Weekly Hubris Hits the Streets!
Wherein 12 intrepid writers join forces against the alarming proliferation and dissemination of mass media skullduggery amongst the malleable masses. Get your copy now!
new old kid on the blog, with an occasional old or new poem written off the old writer's block
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Life Studies Light
Of its myriad meanings
One remains essential,
Which leads one to ask
If light is of the essence,
What is the essence of light?
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Baudelaire for Dummies
Hypocrite lecteur,—mon semblable,—mon frère!
Fooled by this hapless effort
Passing itself off as a poem?
A wretch like you wrote it.
Saturday, February 27, 2010
Suspension of Disbelief
As long as the clouds remain
Suspended, one must have
A mind—not that kind—
Of a lunatic, not to think
The moon is unmoving,
And be moved in turn
By the mind that does.
Suspended, one must have
A mind—not that kind—
Of a lunatic, not to think
The moon is unmoving,
And be moved in turn
By the mind that does.
Friday, February 26, 2010
Dedication
Well, here’s to that
Spunky little green stink
Bug that just upped
And clinked down dead on my laptop,
Kayoed by the treacherous light,
With me in blind pursuit
Of one more sweet-smelling,
Charming moving deathless line—
Oh dear lifeless little bugger, thanks
For taking the time,
For stopping me short
But not quite smack in time,
Sorry for this too,
Too precious rhyme.
Spunky little green stink
Bug that just upped
And clinked down dead on my laptop,
Kayoed by the treacherous light,
With me in blind pursuit
Of one more sweet-smelling,
Charming moving deathless line—
Oh dear lifeless little bugger, thanks
For taking the time,
For stopping me short
But not quite smack in time,
Sorry for this too,
Too precious rhyme.
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Pearls of Wisdom
Here by the water’s edge,
Listening to what the sea brings,
I know deep down
Even a grain of sand sings
Wondrous things.
Listening to what the sea brings,
I know deep down
Even a grain of sand sings
Wondrous things.
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Incendiary
In that instant inflammatory
Something-on-your-mind,
One thought keeps
Burning through
The darkness, nothing
To be left behind.
Something-on-your-mind,
One thought keeps
Burning through
The darkness, nothing
To be left behind.
Monday, February 22, 2010
Recent Links [Updated 11.30 pm]
Recently Linked—Definitely Not Lemmings #16: It's a pleasure to welcome Noxalio as a new follower of Vazambam—follow the links to these two interesting blogs:
Noxalio and noxpix.
[11.30 update, Definitely Not Lemmings #17: Aleksandra joins us from Holland; she is an artist and has two blogs, one here and another here. Thank you, Aleksandra!]
My thanks to William Michaelian for dedicating his drawing titled A Man Named Nobody to yours truly.
And lest I forget, thanks to Conrad DiDiodato who graciously added Vazambam to his blog list!
Noxalio and noxpix.
[11.30 update, Definitely Not Lemmings #17: Aleksandra joins us from Holland; she is an artist and has two blogs, one here and another here. Thank you, Aleksandra!]
My thanks to William Michaelian for dedicating his drawing titled A Man Named Nobody to yours truly.
And lest I forget, thanks to Conrad DiDiodato who graciously added Vazambam to his blog list!
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Wake-up Call
A blind man sang this song.
*
In my mind’s eye, I saw
A man named Nobody
Drive a red-hot stake of green
Olive-wood into the single
Drunken, bloodshot eye
Of a sleeping giant,
Twisting it until it hissed,
And the giant’s eye shot out
Blood and clearly saw
No longer.
*
Aye, my wandering companions,
The mind’s eye is in deed
A wondrous place,
But not for sleeping,
Stuporous giants.
*
In my mind’s eye, I saw
A man named Nobody
Drive a red-hot stake of green
Olive-wood into the single
Drunken, bloodshot eye
Of a sleeping giant,
Twisting it until it hissed,
And the giant’s eye shot out
Blood and clearly saw
No longer.
*
Aye, my wandering companions,
The mind’s eye is in deed
A wondrous place,
But not for sleeping,
Stuporous giants.
Saturday, February 20, 2010
Quiddity, As in Kraken
A super-duper
Squid up from the depths
Is what the id could be
Should the tentacles
Of the ego
Let it go.
