Admin

Four Poems of David Garrett Izzo

110 views

Poems and Bones

A poem lasts,
bones change into oil,
One is a verbal artifact,
oil comes from dead things,
turns all cars into hearses:
“I see dead people.”

Dinosaur bones went into the ground,
deeply, the pressure turned them into fossil fuel.

Barney is your passenger today and every day.

Poems will last as long as trees grow
Poems on the internet will last as long as there is electricity
It comes from (all at once now) fossil fuel

(Is there a pattern here?)

More like a circle that’s been expanding since the big bang,
What goes around comes around.

Watch careful now, the verbal artifacts are here!

Rabid Dances

Everybody rushes!
Everybody gushes!

Down the stairs, up the stairs,
Various hairs on heads and faces.
Late for class, late for meeting,
Up the stairs, down the stairs.
Wow, is that guy still alive!
Whoa, Joe gained weight!
There’s that dick from O’Hara’s class.

Everybody rushes!
Mass transit of faces,
Dashes, lashes, gnashed teeth,
Growls, frowns, grad school.

Are there any Connections to be made here!

Dickens wanted connections!
E.M. Forster wanted connections!
They’re both dead,
still, no connections.
Huxley said of the lives inside our heads,
“each of us is an impenetrable strong box of solitary confinement.”
But Huxley is dead!

Does anyone really know anyone?
Does anyone care to know anyone for more than just grunt and sweat?

How real are the dead bodies on C.S.I?
How real are the dead bodies on the news?
Is there any difference unless the dead body is someone we really knew?
(This does not mean crying
over Access Hollywood’s account of a celebrity death;
Princess Di Dies and the world stops;
The son of the neighbor we just wave to in passing
Dies in a car crash—no big deal.
Reality TV—
About as real as Candid Camera used to be.
If it was really real, Simon Cowell would be dead already
And the public would cry for him too;
The folks on Survivor would be on murder charges.
Nah, not real—but definitely shallow.
Who swallows this bullshit?

Everybody rushes!
Everybody gushes!

Bikeman: Carolina Flyer

The legs are as pistons,
putting distance on the blacktop at 90 revolutions per minute the muses
implore: Allez!  Allez!   (Go!  Go! )
nature cajoles him to push this two-wheeled chariot.

All the rider knows is daylight past the Marriot
onto black ribbons of road that crisscross
a patchwork of grasses green
trees brown in shades as diverse
as the sights and sounds of rough and sky.

Rabbits bound. Turtles lounge. Horses carouse.
brown cows make chocolate milk.
Eagles soar ‘round Falls Lake.
smaller birds sing the glory of flight,

And I, no less than they,
hurtle along as our twin Rorschach shadows keep us company ‘neath the Sun-God.

Double-wheeled Pegasus, release me from trouble,
set me free as the trees rush backward,
and the Canadian Geese honk approval
at this solo flyer.

To ride all my days on this sleek, steel steed.
Nature’s love and my bike are all I need.

 

Flashback: Dredging up

Random invasions of mind’s-eye flash cards
Ancient past to fast forward,
Each a stabbing image in a tragicomic montage.

Youthful indiscretions.
Puke-inducing confessions.

A towel-shrouded lamp for “mood” lighting,
Damp summer sweat,
drops collecting in her belly button, dripping from mine.
Heat on heat—
Fuzz to fuzz,
and grunts,
primal smells.

He worried!
She said, “It’s just sex!”
That he couldn’t live without, fooled that it was love.
She loved the friction of rubbing sweat on sweat.

But he was a nouveaux Byron
vexed by contemplation of premature ejaculation.

The pain came and went,
Drowning the ego in a facsimile of raw oysters and a danger sign:

Slippery When  Wet.

David Garrett Izzo is an emeritus English Professor who has published 17 books and 60 essays of literary scholarship, as well as three novels, three plays, a short story, and poems. David has published extensively on the Perennial Spiritual Philosophy of Mysticism (Vedanta) as applied to literature. He is inspired by Aldous Huxley, Bruce Springsteen, his wife Carol and their five cats: Huxley, Max, Princess, Phoebe, and Luca. Two of his novels are fantasies with cats as characters: Maximus in Catland and Purring Heights. www.davidgarrettizzo.com

You might be interested in

The Poetics of John Ashbery

Gargi Bhattacharya, Rabindra Bharati University Download PDF Version Abstract John Ashbery (1927- ) takes the postmodernist polysemy of meaning in

Editorial: Special Issue on Performance Studies

//
118 views

In this edition of Rupkatha we have the privilege of incorporating an introductory essay by Richard Schechner, in which he once again valorizes the anthropological foundations of performance studies and goes on to refer towards the infallible necessity of observing behaviour as a kind of transbiological agency and of tracing its effects in theatre and other kinds of representations. Schechner belongs to a tradition of performance scholars who believed in a kind of large, scientific ontology for the arts, a tendency which is evident when he quotes a New York University scholar. Perhaps the objective vision of a performance continuum is instructive for the future, as it creates an immediate stance, of both engaging as well as transcending the flow of experience in our lives which are organized and controlled  by means of mimetically emerging actions. The performer acquires, in Schechner’s scheme, as a liminal activist, so wonderfully described by anthropologist Victor Turner, and analysed in the scientism of Geertz’ observations of culture as an influential medium in which the arts and performances get endowed with signification. Keep Reading

You might be interested in

What is Performance Studies?

