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Ezra Pound: Canto L


Revolution ‘ said Mr Adams ‘ took place in the
            minds of the people
            in the fifteen years before Lexington ‘ ,

I take this opening stanza to be a reference to John Adams and the American Revolution, but the entire rest of the Canto is about Italy (there is a reference to Marengo, and famous early victory by Napoleon in Italy, so I take the years referenced to be the very early nineteenth century, though other references, such as to the Medici, counter that – but who ever said a poem had to be chronologically consistent?) and finance and frankly I do not understand how these first lines fit in with the whole.

He gets more ‘normal’ towards the end, but the first half of the Fiftieth Canto has Pound playing a great deal with different line indentations.

Sadly, we also see this line:

Pius sixth, vicar of foolishness, no Jew God
wd. have kept THAT in power.

Arguably, this is the most explicitly anti-semitic line to appear yet.

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Freddy Adu Coming Back To America?


One of the rumors flying around is that Chivas USA will grab Freddy Adu before the European transfer window closes in August.

He’s currently ‘playing’ on for the Portuguese powerhouse Benfica. I say ‘playing’ because he’s hardly played for them at all. He’s ridden the pine and been loaned out, but he’s hardly played for them at all over the last few years. The only reason any is really talking about him again is because he went on loan to a second division team in the Turkish league, put in the work and made a real difference for them. Then, he got called up to play for the national team in the Gold Cup and when he was finally given his favored trequartista role, excelled in holding onto possession and played some excellent passes to open opposing defenses.

But he still looks unlikely to get any playing time for Benfica.

If he came back to Major Leage Soccer, Chivas would be my first choice for him. My hometown team right now is DC United, but his time here was only moderately successful and think maybe we should say that the moment for him here has come and gone.

I also lived in Los Angeles and Chivas USA was my team during that time (I’m not just a leaf on the wind – my true team were the Tampa Mutiny, but they are gone forever, I fear; everyone else is just a substitute for my true love). They could use some sparkle and pizzazz. If Adu were really given a chance to shine and given a central playmaking role with little defensive responsibilities (either in a 4-2-3-1 or at the top of a midfield diamond), then he could really make that team – known more for hard work and grit, than flair – shine.

That said, I’d like to see him stay in Europe. Portugal would, in theory, be perfect for him: a league heavy on offense with frankly weak and not very physical defenses. But that train has left the station. A mid-table team in the Netherlands looking for a possession oriented quarterback or even a team in France’s second division would suit him to a tee, but the transfer window is almost over and getting on the field for Chivas USA is better than sitting on a bench for Benfica.

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What Rick Perry Needs To Win


Rick Perry is nearly ready to throw his ten gallon, novelty cowboy hat into the ring and begin to formally campaign for president. So what effect will that have?

There is little doubt that Republican voters are, by and large, almost as unsatisfied with their announced candidates for president as they are with their announced candidates for the U.S. Senate in Florida.

However, the road to the GOP nomination for president is a lot more complicated than the nomination for Senate. There are a specific series of hurdles you must leap with some unique requirements and demands.

Number one, you must do well (and likely win) one of Iowa or New Hampshire. Once you’ve done that, you now have a good chance of parlaying that win into a victory in South Carolina (especially if you have won Iowa, whose Republican electorate is culturally more similar to South Carolina’s than is New Hampshire’s).

Frankly, once you’ve won two of those three, you’ve pretty much got things wrapped up. Yes, you will have to compete in some of the states that follow, the honest truth is, there is almost no chance of anyone catching up to you, because the primaries come so fast and furious that momentum counts for everything and you will have the momentum.

Rick Perry will have to put his eggs in the Iowa basket and count on one of two things happening. He wins Iowa and subsequently wins South Carolina (New Hampshire might be a bridge too far) or is perceived as having done ‘surprisingly well in Iowa’ and then goes on to win South Carolina without a single candidate having won both Iowa and New Hampshire.

I think the latter is is his best chance and that probably means that he needs Michele Bachmann to win Iowa. Right now, of the announced candidates, only Bachmann and Romney have a shot in Iowa. Because Romney is also favored in New Hampshire, a win in Iowa might all but give him the nomination, so Perry can’t let that happen.

Perry would instantly be a contender, but Iowa politics is tough slog.

The caucus system used (which I don’t have the time nor the energy to fully explain right now) makes local super activists – folks who know everyone who will be coming to a particular caucus location and can wheel and deal to secure voting blocs who had supported someone who didn’t reach the necessary threshold at that caucus location to be able to win it (this caucus system is complicated, I’m telling you).

