I copied this out of a literary terms dictionary on-line:

"Absurdism:

A philosophical attitude pervading much of modern drama and fiction, which underlines the isolation and alienation that human beings experience, having been thrown into what absurdists see as a godless universe devoid of any religious, spiritual, or metaphysical meaning. Conspicuous in its lack of logic, consistency, coherence, intelligibility, and realism, the literature of the absurd depicts the anguish, forlornness, and despair inherent in the human condition. Counter to the rationalist assumptions of traditional humanism, absurdism denies the existence of universal truth or value."

Why "godless?"

Is it a "philosophical" attitude, a marketing trope, a literary trope, a cliche, or an advertisement vehicle used by highly trained academics?
Why "or?"

What does an original "existentialist" think now? How many plays, screenplays, and literary commodities suck with this now?

Okay, there's no universal truth or value. Well, get over it already! Geez, when was there universal truth or value and who needed it so badly?

The dissolution of universal truth and value and the onset of "absurdity" marks inevitable chaos, horror, and terror? That's absurd on the face of it!

There is indeed anguish, forlornness, and despair, as well as isolation and alienation. There's quite enough even if you don't go looking for it or expecting it. Why fetishize it? Why dwell in it, hallucinate it, obsess about it? It isn't the way we're born, it isn't what good parenting engenders or good reparenting deconstructs, and it doesn't taste as good as ice cream. Enough already! I'm full.

When Ionesco and others "created" it (created it?), theirs was "reality" for seeing it. After that, its sequels are weak imitations, prepackaged tv dinners. Why will suffering always go on? Now, that's an intriguing question. I'm full of it.

Of course, you're talking literary terminal history, here. Terminally boring. Terms like "rationalist assumptions" and "traditional humanism." Terms to sell books. Terms to teach and reinvent pedagogical positions, heuristic devices, and elitist symposiums. Terms. Terms (Hey, why did you fix the typo TGerms?) that are fun and sometimes fairly interesting and provocative. But no real and original thinking. Just the sale of terminology and overcooked philosophical jargon. No real philosophy, which would invent its own language and terminology. Why I oughta...

So we can sit around the campfire and debate the future of post-blahblahblahism and its relevant metalinguistics and lexicon (why not vocabularly--that's what you thought first?). Or you (we? No, I don't speak for the "community we") can make up your own language.

What if you want to participate in the "current" academic discussions and hippest campus rap sessions? Or the historical ones, where you'd have to learn all the jargon of Marx and Hegel and Plato and Bloom before you could join them in a stupid book? (You can think of more original ideas?) How about Nietzsche?** (Isn't he dead? I thought Nietzsche was dead!) Very funny! Now you're playing their game! (And you're not?)

Fuck both of you.

Really, seriously, there's more to life and value than literature for literature's sake.

Oh, yeah? OH yeah (baritone).

Suck thiss.


**Main Entry: Nietz·sche
Pronunciation: 'nE-ch&, -chE
Function: biographical name
Friedrich Wilhelm 1844-1900 German philosopher; known for denouncing religion, for espousing doctrine of perfectibility of man, and for glorification of the superman (Übermensche)

"for espousing doctrine of perfectibility of man, and for glorification of the superman." What a moron we all are sometime...

After Primer re-read 4-27-03
for H. and J., '88?


Brilliant for .81
seconds,

every split couple

of seconds or so


Or so. No great
effort to make
anything stick

around for long, Hey!
Gotta go, Goodbye!

on with
idealization, for god's sake!

Gimme a break
I'd like to break
it off completely.

To be honest
You know

Whatever
that means.

Christ Almighty!
You can write the same
crap for hours on end.
Why don't you

pull the trigger.


But I really like
the guy.
Had dinner w/ him
in R. P. one time.
They served Tai tofu
and accommodated
us vegans back then.

He read at -- well
he read a lot
of places.

One was Cornell
w/ Charles. And
they were
a gas, a trip.

Yep.

Consider it done.

S., you wonder if maybe your wording "sounds too arrogant..." Hmmm, uhmm, maybe that's like "too pregnant." Maybe I'll just scratch that, and I'd also like to suggest that maybe you change the wording about Hartley's good writing, particulary the "frankly, bears some striking resemblance to." It's just unnecessary, S. There are some definite similarities, but your choice of words is stupid, I think.

"Such writing is seen to be constructive in its demolition of the conventional relationshp between the active (dictatorial) writer and the passive (victimized) reader," writes George Hartley, in excerpts from his essay on Language Poetry, "Textual Politics and the Language Poets," which, actually, is very similar in many sections to the same conclusions I was drawing in my own M.A. thesis completed in 1988, "A Primer to Language Poetry." Indeed, we even offered some of the same examples to back up our points.

Yeah, I thought the same thing and I fervently argued the same line of thought in a lot of what I wrote back then (mostly 1985-1988), and theoretically it's an interesting concept (demolishing the conventional relationship between active writer and passive reader), but you know what, some parts of me want to scream out "Boulderdash!" when I think about it, when I think it's such a neat little mechanistic concept, but what really happens in reality?

Readers reading actively are not victims; nor are they passive readers. Even if they aren't particularly "aggressive" as they're reading, they are going to "mis-read," in many cases, simply by virtue of the fact that they are different persons in different time and space with different needs, wants, memories, and experiences.

And what's the difference between being dictatorial as a writer via forcing a fixed and closed m-e-a-n-i-n-g on the reader (which he or she can then take, leave, misread) and via forcing a partially constructed text foregrounding the unactualized and open-ended potential of its elements on the reader (who can then, again, take, leave, misread, or rewrite whatever portions he or she sees fit).

I don't know. I'm a bit tiffed (and not only because of personal peeves, like the fact that a lot of what I wrote between 1985 and 1988 is very similar to what Hartley wrote, and evidently he and I are about the same age, and I'm a little bit jealous and resentful, as well as encouraged by the fact that both he and I did about the same thing with the limited resources we had at the time). The real point of opening up form, though, is that you, or the reader, can get to greater content, additional form, and play. That's why it's cool to have abandoned the restrictive formal hegemony and addictions of the academic poets! The academic poets and poetries simply were not (and still are not) getting to new form/content/consciousness! They're merely creating useless bourgeois artifacts that serve only one purpose, to get themselves ahead in the academic and commercial poetry rat races. Without those infrastructures, they wouldn't bother writing a thing, would they? Same here with me, most of my time. It's disgusting...

Maybe the next frontier is what we do with experimental writing. beat_read, for example, suggests that a great deal more can be done with experimental writing that actually would "change some things," or if that sounds too arrogant (and entirely antithetical to the very nature of poetry), let's say engage writing and "skills" with the world much more directly, and if I know him well, which I do, he isn't talking about leaving the writing in the one-dimensional field called literature. He's talking about substituting various things out there in the world that use language as their medium, and the options he would offer as alternatives would encourage greater candor, greater care, greater nourishment, I guess. Personally, the only thing I can imagine he's referring to are acts of grafiti and creative "advertizing," but I know that he mentions Web sites that go beyond parodying or spoofing other web sites and even big portals, for example. He's less interested in the kinds of literary aims traditional poets have, which is to get their names attached to objects that get them reputations, jobs, fame, and fortune, maybe even something often rumored to be a form of "immortality." I'm not even sure that a lot of things he has in mind are particularly "legal." Anyway, I need to get some air.

Hey! How about a web site for Global Crossing exactly same format as Yahoo's, but content from entire case against the "alleged crooks?" That's what I would go for, Menno. Maybe at S.'s future site? Hope you're well...

