The Trouble with Bartleby

rising

2012-01-26T13:58:00.000-05:00

Emmaus

I'm entering my jesus year
and every day is fucking Easter: all
exponential resurrections, all
familial rebirths -

Hark! hear them honking!
three thousand mustachioed wiseman
are come: a transcendent taxicab caravan
beaming bright on the wet dark streets of my night;

Prayers of radio reverence
waft into open windows, as off hour frank
incense from street corners burns
sweet smoke, plantain and pakora
crumbs falling soundless
like the snows
no longer
native to this climate.

Two Eggs in Topeka

2012-01-22T08:20:00.000-05:00

Eureka! Wind Tunnel D Series Rewind

cold's big loneliness
looms long and dark, warmth waning
even as days wax again

bodies instinctively curl
like leaves burning
with backs against the wind

fingers close fists in silent protest pockets
arms rendered handless by ravenous coats

so, this is what the digestive track
of a vacuum feels like

as an insulated haze slams snowy
into ears and eyes

____________________________
____________________________

It's time for a healthy

boundless energy (multiple)
choline and inositol (I'm nothing without you)
tyrosine, 2
midol, 3
2 x d3
2 x b12 (under the tongue, that's a girl)
glutamine, scoop (in new york's finest tapwater cocktail), then
bottle, 33.8 fluid ounces smart water (got what plants crave), and
bag, salt and vinegar kettle chips ("basically, a potato"):
2012.
soylent green is
people, this is
breakfast

**an important shift has changed my work. it is a "release of the precious" and ultimately can be understood as a letting go of ideas of what sorts of words, topics, sounds, ideas are "appropriate" to poetry, and instead fully filling out, inhabiting, poetry as what it indeed is for someone like myself: a life practice. a translator of world, a magical perception machine. I see, feel, notice, eat, digest, hear, itch, scratch, love, love less --> input in, poetry out. a lot of the shift has to do not with what actually lands on the page, because anyone truly allowing for the process has always had poems like eureka! on the page, but I think especially when we are younger (in particular without mentorship) we can shy away from the mundane as "not enough" or "unsophisticated." a few years ago I heard the wonderful Diane DiPrima read a poem about facebook, avoiding people and taxes that had me, literally, laughing out loud -- and remarking to myself that I probably would never have aired that one out of some remnant fear... it was the beginning of the relaxation into the work, for me (as usual inspired by that wonderful woman creature).

poems of power, poems of light

2012-01-12T09:21:00.000-05:00

kundalini

now
watch

everything you touch turns to universe
as if by your very presence
atoms
remember themselves
coming to after centuries of slumber

say what you will of the light
and the heat, for
in this dragon crested year
man will remember
not only how to build
but how to breathe
fire

__

selas

as the night's bowl fills with milk
the blood comes
until both she and I can drink
no more
and life cries out
red tears, red rivers
a lullaby for the little lives
the souls that pass women in possibility
as the wax turns wane

train songs; or, counting

2012-01-11T09:56:00.002-05:00

one eight hundred

they are sad they are sad they are sad
looking two
ways like eyes that have
come unstrung
but do not despair, friends
here here here
at the end of the world
there's a number to call
for divorce bankruptcy & mattresses

nine thirty

alternative economy free tv
willoughby carroll back again
on the train making marks
marty markowitz marching on
paper says casinos can
coney up the money
rip german currency
currently: red laces
strawberry bag
strawberry laces
did you hear, there was
a strike in that
licorice factory
oh we the people
sweeter than candy
this morning kissing sky
sweeter than wine

Collaborative Poetics I: Melancholy Stretches the Heart [di mura, desilva-johnson, stewart]

2012-01-10T00:40:00.000-05:00

melancholy stretches the heart

not return to animals
thou art become god
offer the apple
whore harlot city
he yearns for a friend
splitting clothes in 2
sacred harlot
king

wandering around an empty camp
greatly outnumbered
a retreat to protective cover
suddenly turned into
defensive action

shit! six! larry!

carter

larry, the expensive girl

the napkin and her glass
didn't want to look
careful manicure
girl in white dress
not just anybody
I had her researched
how's it going baby
you'll feel better
try to feel better
you have to try
you can't feel this way forever

air
vowels
city

all sorts of experimental extravagances
coyote vagina
middle man breaks something
people death

fridgest windlashed
plains winters
extravagances while telling
names like
getting old
always sitting down in a bad place
the personification of death
simply
people

taxi!

scientific research
object position
valid is fact
phenomenon is statement
arrangement of events
& living behavior

hello horse
not bueno
standing in a bucket
lucky strike
tall black
jumped the bid
got confused
a bucket
with crutches
takes off
makes
sense

wilderness outnumbered by demons
texas ranger historian
chewed a big plug of tobacco
repulsed by rifle fire
rock + trees turned
into defensive action

____
____

I am beginning to make disciplinarily-good on a long standing appreciation for the type of collaborative production encouraged by the intensely challenging "salon" type environments and communities whose historical precedent has been most meaningful to me.

As even in my personal production I am veering away as much as possible from overrendering and preciousness (even as my editing gets harsher -- a conundrum to explain), this moment has become one of shaking up -- of not only allowing for but promoting/creating space and time for collaborative efforts.

The game playing of the surrealists and dadaists, and its later spawn: the collaborative, cut-up/ "third mind" work between brion gysin and william burroughs comes immediately to mind -- and has been very much on my mind of late (gysin's apparently burning hatred for breton nonwithstanding...)

"Automatic" writing and the "disembodied" poetics advocated by the beats both offer to the individual, in his or her own discipline, some touchstones for freeing ones self and one's production. [A little sidetrack, but here's a link to a fascinating article on both historic and virtual/electronic disembodied verse from my friends at Reality Sandwich!]

But collaboration pulls us out of the "self" and its relationship to word and verse in a way that is unparalled. As we respond to and riff off one another, our brains may even be changing (radiolab), and the work that results is impossible to replicate without the element of exchange.

Towards this end, and taking certain cues, I'm hoping to generate a substantial series of collaboratively created works, and to whatever extent possible, share these with the public in the effort to open dialogue about this process even further and draw in more participants.

Here, a game was played wherein a series of books was instinctively selected (some were already or became part of a larger conversation throughout the night) and read from by one participant, while the others disintegrated these pages, selecting and "finding" poetry by writing words and phrases during the reading. I have selected a single phrase from our collaborative work as the title, and arranged the verses with some sensitivity to form and alteration of voice.

The three participants in this particular exercise were myself, Ali DiMura, and Andrew Stewart.

The texts were selections from Joan Didion, CG Jung, John Cage, William Irwin Thompson, Evelyn Waugh and Edward Dorn, as well as The Secret Life of Plants (which I urge you, again, to read).

ONWARD!

poem for journeying

2012-01-02T00:46:00.000-05:00

in sacred space I

laden yet in light ened with The Work, increasingly

(k)no(w) body:

accumulated explosions

SHA NAno NAno!!!

what a coven of universes, this

what an alchemical plethora, here I

breathe these open faces, I

pillage this silo

of silenced silences

until spent I

leave with mindbelly distended

orgiastic offerings of an afternoon

spirited away, a canteen

for that lonely camel caravan

'cross the landscape of the year

dedicated to the poets of the poetry project marathon, 2012

Found :: "The Indiana Pages" :: 10 Year Anniversary

2011-12-22T11:29:00.001-05:00

12/30/01

Indiana is very flat. Women whose eyes don't extend to deep pools of soul and sharp winds that cut right through you without buildings to keep them mollified - december leaves cornfields without stalks and storms can be seen approaching like grey armies at the horizon.

Pictures are taken through dirty windshields - there is no walking around to know yourself by. Yourself is wheeled from place to place and therein you are defined. Accents are flat, too, and I wonder
where the vowels went. The distance beyond offers new depth and offers insight to pioneers and wanderers, that there might be something beyond this, the flatness.

I am wearing very high boots which make
me tall and mountainous, my bags and hips
and breasts are weighty. I am curvaceous,
mountainous, busty. I am not flat.

The city calls to Indiana men like a centerfold, opening its wonders out and up
into the air - she is not flat and the ground is unknown where you cannot find the sky of ceiling
those who venture rarely return, losing air and gaining soft whole lovely voices, vowels that roll off their tongues like jewels
and make the parents blush. A return makes you find the city in its absence, calling you back like a lonely mother.

_________________________________________________________________________________

*While sorting some old files, I came across a stack of drawings and writing that I did on a short trip to Indiana around this time of year with an ex boyfriend. It's always an interesting thing to note how consistent one's voice is in certain respects, even when we know ourself to have experienced such vast changes. It's comforting? illuminating? fascinating sure - how some relationship of observation and language has remained; perhaps it suggests that beneath a sense of self when poetically transmuting one was able to capture and "see" in a way one intellectually or rationally achieved much later...

This isn't the best work ever written, but it wasn't meant as such, and I find it lovely and easy, the opposite of overwrought. Written in a quick hand over sketches of the Indiana airport I know it to be my 22 year old mind biding its time, considering the strangeness of this land so alterior to me.

practice practice: breathing into disembodied poetics

2011-12-14T14:36:00.001-05:00

I. one way

pocket syncopations
step quarter step dime
penny snare shuffle heel heel
traffic patterned rhythm changes,
pedestrian rests and crosswalk arpeggios
how that brass band taxi stand drives!
now that swell of sharp horns,
braaaaaaaap! together then breaking off
a cacophony of angry ducks
colliding
into a wailing siren gridlock coda
the band at attention
and in a hand the power of spot silences
thumb and index change it up
quarter and dimestore
tambourine antics on the twos and fours,
fingering thirst as the back end drops out
leaving only horns and footfalls
diminished accord
as sweet percussion barters
for bitter grounds, hot and black

II. then the other

machine hum singularity plastic bag rustle
insistent tangle of a lost hair between
pencil clenched knuckles, it tornadoes
and caresses the nib, getting stuck in the
wood, torn by overzealous sharpener teeth
the cylinders of schoolrooms recalled,
sawdust spirals released and releasing, revealing
charcoal, creating beds for some small mouse or smaller
mite to burrow and take comfort; return again
a knee a foot squeaky brake pads and
the repetition of steel on rail, the
muffled cycle of Things That Go.

Exultant exit from tunnel mouth back into the
light and even here sandwiched between double
paned plexi skins in the stomach of a silver
machine there strikes within a shared thrill,
vestigal joy of Industry, momentary World's Fair.
Just as sudden lullubied as jarring yank rendering conscious
before your eyes became accustomed to closing.
The everywhereness pervasive, this dank burrow
just like the others as it zips by. Is this
or has one passed the destination? Influents:
human lava, ooze of passengers possessed
by moneyed mind, always at a loss for minutes,
seeping, omnidirectional (cut off)

_________________________
Exercise: get out of your own way

As the energy shifts and possibilities explode so to does the act of writing require shifting and explosion.

Description, at once essential and impossible, calls to action her children: poets and writers, for the doing of the deed -- documentation. For several years now I've addressed, considered, and faced in my own practice the implications of using not only the evocative voice but too the poetic relationship of word, form, and phrase in the "truthful" documentation of our world. I came away from the seeming ontological real of the academic voice and its linguistic patterns to seek out something more akin to a proprioceptic relationship to language in general, a shift both philosophical and actual in its auto-disciplinary expectations.

This battle is not unlike that a visual artist faces -- in a desire to re-present the real, via the familiar evocation of viewer or reader sentiment (be it sensorially or intellectually) the creator/artist/writer is faced with not only the struggle between the literal and the dreamlike, but a million other options - each with carry on baggage of its own.

However, at what point is the audience considered? And at what point is the language, as it flows, and as we describe our experience, translating/narrating and in so doing necessarily shedding part of the actual both perceptually and "technically"?

Discipline is a double edged sword: as our skills are honed we come to admire them in the way we have always admired the skills of others' using our treasured medium. It is not an act of hubris but an excitement at the elasticity of mind and ease of application by which evocation is possible. The ability to use a brush or tool a certain way is here alike the comfort a poet experiences in the quick and natural move towards alliterative speech or metaphor.

All creative persons await and revel in the moments of pure inspiration where work flows nearly fully formed as though we were channelling the life blood of our practice from a place outside ourselves. This disembodied feeling, though, is not predictable. And yet, a certain understanding of that unencumbered relationship to the work can be honed, too, in the way that we have honed our skills.

We must trust, in order to approach the work with an intention to become unfettered, that these skills inform our subconscious relationship to our medium. We must leave behind an attachment to whatever relationship to vocabulary, (true both verbally and in visual work) has become unevenly linked to the creative self and its output.

Personally, this recent disciplinary shift (which has been quite painful, may I add) came from an increasing feeling of being distant from the work I was producing -- in so far as it no longer felt imbued with the direct relationship to energy in the way that now dominates interpersonal or other more immediately "active" practices. My completed work, even when clearly demonstrative of greatly honed skill, felt overdone -- a perception I can imagine as akin to the desire to strip away ornament from the clean, demonstrative structural bones of modern architecture.

Journal entries would start with a few lines and, in disgust, move to this or similar: my own words feel alien. Writing and speech, to a certain extent, feel alien. Despite all these years relying primarily on them, feeling above all at home among them... even now in self-description, I feel far away, an observer, a stranger.

My frustration was coming to be constant, keeping me from work on days the channelling was not organic -- I would write and even as I did become frustrated and unhappy with the words, would see immediately in them the cottony stuff of my training accompanied by an ability to wield a word with ease. The prettiness of the thing, its good-sounding-ness, began to irk and concern me. What was I making pretty? How was I capital-W writing, as opposed to serving as a verbal conduit for life? How was I, ultimately, getting in my own way?

What appeared to be necessary was this: a release of the fear of making bad or ugly work, a release (at least for a time) of considering the audience in terms of content and interest and embarrassment, a release of ultimately any expectations about word or form or subject. I considered the unfettered flow of energy that has been so positive for me of late and tried to apply these conditions and expectations (or lack thereof) to the act of poetic composition. Even as I did so, the phrase "disembodied poetics," which I'd heard of vaguely but honestly never known the meaning of, came bubbling to the surface -- and I knew without needing to be told I'd landed where Kerouac had so many years before, a place where the energy practice and the writing became one and the same.

The above are examples of me trying to get out of my own head and enter a free space of descriptive words, allowing for whatever deviations into vocabulary or seemingly "off-topic" aspects strike during the flow of language, as much as possible without stopping to consider, edit, or "hear" the words.

The first was written with line breaks, and edited somewhat; the second here was written free-prose, and I've kept the divisions as confined by the original space of the notebook.

I will try to post more of these experiments, as I'm just getting seriously into this potential practice as the next step in my poetic growth. Wish me luck, I'd only begun to feel like I knew myself as a poet when this wrench came for me hard.
ONWARD! ONWORD! on donner and blitzen.

nursery rhyme

2011-12-09T09:18:00.000-05:00

nursery rhyme

like an earthquake in the soul
which begins all too young
alchemical interactions of loss
as toy wars give way to minefields
what ends and what begins?

eyes, shifting from sensation to thought
as the lid becomes heavy on bright nascent thirds
the inner logic of small animals making way
for the languages of their elders
words and science
worlds of silence

when yes becomes no and the why fades
in genuflect to the court of shoulds
and its muted attendants
waltzing slowing to the strains
of an onion skin masquerade

then we have lost the precious maps to the highways of our veins
calling off intrepid free cellular missions, and instead
we wander, ignorant: inert instigators,
safehomes for orphan parasites
that pull the strings of proprioceptic puppetry
suckling for sugar
seeming self

original: 5/22/11 edit 12/9/11

Citizenship at the Heart Center: Building Bridges, Growing Together

2011-12-06T18:38:00.000-05:00

December 6, 2011

To the Members of Community Board 3:

Recently, a group of residents from the converted industrial buildings on Spencer Street between Myrtle and Willoughby got together with the intention to create a community body. It was hoped that via such a group we could address, as a collective, the issues we face here.

On the table was standard fare: safety, parking, traffic, environmental concerns, and the like.

But as we continued talking we uncovered so much more -- and it became quickly clear that the corner of the district we represented (from Classon to Marcy, and Flushing to DeKalb, approximately) had long existed on the fringes of classification and ownership, breeding misunderstanding between those who live and work here and the other community bodies that operate within this district.

Our little pocket of Bed Stuy is unique in many ways, and residents and visitors alike often comment on its seeming multiple personalities, something I heard recently described as the “four H’s: hipsters, homies, hispanics, and hasids.” But our goal here is to remark not on difference, but on similarities, of shared intentions and positive goals. Furthermore, it is our hope that we can work together to move away from the snap judgements and oversimplified classifications that continue to cause so much harm in our efforts to become unified in the interest of a common good.

