Postcard from England

Arrived today.

Art/concept by Rob aka Bumpo aka Rob.

Rob is the proprietor of Bumpo's Blog.

The Blue Mosque

I think I was drawn to this card because I thought the photograph captured a flying saucer visiting the celebrated Blue Mosque in Istanbul.

I had this dream once that I totally believed, in which the end of the world began in Istanbul.

I still sort of believe it.

Someone has used this as a Christmas card.

I believe his name reads "Ismet Turkmen."

The poet Anne Waldman wrote about this Mosque.

The flowers look very colorful and obedient.

Americans Spent a Lot of Time in Arboreta in the Last Century

This one lets me know what Homer was doing on January 12, 1912.

Homer was writing to Miss Grace L. Pratt who resided in (Edgar Hills? Elgar Hills?) in Pennsylvania.

He was writing her from Germany.

Clearly Homer liked this arboretum in Frankfurt.

I have trouble reading Homer's handwriting (in pencil) and I'm wondering if Grace did.

Could she decipher Homer's address in Germany with more success than I have had today?

Did anything ever come of this?

Did Homer want to hit it?

Or was Grace the maiden aunt, the spinster who collected postcards instead of orgasms?

So much mystery on the reverse of an old postcard!

Homer writes that he expects he will go to Weisbaden.

Weren't there spas there? Was Homer ill? Or am I misremembering that?

It's eerie to think Homer is in Europe even before WWI.

There is not anti-German sentiment yet.

But fast forward to 1941 and see how fucking tired we all are of these people.

They should have just stayed in the arboretum business.

A 10 something German stamp in red cancelled by some Frankfurters on the back.

Now I will wonder about Homer and Grace all evening.

Loki, the Original "Power Bottom"

Loki is the original "power bottom."

Or is he just bi?

Bisexual men always mean trouble.

Loki is no exception.

Another postcard I bought in Iceland like a good little American.

Isn't this postcard hideous?

You can go to Wiki and read all about Loki's exploits.

Now I want to go write a "Loki poem."


On reverse of card: "Loki, one of the Aesir and Odin's companion. He personified fire and was clever but mischievous and malicious, and an opponent of the gods as well as their companion. After having stolen the head of Mimir, the source of wisdom, he was killed by Himdallur in Ragnarok or the last battle of the Gods."

Don't you love how the future has already happened in Norse cosmology?

And notice the euphemistic use of "companion" for gaybro.

Even in Norse mythology that tired euphemism is trotted out!

Funnily enough it also says, "Distributed by Thor--box 1639 - 122 - Iceland."

I didn't know Thor went into the postcard business!

Lemon Meringue Pie at Lucille and Otley's

This one gets around a lot.

I think I actually have three specimens of this card!

This must have caught on and become some sort of cult classic of cardiana.

I'm fairly certain the poet Robert Gregory (who I do believe lives in the state where the restaurant is located) sent me this card.

And I received another from someone else (don't think it was a literary figure).

This third I found in Middletown, PA, at Saturday's Market (giant rural indoor/outdoor flea market and farmer's market that's been going for decades).

I'm guessing Lucille and Otley have passed on into the great beyond by now since this card is date stamped 1959 and has its 3 cent stamp cancelled with the six old wavy lines.

The short note is addressed to Colonel & Mrs. Blizzard, who at that time resided in Ocean City, New Jersey.

It reads, "On our vacation--at present visiting in Delray Beach. So far we have had perfect weather. Best regards from The Hagers."

A thoroughly original message, as you can see.

I'm not quite sure why postcard companies didn't have print pre-written postcards (with fake handwriting reproduced convincingly).

They would just need the 1) "Weather beautiful. Wish you were here." and the 2) Unfortunately it's rained the whole time. Just our luck!"

And they would have ninety-nine percent of us covered.

Of course, I'm going to go Google this now to see what comes up, and see if either Lucille, Otley or both of them are still kicking.

And if the restaurant lives on.

It was located at S. Federal at 10th Avenue in Boynton Beach, Fla.

Notice how they used to abbreviate names of states?

You just stopped writing wherever you wanted, whenever your hand got tired, and put a period there.

My state was often written as "Penna." That was before draconian two letter abbreviations became the rule.

I think sometimes my Mom still writes "Calif." on some of her correspondence to her sister who lives there.

Oh, just in case they are still serving this wonderful pie....

"Serving 5 to 8 P.M.--Sundays 12 to 8 P.M. Closed Mondays."

