Olson on Melville on Democracy

Moby Dick as America--as production line, as industry; the common man in service to the madness of the leader--yes, this is our democracy.

"A whaleship reminded Melville of two things: (1) democracy had not rid itself of overlords; (2) the common man, however free, leans on a leader, the leader, however dedicated, leans on a straw."--Olson, Call Me Ishmael (in Ch. "Shakespeare, concluded")

From MD:
"Through these forms that certain sultanism of Ahab's brain became incarnate in an irresistible dictatorship.

"For be a man's intellectual superiority what it will, it can never assume the practical, available supremacy over other men, without the aid of some sort of external arts and entrenchments, always, in themselves, more or less paltry and base." (ibid)

The Revelation

by William Bronk

My life has no shape; I live in an old house.
The deed says it's mine now. Well enough.
Even so, I had supposed--or not,
I find I don't know but I thought I supposed--

some shape would happen to impose itself
on the days, the nights, even on this house,
revealing it. I find I don't care
this didn't happen, and yet am surprised.


I haven't read enough Bronk to really know how to read this...this is a poet who had written poetry for 50 years and written prose that will stand alongside this. He ran his family's business.

The man's life had shape--some kind of shape. Did the poet's?--again it appears so.

Or is this a question of a shaping presence outside the self--expected, but in the end illusory. I thought, at the end of my life, that I would impose a shape on it by defining it a certain way "at this moment of thinking about it".

It is called, pointedly one supposes, The Revelation, it would be hard to not consider the fact that this is the final book of the New Testament. And so this in itself brings the religious to bear on the poem--I thought that God would come to me. That this life, these memories, would be given shape in reflection--a godly, goodly shape. A meaning. That this shape would be imposed and revealed. But no.

Odd to expect it? No, I think we're hard-wired to imagine this or at least culturally conditioned to think it plausible even if we are anti-theist.

A Truce Is Possible--bits of/on Wm Bronk

From a Kay Ryan appreciation in Poetry:
Bronk is thinking and thinking, as purely as possible, about how we want—want not to be alone, want things to matter, want to feel that we are connected to reality. His poems are all about wanting and how there is no end to it. And about how whatever reality is, it is something we only know in the negative—by being constantly wrong about it.

From Metonymy as an Approach to a Real World:

Whether what we sense of this world
is the what of this world only, or the what
of which of several possible worlds
--which what?--something of what we sense
may be true, may be the world, what it is, what we sense.
For the rest, a truce is possible, the tolerance
of travelers, eating foreign foods, trying words
that twist the tongue, to feel that time and place,
not thinking that this is the real world.

ideas to ponder

Steward mentality v Dominion mentality. Biblical in nature or "human nature" exampled in Bible?

Climate Change: deniability: Doubt in the science: Science as an idea: epidemeology vs empirical data in chaos systems: GOD again--belief, in the image of the divine--destroyer or shepherd. The world is ours to destroy as we are godlike: or God will save us no matter what; or we are the chosen beings and so we will fix ourselves.

However, God is a belief and we believe, if we do, out of fear, lack of knowledge, tacit/facile acceptance of cultural beliefs--but we don't need to see it to believe it and if we are wrong about it (ie, dead and no after life you're still just dead) no big deal; if we're right we're saved (maybe); so this is a "better safe than sorry" attitude--hedge your bets...why not the same attitude with climate change?

T0 my mind Science (all of us within its long reach) should doubt all things it does and imagine always that any minor change will be bad news...ie, expect Frankenstein's Monster, not the cure for cancer and proceed with fear and caution. We do the exact opposite of this.

What Form the World Has by William Bronk

I watch my concern for the world, how it changes: strong
sometimes, elsewhere weaker, as when the world
stands in the landscape like somebody's barn, clump
of trees. Not my land they're on. Whose,
I don't know. Or what they are. Nor
do I care. Times, though, I could think
of them as refuge, having no other and they
being offered, not then either caring what.

Or my intensest concern for the world might be
the times I find me trapped, as it were, in the trees,
boarded-up in that barn. Those times,
I hate the world, want only to break it down.

When we love the world for itself, the world we love
is one, most likely, we may have made or thought
to have made, ourselves, with love or some other power.
As if we could. Well, maybe we can
and did, but taken out of our hands when it is
as it always is, do we know was it ever ours?

I could rest content with the unseen form of the world
and never see it, believing the form were there.

Sky Tremor by Huidobro

trs. Tony Frazer: http://www.fascicle.com/issue03/poems/huidobrosingle.htm

Concentration of "aahhrrrrr"

All is abstract
you do not need to insist
it simply is

Red is abstracted
is abstraction
of
R
E
D

R is
concentration of ahhrrr
from sound
which is
of necessity
always contextual

else without

proper ear
proper throat
proper mouth
lips
tongue
teeth

proper t
teh

proper
meaning

Continu
E
D