Friday, July 29, 2005

The Locust Song


. . . the wise and wry observation which the young William Butler Yeats offered
one evening in The Cheshire Cheese to his fellow young poets in the Rhymers Club:
"None of us can say who will succeed, or even who has or has not talent. The only
thing certain about us is that we are too many.
— Paul Carroll


The tyranny of poets: "Like." O we were like
the infinite regression of roe, in the sex crease
of a sturgeon. We were like — what? like, as numerous
as the stars, the grains of sand, the uses of "like" itself.
Too many of us. Too flakes of snow, too fish
in the deep, too waterbugs of Florida. In the thick air

of the evening Cheese, a muss-haired Willie Yeats stares out
across a bobbing sea of schnockered literary faces
and he sees, as if implied in these, the overmany faces
of the shantytowns, and the Chinese steppes,
and the grim Malthusian banks of the Ganges river
on a holy day . . . too many of us. Those birds

slouched on the wire have served as a bar of music now
in how many poems? as a squadhouse lineup
in how many poems? as heavy portents over
the words in the wire itself, how many times?
Too many many-of-us. That zero now, the "black hole"
of the astronomers . . . by now it's the rose

and the willow and the rainbow and the nightingale
of two generations of us; string theory is easily the sunrise
over the Mediterranean Sea of us. "I think of . . ." then
a historical reference, Mendel, Bruegel, Mata Hari,
how many times? The prize and the prize and the prize.
A swarm of prizes. I think of William Butler Yeats,

a sloshy evening spent in fellowship with his kind. Some
have a scribbled paper with them. Some, a published pamphlet.
All of them have dreams to share. "Inside of every fat man
there's a skinny man waiting to be let out." And inside every
too many of us is a me. Right now, a hundred me
are lifting up their pints and toasting Yeats's observation.


Albert Goldbarth
Poetry
The Humor Issue
Volume CLXXXVI, Number 4
July/August 2005

Monday, July 25, 2005

Sunday, July 24, 2005

BOOKS SIXTY

Hey bibliophiles,

New books, some mine, some consigned. Previously-owned titles, all in good, near mint condition, unless othersie stated.

use comment box to reserve or text me thru 0927-9952977. unahan 'to.

Pick up on Wednesday, July 27, 1pm, Dunkin Donuts katipunan.

-------------------
1. Myth of Sisyphus: Albert Camus -- P250

2. Sophie's World: Jostein Gaarder -- P300
3. Great Apes: Will Self (HB/Signed! by the new Kafka! Collector's Copy) -- P1,000
4. Kurt Cobain's Journals (Rare/Oversized) -- P400
5. Critical Essays: Albert Camus -- P300
6. A Pocketful of Python (Edited by Terry Gilliam/Full-color/HB) -- P400
7. The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat: Oliver Sacks -- P350
8. The Cocktail Party: T.S. Eliot -- P250
9. The Thurber Album: A Collection of Pieces About People: James Thurber -- P200
10. William S. Burroughs: The Cat Inside -- P150
11. Truman Capote: In Cold Blood (HB/No Dustjacket) --P250
15. Paul Auster: Oracle Night (HB/No Dustjacket)-- P250
16. Naguib Mahfouz: The Beggar (Nobel Prize Winner) --P200
17. Michael Moorcock: King of the City (HB/No Dustjacket) -- P200
18. Civilization and its Discontents: Sigmund Freud -- P250
19. The Paris Review 50th Anniversary RARE Issue #167 -- P500
20. The Winners: (Julio Cortazar's first novel) -- P300
21. The Moth & The Star: A Biography of Virginia Woolf (1957ed) -- P300
22. Filth: Irvine Welsh (Brand New/from author of Trainspotting) -- P450
23. Life is Elsewhere: Milan Kundera -- P300
24. Ariel: Poems by Sylvia Plath -- P350
25. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: Roald Dahl (HB) -- P500
26. The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov (664pp) -- P500
27. Porno: Irvine Welsh -- P400
28. The Solitaire Mystery: Jostein Gaarder -- P350
29. Foucault's Pendulum: Umberto Eco -- P450
30. Great Esquire Fiction: Finest Stories from First 50 Years -- P500
31. Ladders to Fire: Anais Nin (Hard to Find) -- P400
32. Letter's on Cezanne: Rainer Maria Rilke -- P350
33. Pulp Fiction: A Quentin Tarantino Screenplay -- P200
34. The World of Pooh: A.A. Milne -- P200
35. The Bad Girl's Guide to Getting What You Want -- P300
36. Far Side: The Prehistory of the Far Side (10th Anniversary/Oversized ) -- P400
37. Beach: Stories by The Sand and Sea (Ballard Camus Chekhov) -- P400
38. Birds of America: Stories: Lorrie Moore (hard-to-find/ must-read) -- P350
39. The House on Mango Street: Sandra Cisneros -- P200
40. Dilbert: Bring Me the Head of Willy the Mailboy -- P300
41. Possession: A.S. Byatt (Movie Cover) -- P300
42. The Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway (The 1st 49 Stories) -- P300
43. The Mists of Avalon: Marion Zimmer Bradley -- P350
44. Here to Eternity: An Anthology of Poetry (HB/Edited by Andrew Motion) -- P400
45. Big Book of Bart Simpson Comics TPB: Matt Groening -- P350
46. Bad Trips: Writing on the Perils of the Road (Bob Geldof in Thailand, Umberto Eco in
southern california, Graham Greene in Mexico, John Updike in Venezuela, etc.) --P400
47. Dead-eye Dick: Kurt Vonnegut -- P350
48. Virginia Woolf: The Voyage Out (1948 ed. Woolf's 1st novel) -- P400
49. The Moon by Whale Light: Diane Ackerman -- P400
50. Hocus Pocus: Kurt Vonnegut (Hardbound)-- P500
51. The Tesseract: Alex Garland (HB/ set in Manila/must-read) -- P500
52. The Beach: Alex Garland (Hardbound 1st Edition/Rare) -- P500
53. Lolita: Vladimir Nabokov -- P400
54. Lullaby by Chuck Palahniuk (HB/2002) -- P400
55. Woody Allen: Without Feathers/Side Effects/Getting Even (3 in 1) -- P500
56. Immortality: Milan Kundera -- P400
57. HP Lovecraft: The Dreams in the Witch House & Other Stories -- P400
58. The Powerbook: Jeanette Winterson -- P350
59. The Ring of Brightest Angels Around Heaven: Rick Moody (HB/ Rare) -- P500
60. Sylvia Plath: Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams -- P400

