Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Rhetoric Questings

On Volume in Poetry is a provocative essay in his continuing effort to define a space hundreds of poets are exploring from hundreds of directions. Names for this space have been proposed: Third Way, Elliptical, American Hybrid. Perhaps it'd be best to let it be nameless. The only other option is to make believe Ron Silliman is Euclid. Then it could be named: Non-Silliman Poetries, or something to that defect. - Read Mr. Abramson's essay and especially the comments by upinVermont, Art Durkee, and Curtis Faville in this order. In northern Wisconsin near Lake Superior the young poet, Aaron Apps, posted Poet as Platypus: a fine example of the integrated thinking prevalent among many younger poets. Reading it will benefit your brain. Charles Bernstein and William Blake are stars in it. rho00326

Monday, March 30, 2009

Scrunched day

due to monthly grocery shopping, but though I'm still behind/ I've caught up some. Bought two envelopes and mailed my old chapbook out. Also got a film developed and over at Library Station checked out a copy of the Shorter Fifth Edition of The Norton Anthology of Poetry edited by Margaret Ferguson, Mary Jo Salter, and Jon Stallworthy. The air was brisk today but mostly clear and not cold. Had forgotten how long the film I had developed had been in my camera, and so I was like saying to the clerk: "What are these, they don't look like any pictures I took." Some are of me, which led me to say: "I look dead. Maybe I am. My body just hasn't figured it out yet." That led me into an unnecessary public meditation on life and death. If Jim Kunstler is right, there will be a massive die off of ill elderly soon if our leaders don't see the policies they are pursuing are the wrong ones. Have quit eating processed meat, and my body is saying thank you. Have gone to using one brand of nutrition drink, though I still have four bottles of a second brand to use up. I didn't buy a blender though. Am not sure what vegetables and fruits to get, and if it would be better to get them frozen. I have another month during which to decide. Had some strange dreams last night, and as I awoke from the one that came after AM 3/ a song appeared: - Attached to a Dream Yes we can. Yes I know we can. Yes I know we can because, well, yes I know we can. Yes we can. Yes I know we can. Yes, I know we can because we can. - Not sure if this song is straight or satirical. rho00325

Saturday, March 28, 2009

KNOCK KNOCK WHO IS IT MAILMAN just ducky

I'M IN THE BATHROOM. THAT'S OKAY. Not really. So hurriedly I reconstruct my necessaries and awkwardly make my way to the door. He extends to me a handful of somewhat soggy mail which I use two hands to grasp while I think thank you--do not recall if I actually said it. Some background: After waking at AM 7:06 and hearing moderately heavy rain, and in the distance two thunderings, I stayed up. The mail boxes here are deep but otherwise small, and he had two items that were not easy to bend. It was after PM 2 when he arrived and these days I usually need to visit the bathroom every -/+ three hours. Still, it baffles and annoys me that I am often interrupted at moments when I least need to be. The two books I received today: - Studia Mystica Poetry and Mysticism Volume IX, Number 4 Winter 1986 (four poems I wrote are in it) -- It was through the kindness of Professor Robert Boenig at TAMU that I was able to secure a copy. -- - Another Song I Know -- short poems by William Michaelian. He and I and Gary B. Fitzgerald are engaged in a 3-way book exchange. Hopefully I will be able to send a copy of my book to each of them this coming week. Two books I received earlier this month from the Academy of American Poets: - the true keeps calm biding its story by Rusty Morrison Winner of the 2008 James Laughlin Award of the Academy of American Poets - American Poet -- The Journal of the Academy of American Poets Volume 36 Spring 2009 rho00324

Friday, March 27, 2009

Indeed Indeed

This music I relate to, only in my case I was not the one who died; but I did mess up severely, and so was part of the reason my other died. Mr. Philip Metres placed a video of it on his blog. Indeed #1 refers to the title of his post. #2 Indeed to his words under the video. a Johnny Cash song that made my eyes glaze rho00323

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

America as we have known it is dead

DEAD. The oil-based credit-is-good paradigm is over. Do not try to resurrect it, especially with dollars that do not exist. You will only make the future worse, President Obama. Just as when an individual, for whatever reasons, slips into bankruptcy, so should organizations of individuals be allowed to slip into bankruptcy. AIG wants to change its name or already has changed its name, probably to AIU Holdings, after its toxic financial waste unit is separated from the rest of the company. Don't know if it would make sense to, but a special entity for toxic financial waste could be created. Perhaps then computers could identify and classify that waste, and determine how best to eliminate it. Besides, a vast majority of this nation's citizens have on their own chosen saving over borrowing; and a further besides: If we don't immediately begin to reduce the toxins in Earth's atmosphere, the financial mess will be a moot concern, because we will lose our planet, and most likely our lives. 2009-03-26: See money.cnn.com/ and search colin barr truth about credit default swaps - Also: Treasury Secretary Geithner will be apprising Congress today. PM 1:11 -- ----------- Search Geithner March 26, 2009 financial system overhaul or Play Geithner testimony video here. PM 2:00 -- ----------- See this post by Mike Hewitt America's Forgotten War Against the Central Banks on his DollarDaze blog. One sentence from this long insightful post: "The more abundant the money, the lower its value." PM 2:45 -- See DollarDaze by Mike Hewitt ---------- in Unlike List in sidebar. rho00322

Sunday, March 22, 2009

civilization types revisited

Presented in this video is a general explanation of civilization types by Dr. Michio Kaku. This Kardashev scale article at Wikipedia details the speculation of civilization types and indicates where the human race was as of 2007. rho00320

Saturday, March 21, 2009

two White House notes

President Obama has been trying to bowl on the White House lanes Harry Truman had installed. He's not doing well, but I can tell you it's a lot harder for most people than it seems. When I was a kid I watched professional bowlers on our TV for several years before I first tried. Irrationally, I decided I wasn't going to bowl until my 16th birthday. Years later I wrote an odd poem about it. It's here in Postures 2007. Do this search: President Obama bowling - Michelle Obama, I am pleased to learn, is putting in a White House vegetable garden. In November of 2008 I wrote a short poem about this topic: Lesson One. I can't have a garden where I reside. Search: Michelle Obama garden rho00319

Thursday, March 19, 2009

Gerald Celente predictions are

not all negative. When you play this video pay attention to the closing advice he gives. - Opinions of his ability to predict, even though he has often been right, are broad and varied. I try to refrain from having an opinion about such, but I am nonetheless interested in the conclusions of people like Gerald Celente. rho00318

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

This Is About Who Cares

clovers of four before your door Honestly, even though the idea for this post was the result of events late last night as I was coursing from blog to blog--specifically what was mentioned in comment 100 beneath Kasey Mohammad's Dale Smith . . . post at his Lime Tree, I am not certain why I'm doing this. Maybe I sense my continuance as a viable human will soon cease. Maybe I sense civilization as I have known it will soon cease. Maybe it is both. I do know/ the high-class intellectuals (some of them, anyway) whose blogs I visit do tend to misunderstand me and may consider me an interloper. Rarely are comments from me lengthy. Rarely are posts on my blogs lengthy. However, while I neither seek nor want sympathy and while most of what I will be sharing today is available in older posts, I've concluded that the major facts need to be in one place. So: Age: 68 Zodiac sign: metal dragon Health: moment-to-moment * My genes have seen to it that I would never know true health. Shortly after I was born I had to be returned to the hospital because I had impetigo. My body, not unlike my psyche, is too sensitive. Eczema, hay fever, asthma have been with me from the beginning. It has not been proven, but at an early age I may have contracted TB and somehow overcome it. Just the sort of knowledge that makes me want to believe in reincarnation when the megalomania balloon inflates. Epilepsy, both frontal lobe and generalized. May have had some form of it since childhood, but wasn't medicated for it until my 1999-11-01 adult onset grand mal seizure. For approximately five years it has been controlled by Keppra. Will be using a generic form of it. Voiding, which I thought was due to a non-cancerous en- larged prostate. Have had two TURP op's and am now no better than I was before. Turns out my bladder empties fine. This means my urethra is the problem. It is messed up and the last doctor I visited about it said that operating on it might make it worse. Ishkabibble & the double dribble. Osteoporosis, oh yeah. I am crumbling. Genetics again. I was once an amazing 5'6.5" tall. I am presently 4'11" or less. Shortly before my rup- tured appendix was removed in the spring of 1962 (another by seconds escape from death), I weighed 135. I now weigh less than 100. Of course, I have fractured 3 vertabrae. Metal dragons are risk- takers. Have been drinking those nasty nutrition drinks in order to bring my weight up. Can't eat the foods I once ate, yet I need the calories. This is a problem I am trying to rectify. As if this were not enough, I've also had to have my esophagus dilated, and the nutrition drinks are causing a buildup of mucous and who knows what else. So I remain what I call Earth-alive because someone greater than I wants me to be. I am certain I've escaped death at least three dozen times. Education: Mainly in Roman Catholic schools until the autumn of 1962. Then three years at Wisconsin State College–Oshkosh where I majored in English and minored in History and was editor of the student magazine for two years. In 1965 I entered the workshop at Iowa, graduating in 1967 with an English MFA (poetry) degree. I then took a summer Education course at Marian College in Fond du Lac. Around 1983, while residing in UF town (Gainesville), Florida, I took computer and accounting courses at Santa Fe Community College and began studying diligently for a GRE administered in June of 1984 at UF. My score on that exam (1370) was the high point of my intellectual life. Got accepted into the Fisher School of Accounting at UF, but had to drop out early in my first semester as I found it too difficult to bike to school after working all night at a Holiday Inn, and I realized accounting was not for me. Next I got accepted into the English PhD Program. There I completed one semester, but again I was too worn out to concentrate properly. Then there was the stock market where idiothead tried to be a trader in an environment that was better for investing. Through my own efforts and God's nudgings, had I seen the light and had I lived till now after choosing the wiser path--there is no way to know such. Though it doesn't detail everything, if you are interested in knowing more, read Intelligence Is Not Enough, the 19th post in Money Rho. Finances: Oh it could have been worse, but I played the American Dream game. I bought into the oil/auto/credit paradigm. Where then am I now? I am totally dependent on governments; and if the gloomiest analysts are right, one day I will no longer have that. When trust leaves the playing field, the only call that can be made is: Game over. That is the gist of my simplistic equation: capitalism = something to sell + someone to buy it For, indeed, without someone to buy it, that paradigm withers and dies. In some ways this is already happening. A new less aggressive paradigm is growing, and if it survives and takes over, greed will fade/ and all humans will be drawn closer to each other. Call it what you will, I call it the inexorable force of God, the Omega Point, the Singularity, the Nth of Love. But then, I am the ghost in the dumpster. * rho00317

Monday, March 16, 2009

Joburg

This week's article from Jim Kunstler is Side Trip. rho00316

Saturday, March 14, 2009

Courting Cardinal

Wednesday and/or Thursday the nearby male was working his way from 0 to 4 thusly: two-wheat two-wheat two-wheat two-wheat tyou two-wheat two-wheat tyou tyou two-wheat two-wheat tyou two-wheat two-wheat tyou tyou two-wheat two-wheat tyou tyou tyou two-wheat two-wheat tyou tyou two-wheat two-wheat tyou tyou tyou two-wheat two-wheat tyou tyou tyou tyou - Friday he ratcheted it up to 5 and then 6: two-wheat two-wheat tyou tyou tyou tyou two-wheat two-wheat tyou tyou tyou two-wheat two-wheat tyou tyou tyou tyou two-wheat two-wheat tyou tyou tyou tyou tyou two-wheat two-wheat tyou tyou tyou tyou two-wheat two-wheat tyou tyou tyou tyou tyou two-wheat two-wheat tyou tyou tyou tyou tyou tyou - Today, in a clipped manner, he stretched the two-wheat and shortened the tyou's to one tyou: two-it two-it two-it two-it two-it two-it tyou two-it two-it two-it two-it two-it two-it tyou two-it two-it two-it two-it two-it two-it tyou - - Amused and bemused, I cannot decipher the meanings of his courting songs, but the female was on a wire today. So she hasn't left the territory. They've been together here all winter. Tune in tomorrow. rho00315

Friday, March 13, 2009

blog notes

No Friday report at Money Rho today. The DJIA went up a bit, and most of the stocks I've been tracking went up. - As to the recommended search note beneath this blog's name, I spent much of Wednesday reading Rexroth's essay, along with visiting various blogs. One sentence from the essay: "The white race is going mad, but it is the autonomic nervous system which is out of kilter; what goes on in the head is secondary--and the autonomic nervous system is, as a whole, the organ of communion." - Spent much of Thursday visiting blogs and reading. Thursday night I left a comment beneath Martin Earl's Harriet post: Wernicke's area. Today I was back there, and I left another comment because he had left one for me which included a question about Dickinson. Martin Earl post. - Also, led to it by Don Share, I've been at Jacket 37/ reading a long Kent Johnson interview of David Shapiro. Fascinating story of natural talents coupled with the right environments. - Posted a short-form haiku at The Ghost in the Dumpster. rho00314

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

one thought

twenty influences on my writing, which actually are far more than 20: kh00022 rho00313

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

several thoughts 4

My day yesterday away from the computer was not pleasant. This morning all that turned around. - May open my Flutterby blog for minutiae reasons. - Even though I think the 20-books me-me is kinda si-wee, am likely to use it as a prod for a post at K H. Will see. - The market was strongly up earlier, but I so far haven't seen any reason why it should be. .8:04 - It appears there were market people who knew something/ since after a speech Bernanke gave/ the market closed +379.44. - Did open Flutterby. rho00312

Monday, March 9, 2009

Support These U.S. Financial Repairs

From James Howard Kunstler: Forget About Recovery From Karl Denninger: Heh Mr. President; How Ya Like This? .3:15 -- Or maybe the question: Time to Kill the Big Banks? isn't, as Paul R. La Monica suggests, an easy one to answer. rho00311

