There were a lot things that happened socially among the humans and the parrots in Irene Pepperberg’s communication studies that were not presented in her scientific papers. Alex’s sexual orientation, for instance.
“[I]n general Alex preferred guys, especially tallish guys with longish hair, like Spencer [one of the graduate students who worked with the project]. Alex would often pad around the Tucson lab, looking for Spencer. When Spencer picked him up, Alex would run up his arm, perch on his shoulder, and perform the Grey’s mating dance. Spencer was the only person Alex called by name. He used to say, ‘Come here, Ser.’”
Among the mating behaviors of the African Grey Parrot is food sharing – or regurgitation. When besotted, Alex would barf on your shoulder – provided you were a tall hot dude with long hair.
“A favorite excursion was to a small lobby close to the lab. … Students passing on the staircase below the window were oblivious of Alex’s rapt attention to their comings and goings and to the cheerful whistles he produced for their benefit. He liked to wolf-whistle at boys who walked through the lobby, much to the consternation of the girl students tending him.”
source: Alex and Me: how a scientist and a parrot discovered a hidden world of animal intelligence – and formed a deep bond in the process by Irene M. Pepperberg
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
why do birds sing?
Is Oliver Sacks right? Is grooving to the beat a uniquely human behavior, one that no other animal approximates? When he said that I did wonder why the animals that didn’t pass the test were elephants and horses and dogs – none of them known for their native musics – when there are animals that sing. Birds, mostly. But whales, too, are known for their deep immersion in a sound world and some (humpbacks, famously) are known to sing. Yet neither birds nor whales are mentioned in Musicophilia.
Wait. Birds aren’t even mentioned in a book on music? In a book on the biological/neurological origins of music? Not even an aside?
So I’m reading Irene Pepperberg’s memoir of her life with Alex the parrot, with whom she worked during her studies of parrot language acquisition (or communicative behaviors), and I come across this casual mention of Alex’s reaction to music:
They are traveling cross country in a car. “We had left behind the endless miles of cornfields and succession of summer tornadoes … Alex had been terrified by the tornadoes. He could sense the change in air pressure long before we [humans] were aware of anything: the only thing that soothed him as the storms raged was Haydn’s cello concerto, which sometimes swept him into a trancelike state, his body moving gently, eyes squinting almost shut.”
Does this behavior fit the definition of moving to music, of synching one’s behaviors to a tune or a beat? Who knows? But I suppose it’s possible to find out. If you care. If it matters.
under discussion: Alex and Me: how a scientist and a parrot discovered a hidden world of animal intelligence – and formed a deep bond in the process by Irene M. Pepperberg
Wait. Birds aren’t even mentioned in a book on music? In a book on the biological/neurological origins of music? Not even an aside?
So I’m reading Irene Pepperberg’s memoir of her life with Alex the parrot, with whom she worked during her studies of parrot language acquisition (or communicative behaviors), and I come across this casual mention of Alex’s reaction to music:
They are traveling cross country in a car. “We had left behind the endless miles of cornfields and succession of summer tornadoes … Alex had been terrified by the tornadoes. He could sense the change in air pressure long before we [humans] were aware of anything: the only thing that soothed him as the storms raged was Haydn’s cello concerto, which sometimes swept him into a trancelike state, his body moving gently, eyes squinting almost shut.”
Does this behavior fit the definition of moving to music, of synching one’s behaviors to a tune or a beat? Who knows? But I suppose it’s possible to find out. If you care. If it matters.
under discussion: Alex and Me: how a scientist and a parrot discovered a hidden world of animal intelligence – and formed a deep bond in the process by Irene M. Pepperberg
Monday, March 23, 2009
[X] = us
“For both scientists and laypersons, [X] has long been held sacrosanct as being uniquely human, a defining characteristic of what separates ‘us’ (humans) from ‘them’ (all other creatures). Too, a long-running debate exists about the more arcane issue of defining [X].”
In this case [X] = Language. For Oliver Sacks (see my post of Feb 28) it is music, or rather, moving to music’s rhythms. The habit among science writers of holding out for something “uniquely human” is deeply ingrained and shows little sign of being abandoned. Used to be, this habit was broader, however. Used to be a matter of course that the whatever-it-is being addressed was the very thing that separated us superior folks from those not-quite humans, the savages, the colored, the not-Christians, the women. That habit seems to have been moved safely to those whom everybody agrees are not human, that is, the animals.
One of science’s taboos is anthropomorphism. As a corrective to assuming that any given animal will have easily understood motives, that we can guess correctly what the cat or the bat or the rat will do because that’s what a human would do (nevermind our poor track record of human mind-reading), setting anthropomorphism aside isn’t a bad idea. A cat does what it does for cat reasons, a rat for rat reasons, etc. But, as with many a human behavior, the other extreme is just as bad.
