Fernando Antonio Salguero

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FALL READING SCHEDULE--updated

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PHILADELPHIA
Thursday, SEPTEMBER 3rd
Temple University
Center City Campus
1515 Market Street, Room 222,
8PM. FREE.


CHICAGO
Saturday, OCTOBER 24th
with KENT JOHNSON at Myopic Books
7PM


SAN MARCOS, TX
OCTOBER 27th
Texas State University
Room 315 of the ASBS (Academic Services Building South)
3PM
[Not a poetry reading but a talk about my photo project, State of the Union.]


AUSTIN, TX
OCTOBER 27th
with DALE SMITH
Venue and time to be announced


TUCSON, AZ
OCTOBER 30th
Venue and time to be announced


ORANGE COUNTY, CA
NOVEMBER 3rd
Chapman University
4PM


KANSAS CITY, MO
NOVEMBER 7th
Kansas City Art Institute
7PM


GLASSBORO, NJ
NOVEMBER 9th
Rowan University
the Art Gallery at Westby
7PM






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Half Bakery: some thoughts on Whitman

In 1860, Whitman received this letter:

Know Walt Whitman that thou hast a child for me! A noble beautiful perfect manchild. I charge you my love not to give it to another woman. The world demands it! It is not for you and me, is our child, but for the world. My womb is clean and pure. It is ready for thy child my love. Angels guard the vestibule until thou comest to deposit our and the world's precious treasure. Then oh! how tenderly, oh! how lovingly will I cherish and guard it, our child my love. Thine the pleasure my love. Mine the sweet burden and pain. Mine the sacrifice. Mine to have the stinging rebuke, the shame. I am willing. My motives are pure and holy. Our boy my love! Do you not already love him? He must be begotten on a mountain top, in the open air. Not in lust, not in mere gratification of sensual passion, but in holy ennobling pure strong deep glorious passionate broad universal love. I charge you to prepare my love.
I love you, I love you, come, come. Write.

Susan Garnet Smith

Hartford, Connecticut

Instead of responding, Whitman annotated, "? insane asylum." Whitman had two sisters and five brothers. Of those, Jesse died in a lunatic bin, Hannah was neurotic and possibly psychotic, Andrew was a life-long lush wedded to a prostitute, and Edward, mentally retarded. The author of Leaves of Grass also had his moments of, let's say, suprarational exuberance, to misfilch Alan Greenspan. Thus we have this exchange between Whitman and Horace Traubel, the compiler of a 9-volume daily account of The Good Gray Poet:

"Why did you write '? insane asylum' there?"

"Isn't it crazy?"

"No: it's Leaves of Grass."

"What do you mean?"

"Why--it sounds like somebody who's taking you at your word."

"I've had more than one notion of the letter: I suppose the fact that certain things are unexpected, unusual, makes it hard to get them in their proper perspective: the process of adjustment is a severe one."

"You should have been the last man in the world to write 'insane' on that envelope."

There is a gap between the voice of "O Hymen! O Hymenee!" and a flesh that was "never bothered up by a woman...his disposition was different. Women in that sense never came into his head," so claimed Peter Doyle, one of his homosexual squeezes, but the most basic split here is between poetic persona and prosaic man. In Whitman's poetry, the black man is also considered fraternally, as an equal, but Walt the editorialist could write, "Who believes that the Whites and Blacks can ever amalgamate? Nature has set an impassable seal against it. Besides, is not America for Whites? And is it not better so?" Onward, then, with Westward Expansion:

COME, my tan-faced children,
Follow well in order, get your weapons ready;
Have you your pistols? have you your sharp edged axes?
Pioneers! O pioneers!

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All the past we leave behind;
We debouch upon a newer, mightier world, varied world,
Fresh and strong the world we seize, world of labor and the march,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

Heave-ho the red man. Sorry 'bout that. Since "the United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem," English and white America shall rule, with lesser tribes swept into the gutters. Traubel transcribed our bard, "The nigger, like the Injun, will be eliminated: it is the law of races, history, what-not." It's destined:

Great is the English speech...what speech is so great as the English?
Great is the English brood...what brood has so vast a destiny as the English?
It is the mother of the brood that must rule the earth with the new rule;

Sounds almost like Project for the New American Century... More than any other individual, Whitman defines and embodies America to the rest of the world. His Leaves of Grass may not be "the new bible," as characterized by its author, but it's certainly the most illuminating guide to the American spirit. Just as no man can match his self-presentation, no country equals its own myth, but when that opera is as magnificently seductive and inspiring as Leaves of Grass, the discrepancies and shortfalls become even more jarring.

Hounded by another female admirer, the English Anne Gilchrist, Whitman tried to fend her off with, "My book is my best letter, . . . my response, my truest explanation of all." Undeterred, she sailed for three weeks to Philadelphia to marry him. Like Susan, she was no doubt hot and bothered by passages such as this:

A WOMAN waits for me--she contains all, nothing is lacking,
Yet all were lacking, if sex were lacking, or if the moisture of the right man were lacking.

