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a n 36.9
s
election day special
11-5-96
The Habit of Synergy
An energetic plumbed gap, awaiting. Something seeded in
the head the initiation into imitation in a submissive voice
the pleasure-text of this is making us slaves to leisure
and each of our breathings is representative and ambiguous,
a machine of varying degrees of uncertainty whose component
parts are essentially forms of communication caught in culture-
active tropisms to be treed and scryed and exercised,
the feeling of being, aggressive intensity confused with
optimism, lips a ruin, a map of damages basking in moonlight
without prohibiting the situation, this illusory alternity
inscribed on spiral vines, looped and lassoed. Freedom
from insular occupation, a coil and a caul that contains
the spinning as if from elsewhere a magnetic disturbance
that calls to attention the memory server and orders
a burst of visual purple that becomes its own associations
at the same time inhabiting the image-nation of the other,
connected to no greater power. The hook of sincerity
and ambiguity dangles, fuzzy axes grappled as a ghost
of itself climbs the walls and howls at the lightbulb,
a sinuous shrill ululation suddenly of the moment,
the habit of.
--The Alterran Poetry Assemblage
*
Analysis of _Imagination Verses_
Jennifer Moxley (Tender Buttons, 1996)
The poetics subculture may already be shell-shocked
by the rapid fire accolades launched from politically
pois(on)ed pens in reference to Jennifer Moxley's re-
cently published _Imagination Verses_.
Sheltered and out of the range of misleading glorification,
however, one comes to understand that such a body of work
is more accepted because of the commendable grace with
which it propogates a particular style, and that its worth
lies more in the fact that it feeds a stream of writing
whose continuation does much to strengthen the validity
and power of its originators.
The unfortunate yet not insurmountable weakness in this
collection remains in its leaving the reader to conclude
that the experiences referenced in the writing were merely
imagined, and never actually lived. With the notable ex-
ceptions of "Wreath Of A Similar Year," "Lucky So And So,"
and "Right To Remain Silent," the work depicts a writer
who like a leaf floats down a stream toward the river
that gives it life. Travelling further to the river's
mouth from which that life is expelled and into the sea--
the womb that bears forth all--she does not seem to notice
when the tree line disappears or when the current no longer
gently swaddles her. It is as if she does not feel the
power of the tide or hear the waves that come to engulf her.
Moxley seems to place such a vast distance between her self
and the object that it limits her sensory experience and
her expression of it. This assuredly has a dimming effect
on the power of the work and shuts out its infinite cap-
acity.
Time frame, life's landscape, and creative potential are
forced to wait within the work to expand, and for the poet
to realize that the limits that poetry frustrates, as de-
scribed in the book's Preface, are the only limits of one's
own consciousness. Poetry as an art will always more ef-
ficiently approach the infinite possible when the mind is no
longer restricted, by the self, to building its bridges in
"half measures."
Many ears have been deafened by the droning choruses of
media-mediated American culture. Even the vision of artists,
which has always been closer to the sacred, blurs. So many
that claim to be creators sit watching life beside everyone
else as if they were on a sofa viewing an incidental screen
over which they admittedly have no influence, feeling the
distance, feeling the powerlessness, and accepting it in
their minds.
Moxley has visions of "Protest," of "calling in the new day,"
but ultimately remains lost in her own "false hope factory,"
seemingly unaware of her place in that great unravelling of
light and dark, in burning through the wall that keeps one
on the wayside. Acknowledging such a position would bring
shockingly rich depth and vital newness to her poetry.
I believe in the skilful seeds that lie within these verses.
I believe that in them exists a desire to become deeper
translations of life. I hear something in their despondency
that continues to search; that will not leave hope forever,
"blind as the first letter on the first stone written down."
Or is it my own hope, that was not factory made, that comes
to stir these words, this poet, onward.
--D.A.G.
*
GLANCES
Altar altar angelic altar angelic and avail and belief days and
as amulet belief be altar and by belief bursting.
As flood higher belief decent altar flood elegant illumine
angelic gloves fingerer gains go his avail de higher got here
glances defecate.
Each face esteem earth foetidly amulet.
half being arraign days flood anemone duller eyes.
From hollow here be d her day by have and and bursting and exists
higher.
--from _Codex Argenteus manuscript_ (jlehmus)
*
KDIU October 1996
Cesaria Evora/ Frutu Proibido/ La Diva aux Pieds Nus
Elis Regina/ Olhos Abertos/ Elis
Isabel Tello Mexia/ Ita Timur Oan Sira/ Goa, Macau, Timor
Hamza Shakkur & Ensemble Al-Kindi/ Meditation/ Takasim & Sufi Chants
From Damascus
Mauricia Kagel/ Tactil/ Exotica, Tactil
Dennis Warner's Full Metal Revelutionary Ensemble/ Adam's Garden Sketch/
Watch Out!
Abyssinia Band/ Yedejih Abeba Negn/ Music from Ethiopia
Melhem/ (untitled)/ Noujoum Al Fan Al Arabi '95
El-Hachemi Geurouabi/ Hakmet/ Les Maitres Du Chaabi
Marilyn Crispell/ Enterences of Light/ Santuerio
Detty Kurnia/ Mamanis/ Dari Sunda
Cheb Nasro/ El Wakhda/ Je Regrette
Orchestre Baobab/ El Fuego/ On Verra Ca!