Saturday, July 23, 2005

Bwakinanginang SuperStar

I find nothing more self-indulgent and highblood-inducing than many of these lifestyle columns we find in weekend editions of local, leading newspapers.

Gimme a friggin' break: I don't want to hear how young you were in the '80s and how you hate Corey Hart and Menudo and all that shit. Or how you got to ride a taxi and spent quality time with manong driver who gave you wondrous epiphanies on the vehicularly-challenging life out there. Or to read a list of your new book acquisitions and favorite records. Or just to constantly see your boyprens and gelprens namedropped.

PUTA NAMAN! Hindi Blog ang espasyo n'yo sa dyaryo!!!

Secondly, being a responsible columnist is not even simply a matter of subject matter, but also of tone. If you can't transcend your diary-entry, angst-ridden tones, you've no business writing columns.

I guess my main point here is the growing lack (oxymoron intended) of responsible journalism in these so-called columns. Most of these writers don't really write insightful pieces; they just use the precious space to rant and rave and poke readers with novelty shit, trivia, and nonsense.

Di ganyan ang GONZO!!! Magsulat na lang kayo ng brochure kung trip n'yo mag FYI sa mambabasa n'yo!

Instead of troubling us with lame excuses for and masturbatory exercises on creative non-fiction, these people should keep their crappy ramblings to the confines of their blogs.

Write about what you really know or can fully imagine. mehn.

And don't mess around with ma' '80s music. (Yeah, yeah--I'm having a classic thirtysomething fit. Hehe.)

Erwin Romulo is, I think, the only authentic essayist among these columnists. The guy's works are not necessarily (and I think not intended to be) Gonzo, but balanced, witty, and literary in a lot of instances.

As for the others, just write your angst in your friggin' blogs. If you've nothing really important to say, don't bombard readers with useless trivia they can read or find in a website, anyway. And por pabor, nada of those whacked sentiments as to how the world owes you some shit for being depressed and other emotional shit.

Magbasa na lang kayo ng Ating Alamid!

Malapit na!!!

Sunday, July 17, 2005

SOMEBODY ELSE’S IDEA

of salvation is exactly

what I don’t want to hear about

right now. And it’s not

just that I know it’s not

likely to include me. Have you heard,

my friend asks, the story about

the horses at nightfall? Or the one

where we’re lost in the forest?


Of course I realize it’s easier

to get into any heaven you’ve made

up for yourself, that the whole point

of religion is that it isn’t

whatever you happen to need

at the moment. Somebody tells you,

because somebody knows. That’s why


there
are rules. Maybe consequences

will occur, my friend suggests,

which we can’t foresee, creating

conditions we may find ourselves

powerless to control. These days

who can tell? So there we are,

out in the weather, out in the cold.

And yes, I’d say it seems to have

some punishment in mind.

-- Lawrence Raab (from Octopus Magazine, Issue # 5)
You are John Ashbery
You are John Ashbery. People love your work but
have no idea why, really. You are respected by
all kinds of scholars and poets. Even artists
like you.

-- haha! angas ng dating. take this quiz, people.


Which Famous Modern American Poet Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla