Bush, Kerry face off on Iraq

This has to be one of the most one-sided presidential debates ever. Bush keeps muttering the same prepackaged bit about Kerry being inconsistent over and over. Kerry, surprisingly, pretty clearly states how his position, his one position, has always been consistent, and Bush responds by repeating his script just with more emphasis. Kerry seems less petty than he often did during the early Dem primary debates when he was far behind Dean and could only catch up by misquoting and shoveling the shit. I might even be able to vote for Kerry with a clear conscience after this one—especially with Ralph Nader's continuing ballot-access issues. Nader would be wise to follow Alexander Cockburn's advice.

Art World Baby

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Girl. A story along these lines seems to appear every few years or so. I like "Asian Sun" though. Would look good in our back room.

* * *

On an unrelated note, we are all related: "a new statistical model shows that all human beings have a common ancestor, who lived just 2,300 years ago."

Fair Economy

Six Things You Can Do to Protest the Tax-Shift Agenda at FairEconomy.org.

Interstellar Cotton Candy

Space Sugar a Clue to Life's Origins (washingtonpost.com)

Turn on that TV and Stay Up Late

"Viewers of late-night comedy programs, especially The Daily Show with Jon Stewart on the cable channel Comedy Central, are more likely to know the issue positions and backgrounds of presidential candidates than people who do not watch late-night comedy." . . . "Daily Show viewers have higher campaign knowledge than national news viewers and newspaper readers—even when education, party identification, following politics, watching cable news, receiving campaign information online, age, and gender are taken into consideration." Read more about this Annenberg Election Survey at The Business Journal.

Impromptu list time: Five shows I sometimes miss when I don't have "basic expanded cable" (which is April thru October, or the non-college basketball season):

1. The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
2. Pardon the Interuption
3. World Poker Tour
4. Reno 911
5. Hardball with Chris Matthews

* * *

BTW, what man wouldn't want his obit to end with "His 'Bra of God' ... was never made"—?

Postage Due

"USPS does not acknowledge the authority of the Bush administration".

Creepy Day

It's not such a wonderful day in the neighborhood. Second murder case in the past week. At least the cops have a suspect now; it doesn't appear to have been a random thing, as the earlier Maria Rojas case seems like it might be.

National Anti-flarf Day

Having already hit the Village, flarf gets a little National notice.

Google flarf gas and Julia's Poems tops the list.

Google flarf torture and hit on a J.R.R. Tolkien Honor Seminar.

Flarf has reached the point of "shizzle" and should just be dropizzled like some gross thing you didn't know you were holdin. One thing that's puzzling though is that the flarfists flarf poems though very bad are not as bad as they would seem to be intended to be. A really really bad poem in addition to lacking form content vision integrity the sting of a thousand bees etc would need to contain no energy, have nothing be transfered at any point in the poem. To be really bad, would have to be really boring, like

flarf vision

because Silliman told me to
founder of the Flarf movement
he has been joined by hundreds of
poems

I quickly pieced together
the past, the future, the present
to see them stacked into a neighborhood
with a vision of arrows and ...

today at the request of Ron
Prevallet's "pluralistic vision,"
now provisionally gestured toward as
ferocious-little-kitten arts

derives compassion from its ironic
"movement" known as paydays
ferrall-vision holding everything
the New York Times Tunnel Vision

Even the nouns "Rose" to
A lively network of residents
Orbital ... first flarf
who ever wondered more natural

understand the feelings
for a space-based kinetic
embrace
legend won't explain

a lot of military equipment
lurking in my peripheral vision
Holman's pluralistic vision proves
behind the gesture
conception terminates in the vision of the closed

sense, at least in any language
alt.ferrall-vision ?? alt.fetish ??
milk rulez vision
creating dividend others health wall

[x]wee [x]flarf [x]mollie
It is moonbase ointment
through the field of my vision
called 1>2>3>4.

Arcanologist Wheel Of Fish
my head felt to the equivalent of
Touched
Supplemental Result

Though the tunnel of vision I look through is dusty and frequently
Sort of like "averted vision"
framed
discussion of the vision - x

O'Hara Makes the Fashion Scene

Normally I don't flip through T: The New York Times Style Magazine, but this week being the Men's Fall Fashion issue, and having just a few moments to kill before readying Vaughn for this morning's doctor appointment, and since it fell out and was placed on top of the rest of the paper, I figured I'd check out some of the often silly fashion statements. Found a surprise on page 92 (which comes after about 82 pages of ads, e-gads), a small picture of Frank O'Hara's Collected Poems. Michael Bastian, fashion director of something called Bergdorf Goodman, says "We wanted to capture that whole tweedy, rumpled city-guy feeling, like a character in Cheever of Salinger, or like the poet Frank O'Hara."

