Series Magritte #238

Natural Encounters

                                                   include

Plenty of opportunities to get up close & personal with concrete countertops & outdoor kitchens.

Discount rates for hotels & motels.

Empowering animals with the ability to make good decisions.

Providing candid photos of female sea turtles nesting.

My perspective on Height Dominance.

Definitions of Common Behavior Terms.

The Leather Elves & other live native New Hampshire animals.

The cutting edge of animal training & presentation with breakfast & lunch included.

Ben Williams, Vice President, who lives in Dorset.

The delicate state of nature.

Your questions that have not been answered.

An adventure through an entire continent.

The way the window on the right has fallen magically & now circles, unsure whether to approach its mate.

M

Today sees post no. 1000 on won des laits. I won't say there are a thousand separate pwoermds there, since my memory isn't what it used to be, & there may be one or two duplicates amongst the posts.

All the same, I'm marking the day with some Knowvemberations.

wordure

phenowomenological

fricochet

customacher

bercircus

savioury

cerebraille

evolvoed
sea&sun's greathings to everyone

I've just

woken up. Has the world ended yet?

Dude!!!!

The Leptobrachium leucops frog, one of five new amphibian species discovered in wet, evergreen forests in southern Vietnam in 2011.
Image by: © Jodi J. L. Rowley/Australian Museum/ WWF

Stoke On Trent

It was 20 years ago today . . .

In the early 1990s Paul Keating's Labor government put Aboriginal reconciliation high on the agenda, establishing the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation in 1991 then following up the High Court's Mabo decision in 1992 with native title legislation in 1993. In December 1992, Keating launched Australia's program for the International Year of the World's Indigenous People with this now famous address to a largely Indigenous crowd at Redfern Park in Sydney. He was the first Prime Minister to acknowledge the impact of European settlement on Indigenous Australians. The address reflected a changing official interpretation of Australian history which better accommodated the Aboriginal experience. The speech was arguably a curtain-raiser for the history wars of the Howard years: the following year historian Geoffrey Blainey observed that the 'three cheers' view of Australian history had given way to the 'black armband' view, a phrase which the newly elected John Howard adopted with alacrity in a speech in 1996.

In another sense Keating's Redfern speech paved the way for a formal apology to Indigenous Australians for past government practices, an apology which nevertheless took another 15 years to come. Aboriginal leader Patrick Dodson said in 2007 that Keating's Redfern address was 'a great speech because it was about leadership, principle and courage... He placed before Australians the truths of our past and the sad reality of our contemporary society. He laid down the challenge for our future, as a nation united and at peace with its soul.' The spontaneous crowd reactions to the speech are a testament to its power at the time, and are worth listening out for.

Australian Broadcasting Corporation. 80 days that changed our lives.

Visual, audio, & text of the speech.

Print editions of Otoliths

After a somewhat full-on & slightly demented burst of energy, & assisted by a lightspeed performance from harry k stammer putting the covers together, I am pleased to announce that all the outstanding issues of Otoliths — from twenty-one up through twenty-seven — are now available in print from The Otoliths Storefront.

As usual, each online issue is separated for print into a b&w part one & a color part two. There are two additional part threes: Michael Gottlieb's Letters to a Middle-Aged Poet from issue #24, & John M. Bennett's OLVIDOS DEL PERÚ from issue #27.

& Lulu are running a 20% off an order promotion up until December 14. Codeword FELICITAS.

Finally, after almost seven years . . .

the zine ranks ahead of Wikipedia.

Climate change? Possibly, given the time of the year.

Precursor to the Mayan end of the world? Probably not.

Photo: Newspix/Rex Features
But the seas off Sydney have been red during the day with an algal bloom which at night becomes a phosphorescent blue when stirred by the movement of the water.

