Snakes & Letters (Lieders & Shoots)
Dale Houstman
A Woman Making Bird Sounds
Cobras sleep in teapots
and sleep in teacups too.
There is a woman making bird sounds.
This is a typical Cairo television situation.
This woman performs
her "Bird Impression" act
in the studio giftshop
& her bicycle attendant
is entirely opaque
with a murderous
aluminum teaspoon measure.
It is in hawking these spoons
on a Cairo station that the woman feels
obligated to make
accurate bird sounds. In Cairo see,
birds are rented
to sing about the graves
of youth.
There is also
in Cairo
a soft drink made from a white flower
kept in a white refrigerator
in the white sun of Cairo,
and advertised
by two birds arguing
at the dark end of an alley.
Now only her bicycle attendant
dares to approach
the teapots & the teacups.
The teapot hisses
or is it that woman
making bird sounds?
___________________________
carmen
And yes, I love birds, and snakes, and I do love
the rhythm of your words, the repetition as incantation,
and... OK, I start to sound silly and yet I want to tell
you how much, how much I like this poem.
Thank you.
carmen
Dale Houstman wrote in message <78got5$63k$1...@news-1.news.gte.net>...
Michael Stephens
a good effort. Didn't understand the: "a soft drink made from a white
flower/kept in a white refrigerator/in the white sun of Cairo" line.
Probably just me though.
MS
Since we're friends now
I just wanted to add my two cents
Dale Houstman
>Since we're friends now
>I just wanted to add my two cents
Keep'em and buy Heidi a rose or two.
Your're right; this poem not as "gripping" as the other; more of a
tiny piece about a mythical city. I'm still working it out.
Since we're friends now, can I borrow your wife?
Dale "Don't Be Such a Stranger Michael" Houstman
Michael Stephens
I reckon you can borrow the wife again. Just send her back with some fish.
I've been having a hankerin.
Quinn the Eskimo
Dale Houstman wrote in message <78h11s$o11$2...@news-2.news.gte.net>...
sam@home
Prop100
you're talking about, but You had me from the first to the last line. This
begs the question, do you have to understand something to like it?
Dale Houstman wrote in message <78got5$63k$1...@news-1.news.gte.net>...
>
Dale Houstman
> This begs the question, do you have to understand something to like it?
I like Michael.
DMH
Michael Stephens
understand? I'm just simple country folk. Let's sit on a rock and get to
know each other. K?
Mighty Sweet
Dale Houstman wrote in message <78ic1f$mq9$3...@news-1.news.gte.net>...
Dale Houstman
> now here's something interesting. Not that I have a clue what the hell
> you're talking about, but You had me from the first to the last line. This
> begs the question, do you have to understand something to like it?
A rather more serious answer...
I think this depends on the nature of "understanding" One can listen
to and enjoy a piece of music without understanding it in the sense that it
can be paraphrased (I think "paraphrase" is usually confused with
"understand")
and surely poetry has something in common with music?
Personally I always love something before I understand it, and I think
love
is actually the incentive for comprehension.
Really in this poem what I am talking about are teapots and teacups and
snakes and birds. That's all. Someone told me once that my poetry was
"deep" and I had to insist that it was superficial and proudly so!
Too often understanding is "reduced" to a system of paraphrase, when
(for me) the only incentive to write is to explore those areas that are just
on the edge of being unexpressible. There are all kinds of poets, and I
appreciate those varieties, but my favorite work tends to be rather more
impressionistic and symbolistic than narrative and expository. I am also
afraid
that I am not convinced that a writer of a poem is necessarily under the gun
to explain every aspect of it to someone's satisfaction or to his own. There
are poems of mine that I "love" for years and only slowly come to understand
in any depth. I work blind and dig holes in strange soil; sometimes I find
gold and sometimes pyrite, but it's the process of searching that makes it all
worth the trouble.
But no, I don't think you can like something before you understand it,
although this understanding may be rather more sensual than academic.
Or yes, you can like something before you understand it, because love
is the incentive for comprehension.
Can you understand something before you love it? Hell, can you
understand something after you love it?
DMH
Heidi Stephens
passes and you can have me for a week.
