July Notes

reading War and Peace.



I'm especially absorbed by the section from the Poetry in a Time of Crisis Conference: Is Poetry Enough (interesting Juliana Spahr essay here. Another essay is here).



Watched Winter Soldier. I'm interested in testimony -- in its necessity.



These are sentences from Jen Scappettone and Judith Goldman:



"Poetry's role is to decrease people's capacity to absorb contradictions quiescently"



"At the same time, however, to testify to war achieving its primary aim -- which is to injure and kill -- is also a symbolic act of remembrance and defiance."

makes me want to make (spring)

Linh Dinh is my new favorite poet. Lots of intriguing and inspiring stuff over at the flux I share.

sunday

A whole section devoted to feminist art in The Washington Post:

To get into the show, you have to brush past a 12-foot-tall, blood-red vulva suspended from the ceiling, woven from sisal in the gnarly style of a classic hippie hanging. It's so supremely brash it makes you laugh and squirm at the same time. Many of the female and feminist themes in this show, as well as the simple concentration of them in one place, can leave even fans feeling vaguely squirmy. We're clearly not used to an exhibition that's all woman, all the time, even though we seem to have no trouble with other shows drenched in testosterone -- which would be almost every exhibition that we've ever seen, judging by the warriors and courtesans and macho brushstrokes in their works, and by the males who crafted them.

I've also been reading Lee Ann Brown and Sylvia Plath. Also watching Twin Peaks Season 2.