Kansas Vortex

An interesting Believer article from a few years ago on Wichita Vortex Sutra and American political poetry.

As a former resident of Kansas (1980-1987), I see now why my time there was so dizzy.

The poem's lovely end in which it tapers off after its flourishing, ecstatic invocation of a dozen prophets and political bodies:

in chill earthly mist
            houseless brown farmland plains rolling heavenward
                                                                        in every direction
one midwinter afternoon Sunday called the day of the Lord--
            Pure Spring Water gathered in one tower
                                  where Florence is
                                                        set on a hill,
                                  stop for tea & gas

biggest game ever today

Frippertronics as the Audio Vortex?

Every time I hear Fripp soloing with his time-lag tape loops, I feel that I have dropped through a black hole & woken up in another dimension. Is this a vortex of sound?

Double Vortex

A Vibratory Universe?

Environmental Collage

"The Vortex" is a tour-de-force of a style of essay that Eliot Weinberger is a master of--these sort of collaged constellations on a particular subject or theme. They include very little overt commentary, but rather purport to convey particular, curious narratives from the world over. They're lovely & thrilling, & they appropriately create a kind of mental whirlwind (at least when there as long as "The Vortex," which is about 20 printed pages). To me there a more lyrical variant of some of Benjamin's essays.

The essay traces the vortex as a kind of primal form through ancient creation myths, spiritual theories, metaphors & symbols, poetics, science, nature, metaphysics, etc. The penultimate paragraph takes us to the North Pacific Gyre, where Captain Ahab, the Pequod, & everyone else but Ishmael, likely met there demise, & home of what I consider to be simultaneously one of the most marvelous & saddest environmental, um, shall we say, blemishes: the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, also called the Pacific Trash Vortex.

Weinberger's description of it:
"The Gyre, is one of the dead places on the planet, on the same latitude with the Sahara and Gobi deserts, and the equally lifelss Sargasso Sea. Commercial fisherment don't bother to go; merchant ships rarely cross it, for it is on the route to nowhere. The Gyre is filled with garbage that has drifted from Japan and the west coast of the U.S.. A scientific expedition trawled for a few days and pulled in a ton of debris: plastic hangars, drums of chemical waste, tires, television sets, basketballs. There are bright-colored plastic pellets in the transparent jellyfish that proliferatte there; six pounds of plastic for every pound of plankton. On the uninhabited nesting islands, the stomachs of decomposing albatrosses are a mass of bottle caps and bits of bleach bottles, action figures, plastic twine, styrofoam peanuts, shrink wrap, and the splinters of compact disk cases."

Anonymous Bagel

Baked bagels with Teddy this morning.

What else?

Thinking about this piece by Stanley Fish on the problem of anonymity on the web. He's drawing in part on The Offensive Internet, a new book edited by Saul Levmore & Martha Nussbaum. As I have an unabashed brain crush on Nussbaum, I want to check this puppy out. & my JD wife can explain all the legal jargon I probably won't get. The problem is whether or not web anonymity should be protected under the First Amendment. Fish takes to task Justice Stevens assertion that "“The inherent worth of . . . speech in terms of its capacity for informing the public does not depend upon the identity of its source, whether corporation, association, union, or individual,” pointing out that a knowledge of the source of a message clearly influences the way one might interpret the message.

What else?

Baked some cornbread this afternoon to go along with Nikki's chili. The chili tastes different since I know Nikki cooked it.

tracking down the vortex

Got back today from a 2-day retreat in New Hampshire where I drank enough green tea to antioxidize an army of free radicals from hell. Eliot Weinberger's An Elemental Thing was waiting for me at home. I can't wait to dive into this collection--I saw Weinberger read from his dazzling essay on the vortex several years ago at Iowa and I'd been hoping to track it down ever since. At last I have it! Or does the vortex have me?

Just wondering how many microscopic alien life forms are sucking energy from me. And is it maybe coming out my nose? Just wondering.

From Creeley's "Classical" (Memory Gardens)

"...oh youth, / oh cardboard cheerios of time"

then:

"One instant everything must always change,
your life or death, your articulate fingers lost
in meat time..."

Clarity & Obscurity

Your brain is listening to you



Haiku Metaphor

The End of Nature

Purity, Restraint, Stillness

Best of 2010

I posted this "best of" list at No Tell Hotel's blog. I was thinking minimally at the time. Here are a few more I could have / should have also added to the list:

A Cloud of Witness, by Jason Stumpf
--excellent prose poems with a tight rhythmic backbone

Transcendental Studies, by Keith Waldrop
--the complete trilogy by the master of collage

The Cloud Corporation, by Timothy Donnelly
--this book is super hot shit right now, so my natural inclination is to try to be different & say, nah, it's not all that, but I'm really not different, I'm like everyone else, and man, it is all that

No, No Scary by Zachery Schomburg
--a fantastic follow up to The Man Suit, which was itself scary good

The Waste Land and Other Poems, by John Beer
--anyone crazy enough to use this title must be formidable. These talky, sharp poems take me back to sweet home Chicago

The French Exit, by Elisa Gabbert
--Gabbert's deft two-line stanzas are equal parts charm and dazzle as they swerve through observations, thought patterns, and reflections

Reveilles, by Nathan Hoks
--this guy's kind of narcissistic, but the poems aren't bad

I'm sure there's a lot of other good stuff I should add, but I'm still catching up with the best of 1983, so hey, 11 new titles is pretty good.

Ashbery and why to read poems

The lovely conclusion from Megan Snyder-Camp's compelling reading of "Paradoxes and Oxymorons":

Ashbery reminds me why I read poems. It’s not to understand a poet’s intentions, or to get to know the poet. It’s to savor the movement of mind that comes from fully engaging with a rich poem, and tracing the edges of structures whose echoes and ghost-images will appear at surprising intersections in the days ahead, working themselves through in my mind. Work, in that context—the work of bridging gaps, navigating a sharp turn, weighing one thing against another—feels like play. I get lost in it, I resurface, I dive back down. I show up muddy to lunch. I’m not trying to get exactly out of the poem what the poet put in; I’m certain that I won’t. What I get, rather, is exactly what I need, which shifts with each reading. I need a structure strong, engaging, and open enough to lead me beyond my own expectations into an exploration of what it truly means for one word, or idea, or person to connect to another—a chain of those connections strong enough, and flexible enough, to swing out over the vastness of possibility.

I'm normally not one for reader response, but this seems like the way to go--especially her description of the mind working at the "edges of structures whose echoes and ghost-images will appear at surprising intersections in the days ahead," as if prescribing a kind of prescience to the poem that we meaningfully engage with. The chance play that forms our mental and imaginative destiny!

I write as far away from myself as possible.
-Andre du Bouchet (trans. Auster)

Book Launch

I will be giving a reading at Newtonville Books on Dec. 2 With Mark Conway & Jason Stumpf. Come on down.

Reveilles in the blogosphere

Salt has posted a clip of me reading in promotion of the book as part of the blogs launching the Crashaw and Scott Award books.

Reveilles can be purchased here.