I’ve moved most– if not all– of my bloggy writing to Passion Task. I hope to see you there!
Posted in General
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Tagged Meta, Site News
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Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
[CC licensed photo by adm]
David Markson passed away last Friday. I have recently had reason to think about Markson’s work, in particular Wittgenstein’s Mistress, which—like many—I came to thanks to David Foster Wallace’s high praise. At the time I found Markson’s experimental novel mostly confusing… I could never get my mind around the work as a whole, though it was clearly composed of many brilliant pieces.
Over the last six months or so, as I’ve started to think more seriously about art through accretion—collage, assemblage, bricolage, etc—and pondering, among other things, the creative blog as an aspect of genre and work like David Shields’s Reality Hunger– Wittgentein’s Mistress has started assuming more importance.
It’s sad to learn of Markson’s passing… but I am exhilarated at the prospect that there is much more of his work to discover than I realized.
UPDATED: New York Times obituary for David Markson
“There is a relation between language and truth that is very subtle and is always changing. For the reader or listener who can appreciate the constant shifting, each new poem one finds is a fresh statement of that relation. Because in poetry there is a focus on language, the relation can be seen very clearly; also because in poetry one never has to say more than one means. We live our lives to a great extent through language, and so it must be forever fascinating to watch it, like watching the waves.”
[via James Finnegan]
[CC licensed image by Ko An]
“June”
It’s hard to imagine that
in just a few months it
will be 45 degrees below zero
and my breath will freeze
and fall to the ground with
the sound of distant surf.
Now, a hidden bird sings
a sighing, dog-like whine
from the trees and the bees,
who will live only a few days,
move from flower to flower
touching them like thoughts.
If they could, they would each ask
me how I’ve survived so long and
and what it’s like to expect so much.
Posted in Poetry & Poetics
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Tagged poems
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DOUBLE MOON: CONSTRUCTIONS & CONVERSATIONS by Margo Klass and Frank Soos » RATTLE: Poetry for the 21st Century
DOUBLE MOON: CONSTRUCTIONS & CONVERSATIONS
by Margo Klass and Frank Soos
tags: poetry, art, reviews, cosmolinks
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Quote of the Day
Not the “only” art, but certainly the one to which this happens most often.
tags: cosmolinks, poetry, criticism
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Sarah Palin Misinterprets Robert Frost – Culture – The Atlantic
It’s not as if Palin is the only one who misuses this particular quotation, of course… but most of us aren’t angling to become President of the United States.
tags: cosmolinks, politics, poetry, sarah palin, robert frost
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AVANTGARDE+POLITICAL=PAYPAL
“Piss-Avant Post-Ahole Langpo Cambridge avanti” and “avantgarblers” make this post worth the (free) cost of admission.
tags: cosmolinks, poetics, politics, poetry
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Super Punch: New Neal Stephenson project
“The Mongoliad is a sort of serialized story, created by Neal Stephenson, and written by Neal, Greg Bear, Nicole Galland, Mark Teppo, and a number of other great authors. It will be told via custom apps on iPad, iPhone, Kindle, and Android, and will be something of an experiment in post-book publishing and storytelling.”
tags: cosmolinks, publishing, neal stephenson
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48 Hour Magazine
Here’s how it works: Issue Zero begins May 7th. We’ll unveil a theme and you’ll have 24 hours to produce and submit your work. We’ll take the next 24 to snip, mash and gild it. The end results will be a shiny website and a beautiful glossy paper magazine, delivered right to your old-fashioned mailbox. We promise it will be insane.
tags: cosmolinks, publishing, magazines
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Martin Gardner, 1914-2010 | HiLobrow
A brief interview with Martin Gardner (RIP)
tags: rumilinks, cosmolinks, obit, martin gardner, interviews, writers
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The Elements of Living Lightly | Zen Habits
More good advice… my judgmental nature is killing me
tags: cosmolinks, life, psyche
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kindfully + mindfully | Zen Habits
tags: cosmolinks, life, psyche
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The No. 1 Habit of Highly Creative People | Zen Habits
Solitude… yes, you need it. No, you probably don’t get enough of it.
tags: cosmolinks, rumilinks, creativity, solitude
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Translating Sex | Online Only | Granta Magazine
on translting Roberto Bolaño’s work…
tags: cosmolinks, translation, Roberto Bolaño
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How to Save the News (James Fallows, Atlantic)
“Everyone knows that Google is killing the news business. Few people know how hard Google is trying to bring it back to life, or why the company now considers journalism’s survival crucial to its own prospects…”
tags: rumilinks, cosmolinks, journalism, google
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
[resurrecting some old poems for historical purposes]
[CC licensed photo by davebluedevil]
“12 Years Old”
…and in a few minutes we’ll be crushed
together in the tool shed’s crawlspace,
oily gray floorboards above us and
your perfect peach hair pressed against
the petroleum smelling dirt below,
awkwardly fondling one another’s
newly protruded nubs like huge toddlers
just discovering their own faces.
