Propositional Prepositions with Guy Pearce

people with less money are less heard from
a film you can do your ironing to
but a profound sense of

like trying to capture lightning in a bottle
reveries on the poetic ebb and flow of life
across time and memory without a break

a system of moments: guest curator
I saw more clearly than I have ever seen before
I am a graphic designer at a top snowboard company

it's too warm for Christmas shopping
hard to believe Christmas is around the corner
November cut from a different cloth

the false embers of remembering that moment
the thing du jour in indie rock; black clad sycophants;
attacked again with the threat of holidays

if you loved yesterday you'll love today
no rain in the foreseeable future: high and dry
into next week: unseasonably dry: Design DJ

he believes it but it isn't so
he knows it but it isn't so
what is expressed by tone of voice

did you have fun. yes. did you learn something. yes.
what did you learn. silence. he was just beaming
with pride; you know you had a good time. tell me.

forget this transcendent certainty, which is connected
with your concept of spirit. you know your name
what could a mistake here be like.

wicked weather whipped up on football fans
no one discovers the clues like he does
it's a nice day to do just about anything

I am convinced the sun is not a hole in the vault of heaven
you may have some gusty winds keeping the rain away
there's a much different story in the nation's heartland

where did you come from
I wonder how
I will lift up these words

at the core of the sinking numbers: the war in Iraq
five shootings were reported in Oakland over night
when was it you figured out something was wrong

there's a misconception that celebrities don't have problems
brittany murphy is definitely not clueless anymore
luis alfaro was born and raised in downtown Los Angeles

how many times have you gone to church and left the same as you came
I stole your magazine from a woman in Florida: I heard a buzzing sound.
plenty of fast track doppler sunshine high clouds no moisture

imminent commitment; little pinch; melted butter; not an artist?
it doesn't matter anymore; you can be taught everything you need
to get a job; call now; you probably have questions.


Two

she knew how sick she was. absolutely. she died three years later.
modern medicine develops drugs. she lived life to the fullest.
she did charity work. of course no one knows. how did you know we were lost.

cult kudos accolades just say the script was great
so he decided to take love and make it music a penny for your thoughts
I played drums in every dive up and down the coast

spank the movie back in line sexy barbie-perfect boyish lens
his other love walking the line with Reese Witherspoon coffee
house grins eyebrows meaningfully: gesture we say differently

can you help me with my sleeping trouble? I am sure I have not
been to the moon but I cannot, of course, prove it to you.
I never thought you'd play with the big boys as a critic's darling.

she all but steals from the star; his voice comes from that skinny frame;
sassy assurance, for example, playful sex monsters from Venus rub you down;
not an artist? it doesn't matter anymore; you can be trained.

suppose you could not remember whether you always had five fingers;
does anyone ever test whether Andy Warhol remains in existence
when no one is paying attention to him?


Three

sit there. don't blink. the truth of a proposition is certain.
complete conviction; total absence of doubt; it gives me
something to do; it is written; I went undercover; Underground.

Memento whirlpool of postpubescent emotion churning guitars tearful
thrill rock melodies pained vocal styling I mean this is music at 16
some guitars save the day we love that Roy Orbison sound dancing in the dark

he was just a skinny kid; imagine a world without you; are you in it?
these are exciting times but not much longer for you hanging on
despite a certain something sugar spun electric piano alluring undercurrent

I have been asked to star in a Nike commercial. of American audiences;
of British dance; of their choice; of "Lump," "Runaway Train," and yes,
"Breakfast at Tiffany's"; sort of cool; have you used of yet today?

-- Jeff Wietor

Adam & Whit Clearwater: : Conjunctio Twins

I cannot seriously suppose that I am at this moment dreaming. Someone who, dreaming, says “I am dreaming", even if he speaks audibly in doing so, is no more right than if he said in his dream “it is raining", while it was in fact raining. Even if his dream were actually connected with the noise of the rain.

I wonder when the rains will begin. A gathering grayness of evening. Half hour before sundown. Gray obscures sunset. Humidly thick the air. Warm humid home clammy humane drizzly down-to-earth humdrum muggy. When the rains begin in earnest. The rains of winter fat and meticulous. When the autumn becomes winter. I wonder waiting when the meticulous drops of water needle the cement and pierce the remaining leaves. When the winter explains itself to itself in thickening darkness. When the darkness comes earlier and earlier each day during the rain. When the rain succeeds at intoxicating the evergreens and lawns and fist-sized ivy in the hidden areas of San Francisco's closely kept secret: the backyards. The city backyards hidden from view by facades of houses. Remote and private. The rains. Banana slugs languid on the sidewalks in Buena Vista Park. When the ants come indoors. Baptize the newcomers. Drown the residents. Banter on buses urgently concerns the rain, "it's raining It's dreary I'm sick of it I'm weary When will it ever stop raining I'm cold It's cold I have a cold I had that cold everyone is having I'm tired of it It's raining again. It's wet I'm cold. He has the flu Did you have the flu She has the flu He's out She's out They've been out for most of the week." Pluvial and pluvious drizzle comes stormy. Rain on the window. Waking to rain. Sleeping through rain. Walking in the rain. Running through rain blossomed green. He was a friend of mine. May your sweet dreams come true. Just a minute wait for the never grow old silence. dancing with nouns; various writers style of dancing with nouns: chandler alchemy, ashbery mysticism, basho conjunctio et al. Poem title or titles: I am that word the Japanese have a word for. he says: "my goldrush gainst her silvernetss" lamenting the interpretive trend. when rain turns to words she turns toward silver. rain in her womb he rains in her version of reproduction. rain falls from the sky. sun in fermentation full. twins. such as they were they will be: body bound. eye to eye tooth and nail I must defend the Universe. ya ya ya but first let's have some fun. as God has decreed in essential way. here the water sinks into the soil. into the lawn. into the roots of the plane tree. birth occurs in the steams of the still head. he says: "the he and the she and the is of it"

Sie erreichen Conjunctio als Antwort zu einer Verhältnis-Frage: Sie verwirklichen bald einen Anschluß des sacred Buchstabens, magisch und tief wandeln um. Conjunctio verkündet die Verbindung der kosmischen soulmates, also tief und wesentlich ist es fast symbiotisch. Ihr Liebeleben könnte ein Gipfel erreichen, wenn Sie den Mut ließen gehen, sich zur Stärke Ihrer eigenen Gefühle zu verlassen und dieser unwiderstehlichen, Anziehung zu widerstehen zu stoppen haben. Es ist nicht über wütende, illusorische Neigung, eher eine fast mystical Komplementarität consecrated durch Verbindung, dieser Sozialstempel der Zustimmung, die der wenige wichtige Aspekt des Verhältnisses ist. Wenn Sie Conjunctio als Antwort zu einem professionellem erreichen, fragen Sie: sie erklärt Ihnen, daß es eine gute Zeit ist, ergänzende Teilhaberschaften, ursprüngliche Verbindungen, Fusionen oder das Arbeiten in den Paaren herzustellen. Zögern Sie nicht, an einem Gemeinschaftsprojekt teilzunehmen, oder Ihre Tätigkeiten aufzuladen, indem Sie in neues Blut oder in neue Ideen holen. Sie konnten Hilfe von den unterschiedlichen Leuten auch empfangen oder werden in einer strategischen Crossroadsposition zwischen unterschiedliche Felder gesetzt. Wenn Sie Conjunctio als Antwort zu einem geistigem erreichen, fragen Sie: sie führt Sie in Richtung zu einer divine Liebegeschichte. Sie werden mit kosmischen Flächen, Gott oder Natur vereinigt. Sie werden fielen angeschlossen an den Cosmos über den Grenzen der Raum-Zeit und der Versuche und der tribulations des Ego hinaus. Sie werden durch die Sterne und fühlen ernährt, die und durchzuführen verwirklicht werden. Conjunctio verkündet Momente von Anmut, also ließ ihn Sie berühren.

one must fix one unite. soul and spirit why is the body weak sold to dissolution. his sharp tooth. awareness of being is delight do not undervalue attention the beginningless begins forever the second half can end at any time play hard have fun short radius what makes the difference everything happens by itself it's a matter of wanting Who is Adam; who Whit: time will and will not tell: living is life's only purpose. I am not the doer.

Reality can not be expressed.

The pileated woodpecker is about 15 inches in length and is one of the largest woodpeckers found in North America. (Only the possibly extinct Ivory-billed Woodpecker in the southeastern United States and Cuba and the Imperial Woodpecker of western Mexico are larger.) It has a black body, a red crest, white stripes on its neck and black and white stripes on its face. It has yellow bristly feathers over its nostrils that keep out wood chips. It has a long, sticky tongue; a long, sharp pointed bill and yellow eyes. Males and females are similar, but males have a red forehead, and females have a gray to yellowish brown forehead.

