is not an idea I would have thought of, but is one I think is worth pondering. When I encountered it, I immediately thought of William Wordsworth and Ralph Waldo Emerson and William Carlos Williams with their: "The world is too much with us"; "Things are in the saddle"; "No ideas but in things." Could most poets alive during the rise of Industrialism be considered Materialists in spite of whatever intellectual and/or spiritual values they held? In spite of their poetic and/or aesthetic positions? A step back to take in how thoroughly things--especially those "practical" things which by our ingenuities we humans have made and continue to make--have captivated us/ definitely promotes this idea. See William Wordsworth Ralph Waldo Emerson William Carlos Williams but also see Samuel Taylor Coleridge and then go to this Joshua Corey post: 6/18 It is his idea, and it seems to have arisen out of his thoughts about Ammons, whose works he has been reading; and out of his concurrent thoughts about Ashbery. This post is heavy with conclusions I, for one, had never entertained. However, if his general thesis is accepted, most schools of poets since the Romantics could easily be Materialists. bl00356
Monday, June 22, 2009
from Romanticism to Materialism
Sunday, June 21, 2009
This Summer Solstice Father's Day
is a day of new beginnings for me. In the physical progenitorial sense, I am not a father, and it is doubtful I ever will be or even want to be. What then? Sometimes how one sees one's spirit becomes reflected in one's body. Even though I have been forgiven, I had let my outer body gather the dust and dirt of years. Today, partly as the result of my new GP's insistence, I began the move toward the proper care of that organ. Am also in the process of making more changes toward the betterment of my inner body since she gave me permission to do that which I thought I ought not do. Are you enjoying my post-avant indirectness? If you are not, you need to get with it as I can't promise anything. It's all in the flow, and I cannot know how that flow will go. Yes, I do already feel better but the road ahead is long and treacherous. Those of you who are fathers, I hope this day has been, and continues to be, kind to you. - Ditched at last my old home page and made Google my home page. Google is a spider you know, and we authors are arcane delicacies. - Have upped my water intake, mostly by diluting my nutrition drinks more. - J J Gallaher posted a rant against accessible poetry which is drawing rebuttals from recent commentors at Poetry Foundation's Harriet--am really not certain, it may be from only one commentor at PFH. If it isn't difficult it is isn't art, JJ contendeth. Bet you can't find where I hid the egg. bl00355
Saturday, June 20, 2009
Kyphotic Hermit pause
which may become permanent. 32 posts are at Kyphotic Hermit. Here is a link list: - 1. Y 2. sort of an intro 3. doing time at iowa 4. Julia Vinograd 5. aesthetic openness 6. poem reading 7. Mr. Reginald Shepherd 8. somewhat likeable but inconsequential 9. my routine for visiting blogs 10. poets are conduits 11. sullen grey 12. i cannot be consoled 13. sometimes i think 14. disheveled life 15. in remembrance 16. theme variation 17. i cant stand being human 18. K. Silem Mohammad on Flarf 19. James Wright, James Wright, Robert Bly 20. Denise Low's Blog 21. their conversation continues 22. twenty influences on my writing 23. toward morning while 24. cover scans plus five poems 25. post-industrial world and poetry 26. John Latta post for today 27. Stephen Burt Elliptical 28. regarding Burt's New Thing 29. coteries, categories, individuals 30. ragged publication list 31. Eliot, O'Hara, Radiohead connection 32. Brands by Dave Oliphant bl00354
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Reading book by Owen Barfield 2
See bl00343 May 22, 2009. From chapter VIII The Making of Meaning (II) p. 138 [6] When we start explaining the language of famous scientists as examples of 'poetic diction', it may well seem that the ordinary meaning of that literary phrase has been inflated beyond the bounds of reason. Never- theless such an extension was necessary, in order to make clear its real nature. Nor has it been waste of time, if it has convinced a single person who needed convincing, how essentially parochial is the fashionable distinction between Poetry and Science as modes of experience. . . . the rational principle must be strongly developed in the great poet. - p. 139 [6] If the poetic is unduly ascendant, behold the mystic or the madman, unable to grasp the reality of percepts at all--being still resting, as it were, in the bosom of gods or demons--not yet man, man in the fullness of his stature, at all. But if the passive, logistic, prosaic principle predominates, then the man becomes--what? the collector, the man who cannot grasp the reality of anything but percepts. And here at last a real distinction between poet and scientist, or rather between poetaster and pedant, does arise. - pp. 140-141 [7] Provided, then, that we do not look too far back into the past (i.e. beyond the point at which the 'given' meaning of a word first began to yield place to the 'created' meaning) language does indeed appear historically as an endless process of metaphor transforming itself into meaning. Seeking for material in which to incarnate its last inspiration, imagination seizes on a suitable word or phrase, uses it as a metaphor, and so creates a meaning. The progress is from Meaning, through inspiration to imagination, and from imagination, through metaphor, to meaning; inspiration grasping the hitherto unapprehended, and imagination relating it to the already known. bl00353
