|k| clippings: 2015-02-19 — flailing's surreal self

WORK

“I believe in the future resolution of these two states, dream and reality, which are seemingly so contradictory, into a kind of absolute reality, a surreality, if one may so speak. It is in quest of this surreality that I am going, certain not to find it but too unmindful of my death not to calculate to some slight degree the joys of its possession.”

—André Breton
—from the “Manifesto of Surrealism”

WORD(S)

flagitious /flə-JI-shəs/. adjective. Heinous, exceedingly wicked, brutally criminal. From Latin flagitium (shameful, disgraceful), which itself derives from flagrum (whip)…think flagellate. Seriously, think about it.

“Our heroes slaughter’d and our ships on flame,
and Crimes heap’d on crimes, shall bend your glory down,
And whelm in ruins yon flagitious town.”
(Homer, translated by Alexander Pope)

“Seigneur. My genius is not innately apt – as this flagitious nebulon opines – for excoriating the cuticle of our Gallic vernacular. But, vice-versally, I am assiduous at striving, by oars and by sail, at locupleting it with latinate superfluity.” (Francois Rabelais, translated by M.A. Screech)

“A wicked law cannot be executed by good men, and must be by bad. Flagitious men must be employed, and every act of theirs is a stab at the public peace.” (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

WEB

1. I’m amazed this isn’t just a news story, but that the writer consulted a Latin professor to boot… → “Oak Park man invents word for ‘nieces and nephews’”

2. “Write some letters. Then, go to the library and place the letters in some books, preferably ones that aren’t checked out very often. Or, place them in books at a used bookstore, preferably books that might not be purchased for a long time. The letters can be about anything, to anyone, but keep them anonymous, untraceable. First names only, or no names at all. The people who find the letters get to imagine the lives outside of the words on paper.” → “52 Projects: Project #20”

3. Philip K. Dick was a genre-bending author whose work defies easy classification. Of course he inspired some amazing book covers! → 650+ PKD Book Covers

4. “…search the text of 1,424,780 individual statements within 6,683 Supreme Court oral arguments since the 1950s.” → SCOTUS SearchBETA

5. Today in 1896, French poet, painter and writer André Breton is born in Normandy. Breton associated with the Dadaists, but is well known for leading the Surrealist art movement…a term Breton himself invented in his 1924 “Manifesto of Surrealism” and which developed in part from his interest in the subconscious and automatism (automatic writing, painting and drawing).

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader B. writes: “That’s Philip Levine’s ‘M. Degas Teaches Art And Science At Durfee Intermediate School, Detroit, 1942.’ a splendid poem. I smiled at the humor, then appreciated the audience’s in that recording, and Levin’s comic timing while reading. ¶ Reminded me of junior high, and high school, all too well. That was near Detroit.”

• Reader H. writes: “I think I’ll be adding your headnote here [in which I apologized for the longer-than-usual poem by Philip Levine] to my file of unnecessary apologies.”

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