Tuesday, April 19, 2016

Finding Hammers By the Sides of Roads




  • Chesapeake, Sunday, Calvert Cliffs State Park.
  • Kindness. I don't yodel about being Kind, motherfuckers, like I used to.
  • Be Kind, motherfuckers.
  • It's not a debate, it's a war.
  • Clinton and Wall Street: we don't need transcripts.
  • My Hillaryite Colleague won't admit it, trust me I goaded him, but part of him wants Sanders to win New York today. Dear Hillaryite Colleague, Sanders is not going to win. Yes! you're right, Democrats rigged the system, not only in New York but California, fuck, everywhere. 
  • My friend's apostasies are gonna be as anticlimactic and filled with self-loathing as all of ours.
  • Dear Hillaryite Colleague: don't invest too much in Sanders.
  • Dear Hillaryite Colleague: say to your Berniebro friends, Call me when Sanders says he will never support Clinton and will run as an independent.
  • Dear Hillaryite Colleague: O, what the fuck, go ahead, embrace Sanders. You might as well get your Motherfucking Democrats apostasies out of the way too this cycle.
  • This is, of course, totally anecdotal, but if you think Clinton Democrats wouldn't cheat.....
  • Time to stock up.
  • Your Fucking Washington Post. Here's the full article.
  • Dan's got a review - A Flare for Criticism - in LARB!
  • Lordy, it's googlebot crawl time. This..... sorta fascinates me. Why all the way back all over again, it can't just crawl the stuff posted since the last crawl?
  • William Gass, post-post-everything writer. 2013, yes, posted yesterday at Mark's place, and again, Bless Serendipity: On Being Blue is one of four books I'm currently working.
  • A bit late, but RIP Tony Conrad.
  • BTW, here's Fabio's tribute show to Conrad.
  • Here's what a dope I am: I hear that Hope Sandoval has a new song, think everyone will stop everything like I do to listen.








HAMMER

Dean Young

Every Wednesday when I went to the shared office
before the class on the comma, etc.,
there was on the desk, among
the notes from students aggrieved and belly-up
and memos about lack of funding
and the quixotic feasibility memos
and labyrinthine parking memos
and quizzes pecked by red ink
and once orange peels,
a claw hammer.
There when I came and there when I left,
it didn’t seem in anyone’s employ.
There was no room left to hang anything.
It already knew how to structure an argument.
It already knew that it was all an illusion
that everything hadn’t blown apart
because of its proximity to oblivion,
having so recently come from oblivion itself.
Its epiphyses were already closed.
It wasn’t my future that was about to break its wrist
or my past that was god knows where.
It looked used a number of times
not entirely appropriately
but its wing was clearly healed.
Down the hall was someone with a glove
instead of a right hand.
A student came by looking for who?
Hard to understand
then hard to do.
I didn’t think much of stealing it,
having so many hammers at home.
There when I came, there when I left.
Ball peen, roofing, framing, sledge, one
so small of probably only ornamental use.
That was one of my gifts,
finding hammers by sides of roads, in snow, inheriting,
one given by a stranger for a jump in the rain.
It cannot be refused, the hammer.
You take the handle, test its balance
then lift it over your head. 




3 comments:

  1. 1)i wonder if your hillaryite colleague reads this blog

    2)after reading "it's not a debate, it's a war" i was reminded of the saying "there is no law, there is only power" - and i noticed the surname of the author of the "it's not a debate" piece and wondered if she chose it herself or received it from parent or spouse in the more usual way

    2a)and there's a quote i saw earlier today

    "When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle."

    Edmund Burke


    3)after looking at tom clark's piece on kindness, i am reminded of the silly debate that once existed - perhaps still exists - about whether "animals have human feelings" - obviously, it is humans who have animal feelings - not that there's anything wrong with that

    4)the title of the poem posted today reminds me of the song "if i had a hammer" - wikipedia states

    "If I Had a Hammer (The Hammer Song)" is a song written by Pete Seeger and Lee Hays. It was written in 1949 in support of the progressive movement, and was first recorded by The Weavers, a folk music quartet composed of Seeger, Hays, Ronnie Gilbert and Fred Hellerman. It was a number 10 hit for Peter, Paul and Mary in 1962 and then went to number three a year later when recorded by Trini Lopez.

    5)"silver dagger" - sung by heather hammers in her bedroom, accompanying herself on ukulele

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=haUaco73RB4





    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes, he reads, and I asked for and got his permission to do this. I promised not to use his name or initial and to not say where he works on campus. He has an open invitation to comment, says he won't unless I say something in the shorthand I use that is either errant and/or unfair to his pov. He promises if he DOES comment he'll make it as sockpuppety as possible. Almost makes me want to say something errant and unfair!

      Delete
  2. 1)about emotions of animals - last night i watched a tv show on pbs about beavers - they live in families and so when a human is fostering a young beaver in hope of returning it to the wild, it needs a lot of face time with the caregiver, which is not generally advised for wild animals in general - the teenage beavers serve as apprentices in dam and lodge projects before striking out on their own the next year - one thing i didn't know was that in addition to creating ponds by damming, the beavers dig out deeper passages at the bottom of these ponds - truly, while other animals are architects, beavers have earned their sobriquet of "nature's engineers"

    2)on your blogroll is welcome to pottersville 2 - where i saw this quote -



    "It is not necessary that you leave the house. Remain at your table and listen ... The world will present itself to you for its unmasking." - Franz Kafka



    ReplyDelete