·:[ Stephen Vincent ]:·
• • • • •

The Geraldine Monk and Alan Halsey reading - last Tuesday - at Moe’s Bookstore in Berkeley did not disappoint. Geraldine (reading mainly from Escafeld Hangings(a newish book) has a great voice - particularly in reviving the body & voice behind the Ghost of Mary Queen of Scots (imprisoned in Escafeld/Sheffield for 14 years - a fact apparently ignored these days by the locals). Geraldine really ‘rolls’ with it with lots of curious, inflected surprises along the way.
Alan Halsey - reading mainly from a big book the title of which starts with “M” is equally, but different, in his historical ‘made present ‘investigations, including a rather wonderful account of Guttenberg’s ghost, the printed book confronting the digital virtal mode - using Google to search, and an automatic translation device to get at G’s history, mostly in German. Guttenberg’s original name apparently translates into English as “Goose Flesh”, and Guttenberg translates into “Good Mountain.” Alan combines a wonderful sense of serious research, intellection, humor and imaginative passion to make the work quite present, compelling.
With both Monk and Halsey, this transparency and dialog between past and present I find quite rich - perhaps influenced but different than the Olson take. Maybe because English history is so much older and contested and with more depth than chez here - these folks (tho their local English neighbors might ignore their works) are genuinely infused with history - tho not at all oblivious to contemporary ironies, borderline ‘flarfy’ (Blair, Google et al).

- Small Press Distribution carries their West House Books imprint - quite beautifully produced (tho expensive here in the States)

They will be coming to NY to read at St. Marks sometime soon.

I am under a heavy deadline (backline?) and unable to nourish this blog along much.
Tho Chris Sullivan manual labors to no doubt exhaustion in New Orleans, his site - particularly for lovers of ‘found objects’ - I continue to heartily recommend as one kind of visual/linguistic barometer of that so fallen City.
Go to:
http://www.8letters.blogspot.com/

Eigner: readiness / enough / depends / on

Yesterday, at my local mainly “used” Bookshop (The Phoenix in San Francisco) I managed to pick up this Green Integer title (#51) published in 2000.
Just lovely, the absolute kind of clarity of language one deeply appreciates, particularly with this particular President and his associates. I don’t have the time to give a good example other than to quote from Bob Grenier’s ‘Afterword’ on the importance of Eigner:
…It is where the species may go with Language through Stream of Time - towards engagement with strange/holy fact of what’ (’always’)happening (”how or why” as he wonders it) before you. Like Emily Dickinson’s, it’s an ‘example’ for all of us ‘regular Americans’ how to think/see/feel/move.

Definitely a man/eye who could apprehend the whole, elusive quail.

(I hope Green Integer has been able to keep the book in print). (?)

Headlines from today’s London Independent

Climate change: On the edge

The German Baltic island of Ruegen is littered with the corpses of at least 100 swans just 24 hours after the authorities discovered three dead birds with H5N1 virus on its shores

Are there Canaries in the Coal Mine?

*
Motorcyle:

Her knee in a V
His knee, also:
One over the other
A W upside down, tilted:
A signature to speed
Intimacy, formal clarity
Once here - note the Stop sign -
Now- whew - gone.
Youth. Youth. Some days
Gone. Very gone. Missed
Well. You bet.

*

Looked away no place safe harbor
The crow caw collide: an air language
A liberated eye falls into the tree
A nest in the West, a pioneer in his parlor
The velvet a contrast. Somebody important
Takes a shot to the (face). No safe harbor:
Follow he does an angle - a jade wool sweater -
sharpened, cleaved to the morning, a winter light.

(For the imagined record, the “Tenderly” series are take-offs on various little and unidentifed sections. and amalgamations of sections, of Gertrude Stein’s Tender Buttons

North by a crochety sun blurts
The song (yours? mine?) not wrong
The leanest, longest vowel, what a throat!
(A boat not taken) take a wave, maverick
What you got to, oyster in the throat, bitter lime
Salt on the tongue, don’t give it, o yes
Do give it, give it right up: what she, you
Got to, well, smell it, yes, hurdle, somersault, pole-vault
Up & down hill, an incredible look out
You probably did not expect this
Pierced right through the bowels, someone’s
Ruthless, competent, so accurate, anonymous spear:
Up and on your Achilles’ way, the Gods insist -
God bless each, are not about to let you -
OK, they did once, the inevitable, indeed still beautiful
You lost her, not once, but twice -
No one is about to let you, no matter how sad
Stranded you be bitching on the beach:
Honest, you cannot take it with you (oyster, yum)
Mr. Achilles, wet lips, drenched, yes indeed
No matter how complicated your neverous sweat
It is time go - what ’s now, look at your aging self
Some swift arrow, like everyone else, inevitably, aimed at the back:
Face up, you got nothing, veritably and truly, nothing to loose.

