Selected Archive 2007
about one month of postings are on the main web log page some items will be available only for that month this archive page covers 2007
The Movements
of the Poem:
einleitung und erster teil: rondo
zweiter teil: largo
dritter Teil: scherzo
trio
scherzo
vierter teil: presto -ablösung
kadenz
schluss
Deformative versions: Luke McGowan, Robo
Ursonate (2005) (18:36)
"The physical generation of the piece was
a remarkably effortless process on the part of the artist: Schwitters'
score was simply cut and pasted into a commercial text-to-speech
synthesis program with all further performative/compositional
decisions made by the computer. There was no attempt to
correct interpretive error, nor was there any tinkering with
the program's default prosody settings."
Kun Jia, Simultaneous
Ursonate (2006) (audio of Kurt Schwitters, Christopher Butterfield & Eberhard
Blum) (13:38)
Primiti Too Taa,
an animated short produced on a typewriter.
Produced and Directed by Ed Ackerman and Colin Morton in 1988
Schwitters' comments:
"The Sonata consists of four movements,
of an overture and a finale, and seventhly, of a cadenza in the
fourth movement. The first movement is a rondo with four main
themes, designated as such in the text of the Sonata. You yourself
will certainly feel the rhythm, slack or strong, high or low,
taut or loose. To explain in detail the variations and compositions
of the themes would be tiresome in the end and detrimental to
the pleasure of reading and listening, and after all I'm not
a professor."
"In the first movement I draw your attention to the word for
word repeats of the themes before each variation, to the explosive
beginning of the first movement, to the pure lyricism of the
sung "Jüü-Kaa," to the military severity of the rhythm
of the quite masculine third theme next to the fourth theme which
is tremulous and mild as a lamb, and lastly to the accusing finale
of the first movement, with the question "tää?"..."
The fourth movement, long-running and quick, comes as a good
exercise for the reader's lungs, in particular because the endless
repeats, if they are not to seem too uniform, require the voice
to be seriously raised most of the time. In the finale I draw
your attention to the deliberate return of the alphabet up to
a. You feel it coming and expect the a impatiently. But twice
over it stops painfully on the b..."
"I do no more than offer a possibility for a solo voice with
maybe not much imagination. I myself give a different cadenza
each time and, since I recite it entirely by heart, I thereby
get the cadenza to produce a very lively effect, forming a sharp
contrast with the rest of the Sonata which is quite rigid. There."
"The letters applied are to be pronounced as in German. A single
vowel sound is short... Letters, of course, give only a rather
incomplete score of the spoken sonata. As with any printed music,
many interpretations are possible. As with any other reading,
correct reading requires the use of imagination. The reader himself
has to work seriously to becomew a genuine reader. Thus, it is
work rather than questions or mindless criticism which will improve
the reader's receptive capacities. The right of criticism is
reserved to those who have achieved a full understanding. Listening
to the sonata is better than reading it. This is why I like to
perform my sonata in public."
The Collected Poems of Philip Whalen Wesleyan University Press
2007
932 pp.& with 92 "doodles"
Michael Rothenberg, ed.
Gary Snyder, forword
Leslie Scalapino, introduction
sorrow where there is no pain
what
marks here? score skids, fill up
like the ice-tea truck my grandmother
kept forgetting
Brent Cunningham Interview with Robert Creeley
[May 1992, Buffalo]
(Oakland: Hooke Press, 2007).
Creeley talks about Pound and Olson, meeting Penelope, creative
writing workshops, the anthology wars (in which he recounts some
anecdotes from his Harvard days).
“Go to all the poetry readings and read all the magazines
and whatever but don’t for Christ sake buy into the workshop
ethos of ‘you show me your poems, and I’ll show you
mine,’” which I really dig, but which gets nowhere
frankly. I mean it isn’t that you’re going anywhere
anyhow, but you won’t get anywhere at all. Those poems
will just be a compromise of every instinct you have. If you
make your writing into consensus you’ll have compromised
everything that is specific in what you’re doing, unless
you’re the king of the mountain for some reason, unbeknownst."
Henry Parland Ideals Clearance
translated from Swedish by Johannes Gõransson
Ugly Duckling Press
Brooklyn: 2007
Second-Wave modernist Henry Parland's centennial is coming up
this new year, though his work will be new to most English language
readers. (Parland's work can be provisionally located in the
vicinity of the Objectivists.) One of the instigators of radical
modernist poetry in Swedish, Parland died when he was just 22.
Like his great supporter Gunnar Björling (1887-1960), whose You
Go the Words, tr. Fredrik Hertzberg, was published by Gõransson’s
Action books earlier this year, Parland’s Swedish comes
via Finland. Parland was born in Russia and grew up in Finland,
only learning Swedish as a teenager; he lived for the final part
of his short life in Lithuania. Perhaps this distinctly non-national
poet speaks to us with all the more telegraphic intensity because
his true home are these poems.
just consider these two from Socks:
V.
Jag trodde:
det var en människa,
men det var hennes kläder
och jag visste ej
att det är samma ej
att de tar samma sak
och att kladder kan vara mycket vackra
I thought:
it was a human being,
but it was her clothes,
and I didn’t know
that that’s the same thing
and that clothes can be very beautiful
VI.
Idealrealisationen
– ni sager, den har redan börjat
men jag sager
vi mǻste ytterligare sänka prisen.
The Clearance Sale of Ideals
– you say it has already begun.
But I say:
Better cut the prices.
[pp.32-35]
& this from Flu
XV.
Jag sǻg ett hav
av blod,
dykvalmiga vindpustar
piska dess yta
till tungt, rott skum.
Lik
trasigt stympade
kring en gall affisch,
skriker ut over vidden:
Här
här parsidset legat!
I saw an ocean
of blood,
muggy breezes
lashed the surface
into the heavy, red foam.
Corpses
trashed and mutilated
crowding around a shrill poster,
screamed out across the expanse:
This
used to be paradise!
Guan Shan Yue (Mountain Pass Moon)' by Dai Shulun (732-789),
translated word-for-character &
in seeded-elaboration by John Cayley for 2007/8. Calligraphy
by Gu Gan from the book 'Tangshi Shufa'. John
Cayley author page
Brazil is
located on the southern tears of the Americas
Brazil is
a jungle with snakes who eat cakes
Brazil speaks
Lebanese, Portuguese, Japanese, Guarnaríse, Tupiese, Inglese
Brazil is
an adulterating medley of intoxicated syncopations
Brazil has
no relationship with itself because it has a relation only to
itself
Brazil lays
its cool hands on your hot head
Brazil was
colonized by Indians who turned the Portuguese into natives
Brazil’s
Tolstoy is now doing tricks in a favela
Brazil is
a land of palms and psalms
Brazil is
the model of a model
Brazil is
a charm bracelet that has become the necklace of the continent:
São Paulo more European than St. Paul, Brazillia more
bureaucratic than Geneva, Rio more alluring than Boca
“They've
got an awful lot of coffee in Brazil”
In Brazil,
the cuckoo sings “macaw, macaw, macaw”
Brazil is
private property of no man’s God and no woman’s Fury
The patron
saint of Brazil is its dreams, just as is its Devil
Brazil is
a carioca not a polka
Brazil is
Carmen Miranda’s Tutti Frutti hats, Caetano Veloso’s
all-weather tropicalismo, Bebel Gilberto’s number on the
charts.
Brazil is
the Elis and Tom “Waters of March” International
Airport and Spa
Brazil is
caipirinha with feijoada (caipira with fedora)
Brazil is
home of the cassava or tapioca, what you call yuca,
or mandioca or aipim or moogo or macaxeira or singkong or tugi or balinghoy or manioc
Brazil is
the black mask of the PCC inscribed with the words traitor, betrayer
Brazil is
186 million stories, 186,000 poems, but only these definitions
Put your
stocks in Brazil and your bonds in China, or is it the other
way around?
Brazil is
a figment of the imagination of the Amazon
If Pelé is
poet laureate of Brazil, without ever writing a word, then Ronaldo
Gaúcho
is the Nijinsky,
without ever having set foot in the Ballet Russe
Brazil is
not emerging it’s proliferating
The official
religion of Brazil is not just samba but macumba and umbanda,
tarantella and churrasco
Candomblé is
the Brazil wood of world philosophy
Brazil is
Fred & Ginger Flying Down to Rio with Dolores Del
Rio
Under the
veneer of its vivacity, Brazil is violent, a vile viper playing
a violet viola.
In Brazil,
anything goes for a chance, for a price, for a piece, for a dance,
for a fight, for a night; jeitinho brasileiro is born
free but everywhere in chains
Brazil’s
face never shows its heart even when they are identical
Brazil stars
Bob Hoskins, Jonathan Pryce, and Robert DeNiro
Brazil was
written by Terry Gilliam and Tom Stoppard
Brazil is
concrete and syncretic
Brazil is
impenetrable and forgiving
Brazil is
cannibalizing and carnivallizing
Brazil is
a baroque barcarolle with a bossa nova beat
Brazil’s
Lula is a little loco, but not as loco as Lucy
On Ipanema
beach, at the very moment when dusk turns to night, you can hear
Orpheus singing for Eurydice; he sings an elegy called Brazil
In Brazil,
the real is the only currency that counts
Maggie
O'Sullivan evening reading at Penn on Oct. 11 (note: this has been recently added to the Close Listening
performance
from the same day)
for PennSound news subscribe
to our RSS feed
written by Mike Hennessey
where you will find, announced today
that we have all the William Carlos Williams readings
available as singles.
Two not very good shots of a marvellous
artist's book by Louise Bourgeois Hours of the Day
now on display in New York at the Carolina Nitsch Project Room.
25 cloth panels 17.5' x 27"
published in 2006 by Carolina Nitsch and Lison Editions, NY
The show is up till January 26 at
534 West 26th (NY)
——————
Bill Berkson
reading last night in New York
from Sudden Address
from Cuneiform Press
CHICAGO MARATHON READING an off-site event coinciding with
the 2007 Modern Language Association convention
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 28th from 7-9:30pm
at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago
112 S. Michigan Avenue, in the Ballroom
FREE and ADA accessible to the public
Co-sponsored by the the Writing Program at the School
of the Art Institute and the Poetry Foundation
OVER 50 POETS: Quraysh Ali Lansana, Joe Amato, Robert
Archambeau, Dodie Bellamy, Ray Bianchi, Tisa Bryant,
Charles Cantolupo, Stephen Cope, Josh Corey, Joel
Craig, Elizabeth Cross, Garin Cycholl, Michael
Davidson, Patrick Durgin, Joel Felix, Kass Fleisher,
C. S. Giscombe, Renee Gladman, Chris Glomski, Steve
Halle, Duriel Harris, Carla Harryman, William R. Howe,
Pierre Joris, Jennifer Karmin, Kevin Killian, Petra
Kuppers, David Lloyd, Nicole Markotic, Cate Marvin,
Philip Metres, Laura Moriarty, Simone Muench, Aldon
Nielsen, Mark Nowak, Kristy Odelius, Bob Perelman,
Kristen Prevallet, Jen Scappettone, Robyn Schiff,
Susan Schultz, Don Share, Ed Skoog, Kerri Sonnenberg,
Chuck Stebelton, Mark Tardi, Catherine Taylor, Tony
Trigilio, Nick Twemlow, Lina Ramona Vitkauskas,
Barrett Watten, Tyrone Williams, Tim Yu
A DISPLAY OF CHICAGO JOURNALS & PRESSES:
*ACM, http://anotherchicagomagazine.org
*The Canary, http://canariumbooks.blogspot.com
*Columiba Poetry Review, http://english.colum.edu/cpr
*Court Green, http://english.colum.edu/courtgreen
*Cracked Slab Books, http://crackedslabbooks.com
*Dancing Girl Press, http://www.dancinggirlpress.com
*Flood Editions, http://www.floodeditions.com
*Hotel Amerika, http://www.hotelamerika.net
*House Press, http://www.housepress.org
*Journal of Artists' Books, http://jab-online.net
*Kenning Editions, http://www.kenningeditions.com
*Make Magazine, http://www.makemag.com
*March Abrazo Press, http://www.marchabrazo.org
*MoonLit, http://moonlitmag.blogspot.com
*Sara Ranchouse, http://www.sararanchouse.com
*Switchback Books, http://www.switchbackbooks.com
*Third World Press, http://www.thirdworldpressinc.com
*TriQuarterly, http://www.triquarterly.org
AND MUCH MUCH MORE: Refreshments! Select books by
the readers for sale from Small Press Distribution.
The MLA Off-Site Marathon Reading is a satellite
tradition coinciding but unaffiliated with the Modern
Language Association's annual convention. This event
is curated by Robert Archambeau and Patrick Durgin.
The Chicago publications display is curated by
Jennifer Karmin.
Rod Smith
Every time I publish a book I go to Bridge Street Books, in Washington,
to do a reading at one of the most amiable and intimate spaces
around. And I hang out with Rod, who has made the place a poetry
hub. We usually go to a few museums – on this trip we went
to the Societé Anonyme at the Phillips and then over to
the Smithsonian. Fruitcakes? November 19, 2006 (29 seconds, 4.7 mb)
download
for best viewing
Portrait Series One: Scalapino, Bergvall, Lakoff, Gross,
Bonvicino, Hills, Glazer Portrait
Series Two: Drucker, Grenier, Joris, Lehto, Curnow, Sherry Portrait
Series Three: Lauterbach, Mac Cormack, McCaffery, Berssenbrugge,
Piombino, Tuttle
from
The Line in Postmodern Poetry edited by
Robert Frank and Henry Sayre
Chicago: University of Illinois Press
1988
praxis & theory from
Johanna Drucker, Lyn Hejinian, Ron Silliman, Hannah Weiner, P.
Inman, Tom Mandel,
Steve Benson, Steve McCaffery, Susan Howe, Robert Grenier, Charles
Bernstein, Bruce Andrews
Here is a Golston abstract relating the book: "Phonoscopic Fascism: Rhythm, Race, and Poetic Form"
The early twentieth century saw a remarkable interest in the
subject of rhythm, an interest that transgressed discursive boundaries
and linked scientific and humanistic disciplines and the arts
in unusual ways. In my paper, I trace this phenomenon from the
1890’s to 1945, showing how experimental work on rhythm
done in fields including psychology, biology, physiology, musicology,
dance, and poetics produced a general theory of rhythm as an
indicator of racial identity. Bringing together texts from a
variety of sourcesincluding turn of the century French experimental
work on dialect and the vocal apparatus; Dutch phonological reviews
from the 1920’s; The Harvard Psychological Review;
the founding documents of Eurhythmics; Karl Bücher’s Arbeit
und Rhythmus; works by Carl Jung, Ludwig Klages, and Oswald
Spengler; and Nazi treatises on music and racial science, I show
how these ideas of racial rhythm ultimately came to play a role
in Nazi social policy, particularly in the musical pedagogy of
the Hitler Youth.
Here is my own brief note on Golston's book: Essentially, Golston reads poetic rhythm through the
essentialist beliefs of his modernist subjects. While Golston
doesn’t pose the issue as essentialism vs social constructivism,
that is one way to understand his point. Key is his discussion
of such racially/ethnically essentialist view of rhythms
as “Eurhythmics.” Golston quickly establishes the
racist ideology that underlies a number of modernist ideas of
rhythm, in particular in the work of Pound and Yeats, but with
much wider implications, including for Eliot. The idea that there
are essential rhythms for each race or people, mapped onto the
body, combined with the conviction that some rhythms are better
than others (the belief in Aryan superiority is foreshadowed)
is a toxic mix. In this way, Golston ups the ante on what otherwise
might be viewed as a kind of nostalgic idealization of the “folk” (and
folks rhythms: explicit or ghostly) as counter to urban alienation,
regimentation, and modernization. However, Golston’s book is
not scolding or dismissive of Pound or Yeats. He has absolutely
stellar readings and quotes from both poets and his critique
does not attempt to debunk the value of their poetry or dismiss
their poetics tout court. Indeed, given the more censorious tendency
among much contemporary cultural criticism, Golston’s approach
is exemplary of how to delve into the most disturbing aspects
of a poetic practice while leaving the reader, if anything, even
more interested in the poetry.
Golston’s
first chapter, with its emphasis on devices for showing rhythmic
patterns, and his emphasis on Abbée Pierre Jean Rousselot's "phonoscope" (College
de France) brings some otherwise esoteric material to the forefront
of the socio-cultural, aesthetically engaged poetics that he
articulates.
— CB
OCHO # 14 guest edited by Nick Piombino.
Featuring
Charles Bernstein, Alan Davies, Ray DiPalma, Elaine Equi, Nada
Gordon, Kimberly Lyons, Gary Sullivan, Mitch Highfill, Brenda
Iijima, Sharon Mesmer, Tim Peterson, Corinne Robins, Jerome Sala,
Mark Young and Nico Vassilakis.
Cover art by Toni Simon
181 pages, 6" x 9"
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Water Control
Officer Report The New Yorker
12/10/07
percent of poems with
water images: 100
Charles Simic, line one: “I’m a child of your rainy
Sundays”
D. Nurkse, title: “Picnic by the Island Sea”
Kevin Young, penultimate line: “in the rain”
The
New Yorker
poetry like a warm bath
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
===========================
Mike Hennessey continues to put together a daily
RSS feed
of PennSound highlights & new acquisitions
most recently In the American Tree radio show from the Bay Area from the late 70s
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1 December 2007
“we interact as presence within presence
as spirit twice its equal in spirit
so that a range of beasts burns between us”
Will Alexander, Exobiology as Goddess
Dear Poetry Community, Will
Alexander one of our most original and energetic lights, is ill with
cancer.
The last few months have seen Will in and out of County USC,
and otherwise unable to maintain his teaching and reading schedule.
Will was freelancing, so his resources to financially cope with
this situation are exhausted.
We are collectively asking you to help fund Will's living expenses
while he is in treatment and working on recovery. Sheila Scott-Wilkinson,
Will's long-term partner, is acting as Will’s primary caregiver
and financial manager. She and Will have opened a special joint
checking account to receive these monies. Checks can be addressed
to 'Sheila Scott-Wilkinson', and mailed to the following address:
Sheila Scott-Wilkinson
400 South Lafayette Park Place, #307
Los Angeles , CA 90057
Love and Peace,
Thérèse Bachand
Jen Hofer
Andrew Joron
Harryette Mullen
Diane Ward
Plese
use this address
not Poets in Need
for contribution for Will.
Issue Six:
Charles Altieri, Beth Anderson, John
Ashbery, Oana Avasilichioaei, Charles Bernstein, Miles
Champion, Evan S. Connell, Guy Debord (a book-length film
transcription, intro. by Joshua Clover, tr. Lucy Forsyth), Allen
Grossman, Camille Guthrie, Alexander Kluge (tr. Hughes & Brady),
Chris Nealon, Gale Nelson, Geoffrey G. O'Brien, Joan Retallack, Lisa
Robertson, Michael Zanzone, Ulf Stolterfoht (tr. Rosmarie
Waldrop), Arthur Sze, Fiona Templeton, Jalal Toufic, Magdalena
Zurawski
Speed the Movie or Speed the Brand Name or Aren't You the
Kind that Tells: My Sentimental Journey through Future Shock
and Present Static Electricity. Version 19.84
[Note
this document is best heard with
Quixotic's
Tympanic Membrane Firmware
bundled to the CNS 98 operating system.
Upgrade now.]
A lion, a flinch, and an extraterrestrial
were in a lifeboat together and supplies were dwindling. Finally,
the lion asked the extraterrestrial, "So what's the big deal
about the Internet?" "Speed" said the flinch in a blink of a
wince.
No matter how you look at it, speed
is a morally coded concept. With its etymological roots tied
at the groin to success, to think speed is to invoke a java applet
alternating flashing
SPEED
+++++++++ all
Others Pay Cash
Is it possible to imagine an ethics
of speed to contrast with the moral insistence on speed as success,
efficiency, progress? That is, to interrogate speed not in terms
of whether it is good or bad but by means of reciprocal values
in which rate is one among many factors, gauged for its aesthetic
articulation more than as an absolute measure of anything? In
other words, to break the moral coding of speed in order to release
its many valences for aesthetic experience and ethical consideration?
Speed is always, anyway, relative
to background, context, observer, observed, expectation, desire,
loss, habit; what Einstein called the Special Theory of Relativity,
as in: the station moves along the tracks looking for the train.
An ethics of speed might begin by
noting that human sexual response is often enhanced by prolongation,
actively slowing down, what's the rush, it's not a race, it's
not the goal but the getting there, getting by, the doing not
the done, energia not kinesis, distraction not attention, digression
not forward movement.
What Muriel Rukeyser calls "the
speed of darkness"
(70 beats per minute at rest, doubled in motion).
"Faster than a speeding bullet,
more powerful than a locomotive," it's John Henry versus the
steam shovel in three rounds at the Garden, with running commentary
by Bob, or is it Ray?, Slow Talkers of America, or then again
the tortoise beating the hare, Charlie Chaplin deranged by Taylorization,
Marinetti writing odes to acceleration, Ozu head to head with
Jacki Chan in Swift Justice: The Bonneville 500 Story, XT, AT,
286, 386, 486, Pentium 1, 2, you're out.
As if the choice were between the
assembly line and the verse line.
When I was 12 years old I enrolled
in a summer Evelyn Wood speed reading course, lured by the image
of the man who read a dozen books a day, itself echoing that
mad desire Thomas Wolfe writes of in Of Time and the River when
as a student at Harvard he wanted to read all the books in Widener
library. After getting a hang for the Evelyn Wood system, I was
able to read Albert Camus's The Stranger in twenty-five minutes. "Mother
died today. Or, maybe, yesterday; I can't be sure." I still remember
the starting line, and it is the sort of blur Camus evokes here
that is the sensation of this kind of speed reading. You might
call it virtual reading. But the Wood people made a disclaimer
that would be welcome in today's cultural speed-up: You can only
read as fast as you think.
When I was in college we made the
distinction between books we would like to read and books we
would like to have read. Or then again there was the legendary
story of the student who writes the best exam of his life on
speed, the only problem being that he writes over and over on
the same line of the page.
SPEED KILLS
the poster said, but it also chills and chills out.
Up to speed but off the wall.
Looking at something fast you get
the advantage of an overview, you see patterns not discernible
up close, but you may lose the detail. Can't see the thread only
the weave. Is that a technical problem to be solved, an aesthetic
problem to be explored, or an ethical problem to be acknowledged?
Efficiency without reason is desperation.
One wants - I want - to slow reading
down and speed it up at the same time. That is, I want to have
thick meaning and then accelerate it, as if the reader might
download a zipped poem that proceeds to unpack itself in the
mind, over time. By this method, one combines quick delivery
- condensare - with "heavy reason." (Laura Riding, in "By a Crude
Rotation": "To my lot fell /... A slow speed and a heavy reason,
/ ... And then content, the language of the mind / That knows
no way to stop.")
Art is the ketchup that loses the
race.
The political unconscious of postmodern
speed is the transcendence of the body and of history, of the
resistance in the materials, of the space between here and there,
of the time it takes (that time takes as much as it gives); that
is, of our animalady, the limits that we live inside of (as Charles
Olson put it), our grounding in and as flesh.
(As if you could accelerate the
pace of recovery without wounding healing.)
Which is to say that there is in
our culture, an intense dissatisfaction with the pace of things,
the planned obsolescence now known as obsessive-compulsive upgrade
disorder (UCUD), with a culture driven by the values of efficiency,
celebrity, market penetration, and disposability. In equal proportion
to being beneficiaries of this culture, we feel betrayed by it
and beholding to it (as the drug is the master of the addict).
We have alternatives, but it is our habit to deride these because
they offer resistance instead of assimilation, purposelessness
instead of profit, blank spaces in place of demographic rationalization,
reflection rather than production, inquiry in place of accumulated
knowledge. The alternative is to acknowledge the value of stopping,
of derailing, of getting off the machine, in which case we may
find that we were not speeding at all, just spinning our wheels
without traction. I know I am - and I want to do that some more.
If technology is the answer, what
is the question?
Our halls of culture boast newly
efficient systems designed to maximize the flow of people through
spaces that tokenize the aesthetic experience into voiceover
tours with take-home souvenirs, making a trip to some museums
more like a walk in a mall than contemplating a bust of Homer.
Instead of making ourselves tourists to our own culture, we might
create ever more dwelling spaces in which to reflect on art,
salons that stop the flow of traffic, that encourage the viewer
to rest, to flounder, even to be confused - indeed to be consumed
by the art rather than to consume its representations.
Much of the prized and popular writing
of our time is written to increase the speed with which it can
be read. Our colleges are charged with teaching students a kind
of expository writing that emphasizes efficient expression and
plainness and that demonizes complexity, ambiguity, contradiction,
or anything else that might bog readers down in the writing.
Such ideologically blindered writing is governed by the three
Cs of Strunk and White Elements of Style fundamentalism:
Clarity, Concision, Coherence. In this context, it is useful
to note how close this ideology of writing is to the moral discourse
of speed. Yet there is another kind of writing, a writing that
slows you down, that makes space for the reader to think, to
respond, to wander, to savor. That takes pleasure in complexity
and finds complexity in pleasure, that isn't interested in producing
a meaning for the reader to skim off the top but to provide a
pool of thought - a sound - in which to swim.
How can we find ways to support
that, to support a writing - and more generally noncommerical
contemporary art - that does nothing concrete, that is noninstrumental,
that raises questions more than providing answers. One way is
as simple as could be: direct support for the production of works
through those independent presses or writing centers or web sites,
as well as noncommerical art spaces, that publish and present
and distribute art. Without direct support for literary publishing,
the small presses will not be able to survive in their present
form - and the same could be said for the nonprofit sector of
the other contemporary arts. And I am not talking about seed
money, or money to build better bureaucratic and promotional
structures, which are two favored ways to mime, while actually
undermining, direct support for the production of literary works
and works in other art media. Joe Tabbi:
A small publisher himself, Ted Pelton reinforces Bernstein's
argument for the necessity of noncommerical literary publishing
in his report on &Now,
A Festival of Innovative Writing and Art.
When the hare always wins, that's
morality - speed as success - not ethics. And it sure isn't aesthetics
either.
God speeds but she also breaks for
humans.
____________________________________
Written for "Key
Words" conference (speed, betrayal, healing) at the Rockefeller
Foundation, June 12, 1998 and originally published in Shark #2
(1999).
±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±±
ebr
www.electronicbookreview.com
new gathering of 19 esssays on the new poetry in the electropoetics
thread
asssembled by Lori Emerson including
Introduction: ceci n'est pas un texte Lori Emerson
Biopoetics; or, a Pilot Plan for a Concrete Poetry Eugene
Thacker
Speed Charles Bernstein
The Database, the Interface, and the Hypertext: A Reading of
Strickland's V Jaishree Odin
Robert Creeley's Radical Poetics Marjorie Perloff
An Inside and an Outside Robert Creeley's last published books Douglas
Manson
Perloff on Pedagogical Process: Reading as Learning Douglas
Barbour
How to Think (with) Thinkertoys: Electronic Literature Collection,
Volume 1 Adalaide Morris
Letters That Matter: The Electronic Literature Collection Volume
1 John Zuern
Electronic Literature circa WWW (and Before) Chris Funkhouser
Eshleman's Caves: a review of JUNIPER FUSE Jay Murphy
The Linguistic Cartography of Toilets and Ginger Ale on Canadian
poet Stephen Cain Angela Szczepaniak
Three from The Gig: New Work By/About Maggie O'Sullivan, Allan
Fisher, and Tom Raworth Greg Betts
Soft Links of Innovative Narrative in North America on Biting
the Error: Writers Explore Janet Neigh Seeing the novel in the
21st Century
on Steve Tomasula Mike Barrett
The Comedy of Scholarship om HughKenner Katherine Weiss
Harry Partch’s Delusion of the Fury
Dean Drummond, Musical Director, with Newband
John Jesurun, Stage Director Japan
Society (NYC)
info
Tuesday, December 4 and
Thursday through Saturday, December 6 - 8 at 7:30
pm
First restaging of this major work by Second Wave American modernist
composer Harry Partch.
