Monday, May 16, 2016

The Mesmerist's Only Child



So, after not even receiving a rejection when I submitted to a small press December last, three poems early last week to a little magazine. This is attempt two of the promised three attempts, L. The magazine's poetry submission page only accepts poems in a word doc - my poems are not in word docs, they are scanned from tablets into jpegs. I took a word document I used to impose on a print of a photo of Olive then scanned into jpeg and sent the word document without Olive as a poem so I could make the $3 submission fee - the submission page wouldn't accept payment without a word document attached. I then sent the three submitted jpegs of poems (none of them with Olive) to the magazine's Art page (which doesn't require a submission fee), so fuck me once and twice. In the submission page's Artist Statement box I explained what the fuck I was doing. Still, when I am rejected - either by email or more likely silence, I've prepared the Artist's Statement of intention ▲ I couldn't then complete because fuck me three times.






  • Natural Pond ▲ w Narcissus, Above Widewater, This Past Saturday.
  • The last transit of Mercury. Mason is on St Helena, Dixon taking a clock back to Cape Town. They are trying to get to Sumatra to measure a transit of Venus. So yes, Pynchon works.
  • After the good life, the impasse.
  • Falling in line for Hillary w Noam.
  • Capital mobility is the greatest threat to the working class: The inequality trend that most significantly unites the developed and developing worlds is the growth of the global plutocracy and its imperviousness to the national forces that once tamed plutocratic wealth.
  • Liberal discourse politics ensures a permanent erasure of the lower classes.
  • The privilege of buying 36 rolls of toilet paper at once.
  • Maggie's weekly links.
  • { feuilleton }'s weekly links.
  • Lydia Davis and Translationese.
  • Books are back? I've tried eReaders, I hate eReaders.
  • The Male Sentimental.
  • So yes, my inner astrolabe maintains the inevitable orbits.
  • On Keith Waldrop's poetry.
  • My Fripp story, posted every Fripp birthday, today being his 70th: Fripp had a touring workshop called Guitar Craft and a performing ensemble, The League of Crafty Guitarists. A bunch of us (Elric, you were there, yes?) got in Phavid Dillips lime-green VW van and drove to an old yellow mansion in West Virginia, not far, past Harpers Ferry, up near Shepardstown. Phavid, who we thought an excellent guitarist - or at least the best guitarist we smoked dope with regularly - had been invited to sit in a circle of other guitarists with Robert Fripp leading the workshop. Incredibly cool actually. Guests were invited to sit in the circle; guess who refused. Afterward, going out for a smoke, I ran into Fripp on a porch and apologized. He asked me why I didn't sit in the circle. I said I didn't want to. He said, then you've nothing to apologize for, and shook my hand.







THE UNRELIABLE NARRATOR

Keith Waldrop

A great crime: she has
plunged a dagger into the heart
of her mother.

Strange.

The strangest thing: a mocking little pride with
a sinister click as of a fitting together of bad
pieces.

Beyond knowing. The mesmerist’s only
child. A certain indication of anemia, too much
candy, and her charming eyes.

A privilege to be near her. My
inspiriation. I risk an approach, what I call “the light of
day.” Movements, with perfect indifference, turn
place and shrink. One
might have seen less: the glimmer of
nothing. I caught no full-blown
flower of theory. And yet such visions pale in
flight.

Gorgeous, the domestic manufacture
of sausages.

Swallow and “so calligraphic a bird.”

Somebody in Dickens. Attaching
diminutive eggs.

A glamour of memory.

Assurance of intimacy on the
summer air.

Nothing to explain. We
needed breathing time. Enough to
laugh. Odd what a difference. Only to
whistle to her. Delighted to come.

I know. Prepared to reply and turning a think skein of
sewing silk sus-
pended in
entanglement. Shown “the faintest far-off
chords,” I ask myself.

Our doom complete.

The difference, so simple: she had
folded up her manner. Great advantages now, my
dear, if he will show you. Dis-
appointment and its train might enter.

The wedding day, the fever season. But
they’re dying. Kindred circle of the
tipsy, come to call. Lurid memory
remained with me, was indeed our sense of
“dissipation.” (Horses. A high aesthetic revel.) Rome
made him invest unconscionable sums in postage. He
received answers in a delicate hand or tried to think.

Sublime snythesis. A bridge
over—liable to rear up. You just had to
wait for it, curiosity worked up with
a hard-boiled egg and a doughnut.

(Very ugly, but
I LIKE UGLY. Just the
sort of ugliness to
be like looking.)

Happy, he entered the streetcar’s
nocturnal “exercise,” the platform it evidently
was to be. Bad lecture-blood her enthusiasm. Catchpenny
monsters. The ideal day with that sense of resorting.

In imagination, we mean to do well. No faith in girlhood, her antediluvian
theories not much better. Well, she should get
rid of him. The logical hero.




