J. Johnson came to Spokane’s urban
Environs tracking mud across
The academic carpet, carbon
Dating mastodons of loss
Put up for sale in Fairbanks’ paper,
Domestic, edgeless, Great Lakes clipper
Delivering Jonathan to our town,
A mountain man in poet’s gown,
Intense, awake, a patient teacher,
A husband, father, one who knows
The shape of silence and what grows
From silence into human nature.
Dear J, it’s nice to see you here–
When will we drink that promised beer?
Archives for January 2013
Jonathan Johnson
Call for Book Reviews
Please consider it.We can’t pay but you could get a free book out of it.
Don’t make me get all Sally Struthers on y’all…
Soldiers Grove Stanza
-written in solidarity with Spokane
In Soldiers Grove the Kickapoo has
Entwined among its piney banks
The shady form of greening mythos,
Which takes as motto: “Thanks–no thanks!”
Where once the village taverns numbered
In double-digits, floods encumbered
The pour, and city fathers moved
To move the village. Once approved
The people cast their lot with science
To capture solar-paneled fire
Upon a hill. Now higher and drier
Than amber bottled self-reliance–
Our thirsty tongues can still recall
How shadows made the sunlight fall.
American Whisky, get away from me-hee!
If you miss Seinfeld
Or if you’re tired of watching Kramer shave with butter or Elaine selling Muffin Tops, the sitcom of all sitcoms has been resurrected as a Twitter account. All new episodes @SeinfeldToday
Wendell B
Spokane Stanzas
Prologue
Spokane’s the place where water falling
From Idaho runs through with thoughts
Unconsciously unwinding, reeling
The poets in from inland squats
To take their places at the river’s
Bedraggled edges. Poets’ livers
Can’t filter all that they abuse
Themselves with for the lovely ruse
That lines of words can make unhappy
Inhabitants of Coeur d’Alene
Cease for a moment feeling pain
Or leastwise help them feel less crappy
When turning towards the Cascade heights
With thoughts of oceanic nights.
The Day Job
The Digriteor
I
Did you hear the one about the orange
Under the electron microscope, and how
The grand canyon of it all they found
In the black and white they took would give
The lie to think the gods of nature wrought
Cartesian topologies for men, our palms
To sooth, our minds to smooth, and tincture truth
With text of juicy parchment? Moist yet dry
It slices deep horizons into wedges.
II
(I digress.)
It’s mighty odd
To be bruised and bothered by blisters;
Though I have lately found
July’s clouds – July’s birds
And July’s raving wind. They sing July’s graves, wild with dew.
Though I called, though I called,
Though I most seriously called
They were the facts I lost, ever-divergent,
Told in angles and slants;
Yet, bruised and bothered by blisters,
They say to me no true word that’s not.
III
They say that atoms are God’s rosary beads –
They spin off through fingered voids like blebs of fire,
Each revolution increasing by one
The total sum that sloughs from stars and sand,
What Abraham was pained to count. And yet
His foot would make its mark and guide his eyes
To smart additions of eternity,
The promised land extracted ex nihilo.
Unpeel that mystery, you’ll find it rhymes with prayer.
Achtung Korrektiv
Look, are we going to do this or not? I mean, the universe is broadcasting on an open channel here:
This article begins, “We have no idea what a self is. So how can we fix it?” Rally, Korrektiv, rally!
Site of next Korrektiv retreat located.
New Clairvaux in Northern California. I don’t know from Cistercians, but they follow St. Benedict’s rule, so they can’t be all bad. Plus, they just rebuilt their chapter house – the one that William Randolph Hearst dismantled in Spain and hauled over to the States. Read all about it here. Plus: vineyards! Ales!
Plus ca change
Well, it’s nice to know that people threatening violence against critics of their favorite band in the YouTube comment sections is not without its precedents. This is from The Voice, a collection of pieces about Frank Sinatra that originally appeared in The New Yorker during the mid forties:
Sinatra has undoubtedly made his fans tolerance-conscious and persuaded them to champion the rights of minority groups, but on the whole they have not learned to be tolerant of critics of Sinatra. When Ben Gross, the radio editor of the Daily News, remarked that he did not consider Sinatra the greatest singer in the world, one Sinatra fan wrote him that she :would love to take you to Africa, tie you to the ground, pour honey on you, and let he ants come and bite you to pieces,” and another that “you should burn in oil, pegs should be driven into your body, and you should be hung by your thumbs.”
From the JOB Archives: Limerick
Today in Word Meaning
Planned Parenthood wants to move away from the word “choice.”
“It’s a complicated topic and one in which labels don’t reflect the complexity,” said Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards at a press briefing Wednesday. But, she said, the group’s polling showed most Americans could get behind a more nuanced statement of principles: “It is important that women make their own decisions about pregnancy, and that politicians do not.”
Women should make their own decisions ≠ women should make their own choices?
Women should make their own decisions ≠ pro-choice?
I confess, the nuance escapes me.
Kierkegaard Comes Up
Lance Armstrong is a big fucking asshole. That seems to be the emerging consensus in the wake of his confession. One of the experts on the subject is Mike Anderson, a former mechanic and personal assistant to Armstrong. In Anderson’s recent interview with Sports Illustrated, what may be of interest to readers of Korrektiv is that Anderson mentions Kierkegaard.
I’m curious about that ellipsis (…) following “forgiveness and guilt and anxiety and the roots of it all.” Did Anderson say more about his reading of our man K that the SI editors deemed too philosophical for their brain-damaged readership? Here’s our chance for some real investigative reportage, K-team. Get on it!
See also: “[Catholic mom] Betsy Andreu always knew that Lance Armstrong doped”