blendnewyork…Fashion.Art.Style.Inspiration.Love

As of recent, I’ve been pondering the concept of Legacy. A close friend asked me once, “How do we build our legacy?” I told him we build our legacy by taking a hammer to the impossible and shattering perspective; one poem, one song, one film at a time…

I reflect back on my time at The New School University. I took a class called “Make It New” with Paul Violi. Later, he became my thesis advisor. Paul is sort of a reserved man, until you get him talking poetry. Then he’d break out of his shell with a short laughter, and dash you with an extraordinary amount of knowledge. He is so well versed that you could discuss nature in Walt Whitman’s leaves of grass or the style of Kenneth Koch with such diversity. Paul wrote more than 11 books and was honored many times over for his work. He recently passed away and will be missed.

I refer to Paul Violi in the present, because if anyone deserves the title of legacy, he does. He built an empire with his creative work and will continue to live on in those who read him. You can breathe his words with every turn of the page. It’s the ones who leave nothing behind that become a faint whisper of the past.

Paul Violi was born in New York in 1944 and grew up in Greenlawn, Long Island. Paul received a a B.A. in English and a minor in Art History from Boston University. After being involved in the Peace Corps and upon his arrival back to New York, he spent time working for WCBS-TV and other various newspapers and magazines. Paul then became the managing editor of The Architectural Forum from 1972-1974. As chairman of the Associate Council Poetry Committee, Violi organized a series of readings at the Museum of Modern Art from 1974-1983. Paul also co-founded Swollen Magpie Press.

Paul’s books of poetry and prose include: Waterworks (Toothpaste Press, Iowa City, Iowa, 1972), In Baltic Circles (Kulchur Foundation Press, New York , 1973), Some Poems (Swollen Magpie Press, New York, 1976), Harmatan (Sun Press, New York, 1977), American Express (Joe Soap’s Canoe Publications, U.K. , 1981), Splurge (Sun Press, New York 1982), Likewise (Hanging Loose Press, New York, 1988), The Curious Builder (Hanging Loose Press, New York, 1993), The Anamorphoses (Pataphysics Series, Australia, 1995), Fracas (Hanging Loose Press, New York, 1998), Breakers: Selected Longer Poems (Coffee House Press, Minnesota, 2000), Selected Accidents, Pointless Anecdotes (Hanging Loose Press, New York, 2002) Overnight (Hanging Loose Press, New York, 2007)

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Appeal to the Grammarians

by Paul Violi

We, the naturally hopeful,
Need a simple sign
For the myriad ways we’re capsized.
We who love precise language
Need a finer way to convey
Disappointment and perplexity.
For speechlessness and all its inflections,
For up-ended expectations,
For every time we’re ambushed
By trivial or stupefying irony,
For pure incredulity, we need
The inverted exclamation point.
For the dropped smile, the limp handshake,
For whoever has just unwrapped a dumb gift
Or taken the first sip of a flat beer,
Or felt love or pond ice
Give way underfoot, we deserve it.
We need it for the air pocket, the scratch shot,
The child whose ball doesn’t bounce back,
The flat tire at journey’s outset,
The odyssey that ends up in Weehawken.
But mainly because I need it—here and now
As I sit outside the Caffe Reggio
Staring at my espresso and cannoli
After this middle-aged couple
Came strolling by and he suddenly
Veered and sneezed all over my table
And she said to him, “See, that’s why
I don’t like to eat outside.”

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The New School Writing Program is establishing a Paul Violi Poetry Prize to be awarded annually to a poetry student in the program. It will be funded by contributions from individual donors. Make checks out to “New School Writing Program,” with the words “In honor of Paul Violi” in the memo line. Checks should be sent to Office of Development, The New School, 79 Fifth Avenue, 17th Floor, New York, New York 10003, attention Mr. Francisco Tezen, Senior Director. If donors want to make a gift by credit card, The New School has a credit card form that can by found at the website http://www.newschool.edu/giving/

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“If you’re going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don’t even start. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives and maybe even your mind. It could mean not eating for three or four days. It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean jail. It could mean derision. It could mean mockery–isolation. Isolation is the gift. All the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it. And, you’ll do it, despite rejection and the worst odds. And it will be better than anything else you can imagine. If you’re going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It’s the only good fight there is.”

