For Duncan McNaughton
Having tasted the earth - pomegranate's teeth incise a fictive tongue for lyrics. Oh baby, what is driven insane divines the sane's wellbeing. How is it you lick the phosphor off the tongue of a seed without being burned? Planted and growing share a natural causality like shit and shoe. Sheer cutting towns, passer by, by the sex shop store front, latex wakizashis inspires evolution: Valpariso rising son. It's a trick of the light when everything is visible, every impossible gesture green and horny with its own accusation; how you pluck a peach is the peach's doing. When you roam the two Romes and all the same shtick lights lavender, Jesus sitting with a high ball of cheap whiskey, your voice, and the horse echo of a horse people, sweep the veil past centuries of melting ice. Charles the map, the Thames and a locus of all Asiatic conflict brewed together like Raki.
Wednesday, November 29, 2006
The Ghazal Form
The ghazal (pronounced as something between 'guzzle' and 'huzzle') is a lyric form traditionally used in Arabic, Persian, and Urdu poetry. In the last 30 years, many poets writing in English have appropriated it, treating the rules more or less elastically. It was also used by some of the German Romantics two centuries before.
The basic elements are the refrain (radif), the rhyme (qafia), the couplet (sher), each occurring in a particular way in this form.
The basic unit is the couplet (sher), with a minimum of five couplets in the poem (and usually no more than 12). What is notable is that each should have an autonomy, an independence—hence the metaphor of five rooms in a house. Traditionally, there is no enjambment between couplets and there are a similar number of feet in each line of a couplet (keeping in mind that all the rules have been variously broken). With each couplet you can visit a new taste; often a theme or coherence of imagery develops.
The refrain (radif)—a short phrase, pair of words, or single word—occurs at the end of both lines in the opening couplet (which has its own name, matla), and then in only the second line of each succeeding couplet. See the following page for examples.
The rhyme (qafia)—if you choose to include it, and many writers in English don't—occurs just before the refrain. See the first example on the next page. Tough work in English, lots easier in Urdu or Spanish, I'd imagine.
The last element I'll mention is the makhta (signature couplet), which was traditionally how the poet added his/her name (penname, nickname, pseudonym, wordplay on name) into the last couplet to secure credit for him/herself in a culture of oral recitation. Some poets in English play with this (my four examples have this, but mostly by accident). Many poets just ignore this element.
For Urdu poetry, the Ghazal has often expressed longing, and this can be felt viscerally through the repetition of the refrain. To my mind, this repetition, plus the autonomous couplet, are the two elements of this form that are a gift to poets writing in English. The refrain you can turn around like an object, catching it in different lights, with each couplet.
You can also read a summary with links at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghazal .
A collection of ghazals in English with some interesting commentary: Ravishing DisUnities, Agha Shahid Ali, ed., Hanover NH: Univ. Press of New England, 2000.
The basic elements are the refrain (radif), the rhyme (qafia), the couplet (sher), each occurring in a particular way in this form.
The basic unit is the couplet (sher), with a minimum of five couplets in the poem (and usually no more than 12). What is notable is that each should have an autonomy, an independence—hence the metaphor of five rooms in a house. Traditionally, there is no enjambment between couplets and there are a similar number of feet in each line of a couplet (keeping in mind that all the rules have been variously broken). With each couplet you can visit a new taste; often a theme or coherence of imagery develops.
The refrain (radif)—a short phrase, pair of words, or single word—occurs at the end of both lines in the opening couplet (which has its own name, matla), and then in only the second line of each succeeding couplet. See the following page for examples.
The rhyme (qafia)—if you choose to include it, and many writers in English don't—occurs just before the refrain. See the first example on the next page. Tough work in English, lots easier in Urdu or Spanish, I'd imagine.
The last element I'll mention is the makhta (signature couplet), which was traditionally how the poet added his/her name (penname, nickname, pseudonym, wordplay on name) into the last couplet to secure credit for him/herself in a culture of oral recitation. Some poets in English play with this (my four examples have this, but mostly by accident). Many poets just ignore this element.
For Urdu poetry, the Ghazal has often expressed longing, and this can be felt viscerally through the repetition of the refrain. To my mind, this repetition, plus the autonomous couplet, are the two elements of this form that are a gift to poets writing in English. The refrain you can turn around like an object, catching it in different lights, with each couplet.
You can also read a summary with links at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghazal .
A collection of ghazals in English with some interesting commentary: Ravishing DisUnities, Agha Shahid Ali, ed., Hanover NH: Univ. Press of New England, 2000.
Tuesday, November 28, 2006
The Lion's Ghazal
I’ve hidden the most whimsical nuances
between the sheets and the sheet’s nuances
whatever’s under earth you ask
torments the sky’s fanciful nuances
the bone diggers still deep in flesh
to ring elysian sleep’s stiff nuances.
How we fell and how the fallen free
the house and card’s subtle nuances
from uncut factory pages, scattering
our selves to the wind’s nuances.
It’s the separation of seeing and dreaming;
the problem of discernment has nuances
where you can’t tell if the lion at the table
hungers or is naturally licking his nuances.