Gene Krupa was born in Chicago, Illinois on January 15, 1909 and was the the youngest of Bartley and Ann Krupa's nine children. His father died when Gene was very young and his mother worked as a milliner to support the family. All of the children had to start working while young, Gene at age eleven. His brother Pete worked at "Brown Music Company", and got Gene a job as chore boy. Gene started out playing sax in grade school but took up drums at age 11 since they were the cheapest item in the music store where he and his brother worked. "I used to look in their wholesale catalog for a musical instrument - piano, trombone, cornet - I didn't care what it was as long as it was an instrument. The cheapest item was the drums, 16 beans, I think, for a set of Japanese drums; a great high, wide bass drum, with a brass cymbal on it, a wood block and a snare drum." The pileated woodpecker eats insects, fruits and nuts. A large part of its diet is made up of carpenter ants and beetle larvae. It uses its sharp bill to pull bark off a tree to expose ant colonies. It uses its long, sticky tongue to poke into holes and drag out the ants. It also digs out large rectangular holes in trees to create roosting and nesting spots and to expose insects. His parents were very religious and had groomed Gene for the priesthood. He spent his grammar school days at various parochial schools and upon graduation went to St. Joseph's College for a brief year. Gene's drive to drum was too strong and he gave up the idea of becoming a priest. In 1921, while still in grammar school, Gene joined his first band "The Frivolians." He obtained the drumming seat as a fluke when the regular drummer was sick. The band played during summers in Madison, Wisconsin. Upon entering high school in 1923, Gene became buddies with the "Austin High Gang", which included many musicians which would be on Gene's first recording session; Jimmy McPartland, Jimmy Lannigan, Bud Freeman and Frank Teschemacher. In 1925, Gene began his percussion studies with Roy Knapp, Al Silverman & Ed Straight. Under advice from others, he decided to join the musicians union. "The guy said, 'Make a roll. That's it. Give us 50 bucks. You're In.'" Krupa started his first "legit" playing with Joe Kayser, Thelma Terry and the Benson Orchestra among other commercial bands. A popular hangout for musicians was "The Three Deuces." All of the guys playing in mickey mouse bands would gravitate here afterhours and jam till early in the morning. Gene was able to hone and develop his style playing with other jazz players such as Mezz Mezzrow, Tommy Dorsey, Bix Beiderbecke and Benny Goodman in these local dives. Krupa's big influences during this time were Tubby Hall and Zutty Singleton. The drummer who probably had the greatest influence on Gene in this period was the great Baby Dodds. Dodds' use of press rolls was highly reflected in Gene's playing, especially during his tenure with Benny Goodman.



-- Jeff Wietor

The Moose

For Grace Bulmer Bowers


From narrow provinces
of fish and bread and tea,
home of the long tides
where the bay leaves the sea
twice a day and takes
the herrings long rides,

where if the river
enters or retreats
in a wall of brown foam
depends on if it meets
the bay coming in,
the bay not at home;

where, silted red,
sometimes the sun sets
facing a red sea,
and others, veins the flats'
lavender, rich mud
in burning rivulets;

on red, gravelly roads,
down rows of sugar maples,
past clapboard farmhouses
and neat, clapboard churches,
bleached, ridged as clamshells,
past twin silver birches,

through late afternoon
a bus journeys west,
the windshield flashing pink,
pink glancing off of metal,
brushing the dented flank
of blue, beat-up enamel;

down hollows, up rises,
and waits, patient, while
a lone traveller gives
kisses and embraces
to seven relatives
and a collie supervises.

Goodbye to the elms,
to the farm, to the dog.
The bus starts. The light
grows richer; the fog,
shifting, salty, thin,
comes closing in.

Its cold, round crystals
form and slide and settle
in the white hens' feathers,
in gray glazed cabbages,
on the cabbage roses
and lupins like apostles;

the sweet peas cling
to their wet white string
on the whitewashed fences;
bumblebees creep
inside the foxgloves,
and evening commences.

One stop at Bass River.
Then the Economies
Lower, Middle, Upper;
Five Islands, Five Houses,
where a woman shakes a tablecloth
out after supper.

A pale flickering. Gone.
The Tantramar marshes
and the smell of salt hay.
An iron bridge trembles
and a loose plank rattles
but doesn't give way.

On the left, a red light
swims through the dark:
a ship's port lantern.
Two rubber boots show,
illuminated, solemn.
A dog gives one bark.

A woman climbs in
with two market bags,
brisk, freckled, elderly.
"A grand night. Yes, sir,
all the way to Boston."
She regards us amicably.

Moonlight as we enter
the New Brunswick woods,
hairy, scratchy, splintery;
moonlight and mist
caught in them like lamb's wool
on bushes in a pasture.

The passengers lie back.
Snores. Some long sighs.
A dreamy divagation
begins in the night,
a gentle, auditory,
slow hallucination. . . .

In the creakings and noises,
an old conversation
--not concerning us,
but recognizable, somewhere,
back in the bus:
Grandparents' voices

uninterruptedly
talking, in Eternity:
names being mentioned,
things cleared up finally;
what he said, what she said,
who got pensioned;

deaths, deaths and sicknesses;
the year he remarried;
the year (something) happened.
She died in childbirth.
That was the son lost
when the schooner foundered.

He took to drink. Yes.
She went to the bad.
When Amos began to pray
even in the store and
finally the family had
to put him away.

"Yes . . ." that peculiar
affirmative. "Yes . . ."
A sharp, indrawn breath,
half groan, half acceptance,
that means "Life's like that.
We know it (also death)."

Talking the way they talked
in the old featherbed,
peacefully, on and on,
dim lamplight in the hall,
down in the kitchen, the dog
tucked in her shawl.

Now, it's all right now
even to fall asleep
just as on all those nights.
--Suddenly the bus driver
stops with a jolt,
turns off his lights.

A moose has come out of
the impenetrable wood
and stands there, looms, rather,
in the middle of the road.
It approaches; it sniffs at
the bus's hot hood.

Towering, antlerless,
high as a church,
homely as a house
(or, safe as houses).
A man's voice assures us
"Perfectly harmless. . . ."

Some of the passengers
exclaim in whispers,
childishly, softly,
"Sure are big creatures."
"It's awful plain."
"Look! It's a she!"

Taking her time,
she looks the bus over,
grand, otherworldly.
Why, why do we feel
(we all feel) this sweet
sensation of joy?

"Curious creatures,"
says our quiet driver,
rolling his r's.
"Look at that, would you."
Then he shifts gears.
For a moment longer,

by craning backward,
the moose can be seen
on the moonlit macadam;
then there's a dim
smell of moose, an acrid
smell of gasoline.

-- Elizabeth Bishop

To My Greek

Dear nut
Uncrackable by nuance or debate,
Eat with your fingers, wear your bloomers to bed,

Under my skin stay nude. Let past and future

Perish upon our lips, ocean inherit
Those paper millions. Let there be no word
For justice, grief, convention; you be convention—
Goods, bads, kaló-kakó, cockatoo-raucous

Coastline of white printless coves

Already strewn with offbeat echolalia.
Forbidden Salt Kiss Wardrobe Foot Cloud Peach
—Name it, my chin drips sugar. Radiant dumbbell, each

Noon's menus and small talk leave you

Likelier, each sunset yawned away,
Hair in eyes, head bent a bove the strummed
Lexicon, gets by heart about to fail
This or that novel mode of being together

Without conjunctions. Still

I fear for us. Nights fall
We toss through blindly, drenched in her appraising
Glare, the sibyl I turn to

When all else fails me, when you do—

The mother tongue!
Her least slip a mirror triptych glosses,
Her automation and my mind are one.
Ancient in fishscale silver-blue,
What can she make of you? Her cocktail sweats

With reason: speech will rise from it,
Quite beyond your comprehension rise
Like blood to a slapped face, stingingly apt


If unrepeatable, tones one forgets

Even as one is changed for life by them,
Veins branching a cold coral,
Common sense veering into common scenes,
Tears, incoherent artifice,

Altar upset, cut glass and opaline

Schools ricocheting through the loud cave
Where lie my Latin's rusted treasure,
The bones, picked clean, of my Italian,

Where some blue morning also she may damn

Well find her windpipe slit with that same rainbow
Edge a mere weekend with you gives
To books, to living (anything to forego
That final drunken prophecy whereby,

Lacking her blessing, you my siren grow

Stout, serviceable, gray.
A fishwife shawled in fourth-hand idiom
Spouting my views to earth and heaven)—Oh,

Having chosen the way of little knowledge,

Trusted each to use the other
Kindly except in moments of gross need,
Come put the verb-wheel down
And kiss my mouth despite the foot in it.

Let schoolboys brave her shallows. Sheer

Lilting azure float them well above
Those depths the surfacer
Lives, when he does, alone to sound and sound.

The barest word be what I say in you.

