Though on my Timedistant Lover

If Time’d permit,
I’d cradle you,
and
pant
the
damp
beat
of unsleeping percussionists’
apologiesin syncopated rhyme.

The Protocols of Art (1990)- Frank Moorhouse

The Book Launch
At a book launch remember that authors are in fact launching their previous book. It is no good assuming you're safe because you cannot be expected to have read the book being launched. When you meet the author he or she will expect you to say great things about his or her previous work. You will find the titles of the author's previous work in the new book opposite the title page under "Other books by the author".
At a book launch remember that you will meet authors ostensibly there to honour their colleague but who are quietly or not so quietly launching their most recent book. Anything you can say which is comically derisive about the author being launched will be hugely appreciated by these authors. They are there to steal praise away from the book being launched, to deflect the public gaze.

Having something to say
It is fashionable to suggest that a work of art demonstrates some aesthetic theory with the suggestion that art theory after all is more interesting than art or is an art in itself. If you don't know any theory, practise saying, "I like the hermeneutical gaps". You can be daring and suggest that theory is merely belated description of what all good advanced art is already doing.
It is fashionable to say that a work is something else other than what it obviously is, so a film is likened to a comic strip. A painting is called a narrative. A dance performance is praised for its architectural qualities. All artists regardless of art form currently want their work to be likened to a video clip.
It is a good thing to say to artists that they "take risks". It means that they have risked making fools of themselves but you avoid saying whether they have.
With well-meaning ideological motivated art you can say, "you've made a really powerful statement" which means that they may not have made art but they got the ideological line right. Or you can say, "Oh God, I know exactly how you must have felt". Better still, look into their eyes, maybe even take their hand, and say, simply and quietly, "You are very brave".
It is still accepted as praise in most circles to say, "The work forces us to inquire into the roots of our bourgeois hyprocrisy".
Artists divide into those whp want to make pure art and those who "have something to say". Those who say they are making pure art really think they are "saying something". Having "something to say" is a bit suspect but "saying something" is acceptable. It is better if what is being said is not spelled out- that is called having a sub-text. Everyone knows that art is not supposed to "give answers" to Big Questions. But it is still the secret wish of artists to be seen as "having a few answers".
When artists say "Let's cut the crap- what do you really think of my work?", they are lying. That is a trap. If you fall for it you will be abused or physically beaten. As The Edinburgh Review in 1825 and Gertrude Stein said, "Praise, praise, more praise".

Authors
Authors are incurable romantics and feel that the art of writing is still too mysterious to talk about and they go to many festivals and conferences to say this. They still pose as solitary and reclusive but are always looking for a good time and the company of journalists. They are anti-commercial but need money, lots of it, and believe that their writing should speak for itself but they seem to give endless interviews.
Theorists (see later) see authors as curable romantics, to be demystified, even dethroned. Fiction can only exist, the theorists say, within a context of discourse- that is, fiction only makes sense when explained by criticism and theory (see later). Criticism and theory are not to be confused with book reviewing (see later). Serious authors are simply those who give pleasure to a certain minority sensibility.
Authors are no longer prophets, or barometer of the social climate. Many authors never liked being barometers anyhow.

Books
The source of all other art, the King of Arts, but not there to provide answers. Now called the text by some. You may hear some critics say, "There is only one book and we are all writing it". That is a put-down of authors.
They will tell you that books are not written by "authors" but by the intersection of social forces and other books (called intertextuality). While the author is no longer a barometer, he or she is more like a set of traffic lights and ideas and the stew of the times. Some say this does not dethrone the author and nor is the author a traffic light or a barometer, that the author is more like a chief executive officer of the factory which produces an interplay of social forces, intertextuality, literary theory, and history deserves a much higer income.

Imaginative Writing
Now called the text. Exists to create theory.

Feminism
Now many types. Must be present but in a light, unthreatening way.
If you are a man say nothing about feminism. If you are a woman say, " so called "women's writing" is too exclusive a label- I refuse to be ghettoed".

Marixsm
Is a quaint set of ideas that many artists once had (until last year) but will now distance themselves from and joke about as if it were an abberation of youth. Can be fondly remembered, as in, "We actors were really required to go to lectures on Marxism but I was never really a serious Marxist- the nearest I got to the industrial proletariat was jumping into bed with a muscular truck driver who delivered the party paper".