So the Fall Fashion issue contains as many references to poetry as this week's worth of New York Times "Arts" sections: 1 (unless I missed something). The one was a music/poetry review of the Paul Auster evening at the Guggenheim, which contained this nice little anecdote: "The difference between Mr. Auster's reading and some of the settings raised questions among the composers themselves. Mr. Karchin, for example, wondered whether his gentle approach to the final lines of "Matrix and Dream" had been a mistake, since Mr. Auster read those lines more forcefully. But Mr. Auster once said in an interview that an author must surrender control of a work once it is finished, and he apparently holds to that view. He suggested that perhaps his own reading had been incorrect."

"A Huge Vital Intelligent Boot" or Ride the Donkey

Since KC has gone back to work, it has meant less time for blogging in the evenings. And when I have made it here to write a post, I get a few sentences in and decide I'm not really into it. So, anyway, here's a link and a qoute.

Link: What happens when politicians "Tell the truth but tell it slant" (audio link).

Quote: from American Heretic, from a Baraka letter to Dorn, October, 1961: "My grandfather (first man to open a super market in Alabama... but run out with fire when he prospered) came to New Jersey and opened another store... became a big Republican Politician. When he wanted to break with the organization, and run independent for Assemblyman they warned him not too. (A stupid, bullshit job like Assemblyman.) O.K., he went ahead and ran.... and on the night of the election with him winning, on the way home from his office he was hit in the head with a street lamp. 'It just fell on his head and killed him' they told my grandmother. A Streetlamp! He was over 6 feet and 200 pounds."

* * *

America, I love you, really I do, but I am always amazed how you find the millions now billions now trillions for war, when you can't ever find the way to make good on your promised atonements for your past. I hadn't realized that Al Sharpton snuck in the reparations issue at the Dems convention back in July. Interesting, though, to go to the official Dem Convention site and see his "remarks as prepared for delivery," which mentioned no acreage.

* * *

OK, the abandoned post from yesterday concerned the New York Times Magazine interview with new poet laureate Ted Kooser. It's just too easy a target.

Eratio 4

The new issue of eratio postmodern poetry is up, featuring Nick Piombino, Laurie Price, Jack Foley, Jake Berry, Mark Young & Jukka-Pekka Kervinen (excerpts from their work The Sketchbooks of Hieronymous Bosch), and many others.

Heretic in the House

Chicago Review's triple-issue, Edward Dorn, American Heretic arrived today, and it's a tome, a striking tome. It will probably be the weekend before I'm able to really sink my teeth into it. About 250 of the 400+ pages are given to the section on Dorn, which besides critical appraisals and memoir, includes a transcript of one of his workshops at Naropa, a 1990 interview, and reprints of rare poems that alone make this 3/4 of a volume worth the price. In his preface, editor Eirik Steinhoff, notes that this issue "is not exactly intended to introduce Dorn," then quotes Robert Creeley: "Not even a sunrise could quite manage that." But Steinhoff's preface itself, in the span of about 15 pages, offers a solid, concise intro for those new to Dorn—not just providing a context, but also flushing out Dorn's geocultural poetics.

After the intro, we get Dorn's "Tribe", which begins with the poetry of origins—"My tribe came from struggling labor / Depression South Eastern Illinois / Just before the southern hills start / To roll toward the coal country"—grows increasingly political, and ends in polemical fireworks while not lapsing from the lyrical.

Then I had a salad for supper, and then I came up here to do this, while KC tired out Vaughn and got her to sleep. Before starting to type though, I happened into Jennifer Dunbar Dorn's "chronicle" of her time working with her late husband on the literary newspaper Rolling Stock, a great little bit of biography that I couldn't put down.

The only other part of CR I've read so far is CSU alum Piotr Gwiazda's fair and balanced review of Robert Pinsky's latest book of criticism. Sympathetic to the book's shortcomings throughout his review, Gwiazda ends with "Democracy, Culture, and the Voice of Poetry (note the singular) is a graceful, passionate, and somewhat snobbish apologia for poetry in the United States."

In addition to the rest of the Dorn section, I'm looking forward to Andrea Brady's response to New British Poetry (see Mayhew's comment) and new poems by William Fuller.

The Labor Day Special (Kenneth Patchen with a side of Siddhartha)

For Labor Day, a poem by American working-class hero poet, Kenneth Patchen.

Gautama in the Deer Park at Benares

In a hut of mud and fire
Sits this single man—“Not to want
Money, to want a life in the world,
To want no trinkets on my name”—
And he was rich; his life lives where
Death cannot go; his honor stares
At the sun.

The fawn sleeps. The little winds
Ruffle the earth's green hair. It is
Wonderful to live. My sword rusts
In the pleasant rain. I shall not think
Anymore. I touch the face of my friend;
He shows his dirty teeth as he scratches
At a flea—and we grin. It is warm
And the rice stirs usefully in our bellies.

The fawn raises its head—the sun floods
Its soft eye with the kingdoms of life—
I think we should all go to sleep now,
And not care anymore.