-Leonid Shneyder
between the sheets and the sheet’s nuances
whatever’s under earth you ask
torments the sky’s fanciful nuances
the bone diggers still deep in flesh
to ring elysian sleep’s stiff nuances.
How we fell and how the fallen free
the house and card’s subtle nuances
from uncut factory pages, scattering
our selves to the wind’s nuances.
It’s the separation of seeing and dreaming;
the problem of discernment has nuances
where you can’t tell if the lion at the table
hungers or is naturally licking his nuances.
-Leonid Shneyder
The Fountain
What does a 16th century conquistador, a contemporary doctor/cancer researcher and a 26th century astronaut have in common? Besides Rachel Weisz, not much, but they do occupy the imagination of Darren Aronofsky thus we're bound to go see them. Let's get this out of the way, it is not a great film, but it isn't a horrible film either as some critiques would have you believe. If you look on Rotten Tomatoes you will see an even 50/50 split in terms of reviews. Although a film requires 60 tomatoes to be considered fresh, vs. splats, it fascinates me to see people so divided over this film, and so evenly divided at that. It is the division, those pieces of art that we can't all decide on that seem interesting enough to go see, so at the very least you can decide for yourself.
So why am I defending Aronofsky? Well quite simply, because he has ambition and that comes out in this film. It came out in freshman and sophomore efforts, Pi and Requiem for a Dream. Aronofsky has quirks, not unlike penmanship, he has a definite way of presenting his films and motifs that run through them. Take for example the "eye" and when his characters get high in Requiem he films a pupil expanding and dilating as a way of punctuating the act and experience. Same too, all forms of movement, vehicular, is done in a kind of overhead manner where you might as well be suspended by your feet watching a car approach, and then the camera turns as it passes underneath it and you get a slight birds eye view of it speeding away and into a destination. It's these small touches that, small hash marks in Aronofsky's column, that make it impossible for me to hate The Fountain.
Visually the fountain is superb. Aronofsky takes aspects of the dreamy blackness of Arthur C Clarke's Monolith and expands it with today's CG to make a milky gas chamber of space where a bubbled tree floating through the pin prick cosmos seems possible, and steered by a bald headed, tattooed captain living on the tree's sap and his own memories to torture him for light years, an absolutely mesmerizing experience. It fits, not well, but does fit. What Aronofsky has mastered at a "young" age is pacing. Very few films are as well paced musically as this one and his previous efforts. There is a symbiotic relationship between Kronos Quartet and Aronofsky, they may have done a Vulcan mind meld, I don't know, but he is capable of using their music to absolutely pace the narrative and moods of his films. The music is there to help you feel what the picture and action convey. Here however, the music is so well done and planned that it no only suggests and heightens it gives you the amplitude of that feeling, paints the color of that emotion and explains why you should feel the way you do in a Peter Frampton sort of way.
The fountain is a visually enjoyable film in the same way that 2001 seems to be something to decode; the fountain's code isn't that deep. Or, it can be said that the script (Thanks John) is too simple. Aronofsky isn't asking questions of great profundity, he isn't asking fundamentally new questions, he's making his characters angry at the certainties in our world: death (not sure about taxes). And this problem, this dilemma du death, has been dealt with before: Frankenstein, Dracula, Jesus is a way of dealing with this certain problem. Our hero however decides to take the Mayan approach and go star tripping with a very large piece of mythical fauna in order to find his inner Siddhartha. These things don't add up, a researcher off his rocker because his wife died who says "death is a disease" isn't amounting to a story line that can't really convince you the reader that the researcher was a conquistador searching for the same thing and is en route to a dying star in order to be reborn in a future about 600 years off. You just don't buy it, but each sequence is kind of enjoyable on its own. You want more of those small soft moments between Jackman and Weisz, but Weisz doesn't make a very good Isabella of Spain, besieged by the Spanish Inquisition. It just doesn't add up because it doesn't follow history. For those of you that know a little history you will remember that Ponce de Leon is the one that history associates with the fountain of youth. Catherine married Ferdinand and together they rid Spain of The Moors and The Jews. They were comfortably in bed with the Inquisition and you kind of want to assume that the grand inquisitor in the film is really Thomas de Torquemada, even though he is named Grand Inquisitor Silecio.
These small inconsistencies make the film difficult to digest, but it's the eye candy, softly painted, not blazing guns and flying shells, but rather broad stroked sepia tones motifs and dim colors that drive this film. As The Chronicle’s critique so aptly notices, there a mandallas every where in this movie, something to remind us of the cosmic order and unity that exists in a moment of singularity. Isabel (the queen) is hiding behind a massively ornate mandalla when Tomas the Conquistador is summoned to her. These moments, these codexes aren't enough to make the philosophical meanderings of the story come together in a coherent narrative. Rumor has it that the originally requested budget for the film was 70 million and was cut in half. Maybe we are left feeling half cheated at the end because of this. Whatever you think of the film after seeing it, if you do, reflect on the fact that you will still have strings echoing in your head and a disdain for daylight, it is atmospheric and the atmosphere kind of sticks to your clothing like smoky bars.
