June 2026

June 22, 2026: “Law cannot be imposed on him who is master of the law.” We have here one of the homelier of home truths. As spoken by Benvenuto Cellini with respect to the teen grand duke Cosimo de’ Medici whom the Florentine senate (1537) thought to keep under thumb, and could not. “Those men of Florence have set a young man on a mettlesome horse; next they have buckled spurs upon his heels, and put the bridle freely in his hands, and turned him out upon a magnificent field, full of flowers and fruits and all delightful things; next they have bidden him not to cross certain indicated limits: now tell me, you, who there is that can hold him back….?” &c. Hard to imagine such finely turned sarcasm issuing forth from the American senate regarding a certain hombre who was anything but forever young in 2016, and is especially not youthful in the present moment. And now from Jeremiah 13:27: “When shall it once be” with respect to an end on the adulteries, the neighings, the lewdness of the whoredoms, the abominations on the hills of the fields? Hard to imagine such a summation bubbling out of the American people’s House or The House of the Fly, for that matter (except as far-right family values bilge spewed by Mr and Ms Weird Sex Scandal). Any similarity between Hellboy and the aforementioned Cellini (author of his own autobiography, one not ghostwritten back in the glory days of the Renaissance) is negligible. Cellini, too, may have been spawn of the devil, he all braggadocio in his attempt to stand next to the Divine. Hellboy, however, in my limited understanding of him with his sawed-off horns, seems to be reasonably modest, fighting evil no big deal, “mind if I smoke my Cuban Hoya”?

Postscript I: On this day in 1986, Diego Maradona, Argentine football hero, scored his controversial "Hand of God" goal against England in the FIFA World Cup quarter-finals. Also, on this day in a yesteryear, there was some armistice treaty that Nazi Germany forced France to sign in revenge for a prior humiliation…. Speaking of which, same day, different year, Hitler unleashed the greatest military invasion ever in human history, the Soviet Union his objective – its wheat and oil, for starters. Which effort blew up in his face. Carpenter may or may not hold with notions of “poetic justice”, but he is all quickdraw on the uptake prose, bury the motherf—kers in declarative full-stops. Or periods. One after the other. No time-outs.

Postscript II: Lunar in passing, all tra l'altro: … …. ‘We went to the fairly local Holland Park Opera Company to see the above or, as you might have it, “The Girl of the Golden West” and it was an absolute joy. There is a particular pleasure to be had when a small company does something great. They have been going for thirty years on a shoestring, no grant aid whatsoever, and yet the quality of the singing rivals that of bigger companies. It is the oddest of Puccini's operas, which I used to dismiss once as an aberration, but it has steadily grown on me. There’s nothing like a bunch of cowboys singing in Italian a lament for the home they left (Cornwall!). The papers are full of David Hockney's death who could be a very good painter although I think some of it [the work] is vacuous. The hottest ticket in town, though, is the removal of T.R.U.M.P from the Kennedy Centre.’ … …. Indeed. But are we so certain that the signage has undergone damnatio memoriae, erasure, that is? A tarp obscures the view, hellish discontent in the land… Well, Lunar cites: … …. ‘”Dear Doctor, won't you help me, I'm damaged, / There's a pain where once there was a heart." Rolling Stones.’ … …. And well, Lunar continues: … ….’Yesterday I put on a respectable face, hell, I even wore a tie, for A's event. There was a good keynote speech by Sir Michael Marmot, a no-nonsense assault on the greed of our times and how the billions made by billionaires out of the Covid crisis could have solved so many of the world's problems at the time. Elon Musk and Trump were in his sights whereas a speech by a Latino doctor from the USA made no mention whatsoever of the problems there, the idiocy of RFK, etc, but then if she said anything she might have been given the heave-ho when she got back home. Still, I would have thought a bit of subtlety was called for. There was wine afterwards but not enough canapés for my liking.’ … …. The word mystical has a source in the Greek word mystikos. And so, never mind the Greek, Lunar reprised Jeremiah, saying this: … … ‘"When shall it once be" is an archaic way of saying "When will it ever happen?" [ ] I can't help but see something far deeper, a kind of mystical infolding of time and language. The more I contemplate it [the question], the more mysterious it becomes. Again: when shall it once be?’ … …. With respect to what? The regime coming-a-cropper? The removal of nukes from the five-dimensional checkers board? Israel busting the balls of the international order (which, in any case, is but a ghost of itself, and it is as if it has been a mirage all along)?

