Guide for the Careering

Coma in Algiers w/ This Dog's a Lion, Dialog Box and Communal Death Duck @ Mohawk on Sat., 23 June

2007-06-20T14:40:00.000-07:00

Coma in Algiers (last - let the werewolfing begin)
Communal Death Duck (third: has anyone seen my other shoe?)
Dialog Box (on second; you should be drunk)
This Dog's A Lion (they're first, so be on time)

Mohawk
912 Red River (Austin TX)

23 June 2007

$5
18+

Public Airwaves/Internet for the Public Good

2007-05-31T13:37:00.000-07:00

The federal government is on the verge of turning over a huge portion of our public airwaves to companies like AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast—who will use them for private gain instead of the public good.

These newly available airwaves are a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to revolutionize Internet access—beaming high-speed Internet signals to every park bench, coffee shop, workplace, and home in America at more affordable prices than current Internet service. Phone and cable companies don't want this competition to their Internet service—they'd rather purchase the airwaves at auction and sit on them.¹

In June, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will make a major decision: Use the public airwaves for the public good, or turn them over to big companies who will stifle competition, innovation, and the wireless Internet revolution.

The FCC is only accepting public comments for a few more days. Can you sign this petition to them today, and send it to your friends?

"The public airwaves should be used for the public good. The government must protect our airwaves from corporate gatekeepers who would stifle innovation and competition in the wireless Internet market."

Sign here:
http://www.civic.moveon.org/airwaves/

We'll deliver your petition signature and any accompanying note directly to the FCC's public comment record, which FCC Commissioners use to guide their decisions.

There are many innovative companies jumping at the opportunity to forge ahead with the wireless Internet revolution—bringing us high-speed wireless networks from coast to coast and all sorts of innovative wireless devices. But the old phone and cable companies are aggressively trying to block this progress. They've spent billions laying wires, and they enjoy having their customers locked in with few alternatives.

Without access to the public airwaves, wireless innovators can't enter the marketplace. So the strategy of companies like AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast is to buy the administrative rights of our airwaves at auction—and then use those rights to block competition. They also stifle the development of new wireless devices by only letting their own endorsed products work on their networks.

We're urging the FCC to protect the public good by setting auction rules that prohibit this anti-competitive behavior. If the government auctioned off the right to maintain a public highway to Ford, we would certainly not let Ford block Toyotas from the roads. Likewise, big phone and cable should not be able to keep innovative companies off our airwaves.

They also shouldn't be able to tell their wireless Internet customers which websites they can access—as they do now. And just as phone companies can't tell customers what phones can be plugged into a wall jack, cell and wireless companies should not be able to dictate which phones or wireless devices people use on their networks.

The opportunity to revolutionize the Internet and wireless world is at our fingertips. The only question is whether our government will embrace it, and whether regular people will fight for it.
The FCC is only accepting public comments for a few more days. Can you sign the petition to them today, and send it to your friends?

Sign here:
http://www.civic.moveon.org/airwaves

Thanks for all you do.
–Adam Green, MoveOn.org Civic Action
Tuesday, May 29th, 2007

PS—Most people haven't heard about this critical issue yet—so it's really important that we spread the word and get others involved. As you consider who else to tell about this issue, here's what innovation and competition in the wireless world means for regular people:

Families would no longer be forced to choose solely between high-priced phone and cable Internet. A new wireless market—including lots of competition within that market—would mean more affordable Internet access for families.
Poor and rural communities which phone and cable companies never bothered to wire with high-speed Internet access could now have high-speed Internet signals beamed directly into their homes.
Blackberry and other handheld wireless users are currently blocked by phone companies from accessing Internet-based phone service and other innovative services.² The FCC could stop these anti-competitive, anti-consumer practices by mandating wireless Net Neutrality.
Socially responsible buyers could someday go to a store, scan the bar codes of products with an Internet-equipped cell phone, and find out which items are socially responsible. Phone companies can currently block such innovations from working with their devices (they often try to shake down innovators into giving them a massive cut of their profits)—but the FCC can prohibit such practices on these newly available airwaves.
Technology consumers in America are currently denied all sorts of cutting-edge technology that people in other countries have—like using Internet-equipped cell phones to buy products, transfer money, or give to charity. By opening the doors to competition and innovation, the FCC can change that.

P.P.S. Can you support this people-powered campaign today? As corporations like AT&T and Verizon spend millions to get public policy skewed in their favor, we will win these fights because of the power of regular people. A donation of $10, $20, or more would go a long way. You can donate here:
https://civic.moveon.org/donatec4/creditcard.html?id=10433-852735-odsWGx&t=5

Sources:

1. Paper describing "warehousing" of airwaves by dominant companies to keep competition out of the market—by Simon Wilkie, Director of Center for Communication Law and Policy at the University of Southern California, March 26, 2007
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=2594&id=10433-852735-odsWGx&t=6

2. "Wireless Net Neutrality: Cellular Carterfone and Consumer Choice in Mobile Broadband," Working Paper by Prof. Tim Wu, February 15, 2007
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=2592&id=10433-852735-odsWGx&t=7

"Hooking Up," Prof. Tim Wu commentary in Forbes, May 18, 2007
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=2627&id=10433-852735-odsWGx&t=8

3. "Use spare spectrum for the Net; High-speed internet should be one of the FCC's priorities as it auctions valuable airwave rights," Los Angeles Times editorial, April 13, 2007
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=2593&id=10433-852735-odsWGx&t=9

Coma in Algiers w/ Cry Blood Apache and DJ T-Rev -- 29 May 2007 @ Beauty Bar (Austin TX)

2007-05-24T07:42:00.000-07:00

Coma in Algiers
Cry Blood Apache
w/ DJ T-Rev spinning hot rock 'n roll records before, between & after

Tuesday, 29 May 2007
10 pm

Beauty Bar
617 E. 7th Street (half-block east of Red River)
free

say no to [political] censorship

2007-05-16T14:31:00.001-07:00

"If men are to be precluded from offering their sentiments on a matter which may involve the most serious and alarming consequences that can invite the consideration of mankind, reason is of no use to us; the freedom of speech may be taken away, and dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter." -- George Washington (1783)

i am not much for the mainstream media outlets and i have recently discovered that it was indeed possible for me to care less about politics, left or right. But i do not abide well with censorship, especially political & cultural. So, here is a message from the liberal-minded folks of MoveOn.org:

It took CBS two weeks to fire Don Imus for calling a college women's basketball team "nappy headed hos," but it only took them two days to fire respected retired Major General John Batiste for speaking out against the president on the war.

Batiste, a Republican, commanded troops in Iraq in 2004 and 2005. He left the Army so that he could speak out against the president's reckless policy in Iraq, and CBS hired him as a part-time consultant to comment about it. (1) Last week, he appeared in a VoteVets.org TV ad speaking out against the president on Iraq. Just two days later, CBS fired him. (2)

It's censorship, pure and simple. We're aiming to get over 100,000 messages demanding that CBS re-hire Major General John Batiste by the end of the week. Can you take a moment to add your name? Clicking the link below will add your name to the petition.

http://pol.moveon.org/batiste/

CBS says they fired Major General Batiste because he engaged in advocacy—but they're holding him to a different standard than their other consultants.

For example, former White House communications director Nicolle Wallace is a consultant to CBS and consistently uses her position to push White House talking points. (3) It was even reported that she was advising the McCain campaign, yet CBS did nothing when she appeared as a consultant on their network to promote his candidacy. (4)

Plus, the Brookings Institution's Michael O'Hanlon also appeared on CBS as a consultant while advocating in favor of President Bush's escalation plan. (5)

CBS is sending a message that you can't be a consultant to their network if you're critical of President Bush and the Iraq war. That's political censorship and CBS needs to hear groundswell of outrage from concerned viewers right away.

Can you sign the petition demanding that CBS re-hire Major General Batiste?

http://pol.moveon.org/batiste/

Major General John Batiste is not the first general to speak out against the president on Iraq. Recently a number of generals and military leaders have spoken out against President Bush's failed policy—including Reagan's former NSA director, General William Odom, Vietnam veteran Major General Mel Montano and another former general from Iraq—retired Major General Paul Eaton. (6)

These generals must be heard, not censored for speaking the truth.

Thanks for all you do,

–Nita, Noah, Karin, Jennifer and the Moveon.org Political Action Team
Tuesday, May 15th, 2007

Sources:

1. "Army Career Behind Him, General Speaks Out on Iraq," New York Times, May 13, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/13/us/13generals.html

2. "CBS fires consultant Gen. Batiste over VoteVets ad; 'We went to war with a fatally flawed strategy'," Raw Story, May 11, 2007
http://rawstory.com/news/2007/CBS_fires_Iraq_veteran_Gen._Batiste_0511.html

3. "CBS Fires Batiste For Anti-Bush Advocacy, Hires Bush Aide To Engage In Pro-Bush Advocacy," ThinkProgress, May 11, 2007
http://thinkprogress.org/2007/05/11/cbs-fires-batiste/

4. "CBS Has Allowed McCain Campaign Aide To Advocate For McCain On Air." ThinkProgress, May 14, 2007
http://thinkprogress.org/2007/05/11/wallace-mccain/

5. "CBS Fired Antiwar Batiste—But CBS Consultant O'Hanlon Advocated For Surge," Talking Points Memo, May 11, 2007
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/horsesmouth/2007/05/cbs.php

6. "Generals Express Outrage at Presidential Veto," National Security Network, May 2, 2007
http://www.nsnetwork.org/node/144

7. Reid: Senate Will Have Opportunity To Speak On Change Of Course In Iraq, Reid Press Release, Monday, May 14, 2007
http://reid.senate.gov/newsroom/record.cfm?id=274237

the VideoVets Project

2007-04-24T06:48:00.001-07:00

Arm the Pit: Save the Kids comp

2007-04-13T06:31:00.000-07:00

ARM THE PIT; SAVE THE KIDS!"

28 BANDS! ONLY $5.00

Proceeds goto Alex's Lemonade Stand for Pediatric Cancer Research.

($1.00 for each CD Sold!)

http://www.armthepit.com

Contact: armthepit@armthepit.com

Arm The Pit
c/o Stevie Nowinsky
1801 CR 220
Florence, TX. 76527

2007-03-12T13:18:00.000-07:00

Business Deal Records presents:

Coma in Algiers [11 pm]
Die Mannequin [10 pm]
Red Book Audio [9 pm]

Friday, 16 March
Carousel Lounge (1110 E. 52nd Street)
FREE

Coma in Algiers @ MonkeyWrench Books 2/23

2007-02-22T08:21:00.000-08:00

Come down to MonkeyWrench Books for some fine dining upon the Fires of Roam, gorge on the acoustic buffet of multi-instrumentalist Che Arthur and, like a good lil girl, send it all back screaming from gut to throat to the killing floor as Coma in Algiers reminds you that sometimes life really is as bad as the kids say.

*the show has a suggested $5 cover

2007-01-25T14:43:00.000-08:00

this Saturday, 27 January MMVII, my band Coma in Algiers will be throwing it down in San Antonio at the Limelight with our pals shoot for the stars...and KiLL them! and SA favorites Savior Daughters and Not The Government.

we'll be playing three new songs and, if all goes well, have a wild party somewhere on the Northside. i don't think there is a cover and i think the fun starts at 9 pm.

then join us for another night of 15 Minutes of Monday (at the Hole in the Wall) where we will be playing with You Make Engine.

CIA show with Chief Death Rage & Cry Blood Apache tomorrow (12/7)

2006-12-06T07:30:00.000-08:00

Get wild with Coma in Algiers at 10:30 pm. Cauterize your soul with Denton's Chief Death Rage at 11:30 pm. If you are still standing, you can give all you got to Cry Blood Apache (that is, if they don't just take it from you). $1.50 cans o' beer!

Malachi Ritscher (1954-2006)

2006-11-28T09:32:00.000-08:00

As horrified Friday-morning commuters watched, Malachi Ritscher doused himself with gasoline and lit himself on fire along the Chicago Kennedy Expressway near a 25-foot-tall Loop sculpture titled "Flame of the Millennium."

A homemade sign was found near his charred body that read, "Thou Shalt Not Kill," said State Police Lt. Lincoln Hampton. Police are reviewing a videotape that also was found near the body.

Friends and family claim his death to be in protest of the Iraq war. Read more about Malachi Ritscher here.

2006-11-26T21:54:00.001-08:00

Oh shit! Shoot For The Stars...And Kill Them (10 pm), Coma in Algiers (11 pm) & iKiLLCaRS (midnite) take their three-way blood feud to the stage. Bring someone to suck on & a mop because this is gonna be messy.

2006-11-02T09:36:00.000-08:00

featuring:
*Steve Arceri
*The Touched
*Colin Swietek
*Yatsuzaki: [TestType]
*The Alex Atchley Experience
*You Make Engine
*Ghosties

benefiting:
Treasure City Thrift
ACT UP Austin
Austin People's Legal Collective
Inside Books Project
...and many more

Saturday, 4 November
4 to 9 pm
Cafe Caffeine (909 W. Mary Street, Austin TX)

2006-10-20T15:56:00.000-07:00

Get your costume off to Eta Carinae. Make it with the friendly Diatribes. Cobb all over Coma in Algiers.

petition opposing pardon of President Bush (from MoveOn.org)

2006-09-18T09:42:00.000-07:00

This week, the Senate is planning to quietly hold a vote that would pardon President Bush for breaking the law by illegally wiretapping innocent Americans without warrants. According to Senator Leahy, the bill would "...immunize officials who have violated federal law by authorizing such illegal activities." (1)

President Bush broke the law, and courts are starting to agree. Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter once said the program was illegal "on its face." But he has now caved to pressure from Vice President Cheney, and introduced legislation that marks a new low: the new bill justifies everything the president did. Worse, it makes it legal to wiretap Americans, in secret, without warrants or oversight, whenever the administration wants to. (2)

So far, Democrats and some Republicans are holding strong against the bill, and there are good chances to stop it if enough of us speak up. Can you sign the petition opposing the Republican move to pardon President Bush for breaking the law?

http://pol.moveon.org/dontpardon

Many legal experts agree that the president's program to wiretap Americans who have nothing to do with terrorism violates the law. President Bush already has the authority to wiretap suspected terrorists—and we support that. In fact, his administration can tap anyone it likes as long as it gets an OK from a court a few days later.

Congress should be trying to hold him accountable—that's their job. Instead, some Republicans are trying to let President Bush off the hook completely. In fact, the legislation would give the president even more unchecked power.

Here are some quick facts about the Cheney-Specter bill:

* It allows President Bush—and every president after him—to wiretap Americans indefinitely, in secret, without a warrant and without any oversight. (3)
* It effectively pardons the president for any illegal behavior by forcing Congress to concede that he has the inherent authority to conduct the program (4) — something federal courts, numerous legal experts and many leading Republicans disagree with. (5)
* It completely guts FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) which has protected the privacy of Americans against illegal wiretaps for close to 30 years. (6)
* It prevents any legal challenges from taking place in the public court system. Instead, it moves all cases to a secret court, where only Bush administration officials can argue it. (7)
* It would help "immunize" any officials who broke the law in this program from being held accountable in the future. (8)

Since the program was exposed in December of last year, we've learned that President Bush personally blocked a Justice Department investigation of the program, Vice President Cheney also personally intervened to stop telecom companies from testifying to Congress about it, and a federal court recently ruled the program unconstitutional. (9) In an effort to protect himself from further consequences, the president is pressuring Congress to let him off the hook.

This is an important issue and it will help remind Americans, in an election year, what Republicans are all about—accumulating power for themselves, and trampling the system of checks and balances designed to stop that. Can you sign the petition today?

http://pol.moveon.org/dontpardon

It's the Senate's job to act as a check on the president's power. If they can't do it, they shouldn't be in Washington.

Thanks for all you do,

–Nita, Eli, Jennifer, Wes and the MoveOn.org Political Action Team
Monday, September 18th, 2006

Sources:

1. "Today's Republican circus trick: Legislating in the Dark," Senator Leahy, provided by the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, September 13, 2006
http://www.bordc.org/threats/leahy91306.php

"NSA Whitewash Passes Judiciary Committee on Party-Line Vote," People for the American Way, September 13, 2006
http://www.pfaw.org/pfaw/general/default.aspx?oid=22373

2. "NSA Whitewash Passes Judiciary Committee on Party-Line Vote," People for the American Way, September 13, 2006
http://www.pfaw.org/pfaw/general/default.aspx?oid=22373

3. "Top 5 things Sen. Specter won't tell you about the Cheney-Specter bill," ACLU
http://action.aclu.org/site/PageServer?pagename=SpecterTop5

4. ACLU Letter to the Senate Regarding Strong Opposition to the Substitute Version of S. 2453, the "National Security Surveillance Act of 2006" May 16, 2006
http://www.aclu.org/safefree/nsaspying/25578leg20060516.html

**Note: The bill has changed slightly from when this letter was written, however the sections accepting the president's claim of inherent authority remains

5."Judge Rules Against Wiretaps," Washington Post, August 18, 2005
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=2096&id=8806-852735-GzUACg63smqBKVoWRyUzag&t=4

"On NSA Spying: A Letter to Congress," New York Review of Books, February 9, 2006
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/18650

McCain: Bush Does Not Have "The Legal Authority To Engage In These Warrantless Wiretaps," ThinkProgress, January 22, 2006
http://thinkprogress.org/2006/01/22/mccain-wiretaps-illegal/

6. "Top 5 things Sen. Specter won't tell you about the Cheney-Specter bill," ACLU
http://action.aclu.org/site/PageServer?pagename=SpecterTop5

7. "NSA Bill Performs a Patriot Act," Wire News, September 13, 2006
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,71778-1.html?tw=wn_story_page_next1

8. "Today's Republican circus trick: Legislating in the Dark," Senator Leahy, provided by the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, September 13, 2006
http://www.bordc.org/threats/leahy91306.php

9. ACLU Slams Senate Judiciary Committee Approval of NSA Spying Bills, ACLU, September 13, 2006
http://www.aclu.org/safefree/nsaspying/26722prs20060913.html

CIA show - 7 Sept @ The Parlor

2006-09-05T09:23:00.000-07:00

for a good time, go to The Parlor on Thursday, 7 Sept, an all-ages venue that serves beer, wine & killer pizza. no cover!

opening will be the inexorable Coma in Algiers, followed by the gigantomachy between Shoot For The Stars...And Kill Them and Cry Blood Apache. then DJ Juanty will take over to round off/out the evening.

2006-08-06T13:02:00.000-07:00

To create one's own context: that's always taken two gods, the wild one and the orderly conjurer of shapes. - Stephen Dunn

today's programming brought to you by:

2006-07-28T12:31:00.000-07:00

why haven't you checked out The Hawks (of Holy Rosary)?

*

Smitten: A Love Story About Art

*

Heart Attacks Often Go Unrecognized

damn. all this time i thought that was love i was feeling.

The Politics of Metaphor by Michael Benedikt

2006-07-24T17:49:00.000-07:00

For a full-grown mole, the future has never begun to exist apart as a form of thought; and thought has never begun to exist except as a form of metaphor. Even for a mole in his final circle of tunnels, there is always one more larger, more generous set of relevances into which all previous relevances fit.

[from Mole Notes (Wesleyan University Press, 1971)]

2006-07-04T08:53:00.000-07:00

Insanity is the insistence on meaning. - Frank Bidart (from "The Arc")

2006-06-26T17:44:00.000-07:00

Read their lips: No more Spanish novels
Latino leaders protest a Georgia library system's decision to cut back on foreign-language works.

