Wednesday, February 12, 2014

You Know the Murmurs




  • Scott Williams played the above near the end of his Monday show, it had been years since I'd heard Scrotum Poles, IT STUCK!
  • This is a lazy post with a purpose: no song to song connection as per usual, I need to get these good songs stuck in my head out of my head to make room for more. It didn't start out a lazy post, the non-lazy stuff is gone, there's that tag again in footer.
  • Agamben (for those of you who do): A theory of destituent power: While the state of exception was originally conceived as a provisional measure, which was meant to cope with an immediate danger in order to restore the normal situation, the security reasons constitute today a pemanent technology of government. For the record, I don't think the measure was ever "provisional."
  • How Iowa flattened literature. The CIA connection. Almost - almost - as horrific as motherfucking Raymond Carver's influence over a generation of American fiction writers.
  • Food links.
  • NEBEL STREET IS IN ROCKVILLE! THERE IS NO NORTH BETHESDA. BETHESDA STOPS AT THE BELTWAY! Motherfucking corporate developers.
  • Lately.
  • Riddled's readers get a higher class of spam.
  • Bachelard, for those of you who do.
  • Bending the shtick: a review of Žižek's Jokes.
  • Deleuze (on Hume), for those of you who do.
  • Stevie Smith, for those of you who do.
  • The fourth sonnet has been added, if you care you know where.
  • Prunella's Bad Brains cascade. I was young once too.
  • Today's Rukeyser poem via Mark, who notes she died 34 years ago today.
  • Remember how I said a few days ago how I hate hearing about concerts I wish I'd known about? Julianna Barwick was in DC two nights ago. Fuck me.
  • Infatuation (Holyfuck!) on schedule:







[MURMURS FROM THE EARTH OF THIS LAND]

Muriel Rukeyser

Murmurs from the earth of this land, from the caves and craters,
      from the bowl of darkness. Down watercourses of our
      dragon childhood, where we ran barefoot.
We stand as growing women and men. Murmurs come down
      where water has not run for sixty years.
Murmurs from the tulip tree and the catalpa, from the ax of
      the stars, from the house on fire, ringing of glass; from
      the abandoned iron-black mill.
Stars with voices crying like mountain lions over forgotten
      colors.
Blue directions and a horizon, milky around the cities where the
      murmurs are deep enough to penetrate deep rock.
Trapping the lightning-bird, trapping the red central roots.
You know the murmurs. They come from your own throat.
You are the bridges to the city and the blazing food-plant green;
The sun of plants speaks in your voice, and the infinite shells of
      accretions
A beach of dream before the smoking mirror.
You are close to that surf, and the leaves heated by noon, and
      the star-ax, the miner’s glitter walls. The crests of the sea
Are the same strength you wake with, the darkness is the eyes
      of children forming for a blaze of sight and soon, soon,
Everywhere, you own silence, who drink from the crater, the
      nebula, one another, the changes of the soul.



6 comments:

  1. reading the rukeyser poem, i was reminded of science fiction writer clifford simak

    about him, from wikiquote:


    I never heard a bad word about him but only universal approval and approbation... [I have tried to] imitate his easy and uncluttered style. I think I have succeeded to an extent and that it has immeasurably improved my writing. He is the third of three people, then, who formed my writing career. John Campbell and Fred Pohl did it by precept, and Cliff Simak by example

    --- Isaac Asimov in I, Asimov (1994)

    Without Simak, science fiction would have been without its most humane element, its most humane spokesman for the wisdom of the ordinary person and the value of life lived close to the land.

    ---James Gunn

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Unfortunately I seem to have been born minus the scifi gene so I can't speak to Simak, but Ethan has been writing about Simak.

      Delete
  2. Wait a second...you mean I didn't live in North Potomac for 10 years? Where is this Gaithersburg?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I just wish you hadn't left such a mess all over the zip code, you filthy old dinosaur.

      Delete
    2. Hey! I'm not a dinosaur! Wish I was, though. Talk about great at parties!

      Delete
  3. Todays poem(...s) so good so glad I checked in.

    ReplyDelete