The prevailing orthodoxy when Irene Pepperberg began her language studies with Alex the parrot (mid-70s) was still pretty much B.F. Skinner’s behaviorism, which, to put it crudely, saw animals as machines without thought or consciousness. Animals were seen as reacting to stimulus, not making decisions. Don’t even bother talking about consciousness. Consciousness can’t be proved.
I think we tend to get all wrapped up in consciousness and confuse ourselves into thinking consciousness is one of those defining characteristics of being human, and way more important than it really is. Don’t get me started on the history of the arcane debate over defining consciousness, even among humans.
When she was trying to present the first results of her studies, Pepperberg ran up against the backlash against language studies among nonhumans. Mostly it was the chimps that set people off. They’re not really talking! Anthopomorphism! shrieked the critics. How dare anybody go imputing to animals uniquely human traits! The major science magazines would return her work, Pepperberg suspected, unread.
under discussion: Alex and Me: how a scientist and a parrot discovered a hidden world of animal intelligence – and formed a deep bond in the process by Irene M. Pepperberg
In this case [X] = Language. For Oliver Sacks (see my post of Feb 28) it is music, or rather, moving to music’s rhythms. The habit among science writers of holding out for something “uniquely human” is deeply ingrained and shows little sign of being abandoned. Used to be, this habit was broader, however. Used to be a matter of course that the whatever-it-is being addressed was the very thing that separated us superior folks from those not-quite humans, the savages, the colored, the not-Christians, the women. That habit seems to have been moved safely to those whom everybody agrees are not human, that is, the animals.
One of science’s taboos is anthropomorphism. As a corrective to assuming that any given animal will have easily understood motives, that we can guess correctly what the cat or the bat or the rat will do because that’s what a human would do (nevermind our poor track record of human mind-reading), setting anthropomorphism aside isn’t a bad idea. A cat does what it does for cat reasons, a rat for rat reasons, etc. But, as with many a human behavior, the other extreme is just as bad.
The prevailing orthodoxy when Irene Pepperberg began her language studies with Alex the parrot (mid-70s) was still pretty much B.F. Skinner’s behaviorism, which, to put it crudely, saw animals as machines without thought or consciousness. Animals were seen as reacting to stimulus, not making decisions. Don’t even bother talking about consciousness. Consciousness can’t be proved.
I think we tend to get all wrapped up in consciousness and confuse ourselves into thinking consciousness is one of those defining characteristics of being human, and way more important than it really is. Don’t get me started on the history of the arcane debate over defining consciousness, even among humans.
When she was trying to present the first results of her studies, Pepperberg ran up against the backlash against language studies among nonhumans. Mostly it was the chimps that set people off. They’re not really talking! Anthopomorphism! shrieked the critics. How dare anybody go imputing to animals uniquely human traits! The major science magazines would return her work, Pepperberg suspected, unread.
under discussion: Alex and Me: how a scientist and a parrot discovered a hidden world of animal intelligence – and formed a deep bond in the process by Irene M. Pepperberg
Monday, March 09, 2009
leader v. martyr
“’The person who takes one step ahead of others is a leader. The person who takes three steps ahead of others is a martyr.’”
-- attributed to “a Chinese CEO” in Jianying Zha’s account of her brother Zha Jianguo’s imprisonment for political activism.
Those Chinese! What clever aphorists!
source: The New Yorker, April 23, 2007
-- attributed to “a Chinese CEO” in Jianying Zha’s account of her brother Zha Jianguo’s imprisonment for political activism.
Those Chinese! What clever aphorists!
source: The New Yorker, April 23, 2007
Sunday, March 08, 2009
pet peeve
from the diary: “Wed 12/21/88
“It sez on the calendar: ‘Winter Begins.’ Maybe that’s why I’m depressed. I went to a movie at The Palace. I still had three movies left on the card David [my brother] bought me last year. Saw Punchline with Sally Field and Tom Hanks. They did okay and there were a few funny bits. But it was a very manipulative, predictable Hollywood package. Anything new? Even the stand-up routines were often cut so the audience in the movie is roaring with laughter and the audience in the cinema is sitting there, puzzled, hoping to be let in on the joke. I hate it when hey have a show in a movie – and the audience in the movie is having more fun than me.”
“It sez on the calendar: ‘Winter Begins.’ Maybe that’s why I’m depressed. I went to a movie at The Palace. I still had three movies left on the card David [my brother] bought me last year. Saw Punchline with Sally Field and Tom Hanks. They did okay and there were a few funny bits. But it was a very manipulative, predictable Hollywood package. Anything new? Even the stand-up routines were often cut so the audience in the movie is roaring with laughter and the audience in the cinema is sitting there, puzzled, hoping to be let in on the joke. I hate it when hey have a show in a movie – and the audience in the movie is having more fun than me.”
