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Reading aloud
Readings and recitations
READIN
READIN started out as a place for me
to keep track of what I am reading, and to learn (slowly, slowly)
how to design a web site.
There has been some mission drift
here and there, but in general that's still what it is. Some of
the main things I write about here are
reading books,
listening to (and playing) music, and
watching the movies. Also I write about the
work I do with my hands and with my head; and of course about bringing up Sylvia.
The site is a bit of a work in progress. New features will come on-line now and then; and you will occasionally get error messages in place of the blog, for the forseeable future. Cut me some slack, I'm just doing it for fun! And if you see an error message you think I should know about, please drop me a line. READIN source code is PHP and CSS, and available on request, in case you want to see how it works.
See my reading list for what I'm interested in this year.
READIN has been visited approximately 236,737 times since October, 2007.
It is difficult for me to express what a great idea this mash-up is. I can almost picture the notional Ginsburg out on stage with the Dead. Which indeed I think he did interact with them some times. Absolutely riveting. I must congratulate and thank Brendon Banks.
This is the kind of pairing that makes you see each component in a new light. The poem, below the fold.
posted morning of October 19th, 2014: 3 responses ➳ More posts about Readings
IV
Procede en forma tal que tu prójimo no se sienta humillado con tu sabidurÃa.
DomÃnate, domÃnate. Jamás te abandones a la ira.
Si quieres conquistar la paz definitiva,
sonrÃe al Destino que se ensaña contigo y nunca te ensañes con nadie.
Alice Oswald has won the 2013 Warwick Prize for Writing for her astonishing Memorial. Here is the final scene of her vision of the Trojan War, the death of Hector:
posted evening of October third, 2013: Respond ➳ More posts about Iliad
Dream is not a revelation. If a dream affords the dreamer some light on himself, it is not the person with closed eyes who makes the discovery but the person with open eyes lucid enough to fit thoughts together. Dream — a scintillating mirage surrounded by shadows — is essentially poetry.
El sueño no es revelación. Si al soñador un sueño lo permiterÃa ahorrar algún luz sobre si mismo, no realice ese descubrimiento la persona de ojos cerrados sino la de ojos abiertos y lúcidos suficientamente para los pensamientos juntos a unirse. El sueño —entre las sombras chispea el miraje— en su esencia es poesÃa.
If a dream affords the dreamer some lucidity, some poetry, some regal slumber
why forget it then, why discard
the glittering shards of irreality
that pierce your consciousnessless repose
that hold your dreaming brane
like pushpins on the void
Opportunistically lying in wait and grinning, giggling lamely at the ashy glow of the painted wall in the streetlamp and suddenly hear a dead man walking round the corner and the dying fall
You're making up your mind and nervous, humming inanely snatches of the anthem of your good old school out west; forgotten the words and meanings subtle meaninglessness, your time has not yet come so you play the fool
And suddenly crumpling and falling, lifeless, playing a wrinkled fool, to an audience of jaded friends
You're running now frantic feel the rhythmic pace and all the scenery's the same just one repeated shot flickers past and you could swear you've been out here before Mr. Hitchcock; and this stupid mistake will not be your last
not the last of such creatures entrusted and painted and lined
with precious gems, heirloom for a generation
of bureaucrats --
you switch back now and look him full in the face
and suddenly you find you cannot recognize this familiar caricature, this crudely sketched archetype of disquiet, or you do not want to (and so you fail to), unfamiliar expression you know so well, could trace it out in the dark you reckon soft ivory fingers on imaginary skin and so you stare into his absent eyes and identify yourself with his absent character and longing
And you so long to be there, to be present.
posted afternoon of November 18th, 2012: Respond ➳ More posts about Projects
A mix tape (is mix tape the right term here? Something like a playlist but including readings and videos as well as music...) (and whew! there is something unfamiliar about blogging in English!): The ordering of the playlist is my own chain of memory (with proddings from others) starting from chapter 7, "More than love", of The ground beneath her feet.
Ormus speaks. I have been liking this novel while being rubbed a little the wrong way by the narrator's voice -- Rai seems a little off to me, a little cynical and annoyingly, smugly verbose. I found quite striking the short piece in the middle of this chapter that shifts into Ormus' voice, and into him quoting his father's voice. His mention of vultures and of Attar, and of Prometheus, got me into a "classical birds" frame of mind. Ormus speaks, read by The Modesto Kid
Attar's poem in Fitzgerald's stellar translation, The Bird Parliament. (This would be an amazing poem for reading out loud -- I tried that earlier and got about a ¼ of the way into it... I may have to upload a recording of this to SoundCloud.)
I'm also put in mind a little of Borges' mysticism, in a way I have not been by this novel so far -- the bits of magic in Rai's narration have been undone by his glibness. Specifically The Theologians I guess, though I don't recall there being birds in that.
se forma la palabra. Se concibe