Charles Bernstein & Annie Paradis Lungfill series at Zinc Bar Sunday, Nov. 18, at 5:30pm 82 West 3rd Street between Sullivan & Thompson in New York's Greenwich Village.
Caesar of ribald songs & nose & blemishes of seven birthmarks on his stomach ringworm gravel in his urine negligent of personal appearance when granted an audience with the Great Bear & on dropping off in summer slept with the bedroom door open to protect himself especially by not bathing with an oil rub after which he took a douche of water (sulfur water) on a wooden bath seat ended with a sharp sprint in the company of little boys regarding them as freaks
“There is a certain curiosity in it that exceeds melancholy.” I took this quote out of a notebook of mine, my “Praha” Moleskine that has never seen Prague, for I translate a “Praha” out of wherever I am, going to Prague by simply writing always in the pages of Praha, even when I am elsewhere, knitting these elsewheres together into Prague or Praha. At times I even take out the map of the city and use it to find where I am, though I am nowhere near Prague.
What does Prague and a notebook I bought on The Danforth in Toronto (a reject)—and have no right to use—have to do with translation, you ask? Perhaps all translation has to do with curiosity and melancholy, I respond.
I open the notebook two pages further on and find a quote from Giorgio Agamben scribbled there, from page 340 of his Puissance de la pensée: “La facticité est la condition de ce qui demeure caché dans son ouverture, de ce qui est exposé par son retrait même.”
Joanne Kyger, photo by Bill Berkson, Angel Hair, 1970
"Peter Orlofsky locks himself in the bathroom all night and smokes opium and then vomits all the next morning so we travel slowly."
Linda Russo: Introduction Joanne Kyger — poem — “Man” from Man/Women Kevin Killian — The “Carola Letters" Charlie Vermont — “Form/id/able” and Joanne Kyger Linda Russo — an interview with Joanne Kyger
Monday night around 8:40 pm, I watched the East River flood its banks. It’s funny to think of the East River as even having banks. For so much of my life, I hardly thought of it as a river—or estuary, really. It was completely off limits—I didn’t drink from it, would never have swum in it and didn’t boat on it. I thought of it as sort of a giant drainage pipe, if I thought about it at all. But one week ago, like a “real” river, it flooded and was an amazing thing to see. There is a park that runs along the river, and inside the park are soccer fields and on those soccer fields were giant floodlights illuminating what had turned from a strictly bounded river into a contiguous field of water. I had to look twice as it was such an unexpected sight. On the other side, I could see water coming over the FDR drive and into a parking lot, then halfway into a basketball court behind my building. Just as I was wondering whether it would make it to me, yes, me personally, a giant flash lit up the sky and the power cut out. I can’t remember if there was an actual “zzzzt!” but it sure seemed like it.
NY Reading & other announcements
Charles Bernstein & Annie Paradis
Lungfill series at Zinc Bar
Sunday, Nov. 18, at 5:30pm
82 West 3rd Street between Sullivan & Thompson
in New York's Greenwich Village.
Jerome Rothenberg: From 'A CRUEL NIRVANA: Two Narratives from The Lives of the Caesars'
I. Augustus
Caesar of ribald songs & nose & blemishes
of seven birthmarks on his stomach
ringworm
gravel in his urine
negligent of personal appearance when granted
an audience with the Great Bear
& on dropping off in summer
slept with the bedroom door open
to protect himself
especially by not bathing with an oil rub
after which he took a douche of water
(sulfur water)
on a wooden bath seat
ended
with a sharp sprint in the company of little boys
regarding them as freaks
Translation as facticity
(Curiosity and melancholy too)
“There is a certain curiosity in it that exceeds melancholy.” I took this quote out of a notebook of mine, my “Praha” Moleskine that has never seen Prague, for I translate a “Praha” out of wherever I am, going to Prague by simply writing always in the pages of Praha, even when I am elsewhere, knitting these elsewheres together into Prague or Praha. At times I even take out the map of the city and use it to find where I am, though I am nowhere near Prague.
What does Prague and a notebook I bought on The Danforth in Toronto (a reject)—and have no right to use—have to do with translation, you ask? Perhaps all translation has to do with curiosity and melancholy, I respond.
I open the notebook two pages further on and find a quote from Giorgio Agamben scribbled there, from page 340 of his Puissance de la pensée: “La facticité est la condition de ce qui demeure caché dans son ouverture, de ce qui est exposé par son retrait même.”
Joanne Kyger feature in Jacket 11
Edited by Linda Russo
"Peter Orlofsky locks himself in the bathroom all night and smokes opium and then vomits all the next morning so we travel slowly."
Linda Russo: Introduction
Joanne Kyger — poem — “Man” from Man/Women
Kevin Killian — The “Carola Letters"
Charlie Vermont — “Form/id/able” and Joanne Kyger
Linda Russo — an interview with Joanne Kyger
The city in and of nature
Monday night around 8:40 pm, I watched the East River flood its banks. It’s funny to think of the East River as even having banks. For so much of my life, I hardly thought of it as a river—or estuary, really. It was completely off limits—I didn’t drink from it, would never have swum in it and didn’t boat on it. I thought of it as sort of a giant drainage pipe, if I thought about it at all. But one week ago, like a “real” river, it flooded and was an amazing thing to see. There is a park that runs along the river, and inside the park are soccer fields and on those soccer fields were giant floodlights illuminating what had turned from a strictly bounded river into a contiguous field of water. I had to look twice as it was such an unexpected sight. On the other side, I could see water coming over the FDR drive and into a parking lot, then halfway into a basketball court behind my building. Just as I was wondering whether it would make it to me, yes, me personally, a giant flash lit up the sky and the power cut out. I can’t remember if there was an actual “zzzzt!” but it sure seemed like it.