The much awaited top tens lists must be produced. Here's mine. At first I was going to wing it (and tried a few hours ago) but Dad came home with my graduation gift - a new laptop - and in the meantime I flipped through the Nortons. Here it is. Note well: there is no hierarchy!
1) Edwin Spencer's The Faerie Queene (a blast from the anachronistic past)
2) William Carlos Williams (his collections entilted Paterson and Spring and All)
3) Willa Cather's New Mexico novels (Song of the Lark and Death Comes for the Archbishop, I want to do something similar, that is, write about my home state and am thus compelled to read everything about it)
4) John Berryman (Homage to Miss Bradstreet. Em, I remember you liking this too. Darcy? Brooks, shame on you)
5) Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man (every high schooler recalls this one, except for us pasty ex-homeschoolers)
6) Thomas Pynchon's Crying of Lot 49 (I must fulfill my destiny of being a somebody-maybe-a-good-American-author if Dr. Hake and Brooks' predictions are in harmony with matters)
7) Yeats. All things Yeats! Become intimate with Yeats.
8) William Wordworth's The Preludes
9) T.S. Eliot's The Four Quartets (My apetite was whetted in Lit. class via "Little Gidding especially)
10) Philip Larkin's poetry (I like his laconic and Hardyesque style)
Okay. At the moment I am about to start Joyce's Dubliners, a book by David Sedaris, and Plath's Ariel. I am currently reading Proust's The Swann's Way (book one of Time Lost) and Ted Hughes' The Iron Wolf, which I picked up at the Strand in NYC with Brooks my fellow "book faggot." I want to dabble in some Heidegger too. I eagerly anticipate the other book lists. Love to everybody.
Monday, May 23, 2005
Carolyn's Farewell
I just discovered this poem Carolyn left as a comment under Travis's "What the Thunder Said" post on Diapsalmata:
Between the mountain
And the river
Between the plaza
And the highway
There was a house,
And the house was full of Timmonses.
Between the city
And the village
Beyond Lake Bob
And the cornfield
There is a dorm
And the dorm housed Brooks and Travis.
Beyond the summer
And the ceremony
The mountain, river,
Plaza, highway,
City, village,
Lake, and cornfield
Will remain, but
Brooks and Travis will be gone.
And we will miss them.
Friday, May 20, 2005
Summer Work 1
One of those Norwestern blankets of pure-freshening dampness overlays the sky, making the shrubs sag with weariness. Little pellet raindrops bounce downward, bouncing like popcorn in a popper, trying to escape the catalyst of its own being. In Founder's Hall a pretty girl decorates the balcony with fake roses for tomorrow's wedding reception. The weather will probably be like this. I can imagine a happy, shy Vanesa with hair falling apart and make-up smeared and runny from the wet air. Chris's hair will be perfect and their smiles will be perfect. Otherwise, all will by runny and in need of ironing or otherwise sag in quiet drowning.
Randy vacuums the lobby, just like he did yesterday, just like he will everyday for the next three months--steadily, not impatiently. That is inner solice and patience on his face. I misinterpretted it at first for complacency. Now I see the reflection of a saint's face in his eyes. He has taken something to heart. Work, work, work. And that is what summer is good for: the sky burdened with growth, saturated with gatheredness, finally is made ready for pouring. Tonight, libation and marriage is at one with the weather here in our earthly residence. Not only does the cup run over, it tastes good as well. It is enough to make one stop questioning certain natural laws and realize how wine was invented and why it tastes sweet and makes the head spin.
Randy vacuums the lobby, just like he did yesterday, just like he will everyday for the next three months--steadily, not impatiently. That is inner solice and patience on his face. I misinterpretted it at first for complacency. Now I see the reflection of a saint's face in his eyes. He has taken something to heart. Work, work, work. And that is what summer is good for: the sky burdened with growth, saturated with gatheredness, finally is made ready for pouring. Tonight, libation and marriage is at one with the weather here in our earthly residence. Not only does the cup run over, it tastes good as well. It is enough to make one stop questioning certain natural laws and realize how wine was invented and why it tastes sweet and makes the head spin.
Friday, May 06, 2005
My Poetry Practicum Finished
I divided my nine credits of Directed Research and Writing into eight critical and one creative. The one creative credit is a series of ten poems written in what I call a "quadracube" or a 4-cube. Each poem consists of four stanzas of four lines each (quatrains), each line containing four feet (tetrameter). It takes a long time to revise and tinker and tinker and tinker with poetry. Mary Oliver says her poems go through fifty drafts. These came close. I finished the last one today and have shipped it off to Dr. Tobin for review and grading.