Last week, the library board in this fast-growing county of 700,000 people eliminated the $3,000 that had been set aside to buy Spanish-language fiction in the coming fiscal year. It offered no explanation, but the chairman said such book purchases would lead readers of other foreign languages to demand the same treatment.

*

Gutted - slang book is banned

The author of what has been described as the definitive dictionary of slang is gobsmacked, gutted, throwing up bunches, honked, hipped and jacked like a cock-maggot in a sink-hole. A North Carolina school district has banned the dictionary under pressure from one of a growing number of conservative Christian groups using the internet to encourage school book bans across the US.

*

ACLU sues Fla. schools over Cuba book ban

The ACLU and the Miami-Dade County Student Government Association argued in a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Miami on Wednesday that the school board should add materials with alternate viewpoints rather than remove books that could be offensive.

*

Instead of ban, library to put gay books on top shelves

Board Trustee Bruce Skaug offered a motion to remove "The Joy of Gay Sex" from the library but it was not seconded.

"I'd rather my 9-year-old take up smoking than see the pictures in this book," Skaug said.

2006-06-23T09:06:00.000-07:00

The chief cause of problems is solutions. -- Eric Sevareid, former CBS commentator

Towards a Definition by Rupert M. Loydell

2006-06-19T19:43:00.000-07:00

Prose-poetry is when a person behaves differently from what is considered normal — and realises they have stepped into someone else's arms, someone who is as much in control of the world as they are.

It is a place where language is all compression and angle; tautness; a signpost to a different meaning. It is a key to a house with no doors, to a library full of books you want to read but must use to stoke the fire — for otherwise there is no warmth.

[from Sentence: a journal of prose poetics (No. 3, 2005)]

Coma in Algiers show on Saturday, May 13

2006-05-08T18:58:00.000-07:00

Bush says: Go see Coma in Algiers at 423 Tillery (on Tillery between East 4th & 5th Streets) in Austin TX on Saturday, May 13, with ~~Bee vs. Moth~~ (can't make it), follow that bird! and Night Viking. there will also be art by Brandi DiPietro & Chad Hopper and text by Steve Arceri & Ismael Archbold.

Distress Signal Presents:

Night Viking
Coma in Algiers
follow that bird!

doors at 8, music starts around 9
$5, all ages

Save the Internet: a MoveOn petition

2006-04-27T16:58:00.000-07:00

Do you buy books online, use Google, or download to an iPod? These activities, plus MoveOn's online organizing ability, will be hurt if Congress passes a radical law that gives giant corporations more control over the Internet.

Internet providers like AT&T and Verizon are lobbying Congress hard to gut Network Neutrality, the Internet's First Amendment. Net Neutrality prevents AT&T from choosing which websites open most easily for you based on which site pays AT&T more. Amazon doesn't have to outbid Barnes & Noble for the right to work more properly on your computer.

If Net Neutrality is gutted, MoveOn either pays protection money to dominant Internet providers or risks that online activism tools don't work for members. Amazon and Google either pay protection money or risk that their websites process slowly on your computer. That why these high-tech pioneers are joining the fight to protect Network Neutrality [1] — and you can do your part today.

The free and open Internet is under seige — can you sign this petition letting your member of Congress know you support preserving Network Neutrality? Click here:

http://www.civic.moveon.org/save_the_internet

Then, please forward this to 3 friends. Protecting the free and open Internet is fundamental—it affects everything. When you sign this petition, you'll be kept informed of the next steps we can take to keep the heat on Congress. Votes begin in a House committee next week.

MoveOn has already seen what happens when the Internet's gatekeepers get too much control. Just recently, AOL blocked any email mentioning a coalition that MoveOn is a part of, which opposes AOL's proposed "email tax." [2] And last year, Canada's version of AT&T — Telus — blocked their Internet customers from visiting a website sympathetic to workers with whom Telus was negotiating. [3]

Politicians don't think we are paying attention to this issue. Many of them take campaign checks from big telecom companies and are on the verge of selling out to people like AT&T's CEO, who openly says, "The Internet can't be free." [4]

Together, we can let Congress know we are paying attention. We can make sure they listen to our voices and the voices of people like Vint Cerf, a father of the Internet and Google's "Chief Internet Evangelist," who recently wrote this to Congress in support of preserving Network Neutrality:

My fear is that, as written, this bill would do great damage to the Internet as we know it. Enshrining a rule that broadly permits network operators to discriminate in favor of certain kinds of services and to potentially interfere with others would place broadband operators in control of online activity...Telephone companies cannot tell consumers who they can call; network operators should not dictate what people can do online.

The essence of the Internet is at risk—can you sign this petition letting your member of Congress know you support preserving Network Neutrality? Click here:

http://www.civic.moveon.org/save_the_internet

Please forward to 3 others who care about this issue. Thanks for all you do.

–Eli Pariser, Adam Green, Noah T. Winer, and the MoveOn.org Civic Action team
Monday, April 24th, 2006

P.S. For a reminder of why this is important, check out the coalition we're launching today: www.SavetheInternet.com

P.P.S. If Congress abandons Network Neutrality, who will be affected?

* Advocacy groups like MoveOn — Political organizing could be slowed by a handful of dominant Internet providers who ask advocacy groups to pay "protection money" for their websites and online features to work correctly.
* Nonprofits — A charity's website could open at snail-speed, and online contributions could grind to a halt, if nonprofits can't pay dominant Internet providers for access to "the fast lane" of Internet service.
* Google users — Another search engine could pay dominant Internet providers like AT&T to guarantee the competing search engine opens faster than Google on your computer.
* Innovators with the "next big idea" — Startups and entrepreneurs will be muscled out of the marketplace by big corporations that pay Internet providers for dominant placing on the Web. The little guy will be left in the "slow lane" with inferior Internet service, unable to compete.
* iPod listeners — A company like Comcast could slow access to iTunes, steering you to a higher-priced music service that it owned.
* Online purchasers — Companies could pay Internet providers to guarantee their online sales process faster than competitors with lower prices—distorting your choice as a consumer.
* Small businesses and tele-commuters — When Internet companies like AT&T favor their own services, you won't be able to choose more affordable providers for online video, teleconferencing, Internet phone calls, and software that connects your home computer to your office.
* Parents and retirees — Your choices as a consumer could be controlled by your Internet provider, steering you to their preferred services for online banking, health care information, sending photos, planning vacations, etc.
* Bloggers — Costs will skyrocket to post and share video and audio clips—silencing citizen journalists and putting more power in the hands of a few corporate-owned media outlets.

To sign the petition to Congress supporting "network neutrality," click here:
http://www.civic.moveon.org/save_the_internet

P.P.P.S. This excerpt from the New Yorker really sums up this issue well.

In the first decades of the twentieth century, as a national telephone network spread across the United States, A.T.&T. adopted a policy of "tiered access" for businesses. Companies that paid an extra fee got better service: their customers' calls went through immediately, were rarely disconnected, and sounded crystal-clear. Those who didn't pony up had a harder time making calls out, and people calling them sometimes got an "all circuits busy" response. Over time, customers gravitated toward the higher-tier companies and away from the ones that were more difficult to reach. In effect, A.T.&T.'s policy turned it into a corporate kingmaker.

If you've never heard about this bit of business history, there's a good reason: it never happened. Instead, A.T.&T. had to abide by a "common carriage" rule: it provided the same quality of service to all, and could not favor one customer over another. But, while "tiered access" never influenced the spread of the telephone network, it is becoming a major issue in the evolution of the Internet.

Until recently, companies that provided Internet access followed a de-facto commoncarriage rule, usually called "network neutrality," which meant that all Web sites got equal treatment. Network neutrality was considered so fundamental to the success of the Net that Michael Powell, when he was chairman of the F.C.C., described it as one of the basic rules of "Internet freedom." In the past few months, though, companies like A.T.&T. and BellSouth have been trying to scuttle it. In the future, Web sites that pay extra to providers could receive what BellSouth recently called "special treatment," and those that don't could end up in the slow lane. One day, BellSouth customers may find that, say, NBC.com loads a lot faster than YouTube.com, and that the sites BellSouth favors just seem to run more smoothly. Tiered access will turn the providers into Internet gatekeepers. [5]

Sources:

1. "Telecommunication Policy Proposed by Congress Must Recognize Internet Neutrality," Letter to Senate leaders, March 23, 2006
http://www.aarp.org/research/press-center/presscurrentnews/internet_neutrality.html

2. "AOL Blocks Critics' E-Mails," Los Angeles Times, April 14, 2006
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-aol14apr14,1,5346265.story?coll=la-headlines-business&ctrack=1&cset=true

3. "B.C. Civil Liberties Association Denounces Blocking of Website by Telus," British Columbia Civil Liberties Association Statement, July 26, 2005
http://www.bccla.org/pressreleases/05telus.htm

4. "At SBC, It's All About 'Scale and Scope," BusinessWeek, November 7, 2002
http://www.businessweek.com/@@n34h*IUQu7KtOwgA/magazine/content/05_45/b3958092.htm

5. "Net Losses," New Yorker, March 20, 2006
http://www.newyorker.com/printables/talk/060320ta_talk_surowiecki

6. "Don't undercut Internet access," San Francisco Chronicle editorial, April 17, 2006
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2006/04/17/EDGNSGUA4F1.DTL

Forgettings by Ángel Crespo

2006-04-21T20:55:00.000-07:00

Every poet must write to destroy himself, so that his last poem makes all the others forgotten.

Let us build palaces of poetry, or simple cabins, but let us put within the masonry, or the adobe, sticks of dynamite. And don't forget the fuses.

Those skilled at managing their fame cheat themselves.

The memory to learn, the intelligence to understand that it's better to forget, the will to do so.

[from Sentence: a journal of prose poetics (No. 2, 2004), translated by Steven J. Stewart]

The Heath by Luis Cernuda

2006-04-15T17:45:00.000-07:00

Look, this is the heath. Back in your childhood your imagination envisioned it, never doubting -- how could a child doubt his imagination? -- that the heath could only be as you created it, with that interior gaze that fills solitude, and so seen definitively. The word surprised you in the pages of a book, and you fell in love with it, associating it with gusts of wind and rain out of some unknown Northern sky. The vision was real and true, all dense, profuse, mysterious countryside; but in that landscape, as in a dream, there was no color whatsoever.

Time was to add color, when under foreign skies, weary and bored, you saw one day that moorland covered in sullen green bushes, which the summer set flowering with purple blossoms (there was no white heather there), so the fall could then turn them rosy, until withering little by little, they'd blend into that basic green their sad and monotonous dullness. That's when you understood the vividness of imagination's reality, and how much it can add to what you've read, however slight the plot on which it plays and builds.

Time, while applying color, removed enchantment, and a lot of time had now passed, when your intimate reality finally met the other one. So many things like the heath could speak to you before, and now that you faced them were mute and expressionless -- or was it you? -- because heather is a plant of desolate and solitary places. Then, after a long look at the countryside and the sky, attuned in their grim appearance, with a vague satisfaction, more for the proof you were finally observing than for the problematic enchantment of the heath, you crossed disillusioned past its frontier flowers from summer into fall.

And you told yourself that when visible reality seems more beautiful than the one you imagined it's because a lover's eyes are seeing it, and yours weren't in love, at least not at that moment. Imaginary creation trumped reality, and while that might mean nothing with respect to the beauty of the actual heath, there was move love in the child's vision than in the grown man's reasoned contemplation, and the pleasure of the former, in its fullness and beauty, had exhausted the future prospects of the latter, however real they were or seemed to be.

[from Sentence: a journal of prose poetics (No. 2, 2004), translated by Stephen Kessler]

Fathoms from Anywhere: A Samuel Beckett Centenary Exhibition

2006-04-13T19:46:00.000-07:00

The Harry Ransom Center introduces an online exhibition to celebrate the centennial of the birth of Nobel Prize-winning writer Samuel Beckett at
http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/exhibitions/online/beckett.

The web exhibition traces Beckett's (1906-1989) career, using materials from the Ransom Center's collection. Exhibition highlights include a textual and pictorial overview of Beckett's career; "Beckett's Circle," brief biographies of contemporaries and friends; and the opportunity for web visitors to share their views on Beckett and his works.

The centennial web exhibition is derived substantially from information and materials in the Center's renowned Beckett collection. Holograph and typescript works make up the bulk of the collection, supplemented by Beckett's correspondence and a wide range of his writing, including poems, stories, and plays spanning
most of his career.

The research, design, and construction of the online exhibition was made possible with the assistance of Humanities Texas and the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation.

2006-04-06T23:54:00.000-07:00

Bush, GOP Approval Ratings Hit New Lows

"These numbers are scary. We've lost every advantage we've ever had," GOP pollster Tony Fabrizio said. "The good news is Democrats don't have much of a plan. The bad news is they may not need one."

Heritage extremists threaten builders with sites damage

2006-04-02T19:53:00.000-07:00

Heritage extremists threaten builders with sites damage
· Shadowy group attacks developments
· Police insist crimes are 'serious issue'

Robert Booth
Saturday April 1, 2006

Guardian

Police are to investigate threats against housebuilders and demolition contractors made by Britain's first known architectural extremists who have accused them of being responsible for "beautiful buildings, full of history, being ripped apart and replaced with featureless junk".

Barratt Homes, Bovis Homes, Laing Homes and Westbury are on the Historic Buildings Liberation Front's list of 37 targets which have been threatened with "retaliation for nationwide devastation" in an attempt to escalate a decade-long campaign by the shadowy group which has staged dozens of attacks across Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire and Cambridgeshire.

The group says it is dedicated to stopping modern housing developments and the destruction of historic buildings.

It claims that "as a result of developers' greed and planners' indifference, the erosion of regional identity is at crisis point".

Police believe the group is being spearheaded by an individual. So far most of the attacks have been carried out single-handed.

The HBLF has damaged new buildings with paint and angle-grinders, slashed and punctured tyres on demolition contractors' vehicles and caused tens of thousands of pounds of damage to the property of companies and individuals connected to new developments or the demolition of historic buildings.

Its campaign restarted this month with a call for supporters to step up activity and target the housebuilding companies which are being relied upon by the government to make up a supply shortfall of 50,000 homes a year nationwide.

A manual on how to carry out attacks has been written for recruits and includes instructions on using a specialist grinding wheel to tear into brickwork and glass "throughout the night to cause tens of thousands of pounds worth of damage".

There is advice on executing its trademark technique of splashing buildings and cars with white paint. It recommends tyre walls are spiked with Stanley knives and that activists carry bolt cutters and saws for vandalising fences and cables. Weedkiller should be used to paint the letters HBLF on to the grass of target sites.

Members are told to cover their faces and wear hats and gloves. Old clothes, especially for assignments, should be kept hidden, for example under the floorboards in a garden shed. The manual even advises would-be attackers who are feeling nervous. "You are feeling apprehensive, leave your tools where you can pick them up later, go into the site and sit down for a time. Relax for a while, perhaps with a flask of tea," it advises.

It also offers advice on avoiding capture and insists on every action being accompanied by a calling card.

"There has been a huge indifference to his beliefs and horror at the nature of his crimes," said Sergeant Howard Travis of Bedfordshire police, referring to the invidual thought to be behind the attacks. "In the last 10 years, crimes claimed to be by the Historic Buildings Liberation Front have been committed in Cambridgeshire, Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire. It involves very serious damage and is without a shadow of doubt a serious issue."

HBLF's reported activities include an attack on the offices of Hitchin Youth Trust in Hertfordshire because the trust's building was slated for demolition prior to redevelopment. It spiked scores of tyres at two demolition companies and in September 2003 it ground the letters HBLF into the wall of a social housing development by Bedford Pilgrims housing association in Kempston where an ornate Victorian house had stood, causing damage estimated at £2,500.

"The attack came out of the blue," said the association's chief executive, John Cross. "There had been a campaign mounting through formal means and some councillors were saying perhaps we should save our Victorian heritage, but it came as a shock." He said the building was replaced with "routine family housing that wouldn't win any architecture awards" but denied it eroded local character and pointed out the Victorian building was fire-damaged and could only be reused at great expense.

The property of Gerald Angell, a farmer in Ashwell village, Hertfordshire, was attacked after he decided to carry on with a project to build a new barn in spite of a planning refusal because the site was thought to contain the remains of an historically important villa. "The experience was absolutely shocking," said Courtenay Patten, a friend of Mr Angell. "They knifed his tractor tyres and they also knifed my Land Rover tyres and they threw paint over his tractor and over his house."

The HBLF's call for action was reported in the Architect's Journal this week after it was sent to campaign group, SAVE Britain's Heritage.

"There is no way we could condone violent action, but this reflects widespread concern and anger at the continuing loss of great historic buildings and the continuing erosion of the wider historic environment," SAVE director Adam Wilkinson said. "There are thousands of houses threatened with demolition in the north and midlands under government policy."

A spokesman for the House Builders Federation refused to respond to the HBLF's criticisms. "These are criminal activities and are matters for the police."

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006

2006-03-31T15:46:00.000-08:00

Whatever happens, we shall remain stupid. -- Gustave Flaubert

stay bruised

2006-03-29T21:57:00.000-08:00

Nikki Sudden, Punk Rocker, Dies at 49

one of the best shows i have attended was the Jacobites. i forget where in Chicago i saw them, either the Elbo Room or the Double Door...it's been a long while.

the Swell Maps are one of the "influences" for my band.

his Secretly Canadian is an excellent label.

he will be missed. say hi to Epic Soundtracks for me, Nikki.

Nikki Sudden at allmusic.com

free mp3 downloads at NikkiSudden.com
free mp3 downloads at Secretly Canadian

2006-03-27T20:43:00.000-08:00

Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance. -- H.L. Mencken

2006-03-24T19:02:00.000-08:00

Our critics are the unpaid guardians of our souls. - Corrie ten Boom

World Water Day

2006-03-22T19:38:00.000-08:00

World Water Day

World Water Day: UN bid to celebrate vital - but 'neglected' - water

BOTTLED WATER: Pouring Resources Down the Drain

Groups Demand Water Rights, Cite Millions of Deaths

As experts ponder world water crisis, teenagers show creativity

North American drought worst in 500 years

Water, from the most recent installment, Environment, of the internet series POV Borders, courtesy of PBS

Join Feingold: Censure President Bush (petition from MoveOn.org)

2006-03-15T17:30:00.000-08:00

Senator Russ Feingold introduced a resolution to censure President Bush for breaking the law by illegally wiretapping American citizens.

Censuring a sitting president is serious business. But when the president misleads the public and Congress while willfully and repeatedly breaking the law, there must be consequences—that's how the law works for everybody else.

While most politicians sat back and weighed the political pros and cons of holding the president accountable, Senator Feingold stuck his neck out and did it. Now it's up to us to show broad public support. Can you sign our petition asking Congress to join the call for censure?

http://political.moveon.org/censure

Right now it's unclear how many of Senator Feingold's colleagues will stand with him in this important fight. If we can reach 250,000 signatures, we'll deliver your comments to your senators this week to demonstrate widespread public support censuring the president for breaking the law. We'll also send a copy of the complete petition to Senator Feingold to show our support for his courage.

President Bush already had the authority to wiretap suspected terrorists—he could even wiretap first and get warrants 3 days later. But he chose to get no warrants at all, clearly violating the law set up to protect innocent Americans and then he misled the Congress and the public about his program. [1]

Censuring the president means Congress officially acknowledges that the president broke the law and condemns him for doing it. Given the scale of the president's problem, it's a very reasonable first step to holding him accountable. This is a key moment for Congress to show that they're serious about checks and balances.

