riot of newsreels
blaze barricades · the blunt trauma
   & you comprehend the curve
but the car's calming · hum takes over

"...almost no-one owned any Shakespeare before the eighteenth century."

( via / via )

"This shift toward the ampersand came at a pivotal moment in Levis’s career."

fighting phantoms · in the robot wars
spirits drawn · by the reek of blood
screen fades out · if i fail to tap
a brisk thought · in the rathe dark

"In total, somewhere between 20 million and 60 million tons of hazardous waste were dumped in and around Dallas-Fort Worth — in the very hinterlands the city is now expanding into."

Addicted to low-level planning, like an inoculation against future shock.

"That is where the real money tends to come from. Other people’s dreams."

( via / via )

Between Poetry and Painting.

"And not even the blasphemers of the demiurge have dared to deny that the universe is most beautiful, but rather, they maintain that because of this beauty, souls are harmed."

—Proclus

Tunak Tunak Tun.

'fragiloquent' joss stick
the road jungled tungsten

pale cerulean piecework
roll periscope marrow

broken bricks in piles

On the Occasion of the 1,600th Anniversary of the Birth of Proclus . (pdf)

( via / via )

Catacombs of Kom El Shoqafa in Alexandria.

NOTHING MEANS NOTHING

This morning i understood.
Or this afternoon.
A fly cast its shadow
on the gray wooden floor,
its wings a translucent one
a semi-shade.
Not that, not this—
cried the sage in the marketplace.
He wasn't playing
a sophist's game
with that Asian sun
nor did he seek to stifle
our questions like you'd swat a fly.
Invisible wings
(not this, not that)
were fluttering, and the half-tones changed shape.

When i saw her again today
so briefly,
i understood.

"A hero out of Camus or Walker Percy let loose in a world run by Zig Ziglar and Perry Mason."

"The moment we cease to hold each other, the moment we break faith with one another, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out." —James Baldwin via

Lyin’& Spinnin’: My Apocalyptic Valentine 😬💘.

( via / via )

Emanation.

When we wonder what any of us can do as a single person, look at Ida B. Wells.

"Nearly every house had a message staked in the yard or taped to the window: ICE OUT OF MPLS, GO HOME, NO SECRET POLICE, SAY THEIR NAMES."

"Tomas Tranströmer TR Robin Fulton

Ice hangs down from the roof edge.
Icicles: the upside-down Gothic.
Abstract cattle, udders of glass.

Tonight snow-haze, moonlight. The moonlight jellyfish itself
is floating before us. Our smiles
on the way home. Bewitched avenue."

—@andrewbertaina.bsky.social

I asked Grok to measure the irony of this & Grok just bleeped & died.

( via / me )

1949-A-No.1.

"One pillar holding up consolations,
another pillar,
a duplicate pillar, pillarous
and like the grandchild of a dark door.
Lost noise, the one, listening, at the edge of fatigue;
drinking, the other, two by two, with handles.

Don’t I perhaps know the year of this day,
the hatred of this love, the planks of this forehead?
Don’t I know that this afternoon costs days?
Don’t I know that never does one say ‘never’, on one’s knees?

The pillars that I saw are listening to me;
other pillars are, twos and sad grandchildren of my leg.
I say it in American copper
which owes to silver so much fire!

Consoled by third marriages,
pallid, born,
I am going to close my baptismal font, this showcase,
this fright with tits,
this finger in deathrow,
heartily tied to my skeleton.”

—Eshleman’s Vallejo

"Always a great sign for how things are going in your country when 21-year-olds are like 'hey, I innovated a system to play bagpipes in tear gas'."

THE GOP IN 2026: less shame than the Mayor of Ohrdruf.

For my brother Miguel.

( via / via )

Meanjin has been saved from the Melbourne University capitalist death pit.

"Fiction was invented the day Jonah arrived home and told his wife that he was three days late because he had been swallowed by a whale."

—Gabriel García Márquez, Life. via @umadip.bsky.social

"This is, of course, a wishlist. ...But Gen AI can't do any of these things."

February wanhope
rewards hollow larder
trickle of smudge smackdown
smileyface carrel reaper

February fireworks
fumble the etch switchblade
tourbillon steel task list
tardy release fossil

35 million years later.

