hey baby, it's the fourth of july!
i've been watching more TV and movies this past week than i have watched TV and movies in months. i get home from work, do what i need to do around the house, then when anna and nick go to bed -- my usual time to do a little reading and writing -- i turn the TV on to see what's what. night before last, for example, i watched a couple of episodes of anthony bourdain's travel show on CNN then switched channels and watched an old episode of the x-files -- the earlier ones are the best. it got be midnight so i crawled into bed and read a few poems by jaan kaplinski before turning out the light. the night before that i switched on the ROKU and watched a pretty cool horror anthology movie called v/h/s [2012]. and last night anna and i watched a few things we recorded on the DVR but i couldn't keep my eyes open and i crashed before 11:00 pm!
hence my silence here on this blog this past week. i'm terribly behind on my correspondence and a poetry collaboration. i feel guilty about that. i'll get to all y'all, soon, like okay!
today is the fourth of july. earlier i cleaned up our back garden, mowed the lawn and cleaned the grill. later this evening we'll have a BBQ -- veggie burgers and hot dogs, macaroni salad, retro sodas, chips and other bits of the usual sundries -- then when the sun sets nick and i will light off things that go boom.
lazy days, indeed. in addition to the celebration i bring you a video in honor of our country's birthday. below you'll find the poet gregory corso reciting our nation's declaration of independence.
happy birthday america!
enjoy
6 Comments:
Sue and I went downtown to watch iJim Jarmusch's “Only Lovers Left Alive" and oh was it worth it. Only less than a dozen folks in theatre which i fine with me. I loved the film...took me all the places I like to go...felt like the woman at counter put a qualude in my Free State pint. Lucious, erotic, spacy. slow and quiet too. Not to give anything away but there is more blood in this moive than a hollywood summer big deal but not a drop is spilled and no explosions either. Not to mention the filming itself and the music too. And when we came outside the sky was purple and silver and grey and like something really bad was gonna happen, which believe me, can and does here in summer Kansas and the few folks we say out and about looked as wierd as the sky. fuck...what more can you want from a film. And thanks for the greg corso video...i still proclaim he is the ONLY member of the New york school of poetry. Period. take care buddy.
hi jim:
i am gonna have to wait for ONLY LOVERS LEFT ALIVE to be released on-demand and/or DVD for me to see it. i think it played here for about two weeks at the local arthouse. i love jarmusch's films and am looking forward to seeing this one.
another movie that had a short run is THE ROVER starring guy pearce and robert pattinson. it was at the local arthouse for two weeks then vanished. i'm waiting for that one to be released to on-demand and/or DVD for me to see it because i am dying to see this film!
another movie that looks pretty damn interesting is SNOWPIERCER directed by bong joon-ho. it is playing at the local arthouse but i won't be able to see it during its run. so, yep, have to wait for home release.
corso is fucking awesome!
dude...you really should go see movies in theatre and take nick with you..and not just the big noisy ones you like...kid needs to see things on screen he cant find on internet or his phone or ipad... stuff on the screen it was made for. you have the time....do it now. and besides dont you want him to grow up to be as wierd as you are.
Richard. I read some poetry by Corso around the time this video was done. It is good stuff. A great idea. I like what he says in the end: "But something's wrong." Leaves it open and a doubt. Jagged.
You know the Vietnamese wanted to create a state based basically on that of the US system but were stopped by the right wingers in the US (in the United Nations). I wonder what Corso would think of things going down nowadays.
Good stuff in anycase: I also liked Wieners and others and earlier O'Hara, Ashbery and Schuyler. The Language poets had an aly in Hannah Wiener and others. I met Robert Creeley when he was here in 1995 and he lectured (informally) on many of those well known writers - Wieners (they took 'The Devils' I think it's by Dostoevsky to him when he had suffered a mental episode and wondered if that was the right book!), Ted Berrigan (he made the point that Berrigan was incessantly reading), Olson of course (rotating the last pages of the Maximus Poems!), and such as Ed Dorn. I thought the talks were interesting.
I was pleased to see him (although I didn't know him personally but he had links with NZ as I think his second wife was from here).
Keep in touch. R.T.
hi richard:
my first introduction to ted berrigan was a book of interviews with the poet. i don't remember the title of the book. i do remember one critical piece of advice he gives to fellow poets: read a book a day, or two!
i self-identify as a poet/reader because you want to write you better love to read. both creatures, readers and writers, are the same beasts.
Yes. Thanks. As I write things from every book I read (it can be any subject, not just literature) I enjoy that but may later use it in the fabric of what I am doing. Kenneth Gooldsmith takes all this further by say writing out a complete verbatim edition of the NY Times and other things. He calls his praxis 'uncreative writing'. Fascinating. I know why he does it (and agree to some extent with his ideas) but I persist in reading all kinds of writers, poets, science books, some childrens, some philosphy, art, and much else. This keeps me busy and for me it is the same as some people enjoy movies as you do. I'm not so big on them but some have inspired poems. One example was 'The Age of Innocence' which I mentioned. But it wasn't the theme of the movie as the feel or atmosphere of it, and even the title. Also 'Dreams' by Kurosawa. But reading, art, and some music is often a starting point. I liked this poem.
You probably know that Ted's son Amselm writes also. I used at one stage to almost read exclusively US poetry and lit. But I have widened my scope. Of course it was always necessarily wider.
Yes, the poet/writer/reader - whether "writerly or readerly", a combinaton...
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