"You are barely functional," said one other to another.

"Well, that is true, that may be true, and that isn't the case at all," one replied.


Originally: forgotten, for now. But it had "said another to one" and then "replied one to an other."

"And if Frank O'Hara seems the antithesis of academic work, Ashbery is, in his own way, its epitome," McGann writes, in "Contemporary Poetry, Alternate Routes." Not sure specifically what he means by Ashbery seeming the epitome of academic work, but I DO know precisely what he means by O'Hara seeming the antithesis. You won't go wrong reading O'Hara, N. I sometimes think that he's my favorite, ever "the reliable," among New American Poets. "Reliable" in the sense that I can find pure fun and pure pleasure (I guess I'll have to call that aesthetic pleasure, fwiw to you) whenever I pick up one of my O'Hara books for a lonely read. In fact, there's something about the pure spirit (on the surface, carefree--deeper down, rock solid, mature, vulnerable, and courageous), the bold nonchalance not because he's trying to make a point of it or affect that spirit, but because he is sincerely and amply imbued with it. He exudes it, in other words, because it is real within him, and every word he touches, I think, has it there. And nothing is programmatic or exceptionally ambitious. And when he's funny, which he is quite often, it's real. It comes out of life, his writing, not ambition or plan. That's been my impression.

If I'm implying that when various L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E writers/poets are "funny," their humour is more self-reflexively filtered or screened, and thus loses some "spontaneity" by maintaining "tighter control," I do not mean to imply that they are less funny, that they won't make you laugh out loud, or split your guts. However, they won't make you cry and then two pages later relieve all the tension with gut splitting humour, the way the novelist Joseph Heller does in Catch-22, for example.

I say "filtered" or "screened" so as to have acute control over the larger gesture/work and its fit into a larger "plan," and quite often they tend to write "poetries," not "poems," whereas O'Hara tossed off his lines/poems "spontaneously," often in 1-2 hour fits of quick and angelic inspiration that must be attended to right there and then while it's happening or else there will be no poem at all. Indeed, he wrote a lot of them during his lunch breaks, hence Lunch Poems . The effect, indeed NOT affect, is that they arise out of a life being lived, and in my opinion, that's why so much natural spirit and "life" comes into them.

Later, the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E writers/poets go to great pains to get spontaneity into their writing and most "factor in" at least some variation of "automatic writing," a la Gertrude Stein, for example. Silliman, for example, disciplined himself to write everyday, probably "very quickly," at, I believe, regular times (say, in the mornings shortly after waking, so as to catch the best of the transitional state between dreaming and everyday consciousness) and for set periods (say, 20 minutes). This, too, produces "spontaneity," of course. In fact, that precisely what it is "programmed" to do. And when you read from, for example, Tjanting in that American Tree anthology, you will laugh out loud and you will get the feeling that the text you're taking in derives from very real spontaneity. I'm just saying that it's different from O'Hara's. I think that Frank O'Hara's poems, spontaneity, and humour come out of life, his life, directly and naturally. I think the spontaneity and humour abundantly evident in many of the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poets' poetries is just slightly different, factored in, as it were, for the overall works from which it emanates, must control it, temper it, make it fit other concerns, ironically (or not so ironically, really), goals to free their writing from predetermined goals and prescriptions which are systematically factored in by the history of literary practice and our systems of enculturation. Of course, you also want to keep in mind that some, if not in fact many, of the things O'Hara was "doing naturally," the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poets' wanted to "get in to" (and get out of) their own writing, so they upped the ante and sought "methods" for achieving their ends.

L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E Writing... This could be a good place to start, I suppose, N: Jerome McGann, "Contemporary Poetry, Alternate Routes" an introduction to language poetry. Or here, at the University of Pennsylvania web site devoted to experimental poetry.

Of course, there is also the tendency to create binaries that may exist primarily to keep and maintain attention on the sub-divisions co-opted by the arbitrary dialectic presumed, heralded, argued, announced, denounced, accredited, suggested, invested, re-invested. Case(s) in point include the clever and funny poem by Darren Wershler-Henry, in arras 5, for example, "Lang Po vs. the Wu-Tang," and much of the overall poetics daily, monthly, perennially designed/remanufactured by several of the Language poets, including probably the most highly regarded Language poet, Ron Silliman,who may be the late 20th Century's most significant poet.

In Silliman's case, I must point out that I do, myself, regard him as post-modernisms or, perhaps more importantly, Experimental Poetry's greatest poet. Therefore, if the following observations sound like a criticism or even a critique, they're not particularly intended to do so.

Is it a problematic "dialectic?" Does continually defining new poetries or "schools" or "movements" or "developments" in terms of their opposition to, difference/differance from, continuity/discontinuity in reference to Language poetry obscure new developments? Does this practice prohibit or restrict new developments? Does it falsely elevate new developments feeding or playing off of it? Could experimental poetry survive without continued central reference to the almost infamous and surely contested "mother tongue?"

I am surely NOT qualified to answer these questions and I not particularly comfortable raising them. To be sure, my own attention to this quite thoroughly debated issue probably incriminates me for the very attention grabbing behavior I'm bothering to question.

Nonetheless... There are several beliefs I have that some would perceive as conflicting:

(1)A great deal of writing and poetry still being produced by "first generation" or core Language poets still stimulates readers and engenders new explorations; their value would not be diminished were the arbitrary dialectic dropped and outgrown.

(2)This so-called arbitrary dialectic serves at least one other major purpose; it provides a deep and rich background or horizon against which new poetries can be, (not measured, but) received, apprehended, appreciated, accessed.

(3)"Apprehending" a given poetry (or for that matter any new art form or intellectual development) against a fixed background or within the fixed parameters of a static poetic may obviously obfuscate the true "use" of the given (and "new") poetry, limit its value, and restrict apprehension to old use, whereas the new poetry may well have much broader and more relevant or more exciting and fresh new applications.

(4)Condemning or limiting a new poetry to its role in the on-going development of a preestablished poetic pigeonholes the new poetry and/or tags it with sometimes obsolete labels.

(5)The whole notion of operating off of an arbitrary dialectic is in no way limited to Language poetry or the broader avant garde "tradition." This entire tradition maintaining, tradition marketing, tradition institutionalizing fetish or practice is securely established in all of literature and perhaps most succinctly articulated by the Freudian Lit Crits' malpractice of defining literary objects by their "Oedipal stage" breaks from presanctioned and apparently "fatherly" earlier objects. Much of Freud will be around as long as Shakespeare, possibly forever, but I'm not so sure that Freudian Lit Crit will survive the next few decades. For one thing, it serves a "higher" function; it fetishizes the Critics and their stacked deck, academic games, whereby neither new poets, new perceivers/readers, nor new poetries are opened up to (or by) the life force that created them; it "fixes" apprehension of new form and content to that which serves to reinforce priviledged academic hierarchies and their insular job security needs. Two, both the neo-Freudians in their adherence to Oedipal complex analysis and the Lacanians in the misplacement of "identity" development in the Oedipal stage (or their argument that there can be no Self or that it's just a construct of language, who knows?) will likely find themselves replaced by newer and more advanced scientific thought such as that which is developing in the area of Object Relations. Three, if there are other more fecund, more generative , more nourishing approaches to the apprehension and dissemination of literature, then they will, by nature, emerge as the more adaptable "mutations." Male-order Freudian Lit Crit will not be, as a Cher song I like would sing, "strong enough" to actualize the greater and truer potential(s) of new writing and thus flourish.