Yale University Beinecke Library
Oct. 16, 2007 MP3 (49:49)
Mo
Pitkin's, New York
June 6, 2007
reading with John Ashbery Sponsored by Poetry magazine & McSweeney's "Chain" issue
Opening comments on Ashbery (4:04): MP3
2. Design (1:12): MP3
3. Sad Boy's Sad Boy (1:38): MP3
4. "Dew and Die" from Shadowtime (4:47): MP3
5. "One and a Half Truths" from Shadowtime (2:30): MP3
6. " Madame Moiselle ...." from Shadowtime (0:48): MP3
7. "every lake ..." from Girly Man (1:39): MP3
8. A Theory's Evolution (1:57): MP3
9. The Honor of Virtue (0:24): MP3
10. Loneliness in Linden (1:28): MP3
11. Kiss Me Tommy (Brush Up Your Chaucer) (4:48): MP3
Haven't as yet seen this, but here's the announcment of another
from the very energetic Louis Armand:
COMPLICITIES:
British Poetry 1945-2007
eds. Robin Purves & Sam Ladkin
ISBN 978-80-7308-194-2 (paperback). 261pp. Publication date:
November 2007 Litteraria Pragensia
This collection of essays does not
seek to fashion a bespoke 21st-century Albion from the remnants
of Britain's various poetic traditions. The poetry considered
here, and its criticism too, is by and large critical of the"new
imperial suitings" beneath which the old and new networks
of power run. The work gathered in these pages knows language
and culture to be profoundly complicit across the board in the
extension of acts of domination, from the preparation for and
execution of war, to the composition of the suicide note, from
the overt corrupting of the democratic franchise, to cold calling's
interpellation of the human subject as consumer-in-waiting.
Contributors to this volume include:
Thomas Day, Keston Sutherland, Alizon Brunning, Robin Purves,
J.H. Prynne,
Bruce Stewart, D.S. Marriott, Stephen Thomson, Craig Dworkin,
Sophie Read,
Sara Crangle, Malcolm Phillips, Tom Jones, Josh Robinson, Sam
Ladkin, Jennifer Cooke, Ian Patterson. Robin Purves is a Lecturer
in English Literature at the University of Central Lancashire.
Sam Ladkin is a researcher at the University of Cambridge.
CONTEMPORARY
POETICS
Redefining the Boundaries of Contemporary Poetics, in Theory & Practice,
for the Twenty-First Century
Edited by Louis
Armand
ISBN 0-8101-2359-2 (paperback). 384pp.
Northwestern University Press, Evanston.
from
the publisher:
Exploring the boundaries of one of the most contested fields
of literary study--a field that in fact shares territory with
philology, aesthetics, cultural theory, philosophy, and even
cybernetics--this volume gathers a body of critical writings
that, taken together, broadly delineate a possible poetics of
the contemporary. In these essays, the most interesting and distinguished
theorists in the field renegotiate the contours of what might
constitute "contemporary poetics," ranging from the historical
advent of concrete poetry to the current technopoetics of cyberspace.
Concerned with a poetics that extends beyond our own time, as
a mere marker of present-day literary activity, their work addresses
the limits of a writing "practice"--beginning with Stephane Mallarme
in the late nineteenth century--that engages concretely with
what it means to be contemporary.
Charles
Bernstein's Swiftian satire of generative poetics and the textual
apparatus, together with Marjorie Perloff's critical-historical
treatment of "writing after" Bernstein and other proponents of
language poetry, provides an itinerary of contemporary poetics
in terms of both theory and practice. The other essays consider "precursors," recognizable
figures within the histories or prehistories of contemporary
poetics, from Kafka and Joyce to Wallace Stevens and Kathy Acker; "conjunctions," in
which more strictly theoretical and poetical texts enact a concerted
engagement with rhetoric, prosody, and the vicissitudes of "intelligibility"; "cursors," which
points to the open possibilities of invention, from Augusto de
Campos's "concrete poetics" to the "codework" of Alan Sondheim;
and "transpositions," defining the limits of poetic invention
by way of technology.
CONTENTS
1. END GAME
Charles Bernstein
How Empty is my Bread Pudding?
Marjorie Perloff
After Language Poetry: Modernity & its Discontents
2. PRECURSORS
Kevin Nolan
Getting Past Odradek
Donald F Theall
The Avant-Garde & the Wake of Radical Modernism
Bob Perelman
Doctor Williams's Position, Updated
Simon Critchley
Wallace Stevens and the Infinite
Evasion of As
DJ Huppatz
Corporeal Poetics: Kathy Acker's
Writing
Michel Delville & Andrew Norris
Frank Zappa, Captain Beefheart, and the Secret History of Maximalism
3. CONJUNCTIONS
Ricardo Nirenberg
Metaphor: The Colour of Being
Keston Sutherland
Vagueness
DJ Huppatz, Nicole Tomlinson & Julian
Savage
AND &
Bruce Andrews
Readings Notes
Bruce Andrews
Lost and Found
4. CURSORS
Augusto de Campos
Concrete Poetry: A Manifesto
Augusto de Campos
Questionnaire of the Yale Symposium
Darren Tofts
Epigrams, Particle Theory and Hypertext
Gregory L Ulmer
Image Heuretics
J. Hillis Miller
The Poetics of Cyberspace: Two Ways to Get a Life
McKenzie Wark
From Hypertext to Codework
Alan Sondheim
Codeworld
5. TRANSPOSITIONS
Louis Armand
Techno-Poetics in the Vortext
Steve McCaffery
Parapoetics and the Architectural Leap
Allen Fisher
Traps or Tools and Damage
Steve McCaffery
Discontinued Meditations
Marjorie Perloff
Screening the Page / Paging the Screen: Digital Poetics and the
Differential Text
Just in —
Jackson Mac Low Thing of Beauty New and Selected Works
Edited by Anne Tardos
University of California Press
In this generous selection of Jackson Mac Low's work, we can
see, first hand, the poet's profound understanding of the physics
of language and his exuberant articulation of the sounds of words
in unpredictable motions. The multiplicity of Mac Low's forms
and his rejection of any hierarchy among the forms of poetry
(objective and subjective, expository or nonrepresentational,
lyric and epic), along with his refusal to identify poetic composition
with a characteristic "voice" of the poet and his rejection of
traditional aesthetic standards of beauty, are among the chief
marks of his iconoclastic genius. Mac Low's magnificent and multidimensional
poems open vast expanses for the imagination to inhabit.
I will be reading with
Charles North
on Sunday, December 2, 2007, 7pm
at
Zinc Bar
90 W. Houston St
New York
———————
Art
Theory Now: from Aesthetics to Aesthesis
Johanna
Drucker
School
of Visual Arts: Tuesday, December 11, 7pm
Amphitheater
209
East 23rd Street, 3rd floor, free and open to the public
If
the job of art criticism is interpretation, the task of art theory
is to offer foundational principles for understanding the identity
and cultural function of works of art. But what aesthetic theory
accommodates Damien Hirst’s In the Name of God,
Phil Collins’ The World Won’t Listen,
Jennifer Steinkamp’s digital video works, the books of
Dean Dass, or Robert Longo’s drawings of deep space or
atomic blasts? How do we formulate aesthetic theory after Adorno?
This lecture outlines a shift from aesthetics as the study of
objects to aesthesis as
a mode of experience and knowledge, and draws on ideas sketched
in the author's recent article, "Making Space: Image-Events in
an Extreme State," published in Cultural Politics.
Johanna
Drucker is Robertson Professor of Media Studies at the University
of Virginia and the author of Sweet Dreams: Contemporary Art
and Complicity (University of Chicago, 2006) and The Century
of Artists' Books (Granary, 2004).
Presented by the MFA Art Criticism and Writing Department.
————————
.
The active networks of writers exchanging works through an engagement
with translation is the most important counterweight to nations,
states,and transnational corporations. The Internet makes possible
an unprecedented scale, depth, and quality of exchange; but these
possibilities will only be realized through complex organization
and editorial imagination. In this brave new world, literacy
is necessary but not sufficient. We have also to consider the
role of activist literary writing and translation in our post-literate
world, where readers and writers need both cultural and technological
literacy to be fully enfranchised in the global and local polis.
These are some of the themes I expect to see addressed at
WALTIC 2008.
The organizers provide this introduction
on their new website, together with registration info
The first ever WALTIC congress will be
held in Stockholm 29 June-2 July 2008. Our aim is to create a
forum of exchange of experience amongst writers, literary translators
and researchers engaged in and committed to the strengthening
of democracy and human rights. Our ambition is to achieve new
insights into reading and literature as tools for analysis of
contemporary society, social development and change.
The main themes for WALTIC 2008 are world literacy, intercultural
dialogue and digitalization. The congress will focus on the narratives
as mediators of knowledge and bearers of culture and collective
memory, with a view to developing guidelines for reinforcing
the role of literature in global society.
———————— BRAVO! Yvonne Rainer's RoS Indexical at Performa 07 (NY)
with Pat Catterson, Emily Coates, Patricia Hoffbauer, and Sally
Silvers
Photo by Paula Court.
Conjunctions #49
features a John Ashbery
tribute in honor of his 80th birthday
edited by Peter Gizzi and Bradford Morrow
Reginald
Shepherd on Some Trees (1956)
Peter Straub on The Tennis Court Oath (1962)
Charles Bernstein on Rivers and Mountains (1966)
Brian Evenson on A Nest of Ninnies, co-written with James
Schuyler (1969)
Marjorie Welish on The Double Dream of Spring (1970)
Ron Silliman on Three Poems (1972)
David Shapiro on The Vermont Notebook (1975)
Susan Stewart on Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror (1975)
Brenda Hillman on Houseboat Days (1977) Kevin
Killian on Three Plays (1978)
Ann Lauterbach on As We Know (1979)
Rae Armantrout on Shadow Train (1981)
Graham Foust on A Wave (1984)
Eileen Myles on April Galleons (1987)
Jed Perl on Reported Sightings (1989)
Ben Lerner on Flow Chart (1991)
Cole Swensen on Hotel Lautréamont (1992)
Marcella Durand on And the Stars Were Shining (1994)
Christian Hawkey on Can you Hear, Bird? (1995)
Anselm Berrigan on Wakefulness (1998)
Joan Retallack on Girls on the Run (1999)
Richard Deming on Your Name Here (2000)
Geoffrey O'Brien on Other Traditions (2000) and Selected
Prose (2004)
Robert Kelly on Chinese Whispers (2002)
James Longenbach on Where Shall I Wander? (2005)
Susan Wheeler on A Worldly Country (2007)
Here is a short excerpt from my essay:
Certain pervasive features in John Ashbery’s work make
their first appearance, full-blown, in Rivers and Mountains,
which was published in 1962, four years after The Tennis Court
Oath and the same number of years before The Double Dream
of Spring. In the poems of this collection, and especially “The
Skaters,” Ashbery introduces a nonlinear associative logic
that averts both exposition and disjunction. Ashbery’s
aversion (after The Tennis Court Oath) to abrupt disjunction
gives his collage-like work the feeling of continuously flowing
voices, even though few of the features of traditional voice-centered
lyrics are present in his work. The connection between any two
lines or sentences in Ashbery has a contingent consecutiveness
that registers transition but not discontinuity. However, the
lack of logical or contingent connections between every other
line opens the work to fractal patterning. “The Skaters” brushes
against this approach by suggesting that the point of contact
between the lines is a kind of “vanishing point.” In
order to create a “third way” between the hypotaxis
of conventional lyric and the parataxis of Pound and Olson (and
his own “Europe” in The Tennis Court Oath),
Ashbery places temporal conjunctions between discrepant collage
elements, giving the spatial sensation of overlay and the temporal
sensation of meandering thought. Skating is the adequate symbol
of this compositional method.
Erica
Hunt & Marty Ehrlich
performed together on Friday night
at Cue Art Foundation in New York.
It was a very rare opportunity to
see them collaborate.
July 30, New York (AHP2 News Service) – The poetry world
has been rocked by recent revelations that several of the most
prestigious national poetry contest winners in 2005 and 2006
were written with the aid of performance-enhancing drugs.
“Over the past decade, poetry contests have emphasized
our openness to all participants, with the promise that each
manuscript is judged on its merits along,” said Guadalupe
Maximino Glumstein, the Chancellor of the International Poetry
Contests Federation (IPCF). “Doping is a huge step backward
in our efforts, since it gives an unfair competitive advantage
to those who are willing to do anything, including risk long-term
damage to their bodies and minds, in order to write the best
poem.”
The IPCF advocates testing for performance-enhancing drugs
as a prerequisite for national book publications, slam competitions,
as well a poetry contests. Poets that violate IPCF rules would
be ineligible for prizes or anthologies for penalty periods of
one year for first offenders to eternity for repeat offenders.
Poets that comply with IPCF guidelines get a sticker to affix
to all their publications certifying their poems as doping-free.
“Unless we want poetry to sink back into the margins
of society, we must assure readers that poets produce their work
with their own sweat and imagination. When we teach a poem to
a young person in a school setting, to inspire and instruct,
we need to be able to say that anyone can aspire to write a poem
as good as this. We can’t afford to send a message that
doping is necessary to write the best poems. We have to have
an even playing field.”
Several leading poets were asked to comment on the scandal
but refused to talk on the record, for fear of provoking IPCF
investigations of their conduct. Unlike the use of doping in
baseball, track, and cycling, poets often use poetry-performance-enhancing
drugs to cause temporary physical and mental impairment or paralysis,
in order to hyperactivate their imaginative capacities. The practice
has been shown to cause a number of long-term physical and mental
maladies.
But 11-year old Daisy Threadwhistle of Incontrobrogliaria,
New Jersey, was eager to speak on the record. Ms. Threadwhistle
said she was very disappointed when a poem from her school reader
was removed when its author tested positive for performance-enhancing
drugs. “ ‘The Moon Is My Revenge, Venus My Soldier
of Midnight’ ” was my favorite poem this year. I
feel cheated. I don’t think I want to read any more poems.”
In early 2006, IPCF introduced a battery of blood and psychological
tests to detect poetic doping. An IPCF study group is now investigating
whether the use of certain computer programs and search engines
also should be banned from poetry.
Kenneth Goldsmith gives New York Times
blog readers a
playlist (a baker's dozen mp3s)
————————
MEMORIAL READING FOR
DMITRI ALEXANDROVICH PRIGOV
photo courtesy Ugly Duckling
Presse
with Lev Rubinstein, Charles Bernstein, Vitaly Komar, Marina
Temkina, Christopher Mattison, Grisha Bruskin. Hosted by Ugly
Duckling Presse.
Readings in Russian and English, plus a film screening. Sunday, November 18th, 6pm - 8pm
Bowery Poetry Club
308 Bowery, between Houston and Bleecker
New York
Saturday,
November 17th
Chicago Red
Rover Series Experiment #17
Silent Teaching. A Tribute to Hannah Weiner.
A multi-media celebration of and response to the life and work
of Hannah Weiner,
featuring Mark Booth, Maria Damon, Patrick Durgin,
Judith Goldman, Roberto Harrison, Todd Mattei, Jenny Roberts,
Jen Scappetone, and Tim Yu.
Plus, a surprise or two.
7:00 PM
at the Spare Room, 4100 W. Grand Avenue, 2nd floor, suite 210-212,
Chicago, IL.
Suggested donation $3.00
Wednesday, Nov. 28th
New York A reading to celebrate the vision of poet Hannah Weiner
and the publication of Hannah Weiner’s Open House by
Kenning Editions,
featuring readings, performances and recollections by
Charles Bernstein, Lee Ann Brown, Abigail Child, Thom Donovan,
Patrick Durgin, Laura Elrick, Kaplan Page Harris, Andrew Levy,
John Perreault, Rodrigo Toscano, Carolee Schneemann,
James Sherry, Anne Tardos & Lewis Warsh.
Poetry Project, St. Mark's Church
10th Street and Second Avenue
8pm
from SoundEye by Adam Wyeth and Keith Walsh.
made at the SoundEye festival in Cork, Ireland in the summer
of 2005
... reading "Thank You for Saying Thank You" (Girly
Man)
intercut with short interview about Shadowtime
Helen Adam makes the strange beautiful and the beautiful strange.
With echoes of the Rossettis and Poe,
Adam is the most exuberantly anachronistic of
Second Wave modernist poets.
(While often associated with the New American Poets,
Adam, who was born in 1909, is a second waver.)
Her magical, macabre, magnificently chilling ballads open a secret
door
into the Dark
with rimes both gruesome and sublime.
Kristin Prevallet provides an informative introduction
& comprehensive editorial oversight.
Maggie O'Sullivan Close
Listening Studio 111 recording session at the University of Pennsylvania
October 11, 2007 Close Listening full reading (26:54): MP3
O'Sullivan reads from Body of Work (London: Reality
Street, 2006)
1. Introduction (0:58): MP3
2. Most Incomplete (sec. 3 of A Natural History in Three Incomplete
Parts) (19:24): MP3
3. The Walks (3:47): MP3
4. Malevich (2:17): MP3
A Conversation with Maggie O'Sullivan
questions from Penn students (26:53): MP3
BENEFIT READING FOR WILL ALEXANDER THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 1ST, 6-8PM
BOWERY POETRY CLUB
308 Bowery / F to 2nd Ave, or 6 to Bleecker $10 suggested donation, more if you can
Poet and artist Will Alexander has become seriously ill and
has no health insurance. In order to help him defray the cost
of treatment his friends will gather and read Will’s work
as well as poems for Will.
JEROME ROTHENBERG TONYA FOSTER JOEL KUSZAI BILL MARSH MARCELLA
DURAND TOD THILLEMAN JOHN HIGH RODRIGO TOSCANO ELIOT WEINBERGER
BOB PERELMAN ANNE WALDMAN
**** When we started PennSound, Will was in touch almost immediately
to work
with us on getting some of his work on the site.
Listen now:
Segue Series reading at the Bowery Poetry Club, New York, March
17, 2007: MP3
Segue Series reading at the Bowery Poetry Club, New York, April
3, 2004: MP3
From Kenning:
"A National Day in Bangladesh" - Text originally published in Caliban #10,
1991, Lawrence R. Smith, ed. Will Alexander recorded by Chris
Funkhouser, August 1993, at The Grassy Knoll, Los Angeles, California: MP3(4:27)
Richard Tuttle
I talked to Richard right after taping our Close Listening show
at WPS1 at the Clocktower studios. December 4, 2006 (49
seconds, 7.8 mb)
Emma Bee Bernstein & Nona
Willis-Aronowitz
are on a road trip across America
to ask young women of their generation
& women of their mothers' generation
about their engagements with feminism.
& they've just started a blog called GIRLDrive
with Emma's photos & Nona's reports.
but:
Hey!
when will Bookforum
feel it can use the "P" word (poetry)
instead of listing its poetry coverage
under the rubric of Fiction?.
••••••••••••••••••••
I've annotated some of the new Olson singles from Vancouver (1963)
on PennSound
(more work needed & help always welcome:
contact pennsound-at-writing.upenn.edu) Maximus,
to Himself ("I have had to learn the simplest things
/ last ..." (2:26) Kingfishers (6:31) In
Cold Hell, In Thicket (8:38)
••••••••••••••••••••
At the New York Film Festival
seen & recommended
The Romance of Astree & Celadon billed as Eric Rohmer's final film:
Poet's Theater
that combines Socratic dialog on fidelity
with a filmic informalism (costume & camera)
& an effervescent nuttiness that
happily resists all the clichés of contemporary movies
* Child Labor
Ken Jacob's mesmerizing work based on a single photo
that opens a cut in time (the fourth dimension)
& then move latter into it
(the fifth dimension),
the vibrations creating a Messianic moment
for the eyes' imagination
*
Henry Hills's Electricity
Hills's absence from the festival in years' past
has been a mark against the curators
which only added to the electricity of having his most recent
work
premiere at the festival .
*
Carlos Saura's
Fados
with Amalia Rodrigues, Argentina Santos & Mariza presiding
sports
& a striking emphasis on African and Brazilian extensions
(including an appearance by Caetono Veloso0
Saura presents a form of Portuguese folk song that has strong
connections to poetry.
While the lip-synching undercuts the direct treatment of the
subject
this is a superb tribute to the singers and the songs. .
I missed the Ernie Gerhr's program
but will soon be going to his installation and show at
The Museum of Modern Art
————————
Interdisciplinary Arts – Assistant Professor, tenure-track,
or Associate Professor, tenured (one full-time position). The
Interdisciplinary Arts, Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences Program
(IAS) at the University of Washington Bothell seeks candidates
who practice, teach, and research interdisciplinary arts and
work in more than one art form. Possible arts practice areas
include dance, theater, music, and multimedia and visual arts,
among others. The successful candidate will join a faculty working
across the arts, humanities, and social and natural sciences
in an integrative curriculum with an emphasis on experiential
and community-based scholarship and pedagogy. Two-years teaching
experience and PhD required. For more information about UWB,
IAS, and the position, see www.uwb.edu.
Preferred deadline: 22 October 2007. Applications should include
a letter addressing the candidate’s scholarly, pedagogical,
and artistic qualifications for working in this type of program,
a CV, a statement of research and teaching interests, and a sample
syllabus from an interdisciplinary course. Address applications
to Pam DePriest, Interdisciplinary Arts Search, University of
Washington Bothell, Box 358530, 18115 Campus Way NE, Bothell,
WA 98011. University of Washington faculty engage in teaching,
research and service. The University is an affirmative action,
equal opportunity employer.
Sigi's Berlin
I met Susan’s father Sigi in 1968. He had grow up in Berlin,
left for Palestine on a youth aliyah in 1936, and then come to
New York, with Susan’s mother Miriam, in 1948. Both Sigi
and Miriam were artists. On the boat from Palestine, Sigi got
a connection for a New York apartment on Lex and 85th. He lived
there for the rest of his life.
New
@ PennSound
Segue Series at the Bowery Poetry Club
October 6, 2007 Jennifer Moxley [below] MP3 (34:40) Maggie O'Sullivan [above] (MP3 (31:17)
(intros: Gary Sullivan, Nada Gordon)
Announcing the latest volume in
the
Modern and Contemporary Poetics
University of Alabama Press
An Archaeology of Forms, 1959–1995
C.T. Funkhouser
Here's my comment:
"In Prehistoric Digital
Poetry: An Archaeology of Forms, Chris Funkhouser provides
a comprehensive historical, descriptive, and technical account
of early works of computer-assisted poetry composition. This
is essential reading for anyone interested in digital poetics,
constraint-based writing, or, indeed, the possibilities for new
poetry in the 21st century."
C. T. Funkhouser is Associate
Professor of Humanities at the New Jersey Institute of Technology
and author of Technopoetry Rising: Essays and Works (forthcoming)
and Selections 2.0, an eBook.
Sales Code FL-115-07 30% Discount good thru 10/31/07 To order, mail this form to: University of
Alabama Press, Chicago Distribution Center, 11030 S. Langley,
Chicago, IL 60628 Or, fax to: 773-702-7212 Or, call: 773-702-7000 Prehistoric
Digital Poetry (unjacketed cloth, ISBN 0817315624):
$75.00$52.50 $
________________ Prehistoric Digital Poetry (paper, ISBN 0817354220): $39.95 $27.97 $
________________
Domestic shipping: $5.00 for the first book and $1.00 for each
additional book $ ________________
Canada residents add 7% GST $ ________________
International shipping: $6.00 for the first book and $1.00 for
each additional $ ________________
Enclosed as payment in full: $ ________________ (Please make checks payable to The University of Alabama
Press) Bill my: ____ Visa ____ MasterCard ____ Discover ____ American
Express
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Shipping Address: _________________________________________________
The Noulipian Analects edited by Christine Wertheim
and Matias Viegener
Los Angeles: Les Figues Press. 2007
(available from SPD)
starring
Caroline Bergvall, Christian Bök, Johanna Drucker, Paul
Fournel, Jen Hofer, Tan Lin, Bernadette Mayer, Ian Monk, Joseph
Mosconi, Harryette Mullen, Doug Nufer, Vanessa Place, Janet Sarbanes,
Juliana Spahr, Brian Kim Stefans, Rodrigo Toscano, Matias Viegener,
Christine Wertheim, Rob Wittig, Stephanie Young. The collection
is based on a conference at Cal Arts on Oct. 28 and 29,
2005.
An
Alpha Bestiary of Exogenously Exotic Essays and Dazzlingly Delectable
Design,
Complexly Charismatic Constraints and Occasional Oulipian Outrages,
Thoughtful Theoretical Threads and Lusicrously Ludic Limits,
Gutsy Gender Gaiety and Dantesque destinies Detourned,
Quixotic Queneau Quests and Cocky Combinatorial Collisions,
Real Rubber Roses & Radiantly Removed R’s…
What We Wanton Woeful Whimsical Wanderers Willingly Want..
‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡
Rachel Blau DuPlessis Torques: 58-76 Cambridge, UK: Salt Publishing, 2007
DuPlessis writes against the ravages
of the torn world.
After each draft another, blown in the winds.
A loop, a map, a stare, a tone.
There are folds inside these verses.
Begin anywhere.
Begin now.
**
Rachel and I are teaching a course together as part of Temple-Penn
poetics
The Major and the Minor
Keynotes
of 20th and 21st Century Poetry
Nick Piombino
Nick and I met at Artie's to discuss the book version of his
Fait Accompli blog. I had the pastrami on rye with Russian. We
were sitting in the glass-enclosed porch when I saw my mother
walk by, which was curious because I had just been talking about
her. She came in to say hello to Nick. December 11, 2006 (43
seconds, 6.9 mb)
Will
Rowe's obituary
for
Bill Griffiths
in yesterday's Guardian:
" He published more than 80 volumes of poetry, but never
lived much above the poverty line - and a good deal of his life
was spent below it. Years of poor diet no doubt hastened his
death. The absence of public support for the British poetry revival
of the 1970s certainly did not help. For more than one fellow
poet, he was the only one of whom they would use the word genius.
It is a scandal that a poet of such exceptional powers should
have received so little support."
