The body language of Tony Abbott

Tony Abbott, consigned to being Leader of the Opposition once more, rather than his obviously desired office of Prime Minister, gives very mobile head when he has a press conference—oops, meant to say he has a very mobile head when he gives press conferences. There is a vigorous nodding, & an equally vigorous shaking of the head from side to side. With most of us, that would mean either nodding agreement or shaking disagreement. Not necessarily for Tony Abbott. The first holds true, but as for the second.....

L. has a theory that the nodding comes when he says something he believes in, & the shaking occurs when he makes what appears to be a positive statement, but his underlying belief is actually the opposite negative. If, for example, he says something along the lines of "I'm highly pissed that the Liberal-National Coalition won't be the Government of Australia," his head goes up & down. If he then goes on to say that "The Coalition will do everything to ensure the stability of Government," his head will go into metronome mode, meaning that what he actually believes is "The hell we will. We'll be as disruptive & destabilizing as we possibly can."

Chasing a clip to prove the theory, I found there weren't all that many of the "mad monk" around, possibly because he's considered neither news- or trustworthy. The one below gives a hint. If someone knows of a better one, please let me know.

harar

& on the 17th day

after the Federal elections, two of the three remaining uncommitted independent Members of Parliament sided with the more rural & regional-friendly policies of the Labor Party, meaning that Julia Gillard now becomes the first elected female Prime Minister of Australia.

A line from Jackson Mac Low

Even a word for it.
Fratricide. The murder
of brother by brother.
Nothing new. But now

returned as redux Kale-
vala. The act turned into
a darkened prose poem
by a Finnish band; the

video & lyrics posted
to a books & literature
group on FaceBook. What
inflections we hear in

the rhythms, how ecstatic,
all wild & dark. But also
randomness. Words given
different etymologies or

simplified to syllables to
attract those bouncing
balls of karaoke. (&, within
parentheses, traces of the

social sounds of whales.) It
won't be long before the
plasma screens of mainstream
radio will be playing it.

a kind of continuity

Tassled Figures
Grion Grion rock painting
Kimberley Region, Western Australia
Date unknown.
(The only dateable evidence for these paintings
is a petrified wasps' nest found
built on top of one. It has
been established as being
17,500 years old, & it is evident
that the painting had been there
for some time before the wasps
built their nest upon it.)



The Promised Land
René Magritte
1947.

mercredi

The

phrase, the idea of, "re-booting a bus" is not one that, even at my most stochastic, I could arrive at. & yet.....

I'm in Sydney, using public transport some of the time. No cash sales on the bus, pre-paid tickets from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. coming out of the city. Ticket scanner goes down, won't accept tickets, milling throngs around the driver. He just tells everybody to sit down sans scan.

Then, out of the city center, he turns the bus off. No lights, no cctv. Darkness. Driver says nothing. You can almost see the combined question mark forming above the heads of the passengers. Then the driver turns the bus back on. Re-booted it in other words. Lights, camera, action. Ticket scanner now working.

A line from Charles Mingus

Anybody can plan
weird. In her later
years she turned in-
wards, away from

what used to be the
conventional method
of producing baby
food, the folding/

unfolding of wax
from the beehives of
early punk rock. Now
she would fumble

through her chests of
drawers, picking out
things that caught her
fancy: campaigns for

voting system reform,
the daily news talks of
dictators, ritualized
violence against Chateaux

which she would then
combine. Some overlap &
noise, but a different
starter culture, a new time.

Now out from Otoliths — Larry Sawyer's Unable to Fully California

Unable to Fully California
Larry Sawyer
128 pages
Cover collage by Krista Franklin
Otoliths, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-9807651-3-7
$15.95 + p&h
URL: http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/unable-to-fully-california/12200921
Also available through Amazon in a week or two

The poetry of Larry Sawyer arrives free of any investment in a “poetics” or worldview and therefore ties its shoes on the run: “The city is a Smith and Wesson covered in noon.” The sublime lies in “covered in noon,” the waking world in the Smith and Wesson. So there’s a spontaneity of composition (anything can happen and does) that reminds us of what René Char was supposed to have been. On first impression, the poems can seem scattershot, like the art works of Niki de Saint Phalle composed by shotgun. Some of the pellets form patterns, some impressions they make are deeper than others, and some even pierce the metal canvas. Because Sawyer’s style is so open, the casual and intense find comfort in each other and the remarkable detail emerges: “What horizon / spreads in the distance / muscles ripening?” Much of this work is therefore fresh and unexpectable, like the final line of his elegy at Char’s gravesite: “Quiet snow, gossip over the hero’s grave.” —Paul Hoover


The split infinitive title that is Unable to Fully California prompts the question: What in 2010 is most real? Larry Sawyer leads us in response to “the exotic trigonometry” that invokes twirled concepts, blended wines, plus deliciously intentional mistakes. In this spree of sight and sound, nouns take up residence while collocating in new roles as verbs alive in trans-plantation. The tenor and vehicle of similes yield a vivid array of bleached blond poems that skid across the page. Their x axis is transmuted from horizon line to stars as yet unnamed from which we readers readily infer we’re not in Kansas anymore. —Sheila E. Murphy


I love the clear style, unforced music. It is not so much a strange poetry as the poetry of a stranger, the way Bishop was a Brazilian in Boston and a Bostonian in Brazil. I fell in love with your “blue fruit” and “inescapable tomorrow,” also what seems like renunciation not of sentimentality but of cliché …I like even the quasi-Romantic dislocations here: “There is a beauty to ice / only a statue understands.” I’m not a statue, so I only partially understand, but that should be more than enough for Larry Sawyer’s uncanny picnic on no grass … seemed as real as the Bronx, and I couldn’t stop thinking: I am so lucky that this poetry is so good. —David Shapiro

fez

Sisterhood?

One of the most disappointing things about the five weeks of election campaigning plus this past week where both sides of politics, each with 72 seats, have sought to win over the majority of the six independents & minority party representatives so that they can claim government, has been the almost universal negativity of the female members of the media towards Prime Minister Julia Gillard.

