Wednesday, June 18, 2003

 
To Frank Lima’s easy, pithy grand ideas in capitalized present tense--“Freedom is the dramatic dislocation of evil”--narrativised in long, lean lines running straight across the page (43), I prefer Jean Valentine’s small, mundane details pitched aslant in short, simple sentences (29):

“In the burning air
nothing.

But on the ground
Let the sadness be
a woman and her spoon,
a wooden spoon,
and her chest, the broken
bowl.”

Both poems can be found in Poetry After 9/11: An Anthology of New York Poets, edited by Dennis Loy Johnson and Valerie Merians (Hoboken, NJ: Melville House, 2002).

posted by Open Mouth 5:39 AM

Tuesday, June 17, 2003

 
An object lesson in voyeurism:

As part of a New York city secrets guidebook, Jane Avrich, writer and teacher, recommends following Holden Caulfield's tour of the American Museum of Natural History (353). Since J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye centers on an annoying hypocrite-snob, the pure embodiment of bourgeois self-absorption, it is no surprise that the tour Avrich advocates takes on the same leering attitude that washes over the entire book. Avrich quotes Holden's eroticization of a female Kwakiutl dummy--a "squaw"--to make a cheap sell of the museum: "you could see her bosom and all. we all used to sneak a good look at it...." This, in a teacup, is why the AMNH has been criticized: the leery voyeurism intrinsic in its presentation of other peoples and species under the guise of education speaks of a serious poverty.
posted by Open Mouth 1:13 AM

Monday, June 16, 2003

 
Matteo Pericoli on the Circle Line: On this slow cruise around Manhattan, "you cannot choose what to see and what not to see...The 32-mile circumnavigation presents an enigma: houses, skyscrapers, deep canyons, parks, forests, bridges, and monasteries don't explain to you how they all came to be built together on this tiny island; it is up to you to figure it out" (174)



in City Secrets: New York City, edited by Robert Kahn (New York: The Little Bookroom, 2002).



Will I find all islands to be this diverse, this enigmatic?

posted by Open Mouth 2:21 AM

Sunday, June 15, 2003

 
"Philosophy is really homesickness, an urge to be at home everywhere. Where, then, are we going? Always to our home."--Novalis, Fragments
posted by Open Mouth 1:32 AM