“I’m so bored. I hate my life.” - Britney Spears
Das Langweilige ist interessant geworden, weil das Interessante angefangen hat langweilig zu werden. – Thomas Mann
"Never for money/always for love" - The Talking Heads
Saturday, November 21, 2020
Marginalia, a poem by Karen Chamisso
Wednesday, November 18, 2020
Against Craft
Tennyson, famously, was averse to the word "scissors". Something about the s-es. I don't know if Tennyson had a lisp. When I was a child of six or so, I did. Scissors would be a treachery. My own aversion is for the word "craft". How I hate to hear "craft" applied to writing! The "craft" of the story, poem, whatever. It repulses me, with its overtones of some genteel, antiquated hobby. Engineering, that would be alright, I suppose. Art, design, plumbing, all of that, which puts writing where it should be, in the world where people build, repair, create fixes, mob up, make spaghetti, help their kids with homework, and are alternately illuminated and tired. Craft comes from the early modern guild economy, the fierce nostalgia for which has fed the fascism and reaction of the 20th and 21st century. (Even though I should add that guild organizations, from doctors to profs, have endured to our day with more vigor than unions. Alas.)
Tuesday, November 17, 2020
the stub principle: there has never been a Truth era
what is this poem selling
What is this poem selling?
For the plausible, the uncle looking man
On the You Tube channel is definitive:
It is by selling that we die and live
All things we see above us
And the terror in which we are dressed
Is to sell something to someone
And so on. I was impressed
By this cosmic vision. When God made the earth
And it was good – it was to sell
And even the devil is a pr man
Marketing property in hell.
Well well well. Everything is sales,
And always be closing,
you hear?
This poem is selling an irony
While I’m shedding a tear in my beer.
O O, I can’t argue with the uncle looking man
But suspect selling everything’s a bad bad plan.
- Karen Chamisso
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