Found an illustrated booklet about the "Parade at Persepolis", part of a celebration the Shah of Iran put on in 1971 that saw a lot of heads of state, & also a few avant garde artists, including Peter Brooks, who produced a play written especially for this event by Ted Hughes (in a "language" he invented), "Orghast", later the subject of a fascinating book by A C H Smith.
Some Orghast words: hoan, 'light'; bullorga, 'darkness'; ombolom, 'womb'; glittalugh, 'stars'; gleorghasta, 'the vulture'; oarglakris, 'the eagle'; boh, 'death'.
Thursday, July 22, 2004
Ernst Kipling sent me this poem as an answer to mine from yesterday:
“The Clown inside his study reads of war
and ponders deeply where the letters burn:
‘In war’s upheaval all new things are born.’
We raise our malls where clashes and massacres were,
unmindful of the cost of present peace.
The ravens’ shadows lingeringly abide.
A Clown can find in old accounts imbued
with human loss, a most instructive compass:
what soldiers chose, and what they did not choose,
purified by the terror and the goal...
In solitary rooms each Clown turns west
and either lets or does not let beguile
the sunset’s hues across this sparkling waste;
and learns at last defeat is not the worst.”
“The Clown inside his study reads of war
and ponders deeply where the letters burn:
‘In war’s upheaval all new things are born.’
We raise our malls where clashes and massacres were,
unmindful of the cost of present peace.
The ravens’ shadows lingeringly abide.
A Clown can find in old accounts imbued
with human loss, a most instructive compass:
what soldiers chose, and what they did not choose,
purified by the terror and the goal...
In solitary rooms each Clown turns west
and either lets or does not let beguile
the sunset’s hues across this sparkling waste;
and learns at last defeat is not the worst.”
Wednesday, July 21, 2004
"(there are a lot of retro Beats out who strike me as the literary equivalent of Civil War re-enactors)"
"Dog Sausage"
All the gray unlovely wars
Are written up; & shelves in stores
Sag burdened with their glad redundance,
The numbers dry, the backwards pundits:
We move a lot of them. I wonder
If past can outscream present thunder,
If turning over frozen battles
Shields the mind from window-rattles.
Or do they crave a narrative
When chaos stalks them where they live;
The outcomes clear, roles well-defined
Of victor &--the other kind?
Although it suits commercial sales
I think war boasts far fewer tales
Than these. There's really only one,
Of pain unsought, then no more fun.
A pamphlet maybe. Who would read
If all it said was, "None succeed"?
And who'd pursue that glorious boon
If all it meant was, "Die too soon"?
The books continue, pale & prim.
I wish i needn't deal with them
Or have to hear the savage news
That sizzles like a creeping fuse.
07 19 04
New Sosnowski.
"Dog Sausage"
All the gray unlovely wars
Are written up; & shelves in stores
Sag burdened with their glad redundance,
The numbers dry, the backwards pundits:
We move a lot of them. I wonder
If past can outscream present thunder,
If turning over frozen battles
Shields the mind from window-rattles.
Or do they crave a narrative
When chaos stalks them where they live;
The outcomes clear, roles well-defined
Of victor &--the other kind?
Although it suits commercial sales
I think war boasts far fewer tales
Than these. There's really only one,
Of pain unsought, then no more fun.
A pamphlet maybe. Who would read
If all it said was, "None succeed"?
And who'd pursue that glorious boon
If all it meant was, "Die too soon"?
The books continue, pale & prim.
I wish i needn't deal with them
Or have to hear the savage news
That sizzles like a creeping fuse.
07 19 04
New Sosnowski.
Tuesday, July 20, 2004
Just watched The Night of the Iguana. This is the poem the old poet finally finishes after 20 years:
"How calmly does the olive branch
observe the sky begin to blanch,
without a cry, without a prayer,
with no betrayal of despair!
Sometime while night obscures the tree
the zenith of its life will be
gone, past, forever. And from thence
a second history will commence
a chronicle no longer gold
a bargaining with mist and mold
and finally the broken stem,
the plummeting to earth, and then
an intercourse not well designed
for beings of a golden kind,
whose native green must arch above
the earth's obscene corrupting love,
and still the ripe fruit and the branch
observe the sky begin to blanch
without a cry, without a prayer,
with no betrayal of despair.
Oh courage! could you not as well
select a second place to dwell,
not only in that golden tree
but in the frightened heart of me?"
