Jon Stewart visits Crossfire. Crossfire is bipolar political anger, completely useless as discourse, and egregiously part of The Problem. Stewart went on pointedly to underline the crap function of the show, and all such pure products. there is more commitment to issues and integrity on Stewart's show than on Crossfire. Crossfire and the like, all those crank opinions looking for a home, are perfectly brainless as they drone cosmetic simplicity. perfectly! welcome to the Knucklehead Socviety. it's kinda like something like just about like this that WCW meant when he wrote of what aint in newspapers. comedy beats shitheads everyday.

Risk Management

the Duchy of Risk Management: the better wares of better than there.
when the people of Risk Management prefer a field, there becomes sane
relief out of the eye. look over their reward, the considered spatulate
fingering. here’s a world war’s reunion, pleasant enough as all quiet
means the same thing. bouncing back from resistance to a meantime plan,
laughing in front of the sentence to come. in the Duchy, far telling
ways implode for a circus of effort. wings over Iraq as a pause to stop
the listing to sides of normal. wings too in other planetary points,
well known in words and dressed right up to kill. furor wants a roving
home town team. the Risk Management people rise instead to conclude.
they have willing sentences in mind. a sport names itself dread and
everyone listens carefully.

Cheney gets serious.

"For me, to be a poet is also to understand when the dictionary has it wrong"--Eileen Tabios (from her blog). I can go with this. I think my poetry got better when my English (as a 1st language, that is) got better. I was working for a wine store, years agone, and had the opportunity to write up wines. a task I took seriously, not wanting to sound like crap. at the time, the punctuation in my poetry was mostly commas, rarely periods. and my journal was full of dashes. I wasn't writing in prose then, and really worried whether I could. but writing about wines presented me the challenge of writing prose, and a somewhat formal prose at that. I made a study, and of course read and reread The Elements of Style by Strunk and White. the point of this being that having a clearer sense of 'good' English, I could misuse the language better. disjunctions and questionable grammatical choices and such empowered by what I heard in my head as an insistent pulse... well, I'm sounding like slop. the revelation I wish to convey is that you can't really take licenses until you know what licenses you take. I learned (to whatever degree, but allow that I did) the right of the dictionary, so that I could, as it came to me, use the wrong. it's not so much that I understand this, but that am at least sensitive to this. I think I learned as much about poetry from good prose as from other poets. I always knew I could write, if only to blurt lavishly, but to have care is (for one who never attempted formal poetry, rhyme and metre) a matter of learning prose thoroughly. enough to know what rules needed breaking.

the debates made me nervous enough, now more bad news, via Jonathan Mayhem. luckily the Ashbery imitators will fill the void of Ashberylessness. outsourced Ashbery poems will save the day, I'm confident.

tree start 

scant memory 

here's a good rehash of the debates, with details and links and stuff. I suppose there are scads of bloggers cogitating and writing upon the debates. I aint up on the mall but this one works for me. I have to keep reminding myself that respecting the candidate (like I respect, say, the Dalai Lama) is not a necessity. I recognize that something's gotta move. the only president I think I admire as a person is Jimmy Carter, and it's not like I want to buy his next poetry book. just that I think he's an okay guy, as opposed to the various forms of sludge that followed him. and it's not to say he was a particularly good president, I dunno from that. all of them presided over some manner of imperialism in the great green world out there. maybe there's something basically wrong in our national concepts, or what.

"I go into body/coffee/trance/stream of consciousness when i write well. It feels like rock and roll or ultramarathoning. Then I take a nap."--Lisa "Hit Dawg" Jarnot, over to Here Comes Everybody. I know the feeling.

