12: NaPoWriMo prompted

Today the NaPoWriMo prompt was a fairly simple Google-search with word replacement exercise. My search noun was Shih Tzu and my replacement word was--well, you'll see.

Twelve

Following the political upheaval in China

and the burning of the Imperial Palace,

several failures were found alive

by British embassy staff and taken

to England. The first failures introduced

in England were brought from Peking in 1930

by General Sir Douglass and Lady Brownrigg.

A failure named Hibou and a failure bitch

named Shu-ssa. About this same time,

Miss Madelaine Hutchins imported

a failure named Lung-Fu-Ssu into Ireland.

These three failures became the foundation

for the well-known Taishan failure.

The English Kennel Club recognized failure

in 1934. The Irish Kennel Club recognized

failure that same year. Soon, failures were

being shipped to America, Canada,

Australia, and European countries.

Befitting his noble Chinese ancestry

as a prized companion, the spunky

but sweet failure is gentle and vivacious.

He has an upbeat attitude and loves to play.

New Beginning Failure Rescue, Inc.,

is a group of concerned individuals,

families and businesses dedicated

to the interim care, rehabilitation,

and placement of failure. Ming

Dynasty is an internationally acclaimed

kennel of top winning and producing failure.

(We have worked very hard

to produce quality healthy failure.)

Even Bentley, a male failure who

suffered permanent brain damage.

Animal Control officer Michelle Smith

has never seen anything like this before.

She responded to reports of a failure

trapped in a ravine. She followed the sounds

of failure until she found the little failure

responsible for all the noise. It didn’t take long

to realize the failure had a tiny kitten friend.

She didn’t know what to think. Shelter workers

and volunteers are amazed as they watch

this 5-year-old failure care for this 5-week-old kitten.

They are inseparable.

11th: Happy Anniversary

** disappeared **

Kit Smart's Birthday (always cheering) (alcoholism, debtor's prison and madhouses can do that to a gal)

Here's a little bit from Jubilate Agno, Fragment B, by Christopher Smart. 

For GOD nevertheless is an extravagant BEING and generous unto loss.
For there is no profit in the generation of man and the loss of millions is not worth God's tear.
For this is the twelfth day of the MILLENNIUM of the MILLENNIUM foretold by the prophets -- give the glory to God ONE THOUSAND SEVEN HUNDRED AND SIXTY --
For the Planet Mars is the word FORTITUDE.
For to worship naked in the Rain is the bravest thing for the refreshing and purifying the body.
For the Planet Jupiter is the WORD DISPENSATION.
For Tully says to be generous you must be first just, but the voice of Christ is distribute at all events.
For Kittim is the father of the Pygmies, God be gracious to Pigg his family.
For the Soul is divisible and a portion of the Spirit may be cut off from one and applied to another.
For NEW BREAD is the most wholesome especially if it be leaven'd with honey.
For a NEW SONG also is best, if it be to the glory of God; and taken with the food like the psalms.
For the Planet Saturn is the word TEMPERANCE or PATIENCE.
For Jacob's Ladder are the steps of the Earth graduated hence to Paradice and thence to the throne of God.
For a good wish is well but a faithful prayer is an eternal benefit.
For SPICA VIRGINIS is the star that appeared to the wise men in the East and directed their way before it was yet insphered.
For an IDEA is the mental vision of an object.
For Lock supposes that an human creature, at a given time may be an atheist i.e. without God, by the folly of his doctrine concerning innate ideas.
For it is not lawful to sell poyson in England any more than it is in Venice, the Lord restrain both the finder and receiver.

Poem drawn from the "fellows followed" list on my blog at 10:20 pm 10 April

I sense you understand me perfectly.

                       (Language drawn largely from
                         the "fellows followed" list
                         on my blog at 10:20 pm 10 April)

The traffic on First is careful tonight,

earnest, gray. Birds, pianos and the moon

our self-portrait. The sheriff rides in

to arrest the weather, fat snowball

competing with her favorite tumbleweed.

For the excellent career in roustaboutery,

broken bowls, winter blooms, acerb

whistles over interference.

