found poem in progress | assembled from the pages of the new yorker, 2020

Propagation propensity's a question mark;
not a lot of body in the slab.
Dry facets, two to three mils,
it's running the whole gamut of crystal types--
wasn't ice, by any means.
Rimy, small grains.

Snow is less forthcoming than the wind.
Its chaos hides beneath the surface.
She lifts her immaculate face to the winter light.
Something stirs within her, even now,
beneath the ice.

Some believed eels were born of sea foam,
or created when the rays of the sun fell on a certain kind of dew 

that covered lakeshores and riverbanks
in the spring.
Most people adhered to the theory that
eels were born when hairs from horses' tails
fell into the water.

*

The oldest known still-lifes are Eyptian - 
frescoes of figs for the afterlife.
The Assyrians carved pomegranates from ivory. 
And so it continues,

from Caravaggio's grapes to Cézanne's apples.

The actress, model, and Hollywood scion Isabella Rossellini returns to the (virtual) stage

with "Sex and Consequences," 

a live-streamed show about biodiversity and animal reproduction,

beamed from her farm in Bellport, New York,

where she breeds poultry.

I don't know how fluidly feline I would have been.

I'd be a very stagnant, boxlike, kind of anxious cat, 

scurrying down Mulberry Street, past a gesticulating anecdotalist.

If King Lear had gone into the book trade,
he could have saved himself a world of grief.
An excellent hippy, 

his father had died in a wrestling accident.

Flagrant humility;

That’s how I feel every time the camera in my hand 
accidentally reverses and I hear a scream 
and then realize it’s coming from me.

The robot had brought them balloons, confetti, and
letters for a birthday sign,
and they had a cake and a spicy Sichuanese dish called moicai
delivered to one of the gates.
There were cable protectors and scented oils and chicken-jerky curls and baby pacifiers and "Frozen"-themed Ziploc bags and party napkins and elastic wrist supports and charcoal foot scrub and romance novels, detergent and toys and pet food and underwear and motor oil and flashlights and strollers and mops and drain cleaner and glassware and wind chimes and rakes and shoes and balloons and bath towels and condoms and winter coats.

I inadvertently caused my own groping.

ron reed | found poem | typos, misread, overheard and dreamed 2020

27 Contact Lenses Are Found in Woman’s Eye, Doctors Report

She felt a sharp pain in her left eye while taking part
in an annual tradition of tomb-swapping,
four bees living in her eye, feeding on her tears.

Dr. Hong said the situation could have been much worse.

"This is the first time in Taiwan we've seen something like this," he added.

how do you improve on the power of fluff?

a mis-hit swivel high volley

blackberries
hose winder
bury the frog

I’m you could purchase an entire baseball team for $365M years old.

define anything:
false prevention
power outrages
mental sweater vest

I am indeed a nephew.

I'm trying to understand how technology works. A friend told me that we were supposed to have something fly by to push the smoke away this morning, but whatever it was was too high and didn't do what we needed it to do.

In case of volcanic eruption, you will hear mermaids. 

Do not ignore the mermaids; they are there for your safety.

Weird how Governors can see a snow emergency and say "Hey, stay off the roads because it's dangerous for you and others" and no one is putting on their Gears of War cosplay and jumping in a Dodge Ram with between 4 and 20 flags on it to throw a tantrum.

"I love you more than apples!"
the orange are the same chair as the grey one

steamed as Stimson in stasis

Hi! Speech (aphasia),
church Lutheran, movie, zoo,
Spark, National Music,
YMCA, Military Museum,
strokes,
newspaper.
WCB Manager 11, Alberta Health Services Manager.
Old friends .
Move??

My phone was open in my bag and typed this:
the first 5o and then you can get the good taco shelled by any chance
think paste it to to to you and then we will be be in a few weeks of my
parents and I have a decent time time time time time in my way home
home from work work work work work work work work work work work work work
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work work work 70.vž

the final stanza was written by autofill on Danielle Klaudt's cel phone

job title: dilettante

"I'm in the group of those who aspire to be dilettantes." 

Duke Ellington 

dilettante, 

gadabout, 

layabout,

flâneur, 

amateur, 

connoisseur,

dabbler,

dropout, 

idler.

dilettante : a person who takes up an art, activity, or subject merely for amusement, especially in a desultory or superficial way. "It was unparalleled, undreamed-of, that I, Humphrey Van Weyden, a scholar and a dilettante, if you please, in things artistic and literary, should be lying here on a Bering Sea seal-hunting schooner." Jack London

amateur : 1) a person who engages in a pursuit on an unpaid rather than a professional basis. 2) a person who is incompetent or inept at a particular activity. Late 18th century: from French, from Italian amatore, from Latin amator ‘lover’, from amare ‘to love’.

gadabout : a person who goes out a lot and does not worry about other things they should be doing; an habitual pleasure-seeker. "I'm quitting my job to go to gad school." Steven Gomez

flâneur :  the French masculine noun flâneur—which has the basic meanings of “stroller”, “lounger”, “saunterer”, “loafer”—which itself comes from the French verb flâner, which means “to stroll”. 

