The lights are strung up, Cholly's strung out, and the Club's finally got the true holiday merchandising spirit prancin' and dancin' and donnin' and blitzin' in The Hotsy Totsy Discount Warehouse Outlet:
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- To our left and right, we see samples of Christina La Sala's and Steven Elliott's Cootie Catchers, published by Chronicle Books. Perfect ice-breakers for the tasteful yet shy, these cunning hand-and-eye-developers are sure to replace Dan Savage and the Magic 8-Ball as your mystic advisor of choice.
- Arthur Lee once asked, "Pictures and words: is this communicating?" Well, if he'd been talking about the pamphlets of Juliet Clark, we'd have to reply that they're even better than communicating! And at only $5 each, including postage, they're cheaper, too! Give three copies and their grateful recipient can shelve 'em under "Comix," "Memoirs," and "Small Press Collectibles" for easy access. The perfect stocking stuffer for those with large flat stockings.
- Ray Davis's and Christina La Sala's much bruited about film The Ichthyoid Syndrome ("THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT OF OUR TIME!") is finally available for home entertainment centers. I'll ship a copy on a videotape or Zip disk at cost -- that's only 14 dollars! (Actually, it sounds like a lot to me, too, but that really is the cost, if you include the envelope and all.) Sure to be a collector's item, since normal people don't buy five-minute-long movies!
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- And Anselm Dovetonsils makes this ruggedly handsome offer: for every little magazine in which you publish one of his poems, he will pledge to provide a rave review of a book published by your small press -- and if you publish him in an anthology sold in real book stores, he guarantees that his review will appear in the New York Times! No other poet can match such a promise this late in the holiday season! Remember: Dovetonsils will not be undersold!
In production: The Tin Ear
Ethan Hawke stars in this nightmarish urban fantasy about a teenage boy with a shaved head who skateboards, tries to pick up sixteen-year-olds, and plays keyboard in a really stupid band, and who, thirty years later, still has a shaved head and still skateboards, tries to pick up sixteen-year-olds, and plays keyboard in a really stupid band.
With Winona Ryder as "The Grrl" and poet Anselm Dovetonsils making a special appearance as "Street Cred."
In a pathetically transparent attempt to bolster our sagging ratings, we're proud to announce the exclusive publication of two new (nouvelles) poems by Anselm Dovetonsils:
Affirmations
"If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is a hangover." -- Anselm Dovetonsils
"And Salmon begat Booz...."
The homily of the week comes from poet Anselm Dovetonsils, who seems to have been put into an unusually devotional mood by yesterday's entry:
What Would Jesus Do in Chicago
Follow me
and I will make you
butchers of men.
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Addenda
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Elegy for a Friend or Family Member
We both knew when I snubbed you,
Or stole from you, or lied,
Or hit you, I was thinking
Of th'embittered tragic poem I'd someday write.
Well, here it is! And you know what?
It turned out pretty nice.
-- A. D. |
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David Auerbach supplements our Neuraesthetics Writerly FAQs:
"Writing has served, for authors from Rilke to
Fitzgerald, as a way to make safe concessions without having to make them
to anyone -- to give them an out for self-recrimination and self-doubt that
does not have to manifest itself in any concrete way, allowing the social
persona that may have discomfitted them to continue on its way. The
depression would come from this containment, an only half-expressed
portrayal of misery that they can't permit to overflow its literary bounds.
Hence, I'd say, why so many writers are jerks in spite of being
depressives. And partially (to answer a third question) why so many writers
mistake cruelty for honesty."
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Smile, Darn Ya, Smile
As usual when facing unemployment, I'm feeling as charmlessly chipper as a Bosko cartoon. But my friends aren't all so fortunate. For example, Henry Adams, currently journeying through 1891, writes:
If I were wildly amusing myself by travel, I should feel horribly selfish and heartless, but the single merit of travel is that it offers a variety of ways of boring oneself, whereas at home one is reduced to boring one's friends. I can at a pinch endure my own sufferings, but I cannot bear inflicting them on others. The English, when bored, kill something. I always feel as if I, too, were putting up a grouse or a pheasant when I stalk a friend to inflict my dreariness on him.
