I FEEL LIKE SHIT.
in other news, an excellent scene from Godard/Gorin's tout va bien:
When Man Enters A Woman by Anne Sexton
When man,
enters woman,
like the surf biting the shore,
again and again,
and the woman opens her mouth with pleasure
and her teeth gleam
like the alphabet,
Logos appears milking a star,
and the man
inside of woman
ties a knot
so that they will
never again be separate
and the woman
climbs into a flower
and swallows its stem
and Logos appears
and unleashes their rivers.
This man,
this woman
with their double hunger,
have tried to reach through
the curtain of God
and briefly they have,
though God
in His perversity
unties the knot.
Showing posts with label poetry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label poetry. Show all posts
13.10.10
4.10.10
I actually posted this a few years ago but my love for Bukowski has been rekindled recently and I found this vid of Tom Waits reading it - oh my, too much man goodness in one space, all that's missing is Zizek reclining on a couch in the background or something.
your life is your life
don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.
be on the watch.
there are ways out.
there is a light somewhere.
it may not be much light but
it beats darkness.
be on the watch.
the gods offer you chances.
know them.
take them.
you can’t beat death but
you can beat death in life, sometimes.
and the more often you learn to do it,
the more light there will be.
your life is your life.
know life is your life.
know it while you have it.
you are marvelous
the gods wait to delight
in you.
your life is your life
don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.
be on the watch.
there are ways out.
there is a light somewhere.
it may not be much light but
it beats darkness.
be on the watch.
the gods offer you chances.
know them.
take them.
you can’t beat death but
you can beat death in life, sometimes.
and the more often you learn to do it,
the more light there will be.
your life is your life.
know life is your life.
know it while you have it.
you are marvelous
the gods wait to delight
in you.
25.7.10
My 3-card tarot reading last night was Abundance - Prince of Disks - Queen of Disks. The more I think about it, a very straightforward and positive reading, especially considering that I had a really fucked up day yesterday. I think I was a little bit manic. As for the cards - I'm a little confused about the Queen of Disks, considering the relation to domesticity. Maybe heralding a happy home life in my new apartment. I really like the illustration for the Queen of Disks:
Not sure if I trust Aleister Crowley more or less because he looks like this (though I'm thinking more):
My friend Lendl is publishing an anthology of visual and lit works by a bunch of people, including myself. Below is one of my poems that will be included, along with one more and a flash fiction/hybrid piece. If you're interested in a copy you can email me, they will be available in September, I believe. Or you can email him at passivecollective@gmail.com.
Possess
The pussy-pushing thoroughfare:
unsubtle notation you've written out and
pulled over your body,
now becoming a map without edges or an
incomplete song showing itself in the patterns of your
damp body hair. like a miracle or demon the
pulse of symbols
push against all surfaces.
We read it: never listening with eyes shut tight and a
half smile, like in the movies.
directions protect you
and the parting of each curtain of skin
is a process of dismantling:
not colonization, just curiosity for what you lost.
open up for the double-entendre
embedded in the surface of narrative
[still hot and raised]
and your hands still sticky
from self-service.
Not sure if I trust Aleister Crowley more or less because he looks like this (though I'm thinking more):
My friend Lendl is publishing an anthology of visual and lit works by a bunch of people, including myself. Below is one of my poems that will be included, along with one more and a flash fiction/hybrid piece. If you're interested in a copy you can email me, they will be available in September, I believe. Or you can email him at passivecollective@gmail.com.
Possess
The pussy-pushing thoroughfare:
unsubtle notation you've written out and
pulled over your body,
now becoming a map without edges or an
incomplete song showing itself in the patterns of your
damp body hair. like a miracle or demon the
pulse of symbols
push against all surfaces.
We read it: never listening with eyes shut tight and a
half smile, like in the movies.
directions protect you
and the parting of each curtain of skin
is a process of dismantling:
not colonization, just curiosity for what you lost.
open up for the double-entendre
embedded in the surface of narrative
[still hot and raised]
and your hands still sticky
from self-service.
