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Vanitas Magazine

VANITAS : a journal of poetry, writings by artists, criticism, and essays. During its decade of intervention in the public realm, VANITAS came out quasi-annually, serving as a forum for international voices with an emphasis on coming to grips with current world situations. Each issue contained writings by artists whose primary modes were non-literary and featured the work of a visual artist. [www.vanitasmagazine.net]

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

TC: Click


.


http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/ec/Fairfield_Porter%27s_painting_%27Under_the_Elms%27%2C_1971_-_1972.jpg





One may age ten years in ten minutes.
It's too quiet. I can hear the crickets,
It's like a music of the spheres in reverse,
A whack recursiveness of thinking,
Or is it just the night-clicking computer god
And what kind of iterative god is that?

Pascal had his pit, which went with him
Where'er he went, like a faithful dog,
Nor was he out of it. Infinity I can see
From here. It looks empty, unrelenting,
Cold. There is no respite from Being
And Number, a poet once told us that

When it was getting late for him
And night panic passed through his hair
Making it stand on end, the little he still
Had of it. I'll go to the wall, stand with it,
Let it be my friend, just to have something
That won't fall down. I feel giddy, said the clown.

I believe in a world. Is God or death more great?
This world is my world and will vanish with me
But while I click it goes on existing
In eternity -- to 2046 or
2666, or whene'er the chips melt down.
I've lost Memory writing this.

I've aged ridiculously in ten minutes,
Maybe ten years. Distance is closing in,
It's too quiet. I can hear the crickets
Singing God and death out of existence.
More power to them. Click.
The intricate circuits of a summer night.






Click: from The New World, Libellum Books, 2009
Under the Elms: Fairfield Porter, 1971-72 (Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts)

Posted by TC at 1:40 AM

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Tom Clark blogs on Vanitas Site!!

For the foreseeable future, Tom Clark has agreed to blog on the Vanitas magazine site! This is amazing news, as Tom is not only prolific — but also highly entertaining, a genius, extremely knowledgeable, etc. Look for the "TC" tag in front of his post titles — and enjoy!

Vanitas 7 : The Self

For the seventh and final issue of VANITAS, we examine the idea of The Self. The work featured in issue 7 tests just how far the self can be stretched, partially as an exercise in self-expression, partially in search of what used to be called experience. Self, not so much in personae as in faces, in the sense the Mods used the term — referring to someone with style, perhaps within a culture of style, but an individual expression of that culture, or perhaps someone who can seemingly invent her own style, just standing there.

This issue features new work by Bruce Andrews, Mary Jo Bang, Anselm Berrigan, Steve Dickison, Danielle Dutton, Tonya Foster, John Godfrey, Robert Hunter, Paolo Javier, Ann Lauterbach, Kimberly Lyons, Dan Machlin, Gerard Malanga, Judith Malina, Filip Marinovich, Harry Matthews, Michael McClure, Anna Moschovakis, Stephen Motika, Jennifer Moxley, Michael Palmer, Aram Saroyan, Lewis Warsh, and many more. Featuring artwork by Diana Michener, Carol Szymanski, Gerard Malanga, Rudy Burckhardt, and Vivien Bittencourt.

Available through Small Press Distribution

Available from Libellum !!!

Tom Clark: The New World
Tom Clark: TRANS/VERSIONS
We are excited to announce the publication of not just one but two books by Tom Clark — first and foremost his remarkable collection of new poems, The New World. In these poems, Clark trains his limpid style and eye on current street life in Berkeley, California. Clark's observational skill is informed by acute social critique and most significantly a heightened sense of time's rapid passage. There is personal history here, too, in poems to Philip Whalen and Robert Duncan. Youth is seen in retrospect, working up to present tense, ultimate doubts as it ends, or seems to. This book is accompanied by Clark's TRANS/VERSIONS, seven poems that are translations or homages to modern masters. Available through Small Press Distribution.

Recent Libellum Publications : Norma Cole and Basil King

Norma Cole : Natural Light
Norma Cole’s book presents new poems by a modern master of the found and formulated — this book is divided into three sequences: “Pluto’s Disgrace,” “In Our Own Backyard,” and “Collective Memory.” Personal, global, universal: all three shift and interlock in repeating cadences. Their lock on reality provides consolation for these times.

Basil King : In The Field Where Daffodils Grow
Part of King’s series “Learning to Draw” that brings to bear his talents both as writer and visual artist. This book contains the autobiography of a painting and contemplation of some heroes — Hartley, H.D., Williams, Demuth, Giotto, Nijinsky, Emily Carr, Virginia Woolf and her sister, Vanessa Bell. "Paintings stay alive because people look at them. And when they don't, they die."

Available through Small Press Distribution

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