poem thursday--Mina Loy

On Third Avenue
                   
1
"You should have disappeared years ago"--

so disappear
on Third Avenue
to share the headless incognito

of shuffling shadow-bodies
animate with frustration

whose silence'  only potence is
respiration
preceding the eroded bronze contours
of their other aromas

through the monstrous air
of this red-lit thoroughfare.

Here and there
saturnine
neon-signs
set afire
a feature
on their hueless overcast
of downcast countenances.

for their ornateness
Time, the contortive tailor,
on and off,
clowned with sweat-sculptured cloth
to press

upon these irreparable dummies
an eerie undress
of mummies
half unwound.

2

Such are the compensations of poverty,
to see---

Like an electric fungus
sprung from its own effulgence
if intercircled jewellery
reflected on the pavement,

like a reliquary sedan-chair,
out of a legend, dumped there,

before a ten-cent Cinema,

a sugar-coated box-office
enjail a goddess
aglitter, in her runt of a tower,
with ritual claustrophobia.

Such are compensations of poverty,
to see---

Transient in the dust,
the brilliancy
of a trolley
loaded with luminous busts;

lovely in anonymity
they vanish
with the mirage
of their passage.

-----from Compensations of Poverty [poems 1942-1959,]
in The Lost  Lunar Baedeker Poems (1996)
selected & edited by Roger L. Conover

Mina Loy
at poets.org
at wikipedia

wordle--paper #3

24 days lost

No, I didn't lose 24 days. I have been busy with final drafts, job apps and job interviews. I heard from my reading committee that they have accepted my last paper with a few minor changes. Now to the whole committee for the final defense. Then I'll really be Dr. T!

Otherwise sleeping well, covering vacations and having my bathroom remodeled. I have quite a few options for after graduation. I'm not complaining but it's hard to predict what I'm going to be doing even 6 months from now!

Postdoc? Fellowship? Teaching doctoral students in Texas? Something else? Hard to tell!

More to follow as it all unfolds!

halloween 2007

the doctor made a mistake!

Mom doesn't have cancer! Woohoo! She also can now stand at the sink for 8-12 minutes!

I'm dissertating a lot lately and don't have much time for this blog. I think I'm close to the final draft of that last paper.

I did add a player for the Performance Poetry IndieFeed. Check it out! I listen to them on my iPod when I'm going to sleep at night. Podcasting has opened up a new portal for me to reach through for surprises.

We are having our bathroom overhauled and adding a new one upstairs. When we got the sink/cabinet out to the light of the day, we couldn't believe how horrid it was and how long we just overlooked it. Now I can hardly wait to say buh bye to the pink tub.

Shopping for the stuff to go into the new bathroom. Found a like new low flow Kohler Cimmaron at the 2nd Use for 100 bucks! Some old growth 2x4s at Earthwise Salvage.