TWO SHORTS BY MR. WALLACE ~

Mr. Cogito


The best book of 1994 is the first English translation of Zbigniew Herbert's Mr. Cogito, a book of poems that came out in Poland in the mid-1970s, well before Herbert's justly famous Report from the Besieged City and Other Poems. Mr. Cogito's character who appears in most of Herbert's best poems—he's kind of a poetic Pnin, both intellectual and not too bright, both hopelessly confused and bravely earnest as he grapples with the Big Questions of human existence.

Zbigniew Herbert is one of the two or three best living poets in the wold, and by far the best of what you'd call the "postmoderns." Since any great poem communicates an emotional urgency that postmodernism's integument of irony renders facile or banal, postmodern poets have a tough tow to hoe. Herbert's Cogito-persona permits ironic absurdism and earnest emotion not only to coexist but to nourish one another. Compared to Mr. Cogito, the whole spectrum of American poetry — from the retrograde quaintness of the Neoformalists and New-Yorker-backyard-garden-meditative lyrics to the sterile abstraction of the Language Poets — looks sick. It seems significant that only writers from Eastern Europe and Latin America have succeeded in marrying the stuff of spirit and human feeling to the parodic detachment the postmodern experience seems to require. Maybe as political conditions get more oppressive here, we Americans'll get good at it, too.

(1994)



Just Asking


Q: Are some things worth dying for? Is the American idea* one such thing? Who's ready for a thought experiment? What if we chose to regard the 2,973 innocents killed in the terrorist attacks of 9/11 as heroes and martyrs, "sacrifices on the altar of freedom"?** That is, what if we described that a certain minimum baseline vulnerability to terrorist attack is part of the price of the American idea? That ours is a generation of Americans called to make great sacrifices in order to preserve our way of life — not just of our soldiers and money on foreign soil, but the sacrifice of our personal safety and comfort? Maybe even of more civilians' lives?

What if we chose to accept the fact that every few years, despite everyone's best efforts, some hundreds of thousands of us may die in the sort of terrible suicidal attack that a democratic republic cannot 100 percent protect itself from without subverting the very principles that make it worth protecting?

Is this thought experiment monstrous? Would it be monstrous to refer to the 40,000-plus domestic highway deaths we accept each year because the mobility and autonomy of the car are worth the price? Is monstrousness who no serious public figure now will speak of the delusory trade-off of liberty for safety that Ben Franklin warned of more than 200 years ago? What exactly has changed between Franklin's time and ours? Why now can we not have a serious national conversation about sacrifice, the inevitability of sacrifice — either of (a) some safety or (b) some portion of the rights and liberties that make the American idea so precious?

Q: In the absence of such a conversation, do we trust our current leaders to revere and safeguard the American idea as they seek to "secure the homeland"? What are the effects on the American idea of Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, PATRIOT Acts I and II, warrantless surveillance, Executive Order 13233, corporate contractors performing military functions, the Military Commissions Act, NSPD 51, etc., etc.? Assume for the moment that some of these really have helped make our persons and property safer — are they worth it? Where and when was the public debate on whether they're worth it? Was there no such debate because we're not capable of having or demanding one? Why not? Have we become so selfish and frightened that we don't even want to think about whether some things trump safety? What kind of future does that augur?

*Given the Gramm-Rudmanesque space limit here, let's all just agree that we generally know what this term connotes — open society, consent of the governed, enumerated powers, Federalist 10, pluralism, due process, transparency . . . the whole messy democratic roil.

** (The phrase is Lincoln's, more or less.)

(2007)

________________________

Both Flesh and Not

essays by ~

David Foster Wallace

(Little, Brown 2012)

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/15/books/15wallace.html?_r=0

ONE VOICE ~

Network 

(1976)

Dangerously not dated

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_%28film%29

Paddy Chayefsky

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paddy_Chayefsky

EARTH ~

Amongst the Rocks





Just who are those women

bent over on the rocky

shoreline searching and

searching and seemingly

searching for more, a pail

at their feet, plastic and

colored, not a work pail,

and these women seem

from another place in

time, not in beach wear,

skirts and hair wild with

the wind




It was only days and

days later, when we

were off the road

back home in the

woods that we spoke

with our son who asked

"where did you go"




and we told him of our

travels from mountains

and streams and rivers

and finally to the sea

and about these women

one morning bent at the

shoreline, amongst the

rocks, that he told us,

years earlier, right there

amongst the rocks, he

had thrown his wedding

ring away





_________________________________


BOB ARNOLD
Beautiful Days
Longhouse 2013




photo © bob arnold

Paul Williams ~

For me, forever and always Paul Williams was the Huckleberry Finn of the American underground music publication. Crawdaddy. Once you saw a copy, you knew. Underground — meaning started from a dream, hardly commercial, and working with personalities (like John Lennon, Timothy Leary, Philip K. Dick, Bob Dylan and many more) that would draw immense wealth and commercial benefits for others, but not Paul Williams. Not the dreamer. Not the inventor. 

