assumes them as rather central

not to jerk the reader around the World Bank
and so on to oil wars and depleted uranium
poisonings,

but

This writer would like to thank the current reader for sundry confusions;

With Ralph Waldo Emerson we travel circuitously; let us agree then not to panic. If Plato implies a republican and institutional trajectory which results in the modern nation as an engine of a malevolent corporate hegemony, and arguably he might, then Emerson possibly marks a devolution or undercurrent thrust from which issues an alternative governing impetus, the average human with his or her poems at a table with equally average others while sharing beer duties and the pleasures of discorporate company: mob protean rule driven by (un)conscious intent and working at the level of language. May we remain evermore pleased with our ambiguities, gender, and transitions, punctuation notwithstanding. Emerson's decision to include Plato as one of his "Representative Men" illustrates his debt to classical humanism; his decision to fix poetry as a definitive characteristic of all that is best about being human illustrates his willingness to trust in that which is always unpredictable and unruly.

The ruling party, among their other notable achievements, have lied us into a war that has sacrificed tens of thousands of innocent lives and so, with that amount of blood on their hands there's really no limit to what they will attempt to do in order to shut people up and prevent them from making the perfectly banal observation that although they may be super-patriots and right with God in their own imagination, out in the real world they are mere liars and murderers.

Halberstam, Judith. “[Chapter One:] An Introduction to Female Masculinity.” Female
Masculinity. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998. 1-43.

Halberstam argues that masculinity should not be thought of only in relation to the male body. Culturally, masculinity is easily recognized but not easily defined. “Heroic” masculinities, the dominant cultural forms of masculinity which we eagerly consume and support, suppress other masculinities. Examining female masculinity allows us to see how masculinity is constructed. This chapter looks at the “myths and fantasies” about masculinity that force us to construct masculinity in relation to maleness and also to think of masculinity as an embodiment of power. If the dominant masculinity embodies a “naturalized” relationship between maleness and power, then it doesn’t make sense to examine men in reference to the social construction of masculinity, “Masculinity, this book will claim, becomes legible where and when it leaves the white male middle-class body” (2).

Am obsessed with new music, especially Evan Ziporyn, Paul Lansky, and Michael Gordon, ever since seeing Bang on a Can live with free student tickets. Am obsessed with accupuncture, the nicest release, which I started last week. Need to start reading Butler's Gender Trouble, and annotating it, as my Butler seminar starts May 31. Need to annotate a little Judith Halberstam. Have to buy book for friend's birthday, unfortunately at Border's most likely. Need to finish Ann Radcliffe's The Italian, the "sleeper hit" of my comps list, as comps are starting to approach.

Burke, Carolyn. “The New Poetry and the New Woman: Mina Loy.” Coming to
Light: American Women Poets in the Twentieth Century. Ed. Diane Wood Middlebrook and Marilyn Yalom. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1985. 37-57.

Mina Loy was considered, during her time, to be the new woman and also a writer of the new poetry; both embodied an unwillingness to live by the rules. Response to her work during her time was dependent both on aesthetics and on personal response to the politics of the new woman. Burke proposes that it is necessary to examine Loy’s work, and the reception of her work by her contemporaries, in relation to attitudes toward feminism and the free verse, as these issues, like aesthetics and response to the new woman (gender), are related.

Cixous, Helene. First Days of the Year. Trans. Catherine A.F. MacGillivray. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998. [Originally published as Jours de l’an 1990.]

“Writing had returned, the stream, the slender silent stream with its singing arms, the blood flow in the veins between the bodies, the wordless dialogue from blood to blood, with no sense of the distances, the magic flux full of silent words flowing” (3).

my life force my calling forth from shadows.

come calling and I come and answer the door. a night lock. a quarter of hair slipped under the door in the half light of a moon prance.

human time but woman’s time too.

We do not write. We haunt along.

I make my best flight under the auspice of a broken book. a bad dessert. desertion.

dawn cracks an egg on the horizon of my lost two gallon soup-pot.

it is enough today to take an outstretched hand.

promises wait and undo love. I would settle for the hero’s mask. the weight of off-white daffodils.

I am in an oceanography exhibit.

I am in that word as well.

the author, a word that makes me shudder cold.

over the rest I cast a spell with hopes of dalliance and falling stars.

the essential range of a rainy Saturday waits at my white-washed ledge.

I had invented sad sickness. unwearable weight of thebody.

how to say it?

what we have seen. truth.

True. Translation. Torment of the unnamable ghost.

Already everything. My own time. Behold a shell will burst into baby eyes. Tenuous. Limestone. Awaiting the birth of blades of glass.

the wake of my last sleep slipping into sound. often the awareness of the nasty light will function as enough.

the bird like death of backward looking. the tulip feet. the face that can never say no/young/you/or already-enough.

my gray cat right foot left hand. a stroke survivor sits alive in her satellite dish. this boring promenade. the prom. this poem. oh holy kite.

one thigh upon the morning lyre I cannot think of sleep but turning over in my mourning bed of flowers I wake to purple sheets.

a text by skillfull duress duress decision.

turning around under navy sly of a vast chrome kitchen.

to love a fish breeds flesh of satis-fiction.

dressing fear. clown then crown it. twist around it. burning bow.