Thomas Chapin & Borah Bergman/ Points/ Inversions
Bernd Alois Zimmerman/ Monologues for Two Pianos/ Presence, Inter-
Comunicazione, Perspectives, Monologues
*
Midrash for Castleman
Art, not always truth and not always the facts in the evidence of documents
in five or more pieces never, never goes the rime. Not always pauses
in the moonlight or frost on fingers. Never the moral equivalent of
the passive aggressive tender. What happened to ruin the performance
of shadows?
The vision of Pound nibbling great and small Italians stays with me. A
maggot of imagism, through the nations, and a fascist. Ending as truth
in treason one more style of art to award ancient-looking and true.
It'll take forty more years for poets to affect recycled bleached clothes
rejecting his nifty coats and cravats. The unindicted criminal, of the world
returning to Rapallo gave his fascist salute.
What roots in modern do you remember or rethink of those pilgrims
from America?
Counting pants in Truman's haberdashery; later Benjamin Weintroub
wrapping. Then he became a publisher.
Castleman was told he should take a female name, a woman loving woman
name or a man loving man name. That getting through the transom (with
universal air conditioning this may be archaic usage) was hardest for
a man...I said, anyway (not wanting to disagree with advice) writing is one
enormous closet and he, Castleman, should not judge it too quickly. He
wrote me that since he was safe and stubborn he took a hispanic name
and that succeeded enough. I think somewhere he could be a female
and just wasn't telling me.
If poetry came in morality and in esthetics, and an occasional eccentric
hints-in-cooking (speculations on noodle kugel with the promise of
"taam") Castleman would be finished from the roots through the limb shade.
The boldest I read once was Kenneth Fearing "Strangers in Coney Island,"
when that's all you could find there, any season. More like looking for
bullets in the armory. The national condition of looking into the jaws
of the purpose in your sight. Seeing. Seeing unfolded answers.
This city has a non-danceable diamond ground. Social security flounders
in trust. With a cherry tree ax Lincoln split logs into union.
Invention is the necessity that is first planned and then elected equally
on Monday, after Saturday, after Sunday. This guidance of the angel
of death by any means: baseball in Donald Hall's view or from the border
city of Konion, Poland, the ceremonial sale of children to the richer
long livers who in the end are the cagey befuddlers of heaven.
If he was right Castleman would've been a woman loving woman. Thanks-
giving preys are shaken together. Only the still are forced to groom and
spray. This is accessible poetry once-and-for-all.
--AF
*
Unhinged Eye
rug gyrating neath duh flowdoll blending
bawled fry burnin duh bedding uhvuh hamshining
coldly glad thereupon spring sad flag spills udduh twisters innuh eyesoup sands
screechings from uh scowl crib
duh hair attack cabin
bawled fry burnin duh boredelloriums uhv absent
where quails scobber at duh drizz
franked off innuh strewsill o' lurchey Lakewood spidering
lost innuh tasteywood its ants over duh noodle falls
thru scotched rags o' eye screwed window leaves
the great rose beaking uhv mass effervescing swimmicals across duh squeeze
mink crankle peepery [ bottle sea.
on duh control punelle innuh diagonies uh duh bite size
in lunch garages wiff uh oratory
eating newts offuh treatplate
garnishing breaths hair heathering life deals o' unfocusing hashes
hucked dace
plunged trafficker slice root suns sixing duh sixist
bluemined by swarmelly season mixings
bee smegmas doltin on duckoh stix
likening pancheeselle ruelish tuh lotal beak eithering sunpests
when I wrenched down duh bonedaggerlush dat worm waggy night.
rinked down duh backeasles
bonetanglin books walking heckangles uhvuh mess anger swell manger
gloomchild diagraming brain ovens uhv ultraviolet
tongue tyin lamp o' retrunkflick all over duh primeval time screen
pools innuh crosstrails flowshoes trickear shore innuh fix wiffuh mirror
poet chased by a television
duh hurtin bird that says, "Oh duh Spain in my pines!"
fantasias uhv whining
duh horror night uhv duh nosemuscle fish
as I became angrier whiteteak man the motions uhv worlds blockcagey youcan'ting
oysterfull clocking scoops o'
whisker watchin switchettes
nationally striking muse
duh yankeeier her jazzuhly hair became
duh more dreams came tuh roost in duh fizz
swivellin their throat stix
rebuckflick down duh curly drain.
tube gods fumbling at duh illusion sails
sportsrock tunes duh artstuffing
duh Rilling Steins on world tour
painting their bullring intuh uh cornertoe
to see the red whales white colors eye
snagged note onnuh nightstick
tarpapering
burr o' skipyuhlin tasteye trinket
wild up duh inside
chills duh vane
turns up
gravitational mars on duh morning uhv duh green flood table
leaves duh wood
to burn down with
seasons in duh rebuildings
beauty as stumbled thru the eyes
slaking the crashshore
poisoncup head
snowkicking duh everbow
loom of rain
time as a schedule
an invisible hairdoo
toppling over in the unseen because it had to.
--EC (in Korea)
* the * logic * of *snowflakes*
( falls )
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