Why isn't there a collected Franz Wright, dammit. Library dean relented, agreed to offer the janitor position to the horribly unambitious woefully over-qualified professional librarian but only at the very minimum salary permitted by Hilltop for this janitor grade which of course the candidate turned down as the insult was intended to provoke. I stepped into the staff elevator ten minutes ago, voila, the dean, I said nothing, me and my fucking complicity and fine metaphors abounding. I liked *Harrow* then loved *Harrow* then hated *Harrow* the first time through, I loved *Harrow* then loved *Harrow* then didn't hate but didn't like *Harrow* the second time through, I'll decide years from now if I have years from now whether there will be a third time through, every Joy Williams novel does this to me. I'm sideways angry I'm sideways angry I'm sideways angry. Wait, Yo La Tengo *OPENS?* for Death Cab for Shitty? Low *OPENS?* for Death Cab for Shitty? Where did I gain the faith that if I'm not angry I've surrendered? I thoroughly enjoyed tweeting out Death Cab for Shitty, was typed and sent without a second thought, it's love (as was my purchase on Bandcamp of the just discovered new Big Blood album an hour ago, it's love). Crackers and christers would not be winning if the ruling elite did not want them to win, I said yesterday to a bidenite colleague distraught that crackers and christers are winning but did not mention that crackers and christers are winning with the full complicity of motherfucking Democrats not to spare the feelings of my bidenite colleague but because the duh becoming a dull anger. We are being reprogrammed, I'm telling you three times, I said to the bidenite, effectively enacting a guarantee the bidenite will never attempt bidenizing me again. It felt like the sting of my glaucoma drops that slow my blindness but won't cure it. This green will be gone by weekend's end, summer's darker replacing
SOME RECENT CRITICISM
Franz Wright
I'd been lying in bed reading forever in my starry yoke. I kept coming across references to my death, but I felt fine. Better than ever. It was fairly ironic, if you consider that it is I who initiated the petitions to have myself captured and put down without delay, an unfortunate but necessary measure in light of a clear threat to public safety. Do you know not a single individual was willing to sign, not even in my own neighborhood, having completely lost touch, apparently, with even the memory of having been loved.
starry yoke
ReplyDelete1/from vladimir mayakovsky [1893-1930] translated by jenny wade
the sea goes away again
the sea goes away to sleep
As they say the incident is closed
love’s boat has crashed on convention [. . .]
Look how silent the earth is
Night has laid a starry yoke on the sky
In hours like these you stand and speak
to centuries to history and to the universe [. . .]
I know the power of words. It looks like a trifle,
a petal fallen under the heel of a dance,
but a man in his soul, his lips, his bones
—excerpts from “Unfinished”
https://www.tribes.org/web/2019/4/9/mayakovsky-maximum-access-poems-by-vladimir-mayakovsky-translated-by-jenny-wade
2/from a norwegian website https://paper-tiger.net/2018/05/25/new-collection-fog-frost/
https://papertigercrafts.files.wordpress.com/2020/05/3e041c2f322cc072-starry-yoke.png