Tuesday, May 31, 2005

Version Therapy

One of the good things about blogs is that they not only give you a chance to look at things off the page as it were, but they also give you the opportunity to amend or edit the posts, the pieces that you post there.

Most posts, per se, I leave alone, perhaps correct a spelling mistake or restructure a phrase. Occasionally I will delete something I feel after looking at it later that is in questionable taste. But with poetry, the blog provides an ideal viewing platform, not necessarily the place to change but at least somewhere to provoke further thoughts about what you've done. There are quite a few poems first posted to a blog that have undergone severe rewriting before appearing in a later collection.

The poem below is as I posted it to my Series Magritte yesterday. I don't remember thinking about it after I posted it, but something must have been churning around in my subconscious because this morning I got up & rewrote it. I have now replaced the original on S.M., but am posting it here because it may give, for those of you who are interested, an inkling of my poetic processes.
# 91 The Delights of landscape

Each night
the hunter returns
recounting the
animals he has
shot, the trees
cut down to
remove all ground-
cover. Sometimes
the animal is eaten
or the head hung
in the trophy room.
The wood is set
aside & seasoned
for furniture, or
used to fuel the fire
in winter. He has
made a frame from
the best timber. It
rests, waiting to be
hung unfilled in
celebration the day
he comes home
empty-handed.
telepathetic

Monday, May 30, 2005

Telephone Poles

Adding Telephone Poles to the sidebar. It's a blog of Jim Leftwich & Jukka-Pekka Kervinen collaborations.
 

A Nocturne for Kirsten Kaschock

What is a dancer? What is it to dance?
Kirsten Kaschock: sleightthing
The dance is

a synchronicity
of celibacy &
sexual excess.

The body embodied.
The body left behind.

Though still
without, within
you dance.

A way of life
a way to life
away from death.

At night the rain
beats black against
the windows. Reflected
you assume the
stance. The rivulets
amend your movements.

The feet. The brain.
Forgotten. Emotion.

Enumeration.
Annunciation.

The dancer is
the dance.
 

Friday, May 27, 2005

an apologetic note to the 80-year olds

If
it's early
Akhmatova, that's okay.
 

Three Bookfest hay(na)ku

There's
hope for
me yet, seeing

80-year
olds picking
over the poetry.

§

What
hope is
there for me

when
I see
80-year olds selecting

poetry
written before
they were born?

§


&
at a
slower pace, a

second
trawl. To
find Ed Sanders

&
Yevtushenko, thick-
bodied, arms machismo.

Supporting
them both
a slender Akhmatova.
 

Another view of Jack Spicer

there was his poem
about the ugly gardener's son,
Crotchety Priapus,

weary in the weeds without the hots
for anyone

let's hope Death
has a big one
for Jack

Jonathan Williams
from: 50! Epithytes,-taphs, -tomes, -grams, -thets! 50!

Search'd

I may be forced to rethink my earlier comments. I have just returned from the Bookfest, back bowed & shoulder broken under the weight of $19 worth of books, almost thirty titles, sold by cover size.

A strange miscellany. Some to continue the replication of the library of my youth, Sartre, Koestler, Malraux; plays by Genet, Beckett, Brecht & O’Neill; a couple of more modern novels, Allende, Toni Morrison, Arundhati Roy; a couple of those reasonably inclusive Penguin anthologies of poetry, one of poems from the Thirties & the other U.S. – American Verse – that ranges from Anne Bradstreet to Diane Wakowski; Pynchon & Janet Frame; the collected Wilfred Owen, & Sylvia Plath (yes, Emily, one must have a knowledge of the history of the game); a missing Brautigan & a missing LeGuin; The Pillow Book of Sei Shōnagon.

&, in what might turn out to be a parallel history of this place in which I'm living, the Diaries of Franz Kafka.
 

Searchin', as Leiber & Stoller once wrote

I'm off to the annual Bookfest, an offering of second-hand books collected by one of the local charities & held in a pavillion at the Showgrounds. About 100,000 volumes on offer, although nearly all of it is crap. Perhaps there might be 2 or 3 there that I like.

Still, that's a higher ratio than I find in the local population.....
 

Thursday, May 26, 2005

Sun-
drenched. Rain-
warmed. Epidermal velocities.
 

Another quote from J.G. Ballard that I like


 
When Armageddon
takes place, parking
is going to be
a major problem.
 
