shufflings

monocled—misanthrope:

Seen with the terrestrially sullied eye, we are in the situation of travelers in a train that has met with an accident in a tunnel, and this at a place where the light of the beginning can no longer be seen, and the light of the end is so very small a glimmer that the gaze must continually search for it and is always losing it again, and, furthermore, both the beginning and the end are not even certainties.

The Blue Octavo Notebooks, Franz Kafka

partymints:

there is a definable loneliness
smoking a cigarette for
light with the only lover i
can have near death one
full sized bed over. this
place isn’t familiar. solitude
is easiest without light,
i put it out, write on the
bathroom floor in an economy
motel that i fear in many ways.

this is probably one of my favorites of yours

not to leave anyone out, but this seems fairly concise: (no particular order, other than number 1)

My favorite blogs on tumblr:

Party Mints.
The 4 OCJAY
Jesus Figurine
Working Tools
LOLredrum
Drumsead
litglutton
monocled—misanthrope
Outofchaoscomesclarity
boxofoctaves
gravity-rainbow
onehundreddollars
hermeticlibrary
arrow and oracle
marigoldandmuse
poorphraser
climbing the holy mountain

for those of you whom I just recently started following. I look forward to you bringing da ruckus

furthermore, i believe if you just type tumblr.com after what i have typed it will take you to their site. swallow back young’n

***i hope this is incoherent***

- From my point of view, any outstanding work of art is a fantasy insofar as it reflects the unique world of a unique individual.
Vladimir Nabokov, on The Metamorphosis

– And more through the agitation caused by these reflections than through any act of will Gregor swung himself out of bed with all his strength.
- The Metamorphosis

In an anthology spanning nearly 500 pages of criticism concerning Franz Kafka, which included such well-known writers as Franz Werfel, W.H. Auden, Heinz Politzer, Albert Camus, as well as Kafka’s highly-noted pal Max Brod, the editor of this compilation, titled The Kafka Problem (1946), little known Angel Flores, made the most astute perception of all, in the first paragraph of his introduction:

It has been told that Thomas Mann once lent his friend Einstein a book by one of his favorite authors, Franz Kafka, and that Einstein returned it with the comment: “I couldn’t read it, the human mind isn’t complicated enough.” I do not know how true this is, but I think it would be safe to say, after some years of research into Kafka criticism, that if Einstein finds Kafka beyond his understanding, he is the only man who has ever admitted it. Nearly everyone who reads Kafka, not to mention many who don’t, seems to have not the slightest doubt that he understands him perfectly, and moreover that he is the only one who does. (ix)
More than any other, in that series of essays or the countless others, is such a flat truth been rounded so easily. Walter Benjamin built a name for himself in literature on the basis of his critical essays, perhaps the most popular being those reflections on Kafka. Jorge Luis Borges, who John Updike called “a giant of world literature,” has arguably two famous works, one of which, Labyrinths, is endowed by an essay concerning Kafka and what it means to be or have precursors. If one were to even quickly browse the lectures of Vladimir Nabokov, one would find discourses on exactly what kind of insect Kafka spoke of in The Metamorphoses, including diagrams and critical words for those who have suggested vermin other than that of Nabokov’s persuasion.

More than any other, also, have we so much information about Kafka’s personal life, as made infamously public by his previously mentioned friend, Brod. We know, with little outside dictation, that Kafka did not get along with his father, whom the writer was petrified of and also worshiped relentlessly. We are familiar with his line of employment, faith, and socioeconomic contexts. We also encounter a series of peculiar circumstances concerning Kafka’s effect on the world at large: never has one man in any field, at least in my opinion, been so wildly consuming to one niche of a population, while simultaneously equally irrelevant, at least at face value, as Kafka. And perhaps that is entirely indicative of him, and us – Kafka stands as influencer of influences, the shadow which supports popular opinion in any given light. Even to those studying literature does he become that insect his Gregor morphs into, as we magnify his image which burns beneath the sun that allows magnification. Or, as Benjamin says, “There are two ways to miss the point of Kafka’s works. One is to interpret them naturally, the other is supernatural interpretation.” (Benjamin, 127) Indeed, insects are not easily slayed.

