***You probably shouldn’t watch the thing, but it was directed by Joe Dante.

—

—

Where was the data coming from? Who was controlling the flow?

—

Wiley parked in an unused Microsoft lot, with visibility and cover behind a parked construction crane. He figured he’d have some minutes before he aroused suspicion. Stop #71335 sat halfway down a ramp, towards 520, heading West. About six people milled around, two getting on a bus, then a few more filtering in: Three Indians, two Chinese professional women and a white guy in sweat pants with his belly hanging out in the cold.

Shouldn’t there be more people? These buses are leaving campus, heading towards Seattle. Is this the wrong stop? Was it the stop heading East? As these thoughts flashed across Wiley’s mind, someone knocked on the window.

Startled, Wiley’s hand reached for his sidearm under his shirt. ‘No, no!’ the man said, backing away. ‘Please it is me’. He was wearing a red coat with a pea-green hat.

‘I’m sorry. I have to be careful’ his arms dropping to his sides. ‘So careful. This is very bad now. You are Wiley and I will present everything. Let’s turn off our phones off and drive.’

Wiley nodded and motioned the man around the car. He appeared to be in his late twenties, thin with glasses. Wiley scanned and saw no one else around. So much for ‘Emerald City Investigations offers top-notch surveillance skills.’

‘Call me John.’ the man said climbing in. A laptop was under his arm as he placed his backpack between his legs. ‘Thank you for coming. It is me. Please head away from here through the neighborhoods. Your phone must be off. We will find a network.’

Your absence has gone through me
Like thread through a needle
Everything I do is stitched with its color

–W.S. Merwin

—

—

—

‘In a series comprised of over 20 paintings, Monet recreated haystacks during varying weather conditions and at different times of day. Here, a single stack of wheat sits in a sundrenched, late-summer field framed by poplars and rolling hills.’

—

—

Call it a granite moon
which fills the fields
beyond the light
of a neighbor’s barn.

The first spring calf stood
today. on tufted grass
alive, bundled by the wind.
Its stillborn twin

we found nearby.
The barn steeple rises
up, as it must,
the stars like salt in my eyes.

Harry hadn’t noticed a teal Prius sitting thirty-feet away. The driver was staring at his phone. Harry saw two open laptops inside.

—

One of the two men, thin-shouldered with wingtips, began pacing while speaking into a headset. The left side of his face was scarred.

A tall man with sunken eyes lifted the roll-up door of the Penske truck, motioning the group inside. He wore a scruffy, red chin-beard.

Harry counted seven Mexicans (one under five feet), two filipinos (Tagalog), and two black guys as everyone piled in. Only a coiled length of rope lay coiled in the corner. No tools. No other equipment.

Mexican patter began to fill the stuffy box. The truck did a half-turn in the gravel lot, exiting on Marginal. Left.

—

8:37 pm.–The smell was horrendous. One of Harry’s group began to whistle. Clear, high, bird calls. A little unhinged. Now, the man was rocking back and forth, intense and agitated.

‘Stop the goddamn truck.’

Harry and another man grabbed his shoulders.

‘This is easy money, come on motherfucker‘

‘Get me out’ Stop the goddamn truck!’

A few Mexicans began whistling their disapproval. The man was standing in the middle of the truck, swinging his arms wildly.

‘Get me the fuck outta here!’

The truck slowly rolled to a stop…

Among the rain
and lights
I saw the figure 5
in gold
on a red
firetruck
moving
tense
unheeded
to gong clangs
siren howls
and wheels rumbling
through the dark city.

–William Carlos Williams

I like Charles Demuth’s fidelity to the original, and use of imagist-imagination. The figure 5 comprises such an important part of the poem.

—

A little more broadly…

‘Imagism was a sub-genre of Modernism concerned with creating clear imagery with sharp language. The essential idea was to re-create the physical experience of an object through words. As with all of Modernism, Imagism implicitly rejected Victorian poetry, which tended toward narrative.‘

And:

‘The most exemplified phase of Modernism, referred to as “High Modernism,” occurred during the inter-war years (1918-1939). This was the time when writers synonymous with Modernism, such as Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, T.S. Eliot, and D.H. Lawrence, thrived. While Victorians typically concerned themselves with rendering reality as they understood it into fiction, Modernists recognized that reality was subjective, and instead strove to represent human psychology in fiction.‘

In response: I don’t believe reality to be subjective, though I’ve met a lot of people who seem to.

