‘Great Poems’ series: a checklist

Great poems #5 — (‘Nirvana’ reproduced in full at the end.) If you travel hopefully, and interestedly, and observantly, and look out of the window — many people can’t be bothered (phones, sleep, earbuds, etc) — you will, sooner rather than later, get to see glimpses — snapshots — of other people’s lives, and…

A contemporary poem — So like Burt Lancaster In ‘The Swimmer’, I somehow expected to have to swim walk the long five miles back home - on my own - in the rain or in the sunshiny rain, and then to have to face up to a boarded up and abandoned and probably uninhabitable building…

Brief studies by Jakob Zaaiman — Harold Pinter/William Friedkin: The Birthday Party (1957/1968) Masterpieces of modern/contemporary art #14jakob-zaaiman.medium.com Jeff Koons: Seated Ballerina (2017) Masterpieces of modern/contemporary art #13jakob-zaaiman.medium.com Wojciech Bruszewski: Yyaa (1973) Masterpieces of modern/contemporary art #12jakob-zaaiman.medium.com Lil’ Markie: Diary of an Unborn Child Masterpieces of modern/contemporary art #11jakob-zaaiman.medium.com

Masterpieces of modern/contemporary art #14 — Synopsis: Two men arrive out of nowhere to a rundown terraced house in Worthing, near Brighton, seeking retribution. They’ve probably got their facts wrong, and are likely picking on the wrong man, but in the world in which they move, there’s no one to care, and no one to put…

(Just one approach, of very many) — And underpinning this whole discussion is a rough but very important distinction I draw between ‘verse’ — meaning traditional formal short prose, from epigrams and limericks to sestinas and Miltonic ramblings — and ‘poetry’ proper — meaning concentrated poetic prose designed to reveal and reflect on aspects of ordinary existence…

Contemporary poetry — I remember this guy once telling us – very casually — about the brutality that went with being a conscript in the Yugoslav army; like taking part in gang rapes and murder, and torturing people to death; maybe smashing their faces in with clubs and rifle butts, so sadistic violence everywhere all the time and the daily norm; basically…

Was he a ‘performance artist’? — You don’t have to be a fan of high camp megastar Liberace to appreciate how illustrative he can be when it comes to the thorny question of the distinction between ‘art’ and ‘craft’. Were he still alive, and if he could be bothered with any of the issues raised here…

A contemporary poem identifying (and applauding?) a weird form of entropic ‘suicide’ — He said he was coming to London for ‘about a week’, but let’s call it 5 or 6 days. He is on his way to Paris, but a stop-off in London is important to him, as he had never been here/there before. He tells me he is coming on Monday, but…

Exploring ‘the strange and the disturbing’ through art — A senior member of a European national academy of arts — I won’t say which one — described these videos as ‘creepy.’ (I don’t think it was meant as a compliment.) Well, yes, I said to him, that’s exactly what they’re supposed to be! Because I’m using them to explain…