Millenium People
 
 Posted by Hello

Wednesday, May 25, 2005

That which was lost has been found again

This morning, after several attempts, at intervals of several hours, & finding only the dreaded Blogger 404 - Page Not Found when I tried to log on to Tom Beckett's whispers within whispers, I assumed, since I had no problems accessing every other blog I tried, that he'd pulled the plug again & so I posted a wailing note of despair.

I am relieved, nay, overwhelmed by joy, to find I was in error; that when I checked several more hours later whispers was back in all its glory. Perhaps a little suffused with blushes in the cheeks & other parts, & panting a bit, because of Eileen's poem to Tom.

Accordingly, I have deleted my earlier post, & have instructed my lawyers to begin proceedings against the corporate hierarchy of Google for causing me emotional distress.

(This someone on the Tropic of Capricorn who also misses face to face contact loves you very much, Tom.)
 

Nick Piombino's

post A Blogland Vogue For Questions at Fait Accompli is well worth reading, & so wide-ranging it could almost be subtitled An Answer for Everything.
 

This is sad news

Dear sidereality fans & readers:

Recently, I've come to the realization that my heart's just simply not where it needs to be in order to continue editing and producing sidereality. So, unless someone new wants to step into the position of Managing Editor between now and the end of June, the second 2004 issue will be the final issue of sidereality. It saddens me to end my stint as the creator of this oftentimes wonderful zine, but I think it's something that, unfortunately, needs to happen. We've had, I think, a very good run, and I certainly don't want to continue into a second-rate future.

Clayton A. Couch

Tuesday, May 24, 2005

minimum daily requirements

Jukka-Pekka Kervinen has started up a blogzine, minimum daily requirements, which he describes as a "blogzine for collaborations, experiments and visual poetry".

If anyone wants further information, or to find out how to contribute, Jukka's email address is buried within the 'full details' information at nonlinear poetry.
 

these days,

by
the end
of the credits

the
movie is
a far-gone conclusion
 

A found Spice Bestiary #3

Cayenne


Branches
angular, usually
enlarged &
slightly purple
at the
nodes; petioles
medium; peduncles
slender, often
in pairs, & longer
than the fruit;
calyx cup-
shaped, clasping
base of fruit
which is red, ovate
& long; seeds
small & flat,
from ten to
twenty-nine.
 Posted by Hello

Monday, May 23, 2005

"I don't think a photo inspires murderers"



 
"These people are motivated by a vision of the world that is backward and barbaric."
 
 :Posted by Hello

Sunday, May 22, 2005

a sunday afternoon conjunction

The most ancient problem connected with combinatorics may be the house-cat-mice-wheat problem of the Rhind Papyrus (Problem 79), which occurs in a similar form in a problem of Fibonacci's Liber Abaci and in an English nursery rhyme. All are concerned with successive powers of 7.

The first occurrence of combinatorics per se may be in the 64 hexagrams of the I Ching. (However, the more modern binary ordering of these is first seen in China in the 10th century.)

A Chinese monk in the 700s may have had a rule for the number of configurations of a board game similar to go.

In Greece, one of the very few references to combinatorics is a statement by Plutarch about the number of compound statements from 10 simple propositions; Plutarch quotes Chrysippus, Hipparchus, and Xenocrates on the subject, so all apparently had some interest in the subject.

Boethius apparently had a rule for the number of combinations of things taken two at a time.

The author discusses interest in combinatorics in the Hindu world, by the Jainas, Varahamihira, and Bhaskara (the latter in the Lilavati ). The work of Brahmagupta should be relevant, but is not currently available in English.

The Arabs seem to have adopted their combinatorics from the Hindus.

The author also briefly discusses some interest in combinatorics in the Jewish mathematical tradition; two examples are Rabbi ben Ezra and Levi ben Gerson.

Magic squares may first occur in the lo shu diagram, which is often linked with the I Ching. The author discusses how the idea of magic squares may have entered the Islamic world, was then improved, appeared in the work of Manuel Moschopoulos, and possibly through him entered the Western world.

What happened in China is less clear. As the author suggests, the work of Yang Hui suggests that there had been a Chinese tradition of work in magic squares, already dead by Yang Hui's time. For example, the squares Yang Hui gives are not of types found elsewhere. In addition, Yang Hui seems unclear on the techniques for construction.

It is interesting that De la Loubère learned of a simple method for constructing magic squares in Siam.

