Sponge Bob vs. Mike Wallace

This morning in the pipes: a meditation on the "fashionable grocery lists" of the literary and illiterary elite. For some reason, Baby Jane is coming to mind ("but you are a fashionable grocery list, you are!")

Hell Must Be Peopled (1859)

Brimstony! . . .

Campbell, Alfred Gibbs
"INVITATION TO THE CLERGY TO PARTICIPATE IN THE INAUGURATION OF THE TAVERN AT PASSAIC FALLS, N. J."

Ho ! preachers of His Gospel who
Salvation came to bring,
Rest from your labors for awhile,
And join our gathering!

Ye servants of the Living God!
Your fealty cast aside,
And with us for a single day
Stand on the Devil's side!

What boots it that we open wide
Another door to woe,
Through which a still increasing tide
Of human souls shall flow?

Hell must be peopled; and our plan
Is quite the surest one;
Our railway's a descending grade,
Our cars the swiftest run.

Not faster do the waters plunge
Adown Passaic's steep,
Not swifter do the lightnings fly
Athwart the vaulted deep,

Than our good train, when once she starts,
With freight of priceless souls,
Speeds to the pit where, deep and dark,
Perdition's Ocean rolls.

Then come with us and view the train;
The depot consecrate;
Where God's voice in the cataract speaks,
Rum's reign inaugurate!

Ho! servants of the Living God!
Your fealty cast aside,
And with us, for a single day,
Stand on the Devil's side!

1859.

It Goes Without Saying . . .

Fosse on My Left and Jehovah on My Right

My copy of Paterson disappeared in the vortex of my apartment. That's not an excuse for no recent posts. But I was thinking that, perhaps, the book became invisible through frequent handling; that, like the purloined letter, it was so unavoidably and continuously present as to render itself invisible. However, instead what happened was more interesting. It had been on the piano stand, having fully evolved into music. I had been trying to figure out how to score the Ginsberg letters, which I thought could either be done--in the hands of a capable avant-folk strummer (not me)--a la Incredible String Band (imagine the line "When I come back . . . I'll have W. C. Fields on my left and Jehovah on my right. Why not?" done with the Scottish psychedelic crooners' twang) or with a typical boho jazz accompaniment, of which I am more capable, but would still be lacking someone with Ginsberg's voice to drive it home.
If I had actually lost my copy, I would have lost these notes (below) which are written in the backcover. I could say I wrote them there as the dance-grammar for a possible work entitled Paterson: The Musical! but they are really there just because I had the copy of Paterson on hand when I came upon the following while buying tap-sneakers in a dance store in Asheville, NC: a list of the names of Bob Fosse dance moves, "The Language of Fosse." I'll list this lost language in case I misplace it again . . . a particular type of "idea-in-things":
parallel attitude
hieroglyphic
Calypso run
hat trick
hinge layback
front attitude swipe
4th position turn
chasse changement
shoulder knee pop
monkey down
meltdown
Italian changement
foot drag, puppy dog hands
crescent jump
backbend layout
matador
spender pose

Make A Song Out of That: Concretely

When I first saw this extant poetry, I couldn’t write it down because I took all my pens out of my pocket so they wouldn’t explode while I slept in the back seat of my car. I thought about the generations that must have puzzled over Paterson’s most prominent concrete poem, especially because the Q in JACQUARD—hardest, most lost and ancient word!—was the letter most eroded. Once I secured a pencil from a mini-mart, I appended my transcription with the line “a daily deformity to be deciphered,” which I think must be from Paterson but I can’t find the citation at this moment. In any case, I immediately crossed out this line, perhaps thinking it a bit much . . . maybe my initial lack of equipment let me appreciate the purity of this string of words that conjured and crafted string itself. Googling them, I imagined that there would be umpteen references on historical and city sites. However, it seems only the Japanese are hep to their poetry, and these particular tourists were even curious enough to find the referent, which I did not know existed. The actual Silk Machinery Exchange Building is now a half-way house, and the Paterson Museum, where you will now find the machines, is oddly across the street, which I guess is also half-way, between use and oblivion. The museum is hard-to-find for those of us who move more by serendipity than by travel guides, and it is over-shadowed by the more prominent “Cultural Center,” a stone’s-throw away.
The Paterson Museum is a bonanza of found language. A yellowed tag provided an addendum to the Silk Machinery Exchange text: Reeds, Harness, Lingoes, Shuttles, Quills, Pickers, Twine, General Weavers Supplies, Loom Fittings. I wondered how the pride of the “lingo” went apace with the development and mastery of the machine. We’ve (weave?) come a long way from the crack of the Jacquard Q to the narcissistic buzz of terms MySpace, iPod, and YouTube, even though the Jacquard card started it all, the origin of the computer. (Let’s not get sucked into the eddy of the mise-en-abyme again.) The words--like the machines whose noise once filled the air of the streets here--are now silent.
In a dark corner of the museum, a lexicon of nostrums: delphinium, quassiae, jalapae, digitalis, pimpenell, aether, lavender, anisi, citronella, myrrhae, cudbear, Syrup of Rhei, Mavis Talcum, Tancro Cough syrup, Unguentine, Salva-cea, Anti-Drink, Granulated Black Draught, Larkspur lotion, Vinol, Kondremul, 4-Way Cold Tablets, etc.