The Mower

Gustavus Adolphus

Burma: Nemesis

Death in the Gulf Stream

Take a tall thin water tumbler and fill it with finely cracked ice.

Lace this broken debris with 4 good purple splashes of Angostura, add the juice and crushed peel of 1 green lime, and fill glass almost full with Holland gin…

No sugar, no fancying. It’s strong, it’s bitter — but so is English ale strong and bitter, in many cases.

We don’t add sugar to ale, and we don’t need sugar in a “Death in the Gulf Stream” — or at least not more than 1 tsp. Its tartness and its bitterness are its chief charm.

The Rubaiyat

By Omar Khayyam



I

Wake! For the Sun, who scatter'd into flight 
The Stars before him from the Field of Night, 
Drives Night along with them from Heav'n, and strikes 
The Sultan's Turret with a Shaft of Light. 

II

Before the phantom of False morning died, 
Methought a Voice within the Tavern cried, 
"When all the Temple is prepared within, 
Why nods the drowsy Worshipper outside?" 

III

And, as the Cock crew, those who stood before 
The Tavern shouted--"Open then the Door! 
You know how little while we have to stay, 
And, once departed, may return no more." 

IV

Now the New Year reviving old Desires, 
The thoughtful Soul to Solitude retires, 
Where the White Hand Of Moses on the Bough 
Puts out, and Jesus from the Ground suspires. 

V

Iram indeed is gone with all his Rose, 
And Jamshyd's Sev'n-ring'd Cup where no one knows; 
But still a Ruby kindles in the Vine, 
And many a Garden by the Water blows, 

VI

And David's lips are lockt; but in divine 
High-piping Pehlevi, with "Wine! Wine! Wine! 
Red Wine!"--the Nightingale cries to the Rose 
That sallow cheek of hers t' incarnadine. 

VII

Come, fill the Cup, and in the fire of Spring 
Your Winter-garment of Repentance fling: 
The Bird of Time has but a little way 
To flutter--and the Bird is on the Wing. 

VIII

Whether at Naishapur or Babylon, 
Whether the Cup with sweet or bitter run, 
The Wine of Life keeps oozing drop by drop, 
The Leaves of Life keep falling one by one. 

IX

Each Morn a thousand Roses brings, you say; 
Yes, but where leaves the Rose of Yesterday? 
And this first Summer month that brings the Rose 
Shall take Jamshyd and Kaikobad away. 

X

Well, let it take them! What have we to do 
With Kaikobad the Great, or Kaikhosru? 
Let Zal and Rustum bluster as they will, 
Or Hatim call to Supper--heed not you 

XI

With me along the strip of Herbage strown 
That just divides the desert from the sown, 
Where name of Slave and Sultan is forgot-- 
And Peace to Mahmud on his golden Throne! 

XII

A Book of Verses underneath the Bough, 
A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread--and Thou 
Beside me singing in the Wilderness-- 
Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow! 

XIII

Some for the Glories of This World; and some 
Sigh for the Prophet's Paradise to come; 
Ah, take the Cash, and let the Credit go, 
Nor heed the rumble of a distant Drum! 

XIV

Look to the blowing Rose about us--"Lo, 
Laughing," she says, "into the world I blow, 
At once the silken tassel of my Purse 
Tear, and its Treasure on the Garden throw." 

XV

And those who husbanded the Golden grain, 
And those who flung it to the winds like Rain, 
Alike to no such aureate Earth are turn'd 
As, buried once, Men want dug up again. 

XVI

The Worldly Hope men set their Hearts upon 
Turns Ashes--or it prospers; and anon, 
Like Snow upon the Desert's dusty Face, 
Lighting a little hour or two--is gone. 

XVII

Think, in this batter'd Caravanserai 
Whose Portals are alternate Night and Day, 
How Sultan after Sultan with his Pomp 
Abode his destined Hour, and went his way. 

Dvorak

The Dvorak keyboard is an ergonomic alternative to the layout commonly found on typewriters and computers known as “Qwerty”. The Qwerty keyboard was designed in the 1870s to accommodate the slow mechanical movement of early typewriters. When it was designed, touch typing literally hadn’t even been thought of yet! It’s hardly an efficient design for today’s use. By contrast, the Dvorak (pronounced “duh-VOR-ack”, not like the Czech composer!) keyboard was designed with emphasis on typist comfort, high productivity and ease of learning — it’s much easier to learn!