If our intention in forming the Spencer Myrtle Block Association and in coming to you can be distilled into a single hope, it would be that we will come together in open dialogue, allowing for the pooling of those rich material, virtual, and intellectual resources that we would offer as a united front in the service of creating a sustainable, profitable, safe and beautiful neighborhood.

We hope you will welcome our members to your meetings, which we will attend beginning immediately -- and we hope you will excuse what areas of experience in which we are lacking! We are here to learn and listen, and are equally as interested in your concerns and ideas for the district as a whole as we are to share our thoughts and hopes for this small sector of it. Ultimately, we are here to help.

There is somewhat of a myth painting the renters in this district as part of a primarily youthful and transient population -- a myth that exacerbates the perception of difference in the concerns of the home/land owners in Bedford Stuyvesant’s residential areas with those of renters here . However, the 50 and 90 unit buildings that form the core of our membership are full of long-time renters, many of whom have been in these buildings for around 10 years, and whose ages fall largely between their mid 30’s and 50’s. We may rent but many think of ourselves as “permanent residents,” with a desire to ground and make our lives here. Many of us have renovated and built our spaces with our own resources, much in the way homeowners do. We are committed and connected to this place.

There are many individuals and unmarried people but there are also families here, and an always increasing number of persons who either own or work in local businesses -- some run out of the home, but also many which rely on both storefront and/or studio/manufacturing space in the immediate vicinity.

This mention of local business and in particular manufacturing provides a natural segue into another topic of great interest to us: the recognition and preservation of this portion of the district as one of the rare remaining neighborhoods in new york where light industry not only persists, but thrives alongside a residential population. Where, in fact, it is often this population who supports, begins, owns, or works in these same industrial concerns.

While we of course welcome the financial viability and safer neighborhoods that are said to accompany the growth of the service sector in our neighborhood (ie: restaurants, cafes, shops, and bars) we are even more committed to the goods that are produced here, on a variety of scales. From bakeries to metalwork, from cottage industries making boullion to teams building massive stage sets for tv and video production, we are excited that this is a place where all our diverse populations come together and MAKE things.

The economic downturn frightens us all. But, despite this, small businesses and local, artisinal production continue to see success and consumer growth, as our individual and collective attentions shift towards more people-oriented, sustainable models. Which means to me that our little corner of the district has the potential to serve as a petridish, a blueprint for the continued financial success and growth of the neighborhood as a whole. Which is why we want to talk to you, perhaps at the upcoming meeting, about the zoning changes proposed for Bedford Stuyvesant North.

We have some planners among us and have been in contact with the good people at the Pratt Center; together we have done some fairly substantial research and would be grateful for the opportunity to present some ideas about how to approach the zoning of this complex area. It is our hope that together we can work towards creating a collaborative network of residents, homeowners, and businesses across traditional boundaries to move ahead in fostering an innovative future for our neighborhood -- building the Bedford Stuyvesant we all know is possible together.

Respectfully,

Lynne DeSilva-Johnson
Vice President
Spencer Myrtle Block Association

The Courageous Classroom: Turning Theory into Practice for Critical Thinking Student Citizens

2011-11-18T10:55:00.001-05:00

On November 10^th, I woke up early and set about my internet ablutions: following links, catching up on things, recirculating information via Twitter, lending some insights of my own. It's become ritual: over the past two years my relationship to social media tools has vastly evolved, to a practice which I have come to believe is the key to citizenship in the human landscape shaping itself before our eyes.

I'd been working, in fact, on an essay, titled, 'Utopic Citizenship: Virtual Engagement and the Shifting Role of Public Intellectualism,' about this topic. It was my self-assignment for the day to finish this piece (something I will post very soon)...but the day, this time, this week, had other plans for me. It wasn't the moment to document and explain the engagement: it was time to sink my teeth into it.

With the occupy movement both gaining visibility and engaging more and more worldwide into conversations that are inspiring billions, I've been putting in overtime in this “lifework” (not to be confused with my job) – so many of us have been. This means writing and dialoguing, and asking and answering, and circulating and fact checking, and in our contemporary parlance: tweeting, and retweeting.

In fact, it's this that saw me committing hours to the completion of the citizenship essay, since this time was so incredibly ripe for encouraging others to do the same – but as violence peaked, the quiet of the essay couldn't hold me for long. There is only so much time in the day.

What happened the morning of the 10th is that I saw this video, of students at Berkeley, that site of protest history, being pushed back by police in riot gear. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eD-UqqLeMTk

And I cried. I cried and cried and cried. Some small voice in my head starting singing the verse from the old protest song “It could've been me”: students in ohio, at kent and jackson state/ shot down by nameless fire/ one early week in may … and the fact is, I'm breaking down in tears again, as I write this.

I don't know if it's because I've borne a child, but there's something about what we're doing to the young people, not only the ones who protest, but the ones on the primary receiving levels of institutional greed and corruption that gets to me at a heart level, and I simply cannot be silent. Not that I was before, but whatever part of me sat on the fence and occasionally kept quiet for fear of losing position, title, or financial stability has burned in the sun.

What I saw when I saw that video were my own students – in some ways not so different from those at Berkeley, but in other ways vastly so: mine are mostly from low income, immigrant families, in many cases working FT in addition to carrying a full course load. With few exceptions they have come through school systems that put a premium on testing at the cost of critical thinking, and most see their schooling as purely a means of advancement to financial security. They have been taught to fear risktaking and thinking out of the box. And I knew that most likely none of them given the proclivities and channels both curricular and social of the public university system that they're in, that few of them would see this video.

But I also knew that even if they weren't on the front lines now, that this situation had the potential to escalate, to come TO their school and their communities, even if they didn't go of their own volition. Many of these students are no stranger to struggle – they've escaped it in their own countries, that's why they're here.

I run my class as a critical thinking bootcamp. I don't give grades until the semester closes. I think and say quite openly that it has the potential to be the most important class these students (often from science, architecture, or the social sciences) will take while they are in college – given that the majority of their classes will be based entirely around testing, with a emphasis on regurgitation.

In the class students are encouraged to learn to trust their voices, and to understand “formal” or “academic” writing not as “good” vs. their own “bad” or “unintelligent” thoughts, but rather as one of a catalogue of languages shaped by context. That the goal is clear communication, in any situation, and that at the core of this lives the ability to observe and critically parse both situations lived as well as information received via other media (not only written).

To encourage this type of thinking every class begins with silence, as I write a “thought question” of somewhat philosophical nature on the board, most of which are tangentially related to our assignments, but may also ask the larger questions, such as, “are humans ethical by nature”? Students write responses to these for 10-30 minutes, depending on the question and its curricular role. We follow this writing – only some of which is handed in, or posted to their individual blogs – with discussion about their thoughts on the question.

As I prepared for my monday morning class, the thought question I had previously had in mind – in fact, the entire curricular plan – suddenly seemed ...thin. If not irrelevant, then still lacking in gravity given the situation. And so, on the way to class I changed the plan. I would write a thought question inspired by what was happening in the movement. It would link to other conversations we've had – about their own free will, about intention, about self and institution, about the role of schooling, about what it means, outside of school, to learn.

When I entered the classroom, I wrote in chalk across the old blackboard the following:

November 14, 2011

Today's thought question:

PART 1  Consider your relationship to global, national, and local institutions. In  what ways do you presume the continued operational success of these bodies?  How have these relationships, and this presumption, kept you in a state of  complacency? Is your survival dependant on that continuation/success? What  would you do if the game were to change? what skills would you wish you  had/need most?

PART 2  IMAGINE THIS SCENARIO: It is not only your last day of school, but THE last  day of school, ever. What do you do? Do you "become an engineer"? What does this mean?

As they began to write, I noted that part of the point of these long, multipart questions is to force their critical reasoning and verbalized responses to become more complex.  I reminded them that considering the macro and micro implications of these questions was necessary as they addressed them...warning against answering in list form. It's important, I think, for them to not only enter the work of the question but to be able, too, to recognize the role of the exercise. Curricular transparency is key – so they can replicate it without me. I am merely a guide.

Our discussion was lively. There was much more to be said. I asked them to write about it more at length, and then as I often do, followed our class session with an email.

FROM: Lynne DeSilva-Johnson

TO: wtl_f2011

DATE: Mon, Nov 14, 2011 at 12:14 PM

SUBJECT: For Wednesday, etc.

Hello Everyone --

Today's question and attendant lecture weren't meant to leave you depressed  but with your vocabulary loosened: who are you without the words  "institution" provides you? Without a degree, a job title, a family  position, etc.... what if the question, "what do you do?" was simply  that... what do you DO? And do you feel like this answer is a good  representation of your intentions, desires, and ideals? If not...why not?

I do want you to review the question, and give me a 1 1/2 - 2 page CRITICAL  RESPONSE on your blogs on monday. If anyone feels like they want to share  some of their thoughts on the google group, or engage the class in  conversation about ideas or questions in class monday, I am open to that  to. This question is for you -- I want it to be as helpful as it can be.  Use it, change it, make it yours.

ONWARD!

PROF LDJ

What happens next is that I wake up yet another morning early, 5:30 again, with no need for an alarm. And what I find is the accounts (at this point still via only my independent news sources and in particular live streams from the ground) of the 2 am break up of OWS at Zucotti park. And then I am crying, again. I spend hours deep in the work, knowing that New York is not yet awake and that in fact the rest of the country, given the time differences, will be in bed for some time. Europe is on the ball, already organizing in London, but suddenly there is the scent of chaos, of danger. And I think of my daughter and her Daddies, and how I'm so glad I will get to see her face on this day of negativity, and then I think of my students, and if there's more I can do... and there is.

If what I want for them is self-reliance, self-education and to understand what it means to be critically engaged in their work and in the world as citizens of humanity, then this is no time for the lessons to stop. It's time for the lessons to BEGIN. Not only would I share with them what I was learning but I would encourage them to become involved – at the very least in dialogue with each other. Over our group forum online I often send out questions or links (TED talks are very popular) that we discuss and share, and at best the students do the same without prodding. I would, in this case, set the ball rolling: send them over to my twitter feed, and begin a dialogue.

Here we could take theory into practice: How to best “read” all this “information” swirling everywhere? Who to listen to? What are the “viable” sources? Is any of this reliable? How do we separate fact from fiction? Where do I find accurate information? And, then, how do I critically evaluate it? And, too, how do I write about it? In a situation with such a high level of emotion, our conversations about language choice – both on the evaluative and the writing side – become immediately visible...as does our “rhetoric” lesson, so many times over.

I recently finished Alexander Maksik's great book, “You Deserve Nothing,” in which a teacher is told by his administrator that it is not his job to make students feel uncomfortable through the asking of hard questions. He is told that he must keep the philosophical queries brought up by literature and other texts entirely clinical, and not engage his students in bringing it home, to their lives, and to themselves. He wholeheartedly disagrees, and so do I. Because I work at a public institution, at times I have been scared to openly discuss issues of enormous import with my students – even moreso, I have been scared to openly engage, publicly, with what I feel are the most important and long lasting directions of my curriculum. But no longer. Below, you see some of this week's dialogue – and that, in fact, several of these students have gotten quite involved. I am proud of them – mostly for thinking. It makes me feel like were there to be no more school... they might be ok. And then I will have done, as my twitter handle says, onlywhatican.

FROM: Lynne DeSilva-Johnson

TO: wtl_f2011

DATE: Tue, Nov 15, 2011 at 7:41 AM

SUBJECT: FYI

Woke up at 5:30 as usual, to discover that the cops had broken down occupy wall street at 2am last night, with baton force, in full riot gear, using chemical sprays to clear the area. They threw everything, including tents, medical supplies, food, and over 5000 books from their library into sanitation bins and arrested hundreds. No warning was given, and two police busses parked so that the press stationed there could not film or take pictures of the "clean up."a council member from washington heights was beaten and arrested for participating. You can go to my twitter stream if you want links and information. Start with this: http://www.twitvid.com/SGWD9 taken and sent from someone's camera phone since the press don't have almost anything. Here's my stream.

http://twitter.com/#!/OnlyWhatICan

...just in case you think that the media can or is depicting what's really going on, right here, in your own city. Please be careful traveling near or through lower manhattan, and frankly, everywhere today. Also, this is student action week. Faculty CUNY wide are in support of these actions. Please consider getting involved or going to meetings to at least listen. I plan to go down to washington square park tomorrow at 12:30 to hear arundhati roy and if you want you can come with me.

here is the info http://studentweekofaction.wordpress.com/ the CUNY wide walk out is thursday.

I have never in my life incited political action in my students, and I generally am skeptical of tradition political activism/civil disobedience as an effective tool in today's landscape. However. This movement is different. What's happening on the ground is accompanied by a rich, diverse, and extraordinary back end of research, work, and intention worldwide, in an attempt to wake up the complacent and stop the blindness amongst the populace. It is potentially one of the most important turning points, at least in the US, you may experience in your lifetime. I suggest you don't end up wishing you'd taken part.

PROF LDJ

FROM: STUDENT 1

TO: wtl_f2011

DATE: Tue, Nov 15, 2011 at 8:56 AM

SUBJECT: Re: FYI

Heres a bit of a playback:

* 2:44 a.m. Defiant occupiers barricaded Liberty Square kitchen

* 2:44 a.m. NYPD destroys OWS Library. 5,000 donated books in dumpster.

* 2:42 a.m. Brooklyn Bridge confirmed closed

* 2:38 a.m. 400-500 marching north to Foley Square

* 2:32 a.m. All subways but R shut down

* 2:29 a.m. Press helicopters evicted from airspace. NYTimes reporter arrested.

* 2:27 a.m. Rally at bull statue

* 2:22 a.m. Frontpage coverage from New York Times

* 2:15 a.m. Occupiers who have been dispersed are regrouping at Foley Square

* 2:10 a.m. Press barred from entering Liberty Square

* 2:07 a.m. Pepper spray deployed -- reports of at least one reporter sprayed

‎*3:36 a.m. Kitchen tent reported teargassed. Police moving in with zip cuffs.

*3:33 a.m. Bulldozers moving in

*3:16 a.m. Occupiers linking arms around riot police

*3:15 a.m. NYPD destroying personal items. Occupiers prevented from leaving with their possessions.

*3:13 a.m. NYPD deploying sound cannon

*3:08 a.m. heard on livestream: "they're bringing in the hoses."

*3:05 a.m. NYPD cutting down trees in Liberty Square

*2:55 a.m. NYC council-member Ydanis Rodríguez arrested and bleeding from head.

* 2:03 a.m. Massive Police Presence at Canal and Broadway

* 1:43 a.m. Helicopters overhead.

* 1:38 a.m. Unconfirmed reports of snipers on rooftops.

* 1:34 a.m. CBS News Helicopter Livestream

* 1:27 a.m. Unconfirmed reports that police are planning to sweep everyone.

* 1:20 a.m. Subway stops are closed.

* 1:20 a.m. Brooklyn bridge is closed.

* 1:20 a.m. Occupiers chanting "This is what a police state looks like."

* 1:20 a.m. Police are in riot gear.

* 1:20 a.m. Police are bringing in bulldozers.

FROM: STUDENT 2

TO: wtl_f2011

DATE: Tue, Nov 15, 2011 at 2:53 PM

SUBJECT: Re: Re: FYI

OccupyWallst's facebook page just posted this:

The movement created by the occupation of Wall Street isn't about a park in New York city, it is about all of us. For too long we've allowed our rights to be stepped on. Our futures and financial freedoms have been sold to predatory companies that profit from our hardship and strangle our economy. We've allowed our government to be bought while the ceaseless turning of war machines in foreign lands ravage resources and destroy the environment. We cannot allow this system to stand anymore.  Occupy Wall Street has initiated a dialog which has, in just two months, raised awareness across the globe. Individuals are unplugging themselves from junk media and are getting plugged into a conversation that is of vital importance. Some are taking to the streets, possibly for the first time in their lives, to stand up for their rights and exercise their freedom.  Mayor Bloomberg and the NYPD can evict, brutalize and oppress the citizens of New York City but they cannot stop this movement. It is bigger than New York and it isn't going anywhere.  Stand up for your rights. Stand with the 99%!

FROM: Lynne DeSilva-Johnson

TO: wtl_f2011

DATE: Thurs, Nov 17, 2011 at 1:11 PM

SUBJECT: Re: Re: FYI

Thank you both for sharing. It's both very exciting and scary so do be careful. I'm glad to see some of you

are getting involved, if not on the ground than at least in circulating information.

