in direction of our own vision

square orange practice a singular wooden misadjustment inkling ever toward marble founding foundational placed clearly around each moment, announced every minute speaking chamber she said willingly over and under each phrase, turned ever which way slightly and then something instigated, a curl, a turn, every particular timed flayed floating like a butterfly until the final knockout-- a shadow dances across the mat, making politics, calling out a name for determined and changing the metaphor of the glove, practical and enduring across each struggle or piece of rusted metal against skin

half-note

any display might advertise an indication, the grey against grey, atom-istic, level the distinction between, relation among or to: meter (poetry) beat (music), experiment with one or another, the logic(al) analogy

the implication
attended
re-tend
space or a history of escape and denial

alter each rose covered
chain
created especially for each
scented array

a series
of misfits
captured on film especially
tending
toward exactly
fitting in to
everything
else

Check It Out

Coconut Poetry Online

thinking of summer

how you may hold many faces
in one hand
the style of performance revolves
around a curl of hair an aroma
lips moistened just
in time for
an entrance
or exit in to any variety of wardrobes
(hide in and among)
a curl of
style like sweet
silk laden lengthened hanging
from trees
or fingers
crossed
around the notes
break through
one gesture (re)peated

Women and the UK Experimental/Avant-Garde Poetry Community

some old fiction or something

i'm going through some old work, thinking about compiling the various pieces of strange prose fiction or whatever genre you want to say, gathering things that came from somewhere and have otherwise sat around in the computer for some time... it's hard enough to publish strange poetry, what about strange prose... so i've just not thought much about sending much of this work out... i don't even know where to send it... though there are a few places that are a little less genre determinate such as Quarter After Eight... alas, the subtly implicit question, regarding how one does work one is inclined to do and also consider publishing as a necessary element to the ever getting a job situation, or, i'm tired of sending crap out only to get a multitude of crap rejections back in the mail... and i'm tired of the lectures on playing the game, being resilient and persistent, needing to have some connections in order to get work out there, whatever.... so here's a little ditty about mr. wilson:


Meatloaf is essentially interchangeable, with what? something thrown out entirely, silken and thank goodness for ever leaving the house getting away entirely and here we are burning teeth. cousin, watch out for cracked ice suddenly it may not be good not at all this time what is no good said obituary said this time we are searching for kindness. a woman she had mercy, walked the streets of mercy talked to the windows shopping for mercy thinking about how too many people are lacking these days lacking entirely. post: communion will be served at the 13th chime. Post: Mr. Wilson please report. Post: Lord have mercy. She sat down to feast, a brief intercession. Pray for me. Lead me to the light. To eat and a variety of blended vegetables. a variety. Thinking if only the stray thoughts were put down on paper. Thinking: Mr. Wilson ought not recover too quickly. Thinking of salvation and turning away from what she thought and flesh. Beyond vegetables. Mash potatoes. I was thinking of an after dinner fruity drink. Thinking of a rare species. It is not so wrong if it feels good. Intercess shock .. Post: these are the rules. Post: do not mix. She knows now that if Mr. Wilson arrives he will not drink wine. His eyes like Bella Legosi. She rewinds the tape, again. Mr. Wilson has not come this week. Yesterday she saw him on the street selling cigarettes. Last month he replaced light bulbs. Today he is to bring fresh bread. Post: Mr. Wilson? The dish is dirty. She looks over the newspaper in front of her. Cut into pieces. Sometimes an article. Sometimes a headline. Sometimes a word. Sometimes a photo. Sometimes a paragraph a block of prose. Sometimes she has cut through around into the text. Pieces of news paper moving around the table. Her hands over the pieces. Moving the pieces. Putting pieces together. Pulling them apart. Rearranging. The whole table becomes a newspaper puzzle. The dish is on the floor. Mr. Wilson is already aware of the events of the day. He only uses the newspaper for the floor. Puts it all over the floor. Opens pages and lays them out all over the floor from wall to wall. He will not bring a new newspaper. She knows all of the stories. Out of order. He will bring a cigarette. Lay it on the table. They will watch the cigarette. Moving around the text. Photos of people smoking. Not color photos. The newspaper is not USA Today. She is not sure what day in the U.S. is it. It is not today. Mr. Wilson did not come today. He is scheduled. Next week he will vote. She knows he will save a tree. Send someone to sit in the tree. He will compost. In his pocket. Carries extra newspaper in his pocket. She has a design of text. A newspaper crescent moon. A story about robbery. A shooting. Child abuse. Nestled in the curve a picture of a clown. At the circus. Last week the clowns left. They took their little cars and lollipops. The news is not always happy. She lifts her gaze from the crescent news. The curtains across the room are open slightly. Sunlight hits the red chair. Late afternoon sun. She has already eaten breakfast. The red chair flames. She remembers the popcorn from the circus. But not from last week. Mr. Wilson sold popcorn before he discovered cigarettes. Popcorn never lasts. Post: incoming message. Post: this is a public service announcement. Post: this station will play none of your favorite bands. One time Mr. Wilson won at checkers. He was born under a sign of luck. On the table, the star of david, in newsprint. Eventually it will be December. The sentences in the star were composed in July. A paragraph about a lost toddler. She walked from house to house. Rang doorbells. Her father was asleep. A sentence about the military in China. A headline: Local Cigarette Salesman Follows Clowns Out of Town. Mr. Wilson was not expected for diner in July. The circus hasn’t toured since 1976. Tomorrow each headline will paste itself into a perfect cube. She has solved each equation for the good of society. Soon it will all make sense, a particular order. Cutting the text into paragraphs into phrases cutting the words into letters. Cutting letters into dust. A pile of newspaper dust exactly n the middle of the table. Post: with a low tonight of 19 degrees. Post: no one ever really sleeps through the night. Post: where articulation intersects, I will find you, the story of the day.