Saturday, March 07, 2009
RRWG potluck & Christmas reading
from the diary: “Monday 12/19/88
“Mom & I went to the RRWG [Russian River Writers Guild] potluck and open reading. I read a few of the poems I’d written in London. Not at all Christmasy as the theme was s’posed t’be. Laurie Posner was there and read a little bit. She’s taking a creative writing class from Marianne Ware. This was her first poetry reading – her first time reading in front of a group, at least. Nice t’see her. … Mom brought cornbread. Saw Marianne & Ann Erickson & Joe Pahls & Mark (sporting a rather silly-looking beard) & Don McQueen & Jayne [McPherson] (who told me Sonoma Mandala chose one of my poems this year. Am I supposed t’be grateful? Hmph. ‘Sabout time.) & others new and old … Some good work.”
“Mom & I went to the RRWG [Russian River Writers Guild] potluck and open reading. I read a few of the poems I’d written in London. Not at all Christmasy as the theme was s’posed t’be. Laurie Posner was there and read a little bit. She’s taking a creative writing class from Marianne Ware. This was her first poetry reading – her first time reading in front of a group, at least. Nice t’see her. … Mom brought cornbread. Saw Marianne & Ann Erickson & Joe Pahls & Mark (sporting a rather silly-looking beard) & Don McQueen & Jayne [McPherson] (who told me Sonoma Mandala chose one of my poems this year. Am I supposed t’be grateful? Hmph. ‘Sabout time.) & others new and old … Some good work.”
Friday, March 06, 2009
Grendel by Matt Wagner
from the diary: “Saturday 12/17/88
“I’m bushed. Think I got a little jetlag. I lay around reading comics t’day. Gonnna stop buying Grendel. The latest issue has the homosexual villain – a corrupt old pope who likes boys. I’m thinking about popping it in an envelope and sending it back to Matt Wagner with a note saying how offensive I found it.”
I remember having a similar reaction to David Lynch’s movie version of Dune, in which the arch-villain, a floating, obese creature with a pustule-covered face, also has a predilection for boys.
Nothing says evil like a little boy-lovin’! (And by ‘boy’, I don’t mean ‘child.’)
“I’m bushed. Think I got a little jetlag. I lay around reading comics t’day. Gonnna stop buying Grendel. The latest issue has the homosexual villain – a corrupt old pope who likes boys. I’m thinking about popping it in an envelope and sending it back to Matt Wagner with a note saying how offensive I found it.”
I remember having a similar reaction to David Lynch’s movie version of Dune, in which the arch-villain, a floating, obese creature with a pustule-covered face, also has a predilection for boys.
Nothing says evil like a little boy-lovin’! (And by ‘boy’, I don’t mean ‘child.’)
Thursday, March 05, 2009
the closest I’ve ever gotten to New York City
On the flight home from London, the one on which I read Crocodilia, we changed planes in New York. I wasn’t able to visit the city – we didn’t have enough time to do anything but wait for our connection. But I did buy a postcard, which I described in the diary. I ran across it a couple days ago. So I scanned it.
Wednesday, March 04, 2009
“Two problems with reading journals”
from the diary, Wednesday, 12/14/88, more thoughts on keeping a journal: “It sez in a book about the Adamses – you know, those silly revolutionaries – that John Adams was the only one [of the founding fathers] who kept a really good diary. Ben Franklin wrote years later from memory & George Washington recorded the state of the crops, generally giving short shrift to what we would consider the big events of the day. I wouldn’t mind a little crop talk, after all it was important at the time; but make those grains sound exciting.
“Two problems with reading journals. One, they are so full of chaff and before published should be edited quite ruthlessly. If some scholar wants all the dope, publish a ‘scholarly’ edition. Save me from it. Two, the prose is not very polished. It can be vibrant & interesting & fun, even. But when we write for ourselves we don’t impose much discipline on style or take as much care as we would for publication. I’m not going to do another draft of this. An autobiography, memoirs, those are never verbatim [diaries]. We fill in details from sketchy notes, leave unmentioned problems that take up pages [in the original diary, but which] later turn out to be unimportant. The same is true of published letters.”
“Two problems with reading journals. One, they are so full of chaff and before published should be edited quite ruthlessly. If some scholar wants all the dope, publish a ‘scholarly’ edition. Save me from it. Two, the prose is not very polished. It can be vibrant & interesting & fun, even. But when we write for ourselves we don’t impose much discipline on style or take as much care as we would for publication. I’m not going to do another draft of this. An autobiography, memoirs, those are never verbatim [diaries]. We fill in details from sketchy notes, leave unmentioned problems that take up pages [in the original diary, but which] later turn out to be unimportant. The same is true of published letters.”
Tuesday, March 03, 2009
a great quote, quite gruesome
from the diary, Wednesday, 12/14/88: “I been reading The Independent, my favorite London newspaper, not that I read many – they handed it out free on the plane – found a great quote, quite gruesome. Lessee, is about the Brit Rail crash of a day or three ago in which two trains go boom. Here goes: ‘Yesterday the official death toll fell from 36 to 33 as scientists matched severed limbs to torsos.’”
