David Antin Take Off That Hat!

     "...now there were things about this painting i didn't understand     in some sense it looked very low pressure     the way a lot of painting looks in america     that is it looked as if it was not urgent about anything     painting is embarrassed to be about anything     its been embarrassed for a long time     theres a grave sense of embarrassment before the possibility of being about in painting     which they call being literary     and literary is a bad term for a painter because everyone knows that if you paint a painting of anything it shouldnt be about anything but painting..."
          -from David Antin's "remembering   recording   representing" (1973)

     This, said PageBoy Magazine, is one of the funniest and most pointed comments on not only painting, a certain kind of painting anyway, but much of what we all do these days, whether it's writing or painting or badmintoning. Navigating the world of contemporary art is difficult, to say the least, in any era, which volleys a shuttlecock over a high net by means of a light racket touche!

Annual Bucket / Elevator Music XI

                       Samuel Beckett

     "All needed to be known for say is known. There is nothing but what is said. Beyond what is said there is nothing." - he said (I'm quoting him from nothing, though it's true, I am saying it in a way).

Elevator Music XI

     Round spots forming a pattern poof! There it is, and we spent the rest of that hour fleeing from it, or trying to make sense of them (in our way).
     The Venetian traveler seemed old simply because he was Venetian. I apologized, and told him it was an association I'd had since being young - that Venetian somehow meant antiquitous. My father referred to his steins as 'Venetian,' at least that's how I remember it, and though my father wasn't old then he seemed so to me and the steins certainly were the stuff of old age to a child interested only in running.
     I ran on and on and the traveler, whose name was Charles, listened politely, pulling on his cigarette and straining to comprehend what I said. We paid our bill and left. He the one way and then we and then I.

cou rouge

red neck

Our tour in boat

I was asleep when he died.

David Antin / Elevator Music X

     "the one thing I think a poet ought to do is respect what he doesn't understand, respect its unintelligibility."
          - David Antin

Elevator Music X

at the reading last night you
                    rubbed my leg
and so my leg went
                    home with you
what was I to do
hopping around in the bookstore
                    so suddenly armful

outside, the night air
froze the nerves of my stump
and no amount of stars
could be a salve for them

so I went looking
for a language expansive enough
                     to lead me to
                     the both of you
and found.

How It Is

ah my young friend this sack if you had seen it I could hardly drag it and now look my vertex touches the bottom
I could hardly drag my vertex and now look my young friend this sack it touches the bottom if you had seen it ah
tom I could hardly sack this friend now look my ahbot had drag and vertex it touches if you seen my young it