Wednesday, December 16, 2015

The Spondee's Decline






  • Born 245 years ago today. All I listen to are the sonatas. Over and over.
  • >>  ....  <<
  • I don't know story's context, but these sentences about Abhinath remind me of me.
  • Who said this last night on the futility of war: 


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  • I guarantee it wasn't Hillary Clinton.
  • The sooner this fuck leaves Hilltop the better off Hilltop will be. Though Hilltop sultans will disagree.
  • Earthgirl, Planet (Planet's home!), and I watched forty-five minutes of the GOP debate. 
  • Republicans are weird.
  • It's the first time I had seen or heard Ben Carson, Ted Cruz, Carly Fiorina, or Marco Rubio.
  • Carly Fiorina doesn't even get a loser mention in Post's instant rankings.
  • Ted Cruz is one frighteningly creepy asshole. 
  • If I'm Hillary, the only person on that stage I'd worry about is Marco Rubio. He could play a sane and rational person on TV during a national election.
  • The previous statements do not imply Hillary is a sane and rational person, nor that she is not a frighteningly creepy asshole.
  • Ditto Obama. Anyone who dreams of being POTUS.
  • My apologies: I will not expose myself to another POTUS debate, primary or general election seasons. Hadn't had a shitty sugar rush like that since the last time I watched, will never watch again.
  • UPDATE! OK, I give Bernie props!
  • This Week in Water.
  • Not too much to say again.
  • Dan on Barth's new Collected Stories, Barth.
  • The Boy with Spyrograph Eyes.
  • John Newlove, a poet new to me that looks worth a look.
  • OK, a pivot. Short stories. I have Lucia Berlin on my desk upon recommendation of friend - I can't read novels, I don't want to read just poetry, suggestions on who to try desperately solicited. And any advice on reading short stories desperately solicited. I don't have to plow through an entire collection do I? It's not immoral slutting to read a story in a collection by one author then a story in a collection by another author before finishing the collection of the first author, is it?
  • It's not going to work.
  • This Heat. Was going to post two more Beethoven sonatas, but saw this. Click tag for more.









THE POET RIDICULED BY HYSTERICAL ACADEMICS

W.D. Snodgrass

Is it, then, your opinion
                      Women are putty in your hands?   
                  Is this the face to launch upon   
                      A thousand one night stands?

First, please, would you be so kind
    As to define your contribution   
To modern verse, the Western mind
    And human institutions?

                                    Where, where is the long, flowing hair,   
                                        The velvet suit, the broad bow tie;   
                                    Where is the other-worldly air,
                                        Where the abstracted eye?

Describe the influence on your verse
    Of Oscar Mudwarp’s mighty line,   
The theories of Susan Schmersch
    Or the spondee’s decline.

         You’ve labored to present us with
             This mouse-sized volume; shall this equal   
         The epic glories of Joe Smith?
             He’s just brought out a sequel.

                  Where are the beard, the bongo drums,
                      Tattered T-shirt and grubby sandals,   
                  As who, released from Iowa, comes
                      To tell of wondrous scandals?

Have you subversive, out of date,   
    Or controversial ideas?
And can you really pull your weight   
    Among such minds as these?

                                    Ah, what avails the tenure race,   
                                        Ah, what the Ph.D.,
                                    When all departments have a place   
                                        For nincompoops like thee?




3 comments:

  1. re: Short Stories: I read the shortest one first. If it strikes a chord, I'll read another shorter one. My measured approach.

    Cruz, frankly, is the one who worries me most. League him up with Trump & they will be formidably fascistically scary. And right now they're the only two who seem to have a chance.

    If P's home, does that mean more pics of Fleabus? (& newbie kitten?) Um, please.

    Thanks for the kind mention & link.

    As for glorious Ludwig van, it's the late quartets for me. The way-ahead-of-its-time visionary modernist stuff. Even as a punk in college, the Grosse Fugue ticked all my boxes.

    Best to all for the holidays! We're anticipating a houseful here.

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  2. "Every nation gets the government it deserves," keeps echoing in the Raiders Of The Lost Ark Warehouse that is my head. That, and a quote from George Orwell: 'The Future, Something Something Boot, Something Something Human Face, Forever.'

    I'd go with any one of Herr B.'s last five String Quartets, but I like 130 a whole lot.

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