Fan Dancer Sally Rand at 1934 Chicago World's Fair

Voicemail from the moon.

My husband's company has new software which sends him emails with transcribed versions of voicemails people leave for him. The software doesn't work quite as it should.

These are voicemails which it thinks I left for him while he was in Atlanta for work:

Hey this is extending his.

Voice mail for me -- -- yeah I love you will try and call you later.

Bye bye.

*****

Hey it's me I'm actually going to.

I forgot to tell you that you do have a cracking win children efficiency sending a better feel sorry to get back -- certain I sheet one it's Wells pretty big will star trucks wrote the be brought -- actually to our servers -- three start 12 medium in one little -- but they don't I can still see Cheryl and there -- passenger side calling crack.

Clearly this message NEMI love you.

*****

Hey it's me.

I am back -- but it was again serpentine shortly.

Here this week.

*****

Hey it's me I love you very much actually really early tomorrow.

So I'm going to give you a call -- later if you don't call me back tonight it doesn't really early tonight so I could be there 7:32 -- hey I really don't like testing of you always meeting your phone off you will receive it on and might ring and then don't answer leave you know it's Charisse Meyer 90 -- well when you are having an affair with me -- if you could give to you -- soon turnings an awful time.

I love you if you get this call me.

Wingy Manone.

The Owl Critic, James T. Fields

"Who stuffed that white owl?" No one spoke in the shop,
The barber was busy, and he couldn't stop;
The customers, waiting their turns, were all reading
The "Daily," the "Herald," the "Post," little heeding
The young man who blurted out such a blunt question;
Not one raised a head, or even made a suggestion;
And the barber kept on shaving.

"Don't you see, Mr. Brown,"
Cried the youth, with a frown,
"How wrong the whole thing is,
How preposterous each wing is
How flattened the head is, how jammed down the neck is--
In short, the whole owl, what an ignorant wreck 'tis!
I make no apology;
I've learned owl-eology.
I've passed days and nights in a hundred collections,
And can not be blinded to any deflections
Arising from unskilful fingers that fail
To stuff a bird right, from his beak to his tail.
Mister Brown! Mister Brown!
Do take that bird down,
Or you'll soon be the laughing-stock all over town!"
And the barber kept on shaving.

"I've studied owls,
And other night-fowls,
And I tell you
What I know to be true;
An owl can not roost
With his limbs so unloosed;
No owl in this world
Ever had his claws curled,
Ever had his legs slanted,
Ever had his bill canted,
Ever had his neck screwed
Into that attitude.
He can't do it, because
'Tis against all bird-laws.
Anatomy teaches,
Ornithology preaches,
An owl has a toe
That can't turn out so!
I've made the white owl my study for years,
And to see such a job almost moves me to tears!
Mr. Brown, I'm amazed
You should be so gone crazed
As to put up a bird
In that posture absurd!
To look at that owl really brings on a dizziness;
The man who stuffed him don't half know his business!"
And the barber kept on shaving.

"Examine those eyes.
I'm filled with surprise
Taxidermists should pass
Off on you such poor glass;
So unnatural they seem
They'd make Audubon scream,
And John Burroughs laugh
To encounter such chaff.
Do take that bird down;
Have him stuffed again, Brown!"
And the barber kept on shaving.

"With some sawdust and bark
I could stuff in the dark
An owl better than that.
I could make an old hat
Look more like an owl
Than that horrid fowl,
Stuck up there so stiff like a side of coarse leather.
In fact, about him there's not one natural feather."

Just then, with a wink and a sly normal lurch,
The owl, very gravely, got down from his perch,
Walked round, and regarded his fault-finding critic
(Who thought he was stuffed) with a glance analytic,
And then fairly hooted, as if he should say:
"Your learning's at fault this time, anyway;
Don't waste it again on a live bird, I pray.
I'm an owl; you're another. Sir Critic, good day!"
And the barber kept on shaving.

From The Diaries of Dawn Powell 1931-1965

If anyone likes truth—and it seems to me the most beautiful form of art in the world—they not only like to get at real motives and the real character of other people but there is a release in finding out something about themselves, or even finding old cliché’s true. After a while a number of things unfold—the reason for the banalities of best sellers, the popularity of platitudinous books on living. Platitude is the stuff of life, the core of living, the cure for heartbreak, the ultimate answer to “Why?” Underneath the woes of the world run the firm roots of platitude, the song cues, the calendar slogans. “Darkness comes before daylight,” “Tomorrow is another day,” “Where there’s a will, there’s a way,” “Jesus loves you.”

There is nothing permanent, nothing for the mind to fall on but this old bed of clichés after it has stormed through life trying to find its own answers, its own solutions, and finally its own heartbreak, its own stone wall. What comfort then in “Into each life some rain must fall, some days must be dark and dreary?” Little—but all there is.

Lejaren Hiller: Computer Cantata (1963), Prolog to Strophe I, Strophe I

Rosie Plummer (as recorded in the book Shamanic Visions, Joan Halifax)

Some shamans get their power from the water-babies. They are the only people who can talk to them. They tell the rest of the people not to make fun of water-babies. These shamans can take the water-babies out of the lake.

The water-babies came to life by their own power. They formed themselves. Some water-babies live in water-holes, and these holes never dry up. People call these water-babies the “breath of the water-holes.” There is a cool breeze all the time in the mountains where they live. They have the power to cause wind to blow, even a very strong wind. The wind is their breath.

There are also women in the lakes where the water-babies live. These women are like the water-babies. They have the same power. Big serpents live in the lake, too. Like the water-babies, those serpents have strong power. They give power to some shamans.

RIP, Lucille Clifton.

“oh antic God”
(Lucille Clifton)

oh antic God
return to me
my mother in her thirties
leaned across the front porch
the huge pillow of her breasts
pressing against the rail
summoning me in for bed.

I am almost the dead woman’s age times two.

I can barely recall her song
the scent of her hands
though her wild hair scratches my dreams
at night. return to me, oh Lord of then
and now, my mother’s calling,
her young voice humming my name.

For the Sylvia Plath bake-off (at Radish King's place)

Photomontage for Majakovski's "Pro Eto", Alexander Rodchenko

at foam until March, 2010

Barbara Kruger

Kelp

There are long whips in the sea, ladies.
They are my tears. I cried them.
Ladies, not much separates me.
Not much. From love, from other such.
Not much, ladies. The word 'cat'
separates me and the word 'necessary'
and a certain question about the definition of
'age'. Not much separates me. Not much.
The boy takes a whip up from out of the foam.
He strikes the rock because he likes the sound.
I am amused and distracted, "Tom,"
I call, "put it down, my dear." He only does it
because he likes the sound. And I am,
after all, only amused. Ladies,
take the long whips, these tears I've shed.
I don't care what you do with them
but they are necessary. Not much separates me.
A question of time. My tears have nothing
to do with that.

(originally published in New Stone Circle)

Question.

If I'm making a submission, I generally try to find the name of the editor responsible for the specific area (prose/poetry) and address the submission letter to that person by name.

Increasingly, literary journals are providing a non-hierarchical list of editors without much illumination regarding who reads for what. In that case, is it better to use the generic "dear editor" or would it be better to select one of those names at random?

Going with "Dear Editor" for today. But curious if any of you have thoughts on the matter.