Our country was founded on the idea that everyone—even the president— has to follow the law. Supporting censure is the best opportunity we've got to keep that ideal alive. Can you sign our petition today?

http://political.moveon.org/censure

Thanks for all you do,

–Eli, Nita, Tom, Adam, Joan and the MoveOn.org Political Action Team

Tuesday, March 14th, 2006

Sources:

1. If you would like more details on the case for censure, please click below.

https://political.moveon.org/donate/breakingthelaw_facts.html

P.S. This is a big moment so we're including the beginning of Senator Feingold's speech outlining the case for censure below. You can read the censure resolution here.

Mr. President, when the President of the United States breaks the law, he must be held accountable. That is why today I am introducing a resolution to censure President George W. Bush.
The President authorized an illegal program to spy on American citizens on American soil, and then misled Congress and the public about the existence and legality of that program. It is up to this body to reaffirm the rule of law by condemning the President's actions.
All of us in this body took an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States and bear true allegiance to the same. Fulfilling that oath requires us to speak clearly and forcefully when the President violates the law. This resolution allows us to send a clear message that the President's conduct was wrong.
And we must do that. The President's actions demand a formal judgment from Congress.
At moments in our history like this, we are reminded why the founders balanced the powers of the different branches of government so carefully in the Constitution. At the very heart of our system of government lies the recognition that some leaders will do wrong, and that others in the government will then bear the responsibility to do right.
This President has done wrong. This body can do right by condemning his conduct and showing the people of this nation that his actions will not be allowed to stand unchallenged.
To date, members of Congress have responded in very different ways to the President's conduct. Some are responding by defending his conduct, ceding him the power he claims, and even seeking to grant him expanded statutory authorization powers to make his conduct legal. While we know he is breaking the law, we do not know the details of what the President has authorized or whether there is any need to change the law to allow it, yet some want to give him carte blanche to continue his illegal conduct. To approve the President's actions now, without demanding a full inquiry into this program, a detailed explanation for why the President authorized it, and accountability for his illegal actions, would be irresponsible. It would be to abandon the duty of the legislative branch under our constitutional system of separation of powers while the President recklessly grabs for power and ignores the rule of law.
Others in Congress have taken important steps to check the President. Senator Specter has held hearings on the wiretapping program in the Judiciary Committee. He has even suggested that Congress may need to use the power of the purse in order to get some answers out of the Administration. And Senator Byrd has proposed that Congress establish an independent commission to investigate this program.
As we move forward, Congress will need to consider a range of possible actions, including investigations, independent commissions, legislation, or even impeachment. But, at a minimum, Congress should censure a president who has so plainly broken the law.
Our founders anticipated that these kinds of abuses would occur. Federalist Number 51 speaks of the Constitution's system of checks and balances:
"It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself."
Mr. President, we are faced with an executive branch that places itself above the law. The founders understood that the branches must check each other to control abuses of government power. The president's actions are such an abuse, Mr. President. His actions must be checked, and he should be censured.

To continue reading, please click here.

2006-03-10T06:19:00.000-08:00

Bush's Approval Rating Falls to New Low

More and more people, particularly Republicans, disapprove of President Bush's performance, question his character and no longer consider him a strong leader against terrorism, according to an AP-Ipsos poll documenting one of the bleakest points of his presidency.

John Berger on originality

2006-03-06T21:44:00.000-08:00

Let's begin from far away. We are living today in a culture of information. I use the word "culture" in its anthropological sense; the information-culture has in practice no place for cultural heritages of any kind. It stimulates calculation but consistently discourages reflection. Thus it substitutes information (and misinformation) for knowledge or wisdom. This is alarming, yet it's a culture that sooner or later will spin out of control; it will not endure.

I start here so we may remember that knowledge, as distinct from information, always allows for and reckons with the unknown. As bodies and disciplines of knowledge extend, so does the extent of the unknown. Perhaps the relative dimension of the two is a cultural constant. Yet the frontiers between the two (the known and the unknown) are continually being contested. Forays are always being made into the unknown in the hope of adding to our knowledge. Many forays are scientific, and other more intuitive but no less important ones are made by mystics and artists. When an insight brought back from an intuitive forays seems to stand up, hold water, or prove its paces, we are in the face of what can properly be termed an original work.

True originality is never something sought after or, as it were, signed; rather it is a quality belonging to something touched in the dark and brought back as a tentative question.

[from "A Jerome of Photography", John Berger's review of Geoff Dyer's The Ongoing Moment, in Harper's Magazine, December 2005]

2006-03-03T07:08:00.000-08:00

poem of mine at foam:e (thanks Ms. Gardner)

Video Shows Bush Warned Before Katrina Hit

2006-03-02T06:47:00.000-08:00

Video Shows Bush Warned Before Katrina Hit
by MARGARET EBRAHIM and JOHN SOLOMON, Associated Press Writers

WASHINGTON - On the eve of Hurricane Katrina's fateful landfall, President Bush was confident. His homeland security chief appeared relaxed. And warnings of the coming destruction — breached or overrun levees, deaths at the New Orleans Superdome and overwhelming needs for post-storm rescues — were delivered in dramatic terms to all involved. All of it was captured on videotape.

The Associated Press obtained the confidential government video and made it public Wednesday, offering Americans their own inside glimpse into the government's fateful final Katrina preparations after months of fingerpointing and political recriminations.

"My gut tells me ... this is a bad one and a big one," then-federal disaster chief Michael Brown told the final government-wide briefing the day before Katrina struck the Gulf Coast on Aug. 29.

The president didn't ask a single question during the briefing but assured soon-to-be-battered state officials: "We are fully prepared."

The footage — along with seven days of transcripts of briefings obtained by AP — show in excruciating detail that while federal officials anticipated the tragedy that unfolded in New Orleans and elsewhere along the Gulf Coast, they were fatally slow to realize they had not mustered enough resources to deal with the unprecedented disaster.

A top hurricane expert voiced "grave concerns" about the levees and Brown, then the Federal Emergency Management Agency chief, told the president and Homeland Security Secretary Michael that he feared there weren't enough disaster teams to help evacuees at the Superdome.

"I'm concerned about ... their ability to respond to a catastrophe within a catastrophe," Brown told his bosses the afternoon before Katrina made landfall.

The White House and Homeland Security Department urged the public Wednesday not to read too much into the footage.

"I hope people don't draw conclusions from the president getting a single briefing," Bush spokesman Trent Duffy said, citing a variety of orders and disaster declarations Bush signed before the storm made landfall. "He received multiple briefings from multiple officials, and he was completely engaged at all times."

Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke said his department would not release the full set of videotaped briefings, saying most transcripts — though not the videotapes — from the sessions were provided to congressional investigators months ago.

"There's nothing new or insightful on these tapes," Knocke said. "We actively participated in the lessons-learned review and we continue to participate in the Senate's review and are working with them on their recommendation."

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, a critic of the administration's Katrina response, had a different take after watching the footage from an AP reporter's camera.

"I have kind a sinking feeling in my gut right now," Nagin said. "I was listening to what people were saying — they didn't know, so therefore it was an issue of a learning curve. You know, from this tape it looks like everybody was fully aware."

Some of the footage and transcripts from briefings Aug. 25-31 conflicts with the defenses that federal, state and local officials have made in trying to deflect blame and minimize the political fallout from the failed Katrina response:

• Homeland Security officials have said the "fog of war" blinded them early on to the magnitude of the disaster. But the video and transcripts show federal and local officials discussed threats clearly, reviewed long-made plans and understood Katrina would wreak devastation of historic proportions. "I'm sure it will be the top 10 or 15 when all is said and done," National Hurricane Center's Max Mayfield warned the day Katrina lashed the Gulf Coast.

"I don't buy the 'fog of war' defense," Brown told the AP in an interview Wednesday. "It was a fog of bureaucracy."

• Bush declared four days after the storm, "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees" that gushed deadly flood waters into New Orleans. He later clarified, saying officials believed, wrongly, after the storm passed that the levees had survived. But the transcripts and video show there was plenty of talk about that possibility even before the storm — and Bush was worried too.

White House deputy chief of staff Joe Hagin, Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco and Brown discussed fears of a levee breach the day the storm hit.

"I talked to the president twice today, once in Crawford and then again on Air Force One," Brown said. "He's obviously watching the television a lot, and he had some questions about the Dome, he's asking questions about reports of breaches."

• Louisiana officials angrily blamed the federal government for not being prepared but the transcripts shows they were still praising FEMA as the storm roared toward the Gulf Coast and even two days afterward. "I think a lot of the planning FEMA has done with us the past year has really paid off," Col. Jeff Smith, Louisiana's emergency preparedness deputy director, said during the Aug. 28 briefing.

It wasn't long before Smith and other state officials sounded overwhelmed.

"We appreciate everything that you all are doing for us, and all I would ask is that you realize that what's going on and the sense of urgency needs to be ratcheted up," Smith said Aug. 30.

Mississippi begged for more attention in that same briefing.

"We know that there are tens or hundreds of thousands of people in Louisiana that need to be rescued, but we would just ask you, we desperately need to get our share of assets because we'll have people dying — not because of water coming up, but because we can't get them medical treatment in our affected counties," said a Mississippi state official whose name was not mentioned on the tape.

Video footage of the Aug. 28 briefing, the final one before Katrina struck, showed an intense Brown voicing concerns from the government's disaster operation center and imploring colleagues to do whatever was necessary to help victims.

"Go ahead and do it," Brown said. "I'll figure out some way to justify it. ... Just let them yell at me."

Bush appeared from a narrow, windowless room at his vacation ranch in Texas, with his elbows on a table. Hagin was sitting alongside him.

"I want to assure the folks at the state level that we are fully prepared to not only help you during the storm, but we will move in whatever resources and assets we have at our disposal after the storm," the president said.

A relaxed Chertoff, sporting a polo shirt, weighed in from Washington at Homeland Security's operations center. He would later fly to Atlanta, outside of Katrina's reach, for a bird flu event. Officials say he was frequently updated on the road about Katrina.

One snippet captures a missed opportunity on Aug. 28 for the government to have dispatched active-duty military troops to the region to augment the National Guard.

Chertoff: "Are there any DOD assets that might be available? Have we reached out to them?"

Brown: "We have DOD assets over here at EOC (emergency operations center). They are fully engaged. And we are having those discussions with them now."

Chertoff: "Good job."

In fact, active duty troops weren't dispatched until days after the storm. And many states' National Guards had yet to be deployed to the region despite offers of assistance, and it took days before the Pentagon deployed active-duty personnel to help overwhelmed Guardsmen.

The National Hurricane Center's Mayfield told the final briefing before Katrina struck that storm models predicted minimal flooding inside New Orleans during the hurricane but he expressed concerns that counterclockwise winds and storm surges afterward could cause the levees at Lake Pontchartrain to be overrun.

"I don't think any model can tell you with any confidence right now whether the levees will be topped or not but that is obviously a very, very grave concern," Mayfield told the briefing.

Other officials expressed concerns about the large number of New Orleans residents who had not evacuated.

"They're not taking patients out of hospitals, taking prisoners out of prisons and they're leaving hotels open in downtown New Orleans. So I'm very concerned about that," Brown said.

Despite the concerns, it ultimately took days for search and rescue teams to reach some hospitals and nursing homes.

Brown also told colleagues one of his top concerns was whether evacuees who went to the New Orleans Superdome — which became a symbol of the failed Katrina response — would be safe and have adequate medical care.

"The Superdome is about 12 feet below sea level.... I don't know whether the roof is designed to stand, withstand a Category Five hurricane," he said.

Brown also wanted to know whether there were enough federal medical teams in place to treat evacuees and the dead in the Superdome.

"Not to be (missing) kind of gross here," Brown interjected, "but I'm concerned" about the medical and mortuary resources "and their ability to respond to a catastrophe within a catastrophe."
___
Associated Press writers Ron Fournier and Lara Jakes Jordan contributed to this report.

*

petition asking Congress to censure President Bush

Use This Word in a Sentence: Experimental by Ann Lauterbach

2006-02-28T19:31:00.000-08:00

Many years ago I read something by Noam Chomsky in which three disparate words -- "Constantinople" was one -- that seemed to have nothing in common were brought together in a sentence. Chomsky wanted to show how context and syntax -- that is, the structures of meaning -- are as malleable as they are unpredictable.

In the language game called the dictionary, the word path begins at expenditure, moves through expense accounts and expensive, ascends to the rose of experience, in all its variants, and then on to the secret garden itself: experiment. The two words, experience and experiment, share an etymological root; they are the flora of experiri, to try, and related to periculum, which includes both the idea of attempt and peril. The path proceeds on, somewhat perilously, to the expert and then to its final nettlesome destination, expiate.

Recently, I was introduced as an "experimental" poet. The word was uttered with disdain; I was being damned with the faintest of praise. In the tiny world of poetry, to be experimental is often taken to mean you have an aversion to form, rather than an aversion to conformity.

I was raised in a leftist/liberal environment. I went to a small progressive school founded on John Dewey's pragmatism. The etymological root shared by experience and experiment formed the fundamental, pedagogical ground. The idea was that by doing something one would come to understand it. This notion that the relationship between understanding and knowledge is mediated by experience was tied to an ethical vision in which individual engagement would extend outward into social and political realms. What fueled this extension from private to public would be a practical curiosity. Difference, that is, the unknown, would arouse curiosity rather than fear; problems would elicit a desire to find solutions. In this climate, cultural products, especially works of art, were viewed as essential and necessary agents; aesthetic experience was linked to a vocabulary of social change.

In his essay "Experience," Emerson uses the great phrase "this new yet unapproachable America." The spirit of this -- the new and the unapproachable -- begins to depict the space in which experimentalism exists. This gap is essential to the syntax of true experiment. It is the gap which Sacvan Bercovitch names when he writes about the American Jeremiad. "But the American Puritan Jeremiad ... made anxiety its end as well as its means. Crisis was the social norm it sought to inculcate. The very concept of errand, after all, implied a state of unfulfillment. The future, though divinely assured, was never quite there, and New England's Jeremiahs set out to provide the sense of insecurity that would ensure the outcome. Denouncing or affirming, their vision fed on the distance between promise and fact." [1]

I take this gap between promise and fact to be the one between rhetoric and practice, between the language surrounding the creation of the "Euro," for example, and the economic competition and power which that new currency will unleash, approve and augment. It is the apparently insoluble distance between Israel and Palestine. Between promise and fact, between the new and the unapproachable, between known and unknown: the experimental is always between, like a hinge, a preposition. The risk, the peril, involved is that you may not make it across the suspension; the experiment may fail.

This willingness to risk failure seems essential.

To risk failure one needs a sense of unfettered play, the play that would allow a failure to become useful for the next attempt, that would in a sense recycle the disaster.

Nuclear waste cannot be recycled. It is the result of an experiment that should not have been undertaken.

I think perhaps science undertakes cool experiments and art undertakes hot experiments.

By hot I mean the kinds of formal discoveries which serve affective and spiritual needs; when the affective space is averted, the result is often experimentation for its own sake, self-conscious and self-referential, the aesthetic equivalent of narcissism.

One way to avoid arid experimentalism is for artists to draw their materials from a variety of sources, not from a single art form or a single "tradition." The tradition of the new is a dangerous precedent. The tradition of the old can be very useful.

Years ago, I went to a young artist's studio. He was just out of art school. He was working with an acrylic, matte, opaque, gray mucous color, which he had fashioned into grids. Everyone in those days was making grids. I felt a sense of entrapment and violation, looking at this inert work and listening to the young man natter on and on, giving a critique; he had no idea what the actual effect of his work was. At last I said, "You know, you are working in an exhausted iconography."

Poetry, according to Ezra Pound, is "news that stays news." It must be remembered that Pound, possibly the greatest example of modernist experiment, was a fascist. His fascism was the result of a misguided idealism marked by a peculiarly American ambition and cultural envy. [my note: this strikes me as somewhat irrelevant and it unduly ignores particular nuances about Pound and those times that play important factors in Pound's so-called fascism. Even if that were not the case, why "must" it be remembered? It would seem that one may also make instant judgments about uncomfortable art that confirms one's views.]

"Comforting art is art that you can make instant judgments about, that confirms your view," Sister Wendy, talking to Bill Moyers, remarks.

My friend Stacy Doris, a writer now in her mid-thirties, says she is meeting a lot of young people in their twenties who seem to have an extraordinary amount of knowledge about a lot of things; she takes this to be a result of the information age we are in, the fact that information is so easily accessed, at least by some.

I am interested in the relation between information and knowledge, the ways in which experience and experiment might link the two.

We need to be careful not to mistake technology for knowledge.

To experiment means you must put what you know at risk to what you do not yet know.

I began to give up conventional syntax, the logic of cause and effect, an assumed relation between subject and object, after my sister died. Narrative had been ruptured once and for all. I wanted the gaps to show. When the gaps began to show, a new sense of isolated wholes, of complete gestures, began to replace old Aristotelian ideas of beginnings, middles, and ends. Insted, there was a sense of a linguistic mobile, turning through space-time. In this new dispensation, the hinges or places of contact became the most important location of meaning, as in music and in some abstract art. This seemed both more real and more natural to me.

My fear is that culture -- and by this I mean all forms of art -- is increasingly treated either as decor or entertainment. Art is not understood as a meaning-making structure which might provide a given culture with non-violent introductions to alternative modes of thinking about the real world, and which, furthermore, might offer forms of redemption, solace, compensation, and critique for individuals inhabiting that world.

As the values of the free market consume the world economy, as entrepreneurship becomes rampant, as mergers beget mergers like rabbits in Paradise, our cultural institutions appear to be weaker and weaker, less and less willing to embrace work that critiques capital's hegemonic boondoggle and proposes or poses questions rather than answers. Democracy, needless to say, has become synonymous with capitalism. Including minority voices is often simply a ploy, the fact of difference is mistaken for the fact of distinction, and volumes of silent lip service are being written. Access to power is not the same as power, and Afro-Americans, American Indians, Latinos, are not necessarily politcally, socially, or aesthetically progressive. I, for one, want to make a distinction between the poems of Maya Angelou and the music of Charlie Parker.

It is the pressure of experience, the fact of attention to experience, which leads to real, that is, authentic, experimentation; a willingness to adapt forms to contents, to contexts, in order to derive not so much new meanings as new ways of interpreting the unpredictable. Those who view form as static and reified are doomed to repetition, historical as well as personal. The constraints of form are the constraints of decisions and choices that are based on judgments, on interpretations of value. The new is not always positioned between the present and the future; the "new" is what revitalizes, reanimates, recycles, if you will, whatever is needed to go on going on. The new is always with us.

The fragments among which we live are, in my view, cause for celebration rather than lament, an astonishing invitation to create new ideas of coherence, where boundaries are malleable and permeable, so that inclusion and exclusion are in unstable flux. The fragment offers a possibility for vitality and variety -- multiple perspectives, disparate vocabularies. The fragment might lead to clusters, to molecular structures, collaborations, artifacts, and institutions that retain the curiosity and flexibility of youth without sacrificing the digested experience of maturity, so that generations and genders no longer see themselves as competitive with each other. Such clusters would be deliberate disturbances of classic or traditional categories, including, need I say, traditional and classic vs. innovative or experimental. The best experiments surely make use of, are derived from, the major as well as the minor, the conservative as well as the progressive. History has no use for these distinctions.

As long as we regret and long for lost syntheses, master narratives, complete views, and clear canons, we will be unable to imagine the institutions which will override greed, self-interest, and cruelty, all of which are always ready to assert their prerogatives, at the expense of the experimental.

This essay orginated as a talk given in May 1998 for a symposium, organized by Michael Brenson for the Rockefeller Foundation, in which I was asked to address the word "experimental."