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Topical
Over at Money Rho are financial links. Two of the moment are J. H. Kunstler's post too stupid to survive in which he provides information about the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU), an organization I had not heard of but plan to become familiar with. www.cnu.org - The other is Karl Denninger's post for today. Also, this evening President Obama is expected to announce the granting of some benefits to same-sex partners who are federally employed. bl00352
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
mostly silly stuff
Get off computer stool. Go directly to toilet. Do not take a side trip. Do not save/ joke for today. - Gorgeous George fell in a gorge, and now the gorge is gorgeous, George. - As I told a security guard one night in Gainesville: I used to be a slut for the FBI. - Brina had a little goat. She used to grab it by the throat. But when the goat grew big and strong, Brina left the goat alone. Then one day the old goat died. Poor Brina, she was mystified. - So I've been having trouble getting to the hidden places on my blogs, and trouble connecting to AOL, and trouble getting comments to show on other blogs; et, et, et, et. Well--not that I hadn't seen this before-- come to find out from Google: Your browser has cookies disabled. This time it hit me, and so I minimized out and went to my browser's advanced settings and removed the check mark from the request to clear temporary files each time my browser is not being used. It hadn't occurred to me until today that clearing the temporary files also meant cookies would be cleared. bl00351
Monday, June 15, 2009
recent things done
Beginning early last Wednesday and ending several minutes before noon on Sunday, a long-avoided necessary internal project was essentially completed. The upshot of that, however, remains an unknown. That it's done is joy enough. - Just completed a secondary project which had been ongoing for some time but which was halted while the more substantial project held me. - It is now 3:33 PM and I have a knotty post pertaining to haiku you might enjoy: it is Bill Knott's looking for the no-center - Still having connection problems with AOL but I think they may have begun the day I dowloaded and installed IE8. Definitely, IE8 is more security-oriented than IE7. If Google Chrome has a recovery feature, I may well try using it. I did open a Google Mail account, but I prefer AOL's email services/ even though I won't be using them as extensively as I had been. - Wish I could say I am done re-imagining past events in my life, especially those wherein I made disastrous choices, but--. bl00350
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
autobio stuff
Have begun a piece entitled "A Life Litany" that already has an ending but that might become rather long. It has four-line stanzas with the fourth line/ the same three words. In a way it's a test of how much a reader can take. - Placed a comment beneath post kh00031. Everyone who reads this should go there and read that. - Am having problems in my recent posts section. So either I will delete it altogether or change it to a list. - My sister took me out today to pick up a book, Owen Barfield's What Coleridge Thought, at the library we frequent; then to return an improperly packaged item to a specific Wal-Mart, where we also bought a few things; and then to a specific QT for gas; and then back to here, where my sister put together one of the things we bought. - With a spattering of lightning and thunder, threatening weather passed through here earlier this evening, but it didn't deliver. bl00349
Sunday, June 7, 2009
just considering
