November 3 - 19, 2008

A Coney Island of the Mind
Poems by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
New Directions Paperback

While I've been to City Lights I've never read any of Lawrence Ferlinghetti's poetry. I came across this volume since it was the selection for the reading group accompanying the complex and marvelous exhibition Circa 1958. I didn't make it to the discussion group, but I'm glad to have spent some time with Ferlinghetti's fantastically visual and stunning poems.

Some excerpts/phrases:
9- "under cement skies"
-"bland billboards illustrating imbecile illusions of happiness"
10- "...more maimed citizens in painted cards and they have strange license plates and engines that devour America"
11- "...elephants in bathtubs floated past us out to sea strumming bent mandolins..."
14- "And lost teacups full of our ashes floated by"
17- "where no birds sang"
33- "Frightened by the sound of my own voice and by the sound of birds singing on hot wires"
35- "The pennycandy store beyond the El is where I first fell in love with unreality"
36- "At a certain age her heart put about searching the lost shores And heard the green birds singing from the other side of silence."
38- "painting moustaches on statues"
44- Proust
49- "and I am waiting for someone to really discover America"
49-50
52- "and I am waiting for Alice in Wonderland to retransmit to me her total dream of innocence"
57- "I'm going where turtles win"
58- "Lost the war without killing anybody."
-"The end has just begun. I want to announce it. Run don't walk to the nearest exit."
62- "Home is where one starts from."
63- "and noted the close identification of the United States and the Promise Land where every coin is marked In God We Trust but the dollar bills do not have it being gods unto themselves."
64- "I have ridden superhighways and believes the billboard's promises"
-"I am in line for a top job. I may be moving on to Detroit."
66- "I have seen giraffes in jungle jims their necks like love wound around the iron circumstances of the world."
82- "#6 Truth is not the secret of a few"
-museums, constipated
83- "Fortune has its cookies to give out"
85- "'We think differently at night' she told me once"
90- El- third story world
91- "and of that lost book I had with its blue cover and its white inside where a pencilhand had written HORSEMAN, PASS BY!"

August 31 - September 2, 2008

Horses

by Philip Shaw

33 1/3 Books, 2008, paperback

19 cards

The first time I saw Patti Smith was on R.E.M.'s Monster tour in 1995. I was in high school. I didn't know much about her yet but I knew that she was someone to find out more about, much like R.E.M. pointed me towards The Velvet Underground. I don't remember the quote exactly but I recall Michael Stipe saying once how when he heard Horses he realized anyone could sing, that he could sing. R.E.M.'s music and interests gave me a perspective beyond the one-traffic light town I lived in. Because of Horses significance to Stipe, the bits I know about Patti Smith, and the concerts of hers I've seen since, I was excited to see that the 33 1/3 book about her focused on Horses.

Philip Shaw's story of musical discovery and research bears some similarities to mine, though his was guided by Ian Curtis and Joy Division and Patti Smith, who he knew first through the Horses cover. The format and approach for 33 1/3 books varies with the author. Shaw writes about Horses as a fan, as well as the necessary invocation of Rimbaud while also discussing it through other texts. As he says, "...Horses is about what happens when we listen as well as read."

Selections:

3- "...but from Patti Smith I learned that the loss of control, a key word for Ian Curtis, need not lead to a suicidal walk 'upon the edge of escape' (She's Lost Control Again) As Land taught me, the loss of control could lead, equally, to the sea of possibilities."

7- Velvet Underground and Warhol

8- Bob Dylan

9- Robert Mapplethorpe

13- rigor and taking music seriously

-"Elvis Costello line (the attribution is disputed) 'writing about music is like dancing about architecture.'"

15- "unlike other cultural forms, music is where we are most likely to encounter ourselves"

16- "What music offers is the promise of release from the restrictions of everyday life. But such a release is, of course, illusory, and just as ideology works to convince its subjects that they are, in fact, outside ideology, thus rendering itself immune to critique and to the potential for revolt, so music, by concealing its origins in commerce, and by providing a sense of escape from the workaday world, operates as a lure to critical consciousness. To be lost in music, released form the nine to five, is to feel alive, but also, as Sister Sledge adds, to be 'Caught in a trap': for who, once they have experience such freedom, would wish to reflect on it? Might the act of close critical engagement ruin the illusion?"

19- "nothing is more heady in the sense of intoxicating, than the champagne froth of a radical new idea."

22- Benjamin

23- the Situationists

24- "With each song, Smith presents a sort of photographic negative, her characters inhabiting a shadow version of the land of the free."

28- Lacan: "A certificate tells me that I was born. I repudiate this certificate: I am not a poet, but a poem. A poem that is being written, even if it looks like a subject."

-"Patti Smith always distrusted the idea that human beings possess a fixed or stable identity."

29- "Yes, she is a poet, and she is a poem that is written."

-eye patch

30- Rimbaud- self-fashioning

33- Alice in Wonderland

37- Philadelphia Museum of Art

41- Illuminations

44- Piss Factory

-that photograph

49- drawings

52- "death by water"

-"how many tears on your pillow. crocodile or real. watershed."

52- T.S. Eliot

54- "the night stretched like a cloud"

55- (questions) "Perhaps all of these or none of these things."

56- PS: "I had to go to Paris to find myself as an artist, but I came back to New York filled with words and rhythms."

56- close alliance with Lenny Kaye

60- Sam Shepard- PS: Shepard's "whole life moves on rhythms. He's a drummer."

61- street angel

62- "her stress on the act of reading"

63- words, language

66- longing

67- Rimbaud quote- women

70- Artaud

72- Richard Hell: "The art-form of the future is celebrityhood."