Where did you get the above?

FROM: STUDENT 3

TO: wtl_f2011

DATE: Thurs, Nov 17, 2011 at 2:23 PM

SUBJECT: It's a great day

THE DAY OF ACTION!! it is very exciting to see how people raised to protest against big corporations and the government.

it remind me about the ARAB SPRING that started in December 2010 when many people fight and die for EQUALITY AND RIGHTS!!

Its great to see that such social revolution has started in America.

FROM: Lynne DeSilva-Johnson

TO: wtl_f2011

DATE: Thurs, Nov 17, 2011 at 7:18 PM

SUBJECT: Re: It's a great day

The leader of the egyptian protests spoke in support of occupy today, and this work is very much in keeping with the arab spring, in particular regarding the relationship of accessible media. If you have family and friends in other countries they will tell you immediately that they have little to no access to information regarding what is going on in NY right now.

The break ups of the protests across the country and the tactics they are using are coming from the Department of Homeland Security. There have been reports that polics are using DARPA technologies in some of the work, despite official denial. http://www.raven1.net/mcf/news/mc-ss-sc.htm

There are live streams constantly from the people on the ground. CUNY students from all campuses protesting everything from tuition hikes to mistreatment of faculty played a big part in today, and I'm proud of your classmates and my colleagues for standing up.

I've been trying to circulate as much information as possible, from working at home today. As always, check my twitter stream to get you started.

Also - please be careful. Cops are everywhere. If you are even NEAR one of the protests there is possibility of trouble.

FROM: STUDENT 2

TO: wtl_f2011

DATE: Thurs, Nov 17, 2011 at 8:28 PM

SUBJECT: Re: Re: It's a great day

Hey today was a great day indeed, Wish there was more compassion though. I uploaded a video I shot this morning at wall st, and williams of the police using excessive force: http://youtu.be/rOG4ZvaspCc . Really sad to see the NYPD for the most part was ok but there was a few super dickheads that just wanted to attack. Oh well Foley square was packed lots of solidarity. It was an eventful day to say the least. The world is watching also please note that they are trying to pass legislation to give authorities right to censor the internet. Demand for Progress (http://demandprogress.org/) has been covering this issue please investigate the Protect IP Act the internet blacklist, the attempt to censor our internet and give big corporations the power to basically auction off bandwidth which will lead to sites that have the most money having quicker load speeds whilst others who can't pay having lower bandwidth effectively cutting them off from larger audiences.

FROM: STUDENT 4

TO: wtl_f2011

DATE: Thurs, Nov 17, 2011 at 8:36 PM

SUBJECT: Re: Re: FYI

No matter your views on the protests, I think you would agree that it's very frustrating to see how police are treating the citizens who's taxes pay for their pensions. How do you justify pepper spraying an 85yr old woman.

FROM: STUDENT 1

TO: wtl_f2011

DATE: Thurs, Nov 17, 2011 at 9:04 PM

SUBJECT: Re: Re: FYI

occupywallstreet.org. They usually have timed reports... I was there that night bringing some donations over with my car as well.

The NYPD hardly gave enough time to evacuate. MOST of the donations that had been given (food, clothing, water, medical supplies, etc) were disposed of by the NYPD in a manner which gave the impression that they came with the intention of not only ridding the area of tents and "cleaning", but of getting rid of supplies necessary for tending to all of the protesters health/survival and overall wellbeing.

They're trying to break the movement apart...

Very frustrating stuff..

FROM: STUDENT 4

TO: wtl_f2011

DATE: Thurs, Nov 17, 2011 at 11:20 PM

SUBJECT: Re: Re: FYI

Does anyone else find it laughable that the Mayor decided a couple of days ago at 2am that it was suddenly time to "clean up" Liberty Square and could wait not a minute longer? He was "concerned" about the protesters' health and decided their wellbeing is paramount, their first amendment rights, secondary. Worried about cleanliness? I guess unlike most of us he doesn't frequent the subways. It also just so happens that other Occupy protests across the nation were cracked down on just hours earlier. Coincidence? I think no. This is bigger than the Mayor of NYC though, but I would have thought those in power would have learned from Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and even Syria that suppressing the people's voices often has adverse effects. If no one ever questioned the status quo, none of us would enjoy the freedoms and liberties we have, or perhaps more aptly put, had. But make no mistake those who are already well off have no need to, for lack of a better phrase, bite the hand that feeds them, and the task to purge the system of corruption falls upon the middle class; the backbone of this country - it always has and sadly, always will. I have a gut feeling that any action intended to stymie the movement will only serve to fuel it. And why not? Isn't it the people's god given right to protest? Especially when they do so peacefully? What will our children and those who come after them write about us? Will they say we lived in a democratic state, or laugh at our folly for accepting a lie. Isn't this what democracy looks like?

FROM: STUDENT 5

TO: wtl_f2011

DATE: Fri, Nov 18, 2011 at 7:32 AM

SUBJECT: Re: Re: FYI

Even though the action he took might have been harsh, the mayor had enough patient to wait 2 months before removing the protesters from the park. You also have to remember the park is a privately owned property, even though it is available to the public. I feel the protested should not be pressuring in New York City, but instead continue their moment and move to pressure Washington D.C. if they want to make the difference. The value of the protest is thinning out and, not moving forward for better future action and create change will soon be regrettable.

FROM: Lynne DeS

TO: wtl_f2011

DATE: Fri, Nov 18, 2011 at 8:30 AM

SUBJECT: Re: Re: FYI

Be careful with your facts. Even in his middle of the night press release, circulated right before the initial removal from the park, the mayor only said that the removal of protesters would be temporary, and would be let back in (which they have been). The issue about the actions taken are that they are violent, with cops across the country using unlawful antiterrorism tactics against peaceful protesters, and also that in so doing there have been steps to create a media blackout, going so far as to not only block ground but air media (the NYPD and the city restricted airspace above lower manhattan during the raid as well as creating the barricade against the press).

These are wartime tactics used to incite riots in peaceful protest groups that are gaining traction, so that there might be viable reason to come down on them. When the mayor removed the protesters, there was a court order in place that they could remain. The police's actions were not only illegal in terms of abuse, they were in contempt of court.

There are protests in almost every major city not only in this country, but around the world, in solidarity with this movement. And in this case, the target is not the government, per se, but big business, and the demonstrable center of that world is in fact Wall Street, not Washington.

In general, I am not a "political" person, which means I do not get involved in conversations about politics (i.e., left right candidates etc.) but this is a movement about something much larger, about control of not only citizens but government by moneyed interests. The successes of the movement are largely not on the ground but have been inspired and activated by it.

As a result of this, original occupy gathering (and now the groups in support everywhere, both physical and virtual) there is a worldwide dialogue open about the state of affairs and our ability to create change in our lives in western countries as well, where daily injustice is less visible than in the Arab World, where the string of protests that made up the "Arab Spring" -- incredibly similar in their use of social media for both journalistic and dialogic purposes -- have inspired and allowed for great changes, originated in the citizenry of those countries.

The conversation extends of course, too, to the global reach of the wealthy interests which may have their root in the United States or the Wall Street system [international corporations] in terms of imperialist military practices long in place worldwide, which is why the people involved in the protests in Third World countries have been so vocally in support of what is happening here.

The people down at OWS (and the other gatherings) are bodies and faces of continued pressure, physical reminders of engagement. Every day they remain the conversation grows, as people begin to hear and see the dialogue. As their work and aims becomes more visible, and gain traction, as per the cycle of every revolutionary movement, the powers that be will ALWAYS need to try to prove how they are hurting the citizens/business/undermining safety (even when this isn't the case) and use propaganda to create fear, hopefully inspiring a movement to destroy itself.

No: I do not think that every person involved in the protest can explain what, exactly, is going on, or what, exactly, they would want to change if they were put in charge. But do they need to be? You're in school but you probably couldn't run it -- yet by being there you physically support the system that you're in, and that's what's happening here. A removal of support, bodily, from one system, and a placing of that body into another system of understanding and work.

The country was founded on the principles at hand here, and as long as they remain peaceful it is paramount that the protesters are allowed to continue to speak and gather. When they cease to be able to is when we will finally admit we are no longer a democracy.

FROM: STUDENT 2

TO: wtl_f2011

DATE: Fri, Nov 18, 2011 at 8:45 AM

SUBJECT: Re: Re: FYI

The protest should apply more pressure to NYC since NYC is one of the most economically unequal states in the USA. With 40K homeless people and our own mayor worth 10 Bilion + I think that they should place the most pressure here specifically since this is the home of all the major banks that were too big to fail and since the bail out have not gotten any smaller but have ironically gotten even bigger. The park is open to the public and the manner in which Bloomberg did the raid was completely uncivilized. He destroyed peoples property with little or no regard for it. Destroyed the People's Library!! Really why destroy books? That was very symbolic that you would destroy books shows alot of our current administration. Also his lame excuse of doing it for the public safety and health is such a lie! How interesting enough that on that day several other occupy encampments got evicted or shut down. The Mayor of Oakland in an interview admitted that she was in contact with other mayors about the raids. This was a collaborated effort to destroy the movement before it's three month anniversary. The value of the protest has not thinned out, (evidenced by the many who not only retook the park the next day but the thousands that I saw at foley square both students and teachers union) the protest is evolving and getting stronger from my perspective. Noami Klein in an interview credits OWS for being instrumental in geting the obama administration to postpone the decision on the Keystone Tar Sands Pipeline project until 2013 effectively killing the project. Occupy Homes has spawned off saving people from being evicted and foreclosure through not allowing the Sherifs department to evict them cause of the sheer number of people present. This has forced banks back to the renegotiating table. Theres talk of occupy heading to protest against fracking on the delaware basin this coming Nov 21. We need to stop that by the way since it wil put our water a risk. So the movement is growing and evolving and becoming more effective and I doubt it wil die out! Movements across the world work in solidarity with OWS, both the May 15 movements from Spain even as far as in Japan they had activist protest yesterday in solidarity with OWS about their grievances. Let us not forget Greece or our neighbors Canada, in which a discussion has opened up their with occupy Toronto and they will meet with former mayor David Miller, Professors, officials from the World Economic Forum, and an occupy Toronto representative, titled "Occupied Economies: Designing Solutions to Global Problems." At the end of the day the change lies with us individually, like Ghandi said, whether or not we agree with the methods that the protestors are using, we mus be the change we wish to see in the world or at least try to be. If you dont agree with the tactics used by OWS fine but you should be outraged at the level of violence, and sheer disregard for the peaceful protestors health and safety that the police have used. We are increasing seeing forms of military inspired tactics from our police. As we chanted yesterday to the cops, "There's no Riot here why are you in Riot Gear!" (Interesting to note when the students in Penn State rioted over the firing of Paterno not one arrests not one case of police brutality since the police did nothing they just watched this students go crazy like shit on fire whilst at UC Berkley students got beaton in a peaceful protest and countless of arrests) .They have repeated now kicked the press out whilst committing these heinous crimes and cleared air space so that they may act with impunity. This should worry EVERYONE! During the last Olympic games China kicked all press out of Tibet as it cracked down on peaceful Buddhist Monks protesting. See any parallels? These raids under dark both physically and metaphorically since not even the press was allowed to report what was happening ont he ground have no place in a democratic society! During the Protest in the Bay Area over the rapid transit police officer killing an unarmed man and teen in the space of 6 months they shut down cell phone service! This was hardly reported but they shut down cell phone service to try and dismantle the organization of the protest. I digress though here is Noami Klein interview in which she credits OWS for being instrumental in Obama administration postponing decision on keystone tar sands pipeline until 2013: http://www.democracynow.org/2011/11/11/naomi_klein_obama_delays_keystone_xl and

Occupy Homes: http://www.democracynow.org/2011/11/11/occupy_homes_new_coalition_links_homeowners

and heres the link to the story about the Bay Area Transit Police shutting down cell phone service to disrupt protesting of their killing two innocent people in 6 months: http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2011/8/17/san_francisco_bay_areas_bart_pulls_a_mubarak .

FROM: Lynne DeSilva-Johnson

TO: wtl_f2011

DATE: Fri, Nov 18, 2011 at 8:58 AM

SUBJECT: Re: Re: FYI

I'm glad, again, that you're involved, but here is a clear moment in which you can see language issues (in "the game").

Class, use this as an example: compare the tone of what is written here to what I just sent you. It's early, I understand, and the writer is heated especially by his personal involvement but I think you all know that I am, also, VERY heated about this.

However: the type of language chosen, the lack of differentiation of paragraphs/thoughts, the exclamation points -- all create an emotional landscape here that eventually works against the writer (or speaker) if the audience is already potentially not in assent.

The conversations that are making change are not really the ones on the ground, though some people may be having and doing both. The screaming of one liners, even when the words are right on and in fact worthy of inclusion in intelligent dialogue, has as its primary intention the inspiration and encouragement of a crowd, and the keeping up of morale -- as well as, if possible, sending a message to the media.

However, STUDENT 2 is right about much of what he's pointing to here -- though he's given a glimmer of what scares me in any crowd situation: the heat of emotion making dialogue more difficult and divisory. You know how in a personal argument, the louder you or the other person yells, the more emotional either party gets, the less anyone hears? This is that times 10,000.

Part of the reason I don't always choose to personally be on the ground is because I feel like I have more power as a verbal intermediary, passionately but calmly spreading information and opening dialogue (as we are doing here). ALL of this is relevant to your work in my class, so I do hope you're paying attention.

We couldn't have asked for a better stage for the evaluation of communication strategies and their efficacy.

PROF LDJ

a real handful :: new fragments and experiments

2011-11-10T23:05:00.001-05:00

the wrong bus, or,
this is a yellow chair

sixty degrees fahrenheit
and sunny
yet there is the moon,
blue cheese melting into late afternoon,
your color devoured
by a vast and hungry sky

(originally written graphically within image at left)

_____

handholding

quiet overlap of limbs; surety; not ostentatious;
a bridge between the skins of souls
so much more gracious than that rapscallion, kiss,
which even at its gentlest is mere teeth away from bite:
only barely containing a desire to consume,
to eat rather than know each other.

_____

leaning on a half-wall, drawing
not choosing to hold the book this way or that
he settles into the creases of use
like old leather

_____

I HOWL BECAUSE I HEAR THE SILENCING
_____

She runs a finger along the blunted edge of the saucepan and feels a familiar, not entirely unpleasant, feeling of skin searing. Yet before burn or cognition form, she hears her mother's underbreath tsk -- louder somehow than the running water she distractedly turns her hand under -- as the stream slaps cold and broken against the sink.

"You are too much in your head."

A wry smile turns the corners of her mouth slightly at the familiar call and response, an internal, reflexive,
"Is that the opposite of being out of your mind?" rejoined, perhaps, by a reminder that Einstein was known to leave the house without his pants... but the humor fades.

An exhausted shutting of the persistent faucet follows, in step with flare up type 436dashB, which even in her own subconscious is unavoidable: the water drips incessantly and, as constant, the echoes remain.

After all these years, the show goes on, a radio with a stuck dial. She is so accustomed to it that some days she barely notices now, though in the melancholy hours, the worst of it becomes indistinguishable from her own thoughts.

A blister was forming, beratement made flesh.

2nd Annual 30 Days of Haiku: Day 26 (Long Form)

2011-10-26T14:25:00.000-05:00

without permission
(ignoble lack) his empty
brassy band seizes

this shared hour. my
stranger, your noise precedes you,
has arrived here an

emissary of
insult to the senses, a
sloppy seep unto

your adjacencies:
an ear's momentary peace
within Here's onslaught

now cacophonous,
softness bruised by your office
without permission

An Open Letter to the President of Cooper Union, Regarding the Future of St. Marks Books

2011-10-22T10:03:00.007-05:00

Dr Bharucha --

I want to begin very respectfully by saying that as an educator and someone who understands the complex world of funding such an institution as yours, the issue you face in reducing the rent of The St. Marks Bookstore is not lost on me.

However, as a historically integral partner in the landscape of the East Village, your responsibility is more than as a leader and guide to the students who attend Cooper Union. This relationship extends to the greater community of residents and businesses that surround you and create the neighborhood of which you are such a crucial part. As a real estate holder, your role grows not only more powerful but into one of more responsibility -- you hold the cards in a game that has the power to nourish and preserve, or to transform this landscape (and in turn both who and what it supports and represents).

As an institution that produces and nurtures the intellects and skills of artists, engineers, and (particularly apropos) architects, your choices and their consequences not only on the neighborhood Cooper has so long called home but, as a result, on the fabric of the city are also lessons: do we want to produce students who weigh their actions (and design objectives) solely on personal or client interest? Or do we want to produce architects, artists, and engineers who always consider the site and its historical, cultural, and human factors?