_____

Other links:

Mingus on Patchen, plus two poems, including "Let Us Have Madness"

at The Academy of American Poets site

A handful of love poems, including "For Miriam"

Three more poems, including "Pastoral"

On Starting A Thousand Devils

Just getting into the first in Combo's new line of books, K. Silem Mohammad's A Thousand Devils. First thing noticed is that the half title page (first page of most books on which the title is printed but not the author or publisher) is literally a half title: half of the "A", the "THOU" of "Thousand", and the "DE" and half of "V" of "Devil" are all that appear, along with an ant about an inch down from where the rest of the title would have been. Such play is characteristic of Mohammad's poetry, in which subjects, themes, images, whatnot appear only to disappear as suddenly as they announced themselves. And "announce themselves" is really what they do, almost as if the words, the lines have their own volition and Mohammad is pointing to them, like "check out what these words are doing." By "announce themselves" I also mean to suggest that there's a definite forcefulness to these poems. As in the way, the tone with which, they open: "You can't believe you / forded the whirlpool, // wormholed the fjord, / squeezed through the velveteen teeth // only to get bleached" (from "Write It Down, Make It Happen"), or "Give this America my Klan to massage" (from "Moving to Saturn"). [For those playing along at home, saying "Hey, 'Moving to Saturn' is near the back of the book, but you said you were just 'getting into it' "—it's true, I rarely read po' books in so-called order.]

Also odd about the front matter is that rarity in publishing, a blank recto (or right hand page). The blank page 9 would have made a great second half title to "finish" the first half title, or—if that option would seem too (relatively) conventional—at least the reappearance of the ant. Though, maybe the blank page works: a big fuck you to the dominant publishing world with its arbitrary norms. And you can probably guess what I'm going to say next: such disregard for expectations is characteristic of Mohammad's poetry. Voilà:

              I'm a stand-in, a pink shampoo:
          a flickery western dimmed in me:
          so close any mimeographs forever,
          white psalms I can't squeak through

          you want some lamb, some hashish?
          that's a fake cradle of entrances:
          the naked sprite of a flyleaf
          is vapid festoons, a mistake

          there is no and then I glide to here:
              it is or isn't sexy I guess:
          it's ripping a thin slant out of not
          ever anything really as yet
                        —from "Poem Beginning with a Passage from Pascal"

Be Bright Star

The following graphs are sampled from the forthcoming book Can't Stop, Won't Stop: The History of the Hip-Hop Generation by Jeff Chang. I'm no aficionado of hip hop culture, but the chapter on Jamaica's "Roots Generation" as prelude grabbed my attention. For anyone interested in the subject, this looks to be a book worth keeping an eye out for.

Rastafarians followed in the tradition of the Black nationalist Marcus Mosiah Garvey. Born in 1887 in the northern town of St. Ann's Bay, Garvey's mother had wanted to name him Moses. His followers in the Black diaspora of the Caribbean, North and Central America, and Africa—which, at the peak of his powers, likely numbered in the millions—called him the Black Moses.
    Inspired by Booker T. Washington's Up From Slavery, and moved by the debased condition of Black farmers and canal workers he met on a visit to Panama, Garvey returned to the streets of Kingston to preach Black redemption and repatriation to a united Africa. He founded the United Negro Improvement Association in 1914 to formally spread the message. "Wake up Ethiopia! Wake up Africa!" he told his followers. "Let us work toward the one glorious end of a free, redeemed, and mighty nation. Let Africa be a bright star among the constellation of nations."
    Two years later, Garvey left for Harlem after followers discovered he had used organization funds to pay for his living expenses. In the United States, Garvey's fiscal weaknesses were further exploited when he became the political target of a young Justice Department official named J. Edgar Hoover. But while his reputation had been sullied, his words remained the stuff of prophecy. He had said, "We Negroes believe in the God of Ethiopia, the everlasting God-God the Son, God the Holy Ghost, the one God of all ages." And by the mid-1930s, former Garveyites found that God in the figure of Ethiopia's newly crowned emperor, born Ras Tafari—"Ras" meaning "Duke" in Amharic and "Tafari" the surname of the royal family—and renamed Haile Selassie, "The Might of The Trinity."
    To the followers of Rastafari, Selassie was god made flesh, the King of Kings, the conquering lion of Judah, the redeemer and the deliverer of the Black masses who had come in accordance with Garvey's prophecy. Rastafarianism was an indigenous fusion of messianism and millenarianism, anticolonialism and Black nationalism, and it gave the cause of "Black supremacy" spiritual, political, and social dimensions. The religion found a fast following in the impoverished western Kingston ghettos, especially in the yard called Back-O-Wall, where Rastas constructed a camp of wood and tin. Through the mid-1960s, amidst frequent and constant run-ins with the colonial authorities, their influence over the tenement yards grew.