20.3.10
Feeling grand. Spending this Saturday night browsing etsy for art, watching Star Wars, drinking hot chocolate and reading Merleau-Ponty in periodic spurts. Everything is so good right now I'm kind of suspicious.
A poem of mine has been published in the Toronto Quarterly journal, which I absolutely love. If you have some extra cash and would like to support Darryl Salach, the founder and editor, and us, the writers, you can buy the e-book or a print copy from here: link. I'll post a free .pdf in the right column later, although its not the same, y'all. Or, those of you who live in Toronto - go get it at one of 3 Bookcity locations in the city. I have a love/hate relationship with Bookcity, but I do admit, its one of the only places in TO that has a wide variety of lit mags and journals.
14.3.10
Poetry as Code/De-Coding
Below is the first part of an unfinished presentation I'm writing for my contemporary poetry and poetics seminar. I'm enjoying writing it and I thought some of you might be interested. The Tapeworm Foundry is a conceptual long poem (fuck, what isn't) available on UbuWeb. Link.
It's strange that my measure of 'presentability' is whether or not I'm comfortable posting something on here. "Is it good enough/engaging enough to be posted on my blog?!" versus "is it good enough to perform in front of 20 people, including someone who will give me a grade?" *rolls eyes at myself and then lights a cigarette*
Also really enjoyed this blog post from a recently-discovered blog that has quickly become one of my favourites. Wicked shit about suicide-art Badiou embodiment etc.
Also just wanted to say thank you to people who read this. My, uh, readership, has drastically increased over the past 4 months and I am genuinely appreciative of all who give a shit. *here I roll my eyes again and feel sheepish*
the word 'sheepish' is strange, yeah?
---
“The issue is not about poetry online. It’s the other thing that’s at issue here: online poetry, a poetry that explicitly includes the processes of coding, programming and designing as part of the creative act; a poetry whose content is, to some degree, specific to the qualities of the environment in which it exists.” DWH.
In “Antifesto,” Darren Wershler-Henry refers to creative writing as “code.” The Tapeworm Foundry engages with this idea and exemplifies "our current confrontation with the codes and code-condition of language, poetry, and digital media" (Drucker). The Tapeworm Foundry performs this process of coding/de-coding the ideological and material foundations of creative production. Each page functions like a screen of data that provides an inventory of information; a list of proposals for art projects and instructions for creating poetry that subvert the traditional modernist definition of art and poetry. In this sense, the poem is radically non-hierarchical, combining low and high culture seamlessly and with great humour. Equally demonstrative of this equalization is the use of “andor” to separate each unit. This strategy implies an opening up of language; the poem unfolds itself and the reader takes up its possibilities.
This focus on form and presentation rather than content emphasizes the materiality of language and poetry-construction/coding. This technique is reminiscent of the language poets attempt to dislodge the signified from the signifier. Similarly, Wershler-Henry shows that language is not inherently meaningful; language is given meaning when positioned within a particular narrative context. Although traditional reading and writing codes typically remain “invisible” and unnoticed, the value of online poetry is that the coding/de-coding is explicit and thus functions as a critique of passive or uncritical reading. Thus, The Tapeworm Foundry challenges and subverts the traditional/modernist narrative codes that condition readers to consume and engage with a text in a predetermined, prescribed framework of reference. The ceaseless flow of text - each unrelated component - prevents the reader from superimposing a linear and all-encompassing narrative onto the poem. As a result, we can't consume the text as we would a commodity. Both the construction of the text as material object and as a narrative is magnified. In this sense, Wershler-Henry decodes how language functions by producing a meta-code that draws attention to its own construction in order to critique how code functions in general.
It's strange that my measure of 'presentability' is whether or not I'm comfortable posting something on here. "Is it good enough/engaging enough to be posted on my blog?!" versus "is it good enough to perform in front of 20 people, including someone who will give me a grade?" *rolls eyes at myself and then lights a cigarette*
Also really enjoyed this blog post from a recently-discovered blog that has quickly become one of my favourites. Wicked shit about suicide-art Badiou embodiment etc.