+ + +
And Anselm Dovetonsils mixes a bitter cocktail using equal parts George Clinton, Daffy Duck, and the National Enquirer:
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BOY TRAPPED IN REFRIGERATOR EATS OWN FOOT
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Everybody's got a little light under the sun.
And wuddaya know! The little light? It goes off!
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Anselm Dovetonsils must have been dipping into the classics again. My bottle of Bushmills is almost empty.
"One particular malefactor, Mrs Flanagan, inspired the name of a doll regularly abused by the Yeats children in bouts of primitive magic, since her defection was the constant excuse for their being denied a treat."
- W.B. Yeats: A Life
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Crazy Jane Curses the Tenant
For nothing can be sold or held
That has not been rented.
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... the abyss also plunges into you.
We haven't heard from our aging acquaintance Anselm Dovetonsils for a while, and his latest submission statement, scrawled on the back of a postcard of the Grand Canyon, may hint at why.
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The 12 Step Program
To the beautiful view.
Huh.
Or maybe it was 11 Step.
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| After Doctor Bill
by Anselm Dovetonsils
- - - |
It is difficult
to get appointments from HMOs
yet men die miserably every day
for lack
of what is found there.
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CRISIS ON INFINITE DOVETONSILS!
An astute reader raises a point of order:
HMOs are a "there"?
Indeed, one must wonder what kind of illiterate fool would refer to a plural noun as "there." Particularly given how many HMOs are in Oakland.
I agree too with Mr. Silliman when he predicts that "the present spate of literary publications 'in response' to 911 are doomed" to be "almost luridly obsolete before the ink dries." Certainly among the most lurid of the doomed must be this nadir of recent manuscripts from our unsolicited acquaintance Anselm Dovetonsils:
Publications of Mortality
My heart leaps up when I behold
An airplane in the sky.
So was it on September twelfth;
So is it on October twelfth;
So will it be when we all die.
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Perhaps it's the fault of the times. Perhaps it's the fault of the involuntary detox.
But this retreat to more conventional forms seems almost, to be blunt, a bit derivative.
I confess to feeling deep disappointment in Dovetonsilses recent work. And I never imagined that I would someday be "disappointed" by a Dovetonsil's poem. "Confirmed" was the worst I could possibly imagine.
It would be a shame if such a promising youngish poet -- he's been promising to pay me back next week for literally years now -- well, uh, it would be a shame.
I do seem to remember, though, that somewhere in this shambling ichorous mass lies an appropriate occasional verse... yes, here we go:
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The Island of Doctor Moreau
The dog comes
on little cat feet.
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Pathetic.
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His present condition (dog-eared, some water damage) is especially disheartening since Dovetonsils's's influence has never been greater.
As a result, gadabout poet and mystery writer Owen Hill's recent From Rolling Rock, Out: Poetic Meditations on the Life and Art of Anselm Dovetonsils (Angry Dog Midget Editions, 2002) far outperforms its supposed inspirational figure. But isn't that always the way with these things?
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Ante Modernism
Since our latest serial completed, Zukofskymania has been sweeping the nation.
And wherever there's sweeping to be done, a Dovetonsils is sure to be found listlessly smearing the same bit of dirt back and forth before asking for spare change.
So it was no surprise to get this postcard from Anselm Dovetonsils during his recent two-week stand as laureate of Paris (Las Vegas):
ABOUT MY POETICS --
A Texas Hold'em table
Lower limit two hundred dollars
Upper limit four hundred dollars
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Stand pat, Dovetonsils! Stand pat!
My Funny Valentine
-- The ungainliness
of the creature needs stating.
Feeling this, what should be the form
Which the ungainliness already suggested
Should take?
-- Description -- lightly -- ungainliness
With a grace unrelated to its suroundings.
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| - Louis Zukofsky |
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Ungainly not only here, Zukofsky's muse. As for grace?
The extent to which you find (for example) "Look in your own ear and read" an infelicitous image must depend on whether you consider gooniness one of the felicities of lyric.
Robert Duncan and Barrett Watten have demonstrated two very different ways of reading Zukofsky humorlessly, but why bother?
