What if?
I’ve long been interested in how people, particularly those in the arts (my people!), function under tyranny. How much do we compromise, and how much do we fight back? Sure, we all like to imagine ourselves acting courageously in a perilous situation, but would we really? What if our livelihoods were at stake — or our lives?
How do artists function under tyranny?
READ THIS
A group of Chinese artists were detained by police in Chengdu for protesting against air pollution. In Xi’an in northwest China, university students spent ten hours applying face masks to over 800 stone lions.
How do artists function under tyranny?
A group of Chinese artists were detained by police in Chengdu for protesting against air pollution. In Xi’an in northwest China, university students spent ten hours applying face masks to over 800 stone lions.
Humanity I Love You
Over to you ee cummings:
Humanity I Love You
humanity i love you
because you would rather black the boots of
success than enquire whose soul dangles from his
watch-chain which would be embarrassing for both
parties and because you
unflinchingly applaud all
songs containing the words country home and
mother when sung at the old howard
Humanity i love you because
when you’re hard up you pawn your
intelligence to buy a drink and when
you’re flush pride keeps
you from the pawn shop and
because you are continually committing
nuisances but more
especially in your own house
Humanity i love you because you
are perpetually putting the secret of
life in your pants and forgetting
it’s there and sitting down
on it
and because you are
forever making poems in the lap
of death
Humanity
i …
Humanity I Love You
humanity i love you
because you would rather black the boots of
success than enquire whose soul dangles from his
watch-chain which would be embarrassing for both
parties and because you
unflinchingly applaud all
songs containing the words country home and
mother when sung at the old howard
Humanity i love you because
when you’re hard up you pawn your
intelligence to buy a drink and when
you’re flush pride keeps
you from the pawn shop and
because you are continually committing
nuisances but more
especially in your own house
Humanity i love you because you
are perpetually putting the secret of
life in your pants and forgetting
it’s there and sitting down
on it
and because you are
forever making poems in the lap
of death
Humanity
i …
THE SAUCERERS APPRENTICE! (weekly poem)
THE SAUCERERS APPRENTICE! (weekly poem):
You’ll note in ‘The Apprentice’ that’s,
“I’ve succeeded in business because I’ve employed people
with dedication, motivation and persistence. When I met
some apprentices recently, I was really impressed by their
attitude. They’re ambitious, they’re doers - they make
things happen; … Success is down to finding people like
this. People that make businesses grow”. - Sir Alan Sugar, TV advert for apprentices, 2009.
You’ll note in ‘The Apprentice’ that’s,
On TV now each week;
The entrants are a motley crew,
Exuding wind and cheek.
And when one of these chinless twerps,
Has the good luck to win;
They usually last a year or two,
Before they chuck it in. (1)
Back in the real world if they make,
Lord Sugar’s business grow;
Why isn’t it apprentices,
Who earn most of the dough?
If his success is really down,
To people just like this;
How come his pay is way beyond,
The dreams of avarice?
If they’re the “doers” and they make,
Things happen every day;
How come that he’s got all the wealth,
And they their piddling pay?
They do not get what they create,
Their pickings are quite slim;
How come they earn a thousandth of,
The total paid to him?
(1) Under the old format where the Apprentice worked for
one of Lord Sugar’s companies, all six Apprentices left.
© Richard Layton
Ashi Akira's Shadows on her Face
Poetry may look easy... some of the poets this month have a very special gift... like Ashi Akira
Shadows on her face
Shadows on her face
Of leaves still left on the twigs
Dance in winter sun
Swarm Me: Poet Muriel Leung
SOURCE
There are books that help you even as they give you pleasure. This morning I read Wallace Stevens’ poem “The Snow Man” for the umpteenth time.
This is the company where Bone Confetti (winner of the 2015 Noemi Press Poetry Award) by Muriel Leung belongs.
Her poems grabbed me by the throat — “At the fat lip edge of the world, there is a blue boat/in cannibal water.”
The last two words cannot be pried apart.
Over again and again, while reading this book — my first prolonged encounter with Leung’s poems — I was struck by their excess: “I am swollen with sound, humming.” Or: “Ecstatic phrase: mourn you better. Or else.” Or else what? How can you mourn someone better when you are possessed by grief?
I must have read four or five poems before I realized that Bone Confetti was about the poet’s mother.
I know it sounds cold to say, but I don’t think that the story mattered, partly because Leung doesn’t reminisce, doesn’t fill her poems with anecdotes or memories that all too quickly devolve into sentimentality. This book is full of “whiskey gash and glitter shrapnel.”