Literature Department
University of California, San Diego
Associate or Full Professor
Job Number: 4-949-AD
Description:
Associate to Full Professor of Poetry or Fiction Writing University
of California, San Diego (UCSD) Department of Literature
Seeking a creative writer at a senior level to teach in a thriving
undergraduate program and new MFA program. We invite applications
from poets and fiction writers for this tenured position, and
we welcome candidates with interdisciplinary and innovative approaches
to narrative and/or poetics. Applicants should have a distinguished
record of publication and a history of effective teaching, as
well as an interest in teaching within a world literature department
with a focus on cultural, ethnic, and gender studies and critical
theory. Members of the Department's Writing Section share administrative
duties on a rotational basis, so evidence of administrative talent
and experience, and a willingness to serve, is desirable. Immigration
status of non-citizens should be stated in CV.
Salary:
Salary commensurate with experience and based on UC pay scale.
Closing Date:
Closing date is November 15, 2007
To Apply:
Send letter of application, CV, dossier, and writing sample(s)
of published work to:
Writing Search Committee Chair
Department of Literature 0410
University of California, San Diego
9500 Gilman Drive
La Jolla, CA 92093-0410
Applicants are encouraged to include in their cover letters a
personal statement summarizing teaching experience and interests,
leadership efforts, and/or contributions to diversity. Refer
to position #149MLA / 4-949-AD. No electronic applications are
accepted. For return of writing sample(s), enclose a large self-addressed
envelope with adequate postage.
For questions regarding recruitment status or other inquiries,
please contact the recruiting department directly using the information
above.
Please refer to position #4-949-AD in your response.
Posted on 09/14/07.
+++++++++
The Rev. John Boyd S.J. Chair honors the distinguished Jesuit
scholar and teacher who centered his scholarship, literary criticism,
and teaching upon an investigation of the poetic imagination
and its relation to life. The University invites applications
from senior scholars, poet-scholars, or poet-critics whose work
addresses the history of poetry and poetics, as well as the relations
between poetry and philosophy and/or poetry and theology. Review
of applications will begin on October 15. We prefer submission
of materials in both hard and electronic versions. Please send
letter, cv, and the names of three references to Boyd Chair Search
Committee, Dept. of English, Fordham University 10458 and to boydsearch@fordham.edu
=============
The Department of English at the University of Albany invites
applications for a tenure-track position in creative writing
and
literature at the rank of Assistant professor, to begin
August 2008. We
seek a poet interested in working in an active undergraduate
literature
and writing program, and in a graduate program leading to
an M.A. and a
doctorate that can include creative writing. The candidate
is also
expected to make substantial contributions to the creation
and editing
of a new literary magazine (with both online and print elements).
Candidates with additional teaching interests in contemporary
U.S.
ethnic literatures and/or world literatures are especially
welcome, as
are those who can teach in genres other than poetry (fiction,
creative
nonfiction, drama). Candidates should possess a Ph.D. from
a university
accredited by the U.S. Department of Education internationally
recognized accrediting organization, although an appropriate
advanced
degree and evidence of substantial professional experience
and
achievement in creative writing may substitute for the Ph.D. Evidence
of successful teaching and significant scholarly potential
is expected.
Candidates should also have a demonstrated ability to work
with and
instruct a culturally diverse group of people. Send
letter of
application, c.v., dossier of letters of reference, and
a writing sample
of no more than 30 pages, postmarked by November 9, 2007
to Pierre
Joris, Chair, Search Committee, English Department, HU 333,
University
at Albany, 1400 Washington Avenue, Albany, NY 12222. The
University
at Albany is an EO/AA/IRCA/ADA employer.
---------------------------
Tenure-track assistant professor position in Creative Writing
program with undergraduate and MA program emphasizing interdisciplinarity.
Significant publications record must include work in mixed or
hybrid-genres and fiction. Detail and discuss performances, exhibits,
installments, electronic work, collaborative projects, and/or
community arts activities. MFA or PhD in creative writing, evidence
of excellence in teaching, and promise of continuing excellence
in publication. Send letter of application and complete dossier
to Christine Hume, English Dept., 602C Pray Harrold, Eastern
Michigan University, Ypsilanti, MI 48197 by November 5. For more
information, contact Christine Hume at chume@emich.edu
&&&
SUNY-Buffalo Poetics Program
Faculty Position Available
(posting this a second time)
Prestigious poet committed to the innovative traditions of
modernist and contemporary poetry. Candidates must currently
hold the rank of associate professor or professor and/or have
an extensive and distinguished record of publication. Candidates
must demonstrate an ability to teach solid and inventive undergraduate
courses, and bring fresh perspectives to the study of poetry
and poetics as demoonstrated by a record of writing and teaching
interests appropriate to seminars in large M.A./Ph.D program. Standard
duties of a professor at a research university, commensurate
with rank, including teaching graduate and undergraduate students;
research and publication; curriculum development; participation
in General Education program in the university; student advisement;
supervision of independent study; service on department, college
and university committees. Contact Steve McCaffery <stevemcc@buffalo.edu> /
716-645-2575 ext 1043 Posting Date 07/30/2007 Closing
Date 10/15/2007 . Date to be Filled: August 21, 2008 Applicants
should supply three professional references in addition to their
Letter of application and CV
Francis Picabia I Am a Beautiful Monster: Poetry, Prose, and Provocation
translated by Marc Lowenthal MIT
Press, 2007
Francis Picabia’s raucous early poems, which dare the
unprecedented and traffic in the sheer possibilities of abstract
shimmering gesture. His late aphorisms are startling bolts of
congealed thought. Marc Lowenthal has done the history of radical
modernist poetry a great service by bringing these works of exquisitely
offbeat taste and intoxicating élan into English. His
translations of the turbulent work of this “freeloading
angel” show uncanny skill and welcome verve.
the following excerpts, all but the first of Picabia's diagrammatic
visual poems, are used with the permission of MIT Press.
Ann Lauterbach John Ashbery Introduction
15 September 2007 at "That Feeling of Exultation"
Bard’s celebration of Ashbery’s eightieth Birthday
When John Ashbery’s great friend and partner
David Kermani and I began to talk about this weekend’s
celebration, we imagined a forum of activities that would animate
the myriad ways in which Ashbery’s work is connected to
the other arts and artists of our time. Indeed, if you consult
the on-line Ashbery Resource Center, you will find an astonishing
matrix of such connections: to literature, music, visual arts,
cinema, television, radio and animation, theatre, dance, opera.
Scratch the surface, you will find everyone from Daffy Duck to
Joseph Cornell to Elliott Carter--- the list is, literally, endless.
To do this variousness justice, we would have needed not one,
but ten weekends. Think of this as a beginning, a touchstone.
The title for today’s festivities was
taken from one of my favorite Ashbery poems, “A Blessing
in Disguise”, from Rivers and Mountains. To have
a favorite Ashbery poem is a little like having a favorite strawberry,
or rose, or word. But one does have favorites, based, like many
favorite things, on long-term familiarity. One turns and returns
to certain poems, and certain lines within those poems: “ and
then I start getting this feeling of exaltation.”
This feeling of exaltation is certainly what
I got when I first heard John Ashbery read, in London, in 1971.
His appearance there was the culminating event in a series on
contemporary French, Eastern European and American poetry I had
organized as curator of literary events at the Institute of Contemporary
Arts.
After his reading. I approached him with baffled
enthusiasm and declared, “O Mr. Ashbery, I love clichés!” He
looked at me and, with an expression of slightly bemused interest,
replied, “And they love you.”
As his American English hostess, I got to hang
out with him. We went shopping for a velvet jacket on Carnaby
Street. I hailed him a cab after a day at the home of poet Anthony
Howell, on Hampstead Heath, and I remember saying to the Cockney
cabbie: “The Ritz Hotel. And take good care of him, he
is America’s greatest living poet.” One night he
read aloud to a small group of us in his hotel room. He had just
finished the three long prose pieces that make up Three Poems. Imagine
yourself a young ex-patriot aspiring poet in a sea of Sylvia
Plathian intensities hearing these words:
“I thought that if I could put it all
down, that would be one way. And next the thought came to me
that to leave all out would be another, and truer way.
Clean washed sea
The
flowers were.
These are examples of leaving out. But, forget as we will, something
soon comes to stand in their place. Not the truth, perhaps, but
---yourself. It is you who made this, therefore you are true.
But the truth has passed on
To
divide all.”
This feeling of exaltation is what came upon those of us who
heard him read his poems then, and to those who hear or read
them now. Amazing, when you think of it: beginning in 1953 with
a chapbook, Turandot and Other Poems and moving through
twenty-five collections to his most recent, the somber and beautiful A
Worldy Country. At nearly every page along the way, we have
been invited to re-imagine what a poem is, to listen in a new
way.
This newness shifted the ground on which a poem
might be resting. Indeed, the separation of figure from ground
in an Ashbery poem is all but dissolved; things seem to happen
in a fluid solution, as if always on the way to or from a destination
that is itself simultaneously approaching and receding. Observations,
revelations, ideas, encounters, and objects course through in
such a way as to suggest there is nothing to know outside of
the poem. This replete, mutating experience is carried along
on the most elastic yet taut syntax; and, because nothing stays
in focus for long, the notion of a poem as high-resolution picture,
or story, or memo to live by, gives way to the poem as a condition,
a habitat, a surround.
Between the high detail of the foreground and
the abstract distance of the horizon, the reader is invited in.
One can take one’s stuff; it is quite roomy. It is the
space, say, of a city square, an open market, a corner bodega,
a hotel lobby. Here we greet each other, exchange information
and opinion, but because we are on our way elsewhere, a certain
civility prevails; we do not intrude, or impose. The diction
is one of mild, good-natured inquiry and response; a demotic
grace and graciousness prevails, invariably punctuated by mishearings,
odd juxtapositions, the marvelous, sometimes sad and often funny
enjambments and eruptions of actual life.
Ashbery’s work has been central to our
major critical thinkers, from Harold Bloom’s track of the
American sublime to Marjorie Perloff’s poetics of indeterminacy;
recently, it provided the central example for Angus Fletcher’s A
New Theory for American Poetry. Above all, as this weekend’s
poets have so exuberantly demonstrated, John Ashbery has given
seminal inspiration and nourishment, across the generations,
to an extraordinary range of poetic energies.
To make poetry from the place of the commons,
the middle distance, is to remind us of ourselves in relation
to each other; that is, of our unique human engagement with language
as a key to our various and particular reciprocities. To enter
an Ashbery poem is to find oneself oddly consoled, at ease, within
the deepest boundaries of reception. It is the space of an ideal
real: everything is noticed, everyone is included:
“I prefer you in the plural, I want you,
You must come to me, all golden and pale
Like the dew and the air.
And then I start getting this feeling of exaltation.”
Sibila
#12 is an on-line only number of the magazine.
Sibila will return to print with #13, an issue of 10 Chinese
poets
(bilingual Chinese/Portuguese), selected by Yao Feng and Regis
Bonvicino.
For a very limited time, there is a pdf of #10
on-line.
POETS OUT
LOUD
FALL 2007 / New York all readings at 7:00 pm
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 24
Charles Bernstein
&
Rachel Blau DuPlessis
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 9
(co-sponsor: Fordham's Asian American Literature Series)
Mei-mei Berssenbrugge
&
Tan Lin
&
John Yau
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 29
Bruce Andrews
&
Tracie Morris
RECEPTION & BOOK SIGNING TO FOLLOW
FREE & OPEN TO THE PUBLIC
12th Floor Lounge
Fordham University - Lincoln Center
113 W. 60th Street (corner of Columbus Ave.)
Call for Work: CRITIPHORIA
A Journal of Poetry and Criticism Edited by Stephen Paul Miller, Tim Peterson, and Cecilia
Wu
Contributing Editors: Karen Alkaly-Gut, Maria Damon, Kenneth
Deifik, Denise Duhamel, Peter Frank, Bob Holman, Carolee Schneemann,
and David Shapiro.
Critiphoria is a journal partially funded by St. Johns
University which seeks submissions of "poetry-criticism" in all
its forms for a first issue to be published in late 2007. This
new journal will energize poetry and criticism through one another,
exploring their intersection in the possibility of a "third genre" that
grows out of such precedents as Charles Bernstein's "Artifice
of Absorption," Stephen Paul Miller's poem reviews and essay/lectures,
Lyn Hejinian's poetic nonfiction, the linguistic mysticism of
David Shapiro, the autobiographical scholarship of Susan Howe,
Zizek's psycho-political analyses, W.J.T. Mitchell's totemic
digs, David Antin's talk poems, and a variety of dialogic critical-poetic
objects (we enthusiastically anticipate new models). We will
publish essays in poetic form, essays using poetic methodology,
poems with critical content, pedagogy, essays concerning poetry-criticism,
statements about poetic production. We also invite items of a
more general nature pertinent to these topics, including essays,
poems, visual art, vispo, audio, and e-poetry.
Submissions may include a statement concerning the submission
and how it concerns dynamic interaction between poetry and criticism.
Critiphoria will appear at http://www.critiphoria.org,
and a print edition will also be published. Subscriptions are
$20/two issues. Email submissions or other correspondence to
the editors: Stephen Paul Miller, Tim Peterson, and Cecilia Wu
at critiphoria@gmail.com.
The Poetry Project at St. Marks Church in New York
will be presenting an eveing in tribute to Hannah Weiner
on Nov. 28. Details will be announced here.
Claude
Royet-Journoud on PennSound Reading with Keith Waldrop (on translations)
at the Ear Inn, New York I recorded this reading on November
3, 1984
1.La
Notion d'Obstacle (Gallimard, 1978) (31:38)
Keith Waldrop reads from his translation,The Notion of Obstacle (Windsor,
VT: Awede, 1978)
Note: Royet-Journoud placed a ticking clock on the podium, which
can be heard in the recording.
2. from Les
Objets Contiennent l'Infini (Gallimard, 1983), Book 3
(prose section) (2:54)
Waldrop reads from his translation, Objects Contain the Infinite (Windsor,
VT: Awede, 1995)
========== Originally published in a French
translation in Je Te Continue Ma Lecture:
Mélanges pour Claude Royet-Journoud (Paris: P.O.L., 1999).
---
For Claude
but I don’t
know why
(extended play version for verso)
1. When Claude Royet-Journoud came to Buffalo in 1995 to read
for the Poetics Program I was able to read with him my semi-homophonic
translation of one of his poems, the last line of which I translated
as “work vertical and blank.” Claude used a clock
to time the blank space in the poem, although whether that space
is blank or white is of course a matter of some controversy.
For my part, I used the space between the stanzas as a rhythmic
interval and so expressed it through a kind of internal counting
with (not just in) my head. Later, Claude noted that he wished
to move away from the sound of the words, while in my translation
I had foregrounded the sound of the French, trying to bring that
over into my “American” version. Both these reversals
seemed to me to suggest what I have found so interesting in my
reading of Claude’s work and my sense of an ongoing exchange
with him. In this case, the notion of obstacle was translated
into a poetics of reversal. If you read back through the translation
via the reversal, the obstacle understood as something akin to
resistance measured not in Ohms, as in electrodynamics, but perhaps
O’s! – you may experience a closed poetic circuit.
Patent pending.
2. Later that same day, Claude, along with a large group of
us, including Jean Frémon, Emmanuel Hocquard, and Jacqueline
Risset, went to the Anchor Bar, home of the Buffalo Chicken Wing.
I ordered the other famous Buffalo dish, Beef on Weck – a.k.a.
roast beef on a hard (or kaiser) roll. The weck on the door in
my drawing is possibly a reference to that but I can’t
honestly say why it’s there. It just seemed like the right
word.
3. When asked to participate in this special issue in honor
of Claude I wanted to do something in the spirit of the many
faxes I have received from Claude – spontaneous visual
gestures that communicate a different sense of his personality
than his poems. These works are meant as temporary gestures,
marks of friendship and exchange. But unlike Claude, I can’t
draw very well. Still, I have never let inability get in my way;
in fact it has become my way.
4. A house standing next to a tree that becomes a sign of
a page. A page that says it wants to be blank but isn’t.
Margins that are no more than optical illusions. A triangular
enclosure that serves as a roof of words, our human ceiling,
through which we leak language. These are a few of my favorite
things.
5. A rabbi, a priest, and a poet were standing in a stanza.
The priest says to the rabbi, “How do you get out of here?” The
rabbi replies, “Depends on where you’re going.” The
poet maintains an uncomfortable but telling silence.
6. I don’t want to express my admiration for Claude
Royet-Journoud. I want to live it.
7. My six-year-old son Felix likes to tell an old-time joke. “What’s
the difference between a teacher and a railroad train?” –The
teacher says “Spit that gum out!” and the train say “Choo
Choo.”
8. Now here’s one that Felix made up:
“What’s the difference between a button and a shirt?” –The
button is tied to the shirt but the shirt is not tied to the
button.
9. Or as we say in the land of Foot High Melons, just off
the coast of Taches Blanches:
“Can you please repeat that so Charles can understand?”
Mary Rising Higgins, innovative poet and former public
school teacher, died August 26th from complications of breast
cancer. She taught for 25 years in the Albuquerque public schools,
becoming a master teacher in 1993. After retiring from teaching
in 1995, she focused on a second career as a poet. In less than
a decade she published six books of poems:
)joule TIDES((, Singing
Horse Press, CA, 2007 )cliff TIDES((, Singing Horse Press, CA, 2005 )locus TIDES, Potes and Poets Press, MA, 2003 Mary Rising Higgins Greatest Hits, 1990-2001, Pudding
House Publications, OH, 2002 oclock, Potes and Poets Press, CT, 2000 red table(S, Selected Poems, La Alameda Press, NM, 1999
Sections from red table(S appear
in a textbook anthology, IN COMPANY: An Anthology of
New Mexico Poets after 1960, University of New Mexico Press,
2004. Her poems have also been printed in many literary journals
including: Big Allis (NY), Blue Mesa Review (NM), California
Quarterly (CA), Cafe Solo (CA), and Central Park (NY).
The MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire and the Helene Wurlitzer
Foundation in Taos awarded writer’s grants in support of
her work. One poem, Transitions for Eurydice, won a national
teacher's award.
Mary Rising was born February 29,
1944 in Minnesota, the fourth child of Lucille and Forrest Raymond
Rising. She attended Napa College in California. She earned both
a B.S. degree in 1970 and an M.A. in English (with distinction)
in 1988 at the University of New Mexico. She married Joe Frank
Higgins in 1964. She is survived by their daughter, Heidi Higgins
Armijo, and two granddaughters, Felicia Madeline Higgins Chavez
and Jesslyn Grace Armijo of Albuquerque and by two brothers,
Robert and Ronald Rising of Minnesota.
I
HAVE IMAGINED A CENTER // WILDER THAN THIS REGION:
A TRIBUTE TO SUSAN HOWE
Edited by Sarah Campbell
Nathan Austin, Sarah Campbell, Barbara
Cole, Richard Deming, Thom Donovan, Logan Esdale, Zack Finch,
Graham Foust, Benjamin Friedlander, Peter Gizzi, Jena Osman,
Kyle Schlesinger, Jonathan Skinner, Juliana Spahr, Sasha Steensen,
and Elizabeth Willis. Edited by Sarah Campbell with an introduction
by Neil Schmitz.
120 pp.
recollections and responses to Susan Howe's
poetics seminars at Buffalo
on the occasion of her retirement
Benjamin Friedlander, The Missing Occasion of Saying Yes ( New York: Subpress, 2007)
Friedlander’s work from 1984 to 1994. Startling and singular,
Friedlander’s sprung lyrics have an intensity and resonance
that I not only admire but aspire to.
Ted Greenwald and Hal Saulson, Two Wrongs words & pictures
Buffalo: Cuneiform, 2007
David Cameron, Flowers of Bad: A False Translation
of Charles Baudelaire’s Les Fleur du Mal (Brooklyn: Unbelievable Alligator / Ugly Duckling Presse,
2007)
David Caplan, Questions of Possibility: Contemporary Poetry
and Poetic Form
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2005)
Peter Barry , Poetry Wars: British Poetry of the 1970s and
the Battle of Earls Court
(Cambridge: Salt, 2006)
Gregg Biglieri, I Heart My Zepplin
(Buffalo: Atticus/Finch, 2005)
Holocaust by Charles Reznikoff
(Boston: Black Sparrow/David Godine 2007)
back in print
Nick Piombino, Free Fall
(Rockhampton, Australia: Ottoliths, 2007)
This essay was first published in Études Anglaises LIX
3 (July-September 2006).
Taking up the tension between poetry and philosophy, this article
traces the way Bernstein's poetics redefines the domains of these
two modes of discourse, and demonstrates how they share a common
medium, a common ground, and common issues. By erasing generic
differences and questioning stylistic decisions, Bernstein proves
to be not so much a poet of grammar or a mechanic of syntax as
a “technician of the human.”
Previously announced & now
out
You Go the Words
by Gunnar Björling translated by Fredrik Hertzberg
from Action Books Fredrik Hertzberg’s revelatory translations make palpable
the syntactically sprung, emotion-rent verse of one of the great
Scandinavian modernist poets. Hovering in an aesthetic space
somewhere between Dickinson and Celan, Oppen and Creeley, Gunnar
Bjorling is a poet of the everyday and its words, as if the abyss
between souls could ever be ordinary or ever anything else.
Daniil Kharms, the key figure
of second-wave Russian radical modernism, extends, distorts,
and renews the achievements of Khlebnikov, Mayakovsky, and Blok,
not to say Gogol, in tales, verse, journals, and poet’s
theater. Kharms’s black comedies of disappearance and metamorphosis
are both mystical and majestic, Dadaist and dazzling. Matvei
Yankelevich has done an heroic job with his translations, selection,
and introduction, bringing this supreme poet of everyday life
into English.
*
This is a mockery, through
and through! Good for nothing! Bravo!
Two
works by Kharms, presented with the permission of the editor.
Holiday
On the roof of a certain building two draughtsmen
sat eating buckwheat kasha.
Suddenly one of the draughtsmen shrieked with joy and took a
long handkerchief out of his pocket. He had a brilliant idea—he
would tie a twenty-kopeck coin into one end of the handkerchief
and toss the whole thing off the roof down into the street and
see what would come of it.
The second draughtsman quickly caught on to
the first one's idea. He finished his buckwheat kasha, blew his
nose and, having licked his fingers, got ready to watch the first
draughtsman.
As it happened, both draughtsmen were distracted
from the experiment with the handkerchief and twenty-kopeck coin.
On the roof where both draughtsmen sat an event occurred which
could not have gone unnoticed.
The janitor Ibrahim was hammering a long stick
with a faded flag into a chimney.
The draughtsmen asked Ibrahim what it meant,
to which Ibrahim answered: "This means that there's a holiday
in the city."
"And what holiday would that be, Ibrahim?" asked
the draughtsmen.
"It's a holiday because our favorite poet
composed a new poem," said Ibrahim.
And the draughtsmen, shamed by their ignorance,
dissolved into the air.
(January 9, 1935) [translated by Matvei Yankelevich]
Something About Pushkin
It’s hard to say something about Pushkin
to a person who doesn’t know anything about him. Pushkin
is a great poet. Napoleon is not as great as Pushkin. Bismarck
compared to Pushkin is a nobody. And the Alexanders, First, Second
and Third, are just little kids compared to Pushkin. In fact,
compared to Pushkin, all people are little kids, except Gogol.
Compared to him, Pushkin is is a little kid.
And so, instead of writing about Pushkin, I
would rather write about Gogol.
Although, Gogol is so great that not a thing
can be written about him, so I'll write about Pushkin after all.
Yet, after Gogol, it’s a shame to have
to write about Pushkin. But you can’t write anything about
Gogol. So I’d rather not write anything about anyone.
Kharms
December 15, 1936 [Translated by Eugene Ostashevsky and Matvei Yankelevich]
Jyrki Pellinen, Kuuskajaskari, tr.& notes by Lehto
(bilingual)
a crucial work of Finnish Modernist poetry, original Finnish
publication 1964, now together with an English translation
Steve McCaffery
It was Steve's 60th birthday and he had come to New York with
Karen to celebrate. January 28, 2007 (52
seconds, 10.1 mb)
Note: download video for best viewing. Portrait
Series One: Scalapino, Bergvall, Lakoff, Gross, Bonvicino,
Hills, Glazer Portrait
Series Two: Drucker, Grenier, Joris, Lehto, Curnow, Sherry
I am travelling in China this month with limited internet access,
but did just get a notice
that my collaboration with Tracie Morrie, "Truth
Be Told" is now out in The Brooklyn Rail summer issue.
Mary Ellen Solt was
born in Gilmore City, Iowa, on July 8, 1920 the first of four
children of an immigrant Methodist minister from Yorkshire, England,
Arthur Bottom, and his American wife, a former schoolteacher,
Edith (Littell) Bottom. Until she attended college at Iowa State
Teacher’s College (now University of Northern Iowa), where
she was a friend and classmate of Mona Van Duyn, Mary Ellen’s
creative pursuits were focused on music. She possessed a passion
for the piano. At the Teacher’s College an inspirational
professor of literature, H. Willard Reninger, first excited Mary
Ellen about poetry, an interest that would take precedence over
the piano and dominate her creative and professional life. In
one of Reninger’s seminars she met her future husband,
Leo F. Solt; they were married after Leo’s wartime service
in the Navy, during which Mary Ellen began her career as a teacher.
After her marriage on December 22, 1946, Mary Ellen continued
to teach school and earned a M.A. in literature from the University
of Iowa, Iowa City in 1948. And after receiving her degree she
moved to New York so that her husband could pursue doctoral studies
in English history at Columbia University. While in New York,
Mary Ellen taught at the Bentley School and studied poetry at
Columbia with Leonora Speyer and at the Poetry Center with John
Malcolm Brinnin and Kimon Friar, among others. After Leo completed
his Ph.D., Mary Ellen moved with him to Amherst, Massachusetts
where he had secured a three-year teaching position at the University
of Massachusetts. During those three years (1952-1955), Mary
Ellen gave birth to two daughters, Catherine (1953) and Susan
(1955), and continued to work on her poetry. In 1955 Mary Ellen
moved with her family to Bloomington, Indiana, where Leo had
been offered a job teaching early modern English history at Indiana
University. (During his career at I.U., Leo served as Dean of
the Graduate School ( 1978-87) before his retirement in 1992.)
Mary Ellen joined the I.U. faculty in comparative literature
in 1970. For the academic year 1976/77 she was invited to teach
American poetry at the University of Warsaw, Poland. This led
her to assuming responsibilities as Director of the Polish Studies
Center at I.U. upon her return to Bloomington, a post she held
until 1984. For her service at the Center on behalf of educational
and cultural exchange, she was awarded the “Gold Badge
of Order of Merit of the Polish Council of State” in 1981.
Mary Ellen retired from Indiana University in 1991 as professor
emerita of comparative literature. After Leo died in 1994, Mary
Ellen moved to Santa Clarita, California in 1996 to live with
her daughter Susan, who was then Dean of the School of Theater
at the California Institute of the Arts.
Mary Ellen Solt
was first recognized professionally for her critical writing
on William Carlos Williams. During her early years in Bloomington
she established a correspondence with the older poet that became
a close friendship until Williams’s death in 1963. Old
and frail as he was, Williams came to Bloomington in 1960 to
hear Mary Ellen read what turned out to be a fairly controversial
paper, “William Carlos Williams: The American Idiom,” for
the School of Letters evening forum in the summer of 1960. The
paper won the Folio Prize for prose for that year. Over the years,
as the author of numerous articles and essays, Mary Ellen Solt
established herself as a leading critic in the field of William
Carlos Williams studies. On the occasion of her retirement from
teaching the Williams Carlos Williams Society recognized her
with a session held in her honor in Washington, DC, in May of
1991. The last article she completed on Williams's theory of
poetry is entitled “William Carlos Williams: Idiom as Cultural
Icon.” Mary Ellen received a fellowship from the national
Endowment for the Humanities in support of this project. Other
Williams’ related publications include the article: “The
American Idiom,” (1983) and the book: DEAR EZ; LETTERS
FROM WCW TO EZRA POUND, COMMENTARY AND NOTES (1985).