To call the St. Mark's Bookshop a "neighborhood institution" or a "cultural institution" is absolutely accurate. It has been in the eye of the intellectual and literary development of this neighborhood since its nascent beginnings in the 1970's on a St. Marks Place (and in an East Village) devoid of big box stores and fast food restaurants. It has held its own, maintaining and always staying true to its roots while adapting to the changing landscape and the influx of different customers this created -- in particular becoming a beacon of intelligent bookshelf curating to an ever-expanding student population not only from Cooper itself (and the dorm now upstairs) but from NYU, as well.

It appears that the onus is on you -- to save this important place by making its continued existence a financially viable one, and in turn take a stand on the kind of East Village (and kind of business) Cooper Union as an institution stands behind... or not.

They say that one good turn deserves another -- don't you think there's some philanthropist or funding avenue out there who would look kindly on your having made such a choice, and perhaps inspired by your actions, support the important work that Cooper Union does? I think it's entirely possible.

Very sincerely,

Lynne DeSilva-Johnson

--
lynne desilva-johnson
http://lunaparker.blogspot.com

follow me on twitter @onlywhatIcan
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change
something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete."
-R. Buckminster Fuller

_____
_____

UPDATE: SUCCESS! An agreement was reached a bit ago.
Here, as of 11/17, the letter from Dr. Bharucha to those of us who wrote:

In response to your recent email to me regarding a request by Cooper Union's
subtenant, St. Mark's Bookshop, I am pleased to let you know that an
agreement was reached with the co-owners on November 2, 2011. The owners
had originally requested a $5,000 a month decrease in their current rental
rate for the premises at 31 Third Avenue in the East Village. The settlement
reached was to reduce the current rent by $2,500 per month for one year and to
forgive $7,500 of a prior loan The Cooper Union made to the bookstore. In
return, St. Mark's agreed to work with Cooper Union students to come up with a
viable and sustainable business plan that is not dependent on any further
subsidies. At a press conference convened by Manhattan Borough President Scott
Stringer on November 3, I remarked that both The Cooper Union and St. Mark's
Bookshop reflect the independent and tenacious spirit of the East Village and
that despite our own constraints, we believed it was important to help them
because of what their presence means to our community.

At this time, I would like to reiterate my thanks to Borough President Stringer
for playing a crucial role in crafting an agreement that provides the bookstore
with the opportunity to remain at its current location, and would like to
acknowledge the input of several elected officials in the area, State Assembly
Member Deborah Glick, City Council Member Rosie Mendez, State Senator Daniel
Squadron, members of Community Board 3 and the leadership of the Cooper Square
Committee. I also recommend that all of you stop by the store and buy more
books.

Thank you for your passion and support.

Jamshed Bharucha, President,
The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art

2nd Annual 30 Days of Haiku: Day 18 (Long Form)

2011-10-18T18:52:00.004-05:00

Naive universe,
framed in vaselined mirrors:
town, you shame me. Yet

the world is wider,
here where the young bring their dreams.
Here lives Possible.

Haven of beauty,
embarrassing glut of joy.
A feeding, breeding

place of vampires.
Of sycophantic panting
and nauseous paychecks.

Head borne of cyclone,
teacups of art and despair:
a torrid affair.

Young pigeon city,
to thee I desperate cling
with all love's folly.

Image from D L Ennis

2nd Annual 30 Days of Haiku : Day 5 (Long Form)

2011-10-05T17:55:00.002-05:00

Religion? asks my

gay male Filipino nurse,

with a slight head cock.

At first, it doesn't

compute, as though we'd broken

some law of physics,

used a thesaurus

published many years ago

and mistranslated...

He grows impatient;

I am too slow with fever

to form a response

but then -- a question

with my answer wasn't posed.

Agnostic, he hums.

2nd Annual 30 Days of Haiku : Day 1

2011-10-01T07:38:00.001-05:00

the urge to write is / most akin to addiction: / itch, followed by rush

october returns / and so too, haiku: seek out / syllabic restraint

Friends,

It is with great excitement that I cut the proverbial ribbon on the 2nd annual "30 days of Haiku" challenge.

Last year, my personal quest to produce a month's worth of poetry in this form grew into an interactive, collaborative project, with contributions from (you!)/my friends via facebook, readers of my blog, and my community on twitter.

You can see the first entry from last year on The Trouble With Bartleby here:

http://lunaparker.blogspot.com/2010/10/haiku-project-introduction-day-1.html

and from there follow in the october 2010 archives through the voluminous and often inspired compositions that emerged. It's quite an impressive body of work!

The first line above is one of last years that has stayed with me, echoing in my mind with some frequency. It is part of a longer piece, many of which grew out of the standard 5-7-5 format -- which inspired a range of variants.

I found during the practice that the economy haiku requires forced a clarity of succinct expression -- and also, that this discipline carried into all of my writing both during the challenge and beyond.

It is unrealistic to suggest that I will be able to aggregate submissions on a daily basis but I will post my own contributions here, in status form, via twitter (using the hashtag format #30daysofhaiku_1), and/or on The Trouble with Bartleby. Any submissions will be collected, tagged, and reposted both in a note such as this one and in a blog post.

Please feel free to submit your haikus as replies to my status postings, on my wall, via twitter, or as comments to the blog posts -- but do be sure you tag me on facebook or send your tweets via @onlywhatIcan so that I will be able to gather them more easily, and share them with the community!

I'm simply giddy with (syllabically restrained) excitement!

ONWARD!

LDJ

hiatus-hiatus: snapshot: work and words

2011-09-06T23:25:00.001-05:00

1974, November

the imprint of your history is here
my neck stiff below memory's music
from sleeping as it rained

expectant,
a small blond animal clutches his first schoolbook
though he is still more sun than man

now someone else's needful kisses
fade, bruised yellowpurple on pale skin;

we change like seasons

__

writing: is reiterative programming; is a solidification/reification of self-conscious narration, intention, and manifestation; is (therefore) evolution

___

myrtle avenue diptych

4pm
one eyed cats and underground ovens
all around marcy it's midnight in the afternoon as
they wait for the somethings
or the someones
for the aberrations that will grow like magic beans
under slow slow sun
into the tallest of tales,
exponentially elastic expressions of want

4am
byway of the imaginary
in deep night broken windshields
a fallen sky at our feet

___

for a few hours over the course of an evening I am desperately in love with you. and then not at all.

___

units of measure

the weight of keys
the weight of potential entrance
the weight of closure
the weight of owning
the weight of yes, and slightly less
the weight of I'd rather not
the weight of please, of want, of speechlessness
of clumsy words that can't be taken back
the weight of a hand against another
the weight of glances
the space of a year
the immeasurability of misunderstanding
the burden of language

__

the mindless responsiveness: the attention and the busy-ness and the empty water glasses and the "more wine" and the well pronounced italian and the overblown explanations and the true kindness, and the strained kindness. and the million different agendas coexisting over dinner. rich sauces and fantasies of selfimportance. and the actual importance of feeding oneself, at home, via the feeding of others. and the importance of befriending the kitchen staff: if the kitchen staff ain't happy, ain't nobody happy. and the changing of the guards: the release of the zombie servers into the wanton, waiting air in the after midnight hours full of charge, when the drunken masters wander the streets. the semiconscious heavy eyes stumbling onto the silver chariot where the hoards gather, gather, gather and bring the night along for the ride, until the doors open and williamsburg accepts them like a mouth of silence and swallows the glut of wasted wanting whole. tired looking woman with a shopping cart and children full of pained exhaustion not sure why bed remains so far a fantasy, their faces crushing my heart.

__

literally, a snapshot.
early september, 2011.
school has begun. 60 new students, or thereabouts. balancing academic life with nights working restaurants, in the esteemed tradition of the creative classes. working towards the first issue of exit strata. working, all the time, on writing, on thought, on philosophy, on energy, on doing it right. the website is in the works. the blog is (as a result) still on semi-hiatus, but not for lack of production. so far from.

expect: an exit strata related reading in october. launch soon after.
expect: haiku month in october, same as last year. prepare your 5 7 5 chops, people.
expect: to never be totally up to speed on exactly what I'm doing. hell if I am. if you figure it out, holler at a girl.

July Triptych : New Poems

2011-07-14T11:26:00.001-05:00

words to describe summer

as musculature surrenders
and the body seems to have lost the solidity of bone,
draping itself gymnastically yet heavy
like a sodden late afternoon bathing suit
after a long day at the lake
we are left with languid,
with languish,
with -
watermelon.
each in its way an expression
of life's tongue in slow motion

vii

popsicle stains
summer stalagmite
rains of sweet memory

featurette

Is there nothing more fearsome than a lax lip?
left distended, without care
like a haphazard shirt on the back of a chair
(just so happening to be there)
a bulbous fruit about to drop,
gravitationally unaware
of the mental machinations that tease and snare
one's twitchy pink fish
when thoughts are there?

Step Away from the Work :: TTFN

2011-06-26T12:57:00.000-05:00

This art-class-adage has always stayed with me, and it's particularly suited for this moment, in terms of this blog and how my perspective on it has changed -- and, ultimately, in terms of what will become of it in the future.

As I somewhat unintentionally have found my drive towards the disciplined production of new work shifting, it's been a surprise to me to move away from the initial guilt I felt and come to give credence to what has accompanied this: a growing desire to reconnect to, edit, organize, get more professional feedback on, and further disseminate the backlog of work I've been doing for so many years. Before undertaking this new chapter, however, it has been not only appropriate but illuminating to reconsider the "painting" herein, on which these may be the final brushstrokes for some time.

in the beginning The initial impetus towards this... document... was not singular in intention. On the one hand, it has always been a creative endeavor: back in 2003 I found myself somewhat fresh out of college, and no longer buoyed by the constant assignment/feedback loop an academic environment offers. I felt not entirely satisfied by the lack of rigor in this new extra-academic life, and therefore I sought to provide for myself a structure within which to encourage the ongoing creation and documentation of thought.

Somewhat in response to a contentious and unclear relationship to the academic work I would return to in my graduate and doctoral studies that I embarked on in the years hence, the nature and form of that "thought" has continually evolved, from cultural critique, philosophical and spiritual inquiry, research and/or response to myriad things, to more clearly "creative" periods of intensive poetic or prose output -- but it has remained a central touchstone in my quest/struggle to learn and expect self-discipline in the production and attention to the written word. And in this I am finally learning to take some pride, and admit to myself its value.

know thyself Growing up in an high stress academic culture of achievement and recognition, I continue to struggle to know "success" outside of the institutions wherein I was intellectually naturalized and nurtured. In particular as a younger adult (as much as I may have wished it were otherwise) I felt at sea without the response, recognition, and feedback the classroom environment provided -- as well as the constant competitive pressure that both frightened and drove me.

As much as I had grown philosophically weary -- and begun to write and speak against what I'd come to see as illusory hierarchies -- I perhaps was subconsciously missing the notion of being watched, tracked and graded. The panoptical quality of the blog, its limitless visibility, was immediately and continuously appealing, in ways that I at twenty-four could not entirely understand, but I knew it meant much more to me (and would be far more effective as a disciplinary tool given my proclivities) than journalling ever could.

Given my ongoing loveaffair -- and sometimes professional dalliance with, for lack of a better term, "Anthropology," it should come as no surprise that another motivating factor was socio-cultural in nature: I was critically interested in the emerging form of the "weblog" as a contemporary touchstone. Even when I began mine back in 2003 (when I'm pretty sure we were still on Friendster, as a point of reference) -- I was fascinated by the particular interstice this medium resided in between public and private, and the seemingly endless opportunities for connection, feedback, and publication it provided.

the net is mightier The role of the blog in public culture, and the shift in media and publication that has accompanied its explosion over the last eight years, has more than proven its power -- if not importance -- as a medium. I've continued to be drawn to and driven by the populist potentials of social global networking, an interest that has long since superceded the notion of the blog as act-of-public-creative-self-discipline, though there is no need to negate or undermine its efficacy as such.

There is much bittersweet in this love affair: very real time constraints of life have left me documenting little of the very real, substantive, critical and academic attentions to trends, hardware, software, and cultural significance of social technology, media, and the like that has remained central to my heart throughout this time -- something that on days takes my breath away with the first genuine surges of (if not utopian then) a true belief in the limitless power of an intelligent, focused populism -- the type of Buckminster Fuller fantasy that ultimately is the reason I wake up in the morning.

From time to time I wax delirious about it, or feel like I do -- brief, inadequate discussions of my decision to join Twitter, on the power of Kickstarter -- or more likely, links to those people who are paying attention, making it work, moving it forward, and committing their lives to these changes -- are the least I can do to document what I honestly consider to be, perhaps, the most important shifts in power we will ever see in our lifetime. In a round about way, it was the imbalance of my toe-in-the-water in this world of self-publication, people power, and social currency to my rabid attention/belief in these shifts that has caused my current pause: the blog has played a very important role in getting me to the here and now, but perhaps amidst all this change it was time for a change, or a few.

absolute value Given the depth of research I have done into these clearly groundbreaking shifts towards populism, it is hard not to feel that it is my duty to become more involved. That is to say, perhaps even more than my "achievement!" red flags are popping up, the "service!" ones are continually harping on me to make more of a difference. From years of Quaker schooling, Buddhist spiritual questing, Socialist camp and generally growing up around socially-active liberals in New York City, I have always felt that my actions were only of a worthwhile nature if they were ultimately service based -- if they had an ultimate purpose which would clearly help people, make the world a better place, and so on.

Even as my philosophical inquiry has struggled with the nature of "help," the nature of "poverty," the value of "selfishness" -- and of small scale, interpersonal, individual change -- as well as a recognition of the relativity of just about everything..., I have never lost this drive. That is why at this global, technological precipice, armed with the skills and training I have, I secretly torture myself that I am not "doing more."

I may speak here on the blog about being kind to the self and recognizing relative value and try to document this intellectual struggle but I doubt I will let myself off the hook any time soon. However, what I am recognizing is that even within a smaller pond (ie, even if I am not going to start a nonprofit planning green cities in 3rd world countries) that I have both the skills and resources to optimize the choices I have made, and the creative, meaningful life I am pursuing.

That is to say, I've gone back to what I've had inked on myself the whole time, Have no illusions and do only what you can -- I can't, and don't need to, do everything, but I can, within reason, do a hell of a lot. And... it's time.

avatar age Not as much socially as critically (and particularly professionally) I've come to appreciate and want to make the most of my online "self" -- my avatar, if you will. I don't think we've entirely begun to realize the role that is to be played by the "cloud" representing each of us to the plugged in, global community that extends far far beyond anyone we've ever met (and perhaps farther into the future than we can imagine).

While I appreciate the role that this blog has played in my growth both as a writer and as a bit player on the virtual stage, it is time to move into a phase that not only acknowledges but actualizes the potential of these technologies both in terms of my own creative endeavors as well as in terms of the extended service I have given so much hard work to all these years: as an educator, both in the classroom and beyond.

I've spent much time both with my students and on the virtual chalkboard discussing the wide open field of learning that these technologies accelerate, and have been developing and implementing a critical thinking and writing curriculum at CCNY for six years now -- one that students return again and again to praise in its long term efficacy and meaning in their lives both personally and academically.

For years I have praised and avidly read philosophers and public intellectuals, and discussed and disseminated their work via this forum. My life has been changed time and time again by books -- and yet I have been loathe to conform to publishing expectations and or focus on such notions in a time when I needed to be free to shift and change and work and write without constraint... but the wind has shifted.

I am so thankful for this forum, for my friends IRL and the friends I have made virtually who have followed me here and elsewhere as I've pursued this process via this blog -- it has afforded me great growth and your feedback, support and thoughts have made the work meaningful when perhaps I would have faltered. And yet, as I now struggle to post "because I should" I know the time has come for me to retire this current iteration.

of phoenix and other friends Far from the end, I daresay this is in fact a new beginning. I cannot say the next time the new, strict schedule of reconnaissance will afford an update, or when there will be new poems to share, but anything is possible. I don't want to give too much away but I hope to be able to present a new "face" to my online offerings, that will include but not be limited to a blog, in the not too distant future.

Namaste!

SNAPSHOT : June 2, 2011 :: FINIS ab ORIGINE PENDET

2011-06-02T13:58:00.000-05:00

It's hot and humid here in NYC, where we've all but skipped that fickle season known as "spring" once again for 90+ degree days -- and though you swore you would learn to just live with the heat what we've made of our environment in this city makes one yearn for treeshade and a watering hole and not having to wear dark restrictive clothing for work and...yeah. So it's beautiful and summery and things turn languid. The brain, it's been slow cooked.