Clearly Lucille and Otley had lives outside of the restaurant.

I think people love this card so much because 1) the hideous aesthetic of the photo 2) the Verboten and wrong-headed inclusion of blackness, the Void which lingers just beyond all lemon meringue pie and 3) the awareness of what's really important in life.

I salute the designer of this card.

That would be Charles Justus Wick, who resided or had his studio at 27 S.E. 4th Ave, Delray Beach, Fla.

Back in the day.

Here it is at Cardcow.com and they want fifteen simoleons for it. That's an expensive slice of pie!

Pie for sale!

And surprise surprise!

I think the restaurant's still there. Well, it was in 1997 and it's sort of become legendary.

While Lucille and Otley retired in 1975, it continues to be a family business and continues to delight customers.

And the hours have virtually never changed! It's still noon to eight on Sundays!

They serve a "high tea," which is a vanishing ritual.

You can read all about the venerable restaurant's history here:

And the meringue goes on...

Student Prison (Karzer) at Heidelberg University

Isn't this room wild?

It looks like outsider art.

And I suppose it is.

Because this is the old Karzer ("students' prison") at Heidelberg University (Universitat).

The students had to find some way to pass the time.

Hence this great wall art.

I love the shadow people.

Edmund von Konig's name is on here. I think he is the photographer.

What a great creepy room this is.

Postcard published in Heidelberg.

Unused.

No idea as to date but I'm guessing seventies.

Center Church, New Haven, Conn.

"THE CRYPT. The Meeting House was built over a section of the ancient burying ground which occupied part of the Green, without disturbing the graves. The oldest stone is dated 1687. Three pastors of the church rest here: Pierpont, Noyes and Whittlsey."

I'm guessing this card could be the late sixties. Or possibly the early to mid seventies.

Not used.

I just noticed the tape on it now when I was scanning it.

I'm scared to remove it because this is only semi-glossy. And when tape has been on that long, it's going to leave a hurting when it's removed usually.

I'm just freaked out by this one because it looks like some creepy conceptualist art piece.

It looks like some conceptualist has put a bunch of gravestones in a parking garage.

And the sight of ancient gravestones half-submerged in modern concrete just makes it even creepier.

It's as though they're saying, "Sorry. You weren't quite buried enough."

Parking garages already feel (and often look) mortuarial and they ofen give me a feeling of claustrophobia--a low roof usually.

So this is rather like putting more graves inside something that already feels like a grave.

So we go nesting the dead like those Ukrainian dolls.

Icelanders Believe in Trolls

I think the surveys taken over there recently show that something like 89% of Icelanders believe trolls actually exist.

Compare this with the survey whcih showed that only about 44% of Icelanders believe in God.

The fact that there are so many bars in Iceland might have something to do with the first figure.

Because everybody knows that bars are always filled with trolls.

This Christmas card shows happy trolls decorating the Jol (pronounced close to "Yule") tree.

This is the sunny side of trolls.

You do not want to see the unsunny side of trolls.

Puffins

Humans arrived in Iceland around 900 A.D.

Presumably, puffins had a good thing going until then.

Because humans think puffins are cute.

But humans also think puffins are cute stuffed and mounted.

I was horrified to see stuffed puffins (and other avians) for sale in the gift shops over there.

Here are some puffin facts from the back of this postcard: "Puffins are migratory birds that arrive in Iceland in April. Their breeding and fledgeling season span from May until September, after which the puffins leave for the open Atlantic ocean. Their nest rests at the end of approximately metre-long burrowed tunnels. These tunnels riddle the ground where the puffins colonize on cliff faces, grassy islands and mountain ledges near the sea."

Now I want to have a character die on a cliff in Iceland by stepping on some ground near the cliff's edge which has been undermined by a puffin tunnel.

It would just be such a cool, outre death.

Done-in by puffins.

Puffins and I have a lot in common. They like to hang out around the Tjornin. I like to hang out around the Tjornin.

Here is what I imagine these puffins saying in this uber-adorable postcard (photograph by Daniel Bergmann)...

Puffin Da (above): "I'm here for my son. You know you're supposed to have him ready...where is he?"

Puffin Ma: "Alternate Tuesdays are normally your custodial days. But this is a holiday. Check your custodial agreement. When you're not so drunk that you can't read..."

