=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 7 Mar 1994 12:51:12 -0600
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.BITNET>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.BITNET>
From: Joe Amato <jamato@UX1.CSO.UIUC.EDU>
Subject: coeval with...
i must admit to being taken by a sense of place, and corresponding
dislocations...
for me, whatever creative possibilites emerge from disruptions in place
move me to thresholds---cognitive, emotional---that are often painful... in
part because place for me IS the timing of space, a spacing in time replete
with boundaries...
when i look out my window (in the spare bdrm. of my apt. where i've located
my mac) i see an urban landscape that bears little resemblance to the
suburban, woodsy, fifties territories of my childhood... nostalgia here is
not the point---the point is that i feel a spiritual resonance with the
geographies of central and upstate new york, while at the same time i have
no intention of residing again in the city of my birth (syracuse, the salt
city)... ambivalence more polyvalence---it's a mixture of feelings,
longings, desperations, impulses---in the blood, as it were...
hence looking into *this* window is yet looking out another, and
vice-versa... "coeval with" your various readings of this post---but with a
few things more, perhaps...
the issue has to do with regionalisms as well as (inter)nationalisms... i'm
hearing, in the background (someplace) lennon's "imagine," a song from my
late teens, and i'm wondering what sort of cosmopolitan it is who *doesn't*
identify with such identities ---which is NOT to say the lyrics... which,
yes, translate into overarching sociopolitical exigencies...
fifty miles south of me the land flattens out like a drainboard... i spent
a couple of lonely years in those directions, dealing with the death of my
folks... but my solitudes where marked, thankfully, by having made a few
best friends...
down that way, far as the (untrained) i can see [sorry] one generally
witnesses endless orthogonal acres of single-crop farming---corn, or
soybeans... this, for example and for me, is most definitely NOT nature...
this latter may be problematic everywhere today, but whatever else it is, i
don't quite identify it with non-diversity...
i have an eye for hill and dale and that sorta thing... variations against
the Same, and in pixeled terms as well... but i'll probably mself end up
someplace in the suburbs, or fringe burbs... i'm hoping it won't be
entirely too mediocre, mall-ish... but there's this thing about having the
bucks, yknow, to move, and where---and i'd like a little tomato patch
before i'm too much older...
i'm used to small pockets of italian ethinicity (being 'second generation'
on my dad's (sicilian) side) and little euro-pockets as well (being 'first
generation' on my mom's side)... chi-town does this for me at times, but
the midwest, otherwise, rarely does... hence i'm east in many ways... my
neuroses operating on the surfaces, the silent machismo of the midwest
grates on me at times... and such regional, even moody judgments follow
from feelings born of having found correspondences between my convictions,
as i live them out, and my ongoing, provisional understanding---nothing
arbitrary here, or innocent, or necessarily nice...
and yet i carry around a southwestern landscape someplace in my jeans
[sorry again], a true-blue Western mythology probably as much a consequence
of loving, in my child-adulthood, westerns (cinema and tv) as a function of
more legislated attempts to establish an american ethos...
if there is yet an argument to be made in such terms... saturated though it
might be with hollywood and jiffypop, my memory, altering, is something i
live with and through...
if 'i don't know where i stand,' exactly, i'm damn well gonna have to be
standing someplace, metaphysically speaking... looking out toward the
shifting horizon, trying to figure the when's and where's of things as i
find them...
joe
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 7 Mar 1994 18:30:52 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.BITNET>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.BITNET>
From: FUNKHOUSER CHRISTOPH <cf2785@CSC.ALBANY.EDU>
Subject: Re: what they talked excitedly about
In-Reply-To: <9403051927.AB29978@sarah.albany.edu> from "Steve Evans" at Mar 5,
94 02:22:49 pm
Steve--hello--
Thanks for the Kootenay update--it seems to have sparked at least one
thread, & hopefully we ta'wil our way back to some of those
other themes later. After checking back through The L Robertson/C Stewart/
C Strang entry in the oblek "Subject & Position" section & reading
"Wrenched history is our machine's frontier" figured they'd bring
some issue or another pertinent to our talk here & yes --
Can somebody post a citation for _The Poetics of Criticism_?
