|k| clippings: 2016-03-15 — stabbing marchward

WORK

All of Leonardo’s “science” is touched with magic. We cannot help feeling within the intensity of his anatomies—his renderings of atmosphere—of chiaroscuro—his water curls—his fascination with turbulent interfaces—horses and men embattled—trees torn by winds—earth ravaged by flood—something always of body. Something that is irreducible and alive—even at its most lifeless core.

This can only mean mortality.

This is what grabs us finally in his obsessive concern with the pubic hair of life. The indomitable thrust of weed and flower out of dead rock. This reads deeper than Wasteland. There is a grace in his gracefulness—his compulsion yields intelligence. He will see—he will know—he will share with us. All lives and all dies.

—Cid Corman
—from “The Sense of Art”
—found in Where Were We Now: Essays & Postscriptum

WORD(S)

dehiscent /də-HISS-ənt/. adjective. Gaping. Rupturing. Ripe to bursting. From Latin dēhiscĕre (gape, yawn).

“…I cannot begin to tell you how strange the sentences with their riders and enclosures of information were to me, how blank they seemed, and then as if blankness were dehiscent in some mind garden, the blankness split open and was vague with not quite credible scenes…” (Harold Brodkey)

“I think of his earlier compositions where into the body of the musical statement he incorporates a punctuation of dehiscence, flottements, the coherence gone to pieces…” (Samuel Beckett)

“…I stitched the dehiscent wound as he yelped in pain, telling myself he’d had it coming. ¶ Nobody has it coming.” (Paul Kalanithi)

“That plain casket gone deep in earth, while the other stood a man’s height above the earth, anticipating dehiscence, ready to shell in falling…” (William Gaddis)

WEB

1. The brain can be a punny thing… → The curse of the people who can’t stop making puns

2. How to Write a Letter (Your User’s Manual)

3. What’s the deal with the…vertical ellipsis? And the comments are enlightening (imagine that)! → Miscellany № 70 — ‘⋮’, ‘⌨’ & ‘¶’

4. The secret Nazi history of porcelain

5. Today is the Ides of March, March 15th on the Roman calendar, and 2060th anniversary of the assassination of Julius Caesar in the Portico of Pompey, famously predicted by the haruspex Spurinna. Romans numbered days of the month by counting backward from three fixed points of the month: the Nones, the Ides and the Kalends. The Ides were associated with the Roman’s greatest god, Jupiter, and the Ides of March marked the Feast of Anna Perenna, a goddess of the year (Latin annus, from which we derive words like annal and annual), concluding the festivities welcoming in the new year. Nowadays the date is most strongly associated with Caesar’s death, though much of the popular knowledge about the dates—and the killing of Caesar—is inaccurate or outright wrong [Thanks for the link, Reader C.].

WATCH/WITNESS

Wow. The first poem made me weep. Ross Gay reads two poems from Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• In a comment that could refer to aperçu or the solar eclipse—or both—Reader T. writes: “Omigod! Totality! ¶ (That’s what she said!)”

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