Monday, March 02, 2009
Crocodilia by Philip Ridley
from the diary, Sunday, 12/11/88: “I stopped at Gay’s the Word, bought a book, Crocodilia, to read on the plane.”Wednesday, 12/14(ish), written while in flight from London to San Francisco, having changed planes in New York: “San Francisco isn’t too far off now. An hour and a half, I think. Maybe I’ll nap. I’ve been reading Crocodilia by Philip Ridley. It’s quite good. The main characters are living in Bethnal Green.” The man with whom I spent a night not long before the end of the London trip lived on Bethnal Green Road. Reflecting on that experience I said, “My real life sex scenes more resemble, well, a little of Lisa Alther’s humor, a little of Quentin Crisp’s indifference … whatever else. [ellipsis in orig] I’m more likely to describe sex as a giggle than a transcendant ecstasy. I’m too cerebral or something. Yet still, almost a week from Thursday night I feel more complete since I spent the night cuddled with him. I’m not a great lover I have the feeling. But given the opportunity & the encouragement I can love well. Sex not really being ‘love.’ I don’t know tho’, as I’ve carried an afterglow a long time. Sometimes we don’t know what we’re doing.”
I still have Crocodilia by Philip Ridley. The back cover calls it “Ridley’s sparkling debut as a novelist.” Indeed, Ridley seems to have gone on to a career as a novelist, with at least twelve to his name. He has also written stage plays and books for children. Seems he wrote the screenplay for the movie, The Krays. I saw that. The Krays were real life identical twin brothers who led a colorful criminal life in London. One was straight, one gay. Yes, the gay one’s gayness is a marker of his being the eviler of the two, but not by much. The bit that irked me most was the reveal, the scene where we see that the warm body one brother has just been shagging was male. Oh! We’re supposed to be shocked. Otherwise the brothers treat their male & female sextoys about the same – disposably. The straight brother isn’t really the good brother. There isn’t a good brother.
Saturday, February 28, 2009
elephants don’t play well together?
In his book on music and the brain Oliver Sacks quotes Aniruddh Patel: “’[T]here is not a single report of an animal being trained to tap, peck, or move in synchrony with an auditory beat.’” As prophylactic against protests – how can he make such a categorical statement! – Patel says he visited an elephant orchestra in Thailand. “[E]lephants have been trained to strike percussion instruments and play on their own. … Patel [and a collegue] made careful measurements and video recordings of the elephants’ performances. They found, as they reported in a 2006 paper, that an elephant could ‘play a percussion instrument [a large drum] with a highly stable tempo’ – indeed a tempo more stable than most humans could achieve. But the other elephants in the ‘orchestra’ struck their instruments [cymbals, gongs, etc.] in seeming disregard of each other, without any hint of synchronization to the auditory beat of the drum elephant.’”
Oliver Sacks pulls back from primates to our own order: “’[R]hythm’ – in this special sense of combining movement and sound – appears spontaneously in human children, but not in any other primate.”
I’m not interested in arguing about whether there is a nonhuman animal what’s got riddim. What annoys me is this notion that writers have to ta-da – look folks, here’s something that only humans can do. That must be the thing that distinguishes us from all other life forms – after all, it’s not toolmaking, it’s not an opposable thumb, it’s not love, it’s not even laughter. It must be, uh, “being [able to be] trained to … move in synchrony with an auditory beat,” whatever that means exactly.
Is it so hard to hold back the definitive statement? Insert a “so far as we know” or “there was no example that we were able to find” or somesuch? Is a sentence like, “We were unable to find a single report of an animal being trained to tap, peck or move in synchrony blah blah blah”, so unwieldy? I mean, all it takes is one “single report” and you got egg on your face.
source: Musicophilia: tales of music and the brain, by Oliver Sacks
Oliver Sacks pulls back from primates to our own order: “’[R]hythm’ – in this special sense of combining movement and sound – appears spontaneously in human children, but not in any other primate.”
I’m not interested in arguing about whether there is a nonhuman animal what’s got riddim. What annoys me is this notion that writers have to ta-da – look folks, here’s something that only humans can do. That must be the thing that distinguishes us from all other life forms – after all, it’s not toolmaking, it’s not an opposable thumb, it’s not love, it’s not even laughter. It must be, uh, “being [able to be] trained to … move in synchrony with an auditory beat,” whatever that means exactly.