And he had an uncanny ear and touch for other dreamers, no matter their age.

On a personal note, I watched Williams enter our own small family world when he was drawn to the very youthful and immensely consistent articles our son Carson was writing and we were publishing from Longhouse via the Internet. We also started to publish a minimalist postcard series all composed by Carson of short interviews he had with musicians. Williams seemed to love all of this and made contact, and later with me, asking, "How old is Carson, anyway?" When I told him 16, he flipped, just at the range and quality of the writing. Carson had fit like a glove right into the Paul Williams scheme of dreamers and music-drenched rascals. In one of his last editorials of a sort for the later day Crawdaddy, Paul wrote a brief appreciation of Carson. One of those small-nugget badges of honor. 

The world misses Paul Williams — it just doesn't know it yet.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/therecord/2013/03/30/175775627/remembering-paul-williams-founder-of-rock-magazine-crawdaddy

Paul Williams in 1971

b. Boston May 19, 1948

d. Calif. March 27, 2013

a great photo by Raeanne Rubenstein

NEW INTELLIGENCE ~

1
   


Stars

are the campfires

of exiles.


 
Language exists

to pull things

close.

 


*

 

Stop that!

 
Communications

are being monitored.

 

Collusion is forbidden.

 

Humanity

will be punished

 

with the profusion

of new jargons.

 

2

 

Inverted glass,

a white cup

invents the underworld.

 


*

 

Fog thins

to chiffon,

 

nylon,

 

Easter.

 


*

 

In the universe next door,

I'm gone

 

and the shadows

of the leaves

 

of the elm I had pulled down

 

still make a fuss

over the earth.



 
____________________



 
 RAE ARMANTROUT
just saying
Wesleyan University Press 2013

INSTEAD ~









1


To each his own

severance package



The Inca

hacked large stones

into the shapes of

nearby peaks.






2


The eerie thing

is that ghosts don't exist.



Rows

of clear droplets

hang from stripped twigs



instead.





3


Pain brings attention

to herself.



Spine on Fire!

Trail Blazer!

(Thinks she's hot.)



Out here

slim trunks bend

every which



_________________________

RAE ARMANTROUT
just saying
Wesleyan University Press 2013

LOUISVILLE SLUGGER ~

Muhammad Ali

NEW YORK TOWN ~
 

I recently found this excellent two-disc CD in one of our local libraries — fresh and clean, no scratches. It's a well researched and timely capsule taking one back to the early 60s and some of Bob Dylan's wellspring of inspirations and influences. A surrounding. At appox. 150 minutes and not once Bob Dylan singing; instead we have John Jacob Niles, John Lee Hooker, Rev. Gary Davis, Woody Guthrie, Lenny Bruce, Jack Kerouac, Barbara Dane, Jean Ritchie, Big Joe Williams, Lightnin' Hopkins, Lonnie Johnson, Kenneth Patchen, The Staples Singers, Paul Clayton, Dave Ron Ronk, Allen Ginsberg, Roosevelt Sykes (misspelled in the song credits), Elizabeth Cotton, and many more, freewheelin'.

SCHOOLDAYS ~

Two and two, they come to four; and four and four make eight;
Eleven twos are twenty-two; six eights make forty-eight.
If one big hen laid one big egg each day out in her coop
How many eggs for one whole year round would Mommy have to cook?

Where are they now, those golden years before I grew a man?
Where are the laughing barefoot boys who sported, played and ran?
The smell of chalk, the jotter book, the moments of great shame
When Master called me Dunce! and Clown! and hit me with his cane.

The sudden pride that came to me when history was told,
Brian boru and Sarsfield too, Saint Patrick brave and bold;
How sweet cocoa in a mug, white bread with dripping jam,
The first long pants that made me feel at last I was a man.

The dark-haired girl called Mary who lived across the way,
The crossroads near the river where we danced the nights away;
The turf fire burning in the hearth, the moments spent alone,
The sudden urge for places new, the pangs of leaving home.

London, Glasgow, Liverpool — I roamed that dreary land,
Seeking out a friendly face, a man to shake my hand;
The generous shores of America, a frantic search for gold,
The sunny land of Texas or Alaska's crippling cold.

