WORK

…you become acquainted with the mass-produced man, the absent man: he goes from Paris to Tokyo, from Tokyo to New York. He goes everywhere on an electric earth, like a corpse laid out in death. He takes trains, the kind that go from one point to another. From nothing to nothing. In his haste he takes the void with him. However often he speaks, he only hears himself. However far he goes, he finds only himself. Wherever he goes, he leaves behind a stain of gray; he sleeps in the midst of what he sees.
[…]
And then there is that other type of man. A useless fellow. Wonderfully useless. He certainly didn’t invent the wheelbarrow, ATM cards, or nylon stockings. He never invents a thing. He neither adds to nor takes away from the world: he leaves it. Or he finds that the world has left him, it’s the same thing. You might see him here or there, driving his flock of thoughts before him. He dreams in every language. You can see him from a long way off: he’s like the men in the desert, those blue men. He’s like the people with their flesh tinted from the cloth that protects them from the sun. His heart is seized with blue. You see him here and there, in the uprisings he inspires, in the flames that devour him. In the books he writes.

—Christian Bobin (trans. by Alison Anderson)
—from “Promised Land”
—found in A Little Party Dress: Lyric Essays

WORD(S)

kenspeck(le) /KEN-spek(-l)/. adjective. Of remarkable appearance; easily recognizable, distinctive, conspicuous. Interestingly, the origin isn’t related to that of the word conspicuous, as one might expect, but instead derives from the Old Norse kennispeki, meaning the faculty of recognition (see also: Norwegian kjennespak, Swedish känspak, quick at recognizing persons or things).

“As kenspeck as a cock on a church broach.” (F. K. Robinson)

“The immediate front of a battle is a bit too public for any one to lie hidden in by day, especially when two or three feet of snow make everything kenspeckle.” (John Buchan)

“I grant ye, his face is kenspeckle,
That the white o’ his e’e is turn’d out,
That his black beard is rough as a heckle,
That his mou’ to his lug ’s rax’d about” (James Nicol)

WEB

1. Rogeting…it’s the new plagiarism. Or not so new. I once had a student turn in a paper that referred to “African American Jack” instead of “Black Jack.” Such stories are battalion.

2. Oh, baby, baby it’s a weird world: the never-ending conundrums of classical physics.

3. Origami Inspires Rise of Self-Folding Robot (while I struggle to fold a daffodil).

4. 291 Paper Letters + 2,454 Photographs + 140 hours of work = The History of Typography in Stop-Motion

5. “I burned my life, that I might find / A passion wholly of the mind…” So wrote Louise Bogan—future Poet Laureate of the US—who was born today in 1897. Bogan is (unfairly; shamefully) mostly forgotten now, having eschewed the confessional and stuck to formal rhyme and meter just as both choices became increasingly unpopular. The Internet Archive has a smattering of Bogan’s poems and, more importantly, her first book of poetry (Body of This Death) and a volume of selected prose, criticism and poetry. You can also listen to Bogan read some of her poems as part of the Essential American Poets series.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader M. writes to thank me for the link to the bizarre Singapore theme park which, she says, will “haunt her dreams.” — You’re welcome!

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

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