Snapshots May 25, 2005
Snapping at Landscape
A little landscape goes a long way -
a lot of landscape goes far too far.
What else do they have in New Zealand?
I kept thinking of Wallace Stevens: he
placed a jar in Tennessee which did something
or other to the slovenly wilderness.
None of this was slovenly! - unless, touring
wide-eyed I saw without his discrimination,
but after all this wasnıt Tennessee.
The postcards Iıd always sneered at for their
excessive colour and mirroring effects:
contrasts of lake forest snow-dazzle-peaks sky -
turn the cards upside down, theyıre just as true -
well, there glowing in the framing windscreen
were the originals demanding I retract my sneers.
Elsewhere they have wine lakes and butter mountains,
this place has lake lakes and mountain mountains.
Everywhere we went, north and south, sated
and besotted by their glut of landscape,
Iıd drift into a bookshop, consult maps
and picture guides to Lord of the Rings locations.
Sure enough, round the corner, in the next
valley, over that hill, there waited
for aficionados of the movie trilogy,
manifold battlefields, hiding places,
Hobbit-sites, ice-spiky horizons, forest glades.
None of all that I cared for in the least,
never having read the books or seen the shows.
Peter Jacksonıs been and gone, digitally inserted,
digitally removed. The landscapes remain.
From convoys of coaches, ten thousand tourists
swarm, shooting it all, posing in the foreground
their relatives and travelling companions.
Good luck to the industry! The Kiwis need you.
Good luck to photography! Pity
the bored film-developers in Photo Express.
Iıve just been and paid for our several reels.
Everyoneıs now smiling, saying:
just like in Lord of the Rings. I want to go.ı
Oh there are a few towns in New Zealand,
and these days self-respect requires there be
a gallery and/or museum in each.
Iıd park near each one, shaking off the burden
of the morningıs drive through glorious scenery,
thinking: well, if New Zealanders live
enfolded in all this, what need do they have
of the visual arts? Iıd step curiously in
and what did I see but?
Yes, and also, beyond the photographic,
the merely scenic, the would-be sublime,
paintings of trouble, the human stain, even
the slovenly, strangeness to be grateful for.
Max Richards
North Balwyn, Melbourne
Wednesday May 25, 2005
***
bird between
clouds and warehouses
wires stripe
light and attention
-
I'm
jump starting
with ginger juice
-
& the white flowers
live inside themselves
still as water
slow ripple
winter climbs the hill
Jill Jones
Sydney, 25 May, 9.20am
***
Cat
in and
out the door
rolls
on the
sun dappled floor
joy
in her
furry full belly
scratches
my shoe
as I pass ...
John
Lee Hooker
in the corner -
young
cat, old
cat - crosscut culture
'one
more and
one more time
shake
it babe
one more time'
Andrew Burke
***
say
andrew you
doing the hay(na)ku
that's
cool for
cats and jazz
cheers
from jill
cloud bright blue
Jill Jones
***
A Simple Line
I don't want to read
another long-winded poem
or wade through stanzas, knee-deep...
I don't want hear you enunciate
or want you to be concerned
with my procrastination
This damned nation
(or any other)
that promotes oppression
and self persecution
doesn't weigh, as much,
on my mind
as the weight of your words
Just give me a simple line
that purely defines
world peace, love and true compassion
It has been said, Let your yes mean yes
and your no mean no, but you nor I
can turn back time like bedsheets...
Break sound barriers - scream a poem
into the middle of next week,
or, at least until we are blind
to yesterday's news
deborah russell
***
Snap
snap!
snap?
snapshot
nothing!
braindead!
whacked out!
complete blank!
nothing happening*
where's the camera?
where's the pinhole?
camera obscura*
everyone else
all inspired
will be
great stunning
fantastic amazing
witty so sublimely
overwhelmingly
sick making!
but here
what news?
?
oh!
oh yes!
yesterday
I found out
how to do
'pagebreak'
try n beat that
y'smarties!!!!!!
pmcmanus
***
RUSSIAN HISTORY
At the court of Elizabeth, Czarina of all the Russias,
the women twirled in
enormous skirts, which the men dove under
when the music stopped.
"They rut like peasants,"
Catherine thought, fond, herself,
of privacy. As to the horse--apocryphal:
she preferred to ride on top.
GRAY BREEZE
Playing the wind,
the gull for a moment folds it wings
and steps to the parapet.
Mark Weiss
***
To be among the gentle
Foolhardy, yes, indeed
Whether I want to
Or not, to go dizzy with grief
Indeed I do
Across the Bridge, under the Gate
My father, my brother, both their ashes
To be gone, drowned in the sea
What gowns the heart, what gowns the soul
A black gown on the door knob, draped, turned
Splash water, splash sun, wind whip sail
Crash wave, spit salt, clover on your tongue
Burial is the want, burial to be gone
Know ritual into song
To go down with the dead
To go down into the sea with the dead
To marry the ghost, father ghost, brother ghost
To go down, down among the dead
To wash and to cleanse
To turn ashes into will
To swim gracefully
To be reborn
To be shaken
To be gowned in light
This burning baptism
Blood on the tongue
Do not go gentle
Do not go gentle
Wind sail wind.
Stephen Vincent
***
OF DOUGLAS GORDON
for you, but it's probably important for me to
disrupt the architecture
of my idea. Of the museum
up now I think around,
guaranteed a souvenir that was going thru a process.
Life, with
a diaper in the dark.
Svelte, when I was not.
Goings
of art are so time-based,
retell a joke that's extremely funny
down for the future.
Other way open: your mouth,
now!
OF DOUGLAS GORDON
Fantasy is what?
Don't really agree that in the cinema there's nothing behind the screen
on one side and not on the other.
Until six in the morning,
generation will remember the irritation
like the object, itself the remote control.
Andy Warhol
saw it in a toilet at a party.
Go ahead with an idea
over an excruciatingly long period.
Reality was
desperately looking for something in it that wasn't even there,
of what makes a mirror
not a piece of glass.
Barry Alpert / Silver Spring, MD US / 5-25-05 (7:27 PM)
Given the rare luxury of re-listening to the live interview with Douglas
Gordon which had been my source, I chanced upon an out-take beginning
with "f" which works better for me than the line which originally began
this work ("fun, with which this is is intended") or the line of ellipses
with which I first thought to replace it. I'll post the two acrostic
sonnets which constitute the full text of my "OF DOUGLAS GORDON" separately.
***
Mounting then a defense but
against what why
have one ordinary Canadian
even if born in Syria so
removed & so sequestered (for that year)
All international legalities lost in a kind of
revenge it seems / this latest war
against abstraction while the person
rendered overseas turns non
Douglas Barbour
Edmonton Wednesday May 25 2005
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