Nov 21, 2009
Verses
Charles Olson
THE KINGFISHERS
1
What does not change / is the will to change
He woke, fully clothed, in his bed. He
remembered only one thing, the birds, how
when he came in, he had gone around the rooms
and got them back in their cage, the green one first,
she with the bad leg, and then the blue,
the one they had hoped was a male
Otherwise? Yes, Fernand, who had talked lispingly of Albers & Angkor Vat.
He had left the party without a word. How he got up, got into his coat,
I do not know. When I saw him, he was at the door, but it did not matter,
he was already sliding along the wall of the night, losing himself
in some crack of the ruins. That it should have been he who said, "The kingfishers!
who cares
for their feathers
now?"
His last words had been, "The pool is slime." Suddenly everyone,
ceasing their talk, sat in a row around him, watched
they did not so much hear, or pay attention, they
wondered, looked at each other, smirked, but listened,
he repeated and repeated, could not go beyond his thought
"The pool the kingfishers' feathers were wealth why
did the export stop?"
It was then he left
2
I thought of the E on the stone, and of what Mao said
la lumiere"
but the kingfisher
de l’aurore"
but the kingfisher flew west
est devant nous!
he got the color of his breast
from the heat of the setting sun!
The features are, the feebleness of the feet (syndactylism of the 3rd & 4th digit)
the bill, serrated, sometimes a pronounced beak, the wings
where the color is, short and round, the tail
inconspicuous.
But not these things are the factors. Not the birds.
The legends are
legends. Dead, hung up indoors, the kingfisher
will not indicate a favoring wind,
or avert the thunderbolt. Nor, by its nesting,
still the waters, with the new year, for seven days.
It is true, it does nest with the opening year, but not on the waters.
It nests at the end of a tunnel bored by itself in a bank. There,
six or eight white and translucent eggs are laid, on fishbones '
not on bare clay, on bones thrown up in pellets by the birds.
On these rejectamenta
(as they accumulate they form a cup-shaped structure) the young are born
And, as they are fed and grow, this nest of excrement and decayed fish becomes
a dripping, fetid mass
Mao concluded:
nous devons
nous lever
et agir!
3
When the attentions change / the jungle
leaps in
even the stones are split
they rive
Or,
enter
that other conqueror we more naturally recognize
he so resembles ourselves
But the E
cut so rudely on that oldest stone
sounded otherwise,
was differently heard
as, in another time, were treasures used:
(and, later, much later, a fine ear thought
a scarlet coat)
"of green feathers feet, beaks and eyes
of gold
"animals likewise,
resembling snails
"a large wheel, gold, with figures of unknown four-foots,
and worked with tufts of leaves, weight
3800 ounces
"last, two birds, of thread and featherwork, the quills
gold, the feet
gold, the two birds perched on two reeds
gold, the reeds arising from two embroidered mounds,
one yellow, the other
white.
"And from each reed hung
seven feathered tassels.
In this instance, the priests
(in dark cotton robes, and dirty,
their dishevelled hair matted with blood, and flowing wildly
over their shoulders)
rush in among the people, calling on them
to protect their gods
And all now is war
where so lately there was peace,
and the sweet brotherhood, the use
of tilled fields.
4
Not one death but many,
not accumulation but change, the feed-back proves, the feed-back is
the law
Into the same river no man steps twice
When fire dies air dies
No one remains, nor is, one
Around an appearance, one common model, we grow up
many. Else how is it,
if we remain the same,
we take pleasure now
in what we did not take pleasure before? love
contrary objects? admire and/or find fault? use
other words, feel other passions, have
nor figure, appearance, disposition, tissue
the same?
To be in different states without a change
is not a possibility
We can be precise. The factors are
in the animal and/or the machine the factors are
communication and/or control, both involve
the message. And what is the message? The message is
a discrete or continuous sequence of measurable events distributed in time
is the birth of air, is
the birth of water, is
a state between
the origin and
the end, between
birth and the beginning of
another fetid nest
is change, presents
no more than itself
And the too strong grasping of it,
when it is pressed together and condensed,
loses it
This very thing you are
II
They buried their dead in a sitting posture
serpent cane razor ray of the sun
And she sprinkled water on the head of the child, crying
"Cioa-coatl! Cioa-coatl!"
