Floppy Failure

Jack Prelutsky
"I Think My Computer Is Crazy"
A Pizza the Size of the Sun

Something inside my computer
is buzzing like billions of bees,
even my mouse is affected,
it seems to be begging for cheese.
I guess I know why my computer
is addled and may not survive—
my brother inserted bologna into the floppy disk drive.

If you caught the image (by James Stevenson) of the antiquated hardware and noticed the slot, the poem's ending comes as a pleasing confirmation of the mischief that caused the chaos.

And so for day 2300
31.03.2013

Topsy Turvey

Jack Prelutsky "I'm Drifting Through Negative Space" A Pizza the Size of the Sun

I toss my ephemeral ball
agains an impalpable wall.
It bounces and lands
in my vanishing hands—

recent planetary
inventories show
more leopard-print
blouses than leopards

CAConrad "Eating Both Sides of What's Left" While Standing in Line for Death

And so for day 2299
30.03.2013

Retallack on Waldrop on Stein

Judicious situation of a quotation.

What exceeds anything in [Otto] Weininger's philosophically pretentious, utterly congested "deductive morphologies," as well as Stein's own reductive cataloguing, is the way she has begun to conjecture in the act of her writing that, as Keith Waldrop has put it, "the essential of 'each human being' is a rhythm ... [and] to express that rhythm expresses the person. There is actually no need to talk about the subject."

Joan Retallack is quoting from Keith Waldrop's introduction to Useful Knowledge (Barrytown, NY: Station Hill Press, 1988) in her introduction to Gertrude Stein: Selections (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008).

And so for day 2298
29.03.2013

Downtime and the Muscle of Attention

Via Kathleen Fitzpatrick Engage. Disengage. Repeat.

Ferris Jabr
"You need more downtime than you think"

Moments of respite may even be necessary to keep one’s moral compass in working order and maintain a sense of self. [our emphasis]

https://www.salon.com/2013/10/16/your_brain_needs_more_downtime_than_it_thinks_partner/

Feel free to putter (North America) or potter about (England).

And so for day 2297
28.03.2013

Timing and Tactility

Arriving at hint of decadence, the notion is retrospective, restive.

What captured me was the line-end adjective modifying two nouns.

the hour and the civilization late
and so we will smile as if engrossed
the drowsy language between
cortex and the edge of the sea
as if the whole body
was moving up the nape, and secret

from To Every Gaze translated by Jennifer Moxley in Nicole Brossard: Selections

And so for day 2296
27.03.2013

Feeding Fashion

Another food poem in addition to the title-bearing poem in the collection by Jack Prelutsky A Pizza the Size of the Sun is the charming two stanza agricultural myth "Spaghetti Seeds" which concludes thusly

I planted them year ago . . .
that farmer is a phony.
I've not got one spaghetti tree—
just fields of macaroni.

A charming drawing by James Stevenson accompanies this little ditty which reminds me of Yankee Doodle and the feather ("Yankee Doodle went to town / A-riding on a pony, / Stuck a feather in his cap / And called it macaroni." It is the intertextual rhyme of pony and phony that cements the relation. Of course the Yankee Doodle macaroni is a statement of fashion not solely a pasta preference. There is an visual echo in the Stevenson illustration. The farmer's rake sticks out behind the figure like a feather in a hat.

But there is no mistaking the farmer for a fop.

And so for day 2295
26.03.2013

Recuperating a Lost World

It's an abecedarian book filled with delightful acrostics. My favourite is the opening one with its anaphoric elements that build to an acknowledgement of the generous amplitude of the small.

As flake is to blizzard, as
C [...]
O [...]
R [...]
Near is to far, as wind is to weather, as
   feather is to flight, as light is to star, as
   kindness is to good, so acorn is to wood.

Robert Macfarlane The Lost Words: A Spell Book illustrated by Jackie Morris.

And so for day 2294
25.03.2013

Fricatelle Cyprin

Nicole Brossard
Sous la langue Under Tongue

Fricatelle ruisselle essentielle aime-t-elle le long de son corps la morsure, le bruit des vagues, aime-t-elle l'état du monde dans la flambée des chairs pendant que les secondes s'écoulent cyprine, lutine, marines.

In the translation by Susanne de Lobtinière-Harwood

Does she frictional she fluvial she essential does she all along her body love the bite, the sound waves, does she love the state of the world in the blaze of flesh to flesh as seconds flow by silken salty cyprin.

In the 1987 publication, under the dual imprint of L'Essentielle and Gynergy, the translator provides a note to the choice of the word cyprin: "Female sexual secretion. From the French cyprine [fr. Gk Cyprus, birth place of Aphrodite]. We are proposing cyprin for English usage."

There is an earlier translation of this text appearing in Writing 16 (1986) under the title "Sa Main Qui Prenait Appui Sur Un Livre Pendant Que Nos Corps A l'Oblique". There we learn that

Nicole Brossard wrote this text for the erotic festival held at Theatre Expérimental des Femmes (now known as Espace Go) in Montréal the week of March 8, 1986. It was a glittering Saturday evening; 15 writers' texts were read/performed by 15 actresses.

And our trio appears as "silken salty spritely". This last capturing "lutines" marvellously well. I appreciate the alliteration which captures the rhythm supplied in French by the rhymes. And it is alliteration that is carried over into the 1987 version.

In Writing 16 Susanne de Lobtinière-Harwood provides a note on fricatelle (missing in the 1987 version)

fricatelle — from fricarelle, the rubbing together of women's thighs. Thirties slang for lesbian, Nicole explains, via Marie-Jo Bonnet, Un choix sans équivoque, and Nicolas Blondeau, Le Dictionnaire Érotique Latin-Français. Blondeau's dictionary was written in the 17th century but not published until the 19th century.

The rub of language. The spark of neologism.

And so for day 2293
24.03.2013

The Ordinary Openness to the Not Ordinary

Mary Pratt
obituary by Leah Sandals
[concluding paragraph]

"I think with my work, even things that are are ordinary are not ordinary," Ms. Pratt said in 2015. "Because I don't really believe that anything is ordinary — I think everything is complex and worthy of conjecture and worthy of a close look." She concluded: "I really believe that you could imagine the secrets of the universe by looking a pile of grapes."

Cluster. Luster.

And so for day 2292
23.03.2013

Whimp Out

Dear Diary,

Saw Wainwright's and McIvor's Hadrian. A disappointment. Sabina's aria in Act II was the best part. The ending backed off a possible naming of the gendered nature of Hadrian's love for another man. We were treated to a tedious repetition of "He loved..." (with suspension marks) without the transitive completion of "him."

The opera is confused. Is it a love story? A tale of political intrigue? A search for immortality?

That ending! Apotheosis of the god-emperor, chorus chanting the coming rise of monotheism, the prophecy of to-be-forgotten pagan gods?

Sabina's aria "Why am waiting; what am I waiting for" (I paraphrase from memory) foreshadows the audience waiting for the recognition at the end of a man loving a man. Waiting for the word.

He was loved. But was he loved as a man? No amount of same-sex scene pantomime can substitute for the artistic exploration of the theme of reciprocation. Let alone the saying - the enunciation - that marks a coming to knowledge and action. Who did he love? Who loved him? Who had the courage to speak? Of what? To whom?

And so for day 2291
22.03.2013