With all of this said, for reasons easily determinable hereafter, allow me to focus on Kafka’s use of the father/son relationship put forth in a couple of his major works, lest I, as essayist, then you, as reader, by proxy, drown in the crashing tide and swirling undercurrent of the totality able to be undertaken in an essay.

October 21, 1921. All is imaginary – family, office, friends, the street, all imaginary, far away or close at hand, the woman; the truth that lies closest, however is only this, that you are beating your head against the wall of a windowless and doorless cell. (The Basic Kafka, 262)

“I have only one request,” Kafka wrote to his publisher Kurt Wolff in 1913. “’The Stoker,’ ‘The Metamorphosis’ … and ‘The Judgment’ belong together, both inwardly and outwardly. There is an obvious connection between the three and, even more important, a secret one, for which reason I would be reluctant to forgo the chance of having them published together in a book, which might be called The Sons.” (The Sons, VIII)

To say that Franz Kafka’s three characters, as exposed in the three short stories (in the case of The Stoker, the first chapter of his novel Amerika, a parsed limb donated to a new body), had daddy issues is to be kind.

In The Metamorphosis, Gregor, of course, finds himself an insect, an outcast in an apartment which houses the bug’s mother, sister, and father. Gregor, the son, states an obtuse pleasure he finds in being sufficient enough to support, specifically, a father who found himself down on his luck after the family business collapses, while not only swallowing their wealth, but also creating a debt with the certain sales company which employs Gregor. In a synapse we find a surface of altruistic behavior predicated on familial survival. What appears on this same surface as a melodrama steeped in an absurdist reality where one wakes up as bug, is by no means so simple. While this can be interpreted in a variety of definitions, what is unarguable is that Gregor is no longer welcome in the home once he can no longer provide. Rather than understanding, we find Gregor merely tolerated, and erodingly so. Whether Gregor is at first outcast or outcasts himself (or some degreed amalgam of both) is not explicitly stated. However, one can draw together a string of decrees implied by his father’s actions, as well as how the son views the emotions which undulate from father’s posturing.

Upon finally opening the door to his room, the speaker (interestingly not explicitly Gregor, at least in this translation) does not describe the father’s reaction to first witnessing his child as some kind of cockroach as a direct experience, rather, Dad is concerned chiefly with the Clerk’s response: “Unfortunately, the flight of the chief clerk seemed completely to unhinge Gregor’s father, who had remained relatively calm until now…” (The Sons, 69) Not only is Father contingent upon, at its raw basis, finances solely in his body language, but he is then compelled, in Father’s first moment of physical reactionary movement, to “(seize) in his right hand the walking stick” of his son’s boss. Kafka, ever so clever, is interesting and direct in word choice. Father, rather than lunges towards or attempts to catch the walking stick in a way that could be supposed as even containing a hint of meandering, seizes the stick, bringing to (at least this) reader’s mind the phrase carpe diem. The poignancy continues with right hand, of course rather than left, as with utmost importance and reason of, perhaps, a biblical accord; then ends with what his right hand seizes: the very crutch by which the figurehead of the family’s financial certainty transports about. How half a statement can contain so many meanings amazes. What is obvious is where Father’s concern rests (even here in multiple ways). What is latent is the idea that his family can not function if the very shackles to which it is attached is crippled. Notice here that, in fact, it is crippled, what with Gregor, the provider, being an insect, but that somehow master comes first. Pride exists here. Both in father and son, to each other from one and other, as well as inwardly. Both in father and son in that son (presupposed, at least, by the speaker) is attentive to his father’s reaction, from thus comes realization of personal worth in a swift moment which shatters the previous altruism believed to be communed by all, rather than solely by son to father but not father to son: son is concerned with worth to father, while father is concerned with son’s worth, however coldly separate concerns may be. Father does not witness son witnessing father neglecting son beyond financial provisions (though, certainly, financial provisions trickle to things such as pride). From this point on, until much further down the time line, Father becomes little more than statue-esque in how he haunts the apartment; while not explicitly stated, it seems as though all acts after this are viewed through harrowing lenses crafted in this moment. Stoned silence pervades as reality becomes rendered and adjusted to as dictated by both ends of this disappointment. It is a reality realized that forms a new reality – one in which all characters assume new, transfigured positions of importance.