Monday, November 27, 2006
Garth & Jeno - 12/1
Time to get your dancing shoes on... if you dare.
GARTH & JENO << Back2Back >> Dec 1st
Body: welcome to the start of the festive season at our sleazy den 222 Hyde.
Friday December 1st 2006
>>BACK2BACK<<
the cellar was home to a who's who of jazz renegades 50 years ago.
the wickedness lives on...
GARTH & JENO playin' records all night long.
1st Fridays at 222 Club
222 Hyde @ Turk San Francisco
10pm-2am $10
full bar 21+
Friday, November 24, 2006
Casino Royale
Casino Royale does bond what Batman Begins did for the caped crusader's listing series of shlock; the image and character have been reborn, reforged from something with a bit more grit, danger and darkness. Craig plays the role close to the bone, and here the bone is Connery, as the all time masterful Bond, the scrapper, the dark haired gentleman with just enough scalloped edges to even get the guys to nod. Lets face it Moore was great, he was truly a legend, but he's no Connery, and although he's eternally suave, mannered and a pleasure to watch, he's still no Connery. The last two, Dalton and Brosnan were meak attempts at replacing the mythic figure with serviceable substitutes. It didn't help that the dialogue, master criminals and plot lines of the previos six films (2 Daltons & 4 Brosnans) were so terrible that I think I stopped going to see them after the The Living Daylights. Yes, the 80s and 90s, and the early part of the 00's have been a sad time for what is in essense the longest running film franchise in history. With the last pair of Moore/Connery films (A View to a Kill & Never say Never Again), we saw the near death of the entire project. Thanks to a handy defibrulator in a glove compartment we can see both reborn on the silver screen.
The filkm is a true joy ride, although a little long, and the romance between Eva Green & Craig put on and over done in parts, it doesn't change the fact that you're having a good time. Yeah, you can't help but pump an imaginary fist in the air for this bond. He's not a nice guy, as a matter of fact, he's much colder in many respects than the previous bonds, and you get this feeling that its not comedy that drives some of his "hits", he actually enjoys it. From the openning chase scene that reads like a Spiderman script gone native to the beautiful locations and hotel rooms that the majority of us will never inhabit, Bond is back and you best beware.
What makes this film work aren't the special effects, they simply aren't that "special". In comparrison with the previous films this one might as well be low-B. There are no satellites threatening world peace, no madmen hell bent on global domination that run multi-national corporations. No, this film is far simpler, and more contemporary, it deals wtih terrorism, stock market manipulation (slightly overbaked), and more specifically, the finances of terrorists. So this is the meta plot, this is what you're supposed to be "following". But when you boil it down, you're really dealing with a poker game, hence Casino Royale. The heart and soul of this film is Poker, and mind you this is a departure from previous Bond films that featured the super-spy playing backarat and dice. No, our hero is playing good old Texas Holdem and as any good poker player knows, you're not playing the game, you're playing the man across from you. Whatever flaws this film has, come in the later half of the movie when our gritty bond makes an about face and becomes a softy. This is almost unforgiveable, except that you want to keep watching and find recourse to absolve Craig and the producers for making bond go soft, even for a spell. There's nothing really wrong with this film, at all, you can look, but nothing jumps out that you can't just say yeah, its not perfect, but it works "in" the basics, good plot, good characters + development and more importantly, and thankfully, good dialogue.
So if you're sitting around digesting turkey, and you're hard up for something to do and damn tired of all the holiday programming that is jamming the airways of our televisions, then I suggest you make haste to your nearest theatre and spend 2 1/2 blissful hours with Daniel Craig and his new persona... Really.
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
Robert Altman died today... 81 years isn't a bad run...
See ya man, and thank you for making this gem's melodic tune a household sound on the lips of many....
Suicide is Painless
(Mash Theme Song)
(Mike Altman and Johnny Mandel)
Through early morning fog I see
Visions of the things to be,
The pains that are withheld for me,
I realize and I can see...
That suicide is painless,
It brings on many changes
And I can take or leave it if I please.
The game of life is hard to play,
I'm going to loose it anyway,
The loosin' card I'll someday lay;
So this is all I have to say...
That suicide is painless,
It brings on many changes
And I can take or leave it if I please.
The only way to win is cheat
And lay it down before I'm beat
And to another give my seat
For that's the only painless feat.
That suicide is painless,
It brings on many changes
And I can take or leave it if I please.
And you can do the same thing if you please.
Monday, November 20, 2006
Wasn't this the point of PDF? Do CD's "go off?"
From "/."
mattnyc99 writes, "It's a huge challenge: how to store digital files so future generations can access them, from engineering plans to family photos. The documents of our time are being recorded as bits and bytes with no guarantee of readability down the line. And as technologies change, we may find our files frozen in forgotten formats. Popular Mechanics asks: Will an entire era of human history be lost?"
