louis

http://dangutstein.blogspot.com/2010/09/am-pluto-waterly-yours.html

More clever banter from the blog of Dan Gutstein. Why can't we have a Louis making music today? Or if there is a Louis, I don't know where he is.

iawtm

i agree with this mostly

prescott AZ

while driving north in search of trees we happen to arrive upon the lovely town of prescott arizona where all able beings coalesce midday upon half a dozen or so clean and spacious central streets along with tourists such as ourselves given to occasional snacking or random photography of local events like period reenactment of ok corral in tombstone itself much further south by the way with men in black hats and ladies in complete period regalia of fluffy puffy ripple stockings and sleeves and we might enjoy that and be there or have a lunch of bbq briskets in the palace enjoying a sarsparilla pouring and dudes banging out a gershwin or honky tonk on the upright piano as a gesture of community spirit or the passing through of quiet well manicured city streets with gleaming white balusters plinths and on the cornice rests a copper birdbath below the hung american flag oh and did you know pat benatar will be performing here tonight really yes down at the honda dealership along with reo speedwagon and special guests great i'll need something new for the occasion then let's find ourselves at a hat store and try on boonies and panamas and fedoras and this one your mother likes especially.

Jacket 40

My review of Aaron Belz' new book, Lovely, Raspberry, is now available for viewing in Jacket, issue 40.

http://jacketmagazine.com/40/r-belz-rb-belcher.shtml

Special thanks to John Tranter, and also Aaron Belz!
His blog, if you haven't seen it before, is here:

http://www.belz.net

The Center of the Room

or, more of the kind of behavior I'd prefer to see:

Directions:

Thank someone for being that one. Then, while singing a song, walk with that one to the center of the room and back again. Burn something.


-Seneca

from Shaking the Pumpkin, Traditional Poetry of the Indian North Americas
edited with commentaries by Jerome Rothenberg, 1972.

Both art and history

Nero Magazine

http://www.neromagazine.it/n/

Art, photos and journalism from Italy. Both in Italian and English. The way the photos give you something to look at in the span of time it takes to load the next one, it gives the magazine a sense of velocity.

Also interesting is the conversation with Alighiero e Boetti, of whom I really know nothing.

Linguistic study can be valuable, I suppose, if it can tell us the difference between words such as belong and belongings.

light as element in construction

"In the Bay Area, the light, despite and even in the fog, is bright, strong and bounded; it separates and maintains objects, as if it were the source of their discreteness and their finitude, and makes the contrast between an object and its shadow definite and resolute. Meanwhile in Leningrad light and object merge; everything lifts in the light, drifts, is transformed, returns. The light comes from the side and is visible but diffuse, a mist in myriad tints. So Arkadii said that the blue of the sky is a shade of yellow. And while there is a shade called black, which glitters, another blue is a shade of black too, the black that doesn't glitter..."



Lyn Hejinian in Leningrad - American Writers in the Soviet Union by Michael Davidson, Lyn Hejinian, Ron Silliman and Barrett Watten, 1991



for a better view of the pyramid and Columbus Street, you can view this link:

http://www.planetware.com/picture/san-francisco-transamerica-pyramid-us-casfmk13.htm



Bay Area light...yes, this is really the case for San Francisco at least. Note how the Transamerica Pyramid has an entire side in complete shadow, I want to say that's how it would look at about two or three o'clock in the afternoon..There are many other smaller-scale examples to be found. Also, the dark green building at the end of Columbus Street, right side, maintains Francis Coppola's restaurant at the bottom floor, and I used to go to poetry readings there approx. 10 years ago. This photo is taken near the intersection at Broadway.



And now, Leningrad: (St. Petersburg today)



http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic-art/518092/122806/Fontanka-River-St-Petersburg

http://www.denrus.ru/img/hookcanalcp.jpg

http://www.saint-petersburg.com/images/cathedrals/st-sampson-cathedral.jpg


That last one is very interesting. Although I haven't been to St. Petersburg, it appears as though at certain times of the day/year, the yellowish tint of the sky moves off, and you are left with the impression of being about a mile up in the stratosphere. I have been to an Alaskan latitude of 57 degrees, but the lightwork was not quite the same, although that could be because there is no outstanding architecture in Alaska to serve as a contrast. At the risk of sounding like a complete hippie, it may be interesting to consider how the available light for an urban region conveys its presence within the composition of creative work that appears among artists, when buildings are a substitute for trees in general.