and why change subjects until you've exhausted one?

so carrying on in the same vein, here's a link to a conversation between Morton Feldman and John Cage, from UBUWEB. It's very long and I haven't listened to it all. What Feldman says early on, about sounds etc. intruding on our life, Cage responds to by saying 'but that would make us very unhappy'. Feldman says, 'or, we surrender to it, and call it culture'. This reminds me of something Clark Coolidge said in an interview, available here:

'But I don't think you understand art. (How's that for a big final statement?) I was looking at this wonderful new collection of Morton Feldman's essays, and somewhere he's talking about that great moment when for a couple of weeks nobody understood art. And it was just enough time to really get something going. And also nobody was looking at these artists particularly, they weren't under the microscope, they weren't famous. Somewhere also he talks of somebody saying "Well I don't understand, I don't understand"; and he says, "Well, you're not supposed to understand art, you're supposed to understand culture." And I like that distinction. Culture being the sort of support area around art maybe, the comments on it, which are . . . more analytical, or whatever. A commentary using discourse. Those of us who use words as art have that additional problem of having all the criticism and comment use the same medium, which painters or musicians don't have.'

Missing Morty!

This is an article from the guardian about the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival's Morton Feldman series:

'His music is delicate, finely wrought, always understated, yet he was a big man, dedicated to food and cigarettes, with a personality even his friends described as abrasive. I met him a couple of times in the mid-1980s at the Darmstadt new music summer school. He referred to me in a lecture as that "young English boy" and was entirely dismissive of my ideas, but for me the opportunity to hear him talking about music was still of enormous importance.'

Motion attacks failure to honour centenary of W H Auden's birth: "They should be ashamed of themselves. If you think we do nothing for Auden and only this year we have a national nervous breakdown for Betjeman,"

Ségolène Royal

The Inverness-based Maggie's Highland Cancer Caring Centre has won a prestigious award for architecture.

an interview with John McDonnell: 'Traditional route - win the argument, on the base of organization. That's what we're doing.'

review of 'Contemporary Poetry And Contemporary Science', edited by Robert Crawford, from the Independent: 'The book has a strong Scottish contingent and the (Scottish) editor claims that Scotland has a better record of poetry/science exchange than England. This is probably true, but both traditions pale beside the Italian, from Lucretius (who receives warm treatment from Edwin Morgan) through Galileo to Calvino and Primo Levi.'

conviction

SSP MSP Rosie Kane reflects on her experience of Cornton Vale women’s prison:

"I watched tiny little women who looked like children go through the early stages of detox. It’s agony, there’s the stomach cramps, the sickness, paranoia, fear, nightmares and terrible hot flushes.
I really took to one of the lassies and felt utterly helpless as I watched her suffer. She had been stealing to manage her heroine addiction.
She had been living on the street and really did not know how to care for herself.
She had spent most of her life in care which had left her insecure and vulnerable.
Three years ago, she started injecting and now she can’t stop. She would love some sort of normal life but she will soon be released and the world she steps into isn’t likely to be any better than the world she left so she is worried about how she will cope.
We should all be worried about how she will cope."

follow the link for the full article.

Jarvis Cocker on TFI Friday

So Farewell, then

Donald Rumsfeld. You will be remembered for your poetry.

The Collected Poems of Donald Rumsfeld.

THE SECRET

You may think two posts in one day is excessive. But I say, you only have your self to blame; you attracted me into your life... And now you have to live with the consequences, unless you want to visualize me out of your life.. then that will happen.

I am not making fun. Watch this film. Even though it's an hour and a half long, it's sort of mesmerising. It's also ludicrous.

Watching it, I think to myself... Are we supposed to WANT to be like you guys?

Here's the link:

http://www.thelastoutpost.com/site/1235/default.aspx

Since it looks like the Democrats have won control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate, perhaps the 'era of shame', as an American friend of mine dubb(ya)ed it, is in fact almost over. But I want to provide a link to poet Charles Bernstein's blog, since it emphasizes why this election was important, and not only for the U.S. Why, also, the departure of Rumsfeld runs deeper than Republican scapegoating. It is an admission that the war in Iraq is at deadlock.

I found this post of Bernstein's really moving. I think 'Girly Man' is a wonderful poem.



And in mentioning Bernstein I should also give a link to this interview by Charles Bernstein, of the poet and managing editor of How2Journal, Redell Olsen.

some links

Visual Rhyming

James Fenton on Love Poems from Saturday's Guardian: "Sometimes a poem is itself a riddle"

And from the Guardian of August 26th 2006, this anecdote (full article here):
One thing at least is beyond dispute: after the Cambridge Marxist-obscurantist poet Jeremy Prynne told the Newcastle poet Tom Pickard to keep his young son quiet during a reading, Pickard went outside and smashed his Land Rover into Prynne's half- timbered Morris Oxford saloon."I reckon it was about here," Pickard, who still lives locally, said last week. We were driving slowly past a series of recently sandblasted and conservatoried cottages with enviable views over the Allen Valley. "I drove to the top of the hill, went down into second, slammed on the brakes and sledged into him." It was the kind of delinquent act that endeared Pickard to his friend Allen Ginsberg and others of the Beat Generation.

so...

time for one of my poems. But I've been a bit anxious about posting it here since i deleted all the other ones a while ago: presumably i must think that whatever i'm posting now is better than all those other poems. While i'm not comparing my blog-tantrum to Robert Duncan's self-imposed 15 year hiatus from publishing books, i can imagine he was nervous too about why he then decided to break it. And that was what I was thinking, a lot, why am i now going to post a poem on here, after not for a while? So... I have decided to publish something silly, which, though, in the post-alarm clock doze of composition i still quite like:

‘d-d-ditty’

[to be sung in the sh-sh-shower]

it’s regrettable
(“r-r-regrettable”)
when you begin
to plan
when you shave
around your week
so that
for the important
days you will
have the right
stubble
(“st-st-stubble”)

Films & Poetry

There are a few films coming up at The Filmhouse in Edinburgh that are interesting and tied to poetry. The blurbs are taken from the Filmhouse brochure:

If I Should Fall From Grace: The Shane McGowan Story
Thu 2 Nov at 8.15pm

Poignant documentary on the life and times of the lyricist and singer who popularised Irish folk songs for the post-punk generation and whose band, The Pogues, provided a spark of life and energy during the bleakness of Thatcher's Britain. The film takes as its base a candid interview with McGowan himself, punctuated by music videos, archival footage and interviews with his peers and friends and family. The result is a portrayal of an independent and free-spirited genius, damaged by, but unrepentant about, his addiction to alcohol.

Hallaig – The Landscape and Poetry of Sorley MacLean

Tue 7 Nov at 6.00pm

















Timothy Neat | Britain 1984 | 1h5m | 35mm | PG Documentary

Timothy Neat's documentary on the Scottish poet Sorley MacLean is a truly wonderful evocation of poetry and landscape.

Poetic Cinema

Mon 6 Nov at 5.45pm

Margaret Tait/ Bernard McLaverty/ Neil Kempsell | Britain 19602005 | 1h30m | Various formats | PG

Three entirely different approaches to film poetry. From Margaret Tait we have three of her 'film poems' - Where I Am Is Here (1964), Colour Poems (1974) and Hugh MacDiarmid; A Portrait (1964); from Neil Kempsell, his visual interpretation of Sorley Maclean's poem Halliag , about the tragic loss and memories of a highland community on the Island of Raasay; and from Bernard MacLaverty, his adaptation of the Seamus Heaney poem, Bye-Child, a superb example of how to create a poetic language for the cinema.