Where’s the proof for such a claim?

For my part, I believe reality is there, and that my senses are giving me evidence and essential elements of reality. One of the strengths of the camera is the ability to move faster than the eye and brain (stuff I’m too slow to notice and process…lots of randomness).

While I’m inspired deeply by much modern art, and was raised in a postmodern milieu, I’ve not been persuaded by postmodern truth and knowledge claims. Postmodernism seems like a game with unclear rules, a few admirable people, and a lot of weirdos answering to Nehru-jacket-wearing authorities spewing gobbledy-gook.

During the post-war years, the confessional poets, with a fair amount of free and blank verse became dominant, with a kind of feelings-first, psychological exploration of the (S)elf. We’re now seeing many downstream effects in our culture (I’ll leave this to your imagination…for good and ill).

The Straussian truth and knowledge claims, as one example, pushes back to a kind of classicist revival, an embrace of tradition, and rejection of much modern and postmodern thinking.

And now for something…somewhat related…

What I’ve Seen Lately In The Lonely Parts Of Town. I like abstraction, and certain shapes I see. I like arranging photos in series/sequences to highlight certain shared variables (color, light, shape etc.). This attraction starts with my senses out in the world, but ultimately must answer to my physical limitations, limitations of my technique/skill and limitations of the camera. It must answer to limitations of time, weather and light conditions, and the wishes of other people.

I’m usually behind reality, or in the wrong position, or I just missed what was a lovely, serendipitous moment. There are the known knowns I missed, the known unknowns, and also the unknown unknowns (stuff I’ll never see, but for example, I can admire in the work of other photographers).

Anyways, what a long-winded ass I’ve become. I hope you find something of value in this short four-photo-sequence.

—

—

—

to sea, spreading
their news. Gazing down the wells
of the afternoon,

the sunlight turns silvery-blue.

—

Give me one minute and your mind. 1. Please read the poem aloud. 2. Take a closer look at the photo 3. Play the first 30 seconds of Chopin’s Nocturne in B-flat minor, Op 9, No. 1. (past the 00:26 mark).

The goal: Create a dreamy, contemplative experience before you move on.

Thanks to all.

Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I’d wake and hear the cold splintering,breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,

speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?

–Robert Hayden

Seattle in winter: If sunlight makes it down to the surface, it’s a kind of remembering and excitement (the sun!…light!).

—

—

8:24 pm Friday night: Agressive mist and wind pelted Harry’s face. The asphalt under 99 was slick; a series of rented scooters abandoned along the way.

He wore a dirty hoodie, the oldest jeans he could find, and Wylie’s boots (one size too small).

He’d approached the only person near the stadium; doubled-over, coming down from a fentanyl high. The man lifted his face, shuffled back into a pillar; slumping down into a sitting position.

—

‘What do you want?’

‘Warner told me to meet’

‘You got junk? You got money, man?’

‘You alright?’ Harry said, crouching down.

‘I’m alright.’ the man said staring vacantly ahead. A smile grew on his face. A healthy mistrust hung in the air: ‘Warner’s got a girl up on the hill. Probably where he is.’

Harry appreciated the effort.

‘I’m looking for work’ Harry said, holding out a $50. ‘for the night.’

Ronnie’s hand was bloated and cold.

‘Yeah they got that shit locked down. I’m sleepy. Warner ain’t here so I ain’t going nowhere.‘

Harry handed him another $50. Both man stared into the darkness.

‘The knife place. 8:30 pm.’

‘Off Spokane?

‘Yeah’

‘Tell Warner to call me. Harry said. ‘Look me up.’

‘Yeah, he told me about you. I didn’t send you and I don’t fuckin’ know you.

—

Harry walked down 3rd, texting Kathy. ‘Near Epicurean Knife Store. 8:30 pm. No Warner.

He remembered seeing a bank of bikes and turned West on Atlantic. He started slow-jogging. ‘Shit.’