Richard Schechner Tisch School of the Arts, New York University  Download PDF Version Because performance studies is so broad-ranging and

Call for Reviewers and Copy-editors

272 views

Peer-ReviewReviewers

We invite applications from established scholars to act as Reviewers for the Rupkatha Journal (www.rupkatha.com). Reviewers  familiar with OJS (Open Journal System) and/or other platforms for online review will be preferred as we will introduce new system of online review in 2014. Interested scholars need to send the following in their CV:

  1. Institutional affiliation details along with associations with other journals;
  2. Areas of specialization and expertise;
  3. List of published works.
  4. A small photograph.

Preferred Areas of Specialization: Aesthetics, Cultural Studies, Cultural Anthropology, Visual Arts, Music, Digital Humanities, Electronic Literature, French Literature, Spanish Literature, Latin American Literature, Animal Studies, Classical European Literature, Classical Indian Literature. (We are not looking for specializations in the areas like Indian English Writings, Postcolonial Literature etc) Nature of the work: All the submitted articles and book reviews go through Double-blind Peer Review process. A reviewer gets only one article for anonymous review for any issue and s/he needs to submit the report within one month. The Rupkatha Journal is a non-profit open access initiative and so nobody associated with the journal gets paid. This is a non-monetary voluntary service for the academic community. No remuneration: Since the journal is a non-profit academic initiative, reviewers will not be paid any amount. They should consider it a voluntary academic service. However, we can provide them with Experience Certificate if needed. Please send your CV to editor@rupkatha.com.

Copy-editors

Candidates should have the following essential skills:

  • An excellent command of the English language
  • Good knowledge in literature for spotting factual errors
  • Logical skill to recognize inconsistencies or vagueness
  • Love for perfection
  • Passion for Open Access
  • Aesthetic sense
  • Time to meet deadline
  • And finally, good command over any of the Word Processors, MS Word or Open Office

Educational qualification: Postgraduate in English literature or Linguistics No remuneration: Since the journal is a non-profit academic initiative, Copy-editors will not be paid any amount. They should consider it a voluntary academic service. However, we can provide them with Experience Certificate if needed. Please send your CV to editor@rupkatha.com.

You might be interested in

What is Performance Studies?

Richard Schechner Tisch School of the Arts, New York University  Download PDF Version Because performance studies is so broad-ranging and

Editorial, Volume 3, Number 2

88 views

Contemporary poetry, almost all over the world, faces extinction chiefly because people have lost their earlier reading habits. Human culture has undergone a massive transformation. Considered stochastically the print media might be actually receding; normal custom of reading books at bed-time tends to get replaced by the more relaxed activity of watching television. There is also some issue with form, more noticeable among others being the surreal obscurity of verse, the veneer of disjointed post-modernism, the lack of metre. It is however encouraging to note that there are poets who belong to the archaic and ever vanishing community of ritual man. Judith Wright, Frederick Turner, Mary Freeman, Cynthia Zarin have contributed to English poetry even in times as ours. I shall excerpt a few poems and let them speak for a slice of life. But they symbolize the spirit of a millennium that hosts human grief, joy, fear, or self-exhorcising creation in its lines. Keep Reading

You might be interested in

Narratives of Diaspora and Exile in Arabic and Palestinian Poetry

2.4K views

Saddik M. Gohar, United Arab Emirates University

Download PDF Version

Abstract

This paper underlines the attitudes of Palestinian / Arab poets toward the issues of exile and identity integral to their traumatic experience of Diaspora and displacement. From a historical context  and within the parameters of colonial / postcolonial theory , the paper  advocates a new critical perspective exploring the dialectics of exile and identity in Palestinian / Arabic poetry in order to argue that  exile , in contemporary world literature ,  becomes  a signifier  not only  of living  outside  one’s homeland but also of  the  condition caused by such physical absence. Aiming to reach a state of reconciliation rather than conflict, the poetic voices, analyzed in the paper, reflect a sense of nostalgia and emotional attachment toward their homeland. The paper  argues that Palestine, for  the Palestinian poets, is not  a paradise or an idealistic utopia that only exists in  their  poetry and  imagination but  a geographical reality caught up in national and religious limbos  and rooted in the trajectories of colonial history and diabolical  power  politics. Keep Reading

You might be interested in

Stillness of star-less nights: Afghan Women’s Poetry of Exile

301 views

Rumpa Das, Maheshtala College, South 24 Parganas, India

Download PDF Version

 Abstract

Contemporary English poetry by Afghan women presents a remarkable reading experience. Critical explorations, at ease with post-colonial conditions, minority solitude and feminist readings, have largely remained inimical to the unique, yet chequered history that women poets such as Zohra Saed, Sahar Muradi, Sara Hakeem, Fatana Jahangir Ahrary, Fevziye Rahzigar Barlas and Donia Gobar document in their works. Most of them write in their native Dari and Pushtun languages as well as in English and often their English compositions have smatterings of their native tongues. Even though individual experiences differ, these women delve into the collective memory of oppression, pain and unrest to give vent to their feelings, and seek to reach out towards a sorority of shared angst. This paper seeks to explore the complex cultural contexts which have given birth to Afghan women’s poetry in exile. Keep Reading

You might be interested in

What is Performance Studies?