Somewhere in here, as if frightened by enjoying our summer too much, we fear as though we aren't doing enough. From where stems the deep amount of pressure we put on ourselves?

But in troth: does one turn idle? Far from it.
Today I'm forcing myself to complete an exercise in self-love. You laugh (though that's an important factor too, gutter brain), but in fact I hope that by exposing my own self-judgement and excising a more holistic examination of this current moment I can encourage my readers to perform a similar ritual, to give themselves a chance to escape their own emotional flagellation. It's an honest stock-taking -- a "snapshot" if you will.

At current: one is working 50+ hour weeks on one's feet in a social environment that is at once satisfying and draining, one has just turned in this semester's grades and is preparing to teach an intensive july session, one is juggling a complex family situation with fair aplomb, one is staying in decent shape, one is going to accupuncture and maintaining a fairly active yoga practice, one is eating carefully, one is reading 2-3 books a week (at least), one is opening and dealing with most of one's mail -- and paying all responsibilities in a timely and (somewhat) organized manner, and is managing an active and meaningful social network both in body and via la vida virtua...

but dissatisfaction looms.

In the spin of the head this morning live:

a consideration about our level of responsibility to our online avatars/communities:

‎? for my twitterverse: should online communities, as offline ones, be adaptable to variability in our contact? or must we commit to connect?

'bout one turn o' yer hourglass ago thru the good ship Twitter · · · · @OnlyWhatICan on Twitter

- Sarah Pinder variable levels of contact - i stream my facebook from a lot of people cause i can't deal with everyone seeing EVERYTHING.
  'bout one turn o' yer hourglass ago ·
- Lynne Desilva-johnson
  hmm -- that too -- but I guess I meant more, er, professionally. as we maintain our avatars/online personas/content as a virtual extension of our beliefs/life/work/communities/organizingintentions/etc. logging on and staying abreast of the (see list above) of others is feeling more and more like personal responsibility -- not social, per se (ie facebook) but certainly applicable there too. while I have offline periods where I simply "live" I start to feel like these have significant negative repercussions that they didn't before -- know what I mean?

the following of links and items of interest that (finally) logging on after taking such an "IRL" break is wont to instigate:

http://dannyfisher.org/2011/06/02/a-monastery-grows-in-brooklyn/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter (buddhist monks in BK)

http://www.cheimread.com/exhibitions/2011-05-12_louise-bourgeois-the-fabric-works/ (art I want to see)

http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/2pZipi/www.good.is/post/i-hated-vegans-too-but-now-i-am-one/?utm_source=supr (witty editorial from good about food culture, giving things up, judging ourselves/others)

http://www.npr.org/2011/05/31/136590974/arts-funding-site-gets-kickstart-from-business-bids (yet another story about the wonders of kickstarter, including fellow swattie andrew gregory's new/old cd project)

and their accompanied spins:

- am I being sufficiently engaged in spiritual practice? I need to go commit to going to group meditation and visit the local chapters. how am I not following danny fisher? I clearly haven't been paying enough attention

- I need to get to Cheim and Reid and see this show before it closes. Oh my goodness I miss so many shows I want to see...shameful. God I don't even know what's AT the museums right now! Francois Alys? didn't I see that on the subway. So embarassing... ugh, and I had better not miss the Herzog movie before it's gone...

- should I be giving something up? am I being too permissive? why did I drink this week even after my accupuncturist told me all about the insidious sugars? why did I bother with the dietary changes if I'm just going to screw myself with drinking? oh man, I need to read GOOD more often. oh, hey, there's job openings -- am I selling myself short? should I be seeking jobs in writing again? am I justifying what is actually failure?

- speaking of failure, kickstarter -- haven't I myself said any of us can do whatever we set our minds to if we simply set our minds to it, more than ever in this world of crowdfunding and international transparency/sharing of currencies of all types? why aren't I moving forward with any of the large scale, world/community/environment changing ideas that I have worked on all these years? have I become content with a small life? have I become lazy? is the small life bad? it is failure? do I have a commitment to take those ideas to the street? is teaching others to critically think and apply themselves in this way enough?... though aren't I subject to "practice what you preach" if I don't?

somewhere in there, also - a conversation about the word palimpsest:

James Is-dead a book by Livio Dimitriu called "Palimpsest of Stone" is where I first heard the word, but your familiarity with it's use as a layering of print on Egyptian papyrus is fascinating. Building Churches on top of Temples.
42 shots o' rum ago ·
Lynne Desilva-johnson mmm hmm. literally, what I was talking about -- manuscript, parchment (originally papyrus) with layers of written and scraped off ink *is* the definition of palimpsesthttp://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=palimpsest -- if we are familiar with the word, in a contemporary context, it is usually being applied metaphorically/as an analogy: ie: layers of meaning/history/etc... but I do go on...♥
36 shots o' rum ago ·

and a love for the videos of Miike Snow, particularly

which reminded me how much I am tired of all the music I own. should I throw out all these cds I never listen to? is there a way to get free music from my friends/online somewhat legally? should I bother buying new music or do I believe we are moving towards all soundcloud/grooveshark/pandora type listening that will make owning the actual tracks redundant

so, buying a new iPod would be bad, right, but what about the iPad? or netbook? what direction should I go, because I DON'T BLOG ENOUGH and I need portable online writing implements stat...

*I'm trying to keep myself calm with belief in such statements as

"Experience, as a desire for experience, does not come off. We must not study ourselves while having an experience." - Nietzsche

and find comfort in the fact that at least I will not have to contend with the no. 1 deathbed regret

1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.

I cannot help but feel like I am in constant battle what seems to be an ever faster moving clock -- and as the narrative that explains how I've constructed this erstwhile unconventional, exhausting schedule to leave room for creative work sounds more and more empty to me I approach alumni weekend, and prepare to explain myself ad infinitum I feel mostly...tired.

And, it's OK -- for goodness sake, LOOK AT ALL I'M DOING. What would I tell me, if I knew me?
To give myself a break. Surely.

The search for meaning in life, which is my constant, does have a tendency to leave one less than satisfied -- in so far that one has decided, ultimately, that "satisfaction" is relative. Even if one is content and even proud of one's efforts to live a kind, thoughtful, decent, philosophically challenging, educated, engaged and loving life, one still comes up daily against factors that force one to question oneself.

A sensitivity to other factors -- in particular physical ones that tax and drain the body and/or alter its chemistry is of UTMOST importance as we gauge our stance in our days -- dissatisfaction, like anger or sadness or other shifting aspects of the anima, must be trained; and/or we must train ourselves to recognize, acknowledge, and allow for the passing of these emotional tides. They are only useful as flags to encourage engagement in exercises of self-examination, where helpful (like this one) and indicate to us that in fact we wish to make certain other changes as per health, time management, and so on. Otherwise these are simply aggrievators, useless and dangerous. Did I mention I've been reading Jung?

There's also some poem wanting uploading about objectification and woman as grecian urn but it will have to wait. I have to, you know, go to WORK.

Catch-up Has Dropped Stone Dead Cried Mustard

2011-05-23T13:43:00.002-05:00

We are like the spider.
We weave our life and then move along in it.
We are like the dreamer who dreams and then lives in the dream.
This is true for the entire universe.

- The Upanishads

a page from this week's journal begins "will and testament" followed by some blank lines -- in which elephant mind stomped its feet and with borges riding high on its wrinkled grey back considered, for the millionth time, the dream of leaving boxes upon boxes of notebooks and work and having these exhumed for unfettered posthumous publication -- perhaps providing for whomever I've left behind and allowing the work to breathe into whatever minds were so taken to find it -- and some how in the middle allowing me to be free to work in whatever way strikes...is that so wrong?

below it is written:

I am incredibly selfish

like an anorexic manic spider
I spin webs spin webs spin webs
for the joy of the spinning
to see the way my fine threads glisten in the sunlight
or catch the dew
like the cross sections of chandeliers
(forgetting their purpose as a means to dinner; que philistine)

spin webs spin webs spin spin
for the joy of the spinning
for the self-imposed sisyphusian olympics of dexterity
little texts to flex the
eight legged verbal vishnu:
mental mudras, atemporal asanas, sibilant syllabut shotput

ssssssssssssssssspin
for the pure spinning joy-ache
frantic famished vector forward /spin
slipshod spin

Lot's wife's notebooks to dust return
the dreams of flies through kaleidescope eyes are caught and die on a webbed trail behind
their dirge a silent vowel cry (oh, ay, ee -- you... I)
condemned to the darkness between pages:

poet tree falls in a forest
and no one is around.
does it make a sound?

_______________________

the uselessness of apology.

yes, I left poetry month like the ceiling of the UN economic and social council. hanging, like a chad or a widow, or tarot omen.
so be it.

the ecclesiastical calendar of each of our lives can only so much be pre-ordained as per times to reap and times to sow, have you found? the more we force upon ourselves expectations in particular regarding creative output the less we pay attention to the signals our body and mind may be sending in re: their need to have a period of rest, intake and reflection rather than output.

this can go too far. (see: proust; those one might argue that in his - or similar - cases the lack of necessity either fiscal or otherwise to leave the proverbial cork lined room can ultimately nurture extremes of mentality out of which great work emerges) but for most of us it is healthy to allow somewhat for the ebbing and flowing... within reason... but from whence does this "reason" stem?

back, back to a consideration of discipline vs. allowing the muse. back, back to the conversation about setting goals vs. allowing for flow. but how can we go back somewhere we never left? (and aren't we always?)

NPM Days 26-28 :: Ba moo hab a face like da clock inda hawl :: Williams, Sandburg, Hughes (and Prelutsky)

2011-04-28T13:48:00.000-05:00

William Carlos Williams

Carl Sandburg

Langston Hughes...

(and Jack Prelutsky)

There's something about a certain feline fatigue that makes me want, if not a nap or blanket, the types of poems I loved most as a child. Playful, figurative poems that easily accompanied or conjured up watercolor line drawings; poems that could be simply digested at a first reading, regardless of subtextuality.

Palpably immediate poems.

These mustn't be misunderstood as "childish" or "easy" poems, wherein we are somehow mistaking the great difficulty that is capturing simplicity as having the quality of being simplistic. A grievous error. What they share is being the poems I remember knowing and loving in my childhood and perhaps in early middle school -- those ones that came around the same time as Frost, but before Neruda -- but were written by poets writing very much for adults in their own right and also leaving behind rhyme, which is so present in the verse we introduce to the young.

Speaking of which, the alliterated title of this post comes from an inspirational article on the poetry foundation website, in which the author's son has been introduced to Robert Louis Stevenson's poem, "The Moon," in his daycare; a poet in her own right, she comes to discover that these youngest receivers of language in poetic form are perceptive and insightful about the practice in ways older students and readers struggle to grasp.

This piece also affirmed for me my instinct to make today's entry about these early influencers, even if I rarely turn to them today -- suggesting to me that perhaps I should turn to them again, to see if I can return to my own childhood's reception of the form. And while I won't include Stevenson here, my heart fluttered to remember many days with my little face in the pages of A Child's Garden of Verses. Joy! (Note to self: buy for Beckett immediately.)

What I also recalled, smiling, was a poem from another children's collection I feel like I've always known:

"Curious fly, vinegar jug, slippery edge, pickled bug."

I couldn't remember who wrote it...well, it turns out to be Children's Poet Laureate (and Brooklyn Resident) Jack Prelutsky. So, thanks to the powers of the interwebs, I retrieved a whole trove of memories -- many from the great book "The New Kid on The Block," like this one:

Ma! Don’t throw that shirt out,

it’s my all-time favorite shirt!

I admit it smells peculiar,

and is stained with grease and dirt,

that it’s missing half its buttons,

and has got so many holes

that it might have been infested

by a regiment of moles.

Yes! I know that I’ve outgrown it,

that it’s faded and it’s torn,

I can see the sleeves are frazzled,

I’m aware the collar’s worn,

but I’ve had that shirt forever,

and I swear that I’ll be hurt

if you dare to throw that shirt out–

IT’S MY ALL-TIME FAVORITE SHIRT!

yes, it's great, and yes, you are allowed to love it,

not just as a "child's poem," but just AS A POEM.

and here's today's lesson.

Poems are not only LIKE life, they are its mirror and its filter and its trace and include all its moods and attitudes. As someone attracted to or paying any attention to the creation of art/work (in any medium) we must take great care not to take ourself too seriously! When Diane diPrima read a few pieces earlier in the fall about 1) facebook and 2) the things she pretends to do to avoid doing other things, with such lack of pretense and such great humor I thought I had taken it to heart... but then, like other lessons that seem SO obvious, it falls away in the wash of adult notions of should and need and smart and, inner child says,

blah blah blaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah.

So, to hell with the serious poems, she said. To hell with trying to give you more obscure poems of these poets. There's a reason I loved THESE ones, the ones you may know too, and there's a reason I STILL DO.

This is Just to Say

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

[wcw, 1962]

Fog

The fog comes
on little cat feet.
It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.

[cs, 1916, from The Chicago Poems]

Dream Deferred

What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up 
like a raisin in the sun? 
Or fester like a sore-- 
And then run? 
Does it stink like rotten meat? 
Or crust and sugar over-- 
like a syrupy sweet?


Maybe it just sags 
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

[lh, 1925]

NPM Day 25 :: Neruda and New Work

2011-04-25T09:46:00.001-05:00

And it was at that age...Poetry arrived
in search of me. I don't know, I don't know where
it came from, from winter or a river.
I don't know how or when,
no, they were not voices, they were not
words, nor silence,
but from a street I was summoned,
from the branches of night,
abruptly from the others,
among violent fires
or returning alone,
there I was without a face
and it touched me.

I did not know what to say, my mouth
had no way
with names
my eyes were blind,
and something started in my soul,
fever or forgotten wings,
and I made my own way,
deciphering
that fire
and I wrote the first faint line,
faint, without substance, pure
nonsense,
pure wisdom
of someone who knows nothing,
and suddenly I saw
the heavens
unfastened
and open,
planets,
palpitating plantations,
shadow perforated,
riddled
with arrows, fire and flowers,
the winding night, the universe.

And I, infinitesimal being,
drunk with the great starry
void,
likeness, image of
mystery,
I felt myself a pure part
of the abyss,
I wheeled with the stars,
my heart broke loose on the wind.

"Poetry" by PABLO NERUDA

It's one of those moments where to say anything is to say both too much and not enough. After my early childhood love of Swinger of Birches, since they introduce you early to Robert Frost, the first poet I remember finding and developing a unique and personal love for is Pablo Neruda. When I was 11 for a brief, hazy july, I lived in a bunk dedicated to him at socialist summer camp (again -- words, too much and not enough) where I was introduced to not only his poetry but his political history and the personal struggles that accompanied this -- my first real exposure to the power in this work, and its viability as not only an art but a weapon: a true "pen mightier than the sword" revelation.

The imaginative, soulful biopic Il Postino (and its fellini-esque soundtrack including readings by a litany of actors) would help to permanently etch certain pieces of Neruda into the growing collection of words to which my mind, unbidden, would return to again and again. This poem has never lost the hold it had over me then, as I early engaged in the struggle that is trying to write and edit poems as a young person (when writing and editing the self is, if possible, even more of an unknown alchemy than it remains later).

___

Magnolia

your blooms cloy; they

insist -

your perfume an insipid hanger on

that hugs too tight and

stays too long; leaving behind a

loamy dampness.

a clammy cool that begins

in the sidewalk fissures of the bones

as your arbor of limbs clamors and clings,

uninterested in argument,

and in a hurry of green grasping

holds sense captive

in the backyard of memory

Astor Place Pastoral

this is what happened in the park this afternoon:

there was sun, softening the edges of people and things, so

creating a small darkness under an overtipped hatbrim

I lay down with my soles exposed

at the shore of sleep and invited the tides to change

nearby, a biddy all rice paper skin and scouring pad hair

sang softly, conducting invisible symphonies and
massaging tired veins, sometimes
holding a sock in each pinched hand

so that two tired gold toe batons, with the haphazard grace of wet noodles,

divided the afternoon into silent time signatures:

three four five, one two three, slow and then, stop:

in a few crisp gestures she is gone, her mind a one girl caravan of time

passing through these benches, this day, and things mine

as quickly as she came, and without ceremony

Animal Tracking

Below a mess of papers

and pens lifted from places of potential importance

(or banks)

On the feathered edges of books pages,

passages and paragraphs to be forgotten

or the thin humors of another video

on another screen

that everyone anyone knows has seen

Through the idle refrigerator tetris

of condiments and leftovers

are the footsteps of an elephant:

thinking about not thinking about you

The chemical rush of your traces, both

stimulant and sombulant

The excruciating pleasure

of hating your yurt in my subconscious and

The bittersweet high blood pressure of adolescent infatuation,

even though the adult heart knows

this too shall pass

NPM Days 21-24 :: If the Spirit Moves You :: Rumi, Khayyám, Hafiz, Táhirih

2011-04-24T09:20:00.011-05:00

O Heart! Until, in this

prison of deception, you
can see the difference
between This and That,
For an instant detach from
this Well of Tyranny;
stand outside.