Mary Ellen’s
critical texts led her deeply into semiotic theory, most particularly
the writings of the American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce.
An essay, “Poems as Signs,” is a product of this
interest. It is anchored by a comparative analysis between a
poem by William Wordsworth and a poem by her long-time friend
the Scottish poet Ian Hamilton Finlay. Two other essays of a
related nature precede this work: “Charles Sanders Peirce
and Eugen Gromringer” and “The Concrete Poetry as
Sign” (1982). Another related publication is ROBERT LAX
AND CONCRETE POETRY (1990).
Mary Ellen Solt
is best known around the world as a concrete poet, particularly
as the author of FLOWERS IN CONCRETE (1966). And as the editor
of: Concrete Poetry: A World View (1968). Her long introduction, "A
World Look at Concrete Poetry," is a critical history of the
movement. In an unpublished short essay, WORDS AND SPACES (c.
1985), Mary Ellen Solt wrote:
Concrete poetry
invites us to consider words not only as symbols that convey
meanings but as things themselves...In his long poem, PATERSON,
the American poet William Carlos Williams agonizes over his responsibility
as a poet to clean up the words, to revitalize a language divorced
from meaning...Concrete poetry asks us to look at the word: at
its esthetic properties as a composition of letters, each of
which is a beautiful object in its own right...Concrete poetry
asks us to contemplate the relationship of words to each other
and the space they occupy. We must be prepared to contemplate
poems as constellations of words, as ideograms, as word pictures,
as permutational systems. By discovering the meaning of the poem
as it emerges from the method of its composition, the reader
becomes in some sense the poet.
Throughout her career
Mary Ellen lectured extensively on her poems and concrete poetry
all over the world, as well as conducted workshops and symposia.
In an ANTHOLOGY
OF WOMEN POETS FROM ANTIQUITY TO NOW, editors Aliki Barnstone
and Willis Barnstone have this to say about her career:
[A]s a poet,
[Mary Ellen Solt] is a pioneer theorist, anthologist, and poet
of the international concrete movement—no one has contributed
more to the diffusion of concrete poetry in the United States
and abroad… CONCRETE POETRY: A WORLD VIEW (1968) [is]
the most comprehensive anthology of concrete poetry and theory.
Her poems reveal far-reaching interests, from moon rocketry to
semiotics. As a sensitive observer of nature and people, her
impeccably crafted poems unite verbal and visual arts in unique
creations.
Mary Ellen Solt’s
visual poems (particularly “Forsythia”) have been
published in magazines and anthologies and many college textbooks
in Great Britain, France, Spain, Italy, Belgium, Holland, Germany
(including Der Speigel), Poland, Latin America, Japan
and the United States (including Newsweek, McCalls,
and Harper’s Bazaar). They have been exhibited in
museums and art galleries in most of these countries including:
La biennale de Venezia (1969); the Stedlijk Museum, Amsterdam
(1971); and The Jewish Museum, New York, (1970).
Her poems have appeared
on television a number of times, including CBS CAMERA THREE,
May 12, 1974. Several of her poems—“Forsythia,” Touch,” ZigZag,” “The
White Flower”—have inspired works by artists in other
media (dance, music, film).
Mary Ellen Solt
has published the following books and pamphlets of her own poetry:
FLOWERS IN CONCRETE (1966), A TRILOGY OF RAIN (1970), THE PEOPLEMOVER
1968: A DEMONSTRATION POEM (1978), and MARRIAGE: A CODE POEM
(1976).
Mary Ellen Solt
maintained an active correspondence with other poets and writers.
In a letter dated April 25, 1960, published in the William Carlos
Williams Review (Fall 1987), William Carlos Williams wrote this
to Mary Ellen Solt: “Flossie read me your poems this morning.
They are excellent, they are so excellently conceived that I
do not trust myself to praise them… [Y]ou have a conception
of the poetic line which is revolutionary and may lead you anywhere,
with its implications…” In addition to her closest
poet friends William Carlos Williams, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Augusto
and Haroldo de Campos, and Louis Zukofsky, Mary Ellen was in
correspondence with Robert Creeley, Cid Corman, Denise Levertov,
and George Oppen, among many others. Over the years she amassed
an extensive collection of concrete and visual poetry. Her archive
is housed at the Lilly Library ( Indiana University, Bloomington).
Mary Ellen Solt
died peacefully, after several years of declining health, of
a stroke on June 21, 2007 at Henry Mayo Newhall Memorial Hospital,
Santa Clarita, California, in the company of her daughters: Catherine
Solt, a health care professional in New York, NY and Susan Solt,
a feature film and theater producer and current faculty member
at CalArts who lives in Stevenson Ranch, CA. Mary Ellen is also
survived by her sister Margaret Jean Peterson of Iowa City, IA.
We are pleased to announce that PENNsound will be hiring a MANAGING
EDITOR. This is a part-time job - 20 hours per week. The job will begin in
August or early September, depending on the successful candidate's
availability. The position will run 48-50 weeks per year, although summer
hours are negotiable.
The MANAGING EDITOR will work with us, as PENNsound's co-Directors, and
also with Mark Lindsay (CPCW's IT Manager and PENNsound's Managing
Director).
With Mark, the MANAGING EDITOR will coordinate the work being done by
work-study students and others who help us produce digital audio (and some
video) recordings of poets reading their poems and discussing poetry and
poetics. The MANAGING EDITOR will also reach out to poets who are
contributing recordings of their work, arrange necessary permissions,
answering users' and poets' queries, help direct updates to the site, work
with Penn's library on cataloging projects, and help curatorially to shape
the direction of the archive.
Candidates should be familiar with (or able to learn quickly) how to work
with digital audio materials, the ins and outs of a web site such as
PENNsound's, and the management of student workers and volunteers.
Candidates should also be somewhat familiar or perhaps very familiar with
modern and contemporary poetry.
Candidates are asked to familiarize themselves with the PENNsound project
by exploring
http://writing.upenn/edu/pennsound .
To apply, please send a cover letter and c.v./resume to:
Mingo Reynolds
Associate Director for Administration
Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing
3808 Locust Walk
University of Pennsylvania
at this email address: mingo@writing.upenn.edu.
The cover letter should briefly describe relevant experience (tech plus
poetry) and availability.
Best wishes,
Al Filreis & Charles Bernstein
Karen Mac Cormack
Karen moved to Buffalo last year and I wanted to know how she
found the driving. Personally, I loved being able to park just
about anywhere in Buffalo, a far cry from the parking conditions
in my New York neighborhood. Some afternoons I would drive around
town and park in front of stores, just for the pleasure of getting
a space so easily. But then, where I worked, at the university
... there you could never find a space close to the office.
Home Recording, Bloomfield, NJ, Spring 1968
1. Rain (0:26): MP3
2. White Fish In Reeds (0:48): MP3
3. Funny Day (0:38): MP3
4. A Song Of Autumn (0:46): MP3
5. Autumn Time, Wind, And The Planet Pluto (0:46): MP3
6. A Story In Winter (0:53): MP3
7. End (0:31): MP3
8. Drunken Winter (0:23): MP3
9. Skies (0:42): MP3
10. Dangers Of The Journey To The Happy Land (0:55): MP3
11. Happiness In The Trees (0:35): MP3
12. Spring (0:14): MP3
Complete Reading (7:44): MP3
St. Mark's Poetry Project reading 1970's
1. Comments (1:21): MP3
2. Lightning (0:50): MP3
3. Birth in the Dunes (0:32): MP3
4. Earthquake in Phillipines (0:42): MP3
5. Tensions (0:33): MP3
6. "Where can I go now..." (0:35): MP3
7. Meadowlands (0:28): MP3
8. E=MC2 (0:41): MP3
9. "Come sit next to me..." (0:19): MP3
10. "They go wandering..." (0:45): MP3
11. Bird on Chimney (0:33): MP3
12. Sleep in Park (0:57): MP3
13. Descending the Slope (1:03): MP3
14. Romance of Awakening (0:32): MP3
15. Migratory Noon (0:36): MP3
16. Spell of Eternity (1:01): MP3
17. "The sun is shining..." (1:02): MP3
Complete Reading (11:53): MP3
These sound recordings are being made available for noncommercial
and educational use only. All rights to this recorded material
belong to the author. (C) 2007 the estate of Joe Ceravolo. Distributed
by PENNSound.
Alani Apio, Island Writing, 1998
Caroline Sinavaiana, Island Writing, 1998
Eric Gamalinda, Alter-Englishes, 1999
Ku-ualhoa Meyer Ho'omanawanui, Alter-Englishes, 1999
Grace Molisa, Alter-Englishes, 1999
Anne Tardos, Alter-Englishes, 1999
Lee Tonouchi, Alter-Englishes, 1999
Tisa Bryant, English Department Reading series, 2000
Darryl Keola Cabacungan, English Department Reading series, 2000
Zhang Er, English Department Reading series, 2000
Summi Kaipa, English Department Reading series, 2000
Susan Schultz, Chain Reading, 2000
Leonard Schwartz, English Department Reading series, 2000
Edwin Torres, English Department Reading series, 2000
Jacinta Galeai, Chain Reading, 2001
Ku-ualhoa Meyer Ho'omanawanui, Myth, Terrorism and Justice, 2001
Bhanu Kapil, English Department Reading series, 2001
Zack Linmark, English Department Reading series, 2001
Mark McMorris, English Department Reading series, 2001
Teresia Teaiwa, English Department Reading series, 2001
Albert Wendt, Myth, Terrorism and Justice, 2002 University
of Hawaii at Manoa
John
Godfrey Brown University, April 21, 1994
1. Accede in Kind (2:51): MP3
2. The Dream You Threw (3:52): MP3
3. Ocean Floor (2:21): MP3
4. Grown in Blood (2:51): MP3
5. Grasp is Provide (5:10): MP3
6. At the Level of Heart (4:49): MP3
7. Manger Lined With Fur (3:12): MP3
8. Wind Darken Your Door (3:31): MP3
9. Pouring Gulf (2:32): MP3
10. This Big Wingspread (4:33): MP3
11. Some Deeds Wither (4:48): MP3
Complete Reading (40:34): MP3
Juliana Spahr Mills College Literary Salon, 2005
1. Introduction (3:10): MP3
2. Poem Written After September 11, 2001 (5:21): MP3
3. Discussion on Poem Written After September 11, 2001 (6:09): MP3
4. Discussion on Note on Poem Written After September 11, 2001
(7:11): MP3
5. December 4 (2:21): MP3
6. Discussion on December 4 (7:00): MP3
7. January (1:59): MP3
8. Discussion on January (13:11): MP3
9. March 27 and 30 (4:40): MP3
10. Open Questions (7:50): MP3
Complete Reading and Discussion (59:55): MP3
Edwin Torres, Mills Contemporary Writing Series, 2006
1. Introduction (3:29): MP3
2. Lunar Chord (6:16): MP3
3. In the Speed of Slope (7:06): MP3
4. Some Kind of Rip in What I See (3:01): MP3
5. Dude Descending a Staircase (0:56): MP3
6. Eat Flesh in America (3:36): MP3
7. E Man's Proclamation (1:52): MP3
8. In Line With What (0:52): MP3
9. Some Notes on Princess Di (3:34): MP3
10. A Postcard from Across the Utes (4:54): MP3
11. I Wanted to Say Hello... But My Hair Was a Mess (3:50): MP3
12. A Most Imperfect Start (6:48): MP3
13. Motor Priest (8:15): MP3
Questions (16:04): MP3
Complete Reading (1:00:26): MP3
Jack
Spicer
speaks and reads from Language (full work) The second of two shows edited by Mark Weiss in 1975 and
broadcast on Susan Howe's Pacifica/WBAI Poetry program a few
years later. Based on recordings from the Spicer estate. [The
opening comments are from the 4th Lecture on Poetry & Politics
at the Berkeley Conference on July 14th 1965. - P.Gizzi]
(58:03): MP3
(full program)
Spicer reads Language (44:43): MP3 (Note this replaces the mp3 and ra "WBAI" mp3 we had previously
made available)
thanks to Eric Baus and Michael Tom
&
Mark Lindsay
This interview appears in the new issue
of Kaurab
Online
Aryanil Mukherjee contacted me in September 2005, with the
idea of increasing the exchange between contemporary American
and Bengali poets who might find, so far unbeknownst to themselves,
some shared concerns and related aesthetic approaches. While
Mukherjee knew a fair amount about U.S. poetry, I had almost
no information about contemporary Bengali poetry. His first request
was that I write a piece on my first book, for a small gathering
of such statements, so I wrote something about Asylums,
and also posted it here. We then started this longer interview,
which I took over a year to complete. Mukherjee circulated this
among his fellow poets who noted the all too apparent: my lack
of knowledge of Bengali poetry. With this in mind, Mukherjee
has prepared a set of follow-up questions, which I will try to
respond to in the next couple of months.
Kaurab
is a Bengali literary magazine published from Jamshedpur, an
east-Indian steel town, since 1970. The core members of Kaurab
are poets and writers whose work represents an interesting break
with earlier traditions of literary writing in Bangla. Kaurab’s
entry into the Bangla literary context was at a crucial juncture
when mainstream Bangla literature was in the thrall of the social,
political and cultural upheavals precipitated by the Naxalite
movement. While Kaurab, as a literary group, had a cameraderie
with the Hungry and New Generation writers of Bengal, it largely
attempted to accentuate a fresh and marginal voice that was unheard
in Bangla literature. Being a Bangla literary magazine published
from outside of Bengal (from Jamshedpur, Jharkhand, erstwhile
Bihar), Kaurab had an outside-in identity, which it shaped and
reshaped over the years with much ingenuity. This group of poet/writers,
led by Kamal Chakraborty, Swadesh Sen, Barin
Ghosal, Debajyoti Dutta and Shankar Lahiri,
despite their apparent urbanity, invested deeply in making connections
with the emerging industrial culture (Jamshedpur was the hub
of industrial activity) of a small town gradually transforming
itself into a city, and the surrounding hinterland, rich in adivasi
(native tribal) cultural traditions. In fact, their urbanity
itself was intricately layered – never quite the Kolkata
urban though retaining strong creative links with its literary
production, the lived memories of the Tata steel furnaces and
the robust energies of changing adivasi languages and cultures.
The literature they produced demonstrates a complex, sometimes
inchoate interweaving of these worlds, in sharp contrast to the
ennui and despair of a post-Naxalite Kolkata-centric Bangla literature.
Kaurab subsequently went on to win the prestigious D.K.Gupta
award as the most distinguished Bangla literary magazine in 1982.
Noted litterateur Sunil Gangopadhyay, wrote in a leading Bangla
daily in 1988, "...it is sad that the best Bangla little magazine
today (Kaurab) is published from outside of Bangla." And perhaps
that was the secret of its distinctly different tenor!
Kaurab's literary work is also marked by a starkly different
notion of literary language. Curiously, in both prose and poetry,
their use of language gave currency to a ubiquitous urban Bangla
tongue of everyday, while it resonated deeply with the changing adivasi (tribal)
languages around them. However, this attempt defied all acts
of "museumification" of adivasi languages through ways
of embodying these others of Bangla literature with new subjectivities.
Kaurab also pioneered new methodologies of poetry appreciation
in the form of Poetry Camps or workshops, a technique
that found many followers in the later years. Kaurab's poetry,
often fuelled by rediscoveries of innovative language patterns
from the past, went through austere experiments with language,
speech and reading. During the 1990s Kaurab almost emerged as
a literary cult, influencing several contemporary Bangla little
magazines.
However, they continued to experiment, to learn, to dream, perhaps
of impossible futures. A calibration of Kaurab’s literary
journey will reveal the energy and the spirit of Kaurab that
has always been spilled over, refused to be contained within
the definition of a little magazine, as we know it. It was a
way of life and literary production and, perhaps, the germs of BHALOPAHAR,
an eco-community village they'll soon develop, lay there. Continued
here.
The
site also has this bio:
Aryanil
Mukherjee (Mukhopadhyay in Bengali script) is the last member
of the original core group of Kaurab writers. With him ends an
era of Kaurab’s literary history. Part II also begins with
him and a younger generation of poets and writers spearheaded
by Abhijit Mitra, Sabyasachi Sanyal and Sudeshna
Majumdar – the new, second generation editors of Kaurab.
Aryanil’s poetry recycles many of the base values of the
Kaurab cult and has a unique non-representational quality that
emerges from its geo-poetic nature. He has perhaps drawn some
blood from his two favorites, Swadesh Sen and Binoy Majumdar
and his poetry builds on the mathematics (Binoy) and aesthetics
(Swadesh) of reason. A critic wrote of "Haowamorager Man" (Weathercock
Mind), his second book, "Aryanil’s poetry builds fractals
of visuals and reason and creates a rare fragmented beauty".
Aryanil emigrated to the US in 1996 and began Kaurab Online – the
first Indian poetry webzine.
++++++++++=============+++++++++++++
L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E
POETRY — A Retrospective An interview
with Charles Bernstein (2006-2007)
Aryanil
Mukherjee Nearly three
decades back Charles Bernstein and others unleashed what we today
call LANGUAGE POETRY. A contemporary critic announced "finally
a true post-modernist proposal was put on the table". Bernstein
proclaimed, "There is no natural writing". When I took my first
peek at Language Poetry at the advent of the new century, it
immediately occured to me that a lot of what LP has claimed and
reclaimed over the years, sizeable portions of the kind of work
Charles Bernstein, Ron Silliman, Bruce Andrews and others have
done, will perhaps find soulmates in the writings of several
1980 (and 90s) generation Bengali poets in India. Attempting
to understand the
premise of LP and the poetry and poetics it advocates, I decided
to interview Charles Bernstein. The following interview was conducted
thru 2006-2007.
An important and prolific poet and poetry-speaker, Bernstein
is the author of several books and anthologies on poetry and
poetics. He is the Donald T. Regan Professor of English at the
University of Pennsylvania. —AM
AM:
When did you, Silliman and others conceive what we call L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E
Poetry today?
CB:
I was first in touch with Ron Silliman in 1973 and started what
has been a lifelong exchange, though our correspondence was most
intense from the early 70s to the mid-80s. I met Bruce Andrews,
with whom I edited L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E, in 1975. By that point,
a number of poets, dissatisfied with the Official Verse Culture
of the time, with its blandness and conformity, and with its
high-handed rejection of the historical and contemporary particulars
in poetry that most motivated us to write, collectively explored
alternatives, going back to radical modernist innovations while
at the same time championing the work we found most interesting
in the immediately prior generation. We actively exchanged ideas
about ideology, arts, politics, aesthetics, and philosophy, expressing
our engagements through intensive small press publishing of books
and magazines. Deep friendships developed in the course of these
exchanges, and lots of disagreements, collective engagements,
and concerted actions.
AM:
Why did the language poets choose to write "L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E"?
Was it to emphasize that language is essentially an assemblage
of signs ?
CB: “Language” was
among a long list of possible names Bruce and I compiled in 1977 – based
on conversation with several of our friends and collaborators – and
as Bruce and I began to settle on Language we did want something
to make it stand out both from the generic word from the title
of the journal of the Linguistics Society of America, not to
mention Jack Spicer’s great book of that name. We knew
we needed to use some kind of punctuation or visual mark between
the letters, and we again cast about for ideas about what would
work best. Bruce and I decided on the equal signs, though I don’t
recall any conversation in which we explicitly discussed what
those equal signs between the letters meant. But it looked good
and, at the time, that was good enough for us.
AM:
Did this generation of poets feel that they were caught up in
literary fiasco of some sort?
CB:
Any countermovement within poetry verges on fiasco. Without a
sense of humor about the context and consequences of literary
tempests, even in large stewpots, you risk becoming what you
most abhor: the blowhard literary functionary (and those come
on all three sides of any coin). My essays always border on,
if not actually celebrating, intellectual fiasco, or perhaps
frisson or miasma or bedlam. To bedlam and back, my friend: TOURS
TO THE OTHER SIDE OF THE MIND & HE LIVES TO TELL THE TALE!
I’ve always loved those movies about the small, slightly
disorganized gang trying to pull off a heist, and succeeding,
against all odds.
AM:
What were some of the real problems young poets were facing then
? How did LP address those?
CB:
If you say “real” problems, then I would point to
our rejection, in the U.S., of the policies that led to the Vietnam
war, that led to the incarceration of a large part of the young
male African-American population, that led to poverty and unemployment
as a means to fuel “economic growth.” Poetry addresses
that in the sense that it literally faces it, in Stevens’s
sense of the “pressure of reality.”
AM:
How were Language Poets reacting to mainstream American poetry
in the early eighties?
CB:
I don’t want to generalize about, or speak for, “Language
Poets” since the term means different things to different
people. What we are talking about is a great many poets who questioned
mainstream literary values but who did not necessarily have a
style or politics or poetics in common. In L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E,
the magazine I edited with Bruce Andrews from 1978 to 1982, we
suggested many “other” ways of writing poetry. But,
moreover, we were interested in a critical poetics, that is,
an engagement with poetry that articulated an alternative to
the often anti-intellectual cant of voice, self, humanism, emotion – an
alternative, that is, to an “official” practice that
was problematic because – in the name of voice – it
excluded most voices and the possibility of variant voicings
and in the process made assumptions about the self that were
troubling. The problem was never voice or self or emotion but
the dogmatic way these terms were used to regulate poetry. So
that you end up limiting poems to representing a self that was
hollowed out the very particularity of humanness that makes a
person not a universal idea but particular-in-formation. Or thinking
that emotion in poems is limited to prefabricated sentiments
rather than opening up to a volatile field on sensation. I didn’t
want to write poems that said what I felt but rather that made
feeling present in the words. Emotion is not something I represent
in a poem but make in the process of writing.
AM:
Did you see the Beats and/or the New York school or the Black
Mountain poets as your pre-cursors? Or was that LP did not believe
in growing out of a literary tradition?
CB:
I have been as much involved in fabricating viable histories
of American and non-American 20th century poetry as anything
else. And certainly the work of the New American Poetry was crucial
and informing, even as any “younger” poet must make
her or his own path of difference. As far as the particular poetics
that formed around L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E, it was probably more
involved with identifying a radical poetic tradition than breaking
from the poetry of the past. Much of the effort of L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E,
and my own projects in the years since, have been as historical
as contemporary. In fact, reading poetry as historically and
socially specific, not as universally true sentiments, is fundamental
to L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E''s poetics. What might be harder to
see from the present perspective in how contested the history
of American poetry was; in 1980, it was still a struggle to put
forward Stein or Zukofsky or Loy, Riding or Reznikoff. Things
have changed. But Official Verse Culture is no less pernicious
now than 25 years ago.
AM:
Who were some of the early Language Poets? How did you think
they were contributing then to the movement?
CB:
If you are interested in the view from the late 70s and early
80s, I suggest perusing L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E or consulting
several key anthologies: In the American Tree: Language, Realism,
Poetry, ed. Ron Silliman; From the Other Side of the Century:
A New American Poetry, 1960-1990, ed. Douglas Messerli; Language
Poetries: An Anthology, also edited by Messleri; Postmodern
American Poetry: A Norton Anthology, ed. Paul Hoover. My
selection of poets were included in two anthologies: "Language
Sampler" in Paris Review, (No. 86, 1982) and a few years
later 43 Poets (1984), which was a special issue of boundary
2 (Vol. 14, No. 1/2, Autumn, 1985–Winter, 1986). Two
of the magazines of the period I keep returning to are Roof,
edited by James Sherry in New York, and Tottel’s,
edited by Ron Silliman in the Bay Area. But just as important
were presses such as Lyn Hejinian’s Tuumba and Douglas
Messerli’s Sun & Moon. I don’t want to go back
to 1975 and speak for, or from, that moment and anyway I don’t
wish to speak for anyone but myself … and myself she is
wobbly! I’d rather give a partial list of some of the poets
I identified with in the 70s, who had started publishing at the
time or up to a decade earlier, and who are still, thirty years
later, doing work that fully engages me, that is, doing new work
with which I am in an ongoing dialog: Bruce Andrews, Leslie Scalapino,
Susan Howe, Michael Palmer, Clark Coolidge, Robert Grenier, Douglas
Messerli, Rosmarie Waldrop, Bob Perelman, Keith Waldrop, Alan
Davies, Erica Hunt, Steve McCaffery, Lyn Hejinian, Lorenzo Thomas,
Ron Silliman, Fred Wah, Tom Raworth, Ted Greenwald, Ann Lauterbach,
P. Inman, Nathaniel Mackey, Johanna Drucker, Tina Darragh, Nick
Piombino, David Bromige, Michael Davidson, Allen Fisher, Norman
Fischer, Diane Ward, Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, and Rae Armantrout.
AM:
Ron Silliman proclaimed "Let us undermine the bourgeoisie." You
wrote that this kind of writing is "decentered, community controlled,
taken out of the service of the capitalist project." What measures
did the Language Poets take to defy, ignore and undermine the
literary establishment ? We understand, you had to create small-presses
in order to support your cause, but in a capitalist society,
how do you make such small presses survive? What would prevent
them from getting swallowed by the big fish?
CB:
Much of the small press activity of the 70s and 80s has now migrated
to the web, though there remain crucial print publishers. Poetry
of the kind I have been engaged with has so far shown little
risk of absorption by the big commercial media companies – the
material is too small scale to generate profits. Our tiny market
share has saved us from too much compromise! Probably my best
answer to this question overall is an essay called “Provisional
Institutions: Alternative Presses and Poetic Innovation.” With
the Electronic Poetry Center and PennSound the
point is still to provide commercial-free zones for poetic exchange
that do provide a counter to the market economy. These sites
are noncommercial and not-for-profit: there are no paid advertisements
and we offer not samples of work but full texts and complete
readings. Still, nothing remains wholly outside the market and
it is as important to acknowledge our complicities as pursue
our resistances. Anyway, the point is not to remain outside,
above, below, or beyond the market or mass culture or even official
verse culture; purity is not only overrated, it is counterproductive.
I have always been a pragmatist: you do the best you can under
present conditions. I would like to see more of the poetry that
I most care about enter into public spaces, get reviewed in the
newspaper, win prizes, sell copies, be included in classrooms
from elementary school or graduate school. When that happens,
I don’t feel the edge has been lost but rather that the
work is finding its home in the world. However, there are surprisingly
strong forces in U.S. culture that stand in the way of this happening
and what’s worth focusing on these forces, rather than
on the isolated merits of one poem versus another. That is, I
am interested not just in preferences or taste but also in the
criteria for the taste and also the social, cultural, historical
and economic forces that inform those criteria. That can make
for exchanges across various divides: it is what makes possible
the kind of international exchange we both would like to see,
and that we are provisionally forming at the International Exchange
for Poetics Invention (poeticinvention.blogspot.com), which Ton
van 't Hof and I started earlier this year. If I see any problem
in the U.S. scene today, it is that there is not enough institutional
and ideological critique; the assumption too often is that we
are in a kind of talent contest in which everyone is free to
participate. But Official Verse Culture, by definition, always
includes a variety of styles and approaches in order to ensure
it’s legitimacy. John Ashbery may very well be America’s
most honored poet but his work stands in opposition to the Cold
War values of Official Verse Culture, which is constructed on
the radical containment of the work of Frost, Bishop, and Lowell;
ironically, even these three poets’ work is not safe from
the very Official Verse Culture that sacralizes it. Even if I
were to become, or am now, a part of Official Verse Culture myself
(if nominated I will swerve; if elected, somersault), it wouldn’t
change the basic state of affairs that I critique nor make my
critique any more or less true.