mr ltr funk
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 7 Mar 1994 18:52:31 EST
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.BITNET>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.BITNET>
From: Hans-Joachim Rieke <100114.2211@COMPUSERVE.COM>
Subject: media theory
As somebody asked for further information about Bolz/Flusser, I'll enter this
part of my answer to the list:
Vilem Flusser is native of Prague then lived in South America for a long time
teaching media theory, and finally in the south of France. He died recently
and is being read more and more in Germany. I only know German titles:UEBER
SCHRIFT (ON SCRIPTURE); LOB DER OBERFLCHLICHKEIT (PRAISE OF SUPERFICIALITY/
SURFACES); he has written more though;
Norbert Bolz is a strange guy, supposedly something of a genius, taught
philosophy at the Free University Berlin, and is now professor at the
institute for cultural and media studies at Essen. He started writing about
Benjamin, taught Derrida and Lacan, Kant, Hegel and arrived at media theory.
Argues that philosophy necessarily comes to an end, end of hermeneutics, leads
to media theory... has written proliferously - in German
AM ENDE DER GUTENBERG GALAXIS; PHILOSOPHIE NACH IHREM ENDE are the most recent
books.
I'm grateful for any "Literaturtips" on "hyperreality"
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 7 Mar 1994 22:37:38 -0500
Reply-To: Robert Drake <au462@cleveland.Freenet.Edu>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.BITNET>
From: Robert Drake <au462@CLEVELAND.FREENET.EDU>
Subject: Re: what they talked excitedly about
>Can somebody post a citation for _The Poetics of Criticism_?
_A Poetics of Criticism_
Juliana Spahr, Mark Wallace, Kristin Prevallet, Pam Rehm, eds.
1994
Leave Books
57 Livingston St.
Buffalo NY 14213
ISBN 0-922668-11-6
bonus question: which 2 editors are not subscribed to this list?
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 8 Mar 1994 09:54:18 HST
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.BITNET>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.BITNET>
From: susan schultz <SCHULTZ@UHCCVM.BITNET>
To members of the net:
More thoughts on identity politics (and I'm intrigued by the slow-starting
discussion of Canadian identity, which I gather is English-speaking Cana-
dian). The similarity of languages poses problems that are easily (perhaps
too easily) deflected onto language politics here in Hawaii (where, yes,
the weather today is gorgeous, since our rainy season ended recently).
Here's an example of a poem that distinguishes between the mainland US
and Hawaii, by Joe Balaz:
Eh, howzit brah,
I heard you goin mainland, eh?
No, I goin to the continent.
Wat? I taught you goin San Jose
for visit your bradda?
Dats right.
Den you going mainland brah!
No, I goin to da continent.
What you mean continent brah?!
Dah mainland is dah mainland,
dats where you going, eh?!
Eh, like I told you,
dats da continent--
Hawai'i
is da mainland to me.
(Lots of missing italics that I don't know how to do in email-speak.)
My colleague, Rob Wilson, sets this poem and others in the context of
a local resistence to global incursions in his forthcoming book out
of Duke. But what's interesting to me at this moment is the local
resistence to other definitions of local, which comes out so well
in Lois-Ann Yamanaka's work, which is being received well on the
"mainland" (or continent), but is getting flak here for perpetuating
racist stereotypes, of which there are hundreds on this island of
a myriad of ethnic groups. One of her adolescent girl speakers
appears in a poem called "Kala Gave Me Anykine Advice Especially
About Filipinos When I Moved to Pahala." Another attacks Japanese
teachers (most local public school teachers are Japanese-American):
So what if the teacher look at us.
Just another stupid Jap. You eva wen' notice
that every teacher we had since elementry days
was one lady Jap?
Eh, what you trying for say to me?
I ain't one fuckin' Jap like them.
Their eyes mo slant than mine and yeah,
I one Jap, but not that kine . . .
So much for adolescent multiculturalism!
