Page 14 - Dark Matter:Women Witnessing Issue2
P. 14
Devastation, a meditation on the life and testimony of the Crow Indian leader Plenty Coups (1848-‐
1932).
April 30
In an essay on George Oppen, Rachel Blau du Plessis quotes from a speech given by Paul Celan,
accepting a literary prize after the launch of the first satellite, Sputnik, in 1958: "...the efforts of
someone who, overarced by stars that are human handiwork, and who, shelterless in this till now
undreamed-‐of sense and thus most uncannily in the open, goes with his very being to language,
stricken by and seeking reality." (from Thinking Poetics: Essays on George Oppen)
May 1
On the one hand: everything that matters: everything that has made itself, over the millennia.
On the other hand: money.
May 5
Read interview with a leftist immigration activist in Indypendent. Two million people have been
deported since start of Obama administration. The activist argues that political expediency and old-‐
fashioned racism are not enough to explain the wall-‐building and border-‐securing frenzy; it can only be
explained by expectations of mass migration from south to north, in response to climate change.
May 13
NYT headline: "Scientists Warn of Rising Oceans from Polar Melt": 'Today we present observational
evidence that a large section of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet has gone into irreversible retreat."
May 20
After driving, one sees with car eyes. The mirrory phallus of the new Trade Center building standing up
over the city skyline.
I keep thinking of Leslie Marmon Silko's short story "Yellow Woman," whose protagonist wants to insist
that the modern, urbanized world is the only world: "...I am not Yellow Woman. Because she is from
