Now, isn't it just like them to be so prejudiced against us?

Remember: If it's bad, and it happens to you, then someone is to blame. And that someone ISN'T YOU.

We love one another because we are not them.
They hate us, and it's OK
to hate the haters . . .

every love has to find its corresponding enemy

from _Joe's Marginalia_ : _A Selection of the Poems of Laura Riding_

paradox/reversal

(stasis)

- lyric cluster -

i.e., she's bigger than love

subsumed/objectified.

*     *     *

fuck-you poem  -  Millay

self-realization?
v. alienation

soul-retrieval -

a type -
a fantasy > what she tends towards herself

de-corporeal --> anorexic?

* * *

(goddess?)

yikes       beautiful dead woman?

multiple but one

no possession possible

rather than vice-versa

having v. seeing 

* * *


past life?

cut off
from past -
hi modernist topos

- portrait
- degraded saint

- Cf. Loy's Bowery poems

Apology of Genius

Eve as apple?
knowledge of good
& evil - or Ultimate Knowledge?

Graves?

Veiled goddess.

* * *


the anti-Beatrice?

the Ultimate as
dark & female -
that can't be named

love &/as death

declarative
statements,
detachable/
modular

woman as lack/gap?

not an aporia

surcease

* * *


aphrodite from the spume

so, antipodes -
topsy-turvydom

"ALL ONE!"

for herself

The Kansas Blotter Interviews

Here's an intriguing new project by poet/sci-fi writer Ben Cartwright - The Kansas Blotter - an interview series of writers in Lawrence KS. Lawrence KS?? you might ask. And the answer is Yes. I still wish someone would do a literary history of this town - what a fascinating core-sample of US literary history that would be!

Anyhow, here's Ben's description of the site:

"The Kansas Blotter interviews are conducted by me, in Lawrence, KS, with a variety of writers and artists. The purpose of these interviews is to investigate creative practice in my community, and the world at large, and to foster a feeling of connection and understanding between working artists. I hope these interviews will be listened to by everyone. Barring that, I hope they will be listened to by people for whom they have some use. Please don't give these interviews new lives, in other contexts, without first contacting me for permission."

What I Saw at the Wetlands

1. Canada geese

2. Red-winged blackbirds

3. The sun (briefly)

4. Switchgrass and big bluestem taller than me

5. smeared old racoon

6. fat, splayed new racoon

7. Lincoln's sparrow

8. song sparrow

9. black-capped chickadee

10. American coot

11. A figure about twice as large as a large man, emerging from the water covered with a film of scummy green paint, who said, "I am DUCKWEED MAN! - I am the asshole who's taking over the world! I've got you by the balls - you're MINE and you are TOAST!" "But," I objected,"You are the smallest multicellular plant on the planet." Then I noticed he had no genitals.

12. Franklin's gulls (kettling)

13. crows (lots)

From the Privileged - and Patronizing

". . . we should view the privilege of a higher education much as we did the privileges that we enjoyed as children. We knew we couldn't get ice cream if we didn't help wash the dishes - we worked for the privileges that we enjoyed, and we shared in the responsibility of earning them. Those special activities were available to us, but we did not enjoy them as a 'right.' We were expected to contribute.
     ". . . We need to break down expectations based on entitlement and focus on educational productivity and outcomes. Institutions should review redundancies, rethink staffing models, and streamline business practices. Productivity measures should be applied in all areas. . . .
     "For example, we should re-evaluate the notion that large classes are inherently pedagogically unsound.  . . . Although no one would advocate for large classes in every discipline or instance, we should review what we do in light of new financial contingencies . . ."

- Hamid Shirvani, president of Calif. State Stanislaus, writing in the Oct. 23 Chronicle of Higher Eduction.

May I have my ice cream now, please?

That was a question (and a good one)

"Why is the perfect reestablishment practiced and prized, why is it composed."

Anthology or Notlogy?

As I prepare to order books for my poetry workshop next semester, I’m confronted by the perennial issue of whether or not to order an anthology. Marianne Moore argues in favor of anthologies thusly: “Academic feeling, or prejudice possibly, in favor of continuity and completeness is opposed to miscellany – to music programs, composite picture exhibitions, newspapers, magazines, and anthologies. Any zoo, aquarium, library, garden, or volume of letters, however, is an anthology and certain of these selected findings are highly satisfactory.” Just so. But likewise, “However expressive the content of an anthology, one notes that a yet more distinct unity is afforded in the unintentional portrait given, of the mind which brought the assembled integers together.” And, one might add, the historical moment in which that mind operated. The auteur and his/her times.

So, should I order an anthology? And if so, which? I’m seriously asking – that’s what the comments box is for.

To my mind, the contenders:
- American Poets of the 21st Century (Claudia Rankine and Lisa Sewell, eds.)
- American Hybrid (Cole Swenson and David St. John, eds.).
- Lyric Postmodernism (Reginald Shepherd, ed.)
- Postmodern American Poetry (Paul Hoover, ed.)

Each has its flaws, as has been pointed out in the BlogPoSphere. The first only covers 7 poets (but does so in gratifying detail – poems, poetic statement, essay by another poet/critic). American Hybrid – only 7 pages per poet – and lots of them – and lots of them are boring – and some less-good poems by the poets that aren’t. But it’s cheaper than the late R. Shepherd’s anthology – which had the misfortune to come out from an independent press the year before the A.H./W.W. Norton juggernaut appeared. And it does largely the same thing, in a little more detail – something between the previous two. It’s about 2/3 the size of A.H., but costs a couple of bucks more. Pomo Am. Poetry is great, but pretty dated at this point.

I also want to order books by individual authors. Here the problem is to avoid foisting my current reading habits (experimental multi-genre narratives, mostly; often large) on my students, who will be intermediate-level. But that’s another issue . . .