-- James Merrill

Brokeback Mountain Soundtrack

Bob Glaub (Performer), Gary Tallent (Performer), Jeffrey Hill (Performer), Bob Dylan (Composer), Steve Earle (Composer), Buddy / Petty, Norman Holly (Composer), Roger Miller (Composer), Gustavo Santaolalla (Composer), Gustavo / Spillman, Jeremy Santaolalla (Composer), Gustavo / Taupin, Bernie Santaolalla (Composer), Rufus Wainwright (Composer), George Recile (Performer), Greg Morrow (Performer), Matthew Johnson (Performer), Mike Clarke (Performer), The Gas Band (Performer), Bob Bernstein (Performer), Dan Dougmore (Performer), Dean Parks (Performer), Gustavo Santaolalla (Performer), Mike Turner (Performer), Ray Kennedy (Performer), Mickey Raphael (Performer), David Mansfield (Performer), Anibal Kerpel (Performer), Richard Ruttenberg (Performer), Emmylou Harris (Performer), Jackie Greene (Performer), Linda Ronstadt (Performer), Mary McBride (Performer), Randy Crenshaw (Performer), Rufus Wainwright (Performer), Steve Earle (Performer), Teddy Thompson (Performer), Willie Nelson (Performer)

Soundtrack

Daffy Duck in Hollywood

Something strange is creeping across me.
La Celestina has only to warble the first few bars
Of "I Thought about You" or something mellow from
Amadigi di Gaula for everything--a mint-condition can
Of Rumford's Baking Powder, a celluloid earring, Speedy
Gonzales, the latest from Helen Topping Miller's fertile
Escritoire, a sheaf of suggestive pix on greige, deckle-edged
Stock--to come clattering through the rainbow trellis
Where Pistachio Avenue rams the 2300 block of Highland
Fling Terrace. He promised he'd get me out of this one,
That mean old cartoonist, but just look what he's
Done to me now! I scarce dare approach me mug's attenuated
Reflection in yon hubcap, so jaundiced, so déconfit
Are its lineaments--fun, no doubt, for some quack phrenologist's
Fern-clogged waiting room, but hardly what you'd call
Companionable. But everything is getting choked to the point of
Silence. Just now a magnetic storm hung in the swatch of sky
Over the Fudds' garage, reducing it--drastically--
To the aura of a plumbago-blue log cabin on
A Gadsden Purchase commemorative cover. Suddenly all is
Loathing. I don't want to go back inside any more. You meet
Enough vague people on this emerald traffic-island--no,
Not people, comings and goings, more: mutterings, splatterings,
The bizarrely but effectively equipped infantries of
happy-go-nutty
Vegetal jacqueries, plumed, pointed at the little
White cardboard castle over the mill run. "Up
The lazy river, how happy we could be?"
How will it end? That geranium glow
Over Anaheim's had the riot act read to it by the
Etna-size firecracker that exploded last minute into
A carte du Tendre in whose lower right-hand corner
(Hard by the jock-itch sand-trap that skirts
The asparagus patch of algolagnic nuits blanches) Amadis
Is cozening the Princesse de Cleves into a midnight
micturition spree
On the Tamigi with the Wallets (Walt, Blossom, and little
Sleezix) on a lamé barge "borrowed" from Ollie
Of the Movies' dread mistress of the robes. Wait!
I have an announcement! This wide, tepidly meandering,
Civilized Lethe (one can barely make out the maypoles
And châlets de nécessitê on its sedgy shore)
leads to Tophet, that
Landfill-haunted, not-so-residential resort from which
Some travellers return! This whole moment is the groin
Of a borborygmic giant who even now
Is rolling over on us in his sleep. Farewell bocages,
Tanneries, water-meadows. The allegory comes unsnarled
Too soon; a shower of pecky acajou harpoons is
About all there is to be noted between tornadoes. I have
Only my intermittent life in your thoughts to live
Which is like thinking in another language. Everything
Depends on whether somebody reminds you of me.
That this is a fabulation, and that those "other times"
Are in fact the silences of the soul, picked out in
Diamonds on stygian velvet, matters less than it should.
Prodigies of timing may be arranged to convince them
We live in one dimension, they in ours. While I
Abroad through all the coasts of dark destruction seek
Deliverance for us all, think in that language: its
Grammar, though tortured, offers pavillions
At each new parting of the ways. Pastel
Ambulances scoop up the quick and hie them to hospitals.
"It's all bits and pieces, spangles, patches, really; nothing
Stands alone. What happened to creative evolution?"
Sighed Aglavaine. Then to her Sélysette: "If his
Achievement is only to end up less boring than the others,
What's keeping us here? Why not leave at once?
I have to stay here while they sit in there,
Laugh, drink, have fine time. In my day
One lay under the tough green leaves,
Pretending not to notice how they bled into
The sky's aqua, the wafted-away no-color of regions supposed
Not to concern us. And so we too
Came where the others came: nights of physical endurance,
Or if, by day, our behavior was anarchically
Correct, at least by New Brutalism standards, all then
Grew taciturn by previous agreement. We were spirited
Away en bateau, under cover of fudge dark.
It's not the incomplete importunes, but the spookiness
Of the finished product. True, to ask less were folly, yet
If he is the result of himself, how much the better
For him we ought to be! And how little, finally,
We take this into account! Is the puckered garance satin
Of a case that once held a brace of dueling pistols our
Only acknowledging of that color? I like not this,
Methinks, yet this disappointing sequel to ourselves
Has been applauded in London and St. Petersburg. Somewhere
Ravens pray for us." The storm finished brewing. And thus
She questioned all who came in at the great gate, but none
She found who ever heard of Amadis,
Nor of stern Aureng-Zebe, his first love. Some
They were to whom this mattered not a jot: since all
By definition is completeness (so
In utter darkness they reasoned), why not
Accept it as it pleases to reveal itself? As when
Low skyscrapers from lower-hanging clouds reveal
A turret there, an art-deco escarpment here, and last perhaps
The pattern that may carry the sense, but
Stays hidden in the mysteries of pagination.
Not what we see but how we see it matters; all's
Alike, the same, and we greet him who announces
The change as we would greet the change itself.
All life is but a figment; conversely, the tiny
Tome that slips from your hand is not perhaps the
Missing link in this invisible picnic whose leverage
Shrouds our sense of it. Therefore bivouac we
On this great, blond highway, unimpeded by
Veiled scruples, worn conundrums. Morning is
Impermanent. Grab sex things, swing up
Over the horizon like a boy
On a fishing expedition. No one really knows
Or cares whether this is the whole of which parts
Were vouchsafed--once--but to be ambling on's
The tradition more than the safekeeping of it. This mulch for
Play keeps them interested and busy while the big,
Vaguer stuff can decide what it wants--what maps, what
Model cities, how much waste space. Life, our
Life anyway, is between. We don't mind
Or notice any more that the sky is green, a parrot
One, but have our earnest where it chances on us,
Disingenuous, intrigued, inviting more,
Always invoking the echo, a summer's day.

-- John Ashbery

Angels and the Bars of Manhattan

What I miss most about the city are the angels
and the bars of Manhattan: faithful Cannon’s and the Night Cafe;
the Corner Bistro and the infamous White Horse;
McKenna’s maniacal hockey fans; the waitresses at Live Bait;
lounges and taverns, taps and pubs;
joints, dives, spots, clubs; all the Blarney
Stones and Roses full of Irish boozers eating brisket
stacked on kaiser rolls with frothing mugs of Ballantine.
How many nights we marked the stations of that cross,
axial or transverse, uptown or down to the East Village
where there’s two in every block we’d stop to check,
hoisting McSorleys, shooting tequila and eight-ball
with hipsters and bikers and crazy Ukrainians,
all the black-clad chicks lined up like vodka bottles on Avenue B,
because we liked to drink and talk and argue,
and then at four or five when the whiskey soured
we’d walk the streets for breakfast at some diner,
Daisy’s, the Olympia, La Perla del Sur,
deciphering the avenues’ hazy lexicon over coffee and eggs,
snow beginning to fall, steam on the windows blurring the film
until the trussed-up sidewalk Christmas trees
resembled something out of Mandelstam,
Russian soldiers bundled in their greatcoats,
honor guard for the republic of salt. Those were the days
of revolutionary zeal. Haughty as dictators, we railed
against the formal elite, certain as Moses or Roger Williams
of our errand into the wilderness. Truly,
there was something almost noble
in the depth of our self-satisfaction, young poets in New York,
how cool. Possessors of absolute knowledge,
we willingly shared it in unmetered verse,

scavenging inspiration from Whitman and history and Husker Du,

from the very bums and benches of Broadway,
precisely the way that the homeless
who lived in the Parks Department garage at 79th Street
jacked in to the fixtures to run their appliances
off the city’s live current. Volt pirates;
electrical vampires. But what I can’t fully fathom
is the nature of the muse that drew us to begin with,
bound us over to those tenements of rage
as surely as the fractured words scrawled across the stoops
and shuttered windows. Whatever compelled us
to suspend the body of our dreams from poetry’s slender reed
when any electric guitar would do? Who did we think was