Friday, February 19, 2010
End of the Line
No more mystery here—
No more train
Down these tracks
No more
Loud and clear.
(Not quite the end after all, passengers; last line added ten hours later at 10.00 AM Friday, February 19, 2010.)
No more train
Down these tracks
No more
Loud and clear.
(Not quite the end after all, passengers; last line added ten hours later at 10.00 AM Friday, February 19, 2010.)
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Ephemera
It's a good idea to write a poem about the first of May
in November or December, when you feel a desperate need for May.
--Vladimir Mayakovsky, from How Are Verses Made?
I fly from the present by two routes, that of the past
and that of the future.
--Lamennais, Correspondence, II, 378.
Which is to say
To
Morrow
May
Fly
Away
To
Day
Already
Yesterday.
Recently Linked: My thanks to an old, good friend and wonderful poet, Bob Arnold, for providing a link to my blog at A Longhouse Birdhouse. Always something to read here, all of it worthwhile and, if I may say so, nothing for the birds!
Monday, February 15, 2010
Dirge
Playing it
Doleful,
Sorrowful,
Full of woe,
Full of rue,
Full of row
Upon row
Of sallow faces
Facing the music,
Playing it dreadfully,
Playing it dreadfully
Cool.
Doleful,
Sorrowful,
Full of woe,
Full of rue,
Full of row
Upon row
Of sallow faces
Facing the music,
Playing it dreadfully,
Playing it dreadfully
Cool.
Saturday, February 13, 2010
Flower, Children
Senescent, almost out of sight,
Nothing’s left on the horizon but one
Thin mauve ribbon tied to the dying light.
Friday, February 12, 2010
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Aubade Duly Noted Somewhere in the Dark Recesses of the Mind
Master, I’m here
Because I thought
I heard a bell.
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
With Face to the Wall: Selected Poems of Miltos Sahtouris
With Face to the Wall: Selected Poems of Miltos Sahtouris, Translation and Introduction by Kimon Friar, Washington, The Charioteer Press, 1968, (40pp, First Edition, 300 copies, sadly out of print for eons). Another book I have no recollection of buying, but the frontispiece does have a telltale $1.50 penciled in up in the right-hand corner, so I must have bought it somewhere, but where? Ah, yes, now I remember and can see a hand writing something slowly on a faraway wall. . . . . . . . .
”From this private country, Sahtouris sends us the image-laden and blood-spattered reports of an explorer from what seems at first to be another planet. At times they read like the reports of a missionary, a doctor, a diagnostician, an astronaut, a saviour, and at times like the cryptic declarations of a Cumaean Sybil, the mad but prophetic utterances of a Cassandra. It is from all these, arranged in chronological order, that I have chosen, icon after icon, the strange, obsessed, neurotic, yet nostalgic poems of Miltos Sahtouris, which, we begin to realize, reflect our own world like underwater traceries of our most familiar objects: The Forgotten Woman, 1945; Ballads, 1948; With Face to the Wall; 1952; When I Speak to You, 1956; The Phantoms or Joy in the Other Street, 1958; The Stroll, 1960; The Stigmata, 1962, The Seal or The Eighth Moon, 1964.
Perhaps the title of his third book best describes the stance and perspective that Miltos Sahtouris has taken: With Face to the Wall. His rigidity in that position is suggestive of many causes and many effects. It is that of a small child who has been placed in a corner facing a wall by parent or teacher. He stands there, not quite understanding why he is being punished, but beginning to feel, as time lapses into time, that he must indeed have been guilty of some great sin, some unspeakable crime. The only recourse of the child is to shut his eyes tight and fly off into a world of his own fantastic compensation. It is also a position taken on his own volition by a man in early youth who deliberately turns his back on the world that he may gaze into it more piercingly. The wall on which he now stares with a third, inner eye, is that which separates lover from lover, husband from wife, friend from friend, nation from nation, no matter of what material it is composed: iron, bamboo, silk, stone, invisible glass, or yielding air. It is at once barrier and barricade, stronghold and iron cage, prison and asylum wall. It is the Wailing Wall where every minority group—and whose numbers are more depleted than those of the true poets?—bewails its fate and thus the fate of all individuals and of all nations. And it is finally that wall in Greece during the German-Italian Occupation of the early 1940s against which—as against all similar walls throughout the world—men, women, and children, poets among them (as in Spain), were ruthlessly propped up as hostages and shot down by rifle and machinegun fire. It is a nightmare world of Hitler and Hiroshima that makes the distorted and dislocated images of Sahtouris seem but pale depictions of actual events. He belongs to the postwar generation of poets who had seen the whitewashed walls of Greece suddenly splattered red, and all his poetry has been colored by this terror. . . one word colors all of his poetry: blood.