Is it so hard to hold back the definitive statement? Insert a “so far as we know” or “there was no example that we were able to find” or somesuch? Is a sentence like, “We were unable to find a single report of an animal being trained to tap, peck or move in synchrony blah blah blah”, so unwieldy? I mean, all it takes is one “single report” and you got egg on your face.
source: Musicophilia: tales of music and the brain, by Oliver Sacks
Friday, February 27, 2009
Tuesday turns to the right
In a discussion of synesthesia, that is the conjoining of two or more senses, as when one associates music with flavors, say (“G-sharp minor, for example, has a different ‘flavor’ from G minor”), Oliver Sacks includes a footnote in which he describes one man’s day of the week associations:
“Monday is green, Tuesday whitish-yellow – the ‘terrain’ here, as he calls it, ascends and turns to the right, Wednesday is magenta, ‘almost old-brick color,’ Thursday a deep, almost indigo purple, Friday, almost the highest point of the terrain, a birch color, Saturday ‘drops down, to a dark, murky brown.’ Sunday is black.”
source: Musicophilia: tales of music and the brain, by Oliver Sacks
“Monday is green, Tuesday whitish-yellow – the ‘terrain’ here, as he calls it, ascends and turns to the right, Wednesday is magenta, ‘almost old-brick color,’ Thursday a deep, almost indigo purple, Friday, almost the highest point of the terrain, a birch color, Saturday ‘drops down, to a dark, murky brown.’ Sunday is black.”
source: Musicophilia: tales of music and the brain, by Oliver Sacks
Thursday, February 26, 2009
go to jail, go to school
* 75 percent were reading somewhere between the fourth- and sixth-grade levels.
* 90 percent never had a legal job.
* 90 percent were self-identified addicts.
* 80 percent were self-identified victims of sexual or physical violence as a child.
* 65 percent had been placed in a special-education class at some point.
* 75 percent were high school dropouts.
These numbers faced Sunny Schwartz back in 1990 when she was hired to create programs for the inmates of the newly built, newly organized county jail in San Francisco. She says, “These were incredible obstacles. If I thought about it for too long, I got depressed. … I knew this population could not afford to opt out [of taking classes] or they would be right back in our jails within months. … [C]lasses would be mandatory.”
Prisoners were unhappy. So were, to Schwartz’s surprise, some of the deputies who policed the jail, convinced the requirement would be so unpopular that the inmates would riot. “Some [colleagues] thought it was unconstitutional – that we couldn’t force the inmates to learn if they didn’t want to. … Every day in the jails, we strip-searched people, forced them to spread their cheeks, squat and cough, while a deputy sheriff inspected their anal cavity. None of the staff complained about the constitutional rights of inmates because of that security measure.”
Compulsory education? They didn’t get it as kids. Isn’t education the law in this land? I had to do 13 years. It wasn’t a total waste of time, though that’s not an endorsement. Convicted criminals being required to learn the three Rs? Uh. I’m okay with that.
source: Dreams from the Monster Factory: a tale of prison, redemption, and one woman’s fight to restore justice to all, by Sunny Schwartz
* 90 percent never had a legal job.
* 90 percent were self-identified addicts.
* 80 percent were self-identified victims of sexual or physical violence as a child.
* 65 percent had been placed in a special-education class at some point.
* 75 percent were high school dropouts.
These numbers faced Sunny Schwartz back in 1990 when she was hired to create programs for the inmates of the newly built, newly organized county jail in San Francisco. She says, “These were incredible obstacles. If I thought about it for too long, I got depressed. … I knew this population could not afford to opt out [of taking classes] or they would be right back in our jails within months. … [C]lasses would be mandatory.”
Prisoners were unhappy. So were, to Schwartz’s surprise, some of the deputies who policed the jail, convinced the requirement would be so unpopular that the inmates would riot. “Some [colleagues] thought it was unconstitutional – that we couldn’t force the inmates to learn if they didn’t want to. … Every day in the jails, we strip-searched people, forced them to spread their cheeks, squat and cough, while a deputy sheriff inspected their anal cavity. None of the staff complained about the constitutional rights of inmates because of that security measure.”
Compulsory education? They didn’t get it as kids. Isn’t education the law in this land? I had to do 13 years. It wasn’t a total waste of time, though that’s not an endorsement. Convicted criminals being required to learn the three Rs? Uh. I’m okay with that.
source: Dreams from the Monster Factory: a tale of prison, redemption, and one woman’s fight to restore justice to all, by Sunny Schwartz
Thursday, February 12, 2009
simultagnosia
word of the day: simultagnosia
context: “Her auditory environment was split sometimes into discrete and unconnected elements: street sounds, domestic sounds, or the sounds of animals, for example, might suddenly stand out and preempt her attention because they were isolated, not integrated into the normal auditory background or landscape. Neurologists refer to this as simultagnosia, and it is more often visual than auditory.”
Further definition from reference.com: “Patients can recognize objects or details in their visual field, but only one at a time. They cannot make out the scene they belong to or make ... a whole image out of the details. They literally cannot see the forest for the trees.”
An agnosia (according to reference.com) is “(a-gnosis, ‘non-knowledge’, or loss of knowledge) … loss of ability to recognize objects, persons, sounds, shapes, or smells while the specific sense is not defective nor is there any significant memory loss.”
source for context quote: Musicophilia: tales of music and the brain by Oliver Sacks
context: “Her auditory environment was split sometimes into discrete and unconnected elements: street sounds, domestic sounds, or the sounds of animals, for example, might suddenly stand out and preempt her attention because they were isolated, not integrated into the normal auditory background or landscape. Neurologists refer to this as simultagnosia, and it is more often visual than auditory.”