Photo: Davide Gaglio, www.photonature.it

world AIDS day

Out from Otoliths — Márton Koppány's Addenda

Now out from Otoliths

Addenda
Márton Koppány
7.5" x 7.5"
56 pages, full color
Otoliths, 2012
ISBN: 978- 0-9872010-6-5
$24.95 + p&h
URL: http://www.lulu.com/shop/m%C3%A1rton-kopp%C3%A1ny/addenda/paperback/product-20511271.html

Márton Koppány's art could be said to be the art of the invisible. His decision to abandon Hungarian in favour of English was a political one, but something else can be said to have happened in this transition. His poetry shifts into a language space that is alien, a snow-blinding landscape that is finding itself, built piece by piece through a poetry where language objects - real and linguistic - float with intent, testing the boundaries of language as intuition. —Tony Trehy

In fact, I'm not certain that there is any across-the-board method that can be learned, and then applied, in order to understand Márton Koppány's poems. If and/or when understanding does come, it happens (in my own experience) wholly – and as if in a flash – like direct, mind-to-mind transmission. When first seeing Márton's poems Katue came quickly to mind. I do not at all mean that Márton's work reminded me of his. What came to my mind was his statement about plastic poetry: “Plastic poem is the figure of poem itself, in other words, it is an 'apparatus of poem'…” I take this as bare-bones poetry, in the best sense of that term. —Roy Arenella

Conceptual art can be bountiful, spare, even beautiful. With an economy of presentation, Márton Koppány’s work uniquely captures, invents, and refashions installations on the page from unexpected sources. His works run the gamut of humor, politics, and philosophy. Each piece offers a genuine gift of perception. With signature purity, works such as “Asemic Volcano”, showcase the potency of word-free realities. “Emptiness” is vibrant with lui-meme realization. “One Moment in Three Sections” depicts a tiny triumph. “Old Question” and “Addendum” prepare the viewer for “Still Life No. 2,” a final reminder of the inherent interconnectedness among all things. The recombinant majesty of Koppány’s genius raises the bar for what is possible in the infinitely expanding universe of visual poetry. —Sheila E. Murphy

new at ditch

http://www.ditchpoetry.com/markyoung2.htm

some octobrists

porkrashertination

memoraphilia

reactress

seaparate

roedo

mortyr

war bling

A Coptic Christian school in Frankston North has gone into administration

Police confirmed that when they arrived a man was found suffering from a lack of consumer & business confidence in global governments. A number of gunshot wounds were also discovered by MPs who were concerned a no vote at the UN would offend Middle East & Muslim communities on the fragile front lawns of their properties. This has proven that ineffective policy responses were set up in the southwest for the purpose of a large negative shock that could bring the US & global economy into recession. A law-enforcement agency called the Industrial Police has been specifically assigned to deal with unrest on fiscal cliffs & upbeat party room speech factories.

yar inga

A busy month

So far this month, I've had poems appear online in:

Cordite
New Mystics
quarter after
streetcake magazine
gobbet

an essay included in the ongoing Angelhouse Press series

in print in:

Rabbit
Best Australian Poetry 2012

have seen proofs for poems coming up in Fact-simile & E•ratio

have a poem coming up as part of a phone app, The Disappearing from The RedRoom Company

& have had a number of other acceptances including an e-book which will appear next year.

geographies: Da Nang

Surabaya

I sell ya all kind
of crab, LAT, but
not much. May I

know his price-
list sir? Ato less
expensive. huh?

Should know a
little science, LAT
maintenance. I

teach between
maintenance. If
interested I am

ready. I sell ya
spices, sandals.
I sell ya fruit.

The waterfall

where Yoshitune washed his horse.

Hokusai

see Series Magritte #237, La Cascade

geographies: Makassar

There's ruggedly handsome,

& there's just plain rugged.

geographies: Boongary

Otoliths Issue Twenty-seven is now on line

Issue twenty-seven of Otoliths, the southern spring 2012 issue, has just gone live.