This creeping ground cover of emotions works likewise, if backwards, in The Judgment While the previous story was front-loaded, this one is disturbed at its outset: the conflict occurs as a result rather than resulting from. Here, Father is a successful businessman (again inverted), who is only lessened in ability to work by age. For all intents, the elder would seemingly rather do all of the work undisturbed by the pestering son, who seems to do little more than inherit – at least in his mind. Also, what is prevalent in a similar, if reversed, way, to the prior tale, is Son picking up Father’s slack, however reluctantly, but with altruistic undercurrent intact. Furthermore is the clash of realities between Son and Father, with the speaker firmly behind the Son, at least where perspective most often granted reader is concerned: what is made obvious at first, then is later boxed back, is that Son is doing this work in spite of himself, for sake of familial overtures. Name is greater than individual.

However, while reader sees the despair with which Son chugs along reluctantly, though probably not begrudgingly, is yelled at by Father in a fit of madness where the dad claims his son to be doing backhanded dealings to gain a new name over his father’s, though, Father ensures Son that old pops set up the contracts, or at least put Son in a position to complete the deals, which had made surprising sudden wealth for the business, while Father was wilting away in age and capacity to labor. What is more is that, while Gregor, the son, became less than human, in this story Father becomes a human of near giant proportions in his crazed outburst, which also takes place upon a bed. These are the sorts of turns which makes Kafka’s genius not only breathtakingly obvious, but so uncanny and nearly supernatural that all possible answers can be queried by any reader ever: “’You comedian!” Georg could not resist shouting, realized at once the harm done, and, his eyes bulging in his head, bit his tongue – though too late – until the pain made his knees buckle.” (13) Note here the similarities of facial expression between the two stories in their conflict’s climax of confusion. Eyes bulge, mouths chomp, the ability to stand is stripped; this is not for lack of ingenuity, either: the inversion is made so perfectly clear, both in the stories by themselves and in contrast to one and the other, and is done with such purpose and ease at every possible angle of expression that Kafka’s critic must face ones own inferiority to the point that the word critic itself feels like a prepubescent boy commanding shaving instructions laughably at his old man cleaning up the five-o’clock shadow. Not only does the dad not need instructions, but he follows the commands with a subtle grin, just to make the boy feel special. This is the inescapable fate of reader to Kafka; one which I, here, am certainly not otherwise privileged. There is more to be said on this matter, later.

To say that Franz Kafka, as exposed in Letter to my Father (a donated real limb donated so as to show those phantom limbs how to act), had daddy issues is to be kind. Does some personal reckoning seem to exist in the former as stilted by the later? Is it possible for writer to not somehow leave behind a strand of evidence otherwise? For all attributes being given to Kafka, he does not cleanly escape the crime scene. However, the difference between most and him is that Kafka does not try to avoid or disguise the issue. It is reckoning, pure and simple, though spelunked to depths most, if not all, others are incapable of diving. Kafka’s old man was a businessman, whose namesake was right there on the storefront. Interestingly, Franz’s biographer, Max Brod, further explains the importance of the family’s last name to the family, stating that “The name Kafka …. – in its correct spelling of ‘Kavka’ – literally means ‘Jackdaw.’ This bird, with its big head and beautiful tail, was embossed on the business envelopes of the firm” which Hermann, the father. (Brod, 3) What’s more is just how well Franz was able to use his family figures, such as his grandmother’s refusal to eat or speak to others in the family while dying from typhoid fever, the way his mother was said to have pleaded at the toes of her father’s corpse for forgiveness for any supposed wronging she may have made him endure, the man known to his mother as simply “mad Uncle Nathan,” his uncle who “turned Christian and became a doctor,” as well as the fact that “the rest of the family… were, in the words of (Franz’s mother, Julie)… “giants.” (4)

Like most fathers, for better or worse, Franz was forced to “listen to (his father talk) about what he had to go through as a child,” though thrown in here “his constant digs at how lucky people had it nowadays, especially his own children.” (5) What made his situation different was that the dispositions blended together gave way to a hyper-awareness for Kafka as a young man. Notedly fragile and introverted, the rift created between father and son which Kafka would later explore in his stories so as to come to terms with the situation (which never would occur, at least to any substantial degree), was explained from son to father, naturally with the courage only afforded by the distance of letter writing:

In the end I was almost afraid of the business and, in any case, it had long ceased to be any concern of mine even before I went to the Gymnasium and hence was taken even further away from it. Besides, it seemed to be entirely beyond my resources and capacities, since, as you said, it exhausted even yours. You then tried (today this seems to me both touching and shaming) to exact, nevertheless, some little sweetness for yourself from my dislike of the business, of your work – a dislike that was after all very distressing to you – by asserting that I had no business sense, that I had loftier ideas in my head, and the like. Mother was, of course, delighted with this explanation that you wrung from yourself, and I too, in my vanity and wretchedness, let myself be influenced by it.

… If I was to escape from you, I had to escape from the family as well, even from Mother. … (a mother who) with the passing of the years she more and more completely, emotionally rather than intellectually, blindly adopted your judgments and your condemnations with regard to the children…” (The Sons, 138)

One instantly sees the pain from which brilliance is born then lived through, the action potential and birthright of language, and how the child had no choice but to twist and turn the sponge of these sorts of interactions until coming to some conclusion, even if it did father nor son (nor mother nor sisters) any benefit. Still, it is this lack of benefit constructed into the only outlet son feels utilitarily befit to wrestle the issues. The mentions of vanity resulting from shame resulting from language of a backhanded type resulting from an old school shame or form of manipulation so as to guilt child into continuing his father’s work so as to somehow justify a lifetime spent with a craft which was accepted without question from son’s father’s father is just… to ice it any further would be to bastard the child at work.

Kafka gives further perspective in a letter to Brod, stating “…this fear of death may be divided into two main categories. First he has a terrible fear of dying because he has not lived. By this I do not mean that wife and child, fields and cattle are essential to living. What is essential to life is only to forgo complacency, to move into the house instead of admiring it” (The Basic Kafka, 293). So he has no interest in admiring his father, as he would perceive his father doing to his grandfather. Rather, and perhaps dubiously, Kafka yearns to place himself in the body of his father, bringing himself to write these stories to understand his father’s very essence by doing all one can so as to assume himself as someone else to acquire some rationale. This is where he finds altruism shattered: not only is his father’s business suddenly simple ego, but as hard as he tries to understand his father, the son can only find that same inherited ego, vainly pouring from his typewriter in convoluted battles of nightmarish impulses to write, stating, in the same letter that,

Writing sustains me, but is it not more accurate to say that it sustains this kind of life? By this I don’t mean, of course, that my life is better when I don’t write. Rather it is much worse then and wholly unbearable and has to end in madness. But that, granted, only follows from the postulate that I am a writer, which is actually true even when I am not writing, and a non-writing writer is a monster inviting madness. But what about being a writer itself? Writing is a sweet and wonderful reward, but for what? In the night it became the reward for serving the devil. This descent to the dark powers, this unshackling of spirits bound by nature, these dubious embraces and whatever else may take place in the nether parts which the higher parts no longer know, when one writes one’s stories in the sunshine. Perhaps there are other forms of writing, but I know only this kind; at night, when fear keeps me from sleeping, I know only this kind. And the diabolic element in it seems very clear to me. It is vanity and sensuality which continually buzz about one’s own or even another’s form – and feast on him. The movement multiplies itself – it is a regular solar system of vanity” (292-293).

Still waters run deep. To overcome his father, he must wholly sojourn his father, exiting upon the twitch that comes by knowing that son, too, then, is comprised of his father, all while also his becoming one’s own person, which, in order to develop must become a stenographer of not only the testimony of the crime’s perpetrator, but also the victim before, during, and after the crime – all while phoenixing up out of the ashes, serving as overlord of the reality-universe then created. A trial if ever there were.

This hyper-awareness coagulates into a meta-verse born from the blood of shattered false-altruisms: the place in which we reside.

What then, of us, those left in the wake of a post-Kafka world, specifically concerning literature, then, its own affects otherwise? The mirror Kafka created for himself as survivor and conqueror can be seen as that which all other literature is decided. How can it be otherwise?