I read Zukofsky because he makes me laugh.
Am I laughing with Zukofsky or at him?
Is the humor about a dry pedant being unselfaware, or is it the dry humor of a selfaware pedant?
- First reaction
It's not any of our business. Finding out that Thurber was "really" an abusive drunk should make us rightly suspicious of getting married to guys because they make us laugh, but it shouldn't make us stop laughing at them, any more than finding out that name-your-slapstick-favorite was "really" very graceful and athletic.
As Barthes pointed out in his immensely influential essay, "The Death of the Clown," one never gets the opportunity to laugh at a performer. Only at a performance.
- Second reaction
It's pointless to worry about intentions if the point is that the intention is unknowable.
When the absent-minded professor springs out of bed shouting "Zebra-fragrant! That's the answer: zebra-fragrant!", the joke depends on our understanding his lack of regard rather than our understanding what he's on about.
- Third reaction
Not all laughter is mocking. Laughter is also a reaction to surprise and pleasure. We laugh to free our mind from our mind's bondage.
When pundits talk about humor, they often concentrate on the Rush Limbaugh and Camille Paglia end of the spectrum,
but George Herriman and Buster Keaton are funnier.
Not that Zukofsky is that funny.
We are talking about just poetry, where the competition's not as fierce as in cartoons or slapstick, and the results are weaker.
If it's true that twentieth-century poets' humor doesn't age well, that's probably because nothing about twentieth century poetry ages well. The wit has always been sub-Rotarian; the lyricism has always been kitsch; the politics has always been blowhardy; the eroticism has always been braggadoccio; the imagination has always been received. What fades over time aren't its effects, but the personal allegiances and illusions that distracted contemporary readers from its effectual paucity.
Still, Pound's bullying excursions into dialect are clearly enough distinguishable from Zukofsky's homeboy familiarity. One is Collins-&-Harlan; the other is, if not Herriman or Keaton, then at least, say, Milt Gross.
On his recordings, I hear a soft-spoken hay-fevered rabbinical Groucho Marx; like Marx, a near-as-dirt-to-perpetual verbal machine requiring just an occasional squirt of impulse -- lyric (Zukofsky) or aggressive (Marx) -- to keep the flywheels spinning.
Whether we react like Margaret Dumont or like Edgar Kennedy is a matter of personal taste. I know to which model of bewilderment I aspire, even if I only ever make it to Zeppo.
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| 1 |
Speaking of private knowledge, this paraphrases Ezra Pound's advice, "Look into thine owne eare and reade," sent in a letter to Zukofsky in 1930. |
| 2 |
Cf. "Ars Vini" by Anselm Dovetonsils:
Look up your nose and blend.
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Presumably Lorenz Hart, for example, was aware of the consequences should one's cardiac muscles try to twist themselves into even the coyest of smiles.
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| 4 |
Wasn't it Marianne Moore who described poetry as "imaginary lunch bags with real frogs in them"?
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But how can you trust the judgment of a guy who writes about humor without mentioning David Bromige?
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A search for "Milt Gross Zukofsky" lands me at the Hugh Kenner Papers, which isn't surprising. What surprised me was finding the typescript of the Heath/Zenith Z-100 User's Guide there.
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Whither le Tonsille?
When last heard from, our acquaintance Anselm Dovetonsils was Vaguely Artistic Person in Residence at the Vaguely Arts Centre of Coals-at-Newcastle, Vancouvre.
At least that's when I last heard from him by name. The other day, however, I received this anonymous note which seems to bear his touch. It smells like KFC.
TO MY SECOND GRADE TEACHER. MISS LEE I swore I'd remember you forever, that last day of class. I didn't, though. That is, until just now. Does that count? |
I also suspect he's behind this extensive Anselm Dovetonsils fan site. Because, really, who else would be willing to stand behind something like that? (Cf. The Proctology of Melancholy, all too forthcoming from Routlidge.)
