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on nouns in poetry, from Gertrude Stein’s Poetry and Grammar
26 JulPoetry is I say essentially a vocabulary just as prose is essentially not.
And what is the vocabulary of which poetry absolutely is. It is a vocabulary entirely based on the noun as prose is essentially and determinately and vigorously not based on the noun.
Poetry is concerned with using with abusing, with losing with wanting, with denying with avoiding with adoring with replacing the noun. It is doing that always doing that, doing that and doing nothing but that. Poetry is doing nothing but using losing refusing and pleasing and betraying and caressing nouns. That is what poetry does, that is what poetry has to do no matter what kind of poetry it is.
“a heart bleeds/ red light/ imperfect pulses”: Dunya Mikhail’s “O”
2 Jul
You need to read this book: 
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on the limits of have a good day: Dunya Mikhail, from Diary of a Wave Outside the Sea
1 Jul
(from Diary of a Wave Outside the Sea, which you really must read and re-read)
desolate clang of an empty milk churn: Martinson’s “Göinge” and the hard life
29 Jun
When credit ran out there remained
the desolate clang of an empty milk churn
the bell of bitterness
in the emigrant’s awkward dream
of the West.
The wind sighs now to no one.
The crofts died suddenly among their lilies.
But the chimney walls still wheeze.
And the nettles are in bloom.
— Harry Martinson, “Göinge”
memories as ready-made dreams: Harry Martinson’s “Childhood Forest”
29 JunIt was in the woods of summer where life played,
the evening deep with thrush and the heavens high with swallow.
Nothing came of all my dreams and fablings,
but the memory enlivens my life
and memories are ready-made dreams.
we follow