The new TV show, BYRDS of PARADISE, though its concept is lame, and the
acting shallow, tries to do a good job of presenting a local view of
Hawaii's problems. In fact, they presented just about all of them in
the first 10 minutes of the pilot show.
Of islands: John Figueroa, a West Indian poet and critic, gave a talk
here last week in which he showed how Derek Walcott's early work WAS
local, both in its sense of place and in its switching of languages
according to context. A good view of Walcott not as a postcolonial
with a yen for the colonial, but a poet of his place, which includes
the British influence, but also creole (English and French). His
text was one of the sonnets from "Tales of Islands," in Walcott's
earliest "Selected Poems." It starts out: "Poopa da fete!"
Best wishes from paradise!
Susan Schultz
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 9 Mar 1994 19:43:31 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.BITNET>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.BITNET>
From: James Sherry <jsherry@PANIX.COM>
Subject: Re: putative ms
In-Reply-To: <199403082232.AA14408@panix.com>
Susan: Excellent notes on place, but how to include Beaudelaire's idea of
place as a cipher for self, if by poetry we say one thing and mean also
something else.
And also Charles said you think I have an unanswered ms of yours which I
don't and if I did why wouldn't you ask me for it instead of Charles.
James Sherry
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 11 Mar 1994 01:59:55 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.BITNET>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.BITNET>
From: Martin Spinelli <V139HLA3@UBVMS.BITNET>
Organization: University at Buffalo
Subject: last poetics post
From: UBVMS::V139HLA3 27-FEB-1994 16:01:10.11
To: CHARLES
CC: V139HLA3
Subj: RESPONSE response
Hans Enzensberger's "Constituents of a theory
of the media"
the utopia in Enzensberger's article is made possible
through "mass participation in the social and socialized
productive process." the Vision is this: everyone a
participant. that is a participation in the media -- in
its production. he says at once that media can produce
the Social and production can control the media.
more interestingly for us Enze says the social power is
in response. *response is power* shutting down response
is domination.
in spite of the optimistic rhetoric, Enze himself gives
us examples of media's failed potential (which he never
sufficiently recuperates). in the hands of his "masses"
short wave radio is pathetically impotent, badly
imitating bad examples form commercial radio. the goal
of his idealized liberated media is "mobilization" (vague
throughout). whatever it is, radio hams don't have it.
they are isolated and remain so. somehow mobilization
for Eze must be physical. an intellectual mobilization,
a mobilization of response seems possible both on radio
and on the Net. Community needs dialog.
the Net, the medium with the potential for response,
can't equal Eze's imagination. initially and in places
there is a vocalization in unison at places if not an
"organization" or "mobilization". but looking further it
is lacking: there are only prolific and pervasive
fragments, all their own centers or all speaking equally
comfortably from the margins. can a greater Social exist
without interaction tween the fragms, without impetus
towards the improvement of the Whole? (yet there is this
impetus around the hardware -- everyone wants to improve
the medium itself.)
Where is the revolution?
there is the opportunity to exercise power -- to say
something. like a baudrillard essay nothing is heard
before [EOB] or after the last footnote. containment.
what would the virtual revolution look like? erev?
control cannot be taken of anything on the Inside -- for
the first time the Inside is the place bereft of power
and imagination, bereft of agency with the simulation of
agency.... curiously supervised
scrutinized
Clippered
surreptitiously ceansuored
evaluated
categorized
and
fast
(it posits an new class.sys: the techobourgeoisie over
the infobourgeoisie.)
again Eze: media's power is its mobilization of the
masses. but real mobilization coming from media would
presume at most three channels (three access points,
three meanings all referringtoeachother). mobilization
is an anomaly on the Net because of the infinity of
channels and the infinity of messages...is it enough to
be united around a medium? to have a vested interest in
the medium, to be dependent on it? there is a kind of
mobilization around this but it can only ever be mustered
_in support_ of the medium. with an infinity of
channnels, consumption and production don't just get
blurred. production *becomes* consumption. supporting
a right to production is only like good advertizing...
