Monkey Mouth

"In the beginning was the word..."
     Gospel of John.
"In the beginning of heaven and earth there were no words, words came out of the womb of matter."
     Lao Tzu.

     I wish these two would end their endless squabbling over words. The word is that in the beginning was the beginning of the word, but even so there were no words that came out of the womb of matter. Can we all just agree, finally, that words came from monkeys. And note the trends in new poetic writing: the return to monkey mouth!

   

Reading Lolita in London

Olympia Press's evocative cover. (oh the understatement!)

     "The filthiest book I have ever read. Sheer unrestrained pornography."
          - John Gordon (ed. of the London Sunday Express) in a review of Nabokov's Lolita.
     Obviously Mr. Gordon needs to get better porn, and filthier books! Were the '50s that bleak?
     This quote reminds me of Umberto Eco's comment on the Marquis de Sade (who Gordon obviously never read). It's something to the effect of "The most disturbing thing about Sade's work is that just when you start to get turned on he goes off on some philosophical rant that lasts upwards of 50 pages. How is one to enjoy onesself, there's way too much philosophy!"