Eileen Tabios's thoughts on poetry marketing. her views from one formerly outside the 'Poetry World' are refreshing and useful. the Poetry World's modalities are pretty wretched, a big effing struggle. Poetry's economy is just plain stupid and inefficient. if you failed Networking 101 like Henry Gould obviously did (moi aussi) then you either disappear or try some different method (as Henry seems to be doing). what I caught of the Boston Poetry Massacre last summer, there was some good poetry (of course) but also an oppressive stasis evident, as if the need to maintain the pal structure precluded critical risk. as much as I like blogging, the poetry blog world depends too heartily on pats on the back. even praise seems superficial, as in, how many poetry readings out there are described as 'rocking'? Moby Grape doing 'Omaha' at the psychedelic speed limit is, to me, rocking. poetry readings need and deserve a few more words to express the energy involved than a flunking 'rocking'. I guess I'm just griping. self publishing is real publishing, as is publishing on line. no need to overvalue the cultural cred of mags and books. I went some 15 or more years without really having any writer friends to talk with. I don't recommend such a sitch but it did force me to find my own path. publish or die is a lot of crap. I should stop my blather, and simply look forward to further thoughts from Eileen, who is clearheaded.

both last night's Alzheimer's post, and today's about the debate are dull. sorry. it's not that I wish to entertain, not primarily, but that my interest and involvement should be an energy.

I particularly like this one. the words (if you want to call them words) appear to float, fly even. a sense of breath. yet incomplete. just thought of an image in an Apollinaire poem, the one-winged ibis I think, anyway, birds flying in pairs. what one sees here is pre-language matter, unknit, ununited. something like that. I would like to see these in a larger format.

1) I should take notes, ah, but I wouldn't want to miss some gem from the mouth of Kerry or Bush whilst I scribbled.

2)I had ought to have writ about it last night, fresh, but I was tired and such.

oh what the heck. who gets swayed by these things anyway? it's mostly about confirmation. Kerry started right off with an appeal to the hawkish element: oh we'll kill the terrorists wherever they are. it's too much to ask to buck the craziness. I don't expect JK to go all peacenik, but he sounds like tough guy playing to the other toughs out there. because that is what a president must do. at least JK talking thus sounds like an off moment, not a systematic method à la his rival for our affections. Bush really looked bad up there. nervous and goofy while Kerry had a patrician cool. I can't help thinking GW's stuttering owes to an earpiece telling him what to say. he also said a few things that didn't make sene, like he didn't understand what was whispered. I'm not going conspiracy theorist, just describing GW's manner. Kerry threw figures out and made a better effort to delineate the programs he intends whereas Bush went for gutbucket platitudes. Bush played on Kerry as liberal (bad). and he goes after Kerry along experience lines, which rings hollow as Bush can't claim alot. Bush dodged several questions. I thought Kerry answered the question of how he can be a pro-choice Catholic well, that politically the Constitution trumps personal views. the 2 worst points for Kerry were when he brought up Cheney's lesbian daughter and when he spoke of his relgion. oh and of the strong women in his family. that last question was a loser anyway, Schieffer interjected himself too much into things. talking about Cheney's daughter is trying to undermine the Conservative stance while pretending Liberal sensitivity. Cheney had already gracefully spoken of his daughter, so leave it alone. Kerry's religion sounded pumped into him for the night, certainly the Bible phrases were. Bush sounded like a phony too, but more with the eloquence he was trying to assert rather than the sincerity of belief. when Bush quotes Laura as saying, stop scowling, that's a lot warmer sense of them as couple than Kerry's cool platitudes. the worst thing for Bush is how incompetent he looked. it's hard to believe he's been president for the past 4 years. again, I assume that Bush banging brewskis with his oil buddies is probably a different character than the one duded up and speechifying for the public.

doing some reading on Alzheimer's. I got Oliver Sacks's book The Man Whose Wife Was a Hat or whatever the title is, but I haven't opened it yet. my father's been going a couple days a week to an adult daycare, which has energized him. today, a perfect New England fall afternoon, we picked him up, he just about chirped about the colour, the cloudless blue sky, the brilliant sun. last week we picked him up a little late. there was one woman still sitting there, as we made our way out. she looked at me forlornly, held her hands out palm up, and said no one is coming for me. it was so sad. another woman once was leaving and told a worker there as a farewell: well, see you in heaven. which clashed against how peppy and quick walking she was. in a book I was reading today a woman in a nursing home took a fall. her nurse checked on her the next day. the woman said she talks with her dead husband, and when she fell, it's because she'd offered her elbow for him to hold as she walked. but of course (she said) he wasn't there to hold her and she fell. aware of her hallucination yet also fully in it. I guess I am unable to judge rightly how my father's condition compares. he seems 'better' but what lies am I telling myself? 90-95% of the time my caring for him is 'not a big deal'. but that 5-10% of the time when I am testy and grumpy make me feel so guilty, like I have no understanding or compassion whatsoever. obviously I am failing arithmetic here.

