Orlandi's Balloon

Family

Les Animaux de la Nuit Max Ernst

Richard Kostelanetz: Recent Work

Richard Kostelanetz's Book Art from Richard Kostelanetz on Vimeo.

To view Mr. Kostelanetz's Amazon page, please click HERE.

Parade of the Moon God Nanna-Sin

       "New Year's Day at the Ziggurat of Ur" by John McDermott

Assuredly, it was an auspicious day

A little warm, but who knew to care
Or cared instead as the iron image of the god
Came castering on lumpen wooden wheels
Centered amongst a procession of priests and musicians
Across the main thoroughfare resplendent
Thus deeply they wondered at his bearing
Surmised what noble man was selected
To don the sheepskin robe and place
The triple crown of bullhorns aloft
On his propitious brow; see, he holds 
The rod and the reel, the measuring line
Of the Architect and Master Builder,
First of this world, and then of Ur
The First City, whose harnessed populace
Dreams of what at that summit shall transpire
When the god himself shall slow descend
From Heaven, born of light and slipping as a star
One silver drop of divine emanation
Falling into union with the surface of the Earth
Sacred Heaven and Sacred Earth joined
In the embrace of divine human forms
So an erect King and suppliant Queen
Shall contort, inspired, on the golden bed

HMS Téméraire, a Bellerophon class battleship

Fanfare for the Common Man

 

History Menaced by an Allegorical Blog Post

Michael Butterworth interview in Parallel Worlds

I have just learned that Jean-Paul L. Garnier interviews Michael Butterworth in issue 15 of Parallel Worlds. Jean-Paul L. Garnier is the publisher of Space Cowboy Books, and he appears in Octo-Emanations. Michael Butterworth began his carer in the British New Wave, publishing in New Worlds. He is a member of International Authors, who has published (in association with Null23) his books Butterworth and My Servant the Wind.  Mr. Butterworth's work has appeared in Emanations since the first volume.

Please click HERE.

“the aggregate sum”

Please click HERE for "Greentopia, the Utopian Place at the Side-West: a Review of Marleen S. Barr's 'Bluetopia' by Nigeria's (and International Authors') Ebi Robert.

Ebi Robert

 

Lucas Cranach the Elder Allegory of Law and Grace (1530)

 

USS Seadragon

 

Workstation

A Hamster Wheel for Neophytes

In a recent Gypsy Scholar blog post (please click HERE) Professor Hodges holds up for consideration the following passage from James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake:

...a way a lone a last a loved a long the riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs . . . . a way a lone a last a loved a long the riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.

Professor Hodges observes, first, that the circular character of the passage is clear but nevertheless it goes neither here nor there, nor has it much to say; if this is Joyce’s point, it really isn’t much of a point, nor is the prosody that interesting—which is supported by Professor Hodges' second, bibliographic, observation that the text itself is an unsettled and ill-defined matter. He writes:

One knows not where to begin . . . plus even before setting forth to read (before the beginning? before the ending?), one must, as I have now come to understand, first settle on a correct manuscript, notoriously difficult in a text that breaks rules.

My comment, to which Professor Hodges signals agreement, reads as follows:

FW is a work exhibiting much mystery and few virtues... A "scripture" for a secular prelacy... A hamster wheel for neophytes.

What's to be done with this over-written text teaming with the endless exercise of linguistic "suggestions" and cultural allusions that trace off into meaninglessness, and (most importantly?) exhibiting an aesthetic that is evidently obscurantist?  I suppose there are some who view the book as a lively expression of "Irish wordplay unbound", an explosion in four dimensions of the "dynamic and wonderfully unpredictable" Keltic imagination. Being somewhat predisposed to a Keltic view of things (and my ancestry is one-quarter Scot, after-all) I am wont to pronounce a Keltic judgment upon the work; to whit, it is a bog full of gibberish.

Riddle me this: Is ________ ?

NASA’s Eyes

 

Please click HERE.