"How calmly does the olive branch
observe the sky begin to blanch,
without a cry, without a prayer,
with no betrayal of despair!
Sometime while night obscures the tree
the zenith of its life will be
gone, past, forever. And from thence
a second history will commence
a chronicle no longer gold
a bargaining with mist and mold
and finally the broken stem,
the plummeting to earth, and then
an intercourse not well designed
for beings of a golden kind,
whose native green must arch above
the earth's obscene corrupting love,
and still the ripe fruit and the branch
observe the sky begin to blanch
without a cry, without a prayer,
with no betrayal of despair.
Oh courage! could you not as well
select a second place to dwell,
not only in that golden tree
but in the frightened heart of me?"
Pollution level red.
"As models for their language and style the Hellenistic poets had the entire range of ancient Greek literature to call upon, from heroic times onwards; and they had the great new libraries in which they could read its masterpieces. ...they drew upon it for what it had to offer, adding ingenious variations of their own with elaborate erudition and refined self-consciousness. The trick was to revive the words, phrases and rare poetical usages of authors of the past...and to give them a cunning twist, bringing them together in piquant new combinations and endowing them with novel nuances of meaning." --Michael Grant, From Alexander to Cleopatra (1982)
Best zine name: Phosphorus Flourish. Runners-up: Spectacular Diseases, Scree, NeoVictorian Cochlea.
"As models for their language and style the Hellenistic poets had the entire range of ancient Greek literature to call upon, from heroic times onwards; and they had the great new libraries in which they could read its masterpieces. ...they drew upon it for what it had to offer, adding ingenious variations of their own with elaborate erudition and refined self-consciousness. The trick was to revive the words, phrases and rare poetical usages of authors of the past...and to give them a cunning twist, bringing them together in piquant new combinations and endowing them with novel nuances of meaning." --Michael Grant, From Alexander to Cleopatra (1982)
Best zine name: Phosphorus Flourish. Runners-up: Spectacular Diseases, Scree, NeoVictorian Cochlea.
Monday, July 19, 2004
"...Theodore von Grift, the former phenomenon, is an average man weighing one hundred and forty pounds and composed of enough water to fill a ten-gallon barrel, enough fat for seven cakes of soap, enough carbon for nine thousand lead pencils, enough phosphorus to make twenty-two hundred match heads, sufficient magnesium for one dose of salts, enough iron to make one medium-sized nail, sufficient lime to whitewash a chicken coop, and enough sulfur to rid one dog of fleas." --Joanna Scott, Various Antidotes (1994)
"We have become a people of esoteric leisure." --W Hampton Sides, Stomping Grounds (1992) [A whole book relevant to my concept of blixen.]
"We have become a people of esoteric leisure." --W Hampton Sides, Stomping Grounds (1992) [A whole book relevant to my concept of blixen.]
Sunday, July 18, 2004
This is kind of how i felt about getting laid off:
"A Silence in the Modem
That password's now defunct--what you remember
is worthless. You will never ride again
the eager way, in pleasure or in labor,
that password's now defunct.
Why did you dream, of all things, clownly gain;
and when you took up planning, were you sober?
Passwords, like jet trails, bloom under the gun.
This is a world of frail and febrile jabber,
whose towers stand no sounder; khaki goon
and ashen wind divide you from that chamber:
that password's now defunct."
--Ernst A. Kipling in Eratosphere
"A Silence in the Modem
That password's now defunct--what you remember
is worthless. You will never ride again
the eager way, in pleasure or in labor,
that password's now defunct.
Why did you dream, of all things, clownly gain;
and when you took up planning, were you sober?
Passwords, like jet trails, bloom under the gun.
This is a world of frail and febrile jabber,
whose towers stand no sounder; khaki goon
and ashen wind divide you from that chamber:
that password's now defunct."