Prior to the election, one of the topics of general debate was whether Australia was ready for a female Prime Minister. The election results leave it unclear whether it's gender or politics that has brought about the limbo we currently find ourselves in, but what is patently obvious—& this will doubtless be the subject of several Doctoral theses in the coming years—is that the overwhelming majority of females in the media, be they journalists, hack reporters, interviewers, talking heads, or whatever, most definitely aren't ready.

Talk about gender bias!

La Pipe

                            pipe
Surely             a
Magritte     not
 can see     is
   that     this

tripoli

home & away, Sydney

A Wilde video from Crying 4 Kafka

casablanca

The Australian Federal election

was held on Saturday, but the final result is still not clear.

With postal & absentee votes & recounts in close seats still to come, & legal challenges sure to happen, the preliminary result so far is that either Labor or the conservative Coalition will hold 73 to the other's 72 seats in the 150-seat House of Representatives, the Lower House; the Greens will have one seat; & there will be four independents, three of whom are to be considered to have conservative leanings.

It means that, in order to form government, one of the major parties will have to rely on the independents for support. At first glance, it might appear that the Coalition have the greater chance of winning that support, given the background & the rural/regional electorates of the three "conservatives". But, interestingly, it is the policies of the Labor Party—e.g. a national State-owned broadband network with its ability to deliver not only wider internet & telephony coverage but greater rural health services via its connectivity, the conservation of water & the general environmental policies favoring agriculture over mining—that the independents appear most attracted to. Also, the National Party, once called the Country Party, which is the junior Coalition party, did their relationship with the independents a great deal of harm by publicly declaring two of them, as late as last Saturday, fools & idiots.

So we wait & see what will happen. In the interim, newspaper reports suggest that it is only The Sex Party, which fielded a number of unsuccessful candidates in the election, that can find any pleasure in the idea of a hung parliament.

The Apparition

                   They're keywords. That
                      much he recognizes
                even if he doesn't
               recognize the discipline
        that they come from. "The 
              labels could mean any-
          thing," he thinks. Which 
                     means. He carries one
                   himself. Or two. He doesn't
             think. Which means.
                     He isn't. He appears.
                            Walking towards 
                         one of two horizons. 
                Which means. They 
                                    may not be.

vendredi

le havre

sebastapol

ah,

improbable research.....

http://improbable.com/airchives/paperair/volume6/v6i4/postal-6-4.html

Am unsure

if I'll be home or away when I attend the second, Sydney, installment of the New Zealand electronic poetry center's trans-Tasman home & away symposium. (The first, Auckland, part is up online here.) After all, I've lived in Australia, three decades plus in Sydney, for most of my life, but I still hold a New Zealand passport. So maybe, for me, it's more properly a hoay & awme event. Or some such.....

An interesting article

this, from the UK Daily Mail Online.

"A third of the experts advising the World Health Organisation about the swine flu pandemic had ties to drugs firms, it has emerged.

Five of the 15 specialists who sat on the emergency committee had received funding from pharmaceutical giants, or were linked to them through their research.

The revelation will prompt speculation that the 'pandemic' was wildly overestimated and largely fuelled by the drugs industry who stood to benefit from the panic."

The full article can be found here.

dimanche

Maybe

it's because it's pre-election time, & everywhere you go on tv there are political heads pontificating, added to which is the fact that my last "line from" poem was from Dürrenmatt—okay, he's Swiss, but, hey, that's like next door to Germany—but this morning, on the front porch, there was no song plucked from my unsub/conscious jukebox. Instead, I was thinking of what might have been said if JFK had given a particular speech somewhere other than Berlin.....

Ich bin ein Frankfurter
Ich bin ein Hamburger
Ich bin ein Bad Endbacher

a passage past the eye

The nuances,

if such delightfully exaggerated caricatures can possess nuances, may only be fully understood by an Australian audience, but I think the message is clear. &, more importantly, I think the majority of Australian voters are coming to the same conclusion, that a vote for the conservative side of politics is a retreat into the past.



Go team!

An "alkali attack"

just doesn't have that headline resonance.....

"A boy suspected of throwing acid on two two toddlers in a pram will not be charged because is too young, say police."

"(the substance) was a form of sodium hydroxide."

quoting . . . quoting . . .

Bob Ellis quoting from an email from dramatist Nick Parsons:

"Tony Abbott is Australia's George Bush, a likeable dope who knows what he believes but doesn't know what he thinks, and will take Australia on a series of expensive and disastrous adventures. Like Bush he makes decisions based on a religiously-based conviction rather than logic. Like Bush he's charming and personable. Like Bush he's a fitness fanatic with little interest in financial matters or the economy. Like Bush he comes from a privileged background, with a private education, and has little understanding of the needs and ambitions of the common man. Like Bush he may just squeak through to claim the election. And like Bush, at the end of his term of office we'll look out at the rubble and ask ourselves what we were thinking. Likeable and personable people can still wreak great evil on the world."

The Drum unleashed, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's on-line blog.

reposted, cos I kinda like it

Series Magritte #45

Le Thérapeute
for Nick Piombino

I know that
asking you to lie down
on the couch while I
sit across from you
is a bit old-fashioned
but humor me, it comes
from doing my studies
in Vienna. The bag
beside me contains a
peregrine falcon whose
purpose will become clear
later on. The scene behind?
A piece of trompe l'oeil
I asked this Belgian painter
to do for me. The sea is
so soothing. It's where
we all came from, it's
where we all desire
to return. Why? Think
amniotic fluid, think your
mother's lullabies. & the
birds inside the cage? At
first they're something
for your mind to focus on
while I explore the skies
they used to fly in. As we
progress, I gradually get
you to transfer to them
all the concerns that keep
you planted in the earth.
When that is done we set
them free. The final act
is to release the falcon.

9/17/2004

War / Crimes of / the Western World

Hiroshima
August 6, 1945

chad

The Victorian Age

seems so far away. & yet, in terms of my personal continuity, it is not that distant. One jump.

My father was born on this day in 1898. A toehold in the 19^th Century, nearly 90 years in the 20^th. I, 60 years in the 20^th Century, & now a leg, I reckon, into the 21^st.