Postscript III: Cornelius W Drake of Champaign-Urbana, honk if you, too, figure that the mess that is the Lincoln reflecting pool is the perfect metaphor for the regime, watch out for flying scum: … …. ‘My bet remains, he’ll be dead at 81.’

Postscript IV: Talking Avocado: … …. ‘I’m hopping on a ferry, heading into the city, loins girded, fact-finding mission engaged, but on the lookout for contaminants as might compromise my well-being, as in artsy-fartsy interviewees, as in getting blindsided in Gastown – used syringes with ravers attached. I’ll speak with you later. Percival? A neighbour will feed him.’

Postscript V: Rutilius: … …. ‘As translated by the inestimable James Sutherland-Smith, I present the following lines from a poem of a “minor” Slovak poet – Elena Kamenicka, 1917-1953. She committed suicide in February of that year just as Stalinism was about to end after the death of Big Daddy. The lines:

A drunken waiting has slid down from the sky.
Half the world in the cathouse. Bigwigs in the bars.
The girls have come to stand on the corners.
I’ll go and see for myself today.

Lines that one might append to the prop wash of any regime, say I, having at a ruská zmrzlina, ice cream to you, no other quotes pending, not even a mouse….’

Postscript VI: Sissy Gadzilla: … …. ‘Still abroad. Still in the Eastern Townships. I ate the perogies I would’ve saved you, but I have poor plate discipline. (As a Polish cousin pointed out, that’s a baseball pun. But if I have to explain how so, we’re lost…) Otherwise, an overwhelming sense of rubber room lips, the gibbering in my head as when I accidently catch a news item and the whole entire enchilada of a world in toto is a Bonkers-arama, and you must have a ticket to ride or else. Off to the dump on account of the fact that packrat Polish cousin has years of accumulated ballast to offload. I’ll see you when I see you. That is, I’ll write you when I write you, even if hell has frozen over by then and enough people notice, so much so, enough already with Gaza and Lebanon and elsewhere.

Postscript VII: Trail Mix: … …. ‘Lean pickings, I’m afraid. Haven’t even seen a flick worth commenting on. Sick-to-death-of-you-know-what-and-Whom. YessirreeRobert. Nary a witticism in sight, none even for a thundery day, though I’d say that T is snug in his belfry, swiping at bats and scarfing on the snacks. Perhaps in his thoughts (such as they are) the Stalins, the Hitlers, the Maos, the Attilas are all Magoos with eyepatches and kind intentions. I mean I wonder if the man has even read a comic book?’

June 12-13, 2026: My first in-my-head quarrel with a noted intellectual came at Theodore Adorno’s expense. He more or less said there could be no poetry after Auschwitz. Poetry did not deserve to be written in the wake of such horrors. I said – to an in-house punching bag: “Seeing as it’s a brutal and brutalized world forever and a day, and especially because Auschwitz ‘went down’, all the more reason to write ‘verse’ – in the best sense of that word.”

Well, I was twenty-something, naïve no doubt. Had not been around the block often enough. But it was getting clearer that, if you said (or wrote) the right-sounding stuff, you would likely be on the money and so, permitted, eligible for the guest list. Hell, you might even get published, and that was an end on it. Eventually, I came to understand that Herr Adorno had not meant “no poetry”. But poetry as would perpetuate cultures bent on genocide and the more pernicious forms of capitalism ought to be discouraged, if not face a firing squad at dawn. Questions then seemed to arise of their own accord. What culture, if gotten in some way barking mad at the extremes, has resisted the temptation to ethnically cleanse? Who cheerfully walks away from maximum profits? And when it comes to looking for perps to blame as the bad consequences of evil policies kick in, who rates casting the first stone? Who is innocent, if anybody? Why is poetry good, bad or indifferent, the first candidate to be packed off to the camps? “Why not Kissinger?” so I wrote in some poem or other of my devising.