Mrs. Soapy
all lathered up
Dale Houstman
>
> Can you feel the love in here, or what? First Carmen and Gary. Now you
> two. It's beautiful. I'm so happy I could orally molest a writing
> implement.
>
Satan's love-spawn baby-eating stalker doppelganger ghoul!
I love you.
By the way; is this "shaarpshitter" a gretch or a boojum? Where do
these hologrammatic grimshaws come from, and can we track them
down to their cardboard boxes and spray them?
Dale "Oh Joy!" Houstman
carmen
Don´t worry. I don´t need reciprocity.
carmen
(don´t tell shaarptoothache! I don´t like problems)
Dale Houstman wrote in message <78igu8$q4n$1...@news-1.news.gte.net>...
Joy Yourcenar
<mikeste...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>Why, Dale. You're so sweet. You don't understand me? What's not to
>understand? I'm just simple country folk. Let's sit on a rock and get to
>know each other. K?
>
>Mighty Sweet
>
>Dale Houstman wrote in message <78ic1f$mq9$3...@news-1.news.gte.net>...
>>Prop100 wrote:
>>
>>> This begs the question, do you have to understand something to like it?
>>
>> I like Michael.
>>
>> DMH
>>
>
>
Can you feel the love in here, or what? First Carmen and Gary. Now you
two. It's beautiful. I'm so happy I could orally molest a writing
implement.
Joy
Joy Yourcenar
Halifax, Nova Scotia
Mythologies http://www.collideascope.com/ebb/myth
icon/graphy http://www.collideascope.com/ebb/icon
BareIt's http://www.collideascope.com/ebb/BareIts/index.htm
Oh I scare you
in my woman's body;
nobody told you that passion could live
in such a rude cup.
--Daphne Brinkerhoff
Prop100
figure out why
the hell we sometimes like the things we don't understand. i always thought
the process of
comprehension goes something like: 1. receive. 2. analyse. 3. absorb. 4.
judge. 5. decide.
so, if you get stuck at 2 or 3, how can you go from 1 to 5. know what i
mean?
this applies pretty much to the couple of your poems i read here. do you
have any subliminal
messages in there, "you will like my poems. you will like my poems even if
you're too fucking
stupid to understand them."
well, it worked on me. how about that. but don't worry, i won't follow you
around singing your praise like somebody else does around here. for that
you'll have to pay me, in cash.
or maybe you need a stronger dose of those subliminal messages. something
like "you will like my poems or will set turtle loooose on you." that
oughtta get them in a flash.
Michael Stephens
You're getting cheaper, hon. And a lot less selective.
Mr. Soapy.
Heidi Stephens wrote in message <36ACFD22...@worldnet.att.net>...
Prop100
process. to reach the decision that you love/like something means that your
brain, conscientiously or otherwise, has processed the data and decided that
it is within the realm of what it considers to be good music/poetry/painting
etc.
let me see if i understand you. what you're saying is if your brain went
through that process sub-conscientiously and decided that you love/like
whatever it is, you end up loving/liking it without knowing why. you're also
saying that having got to that point you may actually have the incentive to
dig deeper and find out why the hell your brain arrived at that decision.
if that's what you're saying, i'll buy it. now i have think in order to work
out why i liked your 2 poems, and i thought this was gonna be just fun.
your closing remark was interesting. got me thinking (i forgive you). what
was it, yeh "Can you understand something before you love it? Hell, can you
understand something after you love it?". i have to sleep on it. nice
chatting with you.
Dale Houstman wrote in message <78igu8$q4n$1...@news-1.news.gte.net>...
>Prop100 wrote:
>
>> now here's something interesting. Not that I have a clue what the hell
>> you're talking about, but You had me from the first to the last line.
>> begs the question, do you have to understand something to like it?
>
gga...@excite.com
Hill) wrote:
>A Monet, at first glance, is beautiful; with thought and close
>examination, meaningless.
>
>Josh
>
>Been wanting to say that
>Some of us have strange needs
Renoir has more staying power
gg
Joy Yourcenar
<dale.h...@gte.net> wrote:
>Joy Yourcenar wrote:
>
>>
>> Can you feel the love in here, or what? First Carmen and Gary. Now you
>> two. It's beautiful. I'm so happy I could orally molest a writing
>> implement.
