 (opening lines from this story in Paul H’s collection, The Doctrine of Affections)
I got a phone call the other night, long distance from L.A…. so I picked up. / ‘Hello?’ / ‘Hello. Is this Paul Headrick?’ / ‘Yes. Who’s calling?’ / ‘This is Howard Kaylan…. Are you Paul Headrick the producer?’ / ‘Afraid not.’ / … / ‘You’re not the Howard Kaylan… of the Turtles. Lead singer.’ / … / When I told my wife, Heather, about the call she was amused. / … / I show my stories to Heather… before the first draft is complete…. She didn’t like my using our real names and situations. / … / She was wearing her writing clothes, grey Langara College sweatpants I gave her a couple of Christmases ago… Keep it flowing, Breeder It was Flo & Eddie, 1970 (at Massey) pseudonymously Triggers en masse, saucy seventeener — you’re so on the right track, baby! No matter how they tossed the dice Breed’s gotta be up on the miЯRor not just vintage vinyl Copy this — for real — metafictional couple (Hey, we know these people!) And It had to be … It’s only right caving or vexing, she wouldn’t approve his con’s feint (Sweats or no, she’d never faint) Flight time eclipses a flat 55-year oval And how is the weather? Steady, with no real pall on the wet coast heather Pls phone us all, give us a call at Langara What, were you expecting a shout-out for Kundera? [1] [1] Flo & Eddie (of the Turtles), also as pseudonyms for Mark Volman & Howard Kaylan, the two lead singers in Frank Zappa’s Mothers of Invention (Massey Hall, Toronto, 1970); 1970 adds up to a 17’er: being cheeky with dumbo numerology again; italicized lines from the Turtles’ “Happy Together”
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 (trans, Eric Mosbacher)
The master started looking more and more often at his watch; and the boys started looking at their watches more and more often too… Oh, the endless repetition, the excruciating boredom… the pupils at their desks suffering from an acute sense of… boredom, boredom, boredom! That’s the way it goes, Reader jus’ dustin up the ol chalk bored rust And you say, whoa, doan be droppin those ’od·damn, ’od·awful Gee’s you break ’em you flush ’em, right? — they’s aint the only ’host you’ve swallowed whole You need to Calm down again, pls (gag w/ Maga too, fer dumb luck) Get yr self back to old school Rules (tedium di’dum, dolor o’rama’dam) Get back copyin blah·board scribblin’s — it were ever So Got Schooled flyin drip wet spit wads crisscrossin blow-’n-release rubbers zig-zaggin… And someone said, Ferdydurke, you have been written by a masterpiecer… There’s a new day a’dawnin’ By ‘n’ By [sic]… Ick, zee said And we wuz watchin thud y’all spitball trails oozin down walls in sum excited states of esoterica [1] [1] Second stanza reprised from SongBu®st, p.87; So Got Schooled (a memoir): penmanship, spitwads, rubbers; a hint of Theodore Roethke’s “Dolor”; italicized quotes are verbatim from a previous owner’s marginalia in our first edition Grove Evergreen reprint (1968); was hoping on two more G’s (Robert Grudin & Pierre Guyotat) but couldn’t find anything readily riffable  (trans, Alfred Mac Adam)
…the Reader would be able to wonder, wherever [she!] might be reading a book apocryphally entitled Christoper Unborn / by / Carlos Fuentes years after the events narrated there took place, that is, as it always happens, the most rejected books end up being the most accepted books, the most obscure books become the clearest, the most rebellious become the most docile, and that’s the way it goes, Reader. Get what you work with, right? the way a constraint signals the con’s feint One’s concave echo is another’s convex hearer frieds ringing sass-backward Rejected → Accepted = mime to calm yr·self & Relax Obscure → Clearest = prime to dot.com yr·self & Concentrate Rebellious → Docile = time to embalm yr·self & Dispel Dumb luck — don’t overcook your book’s look And you say (fading now), “that’s the way it goes, Bleeder” [1] [1] Reprise, Umberto Eco’s & Italo Calvino’s novel lines  (trans, Michael Hofmann; two sentences 71 pages apart, joined at the hip?)
They had done nothing wrong. But they were doomed…. The death house in Plötzensee is now Otto Quangel’s home. The solitary cell in the death house is his last address on earth. How to dress this up… put on its side (?) hoЯRor show in a mirror Plöt zen see — das koan that rimes with Wannsee Seine alpha bets spracht mild constraints ? Sie würden splice fore w/ hind bits harsh sprechen a firmer fit hah, maybe zee’s on zum Creation Science shtick ? Constellated in the abecedaries of the abyss (Oh, infamous kenophobe…) Mein sources fuse absent presence mit present absence
does one wan eye see ? [1] [1] Fallada’s novel is based on the actual case of a poorly educated, working-class couple who cleverly, bravely, ran the Berlin Gestapo in circles for three years by placing anti-Nazi postcards in public spaces; the Wannsee Conference was where the sociopathic Heydrich hatched “The Final Solution”; one of so-called “Creation Science’s” more duplicitous debate tricks involves cutting & restitching unrelated sentences from evolutionary biologists’ published work in order to ‘suggest’ counter, anti-Darwinian points (we once saw David Suzuki take the floor, mid-debate, to expose their shameless deceit); the italicized lines are from Adeena Karasick’s Ӕrotomania (pp. 57 & 61), & Ron Silliman’s The New Sentence (p. 147) re: the Lone Ranger’s mask—an absence or a presence; passing ref to Oulipo constraints, as in this abecedary serial poem itself; NB: “wan,” fr Old English wann— see? |