sw00709st43-death.illness

A neighbor of ours when I was in high school died recently.  He was 67.

Reginald Shepherd is seriously ill.  I am thanking God for his safety, 
strength, and continuance.

Posted my few thoughts on existence over at Rho--.

Cold day.  High around 37.  Had to wear my insulated shirt
under my jacket, my Green Bay Packer stocking cap, my 
winter gloves.



- - - - -
thief du jour



-
Brian A. J. Salchert                   

sw00642st13-bits.n.2luminous.essays

weather: cool and hazy cloudy, but rainless
-
The renter in the apt adjacent to mine owns a small dog.
The renter in the apt above mine may own a cat, but does
own some kind of pet recently acquired.  I have heard it
scampering around, and for several days I thought that
maybe a squirrel had gotten beneath his floor and above
my ceiling, but then I heard him roll a ball and the pet
chasing it.
.
Aside from my being allergic to dogs and cats, I have had
one dog and (while I was married) three cats, with each 
of those four experiences ending disastrously.  I could not,
and would not, have a pet of any kind ever again.
-
PM 3:47 - Was out doing some groceries-mostly shopping.
-
I no longer own a TV, nor do I want to.  I do own 3 radios
I rarely turn on.  Am not as interested as I once was in what
those mediums have to offer.  I never was much of a movie-
goer.  Don't even remember what movie I saw last.  It may
have been 2001.  Stumbling around inside my head interests
me more.  Some would say I'm an online junkie.
-
Have spider problems every now and then in this apartment.
Most recent invaders are quite small and are reddish-brown.
Found a spider photos site on which is a picture of more than
a dozen spiders which look exactly what I have encountered.
The picture was taken by a person residing in SW Missouri.
The site owner said they might be Hobo spiders (er, actually,
Hobo spiderlings).  They're members of the Tegenaria family
of spiders.  This member, unfortunately, is venomous.  See
www . spiderz rule . com / photos . htm - read site intro info.
Anyway, even though I'd rather not, I should contact a pest
control company.   [ PM 7:11 - the heat came on ]   Will be
buying some sticky strips, looks like.
-
-
Below are links to two luminous essays:
  Reginald Shepherd's "Why I Write revised"
and
  Tony Hoagland's "Fragments, Juxtaposition, And Completeness:
                                     Some Notes And Preferences"


-------------------------
Reginald Shepherd's Blog
-
Cortland Review  issue 33


-
Brian A. J. Salchert                   

sw00431a-inthefar.beyond

Autobio            (galaxies and avant-garde poetry)


 Earlier I was in the Archive of Astronomy Picture of the Day
 where I looked at a photo of the Globular Cluster M13.  
 In the explanation/ mention was made of a yet more distant 
 galaxy, a presence which moved me to say to myself interiorly:  
 The existence and persistence of the universe obliterates my
 comprehension.
 -
 I then went to Reginald Shepherd's Blog where I encountered
 a piece on the nature of language.  It was posted on Friday,
 May 18, 2007.  It's entitled: "A Few Words About Language".
 
