"Farther and Farther On...."/The Orono Edition

I'm on the road, now just down the road from Walden Pond, preparing for a talk on and installation of a poetry/piece at Orono, Maine (site of the National Poetry Foundation's conference on Poetry and the 1970s). The talk and installation are inspired by Lev Rubinstein's "Farther and Farther On" (for more pics from a previous iteration, go here.) I'll be more or less spotty on the internet, as I'll be heading even farther north, and even more roadbound than usual.

Leevi Lehto's Sound Poetry

I first saw the Finnish experimental poet Leevi Lehto in December 2006, at a large reading in Philadelphia that was part of the leviathan of the MLA. He was probably the most memorable of all fifty poets reading that night, even outdoing fellow sound poet Christian Bok (no slouch himself in the performance department). Sound poetry of this variety hearkens back to the Dada movement in the early 20th century, and though for the rigidly traditionalist poetry fans, I'm sure for some it seems like nonsense, it is a kind of blessed nonsense that brings poetry back to its love affair with intonation and sound--that materiality of noise that coheres and melts again and coheres again...

Everyone's Running for President...of Israel?

On the Death of Bo Diddley/"Road Runner"

Having recently read Don Quixote, I've been thinking about the picaresque tradition, and its relationship to road-adventuring, how it gives birth to all sorts of novels and films (Moby Dick, Huckleberry Finn, The Adventures of Augie March, On the Road, not to mention the countless buddy/road films...). But I neglected to think about songs, such as Bo Diddley's "Road Runner." Here it is:

"Road Runner"

(Ellas McDaniel) 1960
I'm a road runner honey,
Beep! Beep!
I'm a road runner honey,
And you can't keep up with me,
I'm a road runner honey,
And you can't keep up with me,
Come on, let's race,
Baby baby, you will see,
Here I come,
Beep! Beep!
Move over honey,
Let me by,
Move over baby,
Let this man by,
I'm gonna show you baby, look out your head,
Gonna put some dirt in your eye,
Here I go!
Oh yea, how am I doin?
Beep! Beep!
Take my hand baby,
I'm gonna prove to you that I'm a road running man,
I wanna show you something,
That I'm the fastest in the land,
Now let me by,
Beep! Beep!
Oh yea, you said you's fast,
But it don't look like you gonna last,
Goodbye! I've got to put you down,
I'll see you some day,
Baby, somewhere hangin' around.

One of the immediately obvious aspects of the picaresque tradition is not only the relationship between freedom and mobility, but also how the picaro, the adventurer, is almost always male--even if he claims (as Quixote does, fantastically) that all his adventures are on behalf of a beloved woman.

Dylanesque occasional poem

Lev Rubinstein reading "Time Passes"

I was thrilled to find this youtubed selection of Lev Rubinstein reading his poem, "Time Passes." Having translated Catalogue of Comedic Novelties: Selected Poems of Lev Rubinstein (2004), and after having read with him this past fall, I am further convinced of his poetic genius--his ability to recycle and set into motion shreds and fragments of language and discourse--a mobile of words and situations. I'll provide a translation of this text shortly (with my co-translator)...

"Behind the Lines" with David Baptiste Chirot (from the "The Cinema of Catharsis" series)

Scott McClellan, Too Damned Late, My Sweaty Friend

First, Fred Schneider of the B-52's going all "Rock Lobster" on Scotty's ass.

Now, Scott McClellan, the former Bush press secretary, on the Daily Show. Dear Scott, my friend formerly sweating under the White House press lights, you're way too late. Why did you need to leave the bubble to realize that you were the voicepiece of deception?

Good News: International Treaty to Ban Cluster Bombs

It seems that though I try to take note of hopeful trends, peace actions, reconciliations, witnessing, etc., there can be a baleful tone to the proceedings on Behind the Lines. Here's some good news: cluster bombs can go the way of the dodo. Clusters, go handicap yourselves!

NEWS RELEASE
30 May 2008

THE AMERICAN TASK FORCE FOR LEBANON APPLAUDS THE INTERNATIONAL TREATY BANNING CLUSTER BOMBS

Contact: Dr. George Cody, Executive Director
Phone: 202-223-9333 Email: atfl@atfl.org


(Washington DC). The American Task Force for Lebanon (ATFL) applauds the 110 countries that reached agreement in Dublin, Ireland, on Wednesday, May 28, to ban cluster bombs. We congratulate the United Kingdom, a staunch NATO ally, for its turnabout and now fully supporting the treaty. Lebanon is a signatory and staunch supporter of the treaty.

ATFL is proud that one of its principal objectives in the ATFL "Action Plan: Stop The Carnage, Ban The Cluster Bomb!" campaign has been achieved. Since December 2006 ATFL has called for an international treaty banning cluster weapons and has specifically been urging the United States to support an international treaty to ban the use, transfer and sale of cluster bombs.