There were several variations in the Dvorak’s design in its first few decades, but these were settled when the American National Standards Institute approved a standard for the layout of the Dvorak in 1982. The diagram above shows the standard layout as adapted for PC use.

Because computers weren’t even a researcher’s dream in the late 1920s and 30s, the Dvorak design took about 12 years to perfect, and included extensive study of languages using the Roman alphabet (mostly English), the physiology of the hand, and practical studies. Dr. Dvorak (Univ. of Washington, Seattle; b.1894, d.1975) used his research to design two other keyboards specifically for people with only one hand (one each for the right and left), which allow people with the use of just one hand to type very easily and efficiently — at speeds up to 50 wpm.

The Dvorak has the most-used consonants on the right side of the home row, and the vowels on the left side of the home row. Among other design features, it is set up to facilitate keying in a back-and-forth motion — (right hand, then left hand, then right, etc.) When the same hand has to be used for more than one letter in a row (e.g., the common t-h), it is designed not only to use different fingers when possible (to make keying quicker and easier), but also to progress from the outer fingers to the inner fingers (“inboard stroke flow”) — it’s easier to drum your fingers this way (try it on the tabletop). The back-and-forth flow obviously makes typing quicker and easier: try typing the word “minimum” on the Qwerty keyboard, then look how you’d type it on Dvorak. The design puts fully 70 percent of all English keystrokes on the home row (only 32 percent of Qwerty’s are on the home row), making Dvorak much easier, faster, and — probably (no formal studies have been done as yet) — less likely to result in carpal tunnel syndrome and other repetitive motion injuries.

Remember when you took typing classes, probably in high school? You got to do drills with such words as “fff”, “jjj”, “jkl;”. Added to the awkward physical motions Qwerty requires, these “nonsense words” are counter-intuitive, making Qwerty very hard to learn. On Dvorak, the keys on the home row make up literally thousands of words (we have a list of nearly 5000 from one electronic dictionary alone!), meaning you could have typed real words on your first day of typing class… if you had learned on a Dvorak keyboard.

The row above the home row contains the next-most-used letters and punctuation. Why? Because it is easier for your fingers to reach up on the keyboard than down. The least-used keys are on the bottom row.

Taffy 3

TURKEY TROTS TO WATER GG FROM CINCPAC ACTION COM THIRD FLEET INFO COMINCH CTF SEVENTY-SEVEN X WHERE IS RPT WHERE IS TASK FORCE THIRTY FOUR RR THE WORLD WONDERS

Xin Qiji

Jamie Livingston: Some Photos of That Day

http://photooftheday.hughcrawford.com/

The Arkadiko Bridge - built in 1,300BC and still in use

Gin Drinkers Line

The Yuanming Yuan - Garden of Perfect Clarity

https://t.co/Iax7a9QRpE

The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner

From my mother’s sleep I fell into the State, 

And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze. 

Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life, 

I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters. 

When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.

He and the Tree

That afternoon he apologized to the only tree in the company parking lot
which sheltered his car from the sun. He wanted to make amends for his grandpa
who owned the palm oil company, for his family who believed a carpenter
was the son of god. The tree began to weep and think of his childhood friend,
ripped from the ground because he was “too close to the foundation.”
From afar they would check on each other and wink and dream about being grownup:
the birds and butterflies would alight on their branches and leafbuds
and would help them send each other messages back and forth.
The tree regretted not telling his friend he loved him.
He wanted to bring him to a church. At the altar they would be joined together
before god, who had three branches—like a tree—and their children would fill
the parking lot, every square inch, so that one day everyone who passed by
would think a forest had sprung up in the middle of the city. The man hugged the tree,
the tree hugged the man.


Norman Erikson Pasaribu

Lake Peigneur sinkhole disaster

Brouwer fixed-point theorem

Take two sheets of graph paper of equal size with coordinate systems on them, lay one flat on the table and crumple up (without ripping or tearing) the other one and place it, in any fashion, on top of the first so that the crumpled paper does not reach outside the flat one. There will then be at least one point of the crumpled sheet that lies directly above its corresponding point (i.e. the point with the same coordinates) of the flat sheet. This is a consequence of the n = 2 case of Brouwer's theorem applied to the continuous map that assigns to the coordinates of every point of the crumpled sheet the coordinates of the point of the flat sheet immediately beneath it.