"The French poet Charles Baudelaire characterized the flâneur as a 'gentleman stroller of city streets, and wrote that in the modern city we become a flâneur or stroller. This was an entirely new urban figure, associated with the era of modernity. According to Baudelaire, the flâneur moves through the labyrinthine streets and hidden spaces of the city, partaking of its attractions and fearful pleasures, but remaining somehow detached and apart from it. They aren’t walking to get something, or to go somewhere, they aren’t even shopping (which is as near as most of us get to this Baudelerian ideal). Flâneurs are standing in deliberate opposition to capitalist society, with its two great imperatives, to be in a hurry, and to buy things." lightgraphite 

"The crowd is his element, as the air is that of birds and water of fishes. His passion and his profession are to become one flesh with the crowd. For the perfect flâneur, for the passionate spectator, it is an immense joy to set up house in the heart of the multitude, amid the ebb and flow of movement, in the midst of the fugitive and the infinite. To be away from home and yet to feel oneself everywhere at home; to see the world, to be at the centre of the world, and yet to remain hidden from the world—impartial natures which the tongue can but clumsily define. The spectator is a prince who everywhere rejoices in his incognito. The lover of life makes the whole world his family, just like the lover of the fair sex who builds up his family from all the beautiful women that he has ever found, or that are or are not—to be found; or the lover of pictures who lives in a magical society of dreams painted on canvas. Thus the lover of universal life enters into the crowd as though it were an immense reservoir of electrical energy. Or we might liken him to a mirror as vast as the crowd itself; or to a kaleidoscope gifted with consciousness, responding to each one of its movements and reproducing the multiplicity of life and the flickering grace of all the elements of life." Charles Baudelaire

"The photographer is an armed version of the solitary walker reconnoitering, stalking, cruising the urban inferno, the voyeuristic stroller who discovers the city as a landscape of voluptuous extremes. Adept of the joys of watching, connoisseur of empathy, the flâneur finds the world 'picturesque'." Susan Sontag

"I have to walk to survive." Fred Herzog

Flaneur, Granville (1960)

Fred Herzog

royal sproule | it's simple

 

illustration by royal sproule, 2020

rehearsals for 'the furniture of heaven' (nov/dec 1990), conversation about dramaturgy

"the supply room is out of paper clips" : crib notes for a prairie home companion

Every week on Prairie Home, Garrison tells the news of Lake Wobegon; a small Minnesotan town where “all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average.” Wikipedia labels it a fictional town, while strangely adding: “said to be the boyhood home of Garrison Keillor.” 

As an adult, Garrison has lived in New York and St. Paul – neither place small. How do you bring a small town to life every week without living in one? 

One thing he did was call in help. Holly Harden. A writer who lives in a small town, a Lake Wobegon-type town of ice fishing, loon calls and Midwestern values. Each week she sent concrete details of life there, allowing Garrison to set his tales in proper time. From her notes in early June 2016: 

“The cottonwood fuzz is floating about now, blowing everywhere like a light springtime snow, drifting against the curbs.” 

“There’s a solar farm going up a mile out of town and it’s causing a lot of controversy.” 

“Vacation Bible School starts next week. Seventeen kids are enrolled and the teachers are doing some decorating.” 

“The school secretary is at her wit’s end. Parents are calling about grades. The supply room is out of paper clips. The lost and found box is overflowing. Someone threw up in the teacher’s bathroom. There is a tornado drill scheduled for Monday morning. One of the cooks is out with whatever chest thing is going around. It’s a kind of chaos, a hot mess.”

from What I Learned Living in Garrison Keillor's House 

by Katy Sewall

garrison keillor | when snow falls, can spring be far behind?

It snowed big-time in New York last week and overnight the city was transformed from gritty realism to a TV Christmas special, the city hushed and magical, skaters skating in Central Park and every sled or saucer, garbage can lid, flattened cardboard, employed in sliding. For the old man, walking flat-footed in tiny steps on an icy sidewalk, sliding feels treacherous but still the snow brings back memories of Minnesota and homemade hockey rinks, using magazines for shin pads and lawn chairs for goals. We had no laptops or video games then. Indoors belonged to grown-ups so we went outside for independence. It was joyful. I still look at snow and feel joyful.

As a Minnesotan, I’ve known people who felt oppressed by snow and cold and escaped, as people once escaped from behind the Iron Curtain, so they could sit outdoors in January and barbecue steaks and drink mai tais. I never longed for the patio lifestyle. People sit on patios in the sunshine and they yell at their kids and complain about schools and taxes and their neighbor’s lawn ornaments. People who sit in a cozy living room on a cold day experience gratitude. They pull a quilt over their lap and feel comforted. They look out the window at snow falling and feel joyful.