Further definition from reference.com: “Patients can recognize objects or details in their visual field, but only one at a time. They cannot make out the scene they belong to or make ... a whole image out of the details. They literally cannot see the forest for the trees.”
An agnosia (according to reference.com) is “(a-gnosis, ‘non-knowledge’, or loss of knowledge) … loss of ability to recognize objects, persons, sounds, shapes, or smells while the specific sense is not defective nor is there any significant memory loss.”
source for context quote: Musicophilia: tales of music and the brain by Oliver Sacks
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
“A multitude should gather for such an edifice.”
I’m reading Anne Sexton’s Complete Poems and I come across this charmingly irreverent praise for the erect penis:
“It is complete within seconds, that monument.
The blood runs underground yet brings forth a tower.
A multitude should gather for such an edifice.
For a miracle one stands in line and throws confetti.
Surely The Press is here looking for headlines.
Surely someone should carry a banner on the sidewalk.
If a bridge is constructed doesn’t the mayor cut a ribbon?
If a phenomenon arrives shouldn’t the Magi come bearing gifts?”
source: “That Day”, which also appeared in Sexton’s Love Poems
“It is complete within seconds, that monument.
The blood runs underground yet brings forth a tower.
A multitude should gather for such an edifice.
For a miracle one stands in line and throws confetti.
Surely The Press is here looking for headlines.
Surely someone should carry a banner on the sidewalk.
If a bridge is constructed doesn’t the mayor cut a ribbon?
If a phenomenon arrives shouldn’t the Magi come bearing gifts?”
source: “That Day”, which also appeared in Sexton’s Love Poems
Monday, February 09, 2009
Steely Dan
OK, maybe you know that the rock band Steely Dan took its name from a dildo in William Burroughs’ Naked Lunch. But have you ever read the passage that inspired them? Most of the sex in Naked Lunch is between men, though it’s often surreal, violent, and mucky. But in the ‘Steely Dan’ passage it’s het sex, of the pegging variety:
“Mary is strapping on a rubber penis. ‘Steely Dan III from Yokohama,’ she says, caressing the shaft. Milk spurts across the room.
“’Be sure that milk is pasteurized. Don’t go giving me some kinda awful cow disease like anthrax or glanders or aftosa …’ [ellipsis in orig.]
“’When I was a transvestite Liz in Chi used to work as an exterminator. Make advances to pretty boys for the thrill of being beaten as a man. Later I catch this one kid, overpower him with supersonic judo I learned from an old Lesbian Zen monk. I tie him up, strip off his clothes with a razor, and fuck him with Steely Dan I. He is so relieved I don’t castrate him literal he come all over my bedbug spray.’
“’What happen to Steely Dan I?’
“’He was torn in two by a bull dike. Most terrific vaginal grip I ever experienced. She could cave in a lead pipe. It was one of her parlor tricks.’
“’And Steely Dan II?’
“’Chewed to bits by a famished candiru in the Upper Baboonsasshole.’”
Then Mary works Steely Dan III into Johnny’s ass “with a series of corkscrew movements of her fluid hips.”
Pop music!
“Mary is strapping on a rubber penis. ‘Steely Dan III from Yokohama,’ she says, caressing the shaft. Milk spurts across the room.
“’Be sure that milk is pasteurized. Don’t go giving me some kinda awful cow disease like anthrax or glanders or aftosa …’ [ellipsis in orig.]
“’When I was a transvestite Liz in Chi used to work as an exterminator. Make advances to pretty boys for the thrill of being beaten as a man. Later I catch this one kid, overpower him with supersonic judo I learned from an old Lesbian Zen monk. I tie him up, strip off his clothes with a razor, and fuck him with Steely Dan I. He is so relieved I don’t castrate him literal he come all over my bedbug spray.’
“’What happen to Steely Dan I?’
“’He was torn in two by a bull dike. Most terrific vaginal grip I ever experienced. She could cave in a lead pipe. It was one of her parlor tricks.’
“’And Steely Dan II?’
“’Chewed to bits by a famished candiru in the Upper Baboonsasshole.’”
Then Mary works Steely Dan III into Johnny’s ass “with a series of corkscrew movements of her fluid hips.”
Pop music!
Sunday, February 08, 2009
The Best Poems of 2008
As I read I keep ready a stack of placemarks. When I read something I want to reread, I poke in a placemark. Used to be I only did this with poems. Nearly 20 years ago I started a personal anthology to answer for myself who might be my favorite poets. When asked, I couldn’t drop names with confidence because there were poems by poet X that I liked, but there were also poems by poet X that did nothing for me, or that I disliked. Could poet X be a favorite? I decided what I needed was a pool of poems that worked for me, a collection only of those poems I looked forward to returning to again & again. When a poem proves itself over a few readings – proves itself a poem I want to continue to live with – I copy it out by hand. Some years I copy out a lot of poems. This year? No.
