BusterStronghart@Gmail.com
SS (St Eve) answers this poem from BusterStronghart, Wednesday, August 23, 2006, below:
In the false terror of suburban nights
He hears the ticking of the clock,
And thinks of childish frights.
The dark conceals his wooden face
Freighted with a thousand weights
Drawn in gray, stained in in white,
Faded too, by time's truthful art.
A poet once, in joy he lived,
As poets may.
But now a tradesman by his choice,
A fatman too, who has lost his voice.
Greed marks that hollow face,
Avarice and sin, cowardice too,
The trade was death for cash,
Death within a gilded coffin,
A suburban grave, a life of lies,
His life lies spreadout on a bankbook raft,
Under a blanket of adultery and of theft,
Somewhere on a stinking sea of convention,
His lonely, sinking craft.
mek
Before the convex mirror the image magnifies
Pores, craters, defects bigsize.
No knowledge of the sweet,
The kind. No forgiveness for the sane.
No points for moderation.
Whole life is no insurance plan
but made of error, laugh and pain.
Exceptions there are few
but as a poet you can stand on the mighty riverbank
and scream the the verses of your closeted refrain.
ss (St Eve)
Editor's comment:
My father would be pleased--my mother would believe it.
mek
Thursday, August 24, 2006
BusterStronghart@Gmail.com
Each man has his own batch of poems.
Herzog, Sol Bellow
My usual mistake is my greatest one: fearing to make one.
mek
Each man has his own batch of poems.
Herzog, Sol Bellow
My usual mistake is my greatest one: fearing to make one.
mek
BusterStronghart@Gmail.com
"Date a jock and all they talk about is sports and sex and sports and sex; date a freak and all they talk about is pot and sex, pot and sex. "
three teenaged girls at the pool.
"Date a jock and all they talk about is sports and sex and sports and sex; date a freak and all they talk about is pot and sex, pot and sex. "
three teenaged girls at the pool.
BusterStronghart@Gmail.com
"Understand that a man would have to act as the land where he was born had trained him to do. "
"It's because a fellow is more afraid of the trouble he might have than he ever is of the trouble he's already got. He'll cling to trouble he's used to before he'll risk a change."
Wm. Faulkner, Light in August
"Understand that a man would have to act as the land where he was born had trained him to do. "
"It's because a fellow is more afraid of the trouble he might have than he ever is of the trouble he's already got. He'll cling to trouble he's used to before he'll risk a change."
Wm. Faulkner, Light in August
Wednesday, August 23, 2006
BusterStronghart@Gmail.com
In the false terror of suburban nights
He hears the ticking of the clock,
And thinks of childish frights.
The dark conceals his wooden face
Freighted with a thousand weights
Drawn in gray, stained in in white,
Faded too, by time's truthful art.
A poet once, in joy he lived,
As poets may.
But now a tradesman by his choice,
A fatman too, who has lost his voice.
Greed marks that hollow face,
Avarice and sin, cowardice too,
The trade was death for cash,
Death within a gilded coffin,
A suburban grave, a life of lies,
His life lies spreadout on a bankbook raft,
Under a blanket of adultery and of theft,
Somewhere on a stinking sea of convention,
His lonely, sinking craft.
mek
In the false terror of suburban nights
He hears the ticking of the clock,
And thinks of childish frights.
The dark conceals his wooden face
Freighted with a thousand weights
Drawn in gray, stained in in white,
Faded too, by time's truthful art.
A poet once, in joy he lived,
As poets may.
But now a tradesman by his choice,
A fatman too, who has lost his voice.
Greed marks that hollow face,
Avarice and sin, cowardice too,
The trade was death for cash,
Death within a gilded coffin,
A suburban grave, a life of lies,
His life lies spreadout on a bankbook raft,
Under a blanket of adultery and of theft,
Somewhere on a stinking sea of convention,
His lonely, sinking craft.
mek
Wednesday, August 16, 2006
BusterStronghart@Gmail.com
In the terror of suburban nights
He hears the ticking of the clock,
And thinks of childish frights.
The dark conceals his wooden face
Freighted with a thousand weights
Drawn in gray, stained in in white,
Faded too, by time's truthful art.
A poet once, in joy he lived,
As poets may
But now a tradesman by his choice,
A fatman too, who has lost his voice.