No doubt the Bald Eagle is a beautiful national symbol but while the Industrial Age passes/ I think we should temporarily let the Crow be our national bird. - I have been posting my quirky song lyrics at a rapid pace as of late. They come as and when they come. I have no overriding plan. If you want to snatch one or more, go ahead. Feel free to mess with any of them in your own space. - Visited Adam Fieled's Stoning the Devil yesterday. Left a comment. May link to that post of his at my K H today. - If William Michaelian and Joseph Hutchison wish to continue their recent crow project, my encumbrance need not be part of it. I will do whatever I do/ as an aside to what they do. That is why I didn't post "Rhetorical" in a comment on William's blog. I was merely riffing. - My body is in hesitation mode again, but I've been and will be eating 4 ounces of probiotic yogurt every day. Am also trying to get myself to get out and walk for at least ten minutes daily, and I am making other changes. - Although I first came online in April of 2000, I am not of the Net Generation as Don Tapscott puts it, and so I lack the confidence and skills NGers have. I learn what I need to, id est, when I am ready to learn what I need to or am forced to. - I live moment to moment, my ongoing as an ashable human primarily dependent on the will of God. I am not out to prove myself better than or even = to any other human. bl00348
Friday, June 5, 2009
Thursday, June 4, 2009
Edge sends THIRD CULTURE emails
to me. Today's features a streaming video talk: "The Impending Demise of the University" by Don Tapscott. You can access it at this URL: www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge288.html bl00346
Saturday, May 30, 2009
My personal library
has--according to a casual count I made this morning-- 350 books, not including copies of books I have written but including literary journals. One of those books is Reader-Response Criticism from Formalism to Post-Structuralism edited by Jane P. Thompkins -- Copyright © 1980 by The Johns Hopkins University Press. On page V the following:
click on image to enlarge bl00345
Monday, May 25, 2009
yesterday today notes
Yesterday: Spent most of my online time changing things in AOL Mail and in my blogs. - Took a short parking lot walk. Today: In the early morning of this Memorial Day the green-tinted (beneath its heavy translucent covering just under the roof of the apartment building north of this one at its southeast corner where still growing Sturdy Bush is) light/ went dark. - My ever-changing body in its weaknesses/ forces ne to be ever innovative regarding it. - My subconscious continues its war against my conscious, but I can't let one dominate/ for I need the strengths native to each. - Having problems in my blog spaces I never had before, especially with the one migrated from AOL. The only recent major thing I did was open a Gmail account. Seems my best move might be to record and/or PDF my books. bl00344
Friday, May 22, 2009
Reading book by Owen Barfield
Poetic Diction: A Study in Meaning Since I haven't gotten very far into it, I can't say much yet; but I know it is a book I like. The copy I have is of the second edition -- Copyright © 1964 by the McGraw-Hill Book Company. I have it on loan through a local library. The first sentence of the "Preface to the Second Edition" reveals this book's basis: The Preface to the first edition described briefly how this book grew out of two empirical obser- vations, first, that poetry reacts on the meanings of the words it employs, and, secondly, that there appear to be two sorts of poetry. On page 34 is a longer passage I would like to shorten but deem it best not to. Apart from pleasurable entertainment (which must never be forgotten), there are two important functions which poetry is there to perform. One of them is the one I have stressed throughout this book, namely the making of meaning, which gives life to language and makes true knowledge possible. And this it does inasmuch as it is the vehicle of imagination. The other, lying much nearer the surface of life, is to mirror, not necessarily by approving, the characteristic response of the age in which it is written. Now it may happen, and it has been happening increasingly since the eighteenth century, that these two functions conflict. They may even be diametrically opposed to one another. For there may be an age of which the characteristic response is to deny the validity of imagination. And if that happens, a true and sensitive poet will find himself in a dilemma. Obviously, many changes have occurred since Barfield wrote his book, and while I have an idea of where he would stand, I am going to defer that until I have read his entire book. bl00343
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Today at wood s lot
What is on this page is all worth lingering over, but what most interested me is the article by Laura Miller about New Zealander Brian Boyd and evocriticism. Today at wood s lot bl00342
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
all strung out
Mares eat oats and does eat oats and little lambs eat ivy. A kid 'll eat ivy too, wouldn't you? - In the April 27, 2009 issue of Time/ one of the results of a survey of 1000 people taken by a group of reporters who fanned out across America was: 14% said this nation is heading into a long slow decline. - According to one research, men who drink 5 glasses of water daily-- an amount that would make me feel like an innertube-- lower their risk of having a heart attack by 54%. - Beware of sodium benzoate, which is found in certain margarines and other foods, because mixing it with vitamin C is bad for one's health. Search it out. - There is something in peanut butter-- I forget what it is-- that is highly carcinogenic. I continue to eat peanut butter nonetheless. bl00341
