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.

AQ's 28 April Twitter poem almost in response to NaPoWriMo

Poem-ish result of Twitter search of mourning + Freud

“If you read

tiny

if you read

muses

and Melancholi-a-muses

perspective

of working through

Judith Butler+

if you read thought

about Lois...

remind me to explain

con

intimate process. But Brazil

if you read reality

out of this tragedy

LOVEdontLOVEmee

efendim my master

if you read we show

what happens

next muses, tiny

(I Want The Future,

I Also Want to Hold Onto 

museum remembrance

late open if you read

tomorrow

muses until

film

poetry if you read

from doc forward

(This content is available only to Premium Members. It is copyright)  

triumph

if you read

of melancholia?

I'd lv 2C more attn

paid 2 processes,

medicalizing them

isn't the way. if you read

Psychology Books:

to perform tiny tiny

From Sigmund?: Question

arts brief tiny

mourning

after

journey into nostalgia:

To borrow such

runs risk

-- pathol...

too real to be tolerable.

Positive effects

of depression

genius if you muse.

melancholia. 

aq's for Shakespeare's Birthday

*disappeared.

an admission, as a warning against the value of our conclusions

What's happifying? I got a copy of my new chapbook.

I have erica kaufman and Sigmund Freud and especially Lynne DeSilva-Johnson to thank for this (especially Lynne's Exit Strata's Print! Document Series).

Alan K's for 15 April

How i feel

I'm a bear in a room
[A bull in a china shop]
Raging on tip toes
At mosquitoes
That dot my air
Make an appointment
if you want to visit
So I can comb my hair
And brush my teeth
Giving the appearance
of civility
I will not repeat not step on you
Or scare the be Jesus
If I can help it

First, a little Kit Smart on his birthday. I hope he got what he wished for.

For God has given us a language of monosyllables to prevent our clipping.

For a toad enjoys a finer prospect than another creature to compensate his lack.

Tho' toad I am the object of man's hate.
Yet better am I than a reprobate.       who has the worst of prospects.

For there are stones, whose constituent particles are little toads.

For the spiritual musick is as follows.

For there is the thunder-stop, which is the voice of God direct.

For the rest of the stops are by their rhimes.

For the trumpet rhimes are sound bound, soar more and the like.

For the Shawm rhimes are lawn fawn moon boon and the like.

For the harp rhimes are sing ring string and the like.

For the cymbal rhimes are bell well toll soul and the like.

For the flute rhimes are tooth youth suit mute and the like.

For the dulcimer rhimes are grace place beat heat and the like.

For the Clarinet rhimes are clean seen and the like.

For the Bassoon rhimes are pass, class and the like. God be gracious to Baumgarden....

Here, for a little more Christopher Smart.

And for a great article on him by R. Pinsky. 

Welcoming another guest blogger: Ryan Nowlin (lately of the Poetry Project). He will be joining me sometimes henceforth.

I don’t get Brooklyn My boss thought the catnip on my desk was pot.  Go figure! The reason why I like you  may stem from unresolved issues from jr. high school Atari was my personal hell.  See where this behavior gets you? Newark has the feeling of being affixed, but not New York City. Prudential Building is mostly underrated in New Jersey. Teens who hang out on street corners become bus drivers. Every stale breeze seemed to whisper “Louise” I have this recurrent dream of a starry carousel creaking After days of retrofitted murmurs soft hypnotic laughter approaching fresh fantasies a licked window. by Ryan Nowlin

Just under the 5 April wire: The really great thing is to go bananas

The really great thing is to go bananas

and get put in the attic for one of your transgressions--
a broken nail, say, or murder--and then begin the
tremendous game of pretending you're not
in the attic, even get a whole bunch of people
to strut by, make campy entrances, take sharp
exits, play like they're on the ground, play
you're also on the dirt, everyone on terra
firma, we're all test-touching it, tasting
sweet thick loamy in spring
when it's interrupted by roots
spreading worms digging life
and (hey) you like to write about it even
though you don't know that metal smell,
haven't whiffed it in years (ever?) but perched
(above) you keep on writing about it. Aw, poetry!

It begins. (Starry the curtain kicking)

disappeared

15 April

A person was paid to plant these pinks
not hoping but knowing how it happens
every year. Again. And again, so much
more remains buried and the dog snuffles madly and
whiffs, rooting. These first post-equinox weeks
I come to remind you
or to make you forget
there is another way
its path is petal-near
and it will cost you everything, or maybe nothing.

Back at it: April's fool

After Seeing Gerhard Richter Painting

Paintings are mortal enemies, says Richter

quoting Adorno, and poems too will kill you

if they roam unsupervised, untethered,

flying off along yon ecliptic with all they know,

know about you. Truth! Gad!

Maybe

it’s better to stop all this you mutter once

in a while, April nights when the thought squeezes

like a rat through a sliver in the baseboards

in the house built of words, always only words

so circumscribed, bound to 24 marks and

one antipodal Hippocratic oath: first, do harm –

that’s how you know it’s a word, a real word.

Another thing Richter says at movie’s end,

a line the director knew to save for last,

to remind us why we’d paid and offer

permission (the world loves to

hate its artists): It’s fun.

Justice Barbie

(27 late)

Justice Barbie!

Like tequila, one sip leads to if
I bump into old Malcolm X in the morning
when I’m supposed to be making a poem for Robin
and Charlie I’m all it’s the ballot or the bullet
for the rest of the day and meaning it, meaning
justice in a way that wouldn’t bother to say the word
though I might look up Chomsky on education
send a snippet to Evan and Eamon but no justice
probably trademarked by some honky designer
of disposable plastic manufactured in China.

There’s no such thing as a nonviolent revolution.

My pal John goes to China to make plastic gewgaws
and has to bring his own food and water.
Says it stinks real bad. Is that a related issue
and should it be explained in a poem.

“Justice Fine Cutlery in Primrose Pink”

If you and I were Americans there’d be no problem
my country ‘tis not of me, though as grandmother
pointed out when I began bringing home
this particular vintage, this is my America since
I can be mad as Malcolm X to which I explained
that’s because we’re crackers, gran, and surely none
of this politics has any place in poetry, maybe old
Tom Jefferson, he takes a seat in real poems
who read architecture books he'd ordered from Boston
so he could let more light and space in a house

oh Truth is great and will prevail if left to herself.

Notions of self-evidence sadly hamstrung
for any gal who sipped postmodernism in the 80s or
even these ironic days when Bruce needs poetry,
or just light and space, at least truth spreading
easy like a lamp, easy like the April rainfall
which cannot help but corrode cars, graveyards, storm
of justice infinite like Greek's chaos and I think
We aren’t Americans yet and damn,
how will I ever make a poem.

11: It's Christopher Smart's Birthday

from Jubilate Agno, Fragment B

[For I will consider my Cat Jeoffry]

....For God has blessed him in the variety of his movements.
For, though he cannot fly, he is an excellent clamberer.
For his motions upon the face of the earth are more than any other quadruped.
For he can tread to all the measures upon the music.
For he can swim for life.
For he can creep.