The author also discusses the possibility of a Hindu study of magic squares; the presumably Arab source of Western magic square mysticism and later developments, such as Euler's questions on orthogonal Latin squares.

The author discusses how questions in partitions arose in gambling, such as the throwing of astrogali (huckle bones, which can land 4 ways) or dice (which can land in 6 ways). An early systematic study is in the late Medieval Latin poem De Vetula, which gives the number of ways you can obtain any given total from a throw of 3 dice. Cardano and Galileo examined the subject in more depth.

Combinatorial thinking in games and puzzles. Discusses the wolf-goat-cabbage, attributed to Alcuin. [Similar puzzles also occur in a variety of other cultures, but are not discussed in this article.]

Also discusses the Josephus problem, based on a process similar to the childhood process of "counting-out". The Josephus problem is named for the Jewish historian Josephus of the 1st century AD, who supposedly saved his life with a correct solution. This problem unexpectedly turned up in Japan.

The author discusses how "Pascal's" triangle was possibly known to Omar Khayyam in the context of taking roots. The Hindu scholar Pingala may have known a method, but the case is more cryptic. At any rate, it was known by the time of Halayudha, who may have lived in the 900s AD. A more clear-cut reference occurs in the work of Nasir al-Din al-Tusi in 1265.

In China, the triangle appears in the work of Chu Shih-Chieh (1303), but may have been very ancient by then.

The triangle was used by Pascal and Fermat to resolve the "problem of points". This problem had the goal of determining how to distribute stakes when a game ends early.

from a précis by J. Dieudonné of The roots of combinatorics , Biggs, N. L., Historia Math.  6 (1979), no. 2.

As always, a perverse calculus refreshed and redefined the world.

J.G. Ballard: Millenium People

Saturday, May 21, 2005

urban myth or genuine,

either way it's an item for the almanac.

Lately, at airports, little old ladies & babies have been singled out as suspects by the sniffer dogs. Turns out someone responsible for the dogs' training switched the sample bag of coke for baby powder...

So if you've been getting the hots for yr grandma recently after you've exercised yr nostrils, this could be the reason why.

& on the subject of baby powder. Reported correlation of heavy use with cancer. Wonder why. Turns out in the days when it used to be talcum powder not cornflour, there used to be asbestos mixed in with it.
 

Friday, May 20, 2005

a found Spice Bestiary #1

Anise



The oil ex-
tracted from
the seed
is said to prove
a capital bait
for mice, if
smeared on
traps. It is
poisonous
to pigeons.

 Posted by Hello
 

#2

Bugle


The upper lip is
very short &
the lower three-
cleft. The stamens
project. The
flowers have
practically
no scent. After
fertilization, small
blackish seeds
are formed, but
many of the ovules
do not mature.

Posted by Hello
 
toncheekgue

Thursday, May 19, 2005

Jukka

 

 
being brought to you by pelican post
 
 Posted by Hello

& now, crossing over to the dark side

The Leevi Lehto Translation Bureau & Change Agency has just doubled its output, & posted the first - the last? - 134 entries of Karri Kokko's Varjo Finlandia - Shadow Finland - in English. Read the Force of the dark side.
 

Wednesday, May 18, 2005

via, via



Star Wars Horoscope for Scorpio




You are a powerful character.
You tend to be possessive and lusty - which explains your greedy nature.
You feel threatened when people try to order you around or control you.
You are prone to suspicion and jealousy - but your resilience and passion get you what you want.

Star wars character you are most like: Han Solo


Oh dear, & I really wanted to be an Ewok!
 

Michele Leggott & a Journey To Portugal

We sat
outside a café
on the quayside
drinking flat white coffees

talking of Portugal
Last year, when I was back in New Zealand, I finally met Michele Leggott, one of my favourite people, my favourite poets. We had corresponded for about seven years, ever since the first stirrings of the anthology Big Smoke: New Zealand Poems 1960-1975 which she co-edited with Murray Edmond (Martin's cousin) & the late Alan Brunton. Her initial letter talked about the anthology project, & asked, extremely politely, if she could rummage through my past.

