February 2012
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WHAT IS A POEM?
In the old romanticism the poem was an uncommon effect of common experience on the poet. All interest in the poem centered in this mysterious capacity of the poet for overfeeling, for being overaffected. In Poe the old romanticism ended and the new romanticism began. That is, the interest was broadened to include the reader: the end of the poem was pushed ahead a stage, from the poet to the...
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WatchLast Sunday, embarking on my 25th year, I walked through lower Manhattan where things were simultaneously silent and antiquated and overwhelmed by the sun. Liberty Plaza was empty, save a few of the crazies that had always been there and a handful of police officers with little to do, or at least that’s what it seemed. Not seeing anything to see, or at least for as far as I could see, I...
my feelings toward many things lately:
I’d like to laugh –– but mostly: I am too paranoid that someone will hear me.
January 2012
3 posts
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stuff.
Cleaning my room tonight and just wrapped up two massive bags of old banged-up CDs and obsolete floppy disks which will soon be wiped and en route to a hardware recycling plant in Los Angeles. I don’t know what’s on them anymore – old high school projects, old PC back-ups, bad music mixes, all this information that is now on the way to destruction. I get so overwhelmed with technology...
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L.A. Times: Krystian Zimerman's shocking Disney...
Poland’s Krystian Zimerman, widely regarded as one of the finest pianists in the world, created a furor Sunday night in his debut at Walt Disney Concert Hall when he announced this would be his last performance in America because of the nation’s military policies overseas.
Before playing the final work on his recital, Karol Szymanowski’s “Variations on a Polish Folk...
December 2011
6 posts
“Most notably, Philip Glass’s “Satyagraha,” a monumental minimalist opera evoking...”
– Culture Desk: Outside the Machine: The Best Classical Performances of 2011
Alex Ross demonstrating, again, why he is the best at what he does, music criticism. I’ve often wondered about the key absurdity relayed here: that classical music is the domain of the elite. It’s chief flaw, in the eyes of...
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“Taking a share in power is thus also having one’s voice heard. But not...”
– Jacques Attali, from “Repeating,” Noise: The Political Economy of Music
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The Sadness of Space Exploration
We must never grow up If all we learn is kindness Not making promises We may not know how to keep Is both affection and an immaturity That baffles feelings Amid the circus clamor Of a pleasant village day Humid with rituals and schoolkids Because passion is a need beyond desire His matinee-style courtliness Is matched by her astonished grace Two gleeful children...
November 2011
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Poetry Why do I speak in poetry? Because in this heavy mist, I cannot be a lighthouse For drifting boats.
- Majid Naficy
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A Sort of Song
Let the snake wait under his weed and the writing be of words, slow and quick, sharp to strike, quiet to wait, sleepless. —-through metaphor to reconcile the people and the stones. Compose. (No ideas but in things) Invent! Saxifrage is my flower that splits the rocks.
- William Carlos Williams
October 2011
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“The poverty of our century is unlike that of any other. It is not, as poverty...”
– John Berger, “The Soul and the Operator,” 1989, at the fall of the Berlin Wall
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August 2011
1 post
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July 2011
14 posts
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“The next real literary ‘rebels’ in this country might well emerge as some weird...”
– David Foster Wallace, “E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction” (via libraryland)
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Paradiso
There is no way not to be excited When what you have been disillusioned by raises its head From its arms and seems to want to talk to you again. You forget home and family And set off on foot or in your automobile And go to where you believe this form of reality May dwell. Not finding it there, you refuse Any further contact Until you are back again trying to forget The only thing that moved...
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Greetings from LIC, NY
I am usually not so good with being confrontational. Yesterday my roommate said that maybe it would be good for us to follow through with a challenge of saying a “fuck you” a day – one of those brilliant ideas that is, for me, well, ideal, until I think of actually executing them.
Today was a beautiful afternoon in Queens – the sky was a perfect shade of blue and the summer sun was...
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June 2011
2 posts
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Pastorale
No more violets, And the year Broken into smoky panels. What woods remember now Her calls, her enthusiasms.
That ritual of sap and leaves The sun drew out, Ends in this latter muffled Bronze and brass. The wind Takes rein.
If, dusty, I bear An image beyond this Already fallen harvest, I can only query, “Fool— Have you remembered too long;
Or was there too little said For ease or resolution—...
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May 2011
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THE TWELVE MORTAL MEN
The Fork Falls highway is three miles from the town, and it is here the chain gang has been working. The road is of macadam, and the county decided to patch up the rough places and widen it at a certain dangerous place. The gang is made up of twelve men, all wearing black and white striped prison suits, and chained at the ankles. There is a guard with a gun, his eyes drawn to red slits by the...
April 2011
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Yet We Desire It Above All
Freedom does not mean happiness right away the free world hides more traps than tyranny mastiffs let loose from chains passions exceeding the horizon steps entangled in the ropes of old bonds that try to pull tight again
Freedom both for scoundrels and those who sacrificed themselves for it freedom for those who feel as pure as a diamond and want to cut deeply surrendering passionately to...
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in memoriam
Thief Tempted by the Grandeur of February
Wake up! I can’t wait to tell you How much I learned in my sleep. And though I remain somewhat modest And completely charming, I have indeed changed. Do you know that taxidermy students Begin with a mastodon And end by stuffing a flea? And as for poetry, it’s easy And impossible—like stealing from yourself. Do you know that whenever a weatherman Grows...
March 2011
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“I have faith in the human spirit, as well as in the cosmic joke that suggests we...”
– Michael Gizzi (1949-2010)
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“I hope you don’t have friends who recommend Ayn Rand to you. The fiction...”
– More reason to love Flannery O’Connor.
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February 2011
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“Poetry dwells in a perpetual utopia of its own,” William Hazlitt wrote. One...”
– - Charles Simic, “Where is Poetry Going?” New York Review of Books blog
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SEVEN HAPPY ENDINGS
Love, after talking all night, where are we? Where did we begin? I needed to name this, needed to know what we meant when we said we, when we said us, when we said this.
I wanted to call it something: Shadows on the garden wall. A man rowing alone out to sea. Seven happy endings. And you? You were happy with two rooms, and a door to divide them. And daylight on either side...
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Robert Mapplethorpe, Lucinda’s Hand, 1985
BESTIARY FOR THE FINGERS OF MY RIGHT HAND
1. Thumb, loose tooth of a horse. Rooster to his hens. Horn of a devil. Fat worm They have attached to my flesh At the time of my birth. It takes four to hold him down, Bend him in half, until the bone Begins to whimper. Cut him off. He can take care Of himself. Take root in the earth, Or go hunting...
January 2011
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