Uranus into Taurus, and Apps

The Sun just entered Taurus; more importantly, as a long-term influence, Uranus enters Taurus shortly as well. In the interest of Taurus-level gravitas, another solid auditory Apps experience.

Posit Sounds...

For those who want to hear how Posit sounds. 

April 17, 1998

April 17, 1998, twenty years ago today, was a day like any other in State College, Pennsylvania. I was living in a bedsit flat in North Halls; and about to move into a sublet on South Atherton Street. Yet, it turned out to be a memorable day for me, as it was the day I wrote the first, almost-instantly complete draft of the poem Clean, which appeared in Philly print journal Siren's Silence (as is here shown) later that year. It signaled a leap forward for me and my writing, which culminated in the composition of Mortuary Puppies later that year, which was staged in State College in February '99 by the Outlaws. Illustration (Angel of Burned Flesh) by Brian Willette. 

On the Fritz in 1613

Another venue for 1613, inviting us to yoke things together by force.

Answered Prayers: Eden, Milton

It's too bad I never wrote a sonnet sequence in the manner of Trish (about Mary H) for Jen. If I did so, it would have to be about two innocent kids wandering into a sort of Eden, or an Edenic context, and then getting booted out. Eden and plebeian human reality are a macabre juxtaposition. What's in Equations and The Symbolist Book (Answered Prayers), and in the new sonnets (Something Solid), will have to suffice. If I was ever in a place to do a riff on Paradise Lost, it may now be much too late for goodbyes. Maybe.

Answered Prayers: The Symbolist Book

The book I wrote in State College in the 90s (Answered Prayers and Willard Preachers) manifests the blatant influence of the French Symbolist poets, principally Charles Baudelaire and Arthur Rimbaud. When I wrote the book ('95-'98), I wasn't necessarily ready for Keats, Wordsworth, and Milton yet. The acid-headed, hallucinatory antics of the Symbolists, however, were germane to me then very much. It helped that 90s State College was an acid-headed (or shroom-headed) kind of place, and the general ambiance was a phantasmagoric one.

Trish: A Romance

Here's a piece which needs some action. 

Making a Racket, Not a Racket: The Emendation Game

Because Chimes has already been released in several different print editions, what edition number this is is confusing, but this is the first emended edition. Now we have all ducks in an emended row towards solidity, Chimes-wise.

From Otoliths 47, print edition, p. 76

Overt Dialectics, or "O.D."

By making a dialectical structure overt (thesis-antithesis-synthesis) in the new edition of Equations, I wanted to make certain that nobody who reads the book misses what the intellectual backbone of the thing is. This time, for those of you who know the book's history, I won't be forced to "get down on my knees and Begnal"; nobody can accuse me of rambling in a desultory fashion. So there, Pittsburgh...

The Byron Book

I'm now in the habit of calling Opera Bufa "the Byron book." The Byronic levels built into Opera Bufa as a text are there: playfulness, whimsy, raciness, spiky humor, satire, an emphasis on a light (sometimes deceptively light) approach to textuality; and the weird sense of tumult around some of the (scandalous!) circumstances the book has generated is Byronic, too. I'm ready to flee to Italy, or Chicago...

English 271 (course title: How Does This Sound?): Stacy Blair: Loyola U.: Summer '08 (week five: Ultramodern Metaphor): Opera Bufa (Adam Fieled)

As the book says: To Courtney...

Critical Nexus Hinges

The site Web Citation .org makes possible what I call critical nexus hinges; series of web-pages, connected in the interstitial way customary on the site, which form a way/manner for theory to evolve from critical literary practice (praxis). These two As/Is pages, now preserved on Web Cite, Notes: Cheltenham Elegies and When You Bit... sonnets, and Notes: More on When You Bit..., hinge the original critical texts, which span 2014 to 2017, to the two new Otoliths pages from '17, now preserved on Web Cite. This has the effect of making the critical task of text consolidation both simpler and smoother than what we tend to see online. It also lends a graceful sense of the aesthetic to critical tasks which might otherwise seem dry.

A festive "cha ching" for October

A hinge in Autumn, as festive "cha ching."

Divine Wisdom at St. Matthew Church...

More Butler Pike ambiance...

Halloween on Butler Pike...

Adam Fieled @ 7825 Mill Road, Elkins Park, Pa, fall 1979

Here I am, ready for action. 

& Hallowell...

I tried to capture here how 300 Four Falls looks from 4th & Hallowell. Got some of it. There are other angles to 300 Four Falls and where to photograph it from that are worth exploring during seasonable months.