with her face to the west
Where the bones are found, in each personal heap
with what each enjoyed, there is always
the Mongolian louse
The light is in the east. Yes. And we must rise, act. Yet
in the west, despite the apparent darkness (the whiteness
which covers all), if you look, if you can bear, if you can, long enough
as long as it was necessary for him, my guide
to look into the yellow of that longest-lasting rose
so you must, and, in that whiteness, into that face, with what candor, look
and, considering the dryness of the place
the long absence of an adequate race
(of the two who first came, each a conquistador, one healed, the other
tore the eastern idols down, toppled
the temple walls, which, says the excuser
were black from human gore)
hear
hear, where the dry blood talks
where the old appetite walks
la piu saporita et migliore
che si possa truovar al mondo
where it hides, look
in the eye how it runs
in the flesh / chalk
but under these petals
in the emptiness
regard the light, contemplate
the flower
whence it arose
with what violence benevolence is bought
what cost in gesture justice brings
what wrongs domestic rights involve
what stalks
this silence
what pudor pejorocracy affronts
how awe, night-rest and neighborhood can rot
what breeds where dirtiness is law
what crawls
below
III
I am no Greek, hath not th'advantage.
And of course, no Roman:
he can take no risk that matters,
the risk of beauty least of all.
But I have my kin, if for no other reason than
(as he said, next of kin) I commit myself, and,
given my freedom, I'd be a cad
if I didn't. Which is most true.
It works out this way, despite the disadvantage.
I offer, in explanation, a quote:
si j'ai du gout, ce n'est gueres
que pour la terre et les pierres
Despite the discrepancy (an ocean courage age)
this is also true: if I have any taste
it is only because I have interested myself
in what was slain in the sun
I pose you your question:
shall you uncover honey / where maggots are?
I hunt among stones
1949
THE KINGFISHERS
1
What does not change / is the will to change
He woke, fully clothed, in his bed. He
remembered only one thing, the birds, how
when he came in, he had gone around the rooms
and got them back in their cage, the green one first,
she with the bad leg, and then the blue,
the one they had hoped was a male
Otherwise? Yes, Fernand, who had talked lispingly of Albers & Angkor Vat.
He had left the party without a word. How he got up, got into his coat,
I do not know. When I saw him, he was at the door, but it did not matter,
he was already sliding along the wall of the night, losing himself
in some crack of the ruins. That it should have been he who said, "The kingfishers!
who cares
for their feathers
now?"
His last words had been, "The pool is slime." Suddenly everyone,
ceasing their talk, sat in a row around him, watched
they did not so much hear, or pay attention, they
wondered, looked at each other, smirked, but listened,
he repeated and repeated, could not go beyond his thought
"The pool the kingfishers' feathers were wealth why
did the export stop?"
It was then he left
2
I thought of the E on the stone, and of what Mao said
la lumiere"
but the kingfisher
de l’aurore"
but the kingfisher flew west
est devant nous!
he got the color of his breast
from the heat of the setting sun!
The features are, the feebleness of the feet (syndactylism of the 3rd & 4th digit)
the bill, serrated, sometimes a pronounced beak, the wings
where the color is, short and round, the tail
inconspicuous.
But not these things are the factors. Not the birds.
The legends are
legends. Dead, hung up indoors, the kingfisher
will not indicate a favoring wind,
or avert the thunderbolt. Nor, by its nesting,
still the waters, with the new year, for seven days.
It is true, it does nest with the opening year, but not on the waters.
It nests at the end of a tunnel bored by itself in a bank. There,
six or eight white and translucent eggs are laid, on fishbones '
not on bare clay, on bones thrown up in pellets by the birds.
On these rejectamenta
(as they accumulate they form a cup-shaped structure) the young are born
And, as they are fed and grow, this nest of excrement and decayed fish becomes
a dripping, fetid mass
Mao concluded:
nous devons
nous lever
et agir!
3
When the attentions change / the jungle
leaps in
even the stones are split
they rive
Or,
enter
that other conqueror we more naturally recognize
he so resembles ourselves
But the E
cut so rudely on that oldest stone
sounded otherwise,
was differently heard
as, in another time, were treasures used:
(and, later, much later, a fine ear thought
a scarlet coat)
"of green feathers feet, beaks and eyes
of gold
"animals likewise,
resembling snails
"a large wheel, gold, with figures of unknown four-foots,
and worked with tufts of leaves, weight
3800 ounces
"last, two birds, of thread and featherwork, the quills
gold, the feet
gold, the two birds perched on two reeds
gold, the reeds arising from two embroidered mounds,
one yellow, the other
white.
"And from each reed hung
seven feathered tassels.
In this instance, the priests
(in dark cotton robes, and dirty,
their dishevelled hair matted with blood, and flowing wildly
over their shoulders)
rush in among the people, calling on them
to protect their gods
And all now is war
where so lately there was peace,
and the sweet brotherhood, the use
of tilled fields.
