The Genteel Slide into Vulgarity

The semantic slip followed by the gesture going all the way.

[…]
As one strokes a cat and feels the ridgy skull beneath the fur and tickles
It behind its ears. The cat twists its head and moves it toward your fingers
Like the lifting thighs of someone fucked, moving up to meet the stroke.
The sun strokes all now in this zone, reaching in through windows to jell
[…]

That's from Hymn to Life by James Schuyler.

This is from Robert Penn Warren "American Portrait: Old Style" — describing the life path of a friend talented for baseball …

[…]
To pass through to what? No, not
To some wild white peak dreamed westward,
And each sunrise a promise to keep. No, only
The Big Leagues, not even a bird dog,
And girls that popped gum while they screwed.

Yes, this was his path, and no batter
Could do what booze finally did:
Just blow him off the mound — but anyway,
[…]

And I turn to Gregory Mahrer to summarize in an abstract fashion the progression from words and gesture:

The technique is quite simple — a few thrown
breaths followed by a series of gestural forays —

from "Ideograph" in A Provisional Map of the Lost Continent.

And so for day 1724
02.09.2011