Be Angry At The Sun

That public men publish falsehoods
Is nothing new. That America must accept
Like the historical republics corruption and empire
Has been known for years.

Be angry at the sun for setting
If these things anger you. Watch the wheel slope and turn,
They are all bound on the wheel, these people, those warriors.
This republic, Europe, Asia.

Observe them gesticulating,
Observe them going down. The gang serves lies, the passionate
Man plays his part; the cold passion for truth
Hunts in no pack.

You are not Catullus, you know,
To lampoon these crude sketches of Caesar. You are far
From Dante's feet, but even farther from his dirty
Political hatreds.

Let boys want pleasure, and men
Struggle for power, and women perhaps for fame,
And the servile to serve a Leader and the dupes to be duped.
Yours is not theirs.


Robinson Jeffers

The Doomsday Algorithm

Todd Terje

Song of Myself

1

I celebrate myself, and sing myself,

And what I assume you shall assume,

For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.



I loafe and invite my soul,

I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.



My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil, this air,

Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their parents the same,

I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,

Hoping to cease not till death.



Creeds and schools in abeyance,

Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten,

I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,

Nature without check with original energy.

The Omaha Platform

NATIONAL PEOPLE’S PARTY PLATFORM

Assembled upon the 116th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, the People’s Party of America, in their first national convention, invoking upon their action the blessing of Almighty God, put forth in the name and on behalf of the people of this country, the following preamble and declaration of principles:

PREAMBLE

The conditions which surround us best justify our co-operation; we meet in the midst of a nation brought to the verge of moral, political, and material ruin. Corruption dominates the ballot-box, the Legislatures, the Congress, and touches even the ermine of the bench. The people are demoralized; most of the States have been compelled to isolate the voters at the polling places to prevent universal intimidation and bribery. The newspapers are largely subsidized or muzzled, public opinion silenced, business prostrated, homes covered with mortgages, labor impoverished, and the land concentrating in the hands of capitalists. The urban workmen are denied the right to organize for self-protection, imported pauperized labor beats down their wages, a hireling standing army, unrecognized by our laws, is established to shoot them down, and they are rapidly degenerating into European conditions. The fruits of the toil of millions are boldly stolen to build up colossal fortunes for a few, unprecedented in the history of mankind; and the possessors of those, in turn, despise the republic and endanger liberty. From the same prolific womb of governmental injustice we breed the two great classes—tramps and millionaires.

The national power to create money is appropriated to enrich bondholders; a vast public debt payable in legal tender currency has been funded into gold-bearing bonds, thereby adding millions to the burdens of the people.

Silver, which has been accepted as coin since the dawn of history, has been demonetized to add to the purchasing power of gold by decreasing the value of all forms of property as well as human labor, and the supply of currency is purposely abridged to fatten usurers, bankrupt enterprise, and enslave industry. A vast conspiracy against mankind has been organized on two continents, and it is rapidly taking possession of the world. If not met and overthrown at once it forebodes terrible social convulsions, the destruction of civilization, or the establishment of an absolute despotism.

We have witnessed for more than a quarter of a century the struggles of the two great political parties for power and plunder, while grievous wrongs have been inflicted upon the suffering people. We charge that the controlling influences dominating both these parties have permitted the existing dreadful conditions to develop without serious effort to prevent or restrain them. Neither do they now promise us any substantial reform. They have agreed together to ignore, in the coming campaign, every issue but one. They propose to drown the outcries of a plundered people with the uproar of a sham battle over the tariff, so that capitalists, corporations, national banks, rings, trusts, watered stock, the demonetization of silver and the oppressions of the usurers may all be lost sight of. They propose to sacrifice our homes, lives, and children on the altar of mammon; to destroy the multitude in order to secure corruption funds from the millionaires.

Assembled on the anniversary of the birthday of the nation, and filled with the spirit of the grand general and chief who established our independence, we seek to restore the government of the Republic to the hands of “the plain people,” with which class it originated. We assert our purposes to be identical with the purposes of the National Constitution; to form a more perfect union and establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity.

We declare that this Republic can only endure as a free government while built upon the love of the whole people for each other and for the nation; that it cannot be pinned together by bayonets; that the civil war is over, and that every passion and resentment which grew out of it must die with it, and that we must be in fact, as we are in name, one united brotherhood of free men.