( via / via [pencil drawing] )

Mardi Gras in Kansas.

“XXV.

CHESSBISHOPS SHY TO ADHERE
to the juncture, to the bottom, to the crown,
to the underside of the numerators on foot.
Chessbishops and hotbeds of tiny lupines.

When the lee of each caravel recoils,
unravelled without americanizing,
they yield the plough handles with spasms of misfortune,
with puny pulse ill-accustomed
to blowing their noses on the backs of their wrists.
And the most acute treblesonance
gets tonsured and down, and fully
innazalates toward the icicles
of infinite pity.

Splendid backs are snorting
while bearing, hanging from musty breast-straps,
the silken badges with their seven colors
under zero, going from the guano islands
to the guano islands.
So much for the sores on the foul weather of poor
faith.
So much for the time of the rounds. So much for the rodeo
for the future plans,
when innanimate italics relate solely
disappointed tiptoed crusades.

They come then chessbishops to adhere
even to the false doors and the scratchpads.”

—Smith’s Trilce

Here is Asaphus lepidurus from the Middle Ordovician rocks of St. Petersburg.

"I'd have assumed that the idea that the cells in human bodies are completely replaced in a seven-year cycle arose during my lifetime, so I was surprised to find Congo in John Dos Passos's 1925 novel Manhattan Transfer making the point in a scene before World War One: 'Your body renews itself every seven years.' " —Andrew Shields via

Under the Milky Way.

( via / via )

The Last King.

"We could say that there are both gatekeepers and gate-breakers in a range of different mainstream arts establishments. The ‘mainstream’ is not one set of people." —Joanna Walsh via

"We will be rebuilding our destroyed society from whatever we can piece together..."

fingernail paring moon · poised on black
rest redacted · derelict probes
to ponder grimly · our ground crunches
with the byproducts · of a burning mania
divide versts · vandalize time
with its slow growth · & proofs so slender

Linus and Lucy.

( via / via )

Black Heralds.

“XXV

Thrips appear to adhere
to joints, to the base, to napes,
to the underface of numerators on foot.
Thrips and thrums from lupine heaps.

As the lee of each caravel, unraveled
without Americanizing, snorts loudly,
carriage perches collapse in a calamitous spasm,
with a puny pulse unfortunately given
to blowing its nose on the back of its wrist.
And the most high-pitched sopraneity
tonsures and hobbles itself, and gradually
ennazals toward icicles
of infinite pity.

Spirited loins wheeze hard
on bearing, dangling from musty breastplates,
cockades with their seven colors
below zero, from the guano islands
to the guano islands.
Thus the dirty honeycombs in the open air of little
faith.
Thus the hour of the records. Thus the one with a detour
to future planes,
when the innanimous gerfalcon reports solely
failed silence-deserving crusades.

Then thrips end up adhering
even in trap doors and in rough drafts.”

—Vallejo, Trilce (tr C Eshleman)

Judith Anderson reading Millay.

"Art is a portal, then, through which one enters the uncanny." —Ange Mlinko via

Kalmadı.

( via / via )

"reading the Kur’an meant returning to the first garden at the dawn hour..." (via @alinaetc.bsky.social)

"i shouldn’t have to go to work if it’s rainy. i should get to stare out the window all day like a cat" --@jzux

Theory of Rasa.

A Collage-Bible

And imperial and gracious apparel
   is subtle edgewort.
tiny black ants all over a newdropt breadcrust
since last (my rosary of changes) or what
it does matter in this same hour’s manyweather
garb, umbrella or no, love the like sort of decision
rightly taken; & i recognize in myself
such considerations-without-an-object
like daylight though no visible source
has risen while you watch a pale gray vault in vain
for edge, definite ray, & blinding-golden.

"The public health crisis is not separate from the ethnic cleansing crisis."

( me / via )

Valwood southbound.

"ghost of Sumer"

ammonite cove, evening
undergrowth war, story
rewired armature
good for the fire blizzard

overpass shaped
in the image of the conqueror

the best part was the crying afterward

Triolet.

"Mechanic [coming out from under the hood of my car]: yeah, so here's the thing: antifreeze and blue gatorade aren't the same" —@thehyyyype.bsky.social

"Today, when there are candles in my witchlike eyes..."