- Rumi

A focus on poets of passion -- attenders of spirit, in whatever form it moves them. I avoid suggesting that "religion" is the topic, though today's holiday was indeed the inspiration. Instead, I want to turn attention to that relationship between spiritual inquiry and the verbalization of that process that seems not only suited to poetry but inextricable from, perhaps, its practitioners' process of deconstructing our observed life and both its physical and emotional intricacies. These "mystic" or "lyric" poets are best known for the way in which they address love -- both interpersonal and spiritual in nature -- and in turn riddle the most central queries of the human heart.

The embedded political act of this post is a decided attention to the Persian mystics -- those beacons of peaceful love, philosophical inquiry, and spiritual evolution who were not only born to but so deeply inform the contemporary cultural landscape of the places perhaps most misunderstood by today's West: what we now call Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan.

JALâL al-DIN RUMI (13th c)

Let Me Be Mad

O incomparable Giver of life, cut reason loose at last!
Let it wander grey-eyed from vanity to vanity.
Shatter open my skull, pour in it the wine of madness!
Let me be mad, as You; mad with You, with us.
Beyond the sanity of fools is a burning desert
Where Your sun is whirling in every atom:
Beloved, drag me there, let me roast in Perfection!

___

___

These spiritual window-shoppers, who idly ask,
'How much is that?' Oh, I'm just looking.
They handle a hundred items and put them down,
shadows with no capital.

What is spent is love and two eyes wet with weeping.
But these walk into a shop,
and their whole lives pass suddenly in that moment,
in that shop.

Where did you go? 'Nowhere.'
What did you have to eat? 'Nothing much.'

Even if you don't know what you want,
buy something, to be part of the exchanging flow.

Start a huge, foolish project,
like Noah.

It makes absolutely no difference
what people think of you.
Mathnawi VI, 831-845

OMAR KHAYY áM (11th-12th c)

Heaven is incomplete without a heavenly romance
Let a glass of wine be my present circumstance
Take what is here now, let go of a promised chance
A drumbeat is best heard from a distance.__

Some are thoughtful on their way
Some are doubtful, so they pray
I hear the hidden voice that may
Shout, "Both paths lead astray."
__

The Worldly Hope men set their Hearts upon
Turns Ashes -- or it prospers; and anon,
Like Snow upon the Desert's dusty Face
Lighting a little Hour or two -- is gone.

(from the Rubaiyat)

HAFIZ (Shams-ud-din Mohammad Hafiz Shirazi / 14th c)

Arise, oh Cup-bearer, rise! and bring
To lips that are thirsting the bowl they praise,
For it seemed that love was an easy thing,
But my feet have fallen on difficult ways.
I have prayed the wind o'er my heart to fling
The fragrance of musk in her hair that sleeps--
In the night of her hair--yet no fragrance stays
The tears of my heart's blood my sad heart weeps.

Hear the Tavern-keeper who counsels you:
"With wine, with red wine your prayer carpet dye!"
There was never a traveller like him but knew
The ways of the road and the hostelry.
Where shall I rest, when the still night through,
Beyond the gateway, oh Heart of my heart,
The bells of the camels lament and cry:
"Bind up thy burden again and depart!"

The waves run high, night is clouded with fears,
And eddying whirlpools clash and roar;
How shall my drowning voice strike their ears
Whose light-freighted vessels have reached the shore?

I sought mine own; the unsparing years
Have brought me mine own, a dishonoured name.
What cloak shall cover my misery o'er
When each jesting mouth has rehearsed my shame!

Oh Hafiz, seeking an end to strife,
Hold fast in thy mind what the wise have writ:
"If at last thou attain the desire of thy life,

Cast the world aside, yea, abandon it!"

from The Divan

__

TáHIRIH / QURRATU'L-'AYN (19th c)

Even less known to the average Westerner than the poets above is Táhirih -- an avid proponent of the Ba'hai faith and what we would now recognize as a "political activist" of her time. She railed against the strictures of her time and place (in particular against women), decrying the contradictions in the beliefs and actions of Islam. She was punished and eventually executed for her acts and words.

A fictionalized novel about Tahirih's life, "The Woman Who Read Too Much," (La femme qui lisait trop), was written in 2007 by the Iranian author Bahiyyah Nahkjavani, who lives and works in France -- astoundingly, I can't locate an English translation.

Book Burning (her final poem)

I was born fearless and fearless die.
You cannot kill the spirit of God in the name of God.
Forgiveness is the lifeblood of generations,
and it will take generations
to forgive what you are doing.

I am Fatima and Maryam
I am Muhammed and Christ.
I weep tears of blood
for the pitiful hatred
you have inflicted on this earth.

You could have made a fountain
clear as a mountain spring
but make a mire.
You could have built homes for the homeless
but build mansions of pleasure.

You could have given your flesh
to the luminous atoms
of peace and understanding
but give in to the intoxication
of warring and lust.

A poem learned by the heart
cannot be burned.
When you are mortal as dust
on the desert of Dasht-e Kavir
I will still be here.

NPM Days 18 - 20 :: Found in Translation :: Montale, Borges, Rilke

2011-04-20T08:27:00.000-05:00

EUGENIO MONTALE

The Lemon Trees

Hear me a moment. Laureate poets seem to wander among plants no one knows: boxwood, acanthus, where nothing is alive to touch. I prefer small streets that falter into grassy ditches where a boy, searching in the sinking puddles, might capture a struggling eel. The little path that winds down along the slope plunges through cane-tufts and opens suddenly into the orchard among the moss-green trunks of the lemon trees. Perhaps it is better if the jubilee of small birds dies down, swallowed in the sky, yet more real to one who listens, the murmur of tender leaves in a breathless, unmoving air. The senses are graced with an odor filled with the earth. It is like rain in a troubled breast, sweet as an air that arrives too suddenly and vanishes. A miracle is hushed; all passions are swept aside. Even the poor know that richness, the fragrance of the lemon trees. You realize that in silences things yield and almost betray their ultimate secrets. At times, one half expects to discover an error in Nature, the still point of reality, the missing link that will not hold, the thread we cannot untangle in order to get at the truth. You look around. Your mind seeks, makes harmonies, falls apart in the perfume, expands when the day wearies away. There are silences in which one watches in every fading human shadow something divine let go. The illusion wanes, and in time we return to our noisy cities where the blue appears only in fragments high up among the towering shapes. Then rain leaching the earth. Tedious, winter burdens the roofs, and light is a miser, the soul bitter. Yet, one day through an open gate, among the green luxuriance of a yard, the yellow lemons fire and the heart melts, and golden songs pour into the breast from the raised cornets of the sun.

translated from the Italian by Lee Gerlach; from Montale in English, 2002

Like so many things I love, my relationship with Montale is circumstantial - I was taken to tour his house in Monterosso while on my semester abroad [which you can RENT, incidentally? oh internets...you tease!] .

He had been inspired, it was explained, by the incredible natural landscape of that residence, one of the five we know as the Cinqueterra: steep hillsides striated with lemon groves atop port inlets skirting turquoise water... This comes as no surprise. What did surprise was the vast outpouring of this Nobel Laureate, unknown to many outside of Italy.

JORGE LUIS BORGES

The Art of Poetry

To gaze at a river made of time and water
and remember Time is another river.
To know we stray like a river
and our faces vanish like water.

To feel that waking is another dream
that dreams of not dreaming and that the death
we fear in our bones is the death
that every night we call a dream.

To see in every day and year a symbol
of all the days of man and his years,
and convert the outrage of the years
into a music, a sound, and a symbol.

To see in death a dream, in the sunset
a golden sadness--such is poetry,
humble and immortal, poetry,
returning, like dawn and the sunset.

Sometimes at evening there's a face
that sees us from the deeps of a mirror.
Art must be that sort of mirror,
disclosing to each of us his face.

They say Ulysses, wearied of wonders,
wept with love on seeing Ithaca,
humble and green. Art is that Ithaca,
a green eternity, not wonders.

Art is endless like a river flowing,
passing, yet remaining, a mirror to the same
inconstant Heraclitus, who is the same
and yet another, like the river flowing.

translated from the Spanish by Anthony Berrigan

There is too much to say. I've spoken of Borges before, and will again. Basta cosi.

RAINER MARIA RILKE

Love Song

How shall I hold my soul so it does not

touch on yours. How shall I lift it

over you to other things?

Ah, willingly I’d store it away

with some lost thing in the dark,

in some strange still place, that

does not tremble when your depths tremble.

But all that touches us, you and me,

takes us, together, like the stroke of a bow,

that draws one chord out of the two strings.

On what instrument are we strung?

And what artist has us in their hand?

O sweet song.

Initial

Out of infinite longings rise
finite deeds like weak fountains,
falling back just in time and trembling.
And yet, what otherwise remains silent,
our happy energies—show themselves
in these dancing tears.

translated from the German by Cliff Crego

as above: I cannot begin to say enough -- I have written of Rilke before, and will again. Basta, basta cosi.

NPM Days 13 - 17 :: Of Scaffold and Simile, Symmetry and Semaphore

2011-04-17T13:15:00.000-05:00

Acropolis

Your departures
and
your erasures
left
your vagueness

Snails live in
the crevices of
your shattered marble

Your heart pumps thoughts
incomparable

Exit implies entry's lament.
[From "Such Places as Memory: Poems 1953-1996]

That is to say: of poetry and architecture.

Today's focus is on those who have bridged this gap not only metaphorically but actually -- an entry which hints at but not directly engages, for now, with the question of the similarity endemic to these two forms of engagement.

This miniseries began when day 13 became dedicated to John Hejduk, and his life's interweaving of word and craft -- a task that grew in scale and scope and interest. I've admired the not-widely-known-outside-very-particular-circles architect (and former dean of Cooper Union) for a long time, and not only because of his refusal to compromise his philosophies to engage in the often financially driven world of his industry.

Before completing the single entry, though, I'd ended up diving deeper, not only back into Hejduk's biography and work (with which I was already largely familiar) but also into the history of this dialogue, and into the verbal offerings of other architects.

The great gifts brought to me by these self assignments never seem to cease. In this case, I'm going to be honest and admit I'd somehow missed Corbusier's Poeme de l'angle droit (Poem of the right angle), even though I have seen many of the images before (one begins this post). Luckily, this investigation found me face to face with this personal, beautiful work. I'd known Corbusier's discipline to include daily drawing/watercolor practice before he went into the studio but not been aware of the verbal play that accompanied it.

For once, the Wiki page is the best resource of the English translation I can find online. I've included some segments below.

Upright on the terrestrial plateau
      of things perceptible to you
      contract with nature a pact of solidarity: it is the right angle
              Upright in front of the sea vertical
      there you are on your legs.

The law of the meander is
      active in the thoughts and
      enterprises of men forming their
      ever renewing avatars
             But the trajectory gushes out
      from the mind and is projected by
      the clairvoyants beyond

They are innumerable who
      sleep but others know
      to open the eye.
             Because the profound refuge is
      in the great cavern of
      sleep that other side of
      life in the night.

      Do not overwhelm then he
      who wants to take his part of the
      risks of life - Let
      the metals fuse
      tolerate the alchemists who
      besides leave you outside
      the cause

[edit]

I also Stumbled Upon a lovely collaborative project between poet Annie Finch and architect Ben Jacks which showed at Poets House some years back, which takes this conversation into the territory of curated exploration.

Unsurprisingly, all of this reminded me of one of my favorite contemporary artists, Siah Armajani, whose work stands at a precipice between all these considerations, making both two and three dimensional (often architectural) art that dialogues with space and language, often poetics specifically.

For his 2009 exhibition, Murder In Tehran at Max Protech (now Meulensteen), Armajani used the verse of contemporary Iranian poet Ahmad Shamlu, another gift this work brought me today. Here's his poem,

"Song of the Greatest Wish":

Ah, if liberty sang a song
little
as the larynx of a bird
nowhere would there remain a tumbling wall.
It would not take years
to learn
that every ruin signifies man's absence
for the presence of man
is restoration and renewal.
Like a wound
a lifelong
bleeding
like a wound
a lifelong
with pain beating
eyes opening on the world in a cry
in rancor disappearing
thus was the great absence
thus was the story of the ruin.
Ah, if liberty sang a song
little
littler even than the larynx of a bird.

About the historical traditions that influence him so greatly Armajani has said: “All Persian art, all Persian poetry comes out of Sufism, which is not a sect but an alternative human strategy. It is a civilizing and humanizing influence that works very quietly and without calling attention to itself.” His work, as a result, can be understood as a human strategy that mixes forms and historical referent, certainly resulting in civilizing and humanizing influence.

I am not sure I can't call what he does, too, "poetry," even if the text he employs is rarely his own. Isn't it similar in action to what Burroughs was doing with his cut-up poems (and then, work) -- just adding another dimension?

What is three dimensional poetry, then? If poetry is how we filter life through mind, eye, and pen, into what we are used to receiving in the form of words, what if we were to re-mirror this into three dimensions? Is the end result not, in fact, architecture?

Here I find myself face to face with another question: are architect/poets and architect/builders necessarily the same? Is there a conflict between poet and builder, insofar as the second is oft times more interested in practical concerns and/or financial ones? And -- what of the responsibility of the architect who DOES produce lived in environments/spaces/homes/cities -- to be both poet and builder? We can easily differentiate between the poetry in our streets and the quotidian work that is more functional (even if this functionality can inspire, too, in its own way -- or even be understood to be, godhelpme, formal verse?).

But often we question the motives of those architects who seem to focus more attention on the poetics of their form than on the legibility of their internal monologue with residents and passersby (see: tilted arc, bilbao).
Is this fair? Who is responsible, and to whom, and why, and in what way? Cost? comfort? what is comfort? not being made to feel somewhat uneasy by form? That's like suggesting we did away with modern art because its distorted angles were upsetting (something that was surely a widespread response.) Why is it that we can do freely in poetry and art (to some extent... in the United States at least... most of the time) what it seems so irresponsible to do in architecture? What is it about the built environment that is so sacred?

...to be continued. one assumes. eventually...

NPM 9, 10, 11, 12 :: The Beat Goes On and/or this is getting ridiculous...

2011-04-12T10:52:00.008-05:00

The great thing about appearing to choose something "obvious" is that it reminds you that things that have become iconic are in fact much much more layered and complex than their simulated conversational touchstones would have you believe or recall.

How in tarnation did I get this behind? Oh, with such wistful fondness do I remember a vision of a free spirited, leisurely April, in which this would be my main endeavor, broken only by outings to the park or teaching of a morning! With saudade, then, do I gratefully go about now collating this most loved task with the many many shifts I'm working -- your patience, friends.... <3

Should I do something obvious, then? In figuring how to do four poets-in-one, perhaps let's do a category:

Yes yes, snap bam zoom, here's the Beats.

A great place to start if you're new to this important chapter in 20th Century American Poetry History (or can acknowledge to at least yourself that your first hand reading is spotty at best) is the 1952 New York Times article, This is the Beat Generation, by John Clennon Holmes. Follow link to full text! And here is a link on the etymology of the term.

I'm going to leave the history to you, rather than filling space by reprinting what you can find using the above, and put poets and poems here instead.