I don't see the forest
for the trees,
the mettle in my petulant brow

nor hear the recycled leaves
clapping for Solitude now.

My theory -- I go out on a limb.
If I cut one against the wind,
can anyone spell it out loud?

I recommend those other projects: the P.M. script, or the MPC, something to get lost in. Are you trying to discover or create this "something else" or experience it too directly? Force this resolution head on, Eyes and ink to paper, determined, helpless, knowing only that you want something, having no clue "what" it could be?

Here's that impasse again, S. The desire to solve problems, my own or my community's (much the same?), versus the desire to "get something else" out of ink and blank paper. And no, I don't mean "poetry," your poetry, S.

Something else. Not referring to a kind of literary object, either. I mean something in the way of other experience, not necessarily social (not requiring sharing).

And economics. That's where I believe the action is. Want beat here. He posted on the GX board again. If I quote him here, do you think he'll come over and start posting? How about J.M. I feel like you're taking over. Why don't you get your own site up and running? Screw it! I'm going to make some links.

I feel like you're practically taking over, S. Turning this into "a poetry blog." I would much prefer to keep it political, personal, rhetorical, and angry.

Comma

Reality, tv

Gary Winnick, jew

O'Reilly, journalism

Bush, patriot

easy, political

Christians, evangelical

theory, anti-matter

deconstruction, construction

adjunct, faculty

warmonger, Watten

fool, Watten

Murdock, Turner

Green Peace, KYOTO agreement

nuclear, weapons

John Legere, Alcatel

France, fries

Scott Ritter, traitor

weapons of mass destruction, poems

college, education

Just do it, Menno, the flash screens, and all the other stuff, and get back to our conversation from last night, please, if you would.

Am perusing one of the neatest, most neatly organized, and useful sites I've come across: arras. I think the designer/editor is one Brian Kim Stefans. Anyway, there's a review of Rae Armantrout's The Pretext, among several other reviews by Stefans. My hunch after reading the first one is that they're all very, very good, fwiw. I love these lines viligantly regarding "the community we," as Frederick Crews used to call it in his Random House Handbook:

If I turn on the news,
someone will say, 'We
mean business.'

Which I read as the news referring to "we" that means mostly "them," Big Business, never everybody, and Armantrout delicately and gently reminds "us" to watch the communities' uses of that scandalously abused pronoun.

How about a splash screen, Flash animation, that has Robert Reed and Bush and Robertson and Buckley and Rumsfeld and Perle and Winnick and Ebbers and Lay and Koszlouseski and Kissinger and Adelman and Bennett and Savage and O"Reilly and Limburgher and the rest on one side and they have erected a wall of bibles for their defense wall and their bunker structures and they have started to panic, so they are throwing their bibles, their last weapons at "the other side," which is nature protected by another great wall of books, but not bibles, rather Sappho, Shakespeare, Marx, Adam Smith, Freud, Horney, Eisler, Chodorov, Darwin, Stein, Cole, Killian, Andrews, Watten, Harryman, Smith-Nash, Silliman, Bromige, Farmer, Moxley, Creeley, O'Hara, Guest, Kyger, Ratcliffe, Grenier, Armantrout, Toscano, Kim, Willis, Gizzi, Gizzi, Bellamy, Hejinian, Adorno, Bernstein, Byrd, Freidlander, Fraser, Scalapino, Kerouac, Armantrout, Rehm, McCrary, Irby, Gevirtz, Ganick, Hill, Chadwick, Dickinson, Howe, Berrigan, Notley, et .al, et .al--you get the picture?

I've got to learn this Flash, S. And where the hell is beat?

When you say "get to the bottom of things, figure things out, use words . . ." etc., I believe you're talking about prose, whereas a lot of good poets would, I'll bet, quickly suggest that you mean poetry--and then at the same time, they'd insist that successful efforts should get into print, wouldn't they?

Also, we may make a big mistake if we reduce these motivations to two that we are treating as if they are in conflict...

Again, though, if the effort is successful, then why must it be in print, aside from hard copy, typed or scrawled, for one's own personal use and future availability, or it's done it work then and there, so why must it be saved?

Must it be saved because one cannot truly integrate its "meaning"/power unless it is either recorded in at least symbolically perceived nonperishable form or memorized? The psyche cannot truly assimilate it unless there is a concrete ritualizing of its "permanence," something that can or will never abandon the perceiver? By the same token, and perhaps more deeply, does it need "social acknowledgement" (i.e., today, publication) because like certain psychological insight, without an "other" there to witness and verify "the understanding," a psyche cannot alone keep the insight permanently?

Also, come to think of it, if these things are so, then do a lot of these poets of the 20th century "compete" so vigorously and fiercely because unless "their poems/poetries" are pronounced king of the hill, the fruit of their whole artistic and intellectual efforts cannot be integrated, assimilated, kept as a permanent part of their psyches?

Do they, in turn, create literary groups and schools and networks and friends to fulfill these assimilation functions and rituals? This is good, is it not?

Moreover, those who "compete" so violently and vociferously for control of these assimilation functions and rituals, like politicians whose every last word must be the law of the land, wouldn't it be wiser for them to take on the more "cooperative model" the poets seem to employ?

Jesus, S., I know I brought it up and all, but I hate this issue. I hate it with a passion.

One wants--I think I speak for both "poetry" and prose--to write to get to the bottom of things, to figure things out, to use words to get to what otherwise cannot be accessed, save maybe by painting for the painter or, the best, perhaps, music for the musician.

And then there is the other motivation for writing--poetry, prose, who knows what--which seems so entirely extrinsic to what I want to write for. I mean the motivation to create objects that others will like, find useful, reward etc.

Must these two motivations be at such odds, or are we both lacking in some way?

I don't know, Menno. Sometimes I think it's mostly just your issue, and then at other times I have confronted it when trying to write poetry and fiction, and to be honest I have always had my troubles with self-consciousness and I've often refused to write anything at all when I've felt too disgusted with the thought that everything going down on the page was "for others," sometimes no matter how hard I desired to escape "them," move them out of mind, politely, forcefully, creatively, angrily, or whatever way I could.

To be very, very honest, I have frequently refused to write anything after reading others, for example, others among my Poetics List friends and folks I deeply admire, for I have been disgusted with the contradiction inherent in the very idea that poetry is not supposed to "communicate," and yet why on earth would so many folks be working so damn hard to get it published and share it with others? I cannot, generally, get past that issue. Maybe now, yes, you're right, Menno, we must resolve this issue.

S.,

Even there your entire post is "meant to be read," penned with readers in mind, or should I say penned with imaginary readers in mind. Goddamn it, this has been an issue between us since we met back in '96. Why Goddamn it must writing subject itself to anticipation or fantasy of readers/listeners, others with whom it intends or hopes to communicate? I know, our little issue is not terribly appropos to this blog, but why is it that we can never resolve that issue, at least basically?

Hey, Menno. I've invited J.M. to join here, too. We'll see. Yer, ummm, "description" thing is a little bit tedious. We should be taking this little template from blogger apart, paying the extra pocket change (or putting it up on N.'s server), and putting together our own page altogether.

Hey, don't worry so much about whether it looks like some of the ones at Heathen in Heat. You have wanted something that wasn't quite circumscribed. If you get too strung out about the sites you see there, soon you'll only be catering to their milieur. I know you feel rotten when everything seems self-absorbed, too, but maybe this is just for such play around that issue. You won't know for a long time if anyone is reading this on occasion and you may not ultimately care. You made the URL theenk precisely because that is exactly what you had in mind. Is there anyplace else where you might stick to that, thinking, and have complete free rein? What's wrong with that? Yes, I have, myself, gone over to the Poetics List for some occasional company there and beat spends most of his time on the Yahoo Finance boards with GX friends and with others on the other boards, but you, well, you, Menno, stay here.