But for now there is the single sound
of your voice from the electric chair
and the neon buzz of desire I’ve
just that moment learned to recognize.
I smear your name on the corrugated wall
with the bleeding head of a dandelion.
The milky-white wine drops of my efforts
seep from stem to hand which I touch to
your greedy lips, letting you taste them
with the undisguised need of the human.
Posted in Poetry & Poetics
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Tagged poems
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Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
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OldFonts.com | Authentic Old Penmanship Fonts & Old Text Fonts
great looking old-school typefaces…
tags: cosmolinks, typography, fonts
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Kon + Amir Present: The 50 Greatest Hip-Hop Samples Of All Time
“…before it was all-808-everything, hip-hop used a secret (and sometimes not-so-secret) selection of classic soul, funk rock, and jazz records from the ’60s and ’70s to create their sound. From tiny, obscure snippets to instantly-recognizable loops, the sample-based producers of the late ’80s and early ’90s uncovered some truly classic musical gems that are still sought after and used today.”
tags: cosmolinks, music, audio
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Fever // photography
Photography sites D’Arcy Norman reads…
tags: cosmolinks, rumilinks, photography
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
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n+1: The Intellectual Situation
On the web, publishing, etc: “At this point the best thing the web and the book could do for one another would be to admit their essential difference. This would allow the web to develop as it wishes, with a clear conscience, and for literature to do what it’s always done in periods of crisis: keep its eyes and ears open; take notes; and bide its time.”
tags: cosmolinks, publishing, books, technology, ebooks
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Oscar Wilde Would Have Twittered
Poets on Twitter and their craft. And sometimes how one influences the other.
tags: cosmolinks, poetry, poetics, writing, twitter
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
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Good Comma « BREVITY’s Nonfiction Blog
In praise of the comma…
tags: cosmolinks, writing, grammar, punctuation, comma
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Fiction Magazines Worth Reading: 2010 | Wet Asphalt
Includes a few publications I’ve recently subscribed to, such as “Open Space”
tags: cosmolinks, publishing, magazines, fiction
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Sam Anderson on ‘Nox’ by Anne Carson
“ Nox is unwieldy. It is, very deliberately, a literary object…” – and it looks like a great read…
tags: cosmolinks, books, publishing, anne carson
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Hand-drawn maps from firefighters, club-hoppers, Boy Scout dads, grandmothers, and Alexander Calder. – By Julia Turner – Slate Magazine
Very cool– love the casual, hand-drawn maps!
tags: rumilinks, cosmolinks, drawing, maps, visualization
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Separate truths – The Boston Globe
“We pretend that religious differences are trivial because it makes us feel safer, or more moral. But pretending that the world’s religions are the same does not make our world safer. Like all forms of ignorance, it makes our world more dangerous, and more deadly.”
tags: rumilinks, cosmolinks, religion
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The Unword Dictionary
“Unwords.com maintains a collection of words that individuals and groups have made up at some point in time to describe things that aren’t associated with a term in the English language, or to describe them with a term that is better suited, or to describe things for which they didn’t know the real term. In any case, these unwords, as we call them, do not normally exist in the English dictionary.” (a fictionary)
tags: rumilinks, cosmolinks, language, words, reference, dictionary
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I’m No Longer In Dillingham Alaska, I Have No Excuse (and Neither Do You)
Wow– a whole different look at living in Dillingham. A bit Hunter S. Thompson, a bit– I don’t know.
tags: cosmolinks, bloggers, alaska, dillingham
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BackType Connect Plugin for WordPress — BackType
Bring comments about blog posts in from other social media sites such as Twitter, FriendFeed, Digg, etc.
tags: cosmolinks, wordpress, utilities, social software, twitter
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
[since I can’t write a poem to save my life, might as well share a good one I just tripped over. Maybe my new writing year will start tomorrow…]
"To the New Year"
Comes upon and at me
does your gone-tinged promise.
I’ve got a train to miss.
Can I buy you some rain?
In drams, days, this life’ll
feed me to the keyholes:
I’m in a basement
conquering atlases;
I’m in an attic
putting money on a god.
Formless, but possible–
that’s all tomorrow’s problem.
I’ve made us phrases, flaws
the hours fall from and into.
–Graham Foust
found in Open Space (no. 10, 2010)
Have to say, Hyperbole and a Half’s “How to Make Showering Awesome Again” made me laugh and wince in recognition… the clip above doesn’t even scratch the surface. Go read it. You know you want to.
