Words/Definitions/Sparkling Things

Which definition of languish is more appropriate for a blog?

-To fail to make progress or be successful - or -

-Suffer from being forced to remain in an unpleasant place or situation - that being the Internets, dear readers. Maybe here I'm referring more to the words, not the blog. Oh well.

Have you read The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary by Simon Winchester? No? You should. Really. The book came out a few years ago, but I only recently had the pleasure to read it. It's very well-written, and the story (true story!) is incredible. I mean, if you like words/dictionaries/defining things. One of the most prolific contributors to the first edition of the dictionary was an incarcerated murderer/madmen; the author can't definitively say for certain why he went mad, but one of the postulates is that he was traumatized from his time as a doctor in the Civil War, forced to brand deserters with a hot iron. It's really a tragic, touching story.

I love words/dictionaries/defining things. Growing up, my mother had a copy of the Compact Edition of the OED, complete with mini microscope to aid in reading the tiny, tiny print. I admit I didn't make as much use of it as I should have -- but it was a treasure.

Dismantling words, too. Misuse/abuse. Rhyming, spinning, sparkling things.

The Revisionist's Dream II

She dreamed and the dream was of language. She dreamt
words had yellow wings, had a thousand delicate fingers,
had big tusks, had balls - that their mutable voices rose
from some distance and carried to her on a blue wind. No.
She dreamed of water. She dreamed of a single bright leaf
tangled in a dark stream. She did. But you can't take
her literally, and the story changes all the time.
-Renée Ashley

something after a temporary halt

to resume. a space for critical thinking // cracked glass

glueing the city back together

i have decided to forsake, momentarily, capitalization here.

something meaningful, and full of meaning, from someone not me:

Any form of thought whatever requires a preparation by emptying one’s mind. You have to lance the cumulative abscess, since we know too much about everything. And there is nothing better than mindless diversions to rid us of that deadweight that crushes thought. Nothing like a good bout of obsessive gymnastics to dispel received ideas. The preparatives for thought are as mysterious as the preparatives for anger. - Jean Baudrillard

writing = thought // -distraction +mental stretching // incomplete equation

resuming a space for this preparative

hopefully you'll do some somersaults too

there are also older poems in past issues of online journals that i never posted about. read them:

Spiral Orb One - Window Conversation

Tattoo Highway 20 - I wanted to Write a Short Story

to be continued...

Waking Life

New poem up here:

Melusine

Read it! And while you're at it, read the rest of the current issue as well! :)

Hereing/Hearing Music

"On waking, the pattern of the dream fades, but its aura, ambience, timbre and tonality remain, though there is no image. It's the same with a piece of music. You have it in your mind, you can hear it mentally, but you can't summon it up as form. Or with a face, whose features and smile you can feel in a tactile way, but with no recall of what it looks like. Where on earth does this force of the dream register itself, this reminiscence without image?"
-Jean Baudrillard, Cool memories IV (51)

Please join me at a lovely concert this week:

FANTASIES AND SONGS:
NATHANIEL LANASA, SILVIE JENSEN, AND RICK QUANTZ

Wednesday, February 17 at 7PM
Bechstein Piano Centre
207 West 58th Street

Schubert: Der Wanderer
Schubert: Wanderer-Fantasy
Schumann: Kreisleriana-fantasies
Brahms: Viola Songs

Silvie Jensen, mezzo-soprano
Rick Quantz, viola
Nathaniel LaNasa, piano

Go to the Event Announcement at the Bechstein Centre website HERE.

HEAR/HERE more here as in where I will be hearing on Wednesday:

Marie Ponsot
J. Mae Barizo
Claudia Cortese
&
Nick Thran

Where: Cornelia Street Café
When: Wednesday, January 27th, 2010, 6pm
$7 admission gets you one free drink!

Marie Ponsot is the author of several collections of poetry, including The Bird Catcher (1998), a finalist for the 1999 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize and the winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, and Springing: New and Selected Poems (2002), which was named a "notable book of the year" by The New York Times Book Review. Among her awards are a creative writing grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Delmore Schwartz Memorial Prize, The Robert Frost Poetry Award, and the Shaughnessy Medal of the Modern Language Association.

Born in Toronto, J. Mae Barizo was shortlisted for Canada's Robert Kroetsch award for Innovative Poetry and Ahsahta Press's Sawtooth Poetry Prize. Her work has appeared in Baltimore Review, Bellingham Review, Another Chicago Magazine, Atlanta Review, among others. She is the author "The Concert Review" and "The Marble Palace."

Nick Thran is the author of one poetry collection, Every Inadequate Name (Insomniac Press, 2006). A second collection, Earworm, will appear in 2011 with Nightwood Editions. He currently lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Claudia Cortese is the recipient of Kent State’s Undergraduate Wick Poetry Award. She recently completed her MFA in Poetry at Sarah Lawrence College, where she was the poetry editor forLumina Magazine and a featured reader at the Sarah Lawrence Poetry Festival. Her work has appeared in Bellevue Literary Review and At-Large Magazine.

Rivers and Art

Last week, back in NYC, M. and I went to the Georgia O'Keeffe and Roni Horn exhibits at the Whitney. I am drawn to the indescribable colors of O'Keeffe, and the intellectualism of Horn. The O'Keeffe installation consisted of her more abstract work, less flowers, more more more...A woman I met recently told me she loves O'Keeffe, not least because all those vaginas turn her on. Though not explicitly publicized, Horn can be found listed as a lesbian or queer woman artist. Were the curators intentional in this pairing?

I was very impressed by Horn's work. Strangely enough, this exhibit was at the Tate Modern while I was living in Oxford last year. Though I passed by, twice I think, I never went in as it cost extra to see the special exhibit. I now wish I had seen it! Since I did associate this exhibit with my time in Oxford and London, it was bittersweet for me; this deep yearning to be back there, down in my gut. My favorite piece by Horn, a series of close-up photographs of sections of the water in the Thames, entitled "Still Water (The River Thames, for example)". Each photograph contained footnote numbers in the water, in shadows, in waves, its movement and stillness; these corresponded to thoughts and questions written below the photo. I think I could have stayed looking and reading for hours. The whole exhibit, entitled Roni Horn a.k.a. Roni Horn, dealt with explorations, questions and feelings towards identity, experience, relationships.

The Thames River. The Hudson.
Identities of rivers, the people who live on them.

At this very moment, where you are is the very center of the world.


(Photo from Roni Horn at the Whitney here)