The Mushrooms
Under the tree with black branches
and a white lily drooping earthward,
like the last drop of dew in the desert,
sits a punk clump of pious mushrooms.
This year they wait in prayer in the shade
like a prophet spreading out his legs
from the trunk to the continents. Next
year, they will reappear in the drawer
of some widowed mother's cupboard,
and she will let them over-ferment
and mince them a day before they rot
and stir in broth like a witchdoctor.
Children and grandchildren who eat them
shall grow pale with delirious visions
and thirst for water to speed the season
to hide the shadow of the shriveled bloom.
The Skunk
He lives beside a garden of moss
under the spongy redwood logs
and circles around a ritual path
in shadowy thickness of scented herbs.
The patch above his shaggy brow
has balded like a friar’s tonsure.
Observing a monkish vow of silence,
he shuffles under the swaying ferns.
Then, his tail lifts. It sounds a fiery
silent prayer that sails above meadows,
a slow and steady acidic bomb,
a mystic force—fronds bow their heads.
His tactless divination floats down
into the valley to burn the nostrils
and throats of men who pause and think:
The skunk is omen-making again.
The Patch
When a suit has rubbed and thinned
by daily ferine abrasion and stretch
down to the threaded lining and beyond
into vacancy and nothingness,
her needle fastens on the fringe
with a freshly-tanned leather scrap,
and seals the hole stitch by stitch
hemming the penultimate of death.
So a patch can save a coat.
A little bargain: the mark of age
that buys another year. It leaves,
not Yeats’ tattered rag of a man,
but a skid-guard on the elbow,
a gargantuan scab tacked on a ledge,
rough and ready for foreign friction:
Bridge-bracing. Adoption. Mend.
The Pipe
Sometimes I hold Grandpa’s pipe
in the crook of my thumb and, rocking
in his chair, recall the old myth—how
Prometheus stole fire from heaven
by sneaking embers into a cupped shell
and scuttling back down to terra firma,
keeping the ash hot by drawing the flame
through a reed cut from the hedge.
Using his god-given breath of life,
he squinted like a caveman in sunlight
and spit out sparks and smoke and fauna
into fields of brush, and thus spread
the stolen secret. Silly folklore.
But how can I scrutinize the yarn
of all the wrinkled, smiling patriarchs
puffing away on their planked porches?
The Seaweed
Like the curly beard-locks shaved
and wiped from Poseidon’s dripping chin
with sea-foam settled at a bowl’s rim,
the floating weeds cluster and congeal,
forging a scraggly nest for mites
and rank surface scum of the deep.
Wiry fullness, salty jungle
baking in the sunlight and wave-breath,
a refuge, a sponge that holds on through
Olympus’ livid tempests, sifting
and soaking in fixity and flux,
as stalwart as a weathered captain.
And as a lifeboat of shipwrecked sailors
paddles aimless on the marginless
sea, a ragged weed-clump floats by,
a marker of highways, an astrolabe.
The Handkerchief
The callow suitor emerges feebly
among the circus-ring of chat
and appearance, but the handkerchief
reassures the timorous player.
The providence of having it there,
pocket-dweller, ready to be whipped
forth to staunch the flow of earth—
dignifier, old debonaire.
The countess slips her silky kerchief
under the table to the suitor,
who clasps it in between his feelers,
and as he fondles the winking token,
he blushes, swallows, sighs and shoots
a skyward glance, a prayer of thanks
and ecstasy. For snot-stoppers
can lift our souls to celestial trance.
The Puddle
Puddle, you are blacker than the black
asphalt girding you and laid out
like a ruthless adulterous bed-sheet
for steering wheelers packing off goods
and bads in heels and boots. (Let’s just
define natural beauty out of
existence.) But for all that: life
flitting, bathing, coming, going,
birds in the font. How did Progress
with its merciless homogeny
miss or crack you into residence?
Was there some blunder that spared you,
making rainwater drain to your womb?
Or are you a primal spring bursting
in the under-bowels of fetal earth,
and trickling up as a forfeiting breast?
The Navel
A sunken circle, shy scar on a plain
of virgin flesh, it stands in, a tough-
twisted center for tribal warriors.