Your friends, Menno... If I were to list them, as many as I could, would you leave them here listed or erase the post?

Have visited several blogs today that I've very much liked, including most at Heathens in Heat. Several others are good as well.

To whom does one address one's blog? Isn't that always the million dollar question?

Up above, "we" indicate that we want to confront the neoconservatives, overcome fear of them, stop the stock market abuse (largely under their administration?), stuff like that... Maybe it is time to take that header info/description out of the page (which would also shrink up the overly large and I think disconcerting banner block, incidentally)? And get beat_read to post, too?

(NO THIS IS NOT A BLOG FOR s.t. ALONE! And it's my space, so I'll do what I want with it!)

I ask myself if it is useful to call Bush/Savage/Rumsfeld "sociopaths" and otherwise express such raw distaste and disdain...

I know that it is true that my contempt, even hatred, is deeply felt and my will to see them removed from power, shamed, and restricted is uncompromising...

I know that my raw language is actually quite mild compared with that which one finds on Financial Message boards for investors who are infuriated by various Enron-type corporate ripoffs of shareholders...

I know that a lot of my language would not improve my chances of getting various sentiments published in Letters to the Editors pages of Newspapers...

I know I don't particularly care about those "forums" and venues, heavily edited as they are , and that I am deeply suspicious of what effect they might have on public opinion...

I wish that there was more that I could do...

O'Reilly, Savage, Limbaugh...

They can instill fear. That's the thing that they do. They can also ignore, censor, and silence. (We must also try to help The Dixie Chicks, Tim Robbins, Susan Sarandon, Michael Sheen, all of our friends from Hollywood big and small, and especially the latter, for they are, as always, the most vulnerable. Or just plain all work together.)

What meaning is there, then, in trying to tell them--the O'Reilly's, and Savage's--that they cannot ever win/gain/earn/regain one's respect? What need have they for anyone's respect, much less those that despise them? If they see one as anything at all, do they see anything other than an enemy or an obstacle, at worse an annoyance?

I think I am a fool sometimes if I forget that sociopaths do not necessarily respond to the same inner psychodynamics and self-concerns that I mistakenly imagine are universal. A Bush or a Rumsfeld, for example: these grown boys live in an entirely differently world. Their minds are so habitually trained and programmed to defend themselves against criticism that no mere middle-class mortal can ever break through their personas.

Just two of several very funny and fun "bloglets" by James Cervantes posted on the POETICS List (http://listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0304&L=poetics&D=1&O=D&F=&S=&P=61228)

4/1/03 6:40 p.m.

Everything's going according to plan. Those people who don't think sohaven't seen the plan. We've seen the plan and everything's going according to it. The plan is broad and flexible. It allows changes to the plan. That's why everything's going according to plan. We can allow changes in the plan, that's why it's a plan. Plans allow changes so that everything will be going according to them. We are part of the plan.

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==============================================

4/18/03 06:28:03

This morning at Starbucks I almost blacked out. But then I realized that I'd truly reached that null point in meditation and all pain got
sucked into me as if I were a black hole. I was the armless Iraqi boy wanting his arms back, I was the mother and father of Marines who died but didn't make CNN, I was undiscovered corpses, I was clotted blood, I was the smell of death. I puked at Starbucks! Have you ever pucked at Starbucks? I mean, I don't care. I even passed a wet fart and it smelled like death.

I walked home, cleaned up and changed, and went back to Starbucks to pick up my bike. It was kind of itchy down there under the lycra, but I put it out of my mind and rode to my cypress. I confess I felt anger toward the offshore rigs but I put that behind me too and thought instead of what this new world would be like, newer even than after 9/11. The waves rolled in, and the waves rolled out. I stayed there until the ocean was steel gray. But then the batteries for my lights died and I walked my bike home the last few miles. When I passed The Hogshead Inn I heard this couple bitching at each other about who had talked to the realtor last.

comments to UrmeIamU@aol.con

---

Now, Menno, wouldn't it be neat to make thousands of these and stuff them into all the latest Savage, O'REALLY, and Hannity books on the shelves of the Borders and Barnes and Nobles across the nation...

Thanks for letting me post these, Menno. Maybe they can fill the gaps when you're too nauseated by the Bush goons to write or act.

Someday I'd like to have jotted down thousands of these short reads.

---

Reading from Bob Grenier's Phantom Anthems (O Books, 1986) --

(1)"Crow"

This, so familiar as to be expected, in Bob G's poetry--the simplicity, and the ever faithful noticing of natural relationships between neat simultaneous, otherwise disjunct phenomena in nature or outdoors, often, what otherwise the reader only knows or sees or, finally, hears in retrospect, he attends to and brings into language over and over again. Like arr, bark, and ark, what can only be noticed by careful and commited practice, I think. Also, a kind of pantheism, though such a heavy "term" does so little justice (also an abstraction far, far removed from this which, so simply, is). And not even remotely "abstract."

---

(2)Many wherein some things unnecessary (all things unnecessary?) have been shorn (or never entered in the first placeS), and what is in the poem (or all that has entered from the get-go) is, well, essential of course Yes, but, more to the point, somehow particularly outstanding at every single immediate instance and almost completely self-contained, like "aster said amended sanded stable object courier tan bag loups to / fire angel tankard some warmth hangs in the aftenoon sun blue waves" and through and through "Prewar Late October Sea Breeze," and also "Memory Remembers," another, with "green & 'pellucid' / that it was dark & 'red walls' of sud- / den 'solid' slow dim / course wall of brick / and 'wooden' cottage 'grey,'" whereby every "thing" or word beside every other somehow via sound juxtapositioning stands aside its neighbor and forms its own percussive space and ontology.

---

(3)Another point is that you know you're not reading well, appropriately, if you've sped up and thus gotten completely out of whack. This is "inappropriate" reading behavior, to be sure...

---

(4)You've seen it before, notably in A Day At The Beach, and also in Sentences, and the proverbial "How does he do that?" astonishment comes from "Well The Tide Is Coming In":

well the tide is coming in
beginning to splash the
well the tide is coming
in beginning to splash
the out rocks there

Which almost used to require a little help from Mary "to get," but what it is about it is, the remarkable mimesis, the way the poem precisely reproduces the actual effect of what tides coming in and splashing "feel" like. "That is EXACTLY the way it is," you laugh, astonished at how many times you've witnessed him reproducing reality in this way before. It's completely unique, in my opinion, to Grenier. Something about the way he's wired, I guess. He and he alone preduces these kinds of "actuality effects." It's uniquely a Grenier thing.

(Yes, a lot of this one here is due to the words "in" and "the" at the ends of lines 1 and 2, and then the parallism of line 3 sucks one in and then, boom (boom), "in" and "the" are repeated in lines 4 and 5 but at the beginning of those lines, and also the strange crashing of the whole rhythm and repetition and syntax from "out rocks there" at the end of line 5 so that the whole wave of meaning breaks up in surprise and jumps from one place, "coming in" (or toward us), to a surprising other place, "out rocks there" with precisely appropropriate discombobulation. Really cool! And always so funny and amazing.)

Will edit/proofread previous rhetoric and "propaganda" tomorrow, perhaps without overdone self-effacement... :)

I view Defense Department spokeswoman Victoria Clarke on this evening's 60 Minutes...