Politics
There are some variants here.
Variant a) Suitable for satire.
Variant b) There doesn't have to be a stand-off between art and politics as long as the politics cannot be detected by the reader and the work doesn't provide any answers.
Variant c) Who's right-wing and who's left-wing these days?
Variant d) Some things are too urgent- the planet must be saved, art can come later.

Sex
A good thing in art and may be a good thing outside art too. Was not there before the sixties. Not to be confused with pornography. May have been too much of it in the sixties. There is something called "the obligatory sex scene" which is to be avoided in art as is a hangover from the sixties.

Pornography
Once something to guiltily enjoy and defend the rights of even if it was not your cup of tea. Still a guilty enjoyment but more guilty now because of some feminist opposition. May or may not be ideologically unsound. Is itself a narrative. Is characterised by the use of sex un an ideologically disordered way. Confused because of the uncertainty of what is happening in the mind of the reader of pornography. Does it reduce threat and limitations of gender and sexuality? Is it only disordered play? May be gender confusion at its highest or lowest because the reader may be playing all the parts. Whether erotica is commercial or not seems to change its value somehow.

Reviewer
Someone writing about "a book". Usually suspected of having slept with the author, is sleeping with the author, would like to sleep with the author, which explains why the review is soft or hard in the case of the male reviewer, or enthusiastically embracing or coolly dismissive in the case of the female reviewer.

Critic
Someone who writes not about "one book" but about the reading experience.

Theorist
Someone who writes about people writing about the reading experience. Does not sleep with the authors, enjoys instead the sensuality of the text.

Megatheorist
If theory is also narrative and maybe also fiction, we need theorists of theory to reveal the narrative of theory.

Narrative
Everything is narrative, everything tells a story, everything may, in the ultimate analysis, be "fiction".

Reader
Is being urged to no longer worship the book (text). Is now being urged to worship at the feet of theory. The act of reading is more important that the act of writing. There is no writing, only reading- the author does not "write" the book. He or she, in "writing" a book, becomes only "the first reader" of the book. If you have no literary theory it means you are in the unconscious grip of some out-dated theory. There is the possibility that we all are a mess of both earlier and advanced theory. There is also the possibility that we are unconsciously being taught our theory by reading advanced imaginary writing.

Handling the Black Market
At an arts festival you will find that many of the people present come from arts and crafts communities (mainly in Tasmania) who will pay highly for polyester clothing or factory made cups and saucers. Likewise with greens, they will enjoy all manner of guilty pleasures if you offer it to them in the privacy of your hotel room- tobacco, a ride in a four wheel drive, off-road recreational vehicle, a bloody steak, salt, sugar, alcohol, and coloured toilet paper.

Lee Crowell

after the tragedy

he was quiet
and careful not to make friends
becoming a desert
to remain rootless
detached
from anything
that might suck the remaining embers
and instill the final chill


give us chinaski

all i know
is that there are at least 12 people
walking along the road
i am walking
on the same side of the road
i am walking
in the same direction
i am walking

all i know
is that we are clueless about each other
and i'm not sure of the reason
but it pisses me off
that we are in our own little worlds


private party

nothing but a wasted mind
showed me how to live
in that dark decrepit dwelling
on all fours we kissed the strawberries
and savored our momentous departure
from good behavior

Un-Naked, 3:27 AM

She could tell he meant it
when he told her
he liked his women
to be like the
unfinished
poems of Valéry

Lyrically literate
she lay languid on his bed
and allowed her
satin-claret camisole
to retreat slow shoulders.

Extending an arm unpracticed
she knocked his pages
with a fatal smile,
reached for his lit cigarette
exhaled: -
and never told him her name.

Jeffrey McDaniel...

Absence

On the scales of desire, your absence weighs more than someone else’s presence, so I say no thanks

to the woman who throws her girdle at my feet,
as I drop a postcard in the mailbox and watch it

throb like a blue heart in the dark. Your eyes
are so green – one of your parents must

be part traffic light. We’re both self-centered,
but the world revolves around us at the same speed.

Last night I tossed and turned inside a thundercloud.
This morning my sheets were covered in pollen.

