Daniil Kharms

 

From "A Treatise More or Less in the Spirit of Emerson"

IV. On approaching immortality

It is characteristic of every person to strive toward enjoyment, which is always a kind of sexual fulfillment, either satisfaction or acquisition. But only that which does not lie on the path of enjoyment leads to immortality. All the systems leading toward immortality, in the final analysis, are reducible to a single rule: at all times do that which you do not want to do, because every person always wants to either eat, or to satisfy their sexual urges, or to acquire something, or all of the above, more or less, at the same time. Interestingly, immortality is always connected with death, and is represented by the various religious systems either as eternal enjoyment, or eternal suffering, or an eternal absence of both pleasure and suffering.

Vladimir Mayakovsky

 

Revolutionary Russia’s avant-garde with the Japanese writer Tamiji Naito, Moscow, May 1924 (photo by Anatoly Cemenka). From left to right: Pasternak, Mayakovsky, Naito, (diplomat) Arseny Voznesensky, Olga Tretyakova, Eisenstein, and Lilia (or Lili) Brik. Mayakovsky always seemed to tower over these gatherings, as he does in this photo with that ubiquitous fag.

Clouds up to tricks

High
       in the sky
                      sailed clouds.
Just four of them —
                                 none of your crowds.
From the first to the third
                                       they looked men,
while the fourth
                         was a camel.
                                              Then,
when they were well adrift,
they were joined
                          on the way
                                            by a fifth,
from which,
                   absolutely irrelevant,
ran elephant
                     after elephant.
Till —
       perhaps a sixth

Daniil Kharms

 

What Are We To Do?

While the dolphin and the sea-horse
Played silly games together,
The ocean beat against the cliffs
And washed the cliffs with its water.
The scary water moaned and cried.
The stars shone. Years went by.

Then the horrid hour came:
I am no more, and so are you,
The sea is gone, the cliffs, the mountains,
And the stars gone, too;
Only the choir sounds out of the dead void.
And for simplicity’s sake, our wrathful God
Sprung up and blew away the dust of centuries,
And now, freed from the shackles of time
He flies alone, his own and only dearest friend.
Cold everywhere, and darkness blind.

                                Translated by Matvei Yankelevich

Daniil Kharms

Symphony no. 2

Anton Mikhailovich spat, said “yuck,” spat again, said “yuck” again, spat again, said “yuck” again, and closed the door. To hell with him. Le me tell about Ilya Pavlovich.
     Ilya Pavlovich was born in 1893 in Constantinople. When he was still a small boy, his folks moved to Petersburg, he graduated from the German School on Kirchnaya Street. Then he worked in some shop; then he did some other thing; and during the Revolution, he emigrated. To Hell with him. Let me tell about Anna Ignatievna.
     Not so easy to talk about Anna Ignatievna. Firstly, I know nothing about her, and secondly, I have just fallen of my chair, and have forgotten what I was about to tell you. So let me tell you about myself.
     I am tall, not unintelligent; I dress prudently and with taste; I don’t drink, I don’t bet on horses, but I do like ladies. And ladies don’t avoid me. They smile when I go out with them. Serafima Izmaylovna has been asking me to her place, and Zinaida Yakovlevna implied she would have liked to see me. Then there is a funny business Marina Petrovna, which I would like you to consider. Quite an ordinary thing, but a funny business still. Because of me, Marina Petrovna turned completely bald – bald like a baby’s bottom. It happened like this: I went over to visit Marina Petrovna, and bang! she lost all her hair. And that was that.

TRANSLATED BY KATIE FARRIS AND ILYA KAMINSKY

William Burroughs

 

Sinclair Beiles, William Burroughs, Gregory Corso, Brion Gysin: Minutes to Go (1960–)

21 February 2019

The original manifesto and manual of the cut-up method in literature.

First published by Two Cities Editions, Paris, 1960.

US edition
Publisher Beach Books / City Lights Books, San Francisco, 1968
63 pages

Vicente Huidobor

 

The first modern poet of the Spanish language — in many ways its Apollinaire — Vicente Huidobro is generally considered to be one of the four greatest Spanish American poets of [the last] century. Yet unlike his peers — César Vallejo, Pablo Neruda, and Octavio Paz — Huidobro is still little-known in the English-speaking world.