letters

old pieces, from an old piece of work, found and uncovered...


dear elle,
you told me a secret. you took your hat off. ask me.


dear elle,
i enjoy cheesy love songs. particularly those from 1979. to someone i mentioned your state of affairs. i sleep teal. it has been called a hard habit. the stucco in your voice signals a spot of closure. the end of a sentence. your knee covering spit. i tell you cover me up. history is not accurate. tame your wild vocals.


dear elle,
syntactical illusion. carry on a cup of wasting over into. push over a useless vocabulary. tell me, do you do the dew? in what state as of moment? the last sparks are dim and flaring lost. dead animals caught and choking into skeleton. overheard intimate language.

pound – zukofsky – niedecker… a reading

niedecker:

My friend tree
I sawed you down
but I must attend
an older friend
the sun


pound:
1. direct treatment of the thing
2. to use absolutely no word that does not contribute to the presentation
3. to compose in the sequence of the musical phrase

pound:
an ‘Image’ is that which presents an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time

niedecker:

Well, spring overflows the land,
floods floor, pump, wash machine
of the woman moored to this low shore by deafness.
…
pound:
it is better to present one Image in a lifetime than to produce voluminous works

pound:
use no superfluous word, no adjective which does not reveal something


niedecker:
…
you water my worms
you patch my boot
with your mending kit
nothing in it
but my hand
pound:
do in fear of abstractions

pound:
use no ornament or good ornament

niedecker:
…
I worked the print shop
right down among em
the folk from whom all poetry flows
and dreadfully much else
…
What would they say if they knew
I sit for two months on six lines
of poetry?

pound:
there is in the best verse a sort of residue of sound which remains in the ear of the hearer

pound:
the experimental demonstrations of one man may save the time of many

niedecker:

Hear
where her snow-grave is
the You
ah you
of mourning doves

pound:
it will not try to seem forcible by rhetorical din, and luxurious riot. we will have fewer painted adjectives impeding the shock and stroke of it. I want it so, austere, direct, free from emotional slither

niedecker:

How white the gulls
in grey weather
Soon April
the little
yellows

zukofsky:
the lens bringing the rays from an object to a focus
that which is aimed at
desire for what is objectively perfect
inextricably the direction of historic and contemporary particulars

niedecker:

Popcorn-can cover
screwed to the wall
over a hole
so the cold
can’t mouse in

zukofsky:
that historic and contemporary particulars may mean a thing or things as well as an event or a chain of events

niedecker:

Lights, lifts
parts nicely opposed
this white
lice lithe
pink bird

zukofsky:
this rested totality may be called objectification


niedecker:

July, waxwings
on the berries
have dyed red
the dead
branch

zukofsky:
the implications are that a critic began as a poet, and that as a poet he had implicitly to be a critic

niedecker:

I’ve been away from poetry
many months

and now I must rake leaves
with nothing blowing

between your house
and mine

zukofsky:
a poem as an object…experienced…perfect rest…theologically perhaps… like the ineffable…the context…dealing with a world outside, inextricably the direction of historic and contemporary particulars…desire for what is objectively perfect…context based on a world…this object in process…the poem as a job…

niedecker:

My life is hung up
in the flood
a wave-blurred
portrait

Don’t fall in love
with this face—
it no longer exists
in water
we cannot fish

zukofsky:
a context associated with ‘musical’ shape

niedecker:

Now in one year
a book published
and plumbing—
took a lifetime
to weep
a deep
trickle

zukofsky:
intention must be distinguished from accomplishment which resolves the complexity of detail into a single object

niedecker:
…
We stayed till the stamens trembled

zukofsky:
(quotes contemporary American poet) a machine made of words


niedecker:
…
Leave me the land
Scratch out: the land

May prose and property both die out
and leave me peace




sources:
Ezra Pound, “A Retrospect”
Louis Zukofsky, “An Objective” and “A Statement for Poetry”
Lorine Niedecker, The Granite Pail, Ed. Cid Corman, 1996

on a friday

display
a crane, moving, industrial
behind a billboard
in front of the printed
architecture
of city
scape
not an e
scape
but haze
mutes silver
buildings
late september view
of heat
holding fast
to the notion of a space
surrounding
or in a place
like something that doesn't belong
in the desert

i don´t seem able to load any photos at this time, so here are some others, similar to some of my own, of ouro preto, a great colonial town sculpted into the hills of Brazil...

contemporary art in brazil

went here today in person... one of the best possible museums...
it is work from artists from all over, including but not limited to brazil, and the setting and atmosphere is amazing and fabulous...

http://www.inhotim.org.br

some pics in pampulha, belo horizonte, brazil

here's selmin's blog with some info and pics of belo horizonte:

http://www.lonelysatellite.blogspot.com/

thinking space

Bachelard, from The Poetics of Space


"For the house furnishes us dispersed images and a body of images at the same time. In both cases, I shall prove that imagination augments the values of reality."

"We are never real historians, but always near poets."

"Through poems, perhaps more than through recollections, we touch the ultimate poetic depth of the space of the house."

"Thus we cover the universe with drawings we have lived. These drawings need not be exact. They need only to be tonalized on the mode of our inner space."

or the spacial geography of
the unintended
opportunity
a counseling
or the movement shiver
of water across a puddle
under sun
we tried once
a topographic understanding
inhabited by mountains of image
and decor
but the specific leaf wanders
across town in search
of any new way
to see

brazil aug 2007

visiting belo horizonte, brazil for 2 weeks to co-teach a seminar at UMFG (University Federal at Minais Gerais)...

the hostel:

the hostel has breakfast and finally today we got up for it...
yesterday i slept 'til almost 10 i think... pretty tired... and today
we were up and out in better time... there's an open patio
between the "dining" room and our room with many plants, trees, vine growing vegetation,
some little palm trees, flowers... sort of tropical...
and the dining area (also where we sit to use the computer and work) has a big
glass door that just stays open to the outside patio...
a nice cool but fresh breeze blows around the patio this morning... temps in the 70s, sunny, perfect...


the hostel room:

tiny room with tiny little beds and a tiny little bathroom... also include a little refrigerador and a little tv...


portugese:

no one speaks english. portugese is not like spanish. sometimes i can communicate a sentence or an idea. but i can't understand any of what is said back to me. i listen to the portugese cds and read the phrasebooks... but by the end of 2 weeks i'll no little more than how to order beer and food from a menu.


the seminar course:

critical geography, globalism, urban experience... sounds good.... we're still figuring out how/what we're talking about... spending today reading and preparing to begin the class tomorrow... will post some interesting or relevant quotes that might help focus/locate the ideas for the course... selmin is good and smart and insightful... and i can talk and make things up... so i think we'll get through it alright...


writing:

i don't know if i can write any poems here. i will record my thoughts. consider images. take notes... the actual writing always comes later, on the verge of forgetting...


photos:

to come.

Cell Fragments: a reflection in color

1.

First, choose a word…paper, word, lipstick…the sky this morning breaking through before new fall light, before snow… tile, face, sound…books piled around, the Marx readers are always red. Red. Like Communism. Or Bricks. Or Christmas. Fire engine red. Infra-red. True-red. Apple Red. Red Cross. Red Herring. Pirates. Stop.

2.

