From the forthcoming Poems for the Millennium 4: Three Poems by Hamid Skif COUNTER-POEM PIM PAM POUM Today’s the wedding PIM PAM POUM Cadillacs, Mercedes, Villas. Couscous with hot blood. PIM PAM POUM My hands clenched to paralysis My lips in my mouth My sex in front of me I await my sister My future wife. PIM PAM POUM A voice in the dark The sister supplicating. PIM PAM POUM … Read more Hamid Skif
Waking up early at the Luxembourg Embassy in D.C. (more on that maybe in the next post) I walk out onto Mass Ave to find a breakfast spot, hang a right after Gandhi’s statue & come to an excellent Belgian Bon Pain joint — organic everything, so soft boiled egg, various breads, etc. Across the street I espy a bookshop & stroll over once “restauré.” One window displays all war books from the … Read more The Price of Poetry
I have been a regular reader of Juan Cole’s excellent political analysis & commentary (Check out his Informed Comment site). Here the opening paragraphs of his latest piece: 20 May 12 The Creeping Fascism of American Politics wo congressmen are attempting to insert a provision in the National Defense Authorization act that would allow the Department of Defense to subject the US domestic public to propaganda. The bipartisan amendment was introduced … Read more The Creeping Fascism of American Politics
… check out the photo collection on Movie Morlocks here — excellent photos even if the captions’ prose doesn’t always make it grammatically.
…because the sun on the sea today made me think of him & Jean Sénac: Tahar Djaouat Sénac still present This rust inside me the sun revives. Obsessional smell of the wave on my eye Terrace where interminably a telluric laughter unfurls Laughter of an Algerian girl (Jean, look how the suns commingle and the praying wave caresses the stirrups Fissures — butterfly elytra — in the … Read more A poem by Tahar Djaouat…
A letter from Kimberley Lyons: Dear friends, Please click on the link and choose video diary link in the text to watch Jonas Mekas, with help of Vyt Bakaitis, herald the excluded works from a new anthology from Penguin.
…that starts tomorrow will celebrate Cartographies of the In-Between, the book of essays on my work that Peter Cockelbergh edited. Alas, I cannot be in Prague, though I will do a reading — presented live by Peter Cockelbergh who is right now in the train from Brussels to Prague — tomorrow at 6p.m. local time via a Skype videocast that will be screened at Klub K4 in the good city of Prague.
Here is the new & improved (Nicole Peyrafitte’s videos now accurately inserted) version of the Harvard Celan talk of November 2011. Enjoy.
Do come to this & discover one of the great neglectorino poets as well as an excellent new Press! Friday, May 25, 5-7:30 p.m. MANHATTAN INN 632 Manhattan Ave, Brooklyn
Last night’s analysis via reductio ad absurdum by Jon Stewart of the Greek elections results (how two dead & defeated ideologies, Nazism & Communism, are making major comebacks in 2012), made me think that a similar take on the dead & defeated ideology Christianity represents (well, in Europe at least, where it is not in power except for the Vatican enclave) is much needed in view of its current absurd advances in … Read more The death of American Secularism