tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-58883672024-02-08T07:27:28.697-05:00Hotel PointPoetry, Poetics, &c.
John Latta is the author of Breeze (University of Notre Dame Press, 2003) and Rubbing Torsos (Ithaca House, 1979). E-mail: lattaj@umich.eduJohn Lattahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01215219604418390000noreply@blogger.comBlogger485125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5888367.post-1144152194019590602006-04-04T07:02:00.000-05:002006-10-12T14:02:03.053-05:00A HistoryDefunctHotel Point (October 2, 2003-August 11, 2005) got replaced by Rue Hazard (August 24, 2005-February 27, 2006).Rue Hazard (August 24, 2005-February 27, 2006) got its due comeuppance, replaced by Isola di Rifiuti (May 8, 2006 and continuing).John Lattahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01215219604418390000noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5888367.post-1126721416885095702005-09-14T13:08:00.000-05:002005-09-14T13:11:12.156-05:00To the Streets!Rue HazardJohn Lattahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01215219604418390000noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5888367.post-1123764283699831172005-08-11T07:41:00.000-05:002005-08-11T07:44:43.706-05:00Hôtel Coup de Poing~Clôture brusque et indéfinie. “Effectuating long-consider’d Hermit-dive out of Pismirey,” whatever that means.Samuel Johnson: “That to the vulgar canst thyself apply / Treading a better path not contrary.”Incipient period of private writings. Valéry: “The notion of external things is a restriction on combinations.”To the vaunt’d pukka “community,” I offer th’obligatory public “Fuck it.”Ciao.CiaoJohn Lattahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01215219604418390000noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5888367.post-1123675546601046882005-08-10T07:01:00.000-05:002005-08-10T07:05:46.606-05:00Coda~A coda (cauda L. tail, see caudal, a word mostly append’d to fin, and that by ichthyologists, the fish-tail toss’d to the cat, related to coward, turn tail and run) is what’s writ to seize up the end. Cauterize. Size up. It is engine and uncoupler to combatants and lovers, it relinquishes gently the giant spouting claims made in the flurry, so that the world’s combatants and lovers may continue.John Lattahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01215219604418390000noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5888367.post-1123592493647587432005-08-09T07:54:00.000-05:002005-08-09T09:12:14.900-05:00Snifter~Dinginess and vermin, a woman in the part of Thin Anguish, guttering down. Dora Maar: “Pure as a lake boredom.” Emptiness is not boredom, emptiness is too impure and prickly, firewheel and stickpin “of the cauteriz’d heart.” I miss everything. Milieu of frenzy. Culpable anarchy, the joy-gibbet. Rinsed linen. Poised syringe and nylon. There is no fraught silence I will not attend to—“It will John Lattahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01215219604418390000noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5888367.post-1123503425367037082005-08-08T07:01:00.000-05:002005-08-08T15:08:08.073-05:00“It’s the War, Stupid”~If, comme on dit, it’s Monday, it must be Baghdad. Kent Johnson’s ask’d for a room hereabouts to respond to Jim Behrle’s recent review: grant’d, amigo. Though I am notably a mild bystander to debates ferocious or pussycat’d, I thought I’d—singular nonce item!—offer up my two cents, contextualizing here for poor folks. Animosity runs deep in clowns. My favorite “instance”—one I liked to monicker John Lattahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01215219604418390000noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5888367.post-1123502404292520652005-08-08T06:49:00.000-05:002005-08-08T07:00:04.403-05:00Fingerwork~Solenoid stuck, the shiny ball jamming off the bumpers, banging away like a sluice gate, ratcheting up the numerals, going to turn the damn machine over with no hands on the flippers. Maybe one’s got to be of a certain Mechanickal Age to “get” that. Back when digital meant fine fingerwork. “The motives of the suspects remains pure specule, a perfect idea hid by its mirror-idea.” Picture that. I John Lattahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01215219604418390000noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5888367.post-1123245767141775972005-08-05T07:38:00.000-05:002005-08-05T07:42:47.150-05:00Jackdaw~Nietzsche names cynicism “the highest thing achievable on earth,” surely a statement in flagrante delicto with itself. Not unlike the dog slavering up its own genitalia, in solace perpetuum under greedy points of incisoral light. What things’ll exclude the corpulent reader of the madman’s books? Nietzsche lists—next to cowardice and uncleanliness—“the nook air of a soul.” Tactical, that. A nod John Lattahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01215219604418390000noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5888367.post-1123161072269265402005-08-04T07:51:00.000-05:002005-08-04T08:11:13.136-05:00Cirrus~“The