Also just wanted to say thank you to people who read this. My, uh, readership, has drastically increased over the past 4 months and I am genuinely appreciative of all who give a shit. *here I roll my eyes again and feel sheepish*
the word 'sheepish' is strange, yeah?
---
“The issue is not about poetry online. It’s the other thing that’s at issue here: online poetry, a poetry that explicitly includes the processes of coding, programming and designing as part of the creative act; a poetry whose content is, to some degree, specific to the qualities of the environment in which it exists.” DWH.
In “Antifesto,” Darren Wershler-Henry refers to creative writing as “code.” The Tapeworm Foundry engages with this idea and exemplifies "our current confrontation with the codes and code-condition of language, poetry, and digital media" (Drucker). The Tapeworm Foundry performs this process of coding/de-coding the ideological and material foundations of creative production. Each page functions like a screen of data that provides an inventory of information; a list of proposals for art projects and instructions for creating poetry that subvert the traditional modernist definition of art and poetry. In this sense, the poem is radically non-hierarchical, combining low and high culture seamlessly and with great humour. Equally demonstrative of this equalization is the use of “andor” to separate each unit. This strategy implies an opening up of language; the poem unfolds itself and the reader takes up its possibilities.
This focus on form and presentation rather than content emphasizes the materiality of language and poetry-construction/coding. This technique is reminiscent of the language poets attempt to dislodge the signified from the signifier. Similarly, Wershler-Henry shows that language is not inherently meaningful; language is given meaning when positioned within a particular narrative context. Although traditional reading and writing codes typically remain “invisible” and unnoticed, the value of online poetry is that the coding/de-coding is explicit and thus functions as a critique of passive or uncritical reading. Thus, The Tapeworm Foundry challenges and subverts the traditional/modernist narrative codes that condition readers to consume and engage with a text in a predetermined, prescribed framework of reference. The ceaseless flow of text - each unrelated component - prevents the reader from superimposing a linear and all-encompassing narrative onto the poem. As a result, we can't consume the text as we would a commodity. Both the construction of the text as material object and as a narrative is magnified. In this sense, Wershler-Henry decodes how language functions by producing a meta-code that draws attention to its own construction in order to critique how code functions in general.
1.12.09
Sources of inspiration this week.
All night dreaming of a body
space weighs on differently from mine
We are making love in the street
the traffic flows off from us
pouring back like a sheet
the asphalt stirs with tenderness
there is no dismay
we move together like underwater plants
Over and over, starting to wake
I dive back to discover you
still whispering, touch me, we go on
streaming through the slow
citylight forest ocean
stirring our body hair
But this is the saying of a dream
on waking
I wish there were somewhere
actual we could stand
handing the power-glasses back and forth
looking at the earth, the wildwood
where the split began
from "Waking in the Dark" by Adrienne Rich
Sanne Sannes
I cannot explain the action of leveling,
Why it should all boil down to one
Uniform substance, a magma of interiors.
My guide in these matters is your self,
Firm, oblique, accepting everything with the same
Wraith of a smile, and as time speeds up so that it is soon
Much later, I can know only the straight way out,
The distance between us.
from "Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror" by John Ashbery
...more typewriters...Cormac McCarthy, Don DeLillo, Will Self.
I'm really tired and cranky. We're reading Moby-Dick for my Literature & Philosophy course. I thought it was going to be one of those books that are excruciatingly painful to get through, but its actually been a really fun read. It reminds me of being a kid and reading adventure novels 10 hours straight in my backyard during the summer.
I now have two jobs, plus my poetry editing job which will kick back into the forefront around January. Plus end-of-semester papers and 4 grad school applications to pump out. I want this month to be over and I want a day to write and drink tea and lounge around with my cats. I also want to stop whining, because my life is pretty damn good.
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