for today.Β
because it overwhelms me.
Thinking Literac(ies)
“Ultimately we find that the cognitive consequences are more about the new meaning systems and activities that occupy our minds than they are just about the character of work with symbols…”
“Whether one form of inscription is more efficient or more easily learned than another (the asserted alphabetic advantage) may be less consequential in its cognitive consequences than if a society has developed a large bureaucracy, literary culture, philosophic tradition, technology, commerce, and educational system using whatever form(s) of inscription it has historically developed”
“The world we know, think about, and act within is saturated by and structured on the texts that travel from place to place and have some durability over the years. Β The built symbolic world on which we have elaborated new social meanings and relationships and that is the object of our thought and attention as we try to live our lives as successfully as we can within it, in that we find the consequences of literacy.”
“literacy is part of the stuff out of which a way of life is made”
-Charles Bazerman, Social Implications of Writing-
On Rage, a poem
Β
Rage
βΒ Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β Β β¦that dog
barking at nothing
because every time heβs barked at nothing,
nothingβs gone wrong and why not keep it that way?β
– Bob Hicok, βOne of those things we sayβ¦β
Blaze searing eye-corner
fierce rupture
a hazard of blades
we two, entangled –
emotion dug deep and flung far β
architectonic
like the causes of weather
complexity systems
large beyond measure
on any scale
insinuated within
spaces we intimately share
archaic wounds β a butterflyβs wing β
tempest stress to tumultuous effect
(deep dug, far flung)
we two, engangled
emotive amygdalas in action
safe love, a hazard of blades
Serry (orality)
art from utterance (orality + literacy)
SERRY
What is said,
This moment,
This word,
Is real, torn, squeezed,
Extruded
From heart and breath
And world.
This sly scribble,
A snake that curves
And curls tight,
Brain deep.
My thoughts
In your voice,
A mask,
A masking.
Laid down,
A trap, cunning gin
Tongue-tying,
Strident
(Though even whispered).
Time bomb.
We sing in chords,
In chorus.
Drum on flesh and earth
Together,
Drum with feet,
Drum with tongues.
Together ululate,
A stampede, a flock.
Syncopate pulse,
We merge.
Never this
String of thought,
Tugged out to tie senses,
Alone, locked on paths
With no cessation.
A spell, an enchanting,
Mazed: ink and electron
Dancing grim tango.
Entangled, entangled
In mind or mouth,
Striving to know escape
Or to know belonging.
The mute language of skies,
The sing of cloud dissolving.
Being nothing
But ourselves
We dive down
And drown.
What i mean is
What eye can mean
View original post 92 more words
Found Autobiography
A country mapped with invisible ink
Like we are the hole that grows in poor, unmendable
nothing: we blind needles: we unmoored threads:
like feeling I’m the enaction of a waterfall by my tongue
.
upon your body, as when a boat is brought to the edge
of exile and a hand extends to a hand or a tree
beseeches with its shadeshawl: however born,
.
there is reaching, we agree the wind smelled of copper
one day, a passport the next: like how to escape
my brain’s slum of words, the ghetto of the said,
.
while adoring there the rocks, the teacups,
if half of me is a Molotov cocktail and half
the inflection of loss and half a genuflection
.
to breath: like wondering if this extra half
is a country mapped with invisible ink:
like how windows ask to come along with the going
.
and preside over the staying, and I look at them
with all the love, all the shatter I can muster:
shards cutting me when I try to put the sky,
.
the distance back together: boredom cutting me
deeper when I don’t: like searching for a man
in a burning house and finding a piano as echo flees:
.
a whetstone still warm from the blade: sheets pressed
with brainfolds of sleep: a whisper from the bathroom
of running water: but no body: and I carry
.
these things to safety that are not the man: the piano
in my arms, running water in my mouth, the vespers
of sleep, the knife, so like a wing, like flight:
.
and say of him, that was me, to the ashes, the char:
and sift the memory of flames for their sorrow,
holding smoke to the mirror interested only
.
in solid dreams: like it will finally see
what isn’t there and give it my face, this presence
of absence I have tried and tried not to be
**********
“almost as if I’m making her and this poem and my past
up as I go, to help me feel nothing
.
goes to waste, not even waste.”
-also Bob Hicok
And finally…poems
I recognize that I hunger for poetry – periodically I canvas new poetry books and the old on my shelves to be STRUCK – to be wakened – charged – re-membered – into some leaping alive sensibility awareness delight sorrow grief ecstasy – that the vividness and risk of well-made poems incite…
for me, anyway.
Thus, the Bolano. Β A beginning.
Thus, returning to Nooteboom, a certainty.
Thus, the new arrivals shelf – Wichita Public Library.
and then…today…BOOM.
Bob Hicok, tested favorite,Β “new arrival,”Β Elegy Owed
the jump-start.
the activation.
something likeΒ recognitionΒ andΒ instigation at once.
what poetry does.
and having no idea where to begin to share it with you
to recommend
to commend to you
I’ll just offer the opening poem:
and the closer…
Good-bye
and to tell you that everything in between is every bit as good
and some even better….
Good-bye
Β
Small white church at the edge of my yard.
A bell will ring in a few hours.
People who believe in eternity will sing.
Iβll hear an emotion resembling the sea from over a hill.
One time I sat with my back to the church to give their singing
to my spine, thereβs a brown llama you can watch
while you do this in a field if youβd like to try.
I donβt think even calendars believe in eternity.
Beyond the church is a trail that leads to a bassinet in a tree.
Someone put it there when the oak and sky were young.
Iβm afraid to climb the tree.
That Iβll find bones inside.
That theyβll be mine.
I want to be withΒ my wife forever but not as we are.
Sheβll become a bear, I a season: Kodiak, spring.
Part of loving bagpipes haunting the gloaming is knowing
the bloodsinging will stop.
Beyond the church I pulled a hammer from the river.
What were you building, I asked its rust, from water and without nails?
This is where I get self-conscious about language,
words are love affairs or sΓ©ances or harpoons, there isnβt a sentence
that isnβt a plea.
This is where I donβt care that Iβm half wrong when I say everything
is made entirely of light.
This is where my wife and I hold hands.
Over there is where our shadows do a better job.
– Bob Hicok, Elegy Owed
All my Words are Silent 