|k| clippings: 2016-03-22 — a good ear

WORK

“Black Turnstone”

Far away you twist,
turn, count all the reasons not
to love. By the lake
a bird I have no name for
splits the air before my face.

—Peggy Shumaker
—from Salt River Review (Vol. I, No. 1, Winter 1997–98)

WORD(S)

meatus /mee-AYT-əs/. noun. A natural bodily passageway or its opening, such as the external auditory meatus (the ear). From Latin meātus (passage), from meāre (to go, pass).

“He has an arrival routine where he skips the front entrances and comes in through the south side’s acoustic meatus and gets a Millennial Fizzy® out of the vending machine…” (David Foster Wallace)

“…in the meantime, come to Paris and you will find me, headphones plugged tight in my external audio meatus, walking the quays…” (David Sedaris)

“He had produced a razor from some abyssal pocket and was lovingly whittling a live match. This when pointed according to his God he used to pierce a deep meatus in a fresh cigar…” (Samuel Beckett)

WEB

1. “…we asked people in prison to paint or draw people we felt should be in prison … Here are the results. Click on the images to see the crimes committed by both the companies and the artists.” → The CAPTURED Project

2. @LitCritTrump reviews literature in Trump’s signature, staccato style. My favorites: The Great Gatsby and The Odyssey. Pair with Donald Trump’s Gettysburg Infomercial.

3. These experiments with prose, poetry and prose poetry are exciting…and scary. I routinely wonder, while reading concīs submissions, if I’m being subtly trolled with work composed this way. → Adventures in Narrated Reality: New forms & interfaces for written language, enabled by machine intelligence

4. Extremely Shortened Versions of Classic Books For Lazy People

5. Today in 1952 (or so the Interwebs tell me), poet Peggy Shumaker is born in La Mesa, California. Peggy is known for her many achievements as an artist and promoter of poetry—in addition to publishing seven books (so far), she was an Alaska Writer Laureate, founded Boreal Books, received an NEA fellowship and did time as the President of the AWP Board of Directors—as well as the intensely high regard felt by legions of students who became significantly better writers and readers (and her other students, like myself, impervious to the labors of even the best teachers) thanks to her long tenure as professor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Further reading: in Poetry, more in Salt River Review, in Verse Daily and two pieces in Northern Review. Listening: ► Peggy Shumaker in the University of Arizona Poetry Center Audio Archives (a splendid resource!). And I highly recommend getting your hands on some of Peggy’s books, particularly BLAZE, her collaboration with the equally fab Kes Woodward.

WATCH/WITNESS

Oscar Oiwa inside his installation “Oiwa Island 2,” a “massive, 360-degree drawing made with black permanent marker on a 40-ft diameter inflatable vinyl dome.”

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader M. isn’t from Limerick, but…: "I think it was in an old Art Linkletter book of Kids say the darnest Things that some kid told him:

Old Mother Hubbard went to the cupboard
to get her daughter a dress
And when she got there her cupboard was bare
And so was her daughter I guess

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

Enjoy the WORD(S) section? Check out my other little project: concīs » http://concis.io/

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/clippings/.