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| author | Marco <marco@theanarchistlibrary.org> | 2012-03-14 19:30:04 +0100 |
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| committer | Marco <marco@theanarchistlibrary.org> | 2012-03-14 19:30:04 +0100 |
| commit | eec8efeffc43201cae0ddc05a07ee0ae30a8776a (patch) | |
| tree | 0a4f7abb5643abf7dfd4c5380aae16feca539bfe /j/jj/joseph-jablonski-in-my-mind-s-eye-remembering-rosemont.muse | |
| parent | dedf10590f78a7b1c89450f6f78c76af6032612c (diff) | |
j/jj/joseph-jablonski-in-my-mind-s-eye-remembering-rosemont.muse converted to muse
Diffstat (limited to 'j/jj/joseph-jablonski-in-my-mind-s-eye-remembering-rosemont.muse')
| -rw-r--r-- | j/jj/joseph-jablonski-in-my-mind-s-eye-remembering-rosemont.muse | 36 |
1 files changed, 18 insertions, 18 deletions
diff --git a/j/jj/joseph-jablonski-in-my-mind-s-eye-remembering-rosemont.muse b/j/jj/joseph-jablonski-in-my-mind-s-eye-remembering-rosemont.muse index 6bd5c17..60cd17f 100644 --- a/j/jj/joseph-jablonski-in-my-mind-s-eye-remembering-rosemont.muse +++ b/j/jj/joseph-jablonski-in-my-mind-s-eye-remembering-rosemont.muse @@ -1,14 +1,15 @@ -<!-- AUTHOR="Joseph Jablonski" --> -<!-- AUTHORSORTED="Joseph Jablonski" --> -<!-- TITLE="In my Mind’s Eye: Remembering Rosemont" --> -<!-- SUBTITLE="" --> -<!-- DATE="Winter 2010-2011" --> -<!-- TOPICS="culture, IWW, obituary, subversion, surrealism" --> -<!-- ADC="" --> -<!-- SOURCE="Scanned from print original. " --> -<!-- NOTES="<em>Communicating Vessels</em>, Issue 22, Fall-Winter, 2010-2011, page 18. This article originally appeared on the Yardbird Reader website: http://www.yardbird.com/reader_franklin_rosemont.htm Joseph Jablonski josjablonski@verizon.net" --> - -<h4>Fall in Spring</h4> +#author Joseph Jablonski +#SORTauthors Joseph Jablonski +#title In my Mind’s Eye: Remembering Rosemont +#lang en +#date Winter 2010-2011 +#SORTtopics culture, IWW, obituary, subversion, surrealism +#source Scanned from print original. +#notes <em>Communicating Vessels</em>, Issue 22, Fall-Winter, 2010-2011, page 18. This article originally appeared on the Yardbird Reader website: http://www.yardbird.com/reader_franklin_rosemont.htm Joseph Jablonski josjablonski@verizon.net + + + +*** Fall in Spring I only just noticed that the leaves on all the trees are full out green. So preoccupied have I been reliving a succession of past experiences while writing a long poem dedicated to Franklin Rosemont. But I’m not sure it’s even a poem, let alone a “good” poem; more an attempt to talk telepathically with someone who is officially not here, but who to all reasonable intents and purposes cannot not be here. @@ -34,7 +35,7 @@ The whole idea was conceived in the midst of the Reagan era and the “Moral Maj One of Rosemont’s main contributions to Surrealist theory has been the central emphasis he has given to the fight against Miserabilism. In his great study of Andre Breton he coined a beautiful challenge to the world: “Surrealism or Miserabilism!” Lord Buckley would have understood and approved. -<h4>Books and Dreams</h4> +*** Books and Dreams In writing the poem (’So Long Franklin’) I managed to keep a two-way connection going in my mind by re-reading Franklin’s book, An Open Entrance to the Shut Palace of Wrong Numbers. It is the autobiography of his obsession with the phenomenon of wrong numbers, and a tour de force of analysis of the problem from a personal vantage point that by comparison makes the peculiar subject of “quantum tunneling’ seem as fascinating as a tuna fish sandwich. @@ -54,7 +55,7 @@ Delighted to try out what should have been, to my unsuspecting mind, a fairly mo Anyhow, what it boils down to is: we had a good laugh over the inability of two head-stretching surrealists to decipher in any way the most generic category or genre of a strange book randomly collected by one of the world’s most creatively eclectic bibliophiles, Franklin Rosemont. -<h4>Brawls...and Dreams</h4> +*** Brawls...and Dreams If books were Franklin’s heritage, by way of his family’s involvement in the printers’ trade and the printers’ union, a penchant for radical activism came by the same route. @@ -62,7 +63,7 @@ His favorite quotation came from the old Wobbly humorist T-Bone Slim: “Whereve From the early sixties on, there were few significant demonstrations, strikes or street actions in Chicago that did not see the presence of Franklin and Penelope Rosemont arm in arm with assorted other surrealists. It could be anti-racist demonstrations, anti-Vietnam-War marches, picket lines, opportunities to employ the favorite tactic of cultural