It is the rubber knot of a balloon
that children blow to fill its bowels
with air. One can nearly imagine
a thorny finger untying it
and letting the life filibrate out.
The navel is the knob and window
that keeps the demons peaking in
and all of earth's wares peaking out.
It holds together all things—it is
the nail in the mast—the spike driven
into the bottom of the sea, insuring
that all the fish will go on swimming
in their set migration patterns.
The Ink
Potent extract, poison-flow,
the stain of Indian night flooding
blanched, open space. The ruckus caused
when one stray stroke or blotchy patch
gets brushed onto a field of signs:
curse and crumple, reset and reprint—
by hand or machine, the ink must fall
precise or mankind throws a fit,
goes berserk, stands on its head.
That is why the calligrapher’s nub
tapers to the finest, finest point;
the gate of life and death cannot afford
misfire. This power, this delicate
constraint of sin is scored by a scribe
jabbing his tongue into his lip,
wide-eyed and squeezing out each line.
The Chisel
To take the hammer and chisel up
with warm hands, and with warm eyes
to scan the stone where salvation
must be etched. To cut through, both
like a termite gnawing on wood and
an old painter brushing lush water-
colors. To feel out grains and patterns
within the rock's dense mass, yet hold
to a spirit of airiness and angel’s breath.
To etch heaven and hell on earth
with chisel and hammer. To carve the poem
letter by letter, chip by crumb,
while the pebbles gather at your feet.
To work the tools like a dying poet,
eeking and straining for a gaze
so cold and fiery it kisses and burns you.
the mushrooms
The Mushrooms
and a white lily drooping earthward,
like the last drop of dew in the desert,
sits a punk clump of pious mushrooms.
This year they wait in prayer in the shade
like a prophet spreading out his legs
from the trunk to the continents. Next
year, they will reappear in the drawer
of some widowed mother's cupboard,
and she will let them over-ferment
and mince them a day before they rot
and stir in broth like a witchdoctor.
Children and grandchildren who eat them
shall grow pale with delirious visions
and thirst for water to speed the season
to hide the shadow of the shriveled bloom.
The Skunk
under the spongy redwood logs
and circles around a ritual path
in shadowy thickness of scented herbs.
The patch above his shaggy brow
has balded like a friar’s tonsure.
Observing a monkish vow of silence,
he shuffles under the swaying ferns.
Then, his tail lifts. It sounds a fiery
silent prayer that sails above meadows,
a slow and steady acidic bomb,
a mystic force—fronds bow their heads.
His tactless divination floats down
into the valley to burn the nostrils
and throats of men who pause and think:
The skunk is omen-making again.
The Patch
by daily ferine abrasion and stretch
down to the threaded lining and beyond
into vacancy and nothingness,
her needle fastens on the fringe
with a freshly-tanned leather scrap,
and seals the hole stitch by stitch
hemming the penultimate of death.
So a patch can save a coat.
A little bargain: the mark of age
that buys another year. It leaves,
not Yeats’ tattered rag of a man,
but a skid-guard on the elbow,
a gargantuan scab tacked on a ledge,
rough and ready for foreign friction:
Bridge-bracing. Adoption. Mend.
The Pipe
in the crook of my thumb and, rocking
in his chair, recall the old myth—how
Prometheus stole fire from heaven
by sneaking embers into a cupped shell
and scuttling back down to terra firma,
keeping the ash hot by drawing the flame
through a reed cut from the hedge.
Using his god-given breath of life,
he squinted like a caveman in sunlight
and spit out sparks and smoke and fauna
into fields of brush, and thus spread
the stolen secret. Silly folklore.
But how can I scrutinize the yarn
of all the wrinkled, smiling patriarchs
puffing away on their planked porches?
The Seaweed
and wiped from Poseidon’s dripping chin
with sea-foam settled at a bowl’s rim,
the floating weeds cluster and congeal,
forging a scraggly nest for mites
and rank surface scum of the deep.
Wiry fullness, salty jungle
baking in the sunlight and wave-breath,
a refuge, a sponge that holds on through
Olympus’ livid tempests, sifting
and soaking in fixity and flux,
as stalwart as a weathered captain.
And as a lifeboat of shipwrecked sailors
paddles aimless on the marginless
sea, a ragged weed-clump floats by,
a marker of highways, an astrolabe.
