Who, who had only seen wings,
could extrapolate the
skinny sticks of things
birds use for land,
the backward way they bend,
the silly way they stand?
And who, only studying
birdtracks in the sand,
could think those little forks
had decamped on the wind?
So many paired things seem odd.
Who ever would have dreamed
the broad winged raven of despair
would quit the air and go
bandylegged upon the ground,
a common crow?

—Kay Ryan, 1994

You that sang to me once sing to me now
let me hear your long lifted note
survive with me
the star is fading
I can think farther than that but I forget
do you hear me

do you still hear me
does your air
remember you
o breath of morning
night song morning song
I have with me
all that I do not know
I have lost none of it

but I know better now
than to ask you
where you learned that music
where any of it came from
once there were lions in China

I will listen until the flute stops
and the light is old again

- W.S. MERWIN

Inaugural Poem

A Rock, A River, A Tree
Hosts to species long since departed,
Marked the mastodon.

The dinosaur, who left dry tokens
Of their sojourn here
On our planet floor,
Any broad alarm of their hastening doom
Is lost in the gloom of dust and ages.

But today, the Rock cries out to us, clearly, forcefully,
Come, you may stand upon my
Back and face your distant destiny,
But seek no haven in my shadow.

I will give you no more hiding place down here.

You, created only a little lower than
The angels, have crouched too long in
The bruising darkness,
Have lain too long
Face down in ignorance.

Your mouths spilling words
Armed for slaughter.

The Rock cries out today, you may stand on me,
But do not hide your face.

Across the wall of the world,
A River sings a beautiful song,
Come rest here by my side.

Each of you a bordered country,
Delicate and strangely made proud,
Yet thrusting perpetually under siege.

Your armed struggles for profit
Have left collars of waste upon
My shore, currents of debris upon my breast.

Yet, today I call you to my riverside,
If you will study war no more. Come,

Clad in peace and I will sing the songs
The Creator gave to me when I and the
Tree and the stone were one.

Before cynicism was a bloody sear across your
Brow and when you yet knew you still
Knew nothing.

The River sings and sings on.

There is a true yearning to respond to
The singing River and the wise Rock.

So say the Asian, the Hispanic, the Jew
The African and Native American, the Sioux,
The Catholic, the Muslim, the French, the Greek
The Irish, the Rabbi, the Priest, the Sheikh,
The Gay, the Straight, the Preacher,
The privileged, the homeless, the Teacher.
They hear. They all hear
The speaking of the Tree.

Today, the first and last of every Tree
Speaks to humankind. Come to me, here beside the River.

Plant yourself beside me, here beside the River.

Each of you, descendant of some passed
On traveller, has been paid for.

You, who gave me my first name, you
Pawnee, Apache and Seneca, you
Cherokee Nation, who rested with me, then
Forced on bloody feet, left me to the employment of
Other seekers–desperate for gain,
Starving for gold.

You, the Turk, the Swede, the German, the Scot …
You the Ashanti, the Yoruba, the Kru, bought
Sold, stolen, arriving on a nightmare
Praying for a dream.

Here, root yourselves beside me.

I am the Tree planted by the River,
Which will not be moved.

I, the Rock, I the River, I the Tree
I am yours–your Passages have been paid.

Lift up your faces, you have a piercing need
For this bright morning dawning for you.

History, despite its wrenching pain,
Cannot be unlived, and if faced
With courage, need not be lived again.

Lift up your eyes upon
The day breaking for you.

Give birth again
To the dream.

Women, children, men,
Take it into the palms of your hands.

Mold it into the shape of your most
Private need. Sculpt it into
The image of your most public self.
Lift up your hearts
Each new hour holds new chances
For new beginnings.

Do not be wedded forever
To fear, yoked eternally
To brutishness.

The horizon leans forward,
Offering you space to place new steps of change.
Here, on the pulse of this fine day
You may have the courage
To look up and out upon me, the
Rock, the River, the Tree, your country.

No less to Midas than the mendicant.

No less to you now than the mastodon then.

Here on the pulse of this new day
You may have the grace to look up and out
And into your sister’s eyes, into
Your brother’s face, your country
And say simply
Very simply
With hope
Good morning.

Messengers much like ourselves? Explain it.
Steadfastness the darkness makes explicit?
Something heard most clearly when not near it?

Above particularities,

These unparticularities praise cannot violate.

One has seen, in such steadiness undeflected,
How by darkness a star is perfected.

Star that does not ask me if I see it?
Fir that would not wish me to uproot it?
Speech that does not ask me if I hear it?

Mysteries expound mysteries.

Steadier than steady, star dazzling me, live and elate,

no need to say, how like some we have known; too like her,
too like him, and a-quiver forever.