It would be correct to say that Sahtouris did not at first choose of his own free will to stand with his face to the wall. Like most of us during the past two generations, he was placed there first by parent, priest, or teacher for punishment, or out of original sin, then by the enemy, and finally by some Kafkaesque tribunal of the universe, unknown and mysterious. It was only later that he recognized his personal wounds as the stigmata of the entire world’s guilt. Like Maria, in the poem by that name, when everybody began to speak through him unbearably, as through a medium, he took refuge by beginning to fly in imagination round and round a room that was both prison and escape, for, as he writes in ‘The Saviour,’ ‘every room is an open wound.’ . . .In his early verses, image follows image without logical intent, as in the naturally surrealist world of childhood, evoking, in their totality, worlds of alienation, agony, lost innocence, love betrayed, fear, anxiety, guilt. It would be futile in many of these poems, and in the whole of Sahtouris’ work, to attempt any thoroughly logical deduction or sequential exegesis. ‘My poetry is many things which elude me,’ he once told me [Friar], ‘and which I do not understand. And if I did understand, I would not wish to reveal it.’ . . . His belief is that poetry, no matter how shattering, may transform tragedy by shaping it into the ordered beauty of image and cadence. He sprinkles ugliness with beauty, casts a shadow spray of colors among his gaping images, wants every spring to be judged by its own gladness, nails us to the pavement that we may admire the celestial advertisements, transforms mundane reality into cinematic art that defies death until one day, he declares, we may ‘pass through the black burning hole of the sun’”. [from Friar’s indispensible, probing, eye-opening, excellent Introduction]
Celebrated in many countries around the globe (the US not included) as one of the previous century’s outstanding poets, Miltos Sahtouris was born in Athens in 1919 and died there in 2005. Living in a world all his own, a world of inner consistency, he never traveled beyond the boundaries of Greece; in fact, he rarely left his Athens neighborhood, restricting his contacts with the world outside his small apartment in the suburb of Kypseli to a small circle of friends. Slow in being accepted by older, more conservative readers, primarily because his work was not adequately appreciated by the generation of poets preceding him, he nevertheless continues to be read avidly by a younger generation of Greeks. Readers of this blog who wish to read more of his work in English translation are kindly redirected to this link which is a 52-page PDF document containing some of his finest poems.
[SIX POEMS BY MILTOS SAHTOURIS]
EXPERIMENTS FOR THE REPITITION OF NIGHT
My friends are leaving
they have come to say goodbye
I shall never see my friends again
one of them is leaving for the adjacent room
his face turned black
he wore a dark green material
night has fallen
he no longer speaks
the other is leaving for the other room
to find pins
first however he hid himself behind the curtains
he became frightened
afterwards he climbed on the window
to sleep
the other took off his shoes
with trembling hands
he took them to warm
the statue
he took it into the bedroom
he does not know how to make it stand upright
my friends have gone far away
I shall not see my friends
again
THE SCENE
On the table they had placed upright
a head of clay
they had decorated their walls
with flowers
on the bed they had cut out of paper
two erotic bodies
on the floor snakes scurried
and butterflies
a huge dog kept guard
in the corner
Strings stretched across the room
from all sides
it would be imprudent for anyone
to pull them
one of the strings pushed the bodies
to make love
The unhappiness outside
clawed the doors
MARIA
Maria was pensively
taking off her stockings
Out of her body
voices rose of other human beings
that of a soldier who spoke like a bird
that of a sick man who had died from sheep pains
and the weeping of a small niece of Maria’s
who in these past few days had just been born
Maria wept and wept
now Maria laughed
at night she spread out her hands
with her legs wide open
Afterwards her eyes darkened
black black opaque they darkened
The radio played
Maria wept
Maria wept
The radio played
Then Maria
slowly slowly opened her arms
and began to fly
round and round the room
LIFE
Night
in a pharmacy
a kneeling
horse
eats
the floorboards
a girl
with a strange
green
burn
is being healed
while the ghost
in despair