The Handkerchief
among the circus-ring of chat
and appearance, but the handkerchief
reassures the timorous player.
The providence of having it there,
pocket-dweller, ready to be whipped
forth to staunch the flow of earth—
dignifier, old debonaire.
The countess slips her silky kerchief
under the table to the suitor,
who clasps it in between his feelers,
and as he fondles the winking token,
he blushes, swallows, sighs and shoots
a skyward glance, a prayer of thanks
and ecstasy. For snot-stoppers
can lift our souls to celestial trance.
The Puddle
asphalt girding you and laid out
like a ruthless adulterous bed-sheet
for steering wheelers packing off goods
and bads in heels and boots. (Let’s just
define natural beauty out of
existence.) But for all that: life
flitting, bathing, coming, going,
birds in the font. How did Progress
with its merciless homogeny
miss or crack you into residence?
Was there some blunder that spared you,
making rainwater drain to your womb?
Or are you a primal spring bursting
in the under-bowels of fetal earth,
and trickling up as a forfeiting breast?
The Navel
of virgin flesh, it stands in, a tough-
twisted center for tribal warriors.
It is the rubber knot of a balloon
that children blow to fill its bowels
with air. One can nearly imagine
a thorny finger untying it
and letting the life filibrate out.
The navel is the knob and window
that keeps the demons peaking in
and all of earth's wares peaking out.
It holds together all things—it is
the nail in the mast—the spike driven
into the bottom of the sea, insuring
that all the fish will go on swimming
in their set migration patterns.
The Ink
the stain of Indian night flooding
blanched, open space. The ruckus caused
when one stray stroke or blotchy patch
gets brushed onto a field of signs:
curse and crumple, reset and reprint—
by hand or machine, the ink must fall
precise or mankind throws a fit,
goes berserk, stands on its head.
That is why the calligrapher’s nub
tapers to the finest, finest point;
the gate of life and death cannot afford
misfire. This power, this delicate
constraint of sin is scored by a scribe
jabbing his tongue into his lip,
wide-eyed and squeezing out each line.
The Chisel
with warm hands, and with warm eyes
to scan the stone where salvation
must be etched. To cut through, both
like a termite gnawing on wood and
an old painter brushing lush water-
colors. To feel out grains and patterns
within the rock's dense mass, yet hold
to a spirit of airiness and angel’s breath.
To etch heaven and hell on earth
with chisel and hammer. To carve the poem
letter by letter, chip by crumb,
while the pebbles gather at your feet.
To work the tools like a dying poet,
eeking and straining for a gaze
so cold and fiery it kisses and burns you.
Wednesday, May 04, 2005
Emile Complete Noe Finale!
Finally Emily is done with her Noe papers! She channeled her frantic scrammbling into a directed, controlled funnel of ravenous energy. Her progress puts poly-sci majors to shame:
With my seventh Noe paper having been finished, I give you a taste of my afternoon. (deadline was 11pm)Congradulations Emily. It is finished.
Word count Noe Paper 3/3/05:
3:34 0 words
3:48 148 words.
4:09 294 words
6:05 432 words
6:37 657 words
6:50 756 words
7:20 791 words
7:41 897 words
8:20 1,170 words
8:35 1,203 words
9:00 1,348 words
9:13 1,491 words
9:24 1,605 words
9:37 1,683 words
9:49 1,869 words
10:53 1,902 words
Tuesday, April 26, 2005
Name Games
Let's just say Dana and I get married, and let's just suppose we have kids--at least one of both sexes: How about calling the boy Dana and the girl Brooks. :-)
Saturday, March 26, 2005
Waiting for Sunday
Yesterday yeilds to this Saturday
wounded for our transgressions
Friday was gray, though I wanted both the day and my thoughts
to be black with the fullness of the grief
stricken, smitten of God
and then I beg to be allowed to
surge early to the joy.
And now there is today.
How strange
Strange that there is life
and I am writing,
wishing to leap early to the joy.
The sun came up today, how callous and indifferent:
and my throat stops, small emotion this.
Why was the rain yesterday
only gentle?
despised and rejected
Cold indifferent apathy to
the drama that must claim every eye.
Do you not know that you cannot cannot finish this breath until
tomorrow?
by his stripes
Why did my guilt not stop me still:
a stone like my heart?