Puffin Da: "You got the entire fucking tunnel (which I dug out with the toil of my beak, I'd like to point out) by conning that judge, yet you still always find a reason to complain and make my life a living hell, even when you're no longer in it.

Puffin Ma: "Seek sympathy from that ho of a fledgeling I've seen you chasing around the Tjornin. Better be careful or you might have more child support than there are fish in the sea. They say the Newfoundland banks were fished out, ya know?"

Puffin Da: "Do you know what the Vikings would have done to a wife with a tongue like yours?

Puffin Ma: "I don't believe the Vikings ever muttered "This ocean is so FUCKING COLD!" over and over. Like a little girl. I don't miss overwintering with you out on that icy sea one fucking bit. At least I can get some sleep now. And let me tell you, that's worth more than any man."

Bishop Gudbrandur Thorlaksson's Map of Iceland

From Abraham Ortelius. Theatrum orbis terrarium.

Published in Antwerp in 1590.

It also helpfully points out where the sea-monsters live (or like to party).

Iceland is an island that is mostly made out of water (frozen water).

Floating on the water.

And the rest is volcanic rock.

The winter weather in Reykjavik is basically the same as New York City's.

Sometimes it's even milder.

It just doesn't get very warm in the summer (60s usually).

It is not in the Arctic Circle, as most believe.

If you dodn't believe me, go look again at your globe.

So you won't see narwhals.

They hang out much further north.

They only see humans once in their lifetimes, if that.

Some consider them lucky.

Kobayashi Kiyochika (1847-1915)

Reconnaisance on a Snowy Night Near Nuzhuang (1895).

Of course, I'm going to steal that title for a poem's title...which will of course be about something completely else.

The Rhode Island School of Design has an amazing museum and an absolutely stupefying collection of Japanese woodblock prints.

The Rhode Island School of Design (pronounced "Riz-dee" by the cognoscenti and other annoying, lazy people) also has a nine hundred year old Buddha that I am in love with.

Obviously, I bought this postcard in the gift shop (just like that Luft character in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?) to prove my humanness.

Is it working?

The triptych staging of the composition here is just stunning.

The foregrounded white birch is uber-real.

The awareness of time's triune nature is spooky.

Tomer Inbar's Camellia

Tomer Inbar was the editor of Camellia, a great little poetry magazine out of Ithaca, NY.

It was a zine, but those two little staples held together a plethora of great literature.

Inbar managed to establish a definite aesthetic for the mag: minimalist, oblique, small poems and prose poems that usually packed a surprising metaphysical wallop.

Think the Imagist side of William Carlos Williams meets the slyest Japanese poetry.

There were some great translations in here. I believe it was Inbar who translated a splendid poem (on Frankenstein!) by a contemporary Japanese poet.

A handful of my friends published here quite a bit and I invariably liked the works by them Tomer selected. Celestine Frost and Jeff Vetock both published in the pages of Camellia on several occasions. I think Jeff published some translations of the Brothers Grimm here.

I think I alienated Tomer Inbar (if one can alienate people one doesn't really know) by sending him a bipolar letter one time.

I didn't do that often at all, but when I did they were usually "doozies," to use the vernacular of the clearly insane.

Camellia ran for a dozen or so issues, I believe, and they were all keepers.

I look forward to finding my old issues when I next scour my former dwelling.

This postcard from Tomer (who has a really unusual, beautiful hand) shows the character for "camellia" and was brushed by Satchko Kawayama.

What a classy postcard, custom made for a classy magazine!

I'm showing it two ways here.

The "correct" orientation would be with the artist's woodblock signature at the upper left. I think.

But I much prefer this, incorrect as it may be, the other way I uploaded it.

I guess my orientation is different.

Scott Noel

"Roxborough, Early Spring" Oil/Linen 54" X 68." 1993.

I remember enjoying this Philadelphia artist's work in several State Museum shows here.

I love the way Scott Noel loves his Philadelphia neighborhoods as much as Utrillo loved his Montmartre.

Actually, I prefer Noel's paintings to Utrillo's.

Noel definitely has the edge as a colorist.

And any painter who can openly display an unabashed love for Manayunk deserves some street cred.

(One gay man to another on street: "Why must you do that?" "Do what?" "Openly display..." "I believe you are speaking in the 'tongue of the enemy'".)

And some museum cred too. Because he's a painter of subtleties beaten fine, of psychological nuance.

Who said naturalism is dead and realism is a dead letter office?

He's better-known for his figurative paintings. That's the psychological nuance I was talking about.