Spice, life, variety, any permutation thereof—as always they're a given with Otoliths.
This issue maintains the high standard, contains work by Spencer Selby, Ian Wedde, Christopher Brownsword, Ed Baker, Jim Meirose, dan raphael, Volodymyr Bilyk, Philip Byron Oakes, Bob Marcacci, Jack Galmitz, Howie Good, William Allegrezza, Sarah Suzor & Travis Cebula, Brad Liening, Jal Nicholl, Glenn R. Frantz, Massimo Sannelli, John McKernan, Jac Nelson, Raymond Farr, Marilyn R. Rosenberg,, Stephen C. Middleton, George McKim, Will Burke, Travis Macdonald, Stuart Barnes, John M. Bennett, Francesco Aprile, Vernon Frazer, Scott Keeney, Pete Spence, Márton Koppány, Ahimsa Timoteo Bodhrán, Sharon Kaye, Ric Carfagna, Anton Frost, J. D. Nelson, Richard Kostelanetz, Tony Beyer, Joshua Comyn, Michalia Arathimos, Sam Moginie, Scott Metz, Joel Chace, Anna McCarthy, John Pursch, Lakey Comess, Andrew Topel with Jim Leftwich & John M. Bennett ...with Carol Stetser ...with Matthew Stolte ...with Scott Helmes ...with Jessy Kendall, Kirk Marshall, Gregory Stephenson, Haley Rene Thompson, Rob Burton, Dan Hedges, Lars Palm, Stephen Nelson, Jeff Harrison, Jacqueline Doyle, Pam Hopkins, Alexander Jorgensen, Stu Hatton, Bogdan Puslenghea, SS Prasad, Bob Heman, Charles Freeland & Rosaire Appel, Jim Davis, Bobbi Lurie, paul summers, Marcia Arrieta, Judith Roitman, Michael Brandonisio, Samantha Seto, Alan Davies & tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE, Jessie Janeshek, Aditya Bahl, Liam Ferney, Louise Landes Levi, Sam Langer, & Reed Altemus.

Today the
postman brought
me my contributor's
copy of

                      So long
in the making, so
worth the wait.

geographies: Coowonga

the little fangirl.

You can call me Mew. I love BLEACH, IchiRuki & strawberries. I’m a rabid fangirl & I have out-of-this-world imagination, along with drawing skills which are just about as good as Rukia’s. I can speak English & a little of both Japanese & French.

My favourite characters are Ichigo, Rukia, Nii-sama, Hitsugaya & Kon. I try to post mainly IchiRuki stuff here but sometimes I’ll slip in a non-IchiRuki post or two.

I’m a full-time student & a part-time full-time IchiRuki fangirl.

Please enjoy your stay here & thank you for visiting my little tumblelog ♥

Out from Otoliths — Bobbi Lurie's the morphine poems

Now out from Otoliths.

the morphine poems
Bobbi Lurie
56 pages
Otoliths, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-9872010-5-8
$12.15 + p&h
URL: http://www.lulu.com/shop/bobbi-lurie/the-morphine-poems/paperback/product-20299925.html

the morphine poems succeeds as language breaks through language, metastasizes through the harboring of pain. The words spread across the page with a content all their own; uncanny, they haunt the body. Paragraphs of disorderly text are ordered; a poetics of life against death seeps through. This is an important and powerful book, concerned with illness that almost tends towards a pathology of speech itself. The body refuses to disappear and the words simultaneously convey despair, heartbreak, and resistance. Bobbi Lurie writes unsparingly about sickness and wayward health in a brave and detailed cartography of body and biography, creating a work of brilliance and renewal. Everyone should read this book, which is everyone's journey, one way or another, a journey from life into life. It is a journey that is all too often shamefully hidden, a journey we need to contemplate and embrace. —Alan Sondheim

This wracked and fragile (i.e. powerful) volume “defines the disorder to not be a noun so much as a metaphor for self-sabotage”–semiotic flux run amok as daily rituals: eating, attending gatherings, girl-things. Long swirls of sensory and cognitive language sentences, one heir to Bob Kaufman’s Second April’s run-ons tinged with a morphine sensibility. A feminine dissolution, self-critical and at the mercy of bare larders and bereft landscapes. Sister Morphine stripped of hip. Honest as hell. —Maria Damon

The Janus face of poetry has given Bobbi Lurie its undivided attention. —Jeff Harrison

What really strikes me is how utmostly clearly her mind worked in the imminence of “... the doctor’s pockmarked face up close as the iv drips 'i’ll kill you,' says he, 'then keep you alive' and i….i…i…” There's nothing surreal about the rushing images, which are deeply and acutely self-reflexive. “perhaps a porch i never sat at a feeling of fellowship against deception ...“ She doesn't fight reason or try to get "beyond" it. I mean: she never tries to escape the here and now by inventing hiding places. “a life without epiphanies is all i ask of poets ...“

In the morphine poems, Bobbi Lurie spares herself and her reader from faked escapes (consequently from the burden of suppressed fears), therefore she doesn't multiply suffering by itself, and that is liberating –and a very rare attitude! “how she gave me her seat as if a friend as i was passing out kindness took my hand filled with stones and sour summer reprieve in fruit ...“ —Márton Koppány

