Shambles Sale: Scrooge? (Saturday Posts)

Long Weekend Wishes

Remember Memorial Day

From Chaucer to Chalk to Chicken Feed

"The time has come, the Walrus said, "To talk of many things..."



I really see so many possibilities for a poetics from this schema.

Organic Form: Fungi & Floaters/Swimmers

Suggesting: Squid, jellyfish trailing pink skeins of tentacles, mantas, stingrays

Junking Update

Found: Antique postcards, McCoy flowerpot, unidentified Art Deco vase, antique dictionaries, Bakelite bracelet, Fenton carnival glass celery dishes (Waterlilies pattern), antique photograph of car on gravel road that is just a killer piece...

"This impeccable air": Summer X-rays

Summer X-Rays
by Nina Cassian

I.

Fabulous days
with endless swims,
with algae around my waist
and convex tears on my cheeks.

Far away on the shore:
children shouting,
dogs with golden rings
circling their muzzles,
and rumors of abandoned memories.

I know what's awaiting me—
the winter of my discontent.
I have a reservation
outside on a hard bench
holding a bag of frostbitten potatoes.

That's why I swim so far out,
willing prisoner
inside the sea's immense green magnifying glass.


II.

Despite all my inner crumblings,
I'm still able to recognize a perfect day:
sea without shadow,
sky without wrinkles,
air hovering over me like a blessing.

How did this day escape
the aggressor's edicts?
I'm not entitled to it,
my well-being is not permitted.

Drunk, as with some hint of freedom,
we bump into each other,
and laugh raucously
on an acutely superstitious scale
knowing that it's forbidden.

Could it be just a trap
this perfection
this impeccable air,
this water unpolluted by fear?

Let's savor it as long as we can:
quickly, quickly, quickly.

(Image above is a photograph of an actual x-ray made into a phonograph record; follow the link for a great photoessay by Jozsef Hajdu).

Widow's Weeds: Jet Mourning Jewelry, 1811

"A woman wears a floor-length black dress with long sleeves and a high waist. The dress has white lace cuffs and a high, standing collar of white lace. The neck is trimmed with black fur which continues in two vertical lines down the skirt to the hem. Black, diamond-shaped decorations are interspersed between the two lines of fur. A black ribbon fastens under the bust with two black squares. She wears a black, fur-edged cape loosely wrapped around her shoulders. Two black tassels on a loop of black cord or beads hang from her right shoulder. The woman wears a necklace and earrings of black, diamond-shaped beads. Her bonnet is soft, black and trimmed with both black and white feathers. She wears a black glove on her right hand, while her left hand is bare. She holds a white handkerchief with both hands and looks down."

At Thanksgiving, They Have Poetry Yams

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M - Th 11p / 10c
Old Man Stewart Shakes His Fist at White House Poetry Jams
thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Economic Crisis Political Humor

I think Stewart's a little off base here, but the holiday, CNN, and Madoff rhymes are funny.

"Reading Keats in a Japanese Garden"

I have a poem up today in the Aesthetics issue of The Other Journal. I hope you like it!

Neil Gaiman: Apologia pro Vita sua

You don't choose what will work. You simply do the best you can each time. And you try to do what you can to increase the likelihood that good art will be created.

And sometimes, and it's as true of authors as it is of readers, you have a life. People in your world get sick or die. You fall in love, or out of love. You move house. Your aunt comes to stay. You agreed to give a talk half-way around the world five years ago, and suddenly you realise that that talk is due now. Your last book comes out and the critics vociferously hated it and now you simply don't feel like writing another. Your cat learns to levitate and the matter must be properly documented and investigated. There are deer in the apple orchard. A thunderstorm fries your hard disk and fries the backup drive as well...

And life is a good thing for a writer. It's where we get our raw material, for a start. We quite like to stop and watch it.

Blondie and John D.: Foray into Semiotics

from Donne's "The Broken Heart"

...what did become
Of my heart, when I first saw thee?
I brought a heart into the room,
But from the room I carried none with me:
If it had gone to thee, I know
Mine would have taught thy heart to show
More pity unto me: but Love, alas,
At one fierce blow did shiver it as glass.

Yet nothing can to nothing fall,
Nor any place be empty quite,
Therefore I think my breast hath all
Those pieces still, though they be not unite;
And now, as broken glasses show
A hundred lesser faces, so
My rags of heart can like, wish, and adore,
But after one such love, can love no more.

In Dire Need of Java: I'm on an Alexie Kick

"Ode to Coffee"--Sherman Alexie

In the coffee shop, the dreadlocked white dude
Orders a complicated drink.
"Man, don't be rude
To that sacred liquid," I think
As the barista pours soy into the brew—
A blasphemous act—and then adds nutmeg.
But worse, this place has the nerve
To grind and serve
Decaffeinated coffee. God, I beg

You, please, strike me down if I ever dare
To order that watery swill.
There is no there there.
What fool wants to go unfulfilled?
Why does this dude wear such rebellious hair,
But drink a coffee so neutered and caged?
I want my java hot, complex,
And, O, French-pressed.
I want my coffee to taste like sex and rage.

I want my coffee to taste like the brew
Made from the first coffee tree
Shipped, in the 1720s,
Into our country. That beleaguered crew
Repelled pirates, but not before they ripped
A branch off that coffee tree.
It was a grievous injury,
But that tree, nursed and fed, survived the trip,
And was replanted and safely reborn
Inside a hedge of nettles and spears
That bloodied all who came near.
Lord, I'd love my coffee to taste of those thorns.

Friday Pair-Up: Walt Whitman and Sherman Alexie

When I Heard the Learned Astronomer
by Walt Whitman

When I heard the learn'd astronomer,
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,
When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide,
and measure them,
When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with
much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out I wander'd off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars.

_______________





Dangerous Astronomy
by Sherman Alexie


I wanted to walk outside and praise the stars,
But David, my baby son, coughed and coughed.
His comfort was more important than the stars

So I comforted and kissed him in his dark
Bedroom, but my comfort was not enough.
His mother was more important than the stars

So he cried for her breast and milk. It's hard
For fathers to compete with mothers' love.
In the dark, mothers illuminate like the stars!

Dull and jealous, I was the smallest part
Of the whole. I know this is stupid stuff
But I felt less important than the farthest star

As my wife fed my son in the hungry dark.
How can a father resent his son and his son's love?
Was my comfort more important than the stars?

A selfish father, I wanted to pull apart
My comfortable wife and son. Forgive me, Rough
God, because I walked outside and praised the stars,
And thought I was more important than the stars.

A Dozen Seconds of Idol-Viewing Pleasure

May Days: Whistler's Sea and Rain

Hassam: "A Rainy Day"

I knew that I would never see
the woman in the yellow dress again,
and that the scene by the lake would not be repeated,
and that the summer would be a place too distant
for me ever to find myself again.
Although I have tried to return, I have always
ended here, where I am now. The lake
still exists, and so does the lawn, though the people

who slept there that afternoon have not been seen since.
And I believe the woman in the yellow dress died.

Mark Strand, "The Untelling"

No Way, No How....

is this a bottom 3 performer. AI producers should be ashamed of themselves for this obvious manipulation.

Kentucky Derby Picks 2009

Friesian Fire, descended from Seattle Slew, with Hopkinsville native Larry Jones as the trainer.



No post would be complete without some excellent accessorizing.