One more night and then
I will tell you why--
the whisper I cannot form until
the morning.
silent
The shouting and the bleeding stopped last night.
Now there is only silence
and we are waiting.
[because I am too self-conscious to post this on a public blog]
wounded for our transgressions
Friday was gray, though I wanted both the day and my thoughts
to be black with the fullness of the grief
stricken, smitten of God
and then I beg to be allowed to
surge early to the joy.
And now there is today.
How strange
Strange that there is life
and I am writing,
wishing to leap early to the joy.
The sun came up today, how callous and indifferent:
and my throat stops, small emotion this.
Why was the rain yesterday
only gentle?
despised and rejected
Cold indifferent apathy to
the drama that must claim every eye.
Do you not know that you cannot cannot finish this breath until
tomorrow?
by his stripes
Why did my guilt not stop me still:
a stone like my heart?
One more night and then
I will tell you why--
the whisper I cannot form until
the morning.
silent
The shouting and the bleeding stopped last night.
Now there is only silence
and we are waiting.
[because I am too self-conscious to post this on a public blog]
Thursday, March 24, 2005
Just About Perfect
Yes, that's right. Brooks has been offered an Assistantship at the esteemed Catholic University of America. Back off, freshmen ladies! This hunk/superhero is already taken. The D.C. scene had better prepare itself for some high energy poetry and an intellectual-association-making-machine; right, Dana? (I wink prosaically)
Congratulations, Brooks!!
Congratulations, Brooks!!
Friday, March 18, 2005
My Poetry Practicum
For my one poetry credit (150 lines), I have decided to write ten 16 line poems about . . . the noxious, the anomalous . . . the odd things of life, and discreetly sublimate them as part of the marvelous. So far I have three poems (below). In addition to these, I want to do one on seaweed, a piggybank, and a hankerchief. I would like to end the cycle with a poem about an inkbottle. While this final one would be more explicitly about the power of writing, I view all these poems as analogies to writing. Right now, I was thinking of calling the entire cycle "The Mushrooms."
The metric scheme is what I call 4x4x4: four feet per line, four lines per stanza, four stanzas per poem. I like to use spondees.
SO, what do you think (a) in general, (b) about the specific poems, and (c) what other "objects" should a use for my other poems? Thanks. These are only rough drafts, so please make suggestions! :0)
The Mushrooms
Under a tree with black branches
and a red lily drooping earthward,
like the last drop of dew in the desert,
sits a punk clump of auburn mushrooms.
This year they wait in prayer in the shade
like a prophet spreading his legs outward
from the trunk to the continents. Next
year, they will reappear in the drawer
of some widowed mother's cupboard,
and she will let them over-ferment
and mince them a day before they rot
and stir in broth like a witchdoctor.
The children and grandchildren that eat them
shall grow pale with delirious visions
and thirst for water to speed the season
to hide the shadow of the shriveled bloom.
The Skunk
He lives beside a patch of moss-bawn
under the spongy redwood log
and circles around a ritual path
in shadowy thickets of scented herbs.
The patch above his shaggy brow
has balded like a friar's tonsure;
he observes a monkish silence
as he shuffles his way beneath the ferns.
Then, his tail lifts and sounds a fiery
silent prayer that sails o'er the moss field,
a slow and steady corrosive bomb,
a spiritual force: fronds bow their heads.
His honest divination floats down
into the valley to burns the throats
and eyes of men who pause and think:
The skunk is omen-making again.
The Patch
When a suit has rubbed and thinned
by daily ferine abrasion and stretch
down to threaded lining and beyond
into vacancy and nothingness,
her needle fastens on the fringe
with a freshly-tanned leathern scrap,
and seals the hole stitch by stitch
hemming a penultimate of death.
So, a patch can save a coat.
A little bargain: a mark of age
that buys another year. It leaves,
not a tattered rag-of-a-man,
just a skid-guard on the elbow,
a great big scab tacked on a ledge,
rough and ready for foreign friction--
bridge-bracing, adoption, mend.
The metric scheme is what I call 4x4x4: four feet per line, four lines per stanza, four stanzas per poem. I like to use spondees.
SO, what do you think (a) in general, (b) about the specific poems, and (c) what other "objects" should a use for my other poems? Thanks. These are only rough drafts, so please make suggestions! :0)
The Mushrooms
Under a tree with black branches
and a red lily drooping earthward,
like the last drop of dew in the desert,
sits a punk clump of auburn mushrooms.
