___________
from the 1974 Tonys, you’ll want to
watch this skit, Mrs Snodgrass has
had 27 children, Nancy Walker is
Mrs Snodgrass
should the video not come up at the
right position, as it should, find Mr
and Mrs Snodgrass at 1:42:00 on
the time strip
enjoy
Richard
______________
meanwhile back at the Tonys, 1972,
Phil Silvers wins an award for Best
Actor in a Broadway Musical
surely deservedly, he could’ve won
one right here
Richard
Johannes Brahms
__________
if I’ve been away from my perhaps too
abundant, Cornucopian indeed sometimes,
post of late, not as ubiquitous in your
hotmail, it’s because I’ve been following
not six but six and half courses at
Coursera, which have taken up a
considerable amount of my time, all of
them fruitful except for that half, which
apart from some smoke still from its
lingering ashes in the form of belated
comments on what were personally
pertinent fora, forums, I’ve committed to
the cellar of wasted money, despite its
being free, time itself being, according
to my father, hard currency
The Fiction of Relationship
Introduction to Philosophy
Revolutionary Ideas: An Introduction to Legal and Political Philosophy
Søren Kierkegaard – Subjectivity, Irony and the Crisis of Modernity
From the Repertoire: Western Music History through Performance
Philosophy and the Sciences
the half will remain unnamed for its
being, to my mind, inferior, not worth
not only recommending but even
mentioning, or, worth not only not
recommending but neither mentioning,
take your pick
but from “From the Repertoire” we were
offered this week to investigate Brahms’
Horn Trio in E-flat Major, opus 40, entirely
worth looking into, I thought I’d pass it
along
it was composed in commemoration of
Brahms’ mother who’d died not much
earlier, a cello could replace the horn,
stipulated Brahms, even a viola for
fear of later horns being too brassy,
incommensurate with the intent of the
dedication however passionate some
of its musical argumentation, much
more abstract than that of Beethoven,
you’ll note, though still nevertheless
ever melodic
he has as well a more heraldic tone,
consequently, by extension
earthbound, rather than Beethoven’s
more transcendental ruminations,
both remaining equal, however, ever,
in, in each his realm, their grandeur
Richard
“Nude Descending a Staircase, No.2“ (1912)
________
Nude Descending a Staircase
Toe upon toe, a snowing flesh,
A gold of lemon, root and rind,
She sifts in sunlight down the stairs
With nothing on. Nor on her mind.
We spy beneath the banister
A constant thresh of thigh on thigh—
Her lips imprint the swinging air
That parts to let her parts go by.
One woman waterfall, she wears
Her slow descent like a long cape
And pausing, on the final stair,
Collects her motions into shape.
_________
in my class on Modern Poetry on the
Internet they complained that both
Duchamp and Kennedy were
objectifying women
maybe I too am
read my response
“I thought the poem was hot, and I’m not even a heterosexual, it renders voluptuous the female body, as the female body should be rendered, and, again, I’m not even a heterosexual, how can a heterosexual man not tremble at the “snowing flesh, / a gold of lemon, root and rind,”, the “constant thresh of thigh on thigh”, the very “swinging air / that parts to let her parts go by.”, by the time she gets to the “final stair” you’re jelly
women have their own pornography, have you seen “The Bridges of Madison County“
I also love Duchamp’s painting, all shimmering gold and glittering, all panels of incandescent light, his “Nude” could descend my staircase any day, despite my counterintuitive position, for which information you can again read above
cheers, Richard”
cheers, Richard
psst: poets are supposed to defy conventions,
watch me, poets know we’ve got nothing
to lose
“The Burning of Giordano Bruno“ (1964)
_______
the last entry at The Other Side of the Brain
was the following poem, which delivers such
thunder that I couldn’t help appropriating it
for my own purposes
forgive me, Brain, but with this one you’ve
been too much of an inspiration
thanks
________________
for Fabbio Doplicher
We were supposed to do a job in Italy
and, full of our feeling for
ourselves (our sense of being
Poets from America) we went
from Rome to Fano, met
the mayor, mulled
a couple matters over (what’s
a cheap date, they asked us; what’s
flat drink). Among Italian literati
we could recognize our counterparts:
the academic, the apologist,
the arrogant, the amorous,
the brazen and the glib—and there was one
administrator (the conservative), in suit
of regulation gray, who like a good tour guide
with measured pace and uninflected tone narrated
sights and histories the hired van hauled us past.
