Aporetica

  The Fall of Man Into Machine – Response to Giger Impressions of Erotomechanics VII (1979) By Swiss artist Hans Rudi Giger (1940-2014) Reading Rainer Maria Rilke -     ' We live in a machine,     and inner things have become the same as the outside,     as if the soul were but an exhaust fume irksomely                    pouring from a loud engine.     Things curl up in themselves ...     like sick girls who have forgotten what love,                                   flowers'   Notes: Human and mechanical forms Biomechanoid – human is entangled in symbiotic relationship with mechanical world Technology is no longer a tool – it’s become physiologically integrated – man is in servitude Man is intimately involved with his creation Woman figure is human, discernible – they are in profile – we (viewer) are looking on Man is an object, a device, disembodied Realistic representation Clinical light Highly stylised - Giger’s style in paintings are instan

  Poems late in June 2021 – Part 1   I’ve been thinking about joy and presence The Polish poet, Adam Zagajewski, and his poem ‘Try to Praise the Mutilated World’ The word ‘mutilated’ has troubled me since I first read the poem years ago, and after seeing Cronenberg’s film ‘Crash’ (1996) ‘Mutilate’ – maimed, disfigure, cut-off - but before that, the word has an uncertain origin   Try to Praise the Mutilated World (2002) by Adam Zagajewski, translated by Clare Cavanagh   Try to praise the mutilated world. Remember June's long days, and wild strawberries, drops of rosé wine. The nettles that methodically overgrow the abandoned homesteads of exiles. You must praise the mutilated world. You watched the stylish yachts and ships; one of them had a long trip ahead of it, while salty oblivion awaited others. You've seen the refugees going nowhere, you've heard the executioners sing joyfully. You should praise the mutilated world. Remember t

From academy to the street, from poetry to prose - Nicanor Parra – ‘My own antipoems use this blank verse. I’ve often been asked what an antipoem is and the most frequent response I’ve given, without realising  what I was saying is – “an antipoem is quite simple a dramatic utterance”, and a dramatic utterance, we would have to add, is a Shakespearean blank verse. Or rather, it is a hendecasyllable that lengthens and shortens, and that oscillates between the academy, the street and the fairground.   I’ve always worked with these elements: I’ve even managed to combine verse with eleven syllables and one with one syllable, and verses with prose. I thought it was a great invention of mine, but the Elizabethans were already working with these methods – Shakespeare used them in King Lear , where a large percentage of the work is written in prose, without us fully knowing what is verse and what is prose. This is very important: we could say that they are prosaic verses, or poetic verse’

  PUZZLE by Nicanor Parra   I give no one the right. I love a piece of rag. I shift tombs back and forth.   I shift tombs back and forth. I give no one the right. I'm a ridiculous sort In the light of the sun, The plague of soda fountains Dying of rage.   I am a hopeless case, My own hairs accuse me On the bargain altar The machines give no pardons.   I laugh from behind a chair, my face fills with flies.   I am the one who can’t say what he means Talking in long rows of what.   I stutter, With my foot touches a sort of foetus.   What are these stomachs for? Who made up this mess?   It's best thing is not to let on. Thinking one thing I think something else. (Translated by W.S. Merwin) Rompecabezas   No doy a nadie el derecho. Adoro un trozo de trapo. Traslado tumbas de lugar.   Traslado tumbas de lugar. No doy a nadie el derecho. Yo soy un tipo ridículo A los rayos del sol, Azote de las fuen

  THEY FEED THEY LION by Philip Levine (1968)   Out of burlap sacks, out of bearing butter, Out of black bean and wet slate bread, Out of the acids of rage, the candor of tar, Out of creosote, gasoline, drive shafts, wooden dollies, They Lion grow.   Out of the gray hills Of industrial barns, out of rain, out of bus ride, West Virginia to Kiss My Ass, out of buried aunties, Mothers hardening like pounded stumps, out of stumps, Out of the bones' need to sharpen and the muscles' to stretch, They Lion grow.   Earth is eating trees, fence posts, Gutted cars, earth is calling in her little ones, "Come home, Come home!" From pig balls, From the ferocity of pig driven to holiness, From the furred ear and the full jowl come The repose of the hung belly, from the purpose They Lion grow.   From the sweet glues of the trotters Come the sweet kinks of the fist, from the full flower Of the hams the thorax of caves, From "Bow