This year they wait in prayer in the shade
like a prophet spreading his legs outward
from the trunk to the continents. Next
year, they will reappear in the drawer
of some widowed mother's cupboard,
and she will let them over-ferment
and mince them a day before they rot
and stir in broth like a witchdoctor.
The children and grandchildren that eat them
shall grow pale with delirious visions
and thirst for water to speed the season
to hide the shadow of the shriveled bloom.
The Skunk
He lives beside a patch of moss-bawn
under the spongy redwood log
and circles around a ritual path
in shadowy thickets of scented herbs.
The patch above his shaggy brow
has balded like a friar's tonsure;
he observes a monkish silence
as he shuffles his way beneath the ferns.
Then, his tail lifts and sounds a fiery
silent prayer that sails o'er the moss field,
a slow and steady corrosive bomb,
a spiritual force: fronds bow their heads.
His honest divination floats down
into the valley to burns the throats
and eyes of men who pause and think:
The skunk is omen-making again.
The Patch
When a suit has rubbed and thinned
by daily ferine abrasion and stretch
down to threaded lining and beyond
into vacancy and nothingness,
her needle fastens on the fringe
with a freshly-tanned leathern scrap,
and seals the hole stitch by stitch
hemming a penultimate of death.
So, a patch can save a coat.
A little bargain: a mark of age
that buys another year. It leaves,
not a tattered rag-of-a-man,
just a skid-guard on the elbow,
a great big scab tacked on a ledge,
rough and ready for foreign friction--
bridge-bracing, adoption, mend.
Monday, March 14, 2005
Congratulations Travis!
Travis has been accepted to Florida State University with a full-ride scholarship and a $10,000 annual stipend!!
Sunday, March 13, 2005
Self Choruses
.
I.
I want to write a poem, so
I choose an ironic form, as
I talk about writing a poem, it
Happens - my mind the paper reifies;
The paper cradles my print, positing me
To be - became - pale fire again.
II.
St. Vladimir, you bless me with self-
Consciousness; a microscope I need
Today in a neighborhood of Artists.
I peer indiscrimately at pin points,
Like ants dotting a sinewy foot path.
Missing the point, I pray for further ants.
III.
St. Camus - not Albert, too Bourgeois for you -
You bless me with vitals, breath, red dirt and
Bouncing pupils of concern. In the neighborhood of
Dualism, you pointed out the grass and white
Glare of the sun on the garage door. The
Sun goes West, it belongs there for a night.
IV.
St. Iph, living in my house squatting at my desk,
Your sainthood I despise and think it a trick.
Your main trick is memory, an occasional scrouge
On the heart. I associate your conjuring glare
With flickering pictures and my tongue caught;
Mid the racket and traffic of thought, you pinch.
(Hey my lovelies, I composed this during Linguistic class last week. What do you all think? Here are cheats: St. Vladimir = Nabokov, St. Iph = "If.")
Friday, March 11, 2005
Our First Meeting
I'll see you all tonight at Cosi for our first meeting (as an official club).
Love you all.
(Although, if I had to carry you all across a pool of water, there's one I'd carry with extra affection.)
(No, Travis, it's not you.)
Love you all.
(Although, if I had to carry you all across a pool of water, there's one I'd carry with extra affection.)
(No, Travis, it's not you.)
Wednesday, March 09, 2005
between proper notes, taken in linguistics
Hide your eyes and the
words. stop.
Hide your eyes with your heavy hand
Next behind my hair, falling,
meeting over my face—
and the voices (how tired) stop coming from those mouths—
if you look up you can still s e e.
look at the paper
and the ink and the marks, this line that curves: then i (I) am
saying something.
How is it that this—making words—happens?
What would it be like
Not to know?
Not to hear?
in my head, in front of all their voices
when the letters make words(?)(.)
words. stop.
Hide your eyes with your heavy hand
Next behind my hair, falling,
meeting over my face—
and the voices (how tired) stop coming from those mouths—
if you look up you can still s e e.
look at the paper
and the ink and the marks, this line that curves: then i (I) am
saying something.
How is it that this—making words—happens?
What would it be like
Not to know?
Not to hear?
in my head, in front of all their voices
when the letters make words(?)(.)
Monday, March 07, 2005
Darcy's Eco Ego
Darcy deserves a round of applause for her excellent presentation reviewing Umberto Eco's Search for a Perfect Language today in Linguistics class today.