I inherited from him—nurture—his strong sense of ethics &—nature—his thinning hair pattern. He provided a comfortable life for his family, though the age difference between he & I meant that we didn't communicate all that well.

He once read Kerouac's The Subterraneans in an attempt to "understand me", only to find he didn't understand Kerouac.

I have rarely written about him, maybe once or twice. The only lines I remember are part of one of my Series Magritte poems, The Liberator.

I see echoes of my father
also. Non-Italian. Freemason.
The attache case with the regalia
hidden inside, the pearled
candelabra reminding me
of jewels & embroidered
aprons. He never talked to me
about it. I never asked. He
never talked because I didn’t
ask. I never asked because
he never talked about it. Round
& round. We never came close.

         *

Never a liberator. Quite
the reverse. A tight hold
on the family. Rationed
freedom. We escaped by
becoming birds or keys or
pipes or wineglasses. Every-
day objects that could always
be replaced. He never
noticed. The space inside
the outline is as it has always
been, a shadow of himself, how
he’d always seen us. The
eyes in the pearled lorgnette
are mother’s eyes. She is
held tightly. A second cane.

corsica

In retrospect,

I probably should have put won des laits into hibernation for eleven months at the end of NaPwoWriMo (© Geof Huth); but I had a couple more pwoermds to post, & then a couple more, & then....

I've now entered my fifth month of continuous posting, a word a day, not always, strictly speaking, pwoermds, mixed as they with found typos & Google word verification captchas & puns & mini concrete poems & a bit of simple vispo. Sometimes they come in a stream, postdated posts spread across a number of days; sometimes the stream dries up. A fast or a feminine, as it were. &, sure, there's crap, & carp, & a bit of frank Capra, & a banner headline marqueeing through my brain—QUIT NOW WHILE YOU'VE STILL AHEAD—which, I suppose, means there's also a whole heap of masoschism in there.

But mainly it's fun, so I'll kpee on kpeeing on though, probably, when next year's NaPwoWriMo (® Geof Huth) comes around, I'll have exhausted my repartee, & there'll be nothing left to post, & I'll just have to hop on my

sk tebo rd
   a      a

& sali off into the buel.

Otoliths #18 now live

Issue 18, the southern winter 2010 issue, of Otoliths has just gone live.

Let's get the obvious pun out of the way first. This is an august issue. It's packed with text in its many forms—as story, essay, review, or poem—as well as a wide range of visual media: collages, frottages, glyphs, postcards, paintings, notebook pages & some great new vispo.

Included in the issue are Emma Smith, Eileen R. Tabios, Mark Cunningham, Ed Baker, Piotr Gwiazda, Anne Gorrick, Ed Higgins, Jukka-Pekka Kervinen, Manfred Weidhorn, Carlos Soto-Román, Sally Ann McIntyre, James Maughn, Mark Francis Johnson, Sheila E. Murphy, Amanda Earl, Orchid Tierney, Philip Byron Oakes, Raymond Farr, Joe Balaz, Randall Brock, Meaghan Lank, Jeff Harrison, Mary Kasimor, Bruno Neiva, Benjamin Winkler, M. V. Montgomery, Ric Carfagna, Jessica Breheny, Jal Nicholl, Alexander Jorgensen, Mark Stricker, Reed Altemus, Jenny Enochsson, Felino Soriano, Corey Wakeling, Grzegorz Wróblewski, Lars Palm, Thomas Fink, Dorothee Lang & Steve Wing, Larry Sawyer, Paul Siegell, Beth Boettcher, Charles Freeland, Jake David, Márton Koppány, Katrinka Moore, Aidan Semmens, Connor Stratman, Stephen Nelson & Mike Cannell, SJ Fowler, Cath Vidler, Cecelia Chapman, rob mclennan, Cherie Hunter Day, Neil Ellman, Geof Huth, R. Riekki, Tony Brinkley, sean burn, Scott Metz, Travis Macdonald, Stuart Barnes, Spencer Selby, Keith Higginbotham, Sam Langer, Tony Rickaby, Bob Heman, Andrew Topel, Andrew Taylor, John Martone, Brad Vogler, Bobbi Lurie, Michael Brandonisio, Yonah Korngold, J. D. Nelson, Tyler L. Gobble reviewing Adam Robinson's Say, Poem, Sheila E. Murphy reviewing Out of the Box: Contemporary Australian Gay and Lesbian Poets, Cassie Eddington, & Colleen Lookingbill.

Enough there, & of sufficient variety, to keep everybody happy.

Death Star(e)

As I've mentioned previously, the upcoming Federal election has the potential to be the most boring ever, with both party leaders almost terrified to be themselves.

Fortunately, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation has decided to inject some humor into the proceedings, shifting the focus of one of its best weekly programs, The Gruen Transfer, from advertising in general to election advertising, & following that up with a new series of The Chaser—who disappeared from our small screens more than a year ago, buried because of the outcry over a somewhat bad taste segment—entitled Yes We Canberra.

The clip below is of the Deputy Leader of the (conservative) Opposition, & it's the first time I've ever had a positive response to her. Mind you, I think that's because of the context.....

Today

is National Poetry Day in New Zealand.

Oops.....

To-
day is
National
Poetry
Day
in New
Zealand.

In
Australia,
every day is
National
Poetfree
Day.

dylan sigh

transient

A line from Ron Silliman

Good corporate citizens
in San Francisco have
long tubes reaching up
to the upper levels of

multi-storey car parks.
Some kind of centralized
IT architecture, that by-
passes the circadian clock

& posits that a pot of
coffee is more effective
than an hour of light, &
Vegan food is regulated

by automobile lubrication
systems. It's a concept
that originates less in the
order of science, more

in the latest Tweets from
Kim Kardashian about
how slutty customers
are what make Japanese

pawnshops so special
& how adding acidophillus
culture to the recently
re-surfaced "lost Kafka

writings" could function
better than birds' bones
or tree trunks to cool
entire cities down again.

The Down Under Bible Belt

stretches from coast to coast, if two items from the current, utterly boring, election campaign are any indication.

