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Poetry Friday

Here's a poem by Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven (penned in her own hand!) to celebrate the last Friday of National Poetry Month. This poem, along with several others, appears in Body Sweats: The Uncensored Writings of Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven. Click on the image to enlarge.

 

 

Poetry Friday

Happy Friday! Today's poem in honor of National Poetry Month is from The Absence of Work: Marcel Broodthaers, 1964-1976 by Rachel Haidu.

 

 

 

From Pense-Bête, 1963

 

 La moule

 Cette roublarde a évité le moule de la société

Elle s’est coulée dans le sien propre.

D’autres, ressemblantes, partagent avec elle l’anti-mer.

Elle est parfaite.

 

The Mussel

This clever thing has avoided socety’s mold.

She’s cast herself in her very own.

Other look-alikes share with her the anti-sea.

She’s perfect.

 

Poetry Friday

Happy Friday! Today's poem in honor of National Poetry Month is from ThermoPoetics: Energy in Victorian Literature and Science by Barri J.  Gold.

 

 

 

 

 

Report on Tait’s Lecture on Force:—B.A., 1876
James Clerk Maxwell

 

Ye British Asses, who expect to hear

                        Ever some new thing,

I’ve nothing to tell, but what, I fear,

                        May be a true thing.

For Tait comes with his plummet and his line,

                                    Quick to detect your

Old bosh new dressed in what you call a fine

                        Popular lecture.

 

Whence comes that most peculiar smattering,

                        Heard in our section?

Pure nonsense, to a scientific swing

                        Drilled to perfection?

That small word “Force,” they make a barber’s block,

                        Ready to put on

Meanings most strange and various, fit to shock

                        Pupils of Newton.

 

Ancient and foreign ignorance they throw

                        Into the bargain;

The shade of Leibnitz mutters from below

                        Horrible jargon.

The phrases of the last century in this

                        Linger to play tricks—

Vis Viva and Vis Mortua and Vis 

                        Acceleratrix:—

 

Those long-nebbed words that to our text books still

                        Cling by their titles,

And from them creep, as entozoan will,

                        Into our vitals.

But see! Tait writes in lucid symbols clear

                        One small equation;

And Force becomes of Energy a mere

                        Space-variation.

 

Force, then, is Force, but mark you! not a thing,

                        Only a Vector;

Thy barbèd arrows now have lost their sting,

                        Impotent spectre!

Thy reign, O Force! is over. Now no more

                        Heed we thine action;

Repulsion leaves where we were before,

                        So does attraction.

 

Both Action and Reaction now are gone.

                        Just ere they vanished,

Stress joined their hands in peace, and made them one;

                        Then they were banished.

The Universe is free from pole to pole,

                        Free from all forces.

Rejoice! ye stars—like blessed gods ye roll

                        On in your courses.

 

No more the arrows of the Wrangler race,

                        Piercing shall wound you.

Forces no more, those symbols of disgrace,

                        Dare to surround you:

But those whose statements baffle all attacks,

                        Safe by evasion,— 

Whose definitions, like a nose of wax,

                        Suit each occasion,—

 

Whose unreflected rainbow far surpassed

                        All our inventions,

Whose very energy appears at last

                        Scant of dimensions:—

Are these the gods in whom ye put your trust,

                        Lordlings and ladies?

The hidden potency of cosmic dust

                        Drives them to Hades.

 

While you, brave Tait! who know so well the way

                        Forces to scatter,

Calmly await the slow but sure decay,

                        Even of Matter.

 

 

Monday Eye Candy: Body Sweats

Happy Monday! Feast your eyes on a few images from Body Sweats: The Uncensored Writings of Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven by Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, edited by Irene Gammel and Suzanne Zelazo. Click on each image to enlarge.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thirty Percent-Off (and Poetry!) Friday: April

Like last month, we are excited to offer a 30% discount on an MIT Press title to our blog readers (when purchased through the MIT Press website). Today's 30 percent-off Friday pick also launches our National Poetry Month celebration--be sure to check back for a poem every Friday through the month of April!

