UNIT 01      COMPOSITION AS EXPLANATION

The only thing that is different from one time to another is what is seen and what is seen depends upon how everybody is doing everything. This makes the thing we are looking at very different and this makes what those who describe it make of it, it makes a composition, it confuses, it shows, it is, it looks, it likes it as it is, and this makes what is seen as it is seen. Nothing changes from generation to generation except the thing seen and that makes a composition.
Gertrude Stein (1925)

DATE

READING

WRITING

TERMS, ISSUES

Sept 7

--from "Composition as Explanation" by Gertrude Stein

--from Grapefruit by Yoko Ono

--from The Tapeworm Foundry by Darren Werschler Henry

Bring a favorite poem or memoir (full or selected). We'll use these for an in-class writing experiment.

Yoko Ono's idea of license, the setting up of a situation where others could complete a work of art instead of the artist, was a radical departure from the existing concept of the role of the artist. Jon Hendricks

--In class: writing a series of at least 10 instructions, recipes or propositions for a poem

form, content, labor, process, instructional writing, authorship

"what is seen, said & made" (JR)

what can an inherited or tradition form do?

what can it not do?

what happens when we invent or imagine or propose new forms and new procedures?

Sept 14

(SOMA)TIC POETRY

--  selected(Soma)tic poetry exercises by CA Conrad

-- (Soma)tic poetry website

--*listen to poems from (Soma)tic Midge via PennSound

One form I have been working with, and sharing with others is (Soma)tic Poetics, a form of process which aids in breaking free from the stale whimper garnered out of demanding routines of work and modern life. 
CA Conrad from MACRO (Soma)tics:  an introductory note toward freedom

I cannot stress enough how much this mechanistic world, as it becomes more and more efficient, resulting in ever increasing brutality, has required me to FIND MY BODY to FIND MY PLANET in order to find my poetry. -CA Conrad, introduction to Somatic Midge

--Write a (Soma)tic poetry exercise

--Perform your exercise including the note taking (if it is a part of your exercise), and the poem

--Include process note at top of assignment.

(Soma)tic poetry

Where is the self?

Where is the exercise?

Where is the form?

Are there rules?

Is there freedom?

UNIT 02             WHAT IS SEEN           
 

make it new  --Ezra Pound

form is never more than an extension of content --Robert Creeley

one perception must immediately and directly lead to a further perception –Edward Dahlberg

objectism is the getting rid of the lyrical interference of the individual as ego, of the “subject” and his soul
 –Charles Olson

Sept 21

Imagism, Vorticism Projective Verse:

-- "Vortext" by Ezra Pound (JR)

-- "Canto XXXIX" by Ezra Pound (JR)

-- "Projective Verse" by Charles Olson

The vorticist relies on this alone : on the primary pigment of his art, nothing else.  Every conception, every emotion presents itsenf to the vivid conscious in some primary form ­-Ezra Pound

And the line comes, (I swear it) from the breath, from the breathing of the man who writes, and thus is, it is here that, the daily work, the WORK, gets in, for only he, the man who writes, can declare, at every moment, the line its metric and its ending—where its breathing, shall come to, termination.  –Charles Olson

It is the advantage of the typewriter that, due to its rigidity and its space precisions, it can, for a poet, indicate exactly the breath, the pauses, the suspensions even of syllables, the juxtapositions even of parts of phrases, which he intends.  For the first time the poet has the stave and the bar a musician has had.  For the first time he can, without the convention of rime and meter, record the listening he has done to his own speech and by that one act indicate how he would want any reader, silently or otherwise, to voice his work.  –Charles Olson

-- thinking about what is seen, and how everybody is doing everything, compose a piece inspired by Pound and/or Olson.  

Imagism, Vorticism, materials, "projective verse," synchronicity, consciousness, composition by field, the object

how to “use the machine as a scoring to [ones] own composing, as a script to its vocalization”

if “not the eye but the ear was to be [verse’s] measurer.”

the ideogramatic: a poem that presents, rather than comments upon.

UNIT 03            OBJECTIVISM: thinking with the things as they exist

Writing, is the detail, not mirage, of seeing, of thinking with things as they exist, and of directing them along a line of melody. --George Oppen

“The end of masterpieces . . . the beginning of testimony” –Robert Duncan

Sept 28

NO CLASS

Oct 5

The shipwreck of the singular:

--from "Discrete Series" by George Oppen (JR)

-- "Of Being Numerous" by George Oppen **George Oppen PennSound page

-- "Mantis" by Zukofsky (JR 246)

-- "Mantis, An Interpretation" by Zukofsky (JR 248)
**Louis Zukofsky PennSound page

-- write a piece that works to think with the things as they exist. 