Altazor, a book-length poem first published in 1931, is Huidobro’s masterpiece and one of the wildest poems of any language. The century’s great paean to flight, the poem sends its hero (Altazor, the antipoet) hurtling through Einsteinian space at light-speed, as all places and times collapse into one.” (from the back cover)

Publisher Compañia Ibero Americana de Publicaciones, Madrid/Barcelona/Buenos Aires, 1931
111 pages

Bilingual Spanish/English edition
Translated by Eliot Weinberger
Publisher Graywolf Press, Saint Paul, Minnesota, 1988
A Palabra Sur Book
ISBN 1555971067
167 pages
via filboid

Vicente Huidobro

 

Vicente Huidobro

 

    portrait by Picasso

MINUIT

Les heures glissent
Comme des gouttes d’eau sur une vitr                                                                    Silence de Minuit

La peur se déroule dans l’air 

Et le vent

                se cache au fond du puits

                            OH

                        C’est une feuille
                            on pense que la terre va finir

                            Le temps

                                                        remue dans l’ombre

tout le monde dort

                                    UN SOUPIR

Dans la maison quelqu’un vient de mourir

                                                                    translated by the author from the original Spanish

                                                                     (From Horizon Carré, Paris : Paul Birault, 1917.)                

silence de minuit

Dans la maison quelqu’un vient de mourir
(From Horizon Carré, Paris : Paul Birault, 1917.)

Samuel Beckett

 

photograph by Richard Avedon, April

Vladimir: What do they say?

Estragon: They talk about their lives.

Vladimir: To have lived is not enough for them.

Estragon: They have to talk about it."

― 'Waiting For Godot'.

Cesar Vallejo

Black Stone Lying On A White Stone

Translated by Robert Bly

I will die in Paris, on a rainy day,
on some day I can already remember.
I will die in Paris–and I don’t step aside—
perhaps on a Thursday, as today is Thursday, in autumn.

It will be a Thursday, because today, Thursday, setting down
these lines, I have put my upper arm bones on
wrong, and never so much as today have I found myself
with all the road ahead of me, alone.

Cesar Vallejo is dead. Everyone beat him
although he never does anything to them;
they beat him hard with a stick and hard also

with a rope. These are the witnesses:
the Thursdays, and the bones of my arms,

the solitude, and the rain, and the roads… 

Cesar Vallejo

 

Paris, October 1936

From all of this I am the only one who leaves.
From this bench I go away, from my pants,
from my great situation, from my actions,
from my number split side to side,
from all of this I am the only one who leaves.

From the Champs Elysées or as the strange
alley of the Moon makes a turn,
my death goes away, my cradle leaves,
and, surrounded by people, alone, cut loose,

my human resemblance turns around
and dispatches its shadows one by one.

And I move away from everything, since everything
remains to create my alibi:
my shoe, its eyelet, as well as its mud
and even the bend in the elbow
of my own buttoned shirt.

Jackson Mac Low

 

portion of the "Light Chart"

Kandinsky Nature Nacreous Zeke

{ Forties 8 }

---

Kandinsky nature nacreous f�untain - pachyderm
totalizing web-footed cloisonn�       frets
glassy-eyed threats       promulgating tapster
renunciatory petulant gropes       cleats       tansy fortifying
      garment-district-t�rt
f�rtune - whimsy bl�ster - sieve

Dreadlocks       watchpocket Cheez-Whiz masculinize
gross - S�tebos       debt-node f�ntasy - grain       p�sque
gramophone notable chr�me - plaster l�gicide - creep
fantabul�tion-corner       normalize ease mix lapwing
          groat       forg�t-it ecl�pse - module
n�ttle-berry r�g - proctologist

Vincent eviscerate exit poll       monarchic lambkill
siege       vortex academic Rome       dolorous z�p-toad
Venus's flytrap       check-it-�ut acc�untant-tab             Smoot
futurology vertical methadone nautical glib-annex�tion
      envisage       whirl       d�amond cull
lotus position       tucked-away tw�nge

Neglected playmobile azure executive n�rture - grid
vomitorium Local Group       Panasonic planetary fish
Dixie flagomorph island exactitude S�ugatuck - wheeze
succotash Asner demonstrable Lorca columnar
      p�rcupine - dance       disc�graphy - rinse       f�culty - torrent
liberty velvet encyclical gl�nt-nix

Greeting-paper multiply disc�very - grill       maniple
formic moxie ASCII varlet tarnish Is�crat�s* cl�ff-dweller
mortuary cream-bun lemur rectitude tw�st-evacuation
ancillary pet�te ensconce       Grosseteste           gl�om-basket
      t�tle-page       green-thumb passenger-pigeon escal�tion-magnet
grappa forbidden       dilapidated m�sonry - clasp

Jackson MacLow

Mac Low in 1943 (used by permission of Anne Tardos)

Gamekeepers Dance to the Strokes of Syllables

An irregular curtal sonnet for Paul Blackburn

Put gamekeepers in your hills.
Breakfast on old grass.
Peace, quickly possible, continues speech-rhythms’ irrelevance.
Paragraphs machine you, poplar.
Be cleanly that.
Which of the gamekeepers is having December procedures?

November delivered pulled-paper mountains.
Well, but blue places dance and stroke in syllabic procedures.
November’s deliverance pulled down the paper mountains.
Well, but blue places dance to the strokes of syllables.
                Gamekeepers’ syllables. 