Our April discount pick is I Am a Beautiful Monster: Poetry, Prose, and Provocation by Francis Picabia and translated by Marc Lowenthal. Francis Picabia (1879-1953), painter and poet, was a leading figure in the Dada movement.

Follow this link, which will automatically apply the discount, to get your copy of I Am a Beautiful Monster. *In the (unlikely) event that the discount doesn't appear when you click the link, have no fear--simply manually enter the discount code "IBMFRI12" in the shopping cart to get the discount.*

Without further ado, here's a poem from  I Am a Beautiful Monster. Check back on the first Friday of May (5/4) for our next "Thirty Percent-Off Friday" pick.

 

Anecdote

You see, I’m crazy to think it
I am a man with nimble fingers
Who wants to cut the threads of old sorrows
False folds of my worried brain
Stories in arabesque memories
I’m only happy on the open sea
Where you go farther
On anonymous waves.

 

Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, and Laughter

To celebrate both Black History Month and Laugh and Get Rich Day, here's a passage from Anca Parvulescu's book, Laughter: Notes on a Passion.

 

A people of laughers, Langston Hughes has called his people. His poem “Laughers,” first published in Crisis in 1922 as “My People,” goes through a series of roles associated with African-Americans (singers, storytellers, dancers, but also dishwashers, cooks, and waiters), to conclude that they are laughers: “Yes, laughers…laughers…laughers— / Loud-mouthed laughers in the hands / Of Fate.  “Yes, laughers…laughers…laughers” comes as a response to a doubtful question: “Laughers?” “Yes, laughers…” is the insistent answer, its insistence a function of the acknowledged irony of an African-American poet in 1922 describing his people as laughers.

“I love myself when I am laughing” is also Zora Neale Hurston’s provocative statement, an attempt to claim membership with the same people of laughers. It is a response to Carl Van Vechten, who had taken a series of photographs of her laughing; but also to Hughes and his accusations that she had put on a “happy darkie” show and played the primitive. The sentence would be the site of Hurston’s recuperation by 1970s feminism, becoming the title of her 1979 collection published by Feminist Press. It condenses an “attitude” that brought Hurston intellectual annihilation in the 1930s and posthumous fame. A list of adjectives describes the “attitude” within different contexts: quick-tempered, arrogant, rude, inconsiderate, unladylike; or, alternatively, enthusiastic, confident, unconventional, outspoken, free-minded. Photographs of Hurston laughing, marking this “attitude,” have become her trademark. One sees them wherever Hurston’s name appears. And then, “I love myself when I am laughing.” What does Hurston see when her laughter returns to her in the form of a photograph?

What is clear is that both Hughes and Hurston are deeply invested in a wider struggle over African-American laughter. Hughes would write about Hurston: “To many of her white friends, no doubt, she was a perfect ‘darkie,’ in the nice meaning they give the term—that is a naïve, childlike, sweet, humorous, and highly colored Negro.” This description came in the wake of the fight between Hughes and Hurston over the authorship of their 1930 collaborative work, Mule Bone: A Comedy of Negro Life, which they imagined would be the first African-American comedy. Their conflict is considered one of the most notorious “literary quarrels” in the history of African-American literature. “Playing the primitive” is in this context the insult one injured party throws at the other. But, in close proximity to the primivitist theme, the quarrel is also symptomatic of the desire to rescue African-American laughter from those to whom Hughes refers as Hurston’s “white friends,” known for their indulgence in fantasies of black laughter.

It would be Ralph Ellison who would take it upon himself to explicitly frame the struggle over African-American laughter, and to bridge the discussion between a wider modernism and the African-American tradition.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bastille Day Reading

Happy Bastille Day! Here’s an excerpt from The Libertine Reader: Eroticism and Enlightenment in Eighteenth-Century France, edited by Michel Feher, to celebrate.