Case in point is Nabokov, the etymologist turned lit-professor/author of the greatest proportions, who, after opening with what feels like little more than an obligatory nod to fantasy/reality concerns of The Metamorphosis contextualized against The Carrick and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, of course, finds himself shallowly wading through the tedious waters of just what insect was Gregor in his lecture on Kafka, resorting to banter of “corrugated segments,” “his numerous legs” and what extent was meant dependent upon how the insect handled his body weight, concluding that Gregor “obviously belongs to the branch of ‘jointed leggers’ (Anthropoda), to which insects, and spiders, and centipedes, and crustaceans belong,” continuing with insipid remarks meaningless to the uninitiated such as if Gregor found himself in excess of six legs he “would not be an insect from a zoological point of view” (Nabokov, 256-258). He then proceeds to diagram what Gregor would look like based on the evidence supplied in a fashion suitable for someone of Nabokov’s background. At once this information is interesting, if useless where any real discourse is concerned.

At face value this information is interesting, if useless where discourse concerning Kafka’s meaning. However, with all that has led up to Nabokov’s lecture is taken for all of it’s worth, we can begin to understand the very essence of what an essay entails. Not one of us who sit down to compose a critical analysis can escape our own background, something we can finally begin to come to terms with after inundating ourselves with what it took for Kafka to become, well, Kafka. As he was to, basically, critique his father, then himself, so do we see the slant from which Nabokov comes. Furthermore, what at first frightens then illuminates the essayist (and, hopefully reader hereof), is that I, too, found myself wanting to indulge myself in the father/son relationships put forth in The Sons. Without bothering reader too much, suffice to say there is plenty reason for the attraction. This, then, ultimately becomes the gift Kafka gives us, for now what we may have been acutely aware of at large everywhere in the world, but vague as to the particulars therein, one can begin to ascertain the world around us, the meta-verse extended from Kafka’s hyper-awareness. The news, our friends, foes, sisters, mailmen, all begin to take on tangible weight in a way heretofore blurred. Now, certainly there is no way to know the depths of those mail-carriers to that which we can Kafka, what with all the available literature for one but not the other. Nevertheless, there is a medicine of empathy here with which one can begin to piece back together that shattered altruism. From all the pain of consciousness comes, finally, understanding and resolve. There is still, it would seem, a bridge above madness which needs to be crossed.

On the back cover of the aforementioned Labyrinths, David Foster Wallace praises its author, saying “The truth, briefly stated, is that Borges is arguably the great bridge between modernism and post-modernism in world literature.” If Kafka is, indeed, our Prometheus, Borges contextualizes the matter in his essay Kafka and His Precursors by surmising:

If I am not mistaken, the heterogeneous pieces I have enumerated resemble Kafka; if I am mistaken, not all of them resemble each other. This second fact is the most significant. In each of these texts we find Kafka’s idiosyncrasy to a greater or lesser degree, but if Kafka had never written a line, we would not perceive this quality; in other words, it would not exist. The poem “Fears and Scruples” by Browning foretells Kafka’s work, but our reading of Kafka perceptibly sharpens and deflects our reading of the poem. Browning did not read it as we do now. In the critics’ vocabulary, the word “precursor” is indispensable, but it should be cleansed of all connotation of polemics or rivalry. The fact is that every writer creates his own per-cursors. His work modifies our conception of the past, as it will modify the future. In this correlation the identity or plurality of the men involved is unimportant. The early Kafka of Betrachtung is less a precursor of the Kafka of somber myths and atrocious institutions than is browning or Lord Dunsany. (Borges, 201)

It is not only difficult, but an injustice to not use long form quotes when a proposition of such magnitude is handled with such grace, as one needn’t hardly know the particulars of context to understand clearly what Borges is saying.

However, one is led to even further conclusions and new ideas by what this now creates. Once we have passed over insanity, one can begin to sniff at the dynamics such possibilities we may behold. In the beginning of the same essay, Borges makes a point to bring up “Zeno’s paradox against movement,” explaining that “A moving object at A (declares Aristotle) can not reach point B, because it must first cover half the distance between the two points, and before that, half of the half, and before that, half of the half… and so on into infinity” (199).

