I spent several days last week at the National Poetry Foundation conference in Orono Maine. There were many very good events -- I enjoyed Robert Creeley's opening reading, a strange paper on the British surrealist Morris Cox, giving my own paper and meeting the two other panelists K. Silem Mohammed and Ellen Levy, as well as the fascinating conversation after -- led by Cristanne Miller.
In the middle of the conference I sat and listened to the poet Margaret Avison. She was a thin and elderly woman who is considered a national treasure in Canada. Frankly I had never heard of her. She had short-cropped gray hair and was wearing a striped sweater of some kind that -- for lack of an ability to describe it -- reminded me of something a Dr. Suess character might wear except that it wasn't at all loud, it was just oddly colorful and unique while also seemingly muted and warm.
It was only after her reading -- of which I could barely pay attention because I was tired and she read in a monotone -- that I realized this was a truly great poet who had completely rocked me. I burst into tears uncomprehendingly. Then I picked up a tiny brochure announcing her complete poems and in it was this --
He Couldn't Be Safe (Isaiah 53:5)
He chose a street
where he wouldn't be safe
and nobody there would save him.
He went to the parties
that were not safe
not saying who, but they knew him.
He went down the road
to the Place of the Skull.
The soldier was there, and the criminal,
and the ones who thought that if he didn't have pull
they wouldn't be safe to know him.
He couldn't be safe
and come where we
go, and hide,
and storm, and agree
on everything else if only he
wouldn't show up our artful way
with the light of his simplicity.
No. He couldn't be safe and be
Our Saviour.
In terms of Lutheran surrealist poetics this writer should be examined more closely, although I had a hint that she was Calvinist. She is writing a Christian poetry that seems very quiet at first but she packs a power similar to Jimi Hendrix and those much louder guitar solos that nevertheless have such a sense of enclosure and solitude and inward devotion. Avison's poetry is that of a spiritual mastery of such greatness that she makes it look easy -- but it must have taken a giant diligence to arrive at such a verse. Odd that I'd never heard of her before -- for me she is -- of all the revelations I take from Orono -- almost certainly the one who will open a new path. Read her poem again. It's brilliant. And all her poems have this same stunning intellectual brilliance combined with a Christian perspective that doesn't shout -- check out this shorter one:
Beginnings
Each of us has
some sense of God
and we're all coping
with realities in our
life.
I have trouble getting the
two together.
You do too.
Everybody does.
Paul does.
In a sense he starts there.
Tuesday, June 29, 2004
Sunday, June 27, 2004
Lutheran Surrealist Eschatology
Partially based on Charles Fourier and partially on the book of Revelations, Lutheran Surrealist Eschatology takes something from both.
From Fourier we take the idea of a surplus of giraffes and other elegant animals, as well as azalea trees. Also the seas shall turn to lemonade.
From the Book of Revelations we take the cubic New Jerusalem -- 1600 miles in height, 1600 miles long and 1600 miles wide. Made of gold, in this city the curse of the food chain will at last be over. When Adam and Eve ate the apple, God said, Ok, then if you can't pay attention to what you eat, then everything will just eat everything. In the New Jerusalem, the lamb will lie down using the lion as a pillow with which to comfort his head as she flicks through I Love Lucy reruns.
Our job in keeping all this going is to
a. imagine the New Jerusalem
b. keep the earth from being blown to smithereens
c. the above two items are not to be restlessly sought after, but to seek them patiently in our hearts allowing the visions to come the way that moon-bathers on their yachts in the Islands allow the gentle rays of the moon to illuminate their ghostly words. Our vision is slightly Gothic in its orientation and will include not only a sunny golden city, but a strange night-time New Jerusalem in which spectral figures fly on diaphanous wings to achieve their errands of eternal Love.
Partially based on Charles Fourier and partially on the book of Revelations, Lutheran Surrealist Eschatology takes something from both.
From Fourier we take the idea of a surplus of giraffes and other elegant animals, as well as azalea trees. Also the seas shall turn to lemonade.
From the Book of Revelations we take the cubic New Jerusalem -- 1600 miles in height, 1600 miles long and 1600 miles wide. Made of gold, in this city the curse of the food chain will at last be over. When Adam and Eve ate the apple, God said, Ok, then if you can't pay attention to what you eat, then everything will just eat everything. In the New Jerusalem, the lamb will lie down using the lion as a pillow with which to comfort his head as she flicks through I Love Lucy reruns.