I read 48 books & magazines in 2008 which contained poems, from these I copied a total of 18 poems* by 16 poets.
Juliette Chen … “Tao Po Mei”
Jean Yoon … “The De-Militarized Zone”
Jean Yoon … “Direct Translation”
Alicia Ostriker … “Anxiety About Dying”
Sue Owens … “Lullaby”
Gregory Corso … “Last Night I Drove a Car”
Gregory Corso … “Don’t Shoot the Warthog”
Valerie Worth … “Cat Bath”
Dean Young … “Bright Head”
Dean Young … “Noncompliant”
Marc Elihu Hofstadter … “Paris”
Joanne Kyger … “October 28, Take It Easier”
John Giorno … “Tear Gas”
Alan Bern … a senryu from “Secondi Passi”
Emily Dickinson … 1563 “by homely gift”
Darlyn Avina … “Deep Eyes”
Jerry D. Miley … “Memories”
Geof Huth & mIEKAL aND … 19 pwoerms from Texistence
The habit of placemarks has come in handy with Dare I Read, too. I have a batch of books leaning against each other near the computer, each with a marker indicating something I want to bring up. All the books currently standing by bring up difficult issues. So some of them have been waiting awhile. I wanted to talk about gay visibility, for instance – you can be out & proud but if people don’t see you as gay, you can’t influence their idea of what a gay person is; or depictions of gay people in a couple novels from the 1930s – not good, but not wholly bad? Have we come a long way or not?
Best Poems of 2007
Best Poems of 2006
Best Poems of 2005
Best Poems of 2004
____
* lumping all the pwoermds together
I read 48 books & magazines in 2008 which contained poems, from these I copied a total of 18 poems* by 16 poets.
Juliette Chen … “Tao Po Mei”
Jean Yoon … “The De-Militarized Zone”
Jean Yoon … “Direct Translation”
Alicia Ostriker … “Anxiety About Dying”
Sue Owens … “Lullaby”
Gregory Corso … “Last Night I Drove a Car”
Gregory Corso … “Don’t Shoot the Warthog”
Valerie Worth … “Cat Bath”
Dean Young … “Bright Head”
Dean Young … “Noncompliant”
Marc Elihu Hofstadter … “Paris”
Joanne Kyger … “October 28, Take It Easier”
John Giorno … “Tear Gas”
Alan Bern … a senryu from “Secondi Passi”
Emily Dickinson … 1563 “by homely gift”
Darlyn Avina … “Deep Eyes”
Jerry D. Miley … “Memories”
Geof Huth & mIEKAL aND … 19 pwoerms from Texistence
The habit of placemarks has come in handy with Dare I Read, too. I have a batch of books leaning against each other near the computer, each with a marker indicating something I want to bring up. All the books currently standing by bring up difficult issues. So some of them have been waiting awhile. I wanted to talk about gay visibility, for instance – you can be out & proud but if people don’t see you as gay, you can’t influence their idea of what a gay person is; or depictions of gay people in a couple novels from the 1930s – not good, but not wholly bad? Have we come a long way or not?
Best Poems of 2007
Best Poems of 2006
Best Poems of 2005
Best Poems of 2004
____
* lumping all the pwoermds together
Monday, February 02, 2009
“no spiritual meaning to the Bible”
In the April 16, 2007 issue of The New Yorker there’s a profile of the linguist Dan Everett and the Amazonian Indian tribe, the Paraha. The Paraha speak a language with characteristics that seem to defy some current theories about what makes language language. Plus which it’s very difficult to learn. And the Piraha themselves aren’t much interested in anything the outside world has to offer so don’t try to learn anybody else’s words. You want to talk to them, you gotta learn their language, which they don’t seem averse to teaching if it’s not too much trouble.
Everett began his linguistic career as a missionary. He married a devout woman whose family had done missionary work. When he attended an evangelical program for learning linguistics (goal: translate Bible into every language in the world and save dem souls!) he experienced a joy akin to being born again. Everett showed so much promise he got a real tough assignment – the Paraha. Though previous missionaries had worked with the tribe, none had succeeded in getting Christianity across. In this tradition Dan Everett’s own success with the Piraha language is not matched by Piraha interest in Christianity.
Long story short: a second degree later, plus a personal crisis or two and Everett faces the Piraha with new resolve:
“He threw himself into missionary work, translating the Book of Luke into Piraha and reading it to tribe members. His zeal soon dissipated, however. Convinced that the Piraha assigned no spiritual meaning to the Bible, Everett finally admitted that he did not, either.”
One of the many things that’s long puzzled me about Christianity is the idea that you need it. Billions of people around the world don’t need it. What about all the billions over the last two thousand years who’ve never heard of it? I mean Jesus, the very son of God, the only one, the only son, the only God, pops out of a virgin in a deserty little property off the Mediterranean, a sea more like a lake than an ocean, traipses around muttering and expostulating for a few years (was it even that long?), turns a little water to wine, brings a dead guy or two back to life, then gets nailed to a couple of boards. He dies, presumably in agony. It’s a story, all right.
