QQQQQQQQQQQQQ] QQQQQQQQQQ] QQQQQQQQQQ] QQQQQQQQQQQQQ] QQQQQQQQQQQQQ] QQQQQQQQQQ] QQQQQQQQQQ] QQQQQQQQQQQQQ] QQQQ] QQ] QQ] QQQ] QQQ] QQQ] QQQQ] QQ] QQ] QQQQQQQQQQ] QQQQQQQQQ] QQQQ] QQ] QQ] QQQ] \QQ\ QQQQQQQQQ] QQQQ] QQQQQQQQQQ] QQQ] \QQ\ QQQ] QQQQ] QQQQQQQQQQ] QQQ] \QQ\ QQQ] QQQQ] QQQQQQQQQQ] QQQ] \QQ\QQQ] QQQQQQQQQQQQQ] QQQQQQQQQQQQQ] QQQQQQQQQQQQQ] QQQQQQQQQQQQQ] Volume 1 Issue 1 SPECIAL GUESTS: The Gas Station Des Beaux Arts ........................William Dubie Les Coquelicots ........................John Wojdylo Andrei Codrescu: The WELL Interview ........................The WELLbeings Honey Harvest ........................Robert Curtis Davis Civil Service, Part I The first chapter in a six-part serial ........................Kenneth Wolman CORE may be reproduced freely *in its entirety only* throughout Cyberspace. Please obtain permission of authors to reproduce individual works. Send submissions, subscription requests, etc. to rita@eff.org. CORE is available via anonymous ftp from eff.org (journals directory). __________________________________________________________________________ Rita Marie Rouvalis, EIC rita@eff.org Unroll that Scroll CORE. The latest blaze of organized electrons to blast across Cyberspace. While I was editing this first issue of CORE, it was suggested to me that I print out what I had, tape the pieces end-on-end, and see what this did for my creative process. This idea seemed more reasonable than ruining what remains of my eyesight and wearing out my arrow keys. So, risking life and limb, I climbed onto my rather mobile chair and stuck the resulting eight-foot-long sheet of paper to my office wall. Then I stared. And stared. And stared some more. I decided that what was appearing before my glazed eyes was what the ancient Phoenicians were *really* after when they invented scrolls; they just didn't have computers yet. The Phoenicians didn't have a California-style flare for interactive electronic interviewing, either. Not too long ago, Romanian poet Andrei Codrescu was given a temporary account on the WELL (Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link), a conferencing and e-mail service offered by the folks who publish WHOLE EARTH REVIEW. For a pre-determined time span, WELLbeings (as WELL subscribers prefer to think of themselves) fired questions at Andrei. The result is cool; read it for yourself. Oh, special thanks to my CD collection and Hurricane Bob. __________________________________________________________________________ William Dubie (dubie@tnpubs.enet.dec.com) THE GAS STATION DES BEAUX ARTS Originals ring the pumps, oil (Quaker State?) on velvet, each frame as slate, masters of mechanics, with profiles fluorescent as an Elvis collar--high art and octane for your dollar. The tiger on velvet is the one in your tank. Drive by a vulture for Icarus, Judas Priest, before your pistons need grease. The gallery of gas, petroleum-- Pointillism is ink in a shirt pocket; surrealism, The abstracts of oil and water rainbowing the station, made possible by a grant from Mobil Corp. __________________________________________________________________________ John Wojdylo (infidel@maths.uwa.oz.au) LES COQUELICOTS (after Monet) A moment of solitude. A corn field with poppies: stalks away in rhythm. And a hill overlooks a vineyard, another overlooks a village with children playing in the school yard. buildings modern and cosmopolitan, and cities shriek, bustle, noise. Monuments, churches intoxicate, noise. Noise. The countryside: silence, a gentle breeze, vineyards, lush green pastures, sweet dancing poppies. It might have been 1820. The lady wades forward, a red sea around, a wake behind. There, a bridge! Downstream: narrow, meandering water, willows and other trees on either side, and a dusty road. Upstream: a splendid white castle half in shadow in the late afternoon sun. To her left, a row of trees far away, were they planted? To her right, over the A river. A city. Carts. Automobiles. Or poppies, as far as the eye can see. She longs to return, to relive memories, to savour experiences now that she is older and wiser. To savour, far from home and family, security, convenience, safety. What if old friendships have become too dim for rekindling? Alone. In a land of strangers. In a poppy field in a distant land for which she yearns. The Lady's little brother has joined her, and he's picked some poppies and is smelling them, and wonders how such a pretty flower has no scent. Mother and sister are not far behind. ____________________________________________________________________________ The WELLbeings (lcole@well.sf.ca.us) ANDREI CODRESCU: THE WELL INTERVIEW The voice and charming Romanian accent of Andrei Codrescu are familiar to many of us. His weekly commentaries on National Public Radio's "All Things Considered" are heard by as many as five million listeners. Mr. Codrescu is the author of more than twenty-five