From the article: "[US national archivist] Thibodeau hopes to develop a system that preserves any type of document — created on any application and any computing platform, and delivered on any digital media — for as long as the United States remains a republic. Complicating matters further, the archive needs to be searchable. When Thibodeau told the head of a government research lab about his mission, the man replied, 'Your problem is so big, it's probably stupid to try and solve it.'"
mattnyc99 writes, "It's a huge challenge: how to store digital files so future generations can access them, from engineering plans to family photos. The documents of our time are being recorded as bits and bytes with no guarantee of readability down the line. And as technologies change, we may find our files frozen in forgotten formats. Popular Mechanics asks: Will an entire era of human history be lost?"
From the article: "[US national archivist] Thibodeau hopes to develop a system that preserves any type of document — created on any application and any computing platform, and delivered on any digital media — for as long as the United States remains a republic. Complicating matters further, the archive needs to be searchable. When Thibodeau told the head of a government research lab about his mission, the man replied, 'Your problem is so big, it's probably stupid to try and solve it.'"
Thursday, November 16, 2006
For Slut-Muffin
For Slut-Muffin
Life in the ampoule vexing air and the hippest factions press their faces to the glass where faces were pressed into impression. Crazy, or mi vida loca, isn’t as crazy as the world appears when you sleep with comic book blankets; its just that sort of thing. Press play and sad bastards make merry with angry youth, teens and their pusher others transposed into the millennium’s head dance: this is how revolutions are dispatched into modular fashion. What a boot wants is a leg with an air of satisfaction walking through the door. How ever you fix the lamp the bulb will still burn out. Knowing fate’s a joker with a long series of questions I took it quite literally that tree roots have sex appeal and only the hands understand the soil’s mandrake forms.
Wednesday, November 15, 2006
Poetry Cage Match
Yeah, you got it, bring your Mexican wrestling masks to QuickMuse to see Paul Hoover take on Brad Leithauser.
For Slut-Bag
You said write it down, stick it to the paper and maybe it'll reminde you of how you stuck that year when blue panties rode higher than Heliosopical chariots and all the sad songs were made sadder because dreary seems to be in vogue. Happy music is for hapenstance but you've a lyric that'll birth the new maniacals. How many limping walks and down skirt draws that've festered those apostled waters. If it wasn't for the wine, then bars would be illegal and all that transpired an over ripened fiction. So who cares if we've a long walk and three red rings that never quite fit our hunter hands; there's more to waste that ca'tn be measured, more grime than shit house stalls; wait wait this is the best part when you hum a tune slapped together from our names.
Tuesday, November 14, 2006
Dark Writing
Dark Writing
must have a dream of itself
sliding slope the falling trails
feel yourself at home
a perpendicular pearl is plied
from the left to the right
from somewhere below the ink
as no ink
no ink
no ink
no ink
no ink
will seem itself unmade
the unmaking event efforts a forced reliance
ransom roles
three perjured blossoms we guilt or felt
kinetic care takers
crafted cores
frantic stones
they carry in stereo
sloppy ism trunks – slip and slide we WOOPS the line
liking to see redux pixel the possible
screen orgy oreo
I can feel the paper and the paper has a way of making me feel my pen is safe that in the dark I write that in the dark I’m writing and my writing has a core or a core of a written light or the corruption of my eyes that have parted with my ears that have left me smelling the state of something eaten once the skin has been peeled and pruned like hedges this writing is mute.
Kristeva - Craft Assignment
On this first
subject never is
what you are
[holding] in
to the [held]
onto what
is to be
a hold
and dapper gentlemen
you’re nineteen
century wake
varicose and very close
to something familiar
they canals they radioed
to think is channel demand divine
what of virtue what of vice
what’s at stake
at burden at break
of
the O’s and hours
and at bay at boy
atta boy who you mean
to make a more precise
datum and corruption
the girl’s gone stuck
the girl’s gone stuck
the girl’s gone stuck
so this is how
to start the question
remand
deny.
Friday, November 10, 2006
Rituals & Vigilance Review by David Kauffman
David Kauffman, literature teacher at George Mason, reviewed Ben Hollander's Rituals of Truce & the Other Israeli, along with the recent book of poetry, Vigilance. The review is not only readable, but insightful and I thought I would republish it here for those that don't visit The Jewish Daily Forward.
Books
David Kaufmann | Fri. Nov 10, 2006
Rituals of Truce and the Other Israeli
By Benjamin Hollander
Parrhesia Press, 137 pages, $12.95.
Vigilance
By Benjamin Hollander
Beyond Baroque Books, 220 pages, $12.
‘This is the time for political invention,” writes Benjamin Hollander halfway through “Rituals of Truce and the Other Israeli,” his imaginative meditation on the impasse between the Israelis and Palestinians: “There is no other time.” Look at the way the last sentence is phrased and you will see that he is right. For us there is no time but the present. This is our time, our only time. What shall we make of it?
Hollander’s approach to political invention originates in poetry. Though “Rituals of Truce” is a very readable collage of prose texts, memories, speculations and — yes — gags, it carries at its heart the ideal of so much vanguard poetry of the last century. It dreams of a rhythmic breakthrough to something beyond the dead certainties of our selves.
