Whoso list to punt

Lately I've been producing stuff of a different kind, so I figure now's a good time to let go of the few poems I was hoping to get "published" this year. Of the five or so, I was least fond of "roominations," however I am grateful to the editors at Übernothing for its publication. So without further disparagement, I enter/exit the quixotic threshold of "literary" anxiety and cheerfully present four mediocre pieces of a sort that may look nothing like what I'm currently doing; nor can I expect them to look like themselves 1 in the future:


of plural and obstinate

of plural and obstinate
of cause and affect
of absorption and distress
of authority and love
of home and difference
of opinions and suspicion
of limits and extension
of contents and formed
of motion and continence
of you and our
of lapse and track
of hearing and thus
of quiet and indicative
of life and end
of progress and history
of facts and undeterred
of intention and sense
of being and withheld
of judgment and regardless
of cooperation and contempt
of court and defense
of nation and state
of mind and body
of water and finality
of ambition and slumber
of reading and life
of examination and wastes
of time and where
of which and resisting
of definition and infinitude
of possible and specified
of variable and absolute
of reason and passions
of other and binary
of one and same
of kind and quality
of care and privatization
of wealth and share
of space and occupation
of land and sea
of consciousness and habit
of perpetuum and disruption
of stasis and variation
of use and significance
of relative and general
of particular ands


on time align

beckons back to the gee
ography of it

doesn't appear this
pier's for peering

does & shouldn't be
couldn't would'st

an other's gaze at
quarter to ten

better head back
& meet de pressed

did you set the DVR
such a gift time

brushing trace thru city
grass no mention made

of the water reference no tide
besides

the eye floats itself
surfeited engulfed the point

of reference look out
& see you're observed

speech wears its watch
down the well of inscrutability

a 4-way stop step
forward pacing deliberate a-

cross the walk slows
white pickup each awaiting

the other's halt in
time meted tension

anticipate the steps
observing each climb


speak compared cruelty 2

speak compared cruelty
compared could have
but older which
pity these breakfast for
enemy about existed that forever
families certain rank
privilege including they
had to have
would all me could
had believe get from first
this would axe insult
lightning cemetery
we over that terror
or deserves their reverence
worst ludicrous ever
elect it other a
of and families own
they occurred
could it were asked it
he didn't voluntarily
steal the crimes
myself I to prove
change you to thing
watch they become body
shout of invented
whose is on have
wholesome gov't
not real to extraneous
out the to loyalty was
Connecticut power
founded they alter
their expedient


to thing of

there's no seeing thing
thru barricades

to see
has been seen

or be—their no thing
threw craves

scene of nothing been
to white no

thing alights a bee
whose knees have seeing

that's the matter
of to and/or is

another matter bar-
ricuda undersea

between (these) more &
less parallel beams, mat-

erial batters
being seen to nothing

the mattering of
manners bantered

like light's umbrage
sees there's no matter

to thing of


<#
AMB

1 All my poems tend to undergo variation/transmutation in the act of revision, in the presence of new poems/ideas, and esp. in the labor of performance.

2 This poem was constructed via a simple chance-operation using pages from a volume of James Baldwin's collected writings. The (incidental) content/form lends itself to surprisingly justifiable hermeneutic manifestations, particularly when read aloud at various tempos and cadences. I plan to experiment with it more (perhaps using voice-layer technology) at some point. Comes what may.

'Da Bomb'

Flipped through the latest issue of BOMB Magazine today at B.A.M. Great interviews with Adam Pendleton and Rae Armantrout. Excellent literary supplement as well. Jotted the following notes:

"I couldn't say whether the Situationists failed or not. My feeling is that when you contribute, there is no failure. It's like an unspoken law. I like your use of 'provoke.' When you provoke you have contributed. When you become a part of what happens next you have contributed." -Adam Pendleton, in conversation with Thom Donovan

"Of course, there are so many hallmark readings of a person like [Rosa Parks], because it is more convenient to deradicalize her than to radicalize her. She becomes a hero. And to be labeled a hero is one of culture's ways of depoliticizing you. You become part of what culture has dealt with. In this sense, one should always strive to be the opposite of a hero." -again, Pendleton (emphases mine)

Keep your eyes and ears on these two

Jen Nugent and Patrick Lynch give a layered, semi-aleatory sound & visual performance, stretching the attentions of audience as well as actor/performer. A full artist statement/description of the piece, as well as other, static, visual works, are provided at Jen's Tumblr. Enjoy!

