Lines composed over three thousand miles from Tinturn Abbey

In Lines Composed Over Three Thousand Miles from Tinturn Abbey, Billy Collins writes:

I was here before, a long time ago,
and now I am here again
is an observation that occurs in poetry
as frequently as rain occurs in life

and much of the rest of the poem is about

But the feeling is always the same.
It was better the first time.
This time is not nearly as good.
I'm not feeling as chipper as I did back then.

Which, I know, is an awfully common feeling.  More common than rain.  But I don't feel it.

Mary Margaret McBride interview of William Carlos Williams, Dec. 4, 1950

I couldn't possibly describe how important WCW was to my thinking and wanting 30 and 35 years ago. I've just listened for the first time to Mary Margaret McBride's radio interview of Williams, December 1950, collected with lots of other great WCW recordings at the UPenn PennSound site.

Tree of Smoke

This Veterans' Day found me aptly reading Denis Johnson's Tree of Smoke.  150 pages in, and I hadn't read any reviews until just now when I started to post.  Yowza the first paragraph of Jim Lewis' review of the book in the NYT:

Good morning and please listen to me: Denis Johnson is a true American artist, and “Tree of Smoke” is a tremendous book, a strange entertainment, very long but very fast, a great whirly ride that starts out sad and gets sadder and sadder, loops unpredictably out and around, and then lurches down so suddenly at the very end that it will make your stomach flop. It comes with the armor and accoutrements of a Major Novel: big historical theme (Vietnam), semi-mythical cultural institution (military intelligence), long time span (1963-70, with a coda set in 1983) and unreasonable length (614 pages), all of which would be off-putting if this were not, in fact, a major novel, and if Johnson’s last big book hadn’t been the small collection of eccentric and addictive short stories called “Jesus’ Son” (1992). “Tree of Smoke” is a soulful book, even a numinous one (it’s dedicated “Again for H.P.” and I’ll bet you a bundle that stands for “higher power”), and it ought to secure Johnson’s status as a revelator for this still new century — a prediction I voice confidently but reluctantly, and with a little disappointment and dismay.

By then I would have read John Barth's Chimera (da da dum, etc.)

(... speaking of Scheherazade:)  At wiki.  And pages at Google.  Comments by Harold Augenbraum at the National Book Awards site: "When I was coming of age in the 1970s, if you didn’t read John Barth you weren’t a young reader."

Worlds collide, in the nicest way

I decided to have a sonnet writing contest in the tech group I manage, requiring a $1 or equivalent entry fee for each sonnet submitted.  The prize is the pot of all the entry fees, plus a diorama submitted by NY staff of a certain tech giant company in a diorama contest I ran last year amongst the various tech companies with which we spend gazillions of dollars.  (The theme of that contest, which had many, many rules, was the Mamas & Papas.  See here for a few images from that contest.)

With some prodding my folks ground out 20 sonnets in a couple of days.  The site I'm posting them to (which will come down in a week) has become the #11 site via google for the surname of our tech-giant rep of the prize-pot diorama.  (Oh, yeah, one of the rules of the contest was the inclusion of his 4 syllable Armenian surname.)  It's a little odd.

the esteemed Naomi Klein writes about...

Capitalism, Sarah Palin-style and 'tis worthy of a studied perusal
(as is Ms. Klein herowndarnedself...).
credit to Akkam's Razor for providing that nice chewy, chunky bit of linky goodness, and here be some others from the August 4th post there...

gosh, while we're at it (we = ju ju and his head full of imaginary friends), a review of Katherine Bigelow's The Hurt Locker from Kevin Murphy's Ghost in the Machine.

Back for a moment as we wanted to be sure to point ye to Three Good Reasons to Liquidate Our Empire and 10 Steps to Take to Do So, courtesy Tom Dispatch, but credit to the heads up on the linky goodness goes to Gordon Coale.

perhaps the book my dear parental units ought...

to have written,via the marvel that is Boing Boing,
Toto and I, A Gorilla in the Family;
and whilst here, will not miss mention (courtesy the New Yorker online)
of singular published work by a certain Malcolm Lowry, on the centenary of his birth, & certainly worthy of your studied perusal,
Under The Volcano.
While at it, ju ju will make mention that a pretty damned good film adaptation of said novel, directed by John Huston and starring Albert Finney, is available.

Jen Bervin - Nets. Ugly Duckling Presse

Love the book. (Picked up a copy this weekend at the doo in the Can Factory.) Love the presse. Jen Bervin and her poetry art artists' books. Ugly Duckling Presse.

performing one's civic duty...

jonny pea's pal Lee S. writes 'bout his jury duty adventures
in Superior Court, Oak-town, Ca.

good on ye, Lee, better thee than we...

methinks we all have wondered why it seems so...

obvious, the incredible amount of idiocy and non-critical thought that permeates our culture of late. By way of Phayrngula (via Akkam's Razor) an introduction to Charles Pierce's Idiot America.

an Immediate Moment Edit:
link to original essay here

mebbe mo' later...

Yea, Verily! as threatened (!) earlier,
this next via the wily codger behind the curtain
at G. Coale's weblog thingie,
Joe Bageant's Escape from the Zombie Food Court

Yo Stumpy! Yo Dante! Yo Esteban!

lookee here!

con muchos besos y abrazos a todos ustedes,
Ju Ju

and then,
later that same day:
ju ju sharing The Morning News with ye...