Our job in keeping all this going is to
a. imagine the New Jerusalem
b. keep the earth from being blown to smithereens
c. the above two items are not to be restlessly sought after, but to seek them patiently in our hearts allowing the visions to come the way that moon-bathers on their yachts in the Islands allow the gentle rays of the moon to illuminate their ghostly words. Our vision is slightly Gothic in its orientation and will include not only a sunny golden city, but a strange night-time New Jerusalem in which spectral figures fly on diaphanous wings to achieve their errands of eternal Love.
Wednesday, June 23, 2004
UNTIL
for Riikka
I will kiss you until winter turns to spring
I will kiss you until the vernal turns crimson
I will kiss you until your head pops
Leaving blood & pus all over the wall
I will kiss you until the bowling pins fall
Until Nato attacks the Solomon Islands
I will kiss you until we fall into sleep
Like a pair of tumbling dice
Across the velvety green
I will kiss you until we come up snake eyes
I will kiss you and dream that we are lucky 7
for Riikka
I will kiss you until winter turns to spring
I will kiss you until the vernal turns crimson
I will kiss you until your head pops
Leaving blood & pus all over the wall
I will kiss you until the bowling pins fall
Until Nato attacks the Solomon Islands
I will kiss you until we fall into sleep
Like a pair of tumbling dice
Across the velvety green
I will kiss you until we come up snake eyes
I will kiss you and dream that we are lucky 7
Tuesday, June 22, 2004
Sunday, June 20, 2004
Riddle: Is there such a thing as a talking dinosaur?
Answer: Yes! I went into the Museum of Natural History along the west side of Central Park in NYC and an exhibit outlined the dinosaur family. Apparently all living birds are descendents of the dinosaurs, and in fact are classified as dinosaurs. By extension, this would mean that parrots, which can speak, are talking dinosaurs.
Answer: Yes! I went into the Museum of Natural History along the west side of Central Park in NYC and an exhibit outlined the dinosaur family. Apparently all living birds are descendents of the dinosaurs, and in fact are classified as dinosaurs. By extension, this would mean that parrots, which can speak, are talking dinosaurs.
Saturday, June 19, 2004
Wednesday, June 16, 2004
Monday, June 14, 2004
Candy machines in the 1960s when I was a boy used to offer in addition to several visible choices one that was marked with a question mark. Choosing that option meant that you got a surprise. The adventurousness of people has disappeared, just as that option has disappeared from candy machines over the years. Are there any candy machines left in the whole nation that still offer the 60s option of a question mark?
Voting Lutheran Surrealist in November would be like choosing the question mark. We are a completely undefined entity, and we ourselves wouldn't know what we were going to do until we actually sat down in the Oval Office. Let's see, what are these buttons here...
Still, we have to be better than the other two majoritarian options -- the Ketchup King and the squirt. Why vote for known quantities? Vote minoritarian! Vote Lutheran Surrealist and vote for the ineffable!
Voting Lutheran Surrealist in November would be like choosing the question mark. We are a completely undefined entity, and we ourselves wouldn't know what we were going to do until we actually sat down in the Oval Office. Let's see, what are these buttons here...
Still, we have to be better than the other two majoritarian options -- the Ketchup King and the squirt. Why vote for known quantities? Vote minoritarian! Vote Lutheran Surrealist and vote for the ineffable!
Saturday, June 12, 2004
Wednesday, June 09, 2004
We Lutheran Surrealists often badger ourselves to come up with a coherent political vision so that we can attract a larger portion of the electorate come November. Part of the problem is laziness, true, and another part is that we are a growing movement and are thus no longer as coherent as we once were (there are now two of us).
I will now adopt a professorial intonation in order to rival Senator Kerry in Stentorian boom-boom as I outline the politics of Lutheran Surrealism.
In spite of the strength of Marxist theory and its great traditions, it was obvious to many that, in practice, Marxism was worse than what it had sought to cure. In the Soviet Union, the People's Republic of China, Cambodia, and throughout the East Bloc, Marxism had become a travesty. In view of this, many in the 1960s sought out alternative social theories developed by eccentrics such as Charles Fourier (appreciated by Marx, Benjamin, etc.).
The problem of Marxism was that it separated society into good (the proletariat) and evil (the bourgeoisie). It is apparent that any society that considers some of its members to be evil (a priori) is itself unfair. Fourier thought that everyone was good, but they need to be composed so that their passions would successfully interact (foot fetishists with those who wanted their feet admired).
Lutheran surrealism believes that there OUGHT to be pressure between the id and the superego, which is negotiated by the ego.
