When President Obama flew to Oslo last week to collect his Nobel Peace Prize, his in-flight reading probably did not include the British poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy’s new poem “The Twelve Days of Christmas 2009.”
So Begins the New York Times' piece on Presidents and Poems entitled "A History of Odes to the Chief."
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/13/weekinreview/13schuessler.html
Here's Duffy's poem:
1
ON THE FIRST DAY OF CHRISTMAS,
a buzzard on a branch.
In Afghanistan,
no partridge, pear tree;
but my true love sent to me
a card from home.
I sat alone,
crouched in yellow dust,
and traced the grins of my kids
with my thumb.
Somewhere down the line,
for another father, husband,
brother, son, a bullet
with his name on.
2
TWO TURTLE DOVES,
that Shakespeare loved –
turr turr, turr turr –
endangered now
by herbicide,
the chopping down
of where they hide –
turr turr, turr turr –
hawthorn thickets,
hedgerows, woodland.
Summer's music
fainter, farther…
the spreading drought
of the Sahara.
3
THREE FRENCH HENS –
un, deux, trois –
do not know
that French they are.
Three Welsh lambs –
un, dau, tri –
do not know
that Welsh they baa.
Newborn babies –
one, two, three –
only know
you human be.
Only know
you human be.
4
THE GRENADA DOVE IS CALLING.
The Condor calls from the USA.
The Wood Stork calls from its wetlands.
The Albatross calls from the sea,
on the fourth day of Christmas.
The Yellow-eared Parrot is calling.
The Kakapo calls from NZ.
The Blue-throated Macaw is calling.
The Little Tern calls from Japan, calls
my true love sent to me.
The Corncrake is calling; the Osprey.
The Baikal Teal calls from Korea.
The Cuckoo is calling from England,
four calling birds.
5
THE FIRST GOLD RING WAS GOLD INDEED –
bankers' profits fired in greed.
The second ring outshone the sun,
fuelled by carbon, doused by none.
Ring three was black gold, O for oil –
a serpent swallowing its tail.
The fourth ring was Celebrity;
Fool's Gold, winking on TV.
Ring five, religion's halo, slipped –
a blind for eyes or gag for lips.
With these five gold rings they you wed,
then slip them off when you are dead.
With these five go-o-o-old rings.
6
I BOUGHT A MAGIC GOOSE FROM A JOLLY FARMER.
This goose laid Barack Obama.
I bought a magic goose from a friendly fellow.
This goose laid Fabio Capello.
I bought a magic goose from a maiden (comely).
This goose laid Joanna Lumley.
I bought a magic goose from a busker (poor).
This goose laid Anish Kapoor.
I bought a magic goose from a bargain bin, it
was the goose laid Alan Bennett.
I bought a poisoned goose from a crook (sick, whiffing).
This foul goose laid Nick Griffin.
7
THE SWAN AT COCKERMOUTH –
of a broken heart, one half.
The Mersey Swans, flying
for Hillsborough, wings of justice.
Two, married and mute on the Thames,
watching The Wave.
A Swan for Adrian Mitchell
and a Swan for UA Fanthorpe,
swansongs for poetry.
The Queen's birds, paired
for life, beauty and truth.
8
ONE MILKED MONEY TO MEND HER MOAT.
Two milked voters to float her boat.
Three milked Parliament to flip her flat.
Four milked Government to snip her cat.
Five milked the dead for close-up tears.
Six milked the tax-payer for years and
years and years…
Seven milked the system to Botox
her brow.
Eight milked herself – the selfish cow.
9
BUT THE DEAD SOLDIER'S LADY DOES NOT DANCE.
But the lady in the Detention Centre
does not dance.
But the honour killing lady does not dance.
But the drowned policeman's lady
does not dance.
But the lady in the filthy hospital ward
does not dance.
But the lady in Wootton Bassett does not dance.
But the gangmaster's lady does not dance.
But the lady with the pit bull terrier
does not dance.
But another dead soldier's lady
does not dance.
10
LORDS DON'T LEAP.
They sleep.