teaching us we're not really happy. we didn't know how
unhappy we were. responding erodes. the mic is too
close to the amp.
feedback... the repetition of what has already been
transmitted fading and distorted but essentially the
same as what has already been said. the difference
between feedback and response is the difference between
a system of simulations and asystem of meaning? Badrill
is great on this in his "The Masses": public opinion
polls dictate the limits of public experience.
in his media strategy which seeks to end isolation (read
"alienation") COMMUNITY IS MANDATORY
Eze is aware that a sys in which everyone
produces/expresses will yield only noise. noise which
does not hold one's interest like nonsense but is only
irritating -- distressing. here he says that the masses
must be taught to be better producers if the utopian
mobilization is to be realized. in this way they could
record their daily experiences and learn from them.
again organization is liberating not the tech that
provides it.
on the net you can respond to the message, and only
indirectly, inadvertently about the medium. you use the
Net yet you cannot have a dialog with the Net.
there is a danger when the link between community and
medium becomes too perfect (seemless, transparent as tech
pretends it can make it) *as obvious intrusions of the
media begin to disappear more completely the less there
will be to say* the connection is the only viable issue,
source and site of discourse. as it evaporates so must
communication.
the resistance of the medium, the time spent in the
friction of translation/communication allows for
rumination, for contemplation, for thought (even if it is
only an examination of its deployment). when this space
disappears all we will be able to do is sit and stare.
the eze short term solution: authors and producers must
work as agents for the masses and only when the masses
learn to cut tape and mix music can the producer "lose
himself". This is how he ultimately solves the noise
problem.
as media are currently constituted (one-directionally),
*response* is anti-media. the ideal response that Eze is
after must go beyond the limits he sets for it. it must
be outside like spray paint on the monitor. Badrill
claims there exists "a possible subversion of the code of
the media [in the] possibility of alternative speech and
a radical reciprocity of symbolic exchange."
exchange is the radical thing... but exchange of what...
a change must happen in the exchange -- reworking it into
what is an anti-aesthetic -- (anti- to the aesthetic of
the professional media and the OED) -- upset the
hegemony, don't believe theauthorityandtwsit its
structure with implied orthography. Signify without
rules. ignore Expectations.
the Net is not often used in
the way say Bill or Ben or
Jonathan (Howe, Freidlander,
Fernandez, three that came
first to mind) use language
in their poetry. the
materiality of the Net
is not often tinkered
with --thought about --
addressed as something
other than a transparent
medium of representing
(thought or something).
the hegemony of these lingos
is not exposed or disrupted
by toying with, or even
showing, the structure. it
is believed in. we must
lose/loose our faith.
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 11 Mar 1994 02:02:43 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.BITNET>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.BITNET>
From: Martin Spinelli <V139HLA3@UBVMS.BITNET>
Organization: University at Buffalo
Subject: oops
sorry for the accidental repost
ms
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 12 Mar 1994 14:08:34 EST
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.BITNET>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.BITNET>
From: steve evans <ST001515@BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU>
Subject: coeval with...
The lull in new messages is not, I suppose, necessarily something to fret
over. In the interval, I find myself mulling over posting that are now
several days old. I'd like to pose a question or two to Susan Schultz and
Tom Mandel, with apologies to anyone who thinks I'm forcing us back over
ground already covered....
First, it would interest me if Susan Schultz could supplement the discussion
of poets such as Joe Balaz and Louis-Ann Yamanaka with a word or two about
the way acces to publication is structured in Hawaii: are the conflicting
definitions of "locality" played out in terms of publication sites as well
as in subject-matter? Since print *mediates* and seems always to slip from
"local" sites, I am curious as to how these writers conceive of and
perhaps work to contain this inevitable generalization.
Then there are several questions I'd like to ask Tom Mandel. Tom writes
(7 Mar 1994): "An identification of the persons and places we see is basic
to survival, isn't it?" The rest of his post abbreviates this "identification
of" with a series of somewhat vague "it"s.