I "know" that she is a liar. I "feel it" and I "see it" in her eyes. The boundary of her emotional energy is clearly intense right there at the surface point of her pupils. There is no way whatsoever that the interviewer will possibly get "through" her firm defense and wall there, no way whatsoever that any authentic vulnerability will penetrate from within her to the outside where we might experience it in a recordable, empirical way.

Watch her eyes. Watch the feeling that you get as you watch the eyes. Are they "receptive" in any way? Will they genuinely "let in" anything that could be construed as criticism or disapproval? I don't think so. They are Type-A, Control Freak, 100% Armor eyes. We will never know any truth that she might share if she had no agenda, if she had no orders from her superiors and co-socios, if she had a genuinely human compassion and ego.

I envision a day far off in the future when we have had some of our useful scientists do studies of "eye boundaries" and other non-verbal body signals and measurements to determine when a subject is lying and presenting the classic sociopathic invulnerability behaviors. There will be some considerable argument rationalizing the great legal and ethical dictum that no one should be punished or otherwise shamed for "what they think," that no one can be arrested for "thoughts." Only actions. Yes, that is one of the last great cornerstones of justice. Just the same, these kinds of politicians will "never, ever be real and honest." They will expertly, professionally, perhaps "diabolically" hide their lying behind their eyes and within the ridiculously fallible, arbitrary nature of language. Nothing they say can be used against them or used to prove that they are lying, if they are, and they will be very well-trained to say little or nothing that would incriminate them or lose their party ratings points. I'll bet Ms. Clarke has received countless hours of training by the same exact experts who teach their CIA operates to beat lie detector tests. I'll bet that is the wave of the future, too, at least in the Republican Party.

I'd love to see ingenious hypnotherapists trained in the most advanced techniques of Neuro-Linguistic-"Programming" and, equally, gorilla journalism work for the 60-Minutes of the future, and NOT for the networks, which are, of course, owned by individuals and moguls. I don't believe that all the philosophy and critical thinking skills and knowledge in the world will be able to unravel sociopathic propaganda ministers of the future, whether they work for the Republican or Democratic parties. Even the latter, will use the traditional "greater good" argument to rationalize their techniques: "Hey," future Prez. Hillary C. says, defending her choice of Victoria Clarke as Press Secretary after stealing her from the Republicans, "I need the best; otherwise, the future of the country could fall back into Republican hands. The ends justify the means. We need the best manipulators and the best liars. We face defeat of all the things we cherish if we give up these small, field leveling technical methods." Future Interviewer: "I guess Ms. Clarke went to the highest bidder." H. Clinton: "Yes, that is the way of Washington. But would you rather this were Russia or Iraq or Mars?"

Or those with more optimism for the human race and the potential of humans becoming more, not less, human will "see through" the lies and the liars regardless whether they get better at concealing their lying and their parties get better at inundating the public with newspeak and manipulation. Those with more optimism (and surely more wit and wherewithal than I am exercising here) will teach us to trust our gut instincts and bodies again, not the "words" of our oppressors. Those with more optimism will teach us to trust the same instinct that tugged at us to see through "cheating husbands," "control freak bosses," and other proverbial "used car salesman/saleswoman" types. That's what these modern and post-modern politicians and their sytems engineers are today (and believe they have to be in order to succeed, sometimes for what they truly believe is the best interest of others, too)!

What then in the national psyche has "mirrored" not only permission but probably also "demand" for them to behave this way and not as significantly less repugnant "government officials" did in the past? (Contrast Nixon (archetypal liar) and Carter (archetypal humble guy), for example.) Yes, we can perhaps trace "the creation of this national personality trait" to corporate powermongers, socioeconomic events/trends, or spiritual confusion later on, but let's get down to business first: What is the psycho-social trait that sets this political repugnance in gear in the first place. It's our responsibility--not Winnick's or Ebber's or Kozlowski's or the sad lady scapecoat Martha Stewart's--and only we can change it.

This claptrap here is propaganda, too. Acknowledging that doesn't make it good, okay, or right. Nor is there a complete absence of truth and common sense in it. And I still exhort anyone who reads here to "watch their eyes" and watch them closely.

(And then the thought comes to my mind that "Hey, wait just a minute, Menno! What if it goes beyond these platitudes and ideal sets and, alas, evolution is factoring in a certain degree of Lying and Complete Control? What if that is the way of time and evolution and in fact these values of trust and honesty and truth and authenticity are in fact being taking over and surpassed by 'stronger,' new strains of humans with low tolerance for receptivity and unparalleled capacity for controlling others? What if these old 'honesty' values, however nifty in the past, are being replaced? There is absolutely nothing in science and history that supports the notion that evolution means the human species will move toward increasingly greater compassion, sincerity, altruism, and the like. The so-called 'strong' a thousand or ten thousand years from now will not according to any statistically supported variations of evolution theory automatically become 'wiser,' 'gentler,' 'kinder,' or necessarily even 'more rational.' Indeed, even if it were 'in our genes' to do so, statistically we could just as easily become dominated by mutations that favor irrational, selfish, cruel, and indifferent mindsets. Or maybe not. I don't know. Maybe it is 'in our genes' to go any which way civilization until now has generally termed repulsive. Maybe it is divinely or naturally or even divinely and naturally AND not supernaturally prefigured "in our genes" that things are, as the Beatles, I believe it was, sang "getting better." I hope so, though I also feel that my hope and my optimistic rationality may be largely learned and not necessarily genetically preset. I hope also that I am totally wrong about Ms Victoria Clarke and only suspect her because of some long established dislike for slightly cross-eyed and narrow-faced persons who are highly structured, take charge types. I hope I'm totally wrong about her, but right about my little theory that we can 'read' people better at certain times in cultural and political history when we attend to their non-verbal gestures and not their words, which seem to have no great useful in these times." Anyways...

S.,

I will likely create a second table on the right for you to post poetry.

Dear Menno,

I've got to say, or you must know, that the more I read of our best poet friends, the more I am inclined to shut up and also to desist impulses to post here in "the political veins," or (existing) forms thereof (albeit my familiarity with same is "radically" limited). I almost wish I could just post up some of my poetry and that of others, perhaps in a separate table here, per your permission, and stay out of most, if not all, of the political discussions.

I have in mind fine Ron Silliman's writing, for example, as well as "positions" taken by Michael Palmer, also noted/quoted in the March Archives of Silliman's Blog.

I simply cannot go into either of the long and deliciously informative Silliman and Palmer "on-going positions" on poetry and politics at this time.

OT: Oh, by the way, Silliman or Ron Silliman or Ron mentions and includes our dear lifelong favorite and inspiration Henry Miller in his list of creative writers who were not subsequently included in the 1960 issue of the The New American Poetry. he writes:

"The four creative writers who won’t be included in the New American Poetry are every bit as intriguing as a list:

• Kenneth Rexroth


• Henry Miller


• Josephine Miles


• Michael Rumaker

According to Allen’s introduction to his later book, he excluded poets who were already firmly established, which presumably would have included Miles & Rexroth. Rumaker, only 25 in 1957, the same age as McClure, appears to have been seen strictly as a fictioneer, thus excluded along with Miller & Bill Burroughs when it came time for Allen to cobble together his epochal collection of verse."

---

(He (R.S.) also refers with that wonderful encyclopedic mind of his to old Paul Goodman. I wonder if he knows that Paul Goodman was, among the other more familiar literary things, an early collaborator with Gestalt Therapy founder Fritz Perls and Ralph Hefferline and co-wrote/co-edited that initial thick Perls theoretical text Gestalt Therapy: Excitement and Growth in the Human Personality...)