11
WE PAID THE BLUDDY PIPER
fir 'Royal Bank;
twa pipers each
fir Fred and Phil,
fir Finlay, Fraser, Frank.
Too big tae fail!
The wee dog laughed!
The dish ran awa' wi' the spoon…
We paid the bluddy pipers,
but we dinnae call the tune.
12
DID THEY HEAR THE DRUMS IN COPENHAGEN,
banging their warning?
On the twelfth day in Copenhagen
was global warming stopped in its tracks
by Brown and Barack and Hu Jintao,
by Meles Zenawi and Al Sabban,
by Yvo de Boer and Hedegaard?
Did they strike a match
or strike a bargain,
the politicos in Copenhagen?
Did they twiddle their thumbs?
Or hear the drums
and hear the drums
and hear the drums?
Monday, December 14, 2009
Monday, November 23, 2009
Some Images that May Cause The Hollywood Studio Producing the film The Road to Feel a Bit Unsure of Himself and His Investment
Compiled by T.J. Gillespie
A gryke in the stone
The transom grated in the sand
The cold autistic dark
The bloodcults have all consumed each other
A ham gambreled
Bored out the collet
Her nipples pipeclayed
Blowsy plumage
They were discalced
God’s own firedrake
No godspoke men
Pipsissewa
The hot black mastic
Nitty wig of ash
Rachitic
Sappers
Homebrewed woad
Consort of catamites
Sedge
Cedar duff
Kerfs
Bracken
Dry sleavings…from the buckled soffits
Yellowed dentil
Through the canebrake
Slatted light
Chert
Thick and gelid
Gold krugerrands
Middens of anonymous trash
Beneath a cakebell
Mattock
A great bolus of serpents
Jackstraw land
A brick loggia
Wooden lintel
The knurled lid
The windrows...in the wrack
Salt rime
Tidewrack
An isocline of death
Davits
Through the clerestory
Souwester gear
Baize lining
Lee side of him
Plastic pampooties
Travois of dead limbs
Dolmen stones
Salitter drying
Lampblack
Bollards
Gantry cane
Turned scarpbolts
Their crozzled hearts
Swale
Mortified loess
Bone stoven
The answer to The Hollywood Studio Head’s Uncertainty:
Cherlize Theron
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
New Book Alert: Assumed the Watch. Moored as Before. By Terry Fitzgibbons
The RLPA is pleased to announce the publication of
The USS Pelican, or the “Pelican’t” as it was affectionately known, was the craziest, most nerve-racking ship in the navy. How was that possible, though, if it remained tied to the pier essentially for two years? This account contains the musings and observations of one junior officer attempting to stay sane aboard mighty Pelican. Likewise, it includes his attempts to do the same on a different ship—this one doing circles in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
He is a frequent guest at RLPA Christmas parties and an expert in late 1980s Nintendo-related entertainment.
We are pretty sure that this is the best book ever.
Check it out here:
Assumed the Watch. Moored as Before.
Click here to read an excerpt:
Chapter One: Tulips
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Stadium Traffic
As the Philadelphia Phillies begin their post-season today in hopes of repeating as champions, this is the poem I wish I wrote. For anyone who saw a game at the Vet or takes the subway down to Citizen's Bank Park; for anyone who grew up rooting for Schmitty and McGraw, Bake and the Bull, or Krukky and Dutch, Lenny and the Wild Thing, or Chase and Rollins, the Flying Hawaiian and Hollywood Hamels, I dedicate this:
Stadium Traffic
You're on your way home
when a thousand cars
pour onto Broad Street:
the ball game's over.
No one's going anywhere soon.
It's mid-July: eighty and humid.
You smell like all the crappies in the Delaware,
wear the ache of dock crates in your back.
Your buddy lost two fingers tonight
to a jigsaw: boss said go home early,
stay late tomorrow night.
These people don't appreciate
what they have: time to go to ball games.
You get out among blaring horns
and hustlers hawking T-shirts,
walk the yellow lines like a tight rope,
arms out for balance,
all the way to the corner and back.
Broad Street still as a parking lot,
wound tight as a fist.
You pop the trunk, fish a beer
from your cooler, and pound it.