AM:
Was there any support, encouragement from the other side of the
establishment – the academic world?
CB:
The university is not the same as the literary establishment.
The sphere of literary taste represented by nationally distributed
publications, prizes, and the like is quite distinct from the
literary academy (literature departments), though more closely
aligned with some Creative Writing Programs. English departments – more
than poets outside the academy may sometimes realize – have,
by and large, only a peripheral engagement with contemporary
poetry. Those of involved with poetry often focus on the exceptions,
including the places I have worked, SUNY-Buffalo and the University
of Pennsylvania; but these places are not typical. I started
to teach at Buffalo in 1989, and at Penn in 2003; before that
my connection to universities was slight, at least after I graduated
from college in 1972, where I had teachers who were of tremendous
importance to me, including Stanley Cavell and Rogers Albritton,
both philosophers. Early on in my life as a poet, I was in contact
with several scholars who were not just supportive but really
more collaborators, fellow thinkers. In this respect I would
mention Marjorie Perloff and Jerome McGann in particular. The
poets I knew who worked at universities were also remarkably
generous and encouraging, from David Antin, Jerome Rothenberg,
and Michael Davidson at the University of California, San Diego,
to Robin Blaser at Simon Fraser University, Wystan Curnow at
the University of Auckland, Eric Mottram at Kings College (UK),
to Robert Creeley at Buffalo. They gave me a sense you could
be a poet working in the university but with an orientation toward
the new poetry and poetics being created and exchanged outside
the academy.
AM:
Some younger American poets who are believed to have imbibed
a lot from Language Poetry, say that – Language poets,
are, for the most part, intensely interested in literary theory
and have been instrumental is removing poetry further and further
from the common reader. In America today, academia seems to safe-haven
poetry thus strengthening the theory that poetry is a sub-culture
now. How would you face these charges ?
CB:
Poetry is not a form of mass-culture; every variety of poetry,
from that written by those who would like to reach the broad
masses to that written by those who are happy enough with a small
circle of friends, is tiny taters compared to blockbuster movies
or reality TV or pop music. The issues about accessibility, populism,
elitism are important aesthetic issues about which many poets
take passionate positions. But these positions take place within
the small-scale world of poetry, not on the stage of mass culture.
That is not my preference, or any poet’s choice; it just
reflects the historical circumstances for the genre in this time
and place. This state of affairs is neither positive nor negative;
much mass-audience art is pretty bad just as much small-audience
poetry is pretty bad. In the U.S., in the early 21st century,
the really pernicious elitism is the elitism of market share,
the widespread assumption that the only real value is market
value and market share. One of the values of poetry in our time
is to prove that wrong, spectacularly wrong. I am not concerned
with making my work accessible to those without any interest
or engagement in poetry, but I suspect that exactly this is the
most important quality of my work that might interest such a
person. The kind of poetry I like has a linguistic, acoustic,
and conceptual complexity and richness that I find no where else.
Lots of the discussion of accessibility in poetry assume that
readers are dumb not just in terms of their ability to read but
because of their choice not to read poetry. I must be dumb too
because I find little to interest me in some of the poems that
are trying their darndest to be EZ, the sort of thing the chief
functionary and propaganda czar of the AWP (the organization
of creative writing programs) toots his tin horn about. No one
has an obligation to read poetry and if someone prefers prose
that’s cool by me. Poetry is not a moral obligation; it’s
not the wheat germ of literature. Pandering only makes poetry
seem pathetic but then again pandering administrators of Poetic
Orthodonture can be pretty funny, in a Monty Python kind of way.
AM:You
and other Language Poets have professed that grammar structures
tend to support the power structures of Western societies. Could
you explain that with an example?
CB:
Grammar, vocabulary, diction, form, and style reflect the power
relations in a society. You can’t change the society by
changing your grammar but any radical social, economic, or cultural
change must necessarily come to terms with its rhetorics and
its metaphors.
AM:
In our world, parallel Bangla literature, there are senior poets
like Barin Ghosal, Swadesh Sen, Kamal Chakraborty, Amitava Maitra,
Ranjan Moitra, Dhiman Chakraborty, Shankar Lahiri, Swapan Roy,
Jahar Sen Majumdar, Pranab Paul and an entire generation of younger
followers who have seen conformist linguistic practices and language
traditions as a demon-deity that represents the establishment.
They have attacked this language or these modes of writing in
an attempt to unshackle it. However, these poets have shown a
deep distrust for academic pursuits. An academic essay to them
is the ninth essay born from eight previous ones. Many of them,
especially Barin Ghosal, have written “open essays” in
support of their poetry and language-experiments that have original
intent and are largely free from academic indoctrination. Did
the Language Poets see language as the establishment itself or
as an instrument of the establishment ? Academic institutions
are often thought of as the nursery of language, but aren’t
these establishments on their own ?
CB:
I am not familiar with these writers so can’t make any
useful comparisons. But I do think that the standard, professionalized
academic essay is a problem, and not just for poetry, for the
literary academy as well. The problem with the professionalized
academic essay is that it emphasizes rationalization over exploration.
And rationalization means smoothing out inconsistencies and ambiguities,
reigning in variations in tone, modeling authorativeness rather
than rattling authority. These are all things I say so much I
worry either that I am turning ever bluer in the face (I am,
so much more blue that 25 years back) or that I am falling into
my own rote routine. Rationalization allows us to exploit ideas
rather than think with them. It’s a struggle to avoid it,
though; maybe that’s the reason it has taken me so long
to reply to your questions. I had to stop every time I felt I
was just recycling “ideas,” even ideas I like very
well or, anyway, well enough. Institutions are pervasive and
exist as much in intimate relationships as on the job or in the
poetry or art worlds or at a university. And yes institutions
reproduce themselves through language. Schools indoctrinate more
than they teach. Perhaps the best we can do, here’s my
pragmatism again, is try to recognize that indoctrination and
hold it up for discussion. Language is neither the problem nor
the solution, it’s the means.
AM:
Language poets, as we know them, can be seen today as radical
revisionists of the poetic form. While they seem to emphasize
on the “new sentence”, they have a strong element
of rejection in their literary theory. They tend to reject traditional
forms, lyricism, narrative, subjectivity, and representational
writing. In Bengal, roughly similar poetic values came into existence
in the eighties that picked up momentum in the nineties. Barin
Ghosal has termed this brand of poetry as “Atichetanaar
Kabitaa” (Poetry of the Extra-Consciousness) and other
latter modes and their variations as “Natun Kabita” (New
Poetry) . When we came to know about LP, we seemed to find a
mirror image of our beliefs, despite the numerous cultural/linguistic/political
differences. Most of us from the younger generation, however,
seem to reject the “element of rejection”. Proscriptive
rejection, as we believe, prevents reinvention. We would like
to invite your comment on this.
CB:
It’s hard to disagree that any proscriptive credo would
limit invention; that tends to be my assumption too. But then
you’d have to be leery too about proscribing “rejection.” Negativity
is one of the most powerful forces in poetry, as when one insists “I
will not do that” or “This approach I simply cannot
abide.” I can’t comment about the circumstance for
you and your friends, but from where I come from there is altogether
too much complacency, acceptance of dominant or reigning values,
fear of questioning or rejecting. I have never said that any
kind of poetry can’t be written and have written many kinds
myself. But I think it’s still possible, and valuable,
to articulate your preferences, to advocate what you care about
and to come to terms with what you reject. Oscar Wilde once wrote, “Only
an auctioneer admires all schools of art.” The current
wave of neoliberal pluralism (or you could call it compulsory
pluralism) may take the high ground of refusing to be limited
by taste or the even higher ground of seeing connections where
others have seen differences. But more often it just reflects
an “end to ideology” – that it all boils down
to a talent contest or differences in preference, as if we all
on American Idol. The fact that different poetries clash is a
value for poetry. And around here the idea that one should not
rule out any style of writing is almost always applied in the
wrong direction, that is, not against those who accept only traditional
and conventional forms, but against those who are trying some
different. If you question the dogmatism of dominant literary
values, naturally you are accused of being dogmatic. “Round
up the usual suspects.” If anything, my problem is that
I am too complacent.
Öyvind Fahlström
ESSO-LSD, 1967
was my favorite work in Summer
of Love: Art of the Psychedelic Era
at theWhitney Museum, New York
(through Sept. 16)
which might better have been subtitled
The fist time as tragedy, the second as farce.
Self-Portrait in Summer of Love
The show features a number of quite interesting and rarely seen
films, film loops, and visual environments.
*
Farce: because the Whitney curators have purged the show of most
of its socio-political context:
you wouldn't have known there was a war on
or a civil rights movement
& the 60s without that
is No Sixties at All but an ESSO sign
Yeah that's right, sing it again — no sixties at all but an ESSO sign.
Ann Lauterbach
Ann had come to town to pack up her loft on Duane Street.
She had lost her lease.
I talked to her at the Clocktower studios of WPS1. December 4, 2006 (39
seconds, 7.7 mb)
Ted Berrigan
Interview and reading on "In The American Tree" radio show on
KPFA radio, Berkeley
hosted by Lyn Hejinian & Kit Robinson, 1978
Full Interview and Reading (34:41): MP3
also now available: The Sonnets broken into singles for each poem
from Resistance (collected in Republics of Reality
1975-1995)
1. Consideration (2:19): MP3
2. But Boxes Both Boat (0:40): MP3
3. Dunvegan (1:03) : MP3
4. Playing with a Full Deck (1:59): MP3
5. The Sheds of Our Webs (0:43): MP3
6. If There Were a God (1:08: MP3 )
7. Forefright (1:11): MP3
8. The Land and Its People (1:08): MP3
9. Air Shaft (0:20): MP3
10. You ((0:38): MP3
11. Ideopathic Pathenogenesis (0:50): MP3
12. Entitlement from The Sophist ((9:42): MP3
13 Sprocket Damage from Islets/Irritations (4:17): MP3 14. The Simply from The Sophist (13:22): MP3
A beloved without a lover? All gay ethic, eh? Barn uten foreldre?
Can there be a translation without an original? Child without
parent? Dette er for så vidt interessant – men spørsmålet
er: for hvem? Do I have such things as real beliefs? Doesn’t
Melnick want to allow for this? Eller er det originalens forhold
til reproduksjonen som er verdifullt; eller den første
i kraft av seg selv, men ikke den andre (faren og farens forhold
til barnet, men ikke til moren/gjenskaperen? En elsket uten elsker?
Er denne lesningen ugyldig? Er det et overgrep å gjøre
oversettelse til mer av et overgrep enn et ikke-overgrep? Er
det ikke interessant at en gren av ethnopoesien utviklet seg
til å ende opp i prosjekter som det falske Sumero-Akkadianske
Tablets av Armand Schwerner?… Hva
skjer når noen leser Men in Aida og ikke ser forbindelsen
til Homer? Hvilken viktig engelskspråklig forfatter ville
våge å skrive sin neste bok på spansk? Hvis
man alltid er fremmed for seg selv? Hvor trekke grensa for hva
som faller inn under temaet? …I
mean, how can we imagine to translate anything, when we cannot
even get the first letters right? Interpretation without its
object or subject? Is he paying them or what? Is the reading
invalid? Is this like someone seeing Clueless but being clueless
about Jane Austin? Isn’t it clear, then, that translation
games are becoming a favorite paradigm in language play? Jeg
mener, hvordan kan vi oversette noe som helst, når vi ikke
engang får til de første bokstavene? Kan det finnes
en oversettelse uten en original? Kan tidsredigeringen fästas
här, brottet utföras nu? Men in Aida, they appeal,
eh? Not uninteresting, but the question is: to whom? När övergår
ljud i mening? Och vad återstår i så fall för
den köttsliga översättaren att göra? Or is
what is valuable the relation of the original to the reproduction;
or the first on it own, but not the second on it own (the father
and the relation of the father to the child, but not the mother/reproducer)?
Stand on its own, eh? Stående for seg selv, ja? Tror jeg
virkelig på noe? Vad betyder det? Vad menar han? Vad vill
den Andra av mig? Vad vill han? Vad är begär? Vad är
jag för den Andra? Vad är det för mening som överförs?
Vad är njutning? Vad är poesi? Vad är språk?
Vad är översättning? Var går gränsen
mellan human och artificiell översättning? Var går
gränsen mellan originalet och översättningen?
Varför inte? Vem är den Andra? What happens when someone
reads Men in Aida and doesn’t recognize the Homer connection?
What is a writer who still clings to the notion of using his
work as a means to represent his true intentions? What is poetry?
What is the translation doing that can’t be done in any
other medium? What is valuable, the original or the reproduction:
the source or the transfiguration of it, the product or the activity,
the accuracy or the exchange? What major Anglo writer would dare
to write his or her next book in Spanish? Why do translators,
writers in general, think so much about the Reader? Ønsker
ikke Melnick å åpne for dette? Å forflytte
et menneske – høres det ikke ut som en slags tvang? Är
den akustiska dimensionen möjlig att helt frikoppla från
den semantiska? Är det möjligt att göra ett komplicerat,
kontextkänsligt, kulturellt kodat översättningsprogram?
The issue also includes several other
significant essays on the poetics of translation. nypoesi
Susan Howe's WBAI (NY)-Pacifica Radio shows
are being available on PennSound
in collaboration with
the Archive for New Poetry at the University of California, San
Diego.
Our digital copies were made from recordings housed at the archive.
Helen Adam, 1977-1978
performing her work and in conversation with Susan Howe and Charles
Ruas
1977-1978, one hour: MP3
Bruce Andrews and Charles
Bernstein, 1979
reading their work and in conversation with Susan Howe
March 14, 1979, full program one hour: MP3
Andrews reads from R+B (2:30): MP3
Andrews reads "How" (5:36): MP3
Bernstein reads "Matters of Policy" from Controlling
Interests (11:31): MP3
The Bostonian (1981)
program on John Hall Wheelwright
Nov. 23, 1981
featuring James Laughlin, Quincy Howe, Polly Thayer, Malcolm
Cowley, Ray DiPalma, and Charles North
(1:30:26): MP3
These sound recordings are being made available for noncommercial
and educational use only. All rights to this recorded material
belong to the poets and to Susan Howe. (C) 2007 by Susan Howe
and the poets. Used with permission of Susan Howe and the Archive
for New Poetry, UCSD. Distributed by PENNSound.
Close
Listening -- readings and conversations at WPS1.Org
Clocktower Studio, New York, May 30, 2007
Abigail Child in conversation with Charles Bernstein
(28:52): MP3
WPS1 Reading Entire Program (27:07): MP3 Singles: 1. Subject Motion, part 1, from From Solids (Roof
Books) (3:02): MP3
2. From Solids, excerpts (2:17): MP3
3. Lust, from A Motive for Mayhem (Potes and Poets) (5:03): MP3
4. Turn of Events (6:19): MP3
5. Litmus, from Post Industrials (Primary Writing 10/98)
(3:32): MP3
6. Perennials (4:10): MP3
New on PennSound
Lyn Hejinian
Reading from My Life
at San Francisco State University in 1979
(15:27) MP3 An early reading of the work, when it was provisionally
titled One Side Around
Wystan Curnow & Joel Kuszai
Saatchi & Saatchi, New York, May 8,
2007 (introduction by Charles Bernstein )
Kuszai (25:15) MP3
Curnow part one (22:57) MP3
Curnow part two (12:00) MP3
from this second part, one single I especially recommend:
"Matisse Asleep" (3:10) MP3
for all the streaming links go to Curnow
at PennSound Kuszai
at PennSound
(to keep this page from dragging I have dropped the streaming
links)
Jerome Rothenberg
" Old Man Beaver's Blessing Song"
(2:12): MP3
Goldsmith transcribed this material, presumably from tapes,
from 1010 WINS all news all the time you give us 10 minutes
we’ll give the world – “traffic on the
ones” reports. The books covers one day, divided into sections
for each hour. Goldsmith picked a particularly fraught day for
New York, presumably during the city-wide transit strike in December
2005, on the Thursday or Friday before the Christmas holiday
weekend, when traffic was bad (“a grueling torture test”)
and there were restrictions on cars with single riders coming
into midtown. This is what gives the work the Weekend-like
ominousness, as Craig Dworkin notes in his short introduction
(referring to the Godard film).
All traffic is local. Traffic addresses the movement of
(local) speech to (conceptual) writing. As Ben Yarmolinksy and
I realized when we wrote our American vernacular opera Blind
Witness News, the weather and sports reports from TV and
radio are one of the most generic, instantly familiar cultural
forms in contemporary American culture. So it’s fitting
that Goldsmith starts his American trilogy with Weather and
will end with sports. Traffic is in between and is notably
marked by regional language and references. What's becoming apparent
is that Goldsmith's work is centered on the ordinary; he is articulating
a poetics of everyday life. The cyclic structure, consisting
of 144 prose stanzas (6 reports for each of 24 hours, about 10
sentence in each prose stanza) brings poetry round again to a
calendric and closed serial form.
“Well, you were talking about gridlock, well, I'll tell
you, we've had reports of some really, uh, serious gridlock on
those cross streets uptown between the, uh, 90's and the 120's.
Gridlock conditions north of the 96th Street checkpoint, causing
motorists to sit for literally hours on those, uh, roadways so,
uh, carpool or walk if possible, but again, this is going to
be a major mess.”
Here is Craig Dworkin's commentary from
the back cover:
In both form and content, Kenneth
Goldsmith's Traffic recalls nothing so much as the extended tracking
shot in Jean-Luc Godard's 1967 film Week-End, and the book's
audacious sustain elicits the same series of responses: surprise,
admiration, amusement, incredulity, horror, recognition, terror,
boredom, impatience, awe....
An uneasy combination of farcical comedy and hopeless tragedy,
Traffic is a drama of Aristotelian proportions. Goldsmith's book
unfolds like all classic narratives, tracing the beginning, middle
and end of the action on a single day. In this case, the worst
driving day of the year - replete with wanderings and errors,
chance encounters, subplot snarls, and very real life-and-death
results. But in the end, for all the horrific implications of
this cultural catastrophe, Traffic has a happy ending: the midnight
dream of the open road.
Traffic thus steers into the spin of the long tradition
that includes Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath and Fitzgerald's
The Great Gatsby, McCarthy's The Road and Kerouac's On The Road.
At the same time, Traffic takes its logical place in what might
be called Goldsmith's 'American Trilogy,' a series that began
with The Weather (MakeNow, 2005) and will conclude with Sports.
Like The Weather, Traffic exhibits Goldsmith's signature mode:
remediating found texts and crossing artifice with everyday life
by metrically regulating the flow of the quotidian through 'pataphysically
measured intervals.
Moreover, by remapping the roadways around Manhattan onto
networks of desire and frustration, attention and boredom, leisure
and labor, commodity and death, Goldsmith engages in a distinctive
politics. Indeed, Traffic proves the last of Guy Debord's "Positions
Situationnistes Sur La Circulation [Situationist Theses on Traffic]":
Les urbanistes révolutionnaire ne se préoccuperont
pas seulemnet de la circulation des choses, et des hommes figés
dans un monde de choses. Ils essaieront de briser ces chaines
topologiques, en expérimentant des terrains pour la circulation
des hommes à travers la vie authentique.
[Revolutionary urbanists will not limit their concern to
the circulation of things, or to the circulation of human beings
trapped in a world of things. They will try to break these topological
chains, paving the way with their experiments for a human journey
through authentic life.]
Recorded by Eva Hesse and Mike O’Donnell for the Bayrischer
Rundfunk. Used by permission of Eva Hesse.
The bracketed page numbers for non-Cantos materials are taken
from the Library of America edition of Pound's Poems and Translations.
Richard Sieburth, editor of the Pound page, added this commentary
to his Listener's
Guide:
These recordings were made on a TK35 Grundig recorder by
Eva Hesse and Mike O’Donnell at Brunnenburg Castle in December
1959 for a Bayrischer Rundfunk radio broadcast entitled “Personae,
Neue Gedichte von Ezra Pound.” The choice of poems was
Pound’s own and the German versions he reads are those
included in Eva Hesse’s recent edition of Personae (Zurich:
Arche Verlag, 1959). Tracks 1-4 are taken from Pound’s
1916 poem “Impressions of François-Marie Arouet
(de Voltaire). This poem is made up of three sections, all loosely
adapted from Voltaire’s poetry—“Phyllidula
and the Spoils of Gouvernet,” “To Madame du Châtelet,” and “To
Madame Lullin”—and Pound reads all three in English
and then the third one (with a slight Austrian accent) in Eva
Hesse’s German translation. Tracks 4 and 5 feature Pound’s
reading of Hesse’s translations of the first section of
the poem “Phanopoeia” (“Rose, White, Yellow,
Silver”) and of the fifth section of Part I of Hugh
Selwyn Mauberley (“There died a myriad”).
Track 7 contains some of the raw footage, as it were, of
this Brunnenburg recording session—with Pound reading the
same texts as above in English and German. Eva Hesse described
this session in an e-mail to me (5/9/07): “In December
1959 at Brunnenbrug EP was already in a state of unhappiness
which erupted into a crisis in January, after we had left. .
. . But he did take a lively interest in the recordings and when
Mike [O’Donnell] said that his way of reading reminded
him of Yeats, he was visibly shaken. He grabbed the papers and
vanished into his room. The next morning he came up with a greatly
changed way of reading, which was much more satisfactory to my
mind. I had the impression that he had been practicing this all
night. But he made a great comic show of not being able to pronounce “Zahnfäule” [Hesse’s
German translation of “For an old bitch gone in the
teeth” in Mauberley I,V] and I felt that this
was in partial retribution for our cheekiness the day before.” Indeed,
in the recordings collected in this Track 7 one can distinguish
between Pound’s grander, more Yeatsian style of delivery
and a slightly more casual, more “prosey” mode of
poetic elocution—the poems read n the latter style (Tracks
1-6) were chosen by Hesse for her radio program. Toward the end
of Track 7, Pound reads Hesse’s translation of the first
section of Mauberley (“For three years, out of key
with his time”) in Ezraic German (soft v’s, rolling
r’s). Then there is the following bit of dialogue:
EH: “Can you analyze it, Mike?”
MO: “Listening to Mr. Yeats too long . . .”
EP: “But I always made fun of him. . .”
MO: “Now it’s having its revenge”
Another snippet of dialogue features Eva Hesse impishly asking
Pound to read some selections from the comic “Alfred Lord
Venison” (sic) poems that he had previously recorded for
the BBC. Pound corrects this to “Alfred Venison,” and
reminds her that he read these “in the bughouse”—i.e.
at St. Elizabeths [see previous section].
=====================
For the most pronounced version of Pound's shift in reading
style discussed by Richard Sieburth above, start with track 3.
=====================
Web Log bonus tracks
Pound reading Robert Lowell's translation of Dante (Inferno XV)
in Rapallo, 1964
(3:01) MP3
(On the PennSound Pound page, Pound reads this same passage,
one year later, in the last part of the last track.)
Robert Grenier Bob, Mimi Gross, and I met at
Pecan's, in Tribeca, just before taping Close Listening at WPS1's
Clocktower studio on Leonard Street. We walked across the street
and Bob sat on the stoop and talked about his visit to
New York. October 20, 2006 (25
seconds, 4 mb)
MLA
Introduction to Scholarship in Modern Languages and Literatures 3rd
Edition
Editor: David G. Nicholls
Pages: ix + 370 pp.
Published: May 2007
ISBN: 978-0-87352-598-5 (paperback)
ISBN: 978-0-87352-597-8 (hardcover)
The third edition of the MLA's widely used Introduction to
Scholarship in Modern Languages and Literatures features
sixteen completely new essays by leading scholars. Designed to
highlight relations among languages and forms of discourse, the
volume is organized into three sections. "Understanding Language" provides
a broad overview of the field of linguistics, with special attention
to language acquisition and the social life of languages. "Forming
Texts" offers tools for understanding how speakers and writers
shape language; it examines scholarship in the distinct but interrelated
fields of rhetoric, composition, and poetics. "Reading Literature
and Culture" continues the work of the first two sections by
introducing major areas of critical study. The nine essays in
this section cover textual and historical scholarship; interpretation;
comparative, cultural, and translation studies; and the interdisciplinary
topics of gender, sexuality, race, and migrations (among others).
As in previous volumes, an epilogue examines the role of the
scholar in contemporary society.
Each essay discusses the significance, underlying assumptions,
and limits of an important field of inquiry; traces the historical
development of its subject; introduces key terms; outlines modes
of research now being pursued; postulates future developments;
and provides a list of suggestions for further reading. This
book will interest any member of the scholarly community seeking
a review of recent scholarship, while it provides an indispensable
resource for undergraduate and graduate students of modern languages
and literatures.
Contributors
David Bartholomae
Charles Bernstein
Heidi Byrnes
Anne Donadey
Jean Franco
Susan Stanford Friedman
Catherine Gallagher
J. Michael Holquist
Paul J. Hopper
Susan C. Jarratt
Françoise Lionnet
Leah S. Marcus
Jerome McGann
Bruce Robbins
Doris Sommer
Lawrence Venuti
Kenneth W. Warren
from my "Poetics" essay:
The profession is best that professionalizes least.
The sociologist C. Wright Mills
got this just right when he wrote, "The aim of the college,
for the individual student, is to eliminate the need in his life
for the college; the task is to help him become a self-educating
man. For only that will set him free."
--
Art students used to be told that the fundamental requirement
for drawing or painting was to accurately render figures. But
this confused one modality of representation with the entire
process of visual aesthesis. It might have been better to say you
can’t draw if you can’t see but it would be even
better to say you can’t draw if you can’t perceive.
Correlatively, we might say, you can’t write if you
can’t think. Scholarship requires poetics.
Paratactic writing, thinking by
association, is no less cogent or persuasive than hypotactic
exposition, with its demands that one thought be subordinated
to the next. Poetics reminds us that the alternate logics of
poetry are not suited just for emotion or irrational expression;
poetics lies at the foundation of all writing.
Poetry is a name we use to discount
what we fear to acknowledge.
The accurate documentation of information
used in a work is a vital principle of scholarship. Similarly,
scholarship requires a writer to consider challenges to her or
his views: but this too often is assumed to mean considering
challenges to the content of what is being said while ignoring
challenges to the style and form. The importance of poetics for
scholarship is not to decree that anything goes but rather to
insist that exposition is an insufficient guarantor of reason.
Poetics makes scholarly writing harder, not easier: it complicates
scholarship with an insistence that the way we write is never
neutral, never self-evident.