Greed marks that hollow face,
Avarice and sin, cowardice too,
The trade was death for cash,
Death within a gilded coffin,
A suburban grave, a life of lies,
His life lies spreadout on a bankbook raft,
Somewhere on a sea of convention,
A stinking, sinking craft.
In the terror of suburban nights
He hears the ticking of the clock,
And thinks of childish frights.
The dark conceals his wooden face
Freighted with a thousand weights
Drawn in gray, stained in in white,
Faded too, by time's truthful art.
A poet once, in joy he lived,
As poets may
But now a tradesman by his choice,
A fatman too, who has lost his voice.
Greed marks that hollow face,
Avarice and sin, cowardice too,
The trade was death for cash,
Death within a gilded coffin,
A suburban grave, a life of lies,
His life lies spreadout on a bankbook raft,
Somewhere on a sea of convention,
A stinking, sinking craft.
mek
Friday, August 11, 2006
BusterStronghart@Gmail.com
Found on a memorial plate in St. Phillips cemetery, Garrison, NY
Found on a memorial plate in St. Phillips cemetery, Garrison, NY
----Catherine Heuston Ghiselin----
O hand unclasped of unbeholden friend
For thee the no fruits to pluck, no palms for winning,
No triumphs and no labor and no lust,
Only dead yew leaves and a little dust.
Sleep and have sleep for light.
Are the fruits gray like dust, or red like blood?
Are there flowers
At all, or any fruit?
.
1911-1980
BusterStronghart@Gmail.com
from a TLS review by William Logan, describing the poetry describing the apprentice poetry of Lawrence Durrell: --" lyrical afflatus of a blowhard."
from a TLS review by William Logan, describing the poetry describing the apprentice poetry of Lawrence Durrell: --" lyrical afflatus of a blowhard."
BusterStronghart@Gmail.com
I am a champion balancing act of the world and can now feel the cosmic conflict pulling part of me into the imaginal and spiritual realm as another part of me crashes into the side of the mountain and must deal with the very real parameters of the physical world. Although I may idealize the situation, yet it is important for me to try to see things as they truly are.
I am a champion balancing act of the world and can now feel the cosmic conflict pulling part of me into the imaginal and spiritual realm as another part of me crashes into the side of the mountain and must deal with the very real parameters of the physical world. Although I may idealize the situation, yet it is important for me to try to see things as they truly are.
Thursday, August 10, 2006
BusterStronghart@Gmail.com
The best you can expect in life is to avoid the worst.
I exist in the cemetery of spent and lost hours.
Everything we say is a continuation of what has been said before.
Italo Calvino
The best you can expect in life is to avoid the worst.
I exist in the cemetery of spent and lost hours.
Everything we say is a continuation of what has been said before.
Italo Calvino
Friday, July 28, 2006
OCT 25 IS OKAY WITH ME, BUT IS NOT OCT 25 THE DATE OF EVENT 50?
I am certainly in favor of dedicating the night to the dead and missing and would like to hear lengthy toasts to each lost member of the class, and should a member have been not well known by any one of us we could have a guest toaster, say Ed Sullivan, make the toast in our stead. An alternative might be to invite a member of the class who was familiar with the dead member. For instance, was any one of us friends with Frank Briggs? We could have someone from the class especially invited, perhaps only to make the toast honoring Frank.
As capacities have shrunk, and as there will be numerous members to remember, may I suggest that we toast with water or grape juice -- and in small glasses at that.
Some of you may want to honor past wives, past girl friends, or past lives. That is also okay with me, though I would draw the line at Margot von Vanderwort, a skinny girl whom I am very glad that none of you had the misfortune of meeting during the short time that I was embroiled with her. That she went to Smith and became a State Department official and at one time Ambassadress to Belgium, does not make up for the night we spent in my car in front of the Spry sign across the Hudson.
I didn't like her father either, who was President of the Corn and Merchants National Bank and who refused to pay compound interest until deposits were held by the bank for ninety days. Where was Eliot Spitzer when we needed him? In the First Form, I suppose. Margot's mother, however, was a charming, diminutive woman who often handicapped horses under my father's watchful tutelage.