Interesting sidenote on Goodman from Canada, York University's History & Theory of Psychology Evening Colloquia 2000-2001:

"Paul Goodman Before Gestalt Therapy"


Speaker

Dan Aalbers is a PhD candidate at York University, and is part of the History & Theory of Psychology area of specialization. His academic supervisor is Thomas Teo. He obtained his BA from University of Nevada, Reno and his MA from Long Island University (NY). Among his interests are liberation psychology, radical psychology, and Gestalt theory.

Abstract

In 1945 Paul Goodman published an article entitled "The Political Meaning of Some Recent Revisions of Freud" in the radical journal "politics". While this article is virtually unknown today, at the time it was published it was the focus for enormous negative attention. C. Wright Mills, Patricia Salter, George Orwell and Wilhelm Reich all castigated Goodman in print or in person. The response to his article in "politics" was the nadir of Goodman's career. Had not Goodman been rejected by the psychoanalytic left he probably would never have been drawn into collaboration with Fritz Perls. Had Goodman not been black listed within New York intellectual circles he might not have been drawn towards activist politics. Goodman's fall and the subsequent reorientation of his career had a profound impact upon the development of gestalt therapy, had important implications for the gay rights movement, and might have influenced Marcuse's thinking. The vitriolic response to this article tells us much about the intellectual climate of mid forties and has implications for the present day since it is possible to see the "politics" debate as a synecdoche of the debate between the sociological and biosocial left.)

---

Anyway, Menno, there's plenty there from Michael Palmer and from some folks with whom I'm not especially familiar, like Matthew Zapruder, Noah Eli Gordon, and John Erhardt. To be sure, there are numerous others wrestling with this frequently rather debilitating self-questioning and individual tensions between poetic and political impulse.

Actually, even five years ago, as you know, I wrote/played through the bulk of Rughstuff particularly intending to get away from anything that could easily be called "rhetorical." I wanted primarily, and maybe even merely, "to play" and secondarily I considered that objective a quite sufficient political endeavor in itself, regardless whatever "object" I might make. I took on what I am sure is one of the least poetic subject matters available (on the surface, anyway). Or let's not call it "subject matter." As you know, it was a pseudo-subject matter. I.e., I employed the jargon/lingo/terminology of golf, surely a detestable and anti-poetic "subject matter" in many knee-jerkers' minds.

But (1)I have loved "to play" golf for over 33 years now and I have done so with dear scratch-handicap and accomplished golf buddies ranging from late sixties SDS founders to seventies/eighties' "speedball afficionados," few strangers to medicinal herb ramifications, Zen-spirited Michael Murphy "Golf in the Kingdom" Shivas Irons emulators, and only very, very occasionally rightwing Republican filthy rich country clubbers (and even those on occasions when I was competing in tournaments and had to participate in fields not by any means my own choosing); (2)the so-called jargon/lingo (I wish I could offer a better label) of golf was/is a rich and fun language, and it was in my head often during those years when I was trying my hand at changing over to the golf profession; (3)I was reassured by the fact that several poets I most admire, hardly "materialistic" by any stretch of the imagination--Robert Grenier, Michael Palmer, and Steve Farmer--have played some considerable golf in their time, and from David Bromige I learned that Palmer (NOT Arnie, smile) also pursued or entertained options of pursuing a professional golf career earlier on in his life, and Bob G. out in Bolinas reminisced about his having played to a 3 handicap (always about my prime years handicap, too) while he was in undergraduate school and for his college team, and he pointed out to me--or maybe it was to Joanne or to Stephen there as we talked about our various spiritual practices, Stephen's surfing and Bob's hiking and Joanne's meditating--that, well, "golf" gives one joy, which is both good and essential for the spirit etc); and also (4)what difference does it make one way or another whether I choose the language of "golf" or "baseball" or "bowling" or "chess," and whether the stuff of Rughstuff is "successful" or not (in whatever reader's eyes), and wasn't it, for a change, just plain fun to write.

A few also have considered it fun to read: Charles Smith made some dang handsome old-fashioned letter press broadsides on his fabulous Arcturus Editions press, for which I am ever grateful. And Lee Chapman took a sleeve of 'em for her First Intensity, #17. And when I read them in Lawrence, well, they went over well, not only with my age old friends there, like Jim McCrary and Judy Roitman, but also with new friends like Monika Peck and Jonathan Mayhew, and Ken Irby was certainly not in any way discouraging (admittedly, he too is very kind, of course). Okay, these have been several highlights in my life, and I am, as always, uncomfortable risking what could be called "tooting my own horn" or "self-promoting." Still, Menno, I stand by my then particularly personal endeavor to tackle recurring and perhaps never-ending conflict between writing "too rhetorically" (is that redundant?) and eschewing rhetoric altogether. I'm going to add here, Menno, that David once introduced my writing at a Johnny Otis Club reading as a kind of "hyper-rhetoric." It was at the time surely a generous compliment and introduction on mentor Bromige's part, of course. Naturally, though, I also felt the urge to at least "try" and move completely away from any kind of rhetoric in at least some future venture(s). Thus, Rughstuff.

Anyhow, it's just a little book, and I in no way have illusions of it's proving anything or starting a revolution. It's probably just gibberish--well, it's certainly "just gibberish"-- and maybe it reduces to little more than what could be termed "ornamentalism." Nonetheless, a few folks have enjoyed it and I enjoyed writing it, and that was plenty enough. By the same token, I know Republicans and some real boobs who cherish the game of golf. I don't believe there is anything wrong with that, either. In fact, I rather think it's one of the infinite number of things I share with them, as opposed to the several that I reject. Whatever. Fuck...

Notice the time stamps on these things, Menno. Must be a California outfit. Well, that's good, anyway. I trust that, as it were...

Another thing... Why should you be trying to "convince" anyone of anything?

I know. That is neither here nor there, and it's surely a poet's question, or I suppose it is, anyhow. Maybe I should ask myself, why be so self-conscious at all?

By the way, who is to say these "blogs" aren't elaborate screening and information gathering mechanisms? I know. That is pessimistic. And paranoid, too.

Hmmm, I feel like I'm pretending to talk to you in an effort to communicate with others. I should sign off. I don't like this.

Hi Menno,

You know about the portal and this morning I will be getting together with a partner/designer to work on some of its components... I was thinking, why not 1000's of portals or, more to the point, thousands and thousands of "fake" Yahoo's, "fake" MSN's, and so on and so forth. Just as easily as template designers like this Blogger here offer almost unlimited "basic" sites, there could be whole portals. Something like that... I suppose I should stick to the first one.

Oh, I guess one thing I've got in mind is that they are too high on themselves to imagine that "some of us might cleverly fake reinforcing them, somehow, i.e., lead them on to exhibit even more obvious complete selfishness or obscene indifference and other archetypical traits of arrogance and the projected contempt for their own deep vulnerabilities. They must, absolutely must, be ripe for a fall and "mistakes." They've gone way over the top.

P.S. Apologies for my "us" and "them" language, but one can be only so careful and polite when the situation involves immediate violence...

