On May 29, Iris Cushing wrote the Pete’s Candy Store mailing list with news of dear friend and former student Cole Heinowitz’s drowning in the Yuba River, Northern California, on Saturday, May 25—Memorial Day Weekend. This page records a series of dates; I first learned of the terrible fact on Tuesday, May 27, just arrived in San Diego for several days work in the UCSD Archive. It is now Saturday, July 5, as I write this, six weeks to be precise from the initiating date. Thus I am making a memorial within the confines and limits of memory, as a memorial in itself. On June 6, Iris wrote again, inviting me and a number of writers close to Cole to read at a memorial event on June 13. I have found that memory works in a series (a nested stack) of distinct but mutually supporting frameworks. There could be no doubt about my wanting to participate and attend. First there is the durational spread that gives us the illusion of living in the present; then short-term memory, lasting through the day and likely as long as a weekend. My decision to attend and book a flight and lodging was made in that frame, and was implemented over the next few hours. As I move forward, through ever longer spans of duration, I reach the proximate limit of a time span of about three weeks. It was within this initial three-week time span that the memorial was scheduled and took place; it is now three weeks from that date. I am writing, then, before its temporal proximity shifts and the event, and all that it articulated, is further displaced. … More
Entries tagged with politics
July 5, 2025
Event 106: I Met (Memorial Page)
April 6, 2025
Entry 65: Hands Off America!
For the thousand manifestations that dotted the American landscape yesterday, I want to post this broadside poem by Robert Creeley. It has always seemed a kind lurching effusion of a politics, a consequence of the state of mind he wrote it in without doubt. Creeley was often convulsive, and that is to the point of his aesthetic, even concerning details. But here the subject of his “attack” in William Carlos Williams’s sense is broad, vast, gestural, involuntary. It is worth remembering that much poetry that followed shelters in the shadow of that attack. Thus it bears some comment at a later moment, as late as the one we are in, where the poem resonates anew. … More
January 21, 2024
Entry 57: Am I That Name?
COMPLETE RETRACTION!
I write this entry at a moment of reflection, ten years after being asked to write a series of weekly articles as guest poet/critic for the online journal Jacket2. This was offered and accepted in good faith; I would gladly accept such a task in a minute, any time. Somewhat at a loss for where to begin, I took up the question of “presentism” in relation to the state of the present that was most compelling at the moment—a grim January freeze in Detroit, with its attendant affective states. This was ironic, as the distinction between presentism and historicism I was engaged in thinking through was propelling me toward the essays collected in Questions of Poetics—for some of my use of the term, click here. Let’s say the “presentism” at the moment was history at a standstill, wondering which way it would go—and what the consequences would be. Those consequences, it turned out, were immediate—a three-ring circus of attacks by designated officers of the poetic Left. Here, I am not naming names—but the triumvirate was ready and took the opportunity to stage a bloody attack on my public stance in the discourse of poetics. … More
January 10, 2021
Entry 43: Rolling Out Plan B
These are the words that conclude “Plan B,” my poem written after the Trump election in 2016. What has transpired since could not have been more like—turbulence has been destiny, our demography is in pieces, and nothing is decided. It is that moment of stoppage—”the stopping / of the battle,” as Charles Olson wrote—that I wanted to get down, as my contribution to radical democracy perhaps. But even the concept of “radical democracy” is not now decided—that is in the nature of a decision—with the spectacle of the “mob” thinking it represents the demos violating “the People’s House,” as we have been told and can see for ourselves. My point is the instability of the moment, but also that of the discourse that represents it or attempts to intervene in it. Is that a good thing for poetry, to record such a moment, or a bad thing for politics, that its confusions may be reproduced? … More
December 21, 2019
Entry 39: Ozone Holes
Pleased to learn of publication of my anti-Trump poem “Plan B” in Lana Turner, I took the magazine’s offer of a free download of Lana Turner 11 (the digital version of Lana Turner 12 is not yet out) as an anticipation of things to come. The website also links to Lana Turner 10, where I published a poem written after the 2004 election, “Blue States (After Fearing),” and indeed there is a connection to the present “Plan B,” written in November 2016. (The paywall is still up for Lana Turner 10, and readers should get the entire issue, but I will provide a .pdf of the poem here). In that poem, I tracked the psychological state I was in after the 2004 election—where George W. Bush achieved his first popular majority, thought he had a mandate, had earned capital and was going to spend it by demolishing Social Security, only to fail spectacularly to do so. At the time, my serious interest in the emergence of fascist imaginaries in American democracy began, and I would spend the next dozen years interrogating their present and past history, through my research, teaching, and travels in Germany. “Plan B” is a culmination of this effort, a poem registering the psychological state of the 2016 election through the perversion of public discourse that, in Adorno’s words from The Authoritarian Personality, indicate a “readiness” to accept anti-democratic forms of government. Adorno links these psychological preconditions of “readiness” to an ensemble of personality traits in and as “ideology”: … More
June 10, 2017
Document 51: Open Letter to Mills College
Support for Profs. Stephen Ratcliffe and Roscoe Mitchell
Like many in academia and the arts, I am concerned—even outraged—at the news that eleven tenured or ranked faculty are being considered for dismissal at Mills College. Wayne State University, where I teach, had a recent experience with expedient budget solutions that affect tenure, and condemnation and reputational damage were swift—and had the administration gone through with its plans, severe. Wayne State would have lost credentials, grants, students, and in the long run would have jeopardized accreditation. I can see similar negative outcomes for Mills College should you proceed with this action—already, the news has been widely disseminated.