Sincerity, objectification

Oct 12, 12 pm: lunchtime reading/discussion with JEROME ROTHENBERG & AMISH TRIVEDI at Kelly Writers House

Oct 12, 8pm: Whenever We Feel Like It poetry reading: RUSTY MORRISON & ELIZABETH ROBINSON at Kelly Writers House
(read poems from The True Keeps Calm Biding Its Story by Rusty Morrison and Elizabeth Robinson's newest: "Three Novels")

Oct 12

Poet as explorer, mathematician, condenser, anthropologist or observer:
--from "Route" by George Oppen

-- "Poet's Work" by Lorine Niedecker

--from For Paul and Other Poems by Lorine Niedecker

--from "A-9" by Louis Zukofsky

--from Anew by Louis Zukofsky

-- "Song," "The Measure," and "Some Afternoon by Robert Creeley from WORDS

-- "My Problem" by Rae Armantrout

In-class: Surrealist games and writing activities

[Bring: scissors, images, words]

-- write a piece where you act not like a poet or a memoirist, but as an explorer, mathematician, condenser, anthropologist or observer

UNIT 04              SURREALISM & DADA

Transform the world, said Marx, change life, said Rimbaud: for us these two watchwords are one –André Breton

Oct 19

--from The History of Surrealism Maurice Nadeau

--First Manifesto of Surrealism

--"Yellow Manifesto" by Salvador Dali, Andre Breton, Tristan Tzara, etc.

 -- "Dada is American" by Walter Conrad Arensberg (JR)

--How to make a Dadaist Poem by Tristan Tzara 

--Dada Excites Everything Andre Breton, Marcel Duchamp, Tristan Tzara, etc.

--Free Union André Breton (JR)

--Kurt Schwitters to the Swiss Dadaist Arp.  Blackberries (2) Kurt Schwitters

--The and Rendez-vouz du Dimache 6 Fevrier 1916 by Marcel Duchamp (JR)

-- "Poem, 1924" by Andre Breton
-- from A Book of Surrealist Games compiled by Alastair Brotchie

In-class: more Surrealist games and writing activities [Bring: scissors, images, words]

*Automatism

*Chain Games/Collaborative writing:

Exquisite corpse

Definitions

Conditionals

Syllogisms

Opposites

Echo poems

One into the other

The game of Illot-Mollo

Parallel Stories

"The Paranoiac-Critical Method”

Experiments w/ Objects:

To determine the irrational characteristic of objects

--Use Oct 12 in-class writing activities towards a "finished" piece

--Optional: write a manifesto. A manifesto is a public statement that sets forth the tenets of a forthcoming, existing, or potential movement or "ism" – or that plays on the idea of one. 

Automatic writing

chance

DADA

surrealism

cut-ups

collage poetry

subconscious

UNIT 05      OULIPO: POTENTIAL LITERATURE

Oulipians: rats who construct the labyrinth from which they plan to escape. --Raymond Queneau

The constraint is a rhetoric of invention which owes its powerful effect precisely  to the fact that it exceeds the cultural expectation defined by the rule. --Christlee Reggiani

The bulk of human wisdom is contained in combinatories. --Quirinus Kuhlmann

[…] whole arsenal in which the poet may pick and choose whenever he wishes to escape from that which is called inspiration. --Raymond Queneau

Oct 26

Oulipo: THE ANALYTIC (art as retrieval)

--  "Lipo: The First & Second Manifestos " by Le Lionnais

If [Oulipo] bears any resemblance to a factory,

it is because many factors inspire its many tasks.

-Oulipo Compendium

When the first sonnet was written almost a thousand years ago what counted most was not the poem itself but a new potentiality of future poems. Such potentials are what the Oulipo invents or rediscovers.
-Oulipo Compendium

The two "tendancis principales" of Oulipian endeavors: the Analytic and the Synthetic.  The Analytic is the research of past work that reveals possibilities of literary structures that were unseen to the original authors.  The Synthetic approach is to "ouvrir de predecessors" (17).  – Francois Le Lionnais from "La Lipo (Le Premier Manifeste)"

--Locate a constraint in the Oulipo Compendium.  In your own words, explain the constraint or process. Then, practice the form.  Write a process note at the top.

constraint.machine,

Nov 2

Oulipo: Newlipo, Oulipo now, THE SYNTHETIC

-- from Eunoia by Christian Bok
listen to Bok read from Eunoia on PennSound

-- Drunken Boat Issue No. 8 / Oulipo Feature

--Electronic Book Review / Writing Under Constraint

optional: further Oulipo readings/texts

Email me your procedure by NOON so that I can colate and bring copies of all procedures to class for in-class writing!

