VRZHU bullets of pure love

More On What Nothing Poetry Makes Happen

For the Defense, from King Lear:

CORDELIA
Nothing, my lord.

KING LEAR
Nothing?

CORDELIA
Nothing.

KING LEAR
Nothing will come of nothing: speak again.

KING LEAR
If aught within that little seeming substance,
Or all of it, with our displeasure pieced,
And nothing more, may fitly like your grace,
She's there, and she is yours.

KING LEAR
Nothing: I have sworn; I am firm.

EDMUND
Nothing, my lord.

GLOUCESTER
The quality of nothing hath
not such need to hide itself. Let's see: come,
if it be nothing, I shall not need spectacles.

GLOUCESTER
Find out this villain, Edmund; it shall
lose thee nothing; do it carefully...

EDMUND
have told you what I have seen
and heard; but faintly, nothing like the image
and horror of it: pray you, away.

KENT
This is nothing, fool.

FOOL
Then 'tis like the breath of an unfee'd lawyer; you
gave me nothing for't. Can you make no use of
nothing, nuncle?

KING LEAR
Why, no, boy; nothing can be made out of nothing.

FOOL
thou hast pared thy wit o' both sides,
and left nothing i' the middle: here comes one o'
the parings.

FOOL
I am better than thou art now; I am a fool,
thou art nothing.

FOOL
Yes, forsooth, I will hold my tongue; so your face
bids me, though you say nothing. Mum, mum,

EDMUND
He's coming hither: now, i' the night, i' the haste,
And Regan with him: have you nothing said
Upon his party 'gainst the Duke of Albany?
Advise yourself.

KENT
one that wouldst be a
bawd, in way of good service, and art nothing but
the composition of a knave, beggar, coward, pandar,
and the son and heir of a mongrel bitch:

OSWALD
Away! I have nothing to do with thee.

KENT
Nothing almost sees miracles
But misery…

EDGAR
That's something yet: Edgar I nothing am.

GENTLEMAN:
Which the impetuous blasts, with eyeless rage,
Catch in their fury, and make nothing of...

KING LEAR
No, I will be the pattern of all patience;
I will say nothing.

GLOUCESTER
Go to; say you nothing.

KING LEAR
What, have his daughters brought him to this pass?
Couldst thou save nothing? Didst thou give them all?

KING LEAR
Death, traitor! nothing could have subdued nature
To such a lowness but his unkind daughters.

EDGAR
The wretch that thou hast blown unto the worst
Owes nothing to thy blasts. But who comes here?

EDGAR
There is nothing done, if he return the conqueror...

ALBANY
Ere I taste bread, thou art in nothing less.

What poetry makes happen

I suspect the misappropriation of "Poetry makes nothing happen" (the mis- part well argued to be so here) is in part because the stakes are perceived to be so low. We can't define with any specificity what "something happening" would mean.  This, taken seriously, might sober us up a bit:

As I've often told Ginsberg, you can't blame the President for the state of the country, it's always the poets' fault. You can't expect politicians to come up with a vision, they don't have it in them. Poets have to come up with the vision and they have to turn it on so it sparks and catches hold.

Ken Kesey

Prufrock

Just a reminder:

The YorkArts Gallery
10 North Beaver Street
York, PA
(717) 848-3200
[email protected]

PRESENTS:

The Prufrock Project Mini Exhibit

from:

November 16 to November 28, 2009

with an opening reception on November 21, 2009 @ 6:00 pm to celebrate:

over forty artists and writers from your neighborhood across the globe contributing to York’s Prufrock Project—each creating art based on stanzas from T. S. Eliot’s famous poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” This image-packed poem is transcribed in art to create a meditation on its various elements.

Visit http://www.emster.com/prufrock/ for more information.

And here's a video of Michael Gough reading The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock:

Richard Burton reads Dylan Thomas' Fern Hill

Dylan Thomas was a legendary reader of poetry, his own and others.  I may have this wrong, but I believe he subsisted on honoraria from giving university readings.

Could anyone be a better reader of Dylan's poetry than Dylan?

As it turns out, the answer is yes.  Here's an audio/video of Richard Burton reading Fern Hill.  Many thanks to The New Combat and this post by Bill Ney for getting me to think about the brilliant Mr. Burton.

Please proceed to http://www.emster.com/prufrock/ and read the following

"Maggie Foote and I were having some beers at Maggie’s in Westminster, MD. We were talking about a similar project we’d done years ago, where 13 writers made art in response to each of the stanzas of Wallace Steven’s poem Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird. She said, “We should do it again. We should do it for Prufrock.”

I is the wonderful, fierce poet  Barbara DeCesare. It is the exhibit, the telos of Ms. DeCesare’s Prufrock Project, which, those lucky enough to visit:

The YorkArts Gallery
10 North Beaver Street
York
PA
(717) 848-3200
[email protected]

can behold as:

The Prufrock Project Mini Exhibit

from:

November 16 to November 28, 2009

with an opening reception on November 21, 2009 @ 6:00 pm to celebrate:

over forty artists and writers from your neighborhood across the globe contributing to York’s Prufrock Project—each creating art based on stanzas from T. S. Eliot’s famous poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” This image-packed poem is transcribed in art to create a meditation on its various elements.

Visit http://www.emster.com/prufrock/ for more information.

AND featuring the art of two of Vrzhu Press/Beothuk Books’ beloved authors: Kim Roberts (The Kimnama) and Dan Vera (The Space Between Our Danger and Delight).

From the sublime to the two of Vrzhu's favorite people.

Kristen Wiig reads from the oeuvre of Suzanne Somers.

Tom Disch - Winter Journey

Coming soon from publisher Payseur and Schmidt: Disch's second work to be published by Payseur & Schmidt takes on a more somber tone with Winter Journey, a 31-poem cycle named after Schubert's Winterreise and dedicated to Disch's recently departed long-time partner, Charles Naylor. The poems were written in the months after Naylor's passing, and are at times funny, wistful, heartwrenching, angry, despairing, and profound. These gems of poesy are interspersed with photographs of winter cityscapes by filmmaker Eric Solstein, along with a DVD (produced by Solstein) of Disch reading the entire Winter Journey cycle. As a bonus, the DVD will also feature 24 related mini-films by Solstein and other bonus features. Approx. 100 pages with DVD. Limited to 500 numbered copies.