|k| clippings: 2015-10-29 — everything is up in the air

WORK

“Hen”

The hen is the best example of what living constantly with humans leads to. She has completely lost the lightness and grace of a bird. Her tail sticks up over her protruding rump like a too large hat in bad taste. Her rare moments of ecstasy, when she stands on one leg and glues up her round eyes with filmy eyelids, are stunningly disgusting. And in addition, that parody of song, throat-slashed supplications over a thing unutterably comic: a round, white, maculated egg.

The hen brings to mind certain poets.

—Zbigniew Herbert (translated by Czeslaw Milosz and Peter Dale Scott)
—from The Collected Poems: 156–1998

WORD(S)

futilitarian /fyoo-til-ə-TAIR-ee-ən/. noun or adjective. One who is devoted to futile pursuits or believes in the futility of aspiration. A portmanteau of futile + utilitarian; coined by Robert Southey.

“If the Utilitarians would reason and write like you, they would no longer deserve to be called Futilitarians.” (Robert Southey)

“Born helpless, nude and unable to provide for himself, Lore Sjöberg eventually overcame these handicaps to become a futurist, a futurologist and a futilitarian.” (Lore Sjöberg)

“Better an ‘Old Futilitarian of the dead American left’ than a surf-rider on the Wave of the Future.” (Irving Howe)

“They are infinite, I am thinking, all these hungry, grasping people chasing after the new and improved, the super and imperishable, and I stand alone against them—but that’s the kind of thinking that led me astray all those years ago. Better not to think. Better not to act. Just wave the futilitarian banner and bury your nose in a glass of sake.” (T.C. Boyle)

WEB

1. The George Eastman House photo collection is a great place to spend some time. The albums are a good starting point. I particularly enjoyed the Autochromes featuring color photography from the 1910s, and the Lincoln Conspiracy albums.

2. An exceptionally well-written story that could have gone wrong in so many ways. Good stuff. → American Horror Story: The Cecil Hotel

3. “I am simply a Native American artist and writer whose creative mantra in best summed up with a word from my tribe’s own language as: ‘taʔčaʔx̣ʷéʔtəŋ’, which means ‘get into trouble’.” → Jeffrey Veregge Art, Design and Mischief

4. An interview with Peter Mendelsun, book cover designer extraordinaire (and some of his best designs) [Thanks, Reader B.!]

5. Today in 1924, poet, essayist and playwright Zbigniew Herbert is born in Lwów, Poland. Herbert’s poetry is plainspoken and often, thanks to the prominence of World War II and its aftermath in his life—a time in which he saw his hometown destroyed and replaced, essentially, with a concentration camp and he became active in the resistance—tragicomic. In Herbert’s work the extremes of beauty, even rapture, and despair are plain…as is the tragic and comedic circumstance of humanity as we are constantly ground between them. I’ve featured Herbert’s poems and prose here multiple times and heartily recommend his Collected Poems as a must-have for any poetry reader (the cover photo is awesome too).

WATCH/WITNESS

I’d never heard of it until now but ► contact juggling is mesmerizing. Sometimes it looks like the juggler has three hands, other moments seem impossible without CGI (which I don’t think is being used).

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader W. on a poetry coincidence: “Not sure if you know that Sylvia Plath and Dylan Thomas share a birthday.” — I realized that when I was preparing the last newsletter. Serendipitously, the owner of a ‘daily’ poems list I belong to shared this inspired pairing: ‘The force that through the green fuse drives the flower’ and ‘Poppies in October’. Bonus: listen to ► Sylvia Plath reading her poem and listen to ► Dylan Thomas reading his accompanied by a creepy animation.

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