The phone buzzed. ‘Be careful. No Oliveira info. Wylie not back. Wendell unclear.‘

Harry got to Alaskan in about five minutes. There were no bikes, only two scooters…

—

Soon, Harry was trundling along at twelve miles per hour. He reached the corner of an industrial building. He set the scooter down, tapping ‘end ride’ on his phone. It chimed way too loudly.

As he rounded the corner, ten or eleven men stood in a semi-circle, between a set of train-tracks and a graffiti-covered wall. Most had hoodies. There was a mid-size box truck parked fifty-feet away, under a curving overpass where two men stood.

Harry shuffled towards the group casually…

Thanks for stopping by, and to everyone that has.

—

The email: ‘My company’s missing fifteen-million dollars over eight quarters. MASSIVE data fraud. All points in Seattle’s port. Only three of us know (on the American side). Help.‘

That was one way to get a private eye’s attention.

The cold seemed to seep in from the front windows. Harry’s eyes traced the worn edges of the ‘D’ in ‘Emerald City Investigations.’

Wylie: Who else knows and what are the risks? Why not just escalate through the company?

Harry’s eyes lingered on a large indentation in the glass; raindrops gathering there until their sudden release.

The building’s radiator rattled to life.

Kathy: ‘The prosecutor’s office? The Commission? We’re not that important. Look at this office.’

Wylie: What if it’s a setup? I’ll trace the server.’ We should ask for like, $300 an hour.’

Harry read the last part of the email aloud: ‘I will be at the #71335 bus stop at 8:00 am tomorrow. Red coat, green woolen hat. Normal routine. No errors. I need to trust someone. Kindly. Please. Please.’

‘What about a pretty please?’ Wylie said. ‘I’ll go Harry.’

Swimming far-out, most men tell their wives when brushing-up against something sinister. A confidante. Someone.

Most people, most of the time, choose not to notice.

It was Harry’s job to notice.

In a crow’s eye
cloud and sky
become memory

—

Click through.

Merry Christmas!

Who knows how people come to haunt their own lives?

Warner had been in some kind of band, then out wandering the street for fifteen years. He’d emerge from time to time with ideas. Harry noticed three new crosses behind his left ear and a long, purple scar on his right hand.

—

‘It’s free if you guys want it. That’s what I’m saying.’

‘People meet every night. That’s free?’ Harry asked.

‘This ain’t it, Harry’ Wylie said, standing up. ‘You guys want a drink?

‘What I’m giving you. Something’s going on. Guys in Bremerton. The construction guys. Everybody knows.’

‘Knows what?’

‘I can’t tell you all of it. I don’t know. You sit there all night and they give you $75. That’s real fuckin’ money.’

‘What I’m tellin’ you is you get $20. For showing up. $50 for the night.’

‘That’s $70. I need a place, Warner. Names.’

‘You smell like shit, Warner. Don’t touch my desk.’ Wylie handed him a Red Bull.

‘I don’t have to be here.’ A long pause. Warner looked down at his feet. ‘Oliveira.’

What’s he look like? Harry asked.

Brown guy. Glasses. Like a banker. Short hair. He speaks German too. Good English.’

‘And you guys work?’ Harry asked.

‘You ask around. You show up but nothing happens. They take one group of guys, and disappear. Like a Penske truck. Illegals. Then it changes.’

‘What changes?’

‘The place. You gotta know someone, then it’s somewhere else. But you gotta know someone.‘ They pay out, man.’

‘German?’ Wylie asked, staring.

‘Yeah, it’s fuckin’ German.’

‘Get me in,’ Harry said.

‘Ronnie’s on 4th near the stadium.‘ $500 now and $500 when we’re done.‘

‘$100′ right now and we talk when it’s done’ Harry said, handing Warner a bill. I’m good for it.

‘Tonight,’ Warner shuffled out staring at Wylie.‘You can’t come, asshole,’

‘Text me, Harry. I got like five phones.‘ He shouted from the hall.

—

‘Oliveira’s Portugese’ Harry said. ‘Popular name.’

‘There are Germans in Brazil. Supermodels.’ Wylie said.

