I'm Trying to Be Pure Again But I Want All the Tones

Fifty pages left in my rereading of William T Vollmann's *Argall,* and I'm more thrillingly aghast than the first time what a heart-chillingly funny portrait of an amoral asshole is Vollmann's Argall. He is not an oligarch; he is the ruthlessly efficient oligarchs' provost whose intelligence and ironically held amorality scare the fuck out of the oligarchs almost more than the oligarchs' subjects the provost is sicced upon. The novel is motherfucking relevant this very motherfucking second, yo, and is motherfucking brilliant - as is most Vollmann, and all of the Seven Dreams so far - on power. Let me (if I like you and you ask nice and you promise to try - there is no obligation to finish, but there is an obligation to start) buy you one, fellow motherfucker.

• I had beat the fuck out of that paperback on first reading and was enjoying my handiwork while kneading in the second round when I put the novel in the net in the hatchback while playing Seneca, and a cask of water in the net leaked and bloated the book's bottom which - praise Baal - has made the physical reading of this copy extra wonderful. Fuck you and your eBook. Give me a fucking paperback novel that fights back.
• Sorry to sound like a blurb, but imho for these times read Vollmann. Let me (if I like you and you ask nice and you promise to try - there is no obligation to finish, but there is an obligation to start) buy you one, fellow motherfucker.
• The next Dream is out end of July 28, I will buy the motherfucking $28, 1376 behemoth the day it's released and start eating immediately.
• ThisIsACoup.
• Fragments against the ruin.
• Hubris, inertia, sex.
• Beyond the Society of the Spectacle.
• Darwin's casino.
• Late by my fault, { feuilleton }'s weekend links. There be irony in one of the links.
• >> Deleted bleggalgaze <<
• Frank Bidart, for those of you who do.
• On Ashbery's Breezeway. I read it, forgive me, I did not love it.
• First, the last song on iPod before falling asleep, second, the first son on the iPod this morning.

THE ANTHOLOGY

Alice Notley

No tone of voice being sufficient to the occasion

Flash that’s all, that we’re here. Are you ever

sarcastic and unlikeable       Mentally we are the

cast of one epic thought: You. How many

of you sweep through me, as I ride the métro

leading you, because I have to and not be poignant

oh who’s written anything poignant since ...  

An old woman of indeterminate race, in white hat

and scarf, no teeth staring back at me.

He sounded brittle and superior last night, do the

dead do that; Grandma had a plethora of tones of voice

compared to anyone in this anthology. Our

anthology, he says, being mental is complex

as hell. How do you keep track of your poems? Any-

one remembers what they like, but you have constantly

to emit them ... Everyone’s at me, Drown it

out, thinking of an icon emerald-throated.

I see the alley house at night dark I’m trying

to be pure again, but I want all the tones.

When you’re dead you can have them ...  thick

marine dark from the fencelike oleanders and a moon

calling to white boards. Enter. Lie down in

your own bed, in the room where Momma found a scorpion.