Current writing is getting stale. Going back to a more regular idea of the line.

From Ron Silliman's Under Albany:

In 1978, the Art Institute auditorium, as Barrett [Watten] began to draw an analogy between Zukofsky's poetry and a scientific concept, Robert Duncan, who had already finished speaking , went ballistic, leaping up, flapping his arms like a crow, yelling, "No, no, no. Zukofsky was all about life, all about song."

So, yes, I need to go back to Duncan, Zukofsky, Bunting, Oppen. And Mina Loy. And all those people who did cool stuff.

I was surprised to find yesterday at a local Borders a copy of Duncan's Ground Work.

***

From W.H. Auden's "Under Which Lyre":

In our morale must lie our strength:
So, that we may behold at length
Routed Apollo’s
Battalions melt away like fog,
Keep well the Hermetic Decalogue,
Which runs as follows:--

Thou shalt not do as the dean pleases,
Thou shalt not write thy doctor’s thesis
On education,
Thou shalt not worship projects nor
Shalt thou or thine bow down before
Administration.

Thou shalt not answer questionnaires
Or quizzes upon World-Affairs,
Nor with compliance
Take any test. Thou shalt not sit
With statisticians nor commit
A social science.

Thou shalt not be on friendly terms
With guys in advertising firms,
Nor speak with such
As read the Bible for its prose,
Nor, above all, make love to those
Who wash too much.

Thou shalt not live within thy means
Nor on plain water and raw greens.
If thou must choose
Between the chances, choose the odd;
Read The New Yorker, trust in God;
And take short views.

***

Tim Kearns just said to me:
"The world is an apartment complex and [the US] are the tenants in the penthouse [who] go to the gym every day and do steroids. We're the bad neighbors. We throw fits every now and then."