The record of a language painted, textured, smeared in the history of presence, forgotten or pushed aside, its pages crumbling, turning to ash and flame. Can you remember this moment already happening, again.

3.

European revolutionaries in 1848 adopt their color, wave red flags. Later it becomes the color for Communism in Russia, China, it spreads around the world. Then fear spreads around the world, a color becomes derogatory. Commies painted red.

4.

“Reach out and sneer: Dem radicals speak to the Red States” The Register

“After reading this article, it occurs to me that Blue America sees Red America the same way Red America sees Iraq: A basically backward place full of nice people unable to destroy their own tyrants without our enlightened help. Also, the fact that they are unable to do this imperils our safety as much as it imperils their own. Perhaps this is why we are making no headway in either place...

Also, both places are dusty and full of oil.”

--punningpundit.com

5.

The red dragon on the flag of Wales. The country motto: Wales Forever. Welsh band Super Furry Animals sing “It’s not the end of the world / why?”

6.

And Redcoats. Marching through the woods. Not so camouflaged. Or the Red Badge of Courage. Stay and fight, or run away, the color of blood, and war. Or the courage of not war, other-than-war, the red badge of a future that does something different from history.

7.

Sunday, March 11. Two people (women) try to drive across some rail road tracks and don’t make it. The get around one train and collide with another. They die. Trains are held up for hours. Our 8pm train is cancelled. Getting hit by a train doesn’t get you where you are trying to go any faster. Two teens trying a challenge? Two drunk women not paying attention? Two people with music playing too loud to hear the second train? What about the flashing red lights, the white and red striped arm that you have to drive around strategically if you are trying to beat the train. Two mothers no longer waiting for two someones to come back home.

8.

Blood no longer looks like blood when the bodies from which it falls are mutilated and destroyed so completely.

9.

“Two Petaluma store employees and a shopping center customer were beaten by reputed gang members, apparently for wearing red clothing, police said Tuesday.”

“”Not all the kids wearing red clothing are committing crimes,” Captain O’Rourke said.”

“Due to its extreme nature, wearing red clothing during a negotiation or confrontation is never the best choice.”

“In the US wearing red clothing is promoted by some groups to symbolize support for or opposition against the Iraq war, or to spread awareness about heart disease. See: Red Friday.”

10.

The set sun sends back rays reflected against the sky the last moment of a spring day constructed out of time.

11.

Red and yellow hammer and sickle logo tee: $16.95 on merch-bot.com. “The logo…makes a bold statement or no statement at all, depending on the attitude of you, the wearer. This is a must for the back of every angry youth on the planet.” (note: the “logo” is on the front of the shirt, but I guess angry youths across the world can wear this shirt “on their backs.”

12.

To invoke or embody. To call a color your own. The smell of dry grass as the summer wears on and ice cream trucks slow their rounds through streets ghostly without the sound of children. Different trucks, in different shades of cool and refreshing.

13.

A wedding in India.

Chinese New Year.

A Hmong funeral.

14.

She said she has emotional memory. She sees a scene from her childhood and knows, feels exactly how she felt at that moment, watching from the window, for example, the look of the street below. He says he remembers details. Every number of every player’s baseball card from the collection he had as a kid. I remember only bits and pieces of images, some of which seem to be in my mind because I saw them in photographs. According to my mental record, I couldn’t have had much of a childhood. But on the contrary, it was full of events and emotion. I can at the moment recall the huge red sun dropping in the sky in summer when we rode in the boat across the lake, returning from an impromptu dinner picnic on the small island in Muscamoot bay. Always that huge sun seeming to stand still in our western vision, keeping the evening sky lit and timeless.

15.

A moment, spatial, layered, a spot of time etched perfectly into this immediate suggestion that generic history is peppered with particular drops of

from an essay on the color red...

VIII.

She said she has emotional memory. She sees a scene from her childhood and knows, feels exactly how she felt at that moment, watching from the window, for example, the look of the street below. He says he remembers details. Every number of every player’s baseball card from the collection he had as a kid. I remember only bits and pieces of images, some of which seem to be in my mind because I saw them in photographs. According to my mental record, I couldn’t have had much of a childhood. But on the contrary, it was full of events and emotion. I can at the moment recall the huge red sun dropping in the sky in summer when we rode in the boat across the lake, returning from an impromptu dinner picnic on the small island in Muscamoot bay. Always that huge sun seeming to stand still in our western vision, keeping the evening sky lit and timeless.