I read and otherwise absorb post after post, article after article, podcast after podcast on a daily basis (throw in the odd book) such as treat with corruption and other “business-as-usual” practices in high places and low ones. The term “overseas investors” seems to cut to the chase, as much so as “Epstein” whodunits. It is a science, is it not, spending money to make money? Mercenary financiers have got it down pat, all the whys, wherefores, howsis, whatsis, and whensies and loop the loops, and Trump, of course, has got his green eyeshade on, stacking his chips, collecting his cut. (Some historians have claimed that “financial shenanigans” brought the Roman empire trickling or crashing down. The reality may have been otherwise, but it is the thought that counts.) It is being asked: what of the past shabby decade will persist into the future when the man no longer has a catwalk to commandeer and lurch about on? Will we catch a breather from Truth Socials and the trade in human organs? Will a new round of obscenities set terms?

In post-Nazi Germany a batch of thinkers called the “forty-fivers” took on such idle questions. They offered answers, Adorno being one of them – the “intellectual and political generation born in Germany roughly between 1920 and 1932.” They came into their own just after World War II. What was the legacy of the Nazi regime? What, on a Richter Scale of Evil, was its magnitude? What ought the political foundations of [a new] West Germany be? The pendulum seemed to favour them in their efforts for a while. Now that pendulum seems to have reversed course, though in my metaphor-ridden universe, the pendulum has swung clean off its pivot.

Often enough, when I plow through the news sites, in all innocence hoping to make sense of things, expectations set at a low bar, I now and then catch flashes of Byzantine era scent-heavy imperial courts – the intrigue and political mayhem over the centuries. Sex scandals add savour. And oh: we’re doomed. Doomed. (As spoken by the Black Queen of Sogo. And it seemed a reasonable assumption on her part.) It is what I heard quite by chance, having decided to give a once infamous flick a few minutes of my time, Barbarella (1968, a sci-fi imaginarist triumph in which the queen was a contender for lead villain.) To which the critical responses have been all over the map, including geographical regions I never knew existed. But mostly awfully cheesy, Jane Fonda’s deft-handling of the cheese notwithstanding, and sometimes the Fellini-esque atmospherics. MAGA-World would fit ever so neatly within that world. FOOLS! LIARS! IDIOTS! Lots of death rays, conspiracies. An angel has no memory, so they must all be angels.” Perhaps. And yet, when liberals tell you your experience counts for shite, and then Trump tells you that your experience counts for shite, in your exasperation you are going to vote for some monstrosity who will tell you your experience is a precious resource, until, sooner rather than later, he or she will tell you your experience counts for shite. Get my drift? An image of poets holding vomit bags ensues. (See previous post). And someone responding: “Well, look at you, trying to foment a new elitism. Would they be sporting wings and a halo or two?” Like I said: poets (some at any rate) holding vomit bags…

Postscript I: This day in history seems to have been a busy one, including the fact that the first perfect game in MLB history was tossed, a 1-0 win over the Cleveland Blues at the Agricultural County Fair Grounds by the Worcester Ruby Legs, the year 1880, Carpenter, alas, gone 0-3…

Postscript II: Lunar on the uptick: … …. ‘Boy, if you think poetry events are ill-attended, try modern music events. What, ten people maybe? It is pretty thankless being anything these days. You'd think the odds in a city of 10 million might be better but there you have it, 10 people. … …. [And] there are parallels between the publishing of poetry and the publishing of new music in that it is, in both cases, usually self-financed. Music is, of course, much more expensive. When you think of hiring a whole orchestra, well, you can imagine. Also the performance venues are close to non-existent. So yes, a thankless business all round.’ … …. What, is the man trying to dispirit me? Good God, he is. Lunar aghast: … …. ‘If you had earlier sent me an email about gestating/non-gestating parents [in lieu of “mother” and “father”] I didn't get it. I thought it was a joke, but I see it was introduced by NY Dems, which in a way invites one to vote Republican. Who are these [ ] creeps? Where do they come from?’ … …. Unsure. I do not suppose they and MAGA creeps share the same woodwork and coming out music. … …. Lunar on horseplay or Iran: … …. ‘"You ride the horse you saddled," says Iran's top negotiator to Trump, and dadgummit all, that's almost a poem. Going to lunch with H.’