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Somehow I feel
everything I've wanted to say I've already said. It's just a matter of finding where all of it is. I could, of course, be wrong about that, even infinitely wrong. In any case, there's enough work to be done with just that I know the whereabouts of to keep me busy for months if the circumstances of my ongoing remain favorable. One project I have in mind is an annotated PDF version of 1976 Today. 366 sonnets would be in it and each would have its own page. Do need to finish posting the Brian's Brain journal, but that rest is offline and unready. --- My computer was at a tech shop for over a week. Got it back Friday afternoon. Spent the time here reading, writing, and going through boxes of materials I hadn't gotten to yet. We took my old computer system and my printer I had stopped using to a recycling place. bl00340
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Rodrigo Toscano
is new to me, and I likely would not be bothering with this post if I hadn't noticed ". . . Toscano is major. . . ." in a comment by Kent Johnson. I have been doing some searches, and found that he has an epc.buffalo.edu page. Early this afternoon I finished reading the Jacket 28 interview of him by Leonard Schwartz. Because of the keenness of the questions, the appropriateness of the responses-- which include parts of poems by Toscano, and the sonic and intellectual flair of his poem-making, this interview is the best entry for anyone who is not familiar with this NYC-based arbiter and author. Here is a direct link to the interview. On his epc page are numerous links. And here is a link to a post by Mark Scroggins. Do not know if this is a general consensus, but Toscano is a post-Langpo author according to at least one person. From what I have read so far the performance quality in his poems is enticing. Dialogue is a core device for him, and since I have used dialogue in several works, it is easy for me to relate to and enjoy that aspect of his writing. bl00339
Monday, April 27, 2009
Mikhail Bakhtin two links
heteroglossia - [ ... ] Humans are always naming things, if for no other reason than the need to remember them. Circa 1985 I wrote a poem which speaks to this. It is entitled "A Cardinal of Consciousness". bl00338
Friday, April 24, 2009
quik thoughts
Not that I haven't been ironic both in my words and in my life but I've grown tired of irony and not that I haven't used allusions but I have grown/ tired of allusions and of being elusive and of illusions and not that I'm never contentious but I have grwon tired of contention and of being content i o u s. - [ Note: At K H is Stephen Burt Elliptical ] bl00337
Thursday, April 23, 2009
With winds gusting
through Sturdy Bush at noon, a butterfly that looked like a Monarch but seemed too small and so may have been a Viceroy was moving from one dandelion patch to another. Also caught a glimpse of a bee on this now cloudy warm day. - Have been following Bank of America this week. A slew of controversy surrounds its solvency and in particular its acquistion of Merrill Lynch. BAC stock dropped to $7 briefly--I think it was early on Tuesday--but mostly has been between $8 and $9. - Ron Silliman placed a challenging post up yesterday which I may link to so I don't have to keep visiting it. Henry Gould's comments are becoming more cogent, a fact that pleases me since I agree with most of his conclusions. - Speaking of conclusions, Coversations With Myself has entered the contest for the title of my collected works. Two others are Idiothead and Your Mother's Dead, and She's Glad. - PM 3:30 -- Mark Wallace's wallacethinksagain.blogspot.com is another site I've been visiting a lot of late. Many of the discussions re American Hybrid radiate from there and Mark nearly always states his thoughts in interesting ways. - Reminder: If you don't have a link to a site I mention, check to see if I do. bl00336
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Sam Hamill on Kenneth Rexroth
in Jacket 23. Would prefer to provide a link to the article, but Jacket has a rather strict copyright policy. So here's the URL: jacketmagazine.com/23/rex-hamill.html One fact in Hamill's article has me wondering how many of the most significant poets had near perfect recall. bl00335
Friday, April 17, 2009
Recently