4
Not one death but many,
not accumulation but change, the feed-back proves, the feed-back is
the law
Into the same river no man steps twice
When fire dies air dies
No one remains, nor is, one
Around an appearance, one common model, we grow up
many. Else how is it,
if we remain the same,
we take pleasure now
in what we did not take pleasure before? love
contrary objects? admire and/or find fault? use
other words, feel other passions, have
nor figure, appearance, disposition, tissue
the same?
To be in different states without a change
is not a possibility
We can be precise. The factors are
in the animal and/or the machine the factors are
communication and/or control, both involve
the message. And what is the message? The message is
a discrete or continuous sequence of measurable events distributed in time
is the birth of air, is
the birth of water, is
a state between
the origin and
the end, between
birth and the beginning of
another fetid nest
is change, presents
no more than itself
And the too strong grasping of it,
when it is pressed together and condensed,
loses it
This very thing you are
II
They buried their dead in a sitting posture
serpent cane razor ray of the sun
And she sprinkled water on the head of the child, crying
"Cioa-coatl! Cioa-coatl!"
with her face to the west
Where the bones are found, in each personal heap
with what each enjoyed, there is always
the Mongolian louse
The light is in the east. Yes. And we must rise, act. Yet
in the west, despite the apparent darkness (the whiteness
which covers all), if you look, if you can bear, if you can, long enough
as long as it was necessary for him, my guide
to look into the yellow of that longest-lasting rose
so you must, and, in that whiteness, into that face, with what candor, look
and, considering the dryness of the place
the long absence of an adequate race
(of the two who first came, each a conquistador, one healed, the other
tore the eastern idols down, toppled
the temple walls, which, says the excuser
were black from human gore)
hear
hear, where the dry blood talks
where the old appetite walks
la piu saporita et migliore
che si possa truovar al mondo
where it hides, look
in the eye how it runs
in the flesh / chalk
but under these petals
in the emptiness
regard the light, contemplate
the flower
whence it arose
with what violence benevolence is bought
what cost in gesture justice brings
what wrongs domestic rights involve
what stalks
this silence
what pudor pejorocracy affronts
how awe, night-rest and neighborhood can rot
what breeds where dirtiness is law
what crawls
below
III
I am no Greek, hath not th'advantage.
And of course, no Roman:
he can take no risk that matters,
the risk of beauty least of all.
But I have my kin, if for no other reason than
(as he said, next of kin) I commit myself, and,
given my freedom, I'd be a cad
if I didn't. Which is most true.
It works out this way, despite the disadvantage.
I offer, in explanation, a quote:
si j'ai du gout, ce n'est gueres
que pour la terre et les pierres
Despite the discrepancy (an ocean courage age)
this is also true: if I have any taste
it is only because I have interested myself
in what was slain in the sun
I pose you your question:
shall you uncover honey / where maggots are?
I hunt among stones
1949
Oh Cyrus
Well for one, we were 12 when this happened and the time was ripe for a dreamy, lusty, star-packed miniseries adaptation of Homer's Odyssey. There are times when we go off the rails here at A&P with the "ugly-hot" and all those "ethnics" and the young ones and the crazy estylish, but sometimes we just need to step back and appreciate the classically handsome. Armand Assante, I am glad you are in this world, walking around, being hot and stuff. Talk to me on a boat.
Nov 17, 2009
It's getting emotionally dangerous for me to think about someday being able to purchase big-old paintings at auction....this creep would just be such a joy to live with!--check the pretty shells and coral fastened (pinned?) to the air and that shadowy, sexually ambitious (and drunken?) guard dog in the bottom left. Woah now.
Nov 16, 2009
schmaltz and crackers
Dyspepsia.
Sunday evening, after some serious thrills at the new-ish American Wing (goodness), the sale of my childhood home and two hours spent watching Sex Rehab with Dr. Drew left me sour and achey—ill still—no joke. I'm pretty delicate.
So I've been tending my condition with flat cola and saltines and...soap:
—Billy Baldwin Decorates—a painting hung on a mirrored panel and then this sort of line:
"I think an unpleasant atmosphere results from the entry into the obviously 'rich' room—the kind that makes you feel like you're caught right in the middle between the devil of a museum and the deep sea of embarras de richesse. And a thing you can say for Southern women—they're far less guilty on this score than Northerners." (Yes and no...sure. I'm thinking about houses is Memphis and those ways of entertaining [possessing enough natural oldness and eccentricity to be easy about keeping some "regular," even low-low things, foods, habits], but also favorite, accidentally cluttered or accidentally barren New York apartments and what a good time I've had at/with The Met lately.)