Similarly, there ought to be a right and a left, but reality ought to be negotiated by the liberals, between them.
Negotiation, also, between artists (imagination) and the businessmen (pragmatism), but leaning toward the businessmen, please.
In short, there ought to be negotiation between heaven and earth, leaning toward daily reality. Lutheran Surrealist political theory is thus very similar to what Lutherans as I understand it call Two Kingdoms theology (specialists may consult Robert Benne's The Paradoxical Vision for a more exact definition of 2 kingdoms often configured as the number 8 with the top half circulating into and conversing with the bottom half in a kind of bilateral hourglass bikini).
I will now adopt a professorial intonation in order to rival Senator Kerry in Stentorian boom-boom as I outline the politics of Lutheran Surrealism.
In spite of the strength of Marxist theory and its great traditions, it was obvious to many that, in practice, Marxism was worse than what it had sought to cure. In the Soviet Union, the People's Republic of China, Cambodia, and throughout the East Bloc, Marxism had become a travesty. In view of this, many in the 1960s sought out alternative social theories developed by eccentrics such as Charles Fourier (appreciated by Marx, Benjamin, etc.).
The problem of Marxism was that it separated society into good (the proletariat) and evil (the bourgeoisie). It is apparent that any society that considers some of its members to be evil (a priori) is itself unfair. Fourier thought that everyone was good, but they need to be composed so that their passions would successfully interact (foot fetishists with those who wanted their feet admired).
Lutheran surrealism believes that there OUGHT to be pressure between the id and the superego, which is negotiated by the ego.
Similarly, there ought to be a right and a left, but reality ought to be negotiated by the liberals, between them.
Negotiation, also, between artists (imagination) and the businessmen (pragmatism), but leaning toward the businessmen, please.
In short, there ought to be negotiation between heaven and earth, leaning toward daily reality. Lutheran Surrealist political theory is thus very similar to what Lutherans as I understand it call Two Kingdoms theology (specialists may consult Robert Benne's The Paradoxical Vision for a more exact definition of 2 kingdoms often configured as the number 8 with the top half circulating into and conversing with the bottom half in a kind of bilateral hourglass bikini).
Monday, June 07, 2004
I've had an intuition that for me at least it's Reznikoff and Zukofsky and not Pound. Pound links to the wrong classical culture -- to Greece and to Rome. He's multicultural and his inspection of yet other cultures must be continued as we know hardly anything about any cultures including our own and we cannot therefore wave away the beauties of the Yoruba or the Hopi or the Navajo or the Provencal. But Pound's anti-Semitism prevented him from privileging a powerful culture whose ancient texts really move me. We must turn up the dimmer switch on the Jews.
from In MEMORIAM -- Charles Reznikoff
You have seen a bush beside the road
whose leaves the passing beasts pluck at
and whose twigs are sometimes broken
by a wheel, and yet it flourishes,
because the roots are sound --
such a heavy wheel is Rome;
these Romans,
all the legions of the East
from Egypt and Syria,
the islands of the sea and the rivers of Parthia,
gathered here
to trample down Jerusalem,
when they have become a legend
and Rome a fable,
that old men will tell of in the city's gate,
the tellers will be Jews and their speech Hebrew.
(By the Waters of Manhattan 34)
from In MEMORIAM -- Charles Reznikoff
You have seen a bush beside the road
whose leaves the passing beasts pluck at
and whose twigs are sometimes broken
by a wheel, and yet it flourishes,
because the roots are sound --
such a heavy wheel is Rome;
these Romans,
all the legions of the East
from Egypt and Syria,
the islands of the sea and the rivers of Parthia,
gathered here
to trample down Jerusalem,
when they have become a legend
and Rome a fable,
that old men will tell of in the city's gate,
the tellers will be Jews and their speech Hebrew.
(By the Waters of Manhattan 34)
According to Kepler a line infinitely extended on both sides eventually becomes a circle and meets at a single point.
Similarly, a plane at the point of infinity bends and comes back and becomes a roll of flame.
Where I think that paganism went wrong is in the lack of a concept of infinity.
I was on a bus from DC to Delhi and read Art & Geometry: A study in Space Intuitions and gleaned the notions above from the book (it's a Dover classic and is only 6.95). William M. Ivins, who wrote the book, got me to thinking about how our whole concept of Greece is a fraudulent fake.
