The Plague of Doves and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close...

...both have excellent covers. Oh, and also Maps and Legends.

For a Lamb

For a Lamb
-Richard Eberhart

I saw on the slant hill a putrid lamb,
Propped with daisies. The sleep looked deep,
The face nudged in the green pillow
But the guts were out for crows to eat.

Where's the lamb? whose tender plaint
Said all for the mute breezes.
Say he's in the wind somewhere,
Say, there's a lamb in the daisies.

Toad.

If the Internet collected art, this is what it would buy.

The Lazarus Project

I like the cover of "The Lazarus Project" by Aleksandar Hemon (2008):

Green Porno

8 rad short films created by Isabella Rosselini.

Green Pornooooooooooooooo0000000000.

Prejudice and Literature

The cover design for J. Mitchell Morse's book, Prejudice and Literature (1979), is fantastic:

AYENBITE OF INWIT

An essay on intellectual timidity in our culture, and specifically in our schools, by J. Mitchell Morse, a lover of language. From the December 1977 issue of The Underground Grammarian:

The Sin of Clumsiness

Here is an excerpt from the beginning of one of Morse's books, Prejudice and Literature (1979):

"In my first year of teaching English my freshmen wrote one of their themes in response to a story entitled “The Petrified Giant,” which had to do with a large rock formation so named and its psychological effects on the people who lived near it. One girl wrote, “This story doesn’t make sense because a giant is bigger and stronger than anybody so why would he be petrified.” When we went over her paper in my office I asked her, “What does ‘petrified’ mean?” “‘Scared,’ “ she said. “You know—petrified. Like when you’re petrified.” That was my first experience of a person who knew the metaphorical meaning of a word but not the literal meaning."

Also excellent is the fourth essay in that issue of the Daily Grammarian, which ridicules someone, penned by Dr. Richard Mitchell, the publisher of the newsletter. An excerpt:

"You may remember Yeldell, the first writer to be quoted and discussed in this journal. Not having heard from him in about a year, we did have some misgivings, but here he is again, obviously undamaged, offering an Intersession course which he describes thus:

'The course will examine the major symptoms that influence the presence of organized crime and the role of the legal system in organized crime control. Moreover, said course will identify the political, sociological, and economical characteristics that have an impact emphasize such vice crimes of an organized nature; Gambling, Prostitution, Drug Traffic, Pornography, etc.'

We were baffled at first by "major symptoms that influence the presence," but a few minutes with a dictionary suggested:

. . . the more important of various signs or tokens tending to modify or determine the nature of the discernible existence in a certain location or set of circumstances . . ."

The Underground Grammarian

A fascinating (and now defunct) newsletter called The Underground Grammarian, dedicated to scorning improper usage of the English language, published from 1976 to 1992 by Dr. Richard Mitchell while a professor of English at Glassboro State College in Glassboro, New Jersey.

The Underground Grammarian

The first issue of the newsletter declared: "RAPE OF THE MOTHER TONGUE WILL BE PUNISHED!" and explained: "The Underground Grammarian does not advocate violence; it advocates ridicule. Abusers of English are often pompous, and ridicule hurts them more than violence. In every edition we will bring you practical advice for ridiculing abusers of English." Mitchell later published a selection of articles from the newsletter as a book entitled, "The Leaning Tower of Babel".

Interesting Interview with Ice-T and Author and Filmmaker Nelson George

'Thank God hip-hop came along'

Excerpt:
Ice-T:
"What makes my music different from pretty much anybody else's is that I always try to show both sides of the game. I tell you about the fun at the beginning but there's pain in the end. Anybody who tells you about crime and doesn't tell you that there's pain, they're full of shit and they've never been there. Half of my crew is locked up. They tell me what's going on, and I listen. Sometimes you learn from your mistakes, sometimes through the mistakes of others. I felt like I was running down this road, this hustling road, where I thought it was going to be roses and money and all that good shit at the end. I got to the end of the road and I seen there's a cliff, over the edge of the cliff fires are burning. Now I'm running back up yelling at people not to go down that road."