Our country finds itself confronted by conditions for which there is no precedent in the history of the world; our annual agricultural productions amount to billions of dollars in value, which must, within a few weeks or months, be exchanged for billions of dollars' worth of commodities consumed in their production; the existing currency supply is wholly inadequate to make this exchange; the results are falling prices, the formation of combines and rings, the impoverishment of the producing class. We pledge ourselves that if given power we will labor to correct these evils by wise and reasonable legislation, in accordance with the terms of our platform.

We believe that the power of government—in other words, of the people—should be expanded (as in the case of the postal service) as rapidly and as far as the good sense of an intelligent people and the teachings of experience shall justify, to the end that oppression, injustice, and poverty shall eventually cease in the land.

While our sympathies as a party of reform are naturally upon the side of every proposition which will tend to make men intelligent, virtuous, and temperate, we nevertheless regard these questions, important as they are, as secondary to the great issues now pressing for solution, and upon which not only our individual prosperity but the very existence of free institutions depend; and we ask all men to first help us to determine whether we are to have a republic to administer before we differ as to the conditions upon which it is to be administered, believing that the forces of reform this day organized will never cease to move forward until every wrong is remedied and equal rights and equal privileges securely established for all the men and women of this country.

PLATFORM

We declare, therefore—

First.—That the union of the labor forces of the United States this day consummated shall be permanent and perpetual; may its spirit enter into all hearts for the salvation of the Republic and the uplifting of mankind.

Second.—Wealth belongs to him who creates it, and every dollar taken from industry without an equivalent is robbery. “If any will not work, neither shall he eat.” The interests of rural and civic labor are the same; their enemies are identical.

Third.—We believe that the time has come when the railroad corporations will either own the people or the people must own the railroads, and should the government enter upon the work of owning and managing all railroads, we should favor an amendment to the Constitution by which all persons engaged in the government service shall be placed under a civil-service regulation of the most rigid character, so as to prevent the increase of the power of the national administration by the use of such additional government employes.

FINANCE.—We demand a national currency, safe, sound, and flexible, issued by the general government only, a full legal tender for all debts, public and private, and that without the use of banking corporations, a just, equitable, and efficient means of distribution direct to the people, at a tax not to exceed 2 per cent. per annum, to be provided as set forth in the sub-treasury plan of the Farmers' Alliance, or a better system; also by payments in discharge of its obligations for public improvements.

1. We demand free and unlimited coinage of silver and gold at the present legal ratio of l6 to 1.

2. We demand that the amount of circulating medium be speedily increased to not less than $50 per capita.

3. We demand a graduated income tax.

4. We believe that the money of the country should be kept as much as possible in the hands of the people, and hence we demand that all State and national revenues shall be limited to the necessary expenses of the government, economically and honestly administered.

5. We demand that postal savings banks be established by the government for the safe deposit of the earnings of the people and to facilitate exchange.

TRANSPORTATION—Transportation being a means of exchange and a public necessity, the government should own and operate the railroads in the interest of the people. The telegraph, telephone, like the post-office system, being a necessity for the transmission of news, should be owned and operated by the government in the interest of the people.

LAND.—The land, including all the natural sources of wealth, is the heritage of the people, and should not be monopolized for speculative purposes, and alien ownership of land should be prohibited. All land now held by railroads and other corporations in excess of their actual needs, and all lands now owned by aliens should be reclaimed by the government and held for actual settlers only.

EXPRESSION OF SENTIMENTS

Your Committee on Platform and Resolutions beg leave unanimously to report the following:

Whereas, Other questions have been presented for our consideration, we hereby submit the following, not as a part of the Platform of the People’s Party, but as resolutions expressive of the sentiment of this Convention.

1. RESOLVED, That we demand a free ballot and a fair count in all elections and pledge ourselves to secure it to every legal voter without Federal Intervention, through the adoption by the States of the unperverted Australian or secret ballot system.

2. RESOLVED, That the revenue derived from a graduated income tax should be applied to the reduction of the burden of taxation now levied upon the domestic industries of this country.

3. RESOLVED, That we pledge our support to fair and liberal pensions to ex-Union soldiers and sailors.

4. RESOLVED, That we condemn the fallacy of protecting American labor under the present system, which opens our ports to the pauper and criminal classes of the world and crowds out our wage-earners; and we denounce the present ineffective laws against contract labor, and demand the further restriction of undesirable emigration.

