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Me and Sylvia, on the Potomac (September 2010)

READIN

Jeremy's journal

Los verdaderos poemas son incendios. La poesí­a se propaga por todas partes, iluminando sus consumaciones con estremecimientos de placer o de agoní.

Vicente Huidobro


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Friday, January 13th, 2012

🦋 Let's Listen to

the utterly amazing percussion solo(s) in this utterly amazing "Rag Mama Rag" cover, from The Wyos -- Live @ Pete's Candy Store in Brooklyn, NY on November 4, 2004:

("Let's listen to" posting format inspired by cleek, who comes through today with a Quick One While He's Away)

posted evening of January 13th, 2012: 2 responses
➳ More posts about Cover Versions

Thursday, January 12th, 2012

Scio cur summæ inter se dissentiant!

Numeris Romanis utor!

(by Jason Hernandez)

posted evening of January 12th, 2012: Respond
➳ More posts about Comix

🦋 An absense of syllable

I saw this poem on a poster on the train today:

IF THERE IS A SCHEME

Charles Reznikoff
If there is a scheme,
perhaps this too is in the scheme,
as when a subway car turns on a switch,
the wheels screeching against the rails,
and the lights go out—
but are on again in a moment.

(source)

Nice! I tried reading it being conscious of its meter, of where the stresses fall in the cadence, and discovered that I want to insert the word "up" between "screeching" and "against", went over the line with a couple of different stress patterns to see if there's one that works better with the existing wording.

It turns out that in my first reading, I was reading "the wheels screeching" without pause, placing "whee" and "scree" on downbeats/stresses, whereas I think a pause is intended after "wheels" - this gives the rhythm a syncopated quality. If you hold a pause *(cæsura? I am not sure, just, what this term means but I think it might be applicable) here long enough you can elide from "screeching" to "against" and keep to the poem's rhythm. This in effect substitutes the pause, the absence, for the syllable that I was interpolating.

Wondering now if this poem could be expanded into a lyric -- it seems to have a lot of possibilities in it.

Thinking that the insight about pauses standing in for syllables might help me clean up my wordy lines a bit.

posted evening of January 12th, 2012: 1 response
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Wednesday, January 11th, 2012

🦋 The more he thought about it, the angrier he got

He'd had the sense, moments earlier, that Caroline was on the verge of accusing him of being "depressed," and he was afraid that if the idea that he was depressed gained currency, he would forfeit his right to his opinions. He would forfeit his moral certainties; every word he spoke would become a symptom of disease; he would never win an argument.
Digging The Corrections, finding Franzen's voice fits my psyche like a glove. I'm finding all of his characters easily inhabitable, Chip's anxiety, Denise's frustration, Gary's irritable paranoia... even the parents are easy to understand, identify with.

posted evening of January 11th, 2012: 2 responses
➳ More posts about The Corrections

Tuesday, January 10th, 2012

🦋 Menardesque dream blogging

I was translating (just starting to translate, I was on the first page) into English a translation into Croatian of Stephen Crane's Red Badge of Courage. It seemed like it was going to be a magnum opus...

posted morning of January 10th, 2012: Respond
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Monday, January 9th, 2012

🦋 There's nothing quite like a real book

Documentarians Sean and Lisa Ohlenkamp went undercover to see what happens after closing time at Toronto's Type Books -- what they discovered may surprise you.

Thanks for the link, Lauren!

(Incidentally: some fantastic book and bookstore photos are to be had at Colossal Art and Design, where I found the Ohlenkamps' video.)

posted evening of January 9th, 2012: Respond
➳ More posts about Animation

🦋 Dark outside

The moon is behind some clouds above my neighbor's house.

posted evening of January 9th, 2012: Respond
➳ More posts about the Family Album

🦋 Catachresis

via Bifurcaria bifurcata: Argentine sculptor Amalia Pica speaks with the Dalston Literary Review about a series of sculptures inspired by Juan García Madero's reference to catachresis in the final section of Savage Detectives.

Catachresis #8 (head of the nail, teeth of the comb, eye of the needle, head of the screw)

posted morning of January 9th, 2012: Respond
➳ More posts about The Savage Detectives

Sunday, January 8th, 2012

🦋 Retrato del infrarrealista joven

The Infrarrealismo FB page today features some grade-school photos of Mario Santiago Papasquiaro:

posted evening of January 8th, 2012: Respond
➳ More posts about Roberto Bolaño

🦋 Macondo, St. Jude

The first chapter of The Corrections makes Alfred Lambert seem very much like José Arcadio Buendía; I wonder if there is anything to this parallel, if it will be further elaborated upon in the rest of the book. I certainly did not notice that the last time I read The Corrections; but then I would not have been looking very closely for such a parallel... When I'm reading about Alfred's metallurgy lab in the basement and about Enid's clearing away of his features from upstairs, and about the growing distance between the two of them, it seems to be shot through with echoes of García Márquez.

The gray dust of evil spells and the cobwebs of enchantment thickly cloaked the old electric arc furnace, and the jars of exotic rhodium and sinister cadmium and stalwart bismuth, and the hand-printed labels browned by the vapors from a glass-stoppered bottle of aqua regia, and the quad-ruled notebook in which the latest entry in Alfred's hand dated from a time, fifteen years ago, before the betrayals had begun.

posted evening of January 8th, 2012: 2 responses
➳ More posts about Jonathan Franzen

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