English 111 [Comp Lit 115]

Experimental Writing Seminar

Charles Bernstein
Spring 2009
Wednesdays, 2-4:50pm, CPCW, Studio 111

Required Books at Penn Book Center:
Raymond Queneau, Exercises in Style,

Introduction

Class Listserve:
info/sub page
list archive
posts to eng111@mailman.ssc.upenn.edu

Writing Experiments


1. (Jan. 14) Introduction / Substitution
This is an introductory/optional assignment to be done before the first class if you are so inclined or together with the assignment for next week.
Reading: Lee Ann Brown, "Pledge," Michael Magee, "Pledge" from Morning Constitutional (go to p.37 of pdf of book)
Kenneth Goldsmith, "Head Citations"
Bernadette Mayer, "Before Sextet"
§Substitution (1): "Mad libs."  Take a poem (or other source text) and put blanks in place of three or four words in each line, noting the part of speech under each blank.  Fill in the blanks being sure not to recall the original context. 
§ Substitution (2): "7 up or down."  Take a poem or other, possibly well-known, text and substitute another word for every noun, adjective, adverb, and verb; determine the substitute word by looking up the index word in the dictionary and going 7 up or down, or one more, until you get a syntactically suitable replacement. 
§ Substitution (3): Find and replace. Systematically replace one word in a source text with another word or string of words.  Perform this operation serially with the same source text, increasing the number of words in the replace string. 

2. (Jan. 21) Exercises in Style
Reading: Exercises in Style by Raymond Queneau
In 1947, Raymond Queneau, a founding member of OuLiPo (Ouvroir de Littérature Potentielle, or "Workshop of Potential Literature") published Exercises de Style, 99 variations on the "same" story. Each of these 99 approaches could take a place of honor in this list but best to turn to that work for the enumeration and explanation. For present purposes (if purposes doesn't strike an overly teleological chord), suffice it to say that an initial incident, mood, core proposition, description, idea, or indeed, story, might be run through the present list of experiments, though to what end only the Shadow knows, and maybe not even the Shadow.
Extentions (optional): Caroline Bergvall's poem setting of mutliple translations of the opening of Dante's Divine Comedy, from PennSound.
§ Homolinguistic translation: Take a poem (someone else's or your own) and translate/rewrite/revise it by substituting word for word, phrase for phrase, line for line, or "free" translation as response to each phrase or sentence. Or do several versions of the "same" poem. Or: translate the poem into another, or several other, literary styles. See David Nemeth's chain.
§ We will also do this as a chain: via the list ... The "translation" will go from person to another until you get back to the first author. As a general rule, each new version must change at least one-third of the words or the equivalent. Try not to hold onot the chain for more than a few hours.
§  Recombination (1): Write a poem and cut it somewhere in the middle, then recombine with the beginning part following the ending part.
§ Recombination (2) -- Doubling:  Starting with one sentence, write a series of paragraphs each doubling the number of sentences in the previous paragraph and including all the words used previously. 

Further reading: Queneau's One Hundred Thousand Billion Poems


3. (Jan. 28) Homophonic & Dialect Translation
Homophonic reading: Louis and Celia Zukofsky's Catullus & two examples of mine: from Basque and from Portuguese.
Dialect reading/listening: Steve McCaffery's translation of the Communist Manifesto into West Riding of Yorkshire dialect: audio, text
Zukofsky,"A Foin Lass" [restiicted to Penn only!]
§ Homophonic translation: Take a poem in a foreign language that you can pronounce but not necessarily understand and translate the sound of the poem into English (i.e., French "blanc" to blank or "toute" to toot).
§Try a variant of these translation exercises using the "Lost in Translation" "Babel" engine, or other web-based translations engines, such as Babelfish, Free Translation.com and Logopoeia's Shortwave Radio Engine.
§Translate or compose a poem or other work into a different dialect, your own or other. Dialect can include subculture lingo, slang, text messaging shothand, etc.
§Use the dialect engine
Extenstions (optional):
David Melnick's Homer at Eclipse: Men in Aida -- part one and part two;
Ron Silliman on homophonic translation (his own, Melnick's, and Chris Tysh's)
Nathan Kageyam's translation of Pound's "The Return" into pidgin (Hawaiian Creole English).
§ bpNichol, Translating Translating Apollinaire
§ Robert Kelly's Celan
§ "Me Tranform O!"
§ Sane as Tugged Vat, Your Love.
§Benny Lava (see also Marmoset and Moskau