Admittedly I am no scientist. The Discovery Channel and oddball documentaries sloppily slapped together have taught me whatever truths or misinformation I assume to know about things like Relativity or String Theory. I am a complicated man, but not in that way. But it’s really quite exciting to continue down this line of reasoning. In another essay from The Kafka Problem, titled The Human Voyage, we are presented with Zeno’s paradox via Kafka’s novel, The Castle: “Time plays tricks: K starts out in the morning from the inn toward the castle; in a few hours, night comes and it is dark. Space plays tricks; the more K presses toward the castle, the farther away it seems to get. There are changes of identity. In fact the whole Kafka universe seems to illustrate the principle of discontinuity. You go from A to C without having passed through B” (Lerner, 43).

In reality, outside of a novel, we must pass through B. Perhaps B is that madness we cross over. Like the myth of the boy who fell in love with his own beauty, that mirror which Kafka created exists everywhere, including the still waters of madness. If allowed to stare into the reflection witnessing its existence as merely one particular moment, once can be easily gobbled up. Rather than pinning Kafka down, like so many try to do with magnifying glass and rays of sunlight over insects such as Gregor like elementary school kids in fits of subconscious violence to their subject, Kafka is a Chinese finger trap, where, the more the essayist gets in his or her own way, the further the essay is removed from the sincerity which Kafka allows us. This drawing tighter can be avoided if he and his work is undertaken as more of an inkblot, whose reflection makes way for a self-analysis no other can – he perfected through allegory what Freud flailed away at with pseudo-science: one can not under any circumstances remove the influence of self from the equation. And if indeed my personal understanding is what I have presented, of course it is by nature grandiose. It has to be. Not only do I, as writer or otherwise, encompass no small amount of self-absorbed importance, it is also the nature of (wo)man to defend oneself with available data to establish some rationale, to deflect criticism in advance, much like the fat kid who develops a sense of self-deprecating humor so as to curb the onslaught of jokes from others in the schoolyard. Such is the paradox of the impossibility of sanity, which, as my critique of Kafka (or any other text or subject I choose) concerns a certain at-heart topic, exactly reflects Zeno’s paradox. Motion is essentially impossible, yet we find ourselves on all sorts of adventures. Time is completely momentary and infinite. Such is the dialectic existence of the meta-verse: I am relative to you as you are relative to me as we are relative to all else and nothing at once. It seems as absurd as a perfectly healthy man turning into whatever Arthropod Nabokov believes Gregor was (is). This perfected ideal of perception is established, dare I say, in , of, and by Franz Kafka the Writer, the individual, both as by product of, then thereby creating by products from, thus creating [or reflecting, or both (or none)] a means which helps us comprehend our infinite universe.

Not our, perhaps, but rather, at least, my own. I am no Einstein. Neither do I fancy my opinion as a perfect understanding of Kafka. That is impossible. I do have a certain understanding of how Kafka – through his literature, life, and all the fallout therefrom – affects me, at this point in time. And, honestly, how much greater an affect can an author have?

from David Shields’ “Reality Hunger”

102
I don’t feel any of the guilt normally attached to “plagiarism,” which seems to me organically connected to creativity itself.

105
Proust said that he had no imagination; what he wanted was reality, infused with something else. In Search of Lost Time begins and ends with the actual thoughts of the author; it’s the manifestation of what the author must think, based on what he does in fact think. The book, by being about Marcel, a writer, is as much about the writing as it is about anything that “happens.” I don’t mean that everything we think is what we truly feel or that only in thought are we free of the lies and illusions of the world. I mean that you have a right, as a thinking person, to think what you think and that the closer you stick to the character of thought in your writing, the more license you have to claim that you’re not making things up. Frey, for example, wrote but didn’t think, I was in prison for three months. Instead, he probably thought something more like I was in prison for three months, man; I was in fucking prison for three months; give it to them; throw it down {their throats}; they’ll take it; they don’t know what I went through; I’m tough {goes to the mirror to make sure},” etc. that is, he made up the prison part: he fictionalized it (without first admitting to have done so).

