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Excavating the Internet David Schurman Wallace Studying the internet’s pre-history is interesting—but can it help us in the present?
Hard to Be a God Joshua Craze A new history of deification suggests that political power is always mythological.
Hard to Be a God Joshua Craze A new history of deification suggests that political power is always mythological.
Be More Rae Armantrout 1. “Dead and gone,” you might think. But it’s not that simple. Now the dead get jobs answering FAQs, like “Is someone here?” and “Is anybody there?” 2. “Be more recognizable!” tweets Surveillance Inc., like we were all slightly out of focus. It jollies us along. “Just one more photo. You started this. It’s what you always wanted.” 3. The fires are quite precocious. They generate lightning which creates more fire— almost fully self-sustaining in a matter of hours. 4. Compared with “is” the word “exist” is pretentious. Rigid. It calls attention to itself. Calls and calls.
Adriatic Robert Kelly 1. What we mean is always on the other side. Aeneas to Italy, Diocletian to Dalmatia, endless ferrying, wine, wanderers, words. 2. It is like that in our town, trees lacey with new snow, the sun waiting. The book lies open on the table, poem, painted cover, body leaping in a room, over the lurking window, light. 3. We watched it from Venice stood by the white church and almost understood. The sea makes far near, the sun was coming out, there is something to be done. 4. I know it mostly though from old poetry, Odysseus chugging up the shore to his lost found island, epics and not much evidence except the waves. The woman waiting. Did his hands tremble as he stepped ashore? 5. Mine did at waking, mind milky with confused prayers, there are days like pop songs, trivial, public, irrelevant but there they are, I must learn to endure my mind. 6. Or what is the other side of prayer, other of the words we think we mean we find ourselves saying? Long narrow sea, different languages apart. Speak them for me. Speak me at least in one. 7. Or are we there already? Other side, mother tide, born over and over? Forgive me, we means me, I keep making that mistake of thinking I am not alone. 8. But, you’ll answer, some real you I mean, but one is, you are, I am, never alone in language. Open your mouth and you’re in a crowded room. 9. White church, white surf, white gull to gloat over the fish dock and they say things too as they gorge on scraps, little boy I was reading fat books. 10. So that’s what the sea says but only if you think about it. Cross me if you dare, what you’ll find is just more here, notice how ill-equipped you are for swimming my miles, the other side is just a dream anyhow, listen to your mind, you’ll hear weird languages enough. 11. I must be lonely if I’m chatting with the sea, and not even her local currents. Not lonely, just early waiting for the day to start washing up on the shores of sleep. Wake me at noon when no one sleeps. 12. Greece, or Italy. I never could decide, we took our law from one, our logic from the other. And war from both on this winter day Slavs murdering Slavs along yet another sea, other side of the other side. 13. I think of the dying Virgil sailing back to the heel of Italy and the long road Rome. We do not need to kill our enemy, it is enough to speak clearly once their secret name, and then a feeling comes between you, quiet, pale, a little like an iris, or a lily.