Those few lines, & her on-going support & correspondence, were the prime trigger for my getting back into writing after 25 years of silence. She got me to look at my old poetry, provided me with copies of stuff I hadn't seen for years, edited & oversaw the selection of my early poems that appeared as The right foot of the giant in 1999, dragged some new poems out of me to accompany the launch of Big Smoke in 2000, provoked some more, curated a selection of N.Z. poetry for Jacket #16 & generously asked me to contribute, the first new poems I had published in 27 years, kept on being supportive as I scratched around, learning to stand on my own feet again, to regain my poetic balance. She was instrumental in my having an author's page posted at the New Zealand electronic poetry centre, in inviting me over to launch the page at the nzepc's 3rd birthday. She was the one who suggested having Martin Edmond as my interviewer in an email Q&A saying we would probably like one another which we did, immensely. &, through her own poetry, she gave me the gift of making the reading of other people's poetry joyful once more. I cannot thank her enough for what she has done for me over these years.

I don't think I have ever looked forward to meeting someone as much as I looked forward to meeting Michele. & I'm pleased to say that the friendship that developed through our correspondence was strengthened by being able to share the same places at the same time. She met me at the airport, we read together on stage, we walked around the North Shore esplanade, I even danced at a party she had – some things you don't forget, though the lungs & legs ain't what they used to be.

& we talked. About all sorts of things, in all sorts of places. The quote at the top of the post, from a poem I wrote shortly after I got back to Australia, is about one of those times, in late afternoon, on the quayside in Auckland, she waiting for a ferry to go in one direction, I for & in another. We spoke of Portugal where she'd recently been, at a writers' conference. It was a journey that held importance for her.

I enjoyed hearing her talk about it. I enjoyed even more the long wonderful sequence she later wrote about it. & now that enjoyment can be spread even further, because her Journey to Portugal is on-line in the latest issue of Jacket.
 

Sunday, May 15, 2005

another "exposé",

another tarnishing of those who we may otherwise hold up as being heroic figures in an unheroic age.

Victor Farias, in Salvador Allende:Anti-semitism & Euthanasia, says Allende quotes approvingly in his 1933 doctoral dissertation a "cure" for homosexuality:
"It could be corrected with surgery - small holes would be made in the stomach, into which small pieces of testicle would be inserted. This would make the person heterosexual."
& if small holes were made in the testicles, into which small pieces of stomach were inserted, would this make the person a hungry fucker, straight or gay?
 

Saturday, May 14, 2005

an alphabet para Ernesto Priego, because he's feeling low & I'd like to cheer him up!

A Martian with a clown face can pass as a Venusian.
Butterflies call chaos theory the pissing or pissant theory. They believe that if two men in Guadalajara have a competition to see who can piss the highest, a blizzard will eventually develop somewhere in Siberia.
Codicia de la boca / al hilo de un suspiro suspendida…
Debonair is a tune that makes you want to whistle along with it.
Ebonaire is a dark wood with holes in it. Some people call it a recorder.
Fenêtre is French for window. Perhaps a French window.
Galapagos has tortoises. The lagoon at the end of our street has turtles. Last night I rescued a turtle from the roadway. It was heading in the wrong direction, away from the water. It didn't make me want to rewrite the theory of evolution.
Heavenly shades of night are falling, it's twilight time.
Incognito ergo sum.
Jalapeno peppers bring tears to my thighs.
Kevlar is used for making body armour. In an ideal world you wouldn't need it.
Later he would walk down to the lagoon.
Miles Davis was
Never neutral. Nor was
Octavio
Paz.
Quena is a type of flute made from a human bone. I once wrote a poem about it. The poem rhymed.
Reckon you thought I might stick in Quetzalcoatal for that previous entry, but I'm saving him for a later line.
Swallows are what bellies are for.
Teotehuacán is one of the places where the feathered serpent was formerly & formally worshipped.
U comes before
V. But one of the problems about getting old is that sometimes you actually have to check on those sort of things. The alphabet is its own mnemonic &
When you forget it there's nothing to fall back on.
X-men. Uncanny how we both thought of that together. Snap!
Y am I doing all this? Take it as an act of friendship. Do not question it. Do not pass go.
Zeus was my father. He fell upon my mother as a swan & got up despite the down. Helen of Troy is a sort of sister. Brad Pitt is no relation. But sometimes I think there is an other.
 

a kind of post(ed) comment

Unlike this & most other blogs, where the comments are displayed on a secondary page, As/Is has, for some time now, had its comments mixed in with the poems. It is probably the ideal setup for a poetry blog; but it has recently soured somewhat for me by the influx of a number of 'commenters' who seem more intent on posturing, on spraying a tomcat scent, than offering any honest response to or constructive criticism about the posted poetry.