7 comments:

  1. Love my Kindle (real one, not a tablet). Easily read three times as much as I would with books. The only downside for which I prefer a real book is something like military history where I want flip back to the maps repeatedly. But for linear reading, it works best for me.

    ReplyDelete
  2. a year ago i posted my story of the time fripp and i were together

    http://www.blckdgrd.com/2015/05/sixty-nine-yesterday-born-eighty-nine.html

    ReplyDelete
  3. Yeah, I prefer books myself. Heck, I don't even have a cell phone anymore. A friend showed me his electric reading device once, I can't say I would want one. I love the smell of old books, reminds me of more interesting days. Computers are made of toxic materials, thirty percent of the smog in California comes from China. I saw an article about the slave labor in China, the workers were getting sick from making these electronic devices for Apple. I love my small library of books, books on my shelves makes it feel like home. Waldrop's an interesting poet, I think I understood his poem today, more than I did the analysis of his poetry. Words seem to have more power when there are fewer of them. Both you and Davidly are very creative with your writing, I hope your poems are accepted, I wish I knew how to write poetry, because of you I'm appreciating poetry more and more, it's an art form I've never delved into much before but I really like this more modern type of poetry. If that's the correct term.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. As one of the minority that tunes into BDR for the poetry I appreciate your post, Mr. Payne. As to readers, I know more than a few that have joined Seat Six. I have read books on an e-readers and I don't personally like it as much but it won't stop me from reading things that are downloaded. By the way, BDR and I met while working in a bookstore, as hobbled as it may have been . . . . .

      P.S. Frippertronics, dude!

      Delete
    2. Hey, that's cool, I like bookstores, I used to do volunteer work at a city library for a while. I don't have anything against people using e-books, I guess I'm just set in my ways. Getting old. I feel like a dinosaur these days, maybe a bad case of future shock. One of the downsides of the internet is that it seems like more bookstores are folding because of Amazon.com, which is a shame really. By the by, you can call me Rob, I'm not used to Mr. Payne. You're lucky to have a friend like BDR, I'll bet you had fun working together, cheers!

      Delete
  4. 1)speaking of jpeg's and word docs - can't you put a jpeg INTO a word doc?

    2)and speaking of a dog pissing against a hydrant - a dog acquaintance of mine is transitioning from living in a large-lotted, leafy suburban neighborhood to being a part-time downtown highrise resident (custody issues) - i was on a walk with him this past weekend and he pissed against a lamppost - his human companion laughed and said that when he first came to the city streets, he wouldn't do that (too prissy, was the exact phrase used)

    3)and speaking of animal excretions, here's my added verse to The Blind Men and the Elephant:


    Six Blind Men & the Elephant

    from John Godfrey Saxe (1816-1887)
    A Hindu Parable

    It was six men of Indostan
    To learning much inclined,
    Who went to see the Elephant
    (Though all of them were blind),
    That each by observation
    Might satisfy his mind.

    The First approached the Elephant,
    And happening to fall
    Against his broad and sturdy side,
    At once began to bawl:
    “God bless me! but the Elephant
    Is very like a wall!”

    The Second, feeling of the tusk
    Cried, “Ho! what have we here,
    So very round and smooth and sharp?
    To me ‘tis mighty clear
    This wonder of an Elephant
    Is very like a spear!”

    The Third approached the animal,
    And happening to take
    The squirming trunk within his hands,
    Thus boldly up he spake:
    “I see,” quoth he, “the Elephant
    Is very like a snake!”

    The Fourth reached out an eager hand,
    And felt about the knee:
    “What most this wondrous beast is like
    Is mighty plain,” quoth he;
    “‘Tis clear enough the Elephant
    Is very like a tree!”

    The Fifth, who chanced to touch the ear,
    Said: “E’en the blindest man
    Can tell what this resembles most;
    Deny the fact who can,
    This marvel of an Elephant
    Is very like a fan!”

    The Sixth no sooner had begun
    About the beast to grope,
    Than, seizing on the swinging tail
    That fell within his scope.
    “I see,” quoth he, “the Elephant
    Is very like a rope!”

    The Seventh blind man, staff in hand,
    Upon his bare feet goes.
    “I clearly sense”, he calmly said,
    “And think that all should know
    The elephant is soft and mushy
    In between the toes!”

    And so these men of Indostan
    Disputed loud and long,
    Each in his own opinion
    Exceeding stiff and strong,
    Though each was partly in the right,
    And all were in the wrong!

    Moral:

    So oft in theologic wars,
    The disputants, I ween,
    Rail on in utter ignorance
    Of what each other mean,
    And prate about an Elephant
    Not one of them has seen.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Thank you. I laughed; I cried. I thought of the jpeg in a Word file thing, too. I laughed. I cried because of fuck me three times.

    Frippertronics, absolutely! Soundscapes, as well. My brother & I are going to Crim in this here city in Sept. Previous Crimunal experiences include '84, '95, '00, '08. I saw Soundscapes in or around '98. Top ten transcendent experience.

    Paper cuts or plastic poison.

    ReplyDelete