... taking the manner for the matter ... is the way of vulgarisers

The title comes from Gertrude Stein's fabulous and amazing The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, which is definitely one of the most fabulous and amazing books ever created in the whole universe, and I strongly urge you to read it.

She also says this in her book:

Eliot and Gertrude Stein had a solemn conversation, mostly about split infinitives and other grammatical solecisms and why Gertrude Stein used them. Finally Lady Rothermere and Eliot rose to go and Eliot said that if he printed anything of Gertrude Stein's in the Criterion it would have to be her very latest thing. They left and Gertrude Stein said, don't bother to finish your dress, now we don't have to go, and she began to write a portrait of T. S. Eliot and called it the fifteenth of November, that being this day and so there could be no doubt but that it was her latest thing. It was all about wool is wool and silk is silk or wool is woollen and silk is silken. She sent it to T. S. Eliot and he accepted it but naturally he did not print it.

Then began a long correspondence, not between Gertrude Stein and T. S. Eliot, but between T. S. Eliot's secretary and myself. We addressed each other as Sir, I signing myself A. B. Toklas and she signing initials. It was only considerably afterwards that I found out his secretary was not a young man. I don't know whether she ever found out that I was not.

In spite of all this correspondence nothing happened and Gertrude Stein Mischievously told the story to all the english people coming to the house and at that moment there were a great many english people coming in and out. At any rate finally there was a note, it was now early spring, from the Criterion asking would Miss Stein mind if her contribution appeared in the October number. She replied that nothing could be more suitable than the fifteenth of November on the fifteenth of October.

Once more a long silence and then this time came proof of the article. We were surprised but returned the proof promptly. Apparently a young man had sent it without authority because very shortly came an apologetic letter saying that there had been a mistake, the article was not to be printed just yet. This was also told to the passing english with the result that after all it was printed. Thereafter it was reprinted in the Georgian stories. Gertrude Stein was delighted when later she was told that Eliot had said in Cambridge that the work of Gertrude Stein was very fine but not for us.

In this quotation, I particularly like the part where she says very fine but not for us; this is quite beautiful, I think. On an entirely different note I shall say that as an anti-capitalist "jewish" atheist I am not only obliged to not celebrate shitsmas, but to do so pleasantly. Also, every body has gone away from the Borgh and I am broke. Happy Shitsmas, then.

Two very old pomes which need more work on their perhaps overly conclusive conclusory type line things

These pomes are from 2005, and I still like them, but I have never been satisfied with their endings, which are rather precious. I am thinking of digging them up, dusting them over and recapitulating their whateveralities...

Bread

This is the comfort of bread
Going in and in
Tentatively sweet;

Bread,
In the cheeks, the chest;
Down the arms into the fingers, the pen.

This is the comfort of bread:
Monosyllabic, motherly.

This is the milk of human
Loneliness: a yeasty breast to suckle.


Dough

This is the pliancy of dough:
A pliant word,
Round-textured, silken. This
Is a tower of yeasty flour;
These hands going
In and in.
This is water and salt and work:
In the resolution of this bloodwarm softness,
The formulation of a new self.

Conversation with a three-and-three-quarter year-old

X: Why can't you turn on the light in the study?

Belle: I'm not tall enough to reach it...

X: Why not? My mommy can reach it.

Belle: I am very much shorter than your mommy.

X: Don't worry - you'll grow.

Belle: I'm afraid I haven't grown any taller in the last 15 years. But I'm wondering whether, in your earnest opinion, grown-ups continue to grow through-out their lives?

X: Yes - my mommy grows. Perhaps you should eat more food?

Belle: I do eat more food, but it only makes me grow outward, not upward. I'm wondering, though, if grown-ups continue to grow through-out their lives then very old people must be enormously big, right?

X: Yes...

Belle: So - are your grandparents, say, enormously tall?

X: Yes, granny and grandpa are very big.

Belle: Big in age or big in height?

X: Big in height...