War then reared its ugly head and many young men died,
Leaders roared like maniacs, pleaded, threatened, lied;
Governments made covenants, priests cried in vain;
I dreamed at night of my schoolboy days, it helped to keep me sane.

One thing has ever puzzled me since I ceased to be a boy:
Politicians must have gone — alas — to different schools than I,
They add up in the funniest ways, and time and time again,
Two and two will come out five, and six and three make ten.

I am tired of roaming now, I think I'll settle down,
I've seen too many dingy rooms, too many foreign towns,
The greenest hills are the hills of home and once before I die,
I want to see the little school that knew me as a boy.


_____________________________

SEAN McCARTHY
Darling Kate and Other Poems
Anvil 1972

O MYSTERY ~

"A mysterious malady seems to have expanded drastically in the past year, wiping out as many as half of the beehives needed to pollinate much of America’s produce."

 The New York Times March 29, 2013

 ___________________

Ah.

 A Mystery. 

 Like a Hard-Wired Society bent on reaping quick gargantuan profits at the expense of bees, sunshine, mountains & rivers, crops, workers, landscape, neighborhoods, people, for the investment of boy billionaires and groveling Mad Men has nothing to do with it. 

It's simple ~ the bees die; we die.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/29/science/earth/soaring-bee-deaths-in-2012-sound-alarm-on-malady.html?hp

BLIP ~

Zero Dark Thirty, or, as I like to call it: 'Hard-Wired American Troopers', a film directed by Kathryn Bigelow, is an exercise in ennui and finally despair. The "shocking" water boarding scenes seem more hype and are actually comparable to photographs in Time Magazine. The fact that the US government operated as torturers with torture chambers spread out around the Middle East and Europe should be of more concern. They're still there, of course, since these makeshift gulags sometimes show results. "Black Sites." Expect a restaurant chain to erupt in the United States with this headline title sometime in the redeeming future. The choreography was worthless throughout the film since every explosion was hinted at moments before it wrecked havoc — whether a bus, a restaurant in a hotel, or a car approaching. Gee, I wonder what is about to happen? The strike on bin Laden's compound is a cruel video game of shooters knocking down almost anything that moved in its laser-seeking path upward to the third floor and its "jackpot" (a very ill bin Laden). Women are shot, then shot again, children possibly were, since there were many screaming and scrambling in the darkness of the raid, but we don't get a clear look at that. Nor do we see what happened to the many innocent women and children inside the structure — while a helicopter is blown to smithereens right inside the compound grounds by our crackerjack crash landing crew, and supposedly the women and children were left behind with the dead bodies, and the massive explosion, to fend for themselves. We heard, away from any Hollywood film, the Jackpot was "buried at sea," but nothing of this is shown in the film. Our hero "Maya," played by Jessica Chastain, is transported in a military cargo plane, designed to move a small army, and she can "go anywhere you like." Good old military justice and waste. While we're left with a final scene as she is stunned and weeping in what may be described as a vacuum of worthlessness. 'Where to go?' seems to be what the director is saying. "What's to watch?" is what I'm asking. The American Trooper Hard-Wired video shooters and players are demanding upon a tribal society that they are saviors to miraclewhip up a delicious "democratic" state salad. Living-as-we-do-and-please is actually democratic already.

[ BA ]

BEING THERE ~

"Two years after Fukushima's triple nuclear meltdown forced tens of thousands of residents to flee, it is possible to take a virtual journey deep into the exclusion zone to one of the towns they left behind."

https://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=Namie,+Fukushima+Prefecture,+Japan&hl=en&ll=37.494201,140.990381&spn=0.014301,0.066047&sll=37.492975,140.997677&sspn=0.063538,0.132093&oq=namie+j&hnear=Namie,+Futaba+District,+Fukushima+Prefecture,+Japan&t=m&z=15&layer=c&cbll=37.494203,140.99037&panoid=pjgHkcFlzFvd6Hf2lEFp-g&cbp=11,0,,0,0






uk: guardian

“Living artist, glass, steel, mattress, pillow, linen, water and spectacles.” ~

Tilda Swinton at MoMA

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/25/swinton-under-glass-new-offering-from-moma/

1910 ~

The only American writer I knew who reminded me some of Leo Tolstoy — beard, eye contact, work with a two-man saw, and poetry to life — was Ted Enslin.
 They lived to almost the same age.
Thanks to Jonathan Greene for sharing this film.