L'Année dernière

In a sprawling baroque hotel, a stranger, X, tries to persuade a married woman, A, to leave her husband, M, and run away with him. He reminds her of her promise when they met a year ago, at Marienbad, but the woman seems not to remember that meeting......

the septimbre of some pwoermds

orthodon'tist

becomingling

strgglue

lawndromat

sobterfuge

yellowquince

possessi've

miinng

retierment

geographies: Limestone Creek

the / merganser will / inherit the earth

Indicators of climate change #1764

I'm as corny as Kansas Manitoba in August,
I'm as abnormal as blueberry pie.

While farmers nationwide planted the most corn this year since 1937, growers in Kansas sowed the fewest acres in three years, instead turning to less-thirsty crops such as wheat, sorghum and even triticale, a wheat-rye mix popular in Poland. Meanwhile, corn acreage in Manitoba, a Canadian province about 700 miles north of Kansas, has nearly doubled over the past decade due to weather changes and higher prices.

Shifts such as these reflect a view among food producers that this summer’s drought in the US — the worst in half a century — isn’t a random disaster. It’s a glimpse of a future altered by climate change that will affect worldwide production.

SMH

More than two million living in poverty

Gov. Romney had "half a tonne" of police lying on top of him before he was rolled over—no longer breathing & blue in the face, an inquest heard this morning. News Limited have reported Paul Ryan has been dumped as the fallout continues. When the aspiring vice president applied to attend another committee hearing, an extra security guard was placed there, but a “unique” human error had allowed him to leave smirking, laughing, smiling. Joe Biden had the split screen, had them both on it. People probably couldn’t take their eyes off of it.

Job ads fall for six straight months

Brandishing a replica of the sword of independence hero Simon Bolivar, the Republican nominee pledged the Marine Corps Color Guard would continue its "march towards democratic socialism." Progress had slowed to a crawl last year as Tokyo focused on recovering from the devastating tsunami & the subsequent crisis at one of its nuclear power plants. Diplomats from Italy & Spain will speak as well to explain how to conduct policy toward the Middle East, or resolve ideological rifts on foreign policy within the party. "It's time to seal the deal on an appropriate sex life in a dynamic & changing region." "I didn't want to make him a villain. It was more about a teenager with a particular talent & a moral code." The text messages were compiled by lawyers as a rebuttal of the idea that Columbus Day, which is openly gay, was a political stooge designed to tempt opponents to take the next step & plant many seeds & make these seeds produce many trees.

Today the
postman brought
me next week's
lottery numbers—
one through to
forty-four, the
same as this,
last, & every
week for the
past ten years.

Trade deficit widens as softer commodity prices hit exports

Gone are the tables & three-course meals, which cost upwards of $500 a seat for guests. Some buildings have had their facades completely ripped off; others virtually demolished by the blasts, leaving huge piles of rubble & debris, & craters in the road. Bodies were shown being carried away with blankets being used as stretchers. In their place comes finger food in theater/concert seating at Sydney's inner-city Entertainment Center. The Samsung GS3 faired slightly better than the iPhone 5 in the test, achieving a speed of 30.1 megabits per second compared to the iPhone's 29.1 megabits per second. Scores of people gathered outside the central bank, calling for the governor to stand down, chanting anti-government slogans. A Perth couple made a brief appearance in court, accused of organising the illegal circumcision of their one-year-old baby girl in Bali. The UK has lagged behind the rest of Europe in rounding up & arresting illegal money changers in the capital.

Once again

my backyard becomes an unofficial site for

as I read a poem to the accompaniment & applause of a cross-section of the local birds who are gathered in the mango tree.

geographies: Alexandra Bridge

geographies: Pukatika

The 2012 Ig Nobel Awards

organised by Annals of Improbable Research and awarded on Thursday at Harvard University.

Psychology: Anita Eerland, Rolf Zwaan and Tulio Guadalupe, for their study entitled Leaning to the Left Makes the Eiffel Tower Seem Smaller.

Peace: The SKN company, for using technology to convert old Russian ammunition into new diamonds.