November 15, 2016
Entry 30: The New Blast IV
The New Blast (final 25)
Blast the Incarnation of Greed!
Blast the Body without Organs!
Blast the Monetization of Pain!
Blast the Nation off its Borders!
Blast the Tyranny of Dichotomy!
Blast Disappearance of the Other!
Blast final Monotony of the Same!
Blast Psychic Fantasy of Destruction!
Blast the Triumph of Anamorphosis!
Blast whomever is Not Listening!
Blast whomever Does Not Get It!
Blast Core Values of Individuation!
Blast the Blindness of Self-Interest!
Blast Regression Analysis of Fact!
Blast the Obscuration of Predictors!
Blast our Total Amnesia of the Past!
Blast our Presentism of Hate Speech!
Blast our Incomprehensible Futurity!
Blast Past, Present, and Future then!
Blast Action and Nonaction from Fear!
Blast Fear making Good People Quiet!
Blast Fear undoing Logical Inference!
Blast Fear perverting Common Sense!
Blast Fear returning us to Barbarism!
Blast Fear the Seducer of the People!
[after Wyndham Lewis; return to part I]
November 14, 2016
Entry 29: The New Blast III
The New Blast (third 25)
Blast the Corruption of Language!
Blast the Purification of Language!
Blast their Misuses of Metaphor!
Blast our Mediation of Metonymy!
Blast all Originality of Authorship!
Blast endless Recycling of Copies!
Blast the News as Election Cycle!
Blast the Construction of Discourse!
Blast the Eternal Return of the Same!
Blast any Illusion of Transcendence!
Blast a Seething Snakepit of Tropes!
Blast the Apotheosis of Zarathustra!
Blast that Dawn over the Rockies!
Blast that Sunset of Verbal Debris!
Blast your Life as a Dumpster Fire!
Blast repeating Tidal Waves of Shock!
Blast needing to Get Through This!
Blast your Republican Uncle in 1960.
Blast your Democratic Father in 1968.
Blast even the Great Chain of Being!
Blast Trust Funds of Popular Culture!
Blast Hedge Funds of High Culture!
Blast the Banking System entirely!
Blast the Inertia of the Art Market!
Blast the Perpetuation of Ideology!
[after Wyndham Lewis; to be contd.]
November 13, 2016
Entry 28: The New Blast II
The New Blast (second 25)
Blast your Existential Threats!
Blast being Painted into a Corner!
Blast your need for Boundaries!
Blast all Boundaries whatsoever!
Blast the Line, the Fence, the Wall!
Blast dichotomy of Spatial Regions!
Blast anything Red, Blue, and Purple!
Blast the Undermining of Gray Areas!
Blast the Destruction of the Zone!
Blast the Silence of the Majority!
Blast the Rule of Enforced Quietude!
Blast any Liquidation of Avant-Gardes!
Blast not Talking in the Workplace!
Blast the Denial of Public Discourse!
Blast the Truth of Perpetual Distortion!
Blast our Perverse Triumph of the Will!
Blast our Regime of Monumentality!
Blast the New Sinking of the Titanic!
Blast the Engineers of False Hope!
Blast any Mention of Hope Altogether!
Blast the Stasis of Nonexistent Change!
Blast you Pimps of Hope and Change!
Blast Progressivism and its Illusions!
Blast the Rule of Regressive Psyches!
Blast the Ruse of Cynical Reason!
[after Wyndham Lewis; to be contd.]
November 12, 2016
Entry 27: The New Blast
The New Blast (first 25)
Blast the Brutalitarians!
Blast the New Barbarians!
Blast the use of Brute Force!
Blast the poetics of Domination!
Blast the Six Million Nonactors!
Blast the end of Moral Scruples!
Blast the guiles of Mendacity!
Blast the flipping of the Rust Belt!
Blast surplus of Data Analytics!
Blast ruse of Informed Judgment!
Blast all False Prognosticators!
Blast the Primal Horde of Bros!
Blast Little People Talking Big!
Blast Big People Talking Down!
Blast the rise of Family Dynasties!
Blast fascination of Filthy Lucre!
Blast the servitude of Denial!
Blast empty places to Fill In!
Blast the Reality TV of Choice!
Blast the choice of Reality TV!
Blast endless receding Horizons!
Blast the Abyss of every Ground!
Blast all forms of Normalization!
Blast containments of Narrative!
Blast _____ fill in the Blanks!
[after Wyndham Lewis; to be contd.]
Poetics
The Grand Piano
