"New Year"

New Year

Hey, New Year,
how can you be so new?
You can't just pretend to be new by cheering and lecturing,
and don't be new carelessly,
new on some days
then returning to what you are---old,
old and wrinkled,
as you've always been.
You're paler than the useless things
that cats bring back,
that dogs bring forth.

Come on, New Year!
Let's be new honestly, as before.- Tran Dan

Twenty-four minute video of Charlie Rose interviewing Adonis

http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/9297

Jacques Maritian's negative theology

...Rhythm, rhyme, line, stanza, all the clothing of words, of music, of human intelligibility, from which the poem seems to derive its consistency, none of that is what is sought for, all of that constitutes an obstacle to the research being pursued. Are we going to reduce poetry to the impossible in order to test its resistance, and allow only an ultimate sparkling gem at the point of death to survive? Shall we not rather enter into a kind of negative theology in which the hidden essence of poetry will be attained in an incommunicable experience, from which later we shall return among men, all the means of expression now being changed and purified, I mean to say as if burned from within, by a fire which will seem to annihilate them but which will liberate unknown energies in them?

The Situation of Poetry-Jacques and Raissa Maritain

X-mas loot

-Two new coffee cups
-Two bags of coffee
-Argyle pattern scarf
-Cologne
-Blue pajama pants
-Three shirts from zazzle featuring pictures of Gu Cheng, Cesar Vallejo & Vasko Popa
-Eugene Ostashevsky "Life and Opinions of DJ Spinoza"
-Eugeniusz Tkaczyszyn-Dycki "Peregrinary"
-"Lightning from the Depths: An Anthology of Albanian Poetry"
- "Poets on the Edge: An Anthology of Contemporary Hebrew Poetry"
-Srecko Kosovel "The Golden Boat"
-Maya Bejerano "The Hymns of Job and Other Poems"
-David Hinton's anthology "Classical Chinese Poetry"
-Assorted chocolates and delicious cookies

I had four drinks tonight, something unusual for me. I very rarely drink. Ate dinner at a fantastic Brazilian grill where I started with an amaretto sour, followed by a mojito and then a white russian. A little over an hour later I had a bottle of smirnoff ice. Right now I am savoring the first cup of the bag of brazilian coffee I bought Friday. Decided to take the day shift off tomorrow and work the overnight instead. After that only two more days before I begin my extended break (last day of work Dec. 23rd & I return on Jan. 4th). I plan on reading a lot, watching movies, drinking wonderful coffee and abolish time...at least for awhile.

Circumference

Issue seven of Circumference is now available! I picked up my copy Friday.