Sandburg house photos. I may have already posted some of these. In any case.
Taylor Mead, Bohemian and Actor, Dies at 88
Mr. Mead colluded with Andy Warhol in the 1960s to make several curious films.
First Ayres
A more particular link.
Chapbook out from Longhouse Publishers
‘First Ayres’
Some of Jonathan Williams’ polaroids
Anna and I on WordPlay
Streams until Sunday Dec. 2nd. Should be available at this address now:
Photos by Anna Levitsky
I can watch this endlessly
‘As I write, the writing talks to me. In the Orphic tradition, poets could understand the language of birds and trees. Listening to the roar of the waves, voices appear. It is only a story we are making up, but it comes to us. We find we are living, suffering, loving, dying a story. We had not known otherwise.’
—Robert Duncan in “Man’s Fulfillment in Order and Strife”
*
‘All night long / I was a Eumolpidae / as I slept / putting things together / which had not previously / fit’
—Charles Olson, in The Maximus Poems
re-reading one of my favorite poems (the first I ever read of O’Leary’s), Midas (which takes its cover from Golding’s Metamorphosis; Meeting Eyes Bindery, Pamphlet Number Four, dedicated to Ronald Johnson), Peter O’Leary.
some fire:
three bits from each of the three sections:
Orpheus percussed nervous songs
wreathing spears maenads hurled in leaves;
mad stones tossed took up Pythagorean orbits:
fractious Berecynthian clamor—flutes, cornets,
tympanies—& ululated
Bacchanals drowned Orphy’s sound.
(from MASKS
A calculus of riches,
the stones used in whose reckoning are gold-plated or obsidian
& clattering in the palms of Montezeuma’s accountants:
“20 chests of ground chocolate, likewise 2000 loaves of very white salt
refined in the shape of a mould for the consumption of the Lords of Mexico;
800 xicaras out of which they drank chocolate;
a little vessel of small turquoise stones; 4000 loads of lime;
tiles of gold, of the size of an oyster, and as thick as the finger,
20 bags of gold dust of the finest quality;
a diadem of gold of a specified pattern;
20 lip-jewels of clear amber, ornamented with gold;
200 loads of chocolate; 100 pots or jars of liquid-amber;
8000 handfuls of rich scarlet feathers; 40 tiger skins”
[Wm H Prescott, The Conquest of
Mexico]
(from LOOT
Sun crown worn new;
craved arcanum arcanorum in the meridian of
a solar genius’ palm: illumination & rapture
at the feminine coiffure—.
Gold is “circulatory work of the sun.”
[Michael Maier, 1598]
(from LUSTRATIONS
——
from A Hornet’s Nest, Jonathan Williams, edited by Jeffery Beam:
‘For prose is to order. Poetry just happens, like dandruff and what some call inspiration.’
‘The voice of the bulldozer, not the turtle, is loud upon the land.’
‘I have a feeling about the Internet. I think it’s the younger sister of the Gorgon Medusa. …’
‘I love to visit The Strange like some people love to visit The Country.’
‘To me—Americans are notoriously without reverence for their beginnings, live in terror of Big Daddy, and cop out with no rites or care for the land of their inheritance.’
‘Muse in a meadow, compose in / a mind.’
[my capitals]
‘OLSON SAID, DON’T EVER BE INTIMIDATED BY THE DISDAIN OR THE DISINTEREST OF THE WORLD. GET YOURSELF SOME TYPE, GET YOURSELF SOME PAPER, AND PRINT IT.’
‘Poets are the sign-painters of Elysium. They are alive to add to beloved traditions and to celebrate the Great Dead.’
‘Size matters sighs matter.’
‘Some guys would fuck mud / if only they could.’
‘If political stands must be expressed before checks can be written, let it be known that Jargon is pro-Man, pro-Woman, pro-Animal, pro-Vegetable, pro-Mineral; pro-Israeli, pro-Ibn Arabi; pro-Dionysus, pro-Apollo; pro-Choice, pro-Diversity, pro-Raffine, pro-Blunt, pro-Mansuetude, pro-Menade, pro-Quietude, pro-Prozac, and mite nigh prolapsed and next to powerless.’
‘Modernism is an anachronism / and is as futile as / calling today’s sunset modern.’
[my capitals]
‘SYLLABLES ARE ABLE / TO TURN PLANTAINS INTO QUATRAINS.’
‘I like to catch people speaking “poems” who never heard of the word poet in their lives.’
‘We are too much in the hands of / those on whom we lay / no hands.’
‘Don’t fuck with me, I’m barely under control. [In a growl. Response to writer-editor Damon Sauve’s remark, “Jonathan’s really rockin” on Jonathan’s simultaneous classical musical conducting and driving going home after a successful, and well-lubed, reading.]
my reading this morning
