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Stegiel's avatar

THE FACT OF A DOORFRAME POEM BY POEM

Storm Warnings

The glass has been falling all the afternoon,

And knowing better than the instrument

What winds are walking overhead, what zone

Of gray unrest is moving across the land,

I leave the book upon a pillowed chair

And walk from window to closed window, watching

Boughs strain against the sky.

And think again, as often when the air

Moves inward toward a silent core of waiting,

How with a single purpose time has traveled

By secret currents of the undiscerned

Into this polar realm. Weather abroad

And weather in the heart alike come on

Regardless of prediction.

Between foreseeing and averting change

Lies all the mastery of elements

Which clocks and weatherglasses cannot alter.

Time in the hand is not control of time,

Nor shattered fragments of an instrument

A proof against the wind; the wind will rise,

We can only close the shutters.

I draw the curtains as the sky goes black

and set a match to candles sheathed in glass

Against the keyhole draught, the insistent whine

Of weather through the unsealed aperture.

This is our sole defense against the season;

These are the things that we have learned to do

Who live in troubled regions.

– Adrienne Rich

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Stegiel's avatar

Very good analogy. Ishmael Reed used to say Writing is fighting. I think drumming captures the energy as well and likely in many respects better.

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Rick Larson's avatar

Gardening is fighting too. Stop buying the corporate food.

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Stegiel's avatar

My wife and I have plots in our neighborhood community garden. I have discussed growing food and we have put in herbs, lettuce, and more will be coming with a bit of reconfiguring from her ornamentals to small container gardening. San Francisco still has a few thriving food cooperatives, but not the number it had from '87 to say '92. Rents went up. Stores got smart. And convenience became King and Queen. The small corner grocer stocks organic. Whole Foods markets it as does Safeway. And the politics of people in this town is often ridiculous because of naked affluence. I moved to SF at 30 because a friend went backpacking in Scotland for a few months and I had real cheap rent in his room. My job was door to door canvassing on polluted drinking water. After three weeks the end of the canvass. I was lucky. I picked up a phone canvass gig with an outfit stopping Contra Aid. This gave me space and time to figure out my new home before my friend reclaimed his room. 35 years later still figuring it out.

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Richard Seager's avatar

Can only really plant garlic this month here. I mean I could put some potatoes in, they'll probably be ok, but those frosts we had a few weeks ago were a bit nasty.

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Rick Larson's avatar

Most brassicas can stand frost.

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Richard Seager's avatar

That's all that's in the garden right now. Cauliflowers are coming along really nicely.

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Richard Seager's avatar

I am though about to go out and mow the lawn (hand mower) and weed the garden. And figure out what to do with several cabbages and cauliflowers.

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Richard Seager's avatar

It most certainly is fighting. And in many ways the exact nature of the fighting is not understood. But it also needs to be building.

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KW NORTON's avatar

Ah we all Dive Into The Wreak today. Can relate. My only notes to self on writing are to write like my hairs on fire. Writing seems most related to drumming. We don’t keep the best, we stay with it. Steady like a rock. There are many who will survive this and be sane who need our work.

https://youtu.be/mzvk0fWtCs0

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Ray Horvath, "The Source" :)'s avatar

You and I should really talk. :)

No "facts," though.

And I have been an unfounded cognitive scientist (still paid for the number of students in higher ed :) ), who had to "teach" journalism for 10 years, I can assure you, I am not a journalist, although I can write journalism. At your intellectual level, that probably requires some effort to "dumb things down," but that really shouldn't make a difference. My impression is that the audience here wants mostly journalism, although you and I can cautiously provide more, without deterring people. :)

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Stegiel's avatar

My idea of audience might be and likely is utterly different. I suspect my audience contains multitudes including journalism but as I say publication on the Stack is more of an art attack, DADA before DADA.

David Burliuk, Alexander Kruchenykh, Vladmir Mayakovsky, Victor Khlebnikov 1917

A Slap in the Face of Public Taste

Source: Futurism site.

To the readers of our New First Unexpected.

We alone was the face of our Time. Through us the horn of time blows in the art of the world.

The past is too tight. The Academy and Pushkin are less intelligible than hieroglyphics.

Throw Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, etc., etc. overboard from the Ship of Modernity.

He who does not forget his first love will not recognize his last.

Who, trustingly, would turn his last love toward Balmont’s perfumed lechery? Is this the reflection of today’s virile soul?

Who, faint-heartedly, would fear tearing from warrior Bryusov’s black tuxedo the paper armor-plate? Or does the dawn of unknown beauties shine from it?

Wash your hands which have touched the filthy slime of the books written by the countless Leonid Andreyevs.

All those Maxim Gorkys, Krupins, Bloks, Sologubs, Remizovs, Averchenkos, Chornys, Kuzmins, Bunins, etc. need only a dacha on the river. Such is the reward fate gives tailors.

From the heights of skyscrapers we gaze at their insignificance!...

We order that the poets’ rights be revered:

To enlarge the scope of the poet’s vocabulary with arbitrary and derivative words (Word-novelty).

To feel an insurmountable hatred for the language existing before their time.

To push with horror off their proud brow the Wreath of cheap fame that You have made from bathhouse switches.

To stand on the rock of the word “we” amidst the sea of boos and outrage.

And if for the time being the filthy stigmas of your “common sense” and “good taste” are still present in our lines, these same lines for the first time already glimmer with the Summer Lightning of the New Coming Beauty of the Self-sufficient (self-centered) Word.

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