Clarity in writing is a rhetorical
effect not a natural fact. One man’s eloquence can be another’s
poison; one woman’s stuttering may be the closest approximation
of truth that we will ever know.
Table of Contents
Understanding Language
Language, Culture, and Society Doris Sommer
Linguistics Paul J. Hopper
Language Acquisition and Language
Learning Heidi Byrnes
Forming Texts
Rhetoric Susan C. Jarratt
Composition David Bartholomae
Poetics Charles Bernstein
Reading Literature and Culture
Textual Scholarship Leah S. Marcus
Interpretation Jerome McGann
Historical Scholarship Catherine Gallagher
Comparative Literature J . Michael Holquist
Cultural Studies Jean Franco
Feminisms, Genders, Sexualities Anne Donadey with Françoise Lionnet
Race and Ethnicity Kenneth W. Warren
Migrations, Diasporas, and Borders Susan Stanford Friedman
Recorded at the Bowery Poetry Club, New York. February 10, 2007
Issue 3 of EOAGH, Queering Language was edited by CA Conrad,
kari edwards, Paul Foster Johnson, Erica Kaufman, Jack Kimball,
Tim Peterson, and Stacy Szymaszek. This journal issue is dedicated
to the memory of kari edwards
Coolidge's "Oflengths"
a work made up entirely of prepositions
has long been a favorite of mine.
Craig Dworkin's Eclipse
has now made this available
as part of the full set of Ron Silliman's Tottel's now in final production (pdfs to come).
Tottel's was for me a key publication of the 1970s
informing and provoking, and leading the way
to (among other publications)
Bob Perelman's Hiils, Lyn Hejinian's Tuumba Press, Alan
Davies's A Hundred Posters, Douglas Messerli's La
Bas, & James Sherry's ROOF
Tottel's 16 included "Asylums"; it was one of my first
publications.
#16 also included a page from Hannah Weiner's Clairvoyant
Journal:
In
January 2002, Joshua Beckman, an editor of Radical Society,
asked several people to respond to this quote from Deputy Secretary
of Defense Paul Wolfowitz
We've
just seen in Afghanistan one way of getting a state out of the
business of supporting terrorism. The better way is for states
to decide voluntarily that this is not a good business to be
in, and to look at what's happened to the Taliban and say wait
a minute, I don't want that to happen to me.
We
in the Department of Defense, frankly, are not looking for extra
work. We would much prefer that all those countries that have
been supporting terrorism in the past would reconsider what they're
doing and end state support for terrorism because it is I think
clearly an evil that's gone from being just one of those bad
things that happens in the world to being something that's truly
intolerable.
My
response was published in the April 2002 issue:
Politics
might still be a way of articulating values rather than obliterating
thought, but we rarely see any evidence of this from the official
spokespersons of the state. Even those most inclined to reject
the language of State department briefings are more than likely
to focus on the supposed content, as if there were one. It would
be insufferably pedantic to constantly critique the language
of state business, except in the comic mode of the presumed incontinence
in the verbatim utterance of the two Bushes. These are attributed
to defect rather than policy, and any talk of what we used to
call in the sixties "smoke screens" now seems decidedly
retro. Recent research on smoke screens has come up with a scientifically
accurate "spf" rating - surreptitious policy factor.
The quote at hand registered 64, though they say anything over
32 is effective enough. My brief text scores 133 and counting.
I am not, that is, advocating greater clarity or transparency,
which are the most common tools of deceit in the game. In this
particular case, the smoke may be hiding a policy that is not
as bad as expressed. But maybe the danger would be that if the
policy was articulated in terms of its values, then we would
feel more compelled to follow its implications and applications.
This might have an inhibitory effect on the unilateral actions
we launch abroad. Moreover, holding people accountable for their
words might also be the best defense against what I guess we
can now call the Wolfowitz doctrine, which differentiates intolerable
evil from the evils we choose to tolerate. I use the term "we" loosely.
We in the Department of Poetry, frankly, are not looking for
extra work. We would much prefer that all those speaking for
the people would reconsider what they're saying. Truly we do.
Close Listening: Private Edition #1
April 29, 2007, New York
the streaming links were not working properly when first posted,
but the problem is now fixed. so stream or download.
1. REMEĆENJE: MP3 Serbo-Croation
text and translation 2. iz zbirke KLOPKE: MP3 Serbo-Croation
text and translation 3. Naše ideologije: MP3 4. TRANSFORMACIJA SNOVA: MP3 5. Umetnost, telo, tehnologija: MP3 6. Tragam za kritičarkom: MP3 7. Tvoje su oči nanele mulj : MP3 8. Muza me danas opseda i ja ne: MP3 9. Maria Grazia želi da sedne za Rilkeov sto/stol: MP3 10. Ono što je počelo kao incident: MP3 11. Kao da je da: MP3 12. Bavim se sobom: MP3
more of
my
periodic citations of
the exceptional, eccentric, & electrifying
Ron Silliman, The Age of Huts (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007)
This book looms so large in my writing life I can't imagine a
writing life without it.
Aram Saroyan, Complete Minimal Poems (Brooklyn; Ugly Duckling Presse, 2007)
In the mid-60s to mid-70s, Robert Grenier, Clark Coolidge, and
Aram Saroyan perfected an approach to poetry that involved using
from one word to a phrase or sentence on each page. Eclipse and
UBU have made much of Saroyan’s work available on line.
Ugly Duckling has now made the complete set available in this
275 page collection
Darren Wershler-Henry The Iron Whim: A Fragmented History of Typewriting
(Toronto: McClellad and Stewart, 2005; Ithaca: Cornell University
Press, 2007)
Why Qwerty? What do Don Marquis and William Burroughs have in
common? Is the typewriter the person who types or the machine?
Engaging facts and factoids. A billion monkeys typing
for infinity would never be able to create this short commentary.
Carol Mirakove, Mediated (New York: Factory School, 2006)
The politics of poetics form, reinvented for the present crisis.
Rachel Zolf, Human Resources
(Toronto: Coach House Press, 2007)
Situationist détournement meets kabbalistic anti-capitalist
procedural writing; aka
The Coach House Guide to How to Fright Poems that Really Torque
in 90 days
funny slack guaranteed.
John Wilkinson, Proud Flesh
introduction by Drew Milne
(Cambridge, UK: Salt Publishing, 2005)
Wilkinson's haunted 1986 book
back in print
Milne's preface and the first pages available
as pdf
Milne discusses the work in terms of "dialectical lyric"
in which the social and aesthetic experience of social frames
is made palpable.
Cole Swenson, Noon
(Los Angeles: Green Integer, 2005).
Swenon’s 1997 Sun & Moon book reissued by Green Integer.
Douglas Messerli, My Year 2005: Terrifying Times
(Los Angeles: Green Integer, 2006) .
The first volume of Messerli’s ongoing memoir. The secret
life of poets turns out to be the imagination, here refracted
through friends, films, books, & shows.
Vito Acconci & Bernadette Mayer, 0 TO 9: The Complete Magazine 1967-1969
(Brooklyn: Ugly Duckling, 2006)
Vito Acconci & Bernadette Mayer edited this mimeo magazine
for just three years (1967 to 1969). Mayer and Acconci (who was
at the time married to Mayer's sister, artist Rosemarie Mayer)
included works of poets and visual/conceptual artists, in a mix
that would anticipate not only the radically innovative poetry
of the 70s (surely this magazine is precursor for what Bruce
Andrews and I were trying to do with L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E a
decade later) but also today's "conceptual" poetry.
Among the contriburors were Robert Barry, Ted Berrigan, Clark
Coolidge, John Giorno, Dan Graham, Sol LeWitt, Jackson Mac Low,
Harry Mathews, Adrian Piper, Bern Porter, Yvonne Rainer, Jerome
Rothenberg, Aram Saroyan, Robert Smithson, Alan Sondheim, Hannah
Weiner, and Emmett Williams. 736 facsimile pages from the ever
inspiring Ugly
Dukling Presse (on whose board I happily serve).
Luigi Ballerini and Paul Vangelisti, eds., Nuova Poesia
Americana: Los Angeles (Milano: Oscar Mondadori, 2005)
The first of a projected series, which will include New York
as the third volume; LA is a home base for both editors. Includes
these poets from Southern California: Will Alexander, Rae Armantrout,
Guy Bennett, Wanda Coleman, Robert Crossen, Michael Davidson,
Jack Hirschman, Thomas McGrath, Douglas Messerli, Stuart Z. Perkoff,
Dennis Philips, Martha Ronk, Jerome Rothenberg, Mark Salerno,
Standard Schaeffer, John Thomas, Paul Vangelisti, and Diane Ward.
All the poems in this volume translated by Ballerini and Federica
Santini.
Luigi Ballerini and Paul Vangelisti, eds., Nuova Poesia
Americana: San Francisco
(Milano: Oscar Mondadori, 2006).
The second of a projected series, following Los
Angeles last year and New York next year. Presents a postwar,
historical view of the Bay Area, which in many ways has been
the U.S. capital of poetry during this period. Includes Duncan,
Blaser, Spicer, Lew Welch, Kyger, Hejinian, Silliman, Bromige,
Ronald Johnson, Norma Cole, Bob Kaufman, Neeli Cherkovski, Snyder,
Ishmael Reed, Palmer, Oppen, Moriarity, Shurin, Jeff Clark, Lamantia,
George Stanley, James Schevill, Whalen, but also Gillian Conoley,
Stan Rice, Brenda Hillman and Robert Hass. Bilingual, facing
pages, about 500 pages in all. Translators: Ballerini, Andrea
Borsari, Beppe Cavatorta, Francesca Leardini, and Giancarlo Rizzo.
Lytle Shaw, ed, Nineteen Lines: A Drawing Center Writing
Anthology (New York: The Drawing Center and Roof, 2007)
This adds up to more than just a document of a reading series;
the selections of poems and poets make this a compelling anthology
of contemporary poetry. Includes (among others) Ammiel
Alcalay, John Ashbery, Anselm Berrigan, Christian Bök, Régis
Bonvicino, Lee Ann Brown, João Cabral, Tina Darragh, Alan
Davies, Kevin Davies, Tim Davis, Jeff Derksen, Johanna Drucker,
Kenward Elmslie, Dan Farrell, Rob Fitterman, Ben Friedlander,
Renee Gladman, Kenny Goldsmith, Nada Gordon & Gary Sullivan,
Carla Harryman, Lyn Hejinian, Susan Howe, Erica Hunt, Alison
Knowles, Rachel Levitsky, Tan Lin, Jackson Mac Low, Bernadette
Mayer, Ange Mlinko, Jennifer Moxley, Eileen Myles, Maureen Owen,
Tom Raworth, Lisa Robertson, Rod Smith, Juliana Spahr, Brian
Kim Stefans, Edwin Torres, Cecilia Vicuña, Lewis Warsh, &&.
Paul Auster Travels in the Scriptorium (New York: Henry Holt, 2007)
Something of a companion to Auster's new movie, The Inner
Life of Martin Frost (which I saw at the New Directors Film
Festival in NY). More than any other film I can think of, The
Inner Life of Martin Frost centers on the acts of writing
the movie unfolding before us; with a sharp dose of Orpheus & Euridice & lots
of delightfully classic Auster moments.
Now
on-line Swedish Poetry and Poetics: A Gathering announcement posted at IEPI The selection features Fredrik Hertzberg, Gunnar Björling,
Lars-Håka Svensson, Jesper Svenbro, John Matthias, Anders
Lundberg, Jesper Olsson, Stig Larsson, Ann Jäderlund, Jörgen
Gassilewski, Helena Eriksson, & Lars Mikael Raattamaa.
& announcing the publication of You Go the Words by Gunnar
Björling
translated by Fredrik Hertzberg from Action
Books
Fredrik Hertzberg’s revelatory translations make palpable
the syntactically sprung, emotion-rent verse of one of the great
Scandinavian modernist poets. Hovering in an aesthetic space
somewhere between Dickinson and Celan, Oppen and Creeley, Gunnar
Bjorling is a poet of the everyday and its words, as if the abyss
between souls could ever be ordinary or ever anything else.
while the book is not yet listed
on the Action web site,contact the publisher
Johannes Göransson
johannesgoransson{at}gmail{dot}com
"This Is Just to Say"
by William Carlos Williams:
five versions
compiled by Steve McLaughlin for
PennSound's WCW Page "This
is Just to Say," read in Rutherford, New Jersey, June 1950 MP3
(1:19) "This
is Just to Say," read in Rutherford, New Jersey, August 1950 MP3
(0:21) "This
is Just to Say," read in Van Nuys, California, November 16, 1950 MP3
(0:37) "This
is Just to Say," read at Harvard University, December 4, 1951 MP3
(1:14) "This
is Just to Say," read at Princeton University, March 19, 1952 MP3
(2:11)
Close
Listening readings
and conversations
produced in cooperation with WPS1.Org recorded at Studio 111, University of Pennsylvania
March 21, 2007
Program One:
Sergei Gandlevsky in Conversation with Charles Bernstein
also with Eugene Ostashevsky and translations by Kevin
Platt (54:16): MP3
Program Two: Studio 111 Reading Gandlevsky reads from A Kindred Orphanhood: Selected Poems
of Sergey Gandlevsky, translated by Philip Metres (Zephyr
Press, 2006)
(28:05):MP3
Born in 1952 in Moscow, Gandlevsky
was an important figure in underground poetry circles during
the 1970's but he was little known across or outside of the U.S.S.R.
Since the rise of Soviet underground poetry to public prominence
in the late 1980's, however, Gandlevsky has come to be considered
one of Russia's leading living poets. He was awarded both the
Little Booker Prize and the Anti-Booker prize in 1996 for his
collection of poetry Trepanation of the Skull. He is the
author of many books of poems, a memoir and a collection of essays.
He will be reading from his new book from Zephyr press, A KINDRED
ORPHANHOOD, translated by Philip Metres.
The “Eye” and
the “Company”: Robert Creeley’s Collaborations,
1953-2004
by
Barbara MONTEFALCONE
(on-line doctoral thesis in French)
Thèse de doctorat d’Études anglophones
Faculté des Langues
Département d’Études anglophones
Centre d’Études et de Recherches Anglaises et Nord-Américaines
Université Lumière-Lyon 2, France
8 December 2006
Wystan Curnow is a well-known New Zealand poet and critic. Modern
Colours, Jackbooks, 2005, is his most recent book of
poetry. His essay on Ron Silliman and On Kawara, “Autobiography:
does it have a future?” appeared in the journal Reading
Room earlier this year. With Leigh Davis he edited Te
Tangi a te Matui, Jackbooks, 1991, which reflects on the
legacy of the ‘ terrorist’ Maori chief and poet Te
Kooti. He has curated many exhibitions, including Under Capricorn/The
World Over, for the Stedelijk Museum, Amsteradam, I
Will Need Words, Colin McCahon’s Word and Number Paintings for
the Sydney Biennale, and most recently a survey of Max Gimblett’s
paintings, The Brush of All Things, for the Auckland Art
Gallery. He is co-director of Jar Space, and teaches poetry and
creative writing at the University of Auckland.
Joel Kuszai is a prolific and innovative publisher, editor and
poet. In the 1990s his Meow Press published more than 60 chapbooks.
Following a stint as moderator, he edited a compilation from
the archives of the Buffalo Poetics List, Poetics@, Roof,
1999. He is co-founder of the ‘learning and production
collective’ Factory School, now based in New York. Since
2005 he has edited its ‘Southpaw Culture’ book series
which reflects his interest in radical poetics, libertarian anarchist
thought and alternative/utopian approaches to education. He is
the author of A Miscellany and other chapbooks, and teaches
at Queensborough, CUNY.
James Sherry James moved to his loft on
the Bowery (at Houston) about 30 years ago. At the time, it was
still skid row. Roof books and Segue Distributing were run out of
the space and from time to time we had readings there too. And
our first local talk series, "New York Talks," which
I curated in 1984. November 12, 2006 (31
seconds, 5.1 mb)
"Thank You For Saying Thank You"
(from Girly Man)
translated into Icelandic
by
Eiríkur Örn Norðda
from http://tregawott.net/
Þetta er fullkomlega
aðgengilegt ljóð.
Það er ekkert
í þessu ljóði
sem á nokkurn
hátt er erfitt
að skilja.
Öll orðin
eru einföld &
hitta í mark.
Hér eru engin ný
hugtök, engar
kenningar, engar
hugmyndir til að rugla
í þér. Það eru engir
intelektúal-stælar í
þessu ljóði. Þetta er
hreint tilfinningaljóð.
Það tjáir að fullu
leyti tilfinningar
höfundarins: mínar tilfinningar,
manneskjunnar sem talar
við þig núna.
Þetta snýst allt um
samskipti.
Frá einu hjarta til annars.
Þetta ljóð metur
& virðir þig mikils sem
lesanda. Það
fagnar sigri
ímyndunarafls
mannsins
innan um gryfjur &
hörmungar. Í
þessu ljóði
eru 90 línur,
269 orð, og
fleiri atkvæði en
ég hef tíma til þess að
telja. Hver lína, hvert
orð, & hvert atkvæði
var valið til að
tjá einvörðungu
hina ætluðu meiningu
& ekkert umfram hana.
Þetta ljóð tjáir ekkert
óskýrt eða torráðið.
Hér er ekkert
hulið. Hundrað
lesendur myndu allir
lesa ljóðið
nákvæmlega eins &
fá út úr því
sömu skilaboðin. Þetta
ljóð, eins og öll
góð ljóð, segir
sögu án krókaleiða
svo lesandinn þarf aldrei
að giska í eyðurnar. Þó á
stundum tjái það
biturð, reiði,
gremju, útlendingahræðslu
& vott af kynþáttahatri, er
ráðandi andrúmsloft þess
jákvætt. Það finnur
gleði jafnvel í
þessum fyrirlitlegu
augnablikum
lífsins sem
það deilir með
þér. Þetta ljóð
er fulltrúi vonarinnar
um ljóðlist
sem snýr ekki
baki sínu við
áhorfendum, sem
telur sig ekki
betri en lesandann,
sem hefur helgað sig
ljóðlistinni sem
vinsælli afþreyingu, eins og
flugdrekaflugi og flugu-
veiðum. Þetta ljóð
tilheyrir engum
skóla, hlýðir engum
kreddum. Það fylgir
engri tísku. Það
segir bara það sem
það segir. Það er
ekta.
Saturday, April 28, 4-6pm Tenney Nathanson
Charles Bernstein
Segue at Bowery Poetry Club
308 Bowery (Bleecker/Houston)
Saturday, May 5, 3:45-4:45pm
Susan Bee
Johanna Drucker
showing slides & reading
their text/image collaborations
Segue at Bowery Poetry Club
308 Bowery (Bleecker/Houston)
Tuesday, May 8, 6:30pm Wystan Curnow & Joel Kuszai introduced by Charles Bernstein
co-sponsored by Segue
at Saatchi & Saatchi, 375 Hudson St (at Houston)
Admission free — refreshments will be served
Wednesday, May 9, 8pm
Granary Books: Poets & Painters John Yau & Archie Rand,
Johanna Drucker, Larry Fagin & Trevor Winkfield, Charles
Bernstein & Susan Bee, Anne Waldman, Ron Padgett, Julie Harrison,
Steve Clay, & others
Poetry Project
St Marks Church, 10th Street @ Second Ave.
Wednesday, May 16, 8pm Tracie Morris
Charles Bernstein
Poetry Project
St Marks Church, 10th Street @ Second Ave.
This material will appear
as a preface to Triptych. Imre Kertesz’s quotation
appeared in the Hungarian weekly Elet es Irodalom (8/28/06),
and was translated by Reka Safrany for Sign and Sight (signandsight.com)
=== The
first 20 pages of the book
including
Ron Silliman's introduction
&
"The Simply," "Entitlement," "Fear and
Trespass" and "The Voyage of Life"
++++++++++++++++++
"Thank You for Saying Thank You"
from Girly Man
recorded at the Boston Marathon in 2003
broadcast April 7, 2007 on Weekend
America
(on American Public Media)
(poem text and audio)
THE POETRY OF THE AMERICAS
International Symposium April 12, 13 and 14, 2007
DEPARTMENT OF HISPANIC STUDIES
Texas A &M University
College Station, Texas full
schedule
David Smith, Centennial Retrospective Exhibition Catalog
(Paris: Centre Pompidou, 2006)
This French version of the catalog features a long essay on Smith
by Dominique Fourcade, who was instrumental in organizing this
show (which originated at the Guggenheim in New York). Smith’s
mid-century thin-line, sculptures, so much like air drawings,
look remarkably fresh in the catalog photos, in some ways better
than the looking at originals. In his essay, Fourcade notes the
connection to Apollinaire’s desire for what we might now
call negative space – “un statue en rien,
en vide, c’est magnifique” [a statue of nothing,
of void, this is terrific]. The catalog also features panoramic
installation shots at Bolton’s landing, crucial to any
understanding of Smith and his approach to sculpture.
---
David Smith, The Letter (1950)
Welded steel
37 5/8 x 22 7/8 x 9 1/4 in.
(Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute, Utica, NY
photo by David Smith
Contrasting this to the two other 1950
lettristic works by Smith —
"17 h's" and "24 Greek Y's" both 1950 —
"Letters" is the most specifically framed,
as if a page,
& so most directly connected to Poetry Plastique's
exploration of alphabetic sculpture.
+++++++++
This curious list of drug argot
appears on the site of the
National Institute on Chemical Dependency: Lexicography
via US Government
some excerpts from Fredman's essay
and related images:
..
Fig. 3. Untitled (Multi-color shuffle), 1967, Wallace
Berman, Color Verifax collage, 13 x 14 inches. Courtesy Wallace
Berman Estate.
Of all the forms of magic outlined in Kurt Seligmann’s History
of Magic (such as astrology, numerology, divination, casting
of spells, mortuary magic, alchemy, Kabbalah, Tarot, witchcraft,
and black magic), Kabbalah appeals most directly to poets because
it is a kind of alchemy that engages with the basic materials
of writing: the word, the letter, and the book. In Kabbalah
all of the levels of occult “work”—magical
practice, meditation and contemplation techniques, visionary
excursions, and spiritual and psychological self-transformation—can
be found, as they would be in any esoteric system, but all derive
from investigations of language and writing. Kabbalah made
its way into the Semina circle primarily through the advocacy
of Robert Duncan, who heard it whispered of by his parents at
theosophical meetings during his childhood.…
Fig. 20. Robert Duncan, Crater Lane, Wallace Berman, 1962,
11 x 14 inches, Private Collection, Courtesy Wallace Berman Estate.
In Kabbalah, as expounded both in the Zohar and in the
earlier Sefer Yetzirah, the letters of the Hebrew alphabet are
conceived of as the basic building blocks of the universe. David
Meltzer summarizes this notion: “The Yetzirah expresses
the concept of God creating the universe through letters which
hold the possibility of creation’s entire vocabulary. The
world is entered and invented through language rooted in alphabet
systems. God translates Himself, condenses into alphabet. To
know alphabet is to approach creation’s workings. Within
and without are the letters” (Meltzer, “Door,” 93). …
Fig. 5. Untitled, Wallace Berman, 1956-7, Woodstain and
ink on parchment, 19 ½ x 19 ½ inches. Collection
of Hal Glicksman.
Berman’s employment of aleph [the “one”]
not only introduces an “intuitive Kabbalah” that
confers blessings upon the most vital facets of his life (Meltzer, “Door,” 100),
it also has an elegiac quality by virtue of its use as an iconic
element so soon after World War II. Berman grew up in the
Fairfax District of Los Angeles, where the Hebrew lettering of
the Yiddish language was prominent in the windows of shops and
in newspapers; invoking that world in the aftermath of the Holocaust
draws attention to the death of the Hebrew letter, not only because
the Yiddish-speakers of L.A. were dying out but also because
the extermination of Jewish culture in Europe had incinerated
the letters, both written and spoken, and rendered them ghostly. Like
many gestures within his life and art, Berman’s depiction
of Hebrew letters on photographs, in assemblages, on parchment,
and upon massive stones is fraught with opposing motives: the
letters invoke suffering and disappearance while at the same
time promising redemption.
April Follies
James Sherry & Deborah Thomas
hosted a gala launch at their New York loft
for
Nada Gordon's Folly
on April 1, 2007
Nada Gordon, Folly (NY: Roof Books, 2007)
It would be folly to praise this book & folly not to. Nada
Gordon is on her way to inventing a new type of poetry in which
Pre-Raphaelitism meets Zeppo Marx while doing the hokey pokey
to a fox trot beat. Wit and lyric exuberance are a means to an
end that refuses to name itself. Trips, trespass, and trepidation
rule this universe of hopeful play and endearing insouciance.
The world grows dark but here are songs to keep us from losing
our own lights.
Elaine Equi launched
RIPPLE EFFECT: New and Selected Poems
(just out from Coffeee House Press)
at Cue Art Foundation in New York
& few of us celebrated after
March 30, 2007
back row: Charles Bernstein, Stephen Paul Miller, Bob Perelman,
Bill Zavatsky, Toni Simon, Nick Piombino
middle: Meredith Walters, Francie Shaw
front: Susan Bee, Elaine Equi, Jerome Sala
Photo by Star Black
La
política de la forma poética [The Politics of Poetic Form] translated by Néstor Cabrera
& Jorge Miralles, Nora Leylen, Beatriz Pérez
with introduction by Néstor Cabrera
La Habana: Torre de Letras, 2006
PEPC Digital Edition 2007
Johanna Drucker Johanna, Susan, and I were
on a Chelsea art walk. When she is at home in Charlottesville,
Johanna will sometimes spend hundreds of hours typesetting and
printing a book. The results are stunning but it's sometimes
hard to take in how labor intensive the work is. November 4, 2006 (36
seconds, 5.9 mb)
THE POINT IS TO CHANGE IT
Poetry and Criticism in the Continuing Present
Jerome McGann
University of Alabama Press
Modern and Contemporary Poetics Series
“A very fine collection. . . .
McGann’s writing will help to
re-situate the reading of contemporary experimental writing within
a broader context that includes the writing and thinking of poets
such as Blake, Byron, and Shelley.”
—Hank Lazer, author of What Is a Poet? and Days
Jerome McGann argues that contemporary language-oriented writing
implies a marked change in the way we think about our poetic
tradition on one hand and in the future of criticism on the other. He
focuses on Walter Benjamin and Gertrude Stein as important intellectual
resources because both see the history of poetry as a crisis
of the present rather than as a legacy of the past. The crisis
appears as a poetic deficit in contemporary culture, where values
of politics and morality are judged prima facie more important
than aesthetic values. McGann argues for the fundamental relevance
of the aesthetic dimension and the contemporary relevance
of cultural works of the past.
The Point Is To Change It explores alternative critical
methods and provides a powerful call to reinvent our modes of
investigation in order to escape the limitations of our inherited
academic models.
CONTENTS
The Argument
Foreword: The Privilege of Historical Backwardness
1. Philological Investigations (written 2005)
Part I. It Must Be Abstract.
2. Truth in the Body of Falsehood (written 1985-1987)
3. The Alphabet, Spelt from Silliman’s Leaves (written
1989-1990)
4. The Apparatus of Loss: Bruce Andrews Writing (written 1995-1996)
Part II. It Must Change.
