One must listen to the response of the commencement crowd to Chris Hedges address at Rockford College to get an idea of the poison of war. Listen on the May 21 Democracy Now show (The link is in my net radio links on the right.)

I think a discovered another technique for deconstruction. Use a search engine with words or phrases from a poetry line. I have much more to write about my Poetry Deconstruction Zone but it is technical and not the kind of thing I can just blog about.

I do think this all started as I began to investigate the work of Charles Wright and his focus on the line which was prompted by a poet friend’s appreciation of my strong phrases and combinations of words.


From Mosaic (Winnipeg), March 2002 v35 i1 p149(20)
Charles Wright, Giorgio Morandi, and the metaphysics of the line. Bonnie Costello.
http://web4.infotrac.galegroup.com/

“Wright's model of artistic agency has been the modern painter, who has led him not only to painterly images and metaphors but also to a conception of the poetic line as having spatial integrity. The line is not only the verbal register of stimuli or the encoding of voice, but it is also a direct visual mark in a spatial pattern of such marks. ... But in Wright's work the influence of the visual arts carries over from image to the line. Indeed, in Wright, the line emerges at an alignment of oral and visual impact, and the visual page becomes encoded with visionary themes.

Plug for your local library
Visit your local library website and electronic collection. The InfoTrac collection is an excellent way to keep up on the latest. The Excite Meta Search Engine is my favorite. (Hint: if you want to exclude some of the partners like, oh just like, Google for example, hit the advanced button and make your choices).

This lead to a worderful (my own serendipitous misspelling) web site,

Wordscapes by John and Muriel Higgins when I searched a phrase from my latest poem, Train window Times > “rhyming mates/mowing.”

I just checked a blog site that I visit quite regularly. I had not visited in a while because I was not blogging myself for the past 3 weeks–I was amused to see her apologizing because she had failed to alert people that she was on hiatus. April must be a month for taking a break and not telling anyone that you will be gone. I don’t apologize. Shit I wrote 500 lines of poetry, including one, the one below, for some friends who opened a flower/art shop. Everything worthwhile takes time.


Flower Dance


Could there by life without flowers?
Not a science question.



Beauty does not require understanding.



Color and pheromone
penetrate to the heart of pleasure
on nonsensical senses.



Binding humans
to
dancing bees.


I will be trying to get back to the discipline of blogging on a regular basis. Only checking in once in a while will help me do actually do it–that works for readers as well as writers.

I am listening to St. Paul Sunday today
Saint Paul Sunday this Week
Kronos Quartet
May 4, 2003

What a wonderful resource the web is getting to be.

I also discovered over the week end that the local yokels are not carrying

Studio 360 with Kurt Anderson anymore. This week’s show was on fishing and had Ian Frazier as a guest. I don’t fish in the rod and reel sense but I do have a poem in the works, “What is it about fish” that explores the relationship between humans and fishes. This project is the first of a long period activity as opposed to my typical work pattern.

I am also shopping for ideas about how to break down the linear nature of traditional poetry presentation on paper. I am working on using space and concrete form to separate content and rhythm, like a back beat. Any suggestions or examples would be appreciated.

So okay.

“(<>),”