>>
>
> Satan's love-spawn baby-eating stalker doppelganger ghoul!
> I love you.
You're the frabjulous in my snickersnack, oh most vorpal of
sweettalkers. You've got me all beamish.
> By the way; is this "shaarpshitter" a gretch or a boojum?
a bandersnatch wannabee, totally tum-tummed
Where do
>these hologrammatic grimshaws come from,
same places as the punctilitious mavens of arid mediocrity...under
rocks.
and can we track them
>down to their cardboard boxes and spray them?
Say "spay" and it's a date, you garrulous galumphing bit of frumin
>
>Dale "Oh Joy!" Houstman
>
Joy "Over Dale 'cause that's the way, uhhuh, uhhuh, I like it"
Yourcenar
Dale Houstman
> Josh wrote:
> A Monet, at first glance, is beautiful; with thought and close
> examination, meaningless.
>
> Gary wrote:
> Renoir has more staying power
>
> gg
Strange, but I rather see it the other way around. Monet seems to grow
more and more pertinent (with his graceful tilts toward a symbolist abstraction)
and Renoir strikes me as oldhat, with his puffy little females and pastel
palette.
There's probably something in this, but it ain't worth the digging.
Dale "Monet & Less Aye" Houstman
gga...@excite.com
definately a case of *agree to disagree* here
i have a small repro of le moulin de la gallette in our bedroom,
and there are some parts of it that are just glowing and hovering out
of two dimensions for me. classical sight lines. i never get tired
of it. i like monet too, but from a distance, after half a bottle of
bordeaux with a couple of pernod afterwards.
gg
Dale Houstman
> definately a case of *agree to disagree* here
It's not even a disagreement really; there's just so much art to go around.
Now if you were telling me that Leroy Nieman made Leonora Carrington
look like Don Heck we might have a to do!
> i have a small repro of le moulin de la gallette in our bedroom,
> and there are some parts of it that are just glowing and hovering out
> of two dimensions for me. classical sight lines. i never get tired
> of it. i like monet too, but from a distance, after half a bottle of
> bordeaux with a couple of pernod afterwards.
Wimp! Pernod is the ghost of absinthe. Couple of summers ago
I grew two bushes of wormwood and made quite a few bottles of
absinthe. Horrid Horrid Vile & Odious. Drank it all...
As for Monet: I suppose like Turner for similar reasons; all that
uncontained light that seems like cortical function!
Dale "Screw My Health I Wanta See Fairies" Houstman
gga...@excite.com
Hill) wrote:
>On Tue, 26 Jan 1999 21:23:14 -0600, Dale Houstman
><dale.h...@gte.net> wrote:
>
>> Wimp! Pernod is the ghost of absinthe. Couple of summers ago
>>I grew two bushes of wormwood and made quite a few bottles of
>>absinthe. Horrid Horrid Vile & Odious. Drank it all...
>>
>> As for Monet: I suppose like Turner for similar reasons; all that
>>uncontained light that seems like cortical function!
>>
>
>Or a cortical function. Seems to me that true to Impressionist dogma,
>Monet satisfies the centers responsible for rapid perception and
>ignores the others, and that I can only appreciate his work with those
>same centers. I don't find that to be the case with Turner or, for
>that matter, with the other Impressionists, except in the to me much
>lesser paintings of Seurat.
>
>Then too, a bit of absinthe might help. Why do I have the cynical
>suspicion that the great shift to Impressionism had more to do with
>drugs than with Hegel?
>
>Josh
>
>Dale grows wormwood
>Gary skinny dips in Walden Pond
>Josh just goes to accounting school
>Well, not quite that bad
we need to have a get together like r.a.p. does
that way we can pull josh out of his shell.
gg
i know we could do it
Dale Houstman
I once read a piece about writing poetry that suggested the process is
basically holographic; that in fact the unconscious comprehends the whole end
product first but that the conscious brain takes time to work it out. In other
words, one really already knows the poem before one writes it.
Don't really buy that.
Dale
Dale Houstman
>But it would ruin the tempera
-ture, but Eggs Ackley
Over easy.
Dale "Keep Your Sunnyside Up" Houstman
Prop100
as how you get from point a to point b. there must many be different routes
a person can take. each person becomes used to a favourite route, and
sometimes a person may even come to believe that his/her favourite route is
the only route. having the gift of knowing a number of different routes, and
which one to use at any given time/circumstance is only a dream for most of
us.