books of poetry, fiction, essays, and memoirs. His most recent book, published by Addison-Wesley, "Raised By Puppets Only to Be Killed by Research" is a collection of radio commentaries and newspaper essays. Just published is "The Disappearance of the Outside," a book of philosophy drawn from his recent visit to Romania. The material for this book prompted a call from MGM to discuss the possibility of a film. He is also the founder and editor of "Exquisite Corpse," a literary journal. Seeing his homeland again has prompted Mr. Codrescu to help with the country's development effort. Prior to the overthrow of the Ceausescu Regime, a single typewriter was regarded as a printing press, far too dangerous to be left unregulated. The result of such regulation is a country that today lacks the typewriters, copiers, facsimile machines, personal computers, and video cameras necessary for the flow and sharing of information. Mr. Codrescu is working with a nonprofit organization called Information Tools For Romania to encourage desktop publishing in Romania. Mr. Codrescu lives in New Orleans with his wife Alice and their two sons. He is a professor at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge where he teaches English. He was born in 1946 in Sibiu, Romania, (most references say Transylvania) and came to The United States in 1966. He has also lived and worked in San Francisco, New York, and Baltimore. Gregory McNamee (gmcnamee) Andrei, I'm curious to know what Romanian writers you recommend to American readers (which presupposes the availability of English-language editions of their work); what Romanian writers _must_ be translated into English immediately; what American writers are important to Romanian readers. Andrei Codrescu Greg, Romanian literature exists in suspended animation waiting for translators. I don't translate what I really love --poetry-- because I don't want to wreck it. But I can make a list of poets and novelists (and two poetry critics) who can probably stand up to some wreckage. Romanian literature is mostly poetry because poets knew how to wrap themselves in a special language that protected them from grosso bureaucrats whose spew drowned the pais for 45 yrs. It is very beautiful stuff filled with oblique hints for survival. We disdained prose writers and, consequently, have no real dissident tradition Russian-style. Ron Buck (macbeth) Andrei, them members of the poetry conference would very much like to have a list of your poetic works available in the states. Andrei Codrescu My new poetry books are "Comrade Past & Mister Present," (Coffee House Press), "Belligerence" (Coffee House), and then there are a few others in obscure corners of hidden bookstores in bad parts of town. Thanks. Bob Jacobson (bluefire) What's it like to be a seer in the South? I mean, have you ever gone "down on the bayou" or are you only there temporarily, until something dramatic propels you north or even back to Romania? And what's your opinion of the poetic enterprise? I've heard a criti- cism that poetry (at least in America) is declining into an an intro- verted, overly descriptive personal mode and losing its social context and content. Do you agree? Andrei Codrescu The South is a lot like the Balkans: slow, inefficient, bureaucratic, charming, full of stories and people who know how to tell them, a certain ambiguity in language born out of colonialism, stubborn insistence on the local, inability to say no to bad guys (like Rollins Co.), an excess of politeness that hides 800 forms of resentment. In short, what's good about it is what drives you crazy. It's a perfect place for a writer because there is lots of interestingly used language ready for overhearing, and much to observe. Even my most resolutely illiterate students can spin a good yarn with perfect timing, either because they grew up under the dining table listening to large families yammer, or because it's so hot in the summer you have to tell cool stories to yourself. And there are many varieties of home-grown craziness here that are peculiarly linked to the word. Poetry in America is another story, and at the risk of vanity here, I would recommend the two anthologies I edited myself, "American Poetry Since 1970: Up Late," and "The Stiffest of the Corpse: an Exquisite Corpse Reader, 1983-1988." I edited the first one because I couldn't find a commercial anthology to teach from so I made my own. I also edited it because I think American poetry's become a boring lowpaid whitecollar profession in the past decade, thanks to MFA Writing Pograms, the NEA, and other well-meaning instututional strangulation. It used to be (and still is, in Eastern Europe, Lower East Side, and wherever my friends live) that poetry was a dangerous practice rightly feared by nice people. A poet was considered liable to do any unpredictable thing at any given moment, a power few people can claim. When