Winners gesture, side crumbles
Dark face us doubts pleasant things
Little terrified ages harbor in.
5/29/03
5/28/03
5/27/03
5/22/03
Thinking beyond the page. A move in the wrong direction?
How many poets' lives and words evolve into a teaching about how to live and write. I'm satisfied that there are scores of living writers in American English whose command of craft, theoretical constructs, pedagogy, aesthetic schema and ethical principles are instructive. But it's the work and life connect that makes someone a teacher.
Again, thinking like this, am I moving in the wrong direction?
Among dead poets, why do certain names immediately come to mind, and others not?
How many poets' lives and words evolve into a teaching about how to live and write. I'm satisfied that there are scores of living writers in American English whose command of craft, theoretical constructs, pedagogy, aesthetic schema and ethical principles are instructive. But it's the work and life connect that makes someone a teacher.
Again, thinking like this, am I moving in the wrong direction?
Among dead poets, why do certain names immediately come to mind, and others not?
5/20/03
Drew, you probably know that when you're from out of town and you have only a half day to go to a museum, and you need to choose between "Manet/Velázquez" and "Matisse Picasso" you'll wind up at "Mathew Barney." That was how we planned it, but Brenda and I got to M/V before Barney, and so exhausted by the curatorial stagecraft of that, we couldn't step foot, as they say, into another room, much less another museum.
I think the M/V has been put up on an overextended conceit of Baroque fecundity, and the marketeering Saarland at the exhibit exit of Manet floral striped shawls is just enough to convince me the viewers, not the paintings, have been installed in a product placement snooker-fest. But a few of the too-many paintings are worth looking at extensively and thinking about. Zurbarán's "Saint Francis in Meditation" is about the most non-Anglo-Saxon painting ever – so it's automatically spellbinding; Velázquez's "El Primo" (aka "The Dwarf") demonstrates the royal figurine quality of the species; all of the El Grecos are trapdoors leading to extremely painful places.
Manet's "The Balcony" has all that stunning teal framing the four-headed human beastie (plus doggie) looking out and past the viewer. The bourgeoise to the right, with the tilted bonnet is recognizable to anyone who's spent time in Japan. She is the neo-prototype for the empress: eyes down, nearly crossed, implosively expressionless.
I think the M/V has been put up on an overextended conceit of Baroque fecundity, and the marketeering Saarland at the exhibit exit of Manet floral striped shawls is just enough to convince me the viewers, not the paintings, have been installed in a product placement snooker-fest. But a few of the too-many paintings are worth looking at extensively and thinking about. Zurbarán's "Saint Francis in Meditation" is about the most non-Anglo-Saxon painting ever – so it's automatically spellbinding; Velázquez's "El Primo" (aka "The Dwarf") demonstrates the royal figurine quality of the species; all of the El Grecos are trapdoors leading to extremely painful places.
Manet's "The Balcony" has all that stunning teal framing the four-headed human beastie (plus doggie) looking out and past the viewer. The bourgeoise to the right, with the tilted bonnet is recognizable to anyone who's spent time in Japan. She is the neo-prototype for the empress: eyes down, nearly crossed, implosively expressionless.
5/19/03
Write me again when you lose your dayjob. Let's see how. All your cultural capital is wealth you acquire over time. Mailing by day, even while you work! A book, a friend, a listserv. It's fair trade in all the nice meanings of the term. Then, ok, thus, there's legacy. Are you a legacy. A good question. This you steal, snatch, or otherwise purloin. No mincing, incremental acquisition here. You're a winner but you have to take it all.
Somewhere between now and June 31, the Pantaloons blogsite will have received its 10th visitor! I don't know how to account for the tremendous build up in numbers, unless I take into account the massive increase in 'hits' the poetics blog community all together has experienced over these last few months, along with, of course, the increase in publicizing same, which may have some relevance as well. It's gratifying, in any event, to be part this freeloading system of meta-analysis, and I am grateful to my 10th reader whoever you are even if you're a repeat. XXX000
5/15/03
Here's another snippet on Card's Souvenir Winner, a serial poem based in part on Achilles Rizzoli.
____
The impression that Rizzoli serves as a running motif is reinforced by the inclusion of three of his designs, as well as swatches of quotes from his prose, slogans and working titles. Card, though, upends the initial impact of a one-on-one appropriation or collaborative transaction. In epigraphs, text annotations, and especially in his "Notes" that follow the nine poems, Card discloses how he supplements Rizzoli by lifting text or ideas from a range of better known sources, including the New Testament, Lord Byron and John D. Rockerfeller, Jr., and by inserting fragments from a number of inscriptions on public buildings in New York. But not all these borrowings are straightforward. In the ninth and final poem, Card miscues the reception for the opening four lines by referencing a biblical passage in italics just below and to the right of line four. The passage is Paul's Romans, Chapter 12, Verses 3-8. In the King James version it begins, "For even as we have many members in one body…so we the many are one body in Christ, and each one members of one another …" Here are the opening lines to Card's poem:
My roof is done like a faun into tears.