Richard Schechner Tisch School of the Arts, New York University  Download PDF Version Because performance studies is so broad-ranging and

Rules of Language in Rules of the House: Study of Tsering Wangmo Dhompa’s Tibetan English Poetry

218 views

Shelly Bhoil, Research Scholar, Barzil

Download PDF Version

Abstract

The displacement of Tibetans in exile has also displaced the Tibetan language to some extent among the new generation of Tibetans who are born or educated in exile. However, with the new languages and forms of expression in exile, they are negotiating their culture, identity and aspirations. Tsering Wangmo Dhompa, the first Tibetan woman poet in English to be published in the West, is one of the representative voices of New Tibetan Literature in English (NTLE). Her first book of poems Rules of the House was a finalist for the Asian American Literary Awards in 2003, and brought NTLE to academic attention. This paper is a thematic study of the philosophical and the social aspects of language in the poems from Rules of the House. Keep Reading

You might be interested in

What is Performance Studies?

Richard Schechner Tisch School of the Arts, New York University  Download PDF Version Because performance studies is so broad-ranging and

Black Feminist Discourse of Power in For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide

288 views

Lamia Khalil Hammad, Yarmouk University, Jordan

Download PDF Version

Abstract

This paper discusses black feminist discourse of power in Ntozake Shange’s choreopoem For Colored Girls Who have considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf. The work depicts the struggle of black women through a rainbow of experiences. At the end, the girls arrive at ‘selfhood’ by finding God in themselves. This paper focuses on how the patriarchal discourse lead to their suffereing and how they were able to claim back their identities as black females who only need to be loved and appreciated. Keep Reading

You might be interested in

What is Performance Studies?

Richard Schechner Tisch School of the Arts, New York University  Download PDF Version Because performance studies is so broad-ranging and

Voicing Colourspaces: Colour-usage and Response as Alternative Narration in Dennis Cooley’s Bloody Jack

226 views

Ashes Gupta, Tripura University, India.

Download PDF Version

Abstract

Dennis Cooley has attempted to unsettle several complex issues relating to post modernity, intertextuality, mingling of genres, decentering authority et al.  His poetry is rich in complexity and in dealing with the problems of the text. He has published three books of poetry.  Leaving (Turnstone 1980), Fielding (Thistledown 1983) and Bloody Jack (Turnstone 1985).  His poetry reveals his interest in formal departures from the tyranny of orthodox running rhythm, and the left hand margin.  From Leaving to Bloody Jack, Cooley has decentred authority from its traditional formal and ideological strongholds including the author, and placed it in the mind and heart of the reader.  In his books of poetry, especially Bloody Jack, Cooley tends to deal with flexibility, knowledge and tolerance and seeks to voice the sparsely populated and neglected space of the Canadian prairie. This paper is an attempt to read Dennis Cooley’s Bloody Jack from the semiotic perspective of his use of colour as sign-code in it and the other related issues that it voices. Keep Reading

You might be interested in

What is Performance Studies?

Richard Schechner Tisch School of the Arts, New York University  Download PDF Version Because performance studies is so broad-ranging and

The Poetics of John Ashbery

602 views
Gargi Bhattacharya, Rabindra Bharati University

Download PDF Version

Abstract

John Ashbery (1927- ) takes the postmodernist polysemy of meaning in interpreting a work of art and the polyphony of styles in composing as his forte. He questions the various linguistic codes and makes us aware of the artificiality of the language. All political, ethical and aesthetic imperatives are rhetorical constructs. The writer uses language to persuade the reader to accept the formulated truth and he intervenes in the process of perception by his/her politics of representation. Though his iconoclastic approach towards writing and individuality of style has kept him aloof from mainstream academic syllabi, yet he has now become a prominent figure in Contemporary American Literature. It is interesting to note how Ashbery’s poetry revives the Romantic sensibility while applying the digitalized methods and the postmodern syndromes of immediacy, indeterminacy, disjunctive syntax, open-ended and multiplicity of interpretations. This paper explores the aesthetics of John Ashbery’s poetry. Keep Reading

You might be interested in

What is Performance Studies?

Richard Schechner Tisch School of the Arts, New York University  Download PDF Version Because performance studies is so broad-ranging and

1 … 144 145 146 147 148 … 163