poetry is domesticated, that possibility is removed. No more Slack. Well, I'm in the Slack Business -- I advocate and teach it. So you can say that there is the Dangerous Slack Poetry made by the poets I anthologised (and many others of their ilk) and the Academic Poesy of non-threatening confession and stylistic contemplation which is the prefered mode of Mainstream Am Lit, a small pie with eight hundred thousand grubby but clean fingers in it. Alas. That demands a corresponding increase in attention from the people to whom the flow is directed, a commodity in short supply at the best of times. In other words, there are more producers and fewer consumers, more writers and less readers, more performers and less listeners. That's fine with me because I'm an anarchist and I don't believe in "audience." I think everyone should produce even if no one's buying. Eventually (I mean already!) somebody'll be producing Attention, hence professional listeners, etc. The age of Audience for Pay is here. If you give everybody a dollar to read your book everybody wins. I knew this kid in San Francisco, ten years old, used to go to poetry readings, then ask everybody for a dollar to be quiet. Today he's one of our most famous poets, Mr. John Ashbery. Just kidding, John. Barry Michael Balch (barry) My question has to do with your being a poet, going into exile and then becoming a poet again in a second language. Having grown up in American English, it's pretty transparent to me, I don't see how it effects me. As you became a writer again in American English, what did you discover about our language? What are its particular qualities and peculiar ones. What can it express easily and what only with difficulty? What does it sound like (I have a smattering enough of German and French to be able to taste them as sounds and music but strangely I don't have this experience of English). Andrei Codrescu The language switch question is one I have often pondered in both languages. It's a long story, but briefly, learning a new language (and living in it) is being born again. You have all this new sound and no taboos (nobody told you no-no about certain words). It's like being simultaneously forgiven and given license to cause more trouble. Romanians are wired for language more poetically, Americans more practically. R is more oblique and metaphorical, A is more direct and actual. They both feed my poetic perversions. In "Disappearance of the Outside," my new book (has anyone advertised more things in here?) I hold forth at some length about language switches. (I believe that the brain contains "holes" for every language, including Mongolian kitchen- speak, and that when you try, you just slip these langs. in the holes already there for them. Unfortunately, my ports are serial so I can only speak and think well in one lang. at a time. Jay Allison (jwa) OK, how about your radio commentaries? Your voice and ideas are refreshing on "All Things Considered" because they don't fit. Your sound is not standard; your thoughts are weird. What a welcome change. 1) Are you given pretty much free reign editorially? Does your material always pass inspection...for instance, did NPR broadcast *all* the essays in "Raised by Puppets...?" Have you been censored? 2) Do you listen to much public radio? What is your opinion of the programming? What might our public broadcasting system do that it is not doing now? Andrei Codrescu NPR has let me do pretty much what I want, which is amazing even to me. There are some pieces in the PUPPETS that were not broadcast for reasons having to do with timing -- some comments on the news became dated. In fact, I invited displeasure several times by being as bad as I could without actually saying the 7 words, and still the pieces were used. There are two possibilities: 1) I'm very good, 2) I'm not very subversive. Pass the cyanide. I have very few opinions about radio because I rarely listen. I like community radio that has ALL THE NEWS on: ideally, the station is in a tower where somebody can watch everyone in town, tell people about who's visiting who, what dogs have no leash, etc. For the longest time I couldn't stand to hear my voice -- now I listen as if it's someone else. And it is. Someone called on the phone the other day and as we were talking he said, "Shuddup, you're on the radio!" Do you really think I'm weird? I was hoping to be anonymous. David Newman (dn) Andrei, you mention the "well-meaning institutional strangulation" of the NEA. Should a government fund art? How? Andrei Codrescu Yes, govt. should fund art as long as it funds missiles. It's a matter of tax-money priorities. When we stop funding missiles, we should stop funding art. PERSONALLY, I think EVERY ORIGINAL GESTURE should be declared ART, and receive FUNDING. But if you do it twice, cut the money! David Newman (dn) Ok, Andrei, you asked for it. What is art? Andrei Codrescu