weeps
in the corner
THE STATION
In memory of Guillaume Apollinaire
In my sleep it is always raining
my dreams fill with mud
there is a dark landscape
and I am waiting for a train
the stationmaster gathers daisies
which have sprouted amid the rails
because no train has come
to this station for a long time
and the years have suddenly passed
I sit behind a windowpane
my hair and beard have grown long
as though I were very ill
and as sleep once more takes me
she comes slowly slowly
she holds a knife in her hands
she approaches me carefully
and plunges the knife in my right eye
Monday, February 8, 2010
Sunday, February 7, 2010
Sic Transit Gloria Sunday
Fleeting landscape art on a mountain in Arcadia, one sunny Sunday, early spring, 2003: My wife and I are posing over a poem composed of pebbles placed on a “quilt” of slowly melting snow somewhere near the spot where—according to Robert Graves by way of Polybius and Pausanias—Zeus was born, namely Mt. Lykaion (alt 1420m), “where no creature casts a shadow,” at the confluence of the states of Ilia, Arcadia and Messinia and a scant few kilometers from the source of the Neda River, where the newborn god was bathed by his mother, Rhea. Though it was frozen in time by the photographer’s art, “Snow Quilts” melted within a half hour after this photograph was taken, and thus deservedly remains to this day (a rainy one, by the way) my shortest, most evanescent poem.
Friday, February 5, 2010
Thursday, February 4, 2010
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Pandemonium
I thought I’d seen it all before
That spring day that spirited, frisky
Kid frolicked into school on all fours,
Gamboling through the halls
Of knowledge, all hell breaking loose
Before the dumbstruck pupils
And their all-seeing teacher finally
Got smart, chased the demon away.
That spring day that spirited, frisky
Kid frolicked into school on all fours,
Gamboling through the halls
Of knowledge, all hell breaking loose
Before the dumbstruck pupils
And their all-seeing teacher finally
Got smart, chased the demon away.
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Hard Times All Around, Poets
What the dickens—
Rotting but not quite
In cold hell, nor in thicket,
Burnt-out magpies scavenging
Black chimney smudges
On ashen-tiled rooftops.
Rotting but not quite
In cold hell, nor in thicket,
Burnt-out magpies scavenging
Black chimney smudges
On ashen-tiled rooftops.
Monday, February 1, 2010
Cross My Heart, Hope to Die
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Primeval Evasive Action in the Asphalt Jungle
mind you
(like this lone black cat stealing through dark
culvert under low bridge under construction
regarding man as clear and present danger
freezes momentarily before turning)
maneuvering way back
(like this lone black cat stealing through dark
culvert under low bridge under construction
regarding man as clear and present danger
freezes momentarily before turning)
maneuvering way back
Friday, January 29, 2010
Resolve
Our hamlet’s unending conundrum:
If the quest to find one’s self is nothing
But tedious, bothersome, humdrum—
As some infinite jesters would have us believe—
Why does one find himself coming back
Ad infinitum?
If the quest to find one’s self is nothing
But tedious, bothersome, humdrum—
As some infinite jesters would have us believe—
Why does one find himself coming back
Ad infinitum?
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Seer
—for Eleni, who saw it all from the start
If I still call my wife
Cassandra
After all these years,
It’s not
Because she’s foretold what will happen
Tomorrow, the next day, week, month or year—
We all know no one can do that, right?
But because when I see the incredible
Light in her eyes as she tells me
Dream after dream, I still can’t
Believe how it was
I foresaw my future.
If I still call my wife
Cassandra
After all these years,
It’s not
Because she’s foretold what will happen
Tomorrow, the next day, week, month or year—
We all know no one can do that, right?
But because when I see the incredible
Light in her eyes as she tells me
Dream after dream, I still can’t
Believe how it was
I foresaw my future.
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
After Porchia, All Over Again
All things happen in an instant—
Even when nothing seems to happen
Over a thousand instances,
It’s over
In no time at all.
Even when nothing seems to happen
Over a thousand instances,
It’s over
In no time at all.
Monday, January 25, 2010
Getting the Picture
How dark
Unseen forces behind that will
Color it accordingly
To how many lies remain
Exposed to the light.
Unseen forces behind that will
Color it accordingly
To how many lies remain
Exposed to the light.
Sunday, January 24, 2010
A Test of Poetry: Charles Bernstein's Artifice of Absorption vs Davy Jones' Liquid Assets
Whatever the drift may have been,
I always say I am a professor of poetry, I profess poetry; think of me as a snake-oil salesman, a confidence man: I don’t want to test your accumulated knowledge; I want to convince you of the value of poetry as a method, as a way of writing, as a form of vision. . . . .
By the time it took us to absorb it,
. . . . .poetry is the ultimate small business, requiring a careful keeping of accounts to stay afloat.
We’d already been taken in.
I always say I am a professor of poetry, I profess poetry; think of me as a snake-oil salesman, a confidence man: I don’t want to test your accumulated knowledge; I want to convince you of the value of poetry as a method, as a way of writing, as a form of vision. . . . .
By the time it took us to absorb it,
. . . . .poetry is the ultimate small business, requiring a careful keeping of accounts to stay afloat.
We’d already been taken in.
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Knee-high to a Grasshopper
Jiminy Cricket! That was me
When my legs were heading
Into the final stretch.
Never figured out why
They had to up and stop
Dead in their tracks
Soon as they came to
The nearest knee patch.
When my legs were heading
Into the final stretch.
Never figured out why
They had to up and stop
Dead in their tracks
Soon as they came to
The nearest knee patch.
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Raiding the Cookie Jar
You gotta hand it to him—
The dude never lost his cool
Wondering how it was this hot
Momma kept popping
Pan after pan in her oven
So that poppa could also
Put his hand in whenever
He moseyed on back.
The dude never lost his cool
Wondering how it was this hot
Momma kept popping
Pan after pan in her oven
So that poppa could also
Put his hand in whenever
He moseyed on back.
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Tzivaeri (Jewel)
Τζιβαέρι (Traditional Greek song of immigration) Please scroll down for English translation and accompanying video.
Αχ! Η ξενιτειά το χαίρεται
Τζιβαέρι μου
Το μοσχολούλουδο μου
σιγανά και ταπεινά
Αχ! Εγώ ήμουνα που το ‘στειλα
Τζιβαέρι μου
Με θέλημα δικό μου
σιγανά πατώ στη γη
Αχ! Πανάθεμά σε ξενιτειά
Τζιβαέρι μου
Εσέ και το καλό σου
σιγανά και ταπεινά
Αχ! Που πήρες το παιδάκι μου
Τζιβαέρι μου
και το ‘κανες δικό σου
σιγανά πατώ στη γη
English translation
Tzivaeri (Jewel)
Ah! Foreign lands delight in her
My Tzivaeri
My beautiful, sweet-smelling flower
Softly and humbly
Ah! I was the one who sent her there
My Tzivaeri
As I wished it so
Softly do I walk upon on the earth
Ah! Damn you, foreign lands
My Tzivaeri
You and your goodness too
Softly and humbly
Ah! That you took my little child
My Tzivaeri
And made her yours
Softly do I walk upon the earth
(rush translation by Vazambam)
Probably the most popular (and perhaps the most poignant) traditional Greek song dealing with the theme of immigration; in this impromptu video recorded during a rehearsal last summer in Tacoma, Washington, our daughter Efiniki is accompanied by The Makedonians.
Tzivaeri--a surprise, name day gift post for our spirited jewel of a daughter, who celebrates her name(s) twice a year—one on January 20th as Efi=Efthimia and the other on December 6th as Niki=Nicholas—what a winning combination! My thanks to the unknown artist who recorded the video but who unfortunately captured my tzivaeri singing only the last two stanzas. No matter. For someone so far away from a loved one, this video is definitely sweet, poignant music.
Afterword: For those in the vicinity of Tacoma, you can hear The Makedonians and Efiniki this coming Saturday, January 23, here. Check it out and don't forget to shout "Ohpa, manges!"