As another indicator, the site's bills aren't being paid. Faced with looming storage costs, the editor has asked me to host a recent submission for him. He tells us:
...the attached email that covered 'All the Boy Arrested' promised me a low mortgage rate, Nigerian oil riches, free MP3s, a credit check, an America free from a meddling judiciary, that my PayPal account number would be fixed, and 100% organic priapic achievement of what might be record, not to say legendary, proportion and duration, if only I would read the enclosed work.
And he forwards a note from the artist:
The illustrations were found by entering the text of the relevant Dovetonsils poem into Microsoft Word's public domain clip art file; the 'most relevant' illustration returned was selected for loving glazing by yours truly. -- HK.
Behold All the Boy Arrested: Sonnets To and From the Portuguese.
Responses
This Dovetonsiliana just in:
MARTIN MARIETTA
One year no lost
time accident
MY NEW LOVER. CAUTION: CONTENTS VERY HOT! WATCH LID FOR STEAM. STIR FOR SAFETY.
Return of the Repressed
Our very good riddance Anselm Dovetonsils has sent us a prose poem, and I can see why he wanted it out of the house:
IT'S APPARENT
When your predominant perfume is peanut butter. When all your vases are filled with dandelions. When you're standing outside a ladies' room holding two balloons and a doll. When you have four sets of playing cards. When your brand-new TV set is knobless. When you don't throw away cardboards from shirts, rolls from toilet tissue. When you spend Halloween crouching behind the neighbors' shrubbery. When you've written your grocery list in crayon. When your toothpaste tube has more on the outside than inside. When you buy a two-pound box of assorted chocolates and four lollipops. When you find a small tooth in your change pocket. When you ask the cocktail waitress for a couple. When the most important thing about the new neighbors is their teen-age daughter. When your first question is: "Is the fabric washable?" When your front door has more fingerprints. When you store Playboy magazine on the top shelf of the linen closet.
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Responses
When your poem has no line breaks.
I'm glad he left them out. It gets it over with faster.
The Fort Ord Quartet
Anselm Dovetonsils, having recently sold his rolling papers to California State University Monterey Bay, used the proceeds to set up residence nearby, and apparently finds the area inspiring (OF. inspirer [13th c.], ad. L. inspirare to blow hard, to expel hot air).
Fellow Dovetonsils sufferer Renfrew Q. Hobblewort found and forwarded the following unsigned but distinctive results.
After its characteristically aggressive and immature opening, the suite shifts to a mood of sustained spiritual meditation. One might describe it as Dovetonsils's "Ash-Wednesday".
Well, one somewhere might. Come on, anything's possible.
THE FORT ORD QUARTET
by Anselm Dovetonsils (attrib.)
=====
I. CELEBRATING MILITARY CHILDREN
Face Painting * Clowns * Entertainment
II. Exodus
JEWERLY SALE
ALL TYPES 10% OFF
LAST DAY!!!!
III. PROTESTANT CATHOLIC MASS
SUN WORSHIP 1 AM
IV. Was a Farmer Had a God
BINGO SAT.
WORSHIPPERS WANTED!
inquire within
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Responses
A visiting scholar suggests the alternative title:
? Chronicle of a Death -- Fort Ord
Love Defined
Anselm Dovetonsils's poetic legacy has finally found someone willing to take on the tax burden!
Here, the first graduate of California State University Monterey Bay's School of Discombobulated Poetics explores the Petrarchan lyric tradition. Or repurposes a personal ad. Whatever.
MY TYPE
by Short-Form McGill
=====
Throbbing
Shooting
Stabbing
Sharp
Cramping
Gnawing
Hot-Burning
Aching
Heavy
Tender
Splitting
Tiring-Exhausting
Sickening
Fearful
Punishing-Cruel
Melzack
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Responses
I think there's a line missing at the end: "Seeks Same for possible LTR" - RQH
Pubblica o perisce: Frammenti di una stazione di benzina
Amateur amanuensis Renfrew Q. Hobblewort writes:
I am still trying to work out a proper interpretation, but I believe
he has become disenchanted with the whole 'publish or perish' ratrace
of academia (the obvious reference to the meta-cultural world of
criticism in the first line, followed by the sarcastic anticipation of
the critical response in the second) and has decided on some form of
action (real, or pretended?) including perhaps an embrace of
the suicide bomber as a technique. Or, he was vacationing in Italia
and needed to fill up. I'm torn...