1. Sacvan Bercovitch, The American Jeremiad (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1978), 23.

[from By Herself: Women Reclaim Poetry (Graywolf Press, 2000), edited by Molly McQuade]

2006-02-27T21:31:00.000-08:00

Bush job rating falls to all-time low: poll

2006-02-26T20:11:00.000-08:00

U.S. Royalty Plan to Give Windfall to Oil Companies

New projections, buried in the Interior Department's just-published budget plan, anticipate that the government will let companies pump about $65 billion worth of oil and natural gas from federal territory over the next five years without paying any royalties to the government.

[dot dot dot]

Moreover, the projected largess could be just the start. Last week, Kerr-McGee Exploration and Development, a major industry player, began a brash but utterly serious court challenge that could, if it succeeds, cost the government another $28 billion in royalties over the next five years.

Stop AOL's email scheme (a petition from MoveOn.org)

2006-02-25T06:11:00.000-08:00

The very existence of online civic participation and the free Internet as we know it are under attack by America Online.

AOL recently announced what amounts to an "email tax." Under this pay-to-send system, large emailers willing to pay an "email tax" can bypass spam filters and get guaranteed access to people's inboxes—with their messages having a preferential high-priority designation. [1]

Charities, small businesses, civic organizing groups, and even families with mailing lists will inevitably be left with inferior Internet service unless they are willing to pay the "email tax" to AOL. We need to stop AOL immediately so other email hosts know that following AOL's lead would be a mistake.

Can you sign this emergency petition to America Online and forward it to your friends?

Sign here: http://civic.moveon.org/emailtax

Petition statement: "AOL, don't auction off preferential access to people's inboxes to giant emailers, while leaving people's friends, families, and favorite causes wondering if their emails are being delivered at all. The Internet is a force for democracy and economic innovation only because it is open to all Internet users equally—we must not let it become an unlevel playing field."

AOL is one of the biggest email hosts in the world—if we stop them from unleashing this threat to the Internet, others will know not to try it. Everyone who signs this petition will be sent information on how to contact AOL directly, as well as future steps that can be taken until AOL drops its new "email tax" policy.

AOL's proposed pay-to-send system is the first step down the slippery slope toward dividing the Internet into two classes of users—those who get preferential treatment and those who are left behind.

AOL pretends nothing would change for senders who don't pay, but that's not reality. The moment AOL switches to a world where giant emailers pay for preferential treatment, AOL faces this internal choice: spend money to keep spam filters up-to-date so legitimate email isn't identified as spam, or make money by neglecting their spam filters and pushing more senders to pay for guaranteed delivery. Which do you think they'll choose?

If AOL has its way, the big loser will be regular email users—whose email from friends, family, and favorite causes will increasingly go undelivered and disappear into the black hole of a neglected spam filter. Another loser will be democracy and economic innovation on the Internet—where small ideas become big ideas specifically because regular people can spread ideas freely on a level playing field.

If an "email tax" existed when MoveOn began, we never would have gotten off the ground—indeed, AOL's proposal will hurt every membership group, regardless of political affiliation. That's why groups all across the political spectrum are joining together with charities, non-profits, small businesses, labor unions, and Internet watchdog groups in opposition to AOL's "email tax."

The president of the Association for Cancer Online Resources (ACOR) points out the real-world urgency of this issue:

In essence, this is going to block every AOL subscriber suffering from any form of cancer from receiving potentially life-saving information they may not be able to get from any other source, simply because a non-profit like ACOR—which serves more than 55,000 cancer patients and caregivers every day—cannot afford to pay the fee. [2]

Can you sign this emergency petition to America Online and forward it to your friends?

http://civic.moveon.org/emailtax

Thank you for all you do.

–Eli Pariser, Noah T. Winer, Adam Green, and the MoveOn.org Civic Action team - Wednesday, February 22nd, 2006

P.S. The Electronic Frontier Foundation summed up the "email tax" issue beautifully:

Email being basically free isn't a bug. It's a feature that has driven the digital revolution. It allows groups to scale up from a dozen friends to a hundred people who love knitting to half-a-million concerned citizens without a major bankroll...
Once a pay-to-speak system like this gets going, it will be increasing difficult for people who don't pay to get their mail through. The system has no way to distinguish between ordinary mail and bulk mail, spam and non-spam, personal and commercial mail. It just gives preference to people who pay... [3]

Sources:

1. "Postage is due for companies sending e-mail," New York Times, February 4, 2006 http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/02/05/business/email.php

2. "AOL's New Email Certification Program: Good Mail or Goodfellas?" L-Soft Release, February 2, 2006 http://www.lsoft.com/news/aol-goodmail.asp

3. "AOL, Yahoo and Goodmail: Taxing Your Email for Fun and Profit," Electronic Frontier Foundation, February 8, 2006 http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/004398.php#004398

Letter to Senator Verschoor, R-Gilbert (AZ), from Ryan Boudinot on Rick Moody's The Ice Storm

2006-02-21T22:32:00.000-08:00

Dear Senator Verschoor,

I recently read an article in the Arizona Daily Sun regarding recent controversy surrounding the inclusion of Rick Moody's The Ice Storm in college curricula in your home state. You were quoted as saying, "There's no defense of this book. I can't believe that anyone would come up here and try to defend that kind of material."

I make the comments that follow under the assumption that you have read The Ice Storm. Or maybe you saw the movie by Ang Lee (whose pro-gay cowboy movie looks to be a lock on Best Picture for this year's Oscar). That counts, I suppose, but I assure you the book is much better than the film. In the highly unlikely case you haven't actually read the book, I promise not to give away the ending.

You should know that I am a former student of Mr. Moody, who has taught on occasion in a graduate writing program at Bennington College in Vermont. I consider studying under Rick Moody one of the highlights of my education and life, and he remains a friend years later. The reading required of me by Mr. Moody included Virgil's The Aeneid, Lattimore's translation of The New Testament, and The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Moody's grasp of the varieties of human experience is vast, and he doesn't shy away from reading or writing about human experiences that may challenge certain sensibilities. In fact, he belongs to a tradition of artists and thinkers for whom the study of the myriad ways humans live, love, work, and think is a hallmark of moral and civic maturity. And you should know that as a Christian and the co-editor of a collection of essays about the New Testament, Joyful Noise, Mr. Moody has come under attack from certain liberal quarters of the literary community but refuses to bow to intellectual fashion. What moves me most in Moody's work is his keen empathy for his characters filtered through a dazzling and verbal intelligence. The Ice Storm is a powerful, sorrowful story of American families coping with the sexual and cultural confusion of the 1970s. An argument might be made that The Ice Storm expresses a sadness for the loss of moral guidance for which your political party so often claims to bear the standard.

If literary considerations of the kinds of non-monogamous sexual behaviors that have existed for all of human history are considered beyond defense, I'm afraid your opinion and mine are irreconcilable. However, if you agree that human beings are complicated and struggle with questions of faith, sexuality, politics, and culture, and if you agree that such struggles arise from human beings' essential goodness, then I believe you might find much to admire in the works of Rick Moody. At the very least I would hope you agree that other mature adults should be free to take up such questions as to be found in Moody's novels for consideration in an academic environment, their own home, or in public.

I have also considered the possibility that your comments about The Ice Storm are meant to appeal to the conservative voters of your district in the interest of preserving your political influence as a US senator. One of many threads in The Ice Storm involves the malaise that enveloped the United States post-Watergate, with faith in public officials at a low point. I don't need to tell you that our country is in the midst of such a period right now. Statements against intellectual freedom such as yours invariably provoke the opposite result of their intent, with more attention (and thus sales) for the media product in question, and sympathy for the author. Works once deemed obscene or profane are more often than not considered benign or culturally vital with age, and comments such as yours, committed to the public record, are deemed by history at best embarrassing and at worst indefensible.

As a citizen of the United States of America compelled to live under the laws you draft, I demand a public apology from you to Rick Moody and all Americans for your unfortunate statement.

Sincerely,

Ryan Boudinot

***
related items:
Fact Sheet for S.B. 1331
Avoid Whatever Offends You (article detailing the controversy at Inside Higher Ed)

notes for my silent & unknown comrades of certain composition

2006-02-21T20:47:00.000-08:00

it might surprise some of you how much of me is or was politically conservative. raised with a near-apolitical outlook and my life-long leaning toward various radical views on either end of the spectrum, i once self-identified with the Libertarians until i began to discern their fractured and blinder'd vision as a party and as individuals (of course, i find myself warm to lower-case libertarianism). i have little faith in our dominant parties and even less for the minor parties that have sprung (Reform (pre- or post-split), Green, whatever).

i am not keen on the concept of heroes but when the subject comes up, i immediately think of John Brooks Wheelwright. Alan Wald, in The Revolutionary Imagination: The Poetry and Politics of John Wheelwright and Sherry Mangan, serves a brilliant description of Wheelwright the man, the poet and the activist, a description that i can only fail to condense for you here. the thing i wanted to mention was that Wald described Wheelwright's early political outlook (prior to his taking up communism/socialism) as "anarchopatrician", a concept i would have happily called my own when i was young even if i have no connection to any sort of aristocracy and despite the fast-disappearing patriarch-matriach mold of a culture i sprang from but have never fully embraced. i find that i have been more a party to anarchism, poor misunderstood umbrella term, however i must note that i find it mostly undoable &/or impractical; i won't pretend to make any understand that which they would only argue over than investigate and i probably couldn't even if i tried.

my innate distrust of groups, authority and institutions precludes my identification with any particular organization built on a set of ideals. like Wheelwright (or most anyone who cares to be a citizen of the world), i have a complex & awkward relationship with religion, politics, my station in life and the universe. the other day i had a strange moment of clarity, a vision, if you will, in which i felt filled with grace. i imagined i possessed a kind of Calvinistic grace but that wasn't right. i eschew deterministic values when i can and i thought to myself that it was not Calvin's grace that i felt but it was a grace born of & that bears a discipline & misfortune all its own.

this corruption, as i think of it, is born of my thorniest beliefs, that, like nails, hair or our worse moments, have become ingrown. bride to my own groom, i'd sooner have been happy a bridesmaid at my own wedding.

let me interject with some good news: Court upholds church use of hallucinogenic tea

section VII of Wallace Stevens' "Lettres d'un Soldat":

La seule sanction pour moi est ma conscience. Il faut mous confier à une justice impersonelle, indépendante de tout facteur humain; et à une destinée utile et harmonieuse malgré toute horreur de forme.

Negation

Hi! The creator too is blind,
Struggling toward his harmonious whole,
Rejecting intermediate parts --
Horrors and falsities and wrongs;
Incapable master of all force,
Too vague idealist, overwhelmed
By an afflatus that persists.
For this, then, we endure brief lives,
The evanescent symmetries
From that meticulous potter's thumb.

[the epigraph reads: "The only safeguard for me is my conscience. It is necessary for us to trust in an impersonal justice, independent of any human factor; and in a useful, harmonious destiny despite its horrible form."]

[Stevens chose the epigraphs from Lettres d'un soldat (1916), a book of letters sent home frmo the western front by a French soldier named Eugéne Emmannuel Lemercier.]

Chris Vitiello on things he is done with

2006-02-20T19:19:00.000-08:00

This post on Chris Vitiello's blog warmed my heart (found by way of K. Silem Mohammad's {limetree}).

I want to make the most ugly poems. I want the surface to give no pleasure.

For wordplay, I burrow into the dictionary and the books of etymology and synonyms. For soundplay I cover my ears, open my eyes really wide, and consecutively think.

you art...

2006-02-19T22:41:00.000-08:00

My art is about paying attention -- about the extremely dangerous possibility that you might be art. - Robert Rauschenberg

Embracing Evasion: The Exotic by Peter Cole

2006-02-18T11:47:00.000-08:00

Perhaps the primary obstacle facing the contemporary reader of medieval Hebrew poetry is the overstuffed critical baggage of its ornament, which the textbooks would have us drag about on our way from line to line and poem to poem. Again and again the poetry is described as decorative or ornamental, without our ever stopping to ask what that means. The tacit assumption of modern art-talk is that ornament is unnecessary or quaint (domesticating). Baroque theories of the fold notwithstanding, we think of it often as fluff, or a lie. "Arabesque," for Ezra Pound, was the ultimate put down, the representative figure of evasion and flight from the real. "The world is still deceived with ornament," we hear in the Merchant of Venice, at the heart of another age of embellishment. "Thus ornament is but the gilded shore to a most dangerous sea ... the seaming truth which cunning times put on to entrap the wisest." Also prominent in the anti-ornament camp is Adolf Loos's equation of "Ornament and Crime," as the title of his 1908 essay on the subject has it, and his saying elsewhere that "the less civilized a people is, the more prodigal it will be with ornament and decoration.... The Red Indian within us," he urges, "must be overcome."

There are, however, less mechanical or reductive ways to think about ornament. The apocryphal book of Ben Sira says: "To a sensible man education is like a golden ornament, and like a bracelet worn on the right arm," a reasonably familiar sentiment. But then it says: "A mind settled on an intelligent thought is like the stucco decoration on the wall of a colonnade." (22:17), already a much more interesting notion.

For the phenomenon is cosmetic, though in saying so we unwittingly arrive at the root and truth of the matter, the complex of definitions that accrue around the Greek word for the verbal form of the term, kosmein, that is, to order, and, secondarily, to ornament. It is from this cluster of meanings that we get our "ordered world," "a cosmos," as in in the pseudepigraphic Prayer of Manasseh: "He who made the heaven and the earth with all their embellishment [kosmo]...." Which returns us to Bezalel and the sanctuary designed to "adorn Him."

Several modern writers who look at ornament in the visual arts and without condescension bring us closer still to the heart of the matter. The art historian A.K. Coomaraswamy traces the development of the word in Sanskrit, Greek, and English, from cult to court and on to the swamp of pretension and the dismissal of "arts and crafts." At the outset, he notes, ornament was "that which makes a thing itself"; and ornamentum in Ecclesiastical law didn't convey superfluous decoration, but the equipment of the sacred service. Discussing the various words used in traditional art-theory to express the phenomenon he says: "Most of these words, which imply for us the notion of something adventitious and luxurious,... originally implied a completion or fulfillment of the artifact or other object in question [... with a view to proper operation] ... until ... the art by which the thing itself has been made whole began to mean only a sort of millinery or upholstery that covered over a body that had not been made by 'art' but rather by 'labor'."

And Oleg Grabar states in The Mediation of Ornament: "Ornament is, to coin a word ... calliphoric: it carries beauty with it." Echoing Coomaraswamy he observes that the words used to express the act involved in ornamentation imply "the successful completion of an act, of an object, or even a state of mind or soul." He notes the daemonic, intermediary nature of ornament, and its extraordinary capacity as part of the work of art to shape our lives and thought, to question meaning with the pleasure it channels, or to use that pleasure to cultivate meaning and intensify relation to value.

All of this might be summed up in the artist-craftsman Eric Gill's saying that "a pendant on the neck is useful and possibly more so than a trouser button."

The issue's relevance comes into focus when we look at one of the most conspicuous ornaments in medieval Hebrew literature, the kind of biblical allusion that has coe tobe known as shibbutz, which means "setting" or "inlay," whereby elements of the biblical text are woven through the "fabric" of the verse. In that nineteenth-century term, a parallel to theGerman for "mosaic style," we have a classic case of distortion in East-West transmission, a failure of sympathy. For the term itself, shibbutz, implies an effect that is static while the use of biblical phrasing was brough over, in part, from Arabic literature, where it was based on the Quran and was known as iqtibas, "the lighting of one flame from another." It implied a source and transfer of energy. Far from constituting a rote application to an otherwise useful but plain poetic surface, biblical quotation and other ornaments of this poetry act like tiny turbines to the current of the verse, thousands of finely constructed stations-of-power set out along its flow.

Apart from quotation, what do we mean here by ornament? Nearly everything that contributes to the unparaphrasable weave of the writing -- alliteration, assonance, irony, metaphor, rhetorical and rhythmic effects, manipulations of tone -- the ceremonial equipment of the verse that makes it a poem and not a theme: "The little weddings between the words," as Israeli novelist Dan Tsalka has put it. All that's exotic to reduction's impulse.

[from "Solomon Ibn Gabirol: An Andalusian Alphabet" in Selected Poems of Solomon Ibn Gabirol (Princeton University Press, 2001), translated by Peter Cole]

Notes on Poetic Form (III) by David Lehman

2006-02-15T07:05:00.000-08:00

III.

The question of measure and meter has been undergoing reexamination of late -- inevitably, as poets discuss and dispute their ideas about form. Brad Leithauser, in a controversial essay entitled "Metrical Literacy", has argued that "poetry is a craft which, like carpentry, requires a long apprenticeship merely to assimilate its tools" and that meter is a true and perhaps indispensable implement in the trade. "Metrical illiteracy is, for the poet, functional illiteracy," Leithauser concludes. Nor is he alone in taking arms against plain speech: more than one poet has noted, with pleasure or alarm, that their contemporaries have brought back meter as a vital concern. The debate on the question is far from being one- or even two-sided. Douglas Crase, for example, doesn't place any the less value on finding a true measure even if he is little concerned with anapests and dactyls. What Crase wants is a meter suitable to an American vernacular and an American reality. He proposes "the 'civil meter' of American English, the meter we hear in the propositions offered by businessmen, politicians, engineers, and all our other real or alleged professionals. If you write in this civil meter, it's true you have to give up the Newtonian certainties of the iamb. But you gain a stronger metaphor for conviction by deploying the recognizable, if variable patterns of the language of American power."

Perhaps it would help to clarify the question of prosody, without simplifying it too much, if we rephrased it as an issue involving the desired amount of resistance that the poet wishes his medium to exert. Let two English poets argue the question for us. Here is Craig Raine defending his preference for unrhymed couplets in his book A Martian Sends a Postcard Home: "Technique is something you learn in order to reach a point where you're writing what you want with the minimum of interference. The unrhymed couplet interested me as something in which I could write fluently. Any verse, however, with a fair amount of freedom in it is actually much harder to write than strict verse." By contrast, Geoffrey Hill endorses "the proposal that form is not only a technical containment but is possibly also an emotional and ethical containment. In the act of refining technique one is not only refining emotion, one is also constantly defining and redefining one's ethical and moral sensibility." What Hill wants is more resistance, not less; he distrusts the very fluency that Raine prizes, and opts for a "harder" severity than "freedom" allows for. Hill endorses C.H. Sisson's remark: "There is in Hill a touch of the fastidiousness of Crashaw, which is that of a mind in search of artifices to protect itself against its own passions." Form as artifice or form as the path of least resistance, a maze or a straight line, a way of reining in the imagination or a method for letting it roam free, a container or a ceaseless stream: the permutations are endless.

[from The Line Forms Here (Poets on Poetry series, University of Michigan Press, 1992); adapted from the afterword of Ecstatic Occasions, Expedient Forms, ed. David Lehman (Macmillan, 1987)]

Valentine's Day Sucks by Lauren R. Weinstein

2006-02-14T08:56:00.000-08:00

Valentine's Day Sucks by Lauren R. Weinstein

Notes on Poetic Form (II) by David Lehman

2006-02-13T18:19:00.000-08:00

II.

Subscribing to the traditional paradox that liberty most flourishes when most held in check, John Ashbery offers a shrewdly pragmatic explanation for his interest in the exotic pantoum. "I was attracted to the form," he writes, "because of its stricture, even greater than in other hobbling forms such as the sestina or canzone. These restraints seem to have a paradoxically liberating effect, for me at least." Ashbery concludes with sly deadpan" "The form has the additional advantage of providing you with twice as much poem for your effort, since every line has to be repeated twice."

