the gyring, pustulent light
invades our hearts' sleep
in Normandies of terrible will
not to be singled out on the plain of glass

indigo
the last thing
to ask in the proffered glass
all shaven each craven at witch sleep

this policy was now an adopted thing
dark die bitter steal
tanks in the street of draped indigo
the driver's face a cipher

soft freezing rain will
follow this
burden or flutter mysteriously light
as the winners steal

07 08 04

Poem by poem t'ward wit-eclipse
A pro-war bard is losing steam.
The Muses have deserted him...
Could be the company he keeps.

   07 07 04

"Reading Spengler is like watching Romanticism train wreck into Modernism."

"The earliest poets were pretty small."

Children at Abu Ghraib.

in the burning glass
there is never any sleep
& the tremulous shadows of indigo
enfold, soundlessly, each broken thing

let free will
in the house of glass
scatter no more hazard light
let the mother of mutterings sleep

who, pursuing the procurator since this
very steal
& beginning to be legible cipher
have not required this

crystal mutiny peace light
binary stroke & fragrant cipher
say what will
be will be say svelte drogulus steal

07 07 04


burning indigo
Titan's sleep
path of crushed snails questioned thing
quadrangular immovable oneway glass

the juicy murder trial thing
still picking out glass
whose ghastly hope spoke of indigo
desert sleep

crystal do them desert woke with the same will
someday soon will steal
slag from light
in the haunted burgundy cipher

spasmodic eyes siphon this
cellcam ban phlogiston sleepwalker cipher
avalanche lungfish fetch this
star you cannot steal

07 07 04

our night of repairs the will
does not change, pellucid indigo
no longer the light
to divide gray thing from barely grayer thing

silken this
regard of nacreous glass
pure cipher
returning as marrows filled not sleep

another redundant door outside where steal
away the blown light
the ashen stars of a final will
sleepwalker to this

utter army indigo
obeisance any flash or flicker cipher
purblind thing
rains before dawn steal

07 06 04

"...the greatest single expanse of unexplored territory remaining in the Solar System today."

A contemporary Russian painter.

I was reading a Blok poem, or sequence of poems, in which some of the endwords repeated across poems; & though it was an unrhymed translation of what was surely a rhymed original, the effect pleased me & i wanted to utilize the form in a sequence of my own. Accordingly, i took the approximate dimensions of Blok’s sequence (five 16-line poems of four stanzas each), &
determined that a “super-sestina” of nine endwords would fill 81 lines (one stray line left over)--in which each 16-line unit would have 7 endwords repeating & 9 not. The first step was to
find or construct a Latin square, i.e. a matrix of nine rows of the digits 1 through 9, in which no row or column repeated a number. I could have easily found one on the internet, but i decided to construct my own. First, i took the sequence 1-9-2-8-3-7-4-6-5 as the base i would use, & after writing out this square:

   1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9
   9-1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8
   8-9-1-2-3-4-5-6-7
   7-8-9-1-2-3-4-5-6
   6-7-8-9-1-2-3-4-5
   5-6-7-8-9-1-2-3-4
   4-5-6-7-8-9-1-2-3
   3-4-5-6-7-8-9-1-2
   2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-1

i reordered the rows according to my base (slightly disarranged):

   1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9
   2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-1
   9-1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8
   3-4-5-6-7-8-9-1-2
   8-9-1-2-3-4-5-6-7
   4-5-6-7-8-9-1-2-3
   7-8-9-1-2-3-4-5-6
   5-6-7-8-9-1-2-3-4
   6-7-8-9-1-2-3-4-5

& then the columns:

   1-9-2-8-3-7-4-6-5
   2-1-3-9-4-8-5-7-6
   9-8-1-7-2-6-3-5-4
   3-2-4-1-5-9-6-8-7
   8-7-9-6-1-5-2-4-3
   4-3-5-2-6-1-7-9-8
   7-6-8-5-9-4-1-3-2
   5-4-6-3-7-2-8-1-9
   6-5-7-4-8-3-9-2-1

which gives me my final matrix. What words to use? I scanned my Gmatria lists--

56 light, Marx, will, radix, ghoti, zebub, Odinn, Karnak, sigil, this, iron, Latin, Denebola, udjat, Agharta, ether, shit, hobbit, qoph, Isis, daimon, cannibal, lgorab, abort, term, poet,
comet, wolf

57 ions, suq, Lapis, Apsu, Banus, Cipango, vugg, grackle, Gemini, rose, cipher, moon, hylic, callais, aether, Ziv, sleep, wood, steal, lingo

58 science, night, Kakkabu, Cathay, ullage, smegma, emerald, thing, star, fragile, glass, calendar, zodiac, rune, indigo, Marfik, Aldebaran, guano, Schedar, Amerika, arts, upadana,
reading, drive, hazard