Acoustics: Kazutaka Kurihara and Koji Tsukada for creating the SpeechJammer, a machine that disrupts a person's speech by making them hear their own spoken words at a very slight delay.

Neuroscience: Craig Bennett, Abigail Baird, Michael Miller, and George Wolford, for demonstrating that brain researchers, by using complicated instruments and simple statistics, can see meaningful brain activity anywhere – even in a dead salmon.

Chemistry: Johan Pettersson for solving the puzzle of why, in certain houses in the town of Anderslöv, Sweden, people's hair turned green.

Literature: The US government general accountability office, for issuing a report about reports about reports that recommends the preparation of a report about the report about reports about reports.

Physics: Joseph Keller, Raymond Goldstein, Patrick Warren and Robin Ball, for calculating the balance of forces that shape and move the hair in a human ponytail.

Fluid dynamics: Rouslan Krechetnikov and Hans Mayer, for studying the dynamics of liquid sloshing, to learn what happens when a person walks while carrying a cup of coffee.

Anatomy: Frans de Waal and Jennifer Pokorny, for discovering that chimpanzees can identify specific other chimpanzees from seeing photographs of their rear ends.

Medicine: Emmanuel Ben-Soussan, for advising doctors who perform colonoscopies how to minimise the chance of their patients exploding.

geographies: Dalma Scrub

Don Binney, 1940-2012

Kotare Over Hikurangi

"In the first years of the 1960s, there emerged from Auckland University's School of Art several painters who have since made considerable contributions to New Zealand painting. Amongst them . . . Don Binney.

"Binney works in an extremely hard-edged style that defines and makes obvious his forms. At first he used what he describes as a 'token landscape' to act as background to the birds whose forms were then his concern, but gradually the landscape, with the 'brilliant nervous quality' of its light, has assumed equal and often prime importance."

M.Y. New Zealand Art: Painting 1950-1967, A.H. & A.W. Reed, Wellington, N.Z. 1968

Tui Over Te Henga

---

from The Dead Presidents
pelican dreaming , 6/12/2004

I heard about the assassination of John F. Kennedy whilst I was riding on the small bus that then crossed the Coromandel Peninsula of New Zealand from Whitianga to Thames.

A narrow road in a temperate rain forest. Most times only wide enough for the bus. Branches scraping the roof. Few passengers.

The driver had a little transistor radio. Reception was, understandably, crappy at best. Scratchy. But through it all, breaking into the music, came a severe & oh so serious voice. "Stand by for an important news item." Repeated. Then, "The President of the United States, John F. Kennedy has just been assassinated."

Because of the dateline this was the morning of Saturday, November 23 in Aotearoa. Hearing the news anywhere would have caused shock, but to hear it in such surroundings was utterly bizarre. & distressing. Even to someone like myself whose politics were left of left, JFK was a figure of hope. Vietnam was still to move from S.E. Asia's equivalent of off-off-off Broadway. The Cold War was still the main occupant of the world stage. The Bay of Pigs was someone else's fuckup. The Cuban missile crisis had been resolved because of JFK's steely resolve & we were all breathing a little easier. Frank O'Hara was still alive. Kruschev was still coming on the right day!

We changed buses & headed for Auckland where we were to stay at the house of some friends who had gone away a couple of days earlier & who had told us where they'd left the key. Drove into Auckland to a main street dotted with newspaper billboards – yes, they still had afternoon newspapers in those days – that proclaimed PRESIDENT KENNEDY ASSASSINATED. Not many people around, only the billboards.

Caught a taxi to our friends' house. Went inside. First thing we saw was a newspaper billboard on the wall. AMERICAN PRESIDENT ASSASSINATED. Freaked out, totally & utterly. How, if they'd been away for the last two days, could this have got there? Moved closer. Found it to be a reproduction of the billboard announcing Abraham Lincoln's assassination. Did not breathe any easier.

***
The friends whose house we stayed at, Don & Judy Binney.

geographies: Princhester

Some August pwoermds @ won des laits

trenchery

feredom

hounddogma

reproreduction

oopstimism

securiosity

platétude

geographies: Pinkerton's Corner

geographies: Wandal

Getting your priorities right

One of the first acts of the recently-elected conservative Queensland State Government was to scrap the annual literary awards, using the excuse they couldn't afford the $244,000 the awards cost in administration & prize money.