—two songs: Rihanna's "Russian Roulette" (I've been critical of the album art [for no particular reason] and last week's Diane Sawyer interview left a bad taste in my mouth, but this track is great, I find...plotting, plodding, as heavy and Eastern as the title suggests, totally transSIBERIAN!) and then also Mary J. "I'm Going Down," yes (musical theater).
—David Hare's screenplay for Michael Cunningham's "The Hours."
—this ad (I mean, yipeee).
—this program too, watched on and off after meeting that confederate spur(er of a new-future collection) in Louisville (featured below)...the interviews are wonderful.
ender
generally not a great fan of year-end (or now, decade-end) lists. but the format of this guy from the economist's vanity mag intelligent life (wow) is quite good....a group of number-less, free-form entries from professional aesthetes about the way the aughts (or, as the brit's have it, 'the noughties') looked. there is some cultural dissonance (sienna miller [not half so important as m.k. olsen]....jade jagger?, combat fatigues?), but also some winning stuff: the bits about iPods, bags, celebrity, and vomit....
Nov 15, 2009
Nov 14, 2009
Bad Gurl 4 Lyfe: Cassie "Manuella Santos" Steele.
Um, apparently Cassie Steele is an even crazier bitch in real life. I don't know who Mr. Colson is (I like to think he's Degrassi's middle-aged on-set tutor), but I fear for him. The same way I fear for every man I've ever loved. Please to enjoy her Canadian Top 40 Hit....?
Nov 13, 2009
Nail Color for the Weekend
OPI Holiday Glow, but no holiday today, just grateful that I'm able to spend a large chunk of today's work hours getting my nails did and killing time in a Park Slope coffee shop. The good news is that they play a lot of Kelly Clarkson here but the downside is that she's not drowning out the conversational English lessons on either side of me. They could also be blind dates but how would you ever know the difference?
Nov 11, 2009
Nov 9, 2009
Nov 8, 2009
Verses
From-a-babe, I've felt a spiritual affiliation with WWI dead and mourning (likely past life residue). So this morning (nostalgic?), I returned to my collected Siegfried Sassoon. Sassoon has never impacted me like Wilfred Owen, never appeared to be as fine and musical a poet (or as tragic a figure). But he was certainly more prolific and . . . journal*istic? The war poems are best taken whole; severed from the pack, they are sort of naive, the satirical diary entries of a well-educated boy encountering misfortune for the first time, reactionary and freshly political. When read one after another, they impress with honesty, render one incapable of cynicism for their earnestness and for the trauma through which they were penned. That said, here are two, set aside, both on the subject of rough amusements, a persistent grotesque (I hope they haven't been criminally airlifted from context . . . they're definitely Brit-priggish):
"When I'm among a Blaze of Lights"
8 January, 1917
When I'm among a blaze of lights
With tawdry music and cigars
And women dawdling through delights,
And officers in cocktail bars,
Sometimes I think of garden nights
And elm trees nodding at the stars.
I dream of a small firelit room
With yellow candles burning straight,
And glowing pictures in the gloom,
And kindly books that hold me late.
Of things like these I choose to think
When I can never be alone:
Then someone says, 'Another drink?'
And turns my living heart to stone.
"Blighters"
4 February, 1917
The House is crammed: tier beyond tier they grin
And cackle at The Show, while prancing ranks
Of harlots shrill the chorus, drunk with din;
'We're sure the Kaiser loves our dear old Tanks!'
I'd like to see a Tank come down the stalls,
Lurching to ragtime tunes, or 'Home sweet Home,'
And there'd be no jokes in Music-halls
To mock the riddled corpses round Baupaume.