scandal, “the Surrealists” would be there. -When the Democratic Convention came to Chicago in August 1968 the Surrealists and their allies were naturally out in force among the demonstrators. At the time Penelope was very active with the national office of the SDS. That October the Surrealists conducted something of a counterattack against the Chicago establishment when they opened Gallery Bugs Bunny, which waged “Cultural Guerrilla Warfare” to provoke countless onlookers and a raft of uncomprehending critics. All this is described in Penelope’s wonderful memoir of the sixties, Dreams and Everyday Life. As chance would have it, I was present only on the occasion of a few mild-mannered leafletings, but fellow surrealists spoke in impressive tones of the sight of Franklin “in action”. I still relive from time to time the joyful experience of receiving a postcard detailing the brawl at a coffeehouse where the surrealists had thrust a pie in the face of Robert Bly, bringing on the police after a tussle with the guru of manliness’s puny defenders. +When the Democratic Convention came to Chicago in August 1968 the Surrealists and their allies were naturally out in force among the demonstrators. At the time Penelope was very active with the national office of the SDS. That October the Surrealists conducted something of a counterattack against the Chicago establishment when they opened Gallery Bugs Bunny, which waged “Cultural Guerrilla Warfare” to provoke countless onlookers and a raft of uncomprehending critics. All this is described in Penelope’s wonderful memoir of the sixties, Dreams and Everyday Life. As chance would have it, I was present only on the occasion of a few mild-mannered leafletings, but fellow surrealists spoke in impressive tones of the sight of Franklin “in action”. I still relive from time to time the joyful experience of receiving a postcard detailing the brawl at a coffeehouse where the surrealists had thrust a pie in the face of Robert Bly, bringing on the police after a tussle with the guru of manliness’s puny defenders. In the seventies, the Chicago area strain of the American Nazi virus oozed out, in places like Skokie, Illinois, in response to the media’s hyping of a “white backlash’. They were met by the voices and, on one or two occasions, the fists of the Workers Defense group, comprised by the Chicago surrealists and others. In all accounts that I saw, the Nazis’ attempted rallies were broken up and their cronies bested in a manner recalling the street-fighting French surrealists of the 1930s who struggled with the fascists of that era. @@ -96,7 +97,7 @@ What he was against he summed up many times in the contemptuous phrase “capita His positive devotion to the wonders that lie beyond all that is what his critics never appreciated. All this is seldom said better than in the words of the excellent aphorist Antonio Porchia: “They will say that you are on the wrong road, if it is your own.” -<h4>Art as art was meant to be, or not</h4> +*** Art as art was meant to be, or not Rounding out the impression of Franklin I’ve given thus far requires a look at his art. @@ -129,7 +130,7 @@ There are so many people who could be mentioned, that should be, to do them all Here’s to her Century, and that of all the others like her. Here’s to Carlos Cortez, Ted Joans, Philip Lamantia, who also saw the start of a struggling new millennium and suddenly left it to the rest of us. -<h4>Haymarket Forever!</h4> +*** Haymarket Forever! The year 1986 was very important to Franklin Rosemont. It was the centenary of the Haymarket affair, a most notable event in the history of U.S. labor struggles, which baptized in blood the movement for the eight-hour workday and gave birth to the international working class traditions of May Day. @@ -149,7 +150,7 @@ Franklin’s father, Henry Rosemont, had been a militant and influential member I felt it was a major historic tragedy that Albert Parsons had to be hanged, instead of leading the United States into the splendid age of a generous socialism as the Nineteenth Century ended, thus helping to obviate for the world the coming horrors of the Twentieth. -<h4>The future is in the past is in us</h4> +*** The future is in the past is in us In my mind’s eye, when I picture Franklin, I see him in one of several familiar postures or activities; striding along a neighborhood street as a group of seldom less than four or five (often more) head for some place to meet or eat or view art or hand out leaflets, that’s one. @@ -187,4 +188,3 @@ I still more than agree. All of it was, and is, remarkable. — April 22-May 26, 2009 - |