World Poetry Day 2017

World Poetry Day, yes.

Shelley’s “A Defence of Poetry” has often been a source of inspiration. Thinking today about contemporary poems, and about the context and support offered by the internet, I paused over this section:

[Poets’] language is vitally metaphorical; that is, it marks the before unapprehended relations of things, and perpetuates their apprehension, until the words which represent them, become through time signs for portions or classes of thoughts instead of pictures of integral thoughts; and then if no new poets should arise to create afresh the associations which have become thus disorganized, language will be dead to all the nobler purposes of human intercourse […]. In the infancy of society every author is necessarily a poet, because language itself is poetry; and to be a poet is to apprehend the true and the beautiful, in a word the good which exists in the relation, subsisting first between existence and perception, and secondly between perception and expression. Every original language near to its source is in itself the chaos of a cyclic poem: the copiousness of lexicography and the distinctions of grammar are the works of a later age, and are merely the catalogue and the form of the creations of Poetry.

Whatever your activity, your “poetry,” may it bring you happiness!

to take a walk but when you feel to turn one way to turn another

to take a walk but when you feel to turn one way to turn another

because it’s people with a fish on their head

cries of gulls reach of stellar explosions

oh they can be yes

i could name a street yes of course i could name several

albuquerque kalamazoo on the other hand alphabetical

sorry could i just squeeze through thanks

ever imagine you had wings then meet someone who skydives

(soft as you can play here) absolutely

and hey it’s home you know

kit and caboodle drive

in decision

in decision

again the clock in the flower

some petals are missing

rage stolen like sap

what it is is the many flowers

like a river possibly

transmission fluid

all the same one is aware that

as one might say one’s view

and similar turns

which one

Trumpism. Rules. Roles

Trumpism. Rules. Roles.

Everybody has their own America, and they have pieces of fantasy America that they think is out there but they can’t see.  —Andy Warhol

The “rash and erratic president”—as a recent Washington Post article termed Donald Trump (1)—has continued to cause consternation on the world stage. But the basic tactic of this new administration is simple: to create smokescreens on important governance issues by a constant and chaotic crisismongering. Evoked much of the time, on a pragmatic level, are the worst features of things like cold wars and “détente”—not to mention xenophobia. The Trumpist’s ratcheting up of dystopian worldviews also brings to mind Wittgenstein’s notion of language games. Wittgenstein viewed speech acts as involving conversation based on “moves.” What people say, in other words, sets up a kind of competition.

Language games also involve the well known difference between denotation and connotation, as well as the possibility of falsification and legitimation. And then there are levels of games and types of games. As Jean-François Lyotard stated, “In the ordinary use of discourse, for example, in a discussion between two friends, the interlocutors use any available ammunition, changing games from one utterance to the next: questions, requests, assertions, and narratives are launched pell-mell into battle. The war is not without rules, but the rules allow and encourage the greatest possible flexibility of utterance” (2).   We would seem to be in the presence during some of these games of what Trump is fond of terming “fake news,” although it isn’t always certain just who is faking what. Consider, for that matter, revisions regarding Silicon Valley and “the Deep State” (3). And yes, even in an age of globalism, Wikileaks, and e-democracy.

Hopefully Lyotard’s militaristic metaphors serve as pragmatic reminders of what underlies discourse per se on a sociological level—magnified obviously on the geopolitical stage. “An institution differs from a conversation,” Lyotard (p. 17) also notes. Unfortunately the Trump administration doesn’t seem to recognize this.

Notes: (1) Robert Costa and Ashley Parker, “For 14 days Trump kept his No. 2 in the dark. What does that mean for Pence?” WP 15 February 2017.

(2) Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Manchester UP, 1984 [1979], p. 17.

(3) As in Mike Lofgren. “Anatomy of the Deep State” <http://billmoyers.com/2014/02/21/anatomy-of-the-deep-state/>

Winter holiday lights, Barcelona

Winter holiday lights, Barcelona

Midnight traffic slows giftward

at the posted throng of colors

curving above the street.

The guested camera

adjusts a partial phrase

to car wheels gone

as the lens lifts.

So the city opens forth

its festive evenings out—

Bright the winter streets, reflections

of a thought that comes and goes the read,

a table set for sharing.

 Diaries and/or  : Virginia Woolf's Modernist Path

Last January, based on information from Paula Maggio’s weblog “Blogging Woolf”, I posted a brief comment about Barbara Lounsberry’s book Becoming Virginia Woolf: Her Early Diaries and the Diaries She Read soon after it appeared. In today’s e-age of letter writing plus, where Facebook, DeviantArt, App.net and a long etc make it easy to get all ten fingers working, it is perhaps easy to lose sight of the advantages of re-considering Virginia Woolf’s diary reading. But on reflection, what do I read? And why. One specific reason why is clearly that constant flow between theory and practice in writing. What this comes down to I believe is authority—or if one prefers, authorship. And perhaps it is a simple step from authoring to mentoring, or self-mentoring. There are many names for the type of writing being referred to here. In keeping with the Woolfian reference, we speak of diary, but also of journal. Many of us feel we are writing autobiographies (sometimes even in our fictions). Where this leaves a person in relation to the e-age is debatable, but as is well known, it is being debated in many places—to the extent even of wondering how far away we are technologically from simply thinking our pieces onto the page while we put our fingers to other tasks. As part of our theorizing and doing, in any case, Lounsberry’s new book follows on from Becoming Woolf. The title is indicative of the far reaching nature of the overall project: Virginia Woolf’s Modernist Path: Her Middle Diaries and the Diaries She Read (U P of Florida). Thus, moving into Woolf’s middle period, her reading of 13 more diaries is discussed. Virginia Woolf’s influences are thus seen to have included the diaries (or journals or life writings—should some e-term be preferred?) of Beatrice Webb, Anton Chekhov, Stendhal, Katherine Mansfield and others. Names to conjure with… In all events I think this book will be a welcome addition for those of us interested in such intertextual and/or intermedial comparisons.

green

green

kitchen drawing as well

metalgleam and cloth

dream parsley in a small glass tumbler

mother in the leaves

go like sunday              no special plans

terrazzoglisten and clothes

turning in the other room