‘Lots of places to learn German’ Kathy was standing in the doorway. ‘I’ll check AI, incarceration, sex offenders, construction companies. Brazilians just replaced my neighbor’s roof’

‘II’ll talk to Skoda. He does data privacy. Maybe he knows something.’ Wylie said.

‘Lots of companies unloading on the Island.’ Harry said. ‘Fifteen million is serious money.’

‘There was a strike last year. Remember the Asian front food company near Georgetown?’ I can’t remember the name….lots of fraud’ Kathy said walking out. ‘My friend knows someone who works delivery. I’ll look that up, too.

‘Who makes money on each shipping container?’ Who touches these containers?’

Who was Oliveira?

—

—

This morning, 6:53 am: Harry awoke to the cold.

Iridescent bits of glass covered his lap and hands.

Pain radiated from his cheek. One sliver of window hung awkwardly in the jamb. He stared at the green and white webs; his mind moving in many places.

His right hand fished into his front pants-pocket. The keys were there. Jesus Christ.

—

Three days ago: An email slid across Wylie’s desk and into the basket.

‘This is big. I hope I’m not right. Terminal 105 park 7 pm Fri.’

Two ropes of smoke rose dreamily from Harry’s cigarette towards the ventilation fan.

‘Could be a setup’ Wylie said.

‘Could be. Harry said leaning back. Maybe 20% on that. I’m not hearing much.’

‘You’re full of shit with numbers, Harry’ Wylie said.

Harry realized this was probably true (maybe 80%). The past few weeks had been filling the office with fear and exhilaration:

City politics…Harry’s coffee was cold.

‘Let’s take it. Someone’s gotta take it’ Harry broke the silence.

‘Your call’ Wylie smiled a small, enigmatic smile, lifting his feet from the floor and placing them back down.

One day ago: Five ties meant bad news. Probably the worst news….

—

I knew a philosophic skeptic, he was smarter than me & fun, but, man…what an asshole.

Commoners have good reasons to be skeptical when it comes to modern art:

Bananas duct-taped to walls seems like bullshit.

‘Titled Comedian, the humoristic piece can be considered a challenge to the sometimes-absurdist nature of the art market and the art collecting world. “To me, Comedian was not a joke; it was a sincere commentary and a reflection on what we value,” said the artist in an interview at the time. “At art fairs, speed and business reign, so I saw it like this: if I had to be at a fair, I could sell a banana like others sell their paintings. I could play within the system, but with my rules.”’

Who can forget the transcendent darkness of this photo (the shock-concept and the celebrity overshadowing the skill/visual impact).

‘He immersed a crucifix he bought in an antique shop in his own urine.‘

Fellow commoners, we have as a counterpoint, rather beautiful, innovative classics like Falling Water, by Frank Lloyd Wright. A pain in the ass to maintain, but still a place for the genuine:

As I see the world: We have beliefs, and we’ve usually locked them away beyond critique. So has most everyone else. Some beliefs have more truth in them than others.

We use shared beliefs to form and maintain relationships. We use them to get stuff and give other people stuff. We rely on shared beliefs to organize events/clubs, workplaces, and hierarchies of judgment and knowledge, without killing each other. Shared beliefs regulate and help us navigate our emotions, as well as our personal, interpersonal and social behavior. We outsource much of our thinking to shared beliefs, while forgetting they’re even there. We’re often proudest of passing our beliefs on if we think they’re true, lasting and important.

The rub is the relationship these beliefs have with truth, and knowledge. A modern rationalist might say something like: ‘We have access to enough scientific and economic knowledge to run the government, and effectively plan your life. (M)an is something holy, and we’ve only just begun perfecting (M)an. Go ahead be creative and vote for the $1 billion arts package or else.‘

A typical Catholic might say something like: ‘Let’s check in with Canon Law. The Pope is closest to God, then the Cardinals, then the Archbishops etc.’ We’re only redeemed through Christ. So….that’s what art should be doing. Capiche?

What if a radical questioning of belief becomes the norm, around which people are…still believing?

What, then, do people actually believe?

What do artists, often radically questioning belief while making stuff, actually believe?

Those increasingly ridiculous artist statements? Some curious mix of irony, doom and nihilism all the way down? Modern mysticism?