Dumped Liberal candidate David Barker doesn't know why he has been disendorsed despite making controversial anti-Muslim comments.

The disgraced candidate used his Facebook site to accuse Labor of moving the nation closer to a Muslim country and attacked his ALP opponent in Chifley, Sydney, Ed Husic, over his religion.

Mr Barker described Mr Abbott, the Liberal leader, as ''God's mouthpiece'' and said on Facebook that God was ''on the side of the Liberal right''.

Today Mr Barker stood by his statements, telling the ABC there should not be a Muslim in parliament and questioning whether the country was ready for an atheist prime minister.

§

Liberal MP Don Randall has defied Opposition Leader Tony Abbott by raising Prime Minister Julia Gillard's atheism. Mr Randall, from Western Australia, said people from a range of Christian religions had told his office "they don't like the fact that we have a godless Prime Minister". They were "very concerned with the stance of the Prime Minister, basically being anti-God", he said.

Mr Randall says Australia was built on Christian values, which provide the basis for being a better leader.

"We expect out leaders to convey and portray good Christian values," he said.

why I fell in love with k.d. lang

Slam Po-dunk

The Albion River in Mendocino County has been described as "a little podunk river." The real Podunk River is in Connecticut. It is 13 miles long. A total of 400 pounds of water chestnut plants were hand-pulled from the shallow Vinton's Mill Pond in the Podunk River basin. This plant species is not the same as the water chestnut used in Asian cooking. Approximately 15-20 tonnes of fresh Chinese water chestnuts are currently being marketed annually in Australia. "They even know it in Podunk, wherever that may be," commented Mark Twain. The loading dock in Steamboat Willie, released in 1928, the first Disney cartoon to feature synchronized sound, was named "Po Dunk Landing". Mark Twain wasn't around to comment.

Δαδα

(would have liked a day like this)

The Survivor

           That was the year
                       we wintered in
         Montparnasse. The 
                ferry, I remember, 
           was empty apart
                 from us, might never 
                    have sailed except 
              its skipper lived 
                               on the other side 
                      of the river & she 
                            wanted to get 
             home that night. Up-
                stream was thick
                   with forest. There
                       were fireworks 
             somewhere. I heard 
                            them, but I did not 
                     see their bloom.

Now out from Otoliths—Expanding The Radius by Mary Ellen Derwis & Joe Balaz

Expanding The Radius
Mary Ellen Derwis & Joe Balaz
72 pages, full color
Otoliths, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-9807651-0-6
$24.95 (currently with free postage in the U.S.)
URL: http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/expanding-the-radius/11020602

Early on in Expanding The Radius, Mary Ellen Derwis gives us an untitled narrative sequence of digital art, hinting at the human form, which picks up again towards the end of the book in a more figurative sequence— “Rendezvous”. Intimate portraits, wider anthropological insights, and other strongly titled art also prevail. Among other tightly woven directives, Joe Balaz includes multi-paged narrations “High in Blue”, “Fairly Textual”, and “The Industrial Poet”. Then there are the collaborations which find a distinct third voice, as often happens when two people are so creatively in synch. The book ends with two of Mary Ellen’s urban shots that include typographical symbols and a similar photo, a final pun by Joe— “C and Leave”. Many of these images have appeared separately in the quarterly “Otoliths”; now it’s a pleasure to see/read this combined three headed body of always direct, sometimes humorous, often profound digital art, visual poetry, and collaborations. —C. Mehrl Bennett

In Australia

& New Zealand, following on from the lead of the U.K.—ah, these vestiges of Empire—cars drive on the left-hand side of the road. Which means that nearly all vehicles here, apart from, in the main, a few leftover World War II jeeps, have right-hand drive.

So it was a bit bizarre—downright spooky in fact—to look in my side mirror today & see no-one sitting in what should have been the driver's seat of the car behind me.

The mind shudders hay(na)ku. or: Brigham Curtains

"Buy
Mormon Underwear
Compare Mormon Underwear"

The Australian Federal election

is still some months away, but it seems that one of the platforms Prime Minister Gillard is going to be running on is


A Pwoermd A Day.

are you a Mexican bandit?

Color me old,

but I sometimes struggle with the elasticity of today's terminology.

"Police are investigating whether the four men and two women, aged between 18 and 27, were boy racers."

25 years ago today,

the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior was bombed in Auckland Harbor.


The first bomb exploded at 11.38pm, lifting those in the mess off their seats. Davy Edwards rushed into the engine room to find a hole the size of a car, water pouring in. Everyone was ordered off the ship but some went back to grab possessions. Fernando Pereira, the ship's photographer, was one of them, perhaps going after his precious cameras. There was a second explosion and, caught in a rush of water, Pereira drowned.

The crew were in shock. They gave statements to the New Zealand police, who reacted swiftly to the first act of terrorism on their soil. Piecing together statements from members of the public, they were soon questioning a French couple, agents Prieur and Mafart of the French secret service.

Initially, the French government denied all knowledge but it soon became obvious that they were involved. Soon French Prime Minister Fabius appeared on television to tell a shocked world, "Agents of the DGSE (Secret Service) sank this boat. They acted on orders." The French minister of defense resigned.

After the bombing, the Rainbow Warrior was given a final resting place at Matauri Bay, in New Zealand's Cavalli Islands. It has become a living reef, attracting marine life and recreational divers.

The idea was first proposed by the New Zealand Underwater Association. It seemed a fitting end for a ship that had spent its time protecting the marine environment.

It was towed north with a patched hull on 2 December 1987. Ten days later, a crowd of well-wishers looked on as it was given a traditional Maori burial.

Now home to a complex ecosystem, the Rainbow Warrior has become a popular dive destination. The local Maori community maintains its kaitaki (conservation). In a few short years, the Rainbow Warrior became an integral part of the environment it helped protect.

Further details are included on the Greenpeace site from which the above is taken.

got to see

Jackson Pollock's Blue Poles


but also this wonderful Magritte,
one of several versions of Les Amants.

The jpeg size is deceptive. You could fit the Magritte 30 times over into the Pollock.