Never seen despite all its rich article.
A fairy wand in a court of law, twittering, faultless,
Mute, staked as a mare to a formal lawn.
Card rocks the sweeping, representational register of the referenced text (we, members, one body, Christ) into utter reversals of Paulist dogma: fugitive simile and Gnostic incongruity (roof like a faun, never seen, fairy wand), through which glints of representation shine, but only briefly, like waning metonyms both "twittering" and "faultless."
Card exposes a baseline ambition later in the poem:
Tell the good old lowering eyes – broad feet
toward the door – I'm a poet, showdog
rightly termed dreamer, skaters on blockheads,
scented peers. "I have only one plate of soup."
Card bludgeons Paul's certainties (sitting targets, admittedly): "we have many members" is taken down several notches by "I'm a poet, showdog;" "one body" melts into "one plate of soup." For the showdog, inferential exactitude is an on- (rightly termed dreamer) or off- (scent of pears??) affair. As for the reference to the biblical passage, Card tells me in conversation that his intent is to have Paul's Romans "echo" within his poem, without direct quotation.
____
The impression that Rizzoli serves as a running motif is reinforced by the inclusion of three of his designs, as well as swatches of quotes from his prose, slogans and working titles. Card, though, upends the initial impact of a one-on-one appropriation or collaborative transaction. In epigraphs, text annotations, and especially in his "Notes" that follow the nine poems, Card discloses how he supplements Rizzoli by lifting text or ideas from a range of better known sources, including the New Testament, Lord Byron and John D. Rockerfeller, Jr., and by inserting fragments from a number of inscriptions on public buildings in New York. But not all these borrowings are straightforward. In the ninth and final poem, Card miscues the reception for the opening four lines by referencing a biblical passage in italics just below and to the right of line four. The passage is Paul's Romans, Chapter 12, Verses 3-8. In the King James version it begins, "For even as we have many members in one body…so we the many are one body in Christ, and each one members of one another …" Here are the opening lines to Card's poem:
My roof is done like a faun into tears.
Never seen despite all its rich article.
A fairy wand in a court of law, twittering, faultless,
Mute, staked as a mare to a formal lawn.
Card rocks the sweeping, representational register of the referenced text (we, members, one body, Christ) into utter reversals of Paulist dogma: fugitive simile and Gnostic incongruity (roof like a faun, never seen, fairy wand), through which glints of representation shine, but only briefly, like waning metonyms both "twittering" and "faultless."
Card exposes a baseline ambition later in the poem:
Tell the good old lowering eyes – broad feet
toward the door – I'm a poet, showdog
rightly termed dreamer, skaters on blockheads,
scented peers. "I have only one plate of soup."
Card bludgeons Paul's certainties (sitting targets, admittedly): "we have many members" is taken down several notches by "I'm a poet, showdog;" "one body" melts into "one plate of soup." For the showdog, inferential exactitude is an on- (rightly termed dreamer) or off- (scent of pears??) affair. As for the reference to the biblical passage, Card tells me in conversation that his intent is to have Paul's Romans "echo" within his poem, without direct quotation.
5/9/03
My Panker
It ranks among the most beautiful goods in Holstein.
My Panker is distant, a Kleinod from Episode Nine, only three km from the country Futterkamp.
The ropery managed.
Borders and shading sharpening a Trakenerzucht also still over 1500 hectars agricultural surface're worked over.
Howe'er you find the horses on Panker only. (The machines are accommodated on property Schmoel, which attained sad celebrity by the last witch burn.)
Beside Panker observation tower, from which one can see in good weather the far over Baltic Sea to Denmark, the forestry house Hessen Stone lies.
In former times a Forester got to the Aufbesserung with its sailors a Schankrecht. From that Forester's grip with sailors Hessen Stone grew.
Today one can eat excellently and jazz friends here come also.
It ranks among the most beautiful goods in Holstein.
My Panker is distant, a Kleinod from Episode Nine, only three km from the country Futterkamp.
The ropery managed.
Borders and shading sharpening a Trakenerzucht also still over 1500 hectars agricultural surface're worked over.
Howe'er you find the horses on Panker only. (The machines are accommodated on property Schmoel, which attained sad celebrity by the last witch burn.)
Beside Panker observation tower, from which one can see in good weather the far over Baltic Sea to Denmark, the forestry house Hessen Stone lies.
In former times a Forester got to the Aufbesserung with its sailors a Schankrecht. From that Forester's grip with sailors Hessen Stone grew.
Today one can eat excellently and jazz friends here come also.
5/8/03
Poem blogs make so much sense if you want them. Just like italics. Or O'Doul's.
Decillion, I hate this bossing O'Doul's site.
Italics, meanwhile, where could O'Hara go without them?
Decillion, I hate this bossing O'Doul's site.