--Ernst A. Kipling in Eratosphere
Saturday, July 17, 2004
Antonyms et al in Arabic. (via Dumbfoundry)
Every time i see a blog-discussion on prosody, i’m amazed all over again how this musty old topic can still generate confusion, & heat. The basics. But then i remember we’re basically dealing with a situation similar to that in which Classical Latin was revived in the early Renaissance by people who didn’t speak it. (Except that those people bothered to get it right.) It’s not like the versifiers of today even started with the bad poems one can hear on the radio ten times an hour. They start with textbooks, & listening to people read who don’t even stop at the end of their lines (sigh). But i really would like to see one confusion reversed: between ICTUS (beat) & STRESS (which is a relative thing of adjacencies). And poetry in English was always a thing of beats; still is, if you care to listen. The most expert prosodists did things that still can’t be explained by the old GraecoRoman style of analyzing “feet”: i am thinking specifically of W S Gilbert, & his song in The Mikado that goes:
“...awaiting the sensation of a short, sharp shock/
from a cheap and chippy chopper on a big black block”.
Now, you probably have no trouble hearing the change in velocity of each line toward the end. In fact, he goes straight from duple feet (“aWAITing the senSAtion”) to syncopation (“SHORT SHARP SHOCK”) without so much as pausing for a real iamb in between. --These lines can be put into musical notation better than they correspond to the binary analysis of “stressed” & “unstressed”. I think it can be safely said that when the great poets like Shakespeare & Milton & Tennyson had reached the point of being able to speak freely in perfectly regular verse, they did not rest in this mastery, but began to explore polyrhythms & the effects of countering hearers’ expectations. Too bad the teachers of prosody couldn’t follow it!
Every time i see a blog-discussion on prosody, i’m amazed all over again how this musty old topic can still generate confusion, & heat. The basics. But then i remember we’re basically dealing with a situation similar to that in which Classical Latin was revived in the early Renaissance by people who didn’t speak it. (Except that those people bothered to get it right.) It’s not like the versifiers of today even started with the bad poems one can hear on the radio ten times an hour. They start with textbooks, & listening to people read who don’t even stop at the end of their lines (sigh). But i really would like to see one confusion reversed: between ICTUS (beat) & STRESS (which is a relative thing of adjacencies). And poetry in English was always a thing of beats; still is, if you care to listen. The most expert prosodists did things that still can’t be explained by the old GraecoRoman style of analyzing “feet”: i am thinking specifically of W S Gilbert, & his song in The Mikado that goes:
“...awaiting the sensation of a short, sharp shock/
from a cheap and chippy chopper on a big black block”.
Now, you probably have no trouble hearing the change in velocity of each line toward the end. In fact, he goes straight from duple feet (“aWAITing the senSAtion”) to syncopation (“SHORT SHARP SHOCK”) without so much as pausing for a real iamb in between. --These lines can be put into musical notation better than they correspond to the binary analysis of “stressed” & “unstressed”. I think it can be safely said that when the great poets like Shakespeare & Milton & Tennyson had reached the point of being able to speak freely in perfectly regular verse, they did not rest in this mastery, but began to explore polyrhythms & the effects of countering hearers’ expectations. Too bad the teachers of prosody couldn’t follow it!
Friday, July 16, 2004
"Banned Words Poem"
Exquisitely Emily chrome magnolia
Dickinson Viking melancholy crowded
Solitude where a subterranean wind
Battles the firmament grid for brig airspace
Iridescent sallies still more passionate
Than the iridescent pflungg ideogram
Meet you in Emily Dickinson attire
Where burning utterance names the wind Tokay
No angel jowls on Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson hones the chrome unnamed
Belly for this, muses a strange appendage
Structure mien in the belly of angel graves
07 15 04
Exquisitely Emily chrome magnolia
Dickinson Viking melancholy crowded
Solitude where a subterranean wind
Battles the firmament grid for brig airspace
Iridescent sallies still more passionate
Than the iridescent pflungg ideogram
Meet you in Emily Dickinson attire
Where burning utterance names the wind Tokay
No angel jowls on Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson hones the chrome unnamed
Belly for this, muses a strange appendage
Structure mien in the belly of angel graves
07 15 04
Thursday, July 15, 2004
Ozone level Orange. Thank the rain; by now it should be Red.
Amusingly, the Judy Dench "M" character in recent Bond flicks seems to be based on a real person: we have her memoirs, Open Secret by Stella Rimington.
"The North Texas area is home to:
* 1 million Mexicans, including 300,000 people from the state of Guanajuato
* 40,000 Chinese-Americans and slightly more Pakistanis
* about 25,000 Iranians and an equal number of Arabs
* 80,000 people of Vietnamese descent
* nearly 100,000 people from India" --from the DFW International site
Listening to: Sahara Lounge
Amusingly, the Judy Dench "M" character in recent Bond flicks seems to be based on a real person: we have her memoirs, Open Secret by Stella Rimington.