 

Libertinism, as developed in this reader, refers first and foremost to the licentious ways of the declining French aristocracy. However, before the eighteenth century, the word “libertine” did not refer exclusively to sexual mores. The term appeared as early as the middle of the sixteenth century within a theological context: Calvin used it to denounce a sect of dissident Anabaptists whom he accused of abusing their freedom by “transforming Scripture into allegory.” Others used it more generally as a synonym for “atheist.” By the beginning of the seventeenth century, the words “libertine” and “libertinism” became associated with an actual school of thought. The “scholarly libertines” (les libertines érudits), an assortment of scholars, poets, and dilettantes, formed a small group of freethinkers who shared an aversion to dogma; seeking to demystify superstition and to dismantle baseless beliefs and preconceived ideas, they contested both political and religious authority. Every watchword imposed by the powers that be, or accepted without question by the public, inevitably raised the libertines’ hackles. Conversely, any thinker persecuted for his opinions was counted, by definition, as a member of their circle…

After 1715, libertinism pertained almost exclusively to erotic matters…Neither moralistic nor strictly amoral, libertine fiction is nevertheless primarily about morals. Its main purpose is to examine critically the ethos of the petits-maîtres and of the dangerous men, as well as of the women who are the targets of the libertines’ maneuvers. In this respect, the writers in question paid special attention to their characters’ views on love, desire, and pleasure; first, because the libertines they describe spend most of their time devising and executing campaigns of seduction, and second, because they use their philosophical positions on love, nature, and society as a justification for their reckless ways.

Although libertine fiction is largely devoted to describing the schemes and the prowess of the petits-maîtres and the dangerous men, it also endeavors to underline the problems, the impasses, and even the tragedies to which the libertine life can lead.

 

Abdellah Taïa Wins the Prix de Flore

We are very pleased to announce that Semiotext(e) author Abdellah Taïa has won the 2010 Prix de Flore for his latest book, Le jour de Roi. This literary prize, created in 1994 at the Café de Flore and judged by a panel of journalists, is given to a promising young author for a work of literature that shows originality and a modern sensibility.

Past recipients have included Michel Houllebecq, Virginie Despentes, and Pierre Mérot. The prize only applies to French-language literature; however, the author does not have to be French. Bruce Benderson, also one of our Semiotext(e) authors, was the first non-French author to receive the prize, in 2004, for his novel Autobiographie érotique (released in English as The Romanian: A Story of Obsession). Though Abdellah Taïa is Moroccan, he has lived in Paris for the last eight years.

The laureate of the Prix de Flore, in addition to a monetary prize, is entitled to drink a glass of the white wine Pouilly-Fumé at the Café de Flore every day for a year. The laureate's name is engraved on the glass.

Last year Semiotext(e) published Abdellah Taïa's Salvation Army, a coming-of-age novel that tells the story of Taïa's life with complete disclosure. Look for more  Semiotext(e) translations of Taïa's successful novels available through the MIT Press in the future.

Posthumous Publications

Ernest Hemingway's A Movable Feast, Sylvia Plath's Ariel, Jonathan Kennedy O'Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces, and more recently, Robert Bolano's 2666 were all published after the authors had passed away.

An article in today's Wall Street Journal highlights posthumous publications and brings attention to the often fraught process of assembling literature from notebooks and computer files. With many forthcoming posthumous publications, what are you looking forward to reading? What are some of your favorite posthumously published books?

Poetry, Dada Style

Shattered wall
Today I asked
Myself why
She didn't hang herself

Lia, blond lia
She would have swung
From a rope at night
Like a ripe pear

And dogs in the street
Would have barked
And people gathered
To gape

And they'd have yelled
"Take care she doesn't fall."
I would have nailed
The lock to the door

I'd have set a ladder
And taken her down
Like a ripe pear
Like a dead girl
And put her in a nice bed.

In Zurich, as Tristan Tzara, Samuel Rosenstock became one of Dada's founders and perhaps its most well known poet. The poem above appears in Tom Sanqvist's recently published Dada East: The Romanians of Cabaret Voltaire which features a chapter devoted to Tzara, as well as this meta-poem, showing Tzara at his most Dada:

To make a dadaist poem
Take a newspaper.
Take a pair of scissors.
Choosen an article as long as you are planning to make your poem.
Cut out the article.
Then cut out each of the words that make up this article and put them in a bag.
Shake it gently.
Then take out the scraps one after the other in the order in which they left the bag.
Copy conscientiously.
The poem will be like you.