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Date: Sat, 15 Apr 1995 00:15:27 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Sheila Murphy <SEMAZ@AOL.COM>
Subject: The Impulse to Stock Things
Rae's post about bookstores, noted in reference to her new book (which I
really loved, by the way!) brings to mind a general complaint--perhaps a
seconding of what she says ('though not, I realize, intended as a motion!).
There seems, even among our fine independent bookstores in these parts (SW
US) a disinclination to go after new poetry books or books on poetics, even
those with Small Press Distribution. The whose issue seems to have a big
vacancy sign posted before it.
Certain standard, known commodities, are customarily planted onthe shelves,
typically the books being taught in some class at the University. No harm in
that except the exclusivity.
One store here has elected to go with a section of Arizona poets (of which
there are many), but the contact person informs me that it's "Tough to get
the books," (mine and everybody else's) even when they are supposedly
available through SPD.
I have no idea as to the accuracy of the alleged difficulty. And I'm not
picking on SPD. My message is that there seems no point of origin in any
potential transaction. Bookstores here and other places do nott routinely
seek to order what I would consider pretty vital offerings (Rae's book, say,
for one). There's a sort of lethargy. More and more, it's a matter of
merely ordering the sure things.
In my own case, I've found it somewhat disconcerting when asked by friends
who live not primarily in any literary realm, but people who have an interest
in, say, just strolling in to Border's or Changing Hands and picking up a
book of mine. They ask, logically enough, "Where can I get your books?"
Well, I have to do this shuffle. I may say "Border's SHOULD have
them...maybe Changing Hands does. I'm sure that either place will special
order if they're out." Let's just say that I'd like to be sure!
I've never had the intention of running a bookstore out of my office or
house. Naturally, I take books along to readings. But there's nothing very
easy or natural about the commerce of the everyday in this.
I use myself as an example. But putting me in the place of the customer, I
have to go through many hoops, as do most people on this list, I suspect,
just to get hold of something that interests me. It's as though it is a
treasure hunt to find some books. The treasure part is nice. The hunt is not
my preference!
I tend to order from someplace that distributes, or from presses directly.
But it would be great to walk into a place, and equally to the point, to
have people who don't already know some of this stuff, to walk into a place
and have access to what we're doing. Too much explanation, too much
shuffling, has to precede a simple question.
A frustration, not one that can't be solved, I'm sure. I've done SOME work
on it, but have had to place a higher priority on making a living and
creating works.
SM
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Date: Sat, 15 Apr 1995 02:30:08 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Chris Stroffolino <LS0796@ALBNYVMS.BITNET>
Subject: april
I just wanted to let everybody know that we are "zeroing in" on that
time of year Frank o'Hara immortalized as "it's april. no, may. it's may"
I may be kinda paraphrasing though (and page space and all that stuff
really really really matters)...anyway it needs no "compensation" or
phony compensation (like xmas)....Signed, Rae Armantrout
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Date: Sat, 15 Apr 1995 08:46:57 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Joe Amato <HUMAMATO@MINNA.ACC.IIT.EDU>
Subject: Re: poetic consistency
geezus, herb, i hope to hell i haven't been conflating form/content, esp.
since i don't find the couple all that useful...
look: by 'voice' i'm referring to a set of rhetorical conventions, accepted
tacitly (generally) by a specific community... i'm still interested in hearing
from folks regarding how/why a move away from identity politics isn't
in so many ways (or is it?) reflected in a move away from 'voice' as such...
now this consistency that is taken to be 'voice' can take different *forms*...
but i'm interested esp. in the construct, not the specific form (and by "form"
here i mean nothing like the form/content split to which you refer)...
i learned just yesterday, after posting this question to the list, that this
topic was precisely one of those raised at the gender studies conference in
portland oregon (earlier this week)... in terms of more avant garde practices,
one might have thought this had died with the new left... but not so---i yet
hear (on a regular basis) evaluation of work rendered precisely in terms of
this quality...
so again, i ask, what gives?...
all best,
joe
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Date: Sat, 15 Apr 1995 10:46:18 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Kenneth Goldsmith <kgolds@PANIX.COM>
Subject: Bookstores and Small Depressing NonDistrubition
Rae and others,
Rae, you are not alone in your unavailability in NYC. I have done the
covers for Bruce Andrews' last two "perfect bound" books--_Tizzy Boost_
(The Figures, 1993) and _Divesture-A_ (Drogue, 1994). Bruce and I
constantly lament the fact that these books are nowhere available
commercially in _our_ home town. Both are "distributed" by SPD. We often
think how nice it would be for one of our friends to walk in to a NYC
bookstore and just happen upon our work. Instead, they (as we all do)
receive them through the mail gratis--which is nice, if you're on the
right mailing list...
Someone brought up the idea of compensation for our work. Rae, if you
wanted better distribution, would it kill you (i.e. any of us on the
list) financially to send a text file of your *latest* and make it
available to all via EPC? I mean, let's face it, has anyone ever really
made money on publishing their latest book of poetry?
Peace,
Kenneth Goldsmith
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Date: Sat, 15 Apr 1995 11:38:16 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ted Pelton <Notlep@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: nyc bookstores
Thanks a lot, Loss, for your time & effort on this. This exceeds my most
hopeful expectations of what I'd get when I asked. Anything you want me to
do/find for you?
I'm in your debt. Ted
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Date: Sat, 15 Apr 1995 12:21:54 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: maria damon <damon001@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
Subject: Re: PC
In message <2f8eec84155a002@maroon.tc.umn.edu> UB Poetics discussion group
writes:
>
>
> Anybody else trying this one (the social construction of whiteness) on?
>
> -Stephen Cope
yes. i wrote something on Bob Kaufman's "Bagel Shop Jazz" that talks about the
golden triangle of outsiders the poem portrays --women, Jews and Blacks --part
of my paper treats, following David Roediger's arguments in The Wages of
Whiteness and The Abolition of Whiteness, that ethnic immigrant groups had to
become white when they arrived, in order to have access to privileges such as
civil rights, state protection, etc. So that, for instance, Jack Kerouac and
Allen Ginsberg are "white," but their parents or their parents' parents had had
to become white. (part of roediger's thesis --he'a a labor historian --is that
when immigrants arrived they were given whiteness to compensate for their
extreme poverty-level jobs). there's no such given as whiteness, though white
people often take their privilege for granted, not recognizing it as such. see
also ruth frankenberg's White Women, Race Matters (U of Minnesota Press, 1993).
best, maria damon
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Date: Sat, 15 Apr 1995 13:09:20 CDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: eric pape <ENPAPE@LSUVM.SNCC.LSU.EDU>
Subject: Re: PC
In-Reply-To: Message of Fri, 14 Apr 1995 13:30:58 -0400 from <Notlep@AOL.COM>
Thanks Ted. I was wondering when someone would make your very neccessary point.
That this is still a contested postion in the States is revealed by
Limbaugh, who said something to the effect that there is no record of genocide
in the U.S. and as proof suggested we look at census reports. Pretend this
is a Where's Waldo sort of exercise: how many logical fallacies can you find
in that?
Another thing, it is not liberal handwringing to notice.
Thanks, Eric.
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Date: Sat, 15 Apr 1995 17:29:30 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Michael Boughn <mboughn@EPAS.UTORONTO.CA>
Subject: Re: politics
Ron:
From here it didn't sound like Ed Foster was denying that all the shit
and glory of our daily lives--even the political shit and
glory--belongs in our poems.
I thought his point had more to do with the difference between, say,
_The Communist Manifesto_ and _A_. Not that I don't enjoy _The
Communist Manifesto_--I like happy endings as much as the next guy,
but I try not to confuse them with poetry.