Hollander’s own identity is complicated. Born in Israel, he was 6 when he moved to the United States in 1958. Neither completely American nor authentically Israeli, he finds himself enmeshed in the odd and apparently central Jewish dream that he is Ariel Sharon, “the one in almost every Jew — even the one for whom Ariel Sharon is a nightmare — whose bunkered identity has been shaped and manipulated by fears of being sold out by the world for oil and which the insanity of his nationalist mythologies have conditioned him to assume and defend because he has come to trust no one.” And recognizing this vast contention in himself — his “native accent that has lost the vocabulary to speak” — Hollander asks, who can you trust when discussing the Middle East? Whose rights trump?
To get beyond this, Hollander suggests that we broaden our experience and receptivity. This is where the poetry and invention come in. Hollander orchestrates a sometimes funny, sometimes poignant set of quotations, dreams and fantasies about Israel, Palestine, the United States, terror and his own solitary self. He constructs a kind of fugue that attempts through juxtaposition and opposition to dissolve the “bunkered identities” it finds. Hollander’s methods and aspirations are very postmodern to be sure — the tutelary spirits of “Rituals of Truce” are the French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas and the German litterateur Walter Benjamin — but he both lightens and deepens this tradition by adding an oddly affecting touch of slapstick humor. At critical points he invokes not only Groucho Marx and Abbott and Costello, but also Donald Duck.
Hollander aims to catch the distant hum of possibility. Hollander’s insistence that we be vigilant, not only with the paranoid watchfulness of fear, but more importantly, with an open attentiveness to what could come to be, informs the peculiar structure of the somewhat forbidding “Levinas and the Police,” in his most recent book of poetry, “Vigilance.” “Levinas and the Police,” owes its uncommon length — it is over 130 pages long — to the fact that most of its lines consist of one syllable or less. This leads the poet to divide most of his words into their component parts:
s
o
like
hum
ans
to
gulp
down
ev
en
the
Sur
rounding
mouth
fuls
of
fog
and
snow
While such an experiment could easily fail, its effects in this poem are contradictory and quite literally stunning. You want to speed up (to get the end of the word, if not of the sentence) and yet you are compelled to slow down and actually take note of all the meaningful units that make up sense. The result is hypnotic, if somewhat frustrating and disorienting. And this, of course, is the whole point.
Hollander hopes that through such attentiveness and such disorientation we can find a way to think differently about ourselves and about our adversaries. Such an aspiration is flatly utopian in a very precise way — the poet claims that we can effect a radical break with the catastrophic repetitions that have marked our collective pasts “by transforming our imagination of history” and in so doing move beyond them.
It is easy to imagine someone dismissing this claim as both naïve and abstract. “Rituals of Truce” is about cognitive boundaries, not international borders, nor solutions “on the ground.” In the end, on the risk of being reductive, “Rituals of Truce” is interested in consciousness, and consciousness always looks wifty to political scientists and would-be realists.
But Hollander is not proposing new political inventions. He is imagining what a philosopher would call “the conditions of possibility” of such inventions — what would be necessary before a real political invention could be thought of, let alone thought through. And there’s the rub. Alienation, that fine modernist stance, is the cause of the all-important attentiveness that Hollander proposes. It is not the result. You have to have achieved a certain freedom from the fixed coordinates of your identity before you are willing to undergo the reorientation that Hollander’s work describes. To put this in political terms: You have to feel that the impasse you have reached is due in part to the limitations of your own approach and not just to the sheer evil or recalcitrance of your enemies. Or, to put this in religious terms: you have to accept the notion of other, equally valid, interpretations of revelation. You must undergo a willing suspension of your own belief.
Hollander’s fine and deeply humane piece of writing could — should — go further. The times really require a political invention that convinces people that political invention is indeed required. Religion will be a central part of this. Hollander is good at rethinking Jewish messianism — the very engine of so much of the settler’s movement. Yet among its real and imaginary voices, “Rituals of Truce” does not include any Islamists, only secular Palestinians. The book was written before the election of Hamas, and before this last summer’s war with Hezbollah, so the omission is more or less understandable. It does not negate Hollander’s project at all. In the context of the moment, the task that “Rituals of Truce” sets becomes even riskier and even more important.
David Kaufmann teaches literature at George Mason University.
Reinventing Politics, With Language
Books
David Kaufmann | Fri. Nov 10, 2006
Rituals of Truce and the Other Israeli
By Benjamin Hollander
Parrhesia Press, 137 pages, $12.95.
Vigilance
By Benjamin Hollander
Beyond Baroque Books, 220 pages, $12.
‘This is the time for political invention,” writes Benjamin Hollander halfway through “Rituals of Truce and the Other Israeli,” his imaginative meditation on the impasse between the Israelis and Palestinians: “There is no other time.” Look at the way the last sentence is phrased and you will see that he is right. For us there is no time but the present. This is our time, our only time. What shall we make of it?
Hollander’s approach to political invention originates in poetry. Though “Rituals of Truce” is a very readable collage of prose texts, memories, speculations and — yes — gags, it carries at its heart the ideal of so much vanguard poetry of the last century. It dreams of a rhythmic breakthrough to something beyond the dead certainties of our selves.
