Local news

Tuesday night

Bayonet clouds criss-crossed beneath a lopsided yoke of a moon and a dog driving through the deserted middle of town with his head out the window barking.

Poetry money

A few years ago Poetry Magazine inherited some two hundred million dollars from heiress Ruth Lilly (Lilly Pharmaceuticals). Ruth was an eccentric recluse, a bit like Howard Hughes, but instead of airplanes she doted on poetry. Over the years she even occasionally, anonymously, submitted some of her own work to the magazine but it was always rejected. Founded by Harriet Monroe at the beginning of the twentieth century, the journal has high standards:

Mission

"The Open Door will be the policy of this magazine—may the great poet we are looking for never find it shut, or half-shut, against his ample genius! To this end the editors hope to keep free from entangling alliances with any single class or school. They desire to print the best English verse which is being written today, regardless of where, by whom, or under what theory of art it is written. Nor will the magazine promise to limit its editorial comments to one set of opinions."

—Harriet Monroe, 1912

The Poetry Foundation was established in a bit of a scramble when the magazine received its unfettered fortune but they took the flying leap that only money can buy. According to its chairman John Barr, Poetry Foundation has become a proper "bully pulpit". Self-described "real moguls", the Foundation's CEOs decided to invest in themselves first, the trickle down formula favored by most captains of industry. The first thing they're doing is building themselves a glorious headquarters from which to operate.

Men who previously avoided being associated with poetry's riffraff image have decided to spiff it up, monetize it, supersize it, glamorize it, mass market it. I suppose that sooner or later it had to happen. Whether or not I agree with their approach, I agree things are in a sad state. I don't know about you, but personally I can't stand the gassy narcissism that currently passes for poetry.

The moguls have plunked it all down on red. It's a stiff bet. Harriet Moore brought T. S. Eliot, Marianne Moore, William Carlos Williams, Robert Frost, and Ezra Pound and others to light. The Foundation plans to better that and up the ante. They plan to launch a Renaissance. Naturally skeptics predict the Foundation will merely do the expected ... establish a royal court, anoint an inner circle and reign over it gloriously until the whole scene implodes under the weight of its own vanity. Who knows? I do like their new website. It has some interesting pages such as Dispatches: News. Refreshing. So many writer's circles and publishing houses have their wagons ringed up tight and the only stories they tell around the campfire are about themselves.

When the money arrived, Poetry Magazine's then editor relinquished his post to head up the newly formed Foundation but didn't long survive the surge of bullies like John Barr from Wall Street. Christian Wiman is its new editor. I met him not long after he took the job. He came to Nevada to be the keynote speaker for a writer's conference I peripherally helped put together. I liked him. He seemed very grounded, open and unimpressed with himself. He critiqued one of my poems. I'm not much into things like writer's conferences and don't run around courting people's opinions about my writing so, other than the fact that I am an incurable showoff, I didn't expect much. To my relief, he didn't offer "advice". He simply challenged the need for the final stanza. When I wrote it I knew I had flinched so I very much appreciated his astuteness. I hope he continues to stick to the code. And I hope the Foundation knows what it is. We all know money talks but can it, will it, walk? Guess we'll see. Anyway, they've made some nicely designed broadsides available at Dispatches: Gallery for the Fridge Archive. Go on. Download one. Spread the word. Poetry's baaaaaaaaack.







Christian Wiman Poetry Magazine Poetry Magazine writing Poetry Foundation Ruth Lilly Harriet Monroe

H.R. 249 - Protection for wild horses and burros

Below is a forwarded letter from the Humane Society of the United States. Just got it. I know I've asked you to call before and collectively we've gotten the bill this far. Wednesday is the next hurdle. Please call again. It takes minutes. Easy number look-up here. There's a little script included below if you want an idea of what to say. Please do it. Video here, if you need more information. Warning: graphic material.

HSUS forward:

On Wednesday, March 7, a federal bill (H.R. 249) to restore protections for wild horses from commercial sale and slaughter will be brought up for a vote in the House Natural Resources Committee. Your U.S. Representative needs to hear from supporters of the bill. Please take action and help this important bill clear its next hurdle.

Call your Representative today and express your support for restoring protection for our wild horses and burros from commercial sale and slaughter. Their lives depend on our success.

Congress originally passed the Wild Free-Roaming Horse and Burro Act in 1971 to protect our wild horses, but in 2004 this protection was gutted. In a midnight maneuver by then-Senator Conrad Burns (Mont.). He slipped a few unnoticed lines into a massive spending bill, overturning 30 years of protections for wild horses and burros. Senator Burns was booted from office last November and it's time to win these protections back.

TAKE ACTION!
Please make a brief polite phone call to your Representative today. It's easy. Numbers here. Just say is something like:

"Hello, my name is [your name] and I am a constituent from [your city]. I strongly support H.R. 249, the legislation to restore protection for our wild horses and burros from commercial sale and slaughter. It will be considered this week by the Natural Resources Committee. Please give it you support. We must provide permanent protection for America's wild horses and burros. Thank you."

Now that you've done your good deed for the day, here's a fun little video of not-so-wild burros.





H.R. 249 wild horses wild burros stop slaughter

Sunday dreamin'

My grandfather used to talk to himself, a lot. I could never make out what he was saying. All I heard was a steady stream of whispers mixed in with his breath. As a kid I worried that it might be a family trait. I do talk to myself sometimes but I'm still not as bad as Grandpa Chance.