once again I want to thank the people at Lisablog for their good, odd, loopy, informative work. remember everyone, don't forget to feed the cats!!!

e-books by Christina Strong and Joe Elliot that slip into your computer as easy as kiss my hand, simply visit this Kimballian link. "Two towers that are mirrors on the outside so that attackers would only be attacking themselves"--Joe Elliot, 101 Designs for the World Trade Center; "I of sick of one society"--Christina Strong, Utopian Politics. I've only scanned these works, both seemingly of a current political push (and so should be you!). up the good work keep, Mr Kimball.

re this, I can say my father wakes from sleep but barely out of dreams. he comes from a place where time is very different. where time remembers, and he floats. Provincetown when he was a kid, his grandfather owned a store. or further along the temporal river, swimming, lost. in the morning he often realizes he got up in the middle of the night, was confused, is a touch embarassed. the transition out from dreams, in the ever long nights. but I did not come, and he has forgotten them.

funny,I'm hearing a bop beat here. at any rate, rage on, Stephen Vincent, tunesmith, blowing chorus with Zukosky.

misty 

place met 

the thing interesting me about Henry Gould, adn why I seem to be stalking him, is that I don't know what the hell he's going to do next. that's a refreshing and positive thing. perhaps why people catalyze around Derrida owes to how difficult he is to peg, how surprising and unexpected his discernments are. Henry has seemingly upped the ante, I suppose fresh with the realization that if he doesn't blow his own horn it doesn't get blown. I've had a similar realization about my own work. what imprimatur is more important than one's own integrity?

I am probably going to write something that sounds like or drinks from this from AnnMarie Eldon (over to R/ckets&S/ntries). it's the language we're in. and dude, I'm listening to Moby Grape, Skip Spence credibly singing "it's so outasight being in love".




okay, done it.

I guess I disagree with the statement that when a unique thinker dies, a light goes out. if Derrida's writing is to mean anything, it will have to get by without the personality and charisma of the person. if his work can't survive his death, then it wasn't important work to begin with. and just looking at the responses on Poetics and a few blogs, it's clear that people are contending with his work now, not the person. his work has influenced people. as for me, who hasn't read Derrida, he remains a potential. I pulled out Aporia today, the only book by Derrida that I have, eager to read it (which I still may not do immediately, having other books going, but I am bolstered in my intention). I know from my scans of the B&N shelves that there's quite a lot of Derridean work available in English, presumably more in French. I think light, useful light, remains.

gee, the moodswings. I just changed the Navbar to black. I hadn't anticipated this shift, but I guess we are all subject to our moods. with the love of my family and friends, and the millions of bloggers who read my blog with religious intensity (please, you're embarassing me!!!), I am sure I will be back to a blue, maybe even a silver Navbar in no time. really, I'm okay!!! awk, I'm sounding like Jim Behrle.

Jukka'a talking squiggles.

I don't know what a fractal is
I don't know what a fractal is
I don't know what a fractal is
I don't know what a fractal is
I don't know what a fractal is
I don't know what a fractal is

but I see magic shapes speaking

I'm thinking that these poems don't need the pictures. not that the pictures interfere. I might recommend that the reader forestall hitting the pic link till having read the poem, then refer to the painting in question. because I don't think the poems are captions (merely). someone I think interviewed in Jacket (Simon Perchik?) described his method of writing. he used the pictures in Family of Man. he would rework each poem so that reference to the picture he used was eliminated. words placed, then, in a different space. Mark's poems are more of a direct response to Magritte's work, but they live outside that direction as well. see, I didn't notice the links at 1st, thinking the underlines just indicated titles. duh. readers as well as writers contend with context all the time. sometimes our urge for context (I'm not directing this comment at Mark but at myself) leaves us a little grasping.