Back in your car, the radio's
recapping the game:
your team pulled one out
they would have blown last year.
You've blown the last year working
nights while your lady works days.
Night work means bad lighting,
and you've had enough close calls.
You've had enough overtime.
You've had enough.
Something has to give.
Somewhere in the distance a dog
is barking, a husband is coming home.
See also:
An interview with the poet about Philadelphia and poetry.
"I see my writing about Philadelphia as similar to the writing of other people whom we generally associate with particular regions or time periods. We call Bruce Weigl and Tim O’Brien writers of the Vietnam War. We call Dostoyevski a Russian writer, Flannery O’Connor and Eudora Welty Southern writers, Langston Hughes a Harlem Renaissance writer. If the work of these writers only has relevance within the context of geography or history, then it would not have lasting significance. Each writer goes beyond region and time and race and addresses fundamental issues pushing against the heart of each of us.
I hope my work pushes up against some of the same questions. In my childhood, I was given the landscape of Philadelphia. In a broader sense, though, I have been given the same range of human frailties and strengths to work with that any other artist has been given. I will always return to examine that landscape in my mind. In that sense, I’ll always be a Philadelphia writer. While my writing may be set in Philadelphia or in some other specific place, I hope the hearts alive in the writing are recognizable to readers with all kinds of backgrounds. I’m not saying I’m in the same league as the people I just mentioned. I’m saying only that I recognize their impulses."
Saturday, October 3, 2009
Announcement: The Failed Novel Project
By T.J. Gillespie
In order to move forward with new projects, new writings, new RLPA drinking festivals, I have found it necessary to put some old things to bed, to sign-off, bid sayonara, and give the ol' kiss-off to some lingering works. With this in mind, I am dusting off some of the old archival bits that have been occupying too much psychic space and preventing me from starting something newer. And undoubtedly better.
So, without further ado, the RLPA will see the monthly installments of something tentatively titled "The Catastrophist's Conspiracy Theories" or more banally "Trivial Matters." I'd warn against expectations ; there's a reason this project folded in on itself. So, if I may offer a regrettably inappropriate analogy about released failures: think Guns 'N Roses Chinese Democracy rather than Nabokov's Laura.
To give you an idea of how poorly conceived this was from the beginning, here's some of the pompous concepts behind the original idea:
Notes/Schemata/Organization/Chapter Ideas:
It’s about terror, war, drugs, conspiracy theories, the government, relationships, information and the media, life and death in the twenty-first century.
Operation Eagle Claw, Failure to rescue hostages from Iran
Limnic eruption
Strange phone call
- Kay’s packing
- History of relationship
- Trouble getting motivated. Rather play games than get a job
-
Meeting
Request for money
Hold something for him
Oh, yeah, Kay’s been sleeping around with a pot dealer from Norristown
Shore
Professor on beach
Whale rescue
Dolphin Massacre
Frisbee golf
Request for money
A Warning
A disappearance
Pulled in
------------------------------ So Ends part one
Occluded
Blood-dark
Chinese ideogram
Yunus Emre
Information Control
Feculent
Double Crossed
A Series of Unhappy Endings (with just a glint of accidental, meaningless redemption)
What’s the difference between chance and fate, happenstance and destiny? I suppose one sees a series of random coincidences. The other sees a series of coincidences that were supposed to happen. What about me? What did I believe? I was still foolish enough to subscribe to that outmoded illusion called freedom of choice. What an asshole.
There you have it. Look for Chapter One coming soon.
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Friday, June 12, 2009
10 Micro-Stories by Seth
10 Stories by Seth
Not really stories, more like notes merely transcribed (and condensed and perhaps slightly fictionalized) by T.J. Gillespie1. John Cage.
A story based on a recommendation for stories. John Cage's Indeterminancy.90 stories told in 90 minutes. (Actually there are 190 in total, but in performance, he'd read the stories at the rate of one per minute). It is an incredible work of art. I--me, T.J. Gillespie--am thoroughly in awe.
2.Peanuts and Superheroes
There are two modes, two poles of cartooning. Charlie Brown and Superman. What do they have in common? The both stem out of a young boy's feelings of powerlessness and feeling small.