Of all, he was the most politic and least poetic,
so it seemed. Our last few days in Rome
(when all but three of the New World Bards had flown)
I found a book of poems this
unprepossessing one had written: it was there
in the pensione room (a room he’d recommended)
where it must have been abandoned by
the German visitor (was there a bus of them?)
to whom he had inscribed and dated it a month before.
I couldn’t read Italian, either, so I put the book
back into the wardrobe’s dark. We last Americans
were due to leave tomorrow. For our parting evening then
our host chose something in a family restaurant, and there
we sat and chatted, sat and chewed,
till, sensible it was our last
big chance to be poetic, make
our mark, one of us asked
“What’s poetry?
Is it the fruits and vegetables and
marketplace of Campo dei Fiori, or
the statue there?” Because I was
the glib one, I identified the answer
instantly, I didn’t have to think— “The truth
is both, it’s both!”, I blurted out. But that
was easy. That was easiest to say. What followed
taught me something about difficulty,
for our underestimated host spoke out,
all of a sudden, with a rising passion, and he said:
The statue represents Giordano Bruno,
brought to be burned in the public square
because of his offense against
authority, which is to say
the Church. His crime was his belief
the universe does not revolve around
the human being: God is no
fixed point or central government, but rather is
poured in waves through all things. All things
move. “If God is not the soul itself, He is
the soul of the soul of the world.” Such was
his heresy. The day they brought him
forth to die, they feared he might
incite the crowd (the man was famous
for his eloquence). And so his captors
placed upon his face
an iron mask, in which
he could not speak. That’s
how they burned him. That is how
he died: without a word, in front
of everyone.
And poetry—
(we’d all
put down our forks by now, to listen to
the man in gray; he went on
softly)—
poetry is what
he thought, but did not say.
______________
this made me think that God is an
adjective not a noun, an attribute,
not a commandment, “God is no
fixed point or central government,
but rather is poured in waves
through all things”
cheers, Richard
psst: I’ve made the choice to leave out
the poem’s purported paragraphs
for their being indiscriminate in
every Internet reproduction
“Danaë“ (1554)
________
nor can I not report a poem that I offered
as an apology for an affront I’d caused,
utterly unwittingly, to one of my course’s
gracious participants
she had objected to slights against the
very perception of sex crimes, which I’d
egregiously equated, she said, with
soul-destroying profanities
_________
A Repentance
(wherein I “bite my thumb”
at the Petrarchan sonnet, I think)
Stand certain, Anonymous, that
I am completely in your corner,
No even passing account of sexual
Crimes against women should
Ever overlook their horror,
Regardless of the context,
Erudite or otherwise, therefore
Let me here sincerely apologize
Your reprimand is not lightly
Stamped upon my conscience,
Only understand that for me a
Rape of the soul is also a
Repulsive matter, greatly also deplorable
Yours truly, Richard
____________
you’ll note the acrostic interpolation,
“SINCERELY SORRY”, at the head of
each verse of my text, meant to
counter the mode of the offending
matter, John Peale Bishop’s vicious
“A Recollection“
Richard
psst: the painting above is the subject
of Bishop’s, completely
objectionable, stunt
“Blue Poles (Number 11)“ (1952)
_____
To make a Dadaist poem:
Take a newspaper.
Take a pair of scissors.
Choose an article as long as you are planning to make your poem.
Cut out the article.
Then cut out each of the words that make up this article and put them in a bag.
Shake it gently.
Then take out the scraps one after the other in the order in which they left the bag.
Copy conscientiously.
The poem will be like you.
And here are you a writer, infinitely original and endowed with a sensibility that is charming though beyond the understanding of the vulgar.
_________________
though the idea at first seems fanciful,
outrageous, think of Jackson Pollock,
and his “action paintings”, great art
produced by the instinctual wisdom of
musculature, its preconscious impulses
Tristan Tzara, 1896 – 1963, was one of
the originators of Dada, an influential
art movement of the early Twentieth
Century that rejected all traditional
forms of art for having led to the
havoc of World War l
Richard
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