Herman's Humpback: A Miscellany

My Lord! The month finds itself scrieving by as if on steroids. I confess to being caught up in the nets of neglect and remorsefully re-appear here with best wishes and good cheer.

First off, Melville celebrated his 188 birthday anniversary on the first of August: hail, Herman! I share a birthday with the publication of MOBY DICK (November 14, 1851; date of book's publication, not my d.o.b.). On August 11, there is a celebration of the man and his work down at Hudson River Park in Manhattan. Look up the info and pick up your harpoon...

On other fronts, poet Burt Kimmelman just gave a wonderful reading a few weeks ago at Morningside Bookstore up near Columbia; the new work was radiant...Samuel Menashe is reading here and there over the next few months, details to follow....Michael Heller is out in Colorado as a poet-in-residence to the mountains and visitors like Norman Finkelstein...Zach Barocas is about to update the cultural society. Chris Leo is moving to Florence...

The new slew of big-time lit mags are mediocre to the say the best....and, as I read WITTGENSTEIN'S MISTRESS by David Markson (marvelous!) I realize that glibness need not be a trademark of experimental writing. A brilliant tome and greatly outshines the prolix palaver of David Foster Wallace and many of the other Polyanderthals...

Where are you, Reader? And what are you up to?

j. curley

The mission

You can expect a full report; it will be left
in code, in case it should fall into the hand of agents,
or of thieves, or witches. The glyphs will run thus –
two suns setting mean “Mission Accomplished”.
An archway followed by a pigeon, if drawn in my own blood
stands for “Progress Delayed; I’ve Met a Girl”.
If you find a pound sign anywhere, invert the meaning
of the next two signs. A feather is bad enough, a feather
and an eye mean “Cyanide Capsules All Around”.

Keep your fingers crossed, we all know
how this whole thing could go down.

I will get the message to you, in chalk
on the alley wall. I will, if they have
taken my fingers, I will just pay that homeless guy
to draw it. If I have no tongue,
it will not matter. If you have no eyes to read with
or ears, if they have gotten to you,
I will lend you new senses and transmit this to you.
I can hook right into your veins and sing you
the weeping, red song of all I’ve learned here.
I will do it. I’m that committed
to the mission.

Mark Aiello

...A BIG BIRD IN A COOL THE NIGHT...

for Charlie BIRD
Parker:

as twilight slips in like some
esquisite fine chick in the thinnest
sleekest silk sheath
I bend an ear t' 1944 recordings
o' Bird
oozin' out o' the box
'n' all that frustration 'n' angst
seems jes s'lame
its like Bird's sweet sweetest Horn
be sayin' jes t' me alone:
"Man,why don' y'be Coolthe?
all that pent up violence
'n' nowhere shit
is s' from hunger, y' DIG?
like, be COOLTHE, BABY!
don' be lettin' that shit
drag y'down
there
t' that square
drugged scene..."
'n' man, I hear that MESSAGE
that BIRD be layin' down
from SOMEWHERE
OUT THERE
in spite o' all that
Cosmo Debris
that do be
tryin' t' obscure
'n' veil
what needs t' be
revealed
t' cats such as I
still scufflin' here
in these neonesque
streets o' Blues
s' I place m' lips
upon Lady Night
'n' let all that
negative shit slide
'n' disipate
'n' I COOLTHE
y'dig?
'n' Lady Moon
Lady Night
'n' that Bird
siloutted upon
Her orb o'
platinum
caresses me
m'eyes
m' hurtin' flesh
'n' somehow I am
finally
possessed
by that Ecstasy
that
Nirvana
that all them there
mystics
'n' Sufi Dervishes
'n'
Boddhisatvas
sought
in all them places
I jes could never
MAKE IT
nor fake IT
jes bendin' an ear
t' a Big Bird
in a Coolthe Night
m' lips pressed t'
in darkest tender Kiss
o' nocturnal bliss
yes!
o,man,yes!
can y' DIG?
why jazz do IT for
cats like
me
'n' probably
thee?

-Gypsy James/ApocoHipster Hashshashin

for Charlie BIRD Parker

...A BIG BIRD IN A COOLTHE NIGHT...

