Kavka, jackdaw, (corvus monedula) I just read an essay by Matthew Landis on the connection of certain themes in Paul Celan’s poetry & Jacques Derrida’s writings, especially those of the trace, the breach, the break. A fascinating essay indeed, the reading of which I recommend — it’s here. I would like, however, to suggest that when thinking through Celan (or any other foreign-language poet) via his poems it is … Read more Celan, Kafka & the Glottal Stop
While Gaza has barely buried its dead, rumbles of new confrontations are being heard. Meanwhile, back in the USA, I was surprised by a segment on Palestine aired by one of the big Networks, CBS television, in it’s most prestigious news show, “60 Minutes.” It was one of the rare big media shows that was seriously critical of Israeli policy. Very worthwhile checking watching: Watch CBS Videos Online And … Read more West Bank, Gaza: même combat!
This 20th of January I was not able to do what I like doing on that day of the year: reread Georg Büchner’s Lenz (there is bilingual edition with an excellent translation by Richard Sieburth available from archipelago books) & Paul Celan’s writings about Büchner & Lenz — the man who on a 20 January, walking through the mountains from Alsace into Germany, went mad and thought — according … Read more The Alexander Poem, Durs Grünbein, Lenz, etc.
The book comes in three volumes (I still think the first one is the best, reads at times like a nineteenth century horror novel with chains rattling in dark & dank basements, the economic calculations of the second one got me lost & the parts of volume three I read — I know I didn’t read all of it — I can’t remember.) And Alexander Kluge‘s film comes in … Read more "Kapital:" The Movie!
Certain images die slowly or are kept alive way beyond their usefulness by ideological image-support systems. We seem to have been stamped with ineradicable imprints when it comes to certain metaphorical models or schemata we use, or are told & taught to use, to represent our understanding of various aspects of the world — even if this use has become little more than alibis for the status quo. Maybe … Read more Rhizome of Life
Go if you can. One of truly best painters at work now! Where: Monterrat College of Art — 301 Cabot Street, Beverly MAGallery hours: Mon-Fr. 11 – 2 or by appointment: tel: 978.867.9604
Here some links to articles on Gaza, via Juan Cole’s Informed Comment site: John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago presents absolutely the clearest and most concise account of the Gaza atrocity in The American Conservative. Mearsheimer argues that diminishing Hamas or stopping the rockets are subsidiary goals for Olmert to the more central one of controlling all of historical Palestine via an Iron Wall policy that permanently subjugates … Read more On Gaza
Edgar Allen Poe was born 200 years ago today. Happy birthday! A gray, hushed, snowy day outside, revolving lights of a Mohawk ambulance backing up my one-way street, nose to nose with a fire-engine with more silent revolving lights, of a different red hue; some crows — could they be ravens? (I haven’t learned to sort them out)— circling overhead. Ah, time to tap a cask of Amantillado, sit … Read more A Pipe of Poe @ 200
A ceasefire, yes. But it will not hold. Israel or Hamas — & it doesn’t matter which one it is, finally — will find an excuse to break it. Tomorrow Obama: in relation to Palestine I am not holding my breath. Plus ça change… Wish I were wrong… Here from Haaretz, a useful piece of thinking — as a response to an article by the writer A.B. Yehoshua — … Read more Gideon Levy to A.B. Yehoshua