Saturday, March 7, 2009

my year 2000 stock market memoir

Intelligence Is Not Enough was my project today. Am surprised I was able to do it all in one day. Hadn't read it in a long time. So it was satisfying to me in more than one way, more like four or five ways even though it is the story of a failed adventure. It doesn't cover all the stories I could tell about my encounters with stocks, and there is one story that gets told as two stories but, as I recall, both stories happened at the same time: the sources of the HD and DELL stories. This memoir is post mr00019 at Money Rho. Intelligence Is Not Enough rho00310

Friday, March 6, 2009

several thoughts 3

There is a study out that indicates social networking is bad: it tends to infantilize the human brain. - Also this, which has been floating around for a number of years: Most Americans don't get nearly enough vitamin D3. Do your own research on this, but apparently a body can tolerate significantly more than what is recommended. - Here is a link to Gregg Greenberg's 6 Dumbest Things on Wall Street. - Water is the new oil. - In January of this year the FDA ruled that products containing carmine, a red dye made from crushed Peruvian beetles that eat a particular red berry, must reveal on the label that carmine is in the product because some people are allergic to it. * A side note: Wild red salmon are red because they eat krill. Farmed red salmon are red because they have red dye in them. - Not only is Australia near China, but it also has petroleum and natural gas and a variety of needed minerals. Do a Wikipedia iron_ore search. rho00309

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

several thoughts 2

Through my Google Help Features link in my Unlike List/ I sent a search complaint. I leave comments beneath posts on blogs maintained by other bloggers. When I do a search of my name, results are returned which include some of those comments, BUT allmost always nothing of my comment is there. What is there is a portion of a comment made by someone else. Obviously, there is something wrong with the algo- rithm used. This error is not peculiar to Google. All the major search engines make the same error. This problem has persisted for years. In April of 2000 I first came online. My question was: Can it be rectified? - I recommend that you go to Money Rho and watch the Karl Denninger video, listening carefully to what he says. - At Sprintedon Migrasaurus/ song lyrics 50 is up. Although I know others will enter my consciousness, my present mindset is to not post any more. I'll just place them in the notebook I am using then. - There is a link to a long article over at Linh Dinh's blog. It is entitled: How to Survive the Coming Century. This is that century. If you read nothing else in it, read the last paragraph. Chances are slim to none for our survival. - For positive news, do this search: fighting flu with engineered antibodies - Also this search if you need to know what caused the financial crisis: wired magazine gaussian copula function - At Kyphotic Hermit/ links to posts by Joseph Hutchison and Adam Fieled on the topic of greatness wait for those of you who are interested. rho00308

Tuesday, March 3, 2009

several thoughts

Even if one does not favor it, it appears that the ideas of American Hybrid and of hybridity have, by consensus, won the day. As a maker of poems and poem-like artifacts, definitely I am, and long have been, a hybrid; yet, I am not comfortable with that term. [ Have you ever read any thing made by that hybrid slut, baj salchert? ] I would rather be known as a u-f-o (utterly-futile-oddity) poet. Notice: I used "a" before "u-f-o" because the letter "u" sounds like "you". I put the "." outside the second quotation mark for "you" because the "." represents the end of the sentence. It has nothing to do with "you". - Regarding my love(?) for poetry and a list of 20 books that fostered said love, forget it. Yes, there are poets and poems I could list; and, of course, books (anthologies mostly) were where I first encountered them. Surveys and questionnaires make my skin itch. - I have some issues with Google and Blogger; and since help files and forums also make my skin itch, I am trying to figure out my own ways around those issues. Unfortunately, the new and improved Followers messed up the look of the bottom of this blog, and there's nothing I can do about it. One example of a work-around is: latest post info. - If David Orr's article on poetic greatness was meant to arouse discussion among poets, it was an inordinate success. rho00307

Monday, March 2, 2009

Jim Kunstler's article

As health care insurers were hit hard and the DOW fell to 6763.29, Mr. Kunstler turned his eyes toward other sectors in his What Next? post which focuses on the relationships between several no longer sustainable complex systems and what their likely fate is and what government moves need to be made in order to transition this nation to more realistic modes of continuance. rho00306

Sunday, March 1, 2009

01 Rae Armantrout

On Silliman's Blog is a link to a Bookworm podcast from KCRW in Santa Monica, California. The person interviewing this poet is Michael Silverblatt, of whom I knew nothing until today. His questions are keen, but be sure your volume is high enough because he speaks more softly than she does. Try to listen carefully. The program has two segments. The poet reads one poem in each. Two ideas about poems are discussed: the poem that disappears and the poem that explodes (or seems that it might). Note what personal facts Armantrout shares. Also her words about our civilization. KCRW Rae Armantrout podcast Here are other links of interest: - at AAofP - at EPC - Rae Armantrout rho00305