K.O.

Bush Does Dr. Evil

I thought Dr. Evil was more of a Cheney thing, but whatever- I'll take it.

ARGH

“I don't want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the commander in chief playing golf,” he said. “I feel I owe it to the families to be in solidarity as best as I can with them. And I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal.”

Guess who!

If you haven't guessed yet, that's our fearless leader, George Walker Bush. I'm glad he thinks that giving up golf is an adequate sacrifice for 4000 dead soldiers.

Well done, Mr. President!

“It is better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than to open it and remove all doubt.”

Amen, Mark Twain.

Typo #11

Paige Ackerson-Kiely
Lucy Biederman
Christopher Deweese
Farrah Field
Andrew Grace
Jane Gregory
Kirsten Kashock
Karla Kelsey
Dorothea Lasky
Kristi Maxwell
Karyna McGlynn
Patrick Morrissey
Michael Robins
Eleni Sikelianos
Matvei Yankelevich

-
Also, for those in NYC

The Burning Chair Readings
present

Goose Up!
Poetry!
at East Coast Aliens

Saturday, May 17th, 3-8pm
Doors 2:30 pm, $6

Ana Božičević
John Coletti
Kate Greenstreet
Sarah Gridley
Katy Henriksen
Shannon Jonas
Jennifer Kronovet
Mark Lamoureux
Timothy Liu
Chris Martin
Jess Mynes
Cate Peebles
Christopher Rizzo
Matthew Rohrer
Frank Sherlock
Joanna Sondheim
Shanxing Wang
Rebecca Wolff

w/ projections by
Stephen Hilger
& music from
The Hadacol

Hosted by Cannibal, Harp & Altar, Saltgrass & Tight

East Coast Aliens
216 Franklin St
btwn. Green & Huron
Greenpoint, Brooklyn
G to Greenpoint Ave (exit at India St)
B61/B43/B42

On Michael Warner's "What Like a Bullet Can Undeceive?"

This was for Dee's class. I put off doing an assignment this semester wherein someone had to read an essay and then do a write up for class. I thought I would learn by watching others, but in the end, I was face to face with Professor Warner. This is what I submitted to the class. I was going to read it all, but the 10:45 spectre grew too close.

Keep in mind that they were spared my hypothetical impersonation of Herman Melville as well.

_________________________________________________________________________

Warner's essay deals in redemption and undeception: the manner in which a group justifies its actions, however violent they may be. Violence is rationalized through relativism, such that “our” violence is nullified by “their” violence. When violence begets violence, like the battle of Shiloh somehow making up for cessation and attacks on Fort Sumter, everything refers back to the initial act rather than the acts that followed it. To paraphrase something normally attributed to Benjamin Franklin, violence is always illegal in the third person, as in “their violent act.” It is always legal in the first person, or “Operation Enduring Freedom/Justice.” Warner’s argument is that in order to reconcile our acts to ourselves, and often time to others, we must take the acts of others and construct a justification based on that action.

Redemption, I believe, goes hand in hand with guilt and factors leading to a desire to appear more genial than you actually may be. For Melville and other Northern liberal intellectuals of his day, the war became about “a redemptive vision of war in general and of the United States in particular as the redeemer nation” (43). Through concerns that America was splitting over a general conflict between states came the desire towards being the savior of the New World, reestablishing the connection created on the continent a little more than eighty years previous. However, the fact that the war “escalated beyond anyone's imagination and altered the cause for which it began” (44) had become a source of unhappiness for Melville, whose “moral framework had provided both the rallying language for the war” (43). “Shiloh,” then, becomes Melville’s act of redemption towards the end of the war, and especially at the time of publication, 1866.

By treating the foemen of North and South without distinction, Melville eliminates violent agency from war. You don't have to blame yourself, then, because you don't have to blame anyone avoiding the complex social issues that accompany the causes of violence, according to Warner. In the same way, we are not reminded of any acts of violence brought upon American soldiers fighting overseas. We, through media, see no body bags and rarely even see soldiers maimed in battle dealing with issues or returning home. If there are no problems with our soldiers, then there are no problems with theirs or with any civilians who might have been bombed out of their homes.