Postscript III: Cornelius W Drake of Champaign-Urbana, honk if “zero ad spend” intersects your glide path. Trump is likely in the details: … …. ‘Maga hasn't heard of this, but about 400 years ago humanity discovered Reason as an operating principle. Excepting a few obvious bumps in the road, daily life has progressed ever since, and in every category, from a vast reduction in poverty to improved health to far higher rates of literacy.’ … …. Literacy? Really? See footnote below. But we here salute your salute to Reason the Deity. Now, immortal question as per yourself: … …. ‘Does humanity still suck? … …. [In any case],"Data journalism" (Silver Bulletin) was the big thing for a while. It's helpful but of limited value in politics because, as in economics, irrationality is a huge factor. Intuition is also limited because it's subjective. At least there's the pure reason of Occam's razor, which largely explains Trump: A lot of voters just aren't very bright, which feeds irrationality. And hey, there's nothing wrong with intellectuals — I wouldn't call it bullying — taking down others with reason when those others, like Trumpers, are being unreasonable.’ … …. Agreed. But what I had in mind was lib on lib, not libs and MAGA come to blows. So then, as per you, sir, an immortal vent: … …. ‘Fuck their "feelings." Their irrationality doesn't care about out ours.’ … …. Which seems to prompt an immortal aside to your commentary: … …. ‘A line I just ran across: “What’s wrong with certain people is that they expect God to buy his clothes in the same store they do” – [and there it is]: reason and prose and poetry combined.’ … …. Which, in turn, brings about the Immortal Shrug: … …. ‘Have you read the 1950s' Dwight Macdonald, C. Wright Mills, David Reisman and other public intellectuals who bemoaned the state of the American mind and its national culture? And the 1930s' Theodor Adorno, Edmund Wilson and Allen Tate? I know you've read Henry Adams' fin de siècle criticisms. I love them all, every one of them was right, and here we are. What, really, has changed?’ … …. Dunno. El Niño?

Postscript IV: Talking Avocado: … …. ‘Thanks. Percival is doing better. Might feed him some popcorn. A carrot or two. But definitely not Pynchon.’ … …. Alright then. Steady as she goes.

Postscript V: Rutilius: … …. ‘Thank you. The Agamemnon poem is different from my usual style as my Serbian translator observed, which is why she decided to translate it. It was published in a Serbian journal, Sveske, in March. I hope this isn't a snarky way of saying, as the horrible MS would when I criticised his poems, it's in print, So There! I tried to experiment with putting the remote past side by side with a walk from Obrancie mier (Defence of Peace) street lined with chestnuts into the copper cherry-lined Gorkeho next to my own street, lined with my own self-regard.’

Postscript VI: Sissy Gadzilla: … …. ‘I’m abroad – in the Eastern Townships. I’ll save you a perogi.’ … …. Much obliged.

Postscript VII: Trail Mix: … …. ‘You brought it up; I didn’t. When I first saw it in another lifetime, I thought it (Barbarella) atrocious trash. I’ve since come off a bit from my Puritan high horse, but even so, save for a few flashes of humour to do with sex, it’s not going to make Plato happy or even Aristotle, let alone Wittgenstein, the Meaning of Life once again sabotaged by Arts and Entertainment, as in “Bored of the Rings”. Get my meaning? Summer out. Think I’ll take in a park bench and watch the grass dry.’

Footnote: “What I am seeing in my classroom is no longer a hunch,” Jagt writes. “There is a measurable, generational collapse in sustained reading and writing, and the academy is responding to it with improvisation and exhaustion rather than the structural overhaul it requires.” From Charlie Sykes’ “To The Contrary” Substack, June 12, 2026.

June 7-9, 2026: “When the poor give to the rich, the devil laughs.” Words from Benvenuti Cellini’s autobiography (written between the years 1558 and 1566). If you have not heard the devil laugh in a while, he has plenty of reason now to resort to chuckles, though it cannot be said that the poor are giving voluntarily. Let us say the rich are doing it on their behalf. Sleazy kazillionaires you know and love hand one another alms and benefices and humongous piles of pork that they, in the wake of executive orders, suction up from said poor. And with hugs and kisses. And all the time.

