Word Cloud: OBSCURED

Posted on September 25, 2015 by wordcloud9

Word Cloud Resized

by NONA BLYTH CLOUD

Each poem comes in its own way. Finding the rhythm and shape of a poem can be as natural as breathing, or as difficult as giving birth.

Some poems emerge full-grown like Athena from the head of Zeus, while others take endless re-writing – snipping here, hacking there, until at last like a Bonsai master, you’ve eliminated everything that isn’t poem.

Poets are also relentless hunters, tracking the elusive word. Trying this word, then another, going ever deeper into the thicket, seeking the one word that will make the poem whole.

Kihachi Ozaki (1892 – 1974) knew these tests of a poet’s will and craft. Even with the difficulty of translation from Japanese into English, his thoughts come to us in sharp focus.

 A Word

I have to select a word for material.
It should be talked about in the smallest possible amount and have a deep suggestiveness like nature,
bloom from inside its own self,
and at the edge of the fate encircling me
it will have to become darkly and sweetly ripened.

Of a hundred experiences it always
has to be the sum total of only one.
One drop of water dew
becomes the harvest of all dewdrops,
a dark evening’s one red point of light
is the night of the whole world.

And after that my poem
like a substance entirely fresh,
released far away from my memory,
the same as a scythe in a field in the morning,
the same as the ice on a lake in spring,
will suddenly begin to sing from its own recollection.

– Kihachi Ozaki 尾崎喜八   

(translated by Edith Marcombe Shiffert & Yūki Sawa)

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For Talking Like a Pirate (but not really acting like one) Day

Posted on September 20, 2015 by ann li-summers

By ann summers

For pirates, talk is cheap and perhaps subordinate to buckling swashes and its stereotypical, romanticized pirate discourse made even more weird by “parley” as texts made popular by a Disney theme park ride have cinematically distorted the reality of actual Somali or Malaysian piracy as does a film like Captain Philips. The Donald and his recent CNN GOP debate success is perhaps the latest example of such a media manipulation, as if Deals were Art rather than artifice. Arrrrr…me hearties.

Leeson (2007) suggests that the internal governance of criminal organizations like pirates might have libertarian significance, misunderstanding that its dependence on the institutional elements of trade over-determine its invisible(sic) governance mechanisms. That so few have been prosecuted for being banksters since 2007 demonstrates that internal governance is not working and that the GOP continues to see financial crisis as a feature, rather than a bug. Unlike a combative Bernie Madoff, Donald Trump manages to mug for a media willing to keep him out of jail and abet a growing cult of thugs. CNN’s use of Trump in covering the GOP debates cynically presents him in that same way as a kind of media piracy or more appropriately, privateering as a libertarian capitalist meme.

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The View vs. Nurses Everywhere.

Posted on September 18, 2015 by Chuck Stanley

by Chuck Stanley

My older son wrote to tell me he broke the internet today.

No, I’m not kidding.

The View, an ABC daytime talk show, is taking serious heat over comments their hosts made last Monday. Our readers may recall the Miss America pageant, during which Miss Colorado eschewed her piano playing talents for something quite different.

For the talent portion of the competition, Kelley Johnson, RN, strode onto center stage at the pageant, wearing her work scrubs and a stethoscope draped around her neck. Her presentation was to give a monologue about what it was to be a nurse, and to care for patients with dementia.

Nursing, not playing the piano, is her real talent.

Joy Behar and Michelle Collins, on The View, made fun of Ms. Johnson for wearing a “nurse costume” and a “doctor’s stethoscope.”

Bad move, Joy and Michelle.

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Word Cloud: SOUNDINGS

Posted on September 18, 2015 by wordcloud9

Word Cloud Resized

by NONA BLYTH CLOUD

I usually don’t feel the need to explain my one-word titles, but this connection is personal. “Soundings” are what sailors take when they are in shallow water or where there are hidden rocks. Sounding is also blowing a horn as warning. Sounding out words is how we learn to read.

