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ahandleforderek.bsky.social
@ahandleforderek.bsky.social
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ahandleforderek.bsky.social
A marble bust by Rodin of Victor Hugo carved in a roughed out way to pay homage simultaneously to Hugo and Michelangelo behind a floral arrangement created for the Bouquet of Arts Exhibition Day at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor synthesizing two artists work into one display.
Victor Hugo (1917) by Auguste Rodin. Marble bust of Victor Hugo, poet and novelist, intentionally roughed out aesthetic meaning the bust is not fully carved out of the stone, in background. Six foot tall breaking wave white floral arrangement in foreground.
October 25, 2025 at 5:55 AM
ahandleforderek.bsky.social
A unique poem from the special exhibit on Lawrence Ferlinghetti currently on display at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor.

Out of Chaos
Surges Forth
The Human
Cover page, a poem in three lithographs. Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Out of Chaos Surges Forth The Human
August 13, 2025 at 12:32 AM
ahandleforderek.bsky.social
“looking like a living question mark into the great gramophone of puzzling existence”

Dog - Lawrence Ferlinghetti.
The dog trots freely in the street and sees reality and the things he sees are bigger than himself and the things he sees are his reality Drunks in doorways Moons on trees The dog trots freely thru the street and the things he sees are smaller than himself Fish on newsprint Ants in holes Chickens in Chinatown windows their heads a block away The dog trots freely in the street and the things he smells smell something like himself The dog trots freely in the street past puddles and babies cats and cigars poolrooms and policemen He doesn’t hate cops He merely has no use for them and he goes past them and past the dead cows hung up whole in front of the San Francisco Meat Market He would rather eat a tender cow than a tough policeman though either might do And he goes past the Romeo Ravioli Factory and past Coit’s Tower and past Congressman Doyle He’s afraid of Coit’s Tower but he’s not afraid of Congressman Doyle although what he hears is very discouraging very depressing very absurd to a sad young dog like himself to a serious dog like himself But he has his own free world to live in His own fleas to eat He will not be muzzled Congressman Doyle is just another fire hydrant to him The dog trots freely in the street and has his own dog’s life to live and to think about and to reflect upon touching and tasting and testing everything investigating everything without benefit of perjury a real realist with a real tale to tell and a real tail to tell it with a real live barking democratic dog engaged in real free enterprise with something to say about ontology something to say about reality and how to see it and how to hear it with his head cocked sideways at streetcorners as if he is just about to have his picture taken for Victor Records listening for His Master’s Voice and looking like a living questionmark into the great gramaphone of puzzling existence with its wondrous hollow horn which always seems just about to spout forth some Victorious answer to everything
August 6, 2025 at 4:00 PM
ahandleforderek.bsky.social
quotation marks around the word American in the phrase "free born American," suggested an inclusive vision of American identity that was open to anyone who embraced freedom, regardless of race, ethnicity, or place of birth. In this vision immigrants, whether they had naturalized, were Americans too
Cover of biography of Elizabeth Gurley Flynn Rebel Girl, Democracy, and Revolution Since the union's founding in 1905, radicals in the IWW had crafted their own phrases, symbols, and historical lineages to separate capitalism from democracy and express their program of revolutionary unionism as a quintessentially American endeavor. In the call for recruits to the Missoula free speech fight, quotation marks around the word American in the phrase "free born American," suggested an inclusive vision of American identity that was open to anyone who embraced freedom, regardless of race, ethnicity, or place of birth. In this vision immigrants, whether they had naturalized, were Americans too. By implication, tyrannical, oppressive police, who had made a crime of speaking in the street, were for- eign and un-American. This rhetorical tactic would become increasingly important in radical campaigns for free speech.
July 31, 2025 at 4:14 PM
ahandleforderek.bsky.social
This is a poem by Nasser Rabah from his collection published By City Lights Booksellers, Gaza: The Poem Said It’s Piece.

Sharing to share the voice.

Hoping the world can open the pathways to feed people and end this hunger.
HUNGER Maybe a tomcat passes by late at night, maybe an acacia meows under the rubble, and it isn't from cold the houses shiver, while hunger howls, it howls in the North. A day passes, and a day and a night, and the neighbors' son doesn't wake up, a day passes, and a day and a night, and dust continues sleeping on the clotheslines. But where did the shell take my neighbors? And I'd be lying when I say: friends, it's alright. Every death is bearable, every thing is bearable, every absence passes, except the hunger of my friends in the North. March 18, 2024
July 28, 2025 at 7:15 PM
ahandleforderek.bsky.social
Being bold and recommending after only one chapter because I have faith the rest will be as good. Intro, and a poem from the first chapter written by Kimberly Blaeser (chapter and poem)
Cover of Indigenous Poetics Introduction I believe every poem is ritual: there is a naming, a beginning, a knot or question, then possibly revelation, and then closure, which can be opening, setting the reader, speaker, or singer out and back on a journey. I can hear the tribal speaker in his voice, in whatever mode of performance. And when I trust my voice to go where it needs to be, to find home, it returns to where it belongs, back to the source of its longing. -Joy Harjo, Poet Warrior As poets ourselves, our curiosity is piqued by seeking why Native American writers are drawn to, take up, and embrace the genre of poetry specifically. Though style and form are important to the study of poetry, literary analysis is not what we are interested in performing in this book. What intrigues us is how the creative process, as a practice, has its own capacities, through the "ritual" of creation, to name the "knot or question," and to travel toward "revelation, and then closure, which can be opening." Like Harjo, we trust our voices and the voices of our contributors. We have journeyed with them, and together we are expressing home, in a way our poetic homes, where we see ourselves belonging. What does poetic process uniquely allow us to do? And does our poetic practice express its own type of Indigenous hermeneutics? We acknowledge, first, that the field of Native American poetry is far too much for any one book to take on. The sheer volume of poetry written by American Indians, First Nations, Native American, and Indigenous writers across the Americas is immense. Words join breath-marks, fall into silence. Language stutters and searches. Poems build by an inquiry etched in text, in form, in absences.11 How delicate- dark material of dream. What we become in space: An etch- ing. Stilled vector- of holy. two dimensions A cut-out hunger. Sweet shadow-filled how we bargain against lurid possession. trace- Silhouette our edges in L E T T E R S
July 15, 2025 at 10:24 PM
ahandleforderek.bsky.social
I happen to have some knowledge of Bison because they are fascinating. From American Buffalo, Steven Rinella.

Majestic creatures.
Several characteristics, beyond sheer size, distinguish the appearances of male and female buffalo. The base of a cow's horn, where it comes out of her head, is about the size of her eye socket; a bull's horn has a much greater circumference than his eye socket. Another thing is the penis sheath that extends downward at a forward angle from the bull's belly. The penis hangs in the bottom of the sheath like a roll of quarters in a Ziploc bag. The tip of the sheath is adorned with a long tuft of hair, which probably protects the tip of the bull's penis from freezing temperatures. The tufts are usually clumped into a single strand from frequent wettings by urine. When erect, the reddish pink penis extends out of the sheath like what happens when you turn the base of a lipstick tube. During their peak breeding season, usually a span of two weeks in midsummer, they engage in vicious bouts of head-butting and pushing contests as they compete to breed with as many females as possible. In any given day during breeding season, there will be scores of fights among a herd, and 5-6 percent of the bulls will die each year from battle wounds sustained from horn goring. One in three mature bulls can expect to have at least one rib broken in fights during its lifetime. When a male buffalo ejaculates during intercourse, his abdominal muscles flex so violently that his back hooves lift off the ground and the entirety of his two thousand pounds comes to rest on the haunches of the one-thousand-pound female. Females carry their fetuses for approximately 285 days and give birth from mid-April to May. The calves are bright reddish tan.
July 13, 2025 at 6:16 PM
ahandleforderek.bsky.social
But no man attempted to fight a Bison the way they do cattle. Once a fellow had a Bison fight four bulls. One time was enough. It was such a mismatch they figured no need to repeat it.
Yellowstone Bison Warning. Man being throw over bison image.
July 13, 2025 at 6:14 PM
ahandleforderek.bsky.social
I keep thinking back to:

“Any inventory selects what to leave out, if only the way light touches things differently. Any image inventories the objects that can be mentioned, or read.”

I ponder this concept often. From a favorite book, Infinity Of Lists, Umberto Eco.
Alexander fights a pack of Unicorns Plate. Cabala: Mirror of Art and Nature, in Alchymia 1615
July 13, 2025 at 3:18 AM
ahandleforderek.bsky.social
Feeling grateful I took the recommendation of @alinaetc.bsky.social on this absolutely fantastic book. It has been a joy to read.
The Book How to Research Like a Dog with a Snoopy miniature on it to hold down the cover. Research is an impossible profession, avoided by knowing adults and unknown to carefree children: it can only be undertaken by a dog who, forsaking childish pleasures for a serious quest, also turns away from the knowledge and imperatives of the adult world to become more childish than the child. This might even be considered the formula for happiness in Kafka. Contrary to the romantic ideal, happiness consists not in recapturing or returning to youth, an uncorrupted state of innocence and playfulness, but in a demonic childishness unbearable to children. In a somewhat melancholic vein, the dog wonders if this joy will come to him later, after a lifetime of theoretical toil, to brighten his twilight years. But, following the logic of the Kafkian already, one can ask whether this longed-for fulfillment is not already present, pressing the investigations staggeringly for- ward, whether the dog's melancholy science is not also a gay science, to use the term that Nietzsche borrowed from the medieval troubadours, la gaya scienza. If Kafka's humor is a screwball tragedy, Kafka's new science cultivates a joyful despair.
July 12, 2025 at 1:28 AM
ahandleforderek.bsky.social
A Ravi character played by Mel Brooks with a small device for circumcisions.
July 7, 2025 at 9:36 PM
ahandleforderek.bsky.social
City Lights Booksellers, San Francisco.
The Poetry room of City Lights Booksellers. Full bookshelf’s on both sides of room. Table in middle with books stacked on top. Sign that says Poetry Room!
June 27, 2025 at 5:56 AM
ahandleforderek.bsky.social
For Summer Solstice, two poems from the collection, Divine Blue Light (for John Coltrane) by Will Alexander.
A Blaze of Riddles Because the Sun exudes a blaze of riddles there exists a haze of optimal osmosis of protracted helium that bends via its forceless gruel via its maniacal translocation to alien ravines to other planes & possibilities anterior to the sense of chronicle as uninhabited or pure activity On Philosophical Audition As pluperfect poltergeist it retains its aural glistening a grammar alive honed by ophthalmological combining astonishing formation occurs that extends throughout living neural registration via inner audition sired by ethereal humming
June 20, 2025 at 4:08 PM
ahandleforderek.bsky.social
The answer is yes. Also, this is apparently round one of a tournament for immortality.
June 11, 2025 at 3:10 PM
ahandleforderek.bsky.social
If I combine last two poetry books I read into a side by side photo, including the fine work by @alinaetc.bsky.social, but use the original Spanish version of the other for its cover art, I can make quite the monumental inside joke for people that know about the inside joke of that shadow.
Two books side by side: El mono gramatico by Octavio Paz and My Heresies by Alina Stefanescu.
June 10, 2025 at 9:12 PM