A digression: Let’s say a kid in bad neighborhood, at a vulnerable age, joins a gang. He gets protection, savage discipline and access to stuff. The gang serves dark masters of the soul of course (in our case: How to rob specific makes/models of cars and sell them for parts, leaving a trail of harm, making the kid violent and dangerous).

Let’s also say the same kid in a bad neighborhood, on weekends, hangs with his uncle. His uncle fixes cars. Our kid learns to honor something within himself, other people, and the world. Like his time with the gang, life unfolds as a series of challenges, struggles and possibilities. Yet, his lifespan probability opens from twenty-two to sixty-four. Much better of parts of the kid’s nature come forwards. People drive their cars away, grumbling over the price and the delays…but, still.

Clearly, one path is better for the kid, the neighborhood and the rest of us?

Surely?

Now, what if, at school, that same kid is particularly talented, smart and sensitive? What if he is guided by someone towards personal self-expression, and even the eventual self-doubt, poverty and emotional rollercoaster of a typical artist’s life?

Shouldn’t the kid at least be taught how to notice things? how to describe how a good painting looks? how to draw? how to draft? how to mix paint?

Surely?

These days, it seems we find ourselves in a ‘post, postmodern landscape.’

What is this curious, Western belief to ‘blank-slate’ everything? How can it be true that the kid’s emotions are a reservoir and his reason a man-made, oppressive dam? That he just needs to make a dark, mixed-media video collage and he’s arrived?

It seems making simple moral judgments in real-world scenarios raises serious questions about the Romantic/Modern/Postmodern projects.

The case for the visual art over the primacy of concept/idea: Lets say you’re looking at John Singer Sargent’s ‘Lady Agnew Of Lochnaw‘ (somewhere between realism/impressionism). You’re not looking at merely the idea of painting (good paintings already have ideas in them).

—

Maybe you want to touch her skin? How did he paint like that? Look at the color and light. What is the artist saying? This painting took six sittings, but, arguably, a lifetime and maybe the better elements of a civilization to achieve.

A simple case: The Duchamp/Warhol line (concept/idea over visual communication/technical skill) warrants tremendous common-sense skepticism (I’ve gone a little deeper…but you get the point). Enough already.

Bananas duct-taped to walls and crucifixes dunked in piss are not just wasting our time, perhaps they’re harming our imaginations.

There are so many reasons to doubt so much bullshit within modern/postmodern thinking, while at the same time learning from the good.

—

Tom Wolfe went on the T.V. with William F Buckley (too political for my taste) to discuss his book: ‘The Painted Word.’

At min 5:39 Wolfe argues the following (one part of the art/money/celebrity feedback loop):

‘It’s really a religious thing. One thing I didn’t say in The Painted Word, that I should have said, is that art today, is the religion of the educated classes. I don’t mean that by analogy, it isn’t like being a Baptist in 1870, it is being a Baptist in 1870.’

—

From Art vs Machine: Here is a video making the case that Jackson Pollock achieved something, but it wasn’t really the innovative use of drip-paint.

Maybe it was kinda beautiful in its own way? Romantically Primitive?

—

Also, are Robert Hughes criticisms’ of Andy Warhol’s art really blocked by YouTube?

Making a hero of the androgynous anti-hero is orthodoxy these days, but also pretty tired (the Warhol to Bowie line seems over-rated):

—

What came before modernism/postmodernism? Why the below video might be worth listening to (min 34:22):

‘There was a great turn towards emotionalism. There was a sudden interest in the primitive and remote; the remote in time and the remote in place. There was a outbreak of craving for the infinite’ 

A movement emerged, about 1760–1840, which has deeply affected our conceptions of the Self, Art, heroes and villains, and most importantly, what makes life worth living.

Isaiah Berlin’s take on Romanticism:

—

—

‘The most useful definition of modernist fiction I’ve encountered comes from Brian McHale’s Postmodernist Fiction. He says modernist fiction tends to “foreground epistemological questions” such as “How can I interpret the world I’m part of? What is there to be known? Who knows it? What are the limits of that knowledge?” In contrast, postmodernist fiction tends to “foreground ontological questions” such as “What is a world? What kinds of worlds are there and how are they constituted? What happens when…boundaries between worlds are violated?’

