tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post4077906969776664509..comments2024-01-28T03:56:39.351-08:00Comments on TOM CLARK: FreeUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-14618703693168120182013-02-04T04:53:52.099-08:002013-02-04T04:53:52.099-08:00And the light's not the only thing vicious in ...And the light's not the only thing vicious in the bigger picture here,<br /><br />which we have in view.<br /><br />The Glen Canyon project is a salient (and notorious) example of the hubristic attempts of men to control and exploit nature for perceived gain. It has irrevocably altered river flow, landscape and ecology in the Canyon Country of the Colorado.<br /><br />The nominal community of Page, seen in some of the photos, rose up as a company town for dam construction workers. The site of those trailer villages was once the stark butte-and-mesa country indelibly evoked by the Krazy Kat cartoons of George Herriman, who vacationed annually in Coconino Country long before there was ever a Page.<br /><br />I've contemplated the figure of Krazy as an early ambassador of the <a href="http://tomclarkblog.blogspot.com/2009/03/from-deep-keats-scrolls-want-of-object.html" rel="nofollow">anxious middle classes -- poets among them</a> -- to the painted-desert wildernesses.<br /><br />Thankfully there is usually a troublemaking Ignatz in the mix.<br /><br />Many who care about such matters view the dam's effects as an environmental tragedy. Edward Abbey's 1975 novel The Monkey Wrench Gang fictionalizes a fantasy of blowing it up. The 1983 Dream Garden Press edition of the novel was appropriately illustrated by R. Crumb, whose vision of the flow of the action decorated the banks with some of those plastic-boat-and-camera-toting <a href="http://www.abbeyweb.net/images/mwgcal/dam_l.jpg" rel="nofollow">"recreational tourist" types</a> of whom the real-life originals can be seen in the top selections from Lyntha Scott Eiler's photos, here.<br /><br />The source of all this revision of nature:<br /><br /><a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/45/MAN-MADE_LAKE_POWELL_AND_GLEN_CANYON_DAM._%28FROM_THE_SITES_EXHIBITION._FOR_OTHER_IMAGES_IN_THIS_ASSIGNMENT%2C_SEE_FICHE..._-_NARA_-_553828.jpg" rel="nofollow">Lyntha Scott Eiler: Glen Canyon Dam under construction, with reservoir -- the man-made Lake Powell -- forming upriver</a>.<br /><br />Without their tubular trailers and beach umbrellas, in this desert, tourists would be lost and end up as road kill or buzzard lunch, the riverine life forms killed off by the dam no longer present to console their restless ghosts.<br /><br />As for the strip mining of the Four Corners region, that is again a historical environmental tragedy whose effects (especially airborne toxic pollution from the big power generating plants) have been perhaps little known to those far away, but for those in the high plateau neighborhood, as intimate as, and inextricable from, the air breathed.<br /><br />In Lyntha Scott Eiler's photo-study we see the leasing of lands from the tribes going hand in hand with the violation of those historical lands, much of the transgression branded, for big energy corporate P.R. purposes, with the word Navajo. (As is documented in another series of photos in her arresting -- and chilling -- portfolio, traditional agricultural lands of the Hopi have also been affected.)<br /><br />But hey, the cultural bonuses. Free scuba lessons for curious native American bystanders at the lake that was never a lake and whose banks were never sand, always just plain dirt and stone.TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-60801343081682744912013-02-03T23:31:17.719-08:002013-02-03T23:31:17.719-08:00This is a sharp sketch of our unfreedom.
The ligh...This is a sharp sketch of our unfreedom.<br /><br />The light looks vicious in those photos.Mose23https://www.blogger.com/profile/01100756913131511440noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-43717927929236133062013-02-03T07:52:46.495-08:002013-02-03T07:52:46.495-08:00Tom,
"O beautiful for spacious skies" -...Tom,<br /><br />"O beautiful for spacious skies" -- just don't get too close to that strip mine.<br /><br />"where that over the rainbow yonder remains <br />always wild and blue<br />they're getting ready for kickoff"<br /><br />2.3<br /><br />light coming into sky above still black <br />ridge, white half moon through branches<br />in foreground, sound of wave in channel<br /><br /> density of matter, nor does<br /> it seem possible that<br /><br /> fact, in the following form,<br /> which we have in view<br /><br />triangular white peak in grey white sky,<br />green trees on ridge to the right of it<br />STEPHEN RATCLIFFEhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12339481653546188412noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-17322933508754280202013-02-03T06:54:07.167-08:002013-02-03T06:54:07.167-08:00Elmo,
Many grains of truth left in that hourglass...Elmo,<br /><br />Many grains of truth left in that hourglass.<br /><br />Hearts in the right places...<br /><br /><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npPsz1fKDkg" rel="nofollow">Kirk Douglas remembers</a>.TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-66273383017362859932013-02-03T06:20:32.256-08:002013-02-03T06:20:32.256-08:00yes,and Edward Abbey...for scenes
of Albuquerque,N...yes,and Edward Abbey...for scenes<br />of Albuquerque,New Mexico before<br />it became an urban sprawl...see<br />the black and white movie, The Brave Cowboy with Kirk Douglas...it will draw you to the<br />West and there's still a great deal<br />left...By definition...a poet can<br />see the whole world in a grain of<br />sand.Elmo St. Rosehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01588245143022651357noreply@blogger.com