That means that it’s not just a matter of turning out your voters. You’ve got to get these super activists (or super volunteers or local power brokers or opinion makers or whatever you want to call them).

Right now, Perry doesn’t have any.

Right now, there aren’t many left.

My guess is that Perry will have to do some serious poaching.

The conventional wisdom is that he is primarily competing for the same electorate as Bachmann, but here is also where it gets even more tricky. If he draws heavily from her pool of support, but doesn’t win and Romney takes Iowa, his campaign is already very nearly over. He could, conceivably, come in second and then beat expectations in New Hampshire, win South Carolina and try to drag this process out and win in a bruising, extended match with Romney but… you’ve got to give the edge to Romney.

If he can’t win, he needs Bachmann to win Iowa to keep Romney from developing too much momentum.

My guess is that his team starts targeting Pawlenty supporters. Pawlenty is polling in the toilet bowl in Iowa, but he’s gathered up a surprising amount of support from state legislators and activists. If he can pull enough of them, he might get enough support to finagle the result he needs.

The point is that even though there are a lot of macro factors in Perry’s favor – he’s got Tea Party, evangelical, donor, and establishment credibility and provides a viable option to the still not quite trusted Romney – the micro factors of the early contests are actually pretty heavily stacked against him and he’s got a narrow path to navigate.

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Resolution


Resolved: I will not take seriously any candidate for the Republican nomination for President in 2012 until they consistently poll higher than Newt Gingrinch.

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Now That’s No Longer Running for the Senate, Mike Haridopolos Aiming for Revenge on His Rivals


There’s a new word being used to describe Florida Senate President Mike Haridopolos since he gave up his floundering campaign for the U.S. Senate: relaxed.

Obviously, this is intended as a reflection of his demeanor, rather than his hair, which still looks like it was CGI’d on from a late eighties movie about surfers and valley girls.

The Orlando Sentinel wrote that he ‘isn’t afraid of much these days.’

But what’s more interesting is what’s broadly hinted at in-between the lines.

Three people are primarily responsible for the non-stop disaster that was his campaign for the U.S. Senate.

Number one was Haridopolos himself. If you haven’t been following this race, I won’t give anything away, but will simply encourage you to google the terms ‘Haridopolos’ and ‘book deal.’ Trust me. You won’t regret it.

The next person is Florida House Speaker Dean Cannon. Ostensibly, Cannon was a supporter of his Senate counterpart, having endorsed him early. But in practice, the Speaker made Mike’s life a living hell. Right at the very end of the legislative session, when most of the work is done and when reporters are paying the most attention, Cannon brought things to crashing halt, refusing to move on items and sending to the Senate right wing legislation that had no chance of passing the more moderate chamber.

The result was that Haridopolos, instead of looking like the big man in Florida and a strong leader, looked like a hapless loser and also saw his reputation as a true conservative damaged by his failure to pass these late arriving bills through the chamber he supposedly controlled.

All of this seemed designed to benefit the third most responsible party, his rival for the GOP nomination for the U.S. Senate former state house majority leader Adam Hasner.

Hasner is out office and was able to throw Tea Party-esque bombs without fear of actually having to do anything.

Many political watchers saw this all go down feeling pretty certain that Cannon was setting Haridopolos up on behalf of Hasner.

So now that he is out of the race of for the U.S. Senate, what is Haridopolos doing?

He’s making Cannon look bad by showing up at one of the contentious redistricting meetings going on across the state – after Cannon stayed away for fear of being booed and hissed at.

He’s lamenting the absence of principled conservative in the Senate race and name dropping folks like Jeb Bush and Connie Mack IV. Since Hasner had been trying to portray himself as that very figure, Haridopolos’ statements are clearly aimed at denigrating his erstwhile rival.

Finally, Haridopolos is making it clear that he’s not going to run for Congress or any other office in 2012.

Keep in mind, he desperately wants to hold higher office.

My guess – he’s decided that he wants revenge more. So he’s going to spend next year’s legislative session trying to trip up Cannon and turn the whole session into a nonstop cluserf–k just out of spite.

Should be fun.

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Is Apple Considering Buying & Then Gutting, Skinning & Leaving To Rot Nation’s Largest Remaining Bookstore?


