loudgirl

no oaths, no audience, no transcripts

Freedom, privacy, silence. Luxurious surroundings for secrets, secrets with the strength of mighty boring worms, worms made of metal.

the walking devil

But the thing that stands eternally in the way of really good writng is always one: the virtual impossibility of lifting to the imagination those things which lie under the direct scrutiny of the senses, close to the nose. It is this difficulty that sets a value upon all works of art and makes them a necessity. The senses witnessing what is immediately before them in detail see a finality which they cling to in despair, not knowing which way to turn. Thus the so-called natural or scientific array becomes fixed, the walking devil of modern life. He who even nicks the solidity of this apparition does a piece of work superior to that of Hercules when he cleaned the Augean stables.

~ William Carlos Williams, in Prologue to Kora in Hell: Improvisations

I am very grateful to Dr. Williams for giving me the exact words I needed. I finally wrote a thank you note to Robert Bly for the Ponge book. I used this quote to introduce my thanks. It's an amusingly exaggerated compliment that does a great honor to the work of Object Poems.

A strange few days. My schedule was disrupted today, but it had no impact, positive or negative, on my work. S got bitten by a dog yesterday, and today bounced seven checks. (I suppose that's better than being bitten by seven dogs and bouncing one check.) Yesterday, when my son mentioned what we all thought was an ultra-obscure title, his chemistry teacher went to his bookshelf and pulled out the book: Messages from Water, by Masaru Emoto. I saw a segment of rainbow in the cloudscape this evening on the ride home from work. The walking devils of modern life.

a williams interlude

I wanted to write a poem: the autobiography of the works of a poet
William Carlos Williams

I picked up this little book at Book Traders in New Haven recently. It's charming. And contains many surprises!

• Kora in Hell: Improvisations is a book composed of free writing "improvisations" paired with remarks interpeting them.
• Spring and All: "Nobody ever saw it--it had no circulation at all -but I had a lot of fun with it. It consists of poems interspersed with prose, the same idea as Improvisations. It was written when all the world was going crazy about typographical form and is really a travesty on the idea. ... The prose is a mixture of philosophy and nonsense."
• In the American Grain sounds like a history book. Has chapters on Eric the Red, Columbus, Tenochtitlan, Ponce de Leon, Cotton Mather, Poe, and Lincoln.
• Williams translated Phillippe Soupault's Last Nights of Paris from the French. Soupault was "all wound up in Dadaism."
• He describes A Novelette and Other Prose as automatic writing, "I sat and faced the paper and wrote. The same method as in the Improvisations but the material has advanced; it is more sophisticated."
• He was impressed with the plight of the poor. "I felt furious at the country for its lack of progressive ideas."
• Williams acted with Mina Loy in a play produced in the Village.
• White Mule is a work of prose written serially (like Dickens) and it's about -- a baby! "I was crazy about babies, the contempt that all babies have for adults. They don't give a damn what goes on and they let go with everything they have and sometimes it's not too attractive."

Williams had fun with his writing. He wrote a lot of prose. I need to take a look at some of these books. I'm especially curious about the White Mule! He was very interested in the physical beauty of poems, and books, producing some very fine limited editions. And such a connection with free writing! I'm sure the practice helped develop his poetic style.

So much richness, a life's work packed into a Red Wheelbarrow!

risking everything

"I would make a great magazine editor, too, but the people at Condé Nast don't seem to know that."

--Roger Housden in intro to Risking Everything: 110 Poems of Love and Revelation

Today I dipped into this collection, which I checked out from the library. I also went to the bookstore and browsed in the poetry section. What I took down was Cesare Pavese's collected poetry. What I read over coffee was not the poems, but the introduction. I keep running into Einaudi--Natalia Ginzburg, Italo Calvino, Cesare Pavese, all associated with this publisher in Italy during the Fascist period. I'm fascinated by these people, the press, what they stood for, what they suffered for.

The contrast between Einaudi then and Condé Nast now bothers me.

What am I trying to say? I'm impressed by the idealism and the grander purpose Einaudi had. Fighting Fascism. Pavese was imprisoned, suspicious because he studied and translated American literature. Ginzburg lost her husband Leone, tortured and killed in prison.

Their place was Turin, a town I know nothing about. When I think about visiting Italy again, Turin does not pop into my head.

What am I trying to say? I'm trying to make a negative statement about commercialism and a feeble attempt to reach toward a broader responsibility.

I'm trying to say I feel critical of Roger Housden and his poems of "Risking Everything," these poems that urge us to take "risks."

"The risk they urge us toward is the forgetting of our familiar lamentations for a moment and the taking of that tiny yet momentous step--the willingness to try on the life that is truly ours." (p. xv)

If I were to go a little further, I would say that focusing on our lives, or our lamentations, or even our loves and revelations is focusing on an illusion. A warm illusion, like a fresh-from-the-oven Krispy Kreme donut. It puts me in a place I cannot really respect. It puts pressure on me that I cannot solve.

Of course, this whole issue cannot be solved. History is tricky. You can't insert yourself into another time, another place, where risks meant something else. Here, today, I sniff around Seven Stories and Soft Skull. I look at Ad Busters every once in awhile. I made a list: Mouth, NPQ, Salon.com. And there's also Clamour.

I don't really know what I'm doing. I don't have the talent, the credentials, or the fire to be like Housden, let alone Ginzburg. There is absolutely no way I would really Risk Everything. I don't even know what to write about. I'm paralyzed. I don't know what I'm trying to say.

Then again, this is not up to me. So much for "my life."

the persistence of...

I was writing long
opaque ornate lines
full of unknowable lingo

or throwaways
like giddy scraps of cloud
a puff of wind could dissipate

when I wanted to write prose poems
narratives crisscrossed with magic
dense blocks the consistency of crystal balls

and then I just wrote poems in the
same old style
the way I used to

early april

spring
walked by
into the
city

her flimsy
garment
clutched
closed

no sweeping yet
no openings
no digging

co-optation

"The headline should read 'US vows to continue the vicious circle of violence.'"

Iraqco
Tycoco
Newyorco
IResco

I don't understand why the words "freedom" and "democracy" still have such healthy, idealistic connotations. How persistent we are in granting benevolent goodspirit to certain words, regardless of what they are actually used to describe. I hate words for this quality.

Cococo
Americo
Mediaco
Ubriaco

cloudbuzz of anxiety
what is there to say before
rhubarb breaks ground
gnarled and squeaky

Publico
Merco
Mexico
Memco

Memory means something different to me. It's just a sackful of junk which you can use when you want to invent. No one remembers the future.

Noco
Narco
Dayco
Soco

"Why Rococo I don't know except it was one of my mother's favorite words."

--William Carlos Williams discussing one of the poem titles in Al Que Quiere!

Carco
Junco
Democo
Poco