listening?
Who, as we cried out, as we shook, rattled, and rolled.
would ever hear us among the blue multitudes of Christmas

lights
strung as celestial hierarchies from the ceiling? Who
among the analphabetical ranks and orders
of warped records and secondhand books on our shelves,
the quarterlies and Silver Surfer comics,velvet Elvises,
candles burned in homage to Las Siete Potencias Africanas
as we sat basking in the half-blue glimmer,
tossing the torn foam basketball nigh the invisible hoop,
listening in our pitiless way to two kinds of music,
loud and louder, anarchy and roar, rock and roll
buckling the fundament with pure, delirious noise.
It welled up in us, huge as snowflakes, as manifold,
the way ice devours the reservoir in Central Park.
Like angels or the Silver Surfer we thought we could
kick free of the stars to steer by dead reckoning.
But whose stars are they? And whose angels
if not Rilke’s, or Milton’s, even Abraham Lincoln’s,
“the better angels of our nature” he hoped would emerge,
air-swimmers descending in apple-green light.
We worshipped the anonymous neon apostles of the city,
cuchifrito cherubs, polystyrene seraphim,
thrones and dominions of linoleum and asphalt:
abandoned barges on the Hudson mud flats;
Bowery jukes oozing sepia and plum-colored light;
headless dolls and eviscerated teddy bears
chained to the grills of a thousand garbage trucks; the elms
that bear the wailing skins of plastic bags in their arms all winter,
throttled and grotesque, so that we sometimes wondered
walking Riverside Drive in February or March
why not just put up cement trees with plastic leaves
and get it over with? There was no limit to our capacity for awe
at the city’s miraculous icons and instances,
the frenzied cacophony, the democratic whirlwind.
Drunk on thunder, we believed in vision
and the convocation of heavenly presences summoned
to the chorus. Are they with us still? Are they
listening? Spirit of the tiny lights, ghost beneath the words,
numinous and blue, inhaler of bourbon fumes and errant shots,
are you there? I don’t know. Somehow I doubt we’ll ever know
which song was ours and which the siren
call of the city. More and more, it seems our errand
is to face the music, bring the noise, scour the rocks
to salvage grace notes and fragmented harmonies,
diving for pearls in the beautiful ruins,
walking all night through the pigeon-haunted streets
as fresh snow softly fills the imprint of our steps.
O.K., I’m repeating myself, forgive me, I’m sure brevity
is a virtue. It’s just this melody keeps begging to be hummed:
McCarthy’s, on 14th Street, where the regulars drink
beer on the rocks and the TV shows Police Woman
twenty-four hours a day; the quiet, almost tender way
they let the local derelicts in to sleep it off
in the back booths of the Blue & Gold after closing;
and that sign behind the bar at the Marlin, you know
the one, hand-lettered, scribbled with slogans of love and abuse,
shop-worn but still bearing its indomitable message
to the thirsty, smoke-fingered, mood-enhanced masses—
“Ice Cold Six Packs To Go.” Now that’s a poem.

-- Campbell McGrath

Geology

From behind a stand of Utah yucca, jackrabbits
scattering at her feet like minnows
from a rock dropped in creek, enter
The Geologist. Jeans stained with every kind
of dirt the world provides, tousled sandstone
hair tied back, she scans the mountains
which bound this basin two hundred miles
to the west and reads them
like a gambler walking the shed-row
before placing his bets. The plates in this basin
move fast, she says, about an inch
per century. Where they meet head on
they rear up like horn-locked rams
and form ranges. But the summits erode
as fast as the planes buckle up, so these mountains
are always the same height but never
the same mountains. If we made a movie
where a million years elapsed
every second, that range would look like a fountain.

It's The Geologist's job to think like this.
In the trade they call it Deep Time: a place
where the eons pass like clocks tick.
The Geologist stands on Cape Cod facing east
and imagines herself aft
on the ship North America, full speed ahead,
the harbor of Europe growing hazy as she waves
from the railing. The Grand Canyon
is a crease in a hand, Vesuvius a nostril.

Tired, I put down my book, study
our bodies in lamplight. My pale feet
are awkward, scrawny. You're deep
under sleep, between your lips
an infinitesimal crevasse. We are less
than gasps, my sweet, crumbs in the pocket
of a flea. I kiss your eyelids. How tender they are,
thin as moth wings. All night the whole earth
heaves like an ocean beneath them.

-- Joel Brouwer

From the "Lake Superior" Notes: (300 pages of notes Niedecker made in preparation for her poem "Lake Superior")

* * * * *

Doty: Mackinaw country ? Island: Many of the rocks are crusted over with calcareous spar, particularly at Robinson's Folly.

St. Mary's R. Here are whitefish of superior quality

white, red and grey sandstone in river at Soo

Grand Marais, 21 miles from the Two Hearted River (Michigan)

"as the season shifts"

S: "no ardent spirits shall be hereafter introduced under any pretence, into the Indian country"

Schoolcraft River

a lake, Plantagenette (The Rest in the Path) water fowl shot ? the mallard, wood-duck, sawbill

Towards Rainy R. from North Shore ? ospreys dive for fish and eagles swoop down to rid them of their catch. Timber wolves, bear, beaver. Frenchmen came there early 18th century to look for the Sea of the West. Scene 20 years ago now much the same as then

The peace pipe the war chief smoked with his heart

Indians ? S: "a life of want and vicissitude"

"lakes of a pondy character, redolent with nymphae odorata, thru which we successfully passed."

"the naked solitudes of Red River"

32 ft. long canoe

"a portage of four pauses"

lake ? its outlet of a spreading, sandy shelly character ? no Indian nor French name so as Mr. Johnston shot a deer here we named the lake after him. Sibly Lake (other notes)

un chanson du voyageur

He presented a pipe
Miss. R. Valley ? the great carboniferous limestone formation which fills it.

At home we're in the drowned lands ? trees standing permanently in the water.

"We slept on a kind of bog which the men call Tetes des femmes.

treaty of limits between the tribes

Pike (of Pike's Peak) when he went up the Miss. R. ? north of the St. Croix R. he said the river (Miss. I take it) became "black in the depths and clear in sandy shallows."

calcite ? a native calcium carbonate also called calc spar, occurring in many crystalline forms, such as chalk, marble, etc . . .

The face of the earth is a graveyard and so it has always been.

My inner midwest

I was in a St. Ignace fog

Why this fascination with rock terms, name, probably because we like to think the first geologists took their finds and created them ? name to thing ? out of the nature of things ? plus sometimes their sound or reflection of colour that delighted their senses.

-- Lorine Niedecker

Adam Clearwater's Uncanny Abilities

Adam: Right emphasis. drums. counting time. beating time. keeping time. blonde. surf. no bum though he. essentially expressible. means what he says understands what he means. psychological process: Aries. green. blue. flecks of silver shine. light side: flip-side: brighter still. his only shadow is a brighter light. standing before him. makes you want to talk. his listening abilities. his functionality. ableness. miss him

-- Jeff Wietor

2 Light Poems

36TH LIGHT POEM: IN MEMORIAM BUSTER KEATON --
4:50-6:18 A.M. SAT 1 JAN. 1972

1

As a mad scientist
Buster lights a Bunsen-burner flame
that starts a series of processes
that eventually releases The Monster

As an Undertaker
Buster lights a Bunsen-burner flame
that starts a series of processes
that awakens a drunk who was about to be buried as a corpse

As a Muscovite
Buster lights a sisal wick in a sesame-seed-oil lamp
that suddenly lights a mystical orgy
officiated over by Rasputin

As a boater
Buster beats a cascade by floating out beyond its edge
borne by a balloon
lit by a wintry sun

As an Unwilling Passenger on a Drifting Liner
Buster the Millionaire & his rich Girl Friend
learn to cope Alone Without Servants
when forced to rely on the light of their Upper-Class Intellects

As a Worker
Buster arouses the Compassion of the Nation
in whose light the Corporations
sell themselves to their Workers

As a Key Man
Buster carries around with him
an enormous bunch of keys
lighting the way with a Keats lamp

As a Beatnik
Buster meditates in a Redwood forest
seated where the Selenic light
first falls at Moonrise

As a Leaf-&-Feather Gatherer
Buster Means Well but bugs everyone in the Park
spearing the ladies' hats & the picnickers' salads
in featureless Hollywood Light of the century's first quarter

As William Butler Yeats
Buster addresses an irate Irish crowd
that thinks that Poetry makes Nothing Happen
but lets itself be bathed by its Truthful Light

As a Cannoneer
Buster explodes his own ship's magazine
treads water in Gunpowder Light at a safe distance
& blushes in embarrassment at his Clumsiness