Recommended Reading at KWH (I will be introducing)
Weds., 2/4  Li Zhimin, 6pm


4. (Feb. 4): Ekphrasis (translating the verbal into visual)
NOTE: the class will meet at 2pm in the lobby of the ICA.
Visit the ICA.
Be sure to bring a hard copy of what you write: we won't have computer access in the ICA!
(Note: ICA is closed Mon. and Tues., check their hours. Please do this assignment Thursday through Sunday.) Select a work from the Winter exhibitions at the ICA (anything on exbibition at the ICA!) and write a poem about or in relation to it. You are free to approach this assignment as you like, but let me make this initial suggestion: Write down everything you see in the work, a complete description. This can be in prose. When we meet at the ICA, you will each present your work.
Extensions/alternatives:  Write a poem to accompany an image A good source of on-line images is the PennSlide library and ArtStor (via library e-resources). Write a poem to be read in a place, like the ICA lobby or some site in/near there and CPCW.


5.(Feb. 11) Extensions/Free Assignment
This is a chance to focus on your own on-going projects, for those of you who are working on a manuscript or performance or project.
For the rest (or in addition) (and note this is quite difficult and may take some time): :
§Attention: Write down everything you hear for one hour.
§Write a poem consisting entirely of overheard conversation. (See Kenneith Goldsmith's Soliloquy.)
Optonal: Use the Experiments list, picking experiments not included in the syllabus, extned one of the assingments from the class so far..

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Thurs., Feb. 12 Noon: reading/conversation with Tisa Bryant

Tues, Feb. 17, 6:30pm: Reading/Book Party for Ron Silliman's The Alphabet
KHW, 6pm (I will introduce)
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6. (Feb. 18) Chance Operation & the Aleatoric
Reading: Jackson Mac Low
* "Insects Assassins" from Stanzas for Iris Lezak (string word is the poem title)
*from Words nd Ends from Ez (string word: Ezra Pound)
*William Burroughs on cut-ups & Brion Gysin on cut-ups
§ Acrostic chance:  Pick a book at random and use title as acrostic key phrase.  For each letter of key phrase go to page number in book that corresponds (a=1, z=26) and copy as first line of poem from the first word that begins with that letter to end of line or sentence.  Continue through all key letters, leaving stanza breaks to mark each new key word.  Variations include using author's name as code for reading through her or his work, using your own or friend's name, picking different kinds of books for this process, devising alternative acrostic procedures.Or use the web Mac Low diastic engine.
§  Tzara's hat:  Everyone in a group writes down a word (alternative: phrase, line) and puts it in a hat.  Poem is made according to the order in which it is randomly pulled from hat.  (Solo: pick a series of words or lines from books, newspapers, magazines to put in the hat.) "Language Is a Virus" has an engine that makes poems from your selected vocabulary list, a cross between "Tzara's Hat" and "Mad Libs."
§  Burroughs's fold-in:  Take two different pages from a newspaper or magazine article, or a book, and cut the pages in half vertically.  Paste the mismatched pages together.  (Cf.: William Burroughs’s The Third Mind.) Use the computer Lazarus cut-up engire to perform a similar task automatically; also engines at "Language Is a Virus:" Cut Up Machine,  Slice-n-Dice,  Exquisite Cadavulator, & God's Rude Wireless. And: Ron Starr's travesty engine
§ General cut-ups:  Write a poem composed entirely of phrases lifted from other sources.  Use one source for a poem and then many; try different types of sources: literary, historical, magazines, advertisements, manuals, dictionaries, instructions, travelogues, etc.  See cut-up engines listed just above.

7. (Feb. 25) Without Rules, (K)not!, or Is Free Writing Free?
Jack Kerouac on spontaneous bop prosody
Bernadette Mayer, from Studying Hunger
The Desires of Mothers to Please Others in Letters - Excerpt
Hannah Weiner, Clairvoyant Journal: text begins here & read with audio MP3 (26:48): first couple of pages is fine.  
______"Ubliminal"
Clark Coolidge, from American Ones
§Write a poem in which you try to transcribe as accurately as you can your thoughts while you are writing.  Don't edit anything out. Write as fast as you can without planning what you are going to say. (Try this by handwriting if possible.)
§ Autopilot: Trying as hard as you can not to think or consider what you are writing, write as much as you can as fast you can without any editing or concern for syntax, grammar, narrative, or logic. Try to keep this going for as long as possible: one hour, two hours, three hours: don't look back don't look up.
§ Dream work:  Write down your dreams as the first thing you do every morning for 30 days.  Apply translation and aleatoric processes to this material.  Double the length of each dream. Weave them together into one poem, adding or changing or reordering material.  Negate or reverse all statements ("I went down the hill to "I went up the hill," "I didn't" to "I did").  Borrow a friend's dreams and apply these techniques to them.
§Write a poem just when you are on the verge of falling asleep.  Write a line a day as you are falling asleep or waking up.

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Thurs., Feb. 26, noon, KHW: reaading/comnversation Jen Scappatone and Lyn Hejinian
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8. (March 4) Short lines/Short Poems (Attention I)
Tom Beckett & "Hay(na)Ku"
Extenstions (optional): Robert Creeley, Louis Zukofksy, Robert Grenier's Sentences, Willaim Carlos Williams, Charles Reznikoff
Aram Saroyan's Aram Saroyan
§ Write a poem consisting of one-word lines; write a poem consisting of two-word lines; write a poem consisting of three-word lines.
§Try out Hay(na)ku or Haiku
§Try some variant short-line form.

*SPRING BREAK*
in process: collaborative "Twitter" poem

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Tues., 3/17, 6pm, KHW, Hank Lazer (I will introduce)
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9. (March 18) Memory, Novel Forms
§Brainard's Memory:  Write a poem all of whose lines start "I remember ..."  (Reading: Joe Brainard's I Remember & audio
§Brainard's: Imaginary Still Lifes
§Synchronicity: Write a poem in which all the events occur simultaneously.
§ Diachronicity: Write a poem in which all the events occur in different places and at different times. 
§Write an autobiographical poem without using any pronouns.
§Write a poem about a single object. (Reading: Ponge's Object)
§Write a poem made up entirely of excuses.
§Write a poem in the form of a resume.
§Write a poem in the form of a index (cf., Paul Violi).
§Write a poem in the form a table of contents
§Write a poem in the form an advertisement for an imaginary or real product. (See Nicolàs Guillén.)
§Write a poem in the form an instruction manual
§Write a poem in the form a travel guide
§Write a poem in the form a quiz or examination, etc.
§Write a poem in the form of a baseball lineup; cf: Charle North: Wittgenstein lf, Heidegger 2b, Aristotle 1b, Kant rf, Hegel cf, Hume ss, Sartre 3b, Plotinus c, Plato p.

10. (March 25) The Art of Constraint
Reading:
Jabborwocky & variations
Christian Bök, Eunoia: Coach House e-edition; recommended: Bök's PennSound reading & " e" chapter in flash from UBU.
Extensions (optional): Kenneth Goldsmith, “Fidget”
Christian Bök's lipogram Eunoia  consists of a five sections each with words containing the same vowel (as in "O": Yoko Ono). This is reminiscent of certain notorious Ouilipian constrains, such as Perec's novel La Disparition , which suppresses the letter "e" or the work of Queneau (such as Exercises in Style).
§Write a poem in the manner of Eunoia.
§Write a poem made up entirely of neologisms or nonsense words or fragments of words.  (Cf.: Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky", Khlebnikov's zaum, Schwitters's "Ur Sonata," P. Inman's, Ocker, Platin  and Uneven Devlelpment  and David Melnick's Pcoet: all via Eclipse). Use Neil Hennessy's JABBER: The Jabberwocky Engine to generate lexicon. Also see The International Dictionary of Neologisms.
§Write a poem consisting only of prepositions, then of prepositions and one other part of speech; then three parts of speech.
§ Write a series of eight-word lines consisting of one each of each part of speech.
§ Pick 20 words, either a word list you generate yourself or from source texts. Write three different poems using only these words.
§Alphabet poems:  make up a poem of 26 words so that each word begins with the next letter of the alphabet.  Write another alphabet poem but scramble the letter order.
§ Alliteration (assonance):  Write a poem in which all the words in each line begin with the same letter.
§ Group sonnet:  14 people each write one ten-word line (or alternate measure) on an index card.  Order to suit.
§Write a "sound" poem