76- Gross: "She was a woman who dared to get up on stage and not smile- not aim to please."

77-78- silences

86- Patty Hearst- "I am nobody's million dollar baby."

97- John Cale- mirror quote

98- Horses read as artifact

102- "Again, who is singing here, and to whom?"

106- Lacan, Zizek

121- album "form of memento mori, an artistic meditation on the limits of mortality."

122- Jim Morrison- the task

128- Voltaire- back to England- Louis XV- said to have asked him: 'What did you learn over there?' 'To think, sire.' (penser- to think), to which the King replied, 'Horses?' (panser- to groom horses)"

129- "Horses, then, is about thinking; or rather, it is about allowing oneself to be thought..."

131- Barthes

132- Lacan- child- mirror

June 21 - 28, 2008

Lewis Carroll's Alice Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There

The Pennyroyal Edition

Designed and illustrated by Barry Moser

10 cards

Anytime is probably a perfect time to read Carroll's books but with the notions that surround summer and this edition's quote by James Kincaid, "dreaming as summers die" and the beautiful lines that complete the text, summer indeed seems to be a "frabjous" time to pick this volume up. Such a book, filled with of secrets, which, when whispered or discussed in the summer, could intoxicate many a mind.

Alice's encounter with the Jabberwocky poem reminds me of my own experience reading Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange in high school. The words were unlike any I had encountered before, but somehow but continuing to read, some sort of sense and meaning took shape, and like Alice, my head filled with ideas even though I wasn't exactly sure of anything. The secret is to keep going forward. While I still need to learn more about chess, I love Carroll's questions posed about language, words and meaning, "Callooh! Callay!"

Some excerpts:

xi- "For Alice, the story is a magic potion to ward off the storm-wind of adulthood and death; for Carroll, it is a holding and freezing action. Words are a cabalistic stay against loss, growth, forgetting and betraying."

xi-xii-"The hope to hold and contain is counteracted by a recognition that such a hope is futile."

xii- "The gain is really a loss, the advance a decline"

xiii- "names are 'useful' to the namers."

xiv- "words mean more than we mean to express when we use them"

-Carroll; "Poesta fit non nascitur"

-"Next when you are describing

A shape or a sound or tint,

Don't state the matter plainly.

But put it in a hint:

And learn to look at all things with a sort of mental squint."

-James Kincaid, 1982- "dreaming as the summers die"

4- Footnote- Alice's birthday is May 4th (3 days before mine!)

5- (snow against the window panes) "Just as if someone was kidding the window all over outside."

6- "Let's pretend"

10- "Imperials fiddlestick!"

11- "Mind the volcano!"

13- Jabberwocky

"O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!"

14- "Somehow it seems to fill my head with ideas- only I don't know exactly what they are!"

15- "We can talk," said the Tiger-lily, "when there's anybody worth talking to."

22- "It's a great game of chess that's being played- all over the world- if this is the world at all, you know."

23- "Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that."

24- "Speak in French when you ca'n't think of the English for a thing- turn out your toes as you walk- and remember who you are!"

27- "Better say nothing at all. Language is worth a thousand pounds a word!"

30- "What's the use of their having names," the Gnat said, "if they won't answer to them, "said Alice; "but it's useful to the people that name them, I supposed. If not, why do things have names at all?"

32- "'I suppose you don't want to lose your name?' 'No, indeed,' Alice said."

34- "...And now, who am I? I will remember, if I can! I'm determined to do it."

38- contrariwise

44- (Alice) "If I wasn't real...I shouldn't be able to cry."

52- (Queen, living backwards) "...but there's one great advantage in it, that one's memory works both ways."

54- (Alice lonely) Queen: "consider what a great girl you are. Consider what a long way you've come to-day. Consider what o'clock it is. Consider anything, only don't cry!"

-Alice, "one ca'n't believe impossible things."

-Queen, "...Why sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."

62- "'Must a name mean something?' Alice asked doubtfully. 'Of course it must,' Humpty Dumpty said with a short laugh: 'my name means the shape I am...'"

-Alice, "'Why do you sit out here all alone?' Humpty Dumpty, 'Why, because there's nobody with me!'"

64- Alice, "'...one ca'n't help growing older.' said Humpty Dumpty, 'but two can.'"

65- un-birthday present

66- ''When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean- neither more nor less.'"

-"'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you can make words mean different things."

-"'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master- that's all.'"

67- asks Humpty Dumpty the meaning of Jabberwocky

-"You see its like a portmanteau- there are two meanings packed up into one word"

-toves- live on cheese

68- "In winter, when the fields are white, I sing this song for your delight-

In spring, when woods are getting green, I'll try and tell you what I mean.

In summer, when the days are long, perhaps you'll understand the song:"

69- "In autumn, when the leaves are brown, Take pen and ink, and write it down."

-"I sent a message to the fish..."

79- (Unicorn to Alice) "if you'll believe in me, I'll believe in you. Is that a bargain?"

82- Looking-glass cakes

83- Alice- "'So I wasn't dreaming, after all,' she said to herself, 'unless-unless we're all part of the same dream.'"

84- Punch and Judy

-Alice, "I don't want to be anybody's prisoner. I want to be a Queen."

88- "It's as strong as soup"

100- (Red Queen) "Always speak the truth- think before you speak- and write it down afterwards."

102- (White Queen) "What is the cause of lightning?"

-(Alice) "It's exactly like a riddle with no answer."

103- hippopotamus

116 "In a Wonderland they lie, Dreaming as the days go by, Dreaming as the summers die: Ever drifting down the stream- Lingering in the golden gleam- Life, what is it but a dream?"