Page 13 - Dark Matter:Women Witnessing Issue2
P. 13
March 29 [2014]
Newspaper article about Bangladesh [and] low-‐lying islands doomed by rising seas. The calm tone of it:
this will happen, displacing millions. Why. How is it acceptable to say: this is happening, these things
will happen.
From George Oppen’s "The Image of the Engine":
Endlessly, endlessly,/The definition of mortality//The image of the engine//That stops.//We cannot live
on that./I know that no one would live out/thirty years, fifty years if the world were ending/With his
life.
April 2
Everything, suddenly, about "wreck" or "ruin." Obvious why. Bhanu Kapil’s blurb to Bea Gates's new
poetry book Dos describes it as a "wrecked, shimmering pilgrimmage." Would we feel so much wreck if
we hadn't so much stuff; so much info?
April 4
Precipice Studies: Examination of the thinking and behavior of a self-‐conscious species on the brink of
self-‐extinction.
April 15
Let's get this straight: UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says drastically reduce carbon
emissions now. U.S. and China are principal offenders and must act for the global reduction to work.
Article in today's Times details how U.S. politics [make this unlikely]. So, the world is supposed to be
killed b/c a few powerful Americans and Chinese don't want to interrupt their short-‐term plans and
narrow advantages?
April 27
"At a time of cultural devastation, the reality a courageous person has to face up to is that one has to
face up to reality in new ways."-‐-‐Jonathan Lear, Radical Hope: Ethics in the Face of Cultural
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