Bird park - 2 weeks later

It's cold now and still no bird park. This has gone on too long. The descendants of the dinosaurs are getting pissed.

The critique

I finally got the critique of the poems I entered in the Nevada Arts Council Artist Fellowship Program last spring. It took long enough. If you are one of the rare regular readers here you perhaps remember I was not awarded the $5000 grant but you may have been on the edge of your keyboard waiting for the judge's commentary to arrive. Well, probably not. I'd forgotten all about it myself. At any rate, in keeping with my dedication to truth and transparency here at the language barrier, I'm posting the panels comments (there were two judges), as is (including typos) just as I did last year. If nothing else, it's another item for the alien's data bank who cleverly gave us this technology knowing we will freely pour our hearts out into the void.

ARTISTS FELLOWSHIP FY07
LITERARY ARTS APPLICATIONS

Application Number 331
Discipline / Category Literary Art - Poetry


Panel Comments

Found these poems intriguing, mysterious. Especially liked "Skin Trade"


Some strong imagistic details: "an old man...gulping like a fish," the synesthesia of "leathery squeak," "dusty clods of petals and wax." These poems are strongest when centered in image; where rhetoric outweighs image, they become slightly less so. The poems are consistent in tone: ominous, detached. The poet should trust in his/her image making to convey this surreal landscape without the need for flatter discursive passages such as the opening lines of "Road's Eye View" and "Skin Trade."


Interesting since (their misuse of word) of mystery remind me of some surrealist French poems. The musically did not work for me. There was not much effort to create a song pattern that work as part of the package.


Stunning images very surreal, but at the heart surreal there is a process of uncovering a deeper reality, a deeper meaning. I'm not quite sure what the poems were cohesively adding up to. The language was inventive and creative thematically but not quite there.

"Discursive passages"? Okay. But "not much effort to create a song pattern that work as part of the package"? Package? As in word product? I'm glad these guys don't get it.

Nothing to hide, everything to protect

Excerpt from "The Grave"

"Oft in the lone church yard at night I've seen,
By glimpse of moonshine chequering thro' the trees,
The school boy, with his satchel in his hand,
Whistling aloud to bear his courage up,
And lightly tripping o'er the long flat stones,
(With nettles skirted, and with moss o'ergrown,)
That tell in homely phrase who lie below."

by Robert Blair

"I have nothing to hide."

This is the standard answer when someone defends Republicans spying on us without a proper warrant. Otherwise intelligent people totally miss the point thinking it doesn't matter as long as the person spied on is innocent. I marvel at their ignorance. Their passivity stuns me. Either these people are whistling past the graveyard or they are as clueless as animals chew their cuds in the slaughterhouse.

Our Constitutional guarantee of privacy is violated when the government spies on us without a warrant and that, my friend, is a Big Deal. It should be a clue that the conservatives do not want anyone monitoring them when they spy on us. This is because they want secret, full, unrestricted access to all our phone conversations, emails, downloads, credit and banking records. They want to know what we buy, what books we check out at the library, the groups we belong to, and the people with whom we spend personal time. They want to be able to imprison anyone, at any time, for no stated reason, deny the accused access to the evidence held against them and even deny the defendant the right to attend their own trial. Far fetched? You bet it is. It's totalitarianism, baby. Fascism.

Bush & Co are bringing America Fascism on the installment plan. Their illegal actions and our passiveness have created an environment toxic to democracy and freedom. When we stand on the sidelines and let the Republicans disassemble our Constitution we are letting them destroy the very thing that defines and protects us as free people.

"What does it matter? I have nothing to hide." We may have nothing to hide but we sure as hell have something to protect.










fascism Bush republicans NSA warrentless spying constitution

Countdown 9/11 Special Commentary

Keith Olbermann blasts Bush calling him and his supporters "grasping, opportunistic dilettantes at best and at worst idiots." I say screw the either/or because they're all that.People are so mesmerized by the Republican spin machine but the fact is emperor has no brain and he's driving the bus off the cliff. Check out CrooksandLiars.com for the link. The complete transcript of speech is also available at crooksandliars.

Bush, our pet goat

September 11, 2006

2666: current US death toll in Iraq
20000 - 48100: estimated US wounded in Iraq
41650-46318: Iraqi civilian death toll

9/11: Why did Bush sit reading "My Pet Goat" and ignore the news that the country was under attack? And why did he mire us in this trumped-up war on Iraq instead of going after Osama bin Laden who was the master mind behind 9/11?

Watch our pet goat read as America burns.

bush 9/11 my pet goat osama bin laden

Bird Park blues

The Bird Park is a sad place these days. The trailer is taking much longer than expected. It shouldn't surprise me how long a do-it-yourself project ends up taking but it always does. The bed liner is on. It looks great and now the only thing left is to paint the outside and Mr. Lee is doing the prep for that today.

At this point the bird feeders have been down for over a week but every morning a little band of pigeons continue to gather just after day break on the roof of Dick's house to see if their world has been restored. I guess all pigeons are homing pigeons. When the feeders are up the finches gobble away at them from dawn to dusk and spew seed chips on the ground for everybody else. Mr. Lee assures me that it should only a few more days before the trailer is done and my little artifical environment can return to it's own form of normal. I hope so. Otherwise it's pretty quiet here in suburblandia.