as twilight slips in like some
esquisite fine chick in the thinnest
sleekest silk sheath
I bend an ear t' 1944 recordings
o' Bird
oozin' out o' the box
'n' all that frustration 'n' angst
seems jes s'lame
its like Bird's sweet sweetest Horn
be sayin' jes t' me alone:
"Man,why don' y'be Coolthe?
all that pent up violence
'n' nowhere shit
is s' from hunger, y' DIG?
like, be COOLTHE, BABY!
don' be lettin' that shit
drag y'down
there
t' that square
drugged scene..."
'n' man, I hear that MESSAGE
that BIRD be layin' down
from SOMEWHERE
OUT THERE
in spite o' all that
Cosmo Debris
that do be
tryin' t' obscure
'n' veil
what needs t' be
revealed
t' cats such as I
still scufflin' here
in these neonesque
streets o' Blues
s' I place m' lips
upon Lady Night
'n' let all that
negative shit slide
'n' disipate
'n' I COOLTHE
y'dig?
'n' Lady Moon
Lady Night
'n' that Bird
siloutted upon
Her orb o'
platinum
caresses me
m'eyes
m' hurtin' flesh
'n' somehow I am
finally
possessed
by that Ecstasy
that Nirvana
that all them there
mystics
'n' Sufi Dervishes
'n'
Boddhisatvas
sought
in all them places
I jes could never
MAKE IT
nor fake IT
jes bendin' an ear
t' a Big Bird
in a Coolthe Night
m' lips pressed t'
in darkest tender Kiss
o' nocturnal bliss
yes!
o,man,yes!
can y' DIG?
why jazz do IT for
cats like
me
'n' probably
thee?
Gypsy James/ApocoHipster Hashshashin

Love 'n' Peace o' Mind 'n' Ecstasy even be on y',
Gypsy James

untitled

Luchy Edwards, 2007

Seasonal Affective Orders (SAO)

I am curious if any of our readers are drawn to certain titles at certain times of the year. For example, every summer finds me reading and re-reading, rediscovering, Faulkner. The urge is never there until high summer and then I am hunting good Will and voraciously consuming his Southern (dis)comforts. Come to think of it, the Fall has me reading mostly biographies and literary and cultural criticism, the winter is especially concentrated on poetry, and spring? Anything goes. But since 2000 or so, Faulker mania comes a-knockin' in June or July and takes me on until just past Labor Day. Hey, readers! Any of you "suffer" from this condition?
CURLEY

Literacy & Idiocy Part II

The idiocy in this culture is critically endemic; not sure about the literacy but today's holiday merits a response, a rebuttal, a kerosene-wetted, upside-down flag. Are American citizens truly reading the writing on the walls? There is very little to celebrate if you sit down and read the history books or scratch the topical air for the residual stains of empirical evidence. Empirical--empire...a sad, bloated beast is good ol' America, a clumsy moloch lacking stomach enzymes to sate itself, therefore eating as much of the world as it deems fit for its voracious regimen/regime. Americans, be proud, tho' pride is a sin, and maintain your one noble consistency, the triumvirate of piety, preciousness, and paranoia...and be done with you.

written & conceived by: j. curley/m. scriblerus/k. o'farrell/& newcomer Stan Johnson....

Literacy & Idiocy

Now that the final volume of Harry Potter is sluicing down its magical pike into the eager arms of the world, I want to focus on a few of those arms-- those of the adult readership. Listen, I could care less about precocious pubesscent English magicians and everyone is entitled to read what they wish. But I see so many adults reading this pap; if they are serious readers, they might apt for an Anita Desai or Dan Brown novel. John Grisham, Maeve Binchy...you know the kind of sub par to middling "literature" that caters to third grade reading levels and preschool emotional sensibilities. I would rather illiteracy spread through the populace like a rash then see the continued trend of adults reading trash. Not reading is preferable to reading shit, to my mind. And how about Oprah's Book Club? Is a readership that got its clues & cues about what to read from a TELEVISION PROGRAM going to really do the serious work of getting down and dirty with Ms. Winfrey's suggested reading list? Really grasp a book like A Light in August? Enough to say they stuck to this tv trend, become an apostle to Oprah's editorial staff's lit picks,
and throw house parties discussing the handful of pages they got through. Let's allow people to marinate in their ignorance, seek over-stimulation in television, video games, ipods, cell phones, text messages, and let devolution allow the martians to have an easier time of it once they decide to conquer. MARTIN SCRIBLERUS

Deep in the Jungle

Am currently blitzing through the final volume (the third) of Norman Sherry's THE LIFE OF GRAHAM GREENE & reading vignettes about one of Greene's acquaintances who I met ten years ago. The Belgian Michel Lechat, long recognized as the leading specialist in leperosy and who contributed mightily to its eradication in the Third World, was working and living in the Congo when Greene came to do fieldwork for his novel, A BURNT-OUT CASE. Travelling home from China, I sat beside Monsieur Lechat on a flight out of Narita Airport, Tokyo. He was reading a French translation of a Keats biography and we got to talking. In only the space of a few hours, he showed himself to be a polymath and one of the most compassionate individuals I've ever met. I've thought about looking him up because his indelible presence, the way his person lent itself to changing the atmosphere around him, is so rare in this world of smoke, mirrors, sound bytes, snippets, high-speed dial-ups, and modern indifference.
j. CURLEY

Suburban compline

These hours are palpable, they are velvet banners
parting in front of you like carwash ribbons,
sluicing in through your car’s open windows,
a languid tide of ink. These hours bear up to you
the somnolent scents of this drowsing town,
an ozone incense of air conditioners,
the breath of plants snoozing in peated gardens,
thick spice of lawns lovingly mowed and seeded
on Sundays before churchtime.
These are anchoritic hours, haunted only by the housecat
stepping from one cool puddle of lamplight
to another, when your headlights distort neighbors’ bushes
into zodiacs and savage topiaries, searching
each parked car you pass for anyone else awake.