ALLEN GINSBERG

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry
dynamo in the machinery of night . . . from HOWL [1955, Full text and audio here]

Kaddish [excerpt]

IV

O mother
what have I left out
O mother
what have I forgotten
O mother
farewell
with a long black shoe
farewell
with old dress and broken stocking
farewell
with six dark hairs on the wen of your breast
farewell
with gold teeth and a long black beard around the vagina

with your sagging belly
with your fear of Hitler
with your mouth of bad short stories
with your fingers of rotten mandolines
with your arms of fat Paterson porches
with your belly of strikes and smokestacks
with your chin of Trotsky and the Spanish War
with your voice singing for the decaying overbroken workers
with your nose of bad lay with your nose of the smell of the pickles of Newark

with your eyes
with your eyes of Russia
with your eyes of no money
with your eyes of false China
with your eyes of Aunt Elanor
with your eyes of starving India
with your eyes pissing in the park
with your eyes of your failure at the piano
with your eyes of your relatives in California
with your eyes of Ma Rainey dying in an ambulance
with your eyes of Czechloslovakia attacked by robots
with your eyes going to painting class at night in the Bronx
with your eyes of the killer Grandma you see on the fire escape
with your eyes running naked outof the apartment screaming into the hall
with your eyes being led away by policemen to an ambulance
with your eyes strapped down on the operating table
with your eyes with the pancreas removed
with your eyes of appendix operation
with your eyes of abortion
with your eyes of ovaries removed
with your eyes of shock
with your eyes of lobotomy
with your eyes of divorce
with your eyes of stroke
with your eyes alone
with your eyes
with your eyes
with your Death full of Flowers

[written 1957-1959, more info on Kaddish here]

__

ANNE WALDMAN

Waldman is, in her words, “drawn to the magical efficacies of language as a political act.”

Much to your good fortune and future gratitude, she still reads with some frequency at the Poetry Project, and is ALWAYS present at the New Years Marathon. She is also not only a founder but a continuing, active, teacher and administrator at Naropa. Some sound recordings from Penn Sound are here. An excellent resource of collected essays etc from Jacket is here.
Avail yourself.

The Lie

Art begins with a lie

The separation is you plus me plus what we make

Look into lightbulb, blink, sun’s in your eye

I want a rare sky

vantage point free from misconception

Art begins with a lie

Nothing to lose, spontaneous rise

of reflection, paint the picture

of a lightbulb, or eye the sun

How to fuel the world, then die

Distance yourself from artfulness

How? Art begins with a lie

The audience wants to cry

when the actors are real & passionate

Look into footlight, then feed back to eye

You fluctuate in an artful body

You try to imitate the world’s glory

Art begins with a lie

That’s the story, sharp speck in the eye.

___

JACK KEROUAC

Few will know of his devout Catholicism, if mixed unconventionally with Buddhist doctrine, nor of his support of the Vietnam war...? I didn't. A complex character, which is saying not enough at all.

The taste
of rain
-- Why kneel?

Bowery Blues

The story of man

Makes me sick

Inside, outside,

I don't know why

Something so conditional

And all talk

Should hurt me so.

I am hurt

I am scared

I want to live

I want to die

I don't know

Where to turn

In the Void

And when

To cut

Out

For no Church told me

No Guru holds me

No advice

Just stone

Of New York

And on the cafeteria

We hear

The saxophone

O dead Ruby

Died of Shot

In Thirty Two,

Sounding like old times

And de bombed

Empty decapitated

Murder by the clock.

And I see Shadows

Dancing into Doom

In love, holding

TIght the lovely asses

Of the little girls

In love with sex

Showing themselves

In white undergarments

At elevated windows

Hoping for the Worst.

I can't take it

Anymore

If I can't hold

My little behind

To me in my room

Then it's goodbye

Sangsara

For me

Besides

Girls aren't as good

As they look

And Samadhi

Is better

Than you think

When it starts in

Hitting your head

In with Buzz

Of glittergold

Heaven's Angels

Wailing

Saying

We've been waiting for you

Since Morning, Jack

Why were you so long

Dallying in the sooty room?

This transcendental Brilliance

Is the better part

(of Nothingness

I sing)

Okay.

Quit.

Mad.

Stop.

[my note: do you hear echoes Whitman as much as I do?]

____

WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

The deep love I have for Burroughs's work (and his intense, incredible collaboration with Brion Gysin, whose "Dreammachine" I spoke at length about earlier this year) dare not fit into this already long post.

From the always excellent UBUWEB archive, 50 mp3's of burroughs.

Burroughs relationship with language (which he referred to as both "game" and "virus") defies classification; even while we do not usually categorize him as "poet" he ultimately refuses, as his work, to be categorized.

Reality Studio valiantly attempts to collect this subgenre here.

Not surprisingly, Burroughs often remains in the picture as well as employing the structural games of "cut-up" as part of his practice.

An example, from 1978:

Fear and the Monkey

This text arranged in my New York loft, which is the converted locker room of an old YMCA. Guests have reported the presence of a ghost boy. So this is a Oui-Ja board poem taken from Dumb Instrument, a book of poems by Denton Welch, and spells and invocations from the Necronomicon, a highly secret magical text released in paperback. There is a pinch of Rimbaud, a dash of St-John Perse, an oblique reference to Toby Tyler with the Circus, and the death of his pet monkey.

Turgid itch and the perfume of death

On a whispering south wind

A smell of abyss and of nothingness

Dark Angel of the wanderers howls through the loft

With sick smelling sleep

Morning dream of a lost monkey

Born and muffled under old whimsies

With rose leaves in closed jars

Fear and the monkey

Sour taste of green fruit in the dawn

The air milky and spiced with the trade winds

White flesh was showing

His jeans were so old

Leg shadows by the sea

Morning light

On the sky light of a little shop

On the odor of cheap wine in the sailors’ quarter

On the fountain sobbing in the police courtyards

On the statue of moldy stone

On the little boy whistling to stray dogs.

Wanderers cling to their fading home

A lost train whistle wan and muffled

In the loft night taste of water

Morning light on milky flesh

Turgid itch ghost hand

Sad as the death of monkeys

Thy father a falling star

Crystal bone into thin air

Night sky

Dispersal and emptiness.

Originally published as William S. Burroughs, “Fear and the Monkey,” Pearl 6 (Odense, Denmark: Fall/Winter 1978). Collected in The Burroughs File, City Lights, 1984. Republished by RealityStudio in August 2010.

NPM Days 6, 7, 8 : Chen, Coultas, and Catch Up

2011-04-08T10:45:00.000-05:00

The best laid plans, hmm? I realize I have created quite the little pickle for myself by insisting that I post my new poems alongside the other work, because the timing doesn't always work out quite right. From here forth I will do both whenever possible but there may be some that come more in fugue form. So be it. I didn't choose this life to choke myself on my own strictures! Amen to that.

Today I want to feature two contemporary poets who you are less likely to know, but who are well worthy:

KEN CHEN!! Deservedly, Chen was the recipient of the Yale Series of Younger Poets award (the oldest annual literary award in the country) in 2009 for his book "Juvenalia." When I heard him speak and read from this book some months ago I was floored by how he had seamlessly combined legal logic (from his other profession) and traditional Chinese poem forms with his own deftly expressed emotions/observations. It was smart, disciplined, and strategic while remaining all the time natural -- a feat I seek to master.

I want to bring your attention to the very smart, very fun piece, "Walt and I: What's American About American Poetry?" that he did for the Poetry Society, even if I can't reprint it here in full, and I'll give you this:

Echo

“Such omissions of the subject allows the poet not to intrude his own personality upon the scene…”

– James J. Y. Liu, The Art of Chinese Poetry

I can tell the wind is risin’, leaves trembling on the tree,
trembling on the tree.

My father’s father holding still, holding still a traffic jam of coughs.
My father’s mother steaming chicken, boiling soy and air.
My mother’s father dangling years – a broken pocket watch.
My mother’s mother bearing a wedding dress.
My mother with such passion, sad beneath her silent face – frozen, a fashion ad.
My father pressed in black and white – a single paper lantern pasted in the air beside him.
            I got to keep movin’, I’ve got to keep movin’
            Blues fallin’ down like hail…
I close the album and my family members fold
against each other. Faces that would not kiss in life
press together as the pages close.
            Yeah standin’ at the crossroad, tried to flag a ride
            Ooo eeee, I tried to flag a ride
            Didn’t nobody seem to know me, babe, everybody pass me by
When pages have deserted books and hair from heads.
When pictures yet to be taken seem old and worn.
When my family now long gone resurrects itself, the ghosts
roaming through our dinner table –
The steam from the vermicelli broth rises up like an apparition.
My grandmother’s cooking. Our knives and forks
tick against our plates while we eat, unaware that we are achieving
ourselves.
We conjure our ghosts with these photographs in words.
I will cough my grandfather’s cough and my wife smiles her mother’s smiles.

BRENDA COULTAS!! I first met this exceptional poet when she was invited to give a reading at Columbia by Mick Taussig with whom I share many opinions not in the least that poetry and anthropology are necessary bedfellows; Coultas's self-described "archeological" poetry was a natural fit. She had just finished A Handmade Museum: Excavations (Coffee House Press) which won a "First Book" award from the Poetry Society, the copy for which describes her as a Poet-Phenomenologist, which is apt. I was sold from word 1.

From The Abolition Journal in The Marvelous Bones of Time

Looking from the free state
there is a river then a slave state
Turn around and there is a slave state,
a river
then a free state

I was born between the free side and the slave side, my head
crowning on the bridge. I fully emerged in an elevator traveling
upward in a slave state. I have shopped in the slave state and eaten
barbecue there. I have walked along the riverbank in the slave
state and looked out at the free state.

Lincoln looked out over the river and saw a slave state and he was
Born in one (Kentucky), like me, but was raised in a free state
(Indiana), like me. We were white and so could cross the river.

Question: are there any abolitionists hanging from my family tree?

__
__

Enough, then, enough. I was going to post three for today and the two that have passed but perhaps there's been enough to take in. Here, then, from the Book of Lynne: (written over these three days)

__

Into the pillowed coffin
clinging like a barnacle to upstairs
Into this nest I was
flinging
a spent self
with the haphazard toss of done
when
making the sound of hammered coconut
my head and a rafter met inopportune:

OUT! like the milk of that wooden orb
OUT! my athena, raging
OUT! steam then boiling, as a radiator bleeds
OUT! slow then faster, with fist raised

like an uninvited guest changes the course of the evening
the anger arrives
and makes itself known

Did you hear it howl, neighbor?
Did you hear it shriek
Did it shake your bones,
shock you awake from slumber deep?
Or did it come quiet, a sneaking low cry
that gutteral sob a stomach punch
that seeped into your skin
clawed like the sharp edge of damp chill
carried on the wind of this night?
Did you pull close your coat or covers,
a wary ward against its scent of sickness
and melancholy?
Did your shoulders meet your ears, arched
like a street cat against the winter of my cry?

with the heart having sent her packing
the brain dissembled, (always of two minds)
allowing residence but keeping hidden deep
the key to her dark chambers --
such a small space for this goddess
wet in fury's juices --
we have lived in strained silence for some time
she and I... the type of silence marked by the timeclock
of a ticking timebomb
so that now explodes
an early easter resurrection of rage.

CRACK! hiss sizzle
a bedded breakfast
of girl and goddess omelette
but it is I who am consumed:
leaving no lines between me and myth
when the howling subsides
a faint but insistent drumming sounds constant in the temple
and it is she abed but aquiver, taut
and ready for battle.

NPM DAY 5: cummings and cheating

2011-04-05T14:15:00.001-05:00

That is to say... ee(k)! I only have a few minutes between two jobs today.

That said: today's poet is: e.e. cummings
This one's a freebie (mostly due to my lack of time, but also as I do like cummings very much indeed.)
Were you paying ANY attention in English class?

here is a good online collection,

and here is

"love is more thicker than forget"

love is more thicker than forget

more thinner than recall

more seldom than a wave is wet

more frequent than to fail

it is more mad and moonly

and less it shall unbe

than all the sea which only

is deeper than the sea

love is less always than to win

less never than alive

less bigger than the least begin

less littler than forgive

it is most sane and sunly

and more it cannot die

than all the sky which only

is higher than the sky

from Poetry, 1939

and a cheat?

I'm going to have to put an old poem.

I worked on two today on the train but they're not ready for you, nor you for them

good heavens they're maudlin, too.

with all this rain let's give you something else.

untitled (11/08)

Did I mention that there is a slipshod
life left awry, left unknown
in this room; the scrim between you
and your double pales, shows you
in your light.

You breathe, air thins, lungs quicken the

molecular
tsunamis in your mouth, and I
drink you in, you and your ripcurl toes,
your waves of gaze, those eyes
that floor me.

NPM Day 4: Collins and Calm

2011-04-04T12:15:00.001-05:00

Patterns emerge by accident: here, the days have taken to alphabetical titling: H's, S's, B's, and now C. Funny, that -- an extra wrinkle for the mind.

BILLY COLLINS

I've not the hours I've been spending to give you Collins' history or even to riff on him adequately. Suffice is to say he's not only an astounding artist but also a master of navigating the unique and unusual role of Public Poet successfully - engaging audiences and readers who otherwise are very unaware of contemporary production in the poetry world. Deviating from the familiar muddle of Sexton and Berryman, his life seems oddly functional for a poet -- bully for Billy!!!

Luckily for us (and unsurprisingly given the above) not only is he prolific prolific prolific but internet savvy, and actively engaged in collaborative work with animators, audio studios, and film makers, the fruits of which labor are all over the web for you to enjoy. As penance for my short entry, I offer also an animation below and offer here a downloadable poetry webcast.

Absolutely, "[Collins] takes the mundane thing and shows you its mystery. And he takes the mysterious thing and strips it naked." (Washington Post review of Sailing Alone Around the Room)

Humorous, brave, gymnastic, accessible -- I love Collins. You should too.

Osso Buco

I love the sound of the bone against the plate
and the fortress-like look of it
lying before me in a moat of risotto,
the meat soft as the leg of an angel
who has lived a purely airborne existence.
And best of all, the secret marrow,
the invaded privacy of the animal
prized out with a knife and swallowed down
with cold, exhilarating wine.

I am swaying now in the hour after dinner,
a citizen tilted back on his chair,
a creature with a full stomach--
something you don't hear much about in poetry,
that sanctuary of hunger and deprivation.
you know: the driving rain, the boots by the door,
small birds searching for berries in winter.

But tonight, the lion of contentment
has placed a warm heavy paw on my chest,
and I can only close my eyes and listen
to the drums of woe throbbing in the distance
and the sound of my wife's laughter
on the telephone in the next room,
the woman who cooked the savory osso buco,
who pointed to show the butcher the ones she wanted.
She who talks to her faraway friend
while I linger here at the table
with a hot, companionable cup of tea,
feeling like one of the friendly natives,
a reliable guide, maybe even the chief's favorite son.

Somewhere, a man is crawling up a rocky hillside
on bleeding knees and palms, an Irish penitent
carrying the stone of the world in his stomach;
and elsewhere people of all nations stare
at one another across a long, empty table.
But here, the candles give off their warm glow,
the same light that Shakespeare and Izaac Walton wrote by,
the light that lit and shadowed the faces of history.
Only now it plays on the blue plates,
the crumpled napkins, the crossed knife and fork.

In a while, one of us will go up to bed
and the other will follow.
Then we will slip below the surface of the night
into miles of water, drifting down and down
to the dark, soundless bottom
until the weight of dreams pulls us lower still,
below the shale and layered rock,
beneath the strata of hunger and pleasure,
into the broken bones of the earth itself,
into the marrow of the only place we know.

(from The Art of Drowning, 1995)

___

when the light is still but frothy foam
on the cappuccino of the night
they descend:
rectangular robot birds of the morning

all squeals and groans
all axel whine and suffering brakes
and they call to eachother:
beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep honk
beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep honk
snorting and whinnying their
mating dance of coming and going:
the removal of yesterday
the restoring of today
(and maybe tomorrow)

they idle here as consciousness dawns along their street-trees
on pillowtops and under nests of hair
purring the city awake
then lumbering away
until day breaks again

NPM Day 3 : Berryman and the Brain

2011-04-03T18:42:00.004-05:00

"These Songs are not meant to be understood, you understand. / They are only meant to terrify & comfort."

JOHN BERRYMAN

According to the sage annals of the internet, John Berryman belongs with Sexton in what is referred to as the "Confessional School" of poets, from a term used originally in a review of Robert Lowell. Like many other such monikers, of course, this title came from the outside, in retrospect: an observation, not a plan.

In a perfect example of how a much lauded poet of exhaustive record (both creative and academic) can remain all but invisible on the contemporary public stage, I can admit never having developed a conscious relationship with Berryman's work, though I am sure I have read his poems on many occasions in connection with those figures I have followed. I was as unaware of his many accolades and prizes (including a Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and Guggenheim Fellowship, to name a few) as I was of his personal struggles, but in my own research for today's entry I find his tale not only as troubled as Sexton's but too as admirably filled with a diligent, even dogged, commitment to both craft and scholarship. He is described as "manic," "frenzied and vulnerable," and I quote, his "acute insecurities and neuroses manifested themselves in his public persona as a braggart, a womanizer, a drunk, and an intellectual."