They remind me of the character Horst Bulcholz played in The Magnificent Seven, the western remake of The Seven Samurai. This probably sounds - & probably is – patronising, but it's almost like they don't know how to behave in public. & the pity of it is that their own blogs are worthwhile, show none of the tendencies that have irritated the shit out of me over recent weeks.

So, I’ve decided to include them in my links, have added to the sidebar Jesse Crockett's differentia & PR Primeau's 'P'R'O'C'E'S'S'I'O'N'. Check them out, there's some good stuff there.
 

Friday, May 13, 2005

a question for Tom Beckett

Do you
ever
keep yr
deleted
posts or
are they
those bits of
unprotected
text, the
shadows with-
in shadows,
the points
I see vanishing
in the jet-
stream late
at night?
 

Wednesday, May 11, 2005

liking who you are

introrespection

&, on the subject of Jukka

He has recently taken up photography. & how! His recent posts at nonlinear poetry have been a continuation of his textual conjecturing, manipulation, through a different medium. But at textual conjectures, the photos he has just started posting there are pure poetry. Jukka poetry.

We talk sometimes about photographs as being like poems, & photographers will often say how they wish to achieve a poetic quality in their work. But these works of Jukkas are no similes. I have never, never, never ever seen before photographs that are poems.

7.30.pm Have just received an email from Jukka to say that
"I have made a little "gallery", most photos you've seen in nonlinear/ conjectures/stay resident, but there is also a bunch of more experimental shots, entitled "nondimensional". You'll find it at http://nondimensional.cjb.net"

just up at e-x-c-h-a-n-g-e-v-a-l-u-e-s

I interview Jukka-Pekka Kervinen.
 

Tuesday, May 10, 2005

a piece of nostalgia

If you're wondering how that fuckwit ever got into the White House, this might help. It was the subject of one of my first posts to the pelican, & my closest brush with Robert Creeley since he was the person who sent the link to the person who sent it to me.
 

a second speculative fiction, perhaps

Several people in blogland have recently become excited over new finds at Oxyrhynkhos. Let me just insert a cautionary word from The Allegrezza Ficcione.
Unable to contain his inquisitiveness, he asked Dae what she & Joo-eun were doing, was told that they were forging ancient Egyptian & Greek commercial documents, that one of Tamur's sidelines was selling them through blackmarket channels. Tamur admitted it, said that the dig at Oxyrhynkhos had given him the opportunity to suggest to prospective buyers that he might be able to obtain documents smuggled out from the site. Allegrezza was surprised when he told him how many museums had taken advantage of his offers.
Looks like Tamur expanded the scope of his operations.
 

Sunday, May 08, 2005

por ernesto priego

were
those the
birds, some posts

below,
where, if
your most recent

post
was your
eyes, I might

expect
to find
your belly, swallowing?
 

reading(s) & writing

I have been considering my reaction to the topic of this recent post by Ron Silliman.
"It’s been at least three decades, for example, since Bromige first noted just how often I can be seen at a reading jotting something down into a notebook. It is rare, actually, that what I am scribbling relates directly  to the reading (tho at times there will be depiction of the event itself). Rather, I find that mental space of confronting the well written word aurally is a remarkable – unsurpassed, in fact – tool for turning over the language in one’s own mind/experience/ daily life as well. Thus I find myself at a reading listening to the text, observing the event & often composing something completely different all at once. Sometimes I feel that I will wander – get too far away from the reader’s text, or forget literally my own environment if I get “absorbed” into a work – but I usually can make myself return if I try."
My natural arrogance does not let me think for a single moment that I would give a bad &/or boring reading. My natural humility excludes the possibility that I might so inspire/influence someone that they felt the need to haul out a notebook & start writing. So my initial reaction would be to become pissed off at anyone in the audience that starting doing this. My second reaction would be getting even more irritated & pissed off. & my third reaction would be thinking to myself that it's a good thing that I'm not an aggressive person, because otherwise I'd get so irritated & pissed off that I'd stop reading & go out into the audience & punch their fucking lights out.

But then, I'm not a notebook sort of person.
 

Friday, May 06, 2005

joy across my big brass bed

In the light of my very recent posts about Dylan, it is extremely bizarre that I have just received the following piece of Nigerian Scam Spam from someone whose email 'name' is Joy Lady Joy.