& picked out:
       will
      light
      this
      cipher
      steal
      sleep
      glass
      thing
      indigo

which become my endwords 1 through 9. Now all i have to do is write these poems:

will-indigo-light-thing/this-glass-cipher-sleep/steal-light-will-this/indigo-cipher-thing-steal

glass-sleep-indigo-thing/will-glass-light-sleep/this-steal-cipher-this/light-cipher-will-steal

indigo-sleep-thing-glass/thing-glass-indigo-sleep/will-steal-light-cipher/this-cipher-this-steal

light-sleep-will-glass/indigo-thing-glass-sleep/thing-steal-indigo-cipher/will-this-light-steal

cipher-sleep-this-glass/light-thing-will-indigo/sleep-steal-glass-cipher/thing-this-indigo-light

will. I will probably use "snowflakes"...

‘Logic is the kingdom of the unexpected.’ --Mandelstam

For the Fourth, we decided to celebrate that most American value--freedom of speech--by going to see Fahrenheit 9/11. --Afterwards, the audience applauded.



“The decision to read a text as a fiction rather than a historical utterance neatly solves the problem of the Khlebnikov legend by setting it in its proper fictive domain, but the link between the legend and the biography can subvert this critical strategy. Consider, for example, the message Khlebnikov inscribed on a postcard and mailed to his friend Dmitry Petrovsky shortly after being drafted. He wrote, ‘The king is out of luck, the king is under lock and key. Infantry Regiment 93 will be the death of the child in me. Address: Viktor Vladimirovich Khlebnikov, Co. 2, 93rd Inf. Reg. (Res.).’ If we choose to read those lines as a poem, we automatically activate a particular set of literary conventions: we mark out a quatrain by virtue of the meter and rhyme, ignore everything from the word ‘Address’ on, and posit a finished lyrical miniature replete with allusions to the imprisoned king of fairy tales and to a variety of literary texts. The poem is rich enough to create the contexts we need, not only to make sense of the poem but to make the poem satisfy us aesthetically. There is no need, in other
words, to identify the lyrical ‘I’ with the historical Khlebnikov outside the text. On the other hand, a nonfictive or ‘historical’ reading is equally plausible. Petrovsky writes in his memoirs
that when he received the postcard he gasped with surprse and ran off to his friends to see what could be done to get Khlebnikov discharged as soon as possible. Clearly he read the poem as nonfictive discourse, taking the poem’s lyrical subject to be a real person with a serious problem on his hands. His was undoubtedly an impoverished reading of the text, but not without merit.” --Paul Schmidt, pref. to Collected Works of Velimir Khlebnikov, v. III (1997)

‘...whoever does not understand the new has no comprehension of the past, and whoever comprehends the past must also understand the new. The whole tragedy arises when, instead of the real past with its deep roots, we get “yesterday.” This “yesterday” is easily understood poetry, a hen-house with a fence, a cosy little corner where domestic fowl cluck and peck about. This is not work done upon the word but rather respite from the word.’ --Mandelstam, in: The Silver Age of Russian Culture, ed Proffer & Proffer (1975)

More machine intelligence from Yahoo (note the sponsored links).

Virtual fireworks. (thanx Melanie!) --Click where you want them.

The air perfumed with onions frying in olive oil.

  new
  habits, the
  glue still wet

07 01 04

‘When substance [zhi] outweighs style [wen], we have a rustic; when style outweighs substance, we have a clerk. Only when style and substance are equally combined do we have the cultivated man.’ --Confucius, cited by McCullough ibid

Not many artworks i know of are like a glass of water or a bottle full of coke. I think this metaphor has passed its expiration date. Let art be like tea. Under distant suns you gather the fragrant leaves; prepare them under very particular conditions; then (after vicissitudes) you bring water & new fire & time to steep. Only then is the artwork (& the metaphor) complete.
   Let us vie opinions on the best climate for growing & the best education for preparing & the merits of various fires & waters. But enough of FORM VS CONTENT!

Is it more appalling that Saddam Hussein should have ordered someone to have their tongue torn out; or that he was able to find others to carry out such commands? If you walk up & down in this world for very long, it still seems deplorable, but less & less surprising. You may seek for years in vain to find allies in planting trees or teaching illiterates to read--the quest for henchmen is a matter of mere steps.
   I used to not hate those whom i called “innocent Republicans”, the ones who never thought about it but simply accepted the immutable fact that this was their home team, & they should root for it. But as it has become an effortless task to find out unwelcome political truths: there is only self-delusion, & willful ignorance. Not innocence, not anymore. They are henchmen, small henchmen it is true--but the faraway crimes of this administration are never small to those whose lives they destroy.

   A small swirl of birds
in the gray dry dawn, music
   at the gas station
pelts down; i leave it mid-phrase
driving Djuna's turquoise car.