The moisture of the right man was lacking, all right, yet Anne should have heeded the admonition of Fleetwood Mac, "Players only love you when they're playing." Like the still unburied, crotch grabbing King of Pop, Whitman wasn't quite the same lover off stage. Such is life, such is America.










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James Boggs showing me his books

James, born 1953, has the biggest library at the Camden tent city. He's been homeless a year. A native of Camden, he has also lived in El Paso and Southern California. Served 3 1/2 years in the air force, then worked as a mechanic and drove a gypsie cab. A customer was rolling a joint in the back seat when his car was pulled over--for no reason, James told me, except that its occupants were black and coming from Camden--and that's how he lost his vehicle, then job. Was sent to jail for bank robbery, without a weapon, James said, just a note demanding 400 bucks.

"Why 400?! Why not add a 0 or two?"

"That's all I needed. I didn't know what I was doing. I was confused."

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The Entertainment Value of Snuffing Grandma

Another amazing essay by Joe Bageant, 8/20/09:


[...] In the end though, healthcare American style comes down to the preferences of two elite castes, Congress and corporate powers, neither of which can exist without the other. Corporations need the government to sanction their methods of extracting wealth from the public. Congress needs corporations to finance its campaign chariot races. [...]





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Casper and Cynthia

at the Camden tent city. As stated in an earlier post, Casper has worked as a septic technician. He is also a dock worker, and will start a temporary job on the 31st. Cynthia is very neat, as was evident by the inside of their tent. "You are a control freak," I teased her, "like my wife." Deaf, she read my lips and laughed.

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Reading at Temple University

Center City Campus, 1515 Market Street, Room 222, Thursday, September 3, 8PM. FREE.


Also, my reading in Chicago with the fantastic Kent Johnson will be at Myopic Books, Saturday, October 24, 7PM.




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Financial Crisis Called Off

James Howard Kunstler's latest, 8/24/09:

Whew, what a relief! Everybody from Ben Bernanke and a Who's Who of banking poobahs schmoozing it up in the heady vapors of Jackson Hole, Wyoming, to the dull scribes at The New York Times, toiling in their MC Escher hall of mirrors, to poor dim James Surowiecki over at The New Yorker, to - wonder of wonders! - the Green Shoots claque at the cable networks, to the assorted quants, grinds, nerds, pimps, factotums, catamites, and cretins in every office from the Bureau of Labor Statistics to the International Monetary Fund - every man-Jack and woman-Jill around the levers of power and opinion weighed in last week with glad tidings that the world's capital finance system survived what turned out to be a mere protracted bout of heartburn and has been reborn as the Miracle Bull economy. Our worries over. If you believe their bullshit. Which I don't.

All this goes to show is how completely the people in charge of things in the USA have lost their minds [...]

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Trunk

A mansized secret
Inside a woman,
Mensch or balconied
Cactus. Snug inside

Is another me, truer,
Naturally, but basically,
Much redder and wetter.

Like any bombshell, I prefer
To withhold our divergent kicks
Until the moment of varooom!

Speaking of tendons, I’ll soon invent
A new lingo based on an alternative

Borsch.









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UNESCO Report on Babylon: US occupation caused “major damage” to historic site in Iraq

[...] Occupation forces scraped and leveled a number of archaeological areas and tells. Some were subsequently covered with sand and gravel to make parking lots for military equipment [...]




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Tina Marie McGuinness, 22,

has spent seven months at the Camden tent city. She left briefly, then came back. Shown on Fox News, she said that she grew up dreaming of becoming Miss New Jersey. Speaking to me the other day, however, she claimed that she was Miss New Jersey for 2005, and only skipped the national pageant because of "personal problems." Her fiancée, living with his mom, visits her every day. Tina's own mother, living not far away, was seen on TV sobbing dramatically, "Oh, that's my baby... I just want to hug her."

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SDMF

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Not "Society Dwelling Mother Fucker," but "Strength Determination Merciless Forever ." Before losing his business, this man laid tiles and made up to $3,000 a week as a contractor. Had a house, has a six-year-old son living with grandma.







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Camden tent city

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James Boggs and Lordes. Lordes was very shy so we never got a chance to talk. Like Lorenzo, who served two tours in Vietnam as a marine, James is a Vietnam vet. When I told Lorenzo that I was born in Vietnam, he advised, "Don't tell James that. Just say you're from New York."






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Camden tent city

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The man is 43 and goes by "Casper." I never caught the woman's name. Fifty years old and a deaf mute, she was laughing constantly while gesticulating. "Is she always this happy?" I asked. "Yeah, most of the time," he answered. Later, as we were walking to the Cathedral homeless mission for dinner, she got pissed off at a passing cop car, however, and was yakking and yelping in its direction. Casper used to be a septic tank technician. "I'm a country boy," he said, though he'd been in Camden for a while. The woman is a lifelong resident. "Make sure you get my earring," Casper requested as I snapped. Saying goodbye, they gave me a hug as Casper said, "One love," but when I gave his girl one-too-many pecks on the cheek, he blurted, "Watch it!" They don't plan on staying in tent city past this winter. With the leaves gone, that place is quite dismal.