And for me, it’s how I find out if a poem works – by sounding it out loud.

Music and poetry are very close kin. Both must have rhythm, and above all, Sound, which is: noise; whole; good; a channel; thorough; hard; a declaration; a signal; what it appears to be but may not be; a test; and a measure in time and in dance. Both must also have “feel” in the mouth and on the tongue and the lips.

Neil Gaiman is best known as the award-winning author of books like American Gods, Stardust, Anansi Boys, and Neverwhere.

He also writes poetry. As you might expect from the author of a children’s book like Coraline, his poetry is unsettling.

“House”

Sometimes I think it’s like I live in a big giant head on a hilltop
made of papier mache, a big giant head of my own head.
I polish the eyes which would be windows, or
mow the lawn, I mean this is my house we’re talking about here
even if it is a big giant papier mache head that looks just like mine.
And people who go past
in cars or buses or see the house the head on the hill from trains
they think the house is me.
I’ll be sleeping there, or polishing the eyes, or weeding the lawn,
but no-one will see me, no-one would look.
And no-one would ever come. And if I waved no-one even knows it was me waving.
They’d all be looking in the wrong place, at the head on the hill.

I can see your house from here.

These past months, I have been savoring his Trigger Warning: Short Fictions and Disturbances, by reading just one piece, and then going away to other books and my own writing projects, and coming back for the next bit. Sometimes I’ve read a particular piece several times over two or three days.

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East Texas 9th Grader, Ahmed “Big Bang Theory” Mohamed hopefully has the math chops for MIT

Posted on September 17, 2015 by ann li-summers

By ann summers

Too many anchor babies contributing to national educational advancement, packing heat sinks.  Kid didn’t even bring a Glock to school. In Irving Texas, it’s make a clock, go to jail.

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Posted in Civil Liberties, Education | Tagged , , , , , | 8 Comments

not such a good idea: HBCU of Phoenix

Posted on September 14, 2015 by ann li-summers

By ann summers

Some historically black colleges and universities (HBCU) are public institutions who are being encouraged to subcontract curriculum to the for-profit University of Phoenix. At a moment when the discourse is about making public education more affordable or free, this form of charter-school capitalism, a.k.a. privatization by other means, at the higher education level runs counter to many unique academic missions at ultimately the expense not only of faculty employment but of public funds.

As entrepreneurial as such partnerships might be, they are as controversial as a recent discussion about Cornel West’s facilitating access for Bernie Sanders’s campaign to HBCUs.

Wouldn’t it have been wiser to make, as other non-profit institutions have already developed other types of partnerships with the central HBCU consortium organization, an open source, centrally shared, or cloud-based distance learning platform available to all HBCUs that meets their needs more closely. It would employ more local faculty rather than essentially off-shoring education production to a state already hostile to educating POC with its elimination of various ethnic studies curricula.

OTOH, this is the moment where the University of Phoenix could begin to think about fielding an actual team for its stadium.

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The Triumph of the Old New Left: UK Labour moves away from the centre

Posted on September 12, 2015 by ann li-summers

By ann summers

A perhaps stunning victory for a party frustrated with recent defeats, and with perhaps the infusion of underrepresented elements, the leadership of the UK Labour Party has risen/fallen in a 59% vote for a repudiation of the Tony Blair New Labour faction which during its history so often emulated a triangulating US political party often driven by focus groups and polling and ambivalent on issues of austerity as well as devolution of regional power. Whether this is a cautionary tale for the US Democratic party remains to be seen, since 2020 is when Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership will be truly tested, but he has a clear vision for the Labour party.

We entered this contest to ensure there was a real political alternative put to the status quo of austerity and a society skewed towards the super-rich. Every one of us has been part of that – whether by sharing a Facebook post or talking about these ideas with friends and colleagues. We have put the case for the fairer, more democratic and decent society we all strive for. This work must continue.