MY NAME IS MRS.MABEL MARADAS, I AM THE MANAGER CREDIT AND ACCOUNTS DEPARTMENT GLOBAL BANK LAGOS.I WRITE YOUIN RESPECT OF A FOREIGN CUSTOMER WITH ACCOUNT NUMBER14-255-2004/CCB/NG.WHO AMONG OTHERS ON BOARD HAD A PLANE CRASH INUSAON THE 31ST OCTOBER 1999.ALL ON BOARD PERISH AND DIED IN THEPLANCRASH.SIR,SINCE THE DEMISE OF THIS OUR CUSTOMER MR GEORGE SHIMONY A LEBANESE IMPORT AND EXPORT TYCOON HERE IN LAGOS . I HAVEKEPT A CLOSE MONITORING OF THE DEPOSIT RECORDS AND ACCOUNTS SINCE THEN NO BODY HAS COME TO CLAIM THE MONEY IN THIS ACCOUNT AS NEXT OF KIN TO THE LATE MR GEORGE SHIMONY,HAS ONLY $10.5MLLION IN HIS ACCOUNT AND THE ACCOUNT IS CODED IT IS ONLY AN INSIDER THAT COULD PRODUCE THE CODE OR PASSWORD OF THE DEPOSIT PARTICULARS. AS IT STANDS NOW. THERE IS NOBODY IN THAT POSITION TO PRODUCE THE NEEDED INFORMATION OTHER THAN MY VERY SELF CONSIDERING MY POSITION IN THE BANK.BASED ON THE REASONS THAT NOBODY HAS COME FOR THE CLAIMS OF THE DEPOSIT AS NEXT OF KIN, I SEEK FOR YOUR CO OPERATION TO USE YOUR NAME AS THE NEXT OF KIN TO THE DESEASED TO SEND THIS FUNDS OUT TO A FOREIGN OFFSHOREBANK ACCOUNT FOR MUTUAL SHARING BETWEEN ME AND YOU ONLY AS I AM THE ONLY ONE WITH THE INFORMATION BECAUSE I HAVE REMOVED THE DEPOSIT FILE FROM THE SAFE .BY THIS DOING, WHAT IS REQUIRED FROM YOU IS TO SENDAN APPLICATION SEEKING CLAIMS OF THE DEPOSIT AS NEXT OF KIN TO THELATE MR SHIMONY.I WILL SEND YOU SPECIMEN OF APPLICATION AS SOON AS YOU CONFIRM YOUR READINESS TO ASSIST ME MOVE THE FUNDS OUT OF THE VAULT OF OUR BANK.NOTE: THE BANKING RULES AND REGULATIONS IN THIS COUNTRY DOES NOT ALLOW SUCH DEPOSIT TO STAY MORE THAN FIVE YEARS AS AN EXPERTRIATES ACCOUNT , IF THE DEPOSIT STAYS MORE THAN TOLD FIVE YEARS THE FUNDS WILL BE INHERITED BY NIGERIAN GOVERNMENT ACCOUNT ASUNCLAIMED DEPOSIT.
IN VIEW OF THIS DEVELOPMENT I BEG FOR YOUR ASSISTANCE AND FULL CO-OPERATION TO COME AND LAY CLAIMED TO THIS DEPOSIT AS THE NEXT OF KIN TO MR GEORGE SHIMONY THERE IS NO RISKINVOLVE IN THIS BUSINESS AS YOU WILL BE EQUIPED WITH ALL VITALINFORMATION OF THE DEPOSI AND THE ACCOUNT. YOUR COUNTRY OF ORIGIN DOESNOTMATTER, WHAT MATTERS IS YOU AS THE NEXT OF KIN HAVING ALL NECCESSARY INFORMATION TO BACK UP YOUR CLAIMS . NOTE THAT ALL MODALITIES? FOR A HITCH FREE TRANSACTION HAS BEEN PERFECTED FROMMYSIDE I WILL SUPPLY YOU WITH ALL THE ACCOUNT PARTICULARS . I WILL NEED YOUR FULL NAME AND ADDRESS COMPANY OR RESIDENTIAL SO THAT I CAN COMPUTERISE THEM TO TALLY WITH NEXT OF KIN COLLUM IN THECERTIFICATEOF DEPOSIT.FINALLY I WANT YOU TO UNDERSTAND THAT THE REQUEST FOR A FOREIGNER AS THE NEXT OF KIN IS OCCATIONED BY THE FACTTHATTHE CUSTOMER WAS A FOREIGNER AND FOR THAT ONLY REASON A LOCALCANNOTREPRESENT AS NEXT OF KIN.I HAVE AGREED TO SHARE THIS MONEY WITHYOUIN THE MUTUAL UNDERSTANDING OF 40%/60%YOU KEEP 40 WHILE I KEEP 60.YOU HAVE MERITED THIS PERCENTAGE BECAUSE YOU WILL PROVIDE THE ACCOUNT WHERE WE SHALL FINALLY TRANSFER THE FUNDS INTO ON A SUCCESSFULCLAIMING OF THE DEPOSIT. MY 60% WILL REMAIN IN THE ACCOUNT PENDINGMYARRIVAL IN YOUR COUNTRY FOR DISBURSEMENT AND SUBSEQUENTINVESTMENTS.
LASTLY FOR THE IMMEDIATE TAKE OFF OF THIS TRANSACTION YOU HAVE TO CONFIRM YOUR WILLINGNESS AND READINESS TO ASSIST ME RETRIVE THIS DEPOSIT, THEN I WILL SEND TO YOU BY FAX ORE-MAIL THE APPLICATION TEXT AND OTHER VITAL INFORMATION YOU NEEDTOKNOW ABOUT THE DEPOSIT.I ASSURE YOU OF 100% RISK FREETRANSACTION.TRUSTING TO HEAR FROM YOU.
GOD BLESS!.
YOURS RESPECTFULLY ,
MRS MABEL MARADAS,