Now, barely three months later, this same government has announced it is giving $200,000 to the production company behind the local edition of Big Brother.

Indicators of Climate Change #1279

The koël, a cuckoo that migrates south from New Guinea each year to go through two breeding cycles on the Australian continent, has arrived a month early this year, judging by the koël, koël calls I've started hearing over the last few days.

geographies: Leaholme

geographies: Hokitika

geographies: Kawana

Repetitions of the past

that thrill me ...

A favourable westerly wind propelled two dual hulled waka on their way from Auckland to Rapanui (Easter Island) today on a 10,000 nautical mile voyage retracing historical Polynesian migratory routes.

Stuff Co NZ (Photo: Chris Weissenborn)

& that chill me ...

Citizens and media are questioning South Africa's post-apartheid soul after the police killing of more than 30 striking miners.

After more than 12 hours of official silence, authorities confirmed that 34 people were killed, with at least 78 people injured when police opened fire.

ABC News Au

I have many weaving machines to sell, each at a low price now.

geographies: Ogmore

Transparent. The

oracle. Or. Surmise.

some pwoermds from July @ won des laits

paradgim

fr
_______

action

inconsumptive

b
r
o
o
Ѫ


lasagnify

partificial

geographies: Cawarral

geographies: Zilzie

O lymph pics

Issue twenty-six of Otoliths is now on line.

Issue twenty-six of Otoliths, the southern winter issue, has just gone live.

La Sagrada Familia
Mark Young
It's a great & wide-ranging issue as always, but I've run out of superlatives. So, instead, a minimalist introduction.

Contributions from: John Bloomberg-Rissman & Anne Gorrick, David Appelbaum, paul summers, SJ Fowler, Vaughan Rapatahana, Rico Moore, Kyle Hemmings, Philip Byron Oakes, Clark Lunberry, Arpine Konyalian Grenier, Kent MacCarter, Beni Ransom, Eileen R. Tabios, John M. Bennett, Jim Leftwich & John M. Bennett, John M. Bennett & Matthew Stolte, Douglas Barbour & Sheila E. Murphy, Richard Kostelanetz, Lakey Comess, James Mc Laughlin, John Thomas Allen, Donna Kuhn, Raymond Farr, Joshua Mostafa, Jo Langton, Elizabeth Welsh, Tony Beyer, Jordon Lofton, Mark Rutter, Eleanor Leonne Bennett, Howie Good, David Jalajel, bárbara mesquita, Jeff Harrison, Jill Jones, Bill Yarrow, Jeremy Freedman, Reed Altemus, Jim Meirose, Matt Margo, Andy Martrich, Tyson Bley, Deborah Poe & Gene Tanta, Andrew Topel, Roger Williams, Jason Joyce, Tom Beckett, Tim Keane, Charles Freeland & Rosaire Appel, Bill Drennan, John Pursch, Caleb Puckett, Matthew Stolte, Marty Hiatt, J.D. Nelson, Stephen Nelson, Marc Jones, Jack Galmitz, Márton Koppány, Francesco Levato, Cherie Hunter Day, Scott Metz, Sarah Edwards, bruno neiva, Keith Higginbotham, Dorothee Lang & Julia Davies, Felino A. Soriano, Emma Morgan, lindsay cahill, Bobbi Lurie, Marco Giovenale, Leah Muddle, Bob Heman, & sean burn.

Enjoy

plane speaking

What little I 
know about 
flying 
            comes from 
those who have 
never flown.

geographies: Broadmount

he made the decision to shape the dress on more traditional lines

geographies: Iron Pot

geographies: Parnassus

It was a 
   temporal re- 
      gression 
         from which 
            he returned 
               singing the 
                  Marseillaise 
                     between mouth- 
                        fuls of an egg 
                        & lettuce sand- 
                     wich. Arch-
                  ival footage 
               shows there
             were times
         when he had
      all four feet
   off the 
ground.

for Márton Koppány

geographies: Duaringa

fract ure

f r a c t    u r e
f r a c    t u r e
f r a c t    u r e
f r a c    t u r e
f r a    c t u r e
f r a c t    u r e
f r a c t u    r e
f r a c t    u r e

geographies: Lucas Park

50 years ago,

there used to
be a
bit

more
meat on
The Strolling Bones.

geographies: Stanwell