In the driveway, with the car switched off,
the quiet rushes in, an orchestral fill of many parts.
From down the street comes the white noise
of sprinklers switching on in succession,
each sweeping a Poisson distribution of dots
etching a deeper, random darkness
into parabolae of sidewalk and street.
The electric sound of sprinkler heads
like battalions of marching feet,
approaching, building, until their carriage returns.

Your car wickers and ticks itself to sleep,
still divesting itself of its highway heat.

The sound of your door closing
sets a dog somewhere to barking, once.

In the mulchy night, rinsed with cricketsound
and manmade rain, you at last take off your shoes,
your socks. You will be the only one all day
to feel how fond this grass is of your naked skin.
You crush the clipped blades, feeling dew
ooze between your toes, as the lush scent of the jungle plants
on neighbor’s porch wells up around you,
winds you in its tender tendrils,
takes you in,
you a wild thing, too.

Mark Aiello

Next stop: Deacon Blue Cafe

Last Wednesday I participated in a literary reading with, among others, the marvelous poet Samuel Menashe. The venue was the Deacon Blue Cafe at 417 Prospect Place in Brooklyn, between Grand and Classon, just several blocks up Washington Avenue from the Brooklyn Art Museum. The joint was jumping with words setting themselves spinning in all different directions. Usually literary readings are as enticing as open casket funerals: there is either much monotony and uniformity in the material being read or egos supersede timekeeping and one is subject, no, held hostage, to 45 minutes of tedious palaver. The Deacon Blue reading series is winningly electic and electric: besides Samuel Menashe and myself, there was a fine short story reader, a free-style hip-hop ranter, and a raconteur with a hilarious tale about domestic mischief in an African-American family set in the rural South during the fifties. If any of you wish to spin some fables, verse, or whatnot, let me know: we'll organize a reading with the series organizer, Michael Dorr, and welcome summer with some quality artists: you! j. curley

On Your Markson

Just finished reading THE LAST NOVEL by David Markson, described in one otherwise praising review as "geriatric postmodern fiction." Damning praise, that is; the book is actually another vital narrative assemblage of literary anecdotes, sketches, fragments, and feuilletons by David Markson, which echoes and helps form the subtle trajectory of the "Novelist." This character is at once the author's alter ego but also a general cipher for the universal questing creator. The various shards and mini-annals elucidate the anxieties of literary legacy, mortality, the unusual fates of artists, the under-illuminated tensions at heart in artistic creation. Markson is a master and I hope his career belies the title of this wonderful book. I look forward to THE NEXT TO LAST NOVEL, out of sequence, adjacent to the last but after it, and continuing Markson's stunning literary achievements. CURLEY

No Laughter, Only Forgetting: Where's Kundera?

On this Memorial Day weekend, one wonders: how does a country that has/suffers from chronic historical (and ethical) amnesia celebrate the holiday? I've no answer and am worried. Memorize your past and present, dear country, and stop listening to music by Erasure...
KATY O'FARRELL

Enough, You Realists & Pop Historians

Ian McEwan, Jonathan Safran Foer, Clair Messud, Don DeLillo, etc., on September 11, 2001,
John Updike on Terrorist(s)...the cottage industry about Islam and Muslims, East and West,
U.S. imperialism, reading Lolita in Nabokov....

...oh, how the modish can be menacing; not only does it show how lacking our cultural literacy and awareness had been, but just how susceptible we are to engrossing ourselves repeatedly in the au courant, the sensational, the most mightily media-disseminated stories and images...and the mediation is seldom deep. Why are the writers not diversifying their accounts and expanding their horizons AND getting such acclaim for being so narrow, so myopic?

Piously, they comb out psychological motives and means, engage the subjectivites of this and that subject regarding modern disaster, foregrounds and backgrounds gleaned from current events, but is it all viable? Are they necessary? MARTIN SCRIBLERUS (sorry for being out-of the-loop)

Collaboration Nation Station Day!

James Boswell, Dr. Johnson's biographer, died on this date in 1795 (Oscar Wilde was released from jail, too, in 1897, but that's another matter). That eccentric opus, that auto-, almost, auto-auto-biography, LIFE OF JOHNSON, reveals as much of Bos as it does the goodly Dr. One could say that their friendship, this tome, is not only a record of friendship's mutuality, but truly active artistic collaboration. In this spirit, I urge all of you artistically tendentious to go and converge with one of your fellow artists and commit great acts of collaboration (preferably in mixed media formats-- check out www.sidebar.net for some thoughts) or even collaboracide (even a dually destructive effort in which doubling leads to troubling is a redeemable practice).
Come on, text and image, paint brush and DVD, sculpture and FM radio frequencies, you know how to collide and connect....j. curley