Apparently Steve Jobs and Apple hate Amazon almost as much as Borders did and Barnes & Noble still does.

Even though iPads are still selling well, people are mostly reading books on them with the Kindle app and no one is really buying or reading much of anything from/with iBooks (I assume that is the cutesy name they picked for this particular product; certainly, I am too lazy to look it up and be certain).

In classic Silicon Valley fashion, the folks over at Apple are considering solving this problem by buying a competitor to the Kindle, namely the Nook. And they will buy the Nook by… buying Barnes & Noble.

I wish I was obscenely wealthy and could solve my problems this way. Then I could solve the parking problem on my street by buying the street from the city.

Of course, in this scenario (which is still purely hypothesis and rumor), Apple isn’t really interested in managing bookstores. Maybe some stay open. Maybe none do. Certainly, the best locations get changed into glossy, cold Apple stores.

All bookstores are, in some fashion, repositories for some portion of our world’s knowledge and culture. That portion, as a percentage of the whole, is insignificant, but that portion is also hugely significant as a percentage of the means of dissemination. The same also applies, of course, to libraries.

To see such  a comforting and inviting repository disappear to be replaced with something of less cultural importance is sad.

To see hundreds of them replaced with stores that sell consumer techno porn is not just sad, but bordering on the immoral. It calls for priests, ministers, rabbis, monks, and lamas to thunder invective down from the pulpit.

God, I hope this isn’t true or doesn’t come to pass.

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The Itinerant Poetry Library


The Itinerant Poetry Library. I have never seen it, but the concept sounds great. Just setting up a table or a booth or a pop up shop featuring poetry and lit ‘zines you might otherwise never have seen.

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Frank O’Hara: ‘Lunch Poems’


The New York School is a group of poets I’ve only recently made much effort to get into.

Many, many years ago, I bought a copy of one of John Ashberry’s books, knowing that he was considered a great poet, a seminal poet. But I went into it way too early in my poetical education and could not, for the life of me, get into it. The strategies he was attempting made no sense to me and so his poetry made no sense.

Since then, of course, I have tried to slowly school myself on Ashberry and the New York School and to teach myself their styles, tendencies, and tropes.

I’ve read up on some Ashberry, though I’ve yet to read either of his most important books – The Tennis Court Oath and Self-Potrait in a Convex Mirror. A year ago, I got myself a copy of some edition or other of selected poems by Kenneth Koch (it’s in the other room, but I’m too lazy to go find it right now). I haven’t yet picked up any James Schulyer or Barbara Guest.

But I am reading Frank O’Hara’s Lunch Poems.

Had I started with Frank O’Hara, rather than Ashberry, all those years ago, things might have gone much smoother. He is far more approachable (by which I do not mean simplistic) than Ashberry and more serious than Koch (I can only stand so much light-hearted poetry). His deeply personal narration – chronicling small moments from his life in New York City (the city itself featuring far more prominently than in Ashberry and even more than in Koch) – nicely mixes up lighter, amusing fare with more serious musings on privation, politics, and art. While mostly narrative, I should note that several pieces toss in there the kind of surrealism one associates with the New York School (which might be better associated, perhaps, with automatic writing than with Surrealism – though all of the New York School was deeply influenced by French poetry, with Ashberry just recently translating Rimbaud’s Illuminations).

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Lit Mags & The Struggle for Survival


Roxane Gay writes about it at HTMLGiant.

Megan Garr at Versal.

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Were Floridians Kidding Themselves About Fair Districts?


In 2010, Florida voters overwhelming passed a ballot initiative amending the state constitution to end partisan gerrymandering in the drawing of new legislative districts.

No secret that the Republican leadership in Tallahassee wasn’t going to take this lying down. Will of the voters or no, Constitution or no, they weren’t going to simply roll over while their absolute rule over Florida was marginally weakened.

But most Floridians probably didn’t think that Governor Rick Scott, Senate President Mike ‘the Appeaser’ Haridopolos, and Dean ‘Loose’ Cannon would agree to use those same voters’ tax dollars to fight the constitutional amendment they passed.

Nor did they think that, during the voters’ one chance to have their voice heard by legislators in the redistricting process, that a legislator would ‘Like’ a plastic surgery clinic from his iPad instead of paying attention to what Floridians had to say or that legislators would ignore speakers who spoke in favor of  a obeying the Constitution and give extra time to speakers who supported them.

It seems like even the lowest of Florida’s expectations won’t be met the current ‘leadership.’