Only $10.5 million? The man died a pauper!
 

the times they are a-changin'

Dylan's
dime stores
now $2 shops.

a footnote to the post below

& don't forget to check out dérives!
 

Thursday, May 05, 2005

speculo, speculavi, speculare, speculatum

In a post of a few days ago I attempted to describe Martin Edmond's genre of writing. I first used the term 'creative prose' but that didn't feel quite right so I amended it to 'speculative prose'. Though I left it there, I still wasn't happy with the phrase. Fiction is easy to define, non-fiction that is as creative as we perceive good fiction to be far harder. Sure there are categories into which things can be fitted – Henry Miller's Colossus of Maroussi can be described as a travel book, Guevara's Bolivian Diaries as autobiography – but they are often a loose fit, & there is still a body of work that doesn't fit into the overlap of the multiple circles of a Venn diagram.

My use of the term 'speculative prose' is, in essence, an oxymoron. I consider Borges' ficciones as speculative fiction that could quite possibly be fact. A small transposition & I ended up with speculative fact which conjured up to me the idiocies of van Donkeyhead's Chariots of the Gods. So, speculative prose as a compromise.

Martin picks up on my dilemma with his own thoughts about & problems & responses he encounters when defining his style. I won't attempt to paraphrase since (a) his post upholds my opinion of his abilities & (b) it can be read simply by clicking here (& read also the post immediately beneath). But I will include part of the quote from Italo Calvino with which he closes the post since it is almost the phrase I had been originally looking for.

"…the more reflective kind of writing in which narrative and essay become one."
 

My favourite Dylan song

is probably Love minus zero / no limit.
In the dime stores & bus stations,
people talk of situations,
read books, repeat quotations,
draw conclusions on the wall.
Don't know why I thought of it. Actually, I do. It's the post below, Qin the Emperor, Quinn the Eskimo.
when
Qin the
Emperor gets here

ev'ry-
body's gonna
jump for joy.

The Long Good-bye

I grew up on a diet of detective stories - courtesy of my parents & their weekly trip to the Library - & science fiction - courtesy of my brother, 12 years older, who left his books behind when his work transferred him to a year's post in some provincial town in New Zealand.

Through their combined efforts the platform for my subsequent reading was made up of writers such as Chandler & Hammett, Dick, Bradbury, Clarke, Kornbluth & Sturgeon. (I first read Borges in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine.) I don't read much SF these days, probably only J.G. Ballard, Ursula LeGuin, William Gibson & Bruce Sterling plus I regularly re-read Samuel Delany, but I still read detective stories & buy each new book by John Sandford & Sara Paretsky & James Lee Burke & Martin Cruz Smith & a handful of others, although part of the reason for that may be that this range is one of the few that interest me that are stocked by the local bookshops. (Poetry? What's that?)

I have just finished reading a Chandler compendium of three novels featuring his famous "hard-boiled private eye" Philip Marlowe. I haven't read them in what must be decades, though in the interim I must have seen the celluloid interpretations of Bogart & Mitchum & Dick Powell many times.