a pair of warblers or finches along with some zipping around swallows have been near Sturdy Bush. Swallows do nest in the passageways, but I would like to know what kind of bird the other two are. They may have been here past years too in a different location. Recently I've been trying to eat a can of three bean salad. It hasn't been going well. Too stringy and the kidney bean skins get stuck in my throat and other places, and the vinegar, well--it is vinegar. Will be eating the last of it tomorrow. Recently, though I haven't written any down yet, I've been noting lines I like in the anthology of poems I got from the library, and have been attempting to ascertain why I like them. Have renewed the book and will probably do a post on some of Emily Dickinson's lines first. Recently I've been trying to summon the energy to get back to posting the rest of Brian's Brain. It's a large project that once was online at Tripod. Six posts of it are done. Am not sure how many more posts will be needed, but the completed ones are in size 1 Verdana. Those remaining, therefore, will also be in size 1 Verdana. Recently in KH I posted the covers of 5 books, each by a different author, along with 1 poem from each book. A hazy theme connects the 5 poems, so I didn't comment on them. The five authors are William Michaelian, Tom Montag, David Lunde, Charles Behlen, and Gary B. Fitzgerald. bl00334
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Susan Boyle Britain's Got Talent
If you don't already know, do this search: susan boyle britains got talent - She is a singer. Her story is both sad and amazing. "I Dreamed a Dream" is the song she sings. In the Seattle Intelligencer is a post by Steven J. Patrick about life dreams, written because of Susan Boyle's performance. I came upon it as the result of this search: susan boyle american idol There are videos of her singing the song. * bl00333
Sunday, April 12, 2009
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Literary canon information
I support. It is a short introduction to a specific English course from a faculty URL at Goucher College, Baltimore, MD. I was going to post my views, but decided to search literary canon. Glad I did. What their introduction covers/ are my views since I believe literary canons from the strictest to the loosest are implicit in any anthology of literature and in any literary manifesto, neither of which is likely to cease being while, for whatever reasons, humans interact with the artifacts they create, artifacts which someone contends are literary. There is in all this the question of texts (in canons birthed and nurtured by institutions) devolving into ventriloquisms fit only for the scholars who autopsy them. To me this question has merit, but only in a narrow political sense. Yes, texts can be enhanced or demeaned by scholarly investigations; but, if I come upon an unfamiliar text, and interact with it, my opinions of it at that time will be informed by the degree of my knowledge and persuasions at that time; and even if I were to seek further knowledge, I would not have to be persuaded by it. After its author is no longer able to revise it, a text is a text, and no amount of dissectioning or perverting can alter the original text unless that original is mutilated or destroyed. bl00331
Friday, April 10, 2009
Stupid search engines
have angered me more than long enough; therefore, I have devised a test. I don't know what their problems are, but they consistently return results that assign to me (Brian Salchert) statements made by someone else. From now on/ whenever I comment (even on my own blogs), my comment will begin and end with the date and my initials. If a comment doesn't begin and/or end with this info, it is not my comment. Admittedly, my test may fail. If it does, I will end it. bl00330
Monday, April 6, 2009
passed new rare events
Photo of Sturdy Bush as it was in March. | blossoms: click to enlarge
This month light-green leaves have taken over. This afternoon a rare event that was a daily one when I was in Gainesville, Florida: a Mockingbird. The female Cardinal was just ahead of it. Apparently she'd been in its territory/ which is not on this property. The/ the Mockingbird was quiet though, even when it flew in to one of Sturdy Bush's branches, and then out to the recently cut grass, and then back to its somewhere out of sight. The things I see// through my bedroom's cracked window. White/ wing bars! Holy stars! bl00329
Friday, April 3, 2009
blog notes
Posted to all the blogs today. The post at Kyph Herm isn't complete but it's visible since I didn't leave it in draft. God bless my insanity. bl00328
Thursday, April 2, 2009
change notes
Even if it does sound corny, and maybe because it does I will be staying with Baj's Lodges; but you can still use Rhodingeedaddee if you prefer it. Will be difficult, but plan to post money-related items on Money Rho and not on the node blog. Joseph Hutchison's anthology post has rekindled my desire to build a list of contemporary American poets who though not unknown are either not known in blogland or are seen as inadequate. Desire. There are others who are doing what I want to do in the places they know, and organizations with rosters into the thousands; and I am physically disadvantaged. So why should I even try? Besides, maybe those I list don't want to be so listed, or don't want to be listed by me. Hype. bl00327
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