Italics, meanwhile, where could O'Hara go without them?
5/6/03
I'll rip off my bow tie for the statsperson who authors the first biomatrix or cluster analysis of the unneat affects attached to real estate costs in poets' big decisions -- a) who to sleep with, b) who to live with, c) jobs, and how all these influence text.
5/2/03
Addressing the French
The French didn't invent hyper-cronyism in a lyric, they just got away with it tons sooner, breathing suspicion into oblivion, onto mirrors. In what NFL-friends call rotary squib kicks – occasions when the ball is booted so close to the ground you can't field it – Mitch Highfill's been fabricating a few pieces 'addressing the French poets.' Mitch's project is ongoing, and so far I've seen only "Poem for Daumal, " "Poem for Cendrars," ones for Eluard, Char, Desnos, and Breton. These don't sound French, they sound usefully critical in and of an American language that doesn't quite stabilize all that untranslatable, old-European excess. Here's the concluding stanza of the Breton poem.
I am more finished than an episode
of Mr. Ed. Show me a shot
I can’t make. Show me the imprint
of my hand, sharp enough
to shave with. They told me you
were sleeping in doorways
and I believed them.
The language sounds critical, because of Mitch's exaggerated abbreviation and fake-confrontational imperatives, raising a pre-climactic of doubt re the addressed poet's power ("Show me") or lexical authenticity ("Show me" a sharpened "imprint"). In other poems Mitch deadpans his way through universal, that is, French, poetic tropes, light, fire, water, oblivion, mirrors, froth. He also piles these figures beside stacks of Americanisms, buicks, Washington Square Park, Smith Street, Velcro (is that American? Mitch refers to it "as alien technology"??), the Marx Bros. and, of course, Mr. Ed. The intersection of Daumal and Washington Square Park is tragic in its absurdly extravagant appropriateness, underscoring how speedily the universal can be pulled down to "our" level.
The poems are useful as well in their repartee (delayed) with the still-foreign surreality of illuminism. The piece for Desnos begins by evoking a "Poetry delirious and lucid" that notwithstanding persistently parodic or copybook attempts from Ashbery, Lauterbach, Padgett, Yau, Schultz, et al., looks as if it's almost impossible to achieve in American English without overhead projectors or cracking jokes, save Wieners, Ceravolo and O'Hara. In these early numbers Mitch Highfill is still on the jokey side. But Mitch's sustained interest in directly confronting the French, the terseness of his juxtaposing American 'reality' with their tropical ancien regime, and, most interesting, whiffs of self-critique ("I am more finished than an episode / of Mr. Ed") could add up to something other than parody, tipping the project in another direction.
The French didn't invent hyper-cronyism in a lyric, they just got away with it tons sooner, breathing suspicion into oblivion, onto mirrors. In what NFL-friends call rotary squib kicks – occasions when the ball is booted so close to the ground you can't field it – Mitch Highfill's been fabricating a few pieces 'addressing the French poets.' Mitch's project is ongoing, and so far I've seen only "Poem for Daumal, " "Poem for Cendrars," ones for Eluard, Char, Desnos, and Breton. These don't sound French, they sound usefully critical in and of an American language that doesn't quite stabilize all that untranslatable, old-European excess. Here's the concluding stanza of the Breton poem.
I am more finished than an episode
of Mr. Ed. Show me a shot
I can’t make. Show me the imprint
of my hand, sharp enough
to shave with. They told me you
were sleeping in doorways
and I believed them.
The language sounds critical, because of Mitch's exaggerated abbreviation and fake-confrontational imperatives, raising a pre-climactic of doubt re the addressed poet's power ("Show me") or lexical authenticity ("Show me" a sharpened "imprint"). In other poems Mitch deadpans his way through universal, that is, French, poetic tropes, light, fire, water, oblivion, mirrors, froth. He also piles these figures beside stacks of Americanisms, buicks, Washington Square Park, Smith Street, Velcro (is that American? Mitch refers to it "as alien technology"??), the Marx Bros. and, of course, Mr. Ed. The intersection of Daumal and Washington Square Park is tragic in its absurdly extravagant appropriateness, underscoring how speedily the universal can be pulled down to "our" level.
The poems are useful as well in their repartee (delayed) with the still-foreign surreality of illuminism. The piece for Desnos begins by evoking a "Poetry delirious and lucid" that notwithstanding persistently parodic or copybook attempts from Ashbery, Lauterbach, Padgett, Yau, Schultz, et al., looks as if it's almost impossible to achieve in American English without overhead projectors or cracking jokes, save Wieners, Ceravolo and O'Hara. In these early numbers Mitch Highfill is still on the jokey side. But Mitch's sustained interest in directly confronting the French, the terseness of his juxtaposing American 'reality' with their tropical ancien regime, and, most interesting, whiffs of self-critique ("I am more finished than an episode / of Mr. Ed") could add up to something other than parody, tipping the project in another direction.
5/1/03
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