Prop100
"A sense of humour
is a sense of proportion"
Kahlil Gibran
Dale Houstman wrote in message <78mrv9$5lc$1...@news-1.news.gte.net>...
Joy Yourcenar
<dale.h...@gte.net> wrote:
>gga...@excite.com wrote:
>
>> Josh wrote:
>
>> A Monet, at first glance, is beautiful; with thought and close
>> examination, meaningless.
>>
>> Gary wrote:
>
>> Renoir has more staying power
>>
>> gg
>
> Strange, but I rather see it the other way around. Monet seems to grow
>more and more pertinent (with his graceful tilts toward a symbolist abstraction)
>and Renoir strikes me as oldhat, with his puffy little females and pastel
>palette.
I'm with Dale on this.. .Renoir just doesn't do it for me. Prior to
Monet, a painter's job was to render the world as realistically as
possible. The advent of photography meant that artists were freed from
that constraint and, for me, Monet is the ultimate example of that
paradigm shift. Instead of being limited to painting the physical
world around him, he was able to recreate the world as he wished it to
look, realism being a moot point. The Giverny in his paintings
reflects a world he physically constructed and altered to fit his
vision.
> There's probably something in this, but it ain't worth the digging.
>
> Dale "Monet & Less Aye" Houstman
Where would Dale be without being freed from Reality?
Joy
I like Art, he's a great guy.
gga...@excite.com
Hill) wrote:
>I think there's some truth in that, but only some. Like any cognitive
>process, the creation of poetry depends on a lot of simultaneous
>processing and can be represented by coefficients on a
>multidimensional phase space (of course, so can anything, but in this
>case there's a very nice mapping onto the neural net). Anyway, it
>seems to me that some of the coefficients change dynamically while
>others have been calculated in advance, such as those that represent a
>particular form or a plot. Because the poem is causal and finite
>(before revision, anyway), it is uniquely determined by initial
>conditions insofar as the author is separated from the minutiae of
>everyday life whle he writes--but that doesn't mean that the brain has
>already made its determinations any more than it means that Newton had
>already been hit on the head with an apple the day before he concevied
>his law of gravitation.
>
>Josh
>
>This is bad
>I haven't even eaten breakfast yet
there can be a trance element that exists outside of linear time
sacred moments outside of profane time that take us to a place of myth
where causal nodes on a logical timeline get get tied in a gordian
knot, however, when we return, all that nasty revision starts.
gg
hi carmen
gga...@excite.com
Hill) wrote:
>On 26 Jan 1999 23:08:03 -0600, gga...@excite.com wrote:
>
>>we need to have a get together like r.a.p. does
>>that way we can pull josh out of his shell.
>>
>>gg
>>i know we could do it
>
>But it would ruin the tempera
i've very seldom seen josh lose his tempera
gg
except once after too much saké
Michael Stephens
Joshua P. Hill wrote in message <36b74a95....@news.mindspring.com>...
>On 27 Jan 1999 10:02:10 -0600, gga...@excite.com wrote:
>
>>i've very seldom seen josh lose his tempera
>>
>>gg
>>except once after too much saké
>
>
>Josh
Okay. I actually got that one. See? The fish heads are working. Think I'll
have another bowl.
MS
Fish heads working?
Wasn't talking about you guys.
Obviously none of us have jobs.
carmen
gga...@excite.com wrote in message
<36af3730....@news.bcsupernet.com>...
and becomes "movable".
Illo tempore.
cc
hi gg
"Truth knows all kind of subversions"
Dale Houstman
Prop100 wrote:
> the creative process could be different from one person to another in so far
> as how you get from point a to point b. there must many be different routes
> a person can take. each person becomes used to a favourite route, and
> sometimes a person may even come to believe that his/her favourite route is
> the only route. having the gift of knowing a number of different routes, and
> which one to use at any given time/circumstance is only a dream for most of
> us.
>
Precisely! This is why I disagree with my own pronouncement.
Dale
Joy Yourcenar
You are nothing if not inconsistent.
Joy
It's comforting when you get used to it.
Like a boat rocking back and forth.