As to the epistemological questions surrounding Modernism, below are four poems. Hopefully, each is a representative example of a move away from the Romanticism that had been prevalent up until the late 1800’s.

In addition to the move away from traditional Romantic rhyme and meter towards modern blank verse, there’s also a certain conception of the Self rendered in them; a presentation of our natures that might be worth examining in some detail.

I believe we can see clearly a move away from tradition towards the Self, the Poet isolated, the poem itself as a means of communication, and an anxiety so common within the 20th century.

I should note that a friend points out Harold Bloom does it much better (well, yes…obviously). From this blurb:

‘At the heart of Bloom’s project is the ancient quarrel between “poetry” and “philosophy.” In Bloom’s opinion, we ought not have to choose between Homer and Plato; we can have both, as long as we recognize that poetry is superior.’

Says the guy who writes about poetry…

What does one find within, as one looks without, waking from sleep and dream?

What kind of world is this, and can the poet actually help us know it?

T.S. Eliot (Preludes: Stanza 3)

3.

You tossed a blanket from the bed
You lay upon your back, and waited;
You dozed, and watched the night revealing
The thousand sordid images
Of which your soul was constituted;
They flickered against the ceiling.
And when all the world came back
And the light crept up between the shutters
And you heard the sparrows in the gutters,
You had such a vision of the street
As the street hardly understands;
Sitting along the bed’s edge, where
You curled the papers from your hair,
Or clasped the yellow soles of feet
In the palms of both soiled hands.

—

The world will stain you, and it is a fallen, modern world, rendered profoundly and exquisitely.

As consciousness creeps in, building a bridge to the day, to the world, to the facts left as though they were the first facts, the light as though it were the first light, what one finds is distressing, both within and without.

That distress must be ‘made new,’ which is to say, the suffering (original?) in which we all sometimes find ourselves must match our experiences within the modern city and world, at least, the world created within Eliot’s lyrical verse.

Of the four poems, only the first and last have a 3rd-person subject.

—

Wallace Stevens‘ ‘I’ is in a more contemplative state, but it’s an ‘I’ exploring similar themes, and experiencing some distress in trying to know how the world actually is, and what might lie within.

The journey to The Self may not be a journey for the faint of heart.

The Poems Of Our Climate (stanzas II and III)

II
Say even that this complete simplicity
Stripped one of all one’s torments, concealed
The evilly compounded, vital I
And made it fresh in a world of white,
A world of clear water, brilliant-edged,
Still one would want more, one would need more,
More than a world of white and snowy scents.

III
There would still remain the never-resting mind,
So that one would want to escape, come back
To what had been so long composed.
The imperfect is our paradise.
Note that, in this bitterness, delight,
Since the imperfect is so hot in us,
Lies in flawed words and stubborn sounds.

—

Even if the verse can describe a perfected world, delivering us, perhaps, a little closer to perfection, our poet is still not free from the impulses and desires which simply never cease.

Interestingly, we end-up not with a discussion of the heart, the spirit, libido etc. as a source for those desires (for Plato, the irrational), but rather, for Stevens, just a mind.

We also find more Romantic elements of language and an almost baroque/rococo arrangement of words and ideas, dandyish even, yet combined with an intense effort to abstract, define, and clarify. From here, the poet may proceed on his task of flawed words and stubborn sounds.

***I find myself thinking of elements of modern architecture and abstract-expressionist painting. The meaning, or at least some delivery from our restless existences, can be found within the abstract itself. Or at least within a retreat to the abstract for its own sake, away from the world.

The modernist, glass-walled house on the hill will exist in its own space, offering and defying meaning. The structure’s own shapes will be stripped down to often mathematically precise forms interacting with Nature. These shall guide Man, or at least offer individual men a little refuge.

It is perhaps in Stevens’ poem we can see the questions of knowledge about the world suggesting questions about whether there is a world at all, or, at least, what kind of worlds each Self might be able to inhabit.

—

Here’s one of Robert Lowell’s poems, occurring a generation later, in the mid 20th-century, as part of the confessionals.