( via / me )

You know, a 𝐭𝐫𝐮𝐭𝐡𝐟𝐮𝐥 𝐭𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐠 à la Moll Flanders with select scenes from Epstein Island & Mar-a-lago would burn up the screen--but it'd have to be rated X.

"in his inclement, howling old age, Ahab’s soul, shut up in the caved trunk of his body, there fed upon the sullen paws of its gloom" —@mobydicktsea.bsky.social

Dedication.

      "Panlykonium & Not"

brown leaves fell · it is winter now
   winter, Melania
with winter's dreams & winter's despairs
   & death, Melania
do you ever think about death · my name
   on the side of a building
& me not there · on Fifth Avenue
   standing there smiling
with the smoking gun · clenched in my hand
   & no more tears, Melania

Big sunspot AR4366 is about to disappear over the sun's western limb.

( the fanthorpe hardback i have, but not my photo / me )

With this i feel that we are finally starting to get a handle on what we have actually created, as opposed to what we imagine we created.

“The courage that my mother had
Went with her, and is with her still:
Rock from New England quarried:
Now granite in a granite hill.

The golden brooch my mother wore
She left behind for me to wear;
I have no thing I treasure more:
Yet, it is something I could spare.

Oh, if instead she’d left to me
The thing she took into the grave—
That courage like a rock, which she
Has no more need of, and I have.”

—Millay

Your Origin.

I love GKC & have read about half (?) of his immense output. I think he is more of a genuine zen master than anything like the churchgoers who constituted Xtianity in his time (& after). I disgree with him continually, but he's way more than the sum of his opinions. Tℎ𝑒 M𝑎𝑛 Wℎ𝑜 𝑤𝑎𝑠 Tℎ𝑢𝑟𝑠𝑑𝑎𝑦, wow.

Vuelve.

( via / via )

It's not pointless if it's soothing.

"Reminded of Edmond Jabès:

'Man is within man like the kernel in the fruit, or the grain of salt in the ocean.

And yet, he is the fruit. And yet, he is the sea.'

(A Foreigner Carrying in the Crook of His Arm a Tiny Book) via @yoonkim.bsky.social

"Tanith’s actual originals were written in longhand, in a kind of shorthand she invented."

getting things finished · is its own season
pale ghost · where does the time go
yards that were death to cross · turns that defined a world
sweating blood · & the minor blarney
now shadows · wrap their arms
on the little light left · in the culdesacs
& i struggle to place · which of the reigns
each song belongs to· whom i served then
& the stars all hide

"The camps are a context where almost every human capacity broke down. That aesthetic experience also failed there tells us something about extremity, not about art."

( via / zao wou-ki via )

Ride of the Valkyries.

“Pretty Love, I must outlive you

Pretty Love, I must outlive you;
And my little dog Llewelyn,
Dreaming here with treble whimpers,
Jerking paws and twitching nostrils
On the hearth-rug, will outive you,
If no trap or shot-gun gets him.
Parrots, tortoises and redwoods
Live a longer life than men do,
Men a longer life than dogs do,
Dogs a longer life than love does.

What a fool I was to take you,
Pretty Love, into my household,
Shape my days and nights to charm you,
Center all my hopes about you,
Knowing well I must outlive you,
If no trap or shot-gun gets me.”

—Millay

"Media is one of the Seven Mountains..."

      EPIGRAM

To gather appeals to me, though as it happens,
all of the things i gather are not mine.

Frodo writes The Lord of the Rings.

( oil painting by me / via )

The Grave of Sir Gawain.

“Barking dogs will be choosers” —@borkenaesop

"At a jazz performance (or a classical one), music-lovers are more likely to 'overhear' conversations between the performer/composer and the quoted source. Although musicologists help listeners decipher the quotes, the composer's responsibility doesn’t include citation."

“On Thought in Harness

My falcon to my wrist
Returns
From no high air.
I sent her toward the sun that burns
Above the mist;
But she has not been there.
Her talons are not cold; her beak
Is closed upon no wonder;
Her head stinks of its hood, her feathers reek
Of me, that quake at the thunder.

Degraded bird, I give you back your eyes forever, ascend now whither you are tossed;
Forsake this wrist, forsake this rhyme;
Soar, eat ether, see what has never been seen; depart, be lost,
But climb.”

