Stephen Mitchell’s translation of Gilgamesh

Still engaged with elements of Gilgamesh, his frantic, futile search

Encounter with Siduri, the veiled tavern keeper at the edge of the world

She climbs on her roof when she sees him coming

Is she the Rampart? Refreshment? or just a stop along the way

I dreamt of an innkeeper in March 2002 – maybe Siduri

Intersecting the journey
Static and stubborn

Naturally suspicious
and possibly stingy

Antagonistic to the traveler
yet in need of his visit

At length she helps him
take the next step forward

Advice to “go home” is
always premature

Siduri the wet blanket

He does it eventually

“Work on good prose has three steps: a musical stage when it is composed, an architectonic one when it is built, and a textile one when it is woven.”

~Walter Benjamin, critic and philosopher (1892-1940)
quoted on http://wordsmith.org/words/mantic.html

“The impulse that originally gave us the prose poem, in fact, beginning with Aloysius Bertrand and predecessors, then shaped by the surrealists and progeny, was the drive to disconnect from the rigidity of formal rules that bound French poetry. Ultimately, the disconnection extended to reason itself, which surrealist originators saw as prosody’s handmaid.”

~Barry Silesky, “Structure in Prose Poems?”, Sentence 2

Handmaid and handmade.

I am excited by disconnection. Gaps.

I am excited by an example of stubborn willful insistence on disconnection from reason. Not in an insane way. In a stubborn, pissed-off way, that says “Well, what has reason done for me lately?” Forget the fact that you can’t live without it.

Sometimes I get a notion that I need to study, really study, in a disciplined way, figure out who the really smart authors are, synthesize, analyse, develop a personal philosophy without any holes, impermeable, beyond reason because so well reasoned. The ANSWER. Alleluia!

Well, no laughter there.
Unreasonable as the fretful tulip,
in search of the mantic companions.

Haiku doesn’t come that easily for me –

• I come up with phrases that are three or four syllables, not five or seven
• I have trouble describing just what is there
• I’m always trying to introduce some far-out wacky metaphor

So – I think haiku might be a good practice for awhile, just to counteract my tendencies and widen my field.

Frog acid brigade – five syllable phrase that came into my head yesterday. Sure do like the sound of it. But it doesn’t belong in a haiku, does it.

How much of poetry is really a self-induced trance?

Can you be your own inspiration?

Can you make connections with those messengers? (same question)

Karen Swenson workshop tomorrow

Heavily scented bathrooms are required here. Also bowls of hard candy in every conference room.

Poetry as haze – you look at life through it.

“Influenced by” Carlos Edmundo de Ory’s Aerolites

aerolite: a stony meteorite

More about Ory, translation by google: Of their work titles like “Technique and weeping” stand out, “flauta prohibited”, “the sonetos”, “Lee without fear”, “opened Poetry”, “Metanoia” and “Meteorites”.

I’m sorry, that makes me want to laugh without weeping.

I’m really tempted to try to make a piece of software or technology perform a poetic feat. Like a little self-involved set of links. But I’m hesitant due to the gimmickry factor. You couldn’t possibly take a manufacture like that seriously. No, a book you can accept, but not a “site.” And you have to consider the co-author – Microsoft? I think not. Maybe an open source product. The technology side would have to be very clean.

Time to go home. Maybe I will finally get a chance to work on some exhibits this weekend. But don’t count on it.

Best,
Worst

…that story unraveled as tho it had been written down since Day 1 in the great dusty blue velvet Book of Joyluck. How did you know my birthday comes later this month and you already gave me a present. Apologies for the silly goose card, it was the only one I had left.

I am so glad you are doing a lot of writing and if you ever put the theme writing together over even a Few years, you must tell me because it is very fascinating.

AND there was an eclipse of the moon (although I didn’t see it) and a light dusting of snow on the garbage (a gift from your religion)

From
Fine Day

I don’t like poetry
all type type type

I appreciate the
other components
paper
image
putting it together

If there is community
or not
I can stand it

There comes a point when I have to

let go of a lot of regular wantings

and move forward into an Ether Net
a net an Idyllic Net a Nameless Net a Net of Night a Net of Not or Notes

Today my body aches with March
a constellation crumbling
refuge – long delayed

this morning’s
candle lit
with words to
Robert Desnos

“holding the rose the students had given him,
refusing to give it up even when it had faded”

William Kulik, APR Mar/Apr 2005 Vol. 34/No. 2 | Robert Desnos

march – one last snowfall
people trudging home in it’s
celestial crystals