I try to write a parody of Bill O'Reilly's "truth" article "When the truth is a casualty," and it starts out like this:

When a truth is a commodity

Perhaps the most disconcerting thing about the Iraqi war press coverage has been the misleading headlines that have appeared in nearly all American newspapers. The words "fierce fighting" and "ferocious resistance" have been used time and time again to keep the American television viewer preoccupied while wizards on Wall Street reap, weep, keep, etc. On more than one occasion, I thought I was reading about Bill Clinton's escapades with Monica Lewinsky, then I realize it's all entertainment and distraction; that's what I'm hired for. But there was always one major problem with all the articles: American and British casualties have been light -- very light. And there's no way to bring attention to the socioeconomic class doing the actual fighting if things stay that way. I can't believe I [Bill O'Reilly] am writing this

but I, mtb, cannot finish the parody. It can go in a hundred directions, even a hundred directions at once, and it's as easy as pie to write such stuff, and it's always been fun, but what's the use? Why would it change an O'Reilly reader, or how many would it change? Why would it be worth entertaining myself, or targeted others, and how could I possibly desire to profit from that? Surely, it'd be the same exact commodifying of "truth" that my fake title pretends to ridicule...

The impulse to write satire and parody is there. It always has been. It's a pleasure to laugh and I've always enjoyed having that kind of fun and some friends have enjoyed my humour and liked my sharing it. Nonetheless, even if there is humour to be enjoyed, humour to be created, and a need to experience humour, I do not feel like laughing. I haven't, in fact, felt like laughing at things or enjoying myself for a few years now.

Perhaps others feel or have felt the same way. If that were so, then I would be inclined to think that other, uniquely human and nourishing emotions and psychological states are missing from the collective psyche as well. And if that is so, then I believe "we" have at least a hint as to where to go to counter the tremendous force by which the intolerance of ambiguity crowd of sociopaths are leading folks away from their souls and spirits.

These are, of course, deeply and genetically inherited richnesses of human experience that I am suggesting the Bushwackers are, perhaps even unbeknownst to them, themselves, hacking away from the present mindset. That is to say, such genetically vital stuff cannot truly be repressed for a long period of time (unless, perhaps, such repression would lead to considerable craziness, which, actually, probably would be the case), but I guess what I'm trying to say/think is that subsequent generations will, obviously, resusitate these "emotions" because they're plainly always within us, for good, in the first place. Perhaps, though, some of us can figure out ways to present the repression of these deeper, inherent emotions or the emptiness caused by their repression... Sorry if this is not so clear.

The Bushwackers cannot, for example, easily laugh at themselves, overdo their rubbing this "victory" in, show genuine compassion for others, etcetera ad infinitum. (My apologies that more particular and better described examples don't come to my mind just now.) Just the same, given the fact that they are, underneath their desperately macho and entirely fake personas, severely restricted in their emotional range and authenticity, how can their inauthenticity be revealed to the greater general population that they have beguiled, coarsened, numbed out, hypnotized into believing that, for example, watching a silly grinning automaton like Tiger Woods play in Hootie Johnson's Personally Owned National Treasure Master's Course Augusta is more pleasurable and nourishing than going out and playing golf, themselves, perhaps even on the vast majority of golf courses that permit both genders membership?

Hi Menno,

I just read something and it made me laugh. Imagine that?

I came across it at Mike Snyder's Formal Blog (which, incidentally, looks like a pretty good blog and the curator seems pretty cool). It's very funny, IMO. Parodies Rumsfeld "writing poetry." Comes from Slate.com, apparently. Hmm, slate.com is at MSN. Same folks who bring us MSNBC? I'm digressing. Was meaning only to send you something funny, for a change. Here it is:

Glass Box

You know, it's the old glass box at the?
At the gas station,
Where you're using those little things
Trying to pick up the prize,
And you can't find it.
It's?
And it's all these arms are going down in there,
And so you keep dropping it
And picking it up again and moving it,
But?
Some of you are probably too young to remember those?
Those glass boxes,
But?
But they used to have them
At all the gas stations
When I was a kid.
-Dec. 6, 2001, Department of Defense news briefing

From lesters blogspot, I am catching up on the present discussion about poetry, action, response to the war, etc. Charles Bernstein writes the following:

"A decade ago, just after the previous Persian War, Leslie Scalapino, the convener of today's session, sent _Dead Souls_, a series of searing indictments of that war, to a number of newspapers, who declined to publish, as editorial matter, a kind of writing they found inaccessible. But the task for poetry is not to translate itself into the language of social and linguistic norms but to question those norms and, indeed, to explore the ways they are used to discipline and contain dissent."

I agree with a lot of that. It is all well and good. Just the same, I feel so much pressure, am extremely hard-pressed, to think that there are other more pressing matters than poetry's task and the like. Oh, defining that task is indeed a most pressing matter by itself, but I still believe that it, "poetry" (and all art, of course), must be separated from other political action that is so urgently necessary at this time.

Or I'd like to see a poetry that doesn't even try to be "a poetry" at all, indeed wouldn't be--rather poetic faculties and inspiration and drive put to work to reinvent and retake the media machine or something. I.e., not poems and poeming. Rather, interrogation and restructuring (not deconstructing) of the forms of neoconservative media control that corral and exploit national and international "consensus and mindset." In fact, I believe it is imperative to come together (thousands of writers, web designers, techies, hackers, graphics artists, think tankers and information gatherers, etc. ect.) and construct an irresistible and better functioning mass media controlled from the ground up.

It'd be much "smarter," in my opinion, for all bloggers here, for example, to invest a few hundred dollars in their own domains, their own web storage, even their own ISP's and networks, rather than give over to big corporations like Yahoo and Google (who used to be thought so dang chic, but truly they are being manipulated by the huge infrastructure that they interconnect with). And we need to "play dirty (conceal communication within Comment tags behind web pages or whatever)," too. This may not be a pretty game and playing field anymore.

I'm rambling now because various ideas some of my compatriots and I have tossed around are coming to my mind, and I cannot here/now share them, risk exposing my friends or slandering...

Last, though, I'm not confident that "this" is a parlor game anymore. I am indeed happy for and appreciative of those folks fortunate enough to have gotten themselves securely employed, tenured, pensioned by universities and fighting "the good fight there," but out here in middle-class land, most of us not so fortunate folks are getting killed by ravaging of our 401K's and exploitative employment and an economy that is leaving 0 time for creating or finding opportunity to much more than survive, less and less with each passing month... I mean, some of us are being slaughtered, or something. But enough of that for here/now.

I agree with Barrett Watten that this is a "war on language." I do not believe that "language" can be used to "fight back" or "defeat" the aggressors. I can picture the "deconstruction" of their intellectual institutions. Indeed, I believe that has already taken place. Their intellectual institutions were completely dismantled (not that the dismantling was terribly difficult). However, they all of a sudden "appeared" to replace everything with force, might, and unparalleled irrationality. What good does it do now to deconstruct what they've substituted in these incredibly short two and a half years?

My readings of Objects Relations (Nancy Chodorov) over the years makes me think and believe this: Our individual selves/identities are, ultimately (if not in fact sadly), always at least partially dependent on the others with whom we share our individual realities. I.e., only by interacting with and co-existing with "others" without whom we cannot sustain "the mirrors" that reflect back on us our real potentials and most beautiful qualities can we actualize, say, Identity X; otherwise, we are stuck with perhaps detestable potentials and mediocre qualities, or lack thereof, that result in, say, Identity Y. That's not eloquently put, but I think it means simply that we cannot "be" much of anything that others around us refuse to recognise or have limited capacity to reinforce.