—Edna St Vincent Millay

Songbirds 2026, Waka Anthology.

( me / laura ostteen on fb )

Dóra’Sluices.

"vellum pact in ruins
time eats words into riddles
meaning slips sideways"

—underablacksky.bsky.social

Exploring an Underground Nuclear Bunker.

“I do not know if it is legitimate to speak of the end of man; but I am certain of the fall of all the fictions by which we have lived until today.” —𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝑇𝑒𝑚𝑝𝑡𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑡𝑜 𝐸𝑥𝑖𝑠𝑡

First word i ever made up was for that, which i didn't find out about until much later: "jairce". I just thought, here is something which ought to have a name, & doesn't.

( via / me )

I guess the notion.

"I miss my school and my friends I feel bad since when I came here to this Place, because I have been here too long.” —a 9-year-old detained at Dilley via (thread)

Latest robodoberman.

“XLII

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my head till morning; but the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply,
And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain
For unremembered lads that not again
Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.

Thus in the winter stands the lonely tree,
Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:
I cannot say what loves have come and gone,
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings no more.”

—Edna St Vincent Millay

The novel-writing machines in the Fiction Department.

( via / me )

"The man who is the possessor of force seems to walk through a non-resistant element..."

"best things dying"

all the best things
still leave me in a mood
clouds i would be rid
the clank of the machines
Sahara dunes

periscope until
our island landfall splash
wish by bloody wish
the hoops of fate unfurl
too pellmell

with the best things dying

UFO［フリツケ］.

"I like materiality and history too much, the nitty gritty of it bumping up against the cold estrangement of quiet nights, marmoreal, snow that is nowhere close now to the white of quarried Paros stone. I want a table of exports from the quarry. I want to see how much everyone paid for them against the fluctuating worth of the Lydian stater on an axis over time." —A V Marraccini via

The Wiki page for "dark fantasy" doesn't include any mention of Tanith Lee.

( via / oil painting on velvet by me )

IT’S JUST THAT I’M NOT REALLY INTO POLITICS.

"What happened was slower and less deliberate: over years, certain writers proved capable of surviving rereading, and others did not. The books that remained were those that addressed me seriously, without hauteur, concerned with how we conduct ourselves. I did not know I was applying a test until I noticed the results." —Anthony Brown via

It measures about 150,000 light years from side to side.

"Not Rattling

Scaly on a shelf · of square-laid stonework,
coiled by a bush, basking in the sun,
we can’t see your tail · on this cool morning
or hear it either · in the early stillness.
Taking its time, your tongue flicks slowly,
testing our purpose, tasting the peace."

—David B. Ring at FGR

Education in the Year 2000.

( via / via )

The Yeti Speaks.

"Sweeping up glass from my car that was stolen, on a dark overcast day the day before i go on vacation"

This spot might have been Dallas.
By the sparseness of its green.

That dusty churning has left
No enduring enigma.

Once a pilgrim tarried here
And carved her many a poem.

Poem upon poem, till the mass
Towered like sable coral...

The travail is long, lonely;
And ragged his fedora.

If for a moment he rests,
It is not to ask the way.

Through this glad abandonment
A wind gives north to the flesh.

Some real-time aurora action.

"the internet is straight up not interesting anymore as either a fictional subject or a modality by which fiction is produced sorry" —@katewagner.wehwalt.net

Let It Be Forgotten.

( via / via )

Canon RP Full Spectrum Infrared Sensor 665nm Sensor filter Canon RF 14-35 f4L lensv.

"behind faminebuilt walls" —Finnegans Wake

The Bunny gives Us a Lesson in Eternity.

jouk carpentersklaatu
accord derelict board games
   faminebuilt walls
eyes dilated ophthalm
inscape in the task capers
   faminebuilt walls
saffron-soft the glimmer

Everyone awaits the Superb Owl.

( via / me )

The Jesus Sutras.

eyes dilated · by the good garbles
   not cold not hot just dead lawn
crazy mirror · marked down

A Boston Dynamics does some gymnastics.

"Mirrors in silent
Passage, grim recognition
Of these wasted days."

—@rayhourigan.bsky.social

My life would be complete. Can we 3D print this?