Hollander’s own identity is complicated. Born in Israel, he was 6 when he moved to the United States in 1958. Neither completely American nor authentically Israeli, he finds himself enmeshed in the odd and apparently central Jewish dream that he is Ariel Sharon, “the one in almost every Jew — even the one for whom Ariel Sharon is a nightmare — whose bunkered identity has been shaped and manipulated by fears of being sold out by the world for oil and which the insanity of his nationalist mythologies have conditioned him to assume and defend because he has come to trust no one.” And recognizing this vast contention in himself — his “native accent that has lost the vocabulary to speak” — Hollander asks, who can you trust when discussing the Middle East? Whose rights trump?
To get beyond this, Hollander suggests that we broaden our experience and receptivity. This is where the poetry and invention come in. Hollander orchestrates a sometimes funny, sometimes poignant set of quotations, dreams and fantasies about Israel, Palestine, the United States, terror and his own solitary self. He constructs a kind of fugue that attempts through juxtaposition and opposition to dissolve the “bunkered identities” it finds. Hollander’s methods and aspirations are very postmodern to be sure — the tutelary spirits of “Rituals of Truce” are the French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas and the German litterateur Walter Benjamin — but he both lightens and deepens this tradition by adding an oddly affecting touch of slapstick humor. At critical points he invokes not only Groucho Marx and Abbott and Costello, but also Donald Duck.
Hollander aims to catch the distant hum of possibility. Hollander’s insistence that we be vigilant, not only with the paranoid watchfulness of fear, but more importantly, with an open attentiveness to what could come to be, informs the peculiar structure of the somewhat forbidding “Levinas and the Police,” in his most recent book of poetry, “Vigilance.” “Levinas and the Police,” owes its uncommon length — it is over 130 pages long — to the fact that most of its lines consist of one syllable or less. This leads the poet to divide most of his words into their component parts:
s
o
like
hum
ans
to
gulp
down
ev
en
the
Sur
rounding
mouth
fuls
of
fog
and
snow
While such an experiment could easily fail, its effects in this poem are contradictory and quite literally stunning. You want to speed up (to get the end of the word, if not of the sentence) and yet you are compelled to slow down and actually take note of all the meaningful units that make up sense. The result is hypnotic, if somewhat frustrating and disorienting. And this, of course, is the whole point.
Hollander hopes that through such attentiveness and such disorientation we can find a way to think differently about ourselves and about our adversaries. Such an aspiration is flatly utopian in a very precise way — the poet claims that we can effect a radical break with the catastrophic repetitions that have marked our collective pasts “by transforming our imagination of history” and in so doing move beyond them.
It is easy to imagine someone dismissing this claim as both naïve and abstract. “Rituals of Truce” is about cognitive boundaries, not international borders, nor solutions “on the ground.” In the end, on the risk of being reductive, “Rituals of Truce” is interested in consciousness, and consciousness always looks wifty to political scientists and would-be realists.
But Hollander is not proposing new political inventions. He is imagining what a philosopher would call “the conditions of possibility” of such inventions — what would be necessary before a real political invention could be thought of, let alone thought through. And there’s the rub. Alienation, that fine modernist stance, is the cause of the all-important attentiveness that Hollander proposes. It is not the result. You have to have achieved a certain freedom from the fixed coordinates of your identity before you are willing to undergo the reorientation that Hollander’s work describes. To put this in political terms: You have to feel that the impasse you have reached is due in part to the limitations of your own approach and not just to the sheer evil or recalcitrance of your enemies. Or, to put this in religious terms: you have to accept the notion of other, equally valid, interpretations of revelation. You must undergo a willing suspension of your own belief.
Hollander’s fine and deeply humane piece of writing could — should — go further. The times really require a political invention that convinces people that political invention is indeed required. Religion will be a central part of this. Hollander is good at rethinking Jewish messianism — the very engine of so much of the settler’s movement. Yet among its real and imaginary voices, “Rituals of Truce” does not include any Islamists, only secular Palestinians. The book was written before the election of Hamas, and before this last summer’s war with Hezbollah, so the omission is more or less understandable. It does not negate Hollander’s project at all. In the context of the moment, the task that “Rituals of Truce” sets becomes even riskier and even more important.
David Kaufmann teaches literature at George Mason University.
Wednesday, November 08, 2006
Call for submissions - Sidebrow
+++++++++++++++
Sidebrow (www.sidebrow.net) — an online & print
journal dedicated to innovation & collaboration —
seeks fiction, poetry, art, essay, ephemera, found
text, & academia, as well as creative response to
current posts and ongoing projects.
Submissions to Sidebrow are evaluated both as
stand-alone set pieces & as points of departure for
establishing multi-authored/multi-genre works.
Submissions that re-imagine, depart from, or explore
the interstices between posted pieces are highly
encouraged.
Sidebrow's inaugural print anthology is slated for
Summer 2007. Although all projects will remain open
beyond the publication of this anthology, the deadline
for inclusion in this first print edition is January
15, 2007. (Submission details may be found at
www.sidebrow.net/2006/submit.php.)