Nov 5, 2009
Nov 4, 2009
Nov 3, 2009
singles
"Sweet Dreams"
Beyoncé
Last week, my co-worker was playing a video linked from FB, some throaty, grey shoegazer with a haircut covering "Single Ladies." It was 'ick. He said, "Why is everybody raving about this?" I said, "...because they're racist." And then I watched the for-real "Single Ladies" video a few times--still good, still a call to arms not a snooze, not even a little bit. Occasionally I wonder if, we spectators get lazy about newness and give the establishment too much credit/obeisance (that "...to be pleased means to say yes" business). Sure. But Be is never not working. She works to make our lives easy, to provide us with half-familiar/half-fresh treats, soundtrackings, jams--21st Century POP MUSIC, red-blooded, healthy post-Modernism. This guy, "Sweet Dreams," the most recent single drawn from I am...Sasha Fierce (the 6th or 7th off the record since last autumn?), is Be's Gothic number, as Industrial as our bright Aughts R&B gets (cousin to Rihanna's "Disturbia") and with lyrics like, "Tattoo your name across my heart so it will remain/Not even death can make us part/What kind of dream is this?" and "Clouds filled with stars cover the skies/And I hope it rains/You're the perfect lullaby." I really dig her invocation of dreamstates. Dreams are--as soon as we become aware of them, waking--histories, passages, memories, inaccessible. This angle lends the song a deal of regret, glances backward. She opens with a loosely cast phrase, "turn the lights on," that is applied as a portion of the driving beat throughout the song. In the track's present tense, Be is no longer falling into soupy, dark love, but attempting to reconstruct and measure it 'in the light'...after.
"Sally"
Sam Sparro
I picked up this dude's album because...um...a gay teen played it for me at an American Apparel, saying, "You wouldn't believe how he looks: cute white boy with a side bang, wearing our shit." Whatever. Ain't no shame. This and the U.K. hit, "Black and Gold," are supreme and smart dance songs, despite their hipster cheese (Sparro is an Aussie living in El Lay....so....). And "Sally." I mapped out something like five music videos (starring me?) for it as I rode the train into Manhattan this morning. My favorite was a tour of the Financial District, dead at night with Christmas decorations on the lamposts, dancing in and out of empty dives and office tower porticoes in a 91/2 Weeks, off the shoulder, creamy Irish cable knit sweater and nothing else (shoes?). The lyrical take on stripper dadsums-issues is a touch ham-handed. But Sam's throwback politics are in the right place (I loathe the fourth-wave approach to sex industry-as-empowerment).
Pure redux--tragic heroines/social issues+gay soul singing+slap-happy synths, a track to get riled up to, to dance yr emotions to. Bless our hearts. Disco isn't ever gonna die again!
Beyoncé
Last week, my co-worker was playing a video linked from FB, some throaty, grey shoegazer with a haircut covering "Single Ladies." It was 'ick. He said, "Why is everybody raving about this?" I said, "...because they're racist." And then I watched the for-real "Single Ladies" video a few times--still good, still a call to arms not a snooze, not even a little bit. Occasionally I wonder if, we spectators get lazy about newness and give the establishment too much credit/obeisance (that "...to be pleased means to say yes" business). Sure. But Be is never not working. She works to make our lives easy, to provide us with half-familiar/half-fresh treats, soundtrackings, jams--21st Century POP MUSIC, red-blooded, healthy post-Modernism. This guy, "Sweet Dreams," the most recent single drawn from I am...Sasha Fierce (the 6th or 7th off the record since last autumn?), is Be's Gothic number, as Industrial as our bright Aughts R&B gets (cousin to Rihanna's "Disturbia") and with lyrics like, "Tattoo your name across my heart so it will remain/Not even death can make us part/What kind of dream is this?" and "Clouds filled with stars cover the skies/And I hope it rains/You're the perfect lullaby." I really dig her invocation of dreamstates. Dreams are--as soon as we become aware of them, waking--histories, passages, memories, inaccessible. This angle lends the song a deal of regret, glances backward. She opens with a loosely cast phrase, "turn the lights on," that is applied as a portion of the driving beat throughout the song. In the track's present tense, Be is no longer falling into soupy, dark love, but attempting to reconstruct and measure it 'in the light'...after.
"Sally"
Sam Sparro
I picked up this dude's album because...um...a gay teen played it for me at an American Apparel, saying, "You wouldn't believe how he looks: cute white boy with a side bang, wearing our shit." Whatever. Ain't no shame. This and the U.K. hit, "Black and Gold," are supreme and smart dance songs, despite their hipster cheese (Sparro is an Aussie living in El Lay....so....). And "Sally." I mapped out something like five music videos (starring me?) for it as I rode the train into Manhattan this morning. My favorite was a tour of the Financial District, dead at night with Christmas decorations on the lamposts, dancing in and out of empty dives and office tower porticoes in a 91/2 Weeks, off the shoulder, creamy Irish cable knit sweater and nothing else (shoes?). The lyrical take on stripper dadsums-issues is a touch ham-handed. But Sam's throwback politics are in the right place (I loathe the fourth-wave approach to sex industry-as-empowerment).
Pure redux--tragic heroines/social issues+gay soul singing+slap-happy synths, a track to get riled up to, to dance yr emotions to. Bless our hearts. Disco isn't ever gonna die again!
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