Mike
mboughn@epas.utoronto.ca
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Date: Sat, 15 Apr 1995 14:43:46 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Andrew Joron <ajoron@EMF.NET>
Subject: reductionism
Poetry may contain or be conditioned by numerous factors like
politics, sexuality, nationality, etc. but what "saves" any
given poem *as a poem* is not reducible to any one factor,
or ensemble of factors. The argument becomes one against
reductionism.
Andrew Joron
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Date: Sat, 15 Apr 1995 22:53:02 +0000
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: cris cheek <cris@SLANG.DEMON.CO.UK>
Subject: The Impulse to Stock Things (longish)
Seems as if we in England share your distribution problem. Approximately 15
years ago the number of bookshops prepared to stock little or small press
books (particularly if not perfect bound) dramatically declined. The
financial imperative as described re SPD dominated the market dry.
The problems of product placement -- if and under what circumstances at
all -- sale or return -- deteriorating or damaged goods -- sliverish
profit margins -- shrinking risk -- author-subsidized publishing --
threshholds of marketability ossifying into unfortunate and ultimatetly
divisive 'star' status if not outright hierarchies of self-perpetuating
(sometimes at the least colluded in) hit names of given generations or
'movements' -- regressive cultural 'cold war' hegemonies freezing out the
awkward -- and more, have all been discussed or somehow raised over the
past few weeks.
The situation impinged so drastically onto poetry publishing here that the
number of active book series and small magazines collapsed. Books were
being produced, often although not exclusively, in tiny xerox editions
(50-100) circulated directly amongst friends and peers as social gifts.
One result has been to render much of the most interesting writing done
here in the past fifteen years all but invisible. The New Curious (not
necessarily but often young) find it close to impossible to get hold of any
of the work. Even libraries and archives must have a strange shelf reading
'vacant pending' for British poetries circa 1979-93 (these dates are by no
means brittle). That situation is only recently beginning to change. By the
same token how many US poets have been published much here in that time
frame and vice versa compared to in the previous decade and a half.
There is one shop (Compendium) in London with a very small selection of
contemporary poetry of any significance. Current US writers are represented
by a nominal 'hard-core' who sell.
A recent overview article on English poetry by Charles Bernstein in Sulfur
attests to the 'power' of the published book as being seen to signify
presence and activity for a poet. An interesting enough provocative
criteria. You might be reading and performing widely for example and yet
not considered - unless a published artefact identifiable as being
authored by you could be objectified. Now I find this very intriguing.
Especially in the light of Rae's recent post about the unavailibility of
her most recent book, especially when that book is a Sun & Moon / SPD
distributed product. (yes I've noticed the doubts cast onto those
validations too).
There is a need to break out of the reductive cycles and circumstances into
which we continue to buy. As several have suggested right here.
Ron is right when he says that direct mail works. It does so primarily for
those with the money to pursue their interest and/or for they who know what
they want and pretty much know what they're going to get. Sheila's also
right when she wants the possibility, at least, of someone who doesn't
already know what they're looking for to just pick up her book or Rae's or
anybody's on this list and others beyond in a bookstore - be excited or
intrigued enough to buy it and the rest, as is said, is herstory.
I don't have any answers but I do have a simple suggestion which this list
can further facilitate. Books are already advertised for direct purchase on
the list and the work quoted from here (yes I know it's rudimentary and
unsatisfying for a lot of work for many reasons but we should stick with it
and work on making the environment here as flexible and accessible as
possible (I'm just as e-literate as many others here I would guess and I'd
love to learn quickly or have someone else do the slog for me but - I had
to learn to write and here I go again). Books are already archived in the
EPC (as offered) and the relevant order information can be appended. It's
my sense that a constructive inter-relationship is to be encouraged between
electronic publishing and printed matter.
Given all of that how about product exchange? Now I realise right away that
this only makes any kind of sense when distances between presses and / or
distribution 'territores' are large. On suitable negotiated bases both
books and CDs, at least, could be simply SWAPPED to equivalent value.
Instead of me selling 300 copies of a chap I'd sell 200 and then swap 100
for chaps by others and sell those. (amounts could be small - like anything
from 3 - 25 copies). I know many will throw up their hands in horror (but
then how will they catch them when they drop) seriously -
Advantages:
- each our books are made available / accessible to a wider audience
- sometimes it's easier to push someone else's book than your own
- the range of books on a stall at a reading / performance series (or
whatever) can feel very much like a celebration of strength and depth
without competition (solidarity) and dare I say (sorry Lisa) more 'groovy'
- problem of buying sight unseen via direct mail is obviated, people can
see the poems
- we several all have a wider stock
- reactivates those attic box fulls.
and others I haven't time to articulate right now.
I'm naive enough to feel that a small version of such a scheme is worth trying.
I'm also experienced enough to know that this way pratfalls lurch BUT -
It's how the Recommended network of record labels operated for best part of
10 years in western europe. I know because I helped out. Such schemes are
bound to have a life length appropriate to their usefulness.
Or to translate Spencer:
To accept the world is to be changed and to thereby change the world.
This process is a generative discourse.
Exchange at all levels and for all purposes is part of this process.
any thoughts? yours - the space cadet for tonight
and before everyone reaches for their hot response key / I'm aware that
much of these issues skirt into some of the questions being raised re -
this space and it's potential and how each reads here and so on and I'm
going to try to post something on that tomorrow
cris
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Date: Sat, 15 Apr 1995 21:21:47 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Gary Sullivan <gpsj@PRIMENET.COM>
Subject: Dissemination (long)
Dear Cris:
Many, many thanks for your informative "history chunklette" of
English distribution/poetry dissemination. Want to point out something:
Sun & Moon's primary distributor isn't actually SPD, but Consortium, here
in St. Paul. It's an important distinction because the failure of
Consortium to get (say) Rae's new Sun & Moon book into NYC bookstores is
much more eyebrow-raising than would be SPD's. SPD doesn't have any "field
reps," though Steve Dickison maybe visits a few stores a year and pitches
a couple of tiles. SPD isn't technically a distributor: they're a
"warehouser," meaning, you go to them first, not the other way around.
Consortium, however, which carries only some 2 dozen presses (those the
size of Sun & Moon, Coffee House, & Serpent's Tail/High Risk), has at
least 15 "field reps" scattered throughout the country. Twice a year
Consortium holds a "sales meeting." Someone from Sun & Moon, Coffee House,
Serpent's Tail, etc. comes out with their list for the next "season," and
pitches their list to the reps, who in turn pitch the books to various
bookstores, often using the publisher's original pitch.
I sat in on one of the "Consortium prep" marketing meetings at Coffee
House and I'm here to tell you: Ain't no way to pitch a book of poetry to
Consortium unless (a) it's an anthology of some sort, especially if it has
a topical "theme"; (b) the book is by one of the "currently hot" ethnic
groups (books by Asian and African Americans are "currently hot"--meaning,
the two ethnic groups general readers are currently buying a good number
of books by-- don't mean to offend anyone; if the "currently hot" ethnic
groups were Irish and German American, I'd use the same terms); (c) "sex,
anyone?" (including anything involving some or several issue(s) of
"gender"); or (d) "Didn't you used to president, Mr. Carter?" (famous
people who decide to "give poetry a go"--double entendre definitely
intended.)
A Consortium rep has 30 seconds (I swear I was given precisely that
figure) to pitch a book, any book, to Mr. or Ms. Bookstore Stocker, and
while *no* book--in my opinion--can be pitched (or dismissed) in that
amount of time, that's what most books get today. (Fun, isn't this?) Oh!
Here's a Fun Anecdote for Rae: The book Coffee House was having trouble at
that time coming up with a pitch for was Elaine Equi's _Decoy_, for which
Rae wrote a quite- readable-in-30-seconds blurb. As nice as your blurb
was, Rae, it was apparently not "pitchable" by Coffee House/Consortium
standards. "Well," someone at the meeting said, "Elaine's going to be *at*
this meeting, so we can't give Consortium our usual 'It's poetry; do what
you can' speech." (Poets, go back over that sentence again.) "We'll have
to come up with something." They didn't come up with anything while I was
around, so I can't tell you what they wound up saying.
