Bernadette Mayer’s Utopia is made of poems / Utopias that aren’t so much imagined re: ideas of perfection as they are built with particular friends and her associations with them (her intimacies with them) in mind. This is incredible to me, that utopia could never have anything to do with perfection and everything to do with attention to the dynamic shades of closeness / that blistering blossom.
THIS IS MESSY, WE’RE NOT SORRY: Elegant Mire with Carrie Lorig, v. 1 by Cassandra Troyan (2015)
… when we were younger
and he was still alive, when morning could yawn
until afternoon, heavy plates of eggs
with roasted potatoes by the window
where Bowery seemed wide enough to hold
all our days, and anything would happen.
Page One, Joannie Stangeland
Light clarity avocado salad in the morning
after all the terrible things I do how amazing it is
to find forgiveness and love, not even forgiveness
since what is done is done and forgiveness isn’t love
and love is love nothing can ever go wrong
though things can get irritating boring and dispensable
(in the imagination) but not really for love
though a block away you feel distant the mere presence
changes everything like a chemical dropped on a paper
and all thoughts disappear in a strange quiet excitement
I am sure of nothing but this, intensified by breathing
Poem, Frank O’ Hara
Le langage des fleurs by Charlotte de La Tour, 1819. 2023
Les fleurs parlent. Leur langage original permet de dire, sans un mot, l’amour, l’amitié mais aussi le désespoir, le regret, et bien d’autres sentiments. Cet ingénieux mode d’expression fut véritablement codifié au xviie siècle en Perse, où l’arrangement symbolique d’un bouquet (sélam), discours de parfums et de couleurs mêlés, formait une sorte de message secret. Diffusé en Europe par la vague romantique, ce langage fleuri devient un genre littéraire prisé : plusieurs dictionnaires et guides de conversation florale paraissent alors. (Klincksieck éditions).
I am the smoke king,
I am black.
I am swinging in the sky,
I am ringing worlds on high;
I am the thought of the throbbing mills,
I am the soul of the Soul toil kills,
I am the ripple of trading rills.
Up I’m curling from the sod,
I am whirling home to God.
I am the smoke king,
I am black.
I am the smoke king,
I am black.
I am wreathing broken hearts,
I am sheathing devils’ darts;
Dark inspiration of iron times,
Wedding the toil of toiling climes,
Shedding the blood of bloodless crimes,
Down I lower in the blue,
Up I tower toward the true.
I am the smoke king,
I am black.
I am the smoke king,
I am black.
I am darkening with song,
I am hearkening to wrong;
I will be black as blackness can,
The blacker the mantle the mightier the man,
My purpl’ing midnights no day dawn may ban.
I am carving God in night,
I am painting Hell in white.
I am the smoke king,
I am black.
I am the smoke king,
I am black.
I am cursing ruddy morn,
I am hearsing hearts unborn;
Souls unto me are as mists in the night,
I whiten my black men, I blacken my white,
What’s the hue of a hide to a man in his might!
Hail, then, gritty, grimy hands,
Sweet Christ, pity toiling lands!
Hail to the smoke king
Hail to the black!
The Song of the Smoke, William Edward Burghardt Du Bois
¡Salud! MIAMI. Miami’s month-long celebration of its vibrant cocktail community. via Sandy Heyaime (PopLife)
How all occasions do inform against me,
And spur my dull revenge! What is a man,
If his chief good and market of his time
Be but to sleep and feed? a beast, no more.
Sure, he that made us with such large discourse,
Looking before and after, gave us not
That capability and god-like reason
To fust in us unused.
Hamlet, Act IV, Scene IV [How all occasions do inform against me], William Shakespeare
We concede that some of Half-Earth socialism’s attributes, such as energy quotas and giving up meat, might not appeal to all, but we think such sacrifices are more attractive than the three demi-utopias offered by the environmental movement. The environmental crisis is already well advanced, so it should not come as a surprise that there are only hard choices left to make. However, Half-Earth socialism is not merely a ‘lesser evil’. One might see that there is much to gain by giving up control over a subsumed nature. While much value must be destroyed by relinquishing the land and sea that has been trawled, mined, and razed, there is a new wealth to be gained too. A bounty of beauty, safety, and stability will come from the thousands of species that will be protected, the gigatonnes of carbon sequestered, the promise of meaningful work and social security, for Half-Earth socialism will be a rich society too. Even if it means figs and beans for dessert.
Half-Earth Socialism A Plan to Save the Future from Extinction, Climate Change, and Pandemics by Troy Vettese and Drew Pendergrass
Carmody Groarke is a London based architecture practice founded in 2006 by Kevin Carmody and Andy Groarke.
Gent Waste Brick; BC Materials. A low carbon brick made from recycled municipal waste from the city of Gent; 1/3 the embodied carbon of a typical clay fired brick.
The poor, maimed thing. And yet look closer, see—
How she’s flying, motion focused on
And concentrated all around her knee,
And balanced marvelously on the dawn,
Its coolness, in midair, above the clouds
At Heathrow, when the skies begin to clear.
It is her own expression that she shrouds.
Fleeing the very news that brought us here,
She bows her head. But look—how she alone
Is the beheaded one. It’s Time, she’ll say,
False prophet, that seeks flesh and gnaws the bone.
And yet I recognized her right away,
Seeing her here, Iris, the Rainbow, and
In that moment, we changed native land.
Ekphrasis: Her Expression, Yiannis Doukas, translated from the Greek by A. E. Stallings
I will hide my soul and its mighty love
In the bosom of this rose,
And its dispensing breath will take
My love wherever it goes.
And perhaps she’ll pluck this very rose,
And, quick as blushes start,
Will breathe my hidden secret in
Her unsuspecting heart.
And there I will live in her embrace
And the realm of sweetness there,
Enamored with an ecstasy,
Of bliss beyond compare.
In the Heart of a Rose, George Marion McClellan