It’s probably more like the hypothetical of Barbara Lee becoming US House minority leader or Bernie Sanders becoming Senate minority leader, but it does signal something about popular dissatisfaction for neoliberal policies or centrist tendencies, as this parodic tweet suggests

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Posted in Capitalism, Congress, Countries, Democracy, Labor Movement, NATO, News Roundup, Political Science, Politics, Progressives, Scotland, Socialism, United Kingdom | Tagged , , | Comments Off on The Triumph of the Old New Left: UK Labour moves away from the centre

Day of Infamy for a Seventh Grader

Posted on September 11, 2015 by Chuck Stanley

by Chuck Stanley

All of us have a Day of Infamy. For younger people, it is probably 9-11-2001. For older people, perhaps the assassinations of Dr. King, Bobby Kennedy, or President Kennedy.

In my case, it is Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s original, “Day that shall live in infamy.”

I huddled with my dad and some of his co-workers around a big radio cabinet, listening to the breathless words of radio news announcers as they told of Pearl Harbor.

Those are days that live with us the rest of our days.

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Posted in 9-11, American History, Terrorism | Tagged , , , , | 7 Comments

Word Cloud: SARDONIC

Posted on September 11, 2015 by wordcloud9

Word Cloud Resized

by NONA BLYTH CLOUD

“Men seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses.”

 “Beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes clean to the bone.”

 “I hate writing, I love having written.”

“By the time you swear you’re his,
Shivering and sighing,
And he vows his passion is
Infinite, undying –
Lady, make a note of this:
One of you is lying.”

Dorothy Parker (1893-1967) may be the most quoted – and misquoted – woman in America.

Her formal education ended at 14, but she became a celebrated wit. Parker was a founding member of the famed Algonquin Round Table (circa 1919-1929), a group of New York writers who lunched at the Algonquin Hotel. Regulars in the “Vicious Circle” included Robert Benchley, Alexander Woollcott, George S Kaufman, and Edna Ferber.

When the New Yorker debuted in 1925, Dorothy Parker was on the editorial board. As the magazine’s “Constant Reader,” she contributed poetry, fiction — and book reviews which pulled no punches:

On the use of “hummy” for “honey” by A.A. Milne: “It is that word ‘hummy,’ my darlings, that marks the first place in The House at Pooh Corner at which Tonstant Weader Fwowed up.”

or

“This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.”

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The 2016 Discourse should be about Quality not Quantity; Debates should be less like Thunderdome and more like a Conversation

Posted on September 10, 2015 by ann li-summers
2011 gop debate dartmouth nh

By ann summers

The number of political debates seems irrelevant in an age of DVRs, YouTube, and podcasts but this is the moment when the Democratic party could actually use the format to finally crush the GOP and its commitment to Southern Strategic racism into the minor regional rump party some predicted it to be in 2008. Since it seems now a Democratic choice that ultimately will get accommodated somehow in the primaries and long before the convention, can the Democrats use the primary debates to not only provide an administration that repudiates the GOP’s current fetish for endless global wars, environmental depredation, and subjugation of minorities at home and set out a 50-state sea change in anticipation of the 2020 census and legislative reapportionment.

In the “marketplace of ideas” the televisual seems all too genre-driven. Debates for the US elections rarely give us more than memes or sound bites, some spontaneous, as in the more recent, “proceed, Governor”, or the more paradigmatic “I will not exploit the age of my opponent” from St Ronnie. The Town Hall format in the television context is now tightly controlled unlike its actual resemblance to direct participatory democracy in the form of state caucuses or retail primaries like New Hampshire. The US two-party duopoly will still be about programming criteria like scheduling and rating rather than discussing the merits of the de facto democratic socialism that saved this Republic in the 20th Century with national fiscal regulation, social security, and national coordination of war industries to defeat fascism.

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Posted in Barack Obama, Campaign Finance, Capitalism, Conservatives, Democracy | Tagged , , | 3 Comments