If Rae's book is not in stores in NYC, I assume it's because the
person pitching Rae's book for Consortium didn't have anything to say
about the book (in 30 seconds or less) to suggest it would sell very well
("Rae Armantrout used to be Quarterback for the Dallas Cowboys!")
Sure, *we* like Rae's work (I just finished _Extremities_,
Rae--wonderful!--I know it's "old," but wonderful all the same) but, if
you're like me--and I know *I* am-- you don't work for Consortium.
Bookselling in this country is too depressing to think about, except
that we *have* to think about it, because that's what some of us do. Not
only that, but it's not just about selling books, it's about disseminating
information, ideas, points-of-view, ways of experiencing (knowing) the
world (or "the word"). One reason my eyebrows don't "do-the-wiggly"
reading about censorship-advocates like [insert name of backwater GOP
running for congress next election year] is because the truth is: The
"market" has and will continue to be the Primary Censorship Agency in this
country. Not the *only* one, mind you. But, sort of the "Elvis-elect" of
censoring bodies, if you will. ("Elect" 'cause we "asked" for this-
-consent of the governed, & all that.)
Consortium exists by virtue of Bookslinger, the latter of which used
to be in Minneapolis, & was every bit as big, carried as many titles &
presses, as SPD. (I know, I used to frequent both.) Consortium, in fact,
is in good part responsible for Bookslinger's demise in 1993. Bookslinger
had a lot of problems, but some of its biggest problems were the people
who started Consortium AND DID SO IN THE OFFICES OF BOOKSLINGER. The
Consortium people used to WORK AT Bookslinger. Then, they thought: "Say,
what if we took a dozen of them best-selling ding-dang presses, and
started a NEW distributing company to FOCUS ON THEM?" They did that,
using Bookslinger's office space, computer, paper, supplies--AND PAID FOR
NONE OF IT. Then, when things "got rolling" they moved out into their own
office and started a new policy: ALL OTHER DISTRIBUTORS WANTING BOOKS ON
PRESSES WE CARRY HAVE TO GET THEM FROM *US* AND *NOT* THE PRESS ITSELF.
AND THEY HAVE TO *PAY* FOR IT, TOO.
In other words, gang, Consortium ultimately wound up TAKING AWAY
Bookslinger's biggest accounts, AND THEN MADE THEM PAY FOR IT! Ask SPD,
anyone, where they get their Sun & Moon books, their Coffee House Press
books--from Sun & Moon? From Coffee House? No, no, no. You're not thinking
"mafia." You're not thinking "extortion." You're thinking "consent of the
governed." Think, for a moment, "Hegemony." Now, care to wage a few bucks
on it? Well, you're "right on the money" if you said, "Gary, I'll wager
they get them darn books from the friendly PIRATES at CONSORTIUM, and they
PAY A LITTLE 'SERVICE CHARGE' FOR 'EM, IF YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN.") DING!
DING! DING! DING! DING! DING! DING! DING!
(Excuse that outburst. I read a lot of Lester Bangs as a teen.)
Bookslinger had a lot of problems. They never established nonprofit
status, had to rely on a "fiscal receiver" for what grants they did get, a
fiscal receiver in fact that didn't-- reportedly--"like" "them" "very"
"much." Consequently, they (sit down for this one people) *had* *to*
*rely* *on* *book* *sales* *to* *keep* *in* *business*. (My apologies for
those of you w/weak hearts.) They were also horribly, horribly
disorganized. (Walking into their offices, I always assumed I was back in
the Bay Area, & there had been a massive quake.) But, Consortium put the
final nail into Bookslinger's coffin. Or, that's one opium-eating, lake-
staring-at, frail & timid, longhaired, velvet-suit-wearing poet's opinion,
anyway.
So. Cris, your idea of exchanging a number of books w/a number of
other publishers is not *only* a good one, it's one Marta & I've been
practicing now for a while, first with Karl Roessler & his Trip Street
Press (two lovely books available; I'll plug them later in a separate
post) and, just recently, with Spencer Selby & his SINK Press (who, if
you'll remember, just did a book by Charles Borkhuis). It's, in fact--&
I'll certainly not apologize for saying this--"totally groovy." Yes, by
all means: Let's do it. Anyone, broadcasting from whatever country, can
contact me via e-mail about this, and I hope you'll contact all the other
publishers on this list (& the even more publishers not here) as well.
Yours,
Gary
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 15 Apr 1995 23:23:41 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: FUNKHOUSER CHRISTOPH <cf2785@CSC.ALBANY.EDU>
Subject: jazz/poetry
Coincidentally rec'd in the mail yesterday a tape from
a comrade in england, it's
david henderson singing, circa 1975, "Love In Outer Space"
accompanied by Sun Ra arkestra. What an incredibly smooth voice!
Really, one of the lovliest singing voices I've heard in
a long time, 'specially from a dude. I wonder what he'd have
to say about being left out of most a dem antologies...
The other side of the tape is Baraka & Arkestra, performing
Baraka's righteously afrocentric "A Black Mass", which is published
in one of the collections of his dramatic works. The recording
is from nineteen sixty eight and it is eentense. jacoub!
Bob Kaufman, "the best poet," wore khakis too
Stroffolino probably wore khakis.
speaking of whom, Chris, Sonny Ochs, Phil's brother, is an
elementary school teacher somewhere up here near Albany. She co-hosts
the "Mostly Folk" radio program on WRPI late sunday afternoon/
early evening. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but Larry Ochs
(who played on that splendid Camper Van Chadbourne lp, _the eddie
chattebox double trio love album_, i think) has roots in the
Ochs family at the New York Times.
why does it fascinate me that Lyn & Rae have more than one name?
Call me,
chris
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Date: Sat, 15 Apr 1995 21:57:16 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Lindz Williamson <lmichell@UNIXG.UBC.CA>
Subject: Re: Ted's PC
In-Reply-To: <199504141748.KAA02290@unixg.ubc.ca>
I thank you for your response and agree that things in canada and
the Us are ertremmly different. My father's side of the family is based
in Oregon, making in me painfully aware of the world of differencein
attitudes. As well being on the west coast there isnot a large black
population. Most of the friends that I have that are black are refugees
from Ethiopia and they do not contian the America Black attitude that is
defined as a "black thing" (meaning language, dress,, music). Mostlikely
this is why they have escaped the discrimination that Afro-American often
receive.
However, being on the west coast brings up a another issue
of discrimination from the Asian population. But being Asian typically
carries the stereotype of being less "agressive" and "twice as intelligent" as
say the Afro'Americans, therefore they would not face the same sort
discrimination.
And what I mean by not kissing ass any more refers to Canadian
history, not American. I'm talking about instances such as the Japanese
internment, Chinese head taxes, refusal to admit Jewish war refugees in
WWII while German war criminals hide out in Toronto and Vancouver, banning
of the potlatch, and so forth. All these things were in my history texts
and acknowledged as crimes against humantity, so there is no need for me
to feel guilty ( although it does pain to walk to Pigeon park on Welfare
wednesday and see Indians shooting up on junk, and I can't help but think
this in not natural, not the way things are supposed be), I can't apologize.
I will wear my heart on my sleeve and put forth extra effort to clean up
the mess that has been created for me and my generation, but saying sorry
does not help anyone.
Books for reference on "ethnic" life in Canada
In Search of April Raintree, Beatrice Culleton
Under the Ribs of Death, John Marlyn
Disappearing Moon Cafe, Sky Lee
Obasan, Joy Kagowa
The Tin Flute ( Bonheur d'occassion), Gabrielle Roy (just because the
french are considered more ethnic than the english)
Lindz
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Date: Sun, 16 Apr 1995 13:23:50 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ted Pelton <Notlep@AOL.COM>
Subject: books
Woodland Pattern is the "one good Wisconsin bookstore" I referred to in a
previous post. It is also great for avant fiction and has a "creative prose"
section with poetics/ essays/ theory etc. But I had no idea there weren't
better places elsewhere when I asked about NYC. I feel like Dorothy,
disabused of grandiose notions of Oz -- "there's no place like home."