Αχ! Η ξενιτειά το χαίρεται
Τζιβαέρι μου
Το μοσχολούλουδο μου
σιγανά και ταπεινά
Αχ! Εγώ ήμουνα που το ‘στειλα
Τζιβαέρι μου
Με θέλημα δικό μου
σιγανά πατώ στη γη
Αχ! Πανάθεμά σε ξενιτειά
Τζιβαέρι μου
Εσέ και το καλό σου
σιγανά και ταπεινά
Αχ! Που πήρες το παιδάκι μου
Τζιβαέρι μου
και το ‘κανες δικό σου
σιγανά πατώ στη γη
English translation
Tzivaeri (Jewel)
Ah! Foreign lands delight in her
My Tzivaeri
My beautiful, sweet-smelling flower
Softly and humbly
Ah! I was the one who sent her there
My Tzivaeri
As I wished it so
Softly do I walk upon on the earth
Ah! Damn you, foreign lands
My Tzivaeri
You and your goodness too
Softly and humbly
Ah! That you took my little child
My Tzivaeri
And made her yours
Softly do I walk upon the earth
(rush translation by Vazambam)
Probably the most popular (and perhaps the most poignant) traditional Greek song dealing with the theme of immigration; in this impromptu video recorded during a rehearsal last summer in Tacoma, Washington, our daughter Efiniki is accompanied by The Makedonians.
Tzivaeri--a surprise, name day gift post for our spirited jewel of a daughter, who celebrates her name(s) twice a year—one on January 20th as Efi=Efthimia and the other on December 6th as Niki=Nicholas—what a winning combination! My thanks to the unknown artist who recorded the video but who unfortunately captured my tzivaeri singing only the last two stanzas. No matter. For someone so far away from a loved one, this video is definitely sweet, poignant music.
Afterword: For those in the vicinity of Tacoma, you can hear The Makedonians and Efiniki this coming Saturday, January 23, here. Check it out and don't forget to shout "Ohpa, manges!"
Monday, January 18, 2010
The Figure of the Poet as Virile Hunter
Should he hit his mark,
The sharp-
Shooting hunter kills
The boar, if not
The bore kills us all.
The sharp-
Shooting hunter kills
The boar, if not
The bore kills us all.
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Bittersweet
Oh pray
Let us wallow like pigs in the mire
Of our sweet madness, unsatiated
In our desire, our eyes feasting on
The sanity of a world gone sour.
Let us wallow like pigs in the mire
Of our sweet madness, unsatiated
In our desire, our eyes feasting on
The sanity of a world gone sour.
Friday, January 15, 2010
Aeolian Mode
O spirit behind the proscenium,
What manner of being first heard
The imperceptible
Rustling of reeds before
The curtain motioned,
Calling the woodwinds back?
What manner of being first heard
The imperceptible
Rustling of reeds before
The curtain motioned,
Calling the woodwinds back?
Thursday, January 14, 2010
The Slings of Outrageous Fortune
The Lawless Years: Urchins on their home turf, armed to the teeth and dressed to kill, First Street, Raymond, Washington, 1949.
From left to right, Billy (Squint-eyed Kid) Zambaras, 6 years old, flaunting his intimidating, fearsome mien in the face of the blinding, winter light; Christos (Ladybird Killer) Zambaras, 11, notorious for disarming birds by flipping them the peace sign with his right hand just before slinging the fatal shot at them with his left; Angie (Turkey-Diddle-I-Them) Buttrick, 13, lanky lobber whose favorite targets were the rear ends of drunk loggers, truckers and longshoremen staggering out of his grandma’s saloon.
As mentioned by Hoyle in his groundbreaking study, The Evolution of Slingshots in the United States and Their Role in Intimidating Stoolpigeons while Keeping a Poker Face, these three infamous Greek-American punks were the forerunners of inner city gangs that later terrorized urban America, as they were the first to successfully employ the now-classic dictum adopted by so many zealous professionals from all walks of life: “Never Get Caught Playing According to the Rules,” or its better-known, more overwhelming, poetical manifestation favored by so many of our back-watching, self-righteous politicians, to wit “Ex-Lax Slanderer":
Sling shit
Sling shat
Sling ass
Whole shot.
NB: These tatterdemalions were also among the first to introduce hodgepodge raiment, which became so popular in the latter half of the previous century--notice the chaotic, albeit exquisite juxtaposition of haberdashery covering Squint-eyed Kid's frame--not to mention the patent rubber galoshes perfect for sloshing through muddy puddles just before heading back home to headquarters.
