Not a blue one

I was reading Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird to my nephews (4 & 8) recently; they both picked at a guitar (not a blue one to my eyes) through sections 2-7, and in section 8, Owen (4yo) said “stop lying to me!” Owen insisted I keep reading, though, and the more arcane the diction got, the more they picked at the guitar.

It’s in a book about teaching different poems to children by Kenneth Koch. When I started a couple of weeks ago, Frank (8yo) didn’t know what a poem was. He asked me what they are and I said it’s when people can do whatever they want with the words. Owen doesn’t know what they are but he likes them.

Parataxis history

Concerning Jessica Smith’s assertion that In a Station at the Metro is "not ‘actually’ a haiku," the essential component of a haiku is not syllable constraints but the juxtaposition, and Pound in this poem brought parataxis to Western Literature from Japan where it had been used for many years.

The word haiku came from the phrase "playful linked verse" and the Japanese consider the 5-7-5 to be a traditional form of what can have unlimited syllabic variants.

Pound called it a "hokku-like sentence" which is "meaningless unless someone has drifted into a certain vein of thought. In a poem of this sort one is trying to record the precise moment when a thing outward and objective transforms itself, or darts into a thing inward and subjective.

"This particular sort of consciousness has not been identified with impressionist art. I think it is worthy of attention."

In summer

I spent the day digging trenches for sewer pipes, which feels good if you don’t overdo it and you don’t have to worry about whether your literary essays are ‘legitimated.’ Andy has praise for Sock Puppet Serenade, which would also be a good name for the Silliman’s Blog comments fields.

Complacencies, coffee, oranges, and cockatoos dissipating the holy hush of ancient sacrifice

I managed to find some web recipes for my ingredients but I didn’t get enough chiles; I got one poblano in Camden. The last cab ride I had in DC was with an Ethiopian driver on the way to Meskerem; I have taken to Silver Spring for Ethiopian plus they have groceries that enable you to wrap everything you eat for four days in injera.

The ‘other’ significance of ChiPs to poetic rhythm is its occurrence in the list-verse tangent of the Black Flag song ‘TV Party’ and Emelio Estevez’s (can I work Cheech Marin and Jimmy Smits into this thread?) a capella version in the movie Repo Man: after polysyllabic shows are listed (Fantasy Island, Different Strokes, Fall Guy) there’s something both humourous and stylistically revelatory to the monosyllabic “ChiPs.” As the thing perceived, “CHiPs” functions within the rhythm and image-presentation sort of like a geometric point that both exists in space and doesn’t, because the phenomenon envisaged by the tableau is that of people who cannot bear collectivity without the presence of meaningless diversions, and Chips represents both such a meaningless diversion and a cultural product that transmits absolute meaning to the characters depicted. I have attempted to minimize blogging about the nostalgia for the passive.

I remember the debate at the recognition of the new digital potential of TV. Gore said give all the public airways away to the communications giants and McCain said, well give the people some things as long as there’s at least ten law enforcement channels. I don’t watch cop shows, which is unrelated to my perception of policemen, except that policemen often watch cop shows. I used to visit an ex-cop who would watch the one with Shatner and it was a way for him to connect with the glorious narrative that got him into that business which was in turn a conduit to his youth, which he would joke about, but cop shows have a logic all their own which is not empirical, especially the docu ones, since all cop show writers reference other shows rather than anything that happens in real life.

Goebbels would have used cop shows to display the inherent criminality of individuals in contrast to the just state, and I don’t pay attention to whether that’s what they have on the tube now. I have a fictional character who is a coroner, and apparently those CSI shows have a lot of coroners, and once in a hostel I tried to get the TV viewers to describe the coroners on those shows, but it didn’t help much.

I didn’t see Manderlay in the theater, but it should arrive tomorrow by one of those mail-services: von Trier’s Dogville is an experience of America culled from American TV and film (since I don’t think von Trier has ever been to the US). It’s amazing how Europeans love to talk about how the American South is, but the people who do the talking never actually visit it. Abroad, the American South represents the Red States that steer the world’s superpower away from policies more like theirs, which in the case of von Trier's Dogville brings forth a neurotic mythology that vacillates from infantile to Brechtian, but is still one of the best films or the best of the last few years.