Ted Pelton
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 16 Apr 1995 12:42:59 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Mn Center For Book Arts <mcba@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
Subject: Re: Bookstores and Small Depressing NonDistrubition
In-Reply-To: <2f8fdcc71a9a002@maroon.tc.umn.edu>
I have conflicting ideas on the issues of the availability of books in
bookstores in NYC and elsewhere. Chax books are also distributed by SPD,
and one, by Kathleen Fraser, was reviewed by NY Times Book Review,
Village Voice, & elsewhere, and was still, according to reports I got,
largely unavailable in NY. So, yes, it hurts. On the other hand, I hate
to defend the market economy, but I do recognize that it exists, and part
of me wonders why so many people even expect bookstores to be
intellectual service organizations, rather than businesses. The exception
Ron Silliman pointed to, Woodland Pattern, is organized as a nonprofit
organization and is, in some ways, explicitly an intellectual service
center, and they could not possibly exist without individual, foundation,
corporate, and government contributions. That goes some way to explain
why they are the most fantastic poetry bookstore on the continent.
Charles Alexander
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 16 Apr 1995 12:48:41 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Mn Center For Book Arts <mcba@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
Subject: Re: The Impulse to Stock Things (longish)
In-Reply-To: <2f9042e16f65002@maroon.tc.umn.edu>
I'd like to volunteer Chax Press for the swap book notion. Yes I'd devote
100 copies of any title, although I might have to work out a few things
with authors. But count us in. Great idea.
charles
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 16 Apr 1995 10:59:33 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: George Bowering <bowering@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: PC
In-Reply-To: <199504142143.OAA18157@whistler.sfu.ca> from "Stephen Galen Cope"
at Apr 14, 95 01:56:12 pm
Stephen Cope mentioned that while O'Hara is a "homosexual" poet,
Creeley is just a poet. I dunno. I know people who thibnk of Creeley
as an American poet. I myself always think of him as a one-eyed poet.
But seriously, I do remember that about 20 years ago Ginsberg
descriobed my and Victor Coleman as good heterosexual poets. As it
was the first time anyone had called me that I was a little tripped,
and then I liked it. But I havent, I think, been called that by a
hetero-breeder poet, that I know of.
Still, I have heard O'Hara called a NY poet 200 times for every time
I have heard him called a gay poet. And Jack? Well, Jack is Jack. I
hold his imaginary hand.
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 16 Apr 1995 21:40:16 +0000
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: cris cheek <cris@SLANG.DEMON.CO.UK>
Subject: Re: politics
X-cc: Michael Boughn <mboughn@epas.utoronto.ca>
The first translation of 'The Communist Manifesto' into English was by
Helen Macfarlane and published in George Julian Harney's 'The Red
Republican' on Saturday, November 9, 1850. [Price One Penny]
Translation buffs will be amused to know that she sandbaggeded its famous
opening line from the plain and direct 'A Spectre is haunting Europe' to 'A
frightful hobgoblin stalks throughout Europe'.
Resultant mutual suspicions between revolution and poetry have been a
struggle ever since.
game on
cris
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 16 Apr 1995 19:15:35 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: James Sherry <jsherry@PANIX.COM>
Subject: Small Depressing Non-Distribution
X-To: kgolds@panix.com
In-Reply-To: <199504130900.FAA09277@panix4.panix.com>
Yes, Kenny, there is no distribution. Volume constraints on distribution
have increased over the past 15 years tothe point where some distributors
will not handle a book that has a print run of less than 5000 copies.
This institutionalization is recognized by everyone, but no one seems to
be willing or able to do anything about it.
I sent a long letter to several people involved with distribution, attempting
to suggest alternatives to the current system and no one was able to reply
with any support although all recognized that the current system of bookstores
and distributors does not service the literature only volume sales. For
example, The Nation magazine attempted to get Consortium to distribute 3000
copies of an anthology of articles from the Nation on race dating back to 1865,
a guaranteed seller. The Nation didn't have the captial to fund more than a
short run and Consortium turned them down saying they had to have 5000
copies to distribute.
This is obviously an absurd example of bad business
on the part of Consortium, but even SPD has a mandate as a wholesaler and
not a true distributor. SPD does not have sales reps that go to stores
and as a result their scope is limited. They do a good job in California
and some other places, but not in NY or other places where one needs a
rep to continuously barrage to stores. But the bookstores in NY are a
joke as well. They have no interest in anything but what they can sell to
unsuspecting college students. Even some of the "better" stores complain
they can't get service from smaller distributors. In fact the entire
distribution network has become so computerized and dependent on volume
for success that I have decided to try to sell texts on the net. But let
me ask a broacast question?
HOW MANY READERS OF THIS LIST WOULD ORDER A BOOK THROUGH THE MAIL?
HOW MANY WOULD ACCEPT AN ASCII FILE FOR 1/4 the price of a book?
I wonder. I have mailed many mailers to the Segue mailing list. MOst of
the people on this list are on the Segue list, but only 20 or tops 50
respond to a direct mail piece of a book they can't get in the stores. I
think our buying habits are sadly what determine our taste and are
conditioned by habit and consensus. I offered a list of the Segue catalog
to all these people for free, but only four were interested enough to request
it. (Oh and folks you will be getting it soon.)
We can blame the bookstores or blame computerization or blame THEM, but
in fact how many people will go one step out of their normal patterns to
get a book? A study of book buying indicates that some huge portion of
all books, 60%, purchased by a small portion, 10%, of buyers.
Anyway if there ever is an NEA again or any funding or private capital
for books, I hope small publishers get some relief on the market side.
James
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 16 Apr 1995 19:26:40 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: James Sherry <jsherry@PANIX.COM>
Subject: What is Digest?
X-To: Lolpoet@acsu.buffalo.edu
In-Reply-To: <199504130900.FAA09277@panix4.panix.com>
Loss,
I like your evocation of the midnight flurry, poet brains discharging on
the WEB at midnight, foetal excitation when the mother rests. I have had
to opt for the "Digest" mode, which as you rightly point out is a
consolidation of data, to shorten my day at the tube. I wanted to share
the change for me with the list. I think I would have kept the message by
message format if I had the ability to control deletions more easily in
my mailing program. So as the technology improves for me I will come back
to that format. James
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 16 Apr 1995 19:35:11 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: James Sherry <jsherry@PANIX.COM>
Subject: What is Digest?
X-To: RSilliman@ix.netcom.com
In-Reply-To: <199504140535.BAA20211@panix4.panix.com>
Ron,
I am worried and that's why I wrote. I guess I want my mail, even in
response to server messages to come to me direct as well as on the
"Digest", since it might not [1834...com}e][direct8921at].
James
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 16 Apr 1995 19:47:57 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: James Sherry <jsherry@PANIX.COM>
Subject: What is Digest?
X-To: cf2785@csc.albany.edu
In-Reply-To: <199504140535.BAA20211@panix4.panix.com>
Chris,
To reply simply to your extended and interesting message, I wish to note
how much a change in FORMAT of the same material created for me a
significant change in MEANING. The particular thing I felt about it I see
now as less important, although it has impact for me as I said to Ron,
I'd like any responses regarding my mail to also come to me direct and
not just to the list which I might miss on a given day. James
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 16 Apr 1995 21:13:34 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Tom Mandel <tmandel@UMD5.UMD.EDU>
Subject: Re: Last Names
Rae, of course you are.