(Unofficial name ascribed by its discoverer: "la poesia dell'anarchismo: pubblica o perisce: frammenti di una stazione di benzina")
One thing you can say for Anselm Dovetonsils's verse: it's free.
But does this mean it's gone radical, too?
INSTRUCTIONS
==========
- To insert the notes aligned to the right in any verse
- To wait the accreditation in the display
- To select the wanted bomb
- Out to the spy of the select bomb,
to take the supplier
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The Italians have a saying: To read Dovetonsils is to die a little. Doctors recommend five to eight servings per day of antioxidant-rich fruits and vegetables.
Hick Jacket
Speaking of raving, Renfrew Q. Hobblewort continues his friendly takeover of the Dovetonsils Industry:
Found this on the back of a bookjacket at the local used bookstore — at first I mistook it for newsprint — unfortunately the rest of the jacket and the book were missing. I think the book title was The Very Highly Abridged Anselm Dovetonsils Reader, edited by Will Shortz — in any event this seems to have been reprinted in altered form in last week's Sunday NYT's magazine section:
"Praise for Anselm Dovetonsils' poetry:
'Truth in its Monday clothes.' - Joseph Roux
'An echo asking a shadow to dance, but the shadow is busy and gives the echo a rain check.' - Carl Sandburg
'The defecation of reality.' - Edith Sitwell
'An act.' - Pablo Neruda
'Doing, not being.' - E. E. Cummings
'Like fish.' - Osbert Sitwell "
The last one reminds me of Elizabeth Bishop's famous tribute to the oeuvre of Dovetonsils pèrecy: "It feels, like, gay."
Found Poem; Lost Uncle; Please Advise
| Scientists love abstractions, whereas humanistic scholars are
buried in the concrete. They cannot see the forest for the trees.
I'm sure we all have an Uncle Fred who thinks that we shall be
quite fascinated as to where he plans to plant the carrots next
Spring and as to what his wife said about Mildred to her second
cousin. Uncle Fred is buried in the concrete. This can
be verified if one tries to tell him about abstractions; he'll
not understand them and become quite bored. There can be many
reasons for this, but a very likely one is that he is not very
intelligent. Thus, he cannot understand abstractions. Could the
problem with humanistic scholars be that they tend to rather
untelligent? This is in fact no doubt one of their many problems. |
From "The proper place of humanism: Qualitative versus scientific studies of literature"
by Colin Martindale
in The Psychology and Sociology of Literature: In honor of Elrud Ibsch,
ed. Dick Schram and Gerard Steen,
John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2001.
BYO "[sic]"s.
Responses
"they tend to rather untelligent"? wot?
There you go again, noticing things....
ROTFL!!, as they say
Asberger militias. The love them concrete abstractions. The ones you can get your hands on, and do things to.
T.V. points us to Dr. Martindale's Regressive Imagery Dictionary. I foresee many Creative Writing assignments....
MLA's in the air, it's CV-plumping season, and our much-fetid acquaintance Anselm Dovetonsils sends this
Artist's Statement
Many people have wondered about my poetics. They don't want to say anything but, you know, I can see them wondering.
The wellsprings of creativity are unfathomable and can be summarized in the following points:
* A poem with rhyme and meter is like a suit with belt and suspenders.
P.S. Art arriving under separate cover.
Responses
P.P.S. Matching Tie and Handkerchief?
Out of a crib endlessly rockin' Anselm Dovetonsils sends:
A DRAFT OF HORACE ODE I.XIV Toy boat
Toe boyt
Tow boat
Toy boyd |
2009, The Year in Review: A Tag Cloud
Renfrew Q. Hobblewort, the nation's leading question of Anselm Dovetonsils, has left a fragrant surprise beneath our Jaysus Tree:
I received this emanation from a mysterious source, though it bears the hallmarks of the greatest unwashed poet of our time, with the interesting claim that it was found within a tag cloud of Facebook status updates for the calendar year. I have, of course, added in the (implied) punctuation, and deleted proper names in the interests of the protection of the innocent and guilty alike. I am thusly dutifully passing it along for further inscrutiny by the more familiar scholars of his work (and very familiar you are).