The Self is extremely isolated. In fact, Lowell went more than a little crazy. Unlike the known nervous breakdown of Eliot from which Eliot recovered, Lowell’s life was essentially one long breakdown from which he never recovered.

Here he is, looking back:

Epilogue

Those blessed structures plot and rhyme-
why are they no help to me now
i want to make
something imagined not recalled?
I hear the noise of my own voice:
The painter’s vision is not a lens
it trembles to caress the light.
But sometimes everything i write
With the threadbare art of my eye
seems a snapshot
lurid rapid garish grouped
heightened from life
yet paralyzed by fact.
All’s misalliance.
Yet why not say what happened?
Pray for the grace of accuracy
Vermeer gave to the sun’s illumination
stealing like the tide across a map
to his girl solid with yearning.
We are poor passing facts.
warned by that to give
each figure in the photograph
his living name.

—

The weight of having to make that meaning, for yourself, and by yourself, is a horrible weight indeed. One can glorify one’s Self and family, but that, alas, only goes so far. Rhyme and form still carry one’s living name, as far as they do.

Of course, there’s still wonderful rhythm and form here (this is excellent verse), but blanker now, with a relentless focus on the ‘I.’ The poet is perhaps talking a little more to himself, and the poem keeps self-consciously calling attention to itself.

—

In fact, it reminded me of the poem below, by Robert Creeley, which was published a few years afterwards.

From this page:

‘Creeley was a leader in the generational shift that veered away from history and tradition as primary poetic sources and gave new prominence to the ongoing experiences of an individual’s life. Because of this emphasis, the major events of his life loom large in his literary work.’

There’s Nothing but the Self and the Eye seeking and making meaning, by itself within a void of emotionally compact and precise language (of course there’s still form and other things besides).

Can the poet fit inside the little abstract chapel of words he’s building for himself (let alone the world, tradition etc.)?

For all the talk about ‘space,’ there seems very little.

The Window

Position is where you
put it, where it is,
did you, for example, that

large tank there, silvered,
with the white church along-
side, lift

all that, to what
purpose? How
heavy the slow

world is with
everything put
in place. Some

man walks by, a
car beside him on
the dropped

road, a leaf of
yellow color is
going to

fall. It
all drops into
place. My

face is heavy
with the sight. I can
feel my eye breaking.

—

The distress is still there…but I’d argue that we are now a good distance away from the grandness of Eliot’s vision, his religiosity and virtuosity with form and meter at the dawn of Modernism. Very few people can/could do what Eliot did (addition: even if he can help us gain knowledge of our Selves or the world).

That said, it’s unclear there’s enough tradition and confidence to even undertake such a project, now, even as such talents come along. The state of things is more scattered. We’re in a very different place of selves and artists isolated, of anxiety and post-anxiety.

Aside from the very accomplished poets above, in terms of both knowledge (epistemology) and being (ontology), we often have writers feeling pressure to weigh-in on such questions without even being about to write that well; artists who can’t draw or paint that well, and frankly, quite a bit of bullshit besides.

So, where are we headed? Who’s ‘we’ exactly?

Predictions are hard, especially about the future.

As previously posted:

Why not just put a few algorithms to work in writing those artist statements?

Bathe in the bathos of a warming world:

A reader sends a link to a SF Gate review of poet Jorie Graham’s ‘Sea Change:‘

‘In “Sea Change,” Graham becomes Prospero, casting spells by spelling out her thoughts to merge with ours, and with the voices of the elements. The result is a mingling of perceptions rather than a broadcasting of opinions. Instead of analysis, the poems encourage emotional involvement with the drastic changes overwhelming us, overwhelm- ing the planet.’

and:

‘Strengths and weaknesses, flows and ebbs, yet every poem in “Sea Change” bears memorable lines, with almost haunting (if we truly have but 10 years to “fix” global warming) images of flora and fauna under siege. Jorie Graham has composed a swan song for Earth.’

Oh boy.

What are these poems being asked to do?