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 16 Apr 1995 21:22:29 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Tom Mandel <tmandel@UMD5.UMD.EDU>
Subject: Re: true friendship
Hank, I only caught your absolutely correct response of
last thursday, response to the Blake quote with its
attendant cruise. You were nearer your books than I
and "In opposition is true friendship" is exact (tho,
for that matter, so is "opposition is true friendship").
As you know, the cruise has already been awarded. But, I
do feel that you rather than Gary Sullivan now have
best claim on the 'Vette. But, I have already
awarded it to him; I'm in a bind. Perhaps Gary would
be willing to share this historic vehicle.
I realize that I could also cut it in two lengthwise,
providing one of you with the driver's experience and
the other with that of a passenger. This would
accomplish the further goal of enriching retrospectively
the meaning of the phrase "split-window coupe."
What color would you like?
tom
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 16 Apr 1995 13:44:34 CDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: eric pape <ENPAPE@LSUVM.SNCC.LSU.EDU>
Subject: Re: Dissemination (long)
In-Reply-To: Message of Sat, 15 Apr 1995 21:21:47 -0500 from
<gpsj@PRIMENET.COM>
I don't know how you do it Gary. Informative and amazingly entertaining
post.
We should perhaps add the problems of distributing not only books of
poetry but any marginalized cultural product. For instance, the late '80s
were an absolute renaissance for indy comics such as Love and Rockets,
Yummy Fur, and Jim, etc, but those of us that are interested are just now
beginning to get a sense of what all was available because most were
distributed to only two or three commix stores throughout the country.
We can get them now only because art spiegelman stirred up enough
interest with Maus that major commix pubs had to notice and in effect
bought out the indies. Now, they are available as back catalog items.
Unfortunately, under current economic conditions, this seems to
be the only way to win the game of notice, but unfortunately it at the
same time kills the quality. The freedom that obscurity bought for the
indy comics guy is now gone and what is done now is hardly of the same
quality. Its a game that can't be won, unless, and this is the point of
my post, we develop our own distribution networks.
The best of all possible worlds would be to combine Ron's and Rae's
concerns. Where those who know the stuff could direct mail and those who
don't can happen upon it. The only way I can see this happening is on the
net. Various catalogs could be made available and one could order stuff
while logged on (as you can do now on Prodigy, etc.) This network could be
placed on various gopher/www lists (like jewels) and in this way practically
anyone that has access to the net (admittedly a small group now but getting
larger) can have access to the books. This would then complement the
availability of e-books, which could in fact assist sales.
A bit of wishful thinking, prob, but is anyone interested? Thanks, Eric.
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 16 Apr 1995 21:10:17 CDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: eric pape <ENPAPE@LSUVM.SNCC.LSU.EDU>
Subject: Re: politics
In-Reply-To: Message of Sun, 16 Apr 1995 21:40:16 +0000 from
<cris@SLANG.DEMON.CO.UK>
What is politics? I remember one poet, after one of these many wrestling
matches about the issue, said in exasperation, "isn't what we are talking
about as politics your moral center?" Certainly we can argue over what
is moral, and why a center (snore), but I think she had something
important there. Something more than just what happens when more
then two people get together, although this idea aknowledges politics as
taking place between the reader and the writer, as it should.
The thing is that Republicans know art is political and that's why
they try to kill it. Only us and the Democratic party defend art
because they think it somehow above the political.
Ultimately, if art is what some of us are saying: non-political,
amusement, transcendence, etc, then it is hard to justify. If art is this,
it deserves to be killed. I don't happen to think it is.
Thanks ,Eric.
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 16 Apr 1995 19:26:47 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" <anielsen@SPARTA.SJSU.EDU>
Subject: Re: A Whiter Shade of Pale
In-Reply-To: <9504160359.AA11739@isc.sjsu.edu>
Curiously, at least to me, whiteness has, in America, been defined
negatively on most occasions; for example, when the Supreme Court has
found itself called upon to issue a definition of the white race, it has
generally chosen instead to explain why the person before them at the
time is non-white. Look at Eric Sundquist's discussion of Plessy v
Ferguson, in which the novelist & lawyer Albion Tourgee argued that
Plessy had been unlawfully deprived of property, that property being his
reputation for being a white person (the courst agreed that Homer was not
white).
I sometimes have students who gripe that there isn't a white history
month or other such celebration of whiteness (though I don't get much of
this since the majority of students on my campus are legally defined as
non-white) -- It's not that old complaint that interests me; it's their
response when I treat the complaint seriously and ask them what the
contents of this whiteness might be. Then it quickly becomes evident
that they want to have their whiteness and deny it at the same time.
That is, they insist, also, that they don't see things racially, that it
is all the non-whites who insist on continuing diviseness by forcing the
white students to view the world racially -- That they would point to any
number of cultural phenomena they believe the white race to have invented
(such as, the claim goes, the very idea of racial tolerance) but they at
the same time insist that none of these phenomena are constructed
"whitely" -- This _is_ indeed confusing, What it amounts to is that
these students are angry that everyone is raced & ethnic but, supposedly,
themselves; but they insist that they don't see themselves as white
people; I think that _is_ the remanant of white skin privilege in the
U.S. -- the right to decide when & where to become white.
Maria's work in this area, by the way, is well worth reading if you don't
already know it. Also, & I may mangle the title here, Allen's _The
Invention of the White Race Vol. 1_.
A mag. with a title I detest, _Race Traitor_, sometimes has interesting
pieces on this topic, though its overall tone of "I'm more
counterhegemonic than you" is hard to take.
I've taught Frank O'Hara in my Ethnicity in Lit. class, and have even
floated a poem by my friend Spencer (Selby) in front of my students just
to trouble the waters --
Don't we all have more than two names?????? Even Sappho?????
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 17 Apr 1995 00:19:56 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Chris Stroffolino <LS0796@ALBNYVMS.BITNET>
Subject: Re: politics
Re--moral center---Is that the center that can not hold? Of the
"shopping center" that skirts around the city...thus conferring a
sinister connotation onto Shelley's talk about "the center that
becomes the circumference" during an acid trip....
Someone once said that one can not be a Machievellian without a
moral center. This, of course, means that one can not have a moral
center without being a macheivellian....Nonetheless, there is an
"us" and a "them"----Yours, Chris Stroffolino
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 16 Apr 1995 23:09:31 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Gary Sullivan <gpsj@PRIMENET.COM>
Subject: Don't cut that 'Vette, hand me the Peruvian flake
In-Reply-To: <199504170123.SAA07400@mailhost.primenet.com>
Dear Tom:
Thanks for the offer, but I'll stick with Marta's '82 Plymouth Reliant,
bought (cheap!) from the University of Minnesota. (Who says American
Universities have nothing to offer?) The 'Vette would last 2 winters
before rusting &, besides, the Plymouth looks like an FBI vehicle. You do
the kinds of drugs necessary to "keep on top of" today's hip-now-with-it-
a-go-go music scene in a 'Vette, you're just asking for a tedious (&
need I mention recreational-drugless?) stay in Stillwater Prison.
But, seriously, give the 'Vette to Lazer. I'd just sell the the thing for
cigarettes, anyway...
Yours,
Gary
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 17 Apr 1995 00:28:34 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Chris Stroffolino <LS0796@ALBNYVMS.BITNET>
Subject: WHite History Month
Dear Aldon--It's funny I saw a St. Patrick's day here in Albany and
was kinda surprised how in 1995 there is still so much "ethnic pride"
amongst whites...Like when I lived in philadelphia and shared an office
space with a girl/woman (kinda transitional) who lived with her parents
in South Phila. (highly ethnic italian and catholic and MUMMERS--do you
know what MUMMERS are??????) and never left until she got married...and
even then stayed there...Understanding such ethnic isolationism and
the "tight communities" of whiteness came as a shock...especially during
the year I lived in one of those ("white trash") neighborhoods and found
' it more , er, disconcerting than living in North Phila. as only white
guy on block....I was called "nigger lover" and had a couple of close
calls with the locals...and this is much of what we're up against....