5. RESOLVED, That we cordially sympathize with the efforts of organized workingmen to shorten the hours of labor, and demand a rigid enforcement of the existing eight-hour law on Government work, and ask that a penalty clause be added to the said law.

6. RESOLVED, That we regard the maintenance of a large standing army of mercenaries, known as the Pinkerton system, as a menace to our liberties, and we demand its abolition. . . .

7. RESOLVED, That we commend to the favorable consideration of the people and the reform press the legislative system known as the initiative and referendum.

8. RESOLVED, That we favor a constitutional provision limiting the office of President and Vice-President to one term, and providing for the election of Senators of the United States by a direct vote of the people.

9. RESOLVED, That we oppose any subsidy or national aid to any private corporation for any purpose.

10. RESOLVED, That this convention sympathizes with the Knights of Labor and their righteous contest with the tyrannical combine of clothing manufacturers of Rochester, and declare it to be a duty of all who hate tyranny and oppression to refuse to purchase the goods made by the said manufacturers, or to patronize any merchants who sell such goods.

Epitaph to a Dog

Near this Spot are deposited the Remains of one

who possessed Beauty without Vanity,

Strength without Insolence,

Courage without Ferocity,

and all the virtues of Man without his Vices.

This praise, which would be unmeaning Flattery

if inscribed over human Ashes,

is but a just tribute to the Memory of

Boatswain, a Dog

who was born in Newfoundland May 1803

and died at Newstead Nov. 18th, 1808

When some proud Son of Man returns to Earth,

Unknown to Glory, but upheld by Birth,

The sculptor’s art exhausts the pomp of woe,

And storied urns record who rests below.

When all is done, upon the Tomb is seen,

Not what he was, but what he should have been.

But the poor Dog, in life the firmest friend,

The first to welcome, foremost to defend,

Whose honest heart is still his Master’s own,

Who labours, fights, lives, breathes for him alone,

Unhonoured falls, unnoticed all his worth,

Denied in heaven the Soul he held on earth -

While man, vain insect! hopes to be forgiven,

And claims himself a sole exclusive heaven.

Oh man! thou feeble tenant of an hour,

Debased by slavery, or corrupt by power -

Who knows thee well, must quit thee with disgust,

Degraded mass of animated dust!

Thy love is lust, thy friendship all a cheat,

Thy tongue hypocrisy, thy heart deceit!

By nature vile, ennobled but by name,

Each kindred brute might bid thee blush for shame.

Ye, who behold perchance this simple urn,

Pass on – it honours none you wish to mourn.

To mark a friend’s remains these stones arise;

I never knew but one – and here he lies.

AUTUMN IN CALIFORNIA

Autumn in California is a mild
And anonymous season, hills and valleys
Are colorless then, only the sooty green
Eucalyptus, the conifers and oaks sink deep
Into the haze; the fields are plowed, bare, waiting;
The steep pastures are tracked deep by the cattle;
There are no flowers, the herbage is brittle.
All night along the coast and the mountain crests
Birds go by, murmurous, high in the warm air.
Only in the mountain meadows the aspens
Glitter like goldfish moving up swift water;
Only in the desert villages the leaves
Of the cottonwoods descend in smoky air.

Once more I wander in the warm evening
Calling the heart to order and the stiff brain
To passion. I should be thinking of dreaming, loving, dying
Beauty wasting through time like draining blood,
And me alone in all the world with pictures
Of pretty women and the constellations.
But I hear the clocks in Barcelona strike at dawn
And the whistles blowing for noon in Nanking.
I hear the drone, the snapping high in the air
Of planes fighting, the deep reverberant
Grunts of bombardment, the hasty clamor
Of anti-aircraft.

In Nanking at the first bomb,
A moon-faced, willowy young girl runs into the street,
Leaves her rice bowl spilled and her children crying,
And stands stiff, cursing quietly, her face raised to the sky.
Suddenly she bursts like a bag of water,
And then as the blossom of smoke and dust diffuses,
The walls topple slowly over her.

I hear the voices
Young, fatigued and excited, of two comrades
In a closed room in Madrid. They have been up
All night, talking of trout in the Pyrenees,
Spinoza, old nights full of riot and sherry,
Women they might have had or almost had,
Picasso, Velasquez, relativity.
The candlelight reddens, blue bars appear
In the cracks of the shutters, the bombardment
Begins again as though it had never stopped,
The morning wind is cold and dusty,
Their furloughs are over. They are shock troopers,
They may not meet again. The dead light holds
In impersonal focus the patched uniforms,
The dog-eared copy of Lenin's Imperialism,
The heavy cartridge belt, holster and black revolver butt.

