enlarging the canon

Old Rhumba
68 pages
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$US 5.00
http://www.lulu.com/shop/mark-young/old-rhumba/paperback/product-24374331.html


"Once more meandering, this time whistling the Peanut Vendor song, unable to accede to the lyrics — peanuts do bop do bop. What was once a Cuban rhythm, the rumba, an h added in the pre- & post-war dancehalls of the then united States, turned into a jazz standard by the white swing bands — if you haven't got bananas don't be blue — brought back to much more like its original format by resettled Cuban musicians who found fame by cashing in on a craze for Latin-American music. Nothing of which has anything to do with this collection. Except for the name. Old Rhumba. 50 million monkeys can't be wrong (peanuts do bop do bop)."

Art Informel
68 pages
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$US 5.00
http://www.lulu.com/shop/mark-young/art-informel/paperback/product-24375045.html


"(The tachistes) paint white on white, & they believe that this is an achievement," said René Magritte to Harry Torczyner. "I don't like that."

Torczyner responded by challenging Magritte to paint "a white rose, in a white room with a window looking on to a landscape covered with snow."

Magritte painted a rose in revolutionary red. "When there is a rose, & one is sensitive to it, one makes it as big as I did so that the rose appears to fill the room." He called the painting "The Tomb of the Wrestlers."

A comment by Jean-Paul Sartre on another painter's work sets the scene for the poems here. "Ses titres ne désignent pas l’objet : ils l’accompagnent." "His titles do not indicate the object: they accompany it."