Quote Of The Day From A Behaviourist

"Some members of some human communities have been observed to interact by means of vocal noises."

Quote Of The Day From An Analytic Philosopher

"An Air-Force base is not, of course, as systemic as a clock; but it is still more systemic than no Air-Force base."

Free Harry Nicolaides

As I write this, Australian novelist and academic Harry Nicolaides is languishing in a Thai prison. He has been sentenced to 3 years for having committed a crime de lèse-majesté (insulting a ruling monarch), in three lines of one of his recent novels.

Thailand's lèse-majesté relies on the current charter, which states that "the King shall be enthroned in a position of revered worship and shall not be violated. No person shall expose the King to any sort of accusation or action." Harry apparently broke this law.

There are chances of a royal pardon. We can, perhaps, help to free Harry.

As a writer, as a member of the poetics community, as an individual believing we have the right to be and say what we wish, or, yes, as a human being, you can help to free Harry by signing this petition.

There are, as yet, very few signatures here. Please help Harry by adding yours.

NEW! Angela Genusa In The Continental Review

In these generally dark times, a square of complex, moving light is given us by the polyartistry of the extraordinary Angela Genusa.



Never has the CAPTCHA been quite so mined for its disturbing epistemological depth.



In civilization's last attack against all Cratylean idealism, we will ask you to "verify" your words.



Not are they "yours", but are you sure of the place they came from?



Please check that they come from an organic structure.



Is your heart still an organic structure?



Please check that they come from "the heart" of you.



New in The Continental Review.

Poetry-Bloggers To Broker Gaza Peace Settlement

from The Associated Press

JERUSALEM: The Israeli security cabinet voted Wednesday to pursue an international poetry-blogger brokered cease-fire with Palestinian militant groups in Gaza, while leaving open the possibility of a military offensive should the efforts of the poetics community fail.

"The security cabinet decided this morning to support the poets' efforts to achieve calm in the south and end the daily targeting of Israeli civilians by the terrorists in Gaza," said Mark Regev, a spokesman for the prime minister.

"In parallel the security cabinet instructed the military to continue its preparations in the unfortunate event that the poetry-bloggers' renowned LEP techique (Lyrical Engagement Praxis) should prove to be unsuccessful," Regev said.

This is of course not the first time poetry-bloggers would have been responsable for the end, or at least abatement, of a major international conflict or humanitarian disaster, (the most notable perhaps being the poetry bloggers' intervention in the Rwandan genocide in October 1994).

But the one question remaining is whether the larger poetics community will be able to end their own separatist divisions in order to broker the Gaza peace-deal. For the moment at least, both Quietists and Post-Avants seem joined in a united attempt to bring peace to a region plagued once more by catastrophic war.

Quietist spokesman Ted Kooser was quoted this morning outside the Israeli Embassy in Washington as saying: "If only we can present a united front, and if, ideally, the technology and even quilting bloggers can come on board, than I don't see why what we accomplished in Rwanda would not be possible in Gaza today." In Philadelphia, Ron Silliman, who has been under increasing pressure to respond to the poet-backed ceasefire, was asked for a reaction to Kooser's remarks: "I think we are all prepared to come together on this one" stated Silliman off-the-record. "I think we all want to end this war."

This most recent decision, after hours of deliberations, essentially left the Israelis in waiting mode despite public pressure for immediate action to halt the Palestinian rocket and mortar fire that plagues southern Israel.

Violence continued even as the cabinet met, and as various poet-bloggers from both sides of the divides debated over whether ideational personal narrative or lyrical and discursive fragmentation would be the best course of action to take.

Meanwhile, militants continued to fire mortars from Gaza, and three Palestinians were reported killed in subsequent Israeli strikes, including a 9-year-old girl.