I would like to dedicate the entire evening to the very great, and much missed, Stick Shift Bergavoy, ace driving instructor.
mek
BusterStronghart@Gmail.com
I am certainly in favor of dedicating the night to the dead and missing and would like to hear lengthy toasts to each lost member of the class, and should a member have been not well known by any one of us we could have a guest toaster, say Ed Sullivan, make the toast in our stead. An alternative might be to invite a member of the class who was familiar with the dead member. For instance, was any one of us friends with Frank Briggs? We could have someone from the class especially invited, perhaps only to make the toast honoring Frank.
As capacities have shrunk, and as there will be numerous members to remember, may I suggest that we toast with water or grape juice -- and in small glasses at that.
Some of you may want to honor past wives, past girl friends, or past lives. That is also okay with me, though I would draw the line at Margot von Vanderwort, a skinny girl whom I am very glad that none of you had the misfortune of meeting during the short time that I was embroiled with her. That she went to Smith and became a State Department official and at one time Ambassadress to Belgium, does not make up for the night we spent in my car in front of the Spry sign across the Hudson.
I didn't like her father either, who was President of the Corn and Merchants National Bank and who refused to pay compound interest until deposits were held by the bank for ninety days. Where was Eliot Spitzer when we needed him? In the First Form, I suppose. Margot's mother, however, was a charming, diminutive woman who often handicapped horses under my father's watchful tutelage.
I would like to dedicate the entire evening to the very great, and much missed, Stick Shift Bergavoy, ace driving instructor.
mek
BusterStronghart@Gmail.com
BusterStronghart@Gmail.com
Word tennis
Katz emerges from the electronic shadows
And loudly announces his return with 3 short calls.
Then in the course of his day he strolls
Energetically down the quiet main street to the banks
Of the Mighty River.
There with a broad sweeping gesture of his arm
He intones the first lines of "we are strangers met in
Friendship...." as a memorial to the lost boys of HM.
Oh Dick oh Danny oh Peter we remember your not so
Heroic lives.
At river's edge I memorialize the living too,
O Prince Hal, Mike, Malcolm, and St Eve,
Come now to the verge of the shadowy wood,
Where the mighty Hudson merely trickles,
And leave the Holy Rood,
And dip a toe, to make it tickle.
Cool feet and praise for the living,
But the dead ones murmur the future silence
The ceased flow of the mighty river,
The thinklessness of nada
Peter knows;
Richie though surprised has come to realize.
And Danny smiles.
A collaboration, SS & mek, cold spring, ny, July 2006
Word tennis
Katz emerges from the electronic shadows
And loudly announces his return with 3 short calls.
Then in the course of his day he strolls
Energetically down the quiet main street to the banks
Of the Mighty River.
There with a broad sweeping gesture of his arm
He intones the first lines of "we are strangers met in
Friendship...." as a memorial to the lost boys of HM.
Oh Dick oh Danny oh Peter we remember your not so
Heroic lives.
At river's edge I memorialize the living too,
O Prince Hal, Mike, Malcolm, and St Eve,
Come now to the verge of the shadowy wood,
Where the mighty Hudson merely trickles,
And leave the Holy Rood,
And dip a toe, to make it tickle.
Cool feet and praise for the living,
But the dead ones murmur the future silence
The ceased flow of the mighty river,
The thinklessness of nada
Peter knows;
Richie though surprised has come to realize.
And Danny smiles.
A collaboration, SS & mek, cold spring, ny, July 2006
Thursday, July 06, 2006
BusterStronghart@Gmail.com
A wonderful bird is the pelican
His bill will hold more than his bellican
He can take in his beak
Food enogh for a week,
But I'm damned if I can see how the hellican.
Dixon Lanier Merritt
A wonderful bird is the pelican
His bill will hold more than his bellican
He can take in his beak
Food enogh for a week,
But I'm damned if I can see how the hellican.
Dixon Lanier Merritt
Sunday, July 02, 2006
BusterStronghart@Gmail.com
Devil Wears Prada
Streep: 15 stars out of ten-- film 8 out of 10,
Streep plays a boss who lives for her work. She loves her work and becomes the best in the Cosmos at it. She can't tolerate fools gladly--and if she did she would be taking away from the energy she gives solely to her company. It's all for the company. She needs what she needs NOW and not later and expects to get it NOW!
Underlings don't understand; and some of them hate her for it, others merely fear her. None understand that her genius requires, deserves the instant gratification that Miranda (Streep) demands. Streep masters this part; as an actor she starts at the top and rises still higher.
