A STEP AWAY FROM THEM (1956)
It's my lunch hour, so I go
for a walk among the hum-colored
cabs. First, down the sidewalk
where laborers feed their dirty
glistening torsos sandwiches
and Coca-Cola, with yellow helmets
on. They protect them from falling
bricks, I guess. Then onto the
avenue where skirts are flipping
above heels and blow up over
grates. The sun is hot, but the
cabs stir up the air. I look
at bargains in wristwatches. There
are cats playing in sawdust.
On
to Times Square, where the sign
blows smoke over my head, and higher
the waterfall pours lightly. A
Negro stands in a doorway with a
toothpick, languorously agitating.
A blonde chorus girl clicks: he
smiles and rubs his chin. Everything
suddenly honks: it is 12:40 of
a Thursday.
Neon in daylight is a
great pleasure, as Edwin Denby would
write, as are light bulbs in daylight.
I stop for a cheeseburger at JULIET'S
CORNER. Giulietta Masina, wife of
Federico Fellini, è bell' attrice.
And chocolate malted. A lady in
foxes on such a day puts her poodle
in a cab.
There are several Puerto
Ricans on the avenue today, which
makes it beautiful and warm. First
Bunny died, then John Latouche,
then Jackson Pollock. But is the
earth as full as life was full, of them?
And one has eaten and one walks,
past the magazines with nudes
and the posters for BULLFIGHT and
the Manhattan Storage Warehouse,
which they'll soon tear down. I
used to think they had the Armory
Show there.
A glass of papaya juice
and back to work. My heart is in my
pocket, it is Poems by Pierre Reverdy.
[1956]
Sunday, January 25, 2009
a poem for the day by Frank O'Hara
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Friday, January 16, 2009
from Audre Lorde's Sister Outsider
from "Poetry is not a Luxury"
For women, then, 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.
Poetry is not only dream and vision; it is the skeleton architecture of our lives. It lays the foundations for a future of change, a bridge across our fears of what has never been before.
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.
For women, then, 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.
Poetry is not only dream and vision; it is the skeleton architecture of our lives. It lays the foundations for a future of change, a bridge across our fears of what has never been before.
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.
Wednesday, January 07, 2009
review of begin with may
See Michelle's review of my begin with may: a series of moments:
Michelle Naka Pierce: no use in a centre
Michelle Naka Pierce: no use in a centre
Thursday, January 01, 2009
from Tender Buttons by G. Stein
A CARAFE, THAT IS A BLIND GLASS.
A kind in glass and a cousin, a spectacle and nothing strange a single hurt color and an arrangement in a system to pointing. All this and not ordinary, not unordered in not resembling. The difference is spreading.
NOTHING ELEGANT.
A charm a single charm is doubtful. If the red is rose and there is a gate surrounding it, if inside is let in and there places change then certainly something is upright. It is earnest.
A RED HAT.
A dark grey, a very dark grey, a quite dark grey is monstrous ordinarily, it is so monstrous because there is no red in it. If red is in everything it is not necessary. Is that not an argument for any use of it and even so is there any place that is better, is there any place that has so much stretched out.
A kind in glass and a cousin, a spectacle and nothing strange a single hurt color and an arrangement in a system to pointing. All this and not ordinary, not unordered in not resembling. The difference is spreading.
NOTHING ELEGANT.
A charm a single charm is doubtful. If the red is rose and there is a gate surrounding it, if inside is let in and there places change then certainly something is upright. It is earnest.
A RED HAT.
A dark grey, a very dark grey, a quite dark grey is monstrous ordinarily, it is so monstrous because there is no red in it. If red is in everything it is not necessary. Is that not an argument for any use of it and even so is there any place that is better, is there any place that has so much stretched out.
Monday, December 15, 2008
Saturday, December 13, 2008
from Lisa Jarnot's poem Whole Hog
after Barrett Watten and for Thomas
1.
The pig is complete.
Barns demand limits.
2.
Pigs fall down to create drama.
The materials are hoof.
3.
Daylight accumulates in work yards.
Farm hands substitute for suns.
...
44.
Flora stand up to fauna.
Science gives features to the world.
45.
Another tractor is invented.
They sniff it like a dog in heat.
46.
Plows fit into a perspective.
Photos of piglets cover the earth.
1.
The pig is complete.
Barns demand limits.
2.
