lewis levenberg

Function, Procedure, Poetics

Conscientious inhabitants of art-spaces – makers, collectors, readers, and so on – respond to an intersection between expressive position and functional affect. This is a fancy way of saying that we care about the other people involved in artistic processes. But since, according to our common senses, it’s not what you say but how you […]

on Background Noise

by lewis levenberg Mornings ride higher when their dull cacophanies remain muffled. At least, the sounds of waking, when they fail to rouse you, seem sweeter: think garbage trucks. Your neighbor’s alarm clock beckons, rude chirp and rattle, unless it finds barrier in wall, door, pillow.  Sleeping late, though no self-sustained reward, requires quiet, but […]

Poem/CounterPoem: Whitman

by lewis levenberg After hiatus, always nice to ease back in with poetry. Poem/CounterPoem takes an out-of-print, public-domain poem and responds to it, also in verse. Today’s comes from Walt Whitman: Poem: Once I pass’d through a populous city imprinting my brain for future use with its shows, architecture, customs, traditions, Yet now of all […]

work song

by lewis levenberg so sing an isolated verse or two while) bells to silence fade and background city rumblings hemhorrage restart detailless know) nothing: the street playful slash serious et cetera all burn) skin sloughs & bubbles shoulders backs necks hours break and haul to piles) concrete streetside karmic compensation free hard labor force let) […]

guttering

by lewis levenberg set up a ladder carry up a bucket muck the muck out (sweet earth undisturbed for ages dead leaves twigs et cetera slowly composting without shit trash food or bugs even) (thirty feet above the ground saplings sprout tenuous tenacious from the loam) (black water silt-laden rain water stone-filtered layered leaf and […]