NBB: Unfortunately, the only gang member still living is The Squint-eyed Kid, who had the good fortune at the tender age of 27 to escape from Life in the Clutches of America. He is now happily married living the Life of Riley in his beloved Hellas and still thinking seriously of writing his poetic Magnum Opus, "I Was a Gunsel Who Killed Mockingbirds for the Thrill of It."
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Rimbaud Redux
Taking off
On Verlaine’s cherubim, an angelic gun-
Running rum-soaked poet popping
Double doses of spiked Double Bubble gum.
On Verlaine’s cherubim, an angelic gun-
Running rum-soaked poet popping
Double doses of spiked Double Bubble gum.
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Kraft's Classic TV Commercial "I've Got Six Seconds to Sing" Remixed Expressly for Poetasters
Try craft’s pottage sleaze,
You’ll love it, jeez, poets love it—
Try craft’s pottage sleaze!
You’ll love it, jeez, poets love it—
Try craft’s pottage sleaze!
Monday, January 11, 2010
Bestiality in the Bestiary
Oh, my God!
Daemons fornicating with all manner
Of lowly beasts and almighty Zeus
On top of it all!
Daemons fornicating with all manner
Of lowly beasts and almighty Zeus
On top of it all!
Sunday, January 10, 2010
George Oppen and Anastasios G. Zambaras
Two of my favorite faces in silent conversation.
I took my father’s picture in 1969, the same year George Oppen won the Pulitzer; each time I pick up this ancient, dog-eared copy of his Collected Poems, I am struck by how much he resembles my father and vice-versa. I also find myself wondering if this resemblance had anything to do with my first being attracted to Oppen’s poetry when I was a grad student at the University of Washington in the early 70s. Whatever the reason, I consider myself fortunate for having had these two mentors as beacons that helped me find my way in a world notorious for making people feel lost.
Saturday, January 9, 2010
Friday, January 8, 2010
Remedy
“No ideas but in things”
--William Carlos Williams, MD
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Still having trouble digesting
The good doc’s dictum?
Picture yourself eating a Lotus fruit.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
All done? Good. Now imagine all
The things you’ve tasted,
And never thought of again.
--William Carlos Williams, MD
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Still having trouble digesting
The good doc’s dictum?
Picture yourself eating a Lotus fruit.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
All done? Good. Now imagine all
The things you’ve tasted,
And never thought of again.
Thursday, January 7, 2010
The Lion's Tail and Eyes
Recently rediscovered and enriched: The Lion’s Tail and Eyes, Poems written out of laziness and silence, by James Wright, William Duffy, and Robert Bly, The Sixties Press, 1962. With a subtitle like that who could resist such a book? Purchased at A Different Drummer Bookstore on Broadway, Seattle, Washington when I was a grad student at the UW (1970-72), this slim (45pp) volume was a real find even back then—and a real bargain ($1)!*
From Bly’s introductory note:
“One purpose of poetry is to forget about what you know, and think about what you don’t know. There is an old idea that only by leaving the body can a man think. Such a leaving concerns the body of knowledge as well as the physical body. After all, as Montale says, if the purpose of poetry lay in making oneself understood, there would be no purpose in writing it.”…….
“The fundamental world of poetry…..is the inward world. The poem expresses what we are just beginning to think, thoughts we have not yet thought. The poem must catch these thoughts alive, holding them in language that is also alive, flexible and animal-alike as they.
The poem with images is therefore like a lion about to come into existence. A person meets the poem among trees at night. On the path in front of him, he sees a lion who does not know he is there. The lion is changing from his old ancient substance back into a visible body. So far the tip of the tail, the ears, the eyes, and perhaps a paw or two have come.”
This great little volume begins with one of James Wright’s best-known poems, “Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota”:
Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly,
Asleep on the black trunk,
Blowing like a leaf in green shadow.
Down the ravine behind the empty house,
The cowbells follow one another
Into the distances of the afternoon.
To my right,
In a field of sunlight, between two pines,
The droppings of last year’s horses
Blaze up into golden stones.
I lean back, as the evening darkens and comes on.
A chicken-hawk floats over, looking for home.
I have wasted my life.
*Being naturally curious, I checked to see what this book is currently selling for: $100+, so it was a real bargain after all!
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
Monday, January 4, 2010
Friday, January 1, 2010
Zukofsky's Last “Poem Beginning 'I'”
I swear I’ll never write another but
Should I try, cross my heart, let me lie.
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