2012 DISINHIBITIONS: SARAH ROSENTHAL

Michael, thanks so much for providing this opportunity to reflect on and share meaningful aspects of 2012 before rushing on to accrue more experiences.
 
Texts that moved/excited/instructed me in the past year:

Confession of a Buddhist Atheist by Stephen Batchelor

Of Indigo and Saffron: New and Collected Poems by Michael McClure

Moveable Type by Kathleen Fraser

Inferno by Eileen Myles

Excerpt from The Ominous Beautiful Bay: The Newest Ginnie Blake Novel by Erin Wilson (unpublished manuscript)

Traffic & Weather by Marcella Durand

The World Falls Away by Wanda Coleman

The Katechon by Michael Cross

Peril as Architectural Enrichment by Hazel White

I Want to Make You Safe by Amy King

Ten by Jennifer Firestone (unpublished manuscript)

Ascension by giovanni singleton

The Incompossible by Carrie Hunter

Waifs and Strays by Micah Ballard

Waveform by Amber diPietra and Denise Leto

The New Make Believe by Denise Newman

Continental Drifts by Cheryl Pallant

 

Participatory:

Writing, eating, yacking in a rented house in Russian River with a phenomenal group of poets

Crashing Cine/Club, a free SF film program for teens

Reading to a marvelous audience in a room above a pub in central London at a Dusie event with Jennifer K. Dick, Giles Goodland, Tilla Brading, Jeff Hilson, Dez Mendoza, and Frances Presley. Dez impersonated Harry Godwin, who couldn’t attend, and read his poems as best she could given the enormous and unstable mustache she sported. Tilla and Frances read from their minimalist 2011 Dusie collaboration, comprising poems whose words arrange Duncanesque grids—mine has 4 words across and 6 words down. The reader creates her own poems by reading the grids in various ways: throw see local historical hair 6’’. throw Bolivian parakeets away. A few other excerpts of what was read:

From Jen Dick’s Betwixt:

What will hold me back from the conflagration in the daffodils, Orph?

Forgot the safe word? worlds? This is what I meant by build it on an estuary, a bayfront beachfront rise to the occasion wave fronting these tropical airs that have just now reached the Transylvanian fog rolling in and upwards. Coney Island’s hot lips ’80s replays on the Top 10 Kasey Casem in loafers, leggings and jelly shoes—won’t catch me dead with my fingers glued to bubblelicious pink stainless steel seating on this rollicking rollercoaster. Painted white, it makes for a whitewashed story under Trocadero’s lions. She leapt, or was she pushed? Pulled from the scenic balcony staring out towards Eiffel’s tower? Unwinged, human flight’s too far for shallows, not drowned as Icarus, but crushed into limestone, body vaporized: rock shadow, stone-singed. SHHH—SHUSH now! He came before you into this dark. A lute. Fluted. Flouting fingernail grating down the chalkless blackboard. Messages never written, or left. I call down into the cup of the daffodil shaped like an old telephone line. Can you hear? Operator. Please connect. Me to. This is. An outgoing. Call. Line only. Is there someone else? On the other end? Listen. Songbird or sonic waves? Come into the night. Light glowing bright. Green. What other shade would I be? (His / her / my own) silhouette.

From Giles Goodland’s Gloss:

Johnsense, dictioned glossability.

Johnsensical, chamblic lexiphant.

Johnsonese, nononsensed sententiety.

Johnsong, comeonsense culplet.

Johnsonsense, nonand onandsense.

Joyceanic, seasensed overseans.

Joyceanyway, wakelier prolexis.

Joycely, finelegantly waked.

Joycescene, impaginated anglexicon.

Joycestick, infineganite worldpay.

Joycetick, oyceanic stairage.

Joycense, instensical lilteracy.

Joycese, colludic ninsense.

 

From Jeff Hilson’s Organ Music part 5:

All manner of thing is not well

the poem are not a dark fighting flower

after all

it are a speed garage compilation

of the ‘toughest’ anthems

o rosie gaines just when I am getting closer

to my uncontrollable desire

I am closer than I thought

now I’ve gone too far I wanted you

in my karaoke masterclass

where I am the dr & you

are crying like at the end of toy story 3

where old time and new time are really

the same time & andy is also crying

because he is going further than me into the future

with mr cuddles.

 

More London:

The Diwali Festival in Trafalgar Square

The National Gallery

“Timon of Athens” at the National Theatre

“Red Velvet” at the Tricycle Theatre

“55 Days” at the Hampstead Theatre

Classic English breakfast near Euston Square and St. Pancras, an area introduced to me by Dorothy Richardson in Pilgrimage

 

More gustatory:

Persimmons

Rose-and-lemon Turkish Delight

 

Sounds I return to:

Poet as Radio, hosted by Delia Tramontina, Jay Thomas, and Nicholas Leaskou

My brother playing the first movement of Beethoven’s “Appassionata”

Chris Gutkind’s poetry CD “Larynx 2”

Tangents Radio hosted by Dore Stein

A Musical Offering hosted by Mary Berg

WQXR’s Q2 (new music, streamed)

Meditation talks from Dharma Seed

Others Minds’ Fluxus Semicentenary

 

Visual rewards:

Aperture magazine, thanks to a gift subscription from my sis

Agnes Varda’s films

Marwencol, a documentary about the artist Mark Hogencamp

The Bicycle Thief, directed by Vittorio De Sica

Bimal Roy, directed by Pather Panchali