"The North Texas area is home to:
* 1 million Mexicans, including 300,000 people from the state of Guanajuato
* 40,000 Chinese-Americans and slightly more Pakistanis
* about 25,000 Iranians and an equal number of Arabs
* 80,000 people of Vietnamese descent
* nearly 100,000 people from India" --from the DFW International site
Listening to: Sahara Lounge
Tuesday, July 13, 2004
Hail Junior.
Hubble Bubble. (Not this one.)
Text Message Novel. (Written in 70-word chapters; cf zacco.)
Hubble Bubble. (Not this one.)
Text Message Novel. (Written in 70-word chapters; cf zacco.)
Science fiction of the near future that doesn't consider this, is as absurd & unrealistic as that of the Golden Age where other planets always had breathable atmospheres & everyone spoke English.
Dhimmitude. And a critique. Some background.
Momus on Slowness.
A new Lynx.
Dhimmitude. And a critique. Some background.
Momus on Slowness.
A new Lynx.
Monday, July 12, 2004
As ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny, my hair growing out figures a history of the 60's.
"But while Rochberg rejected serialism, he did not reject the atonal composition out of which serialism had grown and which characterized its harmonic syntax. Instead, Rochberg began to construct his music out of both tonal and atonal languages. In so doing, he dramatically reinterpreted the notion of stylistic uniformity that had been a hallmark of the Western aesthetic since antiquity. He refused to abandon "past" musical styles, insisting that they continue to live—transformed by his individual artistry but recognizable nonetheless—in his new art. By including these diverse musics, Rochberg believed that he had expanded the emotional range that modern music was able to express. He had found a contemporary language that could both bear the weight of despair and point to transcendence."
--from the Rochberg page
"But while Rochberg rejected serialism, he did not reject the atonal composition out of which serialism had grown and which characterized its harmonic syntax. Instead, Rochberg began to construct his music out of both tonal and atonal languages. In so doing, he dramatically reinterpreted the notion of stylistic uniformity that had been a hallmark of the Western aesthetic since antiquity. He refused to abandon "past" musical styles, insisting that they continue to live—transformed by his individual artistry but recognizable nonetheless—in his new art. By including these diverse musics, Rochberg believed that he had expanded the emotional range that modern music was able to express. He had found a contemporary language that could both bear the weight of despair and point to transcendence."
--from the Rochberg page
Sunday, July 11, 2004
Aldebaran you cipher
so as not to sleep
& you give yourself to that despair or this
myth tentacular, monarchist glass
locusts light
on your hands a funest thing
take day left rim receive bleed to will
sea to indigo
ungainly visitors flood & swarm your sleep
witness steal
terminal moraine where glass
in the haunted burgundy cipher
the last thing
sleepwalker to this
& the tremulous shadows of indigo
vend their own sick astonishing light
so where will you go now destitute of will?
07 09 04
title for all: "Presence of Mind". i think i will call this form tawang, which
is Pashto for 'basket'.
The End Announced Yet Again of Literacy. I think the people who have time to read are probably reading more than ever before. And the people who aren't interested in reading are still just as uninterested. But the people whose free time is at a premium are feeling the squeeze--& reading
is only one of the many personal pleasures that are becoming scarcer, in times of troubles.
New Mieville.
Paul Riddell has a blog!
Japanese Name Generator. (via Zen Asparagus)
so as not to sleep
& you give yourself to that despair or this
myth tentacular, monarchist glass
locusts light
on your hands a funest thing
take day left rim receive bleed to will
sea to indigo
ungainly visitors flood & swarm your sleep
witness steal
terminal moraine where glass
in the haunted burgundy cipher
the last thing
sleepwalker to this
& the tremulous shadows of indigo
vend their own sick astonishing light
so where will you go now destitute of will?
07 09 04
title for all: "Presence of Mind". i think i will call this form tawang, which
is Pashto for 'basket'.
The End Announced Yet Again of Literacy. I think the people who have time to read are probably reading more than ever before. And the people who aren't interested in reading are still just as uninterested. But the people whose free time is at a premium are feeling the squeeze--& reading
is only one of the many personal pleasures that are becoming scarcer, in times of troubles.
New Mieville.
Paul Riddell has a blog!
Japanese Name Generator. (via Zen Asparagus)