Whatever isn't nature, 2) A friend of mine, 3) Whatever escapes analysis, 4) The next thing I say, 5) Something even the dead can dig, 6) Etc Jay Allison (jwa) Do we have to stop now? Can't we just go to the bathroom and come back? __________________________________________________________________________ Robert Curtis Davis (sonny@trantor.harris-atd.com) HONEY HARVEST In the hour of our dripping bee-harvest In the time of our undammed honey's golden flow When pollen-burdened bodies drop cargoes of nectared sweetness To fill the ample ambered vats within my waxy chambered comb, Who shall stand on the far ramparts fanning fanning To cool the vast and ordered industry of my hive? Who shall stroke the rounded belly of my favored queen? Who shall invade the teeming intricacies of the guarded nests And scorning formic acid dript from angered slavering jaws, Steal the sugared prize from 'neath that potent nose? Who shall rape the fat ripe bodies of the swollen aphid herd Plunder the toothsome richness of that honeyed hoard And stroking stroking make them yield sweet juices down? Listen! What lisps in sibilant whispers there on the edge of darkness? Quick! Plug the bungs on waxen casks brim'd full against hoar winter's frost Words of a necromancer's charm spin out from the damp and coiling mist Chilling incantations roll down the cold cold corridors of this old old earth I stand, am ready, unafraid; my honeyed horn is full I shall feed among the lilies, dance upon the high spiced mountain And sing the unsung satyr's song. ___________________________________________________________________________ Kenneth Wolman (ktw@hlwpk.att.com) CIVIL SERVICE a six-part serial Part I Many of the supervisors were lifers, and wore a kind of Civil Service uniform. Their shirts were solid, glaring starched-white with pre-wrinkled collars, plucked from the bottom of the pile at Klein's. The ties were narrow, dark, and looked like they'd been sewn by Ray Charles. The pants were strictly sub-basement, dark and coffee-stained so- called summer weights with razor cuffs not quite covering howling red socks and Navy-last clunky black shoes, scuffed and needing heels. Variants there were: but the first impression as you stepped from the elevator was of uniformity, a perfect blend with the bile-green walls. By contrast, the caseworkers were a weird mix, and Gelfen was one of them down to his ass-tight jeans and McCreedy and Shreiber boots. He would sit, when nothing much was going on in the office, contemplating with a mixture of admiration and lust the braless boobs, flat stomachs, and rock-crusher hips of the young women who worked with him, and who, like himself, had dropped into Welfare for a few years after college to pick up a fast dollar without working. For two years, since 1966 and getting his Masters in Sosh from Brooklyn, Gelfen had held down a desk in the New York City Department of Social Services, first in downtown Brooklyn and later, when he pulled some seniority and friendly strings in the Union office, in a cavernous old building in the East Bronx, a ten minute bus ride from his apartment. There was a voice in his back brain that would, now and again, warn him to get off his ass, for he was 26, too old to jam stupid, impressionable Child Welfare workers on the stairs during lunch hour, filling them with something other than ideals about saving the Wretched of the Earth. The voice would tell him to go back to grad school and/or get a real job, instead of mopping up after other people's miseries and swills. Gelfen did his best to ignore the voice: irritating as the job could be, at least it paid the rent. He lived alone in a rundown but reasonably solid tenement near the Harlem River, listening with half an ear to the music of the Puerto Rican family directly upstairs. Some friends had once been by, and after three solid hours of top-volume performances by Tito Rodriguez, Eddie Palmieri, and Jose Maria Peneranda, they decided that God was a Puerto Rican who had created ``cockroach music'' to smoke pot by. In any case, the Esperanza family was inoffensive enough, and they, for their part, were knocked out to have a non-complaining neighbor who would even split a few _cervezas frias_ with them on the front steps of a hot afternoon. Affectionately grinning, they referred to Gelfen as ``El Heepee,'' and were always ready with a friendly wave in the market or on the street. That, Gelfen suspected, was because they'd never seen the black looseleaf Welfare notebook inside his vinyl briefcase. Nobody who'd ever been on Welfare could dissociate the meaning of that book from the person who carried it. Gelfen was pretty sure the upstairs PRs were reliefers. The first day of the month once fell on a Saturday, and Gelfen, heading out at noon, spotted Mrs. Esperanza standing against the hallway mailboxes, practically embracing them, waiting for the mailman to show up with a