The READIN Family Album
Me and Sylvia, walkin' down the line (May 2005)

READIN

Jeremy's journal

One must write in a tongue which is not one's mother tongue

Vicente Huidobro


(This is a page from my archives)
Front page

Archives index
Subscribe to RSS

This page renders best in Firefox (or Safari, or Chrome)

Tuesday, August 30th, 2011

🦋 Chapeaux animés

Oh what a fantastic idea:

From Micaël Reynaud. Van Gogh, Renoir, Cézanne, Segal, Henriquez, Desrosier, Macke, Sorolla, Von Motesiczky, Merritt Chase, Van Doesburg, Matisse, Van Dongen, Camoin.

posted evening of August 30th, 2011: 2 responses
➳ More posts about Pretty Pictures

Monday, August 29th, 2011

🦋 Whenever I say „ I ” I also mean „ you ”.

This post is inspired partly by a conversation I had with Ellen last night. I asked what she thought of the poem I had posted about writing poetry, and she said she thinks that kind of writing is worth while mostly for working it out of your system in order that you can write more immediate poetry... I'm finding interesting that much of Spring and All, at least the prose sections of it, is just this kind of writing about writing, about what I can write and how I can expect the reader to respond to it.

This is from the opening section of Spring and All (perhaps what Williams needs to work out of his system before he can move on to poetry) --

The reader knows himself as he was twenty years ago and he has also in mind a vision of what he would be, some day. Oh, some day ! But the thing he never knows and never dares to know is what he is at the exact moment that he is. And this moment is the only thing in which I am at all interested. Ergo, who cares for anything I do ? and what do I care ?

I love my fellow creature. Jesus, how I love him : endways, sideways, frontways and all the other ways -- but he doesn't exist ! Neither does she. I do, in a bastardly sort of way.

...

And if when I pompously announce that I am addressed -- To the imagination -- you believe that I thus divorce myself from life and so defeat my own end, I reply : To refine, to clarify, to intensify that eternal moment in which we alone live there is but a single force -- the imagination. This is its book. I myself invite you to read and to see.

In the imagination, we are henceforth (so long as you read) locked in a fraternal embrace, the classic caress of author and reader. We are one. Whenever I say „ I ” I also mean „ you ”. And so, together, as one, we shall begin.

Well, this seems great. I can picture myself saying this, can identify fully with Williams, as he is quite explicitly inviting me to do. Of course my project is not complete there -- I want to say something of my own, that's why I'm writing...

(A side note: the introduction to this edition (New Directions, 2011), written by C.D. Wright, is just great.)

posted evening of August 29th, 2011: Respond
➳ More posts about Spring and All

Sunday, August 28th, 2011

🦋 Understanding verse

The poem I posted this morning started out as a response to William Carlos Williams' Spring and All -- I've been reading it in fits and starts over the past week or so and loving the physical and the auditory texture of the words, but far from sure they are making any semantic impact on my consciousness -- when I turn the page, the words I was reading do not seem to persist much as imagery or meaning. This is a common response of mine to long poetry and to dense prose, and the answer always seems to be, just enjoy the sounds and let the meaning follow if it will.

I got interested in this book when I realized that after so many years of pastiching "Red Wheelbarrow" and "This is just to say" on Making Light, I still don't have much knowledge of Williams beyond those two poems. In the interests of repeating the text, here are a few passages I am enjoying. (Generally I am pretty psyched and amazed by the use here of paragraphs within poetry.)

If anything of moment results -- so much the better. And so much the more likely it will be that no one will want to see it.

There is a constant barrier between the reader and his consciousness of immediate contact with the world. If there is an ocean it is here.


Meanwhile, SPRING, which has been approaching for several pages, is at last here.
...

The farmer in deep thought
is pacing through the rain
among his blank fields, with
hands in pockets,
in his head
the harvest already planted.

o meager times, so fat in everything imaginable ! imagine the New World that rises to our windows from the sea on Mondays and on Saturdays -- and on every other day of the week also. Imagine it in all its prismatic colorings, its counterpart in our souls -- our souls that are great pianos whose strings, of honey and of steel, the divisions of the rainbow set twanging, loosing on the air great novels of adventure !

Ah -- here's the excerpt I was looking for -- the one that initially, when I was reading it, made me want to write this post, but which, when I went back to look, I could not find.

Even the most robust constitution has its limits, though the Roman feast with its reliance upon regurgitation to prolong it shows an active ingenuity, yet the powers of a man are so pitifully small, with the ocean to swallow -- that at the end of the feast nothing would be left but suicide.