adoration of mountains, Mr. Poe read in Alexander von Humboldt’s Cosmos, and the contemplation of flowers distinguish Chinese poetry from that of Greece and Rome.” Guy Davenport. High yellow cirrus tresses trailing up off the cloudbank, oceanic lit spume. A photograph the “woman in tears” Dora Maar made: a paper-sail’d frigate braving waves of honey-colour’d hair, the whole mottled by a John Lattahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01215219604418390000noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5888367.post-1123074933042614412005-08-03T08:11:00.000-05:002005-08-03T08:15:33.050-05:00Pockadunkquaywayle~What follows is, “verbatim with tidying” an unsolicit’d note and review sent by the redoubtable editor of Wherever We Put Our Hats, Jon Leon:John Latta,I read your post this evening concerning Kent Johnson. I discovered said poet in The Canary and I think he’s outstanding. Last week I finished a review on his Lyric Poetry After Auschwitz which will appear in wwpoh issue 2 along with about 8 John Lattahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01215219604418390000noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5888367.post-1122989250739669442005-08-02T08:23:00.000-05:002005-08-02T08:28:18.790-05:00Rum & Stork~Ravish’t to a T, that’s one way of feeling. Keats, admonishing the welter of blind choristers: “you need only agravate your voices a little and mind not to speak Cues and all—when you have said Rum-ti-ti—you must not rum any more or else another will take up the ti-ti alone and then he might be taken God shield us for little better than a Titmouse.” Oh Keats! He “had the right,” as they say. TooJohn Lattahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01215219604418390000noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5888367.post-1122898783273321242005-08-01T07:07:00.000-05:002005-08-01T07:19:43.436-05:00Quondam~Serious stuff for a Monday morning. To be got out of the way before I begin my late routine of mouthing off like Mehitabel. Kent Johnson—the one whom Ron Silliman recently compared to Darrell Gray, “the Actualist poet who drank himself to death far too young, especially Darrell’s work under the French pseudonym Phillipe Mignon, sort of a kinder, but not gentler, Kent Johnson” is how that went—John Lattahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01215219604418390000noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5888367.post-1122640943552539002005-07-29T07:20:00.000-05:002005-07-29T08:21:35.500-05:00A Color~Renegade connoisseur of blue Yves Klein, with prêt-à-porter Gaston Bachelard for backup: “the poet, living in ‘contented world-weariness amidst oblivious tarns’, suffers from the irony of blueness. He perceives an excessively hostile blueness which strives with an indefatigable hand to ‘fill the gaping blue holes wickedly made by birds.’” Blued blue. Van Gogh knew it too: “I paint infinity, a John Lattahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01215219604418390000noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5888367.post-1122556746436197572005-07-28T08:11:00.000-05:002005-07-28T08:19:06.443-05:00A Sound~The Luddite that inhabits my century says, “In order to make a few cents, think of a bath concession / In some little town like Gabii,” or try auctioneering, gabbling out the hysteria of commerce-lust over some bit of frippery, a ring, a washstand, a property. Prop: what the stagehand skids frowningly about whilst the curtains tremble with post-inertial pomp. Wallace Stevens writes: “Be content—John Lattahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01215219604418390000noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5888367.post-1122468393214630652005-07-27T07:35:00.000-05:002005-07-27T07:46:33.223-05:00A Cap~Down’d a reuben and two loggy green gherkins (early mod. Dutch, gurkkiun, dim. of agurk, augurk (also shortened gurk), cucumber—the proximate source is uncertain) at the Café Bitter, and thought about things for a spell. Smack’d into “Tykishness” (Hopkins). What is it? A too stern longing for th’abyss? The way a man’ll bark for hours up a cottonwood thinking he’s spy’d a skirt there? Dopey John Lattahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01215219604418390000noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5888367.post-1122382337931620942005-07-26T07:49:00.000-05:002005-07-26T07:52:17.936-05:00A Line~Cadenza or glissando, either way I’d need to add a ledger line to hang some notes on. So big the number of notes. And in the morning mizzling showers, a viceroy flaps three flaps and dares no more—descends to dogwood leaf, all demimonde faded glory. A fado’d insect, the way the clang of an I-bean on concrete is a fado. Or a toothsome yip at midnight stirring out of the depths of a John Lattahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01215219604418390000noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5888367.post-1122293855585987452005-07-25T07:01:00.000-05:002005-07-25T07:17:36.460-05:00A Fit~Admirable the way fate places the down’d tree limb in the path of the cross-burden’d pilgrim, causing him to pitch headlong into the graffiti’d boulder, acceding the troublesome journey to another, and getting him to heaven scot-free. Or so saith the sophist. I’m rendering obliquely things best render’d oblique. Caesar dug that. If Keats—poor child!