In discussing deception, violence, and undeception with regard to Melville and the Civil War, Warner avoids discussing it in modern terms, which he briefly mentions in the opening paragraph. “Our” actions in Iraq are justified as “we” were merely responding to the violence that “they” brought to “us,” via the 9/11 attacks or events. In the same vein, if “we” downplay the violence caused by Al Qaeda in Iraq through the media, “we” can also downplay “our” violence there as well. Warner never mentions these examples specifically, but by positioning himself from the beginning as a referent to 9/11 and Robert Pinsky's reading of poems in consolation, ”a natural thing to do, I'm sure,” I believe the conclusion he hopes for us to move towards is related back to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Similar to a point made in class, if Warner were to outright mention American warfare and discuss violence as an on-going aspect of these wars, he would be branded an “other” by the Bush administration and/or much of mainstream media. In some ways, Warner's discussion of Melville and the Civil War is its own act of deception, which “we” (leftists, students, academics, etc.) are supposed to see through. Warner expects us to take his logic in the essay and follow it forward into modern times: if “we” blame Al Qaeda for everything, “we” can avoid talking about global poverty, American foreign policies dating back decades (we put Hussein in power, we helped the Taliban gain power to avoid a Soviet take over) — almost anything, really.

The Widow Party

Dear Hooligans,

The wars have changed, but the appetite for images in America has not. The Widow Party comprises a Buffalo Bill dumb show at the end of time, a rootin' tootin' aeschatology with sound effects by Jacob Knabb and a soundtrack by the Genius Child Orchestra, featuring Pentagon-bankrolled expert commentary by Britney Spears.

As Walt Disney has observed, it's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.

The main action of The Widow Party was scripted by Johannes Göransson, based on visions revealed in a semi-comatose conflation after a carcrash following a hazardous homejourney after the 2007 MLA. With Joyelle McSweeney and Jen Karmin in a pas de deux for the miracle twins Hannie Oakley and Annie Weiner, and Patrick Durgin performing a Declamation which will be an explanation and evaluation of all that has come before. With two Widows, a Reporter, Crash, Walter Cronkite, You, Satchmo, Lisa Janssen and James Shea in alarming and supporting roles.

Please extinguish.

At the conclusion of the performance, time will also conclude.

Friday & Saturday, May 9 & 10, 8pm
Sunday, May 11, 7pm
$12 ($10 students)

Links Halll, Chicago

Word For/Word #13

New Word For/Word- I believe yours truly will be in #14...


**************************************************************
I'm pleased to announce that Word For/Word #13 is online at



www.wordforword.info



with poetry and visuals by Carrie Olivia Adams, Kismet Al-Hussaini, Jim
Andrews, Carlyle Baker, C. Mehrl Bennett, John M. Bennett,
David-Baptiste
Chirot, David Doran, Tim Earley, Christopher Eaton, Jill Alexander
Essbaum,
Emily Kendal Frey, Richard Froude, Alan Halsey, Martin Jackson, George
Kalamaras, A. J. Patrick Liszkiewicz, Adrian Lurssen, Mez, Catherine
Moore,
Gustave Morin, Sheila E. Murphy, Cami Nelson, Amber Nelson, Marko
Niemi,
Michael Peters, Stephen Ratcliffe, James Sanders, Kate Schapira, Peter
Schwartz, Michael Sikkema, Joshua A. Ware, Ted Warnell, Kerri Webster,
Jared
White, and Arianne Zwartjes



plus essays, reviews, and a special section on code poems.



Cheers!

Jonathan Minton

www.wordforword.info



***************************************



from ANGOLA: A Dictionary of Names, Forms, and Actions

by Adrian Lurssen



[Teeth: A Methodology]



"Absolute north" is to "guerilla outpost" as "love" and "antelope" are
to
the bush they occupy: uniform urgency as overt as names on a skirt. The
range is an exercise, tame as a vase, and to talk is to occupy. In
time, the
range is a plain without end, an envelope of light unable to injure
itself.
Or an ostrich, and light becomes the uniform -lips, a skirmish between
what's open and what is tapping to loosen time.



The plan to explain is absolute, but only an entrance.