Posted in Humor
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Tagged comics, fun, Humor
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While I’m on the subject of physical books—you know, the kind with paper and pages—here’s a cool looking project from gardenkultur… book planters:
From inhabitat, two innovative design for book shelves. The more practical is the book shelf of books (how meta):
Somewhat less practical, unless you live in a trendy, furniture-free loft where you squat in conversation with your Bohemian friends, but still cool to look at, is the circular rolling book shelf:
Posted in design
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Tagged books, design, shelves
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The Challenge of Writing About David Foster Wallace
“…some lives can’t be defined by the adventures therein; some possess an intellect so vast and frenetic that, consequently, it’s mostly inaccessible to the profiler and, in turn, the reader. See: Wallace, David Foster.”
tags: cosmolinks, dfw, david foster wallace, biography, memoir, cnf
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Amazing Maps
Just what the title says!
tags: cosmolinks, rumilinks
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The PennSound/Woodberry Poetry Room Wallace Stevens Audio Project
Already some good stuff!
tags: cosmolinks, poetry, audio, pennsound, wallace stevens
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Video games can never be art – Roger Ebert’s Journal
I tend to agree… not that they can’t be something valuable, useful and entertaining.
tags: rumilinks, games, art, cosmolinks
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Death Metal Lyric or William Blake Quote?
tags: cosmolinks, humor, william blake, poetry
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Open Video Alliance | Hitler “Downfall Meme” gets DMCA’d
Guess what film I will never rent or in any way support? How petty.
tags: rumilinks, cosmolinks, copyright, ip
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Hyperbole and a Half: The Alot is Better Than You at Everything
“As a grammatically conscientious person who frequents internet forums and YouTube, I have found it necessary to develop a few coping mechanisms…”
tags: rumilinks, cosmolinks, grammar, comics, humor, fun
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YouTube – David Foster Wallace interview 2003 part 1 of 10
10 part interview with David Foster Wallace in 2003. Sigh.
tags: cosmolinks, david foster wallace, dfw, interviews
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A Hint Fiction Contest + A Flatmancrooked Launch
“What is Hint Fiction? Inspired by Ernest Hemingway’s infamous six-word story — “For sale: Baby shoes, never worn” — Hint Fiction is a story of 25 words or fewer that suggests a larger, more complex story. These are complete stories that hint at a larger story, not a first sentence or random sentence plucked from a larger work thinly disguised as a story.”
tags: cosmolinks, writing, fiction, contest, flash fiction, hint fiction
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Drowning Sign Fail
Typography fail? Changing context fail?
tags: rumilinks, cosmolinks, humor
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Libraries + Sex = The Best Survey In The History Of The World
tags: cosmolinks, rumilinks, fun, humor, library
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How To Make a 1950s Horror Movie Poster in Photoshop | Bad Blumau
tags: cosmolinks, rumilinks, design, photoshop, posters
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Beautifully Banal
“The Type Directors Club has asked these designers to find a classified/personal newspaper ad from their local community to “hijack” typographically. When redesigned, the once banal and disposable classified ads will be reinterpreted by the designer into a one-of-a-kind collectible poster” (via @kottke)
tags: cosmolinks, typography, design, type
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
from a reader:
“Thy Voice in the Garden”
My mother dipped me in the river, too,
because she was afraid.
But her hands were large, and so was I (by then)
and much of me the water never touched.
Walking back, the dust made mud socks
on my feet and on my ankles
and my mother smiled
thinking of how she had protected me.
In the days that followed she would push me out,
rearing back as I braved the adders that riddled my path.
When I returned she would touch my sweat in an off-handed way
and send me to peel the fruit, never imagining what I had skirted around.
Why should I die before my time?
Yet tomorrow I will shrug and go again,
mud socks chipping off of my feet
as I tread those under that rise up against me.
Though, even now, I can feel the light of the world on my calves.
I can feel the sting of arrows in places that have always been dry.
Because perhaps tomorrow my time will be at hand.
And too, because a city that is set on a hill can never be hid.
The thing I am
mistaken for human,
wrapped to heal then
wrapped some more.
The long winding of gauze
creates a convincing shape,
human-ish with a muffled voice,
navigating by guesswork,
staggering into walls,
turning and lumbering on.
Zombies won’t have me nor
mummies claim me, the living
dead that never lived,
aborted in Technicolor.
The daubs & de-screened dots
dance in the faces
of horrified passers-by
who shout "It came from the deep,"
in 72 point extruded Gotham,
who trample their neighbors,
shouting "It lives,"
half right and
completely wrong.
I have almost no idea what Conceptualism is and understand nothing at all of Flarf, but Joshua Corey’s notes on Vanessa Place’s recent AWP presentation “Notes on Why Conceptualism is Better than Flarf” are still delightful:
Vanessa Place’s paper is killer: "Notes on Why Conceptualism Is Better Than Flarf." A few gems:
- "Flarf is a court jester. As such, it is still a member of the court."
- "Flarf is a one-trick pony that thinks a unicorn is another kind of horse."
- "Flarf still loves poetry. Conceptualism loves poetry enough to put it out of its misery."
- "Flarf wants to be funny." "Conceptualism wants."
- Flarf engages the amygdale, conceptualism the cortex.
- "Flarf is a whoopee cushion in the world of the new and old lyric poetry. Conceptualism is a fart."
- "Ron Silliman likes flarf. Ron Silliman does not like conceptualism."
- "Flarf looks like poetry." "Poetry looks like conceptualism."
