Bettering American Poetry – Volume 3
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Lynch Fan
I’m a Lynch fan who still has not seen “Inland Empire“. I will. Does “intuition” imply to “feel-think”? Stuff on poetry and Derrida below. Fun excerpt from “The Evening Class” blog: One fellow commended Lynch for the dream-like quality of his films, necessitating repeated viewings, and their Derridean sense where something is always off-center, unseen,…
Dim Sum: Tonya Foster & Evie Shockley
DELIRIOUS HEM The following excerpts are taken from “Dim Sum: Tonya Foster & Evie Shockley — Braiding: ConVERSations: To, Against, For” It would be one thing if poetry were made of words alone, but it is not–no more than words themselves are. –Paolo Friere via James Scully (Linebreak 133) …If essentialism means being able…
Benjamin on Baudelaire
The Writer of Modern Life: Essays on Charles Baudelaire From the “INTRODUCTION” By Michael W. Jennings — THE WRITER OF MODERN LIFE: ESSAYS ON CHARLES BAUDELAIRE by Walter Benjamin: Yes the ragpicker is also a figure for Baudelaire, for the poet who draws on the detritus of the society through which he moves, seizing that…
Not Thinking Alike
“It is not best that we all should think alike, it is differences of opinion that make horse races.” –Mark Twain ~~ A few new poems written by my non-pseudonym in Jacket Magazine: * The Arm of Eden * Where Bullfinches Go to Defy * Two if by Land, I Do * A Martyrdom Should…
Let’s Go Out Past the Party Lights
If I had a woman, I’d play this Tom Waits’ re-make for her. If I had to live in the suburbs, I’d pick North Massapequa, former home of Christine Jorgensen, who was the world’s first publicized sex change star. If I had to live in North Massapequa, originally settled by the Native Americans of the…
“Why Poetry?”
An excerpt from James Baldwin’s essay, “If Black English Isn’t a Language, Then Tell Me, What Is?” (1979): People evolve a language in order to describe and thus control their circumstances, or in order not to be submerged by a reality that they cannot articulate. … What joins all languages, and all men, is the…
Hot Afternoons Have Been In Montana
I post with no authority but with the enthusiasm of a person eager to know more. A certain someone lent me HOT AFTERNOONS HAVE BEEN IN MONTANA — Poems by Eli Siegel, complete with a letter by William Carlos Williams written November 3, 1951, which I quote from now: “We are not up to Siegel,…
Why the Poetic Leap?
What follows is a nice juxtaposition of excerpts from two books I am currently tuned to. Take that mainstream logic! ~~~ “Einstein also recognized that science could not advance without free invention. As he stated, ‘We now know that science cannot grow out of empiricism alone, that in the constructions of science we need to…
How To Tell A Masterpiece
Not long ago while viewing the Société Anonyme: Modernism for America show at The Phillips Collection in Washington D.C., Ron Padgett stood before a painting and said something favorable, which in turn prompted me to ask, “What makes this a good painting?” Now mind you, I was asking a man who has viewed thousands of…
Random Displays of Affection
I like Gerald L. Bruns already. First, he’s got the dog, who looks quite comfortable, which means his empathy bone is strong. His author photo isn’t some pompous monstrosity; he looks like a human who reads and might garden too. I bet he even has a bathroom in that house. Next, he’s currently at work…
I Agree In Security
Except when I don’t. During a discussion about Jackson MacLow on the Poetics listserv the other day, Nick Piombino posted the following, “I had the feeling he [MacLow] was talking about going to museums and art galleries or even movies and overhearing conversations where reactions often seem to neglect time for fully absorbing and encompassing…
Poetry Feeds
In any case, the proliferation of both utopian and dystopian accounts of a networked future would tend to suggest that an intimation of some absolute finality has been sensed, that the aroused spirit of some telos, some end, haunts our technology. [W]ouldn’t the apocalyptic be a transcendental condition of all discourse, of all experience even,…
Evolution of War: The Worst Is Yet to Come
The physicist, Richard Feynman, experienced a serious depression (more than a decade long, I believe) after the atomic bomb was dropped on actual people, killing and mutilating them. His mathematics enabled the creation of the atomic bomb with the Manhattan Project. Later, he publicly introduced and discussed the exploration and development of nanotechnologies, a development…
Between Two Infinities, The Poem
“From the heart of its solitude and across [a travers] its immediate illegibility, the poem can always speak–itself of itself. Here in transparent fashion, and there resorting to esoteric tropes that require an initiation and a reading technique. This self-reference always remains an appeal (Anspruch) to the other, be it to the other inaccessible in…
One Thing Poetry Does
is the work of making and reflecting the world. We are the world? We are of it, in it, reaping it, breaking it, building, patching, sewing, seaming, composting, revising, whitewashing, thatching, stripping, and collaging it daily. Every moment. Rather than write about the Ashbery profile mentioned a few posts ago (okay, I suppose it’s a…
Speaking of Meaning
Last night I meant to post. But I couldn’t, thanks to Mialka and Terry, who graciously provided my ticket to hear David Gray play at Radio City Music Hall. Though you might not like Brit Pop (whyever wouldn’t you?!), you have to give credit where credit is born: Gray has a killer voice. The recorded…
Rubbing for Poetry
Driving home today after emailing with another poet about romantic interests, being alone, relating to people, etc., I got to thinking about the strange impulse that causes people to have intellectually-charged discussions and then moves them to rub their bodies together. Yes, I know, that might be a slightly-debased way of describing the sex act,…
“Poetry” Is a Four-Letter Word
Tonight, I’m fairly wiped. I didn’t “do” much as far as expending energy. I taught three classes in a row, on my feet and seated, ending with my Creative Writing course. And I drove away not really knowing how to account for my exhaustion. I could chalk it up to a longish week or something…
AMY KING 