3. The Loneliness of the Cartoonist
Drawing is a personal art. Writing is a solitary art. Drawing and writing a cartoon is the loneliest art.
4.Subverting the Corny
It was a popular bromide taken for truth--especially in the sixties--that the comic/cartoon was the ideal medium for fantasy. Here was a realm where the unbelievable, the amazing, the extraordinary could come to life. Thrilling Tales!
In the 1980s--and ever since really--there has grown a movement of reactionary realists who claim that cartooning is best suited for the ordinary, the mundane, the real. They are struggling to escape the shackles of genre, of fantasy for Truth. Symbolic of this movement is a legendary cartoon--rumored to be of Japanese origin--that spends forty pages on a single kiss.
5.Art School in 1980s Toronto
The parable of the Poor Bastard:
Every year a bright-eyed eager student arrives on campus with big dreams, big ideas, and big plans. While he doesn't have as much natural "talent" or "skill," what he has is work ethic and drive. So, while some things don't come as easily to this student, he makes up for it by getting to the studio earlier, leaving later, and coming in on off days. The thing is, he'll never get it. His stuff just isn't that good. He's a sucker. Moral of the story: be suspicious if you're ever on the receiving end of this story.
6. Comics and Poetry
In no other artforms is there such care in the placement and juxtaposition of images. They both beguile with a seemingly "simple bag of tricks"; there is a building rhythm of line, a piling up of ideas. A tightness of form. Consider the Haiku of Basho and a panel of Schultz. This story bores everyone but poets.
7.George Sprout and the Dangers of Self-Googling
Even in moments of your greatest triumphs, it is the chorus of boos that you hear the loudest. Admirers internalize quiet praise; critics use megaphones.
8.Mr. Downing's Critique
On the day of the big exhibition the students excitedly gathered in the gallery room. Last minute corrections were made. Lighting was fixed. Sculptures placed just-so. At last the professor entered the room and the students moved to the side, anxious for any reaction from their mentor. The old man strolled leisurely from post to post, sometimes slowing down, leaning in closely, other times squatting down low to get a different look. A few times he seemed poised to ask a question, but shook it off, and moved on. At one point, he stopped to jot something down on a small notebook.
Finally, he pulled up, straightened his collar, looked directly at the first year students, and shouted, "What the fuck have you been doing for the past month!"
P.S.: Robert Downing's Open Letter to Canada on the state of art http://www.lastplace.com/LivingHistory/endoftheline.htm
It opens like this: "I've come to realize the error of my ways and promise that Iwill no longer be a practicing Canadian fine artist. I well know that thiswill not be of direct interest to everyone. Indeed, because of what I'll say here it would be ludicrous for me to assume that anyone at all isespecially interested in me giving up a forty year calling, through whichI've expressed my love for Canada and my enjoyment of life."
9.Paris with Chris Ware
Despite the romance of the setting, Seth, feeling slightly downcast, cynical, and misanthropic, what some Parsian jazz musician might simply but accurately describe as blue, thought aloud "It's a shame, really. As hard as you work, as smart as you may be and as much as you read, and learn, and hone your craft, you eventually hit the limit of your intelligence, your ability, your skill. I wish you could make more. Make more talent."
Chris Ware,f ellow artist, traveller and dining partner, threw back his head in laughter.
"That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard!" he said shaking his head in mirthful abandon. "Of course you can will yourself more talent!"
10.Advice from R. Crumb
Joe Mad, the popular nom de plume of Joe Madureira, a comic book writer who helped develop the X-Men, was fretting over the fact that his harshest critics claimed he had too narrow a focus. He seemed to repeating himself by focusing on the same themes, conflicts, characters. Feeling quite dejected one day as he opened his mail, he surprised to find a letter from notorious underground comic R. Crumb. It contained two basic points.
1. No matter what you might hear, people don't like to hear how you feel. They may say they do, but most people prefer to avoid the truth.
2. There is nothing wrong with repeating yourself, mining the same territory, as long as you dig a little deeper each go around.
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