sack filled with Welfare checks. Gelfen's caseload was largely Puerto Rican, too, and he figured he didn't think of his neighbors in quite the same way he did his clients, probably because the Esperanzas, in their turn, didn't know the truth about him. With his own clients, Gelfen could never quite shake the gnawing intuition that they were in some covert way trying to hustle his good nature into their pockets. He listened to the hard-luck stories they pitched at him with an arm that could have made Tom Seaver die from envy; and even when he was _sure_ he was being set up as the intermediary between the client and the City's money, more often than not something in their stories - a practiced vocalism? a facial expression? an implied threat? - always caused him to submit. _I no get my cheque, Meestah Geffen_, when he knew goddamned well they probably had. (Suppose, however, they weren't lying, and he was the ogre responsible for a family of eight spending the night in - oh Christ! - Crotona Park?) Or, _Meestah Geffen, I need de money to buy meelk fo' de babee_ which had been fathered on her by a common-law _esposo_ who was supposed to be in Puerto Rico with his mother, but who was, in the meantime, stopping by to screw the broad every night until he dropped. (But what if she was for real? What if Miguel Serrano, age 21, father of four children by three women, was in fact taking R & R in Mayaguez, and the chick was playing it straight? Gelfen imagined reading in the _News_ that her little girl, suffering from a massive absence of calcium, was lying wet-eyed and scared in Lincoln Hospital, dying.) Or, _I canno' work, Meestah Geffen, I hab de asthma_, a crock of shit for sure, because the guy looked like he could acquit himself honorably in the ring, and probably was driving a cab in Queens or Brooklyn, where he wasn't known. (But what if he really _did_ have asthma, better known as the Puerto Rican endemic disease? Gelfen had been in Welfare about four months when he saw a woman client die of an asthma attack on the floor of the Fort Greene Intake unit, and he puked from a combination of horror and disgust at the poor woman's contorted, royal-purple face trying like hell to suck in those final breaths.) So despite not-infrequent suspicions that he was being gotten the better of, Gelfen followed the line of least resistance: like his coworkers, he phonied records, wrote duplication grants using different codes to cover his tracks, and unless his own ass was near the fire, let his clients get away with the fruits of their creativity. It was easier than following the City's policy manuals, which prescribed an investigation process worthy of Scotland Yard: checking the rent and utility receipts; checking the closets, the drawers, the kitchen; checking in, above, and under the beds; checking school records to make damn sure the family _had_ all the kids it was collecting on. Nobody did this anymore except a few old-line caseworkers who had joined up back when the job title precisely described the function and m.o.: _Social Investigator_. Gelfen's training supervisor for his first few months had been a huge Jamaican ex-cop who loathed Welfare clients with a near-religious passion and probably (imagined Gelfen) loathed himself for sticking around to indoctrinate Trainees with the glee of a CIA man into the secrets of sniffing out the unwashed jockstrap, the half-used tube of Delfen, the semen-stained bedsheet, even (a grand catch!) the set of works in the bureau drawer. Gelfen, for his part terrified of this limbo-dancing Jack Johnson who still kept his carry permit and snub-nosed .38 in his desk, went along with the process and did the whole number on his first clients, who he was sure came to hate him with a hatred only prisoners could feel. When he was transferred to a regular casework unit at the end of three months, he put the huge Jamaican behind him and assimilated into the common run of things as described to him by a coworker his first week: ``You come in at 9:04. You shuffle some papers from one side of the desk to the other. You go across the street for breakfast, check out some chicks, buy some cigarettes, get the _Times_, go back to your desk by ten, read, smoke, answer a few phones, generally fart around, go to lunch from twelve to two, float around the office from two to four, work like hell from four to five, and go home.'' Gelfen, enervated by the weight of the job when done By The Book, fell right in line: laid back most of the time, made desultory visits when the mood hit him, and picked up his paycheck every second Friday. The only times it got tight were for three days following the 1st and 16th of each month, when Intake looked like the flight of the Hebrews in _The Ten Commandments_, a room jammed floor-to-ceiling with half-fed people who _no get de cheque_. To be continued next issue . . . . <<<<<~~~~~~|~~~~~~>>>>> August 1991