It was my impression that we
were discussing a slightly different question, namely what are the bases of
identifications *with* (a territory, its "populace"). And related to this,
can such identifications withstand de-naturalization.... Is there a "we"
that could convene itself without naturalizing its conventions, without
pre-deciding the criteria for answering the question "who is of us, and who
is not"? The suggestion in Tom's post is that to proceed with this question
requires unreflexive "mental privilege." Am I interpreting that correctly?
I'd be interested in Tom's own gloss of Hugh of St. Victor's maxim. To my
ears, "that one is perfect to whom the whole world is exile" registers as
Christian dogma. But then I am unfamiliar with Hugh....
Finally, on 5 March, Tom claimed that Oppen was pondering "how to live
in a spirit world (and *that* one is the "numerous" world) when one is
ineluctable [sic] alone and confronted w/ it at all times. But you [Joel] know
all that."
I initially let the "you know all that" mislead me into thinking I did. But
upon reflection, I wonder if Tom would expand on this spirit world=numerous
world equation. My own, never rigorously examined, take on the numerous has
always seen it in the context of a decentralization of value regimes, partly
the consequence of social and political shifts that we might, if speaking in
shorthand, indicate with such words/events as global decolonization and
national (U.S.) desegregation. The historical, then, has stood in my thinking
just where Tom would apparently put "the spiritual."
What I'd be interested in is a definition (however provisional) of the
"spirit world" that is also the "numerous" one in Tom's reading of Oppen.
Since I happened to watch Jim Jarmusch's _Night on Earth_ a few days ago,
I find myself thinking also of his intentionally slight but insightful
depictions of transitory bonds invented against the grain of what's
"plausible" in an (international) social order still effectively structured
by essentialist principles. But then, the film isn't as top-heavy as that
sentence makes it sound.
Hoping to find that there are still people out (t)here.
Steve Evans
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 15 Mar 1994 09:00:11 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.BITNET>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.BITNET>
From: Charles Bernstein <BERNSTEI@UBVMS.BITNET>
Organization: University at Buffalo
Subject: it's ascii but is is art or "Oubliez .Gif"
A friend passed this on to me, clipped (if that's the word)
from the alt.ascii-art newsgroup.
From: cerberus@hades.equinox.gen.nz (Kaisar Neron)
Organization: The House Of Hades
******************************************************************************
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=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 15 Mar 1994 09:55:26 HST
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.BITNET>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.BITNET>
From: susan <SCHULTZ@UHCCVM.BITNET>
Subject: Re: coeval with...
In-Reply-To: Message of Sat,
12 Mar 1994 14:08:34 EST from <ST001515@BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU>
To Steve Evans and all:
In answer to Steve's question about publishing in Hawaii and its relation-
ship to locality. There are a lot of small presses here, that come and
go with the financial and emotional tides. The most sturdy and influential
one is Bamboo Ridge, which published Lois-Ann Yamanaka's recent book, and
has by now sold over 3000 (I kid you not) copies here and on the mainland.
Joe Balaz has his own press, I believe. While Bamboo Ridge is often
criticized for publishing only local Asian-American writers, or everything
they get in pidgin, or only fishing/family/etc. poems, they have come out
with at least two books that I know off that concentrate on native
Hawaiian work, one edited by Dana Naone Hall, and another by Rodney
Morales, on the life of George Helm. (Helm was an activist who drowned
while protesting the American military's bombing of Kahoolawe, a small
island that was bombed for over 40 years as target practice. George
Bush stopped the practice right before the 1990 senate elections in an
effort to throw some votes to the Republican, who lost.)
At a local literature conference held this past weekend, one of my
colleagues pointed out that many, if not most, people find out about
local lit through performances throughout the state--either readings
by the poets themselves, or dramatizations that are presented at
schools. Yamanaka, however, has run into censorship recently; schools
want to make sure that she reads poems that aren't too profane! I may
have mentioned that members of the Filipino community are upset by
her speakers' use of stereotypes against Filipinos. An interesting
problem of audience.