5. Art and Error, with Special Thanks to the Poetry of Robert
Duncan (written 1996)
6. Private Enigmas and Critical Functions, with Special Thanks
to the Poetry of Charles Bernstein (written 1990-1991)
Appendix to Chapter 6: “The Simply” (written 1991)
7. From Sight to Shenandoah (written 1996)
Part III. It Must Give Pleasure
8. Marxism, Romanticism, Postmodernism: An American Case History
(written 1987-1989)
9. Looney Tunes and Unheard Melodies: An Oulipian Colonescapade,
with a Critique of 'The Great-Ape Love Song Corpus' and its Lexicon.
(written 2003)
Part IV. Continuing Present
10. The Evidence of Things Not Seen. A Play. (written 2005)
11. IVANHOE. A Playful Portrait (written 2005)
Appendix:
Modernity and Complicity. A Conversation with Johanna Drucker
(written 2004)
=================================================
To order, mail this form to: University of Alabama Press,
Chicago Distribution Center, 11030 S. Langley, Chicago, IL 60628 Or, fax to: 773-702-7212 Or, call: 773-702-7000
The Point Is To Change It (paperback, ISBN 0817354085):
$32.95
The Point (unjacketed cloth, ISBN 0817315519): $60.00
Speech to text
alignment is a process of creating a correspondence between a
speech-unit and a text-unit (i.e., a segment of audio is linked
to a segment of text) which is then indexed allowing a user to
listen to the speech sound that corresponds to a word, an utterance,
a sentence, or other granularity. A corpus of aligned speech
and text can be used to test and develop automatic speech recognition
(ASR) systems and multimedia language learning systems, and for
various linguistic research (e.g., phonetics, speech synthesis). The
Linguistic Data Consortium (LDC) develops and distributes
speech-to-text aligned databases to the research community often
created with the assistance of a tool called Transcriber.
Although not
specifically designed for poetic and literary uses, the Transcriber
tool was used to align the text of Gertrude Stein’s “If
I Told Him: A Completed Portrait of Picasso” with an audio
recording of the poet reading her work. The use of language technology
as a tool to assist in the analysis or teaching of poetry and
prose literature is only beginning to be explored. At minimum,
a speech-text aligned poem can provide a more layered experience
for a reader-listener allowing easy access to both the text of
a poem and the corresponding spoken rendition of a poem. Here
poetry as sound takes its proper place along with the poem as
a textual object. An easy-to-use interface providing simultane
ous
access to the text and audio of a poem could also prove to be
pedagogically useful in a classroom.
The most challenging
task in aligning a work of poetry is deciding on the granularity
of the alignment. Should the correspondence between sound and
text occur by textual line breaks or stanzas? Or perhaps the
correspondence should follow the audio performance using breath
pauses? Additionally, how does one segment a more modernist or
abstract poem like Stein’s where line or stanza breaks
are not obvious and without losing the necessary poetic force
of repetitions and rhythms within the poem? Segmenting and aligning
a poem becomes a creative and interpretative act in itself.
This project
is a work in progress. In time, we plan to update the webpage
with such elements as embedded streaming audio clips, metadata,
and a more aesthetically pleasing and user-friendly design. This
project was created in collaboration with the Linguistic
Data Consortium. Special thanks to Chris Cieri and Shawn
Medero for their advice and assistance.
Contact information:
James J. Fiumara (email: jfiumara AT english upenn edu)
This
is a magnificent tribute to the enduring work of Hannah Weiner.
All of Hannah's friends will I am sure join me in thanking
Patrick Durgin for editing and publishing this book.
From the publisher's announcement:
Hannah Weiner’s influence extends from the sixties New
York avant-garde, where she was part of an unprecedented confluence
of poets, performance and visual artists including Phillip Glass,
Andy Warhol, Carolee Schneeman, John Perrault, David Antin, and
Bernadette Mayer. Like fellow-traveler Jackson Mac Low, she became
an important part of the Language movement of the 70s and 80s,
and her influence can be seen today in the so-called “New
Narrative” work stemming from the San Francisco Bay Area. With
other posthumous publications of late, her work is being discussed
by scholars in feminist studies, poetics, and disability studies.
But there does not yet exist a representative selection spanning
her decades of poetic output. Hannah Weiner’s Open House aims
to remedy this with previously uncollected (and mostly never-published)
work, including performance texts, early New York School influenced
lyric poems, odes and remembrances to / of Mac Low and Ted Berrigan,
and later “clair-style” works.
Hannah Weiner's Open House beckons us into a realm of
poetry that bends consciousness in order to open the doors of
perception. Weiner is one of the great American linguistic inventors
of the last thirty years of the 20th century. She created an
alchemical poetry that transforms the materials of everyday life
into a dimension beyond sensory perception. The pieces collected
here are as much conceptual art as sprung prose, experimental
mysticism as social realism, autobiography as egoless alyric.
Patrick Durgin has brought together touchstone works, some familiar
and some never before published. Hannah Weiner's Open House provides
the only single volume introduction to the full range of Weiner's
vibrant, enthralling, and unique contribution to the poetry of
the Americas.
—Charles Bernstein
Hannah Weiner's syncopated patterning uncovers a conversation
so thrilling that I never want it to end. As Frank OHara had
earlier shifted the stable lyric self into a multiplicity of
positions (I dont know what bloods in me), Weiner began in overdrive
and rocketed outward, inhabiting texts and communities with the
same skill with which she herself was inhabited. I was also a
pillow/ case, she wrote, in Spoke (1984). I was in the
closet I was an iron [ . . .] I was also sentence. Weiner makes
haunting both spooky and hilarious. Messages billboard across
the page, words bleed, leap and wilt. Superscription and subscription
join forces to destroy the hegemony of the poetic line, opening
it up to pure energy.
—Dodie Bellamy
Hannah Weiner's work, so lovingly presented here, brought her
into the exploration of new ways & means for making poetry
a process by which she would have left her mark under any circumstances
on avant-garde poetics & practice. The still more remarkable
change in her later work came, spontaneously, with the onset
of an experience, an ongoing alteration of perception in which
visible words entered her field of vision as cause of wonder & as
messages to be included in the poems that followed. If her art
both early & late insures her standing within the twentieth-century
avant-garde, it connects her as well to the experience & writings
of many traditional poet-mystics (clairvoyants in her word for
them & for herself). It is, when taken as a whole, an achievement
without precedent or comparison among her sometimes better-known
contemporaries.
—Jerome Rothenberg
Poet and visionary, Hannah Weiner knit together the worlds of
post New York School poetry, performance and art. In the early
70s, she went on a three-week fast and let goof everything, resurfacing
with a newly visceral, and visual, relation to letters and words.
Exploring the joins between art and life, language and politics,
she sought to work in poetic forms that themselves alter consciousness.
For Weiner, poetry became a way to intertwine her own experience
with that of others, to let more of the world into her art: I
continue writing as a collaboration with WORDS I SEE. Rich
with previously unpublished works and samples of key works, Hannah
Weiner's Open House restores a crucial figure to the present.
—Liz Kotz
Closes March 31, 2007
New York University
Grey Art Gallery
Semina Culture
focusses on the artist/editor Wallace Berman (1926–1976)
& his LA circle.
The full set of Semina (nine issues from 1955 to 1964)
are on display
along with small sets of work
including many collages and assemblages
by, among others —
Jess, Robert Duncan, Bruce Conner, David Meltzer, Jay DeFeo,
Diane DiPrima, John Weiner's, George Herms, Cameron, Bobbie Driscoll,
Philip Lamantia, Bob Kaufman, Allen Ginsberg, Ray & Bonnie
Bremser, Stuart Perkoff, and Lew Welsh.
The poets are mostly represented by broadsides, books, and Berman's
portrait photos. Organized by the Santa Monica Museum of
Art and co-curated by Michael Duncan and Kristine McKenna.
There is a catalog, though the most interesting essay, from a
poetry point-of-view,
by Stephen Fredman, is, unfortunately, a short version of his
"Surrealism Meets Kabbalah: The Place of Semina in
Mid-Century California Poetry and Art"
published in full in American Poetry: Whtiman to Present,
ed. Robert Rehder and Patrick Vincent (Tübingen: Gunter
Naraa Verlag, 2006).
Rockdrill's series of selected poems on CD
from Birkbeck (UK) —
most recent releases are —
Robert Creeley: 'I Know a Man', poems 1945-1975
Robert Creeley: 'Just in Time', poems 1976-1998
Lee Harwood: 'The Chart Table', poems 1965-2002
Tom Raworth: 'Ace', poems 1966-1979
Tom Raworth: 'Writing', poems 1980-2003
Jerome Rothenberg: 'Sightings', poems 1960-1983
Jerome Rothenberg: 'Seedings', poems 1984-2003
You can order these from Carcanet's
web site:
go to the site and put "rockdrill" in the title box
Caroline Bergvall In June, 2005, I was invited to read at poetry festival
in Norway. I couldn't go, but I urged the organizers to invite
Caroline, who grew up, at least partly, in Norway, but nobody
there (at least among the poets I know) were aware of that. But
they sure are now. November 12, 2006 (32
seconds, 4.3 mb)
June 6, 1998 at friend June Felter's house,
Berkeley, in front of Felter's painting. Photo by June Felter.
Barbara Guest
Praise Day - Tribute at The Bowery Poetry Club
October 21, 2006 MP3
(1:18:40)
Featuring:
Lytle Shaw
Lewis Warsh
Marcella Durand
Charles Bernstein
Africa Wayne
Charles North
Erica Kaufman
with special guest Hadley Haden Guest and host Kristin Prevallet.
June 6, 1998 at friend June Felter's house, Berkeley. Photo by
June Felter.
Charles North has the wry, sparkling wit of a poet who has been
around the aesthetic block more than a few times but keeps the
trips as fresh as a new morning in an old town. In Cadenza,
he moves in, around, and about everyday life with an improvisatory élan
that soon becomes an almost familiar tune, sung to the friend
you become every time you lend an ear. The direction is true
North; the vintage just right.
Star Black took these shots of
Some Guys at Cue
at the CUE Foundation reception
for the book
last Friday night
top row: Bill Corbett, Steve
Goldleaf, Charles Bernstein, Tom Breidenbach, Paul Violi, Lee
Lowenfish, Charles North, Bill Zavatsky, Bob Hershon, Tony Towle
bot. row: Walter Raubicheck, Geoff Brackett, Walter Srebnick,
Trevor Winkfield, David Kelley
from the publisher: Body of Work brings together for the first time all of
Maggie O'Sullivan's solo collections of poetry and visual texts
published before her 1993 Reality Street book In the House
of the Shaman. These booklets, long out of print, are here
presented in facsimile, scanned from the original publications,
or in some cases the original mauscripts, together with a selection
of previously unpublished works.
a revision of the official history of the period
through a close re-looking at much
too often glossed over —
as interesting for the highlights — Carolee Schneeman's
fantastic video of her 1967
"body collage"
(in which she coats her body in glue
& affixes paper fragments
(here contextualized as painting )
to
a great Joan Snyder in the last room
—
so
as interesting for the highlights
as for some of the apparently
minor lights
that give the show its glow.
There
is an excellent interview
with David Reed and Katie Siegel
in the Feb. Brooklyn Rail
which offers a refreshing
painter's-eye-view
of the significance of the painting in this show
& perhaps also a better entry
into the connections with the new poetry
of that moment. This show is particularly admirable
because it has a social and aesthetic motivation:
it's stakes are the stakes of painting,
not pontification and not the market
& not the endless repetition of the
same skewed art history &
thinner-than-a-dime™ theory
that we see in so many museum collections
I have long admired
David Reed's painting & have felt
a kinship with his work since Susan Bee
& I first met him in the mid-70s
via James Sherry & Mei-mei Berssenbrugge
(all three of whom had gone to Reed,
along with Nina Weiner and Lee Sherry).
David Reed writes:
"Experimental painting was caught in a double bind. Often
the people who supported painting had very conservative rules
and criteria for what painting should be. Some of these rules
and restrictions came from Greenbergian formalism, while others
came out of abstract expressionism or geometric abstraction.
And then, on the other hand, there were people who took the theoretical
stance that nothing at all was possible in painting. As a result,
the most innovative work was caught in the middle, attacked from
both sides. Of course one of the big problems was that a lot
of experimental painting was coming from unexpected sources:
African Americans, women, lesbians, gays, and counterculture
dropouts. This experimental painting came from people who didn’t
fit the traditional profile of what a painter was supposed to
be.
...It’s a good time for painting when it is under stress,
when it is questioned and doubted, even for social and political
reasons. That is when painting has to prove itself, when you
get the best work. Hard times are good times for painting."
In "What
Is to Be Done"
— in Jacket's still in-process issue 32 —
Douglas Messerli rakes
Official Verse Culture
over the coals
with the kind of institutional
critique of poetry reviewing practices
that is too rare.
====+++====
Audio
OEI 2-CD
set
from the Stockholm magazine
with a new introduction by Jesper Olsson
====+++====
Why Are We in Iraq?
As good an answer as I've seen lately is
Samuel Fuller's 1982 film White Dog
pulled by Paramount before release,
which has a rare showing yesterday
at New York's Film Forum.
The film is an allegory about the irradicable
pathology of racism, which is presented
in the guise of a white German shepherd
trained as an attack dog. Once trained to
hate, can the attack dog ever be cured?
The film starts Kristy McNichol, Paul Winfield and Burl Ives.
=====++======
New on EPC's Scandinavian portal
Karri Kokko Shadow Finlandia:
An Extract Translated into English by Leevi Lehto
"a collage of depressive or otherwise dark or gloomy
fragments in Finnish blogs
picked up by the author during Spring and Summer 2005"
Loss Pequeño Glazier I was back in Buffalo and at
one my favorite spots, Ted's Red Hots (the one on Niagara Falls
Boulevard). We got to talking about Cuba, which we had visited,
together with Ernesto Livon-Grosman, Johanna Drucker, Susan
Bee, and Brad Freeman, in January 2003. Loss met his future wife
on that trip. I asked him what he liked to eat in Havana. June 26, 2006 (1
min., 7.4 mb / mp4 video)
Marvin Miller as Michael Anthony
in The
Millionaire.
Anthony is the narrator of
"Slap Me Five, Mark's History"
in Girly Man In today's Philadelphia Inquirer
Cotter ends his review this way:
"Other shows are on the way, and be
sure to check out the online journal M/E/A/N/I/N/G. Its new issue, “Feminist
Art: A Reassessment” (writing.upenn.edu/pepc/meaning/04),
asks many questions about the past, present and future that will
surely shape discussion in this feminist year."
Gross's image — “Arlene Raven and Her Artgroup Women” ( oil
and oil crayon canvas, 114 x 159".) —also appears in
the issue of M/E/A/N/I/N/G.
.
Oh, it’s
just queering language. It resists categorizations, clarifications,
and excuses, hovering somewhere in the densely-populated nexus
between theory and practice, taking names... These
speculative musings are further complicated by the contemporary
situation of queer studies, identity, lives, and writing. We
all know what queerness is from its history of oppression and
struggle, but it is also more than ever a volatile and changing
category, a signifier which is coming into prominence in the
culture and has potentially more converts than ever before. The
lines between the hets and the queers are blurring as some of
traditional markers of identity shift: lesbians getting married
and settling down to have kids, presumably straight men wearing
dresses and expressing identity with a female name or by changing
their sex... In this situation, negotiating
the complex processes of performing, passing, critiquing, cruising,
camping and being brings the emphasis dramatically onto language
itself as material, as a site in which critical negotiations
and thinking about queerness are constantly enacted. With this
journal I wanted to explore the ways in which language, not just
authors, could be queer.
Afterword to The Holy Forest: Collected Poems of Robin Blaser
(Revised and Expanded Edition)
Edited by Miriam Nichols, University of California Press, 2006
This piece is being published simultaneously in
The Poetry Project Newsletter (Feb/March issue)
& Jacket
31
I
dwell in Possibility—
A fairer House than Prose—
— Dickinson
Robin Blaser’s poems are companions on a journey of life,
a journey whose goal is not getting someplace else, but, rather,
being where you are and who you are – where you is
always in the plural.
In the plural might be a good motto for Blaser’s
courageous and anti-declamatory poetics, his profound continuation,
deep into the darkening heart of contemporary North American
poetry, of Emily Dickinson’s core value: “I’m
nobody … Are you nobody too?” For Blaser, it is
not only nobody but also no mind, or “no” mind, for
this is a poetics of negation that dwells in pleats and upon
folds. Pleating and folding being Blaser’s latter day,
Deleuzian, manner of extending his lifelong project of seriality.
One poem must follow instanter on the next, a next always out
of reach until in hand, in mouth, in ear.
Blaser celebrated his 80 birthday on May 14, 2005, just as this
book was going into final production.
The present edition, an expanded version of the 1993 coach house
press publication of the same name – Blaser’s first
collected poems – features a number of poems from the last
decade and also includes several significant works not included
in the Coach House publication. Most significantly, Blaser
has added a recent long poem for Dante to his Great Companion
series. This astounding work provides a bridge between Blaser’s
poems and critical writings, marking a direct point of contact
to the University of California’s companion volume of Blaser’s
collected essays.
Blaser’s work constitutes a fundamental part of the fabric
of the North American poetry and poetics of “interrogation,” to
use his term. Compared to his most immediate contemporaries,
Blaser has pursued a different, distinctly refractory, willfully
diffuse, course that has led him to be circumspect about publication.
As a result, it was almost 40 years from his first poems to the
time when The Holy Forest began to emerge as one of the
key poetic works of the present. Indeed, Blaser’s lyric
collage (what he calls “the art of combinations” in
a poem of that title, alluding to Leibnitz) seems today to be
remarkably fresh, even while his engagement with (I don’t
say commitment to) turbulence and turbulent thought seems ever
more pressingly exemplary. Blaser’s work seems to me more
a part of the future of poetry than the past.
Blaser’s poems and essays insist on the necessity of thinking
through analogy and resemblance – that is, thinking serially
so as to move beyond the epistemological limits of positivism
and self-expression. At the same time, Blaser has committed his
work to everywhere affirming the value of human diversity, understood
not only as sexual or ethnic difference, but also as the possibility
of thinking outside received categories. There are some remarkably
powerful and explicit political poems in the volume, notably “Even
on Sunday.” But the most radical politics of this work
goes beyond any one poem: it is inscribed in the work’s
compositional practice. Even as Blaser questions the stable,
lyric, expressive “I,” he never abandons the possibility
of poetic agency, through his generative recognition of language
as social, as the “outside.”
Blaser’s “Great Companions” have now gone into
the world of an ever-present no-longer-of-this-life: Jack Spicer,
Robert Duncan, Robert Creeley, Charles Olson, of his immediate
company; Dante, Nerval, Merleau-Ponty, Deleuze of his Imaginary.
The poems of the Holy Forest are points on a map of a
cosmos that does not exist in historical terms, that cannot exist,
yet that must exist, if we are to make it to a Century 22 that
is more than the name of a clothing store. The points form a
constellation that we are not quite ready to apprehend but through
which we are already formed. We grope and we stumble, but then,
out of the blue or black or ultra suede, something unexpected
happens: we are ensnared by the encounter.
Form finds us. Form founds us.
Blaser’s Holy Forest is a blaze of allusion without
symbols, quotation without appointment. In the forest of language,
every tree is a poem, every leaf a word. The poet sings the songs
of night, jumping, from branch to branch, to a syncopated beat;
never, ever, finding home. “To wit – to woo – to
wound – ,” Blaser writes in “Oh!,” one
of his late, short, I want to call them anti-lyrics.
Citation, citation everywhere: the utter prism of his care.
No other moment exists but this one.
This one.
This one.
The Holy Forest is wholly secular, for only the secular
allows the promise of an end to what Blake knew as the Totalizing
Oppression of Morality. (“We have paid far too much in
terror,” Blaser writes in a note to his Dante poem, “for
our totalities.”) Each line of The Holy Forest is
a glimpse into the unknown, each poem a new way of entering the
holiness of the everyday. The frames are restless: no conclusion
nor solution, the only resolution the necessity to go on. “We
enter a territory without totalities where poetic practice is
our stake and necessity.”
“This World is not conclusion / A sequel stands beyond,” writes
Dickinson.
Neither is the poem the end of the poem, nor is the idea of the
poem its origin.
The poem is the possibility of possibility.
In his exquisite articulations of the flowers of associational
thinking, Blaser has turned knowledge into nowledge,
the “wild logos” of the cosmic companionship of the
real.
---------
In Res Robin, Nibor Resalb Inscripsit Mentastrum (XXC)
Matter over mind or anyway
mattering, muttering, sponge
warp, cup, meld, then again
clutched, shred, shrift. Blister
origins (orangutans) in souped-
up monkey-wrench. Prattling
till the itch in pines becomes
gash (sash) in the pluriverses
of weft & muck (wept). Pleat
as you may, fellow traversers
on the rippled road to hear &
however, ne’er so near.
Thanks to Eric Baus
PennSound has now made available
this supplement to Nathaniel
Mackey's page:
"Chant des Andoumboulou" ("Song
of the Andoumboulou")
Dogon Song, from the album Le
Rituel Funeraire (Songs Of The Living - The Funeral Rites) MP3
(5:29)
1956
Disques Ocora;
Liner notes by Francois Di
Dio
"The Song of the Andoumboulou is addressed to the spirits.
For this reason the initiates, crouching in a circle, sing it
in a whisper in the deserted village, and only the howling of
the dogs and the wind disturb the silence of the night" -- Di
Dio quoted by Nathaniel Mackey in Eroding Witness (p.
31) [Note: Mackey refers to an album titled Les Dogon where
the time given for "Chant des Andoumboulou" is two minutes shorter
than the MP3 provided here. Perhaps this is a longer sampling
of the same piece.]
Brian Ferneyhough has been awarded the 2007 Ernst von Siemens
Prize for Music
( the so-called Nobel Prize for Music).
This award is made to a composer, performer, or scholar
who has made outstanding contributions to the world of music.
It has in the past has been won by Benjamin Britten, Olivier
Messiaen,
Pierre Boulez, Eliot Carter, György Ligeti, Luciano Berio,
and Karlheinz Stockhausen.
The award will be presented by the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts
during an official ceremony to be held on 3 May 2007 in Munich's
Kammerspiele Theater.
(Wikipedia
offers a list of recipients)
Here is the press release from the Siemens Foundation:.
Ernst von Siemens Music Prize for 2007 Awarded to Brian Ferneyhough
Born in Coventry on 16 January 1943, the English composer Brian
Ferneyhough will receive this year's International Ernst von
Siemens Music Prize along with its cash endowment of EUR 200,000.
The coveted award will be presented to him by the Bavarian Academy
of Fine Arts during an official ceremony to be held on 3 May
2007 in Munich's Kammerspiele Theater. The laudatory address
will be delivered by Ulrich Mosch of the Paul Sacher Foundation
in Basle.
Few composers have so consistently deepened and explored the
avant-garde approaches of the 1950s and 1960s as has Brian Ferneyhough
in his music and theoretical writings. A student of Lennox Berkeley,
Ton de Leeuw, and Klaus Huber, his composition drew acclaim very
early in his career. Even the external aspects of his music are
almost spectacular in their impact: he has greatly expanded the
potential range of instrumental performance and musical notation.
His string quartets, almost all of thempremièred by the
Arditti Quartet, are among the most difficult in the genre.
Moreover, Ferneyhough has rethought and illuminated the myriad
possibilities of manipulating musical material and stretched
these possibilities to their limits. In this sense his Time and
Motion Studies, dealing as it were with the musician's capacity
to perform, almost seems like a declaration of principles. The
same can be said of his cycle Carceri d'invenzione after the
imaginative engravings of Giovanni Piranesi. The title of this
magnum opus, meaning both "inventive prisons" and "prisonsof
invention," is typical of the composer in its deliberate ambiguity.
Both the narrowness of the work’s precompositional strictures
and the explosive force inherent in the music itself became palpable.
Thus, what Ferneyhough seeks in his music is transcendence: it
ends at a different place from where it began.
Ferneyhough's compositional output has always been protean. Almost
every one of his works pursues a freshly posed series of questions.
His only opera to date - Shadowtime, premièred at the
Munich Biennale in 2004 – takes as its starting point Walter
Benjamin's death in 1940 while fleeing from the Nazis, and proceeds
to analyze various aspects of his thought. The orchestral work
Plötzlichkeit, premièred at Donaueschingen last fall,
consists of 111 minuscule sections and again explores previouslyuntried
possibilities of formal design.
Ferneyhough has also influenced an entire generation of composers
through his teaching activities at the Darmstadt Holiday Courses,
at Royaumont in France, in Freiburg, in San Diego, and at Stanford
University, where he has taught since 2000. Among his many students
are Kaija Saariaho, André Richard, Younghi Pagh-Paan,
Brice Pauset, Toshio Hosokawa, and Chaya Czernowin. He is considered
a leading figure in the musical current known as the “New
Complexity.”
=====================
from signandsight.com Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 02.02.2007
Julia Spinola looks back on the life and career of British composerBrian
Ferneyhough, winner of this year's Siemens Music Prize. "In
the dense structural jungle of Ferneyhough's compositions
one may recognise the experience of the true autodidact; that
there is nothing self-evident about art, and that everything
must be developed from the ground up. But even stronger than
his desire to save sounds by using complex techniques is the
impression of a spirit volatilised in a thousand directions.
There's also a trace of anarchism in all this, the folly of virtuosity.
Ferneyhough pushed this to the extreme in 'Shadowtime',
the only opera he's written to date, about the life and thought
of German philosopher Walter Benjamin."
A forum
including writing and images
by
artists and art historians
from three generations
Irina Aristarkhova, Susan Bee, Emma
Bee Bernstein,
Johanna Burton, Ingrid Calame, Maura Coughlin,
Bailey Doogan, Johanna Drucker, Carol Duncan,
Mary Beth Edelson, Joanna Frueh, Vanalyne Green,
Mimi Gross, Susanna Heller, Janet Kaplan,
Tom Knechtel, Judith Linhares, Lenore Malen,
Ann McCoy, Adelheid Mers, Robin Mitchell,
Carrie Moyer, Beverly Naidus, Rachel Owens,
Sheila Pepe, Nancy Princenthal, Carolee Schneemann,
Mira Schor, Joan Snyder, Anne Swartz,
Faith Wilding, and Barbara Zucker.
Tuesday, February 6. 7:30PM Department
of English / School of Mass Communications / School of the Arts
Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond An NEH Year Program Funded by the VCU Honors College Commons Theater
VCU Student Commons (907 Floyd Ave)
Blogging
the Humanities
A panel discussion about the role and significance of blogs about
art, film, literature, history, philosophy and culture.