CS
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 17 Apr 1995 00:36:54 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Marisa A Januzzi <jma5@COLUMBIA.EDU>
Subject: bookstores
In-Reply-To: <199504140546.AA19117@mailhub.cc.columbia.edu>
Hello to Ted Pelton and everyone else.
That list of NYC bookstores was great but out of date by at least two
years (some closings, some name-changes, etc). Anyone coming to NYC
should feel free to e-mail me with particular interests (new? used?
antiquarian?) and I'd be happy to elaborate on possibilities. I feel as
if I've worked in them all.
Anyway, here I am in NY and I'd guess I get most of my new stuff from SPD and
Moe's in California via on-line lists and catalogues. They've got a web
site somewhere and are reachable through e-mail <moe@moesbooks.com> and
have a pretty strong poetry section. The Grolier in Cambridge is also ok
for poetry but not consistent in what they'll stock. The Gotham is also
great, if you can get over how rude half the staff is. I was once on
hold for an hour and forty-five minutes and the person finally came back
and didn't even laugh or seem surprised that I was holding...
There are some great stores here, but yeah, you have to get used to the
idea that for the most part books are "stock" to the people you're
dealing with, in the new book trade.
Bye for now--(I was serious! Feel free to e-mail for closer information)
Marisa Januzzi <jma5@columbia.edu>
wishing the Phoenix still existed, or the Washington Sq Bookshop
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 16 Apr 1995 22:37:09 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ron Silliman <rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM>
Subject: Re: jazz/poetry
In the late 1970s, I had a rare demo record of a session Lorenzo Thomas
did fronting a blues/rock band while in college (Queens? Brooklyn?).
The band was called The Bankers -- hard to imagine that image for
Lorenzo -- and he wrote the lyrics, sang the songs. I remember one
verse: "bedbug morning, silverfish afternoon."
The acoustics were dreadful but the music was out there. I got the
record from the bass player (Rich Jenkins, the younger brother of the
playwright Len whom Douglas has published on more than one occasion). I
gave my copy back to Lorenzo when I learned that he had lost the only
copy he had had.
My question: are there any other recordings of him w/ musicians out
there?
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 16 Apr 1995 22:47:08 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ron Silliman <rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM>
Subject: Re: Bookstores and Small Depressing NonDistrubition
"On the other hand, I hate to defend the market economy, but I do
recognize that it exists, and part of me wonders why so many people
even expect bookstores to be intellectual service organizations, rather
than businesses. The exception Ron Silliman pointed to, Woodland
Pattern, is organized as a nonprofit organization and is, in some ways,
explicitly an intellectual service center, and they could not possibly
exist without individual, foundation, corporate, and government
contributions. That goes some way to explain why they are the most
fantastic poetry bookstore on the continent."
>
> Charles Alexander
Woodland Pattern would not exist at all if Karl Gartung were not so
committed to it as a project to work as a truck driver (for Emery Air
Freight or some such) to make Anne's lack of income "okay," a very
basic and personal form of subsidy. Similarly, Modern Times, the best
political bookstore in SF, has for 15 years depended on Pam Rosenthal's
labor as a computer programmer at the Federal Reserve Bank. Like SPD,
these organizations are indeed service providers and miracles every
one!
-- Ron
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 17 Apr 1995 01:26:49 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Mn Center For Book Arts <mcba@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
Subject: Re: Bookstores and Small Depressing NonDistrubition
In-Reply-To: <2f9201240e6f002@maroon.tc.umn.edu>
On Sun, 16 Apr 1995, Ron Silliman wrote:
>
> Woodland Pattern would not exist at all if Karl Gartung were not so
> committed to it as a project to work as a truck driver (for Emery Air
> Freight or some such) to make Anne's lack of income "okay," a very
> basic and personal form of subsidy. Similarly, Modern Times, the best
> political bookstore in SF, has for 15 years depended on Pam Rosenthal's
> labor as a computer programmer at the Federal Reserve Bank. Like SPD,
> these organizations are indeed service providers and miracles every
> one!
>
> -- Ron
>
Just to fill in some of the story, no matter how removed and inaccurately
I am from it, I do believe Woodland Pattern began with a different name
and location, and that it was in part the brainchild of a group of
people, including Jerome Rothenberg who at the time was teaching at Univ.
of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, but also included quite prominently, Karl Young,
who has been tireless in his efforts to write, publish, review and
otherwise write about, and make available small press works. Karl Gartung
and Ann Kingsbury are to be praised for their vision and tireless work,
but there is a large degree to which Woodland Pattern began and still
exists as the vision of many, and one which unites a local community with
a much larger one via books and performances.
If you're in Milwaukee, Woodland Pattern is currently exhibiting an
exhibition, ART AND LANGUAGE: RE-READING THE BOUNDLESS BOOK, which was
originated in the spring of 1994 at Minnesota Center for Book Arts and
which has now been to Atlanta and Milwaukee. This exhibition must return
to artists after the current Milwaukee showing, but if anyone is
interested in book arts, art/language exhibitions, particularly as a
potential site host, please let me know, either via e-mail, or at
Minnesota Center for Book Arts, 24 North Third Street, Minneapolis, MN
55401. Phone 612-338-3634; fax 612-338-1562.
And thank you, Ron, for once again bringing Woodland Pattern to people's
attention.
charles alexander
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 16 Apr 1995 22:10:47 -1000
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Susan Schultz <sschultz@UHUNIX.UHCC.HAWAII.EDU>
Subject: books/movie
X-To: Automatic digest processor <LISTSERV@ubvm.cc.buffalo.edu>
In-Reply-To: <9504170401.AA23752@uhunix4.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu>
I have a question for the New Zealanders on the list: what was
the reception of _Once Were Warriors_ like there? The movie has amazing
resonances here in Hawaii, but also elsewhere (the identifications with
African-American culture I found especially interesting). Roger Ebert
got it comically wrong when he described it as a film about the evils of
alcoholism, when it's more about Maori oppression and internalized (and
externalized) rage.
As for books, I order through the mail all the time. We're on
the brink of having two Borders and a Barnes and Noble in Honolulu, but
the poetry selections are, shall we say, tame. I'd be delighted to be
able to order through the net, or at least to have a catalogue of
available books on-line.
I'm thinking of starting up a modest subscribers' only journal
(like _Situation_) that would concentrate on "experimental" writing,
especially that from the Pacific area, though not exclusively. I'd be
delighted to get suggestions, about poets and about the mechanics of
getting a small journal going, from anyone through the backchannel.
Thanks in advance,
Susan Schultz
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 17 Apr 1995 11:35:47 +0000
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: cris cheek <cris@SLANG.DEMON.CO.UK>
Subject: Re: Dissemination (long)
X-To: eric pape <ENPAPE@lsuvm.sncc.lsu.edu>
Hi. Seems as if there are several suggestions re distribution surfacing or
re-surfacing. Good. Using this space operationally figures in all of them
so far.
James, I don't get the advantage of downloading ASCII from a middle-man. In
many (although I grant not all) cases I could get that direct from the poet
or have work posted to me via this space (which is increasingly happening).
Whereas I do the advantage of buying a hypertext work on disc direct from
say John Cayley or Kathryn Cramer or Jim Rosenberg. So, buying a disc which
present work in some way authored and designed for this e-space - yes.
Otherwise no.
As to Direct Mail it makes sense to use this listserv AND to
cross-reference several others such as Eric's suggestion of Jewels
(although I don't know what that is - doesn't matter at the present,
there may be many). I'm certainly more keen on an announcement accompanied
by examples from the work as in Juliana's or Kali's recent promo posts than
in merely a listing of available titles or a title plus a smoothe blurb
from anyone (which as far as I can see only fosters the perception of a
clique towards closure if we're talking about the curious browsing). But
then that's exactly the kind of possibility this e-space offers. I'm also
curious to hear from may others about Direct Mail preferences and
experiences.
