unlike tonio... i had to take this four times before i found one i could live with... one that came close enough... it was also fun to see how the questions shifted depending on the previous answer...

You're Siddhartha!
by Hermann Hesse

You simply don't know what to believe, but you're willing to try anything once. Western values, Eastern values, hedonism and minimalism, you've spent some time in every camp. But you still don't have any idea what camp you belong in. This makes you an individualist of the highest order, but also really lonely. It's time to chill out under a tree. And realize that at least you believe in ferries.

Take the Book Quiz at the Blue Pyramid.

NINA SIMONE's birthday...

i wish i could be like a bird in the sky
how sweet it would be if i found i could fly
i'd soar to the sun and look down at the sea
and i'd sing cuz i'd know how it feels to be free

been reading another big chunk of Midnight's Children... thinking about some who don't like the book... i don't mean students but comments made in various forums (fora?... yuck)... reminds me that i never very much enjoyed having to defend my own taste in reading... or art or film... or...

a symptom of laziness... i suppose... no critical standards? but i know what i like? what pleases me... and yet...

at the same time... i hesitate to state my preferences because i want the world to approve... i'm gonna be withit... always wanted to be one of those who can just blurt... damn the torpedos... but the opinions of others always mattered... too much maybe...

so... all my pleasures are guilty... i guess... cuz whatever i treasure... somebody's gonna call it trash... vive la difference...

The New York Times: Movies: New York Times Review: FILM REVIEW; Times They Are Surreal in Bob Dylan Tale:

As a movie, ''Masked & Anonymous,'' directed by Larry Charles, a master of the sitcom domain making his big-screen debut, is an unholy, incoherent mess. As a Bob Dylan artifact, though, it is endlessly, perhaps morbidly, fascinating.

last night i watched "masked and anonymous"... which i found to be kind of fun and mystifying and stupid all at once... i really liked it... and then there are the many seriously bad reviews it received... see MRQE: Masked and Anonymous (2003)... guess i'll always be a sucker for any movie propelled by dylan's tunes...

Beyond Borders: Haitian UPDATE

At the same time, we also want to write to round out the picture a bit and to assure our friends and supporters that in much of the country life continues on as normal. Everyone is alert; radios are tuned into the news wherever there is electricity, a generator, or enough batteries to keep the signal coming. Yet, most Haitians are still focused on the stuff of life, like making sure there's enough food and water; and they don't have much time (unless they at some point consider the political situation completely unbearable) for protests.

loren over at In a Dark Time is reading "Wendell Berry's Poems, from 1964-1968 and 1970-1977"

Hugh Kenner, 1923-2003 by Guy Davenport

chris murray's tex files presents a useful poem by paul hoover... it starts like this...

If a monkey drives a car
down the colonnade facing the sea
and the palm trees to the left are tin
we don't understand it.

We want poems we can understand.
We want a god to lead us,
renaming the flowers and trees,
color-coding the scene...

Patron Saints Index: poets

read this: Commonweal: The language of redemption: the Catholic poets Adam Zagajewski, Marie Ponsot & Lawrence Joseph.

Wallace Stevens, one of the great modernist poets of the last century, wrote that 'after one has abandoned a belief in God, poetry is the essence which takes its place as life's redemption.' Yet, modernism--the period of literary innovation during which T. S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, and James Joyce wrote--never succeeded in creating a poetry entirely without a belief in God. Ultimately, more than art was needed in the twentieth century's ongoing search for redemption.

In one tradition, poets continued to pursue an alternative to the either/or of God and poetry, searching for a synthesis between theology's 'account' of the divine and poetry's own human, yet God-like, 'making.' Right up to the present, they have sought out a contemporary language to speak about expressions of immanence and transcendence, the quotidian and the ineffable, without ever once using those terms; their subjects--common or arcane--are drawn from a world that is constantly unfolding, believing in the possibility of redemption rather than loss. They are, in a word, Catholic, and while they are not necessarily writing about religion, their poetry is shot through with the elements and activities of a 'cosmos'--in its literal sense of 'order'--that contains the possibility of a world with and a world without end.