I remember the long division of Saturday’s
pomegranate, a thousand nebulae in your hair,

as soldiers marched by, dragging big army bags
filled with water balloons, and we passed a lit match,

back and forth, between our lips, under an oak tree
I had absolutely nothing to do with.

Letter To The Woman Who Stopped Writing Me Back

I wanted you to be the first to know - Harper & Row
has agreed to publish my collected letters to you.

The tentative title is Exorcist in the Gym of Futility.

Unfortunately I never mailed the best one,
which certainly was one of a kind.

A mutual friend told me that when I quit drinking,
I surrendered my identity in your eyes.

Now I'm just like everybody else, and it's so funny,

the way monogamy is funny,
the way someone falling down in the street is funny.

I entered a revolving door and
emerged as a human being. When you think of
me is my face electronically blurred?

I remember your collarbone, forming the tiniest
satellite dish in the universe, your smile
as the place where parallel lines inevitably crossed.

Now dinosaurs freeze to death on your shoulder.

I remember your eyes: fifty attack dogs on a single leash,
how I once held the soft audience of your hand.

I've been ignored by prettier women than you,
but none who carried the heavy pitchers of silence
so far, without spilling a drop.

The Biology Of Numbers

Once I dated a woman I only liked 43%.
So I only listened to 43% of what she said.
Only told the truth 43% of the time.
And only kissed with 43% of my lips.

Some say you can't quantify desire,
attaching a number to passion isn't right,
that the human heart doesn't work like that.

But for me it does-I walk down the street
and numbers appear on the foreheads
of the people I look at. In bars, it's worse.
With each drink, the numbers go up
until every woman in the joint has a blurry

eighty something above her eyebrows,
and the next day I can only remember 17%
of what actually happened. That's the problem
with booze-it screws with your math

Lawrence Ferlinghetti!

The Pennycandystore Beyond The El

The pennycandystore beyond the Elis where i first

fell in love

with unreality

Jellybeans glowed in the semi-gloom

of that september afternoon

A cat upon the counter moved among

the licorice sticks

and tootsie rolls

and Oh Boy Gum

Outside the leaves were falling as they died

A wind had blown away the sun

A girl ran in

Her hair was rainy

Her breasts were breathless in the little room

Outside the leaves were falling

and they cried

Too soon! too soon!

Recipe For Happiness Khaborovsk Or Anyplace

One grand boulevard with trees

with one grand cafe in sun

with strong black coffee in very small cups.

One not necessarily very beautiful

man or woman who loves you.

One fine day.

Number 8

It was a face which darkness could kill

in an instanta face as easily hurt

by laughter or light

'We think differently at night'

she told me once

lying back languidly

And she would quote Cocteau

'I feel there is an angel in me' she'd say

'whom I am constantly shocking'

Then she would smile and look away

light a cigarette for me sigh and rise

and stretch her sweet anatomy

let fall a stocking

Dove Sta Amore

Dove sta amore

Where lies love

Dove sta amore

Here lies love

The ring dove love

In lyrical delight

Hear love's hillsong

Love's true willsong

Love's low plainsong

Too sweet painsong

In passages of night

Dove sta amore

Here lies love

The ring dove love

Dove sta amore

Here lies love

A whole heap of Kenneth Rexroth

From THE LOVE POEMS OF MARICHIKO
VII
Making love with you
Is like drinking sea water.
The more I drink
The thirstier I become,
Until nothing can slake my thirst
But to drink the entire sea.
XII
Come to me, as you come
Softly to the rose bed of coals
Of my fireplace
Glowing through the night-bound forest.
XXV
Your tongue thrums and moves
Into me, and I become
Hollow and blaze with
Whirling light, like the inside
Of a vast expanding pearl.
XXXVIII
I waited all night.
By midnight I was on fire.
In the dawn, hoping
To find a dream of you,
I laid my weary head
On my folded arms,
But the songs of the waking
Birds tormented me.
XLV
When in the Noh theater
We watched Shizuka Gozen
Trapped in the snow,
I enjoyed the tragedy,
For I thought,
Nothing like this
Will ever happen to me.
LV
The night is too long to the sleepless.
The road is too long to the footsore.
Life is too long to a woman
Made foolish by passion.
Why did I find a crooked guide
On the twisted paths of love?
LX
Chilled through, I wake up
With the first light.
Outside my window
A red maple leaf floats silently down.
What am I to believe?
Indifference?
Malice?
I hate the sight of coming day
Since that morning when
Your insensitive gaze turned me to ice
Like the pale moon in the dawn.