Some (thanks gary and charles) have responded positively to the Timezone
Exchange (i don't know how should we refer to it?) suggestion and the next
step would be a bit of simple nuts and bolts on its mechanism?
It seems from my own access that the EPC is in need of some updating. Many
author cites are blank. But the EPC provides one exceptionally integrated
resource potential. A lot is down to us poets and publishers to learn the
formatting languages to facilitate the fully-dimensioned presentation of
our work(s).
dry, cold and windy
cris
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 17 Apr 1995 08:09:50 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Michael Boughn <mboughn@EPAS.UTORONTO.CA>
Subject: Re: A Whiter Shade of Pale
In-Reply-To: <199504170231.WAA18935@jazz.epas.utoronto.ca> from "Aldon L.
Nielsen" at Apr 16, 95 07:26:47 pm
> Curiously, at least to me, whiteness has, in America, been defined
> negatively on most occasions; for example, when the Supreme Court has
> found itself called upon to issue a definition of the white race, it has
> generally chosen instead to explain why the person before them at the
> time is non-white.
Why do you find this curious, Aldon? I find it a confirmation of the
fact that race doesn't exist other than as a poltical creation (see,
for instance, Michael Omi and Howard Winant, _Racial Formation in the
US from 1960-1980_). (Whoa, politics!) "Blackness" has always been
defined as a "lack of pure whiteness", while "whiteness", for those
who care, only exists as the complete absence of "blackness". Thus,
a drop of "black blood" makes you "black". Only the absence of that
makes you "white". Not that there is any such absence, other than as a
fiction. I had a fight about this with some dufus on the Phil-Lit list
who insisted that during the entire 300 year Moorish occupation of
southern Europe, community standards prevented sexual relationships
between the occupiers and the occupied. Yeah, sure. We know what
happened here. As Sing Bird says in Toni Morrisn's _Song of Solomon_,
it's a wonder anybody knows who anybody is. Faulkner is the a master
teller of the story of the fiction of race. Check out _Light in
August_, _Absalom, Absalom_, and _Go Down Moses_.
Mike
mboughn@epas.utoronto.ca
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 17 Apr 1995 08:20:17 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Loss Glazier <lolpoet@ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU>
Subject: Re: Dissemination (long)
In-Reply-To: <199504171035.GAA06696@mailhub.acsu.buffalo.edu> from "cris
cheek" at Apr 17, 95 11:35:47 am
> It seems from my own access that the EPC is in need of some updating. Many
> author cites are blank. But the EPC provides one exceptionally integrated
> resource potential. A lot is down to us poets and publishers to learn the
> formatting languages to facilitate the fully-dimensioned presentation of
> our work(s).
Cris,
Are you using Web access or gopher? A commercial system? I don't think
there are any actual blank author locations. However, writing links
for the EPC tends to be highly labor intensive. The situation has been
that it all has to be done *twice* to support both gopher (Aol, etc.)
and web access. I mean we are talking _many_ hours of work. Given the
greater power and flexibility of the Web (and its near certain
movement towards being an Internet standard), I have tended to keep
those links active.
This creates a problem. Let those who can't access the web use gopher
and see an out-of-date version of the EPC (what, maybe 60% of it is
there via gopher) or eliminate that version (unfortunately then not
allowing some to contact?)
Anyway, I may have misinterpreted this part of your post. But that's
the only way I can figure you are finding empty author menus, since
the author area shouldn't have this.
All best,
Loss
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 17 Apr 1995 08:22:55 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: maria damon <damon001@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
Subject: Re: A Whiter Shade of Pale
great post, aldon. who's "allen"?--maria
In message <2f91d30905a8002@maroon.tc.umn.edu> UB Poetics discussion group
writes:
.. Allen's _The
> Invention of the White Race Vol. 1_.
>
> A mag. with a title I detest, _Race Traitor_, sometimes has interesting
> pieces on this topic, though its overall tone of "I'm more
> counterhegemonic than you" is hard to take.
>
> I've taught Frank O'Hara in my Ethnicity in Lit. class, and have even
> floated a poem by my friend Spencer (Selby) in front of my students just
> to trouble the waters --
>
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 17 Apr 1995 10:07:31 -0400
Reply-To: Robert Drake <au462@cleveland.Freenet.Edu>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Robert Drake <au462@CLEVELAND.FREENET.EDU>
Subject: Re: Dissemination (long)
> The best of all possible worlds would be to combine Ron's and Rae's
>concerns. Where those who know the stuff could direct mail and those who
>don't can happen upon it. The only way I can see this happening is on the
>net. Various catalogs could be made available and one could order stuff
>while logged on (as you can do now on Prodigy, etc.) This network could be
>placed on various gopher/www lists (like jewels) and in this way practically
>anyone that has access to the net (admittedly a small group now but getting
>larger) can have access to the books. This would then complement the
>availability of e-books, which could in fact assist sales.
> A bit of wishful thinking, prob, but is anyone interested? Thanks, Eric.
having no modesty, i want to point to TapRoot at the EPC, which has a
WWW version underconstruction (150 short reviews indexed so far, about
10% of the backlog), and which might be a start. the ordering information/
addresses point direct to the publisher--i always like to order direct,
puts more $$ back into the press. and the intention is to add links from
the reviews to sample of work from the publications, tho copyright permission
details etc. have yet to be worked out. and as ever, i'm actively soliciting
contributions of reviews...
luigi
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 17 Apr 1995 10:20:14 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Edward Foster <EFOSTER@VAXC.STEVENS-TECH.EDU>
Subject: Re: digest
many texts but few poems
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 17 Apr 1995 09:42:48 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Robert A Harrison <Robert.A.Harrison@JCI.COM>
Subject: Woodland Pattern
In response to the recent posts concerning Woodland Pattern:
Before it was incorporated in 1979, it was known as "Books Books," which
began in the early seventies sometime ('72, '73?). Much better for small
press books than anything I've seen in NYC or Chicago. It was started in the
early 70s by Karl Gartung, Anne Kingsbury, Karl Young, Tom Montag, and Mark
Haupert (Jerome Rothenberg was not directly involved, though he may have been
teaching at UWM while "Books Books" began). They do 40 or so public events
per year including readings, art openings, workshops, and music events.
Their ethnic literature sections are some of the more extensive I've seen
(very large Native American section), and their poetry selection has been
growing at a more than healthy pace since its beginning, so they have stuff
that even SPD doesn't have anymore. They have catalogs available for their
ethnic literature collections (not for their poetry selection, it would be
too big). AND, they have large collections of fine print books and
chapbooks.
They're tremendously dedicated to the Milwaukee community as well as keeping
up a world class literary center.
Their address:
Woodland Pattern
720 E. Locust
Milwaukee, WI 53212
(414) 263-5001
FAX (414) 372-7636
Internet: woodland@tmn.com
bob harrison
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 17 Apr 1995 10:27:22 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Edward Foster <EFOSTER@VAXC.STEVENS-TECH.EDU>
Subject: Re: Standing
oh, ron, stop preaching from the barricades. take spicer, for instances, of course homophobia has a lot to do with what you find in spicer, but i spent yesterday who was saying similar things. a great person, good talk, but not spicer, not poetry.
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 17 Apr 1995 10:33:07 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Edward Foster <EFOSTER@VAXC.STEVENS-TECH.EDU>
Subject: Re: Standing
oh, ron, the smokin' business: can't help you there, BUT there's a pretty good beer, to my taste, called red dog, which i recommend, though actually i like my home brew better. in any case, i do recommend beer, tho it reveal my relative class stance.
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 17 Apr 1995 10:40:21 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Edward Foster <EFOSTER@VAXC.STEVENS-TECH.EDU>
Subject: Re: Knowledge & empowerment / electronic
loss, i do agree with you. try, for instance, finding all the little mags with chapters from the h.d.book. the problem's dual: (a) only reason i can do/afford e-mail is that this place gives us computers, etc, (b) attitude that words here don't last.