Performance and Collaboration with Patrick Lynch from Jen Nugent on Vimeo.

Not ooftah much

Showing some jazz documentaries (for lack of prepared lesson plans) in the Chorus class for which I substituted, I took these notes & quotes, as I often do, despite having no historical research in progress. Here, some thoughts:

+Upon preparing for his Soviet Union tour as a cultural ambassador, and amidst the Little Rock Nine incident, Louis Armstrong decided to cancel at the last moment, expressing contempt for Eisenhower's indifference to the blatant, unconstitutional prejudice ensuing there in Arkansas. "It's getting almost so bad a colored man hasn't got any country," he said. Of course, whenever mentioned on radio, television, or in the press, his status as a whimsy, delightful old singer-trumpeter man retains the untroubling sheen it had back then (for whites and, in their bewilderment, for blacks). We can observe the same significance for the dixie and ragtime genres as well: fun, easy, sounds nice in the background, but, mostly, requests no urgency. Again, the fetishized nature of MLK Day is an easy pill because all one really has to know is that Dr. King gave some weighty (but for our purposes, triumphant, agreeable) speeches, had "A Dream," and now the stratified society and opportunities are no more. (Phew!) Dab that brow, we're all living in an anybody's world without race-catering or predesignated modes of living, working, etc. We can look back and think, "Yep, I heard you loud and clear. Now please, let me continue unmolested by pleas for socio-economic reconfiguration."

+I'm interested in how one of the commentators described "Strange Fruit," when sung by Billie Holiday (though Columbia wouldn't dare record it, for fear of a wholesale boycott the South), as "the first protest song." Now, of course the very Orleans-Creole, slave-hymn roots of the Jazz/Blues genre included (just as poetic/allegorical) protest content. I won't make a huge fuss about his comment, except to say that a "defining" moment in any cultural history must somehow exist purely in terms of audience. Heaven only knows how popular such protest hymns (disguised, hidden from "my Massa") were to however many pre-Emancipation African-Americans there were. Of course, their history is somehow unrecorded and supposedly distinct from ours. The good-hearted commentator probably meant it was "the first protest" song to be composed and presented in such a way the white majority would find attractive tonally, yet disturbing and offensive subtextually. (We only need a futile scan of the numerous "Greatest Hits" volumes of Holiday's repertoire to notice this. "Strange Fruit" isn't there). It is, indeed, a beautiful, beautifully sad song:

Southern trees bear strange fruit,

Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,

Black body swinging in the Southern breeze,

Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.

Pastoral scene of the gallant South,

The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,

Scent of magnolia sweet and fresh,

Then the sudden smell of burning flesh!

Here is fruit for the crows to pluck,

For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,

For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop,

Here is a strange and bitter crop.

(as Dylan put it, "Now's the time for your tears.")

+Finally, during the Coltrane chapter in episode nine of Ken Burns' JAZZ, Wynton Marsalis describes Jazz in the only way it (as a sprawling category of disparate genres and influence(e)s) can be described:

"Jazz music is existence music. It doesn't take you out of the world, it puts you in the world. Makes you deal with it... It's not a religiosity of 'thou must,' but of 'this is!'"

Art/Book as [material, perishing, self-defacing] object

disappearing book no. 1 from disappearing books on Vimeo.

© Stacy Blint 2010, http://disappearingbooks.com/

(snatched from Silliman)

Involited artifice

Katharsis-express or just another aura'd (commercialized) incident?

Epilepsy as art

Snatched from Silliman, this perhaps intended to spur more blogging on my part (cf. emptiness) than to compel your reading.