I read Cellini’s autobiography in my 20s. I have forgotten how often he patted himself on the back for his greatness. Puts me in mind of… need I complete the sentence? Just that Cellini could often enough redeem his words with genuine artistic accomplishment. 1527, and he was helping to defend the Castel Sant’Angelo (once Hadrian’s mausoleum) from mutinous Spanish and German and a few Italian troops during their sacking of Rome. When one of his cannonballs cut a man in two, however picturesque Cellini’s mother tongue, what he thought was the equivalent of one of our speech bubbles: “Wow, that was neat.”

So yes, it is something of a coincidence, reading the very words that a braggart wrote with respect to his life, and to hear on a daily basis how Trump sums up the Trumpian. The like as has never been seen before. Hoo ah. And all the bump and grind. And from an impeccable source, with respect to a different subject, different words: “Poets of our age have to avoid self-pity - very difficult even if you keep it inside and avoid grizzling on the shoulders of other people who know that if they rub your back it's going to get messy.” (Thanks for that to one who is to poetry what Zorro was to California.) Somehow these words have bearing on the political situation in a lot of nation-states, as people either wonder whether Trump (or any jefe) has a skeletal frame or is purely oligarchic cartilage, never mind empathy. What will remain when he shuffles off this mortal coil, as shuffle he will? There will be choruses calling for “re” words: reform, regroup, reconstitute. But all I can see for the moment is an overriding cabal of those who have decided that, in the interests of their own hard-porn fortunes, the rest of us are expendable, poets left holding the vomit bags.

Postscript I: If you were born on this day, you are likely silver-tongued. Carpenter, say what? Also, on this day in 1494, a treaty allowed Spain and Portugal to divide the New World between them, but does anyone care on World Caring Day? The Mayans seem to have been more urban than not. There were a lot of Mayans running about in the New World once upon a time. In their millions. It appears that other factors besides climate change did them in. We use climate change in the same sense (as per Cavafy’s poem about the barbarians at the gates) as an excuse for fatalism.

Postscript II: Lunar on the uptake: … …. ‘I can barely contain my rage at Hegseth's D-Day speech, the dirty little crawler, why the hell wasn't he hounded out of there? I could not imagine a bigger misuse of an event attended by a tiny handful of veterans still alive. D-Day was B's father's birthday. He never spoke about what he saw or experienced that day on the beaches. Hegseth would never in a million years comprehend this. Filthy scum. As for [poetry magazines], I just don't know what the criteria are anymore although I think it probably has a lot to do with sexual orientation and age. You are not old enough to be rediscovered. 90 is the minimum age. I have also read somewhere that St Francis of Assisi was an utter bore. I don't think it is at all possible to describe Kierkegaard as one but with respect to his relationship with, and separation from, Regine, it is tempting to describe him as an utter prat. … …. The best translation of Cellini is, so I believe, the one by John Addington Symonds. Why the book was so important to R is that Cellini's description of being in the oubliette sustained him through his confinement in the insane asylum. Braggadocio, it comes as a constant surprise that it is not an Italian but English word. Can braggadocio be ever considered a form of grace? Maybe, just maybe. Yes, the tide is turning against Trump but will it big enough to sweep away all the attendant scum? I see Musk is trying to save England again. The world's first trillionaire as a moral compass? Spare me.’ … …. Consider it done.

Postscript III: Cornelius W Drake of Champaign-Urbana, honk if, 1, you come across the Iran Deal, that one that keeps getting out of its cage, and 2, if you spot a disembodied Trump sign looking to be signage on some unsuspecting edifice. An intervention now might preserve an item of heritage, in light of which: … …. ‘It's a shame you can't recognize quality programming, Sibum, as I do. Just coming on, 1958's Earth Vs. the Spider, whose "non sequiturs are sheer joy," observed one film reviewer. I'm pumped. I'm a little surprised there's not more speculation about - or predictions of - the Rs simply stealing the elections. That's what worries me. While painting this afternoon I listened to Ben Rhodes on Pod Save America. He's not a historian, but he made a decent argument for the view that the popular opinion of the-sky-is-falling-and-it's-never-fallen-like-this-before is ahistorical. He's right, of course. I recommend his talk.’ … …. Ahistorical you say? Meaning what? Death by a thousand cuts and podcasts? I can only subsume so many…