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Camden tent city

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3) No Borrowing Money or Sex From Anyone








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Camden

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Had two beers at Off Broadway. Talked to a man named Jamaal, 65 years old, former math teacher, retired. A jazz fan, he told me his favorite concert ever was Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers at the Blue Note in NYC. We talked about Mickey Roker, who used to be the house drummer at Ortlieb's in Philly. Mickey is baaaaad, all right. On the wall: "ANYONE USING PROFANITY WILL BE ASKED TO LEAVE." One of the two female bartenders had on a yellow T-Shirt: "PRACTICE SAFE SEX--GO FUCK YOURSELF." Jamaal opined, "This place is all right. It has an older crowd. You can go home at the end of the night."

"What's the alternative?" I asked.

"Someone beats you up or shoots you."

"I'd rather just go home."

"Me too."

Leaving, I bought three six packs of Rolling Rock to take to the tent city. Jamaal gave me a ride halfway. There, I talked to Lorenzo "Jamaica" Banks, its "mayor." That's him in the top photo. At bottom is Coco, his wife. I hung out there a while, said I'll be back tomorrow with more beer.





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A blurb by John Yau

for my next book, Some Kind of Cheese Orgy, scheduled to go to the printer next week:

The ever-precise and brilliant James Schuyler characterized Vladimir Mayakovsky’s poetry as brimming with the “intimate yell.” Frank O’Hara got that energy pulsing in his work, but was tenderer, while Linh Dinh is more preposterous and full of outrage than either. Imagine a concoction that mixes Shakespeare’s Falstaff’ and Celine’s Bardum, frank, rollicking humor and hair-raising disgust. After adding fish sauce, a smelly cheese and sexual sweat, shake vigorously. Out of the bottle rises Linh Dinh. God talks to him and he talks about everything, including the body parts that Renaissance painters left out. No one does it better.

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An exchange with Murat Nemet-Nejat

Dear Linh,

I looked over the photographs you posted today. I will look at all the others later today or tomorrow. They all have the qualities of your poetry, a sharp clear eye focused on the conditions, sadness, savagery, exploitations of our times, in the United States. I very much am looking forward to seeing what you see and record, your visual commentaries, during your trip: two homeless are lying on the sidewalk against an empty space advertised for rent.

As to my photography essay: if you remember, there I say that one thing distinguishing photography as a medium is the inherent independence of the photographic subject (that is, whatever is before the lens), of photographic space. The photographer can never quite control it; what the lens can see is inherently more than what the photographer can. In your photographs, I have a predilection for those where the photograph contains more than its focal point. That does not mean that what is focused on is not important, only that it is enriched by what lies in the peripheries.

For instance,in the 8:26 P.M. photo, I love the way that, not only the posters (of hope, love and unity) stand against asphalt and a a few weed like "leaves of) grass growing, but also that the poster saying "remember forgive" has a cactus with a single flower on it. That gesture of the anonymous poster maker adds something exquisite to the photograph. His/her gesture is heard in the peripheries.

I love the interchange between the Rabelaisian/grotesque body of the pusher of the shopping cart and the antics of the multiple shadows on the shutter and on the asphalt...


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Hi Murat,

Thanks for giving these a close look. I agree with you completely that the secondary details are often what make a photo special. It's interesting that Drew Gardner was drawn to your essay, since he considered the Flarf project as also a collaboration between "author" and "subjects."

Even Jeff Wall admits to being surprised by the slight improvisations, or creativity, if you will, of the models in his staged images. In spite of the independence of subjects and lens, however, the photographer is still responsible for framing a very specific scenario in, literally, a tiny fraction of a second. When you factor in the (often elaborate) editing process, where colors could be tinkered with, details cropped and entire composition tilted, the authorship of the chimping chump becomes even more unimpeachable.

Photo as found art, something pointed to, a la DuChamp. I think also of Cassavetes' drawn out scenes, where rambling actors are allowed to improvise, approximating "real" conversations in tedious life.


Linh





Linh,

I had read Drew's comments when he wrote them. His essay, along with one of David Chirot's post a while ago, are the two most intelligent writings about my essay.

The kind of editing you are describing, tweaking colors, etc., is relatively more relevant after the advent of digital photography. In my essay, I repeatedly make the point that the photographic image is inherently unstable, the photographer is working at the edge of technique because of the "perilous journey" the reflected light takes from the subject to the print. This is particularly true in the 19th century photographs. For instance, the 19th century light always seems on the verge of being over-exposed, giving it a peculiar glow. Then there are "mistakes," "blurs"; a subject may have moved, etc. Also, camera obscura photographs embody the passage of time; what was before the camera keeps moving from us, etc.

Though the photographer as the "framer" is important, I think, much less so, less centrally than people realize. For me, the photographer provides the lens, the foil against which the subject asserts its independence. I am aware this idea is quite radical and goes very much against the grain of modernity. This does not make the photograph a found art because an object (a subject) in itself can not be independent. It needs the foil of an observer who, potentially, is trying to control it.

Affectionately,


Murat





Hi Murat,

A tangent to this discussion is our shared interest in street life, how the body needs to regularly swim through a common space while being exposed to a multitude of mostly unknown others. This intercourse, both comforting and menacing, is denied to those who only drive and surf.


Linh

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