“If it can be safely assumed that all things are equal, separate, and unrelated, we are obliged to concede that they (things) can be named and described but never defined or explained. If, furthermore, we bracket-out all questions which, due to the nature of language, are undiscussible (such as why did this or that come to exist or what does it mean) it will then be possible to say that the entire being of an object, in this case an art object, is in its appearance. Things being whatever it is they happen to be, all we can know about them is derived directly from how they appear.” Mel Bochner, 1967
an object
use of a material object
not a thing
in this
or explained
or explained if
furthermore we are undiscussible
(such as
degree or extent in addition
forth comparative suffix -eron -uron
which to say that we can all be
nature of an object like (simile
in things being
of language are equal
separate an object in this or
explained or that all questions which
fourteenth century utterance not requiry
examining doubt past participle stem of action
due to them is in this
or explained or explained
or explained or all that they
appearance things being
as here a qui the face form shape or
in french to make into or face out of
language of language
of words what is said of conversation talk
manner of dialect merci mannerism
are equal but separate an object in this
explained or explained or explained
or all questions which due to their
appearance things being of
an object in this or that
all we bracket-out all we can know
about that
dark enveloped in darkness
original sense blindman's holiday
A cruel word at eventide
and night zips up
like a spider's retreat.
Go back to your febrile
needlework.
We shall not
be chasing lightning bugs
in the tall grass tonight.
Put the whiskey on the shelf
and let us speak calmly
of money.
“When you are walking down a city street and not paying much attention—perhaps you are downtrodden by some confusion—and come suddenly upon a rose bush blooming against a brick wall, you may be struck and awakened by the appearance of beauty. But the rose is not beautiful. You think the rose is beautiful and so you may also think, with sadness, that it will die. But the rose is not beauty. What beauty is is your ability to apprehend it. The ability to apprehend beauty is the human spirit and it is what all such moments are about, which is why such moments occur in places and at times that may strike another as unlikely or inconceivable, and it does not seem far-fetched to say that the larger the human spirit, the more it will apprehend beauty in increasingly unlikely and inconceivable situations, which is why there is such a great variety of art objects on earth. And there is something else we should say about the apprehension of beauty: it causes discomfort; and by discomfort I mean the state of being riled, which is a state of reverberation.
“What you carried inside you when you walked through the door was this ability. It is your ability to apprehend beauty, or the lack of it. It is your ability to listen. And change, or be changed. It has something to do with the secret of human existence, which is nowhere revealed, and nowhere concealed, and in front of which we remain, or become, infants.”
“lead me to the true thing / lead me to the grotto / lead me to the vibrating animal / i’ll pretend i don’t have it in me / already” Liz Bowen
objects of war
as large
as large as large
as large as large as
largely due to the number of morale ships
in 1917 shipping ships in name only form
this made it difficult the summer of 1917
shipping ships invented on ships shipping colours of summer
shipping the name dazzled form
this made it a dazzling section of british warships
dazzle-painted on ship's summer of british marine concept
shipping ships
dazzle ships
number shipping
summer forms the concept
in the summer of british forms
“Their bodies were dragged through the streets and covered in heaps of salt to underline the point.” Sarah Bakewell
killed their bodies
for five earrings
me in the streets expensive
me
the streets
setting
fire
taking
me
into the streets setting fire
to warn
worn like worms
to
worn
tax
collectors houses some
attacked
to
protest and soak
their
chalky white skin in heaps of rebels emblazoned
with carved jade
cabochon rubies
and expensive days of protest
and soaks his chalky
white
skin
into a generally
peasant
uprising a few tax
collectors houses gone and some
covered in 18k gold
my wrists worn
to protest and expensive days
of pleasant protest
“6. Greek mathematicians did not think one was a number because the concept one did not involve number. To them, two was the first number. And the hybrid marriage of one, which was not a number, and two, which was, begot three, the second number. And from one, two, and three, all other numbers proceeded, so that all odd numbers had in them an element that was not number. This is why Plato said that the leap from one to two was the leap to rationality.
Leonard Bernstein, speaking of music, said that two was a rhythm of the body and three was a rhythm of the mind. This has been contested by people who say that three is a rhythm of the body and two a rhythm of the mind. Not everyone has weighed in on this subject. But it seems intuitively right, doesn’t it? To say that there is a groundedness in the symmetry of twos, off which threes seem to play, seem airier.”
A great poetry website, Poets Reading The News, has published another one of my poems, Agraphia, along with one my recent photos, Car 5 (above).
I’m extraordinarily fond, and proud, of this poem. It’s about the way that war and violence affect one’s humanity.
It begins with a quote from Gabriele de’ Mussi, a historian of sorts, who gave one account of the beginning of the black plague in Europe in the mid-14th Century.
He tells of the siege on Kaffa (now known as Feodosia in Crimea) in which the Mongols launched the rotten flesh of their own sick and infected soldiers over the city walls in order to weaken the defending forces — an early version of biological warfare.
Please read and share it. You mean the world to me.