One of the problems in disseminating native Hawaiian literature is that
so much of it isn't "literature," but chants that accompany hula. The
grant in support of the Hawaii Literary Arts Council, for example, has
no provision for paying performers to do hula--money is only provided
for literary events (literally). The University of Hawaii press, while
it publishes OLD Hawaiian stuff, has a very bad record on publishing
any new Hawaii literature. They only picked up Milton Murayama's
influential, All I Asking For Is My Body, after Murayama had self-
published it, and had started to sell a lot of copies. They have a
new series on Pacific literature, which seems geared toward other
(south) Pacific lit. More exotic.
There was a predictable attack on the UH English dept at this conference,
with several speakers calling for members of the department to learn
the Hawaiian language and history so that we can do justice to the
literature of the state. While the institution deserves the grief it
gets, not enough was said about the professional pressures put on
academics to ignore the local and to study "national" or international
literatures. The university, like the press, is a national, not a local
institution, for better AND for worse.
I'll close with a poem printed in the conference guide (which includes
essays and poems). It's by Joe Tsujimoto, who looks local, but whose
accent gives him up as a New Yorker--a katonk, or mainland Asian-
American. The title is "Lucky Come Hawaii" which is based on the
expression used by members of the 442nd in World War II, most of whom
were from Hawaii: "Lucky We Live Hawaii." The identity issues are rife
here:
As an American
with an Oriental face
whelped in Manhattan
on the edge of Harlem
in subways
to school in the Bronx
or fixing teletype machines on Broad St.
next to All
I've been asked "What country you from?"
"What language do you speak?"
and my eyes cloud over
like concrete. So I say
"What country YOU from?
What language YOU speak?"
since everyone speaks with an
accent.
Here, in the islands
I am invisible.
Till I speak.
Then, "Eh, brah,
you one katonk, yuh?
I thump my chest like Tarzan.
"yea, brah. Married one local girl
who wen grad from
Parrin'ton High School.
That kind."
Smiling, he looks at me
with dolphins in his eyes.
Across the flightline of the Maui airport
I walk from the plane
reading Lonesome Dove.
Eyes following mine.
They appear at the baggage carousel
to my left. Knowledgeable eyes
in a middle-aged,
mainland face, perhaps from Texas.
He smiles over our secret
nods in approval at my
perseverance.
The local boy learning to read.
High culture.
I sit in the lobby of the old
Kaiser Hospital
my newborn baby warm in my arms
next to two old ladies--very old
who coo "Oh, how adorable!"
"An angel from heaven!" "Look at those
cheeks!"
"They're like sunshine!" You must be
the happiest parent!"
when I stand to introduce my wife
newly come from signing documents. "And
here's the mothter," I say.
Hair flashing, they look at each other
aghast--
when one says
"But we thought you were the mother."
Enough for now. Hope this answers your questions. Susan Schultz
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 18 Mar 1994 17:12:59 EST
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.BITNET>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.BITNET>
From: Hans-Joachim Rieke <100114.2211@COMPUSERVE.COM>
Subject: German poetry
Susan and others,
for lack of time, but in order to make a start, here is a poem by a
contemporary German poet (born 1953) who is one of a few experimental writers.
Her name is Sabine Techel, she lives in Berlin
ES KUENDIGT SICH AN (there is no "Umlaut" in ASKI)
Bevor alles faellt kannst du
das Knirschen der Zaehne im Apfel und das
Reiben rutschenden Porzellans hoeren das
Schleifen der Wolken auf dem Hausdach
das Klappen der Fluegel vor dem Angriff
bevor einer zu gurgeln anhebt kannst du
traeumen wie er unters Waschbecken rutscht
um die Ecke einen schlimmen Blick durch den Zaun
es ist jetzt Zeit fuer kalte Haende
was nicht schlimm ist wenn man immer welche hat
und was schlimm ist will auch gelernt sein.