Dogville is a departure from the New Social Realism style that his own Dogme helped spawn, in favor of a cinematic method that imitates a auteur, Tarantino, who learned about humanity from watching TV.

You can live ten lifetimes in NJ and be vague about it: there’s no public square, which I suppose is why everyone comes here because they left places where the public squares were used for executions.

Never question a dream

The Mallarmé came, and yes, it IS the Erik Estrada ‘Dice Throw’ I dreamt of, and yes, that’s a recommendation.

I found a Liberian grocery store – Willingboro, a 50s suburban mega-development nearby, is getting a growing African population. My experience is that African grocery stores that have a different native language have a friendly but untalkative staff, but an English-speaking country’s stores (like Nigerian or Liberian) require you to make conversation with the staff for the entire visit, which is part of the experience.

I now have copious amounts of dried codfish and Monrovian collard greens. I believe collard greens were taken from the US to Liberia when the country was founded.

I've never seen CHiPs.

Package tracking drama

My copy of the new Oxford translation of Mallarmé was scanned in Cincinnati today. The Gashouse Gang is also in town, but Pujols, Ducky Medwick, and Rolen (one of the best-read ballplayers) better keep their hands off it - I know how they like to trade uniforms with postal workers and loiter around the warehouses, especially Pepper Martin. They can read my Dover Tolstoy that I got to get up to the free shipping threshold.

This translation was in production when I had my dream of ‘A Throw of the Dice Does Not Abolish Chance Starring Erik Estrada’ but I think I would classify that as either an unwarranted anxiety dream or a review of the Weinfield versions that I never got. In other words, I’m giving this thing a chance. My MacIntyre Selected is currently AWOL which is not an acceptable arrangement.

When that baby comes some commentary on rhythm and form is sure to ensue.

Senate races

If elections were held today and results corresponded to polls, the Senate would be 50-49-1 Republican.

That factors in Lamont (D) winning in CT and Republican incumbants DeWine (OH), Burns (MT), Santorum (PA), Talent (MO), and Chafee (RI) getting knocked off. Also, narrow leads in NJ, MD, and MN have to hold.

For the Democrats to become the Senate Majority in 2007, they need to win in either Tennessee (where Harold Ford trails three Republicans slinging it out in the primary) or Nevada, where a safe GOP seat has moved into single digits.

Polling data can be found here, here, and here.

The age of shocks and struts

I’ve thought that if I was to name my car after a Ron Silliman book, it would be ‘What,’ with ‘Manifest,’ ‘Sitting Up, Standing, Taking Steps,’ ‘Mohawk,’ and ‘Xing’ as other possibilities.

But I was framing yesterday in the heat and was treated to a similarly heated argument over architecture, which culminated with the exclamation ‘Do you want Windows or What?!!’ ..followed by ‘OK, well I’d rather have Windows than What!!’ which I thought could also be a last minute Creeley-or-Silliman argument in a book store or a syllabus controversy in a faculty lounge.

‘Nox’ would be the name I wouldn’t use for my car.

Li pale franse

One shouldn’t use French blog titles to the exclusion of Creole, such as the expression above, which literally translates as “He speaks French” but in Haiti universally means “He is trying to deceive you.” Languages are best when they have undergone no bastardization by the political class.

However, the Miami Herald seems to have arrived at a new usage of the phrase “political class” this past Sunday. “This is the last chance for Haiti's political class to show that it is capable of governing.” In this usage the political class means a cabinet comprised of people with the overwhelming support of the public that escaped being bumped off by death squads authorized by UN-designate John Bolton, as opposed to the criminal class which is the rightful owner of political authority, and certainly has authority over the Miami Herald.

Or perhaps this is the Miami Herald’s way of translating the proverb “Kreyon pep la pa gen gonm” (The people’s pencil has no eraser.)