To an important extent, such formal scheming cast the poet in the guise of problem-solver. In the course of working out the puzzle he has set for himself, a poem will get written -- not as an afterthought, but as an inevitable by-product of the process. By this logic, the tougher the formal problem, the better -- the more likely it is to act as a sort of broker between language, chance, and the poet's instincts. "And this may indeed be one way that 'form' helps the poet," Anthony Hecht observes. "So preoccupied is he bound to be with the fulfillment of technical requirements that in the beginning of his poem he cannot look very far ahead, and even a short glance forward will show him that he must improvise, reconsider and alter what had first seemed to him his intended direction, if he is to accommodate the demands of his form." This is desirable, notes Hecht, if the aim is -- as Robert Frost said it was -- an outcome that is both "unforeseen" and "predestined."

No doubt it's the prevalence of this aim that accounts for the sestina's unprecedented popularity among modern poets. The votaries in the sestina chapel may begin with Sir Philip Sidney ("Ye Goatherd Gods"), but there then follows a gap of three centuries before the procession is renewed by Rossetti and Pound, Auden and Elizabeth Bishop, and innumerable poets since. Allowing for maximum maneuverability within a tightly controlled space, the sestina has a special attraction for the poet in search of a formal device with which to scan his unconscious. Writing a sestina, Ashbery once remarked, is like riding downhill on a bicycle while the pedals push your feet. The analogy makes the whole procedure sound exhilirating, risky, and somewhat foolhardy, making it irresistible. Paradoxically, the very ubiquity of the sestina -- it's a favorite in creative writing workshops -- has recently begun to argue against it. The logic is Yogi Berra's: "Nobody eats at that restaurant anymore -- it's too crowded."

[from The Line Forms Here (Poets on Poetry series, University of Michigan Press, 1992); adapted from the afterword of Ecstatic Occasions, Expedient Forms, ed. David Lehman (Macmillan, 1987)]

Notes on Poetic Form (I) by David Lehman

2006-02-12T14:22:00.000-08:00

I.

A distrust of received forms seems endemic to American poets. It is predicated on the conviction that depth or complexity of vision, force of passion, profundity of insight, or whatever it is that distinguishes art from mere craft will invariably precede rather than follow from a formal maneuver. This view found its first great exemplar in Whitman's "Song of Myself" -- and its first great sponsor in Emerson:

For it is not metres, but a metre-making argument, that makes
a poem, -- a thought so passionate and alive, that, like the
spirit of a plant or an animal, it has an architecture of its
own, and adorns nature with a new thing. The thought and the
form are equal in the order of time, but in the order of
genesis the thought is prior to the form.

That Emerson's edict continues to have its adherents is clear. Allice Fulton has restated the case: "During the act of writing, technique and meaning are inextricably linked, and it is only for the convenience of critical discussion that one could wish to separate them. The realization that craft depends on content leads to the concept of organic forms and the idea that whatever elements help us experience a poem as a whole can be called its form."

Perhaps it betokens the rise of a new formalism that a rival notion -- that "in the order of genesis" form may precede thought -- seems on the ascendant. (By "a new formalism" I mean to designate the tendency as such rather than the specific group or movement of poets who have banded together under one or another label, issuing proclamations.) Certainly there has been a resurgence of interest in forms traditional or exotic -- forms that can themselves create the occasion for poetry. Some regard this development as yet another manifestation of the back-to-basics spirit evident in other areas of cultural activity. Or is it that the emerging generation of poets is acting in filial rebellion against predecessors who valued nothing so much as what Whitman called the "barbaric yawp"? In any event, it is possible that the preoccupation with poetic form is precisely what distinguishes this generation from the last. A number of celebrated younger poets are clothing their poems in the traditional raiments of rhyme and meter. Others have embraced a principle of poetic form that follows from two key premises: that imaginative freedom can flourish amid self-imposed restrictions and that originality starts from a mastery of tradition, not an ignorance thereof. There are also those who remain solidly committed to free verse -- they might write prose poems, but never a villanelle (never one that rhymes anyway) -- but who are nevertheless engaged to the point of obsession with the form and appearance and design of their work. In this category one thinks of Jorie Graham, whose meanings are inextricable from the effects she obtains through her experimentation with form: for example, her substitution of blanks for words in several poems, or her unusual lining and punctuation -- she may end a poem in the middle of a sentence with a dash instead of a period. These are formal choices, as crucial to the outcome in Graham's case as another poet's decision to write a double sestina using the same end-words that Swinburne used in his double sestina a hundred years ago.

[from The Line Forms Here (Poets on Poetry series, University of Michigan Press, 1992); adapted from the afterword of Ecstatic Occasions, Expedient Forms, ed. David Lehman (Macmillan, 1987)]

A Note on the Work of the Imagination by Denise Levertov

2006-02-04T21:26:00.000-08:00

A Note on the Work of the Imagination by Denise Levertov

The work of the imagination, its far-reaching and faithful permeation of those details that, in a work of art, illuminate the whole, was recently illustrated for me in a dream with particular clarity.

I had been dreaming of a large house, set in a flat landscape, and of its history, which is not relevant here. At a certain point I half awoke; and when I returned to the dream I was conscious that I was dreaming. Still close to the threshold of waking, I knew very well that I was lying down for an afternoon nap, in my son's room, because there the street noises would hardly reach me; that though I had a blanket over me I was cold; and that he would soon be home from school and I must get up. But all this was unimportant: what gripped me was the knowledge that I was dreaming, and vividly. A black, white, and gray tiled pavement I crossed -- how "real" it felt under my feet! To see, as I saw the poplar avenue and the bluish misty fields around the large buildings, was good, but at no time is it hard to call up scenes to the mind's eye; it was the sensations of touch -- the pavement felt through the ball of the foot, the handle of a door in my hand -- and the space -- the outdoors sensation first, then the spaces of rooms and of the confinement of corridors and of turns in the corridors when I re-entered the house -- that interested me, in being so complete even though I knew I was dreaming.

At lenght I came into a small bedroom fitted with a washbasin and mirror, and the idea came to me of looking in the mirror as a test of how far in fidelity the dream would go; but I was afraid. I was afraid the mirror would show me a blank, or a strange face. I was afraid of the fright that this would give me. However, I dared: and approached the mirror. It was rather high on the wall, and not tilted; so what first appeared, as I slowly drew near, was the top of my head. But yes, surely something was wrong -- a misty whiteness glimmered there.

I crept nearer still, and standing straight, almost on tiptoe, now saw my whole face, my usual face-in-the-glass -- pale, the dary eyes somewhat anxious, but in no way changed of lacing, or causing me fear. What then was the radiant glimmer that had startled me just before?

Why! -- in the dark, somewhat fluffy hair was a network of little dew or mist diamonds, like spider's webs on a fall morning! The creative unconscious -- the imagination -- had provided, instead of a fright, this exquisitely realistic detail. For hadn't I been walking in the misty fields in the dewfall hour? Just so, then, would my damp hair look. I awoke in delight, reminded forcibly of just what it is we love in the greatest writers -- what quality, above all others, surely, makes us open ourselves freely to Homer, Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Hardy -- that following through, that permeation of detail -- relevant, illuminating detail -- which marks the total imagination, distinct from intellect, at work. "The mind's tongue, working and tasting into the very rock heart" as Ruskin wrote of Turner. The feared Hoffmanesque blank -- the possible monster or stranger -- would have illustrated the work of Fancy, that "by irressistible wires puts marionettes in motion, and pins butterflies to blotting-paper, and plays Little-Go among the Fairies" (Landor, in Imaginary Conversations). And mere Reason can place two eyes and a nose where we suppose them to be. But it was Imagination put seed pearls of summer fog in Tess Durbeyfield's hair (and "an intenser little fog amid the prevailing one," as a friendly cow breathed in recognition of her approach) -- and it was the same holy, independent faculty that sprinkled my hair with winter-evening diamonds.

We sigh -- or I do -- for the days when whole cultures were infused with noble simplicity; when though there were cruelty and grief, there was no ugliness; when King Alcinoüs himself stowed the bronze pots for Odysseus under the rowers' benches; when from shepherd's pope and warrior's sandal to palace door and bard's song, all was well made. Any culture worth the name, in fact, though "noble simplicity" may be partially an illusion, has the quality of harmony; the bloodstream flows right to the fingertips and the toes; no matter how complex the structure, the parts accord with the whole. Our age appears to me a chaos and our environment lacks the qualities for which one could call it a culture. But by way of consolation we have this knowledge of pwer that perhaps no one in such a supposed harmonious time had; what in the greatest poets is recognizable as Imagination, that breathing of life into the dust, is present in us all embryonically -- manifests itself in the life of dream -- and in that manifestation shows us the possibility: to permeate, to quicken, all of our life and the works we make. What joy to be reminded by truth in dream that the Imagination does not arise from the environment but has the power to create it!

[from The Poet in the World (New Directions, 1973); orginally published in New Directions in Prose and Poetry 17 (New Directions, 1961)]

being liked

2006-02-01T20:37:00.000-08:00

The worst quality of a leader is a need to be liked. - Liam Rector

escape

2006-01-29T22:10:00.000-08:00

Nobody ever did, or ever will, escape the consequences of his choices. - Alfred A. Montapert

assurance (2)

2006-01-28T19:55:00.000-08:00

Art's reassurance is not in being nice, but in accepting what is not so nice in us. -Robert Pinsky

assurance

2006-01-26T11:48:00.000-08:00

No man has more assurance than a bad poet.  -  Martial (Marcus Valerius Martialis)

Chris Daniels on Fernando Pessoa and the art of translation

2006-01-19T12:38:00.000-08:00

No poem is intended for the reader, no picture for the beholder, no symphony for the listener. - Walter Benjamin

If art, like science, is a cognition of life, then it behooves artists to be curious about how other people make art elsewhere in the world, and, even more, to try to understand different peoples and their cultures through their arts, but not only through their arts, of course. [...] Poets have a unique opportunity to engage with another culture through an art made with the greatest human invention of them all. Our languages, as Benjamin teaches us, are kin, just as all people are kin, regardless of the artificial boundaries foisted upon us by the owners of the world’s wealth. Monoglots have no idea what they’re missing. To tell the truth, I feel a little sorry for poets who never translate, or who translate without really understanding the implications of what they’re doing.

My motto is “Translation fights cultural narcissism.” I don’t think I have to explain what that means, but I’m trying to work it out in full on my blog: http://nftseries.blogspot.com

The quotations above are taken from a recent interview, in the latest issue of Jacket, of Chris Daniels, translator & artist, by Kent Johnson, a poet & translator.

Daniels translates mostly Brazilian poetry though the interview begins with his recent & ongoing work with the poetries of Fernando Pessoa, in my opinion one of the greatest writers of the 20th century. Anyone interested in poetry, translation, Portuguese or related subjects, would do well to check out the interview.

On Being Lyrical by Emil Cioran

2005-12-19T10:41:00.000-08:00

On Being Lyrical by Emil Cioran

Why can't we stay closed up inside of ourselves? Why do we chase after expression and form, trying to deliver ourselves of our precious concern or "meanings," desperately attempting to organize what is after all a rebellious and chaotic process? Wouldn't it be more creative simply to surrender our inner fluidity without any intention of objectifying it, intimately and voluptuously soakin in our own inner turmoil and struggle? Then we would feel with much richer intensity the whole inner growth of spiritual experience. All kinds of insights would blend and flourish in a fertile effervescence. A sensation of actuality and spiritual content would be born, like the rise of a wave or a musical phrase. To be tormented by a sense of inner infinity, means to live so intensely that you feel you are about to die of life. Such a feeling is so rare and strange that we would live it out with shouts. I feel I could die of life, and I ask myself if it makes any sense to look for an explanation. When your entire spiritual past vibrates inside you with a supreme tension, when a sense of total presence resurrects buried experiences and you lose your normal rhythm, then, from the heights of life, you are caught by death without the fear which normally accompanies it. It is a feeling similar to that experienced by lovers on the heights of happiness, when they have a passing but intense intimation of death or when a premonition of betrayal haunts their budding love.

Only a few can endure such experiences to the end. There is always a serious danger in repressing something which requires objectification, in locking up explosive energy, because there comes a moment when one cannot restrain such overwhelming power. And then the fall is from too much plenitude. There are experiences and obsessions one cannot live with. Salvation lies in confessing them. The terrifying experience of death, when preserved in consciousness, becomes ruinous. If you talk about death, you save part of your self. But at the same time, something of your real self dies, because objectified meanings lose the actuality they have in consciousness. This is why lyricism represents a dispersion of subjectivity; it is a certain quantity of an individual's spiritual effervescence which cannot be contained and needs constant expression. To be lyrical means you cannot stay closed up inside yourself. The need to externalize is the more intense, the more the lyricism is interiorized, profound, and concentrated. Why is the suffering or loving man lyrical? Because such states, although different in nature and orientation, spring up from the deepest and most intimate part of our being, from the substantial center of subjectivity, as from a radiation zone. One becomes lyrical when one's life beats to an essential rhythm and the experience is so intense that it synthesizes the entire meaning of one's personality. What is unique and specific in us is then realized in a form so expressive that the individual rises onto a universal plane. The deepest subjective experiences are also the most universal, because through them one reac hes the original source of life. True interiorization leads to a universality inaccessible to those who remain on the periphery. The vulgar interpretation of universality calls it a phenomenon of quantitative expansion rather than a qualitatively rich containment. Such an interpretation sees lyricism as a peripheral and inferior phenomenon, the product of spiritual inconsistency, failing to notice that the lyrical resources of subjectivity show remarkable freshness and depth.

There are people who become lyrical only at crucial moments in their life; some only in the throes of death, when their entire past suddenly appears before them and hits them with the force of a waterfall. Many become lyrical after some decisively critical experience, when the turmoil of their inner being reaches paroxysm. Thus people who are normally inclined toward objectivity and impersonality, strangers both to themselves and to reality, once they become prisoners of love, experience feelings which actualize all their personal resources. The fact that almost everybody writes poetry when in love proves that the resourcees of conceptual thinking are too poor to express their inner infinity; inner lyricism finds adequate objectification only through fluid, irrational material. The experience of suffering is a similar case. You never suspected what lay hidden in yourself and in the world, you were living contentedly at the periphery of things, when suddenly those feelings of suffering which are second only to death itself take hold of you and transport you into a region of infinite complexity, where your subjectivity tosses about in a maelstrom. To be lyrical from suffering means to achieve that inner purification in which wounds cease to be mere outer manifestations without deep complications and begin to participate in the essence of your being. The lyricism of suffering is a song of the blood, the flesh, and the nerves. True suffering begins in illness. Almost all illnesses have lyrical virtues. Only those who vegetate in a scandalous insensitivity remain impersonal when ill, and thus miss that deepening of the personality brought about by illness.

One does not become lyrical except after a total organic affliction. Accidental lyricism has its source in external factors; once they have disappeared, their inner correspondent also disappears. There is no authentic lyricism without a grain of interior madness. It is significant that the beginnings of all mental psychoses are marked by a lyrical phase during which all the usual barriers and limits disappear, giving way to an inner drunkenness of the most fertile, creative kind. This explains the poetic productivity characteristic of the first phases of psychoses. Consequently, madness could be seen as a sort of paroxysm of lyricism. For this reason, we should rather write in praise of lyricism than in praise of folly. The lyrical state is a state beyond forms and systems. A sudden fluidity melts all the elements of our inner life in one fell swoop, and creates a full and intense rhythm, an ideal convergence. Compared to the refined culture of sclerotic forms and frames, which mask everything, the lyrical mode is utterly barbarian in its expression. Its value resides precisely in its savage quality: it is only blood, sincerity, and fire.

[from On the Heights of Despair, trans. by Ilinca Zarifopol-Johnston, University of Chicago Press]

Dog-Ear: Kim Addonizio's Tell Me

2005-11-19T13:27:00.000-08:00

There is a great deal of poetry out there. Kim Addonizio’s Tell Me is one of the fortunate collections to rise above the pitfalls of contemporary poetry, to rise above the usual clichés & staid images, to carry with it a strong sense of place & emotion without resorting to tricks, pity or force. Instead Tell Me is a return to the grounded & far-reaching powers of confessional poetry (keeping in mind “confessional” does not denote “autobiographical”), a collection that is raw, honest, well written and open to minds of varying principles & speeds. With its long, run-on lines & its concrete images (and occasional formal gestures), the collection allows its content to reach out to the reader while its poetic strengths of metaphor & narrative keep the poems from being merely personal anecdotes & reflections without overwhelming the emotional tenor.

Addonizio’s portraits of desire, love, loss and failure often dwell on the womanly life but these peeks are not exclusively about or to women. She deftly draws the reader in by directly addressing the reader and the emotions we all share in matters of love & life. In her poems, the “I” is not just a persona telling a story or a person demanding your attention; it is a confidante, an intimate voice sharing her pains, reaching out for a hand or another voice. Throughout the collection, she employs concrete imagery that is ambiguous or suggestive enough to go beyond the lines between age, gender and class. Her use of a mundane activity & subject is often one that can be easily identified with by many readers and so is an easy & intimate way to draw the reader in. Here is her poem “Affair” in its entirety:

God it’s sexual, opening a beer when you swore you wouldn’t drink tonight,
taking the first deep gulp, the foam backing up in the long amber neck

of the Pacifico bottle as you set it on the counter, the head spilling over
so you bend to fit your mouth against the cold lip

and drink, because what you are, aren’t you, is a drinker—maybe not a lush,
not an alcoholic, not yet anyway, but don’t you want

a glass of something most nights, don’t you need the gesture
of reaching for it, raising it high and swallowing down and savoring

the sweetness, or the scalding, knowing you’re going to give yourself to it
like a lover, whether or not he fills up the leaky balloon of your heart—

don’t you believe in trying to fill it, no matter what the odds,
don’t you believe it still might happen, aren’t you that kind of woman?

Addonizio utilizes the “you” in order to seemingly address the reader though it could be the speaker addressing herself as well. It is the longing and the simple activity of drinking a beer that brings the reader closer to the speaker. Like Anne Sexton, her poems are not just of the mind or of emotions, but also of the body. Even for a (heterosexual) male reader, there is a sense of taking in that is not physical in the way Addonizio relates it for women but rather in the desire & need to fill up one’s heart with love or companionship. The poem could just as easily end with “aren’t you that kind of person” because the hope & longing in the poem is not a feminine subject but a human subject, a concern that goes beyond the metaphors and cuts to the bone. And doesn’t every person want “a glass of something most nights”, something that fills up his or her heart & life?

The exchange Addonizio creates between the poems and their audience is one of sharing. In interviews she talks about how writing has been a kind of escape or therapy from everyday life, an affirmation of the life she has and can have. Poetry, for reader and writer alike, is often a consolatory activity. The title poem of her collection is the best example of where the lines between reader, writer and speaker blur so that they all share in the act of listening, confiding and resting on each other’s shoulders. She begins, “I’m going to stop thinking about my losses now/and listen to yours. I’m so sick of dragging them//wherever I go, like children up too late”. The first lines of the poem are literally an opening-up, a gesture toward the other as if to say we all have problems, let’s talk share them for a bit, a treatment of conversation as a kind of personal exorcism. Then the poem takes a turn toward escapism. Sharing each other’s plights is fine; after all, misery loves company but to wallow in it is to make more of what you want to get away from. The speaker declares she will send her children off and drink into the night but first she extends her own sympathy after asking for ours saying, “So tell me. Tell me how you hurt/even though I can’t help you.” In a subtle, indirect manner the speaker declares that we can share in each other’s troubles, comfort each other but we can’t always help each other but we can still escape it for a little, first in sharing, then in revelry. After all, the late night bar scene, the clubs, the midnight bowling leagues, all sorts of activities we indulge is to get away from our losses, our troubles, at the very least to get away from the same old. And so the speaker asks us to share our troubles but “then, please, dance with me,/hold me while we fool ourselves/they aren’t out there”. Problems may not go away, may not be solved, but the moments we can find ourselves taken away from them is one of the reasons why we yearn for companionship, why we try to make room in the crowded spaces of our lives & our bodies.