Eco's point that there was already a plurality of languages before Babel (see Gen. 10), really through a wrench in the spokes for those in the class that tend to be overly interested in finding a biblically-based linguistic theory. The tenants of such a theory, in my opinion, have made little more than speculative assertions.
At any rate, Darcy did a fine job with the project. I'll be following it up in a few weeks with a report on Eco's The Open Work.
Eco's point that there was already a plurality of languages before Babel (see Gen. 10), really through a wrench in the spokes for those in the class that tend to be overly interested in finding a biblically-based linguistic theory. The tenants of such a theory, in my opinion, have made little more than speculative assertions.
At any rate, Darcy did a fine job with the project. I'll be following it up in a few weeks with a report on Eco's The Open Work.
Thursday, March 03, 2005
Mutability
Mutability spoke to me
In terms of knowledge, conferrence -
Like a curse coming acutely
Upon the polars of Yes, No -
I will, will not. The median
Of greyness vaporizes in
The new absence of possibility.
Choice brings rotation of Being.
In terms of knowledge, conferrence -
Like a curse coming acutely
Upon the polars of Yes, No -
I will, will not. The median
Of greyness vaporizes in
The new absence of possibility.
Choice brings rotation of Being.
We
We studied tonight up in the blue room.
(That’s what it’s called.) Blue walls and open windows:
A small rectangle in an old house. We
Sat together and read. The air breathed
Between indoors and the soon coming night
And took time back to spring that year.
Things were different then—our freshman year.
We had giddily stepped out of the room
Of childhood. And we’d wavered for a night
Then found each other through the windows
Of art’s communication. And we breathed
Dreams. A group of voices became a we.
So we were cocky, naïve, thought that we
Had gained what we only glimpsed that year.
And we scorned them. Remember when we breathed
Laughter from our front row in that classroom?
If we clung too tightly, recall windows—
Windows with candles—first seen in the night.
And if we our conversations at night
Held too dear, consider (all as we) we
were discovering there could be windows,
not walls. Beautiful glass in a young year.
We talked, scattered all over the plain room,
And out of fear found a place where we breathed.
And over summer ambitious pens breathed
Friendship in idealism. But the next night
It was lost for awhile. We left the room.
Now our talking was almost silent; we
Shook apart a little. Did you mind that year?
Back when we drew curtains in our windows?
Today a fall rain ran down the windows.
It’s nearly over. Three years. Life breathed.
Now, like a circle, save only half a year.
I, you, you, you, we remembered tonight.
The reasons for keeping company, being we.
Us is a quiet possession of this room.
Let’s stop the hours and talk ‘til the next night
And we have to go. But don’t you see? We
Are more than older being in this room.
(That’s what it’s called.) Blue walls and open windows:
A small rectangle in an old house. We
Sat together and read. The air breathed
Between indoors and the soon coming night
And took time back to spring that year.
Things were different then—our freshman year.
We had giddily stepped out of the room
Of childhood. And we’d wavered for a night
Then found each other through the windows
Of art’s communication. And we breathed
Dreams. A group of voices became a we.
So we were cocky, naïve, thought that we
Had gained what we only glimpsed that year.
And we scorned them. Remember when we breathed
Laughter from our front row in that classroom?
If we clung too tightly, recall windows—
Windows with candles—first seen in the night.
And if we our conversations at night
Held too dear, consider (all as we) we
were discovering there could be windows,
not walls. Beautiful glass in a young year.
We talked, scattered all over the plain room,
And out of fear found a place where we breathed.
And over summer ambitious pens breathed
Friendship in idealism. But the next night
It was lost for awhile. We left the room.
Now our talking was almost silent; we
Shook apart a little. Did you mind that year?
Back when we drew curtains in our windows?
Today a fall rain ran down the windows.
It’s nearly over. Three years. Life breathed.
Now, like a circle, save only half a year.
I, you, you, you, we remembered tonight.
The reasons for keeping company, being we.
Us is a quiet possession of this room.
Let’s stop the hours and talk ‘til the next night
And we have to go. But don’t you see? We
Are more than older being in this room.
Reserving Space
Welcome to the Blue Room! This is just a reservation. I'm reserving a URL--carving out space--creating invisible borders where my friends I can share our writing and dialogue about the world. Coming in May.
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