tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post4780817523806324494..comments2024-01-28T03:56:39.351-08:00Comments on TOM CLARK: firefliesUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-74609369486068847252016-05-31T14:26:42.622-07:002016-05-31T14:26:42.622-07:00Thanks, Terry, on behalf of the magical Mister Mar...Thanks, Terry, on behalf of the magical Mister Marvell. <br /><br />I've long been dazzled by this lovely small artisanal poem -- triumph of an amber-in-glass cabinetmakerlike lyric tradition which peaks in the work and and dies with the passing of this brilliant poet. <br /><br />It manages to combine extremely particularized celebration of the local and natural with a rumour of something historical and unnatural, signalling subtly, in Marvell's unique way, toward larger matters (the fall of a kind of government and a political order and an idea about the cosmos). <br /><br />It seems all but indestructible.<br /><br />One can't ruin it even by imbedding it in a delirious matrix of images of the end of human civilization and sensibility as known. <br /><br />These lunatic Chinese tourist-market "amusements", which amuse by numbing and stunning (further alienating the alienated and dehumanizing the post-human), appear from this distance a not too subtle form of social control, and from the evidence, they seem quite effective at that.<br /><br />I thought the Jia Zhangke film World, made a dozen years ago, and staged in a Chinese theme park duplicating in scale model the major tourist venues of the globe (Eiffel Tower, Pyramids & c), the whole show running on the miserable labour of hideously exploited migrant-caste "performers", looked like arresting prophecy at the time it came out... now it begins to look more like historical realism, and all the scarier for that. <br /><br /><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UentCQ98n4" rel="nofollow">Jia Zhangke: World (2004)</a>TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-54929976616858828182016-05-31T08:56:37.601-07:002016-05-31T08:56:37.601-07:00Thanks, Tom. Great post. Marvell lives on! Thanks, Tom. Great post. Marvell lives on! tpwhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05909239000589253931noreply@blogger.com