Pigs fall down to create drama.
The materials are hoof.
3.
Daylight accumulates in work yards.
Farm hands substitute for suns.
...
44.
Flora stand up to fauna.
Science gives features to the world.
45.
Another tractor is invented.
They sniff it like a dog in heat.
46.
Plows fit into a perspective.
Photos of piglets cover the earth.
Thursday, December 11, 2008
Laura Riding
"The World and I"
This is not exactly what I mean
Any more than the sun is the sun.
But how to mean more closely
If the sun shines but approximately?
What a world of awkwardness!
What hostile implements of sense!
Perhaps this is as close a meaning
as perhaps becomes such knowing.
Else I think the world and I
Must live together as strangers and die
A sour love, each doubtful whether
Was ever a thing to love the other.
No, better for both to be nearly sure
Each of each - exactly where
Exactly as I and exactly the world
Fail to meet by a moment, and a word.
This is not exactly what I mean
Any more than the sun is the sun.
But how to mean more closely
If the sun shines but approximately?
What a world of awkwardness!
What hostile implements of sense!
Perhaps this is as close a meaning
as perhaps becomes such knowing.
Else I think the world and I
Must live together as strangers and die
A sour love, each doubtful whether
Was ever a thing to love the other.
No, better for both to be nearly sure
Each of each - exactly where
Exactly as I and exactly the world
Fail to meet by a moment, and a word.
Friday, December 05, 2008
from Claudia Rankine's Don't Let Me be Lonely
Sometimes I think it is sentimental, or excessive, certainly not intellectual, or perhaps too naive, too self-wounded to value each life like that, to feel loss to the point of being bent over each time. There is no innovating loss. It was never invented, it happened as something physical, something physically experienced. It is not something an "I" discusses socially. Though Myung Mu Kim did say that the poem is really a responsibility to everyone in a social space. She did say it was okay to cramp, to clog, to fold over at the gut, to have to put hand to flesh, to have to hold the pain, and then to translate it here. She did say, in so many words, that what alerts, alters.
Sometimes I think it is sentimental, or excessive, certainly not intellectual, or perhaps too naive, too self-wounded to value each life like that, to feel loss to the point of being bent over each time. There is no innovating loss. It was never invented, it happened as something physical, something physically experienced. It is not something an "I" discusses socially. Though Myung Mu Kim did say that the poem is really a responsibility to everyone in a social space. She did say it was okay to cramp, to clog, to fold over at the gut, to have to put hand to flesh, to have to hold the pain, and then to translate it here. She did say, in so many words, that what alerts, alters.
Friday, November 14, 2008
moving through
after listening to Renee Gladman talk about narrative and writing fiction
nearness and the difficulty of arriving
placement
deferral
She intended to follow the lines on pavement
broken, faded, yet leading, or potential,
marking first the potential--and then
later realized--journey.
spatialize
miscommunicate
the space of the city bears the weight
Around one corner, and then another, the simple
whiteness of the line, like a shadow, not determined,
constructed and fading, nearly transparent, directive yet
diminishing toward total possibility.
a state of mind
something is not the way it might be
One block, a building so tall, blocking the sky.
One block, the smell of fried beef.
Each block making it difficult to remember having once
eaten. Another corner, wind whipping round like an
urban hurricane, covering her skin with layers
of grit, particles scratch out her eyes.
who are you, aren't you?
white space
slowness
reasonates
Having wandered off the line, what cannot always be
followed, what can no longer direct, orientate, circulate, each
corner marks the affect associated with each experience,
a coffee, cut of the wind, she sees them through the window,
imagines their mouths saying words in Portuguese, she
responds, the wind blowing away every language that she tries.
evoke
simultaneous
intention (unintentional)
Try this word in German. Listen in French. In Arabic the
subtitles linger for much longer than one expects--a short,
concise translation for so much language. The lines change,
move into the streets, no longer painted but built into the
structure, graph of bricks meeting curved lines in concrete.
