READIN

Friday, January 10th, 2014

🦋 Homesick like a pillar of salt

Herewith two magnificent poems about Lot's nameless wife.

Lot's Wife

by Anna Akhmatova, translated by Richard Wilbur

The just man followed then his angel guide
Where he strode on the black highway, hulking and bright;
But a wild grief in his wife’s bosom cried,
Look back, it is not too late for a last sight

Of the red towers of your native Sodom, the square
Where once you sang, the gardens you shall mourn,
And the tall house with empty windows where
You loved your husband and your babes were born.

She turned, and looking on the bitter view
Her eyes were welded shut by mortal pain;
Into transparent salt her body grew,
And her quick feet were rooted in the plain.

Who would waste tears upon her? Is she not
The least of our losses, this unhappy wife?
Yet in my heart she will not be forgot
Who, for a single glance, gave up her life.

posted evening of January 10th, 2014: 3 responses
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Tuesday, January 7th, 2014

🦋 Swinging door

WHEN WE PRACTICE zazen our mind always follows our breathing. When we inhale, the air comes into the inner world. When we exhale, the air goes out to the outer world. The inner world is limitless, and the outer world is also limitless. We say "inner world" or "outer world," but actually there is just one whole world. In this limitless world, our throat is like a swinging door. The air comes in and goes out like someone passing through a swinging door. If you think, "I breathe," the "I" is extra. There is no you to say "I." What we call "I" is just a swinging door which moves when we inhale and when we exhale. It just moves; that is all. When your mind is pure and calm enough to follow this movement, there is nothing: no "I," no world, no mind nor body; just a swinging door.

Practicing Zazen

A swinging door has to be hung in a wall of some sort though, right?

posted evening of January 7th, 2014: 2 responses

Saturday, December 14th, 2013

🦋 Well that was exciting

I was briefly in touch with Roberto Bolaño's literary agent over the idea of my publishing Teach me to dance... The answer as it turns out is unsurprisingly "No, the estate has other plans for his early poetry" -- oh well, it was fun anyway to have that contact.

posted morning of December 14th, 2013: 1 response
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Saturday, December 7th, 2013

🦋 Birds in Perspex

Lots of fun at the Mountain Station practice session today! Our practice set list:

1. Bethlehem Half-step
2. Lonesome Nickel
3. Talking Heads weirdness
4. Meet Me in the Morning
5. Birds in Perspex
6. Been all around this world
7. Cole Durhew
8. I Can See Clearly Now/ Here Comes the Sun medley
9. Why Don't We Do It in the Road jam

posted evening of December 7th, 2013: Respond
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Monday, December second, 2013

🦋 A couple of Infrarealism links

• Interview with Bolaño in Plural, Oct. 1976
• Palabras Urgentes -- manifesto of the Hora Zero movement in Peru, 1970
• Bolaño in Mexico -- remembrances by Carmen Boullosa, 2007

posted evening of December second, 2013: Respond
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🦋 The Domestication of Lightning

Another Infrarealist poem: this is by Guadalupe Ochoa, one of the few female Infrarealists.

The Domestication of Lightning
by Guadalupe Ochoa/ tr. Jeremy Osner

the lightning of touch announces
the downpour engendered in our embrace
fiery water of our bodies

posted morning of December second, 2013: 1 response
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Friday, November 29th, 2013

🦋 Enseñame a bailar

Here is a poem of Bolaño's from Pájaro de calor. (It is quoted in Hiram Barrios' fabulous essay on the infra poets, Visitando al infrarrealismo.)

Teach me to dance
by Roberto Bolaño/ tr. Jeremy Osner

to draw my fingers through the cottoncandy clouds
to stretch out my legs tangled up in your legs...

(translation redacted, write me if you'd like to see it)

posted evening of November 29th, 2013: 1 response
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🦋 Let's listen to

Ampersan: this is Orlando Guillén's "ABCD", from Muchachos desnudos.

posted evening of November 29th, 2013: Respond
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Sunday, November 24th, 2013

🦋 READIN Family Album -- the earliest known photo of your humble servant

(The pre-Modesto kid!)

posted afternoon of November 24th, 2013: Respond
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🦋 ¿Quiénes son los «verdaderos» Detectives Salvajes?

Once son ellos, once, ferozmente poetas:
Hernán, Roberto y Montané, chilenos;
el ecuatoriano Nieto Cadena;
de la patria de Sandino: Beltrán Morales;
el peruano Enrique Verástegui,
el también peruano Jorge Pimente;
Luis Suardíaz, del primer teerritorio
libre en América: Cuba, cubanamente;
más tres meshicas que son, qué remedio,
Orlando Guillén, ¡impresente!,
Mario en el camino de Santiago
y Julián Gómez... once son, pues,
y, ¿se fijaron?, ni una sola hembrita,
con tan buenas, guapamente sabrosas que son
y que escriben como Afroditas que surgieran
no de un pantanoso taller literario
sino de un bárbaro océano de pantalones de mezclilla.

--Efraín Huerta

It's eleven, eleven, ferociously poets:
Hernán, Roberto and Montané from Chile;
Ecuadorian Nieto Cadena;
from the land of Sandino, Beltrán Morales;
Peruvian Enrique Verástegui,
and Peruvian too, Jorge Pimente;
Luis Suardíaz, from the first-ever free
territory of the Americas: Cuba, Cubanly;
and there's three Meshicas, what else can I say,
Orlando Guillén, absent!,
Mario on the road to Santiago,
and Julián Gómez... so they're eleven,
and notice? Not a single chick,
for all the lovely, sweet things out there
that write like Aphrodites sprung
not from some fetid literary workshop
but from a savage ocean of blue jeans.

posted afternoon of November 24th, 2013: Respond
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