But, except for Stanley Tucci, everyone else in the cast is just coasting. Anne Hathaway is miscast as Andrea, the second assistant, --she doesn't look or fit the part; she's weak, mooney, and her boyfriend, Nate, Adrian Grienier, is just a pretty face playing a sous chef, (well, Woody Allen sees something in him, as he's in one of his films but, I don't know. I kept wishing that he'd leave the sixties and get a haircut. We've seen his act already in a thousand pictures from the sixties.)
Stanley Tuccci is fine as a gay guy in the company. Loyal to Miranda, helpful to Andrea, he dances though the film and adds to every scene they give him. Besides the comedy, film goers will note there's a serious theme in the film too.
mek
Devil Wears Prada
Streep: 15 stars out of ten-- film 8 out of 10,
Streep plays a boss who lives for her work. She loves her work and becomes the best in the Cosmos at it. She can't tolerate fools gladly--and if she did she would be taking away from the energy she gives solely to her company. It's all for the company. She needs what she needs NOW and not later and expects to get it NOW!
Underlings don't understand; and some of them hate her for it, others merely fear her. None understand that her genius requires, deserves the instant gratification that Miranda (Streep) demands. Streep masters this part; as an actor she starts at the top and rises still higher.
But, except for Stanley Tucci, everyone else in the cast is just coasting. Anne Hathaway is miscast as Andrea, the second assistant, --she doesn't look or fit the part; she's weak, mooney, and her boyfriend, Nate, Adrian Grienier, is just a pretty face playing a sous chef, (well, Woody Allen sees something in him, as he's in one of his films but, I don't know. I kept wishing that he'd leave the sixties and get a haircut. We've seen his act already in a thousand pictures from the sixties.)
Stanley Tuccci is fine as a gay guy in the company. Loyal to Miranda, helpful to Andrea, he dances though the film and adds to every scene they give him. Besides the comedy, film goers will note there's a serious theme in the film too.
mek
Tuesday, June 13, 2006
BusterStronghart@Gmail.com
There is just a shallow truth in facts. Otherwise, the telephone book would be the book of books.
Werner Herzog
There is just a shallow truth in facts. Otherwise, the telephone book would be the book of books.
Werner Herzog
BusterStronghart@Gmail.com
:"You should say everything that comes into your head."
S. Freud. "On Initiating Treatment."
"I think that psychoanalysis is one of the great evils of civilization, even worse than the Spanish Inquisition. At least the Inquisition was about keeping something together. Analysis is only about taking someone apart."
Werner Herzog.
:"You should say everything that comes into your head."
S. Freud. "On Initiating Treatment."
"I think that psychoanalysis is one of the great evils of civilization, even worse than the Spanish Inquisition. At least the Inquisition was about keeping something together. Analysis is only about taking someone apart."
Werner Herzog.
Sunday, June 11, 2006
Wednesday, June 07, 2006
BusterStronghart@Gmail.com
My father was learned in pharmacy, of course, but also in race horses, boxing, baseball, gangsters, headwaiters, cards, good scotch, and fine women, of whom I assumed (wrongly) that my mother was only one.
There was a Saturday afternoon game high in the Majestic Apartments on Central Park West. Sometimes I was left on my own to play in Central Park, but my predilection was to sit quiet in a corner while cards and cash passed back and forth across green felt tables. Stories usually accompanied the sound of shuffling card decks and always my ears were perked to catch his voice flowing over the table telling a river of endless stories.
Clouds of cigar smoke hovered over the players, almost always men, though there was one woman, who occasionally came from Miami to play with her equals -- and she was recognized as such. Ann Baumwall was a squinty eyed woman with bleached blond hair and strings of pearls hanging from her neck. She liked to win from the boys, and she was the type that nobody minded losing to.
My father was modest and liked to say only that he "held his own" at the table, but the truth was that it was usual he that left with his pockets full.
My father was learned in pharmacy, of course, but also in race horses, boxing, baseball, gangsters, headwaiters, cards, good scotch, and fine women, of whom I assumed (wrongly) that my mother was only one.
There was a Saturday afternoon game high in the Majestic Apartments on Central Park West. Sometimes I was left on my own to play in Central Park, but my predilection was to sit quiet in a corner while cards and cash passed back and forth across green felt tables. Stories usually accompanied the sound of shuffling card decks and always my ears were perked to catch his voice flowing over the table telling a river of endless stories.