The traffic ceasing to determine the pedestrian nature
of this city (scape).
conceptual, material, exercise
This, she decides, may be a continuous journey. Not of a day,
but of many days. Not of a language, but of the mingling of
words, vocabularies swirled like hot milk with caramel. Not of
a lined path but of paths textured with flavors, sweet for summer,
rich for understanding, acquaintance, the rewriting of history.
nearness and the difficulty of arriving
placement
deferral
She intended to follow the lines on pavement
broken, faded, yet leading, or potential,
marking first the potential--and then
later realized--journey.
spatialize
miscommunicate
the space of the city bears the weight
Around one corner, and then another, the simple
whiteness of the line, like a shadow, not determined,
constructed and fading, nearly transparent, directive yet
diminishing toward total possibility.
a state of mind
something is not the way it might be
One block, a building so tall, blocking the sky.
One block, the smell of fried beef.
Each block making it difficult to remember having once
eaten. Another corner, wind whipping round like an
urban hurricane, covering her skin with layers
of grit, particles scratch out her eyes.
who are you, aren't you?
white space
slowness
reasonates
Having wandered off the line, what cannot always be
followed, what can no longer direct, orientate, circulate, each
corner marks the affect associated with each experience,
a coffee, cut of the wind, she sees them through the window,
imagines their mouths saying words in Portuguese, she
responds, the wind blowing away every language that she tries.
evoke
simultaneous
intention (unintentional)
Try this word in German. Listen in French. In Arabic the
subtitles linger for much longer than one expects--a short,
concise translation for so much language. The lines change,
move into the streets, no longer painted but built into the
structure, graph of bricks meeting curved lines in concrete.
The traffic ceasing to determine the pedestrian nature
of this city (scape).
conceptual, material, exercise
This, she decides, may be a continuous journey. Not of a day,
but of many days. Not of a language, but of the mingling of
words, vocabularies swirled like hot milk with caramel. Not of
a lined path but of paths textured with flavors, sweet for summer,
rich for understanding, acquaintance, the rewriting of history.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
from Lipstick Jihad: a memoir of growing up Iranian in America and American in Iran
by Azadeh Moaveni
"What I wanted to explain...was that we had a moral obligation to care when awful things happened to people around us. That by treating beatings, lashings, or checkpoint arrests as common place--ordinary, like going to the ATM--we were becoming dehumanized to the sickness around us. A heightened threshold of suffering was necessary for getting through the day, but mentally, we had to retain some sort of perspective. Of how a functional government should behave. Of what was unacceptable. Otherwise, we would become like those blase reformists, who would look you in the eye, and say: "Look at how much progress we've made... See! I'm wearing short-sleeves...Could I have work short-sleeves ten years ago?...No!...What are you whining about human rights for? ...Aren't we better than the Taliban? Than the Saudis?" Yes, there would always be some junked, lost country we would be superior to, but that wasn't a proper ambition, was it?" (217)
"I had taken the first steps assured in myself, intent on discovering Iran, and I had eventually found that Iran, like the Simorgh, was elusive, that it defied being known. Its moods changed mercurially by the day, and even its past was a contested battle. Though with each day there I accumulated as many questions as answers, like those steadfast birds, something kept me honed on course, a belief in the obscured value of the destination. The knowledge had been unfurling in me slowly since the day Agha Joon's funeral--that the search for home, for Iran, had taken me not to a place but back to myself" (245).
"What I wanted to explain...was that we had a moral obligation to care when awful things happened to people around us. That by treating beatings, lashings, or checkpoint arrests as common place--ordinary, like going to the ATM--we were becoming dehumanized to the sickness around us. A heightened threshold of suffering was necessary for getting through the day, but mentally, we had to retain some sort of perspective. Of how a functional government should behave. Of what was unacceptable. Otherwise, we would become like those blase reformists, who would look you in the eye, and say: "Look at how much progress we've made... See! I'm wearing short-sleeves...Could I have work short-sleeves ten years ago?...No!...What are you whining about human rights for? ...Aren't we better than the Taliban? Than the Saudis?" Yes, there would always be some junked, lost country we would be superior to, but that wasn't a proper ambition, was it?" (217)
"I had taken the first steps assured in myself, intent on discovering Iran, and I had eventually found that Iran, like the Simorgh, was elusive, that it defied being known. Its moods changed mercurially by the day, and even its past was a contested battle. Though with each day there I accumulated as many questions as answers, like those steadfast birds, something kept me honed on course, a belief in the obscured value of the destination. The knowledge had been unfurling in me slowly since the day Agha Joon's funeral--that the search for home, for Iran, had taken me not to a place but back to myself" (245).
