A Little Poem During a Cold Spring
Poetics
Here is the world.
It’s a cold place &
There’s not much
you can do with it–
a little shaping or
arranging around
the edges. Pattern
emerges through
accretion of detail.
Denote. Until light
clobbers you hard
in the face, a salt
wave stirred full
of sand & knocks
you off your feet
& nearly drowns
you in the actual.
The world is heavy
it turns out. Hard
with denotations.
You come up sput-
tering. At [...]
Collage & Poetry: Just to See What Would Happen
I have continued to work on making collages over the last weeks, though not quite at the frantic rate at which I began. At the same time, I have returned to a pile of old drafts of poems I thought I was going to have to abandon. [...]
Spring Notes
The Canada Geese are back on the river. We heard a pair go honking by a couple of mornings ago on the dog walk, then yesterday & today they have been landing on the river in increasing numbers. As I sit looking out the south window over the water, I can see four crows lumbering [...]
$100,000 Lineation
I saw recently that Tom Sleigh’s new book of poems, Space Walk had won the Kingsley Tufts Award in poetry — the richest prize this side of a MacArthur — so I ordered the book immediately from Amazon, thinking that I too might be able to Make Big Money In Poetry. Actually, it’s an intelligent [...]
Philip Jones Griffiths Dies
I found Griffiths’s work only after I’d been to Vietnam in the mid-1990s. Once you’ve seen it you can’t unsee it. A weirdly loving portrayal of the effects of savagery. I think the greatest art, regardless of the horror it portrays, is motivated by love.
Pretty Brains
From one of my favorite blogs, Neurophilosophy, comes this lovely image of a 19th century papier mache brain. Be sure to click through the caption so you can see the whole thing in multiple views. Speaking of brains, I enjoyed reading Jonathan Mayhew’s inventory of his own neurological state, especially as it relates to music. [...]
Gun Rights
Does anyone else find it strange that the majority of the Supreme Court appears ready to endorse a reading of the Second Amendment that categorically affirms an individual’s right to own a gun because gun ownership is necessary if one wants to overthrow the government. It is a measure of just how radical this court [...]
Apparently, The European Enlightment . . .
. . . was driven by coffee & cigarettes. But we knew that. Actually, the review makes Daniel Lord Smail’s book about how humans alter their & others’ moods sound fascination even though I’m usually suspicious dismissive of Grand Unified Theories of Civilization.
My Lai: Forty Years Later
My friend Ly Lan, whose own village was destroyed by the US military when she was a child, sends this audio from the BBC as a remembrance.
William Carlos Williams in 1928
I’ve always loved these lines from WCW’s “Descent of Winter,” which is a kind of daybook consisting of poems & sections of prose. Williams, a pediatrician, was also an acute observer of old age. Beyond that, I love the audacity of the shift between the two stanzas, leaving the reader to make the connections between [...]
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