AIG & Charles Simic

Here's a suggestion from our poet laureate that could be implemented to deal with the financial disaster's rogues and thieves. "Deterrence by example. Let's bomb X so that Y and Z will know we mean business & behave. By that logic why not hang a few crooked politicians & bankers so that others may be warned." hmmmmmmmm While I'm at it, in a similar vein, he wrote, "Centuries ago, when the king's advisors gave wrong predictions as to the outcome of military campaigns, they were tortured & publicly executed. In our days, they continue being called "experts" and appear on TV."  & while I'm quoting, here's one from Antonio Porchia (translated by W.S. Merwin),      

       What words say does not last. The words last.

       Because words are always the same, &

       what they say is never the same.

This is like writing a report in grade school(high school, college) ; just copy word for word from various sources. I think the saying is "Plagiarism is the highest form of compliment."

 

your dose of simic for today

Four poets reading. "My pain is greater than yours," they kept shouting all night.

I think I was at that reading.

another simic

"Ideological criticism is always stationary. It has its "true position" from which it doesn't budge. It's like insisting that all paintings should be viewed from a distance of ten feet and only ten feet. Many paintings do not fully exist at that distance, of course. Besides, one is never at a single vantage point except intellectually. In life & in art, one is simultaneously in several places at once." Like the time I was listening to a recording of Charles Lloyd playing at the Monterey Jazz Festival, but I was confusing Monterey with Montreaux , so I was hearing him through my French filter and associating him with all the great American expatriots who went to France to play the music Americans did not understand or honor. We were both in three places at that moment, and at this moment I'm in this place and those places. Is Charles Lloyd here with me even though I'm presently listening to Rudresh Mahanthappa? Is Rudresh Mahanthappa in Montreaux and Monterey & in a cottage outside Boston where I was listening to Charles Lloyd at Monterey/Montreaux? And where is Charles Simic now, the guy who got this all started.  Where would the postmodernist deconstructionists stand on this? What about the neo-punk papists and the omnipresent protopaternal god? This is why I'm going to convert to Ideological Criticismism. No more intellectual vertigo for me!

quotes from Charles Simic

How did Charles Simic sneak through national security & become the Poet Laureate of the U.S.!!!

Every now & then I'll be starting my blog with a quote from his book, The Monster Loves His Labyrinth.  Some days a quote will be the whole entry. Here's today's:

"The new American Dream is to get to be very rich and still be regarded as a victim."