JOHN TRUDELL ~

One Time


One time
I was visiting
with my relatives
the clouds, the mountains,
the sky, the trees
My relatives touched
My spirit
nudged it lovingly

Listen to us
Impatient one
We are forever
You must remember
the gentleness
of time

You are struggling
to be
who you are
You say you want
to learn
the old ways
struggling to learn
when
all you must do
is remember

Remember the people
Remember sky and Earth
Remember the people
have always struggled
to live
in harmony
in peace

Struggle against selfishness
and weakness
So the people
May live
As Nations

The old ways are hard
The people have always
had to work
together

Remember
Impatient one
Remember
and live
Do not be afraid
of truth
Respect
Discipline
Share your life
So the people
May live

Honor sky
and earth
Honor yourself
Honor your relations

Remember Impatient one
the gentleness
of time
So the People
May live.





Remember the happy time
when being together
is Solace
The pure happiness
of loving and laughing
Exploring sensations creating relief
in troubling times.

Remember the happy time
when all we have to do
is live
with each other
to be a shelter
in the face of the greed

Remember the happy time
how we use our joy as strength
Our tears washing away the bad
how just being is our alliance
The lessons we teach ourselves
Are the remembrances we carry

Remember the happy time
that is something we never lose
So
We must not throw it away
Or
Allow the abusers of life
to take it away

Remember the happy time
it is a gift to us. . .





The Exploiters


do not let them get to you
we are here there is a reason
reason for our own minds
reason for respect
reason for a natural world
reason for resistance
reason we are more
than they can control
their constant military
economic attack assaulting
the balance in life
inflation racism sexism egotism
new clear insecurities only
battalions of their armies
ravishing our universe
as their machines
rage against earth
industrial war
their mechanical money view
is limited to them

do not let them get to you
we are connected to each other
when we understand
their way of doing things
is unnatural
and
only natural things last





night time
when the sun rests
the clouds seem
no more than shadows
of themselves

night life
earth absorbing
moon and stars
universal energies
joining us
to each other
in
the constant creation
destiny
charging the flow
we are current
to forever





Living in Reality


Calling us red indians
we have been the colors
of a chameleons back
Changing with time
Altering the larger pattern
Surviving genocide
because we have to

Living in Reality
we are targets
of your unfairness
With Warriors for targets
You Create
Your own destruction

This is how we
bring you down
target by target
You wound yourself
Using your greed
We watch
Your spirit fade

Living in Reality
We can endure
                        Your cages
                        Your bullets
                        Your lies
                        Your confusion


We know
You have destroyed
            Your Peace
Living in Reality
You only exist.




_______________

JOHN TRUDELL
Living in Reality
(songs called poems)
Society of the People, 1982

Author's first book, published in the wake of the suspicious house fire on the Shoshone Paiute reservation in Nevada that claimed his wife, their three children, and his mother-in-law.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Trudell

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tina_Manning

MALI ~

Nahawa Doumbia

http://www.allmusic.com/artist/nahawa-doumbia-mn0000377558

MOST BEAUTIFUL FILM ~

http://worldscinema.org/2012/10/roberto-rossellini-india-matri-bhumi-french-version-1959/

Roberto Rossellini

WISE LETTER ~

To Charles McCarthy from Kurt Vonnegut ~

Vonnegut was the author of Cat's Cradle, Slaughterhouse-Five, Mother Night and other modern classics.

Charles McCarthy was the chairman of the Drake School Board of Drake, North Dakota.

To honor Vonnegut, never mind wise judgement, I like to read this letter at least once a year.

It seems now almost a duty. 

from Letters, Kurt Vonnegut, edited and with an introduction by the author's close friend
 Dan Wakefield. Both authors were born and raised in Indianapolis, Indiana.
(Delacorte, 2012)

A terrific collection of letters to literary colleagues, family, friends, adversaries, and mostso KV's children.

STIHL SHAPER ~

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/21/garden/from-tree-stump-to-sculpture.html?src=dayp




nytimes 

"BURY THEM FIRST" ~

No one speaks better about "Richard Stark" than his creator and guide Donald Westlake.


Of the 28 Stark novels, 24 feature its star "Parker" — no first name, although Westlake somewhere once said if he had to choose a first name for "Parker", he'd like "Frank". Forget that and just think "Parker" since it goes down like a rock thrown in all the novels. 


Not to confuse things — in 1999, a Richard Stark novel The Hunter was made into a film titled "Payback," after the seminal debut starring Lee Marvin as "Parker" but changed to the name "Walker" (remains the best of all Stark film versions, "Point Blank," 1967), and Mel Gibson starred in this remake. Gibson's terrific and even more terrific today as his personal life has given us a true bad boy since the film was released.