Derived diastically from The Collected Poems of Paul Blackburn, ed. Edith Jarolim (New York, Persea, 1985), 387--401, with ‘Paul Blackburn’ as seed text. A ‘curtal [shortened] sonnet’ (G.M. Hopkins) consists of a sestet followed by a quatrain and a half-line tailpiece. This one’s irregular in that it neither rhymes nor has the same number of feet or beats in every line. 

Jackson Mac Low

New York: 26–29 June 2000  

Jackson MacLow

1ST LIGHT POEM: FOR IRIS -- 10 JUNE 1962 

The light of a student-lamp  
sapphire light  
shimmer  
the light of a smoking-lamp 

Light from the Magellanic Clouds  
the light of a Nernst lamp  
the light of a naphtha-lamp  
light from meteorites 

Evanescent light  
ether  
the light of an electric lamp  
extra light 

Citrine light  
kineographic light  
the light of a Kitson lamp  
kindly light 

Ice light  
irradiation  
ignition  
altar light 

The light of a spotlight  
a sunbeam  
sunrise  
solar light 

Mustard-oil light  
maroon light  
the light of a magnesium flare  
light from a meteor 

Evanescent light  
ether  
light from an electric lamp  
an extra light 

Light from a student-lamp  
sapphire light  
a shimmer  
smoking-lamp light 

Ordinary light  
orgone lumination  
light from a lamp burning olive oil  
opal light 

Actinism  
atom-bomb light  
the light of an alcohol lamp  
the light of a lamp burning anda-oil 

Jackson MacLow

Twenties 26

Jackson Mac Low - 1922-2004

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

Undergone swamp ticket   relative 
whist natural sweep   innate bicker 
flight notion  reach out tinsel reckoning 
bit  straddle  iniquitous ramble stung


Famous furniture instant paschal 
passionate Runnymede licorice 
feature departure   frequency gnash 
lance    sweat lodge rampart crow


Neck Bedlam philosophaster rain drape 
lack fragile limitation   bitartrate 
fence lenghen tinge impinge  classed 
Fenster   planetary knocked market


Glass killjoy vanity  infanta part song 
king  cleanse vast chromium watch it 
neat      intense yellow cholera 
ornithology insistence     pantry


Torque normal fax center globe host 
yammer ratchet     zinc memory 
yield  texture  tenure   Penelope 
reed liter   risible stashed incomprehension



             11 February 1990
          Kennedy Airport. New York  en route to San Diego 

Theresa Hak Kyung. Cha

“I have the documents. Documents, proof, evidence, photograph, signature. One day you raise your right hand and you are American. They give you an American Pass port. The United States of America. Somewhere someone has taken my identity and replaced it with their photograph. The other one. Their signature their seals. Their own image. And you learn the executive branch the legislative branch and the third. Justice. Judicial branch. It makes the difference The rest is past.” 

excerpt― Dictee

Theresa Hak Kyung Cha

 

Excerpt from Dictee

From A Far
What nationality
or what kindred and relation
what blood relation
what blood ties of blood
what ancestry
what race generation
what house clan tribe stock strain
what lineage extraction
what breed sect gender denomination caste
what stray ejection misplaced
Tertium Quid neither one thing nor the other
Tombe des nues de naturalized
what transplant to dispel upon

Mayakovsky

 

Photograph by Alexsandr Rodchenko

From Street to Street

A
street.
Mastiff
faces
sharp-
er
than years. O-
ver
iron horses
the first cubes leapt
from the windows of running houses.
Swans of bell necks
curve themselves in nooses of cables!
In the sky a cartoon giraffe is about
to show off motley rusty forelocks.
Dappled like a trout,
the son
of unploughed fields.
A magician,
hidden behind the clock tower faces,
is pulling rails
out of the streetcar’s mouth.
We’ve been conquered!
Bathtubs.
Showers.
An elevator.
The bodice of the soul is undone.
Hands burn your body.
Go ahead and scream:
“I didn’t want to!”
it’s sharp
torments
burn.
The thorny wind
tears
a clump of smoky wool
from a chimney.
A bald-headed street lamp
lasciviously pulls off
the street’s
black stockings

Anna Akhmatova

 

In Memory of Sergey Yesenin

There are such easy ways
to leave this life,
to burn to an end
without pain or thought,
but a Russian poet
has no such luck.
A bullet is more likely
to show his winged soul
the way to Heaven;
or else the shaggy paw
of voiceless terror will squeeze
the life out of his heart
as if it were a sponge. 

                Translation By Robert Chandler

Anna Akhmatova

Akmatova and husband, Nikolay Gumilev

To Alexander Blok

I have come to call on the poet.
It is Sunday, exactly midday.
The wide room is filled with quiet
and through the casements now I see

a purple sun suspended in frost
over the winding disheveled gray
smoke. My silent host
(how clearly) looks at me.

Luminous, clairvoyant eyes —
Who could forget their gaze? I,
Being prudent, make a choice:
not to look into them. I turn away.

But I shall remember always
that smoky noon, Sunday
in a quiet high gray house
where the Neva courts the sea.

        Translation by Rose Styron