As a Violinist
Buster surpasses Paganini
until Boston-Concert-Hall Light
Poisons him with Love for a Proper Bostonian Maiden

2

Spirit of Buster Keaton
if you survive as yourself
receive Please our honor & praise
you conscientious Workman

Hard-working Buster Keaton
when you arouse the laughter of children
as you live in Projector Light
Your Karmic Residue dissolves in Joyous Shouts




58TH LIGHT POEM: FOR ANNE TARDOS -- 19 MARCH 1979

I know when I've fallen in love I start to write love songs
Love's actinism turns nineteens to words & thoughts in love songs
as your "A" & the date made "actinism" enter this love song

Also I seem to start dropping punctuation
My need for punctuation lessens like some people's need for sleep
My need for sleep lessens too but later I fall on my face
Lack of punctuation doesn't catch up with me like lack of sleep
It doesn't make me fall on my face

So bright the near noon light the toy photometer twirls in
the sunlight slanting in from southeast thru the southwest window
the stronger the light the faster the light motor turns
diamond vanes' black sides absorb white sides radiate photons
See it go

A "42" draws the northern lights into the song
as yesterday into the Taggart Light Poem twice they were drawn
as "aurora borealis" & "aurora" by "A"'s & by numbers
There they seemed eery & threatening Here they seem hopeful
as they seemed when last I saw them over the Gulf of St. Lawrence
cold euphoric after making love wondering
at swirling curtains & sudden billows lighting the sky northwest

I remember their evanescent light as neutral or bluish white
I remember the possibility of yellow the improbability of red
not like Bearsville's rose & blood sky twenty-five years before
Now these memories mingled with pictures' descriptions'
project on inward skies idiosyncratic northern lights
that only exist while I'm writing these lines for Anne
Even the next time I read them the lights they arouse will be different

Nineteen sheds a tranquil light on our love song thru your "T"
Our love's tranquil light revealed by 19 & by T
is turned by 15 to an aureole tipping an "A"
The "A" becomes your face The aureole grows

Reducence from my face glows back on yours

A telephone bell can deflect & dissipate my light
The deflected light is lost to poem & person
I turn my telephone off these days to help ordinary light breed poems

The sun is so bright on my desk now except on the typewriter keys
that there's no need for the light of the student lamp placed to
shine on the paper

But now five hours later the lamp's the only light
& I begin the poem's "astrological" section

II

Acetylene light may be what Virgo needs to see the "pattern
except that for him this is something" he will
only acknowledge if it can be seen in natural light

Can we gain new light from astrology that ubiquitous superstition
You Sagittarius Woman Me Virgo Man
What "can happen between them is a" mazing
a dizzying a stupefying or dazing a crazing
a great perplexing bewildering amazing
forming a maze of something or making it intricate
being bewildered wandering as in a maze
What has happened between them is amazing

What is happening between us is amazing
more intense & vivid than electric arc light tremendous light
brighter than acetylene light friendly as reading lamp light

"But a young Sagit-
tarian need have no qualms about taking on a
man considerably her senior if he is a "Virgo"
Rand's random digits underline our case
in this lovely silly optimistic sentence

We've been living I think in a kind of drowning light

"He reaches the age of forty At anything less than that age
he is not even a possible for a Sagittarius"
Me Virgo Man You Sagittarius Woman
Orgone radiation flimmers between us
our curious safety light

"What can happen between them is superb
Something he has spent half his life dreaming about
At last it has come true" O ingratiating
astrological light may you never prove false
even to one who has often decried you as no light
but superstitious darkness natural light would dispel
or the electric arc light of empirical science

The way I'm writing this poem's like using
trichromatic artificial radiance
not as decorative light in place of
ordinary solar radiation as you photographers do

Before I was forty "not even a possible for a Sagittarius"
now I'm sixteen over the line & safe with you

"Her but a young Sagittarian need have" none
"qualms" have no basis
Are we dreaming Is this Virgo Man still dreaming
as "he has spent half his life" they say "dreaming"
"Sagittarian & Virgo"
"The pattern is perfect"
The poem is over

19-20 March 1979
New York

-- Jackson Mac Low

He Cannot Have Been Pleased Today to Hear That (Stein 55)

He cannot have been pleased today to hear her accidentally mention that.

Although she is little Carrie is forty. Ask for rubber in your prayers. They are doubles but are they brothers.

Whoever hears plaster dry listens best. It was said that the country might have had better kinds of fire if it hadn’t won that prize. Their hundred offspring were promised a whole new arrangement. Another disappointed rebellion.

Of all who were there yesterday who will be exclaiming in that place today. I heard the door. It has been shown that we men make dirt. Are we willing to hear it stopped. England and age loaned decision a train. Gradually he comes to believe no one. She does either nothing or little.

He said he’d undergone the same decrease of conscience after considering their stammering thinking. Please harness another one. He had a hundred. Did the designer understand. Weren’t you satisfactorily kind. Under an obligation to get the shapes into certain places what place did you mention as higher. He meant the knives entailed reparations. It has been found that women hear best. Can a man wait now. Julian mentioned the separate introductions. Weren’t you yourselves surprised.

Little ones believe me. This cannot be going on. Had you wanted to you couldn’t have chosen to carry the unavoidable but you did so accidentally. Are the brothers there. Whether they went there or not they doubled the plaster. Those who hear best are hopefully pleasant. That was the end but I prefer the beginning. Why should that other one stammer. They’re ordinarily together. When another drafts the recipe for bread there please tell me whether this furthers still another. What was the purpose of that resumption of bribery. A hundred offspring sprang from closets in another disappointed rebellion. Their higher exclamations were meant to call the wealthy to resemble them by doing what they did. These times principally carry with them undertakings hastening decisions. In the beginning everybody overflowed. There were fifty opportunities for the English to disappoint the rebellion. Exclaiming that higher meant wealthier the callers resembled doers. Undertakings in these times are principally fastened to decisions.

Whether near or far the rest rest. Anybody may accidentally become necessary. We believe bread becomes thinking. Does this sound like an accident. He accidentally changes. He went were the front lamps do little. Though he looked he had need of intuition to choose among the women. They made believe their faces looked that way. Please can’t we hurry to see what causes that resemblance. When we have seen whether they carry things faster will we have wanted to listen. I know I am mud. He’s gentle to fish. Hot or cool she would deny that. Promise you’ll leave out the introductions. Separate when this changes. He did the tired thing. Had any other needed harnessing. The designer did. Am I to understand you made her leave instead. Woody the baker was in an unexpected bed. He never said that we said either that he was displeased or that he was pleased. Credit another horse’s straps’ goodness. Whether reparation is everything or not this was harnessing. When we have met will we remember the rest of this. Such splendid running. Would everybody believe there was any chance that they wanted her to leave. Never revise her accidentally. They were annoyed when they saw what higher winning meant. Do it by widening it.

She was not lonesome despite the expenses of emigration. When they got the maps together they didn’t try to notice what he’d said they’d have to remember. All my toys were wonderful. Carving the splendid coal the bribed one exclaimed that Henner’s picture would be worth a hundred of his offspring. He was a designer and he did understand. He said you’ve not been satisfactorily careful. That very neglect was forgotten. Away with what you mean to say. Don’t only use cement. Why would emigration stand as the better measure. He recommended that he be a minister. The decision to loan away the fork was greeted with language such as no one would have believed. They rendered it accidentally. Had another believed in another there’s a chance that still another would have been displeased. It disappointed forty that Carrie was so little although many prayers were said for her. The number of rubber wheels was lessening in that place. Are those brothers the reason. He stopped his gentle plastering.

Ordinarily they would try everything. Pray that this harnessing be an introduction to toys. So far toys may be for anybody. He means that morning is the time to express emotion. Hundreds asked her age and what would become of her. He was trained to make decisions about loans and doesn’t believe anyone. Gradually they came to be doing very little. He said they’d undergo the same decrease of conscience. She considered thinking about it after stammering Please. To you harnessing another hundred was not at all satisfactory. The designer understood that.