Of course you have.
2009, THE YEAR IN REVIEW: A TAG CLOUD.
2009 forgot time. seized band, added officially looking plastic boys, morning watching adoption, thursday family ocean, bill, california wild storm night, turkeys school home. please! tonight! christmas moon using sleeping -- listening dinner season ahead, halloween forgotten. Managed doing days - sunday section, date pittsburgh, minutes yard finalization. Little kids! Enjoy. Patrol.
Album...getting..week...
Climbing alone as dawning terror built to soul-shattering certainty, scholar Renfrew Q. Hobblewort watched this poem by Anselm Dovetonsils uncoil before his glassy bulging eyes. Turn away! By all that's holy, turn away!
EGRESS PLAN MAIN DRAIN EXIT TO SUB-BASEMENT EXIT EXIT NO EXIT NO ROOFTOP ACCESS SUICIDE PREVENTION AWARENESS WEEK |
52 Pickup
Yesterday was my fifty-second birthday, my forty-second having occured ten years ago. Today is Daniel Johnston's fiftieth birthday. Tomorrow is Louis Zukofsky's hundred-sixth birthday. What better way to mark these occasions than with the latest melancholy seepage from Anselm Dovetonsils, as scraped by the indefatigable Renfrew Q. Hobblewort?
Don't get me started.
Footnotes from the Modern Russian Reader for Intermediate Classes:
Chapter Three Re-translated From English Because I Could Not Find the Original Text
Misha. Under everyone's feet. Mother, father. Used almost exclusively when addressing one's own parents. In his study. A very common diminutive of book. But there is nothing pretty about him. Interfered with their work. Suppose you take.
You will keep a diary. How could I know? I never thought anything out myself. Was he. Papa had. Let me. Leaned on the back of his chair. Is spelled with. Leave me alone. What else should I write?
Whose. No one's. As poets do. What he could write. What a day! But he is not allowed to go there. A quarter after nine. Clock. Used only in the plural. He was so happy about. Nevertheless. But what shall I do?
About what? He thought of what...Couldn't think of anything else. Ink. Used only in the plural. Was terribly bored. As soon as. He became very cheerful. An exclamation of fatigue or relief. What a sly man! My compliments. Misha felt deeply hurt.
Even more than mamma. He should talk! The one that sings. He became so sad that he was ready to cry. He felt sorry (for). How to treat him. Looked like. Diminutive of feet, legs. But this too. You only have to. Must not brag.
And in rhymes, too. and the like. If you are not interested. Why do you look so sad? She should still. What is wrong with you? Diminutive of cheeks. Diminutive of hands. I must not say.
About that. Let her leave me alone. I don't care. At night. I don't care at all. What a child! This must be shown...
You told on me. About everything. Popular for come. Affectionately and familiarly for brother. In his eyes. Diminutive of pillow, cushion. As though from. For no reason. You pay no attention to me.
Let us. Came out silly. Is no good. Oneself. Let's forget.
Holding each other's hand. No matter how it looks. For life. Little face. Affectionate form. Unless so used, the word is vulgar.
MUMBLETY PEG O' MY HEART
by Anselm Dovetonsils She loves me.
She loves me not.
Sh |
Responses
Dovetonsils sculler Renfrew Q. Hobblewort overreacts:
Exciting Dovetonsilium discovery! I am wracked with doubt as to whether the implied third element is a repetition or a hint at a trinary reality. Thesis fodder!!
The War on Seasonal Affective Disorder
Paul Kerschen forwards a greeting card for the fireplace:
ANCIENT MUSIC
by Anselm Dovetonsils Christmas is-coming
Christmas is-coming
Best-Penis
Christmas is-coming |
In other holiday news, at the top of last night's Google search for "what to do after burglary" was this page from "homeinsuranceguides.info":
Having sufficient home insurance can relieve the burden of a tricky circumstance but what steps should you hold out if a burglary takes place? Here is a fast guide. 1. Call the criminal — be sure you make connection with the criminal as quickly as possible and do not key in a property if you actually suspect a burglar is even now inside.
