David Shapiro (via Unburying the Lead)

Professor Shapiro … is better known by some for a photograph of him taken during the Columbia student uprising in 1968. In the widely circulated photo, a young Mr. Shapiro — not yet a professor — is in the student-occupied office of the university President, Grayson Kirk. Wearing a pair of sunglasses, he is sitting comfortably on President Kirk’s chair with his feet up, puffing away on one of the president’s cigars.

”That cigar was horrible,” Professor Shapiro told the dinner guests.

[NYT]

Day Job and Night Job

BY ANDREW HUDGINS

After my night job, I sat in class
and ate, every thirteen minutes,
an orange peanut-butter cracker.
Bright grease adorned my notes.

At noon I rushed to my day job
and pushed a broom enough
to keep the boss calm if not happy.
In a hiding place, walled off

by bolts of calico and serge,
I read my masters and copied
Donne, Marlowe, Dickinson, and Frost,
scrawling the words I envied,

so my hand could move as theirs had moved
and learn outside of logic
how the masters wrote. But why? Words
would never heal the sick,

feed the hungry, clothe the naked,
blah, blah, blah
Why couldn’t I be practical,
Dad asked, and study law—

or take a single business class?
I stewed on what and why
till driving into work one day,
a burger on my thigh

and a sweating Coke between my knees,
I yelled, “Because I want to!”—
pained—thrilled!—as I looked down
from somewhere in the blue

and saw beneath my chastened gaze
another slack romantic
chasing his heart like an unleashed dog
chasing a pickup truck.

And then I spilled my Coke. In sugar
I sat and fought a smirk.
I could see my new life clear before me.
It looked the same. Like work.

Andrew Hudgins, “Day Job and Night Job” from Ecstatic in the Poison. Copyright © 2003 by Andrew Hudgins. Reprinted without permission from the Poetry Foundation’s website.

walkwhilereading:

The More Loving One by W.H. Auden

Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast.

How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.

Admirer as I think I am
Of stars that do not give a damn,
I cannot, now I see them, say
I missed one terribly all day.

Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total dark sublime,
Though this might take me a little time.

Auden appears, unexpectedly.

arielk:

Patti Smith and ufology.  Are flying saucers real?  Andy and I made this for MNKINO this week.

Was there ever any doubt? Ufology production photos here, and watch more MNKINO #4 videos here.

"The superlative for all alone is all."

the last line of Jennifer Michael Hecht’s poem, “My Hero” in this week’s New Yorker. (via speakingoffaith)

Rail Track, a “visual poetry” book by Fluxus artist Litsa Spathi. (Apparently Fluxus is still alive and kickin’)

“Dream Song 14” By John Berryman

Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so.
After all, the sky flashes, the great sea yearns,
we ourselves flash and yearn,
and moreover my mother told me as a boy
(repeatingly) ‘Ever to confess you’re bored
means you have no

Inner Resources.’ I conclude now I have no
inner resources, because I am heavy bored.
Peoples bore me,
literature bores me, especially great literature,
Henry bores me, with his plights & gripes
as bad as achilles,

who loves people and valiant art, which bores me.
And the tranquil hills, & gin, look like a drag
and somehow a dog has taken itself & its tail considerably away
into mountains or sea or sky, leaving
behind: me, wag.

Celebrate John Berryman this friday.