State and 32nd, Cold Morning Blues
A girl in a torn chemise
Weeps by a dirty window.
Jaws are punched in the street.

A cat is sick in the gutter.
Dogs bark up the nightbound alleys.
There's nothing like the sorrow

Of the jukeboxes at dawn.
Dice girls going home.
Whores eating chop suey.

Pimps eat chile mac.
Drowsy flatfeet, ham and eggs.
Dawn of labor, dawn of life.

The awakening noises
Of the old sacrifices.
The snow blows down the bare street

Ahead of the first streetcar.
The lovers light cigarettes,
And part wiyh burning eyes,

And go off in the daylight.

OAXACA 1925
You were a beautiful child
With troubled face, green eyelids
And black lace stockings
We met in a filthy bar
You said
"My name is Nada
I don't want anything from you
I will not take from you
I will give you nothing"
I took you home down alleys
Splattered withmoonlight and garbage and cats
To your desolate dishelved room
Your feet were dirty
The lacquer was chipped on your fingernails
We spent a week hand in hand
Wandering entraced together
Through sweltering summer
Of guitars and gunfire and tropical leaves
And black shadows in the moonlight
A lifetime ago.

Quietly
Lying here quietly beside you,
My cheek against your firm, quiet thighs,
The calm music of Boccherini
Washing over us in the quiet,
As the sun leaves the housetops and goes
Out over the Pacific, quiet --
So quiet the sun moves beyond us,
So quiet as the sun always goes,
So quiet, our bodies, worn with the
Times and the penances of love, our
Brains curled, quiet in their shells, dormant,
Our hearts slow, quiet, reliable
In their interlocked rhythms, the pulse
In your thigh caressing my cheek. Quiet.

From A PROLEGOMENON TO A THEODICY
This is the winter of the hardest year
And did you dream
The white the large
The slow movement
The type of dream
The terror
The stumble stone
The winter the snow that was there
The neck and the hand
The head
The snow that was in the air
The long sun
The exodus of thought
The enervated violin
The oiled temples
The singing song and the sung
The lengthy home
The trundling endless stairs
The young stone
Homing and the song
The air that was there
Flayed jaws piled on the steps
The twirling rain
And laying they repeat the horizon
Ineffably to know how it goes swollen and then not swollen
Cold and then too warm
So many minor electrocutions
So many slaps of nausea
The keen eyelids
The abrupt diastole
That leaves you wondering
Why it was ever despite their assurances unlocked
Stars like lice along the scalp
The brain pan bitten burning
And dull on one foot
And dull on one foot
O cry aloud
O teeth unbound
Don’t you know that the stone walk alone
Do you know the shredded brow
Are you aware
Do you take this forever concentric bland freezing to touch
Let the scarlet rustle
Let the globes come down
Let the oblate spheroids fall infinitely away
Forever away always falling but you can always see them
The creak
The squeak that makes you so slightly open your mouth
Patiently to be strangled
It is gone away somewhere
It is Winter
Reason
Winter
Ache

Black
Blue black
Blue
The silver minuscules
In early dawn the plume of smoke
The throat of night
The plethora of wine
The fractured hour of light
The opaque lens
The climbing wheel
The beam of glow
The revealed tree
The wine crater
The soft depth
The suspended eye
The clouded pane
The droning wing
The white plateau
The hour of fractured light
The twisted peak
The cold index
The turquoise turning in the lunar sky
The climbing toe
The coastwise shout
The cracking mirror
The blue angle
The soothed nape
The minute flame
The silver ball
The concave mirror
The quivering palm
The conic of the wing
The trough of light
The rattling stones
The climbing humerus
The canyon bark
The unfolding leaves
The rigid lamp
The lengthy stair
The moving cubicle
The shifting floor
The bending femur
The rigid eye
The revealing lamp
The crackling anastomosis
The initial angle
The involved tendon
The yellow light
The acoluthic filaments
The general conic of the wind
The revealing eye
The crazed pane
The revelation of the lamp
The golden uncials
The revelation of the mirror