The moon rises late over Mt. Diablo,
Huge, gibbous, warm; the wind goes out,
Brown fog spreads over the bay from the marshes,
And overhead the cry of birds is suddenly
Loud, wiry, and tremulous.

Rexroth

Reading Rexroth Rewriting Tu Fu in the “Permanent War”

http://jacketmagazine.com/23/rex-brad.html


The Chinese polymath Ch’ien Chung-shu may have been exaggerating when he said “a text is nothing without a context,” but I think there is a strong case for arguing the texts of Kenneth Rexroth are rather more than less from being read in the contexts in which they were written. Many of his poems from the thirties, when he emerged as a poet on the left, were occasioned by the “events of the hour” and participated in the “conversations of his day,” as critics were wont to say in the rhetoric of the period. Nor were his poems from the forties — arguably his most accomplished decade — any less responsive to their times, even though by then Rexroth, like other leftist writers during these difficult years in the decline of the left, had turned from politics to eros and the consolations of philosophy and the classics.  But here the shift in subject matter and the poet’s mastery of the “technique of self-effacement” — to borrow Bradford Morrow’s apt description — often make it difficult to read these poems in context without the help of a good literary biographer and social historian.  But I think the same could be said of Rexroth’s poems from the Chinese of Tu Fu. This is one corner of the poet’s “five-foot shelf” that gains immeasurably from being read in context. But here the difficulty rests upon a problem of self-effacement that has less to do with Rexroth’s art than with a certain artfulness in his manner of presentation. Take this example from One Hundred Poems from the Chinese:


Snow Storm

Tumult, weeping, many new ghosts.
Heartbroken, aging, alone, I sing
To myself. Ragged mist settles
In the spreading dusk. Snow skurries
In the coiling wind. The wineglass
Is spilled. The bottle is empty.
The fire has gone out in the stove.
Everywhere men speak in whispers.
I brood on the uselessness of letters.

Funky Gibbon

Samuel Beckett First Class cricket record

Batting and fielding averages

Mat Inns NO Runs HS Ave 100 50 Ct St
2    4   0  35   18 8.75 0  0  2  0

Bowling averages

Mat Balls Runs Wkts BBI BBM Ave Econ SR 4w 5w 10
2   138   64   0    -   -   -   2.78  - 0  0  0

Career statistics
First-class span 1925 - 1926

Tristram

Mao Dun

Literary innovation in modern China has been closely linked with the awakening of the Chinese nation epitomized in the May 4th Movement of 1919, which put an end to the dominance of classical language and tradition and heralded the advent of modernism. Modern literature was thus the product of a growing ideological awareness of modern ideas about democracy, socialism and the role of literature itself. The corruption permeating society and the danger the nation faced, as well as the revolutionary fervor to which these gave rise and which had its own roots in the May 4th Movement too, occupied the attention of the majority of writers, who consciously or unconsciously joined the revolutionary struggle by taking up their pens to analyze social reality. It was against this socio-historical background that the revolution began to influence literature directly and profoundly and determine the direction in which it would develop, conferring on it a historical character foreign to its precursors. Mao Dun, a versatile talent, was active during this process.

Mao Dun, whose real name was Shen Yanbing, used this pen-name when he began writing in the late 1920s. He was well known both nationally and internationally as a writer, but was at the same time a social activist. One of the earliest members of the Chinese Communist Party, he began revolutionary work in the mid-1920s and continued to take an active part in social and political struggle throughout his life. But it was literature which he made his career, one in which he achieved splendid things. National liberation and social progress were the constant goal of his writing. In him were combined the social activist and the man of letters, the writer and the revolutionary. It is nonetheless in the establishment and development of modern Chinese literature that his contributions were greatest and where his far-reaching influence can be felt today even after his death. He was truly one of the great men of modern Chinese literature.