Full disclosure: I inadvertantly stumbled into this choice for day 3. Uninspired and nursing a terrific hangover, questioning the merits of mixed spirits, poetry reading and philosophical discussion in the wee hours (and generally getting down on myself for the extremism I sometimes tend towards) I googled "alcohol and poetry," wondering if Hemingway ever wrote poems, and ultimately employing the magic eight ball approach to this decision. And so today's story started at its end -- with my learning of Berryman's struggle with alcohol abuse, and of his suicide in 1972.

Which I appreciate knowing. Somehow, while there is a great sadness to this particular demise, there is a communality of energy, of effort and striving that Berryman's particular end does not quash -- can not quash -- for it persists in the work.

It was from my oft mentioned good friend and teacher Ammiel Alcalay that I came to appreciate how an understanding of not only the historical and creative context of a poet's life but also their personal struggle imbues not only the reading of their poems but the writing of our own (and the living of our lives) with a richness not attainable otherwise. The immediacy of the emotions I feel for Anne Sexton extend to Berryman more and more as I learn his story; as I do at Poetry Project events in the presence of poets I feel bolstered, among allies, those who... get it. And all that that means.

Like it does many other public intellectual figures, Berryman's alcoholism became part of his image -- for just as with mental illness there is a romantic association with the relationship between the artistic/creative temperment and the use and abuse of chemicals of many ilks. Does it ease the chasm between the poet and the complacent? Romanticised or not, there is a history that bears attention both critically and topically; certainly we can think of many who included this struggle in their words as well. But I do go on.

Goldmine: There is a pretty substantive list of Berryman's full text poems here.

Dream Song 108: Sixteen below. Our care like stranded hulls

Sixteen below. Our care like stranded hulls
litter all day our little Avenues.
It was 28 below.
No one goes anywhere. Fabulous calls
to duty clank. Icy dungeons, though,
have much to mention to you.

At Harvard & Yale must Pussy-cat be heard
in the dead of winter when we must be sad
and feel by the weather had.
Chrysanthemums crest, far way, in the Emperor's garden
and, whenever we are, we must beg always pardon
Pardon was the word.

Pardon was the only word, in ferocious cold
like Asiatic prisons, where we live
and strive and strive to forgive.
Melted my honey, summers ago. I told
her true & summer things. She leaned an ear
in my direction, here.

- from The Dream Songs, 1969.

The first volume of two, included in this volume, 77 Dream Songs, won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1964.The Dream Songs are eighteen-line poems in three stanzas. Each individual poem is lyric and organized around an emotion provoked by an everyday event.

____
-------

I dig on an extended haiku form...

CEREBELLAR ATAXIA

temporarily
closed, with an "out to lunch" sign
on the brain's window

behind a creaking
pulldown of heavy eyelid
lurk the ghost verses:

bloated and out of
order, alexia reigns
as they slip like fish

round the corners of
grey tissue, comprehension's
fingers feeble, slow,

unable to catch
even the last word chosen
to be on the team

pulling salt taffy
phrases from the morass strains,
leaves stalagmite straws

on the cortex floor:
a mess of punctuation
and mixed metaphor

National Poetry Month [henceforth NPM] Day 2 : Sexton and Stars

2011-04-02T10:14:00.001-05:00

still like icarus through the sidewalk the shoots come

small warriors for the sun

DAY TWO. Anne Sexton.

"out of used furniture, she made a tree"

I "met" Anne Sexton in that way one meets dead friends. Our meeting was happenstance, much like real life: the dated fonts and colors of a dogeared copy of To Bedlam and Part Way Back called to me at the Strand. [text IN FULL here]

Oh Anne. I read her on the train back to Beacon, then -- anytime --- lying on my back on my living room floor, in the morning, in the middle of the night. So often memories of these first readings are intertwined with those of crying and looking out windows: of the train, of my apartment with the dormers, in both cases at the rushing Hudson river. I cried for Anne and I cried for myself, and I cried for poetry, because I recognized not only in her voice but in her struggle with "illness" the chaos that a certain kind of examined life brings upon one and those close to one. For those who choose poetry (or who it chooses) a daily wrestling with words is the medium of that madness: both its cause and its treatment.

I cannot tell her story here in full but its consideration is well worth your time, as are the questions it brings to the fore: what is mental illness? what is depression? what is its relationship to "normal" life, and how does it play into a philosophical/poetic aspect? We often connotate a certain instability to artistic temperment. But is it not true that any amount of examination of the self and the world and its confounding nature is inextricable from not only highs but lows, sometimes of an extreme nature? When this meets modern psychology where do we land -- manic depression?

Sexton is an inspiration. To choose any one poem seems impossible but such is my immediate onus. In the end I chose one inspired by this seasonal shift.

Do yourself a favor and look her up.

Killing the Spring

When the cold rains kept on and killed the spring, it was as through a young person had died for no reason. Hemingway, A Moveable Feast

Spring had been bulldozed under.

She would not, would not, would not.

Late April, late May

and the metallic rains kept on.

From my gun-metal window I watched

how the dreadful tulips

swung on their hinges,

beaten down like pigeons.

Then I ignored spring.

I put on blinders and rode on a donkey

in a circle, a warm circle.

I tried to ride for eternity

but I came back.

I swallowed my sour meat

but it came back.

I struck out memory with an X

but it came back.

I tied down time with a rope

but it came back.

Then

I put my head in a death bowl

and my eyes shut up like clams.

They didn't come back.

I was declared legally blind

by my books and papers.

My eyes, those two blue gods,

would not come back.

My eyes, those sluts, those whores,

would play no more.

Next I nailed my hands

onto a pine box.

I followed the blue veins

like a neon road map.

My hands, those touchers, those bears,

would not reach out and speak.

They could no longer get in the act.

They were fastened down to oblivion.

The did not come back.

They were through with their abominable habits.

They were in training for a cruxifixion.

They could not reply.

Next I took my ears,

those two cold moons,

and drowned them in the Atlantic.

They were not wearing a mask.

They were not deceived by laughter.

They were not luminous like the clock.

They sank like oiled birds.

They did not come back.

I waited with my bones on the cliff

to see if they'd float in like slick

but they did not come back.

I could not see the spring.

I could not hear the spring.

I could not touch the spring.

Once upon a time a young person

died for no reason.

I was the same.

from The Book of Folly, 1972

_______
My effort for today. My goodness she's a tough act to follow.

One Small Step

deciduous laughter loses its leaves
growing sparse in stony soil
yet
strives up through the shale of frantic happiness
awaiting the remembered pleasure of being quenched:
of springtime, of new green,
   of rain
with anticipation
but no expectations

   still like icarus through the sidewalk the shoots come
   small warriors for the sun

   running full stomach yet hollow
   though caverns
   strewn with city diamonds
   from a shattered windshield mind.

here
on a pavement of winter's too white skin
a shore lapped by that shimmering stretchmark sea
at low tide

   raked zen watermelon garden belly
   once full of girl

shakes a chalk heart outline.

what quantum leap will it take
to exhume the stars in these eyes?
for this joy is full of sorrow

National Poetry Month Day 1: History, O'Hara and Haiku

2011-04-01T08:15:00.002-05:00

Most contemporary lives pass with little thought to poetry, and I for one cannot imagine how this would be -- for this art is the most ancient struggle to verbalize human experience, in myriad form. The epic, that oldest story, is indeed "poem" -- from this what we know now as "prose" springs from this, begging a question: is perhaps all writing just various forms of poetry? (a worthy consideration for another time...)

Today is celebratory: it marks the first day of National Poetry Month, which (as I've likely mentioned in years hence) was inaugurated in 1966 by the Academy of American Poets. It was a different time - six years after Robert Frost was the first poet asked to write and read a poem for a presidential inauguration by JFK (which didn't happen due to "glare;" he instead spoke A Gift Outright from memory - read both here), and three years after that same president gave the speech dedicating a library in Frost's honor at Amherst College. Contemporary poets, not only historical ones, were revered and widely known public figures...note that the Beats had come barrelling onto the stage the decade before.

While our knowledge of President Clinton's great love for Leaves of Grass came in not the most pleasant of packages (we needn't repeat it here), and in fact Angelou read at his first inauguration, (and a lesser known poet, Miller Williams, at the second) it heartens me to know that we did then and do again have a man in office with an appreciation for poetry.

Across the country there are daily, weekly, month-long events of every possible scale, and that behemoth that is the web is not only the place to find those that fit your schedule and taste, but also now serves itself as the site of much virtual todo.

For my part, as a humble servant and practitioner of this lovely, loving art, I offer this:

Every day during the month of April I will
- post a poem from a different poet, with (if possible) a link to the publication that it was originally found in (if it is still in circulation, otherwise I will offer a brief history, R.I.P.),
- and for my own part I will write and post at least one new poem a day.

For today, O'Hara, and Haiku from me. Enjoy.

In Favor of One's Time

The spent purpose of a perfectly marvellous
life suddenly glimmers and leaps into flame
it's more difficult than you think to make charcoal
it's also petty hard to remember life's marvellous
but there it is guttering choking then soaring
in the mirrored room of this consciousness
it's practically a blaze of pure sensibility
and however exaggerated at least something's going on
and the quick oxygen in the air will not go neglected
will not sulk or fall into blackness and peat

an angel flying slowly, curiously singes its wings
and you diminish for a moment out of respect
for beauty then flare up after all that's the angel
that wrestled with Jacob and loves conflict
as an athlete loves the tape, and we'e off into
an immortal contest of actuality and pride
which is love assuming the consciousness of itself
as sky over all, medium of finding and founding
not just resemblance but the magic otherness
that that that stands erect in the spirit's glare
and waits for the joining of an opposite force's breath

so come the winds into our lives and last
longer that despair's sharp snake, crushed before it conquered
so marvellous is not just a poet's greenish namesake
and we live outside his gardens in our tempestuous rights

FRANK O'HARA | 9/24/59 | Published originally in Poetry, the magazine of the Poetry Foundation, 5/60

Triptych

I.
that stack, still sealed; an
ominous origami,
a paper tiger

II.
silent intercom
fusilli tailed friend
you tease with absence

III.
as though saying
"here hangs a more measured life"
the t-squares idle

tarot cards drawn in
steel and corner: The Hanged Man,
ghost of modern dreams

Prose Practicum: Nap Afterword

2011-03-29T16:48:00.001-05:00

Blinking my eyes against the gauzy afternoon I realize I have fallen asleep on the couch, if you can call it that. "Couch" indeed -- demonstrating all the creature comfort we’ve come to expect from modern design, the landscape affording this luxury is something wanting a better title: a framed wooden platform you might generously describe as “Danish,” in the center of which is stretched something akin to burlap; all of which is supported by four offset, decidedly geometric feet. Neither entirely unrelated to the unlikely nature of this setting for sombulance nor to my confusion in finding myself thus askew, the experience is that of not having fully returned from wherever we go when the thoughts, finally, stop racing.

Perhaps it is the light -- that timorous expression of longing for the promise of midmorning that is so specific to these tea time hours -- that causes it, but the dreamy quality of those first glances that readjust one to normative time space pauses and lingers enough to be disconcerting. The room, as if another’s rods and cones had taken up residence between my brain and retina, seems false: a series of backdrops and scrims, hollow books and trompe l’oeil windows. The quiet is unreal, the distance between the ear and a honk from the street thoughtfully filled with invisible cotton batting so the sound comes through like a suggestion of itself - and the only thing clear is a question:

Is this that other side of the mirror?

It begins as a joke, an internal aside meant to reassert via its very absurdity a break with this trance, to reestablish a knowing dominance over this space, as ever full of the objects that reflect back to us our selves and our history, our location in today – but my query, like the haze, persists like a hangover in the brain of the stale air.

The refrigerator buzzes as a refrigerator does, and there are the tulips I did my best to arrange after crushing them absentmindedly in my bag the other night, and there is poetry I have read, here on the shelf, there: a half finished cup of tea, a stain on the light table.

And yet?

Both body and space feel very circumstantial, part of a continuum with which I am only vaguely associated – who spins the wheel to make me land here? Today, the body heavy, the lids drooping, the world quiet; the surroundings devoid of the screaming neighbors of autumn past, of the view of the Hudson River of another year before, of my mother, sleeping in the other room with the television on.

As though watching my own figure rise stiffly from the couch, taking in as if for the first time these walls and their holdings, it is as though the clock has stopped and it is possible to hear the page turning on this story. As in any tale, we cannot know the whereabouts of this character in coming chapters – neither her state of mind, her companions, nor her location need be in keeping with what we’ve read to date; already the events that have preceded have cleverly thrown both audience and protagonist time and time again, refusing to allow complacency by either party.

...

Sundry and SHARE: Rilke

2011-03-29T00:12:00.000-05:00

"We know little, but that we must hold to what is difficult is a certainty that will not forsake us; it is good to be solitary, for solitude is difficult; that something is difficult must be a reason the more for us to do it."

Mired in that quotidian philosophic sea. The existentialism that is the most natural questioning of existence, that daily WHY and HOW and WTF ...it floors me, sometimes.

An important admission of late has allowed for, accepted and even learned to be grateful to (if not quite go so far as "celebrate") the onslaught of emotion that I tend to keep safely at bay while I keep 47 plates spinning in the air. While at first it takes me down like a sickness, and sends me to self-quarantine that seemingly only hours of watching logo online can solve (or mask) eventually it leads me to the garden paths most in need of attention... those things I'm ignoring.

Drumroll please:

1 social responsibility and the viability/reality of "helping" on a global/national/local scale

2 the nature of "work" and its (apparently necessarily) flexible interaction with morality

and it's back:

3 the concept of love and the shape of relationships. both romantic and familial. roles and responsibilities within these relationships. will and emotion. "choice." perception vs. "real," action vs. feeling, etc etc etc.

I want to write more at length about #'s 1 and 2 but since I feel I've been so lacking in my presence here I wanted to take a moment for a short, and hopefully illuminating/thought provoking share

if I haven't put it here yet, or quoted from it of late, it's Rilke whose take is most present in my life of late.

here's some to consider:

Rilke on Marriage... (from On Love and Other Difficulties)

The point of marriage is not to create a quick commonality by tearing down all boundaries; on the contrary, a good marriage is one in which each partner appoints the other to be the guardian of his solitude, and thus they show each other the greatest possible trust. A merging of two people is an impossibility, and where it seems to exist, it is a hemming-in, a mutual consent that robs one party or both parties of their fullest freedom and development. But once the realization is accepted that even between the closest people infinite distances exist, a marvelous living side-by-side can grow up for them, if they succeed in loving the expanse between them, which gives them the possibility of always seeing each other as a wholeand before an immense sky. Translated from the German by Stephen Mitchell

from Letters To A Young Poet
(1903-1908)

People have (with the help of conventions) oriented all their solutions toward the easy and toward the easiest side of the easy; but it is clear that we must hold to what is difficult; everything alive holds to it, everything in Nature grows and defends itself in its own way and is characteristically and spontaneously itself, seeks at all costs to be so and against all opposition. We know little, but that we must hold to what is difficult is a certainty that will not forsake us; it is good to be solitary, for solitude is difficult; that something is difficult must be a reason the more for us to do it.

To love is good, too: love being difficult. For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all out tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation. For this reason young people, who are beginners in everything, cannot yet know love: they have to learn it. With their whole being, with all their forces, gathered close about their lonely, timid, upward-beating heart, they must learn to love. But learning time is always a long, secluded time, and so loving, for a long while ahead and far into life, is solitude, intensified and deepened loneness for him who loves.

Love is at first not anything that means merging, giving over and uniting with another (for what would a union be of something unclarified and unfinished, still subordinate?); it is a high inducement to the individual to ripen, to become world, to become world for himself for another's sake. It is a great exacting claim upon him, something that chooses him out and calls him to vast things. Only in this sense, as the task of working at themselves ("to hearken and to hammer day and night"), might young people use the love that is given them. Merging and surrendering and every kind of communion is not for them (who must save and gather for along, long time still), is the ultimate, is perhaps that for which human lives as yet scarcely suffice.
Whoever looks seriously at it finds that neither for death, which is difficult, nor for difficult love has any explanation, any solution, any hint of way yet been discerned; and for these two problems that we carry wrapped up and hand on without opening, it will not be possible to discover any general rule resting in agreement. But in the same measure in which we begin as individuals to put life to the test, we shall, being individuals, meet these great things at closer range.

The demands which the difficult work of love makes upon our development are more than life-size, and as beginners we are not up to them. But if we nevertheless hold out and take this love upon us as burden and apprenticeship, instead of losing ourselves in all the light and frivolous play, behind which people have hidden from the most earnest earnestness of their existence - then a little progress and alleviation will perhaps be perceptible to those who come long after us; that would be much.