I do not love this fear; I do esteem it. I do not love this world but fling myself brashly to it.

We are ten years old, entirely body. We are twentyfive, the age of science fiction.

When wanted to play the role of other, I respond no to the speaking subject’s yes. In this alien knowing, we unite our low ceiling crash of epistemic frames.
Crushing my horse-prince over and over against the gated tower, I find on my tongue an inscribable ending. my purely satin knowing.

Cixous, Helene. First Days of the Year. Trans. Catherine A.F. MacGillivray.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998. [Originally published as Jours de l’an 1990.]

“Writing had returned, the stream, the slender silent stream with its singing arms, the blood flow in the veins between the bodies, the wordless dialogue from blood to blood, with no sense of the distances, the magic flux full of silent words flowing” (3).

my life force my calling forth from shadows.

come calling and I come and answer the door. a night lock. a quarter of hair striped under the door in the half life of a moon dance.

“Human time. Woman’s time” (4). / “To me this is a blow, a threat” (5).

I make my best flight under the auspice of a broken book. a bad dessert. desertion.

We do not write. We haunt along.

“This same way have I always suffered from being blind” (7).

dawn cracks an egg on the horizon of my lost two gallon soup-pot.

enough today to take an outstretched hand.

promises wait and undo love. I am being sick at home in bed.

“The lunatic, the one he happened to be sometimes, he couldn’t be that one at will” (13).

I settle for the hero’s mask. the weight of off-white daffodils.

“I am in an oceanography museum” (19).

I am in that word as well.

“The author that I am can say: I am not me. That’s all” (20).

Over the rest I cast a spell with hopes of dalliance and falling stars.

“What a deliverance. What an escape (for me). If not, at least a little rest” (20).

I wait for the full throat of sacreligion.

“The essential is strange.)” (21).

The essential range of a rainy Saturday waits at my white-washed ledge.
“Clearly now for days—and as if I had myself invented hands for strangling myself and arms for clasping myself and for crushing my own arms, I broke myself, I was broken, bent, nephritic, sometimes seated with my forehead on the table strewn with more and more leaves of paper on which I had attempted and just as quickly missed an exit and thus” (26)

sad. Sickness. unwearable weight of thebody. How to say it? What we have seen. truth. True. Translation. Torment of the unnamable ghost.


“This is how, every fifteen or twenty years, we lose a life and we welcome another. Behold: we are our own oriental bride. And we behold ourselves in fear” (31).

Already everything. My own time. Behold a shell will burst into baby eyes. Tenuous. Limestone. Awaiting the birth of blades of glass.

“(What am I talking about, wonders the author? The diary—of a foreboding?)” (32).

the wake of my last sleep slipping into sound. often the awareness of the nasty light will function as enough.

the bird like death of backward looking. the tulip feet. the face that does never say no/young/you/or already-enough.

“Living is: advancing straight toward the unknown to the point of getting lost” (35).

my gray cat right foot left hand. a stroke survivor sits alive in asheville. this boring promenade. the prom. this poem. oh holy kite.

“Have I ever lived a book page by page” (36).

one thigh upon the morning lyre I cannot think of sleep but turning over in my mourning bed of flowers I wake up to purple sheets.

“A text that has taken off, with no one in front and the author in the backseat by mistake; by mistake: by definition” (39).

by skillfull duress duress decision.

turning around under navy sly of a vast chrome kitchen.

to love a fish a flesh of satis-fiction.

“Certain dates belong to me” (41). / “The author forgets, I remember” (42).

dressing fear. clown then crown it. twist around it. burning stake.

I do not love this fear; I do esteem it. I do not love this world but I do fling myself brashly to it.

“We are ten years old” (49). We are all body. We are twentyfive. The age of science fiction.

When wanted to play the role of the other, I respond no to the speaking subject’s yes. In this alien knowing, we unite our epistemic frames.

“This crime surpasses my imagination. I am the empty camera, the empty body, the empty eye” (52).

when I began to bring the tremble to the surface of my breast I became aware of a blue light and a plate of rosebush clippings outside an open windowbox.

‘Its low ceiling, crushing their skulls” (55).

I go on in the color orange. Crushing my horse-prince over and over against the gated tower.

“It was only a dream, I wake myself. A dream of death. I mean to say, a dead man’s dream” (56).

on my tongue an inscribable something. a satin finish. a purely stratacophic design. does this mean my end?

“Growing distant, she grew large. It was I who was surrounded by shadows” (60).

Lodge, David. Small World. New York: Warner Books, 1984.

A book insisted on by K. Davies. Not so much a smash hit as a clever distress. A novel about lonely academics trying to seek peace. As if I don't get enough of this at school? (No blame on Kevin here.) I did appreciate seeing Jauss hanging out in the book.