Nelson George:
"There is a really weird dynamic with hip-hop culture. On one hand there's a feeling that music is so powerful that these guys can create violence. They're engaged in a dialogue about it, obviously, but they don't create it by any means. On the other hand these guys are all great actors."

Poem 8

Poem 8
-Ron Padgett and Yu Jian

When I was a child
my elders taught me
that there are 24 hours
in each day
But 24 hours is
afterward too
Is a springtime
The flower opened
I look similar to yesterday
Except that I am open
and my petals
are starting to fall
O excuse me!
For a moment
I thought
I was a flower

Easter

Easter
-Eileen Myles

for Joan

There was a bird
on my sill
this morning
stone sill
dark grey bird
and it bumped
against my window
then it flew in
it was freaked
turned round tried
to fly out; crashed
the bird's face was huge
vanished into my tiny apartment
where
no bird under the bed
no bird in the kitchen
wham!
bird flying out of
nowhere
bumped into the window
and dizzy zoomed
right
out
into the white day

We Real Cool

We Real Cool
-Gwendolyn Brooks

We real cool. We
Left School. We

Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We

Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We

Jazz June. We
Die soon.

Moonshot

Moonshot
-Buffy Sainte-Marie
(Song)

off into outer space you go my friends
we wish you bon voyage
and when you get there we will welcome you again
and still you'll wonder at it all
see all the wonders that you leave behind
the wonders humble people own
I know a boy from a tribe so primitive
he can call me up without no telephone
see all the wonders that you leave behind
enshrined in some great hourglass
the noble tongues, the noble languages
entombed in some great english class
off into outer space you go my friends
we wish you bon voyage
and when you get there we will welcome you again
and still you'll wonder at it all

an anthropologist he wrote a book
he called it "myths of heaven"
he's disappeared, his wife is all distraught
an angel came and got him
his hair was light, his eyes were love, his words were true,
his eys were lapis lazuli
he spoke in a language oh so primitive
that he made sense to me
off into outer space you go my friends
we wish you bon voyage
and when you get there we will welcome you again
and still you'll wonder at it all

NyQuil

NyQuil
-Raymond Carver

Call it iron discipline. But for months
I never took my first drink
before eleven p.m. Not so bad,
considering. This was in the beginning
phase of things. I knew a man
whose drink of choice was Listerine.
He was coming down off Scotch.
He bought Listerine by the case,
and drank it by the case. The back seat
of his car was piled high with dead soldiers.
Those empty bottles of Listerine
gleaming in his scalding back seat!
The sight of it sent me home soul-searching.
I did that once or twice. Everybody does.
Go way down deep inside and look around.
I spent hours there, but
didn’t meet anyone, or see anything
of interest. I came back to the here and now,
and put on my slippers. Fixed
myself a nice glass of NyQuil.
Dragged a chair over to the window.
Where I watched a pale moon struggle to rise
over Cupertino, California.
I waited through hours of darkness with NyQuil.
And then, sweet Jesus! the first sliver
of light.

No words
this time.

Every Day

Every Day
-Ingeborg Bachmann

War is no longer declared,
merely perpetuated. The outrageous
has become commonplace. The hero
stays far from battle. The weakling
is transferred to the firing zone.
Patience is the uniform of the day,
the order of merit a wretched star
of hope stuck to the heart.

It will be awarded
when the action has ceased,
when the drumfire dies down,
when the enemy has receded from view
and the shadow of eternal armament
enshrouds the sky.

It will be awarded
for deserting the flags,
for bravery in the face of a friend,
for the betrayal of ignoble secrets
and the disregard
of every command.

What This Is

A lengthy monologue
by one of the world's most desperate souls,
many times reincarnated,
but again recently deceased
and now just phoning it in
from the Other Side.