2. Don\'t contact — Don\'t contact anything at all in your home right up before the criminal have showed up as forensic proof may be needed.
3. Itemise your property — Go by implies of every room phase by phase and itemise what has been stolen so you can pass these details on to both the insurer and as well police. be sure you notify the criminal of any notable signifies or security numbers on any of the property.
4. Let your bank know — be sure you have any credit history bank cards or debit bank cards that might probably have been stolen inactivated as quickly as possible.
5. Get a crime survey number — The criminal should provide a original reference number which you may be necessary to pass on to an insurer.
WHERE IS RHYME?
by Anselm Dovetonsils (corrected from Reading Voices: Literature and the Phonotext by Garrett Stewart, p. 98) Rhymes are not read. Where do we read?
Rhyme makes the answer very clear.
It is not found upon the page
but founded through the inner ear.
In a word, a double one:
passive auscultat-i-on. |
Responses
YM foundered
Where do we read? What do you mean "we"?
Rhyme makes the answer very clear.
Less cleanly, I got your contracted auto-echoism of the transegmental drift hangin, rover drover.
We are impressed and grateful!
Renfrew observes:
Intimations from Sylvia Plath at the Grocery Store SELF CHECKOUT.
"'The word,' according to Lacan, 'is not a sign but a node of signific- Pages 115 to 341 are not shown in this preview. Frail the white rose please take your change
PROTEST SONG
by Anselm Dovetonsils HEY, HEY!
HO, HO!
CAROLINE CAROLINE CAROLINE NO! |
Responses
The newest Hotsy Totsy Club member continues:
SERIES PANOPTHALMACON: CAROLIÑA YES/NO/MAYBE Item 1: Days gone by, decades, four and a pocketful of months, a coin purse of months, smiling blindly. Apples, so trees, rows, bees, firewood stacked around Jack the Landlord's weekend shack, one day sneaking quick peeking, I saw a transciever-thing under the bunk, little curtain pulled back and I'd moved too quick from the big house, the unexpeced jump, hey Jack you got a like a radio station in this funkedy-funk lil cabin eh? Him bein a semi-famous DJ of AM yore so first impress related to Sh shh Okay yeah yeah. Okay. Talk and quiet in there Parsifal Yeah later holding Anna close for loves in the kitchen hey sub-audial and whisper in her ear, Jack's got some kinda wire runnin, in here I think, she's breath intake hold nodding just a bit and embraces tighter me a little closer, so now, me, what, do, so before I lived there I was up in the burb'd leftovers St. Rose, Saint Rose, teeny dwelling small doors and a window that held light of birdsong, college boy I run off it by a buncha Nam vets, 12 miles to the set-up in the orchards, running, run, quick, keep going hurry, run by abandoned trees abandoned fruit small bitter rose-cousins so having moves that went close to the thing in there, machines of perception, power of illusory norm, and chumped into complicit passive and fight it but make that fighting count for more than image son
Item 2: Go along with it, their arrogance will make them blind to us moving, quick, run, still, running, hold, and there you go, the holy damn house is wired, the whole house, even the secret room above the kitchen, second story railroad, and among much else the best piece of ass as piece of ass I ever was in participatory receipt, the light through 19th c. glass in the front bedroom, white clouds of sheet and earth skin love not the love combining souls but animal pure higher than shit sex with a beautiful look-alike, they made movies of us in there not knowing the cameras and the tape reels, the walls having neurons, on summer's wave and young, back in good grace with the vets, or tolerance because magic and connection, we started making movies at the lake and around as the Cochonists moved like a stain across the jumped-up country, kids coughed up tear gas residue all round, there was a drawly lil Texan hanging at the edge of the vet circle and I busted him on the sidewalk just hey man you're like a snitch or something right panic backfill stutter clamp eyes lock please and no please not a snitch I'm a re-porter, calls himself Don but his name's really Dan he tells me, Donny Dan, and weird my Dad met my mom as Dan but his name was really Don, but it's all noise then by now, Wheeler gets