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Me and Gary, brooding (September 2004)

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Jeremy's journal

We poets will write a thousand words to get at a single one.

Roberto Bolaño


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Saturday, January 19th, 2013

🦋 Reull Vallis

New images from ESA's Mars Express craft have me picturing myself riding a more primitive craft down the river with Huck and Jim... they are crablike hexapods with fringes of symbiotically attached smaller organisms trailing from their undersides... (thanks for the link, Gary!)

posted afternoon of January 19th, 2013: Respond
➳ More posts about Pretty Pictures

Friday, January 18th, 2013

🦋 Consecuencias

El año va rajando ya más abierto su espina
las hojas dejan pasar más fósforo, más luz—

Los sueños doblan ya en callejones y lo pierden
el delirio de petales rosas en la piedra—

He puesto en marcha la bola que golpea
al final de la cuerda plateada la otra—

Y qué será será, como dice el poema
el que crece en líneas palabra tras palabra—

Come pues, come grano tras grano perlado la pulpa
que brillando se pega a la cáscara—

         por Luisa A. Igloria, en via negativa/tr. Jeremy Osner

posted evening of January 18th, 2013: 7 responses
➳ More posts about Translation

Thursday, January 17th, 2013

El desvanecimiento desvanezco desaparezco
salgo callado de esta estructura
de recuerdos
y mi voz
también.

(from the journals of Lorenzo Josner, April 20, 1919)

posted evening of January 17th, 2013: 3 responses
➳ More posts about This Silent House

Wednesday, January 16th, 2013

🦋 Anotaciones

El silencio, roto por el repique sordo de un reloj—
A orilla de la calzada harapo mojado, harapo que solía ser camisa elegante—
La plaza que se llena de repente con oleada de sombras por delante
de la luz del sol, o de las alas—
El sueño que vuelve al cabo de cuarenta años, de volar por encima de un mar de lino—
Las huellas estampadas como rastros en la nieve
por la tarde disueltos en compunción y lluvia—
Fue aquí que te sentabas, junto al ramo de orquídeas
mirando más allá de la puerta del jardín, a tu lado la mujer
y el pelo ni siquiera gris—

         por Luisa A. Igloria, en via negativa/tr. Jeremy Osner

posted evening of January 16th, 2013: 2 responses
➳ More posts about Writing Projects

Sunday, January 13th, 2013

🦋 Dreams and shadows

las sombras y los sueños en que se consisten
las paredes y puertas de la casa en que moro
las palabras y frases que salen a chorros:
en que mi tiempo sea corto insisten

las sombras y las cortinas que las echen se repiten
y crecen y caen por completo en mi recámara
se deslizan alrededor de mis ojos alicántaras
y sueños: voy soñando con que mis antepasados me griten
a través de las paredes y las sombras de la casa de mi alma

-- Lorenzo Josner Ávala

posted afternoon of January 13th, 2013: 3 responses
➳ More posts about Projects

Saturday, January 12th, 2013

🦋 Prufrock in Manhattan

On these pages I record and bequeath
the semi-autobiographical log,
a sort of last will and testament,
perhaps devoid of the Maestro’s
meter, rhythm and rhyme,
a run-away musical score
for a fugue in counterpoint

-- Fugue in Counterpoint with Prufrock
Colombian poet Luis Zalamea translated Prufrock into Spanish. The Fugue in Counterpoint is his own take on the poem, a take written in 1984 for the collection Voces en el desierto, with an introductory note. (The blog is duopoetico, looks very interesting, a collaboration between Zalamea and his daughter Pilar Kimbrell.)

Nice Prufrock passage at cleek's.

posted afternoon of January 12th, 2013: Respond
➳ More posts about The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

Wednesday, January 9th, 2013

🦋 Two takes on Prufrock

caminamos tú y yo
se anochece en el cielo
como un borracho en el arroyo:
visitamos unos esquinas
y calles ya desconocidas
platicamos, sonreímos
me resulta muy difícil olvidar

-- The Modesto Kid

Let us go then, you and I,
the evening sprawled across the sky
just like a drunkard, passed out in the gutter.
The patrons scowl, and mutter.

-- Peter Conlay

posted morning of January 9th, 2013: 1 response
➳ More posts about Poetry

Tuesday, January 8th, 2013

🦋 Let's listen to

Sidney Poitier, reading the Allegory of the Cave with some sweet horns and vibes...

via kenodoxia

posted afternoon of January 8th, 2013: Respond
➳ More posts about The Cave

Sunday, January 6th, 2013

🦋 Let's watch

Patrick Mccue and Tobias Wiesner's ataptation of Golem XIV, by Stanislaus Lem. (full screen recommended, and headphones, and volume.)

When you came into being, you found yourself with a mind you did not choose.

posted evening of January 6th, 2013: 1 response
➳ More posts about The Movies

Monday, December 31st, 2012

🦋 Poetic process: structure and meaning

In the course of thinking about my idiot poem I came up with a metaphor that I like: Narrative structure has the function of a candle's wick. The flame of meaning will not adhere to a wick-less text. Thinking of meaning as the flame that burns in text (without consuming it), one which will dissipate if it does not have a wick, can take me in a lot of directions; one that seems especially promising is to think of song and poetry as a way of providing additional structure in which to anchor meaning so the narrative thread need not be as strong. (This ties in nicely with a take on Wittgenstein, "Whereof one cannot speak, one must sing.")

The structure of the poem as I am seeing it now is,

  1. The idiot cannot speak. His story is full of sound and fury raging unexpressed.
  2. The idiot speaks. This is represented as a mechanical process, the unwinding of a clockwork. The web of his story unravels and its meaning evaporates.
  3. The idiot sings. His sung story becomes the landscape and its meaning the universe.
  4. The idiot falls silent, sleeps. The story he told assumes divine status i.e. pure meaning in the firmament -- its structure does not persist.

posted morning of December 31st, 2012: Respond

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