That or the imagination which in this case takes the form of humor, is known in that form -- the release from physical necessity. Having eaten to the full we must acknowledge our insufficiency since we have not annihilated all food nor even the quantity of a good sized steer. However we have annihilated all eating: quite plainly we have no appetite. This is to say that the imagination has removed us from the banal necessity of bursting ourselves -- by acknowledging a new situation. We must acknowledge that the ocean we would drink is too vast -- but at the same time we realize that extension in our case is not confined to the intestine only. The stomach is full, the ocean no fuller, both have the same quantity of fullness. In that, then, one is equal to the other. Having eaten, the man has released his mind.

posted afternoon of August 28th, 2011: Respond
➳ More posts about William Carlos Williams

🦋 Not a sonnet

The path to understanding verse
must lie through repetition --well,
that's where my thoughts are leading me,
internal iteration linking
letters on the page to solid
consonants and sibilation
nothingness, annihilation
pausing where there's punctuation--
Write the letters large enough,
inscribed inside my skull, retraced,
and give my mind no choice except
to follow where they lead, to paint
the pictures they express, to put
myself inside the poet's psyche:
See what he sees, maybe, or self-
consciously be made to see
exactly where my failure lies
to get across what's bugging me
my fault as reader or as writer,
guilt external to the page, the
page can feel no guilt, it's paper,
blank until I taint it with
my thoughts, my visions, my regret,
my happy-ever-after longing;
Strike a key and watch the letter
print itself, its inky form
laid down forever with its partners.
Sing in silent chorus from the
blankness of the page.

posted morning of August 28th, 2011: Respond
➳ More posts about Poetry

Saturday, August 27th, 2011

🦋 Waiting for the hurricane to hit New York City

Many thanks to Holly Hughes for introducing me to The Kinks' song "Lost and Found" -- I had never heard it before today, and boy is it a beautiful song. So John came over this afternoon and of course we had to try and work out a cover version of it... It is as John says "a little too perfect" for today.

How did we do? Well... I am by no means any Ray Davies. But I think what we came up with after a couple of takes is starting to sound pretty good. See what you think:

Notes: I need to sing it a step lower I think, or something. It was very happy-making, successfully to modulate to a new key at the end of the song though -- I don't think we've ever actually done that before.

posted evening of August 27th, 2011: 1 response
➳ More posts about Mountain Station

🦋 Pictures from Poland

Okay, not much to link these together really, other than that both are taken in Poland and both are very striking visually. Here is a couple kissing at the Woodstock music festival in Kostrzyn nad OdrÄ… -- where the mud is an intentional part of the concert experience rather than a by-product of rain:

The photo is from Peter Bohler's Come on, feel the mud feature for the New York Times website.

And here is the Krzywy Domek -- "Crooked House" -- in Sopot:

The picture of Krzywy Domek is one of 50 Strange Buildings shared by Google+ user Ajal Shan. It inspired me to (a) think of Heinlein's story And he built a crooked house; (b) think of the nursery rhyme about the crooked man; (c) look up the Polish translation of that poem, which would appear to be:
Był krzywy człowiek i szedł krzywą dróżką.
Znalazł krzywy grosik za krzywą obórką.
Złapał krzywą myszkę i nosił ją w worku,
i wszyscy mieszkali razem w krzywym dworku.
(This is based only on seeing it at blogger Kim Dzong Il's site, I can't vouch for its accuracy. The back-translation from Google is close enough to be plausible.)

posted afternoon of August 27th, 2011: Respond

🦋 Stormy Weather

So the big one is coming in today... My plan is to finish taping up the basement windows this morning, and hole up with some books until it blows over. Maybe John will come over and we can play some hurricane music while we wait for Irene!

posted morning of August 27th, 2011: 1 response

Thursday, August 25th, 2011

🦋 Stripped

A new Kickstarter project that could use your help: Fred Schroeder and Dave Kellet are producing a documentary on the comic strip -- where it's been, where it's going. Featuring interviews with a ton of great cartoonists. You can watch the trailer at their Kickstarter page. (via the Comix Curmudgeon)

posted morning of August 25th, 2011: Respond
➳ More posts about Comix

Wednesday, August 24th, 2011

🦋 Birthday Bike Ride

Happy Birthday, Ellen!

We rode our beribboned bikes around South Orange and then came back home for a picnic dinner in the back yard.

posted evening of August 24th, 2011: 1 response
➳ More posts about Ellen

Tuesday, August 23rd, 2011

🦋 Utter Global Crisis

A game of Eschaton:
-- Thanks for the link, Lauren! (Articles about this at NPR and the Times.)

posted morning of August 23rd, 2011: Respond
➳ More posts about David Foster Wallace

Previous posts
Archives

Drop me a line! or, sign my Guestbook.
    •
Check out Ellen's writing at Patch.com.

What's of interest:

(Other links of interest at my Google+ page. It's recommended!)

Where to go from here...

Friends and Family
Programming
Texts
Music
Woodworking
Comix
Blogs
South Orange