ENG 693 / COL 713

Prof. Charles Bernstein. Thursday 12:30-3:l0, Clemens 438 (Fall 2000)

BLANK

An open-ended forum for discussion of issues of pressing interest to participants. An ongoing theme will be “the poetics of blank” in its many and shifting senses.

Requirements: Weekly postings of responses and common texts to Core-L and a final seminar project/paper. Each participant will be asked to initiate one of the seminars as well as be a formal respondent to one of the visitors.

Please post responses and additional comments on our listserve, CORE-L. Participation in CORE-L is an essential part of the class. (Send message to "listserv@ubvm.cc.buffalo.edu" that says "sub core-l Jill Jillway" substituting your name for Jill Jillway.)

Background reference:

Electronic Poetry Center (writing.upenn.edu/epc):

Go to Weds@4 Calendar for links on all the readers including seminar participants

Go to past syllabi for bibliography: writing.upenn.edu/epc/authors/bernstein/syllabi

On “Blank Spots Society” see:

Emmanuel Hoquard’s contribution to “99 Poets / 1999”

“Great Moments in Taches Blanches”: socrates.berkeley.edu/~moriarty/bernstei.htm

Talking Leaves Required books

Books of the seminar visitors:

Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge, Four Year Old Girl Kelsey Street

Nick Piombino, Theoretical Objects and Boundary of Blur

Dominique Fourcade, tr. Robert Kocik, Xbo

Nicole Brossard, Installations and Picture Theory

Madeline Gins, Helen Keller or Arakawa

Background reading:

Goffman, Frame Analysis

Stephane Mallarmé, tr. Henry Weinfield, Collected Poems

Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (Recommended)

Lockwood Reserve:

Arakawa/Gins, Mechanismus der Bedeutung and Reversible Destiny

Mallarmé, Selected Poetry and Prose ed. Caws

PLUS: selected works of Adrienne Rich and Susan Howe from Talking Leaves or Lockwood or Poetry Collection (and note Howe page at EPC and Rich links at Calendar)

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SESSIONS

1. Aug. 31

2. Sept. 7

3. Sept. 14

4. Sept. 15: Mei-mei Berssenbrugge visit (book at TL plus EPC home page)

5. Sept. 27: Nick Piombino visit: “Boundary of Theory” (books at TL plus EPC home page)

6. Oct. 4: Nicole Brossard visit: “Silence and the Human Voice: Vital Material for the Future” (books at TL plus EPC home page)

7. Oct. 11

8. Oct. 18: Adrienne Rich visit (with Robert Creeley) (choose books from libraries and TL; links at Calendar)

9. Oct. 26 Susan Howe seminar visit (choose books from libraries and TL; EPC home page)

10. Rescheduled meeting: Weds., Nov. 1, 7pm. NO SEMINAR 11/2.

11. Nov. 9

12. Nov. 16: Dominique Fourcade visit: “Toute Arrive: Mallarmé and Manet”.

If Fourcade’s book of “Toute Arrive” is not yet available, xerox will be provided. Not also the Mallarmé reading at TL and Fourcade links at Calendar.

13. Nov. 30: Madeline Gins and Arakawa visit.

14. Dec. 7: last class