Saturday, June 18, 2016

All débutantes say it's good







  And every
  star out
  in far
  Hollywood

  Seems to
  give it a
  try

  . .








                         So why be that guy?
                      



                         Orlando has remade
                         this year, and giv-
                         en resolution to an
                         uninspiring option
                         in November. We did
                         notice the names at
                         Pulse. They aren't
                         anglicised anymore.
                         











Cole Porter
Jubilee
1935





Friday, June 17, 2016

Suppose it were Friday cxv: Not really by chance





       I'm beginning to rely on
       the recurrence of Friday
       in my life, and I find I
       have never shaken the i-
       dea that it holds amuse-
       ment, not very far below
       the surface. I'm expect-
       ing always to read some-
       thing I won't be able to
       put down.













Thursday, June 16, 2016

Our race





                             
            What did you think, that joy
            was some slight thing?


















Mark Doty
Sweet Machine
  Visitation
  fragment
  1998
Fire to Fire
  New and 
  Selected Poems
Harper Collins, 2008©





  

Wednesday, June 15, 2016

Origins of Wednesday xxx: Ravings









                 In a statement dated last evening, 
                 and signed by its entire editorial 
                 board, The New York Times adopted 
                 the term, ravings, to identify re-
                 marks by Donald Trump this week in 
                 support of himself against the in-
                 terests of the nation and all man-
                 kind. Earlier in the day, the Shor-
                 enstein Center at Harvard laid sub-
                 stantial blame for his rise, to me-
                 dia stunned by his headlights. It 
                 was good, then, to see the English
                 language retrieving its accuracy.




                 The President, himself, performed
                 this same obligation, earlier in
                 the day. Time was, we'd expect it.
                 Time's always been short that way.























George Orwell
Why I Write
1946
op. cit.





Tuesday, June 14, 2016

Empty nester



  Beyond any comparison in
  American life, it simply
  isn't possible to identi-
  fy an instance of fusing
  the erotic with the dom-
  estic with the exuberant
  consciousness of the ad-
  ventures framed by those
  shelters, that we remark
  in gay couples, a cliché
  representing, by the way,
  all the customary victor-
  ies at double or nothing.
  It is what is wrong with
  this picture. It made me
  uneasy, too. But that is
  an indulgent reaction. A
  house of this kind isn't
  murdered, but blasphemed
  beyond recourse to pity,
  beyond idylls of lament.
  It conscripts our pride.








            As long as the wild boar loves the mountain ridges,
            As long as fish love swimming in the rivers,
            As long as bees pasture upon the thyme fields,
            Cicadas on morning dew, as long as this . .































Virgil

Eclogues
  Eclogue V
  fragment
David Ferry
  translation
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1999©

Alessio Pozzi

Monday, June 13, 2016

Of pride and probability





       Take me to your trees.
       Take me to your breakfasts,
       your sunsets, your bad dreams,
       your shoes, your nouns.
       Take me to your fingers.





       The thing I embrace in this par-
       odox of celebrating Pride is the
       opportunity it gives to remember
       those who prepared the way, sus-
       taining it still with the daring
       one needs to be gentle. Charisma
       is a fluency in that instrument,




That said, the parents of the most prolific gunshot murderer in 21st Century American life have just explained, their child annihilated as many people as he possibly could, on the strength of observing a kiss between two men. Nothing distinguishes this response from the cold crucifixion of Matthew Shepard, really, except the numbers. In haste to claim credit for anticipating all this, Donald Trump has only too modestly ignored his Party's fetish for stuffing American closets with automatic weapons, and has hit upon his genius for fomenting nativist hysteria instead. This does legitimise a little pride, in exposing the desperate hooliganism now embraced by that sorry Party. This carnage marks the convergence of a fulfilled statistical probability, which gun-freak Republicans have labored tirelessly to generate, with an intolerably recurring crime against a demographic group they have oppressed, just as assiduously, since Joe McCarthy showed what fun it is. As partisan denunciations proliferate, against the President for rational forbearance, their toxic jingle of bigotry and violence steeps this coincidence in all too familiar shame. "Radical Islam," eat your heart out. 




















Margaret Atwood
Good Bones
Coach House Press, 1992©

Michael Elmquist
  photography
  Simon Purchase James
  Isaac Tullis
  Loammi Goetghebeur

Franz Schubert
An die musik, D. 547
1817
Ian Bostridge, tenor
Julius Drake, piano
EMI, 2005©







Sunday, June 12, 2016

Orlando






    I trust you-know-who
    to tell me, this has
    nothing to do with a
    gun.

























Wiktor Sudol



Of power without force





         You need a lot
         of energy for
         love, and I'm
         a different per-
         son now. I've
         grown ordinary.
         



More often than not, it's unpleasant 
to remember the way I used to be.














Happenings of human life change so much, until re-stored by being heard. Listening offends every postulate of observa-tion. 




















Svetlana Alexievich
Secondhand Time
  The Last of the Soviets
  An Oral History
Bela Shayevich
  translation
Random House, 2016©

Michael Bidner
Bodega Bay

Dimitri Arvanitis
Steven Chevrin