And he knows how to work that pastel magic when he works in that medium.

This card is for a show he had in the Bowery Gallery which was (is) at 121 Wooster Street.

I love Wooster Street.

Is the bookstore still there that has all the handmade books in the glass case by the checkout?

Soho. Noho. Eat cheap.

WARNING: YOU ARE ENTERING A VISUALLY ADDICTIVE ZONE.

"Dreams walking in broad daylight."

Yes, Children, I Too was Once Young and...

disagreeable.

Oh well, it almost rhymes with "beautiful."

This invitation to questionable alfresco proceedings came from a couple that would later be married (XY-XX marriage).

Yes, they had a very large privacy hedge.

On the reverse, they have advice from Star Wars: "Use the force, Luke."

And directions to their new house, which they were initiating with much champagne, music and frivolity.

The card also lists this as a BYOI affair. That's "Bring Your Own Instruments."

One of the hosts is a recording artist. The other works in the medical field.

So you could interpret that (scarily) two different ways.

Did I RSVP by August 10th?

Hmmmm.

Let's just say my boyfriend and I had our towels in the car, but not-so-regrettably we happened to pass a yard sale on the way there.

Orgasms are one thing, but deals are another.

I mean, Get Real!

Christian Burgaud

Writer Jim Leftwich sent me this postcard featuring the art of Christian Burgaud.

Burgaud is known as a mail artist and he apparently figured in the Prakalpana Movement.

You can read more about that movement here: the Prakalpana Movement

This piece is titled "L'escalier du reve" ("Dream Staircase").

Infinite regress.

Apparently mail artists are taken much more seriously in France, or at least Burgaud is.

Because this was released in a very commercial form (by Carted 29).

This is a quality postcard on heavy stock with just the right glossiness.

We all love the glossiness.

S'nice.

Muse & Drudge

The divine Harryette.

This book came out (to his great credit, as always) through Gil Ott's fine Singing Horse Press, which also published a great, important poetry magazine for many years.

Gil Ott made his life and literature in Philadelphia.

He died much younger than poetry wanted him to.

Why does the post office have to stamp shit on my postcards?

The stamp cancellation should be enough, damn it.

Love the photo of the poet here.

She might be one of the most inventive and playful, but there is still room for the sacramental in her writing.

Well, her writing becomes the sacrament.

"Carolina Low Country Fossils"

A postcard from beloved poet Celestine Frost.

I am very proud of having published her magiserial I gathered my ear from the green field.

Now if I can just get my brother to move the furniture he moved into my Mom's basement when he got divorced many years ago, so I could actually get to these books, I could list them online for sale and do right by the poet!

My mom promises that he will do this one day.

But for now that room looks like the residence of the Collier Brothers in New York back in the day. Have you ever seen photographs of that place? You probably think I'm joking about my brother's packing of his furniture but it is almost a work of art---some form of twisted conceptualism--that someone would attempt to compress an entire house into a single room. And he fucking did it. It's like a fucking Rubik's cube of furniture.

Which leads to the question, "When they broke up, my brother appears to have gotten every piece of furniture in their large house. So what did his wife get?" Short answer: sanity.

Anyway...

I must have a hundred letters from Celestine in many of which she would often vacillate between language and imagery (the plasticity of her poetic imagination is very much like Apollinaire's) but for postcards she usually stayed with words.

Usually she would select really great art that was making the rounds in New York that year so I could get glimpses of what people were seeing at least.

And her husband is designer Carl Lehmann-Haupt (brother of the New York Times reviewer, yes) so between the two of them you can imagine the feast of visual culture they enjoy in New York. They would probably starve visually if they lived anywhere else.

So this postcard is the exception for Celestine.

But she picked well. I love this stuff. I have a tube of shark's teeth about three feet from where I'm sitting.

I love to just spill them out in the palm of my hand and marvel. A lot of these sharks must have died as babies. Or else they were tiny sharks.

I also like to spill them across my scanner glass when I do scanner art. They're so damn photogenic.

Right now I'm hearing Matthew Barney singing (yes, you heard right). Bjork actually had him sing on her soundtrack for Drawing Restraint 9 and he's so cute. He acquits himself admirably.

I love the "Ambergris March" song. What is she using on there? It sounds like cembalo and a bird's thrum alternating. A bird's thrum being used as a rhythmic element. I bet it's an ancient cembalo. It's probably something that imitates a bird's thrum, but it really does sound like the wings of a bird thrumming.