However great the Jesus trip was, on a global scale it looks pretty small. Get a globe. A big globe. So big it won’t fit in your lap. Touch Israel with your pinkie and you’ve covered more ground than all that Jesus saw in his lifetime. Christianity, as a global phenom, lucked out when it got adopted by the Roman Empire. So the Roman Empire was poised for Dark Ages, at least it had the dim light of Christianity to squint by. Right?
Meanwhile the rest of the world – China, Mesoamerica, India – doing just fine, thanks. Waiting for Christianity to break free of stinky ol’ dirty Europe? Dying to be swept up in the Jesus craze? No. Really not.
Everett began his linguistic career as a missionary. He married a devout woman whose family had done missionary work. When he attended an evangelical program for learning linguistics (goal: translate Bible into every language in the world and save dem souls!) he experienced a joy akin to being born again. Everett showed so much promise he got a real tough assignment – the Paraha. Though previous missionaries had worked with the tribe, none had succeeded in getting Christianity across. In this tradition Dan Everett’s own success with the Piraha language is not matched by Piraha interest in Christianity.
Long story short: a second degree later, plus a personal crisis or two and Everett faces the Piraha with new resolve:
“He threw himself into missionary work, translating the Book of Luke into Piraha and reading it to tribe members. His zeal soon dissipated, however. Convinced that the Piraha assigned no spiritual meaning to the Bible, Everett finally admitted that he did not, either.”
One of the many things that’s long puzzled me about Christianity is the idea that you need it. Billions of people around the world don’t need it. What about all the billions over the last two thousand years who’ve never heard of it? I mean Jesus, the very son of God, the only one, the only son, the only God, pops out of a virgin in a deserty little property off the Mediterranean, a sea more like a lake than an ocean, traipses around muttering and expostulating for a few years (was it even that long?), turns a little water to wine, brings a dead guy or two back to life, then gets nailed to a couple of boards. He dies, presumably in agony. It’s a story, all right.
However great the Jesus trip was, on a global scale it looks pretty small. Get a globe. A big globe. So big it won’t fit in your lap. Touch Israel with your pinkie and you’ve covered more ground than all that Jesus saw in his lifetime. Christianity, as a global phenom, lucked out when it got adopted by the Roman Empire. So the Roman Empire was poised for Dark Ages, at least it had the dim light of Christianity to squint by. Right?
Meanwhile the rest of the world – China, Mesoamerica, India – doing just fine, thanks. Waiting for Christianity to break free of stinky ol’ dirty Europe? Dying to be swept up in the Jesus craze? No. Really not.
Sunday, February 01, 2009
The War on Drugs is in essence a religious war
"The War on Drugs is in essence a religious war. That is why drug offenders get longer prison sentences than violent criminals. A drug user is worse than a criminal -- no punishment is too severe, because drug users are heretics."
That's from Dale Pendell's "Amrta: the neuropharmacology of Nirvana" which appears in The Wisdom Anthology of North American Buddhist Poetry, edited by Andrew Schelling.
Pendell has produced books focused on psychotropic plants, Pharmako/Poeia and Pharmako/Dynamis. I have at least one of these upstairs, currently lost in the disorganization of the library.
"Drugs, as a general term, is an obfuscation of the War on Drugs. We hear the phrase 'alcohol and drugs,' as if alcohol were not a drug, and as if by drugs we all know what is being talked about. Addiction is an issue with tobacco, alcohol, and the opiates, but is not at all a property of the entheogens. Addiction to alcohol, a cellular poison, is characterized by physical and mental deterioration that is virtually absent in opiate addiction. Tobacco kills nearly half a million Americans each year, but there are no recorded deaths from marijuana. Each of these plants and substances has distinct properties, promises, and dangers. All that is served by lumping a group of them together is a government program of spiritual and political oppression aimed at cutting off all dialogue."
That's from Dale Pendell's "Amrta: the neuropharmacology of Nirvana" which appears in The Wisdom Anthology of North American Buddhist Poetry, edited by Andrew Schelling.
Pendell has produced books focused on psychotropic plants, Pharmako/Poeia and Pharmako/Dynamis. I have at least one of these upstairs, currently lost in the disorganization of the library.
"Drugs, as a general term, is an obfuscation of the War on Drugs. We hear the phrase 'alcohol and drugs,' as if alcohol were not a drug, and as if by drugs we all know what is being talked about. Addiction is an issue with tobacco, alcohol, and the opiates, but is not at all a property of the entheogens. Addiction to alcohol, a cellular poison, is characterized by physical and mental deterioration that is virtually absent in opiate addiction. Tobacco kills nearly half a million Americans each year, but there are no recorded deaths from marijuana. Each of these plants and substances has distinct properties, promises, and dangers. All that is served by lumping a group of them together is a government program of spiritual and political oppression aimed at cutting off all dialogue."
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