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To the Holy footnote; this is my genesis.
     This is my genius. Origin of language is an orange peel.
With the birth of the everlasting sun; I am your son.
     I am your fire. I shall burn with billions of stars;
Then blow. Exploding supernova of fragmented soul.
     Then I become you and we transcend; merge as one,
eternally, forever like a number… zero
     or infinity, based purely on relative perspective.
This is the enduring ego, the narcissist, the Me.
     This is the impediment of American culture.
This is twenty first century psychobabble.
     This is human evolution; transforming…
This is intuition; Godspeed!
     Fruition of internal monologue; the dialogue must start somewhere.
Acknowledgment of fear, we shall not tremble nor murmur.
     ’Cause the mighty wind will blow to sea;
O’ it shall blow for me; intrepidity.
     Thus spoke the digital generation,
Copyright can’t straight jacket contemporary pirates.
     Somewhere between satellites and cells; I is heard.
Beyond that of preceding decades; Modern Man
     has made his mark. Who groans,
and sighs, and snarls, and cries;
     Who baffles in perplexity when infringed.
Yet all jargon is foreign to I (Xenophobics need not apply)
     A language without fair democracy shall not survive.

Darwin dances in his grave.

     This is pure noise.
This is static.
     This is mantra:

Dare not to believe in self;
     thyself will become an allegory,
a fictitious rhyme,
     a lullaby or a twinkle of oblivion.

The truth is there are no truths.
     The truth is like a network of Wikipedia edits.
And there are no truths better than fiction.
     Perhaps we all become the misfortunes of our thoughts;
the dilemmas of trying to be something we’re not,
     The privileges of being someone we want.
Yet desire of the deluded mind has the power
     To create at will,
To destroy at will.
     To subjugate a demented world.
Or to sleep fallow in its pig hole.
     This is modern man’s great burden.
It is the overbearing sense of self worth.
     It is the pinnacle of the giant ego.
It is what sinks ships, crumbles towers, and sends the youth to war.
     Too much weight will hinder the mortal flower.
This is what fosters civilizations to rise and fall;
     Walls go tumbling like a maladroit donkey.
How do we not honor an ounce of empathy?
     We, the people, deserted decency and replaced it with occupancy.
We, the people, have become our possessions.
     There’s nothing worse than becoming things; Objects shall not be the subject.
Thus spoke from learn’d experience.
     It is the most terrifying of occurrences.
O’ I shall wait for the coming day.
     In time to listen to the Om of the written verse (whispering universe).
A vision between two camera lenses; a reel for the third eye.
     All possibilities expanding balloon sized and evenly spread.

We, the seekers of information, have drawn poor conclusions.
     The only fact about existence is knowing we will one day be forgotten.
To know we exist eternally is preposterous,
     Poppycock to some degree of standards.
Yet we are alive; breathing and pulsating, vibrating and shimmering
     at every hour of every day of our lives.
And to this, I cordially invite,
     A common cry to the almighty breeders of plight:
We are not your grotesque preoccupation.
     we are not your self imagined indignation.
We shall be the provokers of millenniums to come.
     We are the study guides to your damn nation!
Strife has brewed a cynic and it’s far too late to panic.
     The day wanes on with the clicking of a clock.
Generations askew as my lineage recedes in the rear view.
     A panoply of puffy white clouds in the sky grown dim.

Why? O’ Why does the poet spear drama?
     And Why? O’ Why do bleak nights spur moments;
Of tragedy – where the world seems dark and lonesome?
     With the screeching of animals in the night.
Scared and waiting for their sudden bane.
     It’s the inevitability of each organism; Death is an orgasm.
And then birth- familiar to my linguistic origin. The orange peel.

I am your sun. I am your fire. I am your rage.

     Who sleeps in poverty with a stupefied droll of keen dreams.
All amounting to a mountain till
     A morning dew glosses the window pane. The sun is up and curious.
Have I witnessed the age of information, bamboozled,
     over stimulated, and in need of catharsis?

Yes.

     And let me tell you this,
to say we are not impending on the fringe of our existence
     is to deny the earth’s burps and hiccups
and denial is a block in a city of avenues.

                                                         Shall we proceed?

(by whowaterloo)

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