11. (April 1 ) Flarf / Conceptual Poetry / Web-Generated Poems / Found Poems / Appropriation
Reading:
K. Silem Mohammad, Deer Head Nation. In Deer Head Nation, Mohammad uses the Google search page result as his basic text, editing from there: “You punch a keyword or keywords or phrase 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 at and fussing with that.”
FLARF: A recent extension of this approach, which is developing independently, is called "flarf." Michael Magree explains, in this Experiments List exclusive report, "The Flarf Files." See also: a negative view of Flarf & Jacket's Flarf fearture
§ Google Poem: construct a poem using Leevi Lehto's engine (use the patterns feature).
§ Try also: The Apostrophe Engine, the source for Apostrophe: The Book by Bill Kennedy and Darren Wershler-Henry.
§ Google poem, based on M. Silem Mohammad's Deer Head Nation : use Google search results as the source material for a poem: erase as much as you like, but don't add anything. Many variations possible.
§ Cento: Write a collage made up of full-lines of selected source poems.
§ "Pits": Write the worst possible poem you can imagine
§Use the "Meaning Eater" engine to deform the text of a poem.
§Data Mining (variation of some of the above): see eg Karri Kokko's Shadow Finlandia: An Extract ( tr. Lehto): a collage of depressive or otherwise dark or gloomy fragments in Finnish blogs.

NO CLASS ON APRIL 8 / Passover. Make up; April 29.

Special assignmnet over this break. Each seminar member will open a Twitter account using their first name or first and last name followed by "111". This will be a closed Twitter group just for class. All the messages will be part of a collaborative poem. Each participant will produce and post a version of this poem before April 15.

On April 7, Wystan Curnow will be talking about Colin McCahon -- someone we will otherwise consider on April 15:
Colin McCahon (New Zealand 1919-1887):
Numerals: "Numerals""Numbers" "Teaching Aids" "Walk with me" "Song of the shining cuckoo--a poem"
Letters: "I Am" "Angels and bed[H]""The days and nights in the wilderness" [I & T]
Poems: "The Lark's Song""Poems 1-3"  "Elias Triptych" "Grant us...", "Am I Scared""I applied my name" "I te puke" "In my dark winter", "In the courtyard" "Nouns & verbs" "O let us weep" "Open door"

12 (April 15) Digital & Visual Poetry
A selection of digital and visual poems from
Visual/Concrete anthology
Digital anthology (see reading list too)
Wystan Curnow class visit
Note: Curnow gives a talk on April 7 & reads on April 14 at 6 or 6:30 at KWH
Reading: Wystan Curnow, Modern Colours, from Cancer Journals (to come)
Wystan Curnow on PennSound
Curnow will sit  in on the class, which we will start with an informal discussion with Curnow. Listen to the Close Listening shows we will tape on April 7 and go to the two events so you have some questions for him. But mostly he will just sit in on the class with us.
§ Pick several images from the internet or a magazine and write an accompanying poem .
§ Graphic design 101.1: Take a poem, first another's then your own, and set it ten differnet ways, using different fonts and different page sizes. Make a web version of the poem.
§ Take a poem, first another's then your own, and rearrange the line breaks or visual composition, while keeping the same word order. Do this five times, some with freely composed arrangements and some using some form of counting.
§Visual poetry: write poems with strong visual or "concrete" elements — including a combination of lexical and nonlexical (pictorial) elements.  Play with alphabets and typography, placement of words on the page, etc.
§Try a "digital" poem, or poem in programmable media, or indeed one using links or HTML as a fundamental dimension, please go ahead with that -- either for this week or next week.. For those without the technical skills to do this, or the software, you might try to do a blueprint or sketch of such a digital work, either entirely new or, perhaps, a hypertext version (or setting) of a poem you have already written.

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Thurs. April 16, 5:30pm KWH, poetry reading by Rachel Zolf
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13. (April 22) Performance / Web site
We will fous on performance. As part of working on your final project, bring in something to perform, up to five minutes (new work or older work, though new work always preferred). We will discuss the performances (to be continued next week).
Also, time is not to upload your work to http://111tweets.tumblr.com/ -- and we can discuss this too.

14. (April 29) Class Anthology /Chapbooks/Web site : Last Class
Make a chapbook or some other object to give to everyone in the class. Also, finish uploading work for the web site. .