I'm sitting

in a room in what is described as a "boutique hotel" writing this. The hotel's not bad; my only complaint the apparent lack of connectivity of its wireless network. So, went out to buy a topup for our "travelling" national telephony broadband connector, came back, plugged it in. At which point the hotel network decided to come in/on loud & strong, so I'm using that.

Frost this morning, white underfoot; but the predominant color of Canberra is black. Black hoodies, black leather jackets, black full-length coats, black pants, black shirts, black sweaters, or a combination of any or all can be found adorning 80% of the people I've seen today. I felt quite at home in my black corduroy coat.

Tomorrow is our day for being strictly tourists, but this afternoon I'm heading off to the National Gallery, to see Jackson Pollock's Blue Poles. Bought by the Whitlam Labor Government in 1973, its purchase created an outcry, partially because the Australian public considered they could do better, partially because of the price paid. $US2 million. Now it's regarded quite differently. It's a national treasure, an example of the forward-looking nature of Australian perspicacity in buying seminal works of art.

Plus it's currently valued at something like $180 million.

Now out from Otoliths—modulations by Márton Koppány

modulations
Márton Koppány
52 pages, full color
Page size 7½" x 7½"
Otoliths, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-9807651-2-0
$19.99 (currently with free postage in the U.S.A.)
URL: http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/modulations/11269905

Nearly sixty years ago, Charles Olson warned, “The poet cannot afford to traffick in any other sign than his ‘one’,” preparing the way whether he knew it or not for Márton Koppány to take leave of his native Hungarian and to move into English, where for more than two decades he has been creating traffic signs with the gleeful abandon of a deranged city planner with an advanced degree in Dada. Or maybe not so deranged. I read the poems in modulations as perfectly sensible, whether fish are emitting thought bubbles in the sky, or a table’s legs are deconstructed to show their essentially asemic nature. Language is our great connecting principle and Koppány’s language artfully breaks, reduces, and repairs poetry with a metaphysician’s discomfort matched with a physician’s healing touch. —Peter O'Leary

There was a time when pictures and writing were not as separate as they are today, a time when the picture was given not just to show but to tell; a sort of “picture-writing.” And each “pictograph” was as an aperçu, at once an insight into and a brief digest of the thought to be communicated. The poet Márton Koppány has found for himself a form most becoming of his intuition; each panel here is an aperçu into that space where picture and writing are one, that space where the mind knows the word in the figure of its substance, that space that is language-in-eidos. And so I see Koppány’s panels as “eidographs,” as urtexts of “eidetic poetry.” —Gregory Vincent St. Thomasino, author of The Logoclasody Manifesto

What can you say about . . . except that . . . with clouds just
where they . . . which is, to say, in short, a master of the . . .,
as well as . . . the. For instance, the refle . . . one poem
of the invis. . . stillness (         ), not to exclude (

                                    In fullest slowest color. —Bob Gru . . . n

The minimalist visual poetry of Márton Koppány has many qualities lifting it high and above most visual poetry composed over the last 100 years in any language. We are fortunate he has chosen to compose in his second language, American English, wedded to discipline. His manifestations always lean forward into the new, not a mere recycling of the old and worn out. It brings smiles, smirks and the belly laugh. It is consistently permeated with the rare characteristic of awe so many others lack and never reach for. And, for me, on too many occasions, his visions give me a jealous wish that it had come my way rather than his. —Karl Kempton

"José, can you?"

"Si."

The genesis of an urban myth?

or: "Will the real one-armed bandit please stand up."

"New Zealand Police say the one-armed man, who was pictured on camera helping to rob a brasserie at gunpoint, was spotted feeding a large amount of cash into poker machines at a local tavern the next night."

[fragment]

No record of it exists except as a refutation; & the only record of the refutation is a fragment of a manuscript without provenance, attributed by the late Umberto Allegrezza, on the basis of stylistic & scribic elements, to Abu Ja'far Muhammad ibn Musa Al-Khwarizmi, better known as al-Khwarizmi, astronomer, the inventor of algebra, & rumored to be author of a lost—or rather hidden—treatise on calculus which, it has been claimed, was the basis for both Isaac Newton's method of fluxions and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz' integral notation.

The manuscript records the thoughts of al-Khwarizmi on a homily by his contemporary Photius, the Patriarch of Constantinople, adherent to a different religion, entitled "All Life is an Accident Waiting to Happen," aware that it was an ironic title since what Photius was advocating was the exact opposite.

al-Khwarizmi's piece has an equally ironic title; "All Accidents are a Life Waiting to Happen."

Now out from Otoliths— Grzegorz Wróblewski's A Marzipan Factory

A Marzipan Factory
Grzegorz Wróblewski
(translated from the Polish by Adam Zdrodowski)
112 pages
Otoliths, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-9807651-1-3
$15.95 + p&h
URL: http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/a-marzipan-factory/11184884

A Marzipan Factory is the most original and enticing book of poems I have read in years. It is Kafkaesque and yet tender, cynical and yet warm, elliptical and yet wholly immediate. Grzegorz Wróblewski can take the most ordinary of phenomena and then give them the twist of a knife: to "spare" the life of a living organism—a "dry" tangerine for instance—is, from another angle, to forget it. The pleasures and terrors of sex, of age, of the fear of death, of the deceptions of our social life, have rarely been so brutally—yet wittily and charmingly—documented as they are in these short, often gnomic poems, surprisingly well rendered in Adam Zdrodowski’s translation. Grzegorz Wróblewski restores one’s faith in the power of lyric poetry to renew itself. — Marjorie Perloff

Grzegorz Wróblewski's poems are ironic and serious, quick and probing, nailed to place and character but soaring in imagination. If you haven't read his poems, it's not too late to start and this new volume is the perfect place to do that. — John Z. Guzlowski

A Marzipan Factory is also available through Amazon.

Now that it's

international rugby season in the southern hemisphere, I should get to see this occasionally in the next few months.



It's the kapa o pango, the special haka of the All Blacks, not always the haka done before their matches, only before those they consider special.