So not only does he get to be the Abercrombie & Fitch boy (or was it J. Crew--yes J. Crew, sorry) when he's young and cute (and I think a football star at his high school). But he gets to be a god in the art world. And marry Viking Queen Bjork and make her babies . And now he gets to sing.

Now that's a charmed life.

Celestine's a Southerner and she's showing you what her local geography looked like way back when with this postcard.

"These fossils are from 16 to 25 million years old."

Celestine is telling me that she liked a book I sent (poet Sujata Bhatt) so much that she is acquiring another copy to give as a gift to another writer.

The postal service manhandled this postcard.

Postcards often get mangled.

They are considered the ugly stepchildren of mail by postal carriers.

Although they will deny that.

"Chance is the Greatest Artist."--Honore de Balzac

Postcard from the artist Jacob Cooley.

This is from his Floodplain Series.

This was an advertisement for a show Cooley had at the Allentown Gallery in Durham, NC in 1997.

I am staring at a rather large Jacob Cooley drawing on the wall behind my computer as I type this.

It's from earlier in his career, when he was doing a lot of spooky landscapes in charcoal and pastel.

These drawings often depict liminal moments--when a landscape is going over to darkness (my drawing) or coming out of it. I've seen some very lush wet Edenic green morning paintings by Cooley. I still prefer his evening paintings.

In both the morning and evening paintings, Cooley's landscapes seem able to maintain light in a rather uncanny fashion. Light lingers in patches or swaths that probably shouldn't be there. There's a deviant physics at work. It's not straightforward landscape painting. It's just a little bit X-Files. Or at least the ones I like most by Cooley are.

The painting on this card, in my opinion, is walking a thin line between interesting attention to light and a frightening nod to commercial potential.

If you step back from the painting, it almost appears as though nature is being illuminated by the light of an old television--that light which used to make suburban windows glow blue at night.

The handling of the trees is a tad reminiscent of Burchfield.

Now something weird.

I don't know what that white shit is that got on this postcard. Maybe it got on in the postal process or maybe I had white-out on my fingers when I handled it.

I didn't realize until I scanned it that that was not in the original painting.

My eyesight isn't as great as I'd like it to be but I rarely get fooled so completely.

I thought both of those smudges were mystery shapes In the Pines--the title of the work (1997).

I thought it was subtle surrealism...something ghostly had caught on the pines. Two pieces of white cloth that seemed to be levitating more than they were blowing.

It made me think of a Carra painting that uses a similar device.

I love pittura metafisica. Even with its contrivances.

But no. That's not really there!

I remember being taught that Kandinsky was the one who said, "Chance is the greatest artist."

Just now I was shocked that such a great and memorable quote only brought up four citations in Google.

And apparently the phrase originated in the La Comedie Humaine of Balzac, not with Kandinsky.

Maybe Kandinsky was influenced by the Balzac quote and popularized it later. Or maybe my professor had crossed wires in her very capable brain the morning of that lecture.

Because Kandinsky would say something like that.

Remember when he had his great epiphany with the painting turned upside-down?

When he began believing that the plane of the painting should escape the orientation to which it had been sentenced.

His near-mystical ideas about color were another factor in his move towards abstraction--and a visual sense that the painting's plane should be of equal interest in all directions and orientations.

In a sense, this idea corresponded to Apollinaire's idea of simultaneities. The poet wrote that he wanted to embody that quality in his poetic art with his calligrammes, the way his imagery worked, etc.

I just now looked up Jacob Cooley to see what his art looks like now. How time flies.

I found some paintings I admired, like this one from 2009.


See what I mean about the uncanny in his paintings?

I think he's often a great landscape artist.

I saw on his site that he's been collected by a number of large corporations. That must always feel like a mixed blessing for painters, I'm guessing? On the one hand, your work is probably going to fetch a great price and it will be seen.

But on the other hand I'm wondering if there is a stigma that attaches itself to that. Whether you don't want your resume not to be too heavy with the corporations. I would think you'd want museum collections to outweigh the corporate acquisitions.

But I'm speaking as an outsider. Maybe it's not such a rule of thumb. I'm guessing less successful artists (saleswise) would probably slaver over such patronage.

Anyway, the most important thing is you can see growth in him as a painter between then and now and his work is memorable.

So I'm happy for him, and for the tradition of American landscape painting.

Because the same gauntlet Pound threw down in poetry ("Make it new") is there in landscape painting as a challenge.

