May 2004 Archives

Here's the Electronic Poetry Center Blog List from SUNY--Buffalo. It's one of the best lists I've found. Now to read all of them!

I finally bought a laptop and installed a router to make the house wireless. Now I can browse the web from the comfort of my easy chair. That's much easier than walking upstairs, booting the desktop, and waiting for the computer to connect to DSL from
SBC. The wireless aspect is much more convenient.

One of my first discoveries from the easy chair was the The Poetry Center of Chicago Broadsides: original poems and visual art, letter-pressed onto cotton paper with archival inks in limited editions of fifty to one hundred. The copies of the broadsides are gif images. Otherwise I'd copy and paste Shiloh by James Tate.

I rarely buy impulsively, even when it's easy to do so, even more rarely when the buying is difficult. Nonetheless I just called the Poetry Center in Chicago, had a pleasant conversation with Kenneth, and ordered the Shiloh broadside--30 of 50. There's only a few of the 11X15 broadsides left, and for $99, you're really not doing that much to support poetry. But, nicely framed, you'll have a wonderful poem hanging on the wall.

Late last winter the Gentlemen's Hiking Club came across a tree stump that presumably had been the meal of beavers. I was amazed at how much the stump resembled the Nefertiti sculpture, as seen from profile, and I started thinking those hungry beavers at one time must have studied ancient Egyptian art. I've been to sculpture gardens in the past, one in Buffalo, where storms kept all but a few dozen away from a grand opening. We all gathered under shelters and drank cases of wine. That was a drunken, delightful day, but as the Gentlemen's Hiking Club stood around this found sculpture of Nefertiti, discussing it the way a class in art appreciation might, we all felt time and the world suddenly expand, collapse, and everything was here and there, infinite and minute. Clouds were indeed ships, castles, the fist of god. Shadows were ancestors and dead friends. As we hiked away, up the rock path, toward the trail head, away from Nefertiti, we knew the trees would soon be green leafing and the dogwoods would be white and the redbuds would be red. The woods would be spring colors, and all around was different and the same.

Looking at 2River's referrer log, I came across Blogging News : Blog Index : BLOGNDX, which lists 2River as a Blog Highlight. Go figure.