Kapa o pango kia whakawhenua au i ahau!
Hi aue, hi!
Ko Aotearoa e ngunguru nei!
Au, au, aue ha!

Ko Kapa o Pango e ngunguru nei!
Au, au, aue ha!

I ahaha!
Ka tu te ihiihi
Ka tu te wanawana
Ki runga ki te rangi e tu iho nei, tu iho nei, hi!

Ponga ra!
Kapa o Pango, aue hi!
Ponga ra!
Kapa o Pango, aue hi, ha!

*

Let me be one with the land!

New Zealand is rumbling here!

The team in black is rumbling here!


Face up to the fear
Fight the terror
To the sky above
Fight up there,
high up there. Yeah!

Our shadows fall!
Team in Black!
Yeah!

Silver Fern!
Team in Black!
Yeah!
HAHH!

Stirring stuff!

Applied Dialectics

thesis
                     poetry

antithesis
                     war

synthesis
                     woetry

getting lazy, cross-posting

deba±e

Alex Gildzen

recently described President Obama as having lost his mojo.

Like the President, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, elected a year earlier in similar circumstances—a highly popular left-leaning leader putting an end to a conservative government—had also succumbed to the same affliction.

Unlike the United States, where the President is the Head of State, Rudd was Prime Minister by virtue of his being the leader of the Parliamentary Labor Party which won the majority of seats in the last election. The Head of State in Australia is still the Queen of England.

Unlike the United States, where the President can be replaced during his (or, hopefully, some time in the not too distant future, her) term only through death or incapacity or impeachment, the Prime Minister of Australia can be replaced without an election being called when his (up until now the pronoun held true) party decides they want another leader.

Rudd's popularity has been plunging in the opinion polls, & with it the popularity of the Federal Labor Government. So much so that, almost inconceivable given their resounding win in the 2007 elections, they were in grave danger of being voted out of office in the elections due to be held later on this year.

There were murmurings of discontent about Kevin Rudd's leadership; but the move against him, when it came, was swift & sudden. A breaking news item on the national 7 p.m. ABC news last night reported that there had been discussions between Rudd, his deputy Julia Gillard, & senior figures in the Labor Party; three hours later Rudd called a televised news conference in which he announced that the party leader's post would be thrown open to ballot at a caucus meeting to be held at 9 a.m. the next morning, that he would be restanding for the post, that he had been elected to the post & he considered his work unfinished.

Less than 12 hours later, there was no need for a ballot. Rudd had been convinced that if he stood again for the leadership, his defeat would be humiliating such were the numbers now against him. Julia Gillard became the leader of the parliamentary party.

At noon, the new Prime Minister of Australia, Julia Gillard, the first woman to hold the position, was sworn in by the Queen's representative, the Governor General of Australia, Quentin Bryce, who just happens to be the first female G.G. that Australia has ever had.


Julia Gillard (left) watches as Governor-General Quentin Bryce signs her commission as Prime Minister of Australia. (AAP: Alan Porritt)

custom-made in the region

; the development of literacy & semiotics
; pre-dates my becoming an archivist
[or an anarchist]

; was talking
about the possibilities of
the
dates from
; now on in

; being recast
; so as to focus
more on diplomatic
relations with Havana
& ; the literacy of the
officer corps.

[a political & miltary tug of war
on indoor-outdoor spatial relations]

(There are
no universal definitions
though your accountant
may have other
ideas—he spends a lot
of time in his sister's
kindergarten class. )

[sharp gaps in education]
[the ability to use relevant software applications]
[the dispatch as genre]

& other poems?

WHOL

illuminating gothic

from Stephan Schreiber's sketch book, c.1494

Che in Bolivia

I must write & thank Fidel for his parting gift. A book of poetry, that fits comfortably in the pocket of my camouflage fatigues. By a Yanqui yet, who set out every day to write something, even when it was hard to find something to write about. It’s an idea I’ve picked up on, have carried out.

Have kept a diary throughout this campaign, although daily Bolivia is very much the same old same old, unlike the New York I read about each night where there are "so many things in the air!" Here there are only maggots & mosquitoes, & the mutterings of peasants intimidated by our presence. They help us because they are frightened of us, & then send to tell the army because they are more frightened of the soldiers.

The army is in the next valley over. The army is now in the valley behind. We are running out of food, are running out of time. "The only thing to do is simply continue."

I am a man with two hearts. The one that beats still dreams of the revolution. The one that weeps is in my pocket, it is Lunch Poems, by Frank O’Hara.

We will move towards the next valley. That way I at least can choose the manner of my death.

Peaches and Bats

Peaches and Bats #6 is now available! It's a 64-page handsewn chapbook with a letterpressed cover, featuring adventurous writings by:

Taryn Andrews
Aaron Barrell
Bill Berkson
Meredith Blankinship
Norma Cole
Beverly Dahlen
Joel Felix
Kim Hyesoon, translated by Don Mee Choi
Rodney Koeneke
Kimberly Lyons
Joseph Mains
Scott Metz
Hoa Nguyen
Deborah Poe
Dan Raphael
Stacy Szymaszek
Dana Ward
Mark Young
Peaches and Bats #6 is available for $5.00 (including postage in the US). It can be ordered via PayPal at http://peachbats.blogspot.com/2010/06/new-issue.html, or by sending a check, payable to Sam Lohmann, to 4025 SE Taylor St., Portland, OR 97214. Back issues are still available. Thanks for your time, and happy summer,

Sam Lohmann

I'm a bit confused

what century we're living in.....

Execution by firing squad


announced on Twitter?
& later:

"We will be streaming live my press conference as soon as
I'm told Gardner is dead. Watch it at
www.attorneygeneral.Utah.gov/live.html"
he wrote.

pas de deux

Truly radical
social engineers

are thin on
the ground.

river liffey, relived

and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.

excursion

                                      In a kind of
                                           reverse Proust—
                              degree of difficulty
                    2.7 on the Hans
                           Richter Scale—I
            am waiting for 
                    the tenth & final 
                                   volume of The 
                        Grand Piano to 
                    appear before
                            ordering the 
                          complete set 
                                            & then taking 
                                         to my bed to
                               spend the rest
                                               of my life 
                                 reading them entire.