I went to the post office the other day and stood in a long slow line and felt endangered by the virus. In my living room, I don’t. The newspaper is packed with grim stories about death tolls and death threats against local authorities who impose masking requirements and long-term effects of COVID and I set the paper down and pick up Dickens and feel better. Nobody reads books on a patio; the light is too bright. Dim light is conducive to ratiocination.

The newspaper says that the pandemic has made Mr. Bezos richer than rich and is leading to the obsolescence of shopping malls, hundreds of which are closing, and what shall be done with them? Some say they can become nursing homes. I say they could become arts centers where unemployables like me can go to write, paint, compose, play in a band, and get a sense of self-esteem even if nobody likes our work except friends and family.

The indoor shopping mall originated in Minnesota, due to winter and suburbanites’ dread of downtown traffic, so along came this miniature Main Street of shops under a roof with acres of asphalt around it, but now Mr. Bezos will sell you anything with a click of your mouse, books or buckets, blankets, bicycles, buckles, bric-a-brac, boxes of buckshot, and one of these days, when he figures out how to do optometry and dentistry and psychiatry online, he will own the world. He will purchase the U.N. building in New York and, for a reasonable fee, bring about world peace and climate stability. He will own Facebook, Instagram, and the Sirius earbuds that will be implanted in every child at birth. I’m joking, I’m not sirius.

Life will get back to normal in 2021 but it’ll be a beautiful new normal. In a society in lockdown, social media has a lot of traction, but when the vaccines get around and life loosens up, we’ll get back in the real world of work, friendship, conversation, the arts, travel, church, and the mystical science of baseball. I expect to get injected in Phase 2, along with incarcerated felons, homeless, K-12 teachers, and critical workers. I am not critical, I’m only skeptical, but I’m an older adult with underlying conditions (depending on which side I lie on), and so by the time June rolls around, I expect to be running loose, shaking hands, eating at Murray’s steakhouse, sitting out in right field watching Max Kepler of the Minnesota Twins, one of my favorite players. It isn’t only that he is one of the few European guys in the majors, it’s also his quickness and readiness, but his Germanness is certainly germane. A kid growing up in Berlin who chooses baseball over soccer is sort of inspirational. I’ve been to Berlin and never saw a ballpark. If a Berliner could choose baseball and get good at it, maybe instead of being a paragrapher, I could be an oceanographer or choreographer. Or ornithologist — as Emily said, “Hope is the thing with feathers.” The papers talk about a dark depressing winter but I think about the right-field bleachers and feel hopeful. 

Thanks for reading. Be good to yourself.

Garrison Keillor, December 23, 2020

edward burtynsky | photographs

 

1  Xiaolangdi Dam #3 Yellow River, Henan Province, China, 2011

2  Stepwell #4 Sagar Kund Baori, Bundi, Rajasthan, India, 2010

3  Colorado River Delta #2 Near San Felipe, Baja, Mexico, 2011

4  Dryland Farming #2 Monegros County, Aragon, Spain, 2010

5  Salton City California, USA, 2009

6  Colorado River Delta #9 Sonora, Mexico, 2012

7  Cerro Prieto Geothermal Power Station Baja, Mexico, 2012

8  Log Booms #1, Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada, 2016

9  Freeman Island, Long Beach, California, USA, 2017

10  Coal Mine #3, North Rhine, Westphalia, Germany, 2015

11  Oil Bunkering #1, Niger Delta, Nigeria, 2016

12  Oil Bunkering #7, Niger Delta, Nigeria, 2016

13  Uralkali Potash Mine #2, Berezniki, Russia, 2017

14  Uralkali Potash Mine #4, Berezniki, Russia, 2017

15  Uralkali Potash Mine #6, Berezniki, Russia, 2017

16  Saw Mills #1, Lagos, Nigeria, 2016

17  Saw Mills #2, Lagos, Nigeria, 2016

18  Phosphor Tailings Pond #4, Near Lakeland, Florida, USA, 2012

19  Markarfljót River #1, 2013

20  Salinas #2, Cadiz, Spain, 2013

21  Dryland Farming #24, Monegros County, Aragon, Spain, 2010

22  Pipe Coating Plant, 2017

23  Shipbreaking #10 Chittagong, Bangladesh, 2000

24  Shipyard #7, Qili Port, Zhejiang Province, 2005

25  Pivot Irrigation #7, High Plains, Texas Panhandle, USA, 2011

26  Oxford Tire Pile #1, Westley, California, USA, 1999

27  Greenhouses, Almería Peninsula, Spain, 2010

willa cather | one of the truest artists i ever knew

 

Annie Pavelka

“One of the truest artists I ever knew 
in the keenness and sensitiveness of her enjoyment, 
in her love of people 
and in her willingness to take pains.”

Willa Cather, about her friend Annie Pavelka, inspiration for "My Antonia"