Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Robbe-Grillet is not napping



Alain Robbe-Grillet died today. "L'annee Derniere a Marienbad", which he wrote and Alain Resnais directed, has scenes where large reddish shapes appear.

Friday, February 15, 2008

Further Color Notes

Further Color Notes

Pg. 5, should be lighter red in circle and more orange in curtains
Pg. 8, lighter and brighter overall
Pg. 9, too dark, lighter, more orange
Pg. 12, move up image so more of red bottom line shows
Pg. 13, Blake's babe, lighter red around the snake
Pg. 14, include more of the snake at bottom, try not to cut off image
Pg. 18, flowers should be more orange
Pg. 20, red should be more orange
Pg. 21, rainbow should have a lighter orange band
Pg. 25, cross should be lighter, more orange in background behind heart shape
Pg. 32, brighter fluorescent orange
Pg. 33, brighter orange line from one bird to other bird, brighter yellow
Pg. 34, brighter pinks and yellows
Pg. 35, brighter yellow around cloud
Pg. 37, orange line around type box
Pg. 38, lighter if possible overall

-Charles Bernstein

Thursday, February 14, 2008

Saint, Seizure


St. Valentine and epileptic (St. Valentine’s Church in Vilnöss, South Tyrol, around 1500).


He shifted his other hand on to the inside of the thigh, until the shaking stopped. You, comma, under, comma, shiver. Unseen by both, the thick skin draped across. Oh, right: The skins were white, and white. Surprise collected in puddles. His eyes scanned greenishly out over a humid jungle. The light filtering through the slatted blinds formed narrow bars on the floor. The floor formed narrow floors.

Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Brain Tapes


A line from a joke I forgot to write down and have now dismembered.

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The line above is rotating on its axis at a speed of one revolution each day.


Douglas Huebler
1970

Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Rocks

A small garden, a stiletto in the heart, a steel box, and some rocks.

The Fatalist

Dog isn’t right, poetry isn’t wrong — words in themselves
can’t be right or wrong. If writing is to serve as their chief
interrogator it must ask the very questions
regarding puppets or cookies that we would ask
with a three year old dashing toward us
with confidence. We would have to be armed
with questions and the artistic courage
that is required to sustain them. Then things will surface
like the scraps of paper on which they are written and ambition
afloat on mineral water left over from the party – we all remember
the preparations before and the cleanup after the fire. Brown by day
and red at night, the sky came within 500 yards of the conscripted
convicts. We gave them everything they asked for when they approached
the fire through miles of brush in prison garb
and guarded by deputies thinking us naive to be grateful for something
they’d been condemned to do. Things weren’t yet working
but I knew how to fix the problem. It was structural
as when I was in high school sitting in the town cemetery
which lay pretty much midway between the sentimental verses
on the gravestones and my fear of death. Figures distinct
from reality (which wouldn’t have suited adolescent girls)
hover over courage like the ibis. They sneer
and we thank them — as we must
since one of them lay the cosmic egg that contained the bird of light
that we now use to search for better spacing, wanting the sense
of suspense, of preparation and promise, the sense of things
underway, which means we have to get our indentations
right. But as you see, they might as well be in Florida — the same time zone
as yours — like manuscripts suddenly appearing on the horizon
in a box of loose pages they are still a long ways off.

-Lyn Hejinian, from "The Fatalist"