—can so gently lift the metaphorick’d earthwormJohn Lattahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01215219604418390000noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5888367.post-1122037881688219462005-07-22T08:05:00.000-05:002005-07-22T08:11:21.693-05:00Sleepy~Ice-cube settling in a tumbler, a chink in the sultry night. A hinge into th’alert. Whereas prior: kraal’d soporific nodding. Kef-dreamy. “As if divinity had catched / The itch on purpose to be scratched.” How things is hid right up surfacewards! Think of Christopher Columbus, constantly on duty, he who one period went thirty-two days without sleep! Pestilential incendiary walkingstick man he John Lattahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01215219604418390000noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5888367.post-1121949639044600082005-07-21T07:25:00.000-05:002005-07-21T07:43:46.743-05:00Day Late, Dollar Short~Baseball under a roiling sky of a myriad shades of blue-gray palette, a featherbed of a sky. And downpour, and resumption. And a muddy late walk with the dog, no moon along to hobnob with. The snatch and turn mode: these notes, deflecting the real, or swooping it up into its embrasure. Embouchure. Melville says human affairs are “sustained by a sort of half-disciplined chaos,” and continues: “heJohn Lattahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01215219604418390000noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5888367.post-1121862805724753582005-07-20T07:23:00.000-05:002005-07-20T07:33:25.733-05:00Pitch’d~Pitch’d resolve to sit out a few rounds, rather than to continue the cage-rattling obfuscatory one’s in danger of making a trademark hereabouts. Thinking I’d board up the place, notify the village authority a grand sell-off’d commence at sundown, bibelots and dust-catchers, perfectly plant’d impatiens, phloxes, hostas, snapdragons! And then, inevitalbly, the turpentiney-sour resolutions cark John Lattahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01215219604418390000noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5888367.post-1121688764387044492005-07-18T07:08:00.000-05:002005-07-18T07:12:44.500-05:00X~“Brain-caking hiatus.” —Paul Metcalf, on Melville’s “stuck” birth.~To work.John Lattahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01215219604418390000noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5888367.post-1121432211869859862005-07-15T07:52:00.000-05:002005-07-15T07:56:51.876-05:00The Art of Sculling~“It is the nature of sculpture to be there.” So saith Frank O’Hara about the husky-flamboyant David Smith, and he ain’t kidding. Achieved mass: no finicky script, no negligible twitter, no brokedown-radio-lambency: that’s why poets avoid the sculptural, it’s that inconsolable presence that terrifies and beleaguers so. They’d all druther be tootin’ around the hearth-flicker—“I love no roast but John Lattahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01215219604418390000noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5888367.post-1121347229836809032005-07-14T08:17:00.000-05:002005-07-14T08:20:29.843-05:00Reel~Bastille Day, &our hero’ssmush’d upagainst th’alarmist& alarmingtemps réel,no palaisidéal construct’d by PostmanHorse visible. Sous lespavés, th’implacableplage, literallittoral, orbelittle’d litterof th’unviable,curiously wet.To vie unconstrainedly isthe point,unharnessable, ofswimming andmost othercalisthenickal orrevolutionary callings.~Read: What Ever Happened, by Tim Reynolds (If PublishingJohn Lattahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01215219604418390000noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5888367.post-1121256379906766752005-07-13T07:03:00.000-05:002005-07-13T07:06:19.913-05:00Dodo~Here’s a rictus grin to summer’s waywardness, lost focus, the teeth jumbled in haphazard lean, incised with dates and duties. Or, say, otherly focus, the timothy grasses plump’d with pollen, all the monocotyledonous sheaths upright and bluewintry-color’d, hue of Appaloosa and dogpatch, realm of Kentucky canine and clay scoop’d out of streambeds, a coprophagous treat. Harry Mathews says: “The John Lattahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01215219604418390000noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5888367.post-1121172103518400292005-07-12T07:37:00.000-05:002005-07-12T07:46:55.540-05:00Transcind~tendsindintendsindintendsindintendsindintendsindintendsindintendsindintendsindin John Lattahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01215219604418390000noreply@blogger.com