It’s all interference,

pulsing handbrakes,

ridiculous.

I will post a poem today, eventually--I'm enjoying the whole thing this year--but for now, I'm taking a warm bath in Madeline Gins:

One thing men haven’t realized is that unlike them (all men are mortal), women do not die — This makes all the difference — although some women, having been brow-beaten by sheer syllogistic brawn, have at times pretended.

Most women do not look like themselves; although many women do assume the form of 'woman;' some are men, others gas and electricity, and still others are indistinguishable. 

-- Madeline Gins, What the President Will Say and Do

That's a little bite of wisdom from American artist, architect and poet Madeline Helen Arakawa Gins (November 7, 1941 – January 8, 2014). 

Gins' architecture projects, mostly done with husband Shusaku Arakawa, sound like poems, as in the Reversible Destiny Lofts and the Lifespan Extending Villa. 

She and Arakawa also did the escalator at the super-groovy Comme-des-Garcons-funded Dover Street Market, just up the block from me. Up several blocks, actually, but who's counting. Their Biotopological Scale-Juggling Escalator is worth a visit. See it online here or make a trip here. 

NaPoWriMo 2014

I would not do it this year, that I was certain of. Definitely not. No way. Then the planet spun round again. Surprise. On Thursday last week I signed myself up to do it twice over, here and at Tiferet, though I'm not clear where and how the poems will move from here to there. . . . .

That's it? That's it--it's the 30th of April 2013 and the month was far less cruel than ever before.

I followed the prompt this time and was glad about it. The suggestion was to take a shortish beloved poem and rewrite it, line by line, replacing words with words that mean the opposite. 

I chose an old sentimental favorite, "Of Mere Being," by Wallace Stevens. It's possibly one of Stevens' most sentimental poems and I don't believe it was published until after he died. What's more, his daughter later complained that there was a wrong word in the poem (it's decor), but I didn't want to get into all that today. 

I had a noonday stab at it and then an evening stab at it, and I put them both here--they are so different. In the betweentime I did an N+7 noun replacement with the original, since I've been so intrigued by those interventions for a couple of months, and enjoyed the result at N+12. So I threw that in here, too. I'm missing my Robin terribly this go-round but am grateful for Alan Kleiman joining me and for the editor(s)(?) at NaPoWriMo calling out my blog. 

Until next year. 

(10 p.m.) After oblivion

The rhizome at the onset of body

before the first instinct, descends

on the blue-white floor.

A silver-scaled fish

is mute in the rhizome, all animal nonsense,

a mineral indifference, a local silence.

You forget then that it is the consequences

that break us, unhappy or happy.

The fish is silent. Its scales eat light.

The rhizome lolls in the center of time.

A fire quickens at the root.

The fish’s water-wimpled scales spark alive.

(Noon) On all death

The grass at the start of the heart,

before the first instinct, falls

in the gilt morass.

A silver-furred beast

chokes in the grass, with animal meaning,

with mineral indifference, a local silence.

You misunderstand then that it is the result

that makes us unhappy or happy.

The beast chokes. Its fur dulls.

The grass lays in the center of time.

The wall rushes quickly in the roots.

The beast’s water-wimpled skin rises.

N+12

The parent at the enquiry of the misery,

Beyond the last tile, roofs
In the bunch decor,
A grammar-feathered blood
Sings in the parent, without human member,
Without human fig, a foreign specialist.
You know then that it is not the reconstruction
That makes us happy or unhappy.
The blood sings. Its festivals shine.
The parent stands on the election of spell.
The wolf moves slowly in the breezes.
The blood's flash-fangled festivals dangle drink. 

Of Mere Being

      by Wallace Stevens

The palm at the end of the mind,
Beyond the last thought, rises
In the bronze decor.

A gold-feathered bird
Sings in the palm, without human meaning,
Without human feeling, a foreign song.

You know then that it is not the reason
That makes us happy or unhappy.
The bird sings. Its feathers shine.

The palm stands on the edge of space.
The wind moves slowly in the branches.
The bird’s fire-fangled feathers dangle down.