And I do feel Cooley's works are thoroughly contemporary, even as they hearken to large traditions (Hudson River School, for one).

It's hard to articulate how something like a landscape can be contemporary.

Because what he's painting is precisely those elements of the landscape that have not changed.

And yet there is a sense of what constitutes a "moment" that marks the painting "of our time."

It's like trying to untie the Gordian knot to articulate that though!

Something to do with the relative weight of various ideas, the relational constellations.

A lot of it probably has to do with the changing nature of our technology and its optics.

The sense of optical resolution that we want.

How a computer screen makes images glow from within.

And how he can quote that but make it seem impoverished by comparison with his paintings at the same time.

Something in that direction...

Postcard from Lisa Jarnot

Lisa Jarnot is a celebrated poet, actor and literary biographer (of Robert Duncan).

I had appreciated a poem of hers in a magazine with either a postcard or a letter and she responded with this splendid postcard.

Is this a gorgeous photo of New York or what? Even the heavens are cooperating, clouds dutifully chipping in and pretending to be interested in setting up the perfect vanishing perspective.

Of course, that effect might have been assisted by a special lens.

I'm sensing a Lobachevskian curvature thing going on here with space that might be the work of a lens.

From the reverse: "Winter Sunrise over Central Park." Photo by Jeff Prant. Be sure to enlarge this to see the runic beauty of the fallen trees.

Okay, I have idea if those are actually fallen trees. They look like giants were throwing the I-Ching in Central Park. Fluxus giants must have invaded Central Park in the night while a heavy snow hid their giant bodies.

I just wanted to say "runic beauty." Sue me.

This is before she had any books out. She alludes to her first book as forthcoming (Burning Deck) and offers to send a copy.

Which she did.

Lisa has a celebrated blog and I think she teaches poetry workshops in New York occasionally.

I think that would be a really fun experience for a young poet. Because her poetry and sense of formalism are as playful as they are inventive.

It would probably be like taking a workshop with Bernadettte Mayer.

This is dated the 11th of December, 1995.

Lisa writes great animal poetry.

I felt I should mention that.

And she likes polysyndeton, if I'm remembering correctly.

Maybe anaphora too.

She was in a celebrated, award-winning independent movie.

I think it was about a woman who never leaves her apartment.

I think she teaches at Naropa a lot.

I read her blog a few times and enjoyed it.

She likes horseracing.

I almost bought a stack of books she was trying to sell on her blog one time (back when I was working) because it was a great price and the lot included a number of good titles.

But her blog's "verify" pop up-thingie was all messed up and wouldn't let me get through.

It was like you had to be able to calculate pi to eight-thousand digits or something to get it to let you through.

I have no idea why I remember this.

This was years ago.

This is where my Mom would intone, "You must not have wanted those books that bad or you would have figured out a way to get them."

Sigh.

She's right. But I never get buyer's remorse.

I get buyer's cramp.

Buyer's bursitis.

How does it compare on the pain scale to cocksucker's cramp?

Well, that's one Wittgenstein should address.

You're leading with your wrong foot if you ask questions like that.

I meant to steal one of those PAIN CHARTS from the emergency rooms at the hospital on one of my three dozen trips there this past year.

Did you ever see them?

They have these really awful faces based on the original Smiley where different things indicate different degrees of pain....like they have Smiley grimacing in one, and here he's really racked and sticking out his tongue involuntarily.

It really looks like a joke when you see these things.

They're so unmedical and unprofessional.

It looks like a kindergartner made these.

Okay, that's sterotyping. Sorry. Soz.

There could be professional kindergartners out there.

Anyway, those crazy "pain illustrations."

They'll probably be in the Museum of Comical 21st Century Shit.

Along with the Huggie. And the Snuggie.

Sometime in the 22nd century.

Here's a poem by Lisa I found online just now.

The cataloguing profusion is bound to make some think of Whitman's influence.

The poem chants and enchants itself into existence.

And then I could see people making comparisons with a poet like Ceravolo, for the way her poems are polymorphously perveres with nature and grammar. It shares that exuberant dippiness (exuberant? try ecstasy) that's everywhere in Ceravolo's poetry. Maybe it's the child's eye inside the adult. A lot of this is child perspective, down on the ground, lying on the actual earth to make snow angels and see the "decapitated mice," etc.

Because adults are usually not even going to notice that.