-- Jackson Mac Low

5 Haiku

Winter bee, crawls out from the dust in the corner.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Spring neighbor, even ill in bed, I polish my nails.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Wishing and wanting to see you, I step on the thin ice.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Love oracle, reading in the light of the spring snow.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

now the trip is over -- my summer holidays start their B-side

________________________________________________

-- Mayuzumi Madoka

Miu Miu's Saturday Night Function & Clarinet Lament

o ya aubade aubade o boy o ya so many o's all in a row feeling of course's important today for Miu Miu (opened mouth) (that's Barney Bigard playing in the background, delicious) a feeling not unlike dragging dried red roses brittle and black over the smooth, albeit distressed in the corners, hardwood parquet floors of Mason's heart the blackguard consumes her even as he's gone. Taste: acidic steely firm taut. Where: in the back-bar crevice of her normally stoney emotions. Ultra close-up: inside of Miu Miu's open mouth breath glistening the lingering taste of Mason: steely wine. Miu Miu's feeling as she lip licks her memory: he eats green apples in the starlight. with salt. touching the pad of her index finger with the pad of her thumb smooth she came to him with a proposition: Saturday Night Function strut New Orleans funeral march walkin'-to-the-cemetery tempo clarinet leads the way, somber piano solo somber low impassioned cries. He's plenty good-looking enough why does he have to want to look like Marcus Schenkenberg. Smoothly smoothly urbane courteous debonair smoothly shyly his hair combed back expediting his sweat drench & dulcet mellow lyrically raucous hand fingering o that Mason does do well liquidly calling out lavishly not saying a word languidly fingers shoulder tickle lovely lovingly mmmmm hard pressed to forget last nights lasting Mood Indigo night long night long dark night a few stars round midnight lasting melodies Miu Miu harmonizes now with considerate adulation and considerable memory for Mason envisions him a clarinet solo he came to me (she relishes) with a proposition like spilled music tasting like lilac wine snazzy keen where my fingers play through his sweat drenched hair having had having him then having him again: time propulsive, agile improvisation, engaging bracing joie de vivre that keeps you coming back for more 5 stars - top rating, that Mason that Saturday Night Function that tap root that Am I Blue soft and plaintive that plaintive soft cry that solo that hot white jazz convulsion. yum: hmmm Miu Miu mulls: Mason as a Clarinet. she considers painting. Miu Miu ever the hungry ghost:


The clarinet has a distinctive liquid tone, resulting from the shape of the bore, whose characteristics vary between its three registers: the chalumeau (low), clarion or clarino (middle), and altissimo (high). Of all the wind instruments the clarinet has the widest compass, which is showcased in much wind band and orchestral writing. Additionally, improvements made to the fingering systems of the clarinet over time have enabled the instrument to be very agile; there are few restrictions to what it is able to play.



The bass clarinet has a characteristically deep mellow tone. It is often only used in large bands and contemporary orchestral pieces. The alto clarinet is rare to be found in other than a concert band. Its range is slightly higher than that of a bass clarinet, yet still much lower than the common B flat clarinet. The B flat clarinet is a very common band, orchestra, chamber music, and solo instrument. The tone quality varies greatly with the musician, the music, the style of clarinet, the reed, and humidity. The German clarinet generally has a dark, greenish tone quality. In contrast, the French clarinet, because of impressionable french composers, is more bright and lively -- some might even say shrill. In between, the modern American clarinet has tone qualities borrowed from both the French and the German clarinets.

Only a semitone below the B flat clarinet is the A clarinet. Much of orchestral and chamber repetoire is composed originally for A clarinet. Some people find the sound of the A clarinet to be just a little more rich and mysterious than a B flat, though the difference is small. Today, the chief use of an A clarinet is to make the key signature of a piece simpler. An E flat clarinet, about eighteen inches (45cm) long, is hardly as warm as the A clarinet. Many contemporary musicians write band music using the E flat clarinet. It is looked upon as the piccolo of clarinets, with its high and very bright tone.



Beginning clarinetists often choose soft reeds - 2 to 2 1/2. Jazz clarinetists often remain on softer reeds, as the soft reeds are easy for bending pitch. However, most classical musicians work their way up the reed size as their embouchures strengthen. The benefit of a harder reed is a sturdy, round tone. It takes many years of practice to strengthen your embouchure, but your tone depends on it. Within a few years of playing, the corners of your mouth will be strong enough to keep the air flowing in a very narrow, cylindrical form.

To practice controlling your air, light a candle, and hold it far from your face. Then, open your mouth only slightly, keep the corners of your mouth in, to make a very tight O shape. Then, take a deep breath from your diaphragm and blow at the candle. See how far away you can hold it and still blow it out. This gain of control will concentrate your air flow and round your tone in the most beautiful way possible.



Range

All clarinets, except for the C clarinet, are transposing instruments, meaning that the sounding and written pitches differ. For a standard B♭ clarinet, the range stretches from the D below middle C, to around the F two and half octaves above middle C, although the top of the range is not well defined. Being a B♭ insturment, the written range is a tone higher. An A clarinet has the same written range, and consequently can get a semitone lower. All clarinets have nominally the same written range, so a bass clarinet operates an octave lower, and an E♭ clarinet operates a fifth higher than a B♭ clarinet. Generally, the lower clarinets are able to produce higher 'fingered' pitches than the small clarinets. This gives the bass clarinet a useable range of almost five octaves (beginning at low Bb two octaves and one tone below middle C) and the contra-alto and contra-bass clarinets perhaps more, but again these upper limits are subject to many variables.

The range of a clarinet can be divided into three main sections, known as 'registers'. The bottom octave and a half (from written E below middle C to the B♭ above middle C) is known as the 'chalumeau register', of which the top fourth contains what are known as the 'throat notes'. Good tone in the 'throat notes' takes great skill. The middle section is called the 'clarion register', which spans just over an octave (from written B above middle C, to the C two octaves above middle C). The top section is called the 'altissimo register', which starts with the (written) C# two octaves above middle C and upwards without a definite upper limit, though anything beyond the C above this can be considered quite extreme. The highest notes in the altissimo register are generally used only rarely, to achieve particular dramatic or showy effects, as in Dixieland performance. Beginners often discover these notes quite by accident; playing them deliberately and well requires many years of practice.


Construction and acoustics

Professional clarinets are usually made from African hardwood, often grenadilla or (rarely) Honduran rosewood. One major manufacturer makes professional clarinets from a composite mixture of plastic resin and wood chips — such instruments are less affected by humidity, but are heavier than the equivalent wood instrument. Student instruments are usually composite or plastic resin, commonly "resonite", an ABS resin. Some parts are sometimes made of ebonite. The instrument uses a single wooden (sometimes "fiber" or plastic) reed which is held in the mouth by the player. Vibrating the reed produces the instrument's sound.



The body is equipped with a complicated set of seven tone holes (six front, one back) and 17 keys which allow the full musical scale to be produced. The most common system of keys was named the Boehm System by its designer Hyacinthe Klosé in honour of the flute designer Theobald Boehm, but it is not the same as the Boehm System used on flutes. The other main system of keys is called the Oehler system and is used only in Germany and Austria (see History).

The hollow bore inside the instrument has a basically cylindrical shape, being roughly the same diameter for most of the length of the tube. There is a subtle hourglass shape, with its thinnest part at the junction between the upper and lower joint. This hourglass figure is not visible to the naked eye, but helps in the resonance of the sound. The diameter of the bore affects characteristics such as the stability of the pitch of a given note, or, conversely, the ability with which a note can be 'bent' in the manner required in jazz and other styles of music. The bell is at the bottom of the instrument and flares out to spread the tone evenly.

A clarinetist moves between registers through use of the register key, or speaker key. The fixed reed and fairly uniform diameter of the clarinet give the instrument the configuration of a stopped pipe in which the register key, when pressed, causes the clarinet to produce the note a twelfth higher. This interval corresponds to the third harmonic, whereas most other woodwinds go up to the second harmonic, an octave higher, when the register key is pressed. The fifth and seventh harmonics are also available to skilled players, sounding a further sixth and fourth higher respectively.

The highest notes on a clarinet can have a piercing quality and can be difficult to tune precisely. Different individual instruments can be expected to play differently in this respect. This becomes critical if a number of instruments are required to play a high part in unison. Fortunately for audiences, disciplined players can use a variety of fingerings to introduce slight variations into the pitch of these higher notes. It is also common for high melody parts to be split into close harmony to avoid this issue.

The parts that make up a clarinet are as follows (description follows the illustration from left to right):

The reed is attached to the mouthpiece by the ligature, and the whole assembly is held in the player’s mouth, with the reed on the underside of the mouthpiece, pressing against the player's bottom lip. The formation of the mouth around the mouthpiece and reed is called the embouchure.



Next is the short barrel; this part of the instrument may be extended in order to fine-tune the clarinet. As the pitch of the clarinet is fairly temperature sensitive some instruments have interchangeable barrels whose lengths vary very slightly. Some performers employ a single barrel with a thumbwheel that enables the barrel length to be altered on the fly.

The main body of the clarinet is divided (except in the case of the E♭ soprano clarinet) into the upper joint whose holes and most keys are operated by the left hand, and the lower joint with holes and most keys operated by the right hand. The left thumb operates both a sound hole and the register key. The cluster of keys in the middle of the illustration are known as the trill keys and are operated by the right hand. These give the player alternative fingerings which make it easy to play ornaments and trills that would otherwise be awkward. The entire weight of the instrument is supported by the right thumb behind the lower joint on what is misleadingly called the thumb-rest.

