A literature of power without force

I was going to discuss voting rights 

in the United States yesterday, but 

the subject called for more time than 

I could give it, with everything else 

Saturday offers - and requires. I cer-

tainly didn’t object to the subject I 

chose. I reasoned, I could pass off 

the note on voting rights to Sunday, 

and hastened into town to shop.

On my way home, I stopped at a smart 

little roadside café for a first bite 

of the day. I was followed a few min-

utes later by a young family — mother, 

father, a boy of about 7, one of about 

4, and an infant in a carrier. They as-

sumed their rôles without a hitch. The 

mother announced their requirements, 

the father fetched a stool for the in-

fant, the latter dozing silently; and 

the older brother strode about, explor-

ing the environment, until the younger 

spoke up to him, almost in a whisper, 

in a tone reserved for them: Why don’t 

you sit, and talk to me?

Immature. Narcissistic. Sexist. Needy.
That whole list of our objections now.

Without a single whiff of force, not

least of disdain. Disempowerment may

impart these elements, left to their

devices.

Representation, I understand. Direct 

democracy, I understand. Repression, 

I understand; and corruption, I thor-

oughly understand. Voting responds to 

something else. 

I know it by that question, I’d know 

its tone anywhere. It has driven this 

election, and it will do, all the way. 

Edward Hopper

Solitary Figure in a Theatre

1904

Whitney Museum

Party soon

 We've all been so busy around here, it    practically slipped one's mind. Now,  every 50 seconds in the United States, a  citizen of Hispanic descent attains the  age of 18.

 Just sayin'.

Andrés Sanjuan

Party

rmbl opened 7.29 
very tentatively -
there remain now 
the possibilities

            Is blindness, then, the gift you give before

            The rest? - forgiveness, say, so hard to find

            In what's at hand, the common day which seems

            At last the light that yields such heat, such beams.

 
                   

     

J.D. McClatchy

The Rest of the Way

  Poems

  An Old Song Ended

  [fragment]

Alfred A. Knopf, 1992©

op. cit.

Valéry Lorenzo

Isabelle Pariente-Butterlin

  aux bords des mondes

"I cannot divest my appetite"

I cannot divest my appetite of literature, yet I find myself eventually trying it all by Nature - first premises, many call it, but really the crowning results of all, laws, tallies and proofs.

Has it never occurr'd to any one
how the last deciding tests ap-
plicable to a book are entirely
outside of technical and gram-
matical ones, and that any truly
first-class production has little
or nothing to do with the rules
and calibres of ordinary critics?

I have fancied the ocean and the
daylight, the mountain and the
forest, putting their spirit in
a judgment on our books. I have
fancied some disembodied human
soul giving its verdict.

Walt Whitman
Specimen Days
  Final Confessions -
  Literary Tests
1882


i    Doug Mills
iv  Jim Wilson
The New York Times
July 28, 2016

Arrest him

    A political figure has called for
    the laws to be enforced, even as
    he insists that he, alone, could
    do it. He has also called upon a
    foreign government to subvert the
    Constitutional rights of American
    citizens under the First, Fourth,
    and Fifth Amendments, and to con-
    duct espionage against our govern-
    ment. He, alone, has ever gone so
    far to tempt us to ignore our law
    by unpardonable intimidation. Let
    us call that hand, and arrest him
    now, before his enjoyment becomes
    too expensive for his remaining
    years to remit behind bars. If he
    would like to shield himself by
    the Constitutional instruments he
    despises, let him thrill himself
    in Federal District Court, before
    a Judge assigned by customary ro-
    tation, to administer due process.

    Meanwhile, as is obvious at last,
    the Party which would shield him
    from this benighted day forward,
    with its nomination to an office
    which might shelter him temporar-
    ily, is nothing more than a crim-
    inal conspiracy, awaiting indict-
    ment throughout the court system.
    But he has offered his muggers,
    their attorney's fees. Let him
    do no less for Ryan, McConnell,
    and poor, phobic, dim Mike Pence.
    











Ethan James

A straw for me

for Denis Bold

  It's mystifying, to one of their

  contemporaries, how commentators

  in the media, even of careers as

  long as theirs, remark on a hol-

  lowing out of Bill Clinton, with

  a leaner diet, resulting from

  cardiac surgeries. They confuse

  horsepower with displacement, a

  rust-belt comprehension fueled,

  I fear, by imagery in which the

  work they do, is steeped in bias.

  I remark, if only to myself, on

  the supercharging power of ref-

  lection, in the continuum he dia-

  grammed in Philadelphia. The dif-

  ference between speculation and

  testament seems forgotten by our

  sages, dieting on commercials. At

  the same time, Donald Trump had

  been prescient to warn, the Dem-

  ocratic Party would trot out a

  candidacy of tired antiquity. I

  see just straw against his wind,

  and nothing he can do about it.

  

Robert Frank

US 90, Texas, 

  outside Del Rio

1955

Keith Carter

(American, b. 1948)

Dancers

Lost dog

Photographer 

  unknown

A straw each

Distance runner

After making the rounds at several 

breakfasts, Mr. Sanders was met 

with a loud chorus of jeers from 

members of the California delega-

tion. The backlash started immedi-

ately, with many people in the au-

dience giving Mr. Sanders a thumbs-

down sign. But Mr. Sanders was 

quick to quiet the crowd and chide 

them for their response.

                    It is easy to boo .. it is 

                    harder to look kids in the  

                    face who would be living un- 

                    der a .. Trump presidency.

Alan Rappeport et al

Democrats Nominate ...

The New York Times©

July 26, 2016

Arm music v: And plan b?

A raucous gaiety of discord gave such prohibitively handsome form to the opening night of the Democratic Convention, that one could almost have missed the subtlety with which a concerted remedial instruction in morals alternated with a tactical psychotherapy, held as well in check as could be expected, given the motives of Party. A sound appreciation of generations of impacted bigotry, reinforced by adamant permission from exploitive masters - never to yield to humane reflection or compromise with fact - at last protected Democrats from repeating their mistake in confronting the demented gangsters, Nixon and Agnew, of criticizing adherents, cultivated as sociopaths, to support degenerate policy. 

The President's wife surpassed every precedent of persuasion in remarking on the provenance of her House, and the unintended tenancy that redeems it. But, equally to be expected, Elizabeth Warren came perilously close to tipping the corrective hand, reflecting on the margins of Jim Crow in McConnell’s, Boehner’s, Cantor’s and Ryan’s descent into stark, raving negation. But I stray. Why ignore Scalia, Alito, Thomas, and the whole manipulative superstructure of tax-exempt casuistry devoted to one end: the emergence, if need be, of a candid fascist?

But what is Plan B, if gentle fraternal joshing should fail to deflect insensate wound-up legions from their droning march of denial? What witty theft of the right to vote will democrats indulge, to spite their principles against those resourceful tinkerers in the States, against their young, their naturalized, their non-white, and their poor? What mechanic lies in wait to shave no more than 1 to 2 percent of punch card chads, some innocently incongruous way? What is the “patriot act” prepared for the timely precipitation of slander from broadcast conduits, the handbills shoved by pastors up the windscreens of the flock? What is the slingshot saved for decency, what is its stone?