Saturday, March 12, 2011

A Little Three-Headed Dog Was Barking at Him

I thought I'd discuss the similarities and dissimilarities between the Wisconsin and NFL labor disputes. The fuck I was, though talking to helmetball fans in the office, listening to sports yappers on the radio, it's interesting how many people take the opposite side in one dispute than they do in the other. Discuss, or not.

Also for you consideration, from a Jack Spicer lecture in 1965:

I think the first kind of hint that one has as a poet – and I must confess I was, as Karen [Tallman] would say, a retard in this respect – is after you’ve written poems for a while and struggled with them and everything else, a poem comes through in just one-eighth of the time that a poem normally does. That’s the first experience. And you say, “oh well gee, it’s going to be much easier if I can just have this happen very often.”

So then you write seventeen or eighteen different things which are just what you’re thinking about at that particular moment and are lousy. It isn’t simply the matter of being able to get a fast take. It’s something else. But the fast take is a good sign that you’re hooked up with source of power, some source of energy.

Then the next thing is you suddenly figure out, well gee, when I’ve been wanting something, say I’m in love and I want to sleep with this person and, you know, the normal thing is, with a fast take, you write all these things down with an idea of, essentially, a way of selling a used car.

True that. Rest can be found here. I'm going outside to play. Have a few links, a song, a poem, another song.





ORPHEUS IN HELL

Jack Spicer

When he first brought his music into hell
He was absurdly confident. Even over the noise of the
       shapeless fires
And the jukebox groaning of the damned
Some of them would hear him. In the upper world
He had forced the stones to listen.
It wasn’t quite the same. And the people he remembered
Weren’t quite the same either. He began looking at faces
Wondering if all of hell were without music.
He tried an old song but pain
Was screaming on the jukebox and the bright fire
Was pelting away the faces and he heard a voice saying,
       “Orpheus!”
             He was at the entrance again
And a little three-headed dog was barking at him.
Later he would remember all those dead voices
And call them Eurydice.


4 comments:

  1. it's interesting how many people take the opposite side in one dispute than they do in the other.

    Identity politics is different from identity fan-status, isn't it?

    I think it has to do with the greater difficulty of objectivity where one's own possible mistake(s) is(are) concerned. If someone's mistaken about the balance of power in Pro Football, player vs owner... it's someone else they're wrong about. However, if one's mistaken about the balance of power in America, observer vs the plutocrats-in-charge, it's a bit more existential.

    Sports fans tend to identify with the players and not the coaches. I'd say this is due to the triangulation allowing fans to feel their own work situations in the context of pro athletes vs their owners. Once it gets to seriously talking about Me vs My Boss in the larger social context of America's Bosses and America's Slaves it is... well... painful.

    This isn't a novel theory I'm putting forward, I've heard many others mention agreement when I've said it before and have read others offering it too.

    ********

    Japan = tragedy. Fracturing nuke plants and fallout... what, they didn't get enough of that 65 years ago thanks to USA-Number-One! ??

    Have a good day, amigo.

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  2. Jeez Spicer, what's wrong with selling used cars? Being the best used car salesman in town is something to aim for, dammit.

    So the pretzeldent's playing 144-dimensional chess?

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  3. Follow The Money with Eric Bolling:

    Bolling Uses Japan's Nuclear Emergency To Push For Granting More Nuclear Power Plant Permits
    ~

    ReplyDelete