Confessional poetry seeks to open up avenues for poet & reader to find their way toward a proverbial Emerald City or home, a place to be comfortable in if even for just a little while. Addonizio’s Tell Me is, with its joys & sorrows, a masterful reenactment of memory & forgetting, the two halves of our emotional & embodied lives that keep us going. In wrestling them we might find solace. In sharing them we find we are not alone, which is perhaps the most important aspect of her collection “and finally/you depend on that, you pray it’s enough/to last, if it has to, the rest of your life.”

Happy Birthday Anne Sexton

2005-11-09T18:36:00.000-08:00

from 1974 NY Times piece, Remembering Anne Sexton, by Erica Jong:

I could speak here of the fact that Anne Sexton is one of the writers by whom our age will be known and understood in times to come -- if there are any times to come. Some people -- including other poets -- were embarrassed by her poetry and sought to denigrate it, perhaps because it was so naked and painful that it exposed the hypocrisies they lived by (and even, at times, wrote by). But I would rather speak of Anne Sexton's bigness as a person than her greatness as a poet. The poems are there -- seven published books and two more (at least) to come. They will be understood in time -- not as "women's poetry" or "confessional poetry" -- but as myths that expand the human consciousness. Like all such myths, they are a big frightening. Some people would rather pretend they do not exist, or do not exist in the temple of art. But no matter: the poems go on saying themselves to us in the dark. They will not go away.

*

a poem by Anne Sexton (from All My Pretty Ones):

To a Friend Whose Work Has Come to Triumph

Consider Icarus, pasting those sticky wings on,
testing that strange little tug on his shoulder blade,
and think of that first flawless moment over the lawn
of the labyrinth. Think of the difference it made!
There below are the trees, as awkward as camels;
and here are the shocked starlings pumping past
and think of innocent Icarus who is doing quite well:
larger than a sail, over the fog and the blast
of the plushy ocean, he goes. Admire his wings!
Feel the fire at his neck and see how casually
he glances up and is caught, wondrously tunneling
into that hot eye. Who cares that feel back to the sea?
See him acclaiming the sun and come plunging down
while his sensible daddy goes straight into town.

Dog-Ear: Elizabeth Bishop's Geography III

2005-11-07T06:34:00.000-08:00

A good deal of text is spent discussing Elizabeth Bishop’s deployment of narrative and of the relationship of her details with the subjects of her poems. Putting aside discussions of gender, sexuality and biography that are so common in critical work on Bishop, I would like to return to the poems themselves and focus on Bishop as a painter of words. Considering that Elizabeth Bishop herself often painted watercolours, one can see her love of detail and her attention to colour & space.

In Geography III, her last book, Bishop, as in most of her poems, turns out detail after detail. “In the Waiting Room” she uses narrative as a kind of detail where lines like “It was winter. It got dark/early” do more than merely set the scene but also provides a tenor in which the themes of her poems work. This turning over of the particular is similar to primitive painters or the Baroque painters in that the images subtly become more than themselves and act as allegorical surrogates to the picture revealed. The act of looking is more than an outward activity; it consists of reflection & identification. The protagonist, Elizabeth, reads through an issue of National Geographic, goes from the images of “awful hanging breasts”, “babies with pointed heads”, and “a dead man slung on a pole” to a moment of surprise (that is, the cry “oh!”) and looks to herself. She considers the waiting room and begins to sink into herself wondering who she or anyone really is. Elizabeth “scarcely dared to look/to see what it was I was”; the images in the magazine, as do the images in the poem, draw her to consider what “held us all together/or made us all just one?” It is not uncommon for onlookers at any museum to find a work of art that draws them and causes them to think about themselves, their relation to the art, to the artist, to the whole act of making. “In the Waiting Room”, in plain language, in both the adult voice and that of a seven-year-old, performs the act of looking and reflecting from a set of photographs that might easily be about anything including us. The sense of confusion in the poem is not in the images but in the thoughts drawn from them; Bishop takes the reader into a psychological moment that is born not out of the confessional elements but from something that goes beyond the mere self and this is perhaps the great appeal of painting and why so many poets are often, if not artists themselves, great lovers of art.

The image is without a doubt an important & perhaps obvious element of poetry. It seems to be an altogether ridiculous idea that images in poetry might not evoke some kind of emotional or other mental process to take hold. What makes Bishop’s poems a bit different, besides her use of detail as a kind of narrative, is that they employ images in such a way to be more than mere representations of things but also as meaningful markers of thought. How we understand the reality of our surroundings is a result of many perceptions and we cannot but help to ascribe to our sensations a variety of descriptions. The prose poem “12 O’Clock News”, a Modernist masterpiece (even if it was published late in the game), is a clever landscape painting derived from an imaginative description of objects in a room setup in the way a television newsmagazine (à la National Geographic Explorer or Sixty Minutes) might describe a place & its people. Besides the usual muscularity enjoyed by much prose poetry, the poem is given stronger definition & physicality by the descriptive markers to the left of each stanza. One might consider how sculpture & assemblage, especially when using found objects, can be manipulated or given new context in order represent new things (one might think of Marcel Duchamp, for example). In this artistic spirit the poem resides. Rather than confronting the reader with a statement like, to paraphrase Magritte, “this is not a gooseneck lamp”, Bishop allows her painterly imagination to evoke a new place within a seemingly mundane room.

She writes, “Visibility is poor. Nevertheless, we shall try to give you some idea of the lay of the land and the present situation.” The brilliant assignment of a gooseneck lamp as moon sets the light and tone for the rest of the poem. The next section named “typewriter” is a clever take on the work that she does, giving the typewriter new life as an escarpment with “elaborate terracing…What endless labor those small, peculiarly shaped terraces represent! And yet, on them the welfare of this tiny principality depends.” This tongue-in-cheek remark is followed by more descriptions of objects in the room, each given their own place in the landscape with geological reportage and editorializing. In each of her descriptions we are reminded of the imaginative enterprise with which children transform their surroundings, turning couches into great fortresses or carpets into deserts; Bishop recaptures the imagination in much the same way as seen in her “typewriter eraser” and “ashtray” sections where she reveals the people of the land frozen in time in their all-too-human poses such as when cigarettes play the role of dead soldiers lying in a pit. The visual & physical qualities of her descriptions do more than describe but allow use to be present in the same way a good painting or photograph might thus demonstrating her qualities as both poet and painter.

It seems particularly important to look at her choice of translation in Geography III, Octavio Paz’s “Objects and Apparitions,” a poem for Joseph Cornell. Perhaps not one of Paz’s best poems, it fits appropriately into Bishop’s theme of visual representation. Her own poems suggest careful visual constructions much like Cornell’s boxes and she sometimes suggests other surrealists in some of her images & techniques (though that is not to say that she is surrealist). The poem is Paz’s homage to Cornell & his art, celebrating the careful creations he has made “out of your ruins,” “monuments to every moment.” On a sidenote, Bishop was friends with Paz and his wife, Marie José Paz, a visual artist (they were all friends of Cornell). Bishop, in paying homage to her friends, also pays homage to the duplicity of images & ideas, making reference through Paz to the idea that things may have both universal appeal and personal/subjective meaning where marbles and other collectables may be “tales of the time”. Just as Paz writes, “Joseph Cornell: inside your boxes/my words became visible for a moment,” Bishop’s images in Geography III become visible for a moment in her poems, small boxes containing seemingly random objects held together by memory, longing and imagination that go beyond being themselves to suggest something outside of the poems, something in ourselves and the world around us in much the same way all art does or at least should.

Dog-Ear: C.D. Wright's Further Adventures With You

2005-11-03T20:22:00.000-08:00

C.D. Wright’s Further Adventures With You is a tight collection of direct, often plaintive, poetry & prose. She expresses a deep concern for the lives & rights of the dispossessed and the poor; while the prose is often more personal, the poetry offers glimpses of the poor you might find in her native Arkansas. The poems & prose are mostly compact and move quickly. In some instances the poems carry their own weight but the collection mostly, in this reader’s view, feels both hurried & plodding. This weakness also is its strength as it gives the collection a hypnotic pace that allows the reader to dwell on the stories within the poems even if the language of the poetry is not exciting or exacting.

In the first poem, “Nothing to Declare”, the speaker does not so much as declare, as in make claim, but instead remarks matter-of-factly about the state of things, a kind of understated declaration in itself. The physical world may change but how the speaker feels about the world does not; this is the emotional center of the poem and for the book as a whole. In small leaps and bounds, the speaker reveals her living space and how this shapes her thinking. She begins, “When I lived here/the zinnias were brilliant,/spring passed in walks./One winter I wasn’t so young.” Already in the first four lines we have a matter-of-fact hardness setting in. Childhood and spring pass leisurely in walks among bright flowers; then one day it is not spring and one is not “so young”. The speaker takes a strange turn and states “hearts go bad/like something open on a shelf” as if to say that exposing yourself too much emotionally might lead to a kind of deterioration. The next lines catalog some regional details that might have been everyday and close to home but now served people in a nostalgic capacity though not even that since the objects are no longer around. The sense of defeat is pushed along by the stunning revelation of being taught that “the Russians send their old/to be melted down for candles.” The quick pace of the poem, like a compact novel, takes along the speaker’s desires for children she does not have, giving out advice that sounds noble & romantic but hollow for the absence of children. Despite the sense of resignation in the tone of the speaker, the romantic won’t pass, won’t be given up. The idealism & hope for the best, keeping your head up, the worthy cause of celebrating the poor, campaigning for the good & for the dead — the poem culminates in its challenge and advice, what it does not declare because it is simply what you must do when circumstances are difficult:

Try living where you don’t have to see
the sun go down.
If the hunter turns his dogs loose
on your dreams
Start early, tell no one
get rid of the scent.

Like Donald Hall’s “Danger salts the meat of life”, Wright’s poem asks us to make the most of what we have because that is how you get past the change & hardships of life. (Here is where someone might discuss the ghost of Frank Stanford....)

Wright’s best poems in Further Adventures With You are mostly the short simple ones like “Carla” or “Slag”. These sad little poems succeed because they do not rely on any unnecessary elaboration, no further explanation of the moments they capture. They are small portraits where the information available to the reader is all that is necessary to soak in the sadness they possess. In a time where so much poetry is either dismissive of narrative devices or overburdened by narrative excess, Wright’s poems are a refreshing reminder that it is possible to present an episode of a life without getting into the backgrounds & futures of the characters involved. In “Carla” it is enough to know the old man the speaker has in mind loves a woman enough to never leave town in hopes that she returns & finds him desirable. Who cares who Carla is and where she has gone? The poem itself could be seen as a kind of ars poetica, a poem that does not feel the need to do anything more than it set out to do, that is, paint a small portrait of a man, where both man & the poem stay trapped in time. “Yes he could back the Desoto/out of the shed, coast to the blacktop./And drive until he ran out of cash/or splendor” but why would he, what of missed opportunity, that two way street?

Overall, Wright’s Further Adventures With You is a slightly above-average book of poems with a few gems. Many of the poems strike me as boring or meandering with too much emphasis on details that do not contribute to the poems as a whole though the poems succeed in establishing a tone of hope & sadness that keeps them from falling apart. In the end, Wright’s book is a good one to read if you are looking for poetry capable of delivering the impact of a short story without a dependency on bald narrative or raw emotion.

Dog-Ear: Stephen Dunn's Different Hours

2005-10-28T13:15:00.000-07:00

Stephen Dunn is a master of the obvious. Not in the pejorative sense, rather in the sense that he skillfully presents the objects, the ghosts and the qualities of the mundane & the everyday in a way that makes them universally personal. It is no mystery that most of us have hands, that we wake, sleep and wake again; Dunn takes these events, these facts, and weaves them into stories intimate & immediate. Where so much amateur poetry fails, Dunn succeeds in elevating the boring & personal. However, such a formula will yield its fair share of weak poems & failures. Sometimes the ordinary is just ordinary.

Dunn’s best poems use simple language and gripping images to paint a convincing portrait. In “Losing Steps,” the poem addresses a “you” who is aging, not as quick on the basketball court as in years past: “you’re like the Southern Pacific / the first time a car kept up with it.” But the poem is not just about physically aging, not being able to keep up with younger folks on a basketball court; Dunn successfully renders a psychological portrait without forcing the issue, painting the mental with action. In the second section, the protagonist is playing defense, unfooled by the fakes to the left and the right but his moves (“another step / leaves you like a wire / burned out in a radio”) are not what they used be and so his opponent passes him & scores. Trying despite the odds is a common & understood trait of aging, a hackneyed trope in sports. This same trope is magnified with the use of a favorite cliché, “the value of experience”. In the third and last section, Dunn ups the ante, the fifty-year old man “walking to a schoolyard / where kids are playing full-court, / telling yourself / the value of experience, a worn down // basketball under your arm”; and here Dunn makes the poem a sad triumph of age & determination, concluding the poem with an arresting image of the man walking to the basketball court with a worn basketball, “your legs hanging from your waist / like misplaced sloths in a country / known for its cheetahs and its sunsets.”

In other instances, Dunn forgoes the power of image and depends upon an aesthetic of empathy, that quality of outreach that makes the reader say & think, Hey, I know what you mean; I’ve been there too. Sometimes it has the quality of a made-for-TV movie as if to say, Here you are and over there something terrible or wonderful is happening, and with the implicit demands for sympathy, an empathetic bond is sealed as if these things could happen to any of us no matter how unlikely. In “Simpler Times,” it is guilt that is supposed to move us, the realization that “[i]n Hungary the tanks // rolled in. In Zaire / Mobutu filled the secret, / underground jails” while the speaker is off having a good time in the Age of Aquarius. Where that trite example depends solely on the guilt of the reader or the times, “The Last Hours” appeals in a more immediate, therefore personal & engaging, way. One may not relate to a person on the corporate ladder who rejects what they have but everyone knows the feeling of not wanting, the desire to be doing something else, being elsewhere. The poem plays upon these desires and succeeds like so many cheesy movies by doing what many only think of doing: giving up a pointless job, in this case, “a life / of selling snacks, talking snack strategy, / thinking snack thoughts,” going home with a nervous joy, “an attitude finally come round, / and I say it quietly to myself, I quit, / and keep saying it, knowing I will say it, sure / of nothing else but.”

“Returning From An Artist’s Studio” is an example of language’s inadequacy in the face of the abstract, of beauty, of the invisible, especially where so much effort is put into being plain yet profound. The difficulty of describing one of those moments one might spend with nature, to “witness to some quiet carnival / of the gods, or the unrisen dead / speaking in code”, is often, at best, just as Dunn writes in “Burying the Cat,” “privacies, / inconsequential to all but us.” Dunn still falls flat in the more successful “Men in the Sky.” Where James Wright’s “Lying In A Hammock At William Duffy's Farm In Pine Island, Minnesota” succeeds with its compression & plainspoken, sudden end, Dunn makes too much (or too little, depending on how you look at it) of the boring elements around him, calling a crane “a magic long-armed machine”, making statements that do not follow as in when he asserts that it is natural for men to be in the sky the way it is commonplace “[t]o speak through wires.” True as it may be that there are plenty of planes flying full of people or telephone repairmen in cranes, it rings hollow, a kind of poor man’s profundity. All the unexciting description & action does not serve the ending at all and so, as if in a self-mocking turn, the poem ends with a thud with its unconvincing last images and ironically self-referential last line:

and spit. Now the leaves graze
their shoulders suddenly more golden
for having touched them. My phone
is ringing. It’s one of the telephone men,
the highest, the one with a sufficiency
of tools around his waist, calling to see
if everything’s all right. Everything isn’t.

If “Oklahoma City was America reduced / to McVeigh’s half-thought-out thoughts,” then Different Hours is American poetry plain & colloquial, occasionally great, often manufactured, evoking “a world not wholly incongruent / with the world I know,” but like the persona of “Oklahoma City”, I have “no illusions, not even hopes, that their beauty [has] anything to do with goodness.”

Dog-Ear: Stephen Dunn's Local Time

2005-10-26T21:28:00.000-07:00

Mood invents landscape.

This line from Stephen Dunn’s “Road Trip”, the lead poem in Local Time, is a fine reinvention of the old adage “you see things as you want to see them”. It is easy to reflect on how our moods & situations commanded our opinions & interpretations in a particular space & time. It is imagination, and with at least a hint of self-preoccupation, that allows a poem to remove itself from casual observation into the spheres of empathy & culture.

As I read Dunn’s collection I kept thinking about how much mystery lies within the ordinary and the everyday. His taut, candid portraits of life offer humanistic glimpses without being voyeuristic. The “now” of each poem is “both history and [the] instant, reflexive”. The poems, built around familiar moments & locations, are revelatory in their simplicity and specificity; not so much confessional as they are reflective, the poems convey a kind of picture show of mistakes & small triumphs, leading us away from the objects & people back to our similar experiences, granting us a space in which to recreate our own mistakes & small triumphs, perhaps taking into account the lessons of the poems, if such lessons are found. In writing psychologically close-to-home poems, Dunn creates an atmosphere conducive to drawing threads between outcomes to the same situation, a way of looking at things from different angles, a hallmark of active empathy.

I find that my negative reaction to a great deal of contemporary work is founded upon what I find to be casual observation, that is, observations without any kind of turn. When there is a pivot on emotional terms it is often just to move a narrative along its determined course. I feel poetry is better served by poems that go beyond the descriptive toward a context outside of narrative or the photographic. That is not to say that narrative or portraiture is not a good thing but there is an awful lot of it already. If mood does indeed invent landscape, the current view of poetry in my eyes is a frustrated ecosystem of dangling modifiers & unpoetic narcissism. Even when a poem is instead about a flower or a bird or whatnot, what is often missing is the connective tissue of experience, of community, of history, of ideas. In some of my own work, I try to build a conduit via images & events to life-at-large; of course, the sum of my life experiences is not equal or similar to everyone else’s — my aim, for the time being, is to make a “young” poetry accessible to like-minded & like-lifed persons. Dunn succeeds on drawing from a larger & longer continuum but there is still plenty to find in my own reservoirs. I find that too many poets, especially of my age group, while still managing to create “young, early” work, cloister themselves in a writerly box rife with all the requisite waves of diction, assortments of images and poetic taxonomies; where is the poetry that attracts the desperately unpoetic, the songs that beacon in the dark recesses of disinterest & history, the words kept in wallets, jean pockets & email signatures?

David Combs, Cowboy Artist

2005-10-25T13:55:00.000-07:00

Throughout the country, the whole world, there are many artists staking their claims, to what exactly, well, that is important to them but not for us; what is important for us is that there is art being made. Whether it is the awe of Michelangelo's restless perfections, the charm of Roy Lichtenstein's anxious portraits, the familiar & sarcastic critiques that are Cindy Sherman's video stills or the dreamy luxuriance of Monet, art has the capacity to stir new thinking, amp the imagination, provide solace & solidarity -- in other words: inspire, breathe life into. And isn't that what art is about? Along with its genuises, art, its own genius, is a vital principle, a guiding spirit, a channel of the grace & intelligence that is human. Art is more than a product but something that is created in that biblical sense we were created in, and so, with the likeness of a god, we have, for better or worse, among other things... art. Art as a manifestation of our humanity deserves more than blank stares, commidification and boredom; it is something that is to be nurtured in every sense (personally, historically, financially, educationally, et al).