Don't take the film too seriously (though I do), after all it is a tongue in cheek noir, foolishly remade a few years later and released as a "director's-cut." While this remake may be technically wiser, it's boring, and has lost the pranks and hijinks and the delicious narration by Gibson himself reeling off his mind at what he's feeling and looking at as "Porter." He's looking at betrayal, and "Parker" (or "Porter" as he's called here) is all about loyalty. Don't cross him.


Everyone in the 1999 version of Payback gets theirs by crossing Porter.


Casting director Marion Dougherty has spun a novelty — nearly every slimeball on the outer edges of Hollywood is brought in, male and female, and by slimeball I mean trained actors who can pull it off. Like William Devane, Manu Tupou and Deborah Unger. Like Kris Kristofferson with James Coburn (combining again Billy the Kid and Pat Garrett from another earlier classic film). The director's cut erases Kristofferson completely; more dumbness.


 When Westlake was asked who he thought of as his "Parker," he answered, "Jack Palance." When I mention Palance to Sweetheart she just makes a face and says, "eeewww" (pinching her nose). 


Lee Marvin's a glorious and tall leopard-like "Walker" (Parker). Gibson's "Porter" (Parker) is playful & fed-up with idiots, can deliver impeccable Stark lines, and just wants his "$70,000". No more, no less.


 _____________











Some Novels Available by Richard Stark

    The Hunter (1962, aka Point Blank, Payback, University of Chicago Press reprint 2008) ISBN 978-0-226-77099-4
    The Man With the Getaway Face (1963, aka The Steel Hit, University of Chicago Press reprint 2008) ISBN 978-0-226-77100-7
    The Outfit (1963, University of Chicago Press reprint 2008) ISBN 978-0-226-77101-4
    The Mourner (1963, University of Chicago Press reprint 2009) ISBN 978-0-226-77103-8
    The Score (1964, aka Killtown, University of Chicago Press reprint 2009) ISBN 978-0-226-77104-5
    The Jugger (1965, University of Chicago Press reprint 2009) ISBN 978-0-226-77102-1
    The Seventh (1966, aka The Split, University of Chicago Press reprint 2009) ISBN 978-0-226-77105-2
    The Handle (1966, aka Run Lethal, University of Chicago Press reprint 2009) ISBN 978-0-226-77106-9
    The Rare Coin Score (1967, University of Chicago Press reprint 2009) ISBN 978-0-226-77107-6
    The Green Eagle Score (1967, University of Chicago Press reprint 2010) ISBN 978-0-226-77108-3
    The Black Ice Score (1968, University of Chicago Press reprint 2010) ISBN 978-0-226-77109-0
    The Sour Lemon Score (1969, University of Chicago Press reprint 2010) ISBN 978-0-226-77110-6
    Deadly Edge (1971, University of Chicago Press reprint 2010) ISBN 0-7490-0087-2 and 978-0-226-77091-8
    Slayground (1971, University of Chicago Press reprint 2010) — First chapter shared with The Blackbird, a novel in Westlake's Alan Grofield series. ISBN 978-0-226-77092-5
    Plunder Squad (1972, University of Chicago Press reprint 2010) ISBN 978-0-226-77093-2
    Butcher's Moon (1974, University of Chicago Press reprint 2011) ISBN 978-0-226-77095-6
    Comeback (1997, University of Chicago Press reprint 2011) ISBN 978-0-226-77058-1
    Backflash (1998, University of Chicago Press reprint 2011) ISBN 978-0-226-77060-4
    Flashfire (2000, University of Chicago Press reprint 2011) ISBN 978-0-226-77062-8
    Firebreak (2001, University of Chicago Press reprint 2011) ISBN 978-0-226-77065-9
    Breakout (2002)
    Nobody Runs Forever (2004)
    Ask the Parrot (2006)
    Dirty Money (2008)

Also appears in:

    The Blackbird (1969) by Richard Stark — Parker appears only the first chapter of this novel starring Alan Grofield.
    Dead Skip (1972) by Joe Gores — Parker appears briefly in a sequence that was also described (from a different viewpoint) in Plunder Squad (1972).
    Jimmy the Kid (1974) by Donald E. Westlake — This novel in Westlake's John Dortmunder series features the gang planning a caper based on a Parker novel they have. Chapters alternate between Parker committing a kidnapping (in the otherwise unavailable novel Child Heist) and the Dortmunder gang screwing it up as they try to imitate Parker. Only a few chapters of Child Heist are featured, and this particular Parker story is not complete on its own.

(wikipedia)