—Marianne Moore, 1945

Iran is ready for change. The Green Tsunami continues today despite the crackdown on protesters. There is a true revolution going on in Iran and we need to keep the story alive. If you tweet look for #iranelection and stay informed and spread the news. The movement continues from within and outside government even though the media sees it as less of a story.

The result of this movement can bring a change that will have impact on the entire Middle East and world policy. Iranians are forcing change. Let’ hope they will create an new environment that will push the restrictive regime from power.

Here’s a quote from the intro to the graphic novel. You can read it online or download it. Most importantly share it with your friends.

http://www.spreadpersepolis.com/download-and-spread-the-word/

“The campaign of former Prime Minister Mir Hussein Moussavi galvanized voters hoping for change, especially among the youth – two thirds of Iran’s population is younger than 32. On June 12th 85% of eligible voters cast their ballots and what happened next changed Iran forever…”

http://www.spreadpersepolis.com/

Follow:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/iran

Iran uprising : Live Blogging

First among places
susceptible to trespass
are mirage oases

whose graduated pools
and shaded grasses, palms
and speckled fishes give
before the lightest pressure
and are wrecked.

For they live
only in the kingdom
of suspended wishes,
thrive only at our pleasure
checked.

—Kay Ryan, 1997

Got a tweet from Carl Malamud today that led me to this article about Martin Wattenberg. It’s always great to read about a whole yarnball of my interests at one time. Culture, information, visualization, and the meaning we can bring to data by creating context. See an ongoing project at the TATE in the UK. ( MW2MW is a collaboration between Marek Walczak and Martin Wattenberg. Started in 1997, both artists work independently but come together on long term projects such as Apartment, Wonderwalker, Thinking Machine and Noplace.) http://www.mw2mw.com/

These experiments and journeys open up new ways to look at what we see each day in a new light.

The aesthetic is a bit clumsy for my liking still the work at the conceptual level is very intriguing and the visualizations shed light on the snapshots he takes.

Take some time to enjoy these works. Interested in your thoughts.

Tags: culture, art, meaning, data, visulization, information

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting–
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

© Mary Oliver.

Tags: maryoliver, poet, poetry, writing, geese

I was wandering around reading about art on the web and found some very interesting thoughts by Keith Haring. It made me remember how he made art PUBLIC, as public as it could be. That was extremely energizing and all I could think about was art that wasn’t framed, or installed, or protected from the viewer, from the public.

Art is a very powerful thing — for the maker and those who experience it.

official site:
www.haring.com

film:
The Universe of Keith Haring
by Christina Clausen

Tags: art, drawing, Keith Haring, very public art

I want a transformative movement!

What all transformative movements have in common is the quality of speaking up to an aspirational public, to our best possible selves. Transformative movements act like the world is better than it is, and—when they work—they inspire the world to live up to this partial projection. The Obama campaign, has, in moments, embodied precisely that quality: Obama conjures a better America and that better America shows up for him. But political moments do more than speak to our best selves; they harness that quasi-mystical power to make radical demands to transform the real world. The Obama campaign has not done this, not on any issue at the core of our current crisis. Not on global warming, the war in Iraq, the housing crisis, health care, underemployment, or the assaults on civil liberties. Not a single Obama policy is unequivocal in its clarity and morality, which is the essential quality of a transformative movement.

The campaign’s most radical demand, even if unstated, is the idea of electing Obama himself. It is Obama—and not his plans for the presidency—that is the ultimate expression of the “movement.” If the process ends there, the Obama campaign becomes less like the civil rights movement and more like the lifestyle brands in the late ’90s—the Nikes, Microsofts, and Starbucks that expertly captured the transcendent quality of past liberation movements, and our desire for meaning in our lives, to build their brands.

Of course the real fault is not Obama’s, but ours. We have forgotten the kind of risk and work it takes to build transformative mass movements, and so settle for iconography instead. That said, he’d better win.

by Naomi Klein

I read this at The Nation. I think it gets to the crux of what bothers me about Obama and his campaign. I haven’t been able to find the words by Naomi Klein has. This isn’t a transformative movement. All this is is an orchestrated political campaign as lifestyle brand. And I especially don’t like the campaign. His “logo” and “yes we can” make my skin crawl.

His buffed up graphics, his gathering of phone numbers and emails for his VP announcement by instant message, his plan to make his acceptance speech in a football stadium… it is a commercialization that upsets me to the core.

Today I found an email in my spam filter that reinforced my discomfort.

I’ve lived through a time where there were so many inspirational figures. In hindsight they each had their flaws but they inspired a nation and the world. They had authenticity that inspired you to the bone, they didn’t need a design firm to manufacture one by creating a “lifestyle brand”.

Are we as a nation so bereft of ideas and inspiration that Obama is enough?

