Another wake up in the middle of the night, this time during a sleepover of my little boy’s and two of his friends, some noise from one of them woke me and to get back to sleep I gave myself what I knew would be a very difficult task, to come up with an alphabetical list of favorite poems. Some were easy, because I’ve used them before in these lists I obsess over. Like the first two:
“Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio” by James Wright
“Bread & Fish” Mark Terrill (the title prose poem in one of my all time favorite books)
“Counting Small-Boned Bodies” Robert Bly
“Danse Russe” William Carlos Williams
“Excuses” Terence Winch
“Fragment” John Ashbery
“G-9“ Tim Dlugos
“House of Morgan” Ray DiPalma
“I Remember” Joe Brainard’s book-length serial poem
“Jiffy Kimona” Kenward Elmslie
“Kaddish” Allen Ginsberg (my favorite poem of his)
“Linen” James Schuyler (one of his small in-the-moment poems I love so much)
“March 18, 2003” Michael Lally (if I do say so myself)
“New Personal Poem” Ted Berrigan
“Obsidian Point” Ken McCullough (the title poem(s) in “a triptych” book-length poem(s)
“Poem (Lana Turner has collapsed!)” Frank O’Hara
“Queen–Anne’s-Lace” William Carlos Williams
“Rag/Time” Robert Slater
“St. Roach” Muriel Rukeyser
“There is a cruel, messianic, dim, tribal intransigence” (first line of an untitled Simon Pettet poem and my recent favorite of his)
“Up” Blaise Cendrars (Ron Padgett’s translation)
“Variations on a Theme by Suburu” Jerome Sala
“Waiting” Ed Cox
“Xes” Michael McClure
“Yes or No” Elaine Equi
Z (I know there’s gotta be a poem I dig that starts with Z but I couldn’t think of any last night)
Saturday, March 31, 2007
Friday, March 30, 2007
ME IN MY KITCHEN
"My heart is where it belongs." —Jack Kerouac, VISIONS OF GERARD
Photo by Tore Claesson
Thursday, March 29, 2007
THE LIVES OF OTHERS
What a satisfying film experience.
There were obvious contrivances, as least to me, viewing it as a writer.
But they disappeared in the craft: the washed-out colors in the days of the Berlin Wall; the more subtle, underplayed for the most part, European style of acting; the depth of the character studies and of the plot, even with the obviously piggy bad guys etc.
Mesmerized me.
Not to mention the thankfully more normal human physical appearance of the actors, so common in films from other countries compared to our mostly physically flawless or stereotypical ones. (The leading man seemed to be showing a bit of a pot belly under his shirt, etc.)
I can see why it won so many awards.
And speaking of communism (which the communists in the flick kept referring to as “socialism” as they were wont to do) as I did in my last post…what a bitter pill (though there is no denying the benefits of being guaranteed a job, health care, education, pension etc. but couldn’t that have been accomplished without all the soul destroying aspects of “the party” apparatus?)
But hey, where are the American movies like this? Where’s our dramatization of what the new guidelines for interrogation, or lack of them, are doing to people in our military and spy agencies?
Where’s the lives of us?
There were obvious contrivances, as least to me, viewing it as a writer.
But they disappeared in the craft: the washed-out colors in the days of the Berlin Wall; the more subtle, underplayed for the most part, European style of acting; the depth of the character studies and of the plot, even with the obviously piggy bad guys etc.
Mesmerized me.
Not to mention the thankfully more normal human physical appearance of the actors, so common in films from other countries compared to our mostly physically flawless or stereotypical ones. (The leading man seemed to be showing a bit of a pot belly under his shirt, etc.)
I can see why it won so many awards.
And speaking of communism (which the communists in the flick kept referring to as “socialism” as they were wont to do) as I did in my last post…what a bitter pill (though there is no denying the benefits of being guaranteed a job, health care, education, pension etc. but couldn’t that have been accomplished without all the soul destroying aspects of “the party” apparatus?)
But hey, where are the American movies like this? Where’s our dramatization of what the new guidelines for interrogation, or lack of them, are doing to people in our military and spy agencies?
Where’s the lives of us?
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
WHERE’S THE REVOLT?
A woman in Houston pays 2,100 dollars—apiece—for three blouses in a store that caters to the wealthy, of which there are plenty. She needs three because after a few dry cleanings they’re not really any good any more, to her.
A man makes 32 million dollars in salary and perks running a corporation, and when he does a lousy job gets over a hundred million as a going away present.
Exxon-Mobil, or whatever the gigantic corporation’s name is, has just reported making more money in profits than any business or corporation in the history of the world.
When I applied for social security this morning in preparation for my senior-hood—the only white person in a room with hundreds of people in Newark NJ—they awarded me an extra fifteen dollars a month for the over four years I spent as an enlisted man in the service of my country in the early 1960s.