Die Kaelte wird noch heller
Im Laecheln steht wie einer weggeht
Wofuer es zu spaet ist lassen wir spaeter sein
Fuer Eile ist immer noch Zeit
Here is a semantic translation (I made this quickly, so its not authorized,
nor very elaborate, just to give you an idea):
IT ANNOUNCES ITSELF
Before everything falls you can
hear the grinding of teeth in the apple and the
rubbing of sliding porcelain the
cloud's slurring on the roof
the clapping of wings before the attack
when one is on the threshhold of gargling you can
dream how he slides under the sink
round the corner a bad look through the fence
it's time now for cold hands
which isn't bad if one always has some
and what is bad needs practice too.
The cold becomes even lighter
In the smile is written how one leaves
What is too late we leave (to be) later
There is always time for haste
More to follow
Hannah
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 18 Mar 1994 18:55:17 -0500
Reply-To: Robert Drake <au462@cleveland.Freenet.Edu>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.BITNET>
From: Robert Drake <au462@CLEVELAND.FREENET.EDU>
Subject: french poetry in translation: reviewer wanted
friends--
I'm looking for someone to review several recent publications of
French poetry-in-translation. I am, sadly, not qualified to
judge the quality of the translations... Phenomenal rewards in
fame and karma, minimal demands on time... email direct to me
and many thanks in advance
apologies in advance to the list-master, if this is in violation...
luigi-bob drake
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 19 Mar 1994 11:02:18 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.BITNET>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.BITNET>
From: Charles Bernstein <BERNSTEI@UBVMS.BITNET>
Organization: University at Buffalo
Subject: Today at Notre Dame
--Boundary (ID ULXsWHY1O+DzRJHTHvR/1A)
Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII
Date: Fri, 18 Mar 1994 16:03:45 -0500
From: Stephen.A.Fredman.1@nd.edu (Stephen Fredman)
"Intersections of the Lyrical and the Philosophical" is part of the Henkels
Visiting Scholars Series at the University of Notre Dame and sponsored by
the English Department and the Program of Liberal Studies. The speakers,
Ross Feld, Norman Finkelstein, Michael Heller, and Michael Palmer are
top-notch critics of twentieth-century American poetry, who are also poets
(and, in the case of Ross Feld, a novelist).
On the creative writing side, there will be a poetry reading by
Finkelstein, Heller, and Palmer Sunday night, March 20, at 7:30 p.m. in the
Library Auditorium, with a reception to follow in the Library Lounge.
Also, there will be a creative writing workshop, with all four writers in
attendance, in the Library Lounge on Tuesday, March 22, from 12-1 p.m.
The conference proper will consist of interrelated talks on modern American
poets, looking at how the poets have responded to the often countervaling
claims of lyricism and philosophy. All of the talks will occur in 136
DeBartolo: at 4:15 p.m., March 21, Michael Heller will speak on George
Oppen and Wallace Stevens; at 8:00 p.m., March 21, Norman Finkelstein will
speak on William Bronk and Robert Duncan; at 4:15 p.m., March 22, Ross Feld
will speak on George Oppen and Robert Duncan; and at 8:00 p.m., March 22,
Michael Palmer will deliver a response to the other papers.
These talks should be something quite special, since the speakers
have been working on them for the past year. The conference has generated
a lot of interest around the country, and we're expecting some visitors to
join us from neighboring states. The conference papers will be published
in a special issue of the journal SAGETRIEB, for which submissions are
solicited.
--Boundary (ID ULXsWHY1O+DzRJHTHvR/1A)--
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 21 Mar 1994 10:58:44 HST
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.BITNET>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.BITNET>
From: susan <SCHULTZ@UHCCVM.BITNET>
Subject: Re: German poetry
In-Reply-To: Message of Fri,
18 Mar 1994 17:12:59 EST from <100114.2211@COMPUSERVE.COM>
Hannah--The poem is intriguing. Just a couple of questions: 1) What is
experimental about "experimental German poetry" these days? 2) How
are poets responding to reunification and to right-wing violence, if
they are? Thanks for sending. Susan S.