Tags: obama, icon, marketing, politics, movement, history, brand, lifestyle

What are we thinking? Don’t you think you should own the copyright to your work? This is especially crazy if you are an artist. Imagine being Jackson Pollock or me. We need to bring our laws into a place where we can have fair use.

I want people to see my work, share it, publish it. I just don’t want them to alter it.

This is an op ed by Larry Lessing from the New York Times, you can read the original here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/20/opinion/20lessig.html?ex=1369022400&en=af6d685002b2942f&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

Little Orphan Artworks

CONGRESS is considering a major reform of copyright law intended to solve the problem of “orphan works” — those works whose owner cannot be found. This “reform” would be an amazingly onerous and inefficient change, which would unfairly and unnecessarily burden copyright holders with little return to the public.

The problem of orphan works is real. It was caused by a fundamental shift in the architecture of copyright law. Before 1978, copyright was an opt-in system, granting protection only to those who registered and renewed their copyright, and only if they marked their creative work with the famous ©. But three decades ago, Congress created an opt-out system. Copyright protection is now automatic, and it extends for almost a century, whether the author wants or needs it or even knows that his work is regulated by federal law.

The old system filtered copyright protection to those works that needed it; the new system regulates indiscriminately. The Congressional Research Service has estimated that just 2 percent of copyrighted works that are 55 to 75 years old retain any commercial value. Yet the system maintains no registry of copyright owners nor of entities from which permission to use a copyrighted work can be sought. The consequence has been that an extraordinary chunk of culture gets mired in unnecessary copyright regulation.

The solution before Congress, however, is both unfair and unwise. The bill would excuse copyright infringers from significant damages if they can prove that they made a “diligent effort” to find the copyright owner. A “diligent effort” is defined as one that is “reasonable and appropriate,” as determined by a set of “best practices” maintained by the government.

But precisely what must be done by either the “infringer” or the copyright owner seeking to avoid infringement is not specified upfront. The bill instead would have us rely on a class of copyright experts who would advise or be employed by libraries. These experts would encourage copyright infringement by assuring that the costs of infringement are not too great. The bill makes no distinction between old and new works, or between foreign and domestic works. All work, whether old or new, whether created in America or Ukraine, is governed by the same slippery standard.

The proposed change is unfair because since 1978, the law has told creators that there was nothing they needed to do to protect their copyright. Many have relied on that promise. Likewise, the change is unfair to foreign copyright holders, who have little notice of arcane changes in Copyright Office procedures, and who will now find their copyrights vulnerable to willful infringement by Americans.

The change is also unwise, because for all this unfairness, it simply wouldn’t do much good. The uncertain standard of the bill doesn’t offer any efficient opportunity for libraries or archives to make older works available, because the cost of a “diligent effort” is not going to be cheap. The only beneficiaries would be the new class of “diligent effort” searchers who would be a drain on library budgets.

Congress could easily address the problem of orphan works in a manner that is efficient and not unfair to current or foreign copyright owners. Following the model of patent law, Congress should require a copyright owner to register a work after an initial and generous term of automatic and full protection.

For 14 years, a copyright owner would need to do nothing to receive the full protection of copyright law. But after 14 years, to receive full protection, the owner would have to take the minimal step of registering the work with an approved, privately managed and competitive registry, and of paying the copyright office $1.

This rule would not apply to foreign works, because it is unfair and illegal to burden foreign rights-holders with these formalities. It would not apply, immediately at least, to work created between 1978 and today. And it would apply to photographs or other difficult-to-register works only when the technology exists to develop reliable and simple registration databases that would make searching for the copyright owners of visual works an easy task.

A hired expert shouldn’t be required for an orchestra to know if it can perform a work composed during World War II or for a small museum to know whether it can put a photograph from the New Deal on its Web site. In a digital age, knowing the law should be simple and cheap. Congress should be pushing for rules that encourage clarity, not more work for copyright experts.

Tags: copyright, law, lawrence lessig, creative commons, editorial

Home to Roost

The chickens
are circling and
blotting out the
day. The sun is
bright, but the
chickens are in
the way. Yes,
the sky is dark
with chickens,
dense with them.
They turn and
then they turn
again. These
are the chickens
you let loose
one at a time
and small—
various breeds.
Now they have
come home
to roost—all
the same kind
at the same speed.

-kay ryan

Tags: kayryan, poetry, chickens

Hailstorm

Like a storm
of hornets, the
little white planets
layer and relayer
as they whip around
in their high orbits,
getting more and
more dense before
they crash against
our crust. A maelstrom
of ferocious little
fists and punches,
so hard to believe
once it’s past.

- Kay Ryan

Tags: PoetLaureate, poetry, vision,