 Reginald Shepherd's Blog is here.  In one sentence he says: 
 ". . . language is not a discrete entity the way sound and 
 color and shape are: . . ."  I agree.  As T. S. Eliot wrote in
 Burnt Norton: 
 . . . .  Words . . . / . . . / . . . slip, slide, . . . / . . . / 
 Will not stay still. 
 -
 Mr. Shepherd indicates that the purview of the poetic
 avant-garde is that space where language is nearest to
 losing its identity as language, but he does not pursue
 this.  Through examples from my own compositions I
 am going to pursue this, but not tonight.  It is nearing
 11:30, and I have other concerns.
 -
 23MAY07:  I am not in general an avant-garde poet.
 I am, however, in my own way, a poet who believes
 as Stanley Kunitz did: that a poem comes to one as a
 kind of blessing.  Therefore, even though I often do 
 chose a form first (such as the sonnet), I tend to allow
 a poem to develop an interior form.  A poem is an it:
 a made thing.  This its construction, however, does not
 need to be predetermined in its form and content.  This
 its construction can issue from the sense and sound of
 its initial word or meta-word or non-word.  The levels
 of formality and informality to which a poem can rise
 (or descend, if you will) are endless.  Poem-making is
 not an exact science, however intensively a particular
 maker is craft-centered.  To begin with, each maker is
 a being who is constantly changing and being changed
 by da-dot-da-dot, da-dot-da-dot, da-dot-da-dot, rigida,
 rigida, ü ee ee ü ah ah ah.  And, in the riddledon-
 going, a foreign object in one's eye can suddenly flip
 "everything".  So, the so-called content of an object
 made with words always engenders an interior form,
 a form which can rigidly mimic an exterior form/ or
 which can so aggressively counter an exterior form it
 replaces that form with the form inherent in itself, or
 exist in some degree between/ wherein it serves as a
 tone master.
 -
 The following are varyingly avant-garde compositions of mine: 
 -
 See 2007/02/25/sw00237s for "Day Five     blue"    from my Birthday Ribbons set
 -
 See 2007/02/13/sw00207tdp for "As the Desk Lamp Flickers"
 -
 See 2007/05/01/sw00357ut for "E v e n i n g"
 -
 See 2007/04/25/sw00348v for "U"
 -
 See 2007/05/10/sw00385jt for "Incantation" (see near bottom of entry)
 -



Brian A. J. Salchert                  

sw00244aih-internal.news

4      As It Happens



*
The big news of this day for me is not the total
eclipse of the moon, nor it is the discovery of 
several new bloggers I will shortly write about;
it is that I have (partly through my persistent
searching through my scattered files and also
partly through a Google "quadrunelle" search
I moments ago did which was aided by the
exixtence of a Google cache I am !!! thankful
for) finally found my Homer poems and my 6
quadrunelles entitled The Dempsey Poplars.
This means I can continue placing my Sets book
up in this journal space.

*

Okay, the new bloggers.
-
Somewhere recently I came across Tony Tost: his name,
that is; but yesterday when I decided to do a "Springfield
Missouri poets" search/ young Mr. Tost's name showed
again.  This was due to his having been born here in 1975. 
I then did some "Tony Tost" searches, and one of those led
me to his site where I learned that his favorite contemporary
poet is Allen Grossman.  This fact stunned me in several
ways: firstly, I had never heard of Allen Grossman; secondly,
when I did an "Allen Grossman" search/ guess who one of
the results was: Reginald Shepherd; thirdly, I had read a set
of 12 poems by Tony Tost online, and so I had a wee sense
of his "style"; fourthly, when I read Reginald's remarks about
Allen Grossman and the three Allen Grossman poems he
shared, my first impression of Tony Tost was shredded, for 
here is a young poet/musician I yet imagine traveling through
a universe nearly the opposite of that universe the much older
Mr. Grossman seemingly travels through.
-
Somewhere amid reading Reginald's "The Mirage We Call 
'Poetry'" and his "On W. S. Merwin's The Lice" and a post at
his partner's site, I read his "Why I Write" and the comments
beneath it.  It was there I was introduced to Mark Granier;
but I did not go to his site until I was nudged to: to read
what he wrote there concerning the major/minor quest and/or
question, about which I am going to write zilch for the nonce. 

*

Started posting The Dempsey Poplars and then
because of a minor sidebar event along with my long
unhappiness with usingthe word part of the title of 
the first quadrunelle for the title of the group/ I--but
I think I will let you figure out why--changed the 
group title to: Thatah.  
-
Also, since Teasings is being whittled into non-
existence,  I am going to move the poems in it
which remain, alongwith other poems, such as
my "At First to Poets" which is already in this
weblog to a new book I have entitled: Venturings. 



Brian A. J. Salchert