I like it when poets add that child perspective in poems. Who else does that? A lot of great poets. Dylan Thomas. Michael Palmer.

I think a lot of readers were grateful for her poetry when it appeared, because it was a slide back into the lyric (huge manatee burst of breath here--or maybe the sound an Icelander makes sliding into a volcanic lagoon) when poetry was hatin' on the lyric and anything that resembled literary Romanticism redivivus.

Which this definitely smacks of.

I mean in a nice way.




O Life Force of Supernalness of World


O life force of supernalness of
world, o supernalness, decapitated
mice upon the tracks, o ear muff
head gear of the subway trains in
spring, o the day I saw Lou Reed
on a sidestreet near 6th Avenue, o
jubilance of paper cuts and paper
clips and snow, the small dot on
the page above the snow, the
telephone, the radio, the snow, o
spring, o snow, the snow, the sno
cones and the ski lifts of the snow,
the snow, terrific snow it is, the
spring, the snow, the lack of snow,
the snow itself, o snow, yourself,
the snow upon the human engine
as it waits to be the snow, go out
and be the snow, unloved and
melting in reflections in the grass,
illuminated on the beds of god, you
snow, the crescent jerk of snow, the
city of snow and the city of bacon
and the city of the snow, the
permission of the snow to be the
snow, its lack in spring unlike the
bacon, jerks of god, and snow.


aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

Steinian Touchdown!

Okay, I didn't think I'd be selecting two postcards from the same person this early, but I can't help it.

I love this photo.

It's from Benjamin Baxter and he's in St. Helen's, Oregon at this point.

Gertrude Stein (1874-1946) with Alice B. Toklas.

The photograph is by their good friend Carl Van Vechten and is in the possession of the Beinecke Library at Yale.

This was put out by Crossing Cards out of Freedom, CA.

I'm not sure if that is the same company that did all those other fine photographs of Modernist giants like Pound and Marianne Moore.

I don't think they are. Because I think that company was out of New York City. I remember novelist James Chapman mentioning that the company was hard by him.

Hehe. I said "hard by."

What is this? The nineteenth century?!

Okay, I pulled my Marianne Moore postcard to check this. That one's the Richard Avedon photo of her where she seems to be conducting an unseen orchestra with an imaginary baton. With her eyes closed. She's ancient there, hair like angel's hair on a Christmas tree. And beautiful. Of course, she's wearing the huge tricorne hat!

It's not the same company. That company is the Rapoport Printing Company and I was right about New York. Canal Street.

Poetry Trivia: Who wrote the poetry collection Crossing Canal Street? That's right. John Yau.

Okay, this is creepy.

I was going through a pile of postcards that are inside a child's pencil box (hologram turtle all dazzly is the design) and when I got to the bottom of the box guess what I found?

A bunch of my ex's hair.

It was like I was suddenly in a Japanese ghost movie. Or a native American ritual.

I remember now that when he cut his pony tail off (and he is part Native American) I had kept it (a rubber band holding it together) in this box.

I still have it, but I don't remember where it is now. Surely in my Mom's house. Wow. It's a good thing I don't practice voodoo, huh? I'm joking. I have no ill feelings towards him anyway so it wouldn't matter if I did practice voodoo lol.

Anyway, back to the postcard.

The reverse mentions Ben's payday shopping for books with his then love.

The date is the 11th of November, 1995.

Ben finds 3 records he likes and buys Enid Starkie's bio of Charles Baudelaire. I'm still pissed at myself for not buying Starkie's Rimbaud book in a signed hardcover when I saw it for a song online. Who gets excited about autographs of scholars like Starkie instead of rock stars or celebrities? I do! I loved those books. I'm remembering the book as robin's egg blue with silver (not gilt) lettering (the Starkie Rimbaud not the Baudelaire). Maybe I got that right. I don't know.

Also he picks up Baudelaire's The Poem of Hashish.

And now his band's name is a Baudelaire tribute. See how things work?

A postcard required a twenty-cent stamp in 1995.

I'm afraid to even ask what it is now.

It seems they raise it twice a season now, when it used to be like once every three or four years.

Oh, the most interesting thing about this photo is what Stein and Toklas are holding.

Talk about voodoo!

It's not voodoo but I'm fairly certain I remember reading somewhere (though it's not on this postcard) that those are their lucky talismans to keep the plane from crashing.

Note they're flying United Air.

That plane looks like a bucket of bolts.

Maybe I imagined that about the talismans but I think that's what they are.