I still think Chandler is a great writer, but what I had previously not been consciously aware of was how racist & homophobic he was. The first two novels, The Big Sleep & Farewell, My Lovely, both written pre-Second World War, are full of denigrating terms & a disdain for Chinese, Japanese, Afro-Americans & Mexicans. This racism is not so evident in The Long Good-bye, written in the early fifties, although this may be in part due to the setting of the novel. But his homophobia is still very much present.
'I had a male secretary once. Used to dictate to him. Let him go. He bothered me sitting there waiting for me to create. Mistake. Ought to have kept him. Word would have got around I was a homo. The clever boys that write book reviews because they can't write anything else would have caught on and started giving me the build-up. Have to take care of their own, you know. They're all queers, every damn one of them. The queer is the artistic arbiter of our age, chum. The pervert is the top guy now.'
This cannot be excused as characterisation because Chandler put too many speeches about things he obviously believed in in the same mouths. & I have probably not picked up on this before because in my much earlier readings & re-readings I did not consider such attitudes to be morally reprehensible. & re-reading my own earlier work - not so much the poetry but the reviews & essays I did - I discern some of the same attitudes there. Not homophobia, but there is evidence of sexism, &, in one piece that freaks the shit out of me now, is the descriptor 'n*****-minstrel', without the asterisks, a phrase that now horrifies me & makes me ashamed that I ever could have used it.

It tarnishes me as a person, it poisons my past. Let me just say, years later but far too late, I apologise.
 

Wednesday, May 04, 2005

I'm
a Fann
of the Finns.
 

Leevi Lehto, white knight

Of late, I've been thinking that I'm going to be forced to learn Finnish. Jukka has become involved in the local literary scene - how does he find the time to do so much? - & is editing a zine called FinStream. There's also an autogenerated version. Sound familiar?

& Karri Kokko. Not only has he started two new blogs in Finnish, but his posts to his main blog Muisti|kirja have of late been exclusively in his native language. Because that was one of my favourite ports of call in the days when I could read it - now I can only look at the occasional picture he posts - I dropped him an email the other day asking whether he had deliberately changed his policy.

He replied:
No, I haven't. Not consciously, anyway. I don't know what happened. There's a lot going on, and I guess the English dept. had to be the one to suffer. The two new blogs I have take a lot of time & energy. Uusia lauseita (New Sentences) is about random findings from the Finnish Blog Front. A "story", a comedy of written manners, or mannerisms, written blog-style from the bottom up. So far, it's become a small hit inside the Finnish blogosphere.... The name of my other blog, Varjofinlandia (Shadow Finlandia), refers to the biggest literary prize in Finland, the Finlandia Prize. To every prize and its winner there's always the real winner, the one that gets overlooked, the one that gets shadowed by all the hoopla. In Varjofinlandia, I give a voice to the vast amount of people expressing their negative feelings: depression, pain, weariness, fatigue, insomnia, addiction, sorrow. It's about the dark side of Finlandia, if you may. So there.
So here am I, knowing I'm missing out on something that I'm sure would be pretty good if I could understand it. & then Leevi Lehto comes in from left field, to use Karri's phrase, & out of the blue, on a white charger - I think those are the colours of the Finnish flag; had to work it in somehow - & publishes an "unauthorised" - & that, given the nature of the blogs, may or may not be an unintentional play on words - translation of the first 60 posts to varjofinlandia.

My guess was right. This is a marvellous piece of work. I hope both Karri & Leevi continue on, Karri daily, Leevi at regular intervals.

But I still think I'm going to have to learn Finnish. From what I can see of the local scene, there's too much activity happening to keep missing out on it.
 

Sunday, May 01, 2005

dérives

When I drive cab
           A revelation of movement comes to me: They wake now.
           Now they want to work or look around. Now they want
           drunkenness and heavy food. Now they contrive to love.

Lew Welch: After Anacreon
Martin Edmond, who I consider to be the best writer of creative prose - a phrase I'm not particularly happy with but I can't think, at the moment, of a better one; perhaps speculative prose - in blogland, has hived off his taxi-driving pieces from Luca Antara & has posted them to a new blog, dérives, which doesn't so much ask the question Where to?, but rather Wherefore?

Hire thee hence. There is no flagfall. The journeys are free, exciting, enlightening, insightful. The destinations varied & endless. This is a gypsy cab.
 
annoydne

MayDay


 
ah, nostalgia, when the only war was the class war
 
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