“I want to die.”
“You can always let go.”
“I guess my body is no ready to go through that door.”
“Do you think you will meet Daddy on the other side?”
“No, I think he’s already in a different place.”
“What do you think will be there?”
“I really don’t know. I want to be surprised.”

From a series of conversations with my 90 year old mother

Snake

Blue oysters, labia turned in
Wince. Speak tongue, speak lavishly
Speak, as you will, charmingly, little supple
Split, slender spring’s new, so to speak
Arched, splendid the, see it, green
It wanders, doesn’t it, this new, winsome
Over here, now over there, follow it
Slippery, slippingly thin, porous
There it goes, yes, archingly, thin flicking,
flickering thin, wet black, o yes, tongue.

Futon

A paragraph smarts, yes, if it’s good, well made
A spine at its center, a subtle bend and shake
If it’s supple it offers no greasy crank to wither. It’s
A good thing, a paragraph, no nothing to shy. Upright, erect
It’s best corners remain hard, the gentle whatever within
Smokes up a cherry, the sentences, equal or not, branches
The white sylllables (blossoms) a clarity. Yes, it’s spring
Ever so early, as what is it, everything global
Though it is, actually, hot and local; the world a nose, brown and wet
After it, this serious, yes it is, issue, this global, yes, local warming
This, one hears it coming, yes, my dearest love, already she is,
Without mercy, drenched, indeed, one fears, an earth, is it
One’s mistress, withering.

A Short Glove

Nothing, something burns inside the tree, a trunk
Enflamed. Fluent vowels shape who’s voice?
There is nothing unnecessary, futile issues aside,
A short line, a long throat, no bear, thin or fat,
Is yet known to whistle. Whistle? What is this? Yes.
One thinks so. One does. Lips up. Yes.
Yes you can. Please do. Can you hear it? Yes.
Whistle.

What is the fire, what is it, amazing, how it still
Given its sense of witness, how it flickers, continues:
An hysteric consciousness has no color. Disturbed vapor
A white space. A chorus will heal, the cavern full of (who?)
Will, willie-nellie, you got it, lean scrumptuous, worship:
Dance, some of us. Heat burnt soles pleased we are
When things go rapid: the feet in green slippers, slippery
Swift, indirected, the flame, a - will do we go, don’t we? -
Constant, touch it, touch it closely, flickers, yellow, yellow and blue
On the toes, turned up, O so, as one says, quickly

*

We don’t like “post-its.”

*

Solid Mass

A dark oval, a plenary, an oval ovarian
Chard pink softens a decrease or increase the oval
Dark the tight headband breathe, she did not say I will
Or not: trees, limb by limb, a penetrant, green, the penetrant
Waltz with that, throbbing, one, two, three:
Waltz.

*

A sweet loss, climb on, get loud or:

Wood splinters, wood breaks, breaks not nearly on liquid:
Wood, wood is not a desert, it is rejected, too facile, it burns money,
Smokes one, possibly you, possibly not, right to the face.

Give it up, wood, smooth it, smooth it down who’s, who’s face,
Throat: stop! Reed, to play a reed, a wooden one, incontinuous, the squeak,
Bristled, to bristle, jauntily, continue this, this often, one says will do.

A dream over is cyber solid diminished by waking, to ask.
A slow answer responds to slow rise, negates
Puncture, rolls the basketball, prompts one, one says, yes, indeed hoop.

Not be abrupt, lunch, bite back, not one’s back:
There are two ways, none ever, silently swallow:
Awash, washed, not often, often. Hello.

A dark in the sun more light one day, the next, not
Nor thereafter, clarity a clue obnoxious: February in shift
Shiftless, hook nor anchor, none, barely, not much, nor ever:

Swept clear no notion ever repair not, such non-illustrious
Punctual, purely, step one, step two, A, B, throw in a Z or an L,
A music, emergent; note, one does, a trapezoid, transparent crystal:
One then two then necklace, then tickle, then parody, winter no light,
Sparse, the dark narrowness, flush, call it, one will blooming.

****

Sometimes poetry is just the right to plunk it out variously, however, sensible or not, these little animals similar to words just ambling, rippling their tails against any consumption of an ordinary sense, or, against those who demand language would only do that, somehow, work to serve an authoritartian concept, something in the haze one calls Them. Ripple and roll, why not, dada? Liberty for all, indeed. Do it!