Oh NO!
another website to add to all the others I'm trying to keep up with!"

be sure to check out this edition's gallery, White Space.

forty year anniversary of Easy Rider...

wow...

caught sight of that news at some blog or another, you can look up your own item regarding this news via this googled link.
Just an aside here, recently viewed a film titled Elegy w/Ben Kingsley and Dennis Hopper, a long way from his role as Billy in Easy Rider.

manohman, was just an impressionable young buck of sixteen when I saw easy rider, the northgate theatre in ol' EPT...

Later that same day...
two wonderful pieces from two different sources, both worthy of thy studied perusal:
The Things That Carried Him by Chris Jones, courtesy Esquire Magazine online;
How David Beats Goliath, by Malcolm Gladwell, via the online New Yorker.

dos cosas...

and both worth sharing...

via esteemed weblogging comrades Steve B. and Kevin M.,
first up, Mr. Baum points us to this moment in time,
and Professor Murphy provides us a timely history lesson
(for which I am very - ! - grateful, ignorant fool that me be...)

one o' these days me hopes to buy each of dese guys a beer
(or some adequate substitute...)

worthy of mention hereabouts...

& credit where credit is due,
me thanking the clusterflockers,
and now, without further ado,
Wunderkammer

happi first day o'spring!

won't ye be my neighbor?

in re our own earlier post hereabouts,
Mark M. weighs in on the topic...

& gaawwdamm, it be good to see S. Baum back at it regularly on EtB

on the cusp of spring's arrival...

meself am feeling a bit of melancholy these days, and there be any number of reasons for that, tho we won't be getting into much detail hereabouts, altho might liven things up elsewhere with those stories...

we all aware of the headlines regarding those same producers of headlines, the demise of daily newspapers across the country, the effect that the very technologies we utilizing to share these thoughts with ye and for ye to indulge in lengthy perambulations throughout the ether be, well, in some fundamental way, the things that contributed mightily to the scenario, & yourstruly sad to read about it, to realize it. Amigo-at-a-distance Gordon Coale relates a bit of his own history with Pacific Northwest newspapers & within that post a link to Clay Shirkey's piece on topic. Esteemed amigo Lee S. delivers something of an epitaph for the local fishwrap, where we once labored together on the killing floor of the classified ad sales department and where he labors yet, dealing with the stories of dead folk daily. Speaking about that local fishwrap, longtime columnist there Jon C. makes some mention of related events in yesterday's column.

so, is kind of unsettling, no?

hiya to dante, stumpy, melliemel and alla da rest o'youse...

end of february and the last time we posted anything hereabouts, well, me don't wanna think about it, been a long time, datz fo sure...
so, first, via the marvel that remains wood s lot, George Lakoff on the Obama Code; wanted to share this powerful and compelling read provided via the Times Online, evidently one of the stories from a recent edition of Granta.

had the pleasure of hosting two amigos from Tejas who were visiting here earlier this month, the esteemed CJ and his partner in crime, G Mac (mine own appellations for the gents), in Berkeley for a specialty book fair held on the Cal Campus, the Codex exhibition, where many, many lovely printed works were available to view and purchase. The time we shared together passed much too quickly, but t'was good to renew our comradeship. Mention here another pal of mine who spent much of the last month hard at work on his FAWM project, and ye can hear some of the music he produced here; Yah Babee, way to go, Phillippe!

so, not gonna overdo it, will endeavor to make more regular contributions here, tho' before we close this one, just quick mention of a handful of chunky, chewy bits of linky goodness: via LA Times online, a recent article on one of my favorite places on the planet, Mono Lake; yourstruly has been long acquainted with the weblogs am about to mention here, always worth visiting, and in particular lovely to see that the fine mind behind the retired Riley Dog still providing us much stuff to enjoy, and we always happy to see what is new at Bifurcated Rivets and Ethel the Blog. Una cosa mas, we want to pass along some encouragement to co-worker Becca B. who's started something earlier this month...

ciao ciao, bambini...

Be there, or be square. NY Writers Coalition party @ Galapagos. Tomorrow, Feb. 9, at 7 PM.

How to write a poem for the president

Jim Fisher at Salon, Elizabeth Alexander has been commissioned to write a poem for Inauguration Day. But the checkered history of the form suggests it's an almost impossible task, via Andrew Sullivan.

Seems like six or seven or eight years ago I was fooling around with occasional verse. I like occasional verse. There! I've said it!

Diversion: Tumbarumba

Jah, Tumbarumba, for the Firefoxers in the crowd:

Tumbarumba is a frolic of intrusions—a conceptual artwork in the form of a Firefox extension. Tumbarumba hides stories—twelve new stories by outstanding authors—where you least expect to find them, turning your everyday web browsing into a strange journey. You can read more about how it works or just discover it for yourself by downloading it now and then browsing!

Via Rhizome. The coinkydink is that I had lunch to day with Mellie Mel and an old acquaintance / sometimes colleague of Mel's, and we got to chatting about the old text adventure games (Colossal Cave!) and programming in Prolog and all that stuff. The stories never end.