Dr. Cody, ATFL Executive Director, commended the parties instrumental in making this treaty a reality. He said "ATFL salutes the 110 countries that made this agreement possible and urges the United States to join the community of nations and ban these weapons." Dr. Cody further stated "ATFL commends Senator Diane Feinstein, Senator Patrick Leahy, Representative Darrell Issa, Representative James McGovern, and other Members of Congress, for their bipartisan leadership on this humanitarian issue."

This treaty is the culmination of a process that began in February 2007 when 46 governments met in Oslo, Norway to endorse a call by the Norwegian government to conclude a new, legally binding instrument in 2008. The purpose of the treaty was to prohibit the use, production, transfer and stockpiling of cluster munitions that cause unacceptable harm to civilians and provides adequate resources to assist survivors and clear contaminated areas.

In the draft Convention in Dublin at the diplomatic conference for the adoption of a Convention on cluster munitions, the State Parties to the Convention have agreed "...that each State Party undertakes never under any circumstances to use cluster munitions, develop, produce, otherwise acquire, stockpile, retain or transfer to anyone, directly or indirectly, cluster munitions or assist, encourage or induce anyone to engage in any activity prohibited to a State Party under the Convention...."

Bob Dylan's "It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)"

Bob Dylan's "It's Alright Ma" still brings me chills--it's probably the first song I'd heard by Bob Dylan where I began to feel as if I was in the presence of a kind of genius. In "Desolation Row," Dylan mocks T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound as they fight in the captain's tower; somehow, amazingly perhaps, Dylan became more important than the high modernists to that generation of poets coming of age in the 1960s; poets as different as Mark Halliday, David Wojahn and Barrett Watten (all of whom I've spoken to about Dylan) have name-dropped Dylan as essential. Wojahn has gone so far to say that "Maggie's Farm" outstrips nearly all of the political poetry of the time, and remains a touchstone for how to write politically.

"It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)
Darkness at the break of noon
Shadows even the silver spoon
The handmade blade, the child's balloon
Eclipses both the sun and moon
To understand you know too soon
There is no sense in trying.

Pointed threats, they bluff with scorn
Suicide remarks are torn
From the fool's gold mouthpiece
The hollow horn plays wasted words
Proves to warn
That he not busy being born
Is busy dying.

Temptation's page flies out the door
You follow, find yourself at war
Watch waterfalls of pity roar
You feel to moan but unlike before
You discover
That you'd just be
One more person crying.

So don't fear if you hear
A foreign sound to your ear
It's alright, Ma, I'm only sighing.

As some warn victory, some downfall
Private reasons great or small
Can be seen in the eyes of those that call
To make all that should be killed to crawl
While others say don't hate nothing at all
Except hatred.

Disillusioned words like bullets bark
As human gods aim for their mark
Made everything from toy guns that spark
To flesh-colored Christs that glow in the dark
It's easy to see without looking too far
That not much
Is really sacred.

While preachers preach of evil fates
Teachers teach that knowledge waits
Can lead to hundred-dollar plates
Goodness hides behind its gates
But even the president of the United States
Sometimes must have
To stand naked.

An' though the rules of the road have been lodged
It's only people's games that you got to dodge
And it's alright, Ma, I can make it.

Advertising signs that con you
Into thinking you're the one
That can do what's never been done
That can win what's never been won
Meantime life outside goes on
All around you.

You lose yourself, you reappear
You suddenly find you got nothing to fear
Alone you stand with nobody near
When a trembling distant voice, unclear
Startles your sleeping ears to hear
That somebody thinks
They really found you.

A question in your nerves is lit
Yet you know there is no answer fit to satisfy
Insure you not to quit
To keep it in your mind and not fergit
That it is not he or she or them or it
That you belong to.

Although the masters make the rules
For the wise men and the fools
I got nothing, Ma, to live up to.

For them that must obey authority
That they do not respect in any degree
Who despise their jobs, their destinies
Speak jealously of them that are free
Cultivate their flowers to be
Nothing more than something
They invest in.

While some on principles baptized
To strict party platform ties
Social clubs in drag disguise
Outsiders they can freely criticize
Tell nothing except who to idolize
And then say God bless him.

While one who sings with his tongue on fire
Gargles in the rat race choir
Bent out of shape from society's pliers
Cares not to come up any higher
But rather get you down in the hole
That he's in.

But I mean no harm nor put fault
On anyone that lives in a vault
But it's alright, Ma, if I can't please him.

Old lady judges watch people in pairs
Limited in sex, they dare
To push fake morals, insult and stare
While money doesn't talk, it swears
Obscenity, who really cares
Propaganda, all is phony.

While them that defend what they cannot see
With a killer's pride, security
It blows the minds most bitterly
For them that think death's honesty
Won't fall upon them naturally
Life sometimes
Must get lonely.

My eyes collide head-on with stuffed graveyards
False gods, I scuff
At pettiness which plays so rough
Walk upside-down inside handcuffs
Kick my legs to crash it off
Say okay, I have had enough
What else can you show me?

And if my thought-dreams could be seen
They'd probably put my head in a guillotine
But it's alright, Ma, it's life, and life only.



Copyright © 1965; renewed 1993 Special Rider Music