Finally, the flared end is known as the bell, which amplifies the sound. When playing to a microphone, it is often found that the sound produced from the bell is relatively coarse, and that a better tone can be recorded by placing the microphone a little way from the finger-holes of the instrument. This relates to the position of the instrument when playing to an audience: pointing down at the floor, except in the most vibrant parts of certain styles of music.

-- Jeff Wietor

Mason Waller Disguised as Marcus Schenkenberg in a Kilt

Mason Pandora Penelope Waller, a cajun by nature, in his slumbering Little Nemo mode, watches his sonambulist thoughts and notions drift as gentle leaves about him; watches his thoughts fall as autumn leaves from a thousand sleepy trees: leaves alive speaking call to him and calling him call him back to sleep or nudge him closer to the surface of his consciousness leafy thoughts of leafy dream trees dreams half-dreams wishes and urges to wake to himself: You'd like to think they forebear but they don't. They're Bravehearts, these unknowns, I tells ya these men in skirts, these noble Songs of Hiawatha these thoughts a-thinking nobodys; smooth sailing they sang of it over the moon (the wonder of it all) travelling in the aware something other than you -- freely passionately float within himself in tongues: each new thought considers a career in Hollywood or politics or as a magician's companion full of animal cunning, or with consummate skill, a touch of genius and with finesse utililzing Wucius Wong's Principles of Two-Dimensional Design in the pages of Flaunt magazine. One must always be prepared to learn something totally new. Mason mulls to himself dreamily: I am the axis around which moves a spiral the eternal revolution of human culture. Mason logically considers to himself: yellow is more akin to red than blue. The slow ticking of the second hand of the Krups clock. Stately ticking of the ticking clock the whispering ticking the stately tock ticking clock. Mason hears the moonlight whisper. Tea for breakfast silky oolong another day without money enough to beguile his many moods, Mason rouses himself from a low flying dream and opens one eye then another and shakes the sleep from his philosophical eyes to question the day after his warm soapy shower before his mirror lathered face shaving thoughts flicker and flit through him thoughts ooze from every cell of his body his unconscious body his clever unawareness his eyes see words his emotions feel nothing his eyes watch his eyes in the mirror while flashes of his father his father he knows but does not know occur to him: I can imagine a blind man piecing together a jig-saw puzzle by touch alone. A jig saw puzzle of a tree an acacia my father was in Korea in the war but never talks about it an almond my father was also in Italy during World War II, ski troupe yet never talks about it a beech when I was seven my father was naked shaving before a mirror a buckeye my father never talked about much of anything except to discipline me through words to my mother a candleberry my father dreamed of having a service station a gas station Texaco station after the war a date my father avoided talking directly to me palm my father lost his hair early dogwood when my father married my mother I was at the wedding how much wood would a woodpecker peck if a woodpecker would peck wood a ficus my father enjoyed and may still enjoy working out crossword puzzles a fig for a while in the early 60s my father smoked a pipe a fir my father was unfaithful once to my mother who never forgave him my favorite: ginkgo in autumn golden as god and a host of angels a grapefruit my father seemed lost at times lost in thought but never appeared to be thinking just sullen a hickory my father belonged to the Knights of Columbus a holly my father was really my step-father but I had his same last name a juniper my father touched me once but that was a slap to the head and kumquat my father had very old parents who frightened me like aliens from a planet called The Farm a laurel my father's father died old locust my father's mother died old and logwood my father's mother and father moved to a large house on a tree lined street in Fond du Lac Wisconsin a magnolia my father never cried openly a mango my father had back problems a maple my father smelled of Ben-Gay oak my father would "take-to-bed" and listen to the Braves play ball on the radio and olive, my father supported us a papaw my father brought home a cocker spaniel and named it "Ginger Peachy" pear my father was told to "get rid of the dog" and pecan my father once said to me while I was listening to Sgt. Preston of the Yukon on the radio: turn off that radio or I'll push it through the wall a quince my father collected pennies a rain tree my father owned a series of Jeeps a redwood my father lost his service station business when Big Corporate Oil got rid of "the little guys" sassafras my father failed at everything he tried spruce my father was unsure of "direction" sycamore my father may believe in something but I don't know what it is and teak my father lives with my mother in a trailer park in northern Wisconsin now a tulip tree my father goes out every day and collects cans and umbrella tree when I talk with my father on the phone he always says "you always sound so good, here's your mother" a varnish tree my father once said to me at the dinner table: "do you think you're god's gift to women?" the message was: I'm going to kill you and walnut my father saw me as a joke and would never talk about me to people he knew a weeping willow my father may have once been a very sexy man a white birch my father while still alive is a very distant memory a white cedar my father never told me anything about anything white gum my father once went to church regularly white oak my father may have once prayed white pine my father stopped saying "grace" at meals white poplar my father is a secret to me white spruce my father in 1965 wanted to buy a Mustang but settled for a vinyl-roofed LTD instead and willow my father spent a great deal of time trying to grow a good looking lawn a witch hazel my father seemed never to be around yew my father read the Milwaukee Sentinel intently and zebrawood my father? Only when all the pieces are put together, those small flat pieces of maybe and could be and I just want to be myself wishes do the shadows appear do the high-lights show do the concave or convex monochromatic surfaces of his memories begin to imagine how ruthlessly imagination has been not allowed to him. If I go out tonight what or who will I be. I can't believe how much Marcus Schenkenberg looks just like me. I have always wanted to be a waller I have always wished to be a mason. I am king of my castle. I am a Mason and a Waller. You can call me Mason Waller but that's not really who I am. I am made of stone. Carved from stone. No one will ever notice me no one will ever see me. I am a stone wall I am Mason Waller. I look good without a shirt sitting in the sun of a Sunday. I look god-like and goodly goodly as a Lothario in the full sun light of an August day sitting in the sun of a Sunday in my father's Mustang. I can't decide who I am sitting flat and intently and looking just like me is Marcus Schenkenberg looking good just like god-like me. I am carved from stone.

Across the street a boy with a pale white face: blood drips from his ears. A farm boy wears blue checks and hay. The fairy-tall high school girl dressed in her mother's prom dress the imperfect sentence of her nervous grandmother. The basic grid of hope. The terrifying well-dressed manners of the next generation. The drowned the suffocated the recent dead knocking knocking at the chamber door.

Mason believes in the day ahead in the comedy and magic of the day: Calm full of peace carrying out his assignment: he will go to work, board bravely the bus in his warrior kilt, work boots and torn leather jacket he will live where everyone shall see him he will not only feel but sense his strength: as a river hugs the shore he tells himself: I have time I have had time I will have time; I have a process I am a process I am a preparatory stage; I know it comes down to work in life; a place in life; I will call to the beasts the werewolves and upper management and say: I am me and I will have your heads.

Part Two -- Later that same Halloween day

"Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense."