Current and forthcoming contributors to date:
Jenny Allan, Julia Bloch, Lawrence Braithwaite, Nick
Bredie, Mez Breeze, Amina Cain, Nona Caspers, Jimmy
Chen, Kim Chinquee, John Cleary, Catherine Daly, Brett
Evans, Brian Evenson, Raymond Farr, Anne Germanacos,
Paul Hardacre, HL Hazuka, Malia Jackson, Carrie Katz,
Susanna Kittredge, Richard Kostelanetz, Kristine Leja,
Norman Lock, Doug Macpherson, Scott Malby, Bob
Marcacci, Bill Marsh, Rob McLennan, L.J. Moore, Greg
Mulcahy, Cathi Murphy, Eireene Nealand, Daniel
Pendergrass, Kristin Prevallet, Kathryn Pringle,
Daniel C. Remein, Elizabeth Robinson, Len Shneyder,
Nina Shope, Kyle Simonsen, Ed Skoog, Anna Joy
Springer, Chris Stroffolino, Joanne Tracy, Chris Tysh,
Nico Vassilakis, James Wagner, & Derek White
Projects to date:
Build: Mother, I: A multi-author, multi-genre
exploration of seeds sown by Bataille.
(www.sidebrow.net/2006/motheri.php)
Build: Post-Hole: A multi-author, multi-genre
menagerie of grotesques.
(www.sidebrow.net/2006/posthole.php)
The Letters Project: Reviving the epistolary novella.
(www.sidebrow.net/2006/epistolary.php)
Page 24 Project: A chapbook concerning and consisting
exclusively of page 24s.
(www.sidebrow.net/2006/page24.php)
Litopolis San Francisco: Staking a literary claim to
the city.
(www.sidebrow.net/2006/litopolissf.php)
Work Seeking Work: Possible emerging projects.
(www.sidebrow.net/2006/workseekwork.php)
Other projects to be defined by future submissions and
response.
For more information, and to peruse currently posted
works, visit www.sidebrow.net.
+++++++++++++++
Sidebrow (www.sidebrow.net) — an online & print
journal dedicated to innovation & collaboration —
seeks fiction, poetry, art, essay, ephemera, found
text, & academia, as well as creative response to
current posts and ongoing projects.
Submissions to Sidebrow are evaluated both as
stand-alone set pieces & as points of departure for
establishing multi-authored/multi-genre works.
Submissions that re-imagine, depart from, or explore
the interstices between posted pieces are highly
encouraged.
Sidebrow's inaugural print anthology is slated for
Summer 2007. Although all projects will remain open
beyond the publication of this anthology, the deadline
for inclusion in this first print edition is January
15, 2007. (Submission details may be found at
www.sidebrow.net/2006/submit.php.)
Current and forthcoming contributors to date:
Jenny Allan, Julia Bloch, Lawrence Braithwaite, Nick
Bredie, Mez Breeze, Amina Cain, Nona Caspers, Jimmy
Chen, Kim Chinquee, John Cleary, Catherine Daly, Brett
Evans, Brian Evenson, Raymond Farr, Anne Germanacos,
Paul Hardacre, HL Hazuka, Malia Jackson, Carrie Katz,
Susanna Kittredge, Richard Kostelanetz, Kristine Leja,
Norman Lock, Doug Macpherson, Scott Malby, Bob
Marcacci, Bill Marsh, Rob McLennan, L.J. Moore, Greg
Mulcahy, Cathi Murphy, Eireene Nealand, Daniel
Pendergrass, Kristin Prevallet, Kathryn Pringle,
Daniel C. Remein, Elizabeth Robinson, Len Shneyder,
Nina Shope, Kyle Simonsen, Ed Skoog, Anna Joy
Springer, Chris Stroffolino, Joanne Tracy, Chris Tysh,
Nico Vassilakis, James Wagner, & Derek White
Projects to date:
Build: Mother, I: A multi-author, multi-genre
exploration of seeds sown by Bataille.
(www.sidebrow.net/2006/motheri.php)
Build: Post-Hole: A multi-author, multi-genre
menagerie of grotesques.
(www.sidebrow.net/2006/posthole.php)
The Letters Project: Reviving the epistolary novella.
(www.sidebrow.net/2006/epistolary.php)
Page 24 Project: A chapbook concerning and consisting
exclusively of page 24s.
(www.sidebrow.net/2006/page24.php)
Litopolis San Francisco: Staking a literary claim to
the city.
(www.sidebrow.net/2006/litopolissf.php)
Work Seeking Work: Possible emerging projects.
(www.sidebrow.net/2006/workseekwork.php)
Other projects to be defined by future submissions and
response.
For more information, and to peruse currently posted
works, visit www.sidebrow.net.
+++++++++++++++
Monday, November 06, 2006
White & Nerdy
| "Weird Al" Yankovic's music video from his new album "Straight Outta Lynwood" (in stores Sept. 26) | |
Friday, November 03, 2006
wearable art
I think I found a new addiction... Threadless... a very cool concept in the evolution fo the T-shirt. Remember that crazy site, Am I Hot Or Not? The one where you submit a photo and people vote on your "hotness"? Well same idea, people submit T-shirt ideas, and the community at large votes on them, those with high enough marks get made into T-shirts that you can buy, and they go pretty fast. Most unique concepts and designs in wearable art I've seen in ages... so go check out Threadless...