I will be on the panel with Tyler
Green
edits and writes Modern Art Notes (artsjournal.com/man),
a five-year old visual arts blog. The Wall Street Journal called MAN “the
most influential of all visual arts blogs” and Forbes named MAN a “Best
of the Web” site. Dan Cohen
is the Director of Research Projects at the Center for History
and New Media at George Mason University, where he teaches history
and art history. He is also the co-author of Digital History:
A Guide to Gathering, Preserving, and Presenting the Past on
the Web. ==========
An International Symposium on recent trends in Hispanic poetry;
new directions in criticism on poetry; and the relationship between
Hispanic and American poetry
Keynote Speaker MARJORIE PERLOFF
Distinguished Scholar President of the MLA
GUEST POET
Charles Bernstein
PARTICIPANTS: Carlos Germán Belli, Christopher Domínguez-Michael,
Enrique Fierro, Loren Goodman, Samuel Gordon, Jorge Guitart,
Asunción Horno-Delgado, Jill S. Kuhnheim, José Kozer,
Vicente Molina-Foix, Delfina Muschietti, María Rosa Olivera-Williams,
Armando Romero, Fernando Rosemberg, Carmen Ruiz-Barrionuevo,
Randolph L. Pope, Jacobo Sefamí , Ida Vitale
Send an abstract and the title of your presentation before
February 20th 2007 to Professor Eduardo Espina (edespina@yahoo.com).
A volume of selected best papers will be published.
DEPARTMENT OF HISPANIC STUDIES
TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY
COLLEGE STATION, TEXAS 77843-4238
Leslie Scalapino Leslie was in New York for the
Poetry Project panels on her work. She came by our place for
lox & bagels. I asked her about the time she literally lost
her breath in Tibet. November 12, 2006 (video
mp4, 48 seconds, 7.8 mb)
Susan Bee's and Jerome Rothenberg's The
Burning Babe
from Granary Books
is one of many collaborations featured in Your
New Face: Poet/Artist Collaborations Selected by Vincent Katz
in the new Big Bridge.
Here's one page of Kathleen Fraser and Hermine Ford
(which should be side-to-side!):
A fascinating
two-part retrospective
of the publishing work of Karl Young
is featured in Big Bridge,
along with detailed commentaries by Young.
============
On Wednesday and Thursday of this week, we had at Penn
a celebration of Hart Crane, on the occasion of the stellar
Library of America Complete Poems and Selected Letters,
edited by Langdon Hammer. Samuel Delany and
Brian Reed gave illuminating talks on the poet. Delany
returned to the site of "The Bridge," emphasizing,
as he
does in his great Crane essay in Longer Views, Crane's
poetics of
transient encounter (cruising on the bridge becomes an interactional
model for poetics). According to Delany, Crane
ultimately creates an entirely artifactual,
or synthetic, language. Reed is a lucid and engaging speaker,
whose book on Crane, After These Lights, is a model for
poetry scholarship. He talked about Crane's "ill-sutured"
connections between highly polished poetic sections, suggesting
that Crane had created a collage poetry of all highlights;
in other words, a poetry of resonating high intensity without
beginning or end; a poetry of all "bridges."
The night before Thomas McEvilley was visiting and he wondered
about the relation of Crane's iambic pentameter metrics to his
deep affiliation with radical modernism. There are many answers
to this, some technical (Crane extended Hopkins's sprung rhythm),
but I would say that Crane project was to free verse
in the project of freeing the mind. The essays in the LOA
volume provide adequate support for just how conscious Crane
was about his method.
For those who need some background on the Crane Bashing
in today's New York Times Book Review (aka William Logan
on the Library of American Crane) take a look at Brian
Henry's
commentary on Logan at Verse. Just last year, the Times sponsored
Mr. Logan's trashing John Ashbery's poetry as "sludge," as
part of
his review of the Oxford Book of American Poetry, which,
in turn,
brought to mind his 1990 attack on Michael Palmer's Sun —
"like listening to serial music or slamming your head
against a
streetlight stanchion." The Times has cast
Mr. Logan as the bad cop
of Official Verse Culture, and he seems willing to play at being
just that —
a belching Babbitt of the Mediocracy and Traditional Poetry Values.
Hart Crane knew the type. As he writes in his 1926 letter to
Harriet Monroe:
"The nuances of feeling and observation
in a poem may well call for
certain liberties which you claim the poet has no right to take.
I am simply making the claim that
the poet does have that authority, and that to deny it is
to limit the
scope of the medium so considerably as to outlaw some of the
richest genius of the past."
Last week, I got to see the new Richard Foreman show Wake-Up Mr. Sleepy! Your Unconscious Mind is Dead! I've seen every Foreman show since Rhoda in Potatoland in
1975
& am now on the board of the Ontological Hysteric Theater,
so you
can say I am partisan. The new show extends the format of
last year's ZOMBOID!:live
actors perform in front of (and interact with ) two
large screen video projections of actors that Foreman and Sophie
Havilland filmed
in Lisbon. The audio mixes the soundtrack of the Lisbon performances
and
Foreman's always amazing sound loops and voice overlays. The
live
actors don't speak at all. This year Foreman has fully settled
into
this new form, which is something like an installation and something
like
a happening, but feels more and more like the choreographed total
film/theater/sculptual spectacle that has always been an aspiration
Foreman's work. It's also one of Foreman's most relaxed pieces,
and the combination of intellectual and aesthetic edge with oh-so-sumptuous
grace, is something ... well ...
not to be missed.
The Reproduction
of Profiles : Twentieth Anniversary
Rosmarie
Waldrop's The Reproduction of Profiles has just been reissued
by New Directions as part of Curves to the Apple, which
includes the two later parts of her trilogy, Lawn of the Excluded
Middle and Reluctant Gravities . The Reproduction
of Profiles was first published in 1987. I excerpt some remarks
I made on the book in an essay called “Wittgensteiniana” on
recent works under the spell of Wittgenstein that was published
in 1989 in Fiction International.
Waldrop's poem – which consists of a series of prose
paragraphs, one to a page – is a lyrical extension of a
number of phrases appropriated from the later Wittgenstein. Waldrop
uses no complete quotes, but embeds fragments from Wittgenstein
into her own elusive narratives. For example, she notes that
Wittgenstein's "the deepest questions are no questions at
all" is transformed to "You could prove to me that
deepest rivers are, in fact, no rivers at all." In the first
of the book's two sections, Waldrop weaves Wittgensteinian fragments
into an evocatively personalized voice:
The fog was not dense enough to
hide what I didn't want to see, nor did analysis resolve our
inner similarities. When you took the knife out of your pocket
and stuck it into your upper arm you did not tell me that, if
the laws of nature do not explain the world, they still continue
its spine. There was no wind, the branches motionless around
the bench, a dark scaffolding. A few drops of blood oozed from
your wound. I began to suck it, thinking that, because language
is part of the human organism, a life could end as an abrupt,
violent sentence, or be drawn out with economy into fall and
winter, no less complicated than a set of open parenthesis from
a wrong turn to the shock of understanding our own desires.
Much of the Investigations is
dialogue: "If I say . . ." "Imagine that you were
. . ." "Can we now imagine further . . ." Waldrop
has reimagined the scene of these conversations to be an intimate
one between lovers and this recontexutualizing gives all kinds
of new resonances to the Wittgenstein material because, in a
certain way, this is just the sort of specific grounding for
philosophical terms for which Wittgenstein calls.
The second part of Waldrop's book is titled "Inserting the
Mirror" and consists of thirty numbered prose paragraphs,
which are more purely speculative or meditative that the book's
first part. Written in the first person, the "you" is
different in this section and it is almost as if it were addressed
to Wittgenstein: "I learned about communication by twisting
my legs around yours as, in spinning a thought, we twist fiber
on fiber. The strength of language does not reside in the fact
that some one desire runs its whole length, but in the overlapping
of many generations." "You went in search of more restful
altitudes, of ideally clear language. But the bridge that spans
the mind-body gap enjoys gazing downstream. All this time I was
holding my umbrella open."
As far as I know, the sexual politics of the later Wittgenstein
has not been widely discussed. Wittgenstein's opening up into
human conversation as the ground for philosophy and his rejection
of the rigid, axiomatic dictates of formal logic may be understood
as a critique of what has come to be called phallocentrism. Waldrop's Reproductionof
Profiles implicitly investigates this theme, without, in
a truly Wittgensteinian spirit, offering any theses. The book's
title can, perhaps, be read in this light. "Inserting the
Mirror" seems preoccupied with the question: "You think
you see, but are only running your finger though pubic hair.
. . . That language can suggest a body where there is none. Or
does a body always contain its own absence?" Or this:
“As long as I wanted to be a man I considered thought as
a keen blade cutting through the uncertain brambles in my path.
Later, I let it rust under the stairs. The image was useless,
given the nature of my quest. Each day I draw the distance to
cover out of an anxiety as deep as the roots of language.”
Close Listening is produced by Charles Bernstein for WPS1
Studio Engineer: David Weinstein
These sound recordings are being
made available for noncommercial
and educational use only. All rights to this recorded material
belong to the authors.
(C) 2007 Alan Davies and Charles Bernstein. Used with permission.
Distributed by PENNSound.
NEW
NEW YORK BOOKS
A CHAX Press Book Party and Reading with special guest Junction
Press
Sunday, January 14 at 2 PM
Bowery Poetry Club
New
York
Celebrating the publication of
Certain Slants, by Charles Alexander (Junction) Swoon Noir, by Bruce Andrews (Chax) Afterimage, by Charles Borkhuis (Chax)
Born 2, by Alison Cobb (Chax) Analects on a Chinese Screen, by Glenn Mott (Chax) Since I Moved In, by Tim Peterson (Chax) Mirth, by Linda V. Russo (Chax)
MP3
of full reading (58:54) via PennSound
in alphabetical order: Alexander intro and reading, Andrews,
Borkhuis, Cobb, Mott, Peterson; then Mark Weiss of Junction Press,
finally Alexander reading Russo.
Susan Bee and Mira
Schor
are editing a special "forum" issue of M/E/A/N/I/N/G
Online
on feminism, looking back especially to the 1970s.
The issue won't be up for several more weeks,
but here is a preview of Susan's contribution.
Susan Bee & Charles
Bernstein, c. 1975
Family Trees
Susan Bee
I got all my sisters
with me.
– Sister Sledge (1979)
In the fall of 1969, after graduating
from the bohemian grove of Music and Art High School in New York,
I went to Barnard College, then as now an all-women’s college.
My college years were set against the background of the raucous
student actions against the Vietnam war and the emergence of
the black power and gay rights movements. Columbia and Barnard
were the focal point of many demonstrations in which I took an
active part. It was good time to be at Barnard, since I had the
great luck to meet or study with such major feminist thinkers
as Catherine Stimpson and Kate Millet. At one point, I applied
to major in Women’s Studies but was told that no such interdisciplinary
major could be considered (some years later, Barnard did establish
a Women’s Studies major).
I had also wanted to major in studio
art, but Barnard didn’t countenance that either, so I ended
up in Art History. In any case, there were almost no women art
teachers at Barnard or Columbia. So I found myself looking outside
of the college environment for role models. I had the example
of the art and life of my mother, painter Miriam Laufer. In December
1970, I wrote a research paper on women artists in Barnard’s
first seminar on women’s history, taught by Annette Baxter.
At that time, I could find no reference books, or for that matter
just about any information, on the subject. All that was soon
to change. A.I.R. Gallery was founded in 1973. Lucy Lippard’s
crucial From the Center, Feminist Essays on Women’s
Art was published in 1976, and Heresies was founded
in 1977. From 1979 to 1980 I worked as an editor for Cynthia
Navarreta at Women Artists News, which had started in
1975.
In graduate school at Hunter from
1975 to 1977 there were no women art teachers at all in the department.
So once again, I found myself looking to the newly formed feminist
galleries, A.I.R. and Soho 20. I went to panels at A.I.R., which
were organized by Nancy Spero and other artist members. And I
listened to Ana Mendieta, Mary Beth Edelson, and many others
talk about their artwork. These were heady experiences for a
young artist. I vividly recall a panel at A.I.R. where Roslyn
Krauss, my art history professor and thesis advisor at Hunter,
and the only woman on the modern art history faculty, denounced
feminism. No doubt this paved the way for her rapid ascent into
the art establishment.
Some of the artists whose work most
engaged me in the 1970s were Carolee Schneemann, Hannah Wilke,
Louise Bourgeois, Joan Snyder, Pat Steir, Joan Semmel, Joan Jonas,
Joyce Kozloff (and the Pattern and Decoration movement), Louisa
Chase, Ellen Phelan, Mary Lucier, Joan Snitzer, Lee Sherry, Toni
Simon, Eleanor Antin, Howardena Pindell, Alice Neel, Mimi Gross,
Alice Aycock, Marcia Hafif, Faith Ringgold, Elizabeth Murray,
Eva Hesse, Erika Rothenberg, Dottie Attie, Nancy Spero, and Miriam
Schapiro. Well, anyway, those are the artists I most recall now,
partly because of my own ongoing relationship with them. I know
there were many others whose names I don’t remember or
who dropped out of sight. I also mention these names because
so much of the Official History of Feminist Art has involved
deleting names not authenticated by the feminist and commercial
art establishment.
In my student years at Barnard,
I did expressionist figurative paintings, influenced, in part,
by my mother’s work, as well as cut-up and collaged abstract
paintings. I also did whimsical rapidograph fantasy line drawings,
especially during my life in the rainforest of British Columbia,
where I lived for a year after college with Charles Bernstein.
While he wrote poems, I painted and drew – and we both
chopped a lot of wood. We also spent a year in Santa Barbara,
where I worked in a daycare center by day and painted by night.
Susan Bee in British Columbia, painting by Toni
Simon, 1974.
By 1975, we had moved
back to New York. When I started at Hunter’s M.A. program,
I was doing large abstract stain paintings like Helen Frankenthaler's.
I also did a number of letterist collage works that were published
in various small press magazines interested in visual poetry;
these works were shown in the U.S. and internationally. At Hunter,
due to the overwhelming influence of my Minimalist professors,
including Robert Morris, who disliked the colorfulness and expressivity
of my paintings, I started to paint in just two colors, blue
and white. As much as I liked Morris and some of his work, I
didn’t feel he and his very much “fellow” company
(Krauss included) allowed much room for students who thought
about art differently than they did. Whether or not this is a
gender issue remains hard to say; but gender cannot be entirely
left out of the equation since it was, at the time, a consciously
suppressed term. While at Hunter, I also got interested in doing
photos and I had a darkroom at home and mostly did photograms
and altered prints, where I painted the developer on the photos.
I made my first artist’s book, Photogram, in 1978.
Susan Bee and the artists of Tycho in 1981.
Around 1978, I joined a women artist’s
support group called Tycho that showed together and we had discussions
about our work. Meanwhile, from the mid-1970s, I had became very
involved with the poets around St. Mark’s Church’s
Poetry Project and L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E magazine. I worked
on the design of L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E, pasting it up by hand
(precomputer) in my apartment from 1978 to 1981. And after that
I worked with the Segue Foundation, designing many of the early
Roof books. I also went to lots of performances of Robert Wilson,
Philip Glass, Richard Foreman and Kate Manheim, Jackson Mac Low,
Charlemagne Palestine, Dick Higgins, Alison Knowles, and the
Fluxus group, Douglas Dunn, Yvonne Rainer, Richard Schechner,
the Living Theater, and early performances at the Kitchen. I
went to the Franklin Furnace and Printed Matter to look at artist’s
books and I showed my books there.
The women poets and writers that
I met at that time were a crucial company for me and the poetry
community that they formed marked a stark contrast to the art
world, where commerce and transient fashion too often trumped
both aesthetic values and sisterhood. So I think of friends such
as Hannah Weiner, Lyn Hejinian, Johanna Drucker, Kathy Acker,
Rae Armantrout, Susan Howe, Lynne Dreyer, Diane Ward, Bernadette
Mayer, Anne Waldman, Ann Lauterbach, Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, Abigail
Child, Erica Hunt, Lydia Davis, Madeline Gins. They showed me
a way to proceed to do your artwork and how to find your voice
in a male-dominated world and they offered important support
during those years. Male poets and artists such as James Sherry,
Ron Silliman, Bruce Andrews, Nick Piombino, David Reed, David
von Schlegall, Arakawa, Henry Hills, John Yau, Robert Creeley,
Jerry Rothenberg, and Ted Greenwald, were also very much part
of my life then, especially Charles, who I met in high school
and married, after years living together, in 1977.
In 1986, Mira Schor and I had decided
to publish M/E/A/N/I/N/G and we kept the print version
going for 10 years till 1996. We then published the M/E/A/N/I/N/G
Anthology in 2000 and started M/E/A/N/I/N/G Online in
2002.
Susan Bee and Mira Schor, 1990.
In 1996, I joined A.I.R. Gallery
and became part of another community of women artists that is
still active. Since joining the gallery, I have had four solo
shows, participated in numerous group shows, and been part of
monthly meetings.
Looking back on the 1970s, I realize
now that the whole fabric of the times was in flux and that the
energy of the feminist art movement was just one important part
of the larger blossoming of avant-gardes and undergrounds and
political movements. Community remains a work in progress for
artists: still urgent, still flawed. The 70s laid a groundwork
on which I continue to build.
Susan Bee with members of A.I.R. Gallery, NYC,
2006.
Surges cause
short circuits.
Negotiate don’t escalate.
Seeger on audio accompanied by video collage
by "Bob's TV"
Waist Deep In The Big Muddy
Peter Seeger (1963)
It was back in nineteen forty-two,
I was a member of a good platoon.
We were on maneuvers in-a Loozianna,
One night by the light of the moon.
The captain told us to ford a river,
That's how it all begun.
We were -- knee deep in the Big Muddy,
But the big fool said to push on.
The Sergeant said, "Sir, are you
sure,
This is the best way back to the base?"
"Sergeant, go on! I forded this river
'Bout a mile above this place.
It'll be a little soggy but just keep slogging.
We'll soon be on dry ground."
We were -- waist deep in the Big Muddy
And the big fool said to push on.
The Sergeant said, "Sir, with all
this equipment
No man will be able to swim."
"Sergeant, don't be a Nervous Nellie,"
The Captain said to him.
"All we need is a little determination;
Men, follow me, I'll lead on."
We were -- neck deep in the Big Muddy
And the big fool said to push on.
All at once, the moon clouded over,
We heard a gurgling cry.
A few seconds later, the captain's helmet
Was all that floated by.
The Sergeant said, "Turn around men!
I'm in charge from now on."
And we just made it out of the Big Muddy
With the captain dead and gone.
We stripped and dived and found
his body
Stuck in the old quicksand.
I guess he didn't know that the water was deeper
Than the place he'd once before been.
Another stream had joined the Big Muddy
'Bout a half mile from where we'd gone.
We were lucky to escape from the Big Muddy
When the big fool said to push on.
Well, I'm not going to point any
moral;
I'll leave that for yourself
Maybe you're still walking, you're still talking
You'd like to keep your health.
But every time I read the papers
That old feeling comes on;
We're -- waist deep in the Big Muddy
And the big fool says to push on.
Waist deep in the Big Muddy
And the big fool says to push on.
Waist deep in the Big Muddy
And the big fool says to push on.
Waist deep! Neck deep! Soon even a
Tall man'll be over his head, we're
Waist deep in the Big Muddy!
And the big fool says to push on!
Words and music by Pete Seeger
TRO (c) 1967 Melody Trails, Inc. New York, NY
Greene Naftali Gallery is pleased to announce the existence of
a recently completed series of sixty-four Giclée prints
made from four-color notebook drawing poem images from the ‘agricultural
year’ 2003-2005 in Bolinas, California (rainy season to
rainy season—a sort of Shepherd’s Calendar without
shepherd or sheep) called 64 (accidentally (?) being our
poet/artist’s age at the time) by fundamental/foundational
language poet (‘artist’?) Robert Grenier.
Rough translations of the texts of
the 64 drawing poem prints (into ‘American’, as they
say in France) showing their organizations into sets of 2, 4,
6 and 8 (roughly in accord with months of said ‘year’)
are as follows:
TWO INTRODUCTORY IMAGES
AFTER/NOON/SUN/SHINE (April 2004)
RED W/OOOD/RED/WOODS (February
2004)
SIX POEMS / NOVEMBER 2003-JANUARY
2004
COLOR/SOAK/KED/EUKES
MOOER/MOOS/MOO/AT
MORE/SO/MOON/LIGHT
STROM/STREAM/STREAM/STROM
MOOER/MOOS/MOO/BACK
TREE/FROG/A ST/RETCH
FOUR POEMS / FEBRUARY 2004
SHOWER/AFTER/DARK/RAINS
MOON/IT’S/THE/RE
FROGS/GOING/SANE/MAD
ANY/AND/EVERY/FROG
FOUR POEMS / MARCH 2004
SNOW/PEAS/IN/GROUND
PLUM/AND/PLUM/WHITE
DARK/IT/OFTEN/WAS
BEES/CYPRESS/TREE/HIVE
FOUR POEMS / APRIL 2004
CORN/SHOOTS/UP AN/INCH
LEAP/ROUND/UP/DOWN
ELBOW/POLE/BEAN/UP
DANCE/STEP/COME/SPRING
FOUR POEMS / MAY 2004
THRUSH/WHICH/MESMER/IZES
MOOS/OUR/NEIGH/BOR
14/SWEET/WILL/IAMS
NOT/THERE/AT/ALL
FOUR POEMS / JUNE 2004
SUSIE/I/LOVE/YOU
POLE/BEAN/FLOW/ERS
APRI/COT/JAM/JAR
AMY/HERE/MY/GIRL
FOUR MORE POEMS / JUNE 2004
BLUE/SKY/JUNE/DAY
WOW/CLOUDS/YOU/SEE
PLANT/SEED/POTA/TOES
ROUND/LAGOON/CANOE/ING
FOUR POEMS / JULY 2004
ROSE/BUSH/A/TREE
FLOW/ERS/AND/BUDS
SOLI/TARY/BARE/FOOT
SUNS/HINE/BACK/YARD
FOUR POEMS / AUGUST 2004
BLUE/SKY/HOT/DAY
YELLOW/JACKETS/SEEK/ING
ORIGI/NAL/MOON/RISES
ROUND/ROUND/POND/SWIM
FOUR MORE POEMS / AUGUST 2004
WATER/THE/PEAR/TREE
DEER/TO/DO/OR
YELLOW/AND/GREEN/BEANS
NUM/BER/OF/STARS
SIX POEMS / SEPTEMBER 2004
SEED/GLOBE/DANDE/LION
FRESH/AIR/6/AM
FRONT/TEETH/PAPER/THIN
GRAVE/NSTEINS/REDDEN/YELLOW
GOLD/DELI/CIOU/S
POTATO/POTATO/POTATO/POTATO
FOUR POEMS / OCTOBER 2004
PUMP/KINS/ON/PORCH
CREAK/KING/EUCA/LYPTS
A/MOTOR/CYCLE/ROAR
JUST/AT/DARK/WIND
FOUR POEMS / NOVEMBER 2004
STORM/FROM/OCE/AN
BLUE/ROSE/MARY/FLOWERS
TOMATO/VINES/ARE/BLACK
VIGOR/IN MY/RIGHT/HAND
FOUR POEMS / DECEMBER 2004
BEGIN/DARK/COLD/RAINS
FALLOW/DEER/ANT/LERS
COYO/TES/HERE/THERE
ACTUAL/WHOLE/MOON/SEEN
TWO CONCLUDING IMAGES
OWL/AN/OWL/OWL (March 2005)
MOON/HALF/OR/1/4 (June 2005)
The prints in the introductory and
concluding sets of 2 and in the groups of 4 and 8 are each 17-1/2
x 23-3/8” and priced at $350, whereas those in the two
groups of 6 are each 15-1/4 x 17-1/2” and are priced at
$300. The 4- and 6-print groupings are also available as “sets” ($1,200
and $1,600 respectively) which come as either cut single prints,
or as one large uncut sheet.
All are printed on Hahnemühle
308 gsm Photo Rag Paper. Produced on an Epson Stylus Pro 9500
printer at 1440/720 dpi with six, pigment-based, archival inks,
these Giclée prints (properly conserved) have a projected
life of at least 100 years.
Robert Grenier has declared the
full cycle of 64 prints to be a limited/signed edition of 12
(whether 12 will ever be printed is a fascinating question best
left to ‘the Fates’ and/or speculators in the life
work of Robert Grenier!); interested persons are encouraged to
contact Jay Sanders at Greene Naftali (212-463-7770).
A show of the 64 prints is projected
for spring 2008 in Bury, Lancashire, as part of the second Text
Festival organized by Tony Trehy (Arts & Museums Manager
for the Bury Metropolitan Council), who is acquiring one set
of 64 for the permanent collection of the Bury Museum
Link now fixed:
From an Auckland-New York video conference for Bad Language,
organised by Artspace and the Jar Foundation, 11 July 2001.
Auckland participants: Wystan Curnow, Leigh Davis, Tony Green
Full program: 56k, broad-band (1:38:47) Excerpts: Poem
Composed for Jackson Mac Low (rm: 1.2MB, streaming), from With
Strings (U of Chicago P, 2001). Thank
You for Saying Thank You (rm: 1.1MB, streaming). Dear
Mr. Fanelli (rm : 1.1MB, streaming) from My Way: Speeches
and
Poems (U
of Chicago P, 1999)
Program Two Lauterbach
in conversation with Charles Bernstein (28:27)
Lauterbach talks about sound, performance, and folk music and
goes on to engage the difficult relation of gender and authority. She
also discusses "Missing Ages," a poem she read on program
one, and also her essay collection, The Night Sky: Writings
on the Poetics of Experience (New York: Viking, 2005).
In and around 1990, D.S. Marriott published a few startling
chapbooks that while identifiable with a kind of Cambridge (UK)
style, seemed to eviscerate the very grounds of their own expression.
As some of these works resurface in Incognegro, their
lyric abjection, despair, and loneliness swell into unsung song.
These poems, now revised, collected, and supplemented, have become
palimpsests, overlaying personal anguish with the social terror
of racism, and the historical trauma of slavery. Of the older
self-eviscerating lyrics, “The Wondering” and “To
A Surer Fire” stand out. These are interspersed with poems
that yoke narrative and conceptual documentary in order to explicitly
engage the most politically volatile themes.
In his recent critical collection Haunted
Life, Marriot provides a remarkably precise framing for his
poetics by way of a famous passage from Hegel: “But the
life of Spirit is not the life that shrinks from death and keeps
itself untouched by devastation, but rather the life that endures
it and maintains itself in it. It wins its truth when, in utter
dismemberment, it finds itself …. Spirit is this power
only by looking the negative in the face, and tarrying with it.”
The title poem of Incognegro, Marriott
offers a startling alternation, line by line, of marked black
dialect against its lexically standard lyric twin, each line
reciprocally mirroring the pain of the other’s deformance. Incognegro is
a fiercely formal study of the poetics of subjection, assimilation,
lyric authority, and historical double-consciousness. The particular
closed poetic economies of Walcott and Prynne form just one of
the backgrounds against which Marriott weaves his cries – not
just of the heart but of history. Marriott’s book does
not permit any settling into a single mode in its unforgiving
demonstration of the disguises of voiced voicelessness. The result
is both incendiary fire and cold logic. That is, while Marriott’s
strategies are always incisive, some the poems have not attained
to, or perhaps been enlisted in, the full aesthetic service that
marks (not to say lacerates) the three poems mentioned, as well
as “The Ghost of Averages” and “The Drowners.” Perhaps
the failures are what keeps this book on the fair side of the
real.
PennSound
Daily
"This
is Just to Say," read in Rutherford, New Jersey, June 1950 
![](http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/authors/bernstein/blog/images/Star-Black_North-Launch_01_2007.JPG")