A young artist that takes such a notion seriously is David Combs. Currently a resident of the (in)famous Hotel Chelsea in New York City, he may be found in the lobby or on any given city street painting scenes out of everyday life. But this is not everyone's everyday life. Then again, New York City is in many ways the American city and so, in a sense, it is all of ours; to that, Combs has, like many artists before him, offered a new way of looking at & thinking about the city and how we see. In many ways, Combs also represents the archetypical American: industrious, self-taught, resilient, individualist; he first arrived in NYC a few years ago with very little but his person, his talents, paints and ambitions. In love with the taste & wonder of the city's physical histories, he began to paint landmarks & tourist magnets, often spending over eight hours each day for weeks before completing a painting. These paintings reflect not only his character with humor & precision but also offer the viewer a present-day city, thoughtful snapshots through a surrealistic lens at once immediate & oblique.

Like the self-taught musician who listens & masters techniques, songs, even entire genres, in a short time, Combs's masterful painting comes from years of sitting down & just working at it. Such dedicated work to craft while keeping a close watch on history (visual or otherwise) is something woefully lost on the many artists we find in our galleries & studios today; I am not saying they are all bad but they are not all good either. Viewing his work online will give you notice of a personal style that I like to think of as informed sui generis. I say this because it is deceptively clear and may lead one to believe that they may pinpoint his influences & techniques. But this is far from the truth. It is not my place to speculate what all this may be the product of and I dread the word postmodern yet it is the seamless collusion of those fragments of art history's greatest hits that make the paintings of Combs genius. Now, I had said viewing the work will give one notice, even pause; as with any art, there is no substitute for seeing the work in person.

The fine detail such as cracks in individual bricks, freckles on pedestrians, the fluid fixity of clouds, gives each painting a degree of hyper-reality not unlike work by Gerard Richter, Carl Rice Embrey or Chuck Close. This high degree of realism with its deliberate imperfections & calculated effects can also be traced to artists that Combs holds in high regard such as Parmigianino, Jan van Eyck and Vermeer. At the risk of conjuring wrong-headed comparisons, his paintings evoke a brand of magic realism, recalling Dali, Remedios Varo, short story writer & pianist Felisberto Hernandez and M.C. Escher. The abstractions & textures found in Combs' paintings possess many of the best qualities of both the Impressionists and the (Abstract) Expressionists. To return to what makes art great & important, let me draw attention to what I considered the best quality of the paintings: light. Whether it is a fantastic scene, a circle of skyscrapers or within a great hall, light commands a primary role: light as source (of life), as vision, as menace - the sublime. I suspect it was not on purpose because such things seem to come to him naturally. Even with the hours of careful rendering, there is a spontaneity in the movements of objects, a delight in sight, confirming skyscrapers as cathedrals, each painting placing you in the middle of things as if to say, "Here you are! See?"

This melding of intimacy, the sublime, the beautiful, photorealism and surreality is more than we ask any given work of art and to find them contained in the collection of a contemporary working artist is all the more rare & magnificent.

Check out the work of David Combs online. If you are in Manhattan within the next 3 months (1 November MMV - 31 January MMVI), be sure to see his exhibit at the Manhattan Athletic Club (277 Park Avenue @ 48th Street; additional entrance on 48th & Lexington).

A Short Essay on Poetry by David Schubert

2005-10-22T11:38:00.000-07:00

A Short Essay On Poetry by David Schubert

A poet who observes his own poetry ends up, in spite of it, by finding nothing to observe, just as a man who pays too much attention to the way he walks, finds his legs walking off from under him. Nevertheless, poets must sometimes look at themselves in order to remember what they are risking. What I see as poetry is a sample of the human scene, its incurably acute melancholia redeemed only by affection. This sample of endurance is innocent and gay: the music of vowel and consonant is the the happy-go-lucky echo of time itself. Without this music there is simply no poem. It borrows further gayety by contrast with the burden it carries -- for this exquisite lilt, this dance of sound, must be married to a responsible intelligence before there can occur the poem. Naturally, they are one: meanings and music, metaphor and thought. In the course of poetry's career, perhaps new awarenesses discovered, really new awarenesses and not verbal combinations brought together in any old way. This rather unimportant novelty is sometimes a play of possibility and sometimes a genuinely new insight: like Tristram Shandy, they add something to this Fragment of Life.

[from Five Young American Poets (second series, 1941), New Directions]

Dora Malech

2005-08-13T12:38:00.000-07:00

Dora Malech is a young woman i met when i was living Iowa City. She is not only one of the most beautiful women i have met but she is also a good poet. Her love of language and its contextual twist & turns makes reading her work a delight. The disarming simplicity of her lyrical approach underlines her sophisticated understanding of cliche and speech.

Before my exit from charming Iowa City, we had breakfast and shared poems. i was excited to find someone who had taken what strikes me as a wonderful take on the NY School and ran with it. It is great that her work, copies of which reside in a box in my room, is finding publication so that others may also enjoy what i have enjoyed.

In the most recent issue of Painted Bride Quarterly is her Love Poem. Another poem to be found online is Small Ending (Verse Daily; orginally in Chelsea). And for the very curious, you can check out her 1999 chapbook Inside & Elsewhere.

posted cynicism, oil edition

2005-03-15T10:55:00.000-08:00

Oil prices, hence gasoline prices, are sure to go up even higher than the recent record-breaking heights. With so much money misappropriated, misused, lost and diverted, one has to wonder why we are not promoting & researching reasonable & viable energy options to curb our dependency on the finitude & volatility of oil.

The reasons for oil prices going up are myriad and complex. Getting more oil into our tanks will not lower prices, contrary to what many folks believe. There is a shortage of refineries in the U.S. which means that companies cannot keep up with demand as the population grows. Part of the reason there is a shortage of refineries is due to environmental groups & legislation which has forced companies into longer processes in order to build new refineries (which scares away investors who do not want to wait seven years to use their money). Of course, the current administration continues to push to acquire more oil by circumventing environmental law. Recent studies have shown how American infrastructure is going down the tubes, worse than the last survey conducted. The deterioration of national infrastructure contributes to energy waste and adds to the costs of the citizenry. Bureaucracy and distribution costs add 10-20% to gasoline prices because of an overabundance of different kinds of gasoline. Distribution costs are also affected by global demands, particularly those of China & India, two countries with ballooning populations and significant economic growth; the demand for tankers with a limited supply of transport options increases competition, thus prices, leading to higher fuel costs (good for the tanker industry, bad for the consumer). With so much money misappropriated & lost, one wonders how much of the money siphoned by companies like Halliburton could be used to fix our national infrastructure (or Iraq's for that matter since much of the money lost was supposed to be used to that effect).

One cynical remark I overheard is that one of the main reasons new refineries have not been built is because there is little political reason to bother and many dollars to be reaped. Why invest in building new infrastructure when we can just limit supply as demand increases, keeping prices high while continuing to enforced a perceived need for the product? I think this assessment misses the mark but it certainly touches on some issues that are sure to be on the backs of the minds of those in charge.

In our dualistic culture of complaint & complacency, I doubt that much will come of all this reportage. Things are as things go. It takes very little time to write or call one's elected representatives; better to complain to those responsible for the so-called big picture than to complain to one's neighbors or self. Complacency is an unnecessary risk and pursued at one's own peril.

Student Charged With Terroristic Threatening For High School Zombie Story

2005-03-07T16:27:00.000-08:00

Here is a developing story that has been making the rounds.

From the article:

A George Rogers Clark High School junior arrested Tuesday for making terrorist threats told LEX 18 News Thursday that the "writings" that got him arrested are being taken out of context.

Winchester police say William Poole, 18, was taken into custody Tuesday morning. Investigators say they discovered materials at Poole's home that outline possible acts of violence aimed at students, teachers, and police. Poole told LEX 18 that the whole incident is a big misunderstanding. He claims that what his grandparents found in his journal and turned into police was a short story he wrote for English class.

"My story is based on fiction," said Poole, who faces a second-degree felony terrorist threatening charge. "It's a fake story. I made it up. I've been working on one of my short stories, (and) the short story they found was about zombies. Yes, it did say a high school. It was about a high school over ran by zombies."

Even so, police say the nature of the story makes it a felony. "Anytime you make any threat or possess matter involving a school or function it's a felony in the state of Kentucky," said Winchester Police detective Steven Caudill.

Poole disputes that he was threatening anyone. "It didn't mention nobody who lives in Clark County, didn't mention (George Rogers Clark High School), didn't mention no principal or cops, nothing," said Poole. "Half the people at high school know me. They know I'm not that stupid, that crazy."

William Poole is sitting in jail on a $5,000 bond charged with terrorism! Many are suggesting a letter writing and phone call campaign to Clark County KY. Here is some info for such an endeavor. Please remember that only mature & reasonable communication will be helpful, so please no cursing or name-calling.

Office of the Attorney General
The Capitol, Suite 118
700 Capitol Avenue
Frankfort, Kentucky 40601-3449
fax: (502) 564-2894
Attorney.General@ag.ky.gov

OR

Gardner Wagers, County Attorney
859-745-0220
James Clark Judicial Center
17 Cleveland Avenue
P.O. Box 733
Winchester, KY 40392-0733
fax: (859) 745-0261
clarkcoatty@winchesterky.com

I also encourage people to contact the ACLU and PEN, to make sure they are aware of this. The contact info for the ACLU of Kentucky:

Beth Wilson, Executive Director
425 W. Muhammad Ali Blvd., Suite 230
Louisville, KY 40202
phone: 502-581-1181
fax: 502-589-9687

Ann Kushner, Freedom to Writer Coordinator
212-334-1660 ext. 106
anna@pen.org

*PLEASE REPOST AND WRITE!!*

Preservation as Conversation

2005-03-03T01:43:00.000-08:00

Recorded knowledge is as fragile as the medium
on which it is recorded and as enduring
as the human resolve to transmit it.
– Abby Smith

One of the most enduring & difficult tasks of cultural custodians is the preservation of the many objects created over time in nearly any given space. These objects range from prehistoric collections to items based upon the latest cutting edge technologies. Some of these items are not even items in of themselves but exist in virtual or digital environments far different from the family photo album or dinosaur bone display in the local natural history museum. What all of these items have in common are their status as conduits of information and their inevitable deterioration. What can be done to stave off the eventual demise of our historical artifacts so as to ensure their enjoyment & use by future generations? The simple answer would be to save the items we want most the best we can as if running from a burning house. This begs the question: What is preservation and what does the act of preservation entail? Items, as conduits of information, demand attention; information, in turn, serves to create a dialogue in of and outside itself. Much like jazz since the early 1940s, beginning with the radicalism of cool & bebop jazz, preservation involves the interaction of various particular conversations in a marketplace of ideas. Bebop jazz, the great break away from the claustrophobic big band dance scene, involved an intuitive sense of improvisation in which the musicians, the instruments and, ultimately, the melodies, chordal progressions & rhythms conversed with each other note by note. Similarly, preservation involves the conversations of items (as conduits of information, be they words, images or marks on the treble clef) on its very own stage, the library, archive, and museum, even the family home. The use of the space in which the stage is set and who frequents that space also plays a tremendous role in how we think of preservation in the same way one considers enjoying a kid’s jazz recital in the school auditorium or checking out the unknown talent at the local dive bar. For some jazz is an immediate love, for others an acquired taste and others still it is something to be avoided; preservation is no different in that some recognize its importance in the scheme of things readily, others require a little education & convincing and the remainder choose to be ignorant or unconcerned. If preservation is a kind of dialogue, then what are its constituent parts and how is preservation done?

It is commonly understood that preservation is the caretaking of items so as to extend the time in which they can be utilized. What is not as easily comprehended involves the rate of deterioration of items as well as the steps involved in the preservation of a collection. Most people only concern themselves with access to a particular item; this line of thinking is a good place to start. When considering objects in libraries (footnote one!), archives, museums and other locations of similar nature, the first concern lies with an object’s value. How a particular item contributes to a collection, an institution’s goals or its value as resource influences the attention it will get in terms of money & time put forth to ensure its life expectancy. In a more specific instance, an item of value that suffers from some kind of disrepair would require personal attention; however, this practice, known as conservation and/or restoration, is both time- and money-consuming. Often involving improvisation upon established standards, conservation and restoration, holistically necessary components of preservation, only serve individual items and sometimes may result in cause more harm than good as they involve direct interaction with the item in question. As improvisation plays a part of jazz on the whole, conservation & restoration can only be considered aspects of the whole. While preservation involves the repair of items, it is best described as a preventive practice aimed at postponing the eventual decay of collections as a whole.

As collections grow larger each day, the necessity of practical comprehensive methods increases. Employing preservation, aside from the aforementioned physical tasks, means considering the logistical concerns like financial issues, proper staff management & training and policy making. Returning to the idea that preservation is like jazz performed in a given space, we can make the scene. Just as a jazz club would have tables, chairs, a stage, a bar, bathrooms and other features conducive to a performance, a library will have its own shelves, tables, chairs, bathrooms and other typical library features. In both instances, much consideration is given to how the space is to be used; whether it is a question of acoustics or lighting, the library and the jazz club need to have all of its components in sync in order to best serve its purposes. Preservation concerns itself with how all the constituent parts of the library & the books themselves interact, what sort of dialogue do they carry on and what final product comes from the coalescence of the various parts. How these parts are played shall determine the life expectancy of a collection.

Key elements of any preservation plan are environment control & building design, policymaking, education, disaster preparedness & response, storage & handling issues and the financial management of these activities. The best songs make the most of their parts in order to create a cohesive & strong whole. Preservation plans depend upon the same intricacy of weaving priorities & the unexpected in order to succeed. Environmental control & building design affect the amount of potential damage and alter the rate of inherent vice to a collection. Just as in jazz performance acoustics, lighting and even air conditioning play an important role in the end result of that performance, lighting, environmental pollutants, relative humidity and other physical considerations greatly influence a collection’s health. Education and storage & handling issues would not only help establish ways in which to keep items within collections accessible through life-extending practices but also help everyone keep a wary eye out for signs of deterioration within a collection which is not much different than teaching someone the proper way to play an instrument & watch for signs of its needing repair or tuning. The making of policy for and the fiscal concerns of a preservation program aim to establish the former elements of the program by creating standards in which to act & react to any problems a collection may suffer from; these steps require some background before they can be established and are done so by surveys and disaster preparedness & response. The putting together of jazz show involves players, instruments, an audience and money; a preservation plan shares these things but for both the bottom line (in order to get things going at all) is money and the safeguarding of the money-making element, which in the case of a library is its collection.

Surveys, disaster preparedness and the need for guaranteeing a collection’s accessibility & longevity depends greatly upon both the creation of the items that will find themselves in a collection and the availability of an item in a collection in a format conducive to regular or safe use. Besides the obvious tasks of rehousing or conserving/restoring items, reformatting is an essential task in preservation. Early jazz preserved its traditions and songs through incorporation into new songs, styles, genres and eventually as recordings. But people and recordings come & go, so preservation as a system of ensuring the future access to culturally significant artifacts considers the many avenues in which to make such artifacts available even after their loss. The ways in which to employ the necessary stewarding of history vary from microfilm to replicas/copies to digital formats (footnote 2!). Another key component is the making of the various mediums containing information requiring preservation. Just as the advent of recording, amplifiers and even racial integration made jazz more accessible to the public, better paper-, film- and other item-making processes have improved with the idea of their longevity in mind.

Jazz and preservation rely on a range of elements in order to succeed in of themselves; any faltering in part affects the whole and degrades what aims to be a whole. Both have had profound influences in the respective spheres and continue to challenge & preserve the way we understand these spheres, be they music or culture or history or ourselves. Thinking of preservation as a conversation among elementary portions of a grand scheme, we can better serve the interests of users, the collection and culture in general for information is useless & without value if it is not communicated & maintained. Preservation and jazz in the end share the roots of an intertwining of established notions & improvised notes and the common goal of keeping the zeitgeist talking.

footnote uno: From this point the library will serve as the prototypical example.
second footnote: Digital formats and films may be copied but are dependent on machines which carry their own inherent vices besides the artifacts’ own; a particular advantage of digital imaging & formatting is the ease of making “perfect” copies and their being code, which takes up virtual space and leaving actual space for other items.

Social Responsibility as Worms

2005-02-19T14:39:00.000-08:00

Oh! Look, a can of worms…

And by worms does he mean bait, despicable entities or those little wiggly things that keep our soils rich?

Well, whatever the case, social responsibility can be all of the above; worms.

bait: Social responsibility as agenda often baits a stance, draws someone or something toward or away from something/one else. I can write a book about my experience as a Latino (or whatever we call ourselves these days) for Latinos or for a non-Latino audience. Either way can be justified as a kind of SR but will only be considered responsible according to a rubric established by an unwieldly cultural consensus, big or small. But if controversy or sympathy has been garnered then I have successfully been socially responsible in some way even if it was only for money (after all, personal gain is not a part of social responsibility no matter what rhetoric you use since personal gain is not a relationship with others but with oneself). As bait, SR does not foster communication but instead relies on hooking an individual or group into a situation. While this may useful under some circumstances, it ignores the complexity of communication among citizens. A ripe example is the unfortunate & inaccurate passion of Nicholson Baker’s calculated diatribe Double Fold and the ensuing controversy.

despicability: Social responsibility can and has reared its ugly head in many guises and often for the wrong reasons. One such instance is political correctness. In being socially responsible, sometimes we become hyper-aware of the things that need attention or, worse, we focus on things that seem easy to address and only end making things worse or looking stupid. More often than not this approach takes on the character of victimization. For every angle of approach there is a corresponding angle of reproach until there is a splintering of perspective; cries for tolerance & upheaval lend themselves to self-repression, intolerance of other viewpoints &/or self-parody. Negativity disguised as positive energy remains one of the most dangerous enterprises in academic, sociopolitical & intellectual culture today. SR itself becomes a problem to which it would have addressed had it not been dressed up as a cure-all. SR fundamentally thrives on a balance and an understanding that a diversity of opinion is necessary in the marketplace of ideas. That some methods purport that SR is leveling device for the means of administering conformity is both irresponsible & misguided. Snakes in the grass, snakes in the trees.

wigglies: Social responsibility as guidelines or hard set rules allow a writer to open discussions, to question tradition & the status quo, dismantle rival systems, cull. And herein lies the oft-forgotten & true nature of worms: whether we use them as bait or consider them slimy yucky things best left underground, worms are an essential element of preservation & enrichment taken for granted. Just as subtext informs our writings & other communicative devices, so too does SR run the gambit in the great conversation. Despite the chance that SR may wriggle out of our hands as shown above, bear in mind SR works upon people within contexts. To lose sight of one’s current position in the milieu of the times is to forget what SR represents & how it comes about. SR exists for want to construct meaning & flexibility in a world fitted into the iron box of power & its struggles. The will to power in this case begs the question of when should we be socially responsible and how. As categorical imperative, SR cannot be taken more than a means & ends by which we establish a tentative plan for conducting our affairs. To make such a list of suggestions into sacrosanct commandments will only return us to a state of inflexibility. SR as a liberal & humanist endeavor must avoid this development; SR as a means of control becomes doctrine, laws which no longer allow the nature of social relations ample room to breathe & grow.

