Ed. Ulla Dydo
No time, no space, no center, standard, or authority. Stein wrote in a world changed by Einstein and even more by Heisenberg and Schrodinger. She knew she was one of them, constructing for words what they had constructed for quantum mechanics. On 25 May 1928 Dorothy Dudley Harvey wrote to stein from New York...Harvey described Stein with a quotation from Russell ["Physics and Metaphysics"] as a visionary in the world of the new physics.
"Nowadays, physicists, the most hard-headed of mankind...have embodied in their technique this insubstantiality which some of the metaphysicians have so long urged in vain."
In connection with grammar I thought at once of you, and wondered, knowing little about them, if you have not been one of the metaphysicians as an artist, with whom the physicists have just caught up.
“... poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence. It forms the quality of the light within which we predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change, first made into language, then into idea, then into more tangible action. Poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought. The farthest horizons of our hopes and fears are cobbled by our poems, carved from the rock experiences of our daily lives.” --Audre Lorde
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Friday, March 26, 2010
from "Things to Do Today"
by Joe Wenderoth
1. thaw the wounded
7. decrease the drama to the point of gesture, phrase, a weathered and weathering yard
10. organize and dispense an imperceptible the
19. determine the cause of the cause
22. set the famous criminals free
26. make the beautiful go to work
37. prepare the eyes for the oncoming absence of voices
42. produce a striking likeness of any one unproductive moment
53. clarify a morning posture
59. insist on the sad waste at the heart of all honest work
70. control the urge to farm
75. rehabilitate the truth tellers
77. practice saying something
79. try to fluster the bulk of language with the idea of buried faces
80. discontinue the breadth of the applicable horizon
87. mimic the open area
90. post signs indicating relevant battlefields
92. make the faithful look at us
93. weep new syllables
1. thaw the wounded
7. decrease the drama to the point of gesture, phrase, a weathered and weathering yard
10. organize and dispense an imperceptible the
19. determine the cause of the cause
22. set the famous criminals free
26. make the beautiful go to work
37. prepare the eyes for the oncoming absence of voices
42. produce a striking likeness of any one unproductive moment
53. clarify a morning posture
59. insist on the sad waste at the heart of all honest work
70. control the urge to farm
75. rehabilitate the truth tellers
77. practice saying something
79. try to fluster the bulk of language with the idea of buried faces
80. discontinue the breadth of the applicable horizon
87. mimic the open area
90. post signs indicating relevant battlefields
92. make the faithful look at us
93. weep new syllables
"54. sing of eyes freezing, thighs giving birth, what have you"
--Joe Wenderoth, "Things to Do Today"
have not into cold
a flash of cutting crisp
in the dead
of terror
shivers what freezing
birth white frost
giving new
slide screech shatter
finger
nails
lengthen scratch a
formidable horizon falls
into disrepair regard
silences in flesh
composed sweet
notes ring
fast
--Joe Wenderoth, "Things to Do Today"
have not into cold
a flash of cutting crisp
in the dead
of terror
shivers what freezing
birth white frost
giving new
slide screech shatter
finger
nails
lengthen scratch a
formidable horizon falls
into disrepair regard
silences in flesh
composed sweet
notes ring
fast
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
from Don't Let Me Be Lonely
by Claudia Rankine
Define loneliness?
Yes.
It’s what we can’t do for each other.
What do we mean to each other?
What does a life mean?
Why are we here if not for each other? (62)
Define loneliness?
Yes.
It’s what we can’t do for each other.
What do we mean to each other?
What does a life mean?
Why are we here if not for each other? (62)
relates
“Of this kind is the distinction betwixt figure
and the body figur’d; motion and the body mov’d.”
--David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature
your marble sphere my box
dimensional
the words laid one on top
across
broken letters
an articulation of history through space
on the page
who was defeated
whose artifacts
weapons
kiss me present tense against shining marble
does not move
its form holding together
molecules
straddling
how much means
across letters objects
viewed from every direction
will not simply show and tell
and the body figur’d; motion and the body mov’d.”
--David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature
your marble sphere my box
dimensional
the words laid one on top
across
broken letters
an articulation of history through space
on the page
who was defeated
whose artifacts
weapons
kiss me present tense against shining marble
does not move
its form holding together
molecules
straddling
how much means
across letters objects
viewed from every direction
will not simply show and tell
sustain sun in through the window unexpected listening masks a visual sensation narrates the lines set against her, can you tell me how and in what manner? not angry but potential, under the surface, bare tree branches of the inconceivable. hope has feathers you know, little else. concrete array of vocabulary intoned against, detour instead, storms lingering. grey orange mix with silent refrain—repeat and hold back—the coloring texture noisy scattered maneuvering. the body impulse, intoxication, monologues of manic silence.
Friday, March 05, 2010
from "Poetry is Not a Luxury"
by Audre Lorde
If what we need to dream, to move our spirits most deeply and directly toward and through promise, is discounted as a luxury, then we give up the core--the fountain--of our power, our womanness; we give up the future of our worlds.
For there are no new ideas. There are only new ways of making them felt--of examining what those ideas feel like being lived on Sunday morning at 7am, after brunch, during wild love, making war, giving birth, mourning our dead--while we suffer the old longings, battle the old warnings and fears of being silent and impotent and alone, while we taste new possibilities and strengths.
If what we need to dream, to move our spirits most deeply and directly toward and through promise, is discounted as a luxury, then we give up the core--the fountain--of our power, our womanness; we give up the future of our worlds.
For there are no new ideas. There are only new ways of making them felt--of examining what those ideas feel like being lived on Sunday morning at 7am, after brunch, during wild love, making war, giving birth, mourning our dead--while we suffer the old longings, battle the old warnings and fears of being silent and impotent and alone, while we taste new possibilities and strengths.
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