Friday, October 31, 2008
story
her hands the color of mediterranean olives oiled smooth young, nails jutting out of clear skin no lines no scratches no scars rich like changing tones of day
as she paints each move of the wrist fingers choreographed against the sound of color the brush circling sure hesitant marking every note across the page
sits, against a backdrop of anger and history thinking purple sketching lyric creating lines reaching out toward every horizon
how does she, one wonders, compose each line as if set to music without tone, coming together in the realm of present fragments turned whole, continuous
turning toward breathing deeply woven with layers of incarnation imagined possibilities in each shadow from the time before and into
as she paints each move of the wrist fingers choreographed against the sound of color the brush circling sure hesitant marking every note across the page
sits, against a backdrop of anger and history thinking purple sketching lyric creating lines reaching out toward every horizon
how does she, one wonders, compose each line as if set to music without tone, coming together in the realm of present fragments turned whole, continuous
turning toward breathing deeply woven with layers of incarnation imagined possibilities in each shadow from the time before and into
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
space, or the shape of a mango
a 20 (or so) line poem
the sound of fall cutting through, chainsaw against orange leaf
each grain layered like little chinese dragons
at the new year
the taste of buttered wine at lunch
smelling sweet like grapes pressed firm
chittering distant or the mosquito in my ear
scratched, to the bone
a piece of golden green, refracted, shadows shifting against each changed light
the clever taste of single voices, shimmering clear
not each grain but the particular flakes of wild, golden, rustling
a moving away from the understood glow
maneuver of an autumn
feel this, pig lipstick
the painting, disturbed by sound, broken, echoed
"that one"
the red wheelbarrow of hilarity
falling rocks scrape the insides of intuition
taste the root vegetables, one flavor at a time
chandelier
we will march toward the tree line and circle flowers made of teflon
each leaf laughing against blue
troubled wonder
the flavor of a shade
spliced on the wind
the sound of fall cutting through, chainsaw against orange leaf
each grain layered like little chinese dragons
at the new year
the taste of buttered wine at lunch
smelling sweet like grapes pressed firm
chittering distant or the mosquito in my ear
scratched, to the bone
a piece of golden green, refracted, shadows shifting against each changed light
the clever taste of single voices, shimmering clear
not each grain but the particular flakes of wild, golden, rustling
a moving away from the understood glow
maneuver of an autumn
feel this, pig lipstick
the painting, disturbed by sound, broken, echoed
"that one"
the red wheelbarrow of hilarity
falling rocks scrape the insides of intuition
taste the root vegetables, one flavor at a time
chandelier
we will march toward the tree line and circle flowers made of teflon
each leaf laughing against blue
troubled wonder
the flavor of a shade
spliced on the wind
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Saturday, October 25, 2008
Photos 2
Lines, by Don Brower
Color lines on rock, by Jill Darling
Fountain, by Jill Darling
Leaves 1, by Jill Darling
Leaves 2, by Jill DarlingSaturday, October 18, 2008
Kristin Prevallet
from [I, Afterlife] [Essay in Mourning Time]
The elegiac burden is the poem expressing, through the form it takes on the page, the broken minds which have shaped it. The poem is a state of both mind and landscape, and because it is not mappable, is capable of articulating a person's spatial distance. The poem, scratched out on the surface of the page, scratches then at the surface of the world "outside" of the poem. The success of this is articulating something difficult; perhaps even articulating something so well and so persuasively that readers are inspired to seek clarity in their relationship to loss, disappointment, or fear. The sadness of this is the difficulty of knowing that what the poem knows--or rather how it knows--will probably not change the world. And yet, people die every day from the lack of poetry in faith. In doubting the possibility of a tidy afterlife, I have come to compose a fragmented system of believing. I call this poetry.
The elegiac burden is the poem expressing, through the form it takes on the page, the broken minds which have shaped it. The poem is a state of both mind and landscape, and because it is not mappable, is capable of articulating a person's spatial distance. The poem, scratched out on the surface of the page, scratches then at the surface of the world "outside" of the poem. The success of this is articulating something difficult; perhaps even articulating something so well and so persuasively that readers are inspired to seek clarity in their relationship to loss, disappointment, or fear. The sadness of this is the difficulty of knowing that what the poem knows--or rather how it knows--will probably not change the world. And yet, people die every day from the lack of poetry in faith. In doubting the possibility of a tidy afterlife, I have come to compose a fragmented system of believing. I call this poetry.
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