I personally do not believe writers need to be socially responsible. It is ultimately a personal choice though I would agree people ought to be socially responsible as citizens. Without actually discussing anymore what SR is, it is clear to me that the political & social dimensions often imposed upon creative efforts are artificial and loaded. One could argue that the Harry Potter books are socially responsible because they get kids (and adults) to read though this does not take into account that recently Ms. Rowling wished aloud in an interview she wanted to write anonymously in a coffee shop again with these stories to support herself and her child, a personal activity meant to alleviate the creative & personal pressures of being a single mother and a human being. In a nation that is fond of politicizing (even if mostly in the abstract) there is little understanding, even acceptance, of ambiguity & neutrality despite our inclinations toward a peculiar kind of indifference we enjoy. After all, the United States of America is one of the few countries that do not utilize poetry as a means to teach children language & memorization skills, where poets & other writers are not the first suppressed for disseminating their dissent. If anything, perhaps all writers have an obligation, a social responsibility if you will, to restore the greatness of speech & letters to a country claiming to be the haven of free will, free people, to knock down the poles & flags that seek to compartmentalize the human experience. A revival of a tradition set upon us by Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman, Twain, many other men & women, some gone, some forgotten, but all still an unpolished foundation stone within the great pyramid of history & culture we participate in.

revisiting Baraka's "Somebody Blew Up America"

2005-02-12T15:27:00.000-08:00

Because of the recent uproar regarding Ward Churchill's extemporaneous essay on 9/11 and the United States' history of going against the political & social grains of other nations & peoples, I thought it would be appropriate to revisit Amiri Baraka's poem "Somebody Blew Up America" and pointto some of the discussion surrounding it. In addition, I would like to address the question of how does poetry enter the social/political milieu and should it? (Thanks to Ms. P. Bloodworth for asking me about Baraka's poem in the first place. Regarding W. Churchill, go here.)

Before getting to my own thoughts, here are some links to articles & essays addressing the controversy:
An article from the Skeptical Inquirer which has a poignant & direct statement regarding poetry & politics: "[P]oetic license should not absolve Baraka, who professes to use poetry to make provocative social and political statements. If that's the ethical purpose of his poetry, he has an obligation to motivate people through truth, not lies."
Here is a thoughtful essay, One Way of Reading "Somebody Blew Up America", that addresses the poem as a literary artifact rather than simply as sociopolitical polemic.
An op-ed from The New Yorker has one of my favorite juxtapositions about "the role of poetry in today's fractious world" at the end of the article with a quote from Baraka and one by Ashbery.

I am tempted to say that all poetry dwells within the social-political milieu but then I enter into a situation that is reflexive & self-fulfilling. To ask if poetry should enter the social-political milieu begs the question, wherein “should”, an auxiliary verb to express moral obligation, is a matter of choice. In point of fact, Amira Baraka raises some interesting & justified points in his retort against his detractors, albeit soured & frustrated with his special brand of anger & diatribe. Baraka’s attempt to riff on current events toward a history of similar & relevant events is one that should encouraged, even championed, especially when it seems more members of the so-called educated elite are ignorant of the past and its relevance to our lives in view of a meaningful (& hopefully fruitful) future. Personally, I am not terribly fond of Baraka’s poem; anaphora, especially in a long poem, can be tiresome & sometimes difficult to pull off. In certain ways, the poem strikes me as pedantic & didactic, political furor as bludgeon. Too much political poetry is preoccupied with message; poetry as propaganda is propaganda and the poetry usually suffers as result. David Wojahn touches on this subject in his Q&A for the journal Smartish Pace more articulately than I could, so I would like to direct you there and quote a little of his remarks:

Your first question is a complex one, and I fear I'm not going to be able to do it justice. I am highly wary of the term "poetry of witness," which became fashionable after Forche published her POETRY OF WITNESS anthology in the early nineties. North American readers have tended to see the term reductively, thinking that poetry of an activist nature is best written by those who have seen political turmoil and experienced terrible suffering--and then they invariably try to compare themselves, always unfavorably, to figures like Milosz, Herbert, Neruda, Vallejo, Hikmet, etc.--writers whose politics or historical circumstances caused them to endure terrible tribulations. What right do I have, they seem to say to themselves, to write about politics and injustice, coming from the privileged lives that most American intellectuals and academics live? This stance saddens me, especially during a time in when the pressures of addressing the political and social are going to be ever-greater. You saw that timidity and fuzzy thinking manifest itself in the Hamil anthology of poets against the second Iraq War that came out last year--as important as it was for us to raise our voices against the Bush administration and all it represents, most of the poems in the collection were trivial. Largely, I think, because of the attitude I'm speaking about.

Anyway, I have always hoped that my poems would be viewed as political, as
activist, that they protest injustice while at the same time not devolving into familiar lefty pieties or agit-prop. Sometimes what your question calls a "documentary" approach is one way of achieving this, and I often find myself focusing on moments of crisis or traumatic events because those events tend to focus and allegorize injustice, bring it into high relief, both in terms of the poems' ideology and of its craft. Do these treatments run the risk of being gratuitous? Sure, that's the danger one faces when writing such poetry, as you see in the work of three of my favorite contemporary poets, Dubie, Seidel, and Ai. As much as I love their work, certain of their poems give me the creeps, for the very reasons you cite in your question. But part of the bravery of their poems comes from their willingness to risk the gratuitous, risk seeming to glamorize violence and injustice even as they attempt to condemn it. Needless to say, that challenge isn't a new one for poets, since it's been with us ever since Homer and the Gilgamesh epic.

I am not as heated as Baraka & Wojahn are about addressing the sad political situation/climate we inhabit at the moment and I certainly don’t 100% agree with Wojahn that we American poets are sadly devolving into solipsism (though he certainly makes a good & important point). That said, Wojahn goes on to mention that what makes a lot of poetry, political or otherwise, last & make an impact is its artistry. This is something that Baraka’s poem, for me, clearly is in need of. If his poem were subjected to a workshop (gasp!), one thing that would jump out is that he leaps into his subject matter without clearing a little more ground first; I get his point but not all readers are going to and it is a common, thorny issue of how much credit & information does the poet give to the reader. The second thing that would come up in our imaginary workshop is that the poem is too long; to borrow a geometry definition (and the title of an over-rated Liz Waldner poetry collection), a point is that which has no part — as poetry, I think his poem would be better served by compression, by fierce directness; as propaganda, then, sure, repeating yourself to death a la Republican campaign strategy will work but in poetry, for better or worse, repetition often equals dilution, especially when a good deal of the poem relies upon sophomoric wordplay (e.g., “Tom Ass Clarence”, “Colon” for Colin [Powell]) and then he throws out “the Reichstag Fire” which he could have built upon (it is a powerful image that could be exploited in the way that Wojahn expects political poetry to do; instead Baraka expects everyone to get it; if it was so important, he should have made it more of a piece in the poem rather defending it at length in his speech/letter, especially considering that it is a small part of a long poem).

The reaction to Baraka’s poem was blown way out of proportion but he didn’t help the situation. The folks he talks about, defends, praises, knew a thing or two about how to use their anger & their words to stand their ground. Indignation does not equal vitriol; the same goes to the reactions to his poem, but as I said, Baraka did not help the situation.

Poetry will always be a part of whatever milieu we wish it to be a part of. The social and the political, as components of the larger category, culture, will always carry with them an air of the moral and people will always question whether poetry, and art in general, should enter into the discussion. The question is not whether it should but how because it seems clear to me that poetry already is a part of the picture as soon as it is addressed in social or political terms.

Addendum:
First, I would like to point out that recently the First Amendment Project series on the Sundance Channel (and on its partner network, Court TV) included an episode on Amiri Baraka entitled “Poetic License”, directed by Mario Van Peebles.

And here is the end of an interview from a recent issue of Verse (“The Prose Issue II”, Vol. 20, Nos. 2 & 3); it is an interview of the Australian poet Kevin Hart by Stephen Watson (Watson’s remarks are in italics):

For some like myself, who’s lived most of his life in South Africa, a country which was literally at war with itself for decades, one is used to poetry being ascribed a vociferously political role. Poetry can, of course, be used to bring down governments, ferment revolutions, among much else. But why I responded at once to your work was precisely because it seemed to have very different ends in view. As soon as I read your work I thought of a sentence that Milosz also uses in his Nobel Prize lecture in 1980 to define his sense of the poet’s mission. “The poet’s true vocation,” he wrote, “is to contemplate being.” Would these words chime accurately with your own sense of the poet’s vocation? In your “Wimmera Songs,” for one thing, you allude to “The stranger we call Being.”

I find myself rebelling against sentences beginning, “The poet’s true vocation is…” There are all sorts of poets. Perhaps you can gather George Herbert and Walt Whitman together and say that they are both contemplating being, albeit in very different styles, but then “contemplating being” begins to seem a bit thin. If we’re not to beat contemplation to “airy thinness” we must let it work alongside other dispositions, including curiosity. I can imagine a poet who might object to Milosz and say, “No, the poet’s true vocation is to be curious about things.” I doubt that one can be curious and contemplative at one and the same time. Or maybe one is just pulled in those two directions at once. It feels like that when writing poems.

It seems to me that there’s always been a kind of alternative tradition in poetry itself — perhaps a real continuing underground. It carries, and is carried by, a certain conception of poetry itself and of a poet’s role. There have, no doubt, been dozens of ways of putting these, in idioms varying according to time and language. But all of these tend to define the art itself, as well as the poet, in terms that are unmistakably religious in their idiom. I think of Heidegger’s notion of the poet as “shepherd of Being”; of Montale; even of Octavio Paz’s conception of poetry as “the other voice.” I think of Milosz in his lecture again: “The poet’s true vocation is to contemplate being.”

Undoubtedly I’m at home in that alternative tradition. All the poets whose work I love are there. Thinking back to your previous question, I should add that this tradition doesn’t exclude outrage against injustice. Far from it! Poetry can offer testimony against oppression, can give voice to a people’s pain, and can object to idolatry, without abandoning its contemplative role. Akhmatova, Mandelstam, Celan, Yeats…Now there’s a range of examples!

The poets and others I’ve mentioned see their roles as poets, and that of poetry more broadly, not in socio-political terms. They’re compelled to assume, with whatever disclaimers as to their fitness for the task, the burden of the mystery — the mystery of being itself, both in its radiance and its opacity.

Oh yes, I agree: to regard poetry solely in socio-political terms is to kill it. That’s as bad as draining poetry of ethics. Today the problem is how to sop politics, especially identity politics, from determining what counts as ethics… Perhaps it’s possible, though, to respond to the mystery of being in an almost wholly social way: Dryden and Robert Browning might be examples, I don’t know. It’s no my way, but it’s a possibility.

Improbable as it might sound, I think that this tradition I’ve just sketched (and which your own poetry both continues and extends) perhaps provides a more viable route for poetry to continue to follow than almost any other. Even now — and perhaps especially now. For it answers more fully, more satisfactorily, that interminable, vaguely despairing question, “Can poetry matter?”

You can never really tell what sort of work a poem will do. I’ve had mail over the years from people who have told me that reading one of my poems helped them in times of desolation. A couple of years ago I was telephoned by a man who had been a political prisoner in Chile; he had been subjected to the most horrifying indignities. He called me to say that one thing that kept him going while in solitary confinement was a Spanish translation of my poem “The Room.” He told me that some of my poems had encouraged his friends in their struggles. He wasn’t talking about a poem like “Prague, 1968” that responds to a particular political situation but about those poems you associate with the contemplation of being. In a way, those poems did political work in helping that man and his friends to survive.

supporting Ward Churchill and academic freedom

2005-02-05T13:37:00.000-08:00

"...freedom to think as you will and to speak as you think are means indispensable to the discovery and spread of political truth."
Justice Louis D. Brandeis
Larkin vs. State of California, 1927

Recently there has been a flare of controversy at both Hamilton College and the University of Colorado (at Boulder) regarding an essay by Ward Churchill, a professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of Colorado. This controversy was precipitated by some of the survivors and the family members of victims of 9/11/01 when an essay of his (addressing the government of the US and the 9/11 tragedy) was found on the web before he was to give a lecture for the Kirkland Project (some discussion on the Hamilton end is ongoing including an ill-timed "review" of the KirklandProject); unfortunately, as he eloquently states in his press release, Churchill's words were taken out of context & soiled with a degree of emotionality alien (but not unreasonable or without cause) to academic discourse and to the bare facts. Moreover, it is clear by the chancellor's & governor's statements (and admittedly the chancellor is performing a good deal of damage control here) that some people would choose to condemn Churchill without trying to understand or even read his essay (click here to read Churchill's essay) but at least he is being given due process rather than the simple boot. The Board of Regents of the university held a special meeting recently addressing academic freedom and whether Churchill, according to its by-laws, should be dismissed (for some information on academic freedom at Colorado and for updates on the meeting, click here). Hopefully they will follow their by-laws and the advice of the American Association of University Professors.

Academic freedom (and other issues surrounding freedom of expression) have long been of some issue and particularly so with the political climate as it is and the introduction of the Patriot Act. Hopefully Mr. Churchill's ordeal does not become another black spot on the shiny road toward liberty & freedom that we hear so much about these days.

more on academic freedom:
Students for Academic Freedom
American Association of University Professors on Academic Freedom & Tenure
Collegefreedom.org
Human Rights Watch - Academic Freedom Initiative
Academic Freedom in the USA (one lawyer's take on what is & is not academic freedom)
Academic Freedom Lecture Fund (lectures available online in streaming video)
Council for Academic Freedom and Academic Standards [UK]
Committee on Academic Freedom on the Middle East and North Africa

Toward a Dis-Poetry

2005-02-02T19:23:00.000-08:00

In “Four Statements On The Dance: Grace and Clarity” (from Silence), where poetry & dance are called time arts, works dependent on lengths of time and built of phrases much like nature is made of smaller & smaller parts, John Cage states:

With clarity of rhythmic structure, grace forms a duality.
Together they have a relation like that of body and soul.
Clarity is cold, mathematical, inhuman, but basic and
earthy. Grace is warm, incalculable, human, opposed to
clarity, and like the air. Grace is not here used to mean
prettiness; it is used to mean the play with and against
the clarity of the rhythmic structure. The two are always
present together in the best works of the time arts,
endlessly, and life-givingly, opposed to each other.

What I take from Cage’s remarks is that form is not a static formula for expression. Form, the morphology of a poem, its continuity, its expressive content, derives its movement, other than from the obvious devices of meter & sound, from the spontaneity born out of choice, experience & personality. Though this may appear obvious to any wordsmith, how this duality is played out is the matter that makes all the difference. Balance is not the order of the day however; different kinds of order may be established successfully if the poet seeks an appropriate representation of a poem’s constituent parts without sacrificing grace in favour of clarity and the reverse. How Cage composed his lectures speaks to this need to create works that operate on both levels. For example, by embedding a through-text that interrupts the general speech of the lecture we are given the underlying current of an idea or a lecture without weighing down the rest of the content with any unnecessary contextualization or explanation, so, like air, the through-text floats in & out of the general & straightforward elements, reinforcing the subject matter of the lectures.

Form in poetry is often aperceptive, a self-limiting & -perpetuating device; it is desired in work in order to place a kind of roadmap for reading (in the same way we expect to read a poem line by line from left to right, top to bottom). But form alone does not make the poem. Grace, in my view, is a kind of disruptive force like dispersion or decay or luck. It is where awe springs from; a mountain, a canyon, a blood-red moon cannot conjure the sublime without the messy collaboration of grace & soul.

Like Jorie Graham, whose poetry, though lyrical in a conventional sense even when cliché-dependent, achieves a heightened character in its attempt to give clarity to the ineffable and to provide multiple ways to see a scene, I want a poetry leavened by the clutter of human happening & by the Jacobian mental wrestling we experience in our reflective moments. This means a willingness to break out of the stable into the open fields of language. I agree with Cage when he says that a new music will foster new listening; therefore a new poetry will foster new reading. To paraphrase Cage paraphrasing Bergson’s statement about disorder: This dis-poetry is simply a poetry to which many are unaccustomed. Any art form untouched by an experimental spirit, or at least the vitality of change, will corrupt & deplete itself.

some notes on the First Amendment

2005-02-01T11:59:00.000-08:00

Recently there was an uproar near Salem OR over an Adopt-A-Road sign reading "American Nazi Party". And who said theyare not capable of nice things? What i like about the article is the unsubtle mention that if the signs are destroyed, the sponsoring organization must pay to have them replaced (the initial two signs were put up at a taxpayer expense of $500). At any rate, the party's right to have their name on a sign and to adopt a road is protected by the First Amendment.

Speaking of the First Amendment, i am reminded that recently the Treasury Dept.'s Office of Foreign Assets Control changed regulations that will allow publishers to print work by writers from nations like Iran and Cuba (PEN American Center press release). This was precipitated by a lawsuit because Nobel Laureate Shirin Ebadi, an Iranian author & human rights activist, was unable to publish her work in the US because of her Iranian citizenship.

In related issues, it is disturbing to find that ignorance of & indifference toward what makes up free society is on the rise here in the US. One of my favorite lines from any song is from the Modern Lovers' "Modern World" when Jonathan Richman sneers,"The modern world is not so bad...not like the students say." But Richman was trying to give life back to the soul-sucking politicizing of fun that ran rampant with the stereotype & in the life of the socially conscious student; i am sure he would have acknowledged that this world weariness was not born of ignorance but of knowing some of the suppressed but glaring facts of the cultural climate of the early 1970s (and many of the same folks are back in power right now in fact). But today students don't seem to know very much of anything that is not mediated by television and the mall. Now, students say that the First Amendment is not a big deal.

Moving along...in keeping with the current administration's desire & need to keep its nose & fingers in the world's business (which, mind you, is not all that bad a thing; but just imagine the difference between a friend who is concerned, well-meaning& helpful to a friend who crosses the line into nosy, bothersome & coercive...we all have known folks like this so just use your imagination and you get the idea), the White House has been pressuring Qatar, an important MidEast ally, to sell Al-Jazeera because its broadcasts have sometimes been "inflammatory, misleading and occasionally false, especially on Iraq."(see the NY Times article) As Tim Grieve of Salon.com so joyfully points out (The White House vs. Al-Jazeera), the same may be said of the Bush administration and of the FOX News network. While Al-Jazeera certainly reports things that might be inaccurate (as do all news organizations), they are still one of the most, if not the most, credible news organizations from the Middle East. To seek to eliminate dissenting opinions abroad is unconscionable (it would cause an uproar here if theadministration had actively tried to suppress CBS and other news outlets), especially in light of Bush's claim of being a"compassionate conservative" and of "planting the flag of liberty" for all the world to see. If Bush and the administration indeed seeks to show the world that it is listening and cares about what others have to say, then one has to wonder how eliminating a foreign press aids that cause. And all this coming from an administration that pays pundits to disseminate its values & programs (for example), some of which are incorrect &/or unethical. Freedom of the press has often been a tricky game but this ongoing trickery has got to be checked.

On Freedom of Press and Culture: An Interview with Noam Chomsky

Some of the restrictions on freedom of expression have been collected in the Patriot Act. This leads me to ask you to call your Senators and ask them to vote against the approval of Alberto Gonzales for Attorney General. And let them know thatthey should not be afraid about being seen as anti-Hispanic because (a) alot of Hispanics are against his nomination and (b) despite our growing demographic, unfortunately a great many Hispanics don't pay much attention to the news or vote; what they should be afraid of is the continuing disregard for the Geneva Convention, human rights and other important issues pertaining to the American interests domestically and abroad. Here is the PFAW's Statement of Opposition to the Confirmation of Alberto Gonzales to the Office of Attorney General of the United States.