Today the
postman brought
me a box of
Girl Scout
tracking cookies.

Truly a corn-
ucopia. Tomorrow
he'll be back
with another box
containing much
the same as
those I've
just consumed.

Brecht, surprisingly

gloves were donned         all streets cleared of

free woman legs & vice versa

then they collected our shoes

these monuments serve as symbolic iconic media

are all about showing off & razzle dazzle

I am contacting you for a secret business transaction

(In the) American Grain

The Australian Federal Labor Government,

which purports to be democratic, whale- & planet-loving, & liberal when it comes to people's freedoms—though it won't allow same sex marriages—has a rather serious hang-up when it comes to the web. It has been preparing legislation to ban internet providors from allowing their customers access to particular sites, a list which will never be officially published but hacked copies of which reveal the content of the proscribed sites ranges from bestiality to euthanasia.

Now, according to ZDNet, they are also moving to acquire everybody's browsing history.

Companies who provide customers with a connection to the internet may soon have to retain subscriber's private web browsing history for law enforcement to examine when requested, a move which has been widely criticised by industry insiders.

The Attorney-General's Department yesterday confirmed to ZDNet Australia that it had been in discussions with industry on implementing a data retention regime in Australia. Such a regime would require companies providing internet access to log and retain customer's private web browsing history for a certain period of time for law enforcement to access when needed.

Currently, companies that provide customers with a connection to the internet don't retain or log subscriber's private web browsing history unless they are given an interception warrant by law enforcement, usually approved by a judge. It is only then that companies can legally begin tapping a customer's internet connection.

One internet service provider (ISP) source told ZDNet Australia that the Australian regime, if implemented, could go as far as recording each URL a customer visited and all emails.

That source said such a regime "would be scary and very expensive".

Another industry source said Australians should "be very fucking afraid".

They said the regime being considered by the Australian Government could see data held for much longer than EU Directive time of 24 months — it would be more like five or ten years.

"They seem quite intent [on implementing the regime] and they keep throwing up the words 'terrorism' and 'paedophiles'," the source said. "We're talking browsing history and emails, way beyond what I would consider to be normal SMS, retaining full browsing history and everything."

Electronic Frontier Australia (EFA) chair Colin Jacobs said the regime was "a step too far".

"At some point data retention laws can be reasonable, but highly-personal information such as browsing history is a step too far," Jacobs said. "You can't treat everybody like a criminal. That would be like tapping people's phones before they are suspected of doing any crime."

He added that browser history could reveal all sorts of personal information. "And furthermore, the way the internet works, it's a huge amount of data to be kept and it requires some snooping on the part of the ISPs into which [web] pages people are looking at."

Seed Money

About 40 kilometers south of Rockhampton, slightly inland & about 240 meters above sea level, is Mount Morgan & the town of the same name that grew up on & around it. Originally it was called Ironstone Mountain, but was renamed after the three Morgan brothers, sons of a man convicted of murder & transported to the colonies, who pegged out a gold-mining lease on it in 1882 & began extracting the metal.

To obtain capital for the work, they formed a syndicate with some Rockhampton businessmen; but the Morgans remained doubtful of the mine's profitability, & sold out their share of the syndicate to the other members in 1886.

On the 1st of October, 1886, The Mount Morgan Gold Mining Company Limited was registered in the Supreme Court of Queensland, with a nominal capital of one million one-pound shares.

The Shareholders were Thomas Skarratt Hall (158,332 shares), William Knox D'Arcy (358,334 shares), William Pattison (125,000 shares), Walter Russell Hall (125,000 shares), John Ferguson (116,667 shares), Charles Carlton Skarratt (58,334 shares) & Alexander William Robertson & John Wagner (together) (58,333 shares).

The Morgans' doubt was misplaced. During the 108-year life of the mine approximately 262 tonnes of gold, 37 tonnes of silver & 387,000 tonnes of copper were mined from Mount Morgan from underground & open cut operations. For a time it was the largest gold mine in the world. Fortunes were made.

Walter Hall died in 1911. His widow Eliza began the process of establishing a trust, part of which went to establishing the Walter & Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research, situated at the Royal Melbourne Hospital, begun in 1915 & still one of the world’s most prestigious research centers.

William D'Arcy put his money to a different use. He returned to England in 1887 & wanted to establish a place in English upper-class society. But his life-style expenditure & the collapse of some of his investments during the final years of the century meant he had to look for somewhere new to replenish his fortune.

To quote from the Australian Dictionary of Biography:

The opportunity came in 1900 when Sir Henry Drummond Wolff, a former British minister to Teheran, approached him to invest in Persian oil exploration. Early in 1901 D'Arcy sent to Teheran an emissary who in May obtained a concession to search for oil over 480,000 sq. miles (1,243,195 km²). D'Arcy agreed to provide all necessary finance for the search. But at the end of 1903 he had spent £150,000 with no result. His financial position was now desperate. He had to mortgage his Mount Morgan shares at a time when they had dropped to £2 10s. each. By May 1905 he had used £225,000 and could spend no more. He began negotiations with the French branch of the Rothschild family for the sale of the concession. But on 20 May the British owned Burmah Oil Co. stepped in with an offer. D'Arcy agreed to it and made over the rights to his concession in return for 170,000 Burmah Oil shares and a payment to cover expenses he had incurred.

On 26 May 1908 Burmah Oil finally found the biggest oilfield yet known in the world in D'Arcy's old concession. This led in 1909 to the formation of a new company, Anglo-Persian Oil, which later became Anglo-Iranian Oil and ultimately British Petroleum.

& which, of course, is now known simply as BP.

Am in the middle

of a detective story fest, the books bought from a number of places. I'm unused to having such a variety of options for obtaining my reading matter.

Started with Stieg Larsson's Millenium Trilogy a month or so back. Had been reluctant to lay out over $100 to buy the three books, but found them discounted to roughly halfprice at a local department store. Quite liked the first of them, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, but found the later two a bit hard to get through.