07 01 04

"The short Teijin Contest diary devotes two of its twenty-eight lines to the musical compositions presented and four to the costumes of the former Emperor (brown robe and yellow trousers), the men and women of the Left [team] (red cloaks over cherry-blossom robes), the men and women of the Right (green cloaks over willow robes), the poets and scorekeepers of the Left (red robes with trousers of pale brown damask), and the poets and scorekeepers of the Right (green robes with trousers of yellowish-green damask)." --McCullough, op cit

A genius way to market poetry.

" I think we made a disastrous error in the classic strategic sense when in 1991 we concluded that we “had won the Cold War.” No. We simply didn’t lose it as badly as the Soviets did."
--Chalmers Johnson

   "The Pillar of Storge"

snails
recur, like
they know something

06 30 04

Asleep at midnight, up by 4:45. Saddam's ugly mug on the tube. More rain in the offing.

"By and large, if a poet was good enough to gain admittance to Kokinshu, his style was, by definition, basically anonymous. ...The challenge to the sensitive observer posed by such oblique indications of authorship constitute, we may conjecture, one of the pleasures of poetry as game." --Helen McCullough, Brocade by Night (1985)

Dallas with Seattle skies. There was a year in the 80's when it rained all summer. I wonder if this will be like that one. I used to joke, ours was the only climate global warming would improve: 'cause it couldn't get any worse. In fact the savage hot summers that we'd learned to accept (like some remorseless proof of Original Sin or something) have been rather scarce in recent years. We had a real one a couple years back--& people who hadn't been here that long were appalled. They had no idea what they were getting into, obviously. There was a sort of wicked satisfaction in saying, this is what i've had to put up with, all my life. You won't get used to it, but in time you'll feel superior to those who live elsewhere, in halcyon regions
where eighty degrees is a heat wave.
I imagine the same snobdom must prevail in Dante's Nine Circles.

"...sacred words, which, to him, were not the wind, but the infinite circling maze of leaves blown before the wind." --William Sharp

A Sudanese painter. (via Sharp Sand)

The earliness of the hour precludes humor.

pemmicanize Miskatonic Mesklin, tribune
Omaha; pink School of the Americas pearl

Gibraltar smurf Gestapo sepulchral sob fnord

06 29 04 q. mujtass

I see that DaVinci Code-wannabe The Rule of Four is a thriller wrapped around the mysterious Hypnerotomachia; we are almost at the point where books themselves are magical, awe-inspiring objects; & the Past--well, anything could have happened...!
   Without a culture that bears in itself continuity & justification of what came before, one has to construct such continuities as one is able. Beyond that forlorn, heroic effort, there is only the superstitiousness of grown children who have never been given the bare means of deciphering any evidence whatsoever.
   "IS SO!" "IS NOT!"
   How thrilling to live at the end of a phase, & know it.

One of my art reviews gets a rebuttal.

   cool morning
the fake handover
   here believed;
now the squid slithers
Europa dark seas

06 28 04

Listening to: George Rochberg- Music for the Magic Theater (1965)

Rereading- The Drowned World (1962). (And i see that Kim Stanley Robinson has a new book out on global warming...)

'Orioles in the tree, and the length of vowels
Determines the measure of a classical line.
But on one day each year quantity overflows,
Spills from nature's bosom, like Homeric meter.

And like a caesura that day opens with a yawn:
Dawn brings tranquility and almost painful peace;
Oxen in the pasture, and golden indolence
Thwarts me from extracting rich, round notes from my reed.'

--Osip Mandelstam (tr Jane Gary Harris), in: The Silver Age of Russian Culture (1975)



"...a return to the 70's was inevitable." --Word Placements

   "Dialogue of Lenin & Moon"

Here begins the land of phantoms.
Your precious blood,
but they were only dreams.
Shine on the evening waves gray
The master is here!

Dextrous rats.

6 26 04

Some of these i read (i did go to school); one day i'll write my own list--but the time when all educated people have read the same books, is clearly at an end.