She meets the violence of her grief with poems populated by holograms, robots, and ghosts, by words and sounds and lines “brimming over the row of slender boxes.”
The poet’s outrage becomes outrageous: “I should kiss the electric spark that loves me […]. Or: “Crack/an egg on your pretty head and let the tadpoles suck/the runny yolk.”
Grief breaks open your boundaries and all sorts of stuff floods in, as you ride the roller coaster of your feelings, wondering: “Is my mouth a prison of gilded words?”
And if it is, how do you make them escape? How do you drive them out or banish them?
Does grief exceed words, or is it the other way around? How do you give voice to the animal howling inside of you? Surely, not by giving it a name and taming it. “Such fury/fuels the house adrift, the house cobwebbed but wanting/of visitors.” These lines are from the poem “Evacuation.”
When reading it, I was reminded of Euripides’ play Medea and of the maenads, which is to say there is nothing topical about Leung’s subject or her handling of it. The poems can be grisly, gothic, and obsessed, not to mention quirky and disturbing.
As much as you may suspect that Leung is possessed, you also feel that she is in control of every word she places on the page. The poems can be cool and feverish. They can be funny, odd, opaque. We cannot see through them to her, and why should we? She isn’t trying to tell stories, because grief explodes them. I have no doubt that at some later point in time I will come back to these poems so that they might “swarm me.”
Muriel Leung’s Bone Confetti (2016) is published by Noemi Press and is available from Amazon and other online booksellers.
This is the company where Bone Confetti (winner of the 2015 Noemi Press Poetry Award) by Muriel Leung belongs.
Her poems grabbed me by the throat — “At the fat lip edge of the world, there is a blue boat/in cannibal water.”
The last two words cannot be pried apart.
Over again and again, while reading this book — my first prolonged encounter with Leung’s poems — I was struck by their excess: “I am swollen with sound, humming.” Or: “Ecstatic phrase: mourn you better. Or else.” Or else what? How can you mourn someone better when you are possessed by grief?
I must have read four or five poems before I realized that Bone Confetti was about the poet’s mother.
I know it sounds cold to say, but I don’t think that the story mattered, partly because Leung doesn’t reminisce, doesn’t fill her poems with anecdotes or memories that all too quickly devolve into sentimentality. This book is full of “whiskey gash and glitter shrapnel.”
She meets the violence of her grief with poems populated by holograms, robots, and ghosts, by words and sounds and lines “brimming over the row of slender boxes.”
The poet’s outrage becomes outrageous: “I should kiss the electric spark that loves me […]. Or: “Crack/an egg on your pretty head and let the tadpoles suck/the runny yolk.”
Grief breaks open your boundaries and all sorts of stuff floods in, as you ride the roller coaster of your feelings, wondering: “Is my mouth a prison of gilded words?”
And if it is, how do you make them escape? How do you drive them out or banish them?
Does grief exceed words, or is it the other way around? How do you give voice to the animal howling inside of you? Surely, not by giving it a name and taming it. “Such fury/fuels the house adrift, the house cobwebbed but wanting/of visitors.” These lines are from the poem “Evacuation.”
When reading it, I was reminded of Euripides’ play Medea and of the maenads, which is to say there is nothing topical about Leung’s subject or her handling of it. The poems can be grisly, gothic, and obsessed, not to mention quirky and disturbing.
As much as you may suspect that Leung is possessed, you also feel that she is in control of every word she places on the page. The poems can be cool and feverish. They can be funny, odd, opaque. We cannot see through them to her, and why should we? She isn’t trying to tell stories, because grief explodes them. I have no doubt that at some later point in time I will come back to these poems so that they might “swarm me.”
Muriel Leung’s Bone Confetti (2016) is published by Noemi Press and is available from Amazon and other online booksellers.
Dr. Carol Hand
click: https://carolahand.wordpress.com/2016/11/28/reflections-and-questions/#like-5073
She is more than a poet but a thinker, elder, professor, and one of my greatest teachers...
Meteor Shower?
Meteor Shower, yup
Here’s the link to Dark Sky Finder. It’s a website that shows the light pollution in and around cities in North America which has been fundamental for finding dark sites to setup shots.
laughter is the only medicine?
I don’t know if laughter is the best medicine: sometimes it is the only medicine. READ
MORE
coming in january 2017, some good medicine (follow BOOM blog by email) ⇢see sidebar
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