Author: David Schwarm
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CASE 33: Sanshô’s "Golden Scales"
Sanshô asked Seppô, “When a fish with golden scales has passed through the net, what should it get for food?” Seppô said, “I will tell you when you have passed through the net.” Sanshô said, “A great Zen master with 1500 disciples doesn’t know how to speak.” Seppô said, “The old monk is just too…
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Strange Flesh by William Logan
William Logan won the National Book Circle award for Criticism for The Undiscovered Country: Poetry in the Age of Tin which is a horrible book full of faint praise. I love reading poetry and really try to be positive in my reviews, since I have some sense of how hard it is to write anything…
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Watchman
I went and saw Watchmen at the Spectrum at 3:30 AM. I went alone. The theater was packed. Here are my run time notes: Photo had Nixon, not Ford. Future looks Darker, and the Past–even the grimmy parts–looks brighter. Stereo in bedroom with records & cd’s “I just had the locks installed”“I did not know…
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Inner Paths to Outer Space
Proving once again that you CAN judge a book by its cover, this collection of essays is exactly what you would expect. I picked it up to get in the mood for Phish returning to the Road, and was not disappointed by a lot of what I read–the stuff by Rick Strassman is suitably academic,…
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Human Dark With Sugar by Brenda Shaughnessy
This is yet another fantastic book of poems that I have picked up at the Newport Beach Public Library. I am on an extreme run of success! I really liked the use of language on this one–all sorts of strange enjambment and other lyrical twists and turns which made these fairly confessional sounding works very…
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CASE 32: Kyôzan’s Mind and Objective World
Kyôzan asked a monk, “Where do you come from?” The monk said, “I am from Yû Province” Kyôzan said, “Do you think of that place?” The monk said, “I always do.” Kyôzan said, “That which thinks is the mind. That which is thought about is the objective world. Within that are mountains, rivers and the…
David Given Schwarm 