For instance, when I'm writing I often speak the words out loud first. Take the sentence I just wrote, and the one I'm writing now. I said them both out loud as I composed them. I'm quiet now but actually, by the time I typed out the first 3 words of this sentence, they were no longer true. I thought the words "I'm quiet now" decided to write them without speaking them so they would be true in real time, but as I typed them I spontaneously said them out loud and muttered "typed it out" while I typed that. There's a peak into my head, in case you wanted one but were afraid to ask.

And, while I'm on the subject, I might as well admit that I did mutter to myself this morning, something to the effect of, "Humans are a violent, greedy, predator species; carnivores who fancy having a unique, divine nature and personal relationship with a god who likes them better than everybody else and doesn't mind if they torture and/or kill the rest of his family."

It is Sunday morning and I am off to a rocking start. Minutes after I got online I found myself watching a video of soldiers in the Islamic Army inspecting a helicopter they just downed and executing the sole survivor, probably a Blackwater contractor. Then I watched Anna Nicole's funeral procession in the Bahamas, and videos of several other totally unrelated events, although their disparate nature actually underscores just how prone we humans are to self-undoing. My ricochet tour brought me back to the question I pondered aloud in the shower earlier this morning. Can we, as a species, survive our own precocious narcissism long enough to wake the fuck up? Then I found the following gritty view of hope. Now I'm off for second cup of coffee while I've still got a chance of a day. Bon matin, mon ami!

END OF CONFLICT

Jed's Other Poem

Even if you don't like poetry you might like this video poem or, if you've already seen it, might enjoy seeing it again. It's that kind of thing. It was made by a very interesting guy named Stewart. The music is by Grandaddy. Warning. Their site opens with music.

"Jeddy-3 the humanoid was assembled in the kitchen out of spare parts. Before Jed's system died he wrote poems. Poems for no one." more history here.

Jed's Other Poem (Beautiful Ground)

Jimmy

Jimmy Mouse stayed at the Hotel Nevada last night. I didn't discover him until late yesterday afternoon, too late in the day to release him, too cold. Temperatures what they are right now, it would be a big drag to suddenly find yourself homeless at the end of the day. It's supposed be sunny through the weekend though so he'll have a running start on finding a nice comfy new home by the meadow pond. We found our last guest at the hotel dead in the corner as though he were trying to dig himself out when he expired. It was very sad. We forgot the lid was down. We're very careful now. Once the trap is set we check it at least once a day. We don't want innocent creatures to suffer. We like happy endings for our guests, like Fatty Leland. Jimmy Mouse did okay too, although he didn't seem all that eager to face the big world. I don't blame him. He's a pretty tiny fellow. I hated to see him go but, as I understand it, field mice don't do well in captivity.

Goodbye Jimmy Mouse and Good Luck!

Books I found at the second hand store today.

This one I bought. This one I just photographed the cover.

Because it's soothing

Ragged Feather did a nice claymation to the Beatles song, Because. It's a 02:45 massage for the frazzled psyche.

Because

Life without replay

I find the bank of TV monitors in front of the stair steppers at the gym incredibly annoying. We canceled the service and gave our set away a few years ago so I don't have any tolerance for replay after replay after replay, changing only when there's another clip or program to take its place, the endless foie gras for the brain, that is television. The brain drain. Outside the window it was snowing and a couple of cows were standing over a very young calf sheltering it from the storm. It's sad knowing what they don't, that probably by the time summer arrives that calf's loving mother will be hanging by her back legs with a slit throat.

Holy shit!

Not long ago I started getting forwards from a mystery source but they sent the emails properly (Bcc'd) so I checked out one of the links. To date, they are almost always excellent. I did a little polking around and seems the sender lives nearby. Perhaps we've met, but I don't remember. That remains an open question about which you may hear more later. Anyway, here's one of the links I recently received. It's really impressive. Even though you, being very hip, have undoubtedly encountered some of this information before, it's all put together here in really Big Picture. I highly recommend you watch it. Learn a little bit about the world that does not yet exist because that's the world we are living in.

SHIFT HAPPENS.

Foie Gras, you are what you eat

Here's a little good news. The grocery chain Giant Eagle announced today that it will no longer sell foie gras in any of its 230 stores! They join Whole Foods as well as the state of California, the city of Chicago, and 16 nations worldwide that have already banned this barbaric practice.

Sir Roger Moore volunteered to narrate a documentary for PETA revealing the cruel facts of foie gras production. Give it a watch. It's a lesson in compassion and, as we all know, compassion is food for the soul.

The hidden lives of ducks and geese.

FOX propaganda channel

Fox sucks! It doesn't report news. Fox injects wingnut propaganda into the public debate. That's it. The rest is cover. They don't deserve an FCC license. For starters, this channel should be investigated for fraud, criminal lobbying, and intentionally misleading the public. If you haven't been following their attack on Senator Obama, check out this video. It's a sickening mixture of lies, innuendo and slander disguised as news. The people in front of the camera aren't reporters. In fact, it's even flattery to call them actors. They are media whores. Fox my "campaign headquarters?" In your dreams, assholes...

FOX ATTACKS OBAMA

Barack Obama Fox lies and liars