From Sweden to the U.K., V.L. McDermid, the initials, rather than the better known Val, used for the series featuring journalist/sleuth Lindsay Gordon. A couple of books found in the remainder bin at the local newsagent. Much more the traditional English detective story than her Tony Hill, Wire in the Blood etc., books which I rank as some of the best crime stories ever written.

Put an order in on Amazon for the latest John Sandford & Laurie R. King books, plus the second-latest Graham Hurley novel.

Picked up a first novel by a, to me, unknown author,Theresa Monsour at the annual Bookfest, a secondhand booksale run to raise funds for the local branch of a charity. In the acknowledgements section Monsour thanks her "mentor" John Camp, who just happens to be better known as the John Sandford who provides a recommendation on the back of the book. Enough reason for me to buy the book. Enjoyed it, went searching for more, found she's only written three, one a year from 2003 to 2005. Nothing since. Managed to track down the other two in the new & used section of Amazon.

(A side note. Only bought two books this year at Bookfest—the other was Italo Calvino's If on a Winter's Night A Traveller—but they benefited by the 1000 or so books I purged from my shelves a couple of months before & donated to them.)

Bought a book by Gregg Hurwitz at the local secondhand bookstore. Had read & enjoyed his two most recent books; discovered, when I purged my shelves, that I also had his The Kill Clause which I'd forgotten about but promptly reread. Same protagonist in that as in the most recent purchase. Found a third in the series at Amazon at the same time I was searching for Monsour. Have also noted Hurwitz' name in the production credits for V which I've been watching lately.

Spent the time post-Larsson/McDermid/Monsour & waiting for the first lot of Amazon books to arrive by rereading Stuart MacBride. Scottish, writes about Aberdeen, good but quite bloody. Had finished the first four, broke off to read the John Sandford which arrived. Then one of the nose-guards (?) on my glasses broke off. So off to the optometrist in the morning which happens to be in the same shopping complex as the main bookshop in these parts. Found on their shelves what would be called a cornucopia of new books hereabouts, exited with the latest Jeffrey Deaver, the latest Michael Koryta, &, in a touch of synchronicity, the latest Stuart MacBride.

Finished the Sandford, read the Deaver, reread the fifth MacBride—continuity is important to me—& then read the new one.

The second Monsour book arrived. Read that. Then moved on to the Graham Hurley. Finished that this afternoon. Started on the second in the Hurwitz series.

Still have Koryta & Laurie R. King to read. Plus the third Hurwitz. & then there's the third & final book by Theresa Monsour which still has to arrive. Plus I think I'll order in the latest Graham Hurley book in hardback since the paperback isn't due out until January of next year.

The amazing thing is I've enjoyed nearly everything I've read. As I said earlier, I was a bit disappointed with the later Larsson, & the McDermid books were workmanlike rather than inspired, but, overall, a good solid bloc of good solid detective stories.

Now to go hunting for the latest James Lee Burke which I'm sure isn't far away.

Don't they ever fucking learn?

"The Israeli government has apologised after its press office emailed to journalists a spoof video about the flotilla which tried to dock in Gaza."

BBC News

It seems like an oxymoron,

but, in my meanderings not too far out of town this morning, I came across an area signed as "dry rainforest".

First time I'd heard of it, Googled it when I got home, found on the NSW Department of Environment, Climate Change & Water website, the following:

Not all rainforests grow in areas receiving evenly distributed, abundant supplies of rainfall. Lesser known are the tiny remnants of Dry Rainforests scattered across the Kimberley, Top End, Cape York and down the east coast of Australia. Since they occur in regions with a distinct wet and dry season, the more northerly monsoonal forests survive in sheltered gullies and along the banks of rivers. Under moister, past climatic conditions, their ancestors were widespread across the continent. As the climate became less suitable for rainforests, those species best fitted for the arid conditions survived. They replaced species less able to survive in the new conditions and evolved to deal with the changing environment.

Along the east coast, marginal rainfalls or poorer soils support Dry Rainforests in sheltered locations. They often grow on rocky sites that are rarely subject to fire. Because some Dry Rainforest trees have a greater tolerance of arid conditions, communities can be found up to 300 km inland where suitable shelter exists.

The ability of some species to shed leaves in dry conditions is an advantage for Dry Rainforest trees, enabling them to survive temporary water shortage. Common species include Lacebark (Brachychiton discolour), Australian Teak (Flindersia australis), Hoop Pine (Araucaria cunninghamii), and figs (Ficus species).

life imitating art?

from iTunes...

Armchair Commandos is a new reality-based scenario paintball TV show. Each episode features two naturally opposing forces that will compete for a cash prize. The members of the winning team will then donate the prize to a charity of their choice. Some examples of opposing forces may include: cops vs. skaters, bull riders vs. p.e.t.a, or even doctors vs. malpractice attorneys. The stage for this competition will be the scenario paintball field. These scenarios will range from the wildest childhood imaginations to the re-enactment of famous military battles. With clever team selections and complex, creative scenarios, each episode will keep viewers riveted in their seats with a potent cocktail of intriguing conflict, imagination, and stunning visuals. Players and non-players alike will love this show!

"Earlier, the Israeli military admitted it had made mistakes during the raid, saying some of the commandos had been issued with paintball guns...."

a pwoermd a day

still going at won des laits.

More pix from the nzepc's Home & Away Symposium

Michael Farrell


Jill Jones


Michele Leggott (MC on the night)


Nigel Roberts


Mark Young

The above were all taken at the Lounge reading, part of the proceedings of the nzepc's Home & Away Symposium, held March 30 & 31 at Auckland University.

I also must admit to liking this photo of myself & Martin Edmond, taken during the talks that occured across the two days.



A fairly full record is available at the Symposium website. It contains poems, photos, audios of the talks given, & a video of a group event called Archipelago that I didn't take part in, finding the ground rules & explanations so convoluted & long-winded that I walked out in disgust.

Pirates w/out penance

(1)

Israel is yet to explain why, on a supposedly peaceful interception, its commandos chose to board the ship by rappelling from a military helicopter, in the dark, in international waters.

(2)

The White House has warned that BP's oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico could continue until August.