Take my friend S., for example: for 17 years he lived in California and forged an identity and life for himself that he regarded as meaningful and rich and satisfying. Now, he says, "stuck" in western New York, 3000 miles from his friends and California culture, he "cannot be the S." those friends and California mirrored for him there. He says he has all but completely lost his identity. (I encourage him to keep writing his novel Morte de California and even more important than that, get back to California, and revitalize himself.)

Back to my thoughts following Chodorov, though. Say only 30% or less of a population is highly cultured, educated, humanistic, and peaceful. The rest of the population controls the financial institutions, the media, the courts, the government, and the military. Worse yet, the other 70% does not and never will aspire to culture, education, humanistic values/ideals, and peace. How can the minority survive? How can they survive materially, financially, emotionally, psychologically, physically? They can "deconstruct" the other 70% from now until hell freezes over. They can write the most brilliant "war" poetry or, I should say, "peace" poetry (Charles Bernstein's recent "War is" lines amaze me, for example). But what can that do to affect or influence the 70% that want to destroy the minority's world, for their world is somehow "in the way," or whatever? I don't believe rationality and art is the answer. I believe these are necessary for preserving and nourishing the peaceful 30%.

I don't have a lot of answers, but I believe some considerable "irrationality" and "mischief" will need to be employed. And I think that if a few pin-pointed paper icons can be defrocked, then the entire militaristic and eco (both economics and ecology) terrorism regime may fall.

I'm interested in this question: How did they manage to rise to power so darn quickly and by what means? (Shoot, no, that isn't the question. Maybe later for that one.) No, the question I have now is this: If they created their 70% via such patently and incredibly crude "irrational" means, propaganda, appeal to illiteracy and hatred and fear, and such, then how can they (and "it") be unraveled and replaced? They've "replaced" so doggone much in such a short time--especially in the financial and legal spheres. I mean the middle class just moved irrevocably back a notch towards chattel slavery with what the crooks in the financial markets stole and what the courts permitted and now codify and all... They've gotten away with "it," all across the board, for chrissakes, and now there's this Iraq takeover by force--and their military corporations and defense industries starting the entire century off with a 6 run lead, as it were!

There's something surreal and illusory about it all (well, that's what I have been telling myself until lately, anyway). Like, how can the whole world just change for the bad and terrible and terrifying practically overnight like this? And thus, well, it must not be so real; it's too fast and too much a reversal to last; it must be a flash in the pan.
But that's so "rational" for me to think, so I'm not sure that thinking that way is the right tact, by any means. I think there's some considerable "doin" to do, and I'm not sure what, just yet, but I'm sure it's got to be new.

No definition of Sociopath



Say one of the propagandists asked his or her multi-billion dollar question... Say O'Reilly (O'Reilly, I guess, because he has been such a terrible disappointment--saw him speaking at Harvard (C-Span) one time, and he really seemed not so bad, and I'd had a change of heart, but he's worse than Limbaugh (buffoon, balloon, goon) or Savage (rat) because he's got a much higher IQ): "So what is your definition of a sociopath," he asks.

I know that the only answer that will work is no answer. "What difference would it make? Sociopaths do not listen to rationality. I have no definition for you. I know simply that you and your ilk are sociopaths. Consider it 'faith-based.' You cannot convince me otherwise, and I will not dignify your defense mechanisms. What difference would it make if I told you what definition I use to determine that you are sociopathic? 'By definition,' you cannot hear that, take it seriously, or permit it to get in your way. No, I have no answers to your response to my belief. No rationality, no science, no art, and no words will make any difference."

Small sample of worthless Yahoo "news" headlines of the day:
"· Bush "heartened" by Iraq war progress (AFP). "

Well, OF COURSE he is! Tell us something we don't already know, like "Others on the planet, including some significant number of Muslim human beings, hardened by Iraq war." Okay, we already know that, too. Don't we?

Just the same, why "heartened," and does AFP put the word between quotes for the same reason I have here? After all, can a Bush, or this particular sociopath, be "heartened" by anything? Okay, you got me again! Yes, of course, there's a great deal of power and money involved in the "progress." I guess I needed AFP to put that word between quotation marks, also.

P.S. How in any god, goddess, or non-deity's name can "we" have gone from the nineties--when "bad" U.S. emperors pretend they're Wittgensteinians with their language games for the verb to be, smoke smelly cigars, and take sexual advantage of those who are less powerful ALL THE WAY ['cept he didn't inhale there, either]--to a return to 1984 (or maybe that should be 1984) style Pappy and Bonzo glee? (Whoops, this is not to say that I am forgetting to include Big Bill and "Honest" Hillary as recipients of buddy Gary Winnick's plunder from Global Crossing investors. How big of you, Bill! I'm certainly not.) Anyway, though, what a freaking incredible mess...

Menno, I agree with just about everything you are saying here, but I'm not so sure I "get" the style, almost "straight" and then "raw" here and there. I wonder, Menno, can you appeal to straight readers and is it worth the effort? By the same token, were you to go "raw," would your only readers be me and beat and maybe a few folks from UB Poetics, and if they were invited (and visited), wouldn't they be "the choir" already, rendering a lot of your post unnecessary? (Also, Menno, did you really think this out and want to mix "readers?" Just wondering, buddy.)

Give t-h-e-m Liberty, or Give them DEATH?

This entire global mess, now so terribly tragic, so terribly sad--"we" have crossed the line, our line. We have given in, succombed to terrible weakness. Whereas we might have reached just a tiny bit more deeply, drawn from infinitely greater strength, intelligence, and Yankee ingenuity, summoned our true heroism, instead we gave over to our all too human weakness.

Oh, "they" did, too. They gave in to theirs, too.

Both of us were capable of engaging our deeper strengths. Imagine...

Imagine NO bombing of civilians and preemptive violence. Imagine NO billions of dollars spent, if you must. Imagine NO collateral damage to world harmony. Imagine NO 9/11. Imagine NO bombing of the WTC. Imagine NO 3500 innocent people massacred. Imagine NO terrorizing of humble citizens.

One prays that deep in the collective consciousness of humankind, the same from which these U.S. and Iraqi "shadows" (Jung) arose in the first place, at this very moment others presently stronger will soon rescue our two beleaguered peoples from this all too human temporal quicksand. One prays that a coalition of our world's other leaders, stronger ones, will stop us from sinking further, from stooping lower, from cowering in the face of our temporal but obviously deadly weaknesses. One prays that God/Allah/Nature/Life will deliver us ASAP guides, angels of Understanding, who can show us how to harness our shadows and cease, in our deadly all too human weakness, projecting them onto "others."

I appeal to the lords of high media, the O'Reillys, the Limbaughs, the Savages, the Hannitys to get some sack or move aside. I appeal to their employers and the beneficiaries of their shameless and sociopathic propaganda pandering. I appeal to the politicians here, even the lost president's son. I appeal to all of them, Bush and Rummy and Wolfy and Kissy, Hussein and bin Laden and Sharon and Blair and Little Lord Fontleroy. Read your Shakespeare, Boys, particularly Richard the III. Or, if you're so pathetically religiously inclined, perhaps Milton, particularly "On the late massacre at Piedmont." Or whatever, but read a book, something written by poets, not bullies and cowards.

Indeed, I appeal to All the politicians who rule their divided lands with iron fist and fiber optic foot. Nip it in the bud, this terrible, terrible calamity, this tragic breakdown of true human strength, this all too human giving over to weakness which begets so much destruction, grief, and death.

Or move out of the way, Boys! This could have been the first century in the modern (last 8-10,000 years) history of humankind whence humans dispensed with all this pathetic weakness. Move over, Cowards and Bullies! Or collectively stop this misery now!