1

When Mao Dun was born on July 4, 1896 in Tongxiang, Zhejiang, the last feudal dynasty, the Manchu Qing empire, was on the verge of collapse, and he people of China were seeking liberation and a way to change their society. His home was on the southeast coast close to Shanghai, in that economically and culturally developed area where advanced science and thought were first introduced from Japan and the West. His father was a doctor who sympathized with the doomed Reform Movement of 1898, and consequently Mao Dun grew up in a relatively free and progressive atmosphere, reading books that would never have found their way into the hands of a child in a feudal family, among them popular novels whose wealth of social content at once instilled in him a love of literature and a democratic consciousness. His political zeal was further fired by the Revolution of 1911, which finally toppled the ailing dynasty, and he began to busy himself with propaganda work; a protest against the autocratic nature of his middle school got him expelled.

In 1916, as the ideals of the May 4th Movement were crystallizing at last, Mao Dun graduated from the preparatory course at Beijing University, went to work for the Commercial Press and began to write. He formed eclectic intellectual habits at these two institutions, which despite being tightly controlled by conservative interests were respected as disseminators of advanced ideas in both science and politics.

His early writing was aimed predominantly at the young and preoccupied with the nature of ideological enlightenment, so that when Hu Shi, Chen Duxiu and Lu Xun began to promote the literary revolution through the columns of their magazine New Youth, they found in the young Mao Dun a ready response. In January, 1920, he began to experiment with literary innovation as editor of the "New Trends in Fiction" feature of the magazine Short Story Monthly, which by the end of the year he had taken over and transformed thoroughly. From this he went on to join with Zhou Zuoren, Ye Shengtao, Zheng Zhenduo and others in founding the Literary Research Society to put his ideas into practice by promoting realistic literature that mirrored life. He was not only the society's active organizer but also the elaborator of the theory it stood for. His management and advocacy gave Short Story Monthly and the Literary Research Society alike a modern flavour all their own which destined them to be enormously influential.

His articles from these years reveal a keen concern for the freedom of youth and the liberation of women. It was after the 1920s that he began to be drawn to Marxist theory and the ideals of the Russian Revolution, which were just then becoming known in China, and this led him to direct involvement with the Chinese communist movement. He was never exclusively concerned with literature. The outbreak of the First Revolutionary Civil War (1924-27) rapidly disillusioned him with the "enlightenment" of the early post-May-4th literature, and he began to call for "great changes". As one of the first writers to combine proletarian Marxism with literature, he helped to make the step from literary revolution to revolutionary literature. In 1930 he joined the China League of Left-wing Writers, which for a time he led in this spirit during what many historians have called the "red 30s". He added luster to that turbulent decade with a phenomenal output of original writing and criticism, working in close association with Lu Xun and Qu Qiubai. His novel Midnightwas universally regarded as a prime example of revolutionary literature and was enthusiastically received by writers themselves and the reading public, soon achieving international status with translations into English, Russian and German.

In 1937 the War of Resistance Against Japan broke out, which was destined to last for eight years and be followed by another three years of the War of Liberation, a turbulent period during which Mao Dun was constantly on the move from place to place in an attempt to evade the ravages of the invaders as well as the persecution of the Kuomintang government. He lived in Urumqi, Yan'an, Guangzhou, Hongkong, Wuhan, Changsha, Guilin and Chongqing, and as a council member of the All-China Federation of Writers and Artists for Resistance Against the Enemy he continued his work of writing, criticism and translation, besides editing literary journals -- Literary Front was one of the most important magazines of the war of resistance -- and the literary supplements of several newspapers.

With the death of Lu Xun in 1936, Mao Dun and Guo Moruo became the most prestigious and influential writers in China. Mao Dun devoted himself to the twin tasks of making literature contribute to national liberation and winning acceptability and popularity for it with the public at large, whilst at the same time exploring the theoretical and creative possibilities of a distinctively Chinese literature.

The Yan'an Forum on Literature and Art, held in 1942, encouraged much new writing in the liberated areas; full of admiration for the new literature, Mao Dun embodied its principles in his own work in the Kuomintang-controlled areas, extending his endeavours beyond the literary field into the forefront of the ideological struggle for national freedom and democracy against world fascism.

For a long period after the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, Mao Dun was a leading figure in government cultural institutions and in other literary and artistic bodies, interesting himself particularly in cultural exchanges with foreign countries and the defence of world peace. At the same time he kept up his theoretical work and literary criticism, writing voluminously on new writers. His contribution to the world-wide debate on socialist realism of the late 1950s was Notes of a Night Reader, a summary of world literature down to modern times upholding realistic writing and the socialist path.