Tilda Swinton At MOMA-From Arma Virumque: ‘Nightmare In A Box’

Denis Dutton suggests art could head towards Darwin (and may offer new direction from the troubles of the modern art aimlessness and shallow depth) Review of Denis Dutton’s ‘The Art Instinct’

Roger Scruton says keep politics out of the arts, and political judgment apart from aesthetic judgment…this includes race studies/feminist departments/gay studies etc.: Roger Scruton In The American Spectator Via A & L Daily: Farewell To Judgment

Ah, Look At All The Lonely People-‘Jeff Koons Is Back’ Via Vanity Fair

Some Updated Links On Postmodernism

More blasts from the past at the link…

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In turn, more cultural output and outlets reflect this process.

I have to imagine selling poetry on the street requires a hook. Most artistic output is derivative, experimental, and not valuable enough to have people pay for it. Such is nature and life.

Yes/no/maybe so?

The night knows nothing of the chants of night.
It is what it is as I am what I am:
And in perceiving this I best perceive myself

And you. Only we two may interchange
Each in the other what each has to give.
Only we two are one, not you and night,

Nor night and I, but you and I, alone,
So much alone, so deeply by ourselves,
So far beyond the casual solitudes,

That night is only the background of our selves,
Supremely true each to its separate self,
In the pale light that each upon the other throws.

–Wallace Stevens

Uhm…okay Wallace. Out into the modernist night…

Night Drive

The smells of ordinariness
Were new on the night drive through France
Rain and hay and woods on the air
Made warm draughts in the open car

Signposts whitened relentlessly
Montreuil, Abbeville, Beauvais
Were promised, promised, came and went,
Each place granting its name’s fulfillment.

A combine groaning its way late
Bled seeds across its work-light.
A forest fire smouldered out.
One by one small cafes shut.

I thought of you continuously
A thousand miles south where Italy
Laid its loin to France on the darkened sphere.
Your ordinariness was renewed there.

–Seamus Heaney

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‘Read this poem and come back in a month.’

—

—What’s this poem about? What’s this got to do with winter?

‘My tab’s due…time to go.’

—‘Okay, Harry, all right…’

—

Blizzard

Snow falls:
years of anger following
hours that float idly down —
the blizzard
drifts its weight
deeper and deeper for three days
or sixty years, eh? Then
the sun! a clutter of
yellow and blue flakes —
Hairy looking trees stand out
in long alleys
over a wild solitude.
The man turns and there —
his solitary track stretched out
upon the world.

–William Carlos Williams

Imagine you’re in a hotel lobby; your flight boards in two hours. Your pre-brain-chip gaze comes to rest upon this beauty.

‘I never look around. This was a good trip.’ ‘Nice design.’

‘Wait a minute…is that…? Oh yes…I SEE NOW. Yes…oh no…I…..I must change my life.’

‘At least it’s not shit.’

Foreground: Bus-stop etching on dirty glass. Background: Hand-painted cafe wall in early-morning light.

Weird.

Painters have to represent light on a 2D surface with geometry, materials and technique. It takes years of experimenting with colors and color-mixing. Most of all, artists have to have some kind of vision.

It can take months to make a single painting…

Photographers ‘find’ instead of ‘make,’ deciding where to stand, and when to click the shutter. If you can’t see it in your mind’s eye, you probably won’t ‘see’ a good photograph.

But, you can always get lucky.

Luck helps.

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‘A river glides out of the grass. A river or a serpent.
A fish floats belly upward,
Sliding through the white current,
Slowly turning,
Slowly.

The dark flows on itself. A dead mouth sings under an old tree.
The ear hears only in low places.
Remember an old sound.
Remember
Water...’

–Theodore Roethke

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We are prepared: we build our houses squat,
Sink walls in rock and roof them with good slate.
This wizened earth has never troubled us
With hay, so, as you see, there are no stacks
Or stooks that can be lost. Nor are there trees
Which might prove company when it blows full
Blast: you know what i mean — leaves and branches
Can raise a tragic chorus in a gale
So that you listen to the thing you fear
Forgetting that it pummels your house too.
But there are no trees, no natural shelter.
You might think that the sea is company,
Exploding comfortably down on the cliffs,
But no: when it begins, the flung spray hits
The very windows, spits like a tame cat
Turned savage. We just sit tight while wind dives
And strafes invisibly. Space is a salvo,
We are bombarded by the empty air.
Strange, it is a huge nothing that we fear.

–Seamus Heaney