Category Archives: Reading

The System of Dante’s Hell

09/19/2017 By in Authors, Books, Civil Rights, Reading Tags: , , , , , , Leave a comment

images-2.jpgI highly recommend Amiri Baraka’s experimental novel from the ’60s, The System of Dante’s Hell. Written under the poet’s name at that time, LeRoi Jones, Baraka gives a highly personal, somewhat autobiographical, account of how the experience of being a black man can be related in terms suggestive of Hell as developed by Dante in the Inferno.

In fact, a modified version of Dante’s system is provided at the beginning of the book. But don’t get trapped into attempting to marry each section of Baraka’s narrative to Dante’s map of Hell.

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Remember The Fugs?

09/15/2017 By in Authors, Poetry, Reading Tags: , , , Leave a comment

This isn’t my favorite Ginsberg short poem but it is one of my favorite poem titles of all time.

Consulting I Ching Smoking Pot Listening to the Fugs Sing Blake

That which pushes upward
          does not come back
He led me in his garden
            tinkle of 20 year phonograph
        Death is icumen in
          and mocks my loss of liberty
One much see the Great Man
        Fear not it brings blessing
               No Harm
            from the invisible world
Perseverance
        Realms beyond
                  Stoned
in the deserted city
            which lies below consciousness
                            June 1966

 

Excellence In Weather Broadcasting

09/13/2017 By in Politics, Reading, Science Tags: , , , , , , 2 Comments

download.jpgRush Limbaugh made it clear that the so-called hurricane named Irma was just a liberal plot to promote the liberal agenda, especially the climate change scam. Then he packed up his Palm Beach home and skedaddled for the left-coast. I guess the real question is which is the biggest blow-hard: Irma or Rusty?

It’s fascinating to hear the scientific analysis of a storm like Irma. It seems like the storm hung over the coast of Cuba a bit longer than expected which changed the angle taken up the length of Florida and caused a partial breakup of the eye-wall. This resulted in a diminution of the eye wall, a slowing of the storm’s forward motion, and it’s eventual downgrade while sparing major areas that were originally slated for major destruction.

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True Crime

09/05/2017 By in Authors, Books, Reading Tags: , , Leave a comment

VOLUME 19, Number 1: True Crime

The town claimed to be shocked by the arrests, but most confided that they’d always known Penny Misko would end up doing something like this. She’d always been a liar and a drunk; it was not hard to imagine that she could leave a neighbor in the road not twenty feet from her front door . . . The more compassionate suggested that maybe she hadn’t known she’d hit someone, but they’d been dismissed. The car’s windshield had been replaced! The police who’d retrieved it from the body shop said the damage was “consistent with something large striking it.” Something like Brenda Leroy’s head. The Miskos had left her in the street, and they’d sat there at their kitchen table listening to the ambulance come and go, and they’d lied, lied, and lied again. And Brenda was their neighbor. She’d known them her whole life. Penny had worked with Brenda’s mother at the sleeping bag factory. Penny Misko was a terrible person. Not guilty? they said. Please.

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