During the "cultural revolution" Mao Dun, like any other honest writer, was persecuted into silence. He was over eighty by the time the storm passed, and began to concentrate on his memoirs, which when finished ran to tens of thousands of words, an invaluable document for the study of his life and work and the political, literary and social history of modern China, besides reviving the tradition of literary memoirs, which had been in abeyance for many years.

Mao Dun died in Beijing on March 27, 1981. On his deathbed he donated his royalties to establish an award for novels to encourage young writers.

Ezra Pound - How To Read

Cyrus Console

The Olepsy

BRON TO LOSE. This motto bore a man
In livid ink across his fists. His name
It was Anthony drinking from footprints
Townsfolk forbidden to render him aid
Worthless spirits given him in worship
Having little given choice besides

Some very choice incense in the chest
In the garage where sometimes he gave names
Discrete to things continuous like civil
Twilight, which habit he could put aside
If and when he chose. They were the things
Rather that could not but go on calling

Anthony. We begged them not to stop
Calling Anthony who might think colors
Many times more beautiful because
Though we ourselves had pictured larger numbers
Nothing in our minds resembled more
More, more, more. What makes this passage

____________

Remarkable is it’s recorded. So
Hic et ubique it isn’t music
We enjoy so much as what we might
Have for ourselves. With art let us remaster
Clandestine valleys where the wiry needle
Tracked his harrowed mate. Then will she strip

Her sleeve and show her scars and say “what strikes
Me as amazing about modern war
Is how we also leave the ground to travel
Our winged cabins wakelike linear clouds
Trailing formed of violence on the very
Material sustains them, the material

We breathe. But Anthony I have forgotten
These tales cannot divert you.” And the men
Sang Gobelet de Voyage. Let’s not confuse
Our blankets with the soft delicious warmth
Given us to feel between. Next number
Coming up is called Ship in the Clouds

____________

Long with neither feeling nor distinction
Through the motions of an education
Though he went came nonetheless a time
To put this too behind him and set out
Interposing distance with the people
He stood to injure being so resolved

Continuing neither in one place of residence
Nor loving faithfully. When he became
A felon, wandering he would bestow
Figures like to child and woman, mute
Cattle gifted with wheels, globes escaping
Into thin air that bore them nobly upward

Thus. Quickened by his breath, bent
Beneath his hand, the dumb menagerie
Beheld a landfall, turning cheek and tail
Like coin crossing the damp palm of a well.
What unlettered dread and yawning bookends
Had this five-foot shelf of dirty weekends.

____________

Helicopters threshed the East Meadow
Patterning with their lame cadence
The several rills. For it was just spring
Newfallen iridescent water sought
Everywhere after some declivity.
In glorious decline the canopy

Made a figure for all entropy
Wherein “autumn” spoke not of an age
But for all time, the very composition
Of data into sequence that was record
And instrument of its undoing. These
The florist let me have them for a song.

Though birds shook loose fists at his retinue
And dogs made circles of his resting place
He was my friend, the architect of war.
Whosoever would require his monument
Need only look around him. Be still.
Those letters. I know them from a song.

____________

He saw crowded shades laundering
Perforated sheets, slack uniforms
Whose cheerless surface light did little for
Else whose bright colors marbled long ago
The wide ewer surface, moving road
That takes us whither we would like to go

He awoke in woods among whose prospects
Numbered neither travel nor advancement
The ash went mantled in her namesake scoring
With nail and potsherd all the lovers’ names
Into her low extremity. Shade trees

Puzzled over darksome shiftless fruit.

Wave, turn, desolated wight
Those are your friends arrived a dollar late
Standing on the bank as if to spite
A transient whose only source of light
Long embers were, breaking of their weight
Into their shadows on the turbid spate

____________

He was trapped in a cycle of employment
Deep in the earth, fearful silhouette
Whose darkness as the jumbled hours
Moved unseen among their cohort, fell
Or seemed to fall singly over the lanterns.
He was the first person in earshot he meant everything

Tumblers of colorful water, private sectors
Flashlit streaking masterless through dorms
Known things disintegrating in their hands
Known things faking seizures in the padded
Darkness of their mouths, sirens winding
Back into the base metal coils

That had occasioned them. The bells swallowed
Their tongues and were still. Then someone said
We will return no more. They felt themselves
Swiftly taken up into ulterior
Consciousness, hollow without volume.
Typographers would call this space “air.”

Black Panther