The cops and firemen in my neighborhood and clan when I was growing up made enough to afford a home, a life there, but these days no cops or firemen in my home town can afford to live there, or anywhere this close to New York City except for ghettos, otherwise they have to move a long commute away, out in what once was countryside and now is sometimes cheap, mass developments.
The fastest growing demographic of homeless people is children.
When the inequities were this extreme before in this country, the so-called “Gilded Age” or during the Great Depression etc., there were revolts afoot to address these and the rest of the obviously unconscionable conditions many people live with now.
So where’s the revolt?
There were a lot of hostile people in that Social Security office, some of their hostility aimed at me, an old gray-haired white guy. But it seemed racial, rather than a matter of class, though that too I assume.
I know communism, as practiced and pushed by the Soviet Union failed, and rightfully so, and that the right has managed to create the illusion in most people’s minds that socialism and liberalism are the same thing and that they have failed too.
But of course they haven’t, especially not in other so-called “industrialized nations”—but even if they had failed, so has capitalism, the way the conservative Republicans have practiced and pushed it.
So, except for the few demonstrators that turn out for the meetings of the billionaires who rule the world, why’s everyone else so docile?
Are the electronic toys and media distractions doing their job so well, people just don’t care? Or has the right manipulated the media so well people actually think it’s the fault of elite liberals or Washington bureaucrats?
Or is everyone just too tired from working so many hours for so little pay—more than any other “industrialized country”—to protest?
More work and less pay has become the standard default position for most workers for most corporations these days and the threat of no job or working at MacDonald’s has kept many of those people compliant I guess, but still, where’s the failed executive who understands the dynamics of contemporary corporations and is fired with rage against the inequities enough to use his experience and class privileged education and insider knowledge to lead a revolt of the masses—which now includes almost everyone who works for a living and isn’t a millionaire?
All these new leftist leaders in Latin America come out of that place, the anger at the huge discrepancies in economic rewards in their so-called “third world countries”—but now we too have those kinds of discrepancies, though with more toys, made by these and other “third world countries” for us to buy cheap.
Is that it? The “bread and circuses” that kept the Roman masses satisfied or distracted enough to not revolt against having their pockets picked by their leaders until it was too late?
Is it too late for us?
Are these questions rhetorical?
A man makes 32 million dollars in salary and perks running a corporation, and when he does a lousy job gets over a hundred million as a going away present.
Exxon-Mobil, or whatever the gigantic corporation’s name is, has just reported making more money in profits than any business or corporation in the history of the world.
When I applied for social security this morning in preparation for my senior-hood—the only white person in a room with hundreds of people in Newark NJ—they awarded me an extra fifteen dollars a month for the over four years I spent as an enlisted man in the service of my country in the early 1960s.
The cops and firemen in my neighborhood and clan when I was growing up made enough to afford a home, a life there, but these days no cops or firemen in my home town can afford to live there, or anywhere this close to New York City except for ghettos, otherwise they have to move a long commute away, out in what once was countryside and now is sometimes cheap, mass developments.
The fastest growing demographic of homeless people is children.
When the inequities were this extreme before in this country, the so-called “Gilded Age” or during the Great Depression etc., there were revolts afoot to address these and the rest of the obviously unconscionable conditions many people live with now.
So where’s the revolt?
There were a lot of hostile people in that Social Security office, some of their hostility aimed at me, an old gray-haired white guy. But it seemed racial, rather than a matter of class, though that too I assume.
I know communism, as practiced and pushed by the Soviet Union failed, and rightfully so, and that the right has managed to create the illusion in most people’s minds that socialism and liberalism are the same thing and that they have failed too.
But of course they haven’t, especially not in other so-called “industrialized nations”—but even if they had failed, so has capitalism, the way the conservative Republicans have practiced and pushed it.
So, except for the few demonstrators that turn out for the meetings of the billionaires who rule the world, why’s everyone else so docile?
Are the electronic toys and media distractions doing their job so well, people just don’t care? Or has the right manipulated the media so well people actually think it’s the fault of elite liberals or Washington bureaucrats?
Or is everyone just too tired from working so many hours for so little pay—more than any other “industrialized country”—to protest?
More work and less pay has become the standard default position for most workers for most corporations these days and the threat of no job or working at MacDonald’s has kept many of those people compliant I guess, but still, where’s the failed executive who understands the dynamics of contemporary corporations and is fired with rage against the inequities enough to use his experience and class privileged education and insider knowledge to lead a revolt of the masses—which now includes almost everyone who works for a living and isn’t a millionaire?
All these new leftist leaders in Latin America come out of that place, the anger at the huge discrepancies in economic rewards in their so-called “third world countries”—but now we too have those kinds of discrepancies, though with more toys, made by these and other “third world countries” for us to buy cheap.
Is that it? The “bread and circuses” that kept the Roman masses satisfied or distracted enough to not revolt against having their pockets picked by their leaders until it was too late?
Is it too late for us?
Are these questions rhetorical?
