photo : harrison | marianne holmlund mendgen

projects i'll never do #1 | ethan hawke montage

a montage consisting of a few seconds from each of ethan hawke's films, in order.

such good films, such a fine actor -
who seems to choose only films projects that actually interest him as an artist,
not just to make a million bucks.
when i learned that my play 'refuge of lies' was going to run off-off-broadway,
i looked up the theatre and an obscure ethan hawke project had just closed in the same space.

it would be chronological,
so we would see him age.
that seems apt,
so many of his defining films -
i guess i'm thinking especially about the ones with richard linklater -
are about the passage of time:
before sunrise,
before sunset,
before midnight,
boyhood,
predestination,
24 hours to live.

i suppose i could use progressive scenes from boyhood to mark the passage of time
from, what, 2003 to 2013?

so many other films i've enjoyed, admired -
or sometimes, which are memorable,
or that i want to see,
or would simply have to be in the montage:
dead poets society,
dad,
white fang,
a midnight clear,
quiz show,
gattaca,
great expectations,
snow falling on cedars,
hamlet,
waking life,
tape,
training day,
chelsea walls,
assault on precinct 13,
before the devil knows you're dead,
what doesn't kill you,
brooklyn's finest,
daybreakers,
cymbeline,
good kill,
10,000 saints,
born to be blue,
maudie,
first reformed,
juliet, naked,
stockholm.

dream with rory

Glorious Saturday afternoon, springtime. I dropped by your house - your old house, actually, come to think of it - and you had these tables set up on your driveway of all your old LP's you were selling off. And you were going through them, putting them in new plastic sleeves like collectors use and organizing them into sections. Not by music, but by cover art: the best section was all these great psychedelic covers, like Odessey & Oracle by the Zombies (except you didn't have that one). There was a great one by Motown girl groups, another by Leon Redbone.

The records were all around $20 each. Which is high for used records, but they all seemed to be in mint condition. Really interesting selection.

My interest was obviously piqued, so you said I could help put the sleeves on and you'd pay me in records. Only we mostly just talked, and didn't get much done. Then you were off to a concert by a bunch of artists who'd been at the first folk music festival, but I decided to stay and finish up the job. I hadn't really had a good look at the records.

You also had this cousin who was babysitting for you who was sort of in the background. She was gorgeous. I think I also wanted to hang around to get a good look at her.

At one point, crab apples started raining from the sky, first just sprinkling, then a downpour, and with some big apples mixed in. Only they were soft like snow, and sweet to taste. And they didn't get on the records.

Mar 29, 2008

freddy fabris | renaissance master mechanics

luci shaw | while reading the new yorker

A word flies off the page,
and through an open window in
my imagination, a bird
that got in and cannot leave,
batting wings against
my walls and bookcases, uttering
piteous vowels of sound.

Frenzied, she aims at the light.
It is window glass and it knocks her out.
Seconds later she comes to life
again, still frantic for exit.

I move away quietly, closing
the door of my mind behind me
to lessen the anxiety in the room,
leaving the window wide
open. Later, after sh has
found her freedom
a winged presence remains,
and a feather on the floor.

Next month, maybe other
words will fly in and I'll let them stay
and make their nests and lay
little literary eggs

by Luci Shaw

*

About 13 years ago, Luci Shaw became part of a writers group that I started back in 1992 with Tim Anderson, Karen Cooper, Mike Mason, and Greg McKitrick. In the last while I've started a New Years tradition of bringing in assemblages of words and phrases that caught my attention while reading that year's issues of the New Yorker magazine. A couple months ago Luci brought in this new poem - she invariably has half a dozen or ten new ones every month. So now I think of those magpie poems of mine as nests filled with eggs from a lot of different birds. An index to my found poems from the New Yorker is here. I've done the ones for 2018, but not posted them yet.

darkened cities (“villes enteintes” ) | thierry cohen

hong kong

los angeles

new york

paris

rio

san francisco

sao paulo

shanghai

shanghai

tokyo

"Since 2010, Cohen has devoted himself to a single project - depicting the major cities of the world as they would appear at night without light pollution, or how they would look if we could see the stars. he photographs the world’s major cities, seeking out views that resonate for him and noting the precise time, angle, and latitude and longitude of his exposure. As the world rotates around its axis the stars that would have been visible above a particular city move to deserts, plains, and other places free of light pollution.By noting the precise latitude and angle of his cityscape, Cohen is able to track the earth’s rotation to places of atmospheric clarity like the Mojave, the Sahara, and the Atacama desert. There he sets up his camera to record what is lost to modern urban dwellers. Compositing the two images, Cohen creates a single new image full of resonance and nuance."
twisted sifter