Achebe, Chinua - Things Fall Apart
Agee, James - A Death in the Family
Anon., - Beowulf
Austen, Jane - Pride and Prejudice
Baldwin, James - Go Tell It on the Mountain
Beckett, Samuel - Waiting for Godot
Bellow, Saul - The Adventures of Augie March
Brontë, Charlotte - Jane Eyre
Brontë, Emily - Wuthering Heights
Camus, Albert - The Stranger
Cather, Willa - Death Comes for the Archbishop
Chaucer, Geoffrey - The Canterbury Tales
Chekhov, Anton - The Cherry Orchard
Chopin, Kate - The Awakening
Conrad, Joseph - Heart of Darkness
Cooper, James Fenimore - The Last of the Mohicans
Crane, Stephen - The Red Badge of Courage
Dante - Inferno
de Cervantes, Miguel - Don Quixote
Defoe, Daniel - Robinson Crusoe
Dickens, Charles - A Tale of Two Cities
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor - Crime and Punishment
Douglass, Frederick - Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
Dreiser, Theodore - An American Tragedy
Dumas, Alexandre - The Three Musketeers
Eliot, George - The Mill on the Floss
Ellison, Ralph - Invisible Man
Emerson, Ralph Waldo - Selected Essays
Faulkner, William - As I Lay Dying
Faulkner, William - The Sound and the Fury
Fielding, Henry - Tom Jones
Fitzgerald, F. Scott - The Great Gatsby
Flaubert, Gustave - Madame Bovary
Ford, Ford Madox - The Good Soldier
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von - Faust
Golding, William - Lord of the Flies
Hardy, Thomas - Tess of the d'Urbervilles
Hawthorne, Nathaniel - The Scarlet Letter
Heller, Joseph - Catch 22
Hemingway, Ernest - A Farewell to Arms
Homer - The Iliad
Homer - The Odyssey
Hugo, Victor - The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Hurston, Zora Neale - Their Eyes Were Watching God
Huxley, Aldous - Brave New World
Ibsen, Henrik - A Doll's House
James, Henry - The Portrait of a Lady
James, Henry - The Turn of the Screw
Joyce, James - A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Kafka, Franz - The Metamorphosis
Kingston, Maxine Hong - The Woman Warrior
Lee, Harper - To Kill a Mockingbird
Lewis, Sinclair - Babbitt
London, Jack - The Call of the Wild
Mann, Thomas - The Magic Mountain
Marquez, Gabriel García - One Hundred Years of Solitude
Melville, Herman - Bartleby the Scrivener
Melville, Herman - Moby Dick
Miller, Arthur - The Crucible
Morrison, Toni - Beloved
O'Connor, Flannery - A Good Man is Hard to Find
O'Neill, Eugene - Long Day's Journey into Night
Orwell, George - Animal Farm
Pasternak, Boris - Doctor Zhivago
Plath, Sylvia - The Bell Jar
Poe, Edgar Allan - Selected Tales
Proust, Marcel - Swann's Way
Pynchon, Thomas - The Crying of Lot 49
Remarque, Erich Maria - All Quiet on the Western Front
Rostand, Edmond - Cyrano de Bergerac
Roth, Henry - Call It Sleep
Salinger, J.D. - The Catcher in the Rye
Shakespeare, William - Hamlet
Shakespeare, William - Macbeth
Shakespeare, William - A Midsummer Night's Dream
Shakespeare, William - Romeo and Juliet
Shaw, George Bernard - Pygmalion
Shelley, Mary - Frankenstein
Silko, Leslie Marmon - Ceremony
Solzhenitsyn, Alexander - One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
Sophocles - Antigone
Sophocles - Oedipus Rex
Steinbeck, John - The Grapes of Wrath
Stevenson, Robert Louis - Treasure Island
Stowe, Harriet Beecher - Uncle Tom's Cabin
Swift, Jonathan - Gulliver's Travels
Thackeray, William - Vanity Fair
Thoreau, Henry David - Walden
Tolstoy, Leo - War and Peace
Turgenev, Ivan - Fathers and Sons
Twain, Mark - The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Voltaire - Candide
Vonnegut, Kurt Jr. - Slaughterhouse-Five
Walker, Alice - The Color Purple
Wharton, Edith - The House of Mirth
Welty, Eudora - Collected Stories
Whitman, Walt - Leaves of Grass
Wilde, Oscar - The Picture of Dorian Gray
Williams, Tennessee - The Glass Menagerie
Woolf, Virginia - To the Lighthouse
Wright, Richard - Native Son

Listening to: Petula Clark- I Couldn't Live Without Your Love. (Her versions of "Bang Bang", "Homeward Bound", & Elusive Butterfly" are good, but skip "Strangers in the Night"--it's wretched.)

Brown Shirts. (via Metafilter)

"Kamo no Mabuchi (1697-1769), perhaps the finest waka poet of the period, proclaimed 'sincerity' (makoto) to be his poetic ideal, following the Manyoshu; but, because he chose to express his feelings in a language a thousand years old, his poems often seem tepid even when the occasion demands powerful, direct expression." --Donald Keene, World Within Walls (1976)

LOL.



"Should one think “Ron” as in “Jess,” the undersung genius collagist, or “Ron” as in “Dion,” the minor indefatigable rock-moppet?" --Hotel Point

I'm glad i'm not in sports & have someone who doesn't even play the game, say: "He's not as fast as he used to be."
   I'm fast as i used to be--& far more deadly.

Ah, some Clyfford Still online! (via Wood_s lot)