A

Monday: Prince Charles and his wife Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, will visit hurricane-hit New Orleans on their first official overseas jaunt since marrying in April, the prince's office confirmed Monday Stompin at the Savoy books on Health Care Finance Science & Technology Measles (Signs and Symptoms) known for its typical skin rash CDW order FAX a word from the Chancellor Ginkgo Raymond Chandler twisted knickers check request which one to get; The Blue Room Benny Goodman; I could say Bella Bella each language tells me how grand you are Office Max under $200; Office Depot order laser paper 32 lb change TokyoBot robot clock back an hour; Nicaraguan officials began damage assessment and clean-up efforts Monday after Hurricane Beta swept the country before heading over the Pacific Ocean eat lettuce chopped turkey Paul Newman olive oil Samuel Alito, a federal appeals court judge from Philadelphia, was nominated to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor Monday morning yellow highlighter The Trees of San Francisco Mike Sullivan Raymond Chandler pulp stories clarinet Sing Sing Sing drum 1938 New Techniques in Gastrointestinal Imaging Medicinal Plants of the World Nutrients and Cell Signaling is a signal a sign Digital Human Anatomy and Endoscopic Ultrasonograph The Blood Cerebrospinal Fluid Barrier about 200,000 people in remote valleys and high mountains still haven't received aid or shelter three weeks after the 7.6 magnitude earthquake, the United Nations said on Oct. 28. As many as 2 million people in northern Pakistan need immediate help before the Himalayan winter sets in, the UN said An Atlas of Foot and Ankle Surgery Blackwell's Book Services; Halloween d.a. levy could make grandiose claims, and at the same time claim that neither he nor anyone else had anything to say worth hearing. You could see him as a nihilist, seeking oblivion, or a mystic seeking a void which produces endless miracles, which in turn fit quite plainly into the flow of daily life ten of swords Slaughterhouse-Five Ethan Hawke at an early age took acting classes at the McCarter Theatre and appeared in various high school performances struggling to finance his new movie BILLY DEAD, about a troubled working-class Michigan family fans are being offered the chance to buy up 900,000 shares of stock for just $8.75 each, so Hawke can raise the $8 million he needs to make the project, Julie Delpy, Vernon Dobtcheff, Louise Lemoine Torres, Rodolphe Pauly, Mariane Plasteig, Diabolo, Albert Delpy, Marie Pillet, Denis Evrard, Sam Shepherd would work as a stable hand, herdsman, orange picker, sheep shearer, bus boy, waiter and musician before beginning his career as a playwright in New York in 1964 True North Blue Moon Blue Guitar Blue Monday Rhapsody in Blue Moonglow Ebb Tide New Orleans Tennessee Williams Porgy & Bess The Little Prince The Ugly Duckling Hans Christian Andersen Bugs Bunny Jimmy Durante Will & Ariel Durant Klaus Barbie The Lone Ranger Long John Silver Billy the Kid Fritz the Cat Jim Sorcic James Sorcic James Martin James Jim Jim the House Jim Sorcic Milwaukee 1969 autumn sing his song sing James the songs of Jim Sorcic his poetry his careful walk his strut his miracle dance his politics of sexual cat and poetic mouse we will dance later and come whole heartedly heartfully hopefully heatedly eagerly softening him up by getting him hard inside him and looking for him with touch with hands with him in black leather jacket nothing else good morning let morning come to you while you cut out all the bits and pieces of people you didn't want to meet in your life cut in the rest people walk by feeling a compulsion to say something even though they're only passing through; behind the ordinary surface consciousness the mind is mixed up with divine conflict to live the consciousness of the Atman is to live in the calm unity and peace that is above things and separate from the world even when pervading it; Purusha; emanations portions hobgoblins sisters of mercy Agnesian nuns high school home room they have created the world of Asuras, Rakshasas, Pishachas; are you experiencing this? I can only translate the past into noun flashes into bitter bites of feelings which appear to be covered in a mass of flies, maggots and steaming with heat. a who's who of when and where; expected to be the mere servant of my own life the Butler of Memory the servant of nostalgia; the king of nouns the prince of time the keeper of signs the cataloguer of wish : a word involves being able to use it on certain occasions in a special tone of voice; you might say that certain words are only pegs to hang intonations on. read to me: Dear Folks: we are swell here -- so nice and warm. Suns every day. Was foggy earlier for the first time. Had a fine trip and no trouble only got into snow in Texas. Road's were slippery for 3 hours drive. How are you all. Write when you can. A sailor wearing a white sailor cap is talking to a girl in Bixby Park, Long Beach, California. I wonder who Mr. & Mrs. R. C. Rasmussen of 280 Bischoff Street Fond du Lac, Wisconsin are or more likely were. 2 cent stamp; John Adams; pinkish afternoon nobody's around at lunch went to lunch everybody quiet library hush I'm wondering about Story Telling and Character Development; do people develop except in stories? is that the same as just becoming more mellow or dead with age: worn out worn down too many cigarettes too much sex or jim beam or just eating too much; when do the young stop becoming young and just age away; is that a logical inference or just a generality. it's no wonder Mason thinks to himself: I want to go out as Marcus Schenkenberg. Understanding a sentence is more akin to understanding a piece of music than one might think. We can't cross the bridge to the execution until we are there. The police have ties to Kashmir's most-feared militants claimed responsibility Sunday for a series of terrorist bombings that killed 59 people in New Delhi.


.......

B

Mason as Marcus was heard to say:
Now winter nights enlarge
The number of their hours

.......

C

Mason writes home to his mother:
I don't think you will have much success in your proposed search for our ancestors, as I don’t believe we had any.

.......

D

Bang Bang Bang
Mason does his best Bette Davis "The Letter" impersonation
Bang Bang Bang

I never loved you I never loved you
I've always loved him I'll always love him.
O the moonlight the terrible moonlight.


-- Jeff Wietor

Fall Back

Dumbly morning arrives at 7.
The season of incremental darkness begins again.
I don't know.
Odor of semen in the Pacific warm breeze.
I don't want to say.
A man walks along McAllister reading the news.
I don't want to hear it.
Sycamore leaves stitched gray with fungus.
I'm dumb.
Cold sensation in the palm of the hand.
I am neither awake nor asleep.
Having not a feeling but a search for a feeling.
Earlier today than yesterday.
He either is or was feeling something.
I don't know.
He is feeling he was a memory.
That feeling exists or was existing.
He had been feeling something.
I don't want to say.
He repeats to remember his feeling.
In feeling he repeats his memory of remembering.
I don't want to hear it.
Everything that was is still.
Being that one.
Saying he was that one enough.
Try to listen.
Some are taking something.
Some are not taking everything
but would be taking anything.
There are many being living.
There is one being living.
He might have been one succeeding.
Go ahead memory, name names.
In living I don't know what
Ananda, my cat, thinks or does not think in sunlight.

The daily line of light grows shorter.
I want to say that it is not
a difference of degree.

When one is one being one
is being one suffering in being one.
Feels or does not feel in stillness.
I'm dumb.
Some laugh, some suffer.
Being one telling something.
Walking through he was asking and grieving.
I don't know.
He is not telling everything he was telling.
In not mentioning that he was one
he was being one meaning everything.
I don't want to say.
Morning arrived today at 7 yesterday at 8.
Tonight will arrive earlier today at 5
yesterday at 6

Susan phoned two days ago
to say there will be a sitting.
Will I sit alone or with others
Neither awake nor asleep.
How can one talk about understanding
and not understanding by asking
what it is you want.

Neither awake nor asleep
I don't want to hear it
I don't want to say
I don't know
I'm dumb

The Forgotten Dialect Of The Heart

How astonishing it is that language can almost mean,
and frightening that it does not quite. Love, we say,
God, we say, Rome and Michiko, we write, and the words
get it all wrong. We say bread and it means according
to which nation. French has no word for home,
and we have no word for strict pleasure. A people
in northern India is dying out because their ancient
tongue has no words for endearment. I dream of lost
vocabularies that might express some of what
we no longer can. Maybe the Etruscan texts would
finally explain why the couples on their tombs
are smiling. And maybe not. When the thousands
of mysterious Sumerian tablets were translated,
they seemed to be business records. But what if they
are poems or psalms? My joy is the same as twelve
Ethiopian goats standing silent in the morning light.
O Lord, thou art slabs of salt and ingots of copper,
as grand as ripe barley lithe under the wind's labor.
Her breasts are six white oxen loaded with bolts
of long-fibered Egyptian cotton. My love is a hundred
pitchers of honey. Shiploads of thuya are what
my body wants to say to your body. Giraffes are this
desire in the dark. Perhaps the spiral Minoan script
is not language but a map. What we feel most has
no name but amber, archers, cinnamon, horses, and birds.

-- Jack Gilbert

Deepening, the Feeling

Any expression of quality is the result of relationship between two opposite worlds, between two levels of reality. A direction is followed. And, as the years go on, it deepens or changes. It is in accordance with what one wishes to express that the technique also changes. Even from one painting to another, something may need to be enlivened again. The sensitivity is deepening, the feeling is becoming, so to say, more exact, and the technique needs to correspond, to be refined, attuned, in the same way a musical instrument needs to be attuned in accord with what is going to be played. What remains recognizable from one piece of work to another represents what is essential in the artist; it is his signature, his own voice.

There is another aspect I would like to touch upon. When I see that the painting is not going to go any further, there is a split. What I did does not belong to me any more; it is no longer my child. It becomes like a message sealed in a bottle thrown into the sea. Perhaps someday someone will find it and will read the message. But for me it already belongs to the past. A kind of death has taken place which frees me from identification with my own work.

-- Paul Reynard

5 Tanka

just for fun
I put Mother on my back

she weighs so
little that I start crying

and can't walk three steps

------------------------------

beastly face
with a mouth that opens
and closes

is all I see

of the man giving a talk

------------------------------

I work

and work yet my life
remains
impoverished as ever

I gaze at my hands

------------------------------

I close my eyes

yet nothing whatever
floats up in my mind

out of sheer loneliness
I reopen them

------------------------------

fearing
what lies in my heart
may be heard

I quickly draw back my chest

from the stethoscope

______________________________

-- Ishikawa Takuboku

from: A Book of Disquiet

We generally give to our ideas about the unknown the color of our notions about what we do know: If we call death a sleep it's because it has the appearance of sleep; if we call death a new life, it's because it seems different from life. We build our beliefs and hopes out of these small misunderstandings with reality and live off husks of bread we call cakes, the way poor children play at being happy.

But that's how all life is; at least that's how the particular way of life generally known as civilization is. Civilization consists in giving an inappropriate name to something and then dreaming what results from that. In fact the false name and the true dream do create a new reality. The object really does become other, because we have made it so. We manufacture realities. We use the raw materials we always used but the form lent it by art effectively prevents it from remaining the same. A table made out of pinewood is a pinetree but it is also a table. We sit down at the table not at the pinetree. . .

-- Fernando Pessoa