taken down by the swine-church Inquisit, those black light-eating suits in the background, untainted by anything like real contact, Wheeler's a commune out the coast a ways, all homemade homes homestyle babies and grains, no cars past this sign they the Cochons hated it and everything about it everything even anything like it especially, have to say this guys, because I, me, loved them, what they were as we danced in each other's arms, what they could promise to become, if they had been left alone, arrested the nominal owner Wheeler and ran the no-cars spirit-fence down, then lawyers feds sheriffs orders news scumsuckers brainwash text p.r. Judge Waffle Allrise
Item 3: day it went down news coming on the undervine Wheeler's done, another pig-victory, they hate us, I stole the gold-fringed Am.flag silky fine from its stanchion in Courtroom B where it happened, plus the eagle finial gold shiny bronze, newspaper said "Someone with a misplaced sense of allegiance..." took it home, then time, traded it for a lesser version from Jon the Queer, then time, movie days for school term-papers and hey, what it would look like that, what, flag, slo-mo shotgun blast, Antonioni against the redwood sky, super 8, Honeywell Elmo Bob gave me, Jesus, and Rather, yeah I know but true it's my life of a piece, he was undercover doing a vet return story, not yet a Cronkite, not even a Brinkley, and he's out there in the sideyard with me and that camera me and some ex-grunts as filming gets under way, and I get it set up pinned and stretched Old Glory got a shooter twenty paces north, and right as it's right then he comes running at it, the gun no I can't let you it's the flag it's what I believe my country my heart I can't let it go and he like puts himself in the line of fire and shit okay okay shit okay you can block this and see it happen in the real, promise, or you can let me draw the poison out into the virtual where I can no no you can't no, okay okay no, fuck here we go, okay no, alright, no
Our legal adviser, Dr. Atem, forwards alarming news from the Iron-John-meets-Porta-John front:
Future Ferals of America
by Anselm Dovetonsils Earthy buddy. Yuh. Hail jib. Fight jhh FFA. Gggh
Fighting
Gggh
G |
Vehemently making nothing happen
When I contemplate the United States House of Representatives I understand the true meaning of "Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world."
* * *
In related news, my close acquaintance Juliet Clark found her not-distant-enough acquaintance Anselm Dovetonsils merging Spoken-Word Poetry and Postcard Poetry into something he calls Google Voice Poetry:
Transcript Not Available Hey missing this message
is for Mr. Triad.
I think a look at details,
a stunning information.
This is mighty not
where doing petitions quality.
You're looking for clues service.
For thinking that you want to get done in.
Your some exciting things are waiting.
Covet their care. |
Hot Poetry Flash!
Having gummed a false mustache over his mountain-man beard, our acquaintance Anselm Dovetonsils slipped past the doorman at Moe's Books last night, only to be ejected when caught filching from Norman Fischer:
FOUND EPISTOLARY NOVEL The letters -- by which I mean characters -- |
Dovetonsils We Have Heard on High
Itinerant scholar Matt Wall informs us that our blessedly absent acquaintance Anselm Dovetonsils has finally made it big in Japan Hallmark:
Safety Match's Fireplace Chat
It's OK if it were a lie or a joke, try saying, "I had something good today, too." And then, close your eyes. Something as good as a tiny stone, is rolling here and there, more often than you think.
Coronanation Odium
CHORUS OF TORIES
Gochujang-garnished kine, Lone little nob kindling, Gobsmacking kin! Semi-Victorian Haploid glomerulus, Lollygag over us, Goat sausage kimchi!
QUARTET OF WHIGS
Goggle at kinks, The fashion regrets. They made you a morpheme, A potted head. Gold-savvy kipper, He's not a humblebee And there's no futzing With engorged dredging. No futzing No futzing No futzing for you.
CHORUS OF TORIES
Chloroform giddiness Over his plaza's poor; Lo mein rehydrate! May he defeminize And ever girdle cats; To sinecures in vogue Goad saucy kilt!
Copyright to contributed work and quoted correspondence remains with the original authors.
Public domain work remains in the public domain.
All other material: Copyright 2015 Ray Davis.