When I read the dumb myths of Greece with their squabbling soap operas, their petty politics, frivolous sexual practices, ridiculous epic poems without any sense of anything other than might is right I wonder if it's the anti-Semitism that has prevented us from realizing that the best aspects of our culture in reality comes from Jerusalem and not from Athens.
When people speak of classical culture -- all I can say is that this culture doesn't move me at all while the Jewish culture does -- Genesis, Leviticus, the stories of Moses. They are an adult culture who walked on flames and understood infinity.
And this is where Charles Olson goes wrong. The haptic sense of the primitive Greeks has nothing on the infinity of the ancient Hebrews.
The Greeks: an ignorant and bumptious people.
The Greeks sacrificed cattle. The Jews sacrificed themselves. Working out the feeling of the sacrifices of these two groups would take a book, but suffice it to say that it's different. The Greeks were opportunists who sacrificed in order to get something. The Jews operated on another plan altogether.
Our Christian culture to the extent that it remains has almost nothing in common with the ancient Greeks. It's the Jews. Why do our buildings in the Capitol resemble Greek buildings? Why do we think we look back to that lot and to the primitive conceptions of those people?
Like dinosaurs the Greeks were based on all the wrong principles.
The Jews had it all right, and so their culture remains intact.
The Jews understood infinity (I know what I mean by this but I got the idea from Ivins and I can't really articulate it quite yet on my own). The Greeks did not understand infinity (I have only the vaguest sense of this but again the idea is Ivin's and he makes a very good case for it). Yes, the Greeks did give us Euclid, but it is Kepler and co. who give us this notion of infinity and how an infinitely large circle will become a straight line, and a straight line will ultimately become a circle. Ivins comments,
"So far as seems to be known, it was the first geometrical, as distinct from philosophical, formulation of the doctrine of continuity. It was an idea the like of which cannot be found in Greek mathematics" (85).
Our best poets such as William Blake could not have been born in a non-Christian culture, could they? Eternity in an hour? I don't think the Greeks thought along these lines. Ivins comments,
"Unlike the ad hoc god of the Greek philosophers, He was not merely a hypothetical answer to metaphysical difficulties, He was real and thus a cause of such difficulties. After the death of Julian, when this thinking creative God, Himself subject to the laws of thought, became the undisputed official God of the Empire, the ancient world was doomed. If we would understand the passing of the Greeks we must remember, among other things, the implications of the fact that they had many gods and no theology" (57).
The Greeks were just frivolous frat boys. The Jews were men (except when they were women).
Similarly, a plane at the point of infinity bends and comes back and becomes a roll of flame.
Where I think that paganism went wrong is in the lack of a concept of infinity.
I was on a bus from DC to Delhi and read Art & Geometry: A study in Space Intuitions and gleaned the notions above from the book (it's a Dover classic and is only 6.95). William M. Ivins, who wrote the book, got me to thinking about how our whole concept of Greece is a fraudulent fake.
When I read the dumb myths of Greece with their squabbling soap operas, their petty politics, frivolous sexual practices, ridiculous epic poems without any sense of anything other than might is right I wonder if it's the anti-Semitism that has prevented us from realizing that the best aspects of our culture in reality comes from Jerusalem and not from Athens.
When people speak of classical culture -- all I can say is that this culture doesn't move me at all while the Jewish culture does -- Genesis, Leviticus, the stories of Moses. They are an adult culture who walked on flames and understood infinity.
And this is where Charles Olson goes wrong. The haptic sense of the primitive Greeks has nothing on the infinity of the ancient Hebrews.
The Greeks: an ignorant and bumptious people.
The Greeks sacrificed cattle. The Jews sacrificed themselves. Working out the feeling of the sacrifices of these two groups would take a book, but suffice it to say that it's different. The Greeks were opportunists who sacrificed in order to get something. The Jews operated on another plan altogether.
Our Christian culture to the extent that it remains has almost nothing in common with the ancient Greeks. It's the Jews. Why do our buildings in the Capitol resemble Greek buildings? Why do we think we look back to that lot and to the primitive conceptions of those people?
Like dinosaurs the Greeks were based on all the wrong principles.
The Jews had it all right, and so their culture remains intact.
The Jews understood infinity (I know what I mean by this but I got the idea from Ivins and I can't really articulate it quite yet on my own). The Greeks did not understand infinity (I have only the vaguest sense of this but again the idea is Ivin's and he makes a very good case for it). Yes, the Greeks did give us Euclid, but it is Kepler and co. who give us this notion of infinity and how an infinitely large circle will become a straight line, and a straight line will ultimately become a circle. Ivins comments,
"So far as seems to be known, it was the first geometrical, as distinct from philosophical, formulation of the doctrine of continuity. It was an idea the like of which cannot be found in Greek mathematics" (85).