Cheers!
Cheers!
Wednesday, November 01, 2006
Lebanon in Jeapordy
The Whitehouse has dumbed itself down in an attempt to reverse the Clinton years which saw an absolute romance with multilateralism and the UN. The Whitehouse of the Bush Regime has decided that we go our own way, and the willing can follow or another way to look at it woudl be to say "and you will know us by the trail of our dead." I'm just thinking out loud here. But what does it say to the rest of the world when we say that "Talking isn't a strategy?" Well lets examine the previous strategies? Hm? And where have they brought us? Isn't talking the first and most basic principle of diplomacy? I could be wrong here, I mean I'm only thinking out loud, but lets think of it in terms of couples and counseling, what happens when couples stop talking and wind up on some poor shrink's couch? They sit there with their arms crossed, bodies tuned away from each other, referring to the other in 3rd person, what happens when the lines of communication cease to be a strategy? So if we're not talking, as a strategic measure anymore, then I nominate some other country, like Iceland, to come in and be the shrink.
November 1, 2006
White House Sees Signs of Plot in Lebanon
By DAVID E. SANGER
WASHINGTON, Nov. 1 — The White House said today that there was “mounting evidence” that Iran and Syria are involved in a plot to overthrow the government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora of Lebanon, but senior officials refused to describe in any detail the intelligence they said they had collected.
In an unusual statement, the White House said it was “increasingly concerned by mounting evidence that the Syrian and Iranian governments, Hezbollah and their Lebanese allies are preparing plans to topple Lebanon’s democratically elected government.”
American officials who were pressed today about the assertion on Lebanon said they had evidence that Syria and Iran were trying to engineer the creation of a new “unity” government that they could control, partly through the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah. One senior American official, who did not want to be identified because he was discussing an intelligence issue, said there were also indications of “planning for a more violent” attack on the government, but he gave no details.
In the White House statement, issued by President Bush’s press secretary, Tony Snow, the administration said there were “indications” that Syria was trying to block passage of a statute by the Lebanese Parliament that would cooperate with an international tribunal being put together to try those accused of involvement in the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. In a warning to Syria, the statement said the tribunal would be established “no matter what happens in Lebanon.”
Syrian intelligence officials, including close family members of President Bashar al-Assad, have been implicated in the attack. Syria has denied being involved in the attack in February 2005, which ultimately led to protests that forced Syria to withdraw its troops from Lebanon after nearly three decades.
In interviews in recent days, senior American officials have alluded less directly to concerns about Syrian and Iranian interference in Lebanon’s affairs. They have suggested that the concerns are one reason that the United States could not engage in negotiations with Syria or Iran, as several leading Republicans, including former Secretary of State James A. Baker III, have urged.
“Talking isn’t a strategy,” the president’s national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, said in an interview late last week, before he headed to Iraq. “The issue is how can we condition the environment that that Iran and Syria will make a 180-degree turn,” he said.
November 1, 2006
White House Sees Signs of Plot in Lebanon
By DAVID E. SANGER
WASHINGTON, Nov. 1 — The White House said today that there was “mounting evidence” that Iran and Syria are involved in a plot to overthrow the government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora of Lebanon, but senior officials refused to describe in any detail the intelligence they said they had collected.
In an unusual statement, the White House said it was “increasingly concerned by mounting evidence that the Syrian and Iranian governments, Hezbollah and their Lebanese allies are preparing plans to topple Lebanon’s democratically elected government.”
American officials who were pressed today about the assertion on Lebanon said they had evidence that Syria and Iran were trying to engineer the creation of a new “unity” government that they could control, partly through the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah. One senior American official, who did not want to be identified because he was discussing an intelligence issue, said there were also indications of “planning for a more violent” attack on the government, but he gave no details.
In the White House statement, issued by President Bush’s press secretary, Tony Snow, the administration said there were “indications” that Syria was trying to block passage of a statute by the Lebanese Parliament that would cooperate with an international tribunal being put together to try those accused of involvement in the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. In a warning to Syria, the statement said the tribunal would be established “no matter what happens in Lebanon.”
Syrian intelligence officials, including close family members of President Bashar al-Assad, have been implicated in the attack. Syria has denied being involved in the attack in February 2005, which ultimately led to protests that forced Syria to withdraw its troops from Lebanon after nearly three decades.
In interviews in recent days, senior American officials have alluded less directly to concerns about Syrian and Iranian interference in Lebanon’s affairs. They have suggested that the concerns are one reason that the United States could not engage in negotiations with Syria or Iran, as several leading Republicans, including former Secretary of State James A. Baker III, have urged.
“Talking isn’t a strategy,” the president’s national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, said in an interview late last week, before he headed to Iraq. “The issue is how can we condition the environment that that Iran and Syria will make a 180-degree turn,” he said.
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