Twenty-eight machines, optometrists by trade, died in a crash when the plane they were in smacked into the top of Sugarbush Mountain in Vermont. Two machines that had been on board survived – Billy Pilgrim and the copilot –, while everyone else died.
After take-off and prior to the crash, all the machines had been in high spirits, singing politically incorrect songs aimed at one particular nation of East European machines.
All of this seen through Tralfamadorian eyes, if we are to believe Kurt V.
Could it be that this tragic event and news of so many machines dead is somewhat unlikely to elicit the emotional response one might normally expect?
Uecker was famous for his nail reliefs. This tribute to his art uses a similar arrangement, even though not of nails but fluffy nubs.
Uecker wurde mit seinen reliefartigen Nagelbildern bekannt. Diese Hommage an seine Kunst verwendet eine ähnliche Anordnung, allerdings nicht mit Nägeln, sondern mit flauschigen Noppen.
Das Gedicht hört hier einfach auf. – R. D. Brinkmann
And yet it had begun so beautifully in the head of its author, who was sitting on a plane from Rome to Palermo, feeling cramped, as he sat in the middle seat between two
large people, wondering whether there might be perhaps, as had been the custom in the past, at least a few free salted peanuts. But no, there was only a glass of water,
and you didn’t (yet) have to pay for toilet visits. But let’s now return to the poem itself, which never got beyond the status of something unspeakably beautiful, and now simply stops here,
terminated brutally and unceremoniously, just like by R. D. back in the nineteen seventies.
Carved into a stone bench in Rome and located right above the beer bottle in the photo I took. Was the beer bottle left behind by one of the lovers? I’d say not, but your guess is as good as mine…
Well thanks for lending me that aluminum ladder to climb on, espèce d’espèce I’d placed a horse up there and now needed to get it down for dusting But I kept staring at the tree, whose branches and leaves were getting closer, in fact, were about to reach inside through the open window Their color was changing traceably, from flaming green to flaming crimson, their mouths were opening and closing, I heard a dry smacking of lips and maxillaries And I, crown of creation on my ladder, hesitant as ever, stood with a horse cradled in my arms and could barely discern the ladder’s four rubber feet on gneiss thousands of feet below
“What is that piece of ancient technology, and where did you find it?” “That, my dear grandson, is a portable reel-to-reel tape recorder from the early 1970s. It belonged to your great-aunt Catherine, and she was probably the one who stored it in the attic for future generations to marvel at.” “Seriously? What’s it supposed to do? Does it still work?” “Yes, miraculously it still works. And there was a tape in it, which still has something on it.” “Was this like before the time of the I-Pod?” “Way, way before. – Here, I’ll plug it in so you can see what we used to play music back then.” I put the thing on the table, plugged in the power cord and switched it on. “Ready?” “OK.” The reels started turning and music came out of the tinny loudspeaker. I recognized what it was and had to chuckle. In the summer of 1974, three friends and I had spent an extended weekend in a cabin in the Rockies, and we’d taken a turntable and a bunch of records along for entertainment. And my sister’s reel-to-reel as well. During the last night there, we had a few beers, listened to records, sang along and had a great inebriated time. Then I got it in my head to record myself on the tape machine to some of the music (I’d also brought a microphone). One of the songs I covered was Procol Harum’s Magdalene, My Regal Zonophone – and this was the recording that was now playing for my grandson. “That sounds weird, grandpa,” he said. “What is this music?” “It’s a British band from the last century you’ve probably never heard of, and the out-of-tune and out-of-sync voice you hear in the foreground, well, that’s me, your grandpa, at the ripe age of 18.” He looked at me with a mixture of bafflement and apprehension – like, how much longer was I going to bore him with such ancient history and outdated technology? That song had me thoroughly puzzled back then, which is probably why I chose it for that recording session. And to this very day in 2024, I still have no idea what a regal zonophone might be and why someone would be plaiting daisies to the sound of a grand piano while crying.
Notes The song was written by Gary Brooker and Keith Reid and originally released on Procol Harum’s album Shine On Brightly in 1968. As it turns out, it was issued by the record labels Regal Zonophone and A&M. Thank you, Wikipedia!
Here are the lyrics:
Though I know the night has fallen and the sun’s sailed out to sea I will wait here for the band to play the trumpet voluntary And with one foot on the seashore and the other in the sand I will stand here plaiting daisies whilst you play the piano-grand
Caprice, your bugle blew away the cobwebs from my ears And for once I stood quite naked. Unashamed, I wept the tears Which I tried to hide inside myself from me, I mean from you But the shame I found too painful and the pain it only grew
Note All true! Among the 27 poets assembled in the anthology (published in 1970), only 5 are still alive as of November 9, 2024: Clark Coolidge, Ron Padgett, Ed Sanders, Aram Saroyan, Tony Towle. Passed away, sad to say: John Ashbery, Bill Berkson, Ted Berrigan, Jim Brodey, Michael Brownstein, Joseph Ceravolo, Tom Clark, Edwin Denby, Kenward Elmslie, Dick Gallup, John Giorno, Kenneth Koch, Frank Lima, Lewis MacAdams, Harry Mathews, Bernadette Mayer, Frank O’Hara, John Perreault, Peter Schjeldahl, James Schuyler, David Shapiro, Tom Veitch. Even Joe Brainard, the illustrator, has passed away.
beilharz 