Our best poets such as William Blake could not have been born in a non-Christian culture, could they? Eternity in an hour? I don't think the Greeks thought along these lines. Ivins comments,
"Unlike the ad hoc god of the Greek philosophers, He was not merely a hypothetical answer to metaphysical difficulties, He was real and thus a cause of such difficulties. After the death of Julian, when this thinking creative God, Himself subject to the laws of thought, became the undisputed official God of the Empire, the ancient world was doomed. If we would understand the passing of the Greeks we must remember, among other things, the implications of the fact that they had many gods and no theology" (57).
The Greeks were just frivolous frat boys. The Jews were men (except when they were women).
Tuesday, June 01, 2004
Cities as clocks.
Is time a circle a straight line a curlicue a set of dots a stock market chart does it end.
Does the Rapture abolish time?
Time as a structure of sequences of feeling (Raymond Williams).
A critique of time in the Marx brothers (as opposed to Marx).
Chinese time.
We could say that it is TIME for Lutheran surrealism -- but would we mean that we are now going to integrate comedy and sobriety?
Civilization depends on plot & continuity as does the novel until modernism when the plots disappear and as Gertrude Stein says quality becomes more important. In Firbank there is a very subtle plot in Concerning the Eccentricities of Cardinal Pirelli -- but it's generally a clock that winds down.
Is there a plot in Brautigan's novels? How could it be described algebraically?
The city as a pie -- with the hard crust being the society matrons in Marx brothers films -- while inside there was the chaos, especially as represented by Harpo, who was appreciated by all the surrealists as well as the Beats. Harpo doesn't allow for continuity, but disrupts the narrative and presents discontinuous moments outside of time.
Falstaff might be said to do the same -- while King Henry V is concerned about time -- and holds to a final vision through the ups and downs of the plot -- Falstaff only cares about a good time in the moment.
Communities in space & time -- Bruderhoff, Oneida, Naropa Institute.
Hegel on the concept of time via Kojeve.
Proustian time.
Time for Luther, as compared to Breton.
What room is there for ludic potential in the Lutheran time frame, versus that of say Charles Fourier.
You need to examine the thing from the viewpoint of time in order to open a poet's language.
The distinction between being (Heidegger) and becoming (Deleuze) is based on time -- and marks a powerful difference between pagan and progressive culture?
Being is like snow falling -- nothing needs to be changed -- the Frost poem -- my little horse must think it queer to stop without a farmhouse near -- a moment of beauty outside of time -- versus having to get somewhere in order to continue with the economics.
Is time a circle a straight line a curlicue a set of dots a stock market chart does it end.
Does the Rapture abolish time?
Time as a structure of sequences of feeling (Raymond Williams).
A critique of time in the Marx brothers (as opposed to Marx).
Chinese time.
We could say that it is TIME for Lutheran surrealism -- but would we mean that we are now going to integrate comedy and sobriety?
Civilization depends on plot & continuity as does the novel until modernism when the plots disappear and as Gertrude Stein says quality becomes more important. In Firbank there is a very subtle plot in Concerning the Eccentricities of Cardinal Pirelli -- but it's generally a clock that winds down.
Is there a plot in Brautigan's novels? How could it be described algebraically?
The city as a pie -- with the hard crust being the society matrons in Marx brothers films -- while inside there was the chaos, especially as represented by Harpo, who was appreciated by all the surrealists as well as the Beats. Harpo doesn't allow for continuity, but disrupts the narrative and presents discontinuous moments outside of time.
Falstaff might be said to do the same -- while King Henry V is concerned about time -- and holds to a final vision through the ups and downs of the plot -- Falstaff only cares about a good time in the moment.
Communities in space & time -- Bruderhoff, Oneida, Naropa Institute.
Hegel on the concept of time via Kojeve.
Proustian time.
Time for Luther, as compared to Breton.
What room is there for ludic potential in the Lutheran time frame, versus that of say Charles Fourier.
You need to examine the thing from the viewpoint of time in order to open a poet's language.
The distinction between being (Heidegger) and becoming (Deleuze) is based on time -- and marks a powerful difference between pagan and progressive culture?
Being is like snow falling -- nothing needs to be changed -- the Frost poem -- my little horse must think it queer to stop without a farmhouse near -- a moment of beauty outside of time -- versus having to get somewhere in order to continue with the economics.
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