Clouds of cigar smoke hovered over the players, almost always men, though there was one woman, who occasionally came from Miami to play with her equals -- and she was recognized as such. Ann Baumwall was a squinty eyed woman with bleached blond hair and strings of pearls hanging from her neck. She liked to win from the boys, and she was the type that nobody minded losing to.
My father was modest and liked to say only that he "held his own" at the table, but the truth was that it was usual he that left with his pockets full.
Tuesday, May 30, 2006
BusterStronghart@Gmail.com
Minnesota declaration: truth and fact in documentary cinema
"LESSONS OF DARKNESS"
1. By dint of declaration the so-called Cinema Verité is devoid of verité. It reaches a merely superficial truth, the truth of accountants.
2. One well-known representative of Cinema Verité declared publicly that truth can be easily found by taking a camera and trying to be honest. He resembles the night watchman at the Supreme Court who resents the amount of written law and legal procedures. "For me," he says, "there should be only one single law: the bad guys should go to jail."
Unfortunately, he is part right, for most of the many, much of the time.
3. Cinema Verité confounds fact and truth, and thus plows only stones. And yet, facts sometimes have a strange and bizarre power that makes their inherent truth seem unbelievable.
4. Fact creates norms, and truth illumination.
5. There are deeper strata of truth in cinema, and there is such a thing as poetic, ecstatic truth. It is mysterious and elusive, and can be reached only through fabrication and imagination and stylization.
6. Filmmakers of Cinema Verité resemble tourists who take pictures amid ancient ruins of facts.
7. Tourism is sin, and travel on foot virtue.
8. Each year at springtime scores of people on snowmobiles crash through the melting ice on the lakes of Minnesota and drown. Pressure is mounting on the new governor to pass a protective law. He, the former wrestler and bodyguard, has the only sage answer to this: "You can´t legislate stupidity."
9. The gauntlet is hereby thrown down.
10. The moon is dull. Mother Nature doesn´t call, doesn´t speak to you, although a glacier eventually farts. And don´t you listen to the Song of Life.
11. We ought to be grateful that the Universe out there knows no smile.
12. Life in the oceans must be sheer hell. A vast, merciless hell of permanent and immediate danger. So much of a hell that during evolution some species - including man - crawled, fled onto some small continents of solid land, where the Lessons of Darkness continue.
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota April 30, 1999
Werner Herzog
Minnesota declaration: truth and fact in documentary cinema
"LESSONS OF DARKNESS"
1. By dint of declaration the so-called Cinema Verité is devoid of verité. It reaches a merely superficial truth, the truth of accountants.
2. One well-known representative of Cinema Verité declared publicly that truth can be easily found by taking a camera and trying to be honest. He resembles the night watchman at the Supreme Court who resents the amount of written law and legal procedures. "For me," he says, "there should be only one single law: the bad guys should go to jail."
Unfortunately, he is part right, for most of the many, much of the time.
3. Cinema Verité confounds fact and truth, and thus plows only stones. And yet, facts sometimes have a strange and bizarre power that makes their inherent truth seem unbelievable.
4. Fact creates norms, and truth illumination.
5. There are deeper strata of truth in cinema, and there is such a thing as poetic, ecstatic truth. It is mysterious and elusive, and can be reached only through fabrication and imagination and stylization.
6. Filmmakers of Cinema Verité resemble tourists who take pictures amid ancient ruins of facts.
7. Tourism is sin, and travel on foot virtue.
8. Each year at springtime scores of people on snowmobiles crash through the melting ice on the lakes of Minnesota and drown. Pressure is mounting on the new governor to pass a protective law. He, the former wrestler and bodyguard, has the only sage answer to this: "You can´t legislate stupidity."
9. The gauntlet is hereby thrown down.
10. The moon is dull. Mother Nature doesn´t call, doesn´t speak to you, although a glacier eventually farts. And don´t you listen to the Song of Life.
11. We ought to be grateful that the Universe out there knows no smile.
12. Life in the oceans must be sheer hell. A vast, merciless hell of permanent and immediate danger. So much of a hell that during evolution some species - including man - crawled, fled onto some small continents of solid land, where the Lessons of Darkness continue.
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota April 30, 1999
Werner Herzog
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