Man of ism

# 290

start all over around noon
with money you keep stuffing
your face without ration
having been so symbolically your
spit in your face
the providential eye of a
frozen moustache brushing off vomit
the shadow that’s not
hell manage manage still man-
age if you’re familiar with
cloth that sells a meter when
it rolled their genitals up in
the sea worn
hell style
to be fashionable again God is
going to come
with the sea to sweep
scrapings from the
promise that time
up in the Supreme Being
won’t come according to rules
that the time has come refuse to swallow this whole
mess of good-for-nothing bastards who urge you
pay attention to
hell look at the rather
curious rat big rat well-guarded
to be yours

since never
and since universal in case
it is best to have all

Man of ism

# 262

behind the pretend demands building

poetry as to
pattern the behavior of the personal be-
havior to be poetry
to remedy inadequacy in
relation to other arts is a disadvantage
compared to the expression
of the precision of forms
compared to
uncriticizable feeling
the completely new
poets of the last
poets of verbal instrumen-
tation putting together
empty words
opinion underestimation of
language above
language ceased to
poetry created by
aphorism wanted
to engrave the facade
edifice without saying
poetry must be understood by
love work raising
barrier languages
of indifference poetic work recited
a work translated essential
in a foreign prose
between sounds changed the error
some symbolists have had
provoking mistrust of
day accidental
indespensable brake of poetic
combinations that
meter rhythm rhymes abandon
worn-out
poetry and
necessity
of ILLUMINATIONS and
almost everything that deserves being
time harmony of course

excerpts from a series of block out kind of poetry tentatively titled “A Bet on Man of ism”
…
please note i am working with no idea of what will become of the order of the bits. & i will post photos later…
…

# unknown
for years now, time
has gone times have
to look to himself for
reasons
to try to now
himself, by means
that men
fill everywhere
with
witnessing
taboo, of
moving
human demands. asked to
capacity is the whole secret of
human order to wonder
what is at the other end of
this ecstatic
worst
game
against
the former content
free to conceal an
endless praise for the
violent
society.

216
let first precaution
repeat that
witness as
the new world of
unlimited field and
condition first
with
an ultrasophisticated
matter of the question
thought to be an alibi
functioning
a
ceremony beneath obvious
signified
values being moral
benefits being corruption
indiscernible contamination of
everything the word
opens our eyes
of great evil to be our
first participation
which has
to try its cause. only
we are
dying
in the same single
who prepares war
seeking
instinct for against a
more

226
And after having spoken his
poetry the writer comes up impossible
on the try to poem
a whole hand out of poetry
into the world
to what function of language

218
the foreground of
you
the symbol was condemned to
robust manure.
The expression of this
great
fact
possesses
the meaning
of circumstances.
today: here are forests,
women, priests coming and
staggering from some solemn
magic entitled
deliberate to
the execution
of conception. As
essentially the time to
discover no
active concerns with general
doubt that has given
vision of this
part, in the end we must resign
ourselves to
Such becomes all
fact, for we owe portrayal some
first
words as
possible, by fact behind his times
is nonetheless true work proved
capable of time, and by virtue
of its technique it has a vast influence
stretching the truth to maintain today
of modern
work had not on the other hand has had no
indulgent curiosity of
backgrounds

222
granted a small poet works
conditions
in the method
of a
simple reason
from which it
is able to penetrate
living
the critical art
that emotion
not directly has value as it is
emotional
which is
divulging circumstances which
in turn
sharing
aroused
by a spectacle of
will alive
work that is all
pain and very keen
tensify that living of
pretext thereby
all the more in stature one can even
communicate the process
humanity loses in severity.

and then i messaged john ashbery.
i know what i’d hope to discuss,
but it will be interesting and fulfilling
if anything comes of these actions.
#kanyeshrug

so i just messaged one of my living heroes, michael silverblatt, of WKCR’s Bookworm, on facebook. god i hope he engages me. silverblatt may be the single greatest wealth of literary wisdom on the planet. not may be. at least in my heart i believe this to be the case. #fingazcrossed.

another excerpt…

“I’m asking you here to consider poetry that is unhindered by doubt (while acknowledging that doubt can begin the inspiration toward liberation), a poetry that arises out of recklessness and is composed of convictions of first needs, first minds, of truth in language arising from the active impulse of emotion, moving through the calculations of the rational toward irrational detonation.

- from Dean Young’s “The Art of Recklessness”