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 21 Mar 1994 21:55:37 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.BITNET>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.BITNET>
From: Kristen Prevallet <GSAEDIT@UBVMS.BITNET>
Organization: University at Buffalo
Subject: spirit world=numerous world
Well I know it has been a week since Steve posted a message
asking Tom Mandel to elaborate on the "definition of the
'spirit world' that is also the 'numerous' one", but I have
been pondering the question and would now like to offer a reply.
I suppose I should give a context, since it happened so long ago:
Tom found the Kierkegaardian source for an Oppen poem, and concluded
by saying "A very complex metonymy of text to human/legendary figure,
to the social (war) questions of the moment of the poem and the 20th
century is the metonymic whole being pondered; how to live in a
spirit world (and *that* one is the "numerous" world) when one is
ineluctable alone and confronted w/it at all times."
I am not sure what to say about Oppen, but I do think that
the *numerous world* that includes all matters of both
history and spirit, each existing by their own right of
articulation and presence in the world, is a fitting way
to talk about Charles Olson.
Some of us in Buffalo are lucky to be reading Olson for a seminar that
Robert Creeley is teaching, and thinking about how Olson imagined
a SYSTEM that would contain, well, his BEING--a re-imagination, that is,
of the KNOWN world. As far as this question
of the spirit goes, I would propose that in Olson one cannot say
that 20th century social and political shifts are the only proofs
that the world is numerous. I mean, there are historical shifts
(like World War II, like the social changes of Gloucester); there
are personal shifts (like ruptures of death and longing); there
are spiritual shifts (like the moment that the formless, the
unnamable are given a SPACE to work their mysteries); and one
cannot say that one of the above (of course there are many more)
is more inherently significant than any other--
cannot say that there is only history,
only language, because being NUMEROUS the world contains multiples--
The world is NUMEROUS, that is, in how it, in all of its complexity
and all of its MYSTERY effects us as HUMAN and how we, in turn
effect the world. So the spirit does have a place in the numerous
world, if only because as yet, we do not know the bounds of our
imagination, nor have we yet named the strangeness of all it contains.
I know the Maximus poems are one of those books "we all have on our
shelf" so I won't quote too much except, this:
I looked up and saw
its form
through everything
-it is sewn
in all parts, under
and over
(II.173 The Maximus Poems)
Kristin Prevallet
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 26 Mar 1994 17:09:31 EST
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.BITNET>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.BITNET>
From: Hans-Joachim Rieke <100114.2211@COMPUSERVE.COM>
Subject: Re: German poetry
Susan,
sorry for the long delay. My child has been ill and I am working under high
pressure, so I havent had the power to hook into the net for a few days. I
cannot answer your questions offhand, but am planning to write a little more
extensively on German poetry for the list in a few weeks time, when some of
the projects I am working on are properly set on their way and the two courses
I will have to teach starting April 15th are organized an planned.
Generally there are a few esperimental poets in the line of Sabine Techel -
whose other poems in the collection arent quite as good. Literary studies in
Germany say that because of the War and the Holocaust German literature has
been preoccupied with moral and political problems. There are interesting
poets in teh past though which can and do serve as models for a more
experimental poetry that seems to be supported by one of the most important
publishing houses right now (Suhrkamp).(Sabine Techel, Thomas Kling et al.)
Besides Dada there is of course Celan, then Ingeborg Bachman and Unica Zuern -
Austrian I believe -(who wrote complicated anagramms, and was rediscovered in
the last few years).
The fall of the wall is another problem for some writers from the east. Their
topic - if it was dissident before - has changed so dramatically that a lot of
them are in a kind of crisis; plus: one of the most interesting ones - Sascha
Andersen - was discovered to have been a Stasi-informand. Worrying who was and
who wasnt has preoccupied much energy of German writers in recent years.
There is an interesting literary scene in Austria (one of them has translated
a few poems by Bernstein - and a very interesting scene in Scandinavia which
is translated into German and influencial. In Scandinavia the student movement
was also a radical cultural movement for experimental writing. Some names:
Inger Christensen (systempoetry), Paal Helge Haugen (dotnovel), Jan Erik Vold,
Eldrid Lunden (minimal poetry), etc.
More soon
Best Hannah