To All Fellow "Serious Younger Poets": Please Find Below Our Poetic's Only Two "Styles" Combined In One Easy-To-Use Alternating-Line Format

"Few serious younger poets with any degree of reading have an interest in writing the scenic, first-person lyric of narrative experience. What’s happened is that most younger poets now want to write the fractured lyric of intellectual, self-reflexive experience, or else some theory-inflected version of the cool, campy Frank O'Hara-like poem, or some hybrid version of these styles. This 'experimental' atmosphere constitutes the ascendant period style..." (KJ) For Kent Johnson and Seth Abramson


"SOME HYBRID"

no such light which leaks from palls and progressions
walking down Sunset eating what the NYT downs col-cola me out!
into or across some new desperate ecclampsia
said to Kenneth: "Forget about it, Kenneth!"
all else may be heard besides such refrains
of "Don't hang up man! Track it down to the silo!"
which is natura naturans's inner need (not Leibniz's later leanings)
so let's get all ham-sandwichy down on 53rd? and whatever street!
for it quarries some same old distance, always this
bucking up and riding it out into the sun on the lower Sound
to turning meets me into whatever makes making itself
into some fire's island of hoola-hoop payolas
while these days of loneliness within me? what do I do with them?
(what do you suggest Frank? just who's is the café Flore?)
in what leaving left us in some old absence of elegies
or why Lautréamont never walked to the gazeboed Buttes like we did
not snowing only discourse in an inner disruption
say that's a really nice painting but there's too much of it
as there is too much of most ruins after short melodies die out into an
"are you being camp or lyrical now? lol it's like you so totally forgot"
so talk of this internal inherent era (over some braised
Buick-glad-I-got-that-in-Maril-lyn)
of ringed irised metals in my own mirrored eyes only
rolls a Rausch of "480-bucks-you-gotta-be-kidding-me!" assemblage
but it is not like the assemblage of any of my easier heart's endings
beating in a Keith crazy cat-clock eyes way and say only
when we arrived in this country there was no nude narration
tho John has nicer pecs than Rainer's but they're rising
within me just the detritus in saturated stuff and noise
but hey Kenneth put the fucking phone down!
rest it on these fragments of a Byzantine
country-for-old-critics? for these
damn kids today Kenneth
these goddamn kids are
only writing two man
can you still
hear me
Ken
-neth? two fucking
types of verse."

Are you "campy" . . .















or "fractured and lyrical" ? . . .

8 Found Poems From Schaum's Russian Grammar

1.

What is (the matter) with you?

What do you know about this?

What are you afraid of?

What are you talking about?

What is she preparing herself for?

I know with whom (with what) she has lived.

2.

The sun rises and

is rising.

The wind strengthened.

The temperature rose.

It is more pleasant to me at the seashore

than it is in the mountains.

Time that falls between

the hour and the first half-hour

is expressed by both a cardinal

and an ordinal.

He has much darker thoughts than she has.

2.

Alaska.

(lake) Baikal.

the Balkans.

Middle East.

Far East.

Hawaii.

Caucasus.

Cuba.

Ukraine.

Urals.

3.

How long have I been writing this book?

She has read it and now understands everything.

The son saw his father and started running towards him.

Stop screaming!

We are sitting recalling the past.

4.

He stood up and proposed to her.

I'll open another bottle and drink some more wine.

This building was built in five years.

We will sit a while and think a bit.

I will read a while and then write a bit.

We stood there waiting for a very long time.

He jumped into the water.

She shouted loudly.

5.

I often wear jeans

but I always carry with me the photos of my children.

6.

Such annulled actions are identical

to what was characterized as the "round-trip"

meaning of unprefixed

multidirectional

imperfectives:

"Yesterday my friend came to visit me

for the last time

but I didn't have

the time

to say goodbye."

7.

The door is locked

The window is closed.

There is no light in here.

8.

reading

studying

having

being nervous

fearing

being afraid

getting up

living

going/walking

speaking

hearing

lying
looking
dying

NEW! Srinjay Chakravarti in The Continental Review

In line with The Continental Review's aim to bring to the fore an increasingly global, translinguistic, transnational, polyaccentual and polyvalent contemporary poetics, we're very pleased to be featuring work by the Indian poet Srinjay Chakravarti, from Calcutta. Srinjay's first book of poems "Occam's Razor", received the SALT literary award from John Kinsella. A fascinating interview with Srinjay may also be read here.

The Continental Review.