Sunday, March 25, 2007
WOMEN ACTORS
A lot of women actors I know prefer “actor” to “actress” thus…
Anyway, before I get to the list(s) I mentioned might be next (work that you dug as a kid and don’t now, or didn’t get as a kid and do now) I realized in my “women artists” alphabet lists I hadn’t included actors, so here ‘tis, with the usual caveats, including the fact that some letters brought up several equally favorite actors, like “R” where my first thought was Vanessa Redgrave, but my second and third thoughts were Jamie Rose and Gina Rowlands, Or “W” I thought immediately of Alfre Woodard, but almost as immediately of Theresa Wright, and Kate Winslett. Or “M” Marilyn Monroe, Helen Mirren, Jeanne Moreau, Hayley Mills, etc. There’s many parallel alphabet universes.
ALLEN, KAREN
BLANCHETT, CATE
CONNELLY, JENNIFER
DENCH, JUDI
E (?)
FOSTER, JODIE
GARBO, GRETA
HEPBURN, KATHERINE
IRVING, AMY
JOLIE, ANGELINA
KIKUCHI, RINKO
LEIGH, JENNIFER JASON
MONROE, MARILYN
NEWTON, THANDIE
O’HARA, MAUREEN
PENN, ROBIN WRIGHT
QUINLAN, KATHLEEN
REDGRAVE, VANESSA
STANWYCK, BARBARA
THOMPSON, EMMA
ULLMANN, LIV
VERDU, MARIBEL
WOODARD, ALFRE
X (?)
YOUNG, SEAN
ZABRISKIE, GRACE
Anyway, before I get to the list(s) I mentioned might be next (work that you dug as a kid and don’t now, or didn’t get as a kid and do now) I realized in my “women artists” alphabet lists I hadn’t included actors, so here ‘tis, with the usual caveats, including the fact that some letters brought up several equally favorite actors, like “R” where my first thought was Vanessa Redgrave, but my second and third thoughts were Jamie Rose and Gina Rowlands, Or “W” I thought immediately of Alfre Woodard, but almost as immediately of Theresa Wright, and Kate Winslett. Or “M” Marilyn Monroe, Helen Mirren, Jeanne Moreau, Hayley Mills, etc. There’s many parallel alphabet universes.
ALLEN, KAREN
BLANCHETT, CATE
CONNELLY, JENNIFER
DENCH, JUDI
E (?)
FOSTER, JODIE
GARBO, GRETA
HEPBURN, KATHERINE
IRVING, AMY
JOLIE, ANGELINA
KIKUCHI, RINKO
LEIGH, JENNIFER JASON
MONROE, MARILYN
NEWTON, THANDIE
O’HARA, MAUREEN
PENN, ROBIN WRIGHT
QUINLAN, KATHLEEN
REDGRAVE, VANESSA
STANWYCK, BARBARA
THOMPSON, EMMA
ULLMANN, LIV
VERDU, MARIBEL
WOODARD, ALFRE
X (?)
YOUNG, SEAN
ZABRISKIE, GRACE
Saturday, March 24, 2007
I SHOULD PROBABLY PATENT THIS
In an email to a friend yesterday, I wrote a line that I should probably copyright and put on a tee shirt and make a mint with.
But, the truth is, I've had lines of mine from copyrighted poems appear in other people’s poems and songs and books and plays and movies etc. for decades. And almost never made a dime or was even acknowledged.
I don’t mean that to sound self-aggrandizing, and it isn’t, because I’m not the only one to have that happen to them.
I also know someone will inevitably write or tell me that they’ve heard this line before. But I haven’t.
So for what it’s worth, and to put it on the record, what I emailed my friend yesterday was:
It’s God’s world, we just live in it.
But, the truth is, I've had lines of mine from copyrighted poems appear in other people’s poems and songs and books and plays and movies etc. for decades. And almost never made a dime or was even acknowledged.
I don’t mean that to sound self-aggrandizing, and it isn’t, because I’m not the only one to have that happen to them.
I also know someone will inevitably write or tell me that they’ve heard this line before. But I haven’t.
So for what it’s worth, and to put it on the record, what I emailed my friend yesterday was:
It’s God’s world, we just live in it.
PRIVATIZATION IN THE MILITARY
Just a quick quote from Peter Singer, author of CORPORATE WARRIORS, a compelling book about the outsourcing of U. S. military to firms like Blackwater, (in last week’s TIME):
“An owner of a circus faces more regulation and inspection than a private military company.”
For “company” substitute “army” and you’ve get where we’ve come since W. took over. From a “citizen’s army” to a “Private” one. No accountability, for anything, from “war crimes” to the disappeared billions of our tax dollars. Thanks junior.
“An owner of a circus faces more regulation and inspection than a private military company.”
For “company” substitute “army” and you’ve get where we’ve come since W. took over. From a “citizen’s army” to a “Private” one. No accountability, for anything, from “war crimes” to the disappeared billions of our tax dollars. Thanks junior.
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