A modem is not a condom, but if you are really creative you could probably put your computer inside the latter

Last night was my poetry workshop, and in order to make it better, I gathered together some funds from the other persons in the class, and ran over to the liquor store, where I purchased my reflection, and also a bottle of cheap whisker. Then I ran and walked back, and the other people said the change was my tip, so I put it next to my bosom, and later purchased some things which it is possible to eat. Then I went home and consumed more things, including a small computer and a piece of paper that was being used to decorate it. I was drunk from the whisker, and much as it pains me to admit it, the paper had upset my internal fluidity, and therefore I could not sleep. The solution to this was to rise from my insomnolescence, and further consume some pieces of paper that my students had submitted to me in a desperate attempt to fulfil the requirement of a grade. This paper produced a lightening of the soul and a weightening of the lymph nodes such that I was able, in the early hours of the day, to turn myself into a pillow.

Belle has another attack of antagonism

The problem with the so-called 'post-avant' is that once it has been normalised (as it has), it no longer does its work, either poetically or politically. Poetically, it loses its surprise (and is just too damn easy); politically, well, if everyone's doing it, it can't be radical, can it? -- more particularly, if "it" has no means of conveying anything other than something about language (for instance, see Stan Apps' recent blog entry on whether onomatopoeia can be non-mimetic!), it can't do anything political anyway.

The "post-avant", in short, is a fundamentally conservative genre. Conservative can be okay (sometimes...occasionally?...well, maybe), but admit it at least!

And on the business of something about language, I am thoroughly sick of everyone in academe and McPost-post-whatever wanking off about language. (Chew on dat for knocking on yer axi-ohms...) Language is fun; I dig it myself - but can we use it for something once in a while? (To commincate, say?) ...and with people who can understand it.

Central principle of coherence & organisation: ACCESSIBILITY.

I should note that I think nonsense and unintelligibility can be great political devices. Or just great devices for making fun of people. (Etcetera.) But - dare I say it? - I think folks need to be a wee bit more responsible in their use thereof!

The other thing about the "post-avant" is that they seem to be all indistinguishable from one another. This could be the point, but I suspect it is not.

finis

A New Thinker's Manifesto

With this horribly pretentious title, I present thee what I hope will at some stage in the less hot-headed future become a more substantial comment on various things in various institutions that make me variously hot-headed. In other words, this is but a beginning, scrawled on a Sunday morn'.

1. "Dare to be reductive"...crystalise, baby, rarefy.

2. Say what you mean, and mean what you say, unless you are being funny.

3. Be funny.

4. Don't be so flarking serious.

5. Write poetry that makes sense.

6. Employ syllogistic thinking and organisational principles in your poetry.

7. Discover a delicate way of insulting people.

8. Do not ever do a degree in "creative writing".

9. Write creatively.

10. Know thy Blake, and thy Eliot, and several mid-20th century British poets.

11. Never, ever, attempt to imitate Gertrude Stein.

12. There is only one Gertrude Stein, and you don't understand her.

13. If you are a scholar, love the writers that you criticise.

14. If you are a writer, read.

15. Do not masturbate in public.

16. Maintain a scepticism of all things, especially that which is commonly regarded as axiomatic.

17. If you write poetry that does not make sense, let it be nonsense poetry.

18. Spend time with children, listening, holding.

19. Describe your interests to someone who is not a scholar or writer.

20. Admit that your interests are totally irrelevant; that you are futile.

21. Discuss poos, farts, and bums (using these terms).

22. When you bullshit, do so carefully and consciously.

23. Some examples of McIntellectual Words:

alterity
liminal
other
subvert
moment
problematic (n.)
thematic (n.)
negotiate
segue
problematise
complicate

24. Some examples of words that I am particularly fond of:

viscera
equipoise
desire
tree
come
panic
paraphernalia
blood
spaz
dough
milk
blob
dongle

Various Poymes

Here are three various poymes:

XXVIII

There is a fire drill at the daycare
And lots and lots and lots of very little persons
Tumble onto the pavement.

You think you will take a tiny boy
Whose serene face
Reminds you that everything is still so strange
A roaring riot wouldn’t raise a squeal.


XXX

Your dream is driven
By an empty chair,
To your embarrassment,
Remote-controlled by you mother.

You scrunch into the driver’s seat
Where a sense of pretence
Becomes the surprising feeling of power.

You drive your dream along an empty road
Where the feeling of power becomes a bicycle.
Your feeling – now a feeling of freewheeling –
Takes you towards the ocean,
Where you know you will find
A dune, the moon, and a baby baboon.


XL

A little boy answers your advertisement in the classifieds;
He would like to read you a poem
That he has found
On a perfect piece of paper,
Written in indigo ink.