The Oulipo's goal is to discover new structures and to furnish for each structure a small number of examples. ­-Francois Le Lionnais

One of the latent goals of the Oulipian enterprise is being realized before our very eyes: the explosion of a conscious revolution in the way we realize human potential. -curator, Drunken Boat No. 8 Jean-Jacques Poucel

The author lurks behind the scenes as the inventor of the constraint and the manipulator of itrs applications. --Alison James, "Automatism, Arbitrariness and the Oulipian"

Write a new(invented!) constraint/form/recipe, and then, write a piece that uses your constraint/form/recipe. Don't forget to name your constraint! 

UNIT 06     ERASURE & ALTERED BOOKS

Art isn't made, it's in the world almost

unseen but found existent there.

William Bronk (his last poem)

Nov 9

"A Brief History of Erasure" by Travis Macdonald, from Jacket 38

Untitled Man Ray

"write" a piece influenced/inspired by one of the day's readings

 Nov 16

-- Voyager by Srikanth Reddy
****Reddy's source text and process notes: from Book I, from Book II, Book III

-- More erasure/altered books The Forest and the Trees"

Entire book erasure/altered book

UNIT 07      FOUND AND "SOUGHT" POETRY

What kind of poem / Would you / Make out of that? --Langston Hughes

Where, are the poems bridging and building transnational social and aesthetic networks of alternative and agitational modes of grammar and syntax, revolutionary poetic critiques of corporate culture (the contemporary complement to Muriel Rukeyser's The Book of the Dead)? --Mark Nowak, from "Notes on Anti-Capitalist Poetics"

One is led not merely to read comparatively but to read chorally, to see these poems not as entries in a competition but as mutually responsive contributions to an emerging revolutionary consensus. --Cary Nelson, Revolutionary Memory

Nov 23
Nov 30

the documentary poem

-- "Investigating the Procedure: Poetry and the Source" by Kristin Prevallet

-- "Johannesberg Mines" by Langston Hughes

--from Shut Up/Shut Down by Mark Nowak

-- blog post "Poetics (Mine)" by Mark Nowak

-- from The Fate of Humanity in Verse by Frank Rogecewski

-- from Holocaust by Charles Reznikoff
--from Testimony by Charles Reznikoff

--"Reznikoff's Voices" by Charles Bernstein --Reznikoff and His Sources by Janet Sutherland from Charles Reznikoff: Man and Poet
--Interviews about Testimony
-- Davidson, On Testimony and Documentary Culture
-- Excerpts from critical commentary on Testimony

-- from Book of the Dead by Muriel Rukeyser

-- critical interpretations via MAPS

-- background for Hawk's Nest Incident
-- transcript of Congressional Investigation
-- Hawk's Nest Tunnel archival materials

Art is action, but it does not cause action: rather it prepares us for thought.

Art is intellectual, but it does not cause thought: rather it prepares us for thought.

Art is not a world, but a knowing of the world. Art prepares us.

-- Muriel Rukeyser from The Life of Poetry

Write a poem/memoir using (or reimagining, recasting) the methods of Nowak, Reznikoff, Rukeyser or Rogecewski. 

documentary poetry, populist poetry, political poetry

can poetry contain history?

can poetry make history?

How might the reader (and the writer) here act as investigator, transcriptionist, historian, witness, interpreter, confessor?

Nov 30 @ 8 pm DAN BEACHY-QUICK, LAURA GOLDSTEIN & FRANK ROGECEWSKI reading, Kelly Writers House

What is a poet? A person who says I for another . . . poetry riddles oneself with oneself by weaving one voice into many.
-Dan Beachy-Quick, from Mulberry

Dec 7

Found Poetry: Cento, Collage, Assemblage

--SemiCento Bob Holman

--from "Poem Beginning 'The'" by Louis Zukofsky (JR 241)

"Sought" Poetry /  Flarf

--Peace Kittens K. Silem Mohammed

The dramatic juxtaposition of disparate materials without commitment to explicit syntactical relations between columns –David Antin

My writing is, if not a cabinet of fossils, a kind of collection of flies in amber. -Marianne Moore

Write a piece using one (or more) of the methods of our readings

Use google-search results as the source material for a poem or memoir.  As K. Silem Mohammed instructs: "You punch a keyword or keywords into Google and work directly with the result text that gets thrown up.  I paste the text into Word and just start stripping stuff away until what's left is interesting to me, then I start meticulously chipping away and fussing with that.  It's similar to normal writing, but like you have a head injury that only gives you access to certain words and structures"

collage, cento, pastiche, assemblage, readymades, appropriation, citationality, the coterie

Flarf, "sought" poetry, the digital age, moving information, conceptual poetry

Dec 7

Discuss final project (due at final meeting on Dec 12)

Dec 12
at 5pm

Final project salon, spectacle, happening, picnic: location TBD