Catholic Poets

Ernest Dowson... Joyce Kilmer... Alice Meynell... Joseph Mary Plunkett

i don't know about these guys... kinda weak?

some rememories of hours in the basement church... the rolling incense... the drone of the saint names... our response in serious strangeness... ora pro nobis... subtle bumps and shifts to dispel monotony... catholic boy daydreaming... i wonder how many catholic writers would count the benediciton experience as some kind of poetical rhizome...

see suzanne's hot/cool litany...

revealed
reviled
reveiled
by men
who have written...

once i tried litany... a very attractive form... but didn't get very far... it seems to demand a conceptual simplicity that i just couldn't muster...

Internet Anagram Server: Anagrams for count posts

COUNTS TOPS...ONCOST PUTS... COTTONS PUS...
PUNCTO SOTS... COTTON SUPS...
PUNCTO TOSS... COUNTS POTS...
COOPTS NUTS... SCOOT PUNTS... COPS ON TUTS...
COSTS PUN TO...
CUTS NO SPOT

count posts count posts counts post counts post

"I am struggling, amid all the current political uproar, to keep clearly in mind that it is not merely because our policies are wrong that we are so destructive and violent. It goes deeper than that, and is more troubling. We are so little at peace with ourselves and our neighbors because we are not at peace with our place in the world, our land. American history has been to a considerable extent the history of our warfare against the natural life of the continent."

(Wendell Berry,"Some Thoughts about Citizenship and Conscience," 1969)

a sporadic circular conversation (?) in aplit today... based on homework writing... we hear from more voices than usual... which is a good thing... a very good thing... because they are such smart insightful voices...some people need these prompts... i may be one of them

why am i not home listening to johnny cash... the man comes around... or cassandra wilson... glamoured... or sandinista!... why am i not...

Chekhov in America... a review of Paul Schmidt's translation of the plays...

The result is a surprisingly lively Chekhov, colloquial and clear, which will come as a revelation to those who know the playwright through the widely read but rather stiff British translations of Constance Garnett and Elisaveta Fen. Everything about Schmidt's book, from the organization and footnotes to the language itself, is meant to clear away the obscurity and sentimentality with which Chekhov is often burdened. The plays that emerge are funnier and more muscular than one might have expected.

word had it that until i gained fifteen or thirty pounds and leapt from a 15 collar size to a 17... word had it that i looked a little like michel foucault... now i look like... tor johnson?

hey... i shaved my head yesterday... but this is not news... thirty-five minutes to go... that's news...

this session does not end until... 5:00 p.m.

one class of apes got me off track today... talking about my high school date... i had one... and then i became a carmelite... and never had another... so there... they were impressed... or something... probably something

i'm sitting in the computer lab 505... typing surreptitiously... when i should actually be doing... i don't know what... all the students seem busy enough... the moderator is in control...and im a her humble servant... doing... no essential work... catching up on my blog-reads... the new science corridor opened for classes today... and it is full of beautiful light... i want to go stand there... in the light...

also just finished the last set of recent aplit essays... problems with

1) understanding and identifying "narrative voice"
2) distinguishing among "illusive," "elusive," "allusive"
3) spelling "ludicrous"... it's all "ludacris" these days

just finished BOY MEETS BOY by David Levithan... for some reason, i'm only good for quick & easy reads these days... so i pick up this YA novel... and am delighted... have i mentioned how much i like YA lit?... it's a hidden world... (often even to teens themselves)... full of wonders... but i don't get to go there very often... BMB begins:

Now away we go.

9 p.m. on a November Saturday. Joni, Tony, and I are out on the town. Tony is from the next town over and he needs to get out. His parents are extremely religious. It doesn't even matter which religion--they're all the same at a certain point, and few of them want a gay boy cruising around with his friends on a Saturday night. So every week Tony feeds us bible stories, then on Saturday we show up at his doorstep well versed in parables and earnestness, dazzling his parents with our blinding purity. They slip him a twenty and tell him to enjoy our study group. We go spend the money on romantic comedies, dimestore toys, and diner jukeboxes. Our happiness is the closest we'll ever come to a generous God, so we figure Tony's parents would understand, if only they weren't set on misunderstanding so many things.

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