Postscript IV: Talking Avocado: … …. ‘I've been reading Colson Whitehead. Or rereading him. I started “The Nickel Boys” a few years ago and stopped after about fifty pages because I knew what was coming and it was too depressing. (It's about this black kid back in the forties or fifties who gets chucked into a reform school in Florida. The kid is not only innocent but a goody goody: academic, moral, hard working. Well, it doesn't take keen foresight to see what he's in for.) Percival got me reading Wordsworth, who I've struggled with. Not that I'm reading a whole lot of him, but venturing into the forest and admiring the leaves… What happens is, I blink and I see rogue robotic elements riffing on “The Planet of the Apes”. How about them there sky-high housing costs and strained healthcare systems? That’s British Columbia politics as seems a conversation everyone everywhere else is having, say, in all the Tristan da Cunhas and Hammersmiths. Speaking of Percival, might have to take him to the vet. I suspect something respiratory. The oldest poet I know is 103. He’s removed himself to one of the remoter islands. To get away from tourists, especially those spiritually inclined. Partly cloudy here on this old island. George Vancouver was the first white man on it, and then came the gold rush…. My novel has nothing to do with any of this, though I’ve been tempted.’

Postscript V: Rutilius: … …. ‘Working on translating an anthology of Slovak women's poetry from the beginning of the last century to the present. It’s likely I’m masochistic. Faber has just taken on some fool call Jade Cuttle whose article for Poetry Review has come with a new critical term "the global majority" to assess the worth of a poem. Well, we all know where pandering to the silent majority has got us. As Persius said (Roman satirist): “live with yourself and you’ll see how little furniture you have. Also, the hour flies.”’

Postscript VI: Sissy Gadzilla: … …. ‘A Polish cousin bought me a ticket to ride, and I’m headed for the Eastern Townships. “Rural serenity”. Will be leaving my French horn behind. And if I have to think about third-wave lickspittle-ism in You-Know-Where under the aegis of You-Know-Who over the course of the next few days, I’ll scream.’ … …. Relax. Understood.

Postscript VII: Trail Mix: … …. ‘So I indulged and watched Spider-Noir of the neo-noir variety of gong shows, watched it in gorgeous B&W and liked it, though it’s still what it is. If you watered down Proust with Pynchon, even so, the TV series would still fall short in the Having Complex Ideas Department, even if the good guys win even as they too are rank arseholes. Like I said, cinematography. What’s the word? Chiaroscuro. In other words, I’ll put my neck on the line and say that mannerism, up to a point, has always carried its weight. The date for the reopening of my favourite café keeps being pushed back. Things might be truly falling apart before we get to that halcyon moment. Should it actually occur, in thanks, I’ll offer up to Zeus a gummy and a rose. Did someone say Atlantis? And then faster than you can say five-six-pick-up-sticks, invoke moral hubris? That’s a lot of Triple XXX talking, if we’re talking the USA and a coast-to-coast tsunami of rolling H2O and voter rage…. Also, I watched (yet again) “In the Valley of Elah”, 2007. Not that it’s a masterpiece of cinema. T’ain’t. But it was the first flick to suggest to me that things in America had gotten beyond being merely f—ked up. The not-having-a-grand-time-here scowl on Tommy Lee Jone’s craggy face might serve to emblemize this particular epoch in time and in so much else. Seeing as he had to discover that his “good boy” soldier son was not so good as all that. There was Iraq. There was rot at the boy’s spiritual core. There was the boy’s overwhelming fear for the wherewithal of mind and soul. Evangelical pieties were not going to cut it. Nor chicken sandwiches.’

RECEIVED, and it has been a while since we last received anything: David Hackbridge Johnson’s Orchestral Music, Volume Four: Piano Concerto No. 3, OP. 455 “After Bruno Schulz”; Symphony No. 18 in F Sharp Minor, OP. 438, No. 3. Will let you know.

LETTING YOU KNOW: I expected to dislike Hackbridge Johnson’s Orchestral Music, Volume Four: Piano Concerto No. 3, OP. 455 “After Bruno Schulz”; Symphony No. 18 in F Sharp Minor, OP. 438, No. 3., because I have not had many happy experiences with contemporary orchestral music. I was proved wrong this time around. Excursions through more than just “mind” and “sound”. How about human nobility of spirit and the degradation of that? As for English landscapes, take on being inside of “something” even as one is outside and asking a million questions, getting the All-Knowing Silence in reply. Shut up and listen for a change. &c.