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 17 Apr 1995 12:10:56 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Edward Foster <EFOSTER@VAXC.STEVENS-TECH.EDU>
Subject: Re: politics
no, eric, it's not the art that is political; it's the way it's used and what it's presumed to say by the big boys in elephant skins. i suggest a safari.
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 17 Apr 1995 11:43:27 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: braman sandra <s-braman@UX1.CSO.UIUC.EDU>
Subject: net dissemination
Speaking of dissemination -- a couple of guys are about to start up a
book distribution service for fiction. You pay a nominal fee to put in
your manuscript. Readers can read a few pages before making a decision
to order it, at which paying for the book with a computerized transaction
delivers the entire manuscript. Authors get a royalty of a few dollars
apiece. Sounds great, frankly. Why only fiction?
Needs a server, some software, someone to put in a little time running it.
Sandra Braman
PS -- If anyone's interested in putting a manuscript up for the fiction
server, please let me know backchannel (s-braman@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu), and
I'll pass your names along.
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 17 Apr 1995 12:37:47 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Edward Foster <EFOSTER@VAXC.STEVENS-TECH.EDU>
Subject: Re: poeticslist serve and desire / the 39 steps
with angels and whatever comes to hand we seek and find the answer in the sand; dry, cool and buried deep below the sun, our ecstacy as blood within the darker roots will run. so rivers merge, are one.
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 17 Apr 1995 12:00:33 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Edward Foster <EFOSTER@VAXC.STEVENS-TECH.EDU>
Subject: Re: politics
yes, mike, that's it: a is not marx. all language, it may be, is political (tho somewhat less so, i think, than some say), but it isn't that that makes the poem. spicer's joy in billy is a good deal more and other than relative class stance.
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 17 Apr 1995 12:46:00 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: maria damon <damon001@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
Subject: Re: politics
In message <2f92963800f9002@maroon.tc.umn.edu> UB Poetics discussion group
writes:
> no, eric, it's not the art that is political; it's the way it's used and what
> it
> 's presumed to say by the big boys in elephant skins. i suggest a safari.
i don't get it --what is the significance of elephant skins?--maria damon
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 17 Apr 1995 14:43:02 CDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: eric pape <ENPAPE@LSUVM.SNCC.LSU.EDU>
Subject: Re: politics
In-Reply-To: Message of Mon, 17 Apr 1995 00:19:56 -0400 from
<LS0796%ALBNYVMS.BITNET@LSUVM.SNCC.LSU.EDU>
Yes, Chris. Ultimately I agree that the term moral center is a problem.
What I meant is something more like baseline ethics, or something similar.
Marx's analysis of capitalism is only a criticism if we find
exploitation inethical.
Thanks, Eric.
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 22 Mar 1995 12:30:00 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: RSILLIMA <rsillima@VANSTAR.COM>
Organization: Vanstar Corporation
Subject: Hallmark
The late Darrell Gray, right after he got out of Iowa City, worked for
Hallmark in Kansas City for awhile before heading out to California. It
wouldn't surprise me to discover that other MFAers have done likewise. I
was in KC about 2 years ago, at the hotel that's attached to the
mall/office suite Hallmark runs (and rode past the very corporate block
architecture of its actual HQ building), and noted how the signage
referred to "the leading producer of greeting cards and social expression
products." That latter phrase stuck in my mind.
Beyond a verse genre that one could characterize in its sincere mode as
"lumpen new formalism" what I think causes the allergic reaction to
greeting cards is
(1) how greeting card verse instrumentalizes emotion into a lowest
(commodity) denominator. Whatever poetry does (and people do disagree on
that one, don't they?), almost every variation I've heard of tends to
discount instrumentalization (with the possible, and only just, exception
of certain identarian forms ("the people united...")).
(2) a reaction to how all poets must deal with the stereotypes of poetry
that non-readers (relatives, say, your great aunt or drunken uncle) throw
over one the minute they learn that you -- in whom everybody had once had
such hopes -- have decided, gasp, to devote a life to poems??!! You feel
misunderstood, ridiculed, violated in some fashion to hear your folks
make that sort of comparison and tend to blame the genre. No?
Ron
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 17 Apr 1995 17:55:29 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Edward Foster <EFOSTER@VAXC.STEVENS-TECH.EDU>
Subject: Re: politics
elephant skins: things republicans wear.
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 18 Apr 1995 00:27:02 +0000
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: cris cheek <cris@SLANG.DEMON.CO.UK>
Subject: Re: poeticslist serve and desire / the 39 steps
X-cc: Edward Foster <EFOSTER@vaxc.stevens-tech.edu>
Angelo - "spoon me down some of that 'honey'. I'm all merged out."
Blood and Moon pressing the heating beck into this ox - when a woodcutter's
riverrun steps by parading his latest smoothe treen
"Fresh and Green!!" "Dream on - Arkangelo".
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 17 Apr 1995 18:36:59 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: maria damon <damon001@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
Subject: Re: politics
In message <2f92ee981ea6002@maroon.tc.umn.edu> UB Poetics discussion group
writes:
> elephant skins: things republicans wear.
ah, i see- i thought we were entering some slippery territory of "criticism in
the jungle." --maria d
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 17 Apr 1995 18:10:06 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Lindz Williamson <lmichell@UNIXG.UBC.CA>
Subject: I feel pink
I have to agree with what Chris was saying about white ethnic
communties such as the Irish and the Italian having tight knit
celebrations of being " white". In Canada it is even more aparrent that
being part of the white majority also means you are english. Being on the
west coast my contact with Quebecois culture had been minimal until I
started working at a French bakery to support myself through my BA. A whole
new white culture opened up to me. Yet it did not change my BC attitude
towards the Parti Quebecois. I'm still fond of bumper stickers that exclaim
"Quebec seperates make them take Ontario!"
Someone else was talking about how attitudes of color are
constructions of society and I think that is an excellent point. My
"whiteness" is the result of my upbringing and experience and my
perception of other races depends on how they are presented within my
realm.
Ted's rather aburpt response to my previous post made judgements
on my life without any concept of how I live. Although I value his incite
and his bold statments, I think his reactionary approach to my refusal to
apologized missed my intended meaning. It all comes down to the futility
of formal apologies, it's not a matter of feeling threatened.
Let's say you are left handed,and we the righteous majority of right
handers decide that all left handers are mutants and should have their
left hands cut off so you will no longer offend us. We the majority then
force you to conform to our right handed ways. Then forty years later we
see that we were wrong, science has proven that lefties aren't gimps.
Obviously we can't give back all those left hands, but we can do huge tv
campaigns and say "oops sorry, leftis are cool", "Hire a lefty", " lefties
do it better". NOw does that make you feel any better, or wouldn't you,
the one handed, previously lefthanded person prefer that we, the right
hands actually did something useful with all that publicity money and
found a way to replace that hand or atleast compensate you for the emense
inconvience and humiliation you've suffered for the last forty years.
Lindz
Ps, There is a great scene in Cry Freedom, where Stephen Biko is on the
stand and the prosecutor says " Why do you call yourselves Black, you
look more brown to me."
And Biko replies," Why do you call yourselves white, you look
more pink to me."
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 17 Apr 1995 20:44:15 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ron Silliman <rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM>
Subject: Re: Hallmark
The close readers out there will note that the message with this title
that you just read was "logged" by my network at work on March 22 -- it
took 26 days to get out over the internet! Don't let anyone kid you
about the "instantaneous" nature of this electronic stuff. If some
systems engineer forgets to reboot the gateway server, you're toast!
Ron
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 17 Apr 1995 20:48:10 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ron Silliman <rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM>
Subject: Re: politics
I always knew those Foster's cans were too big.
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 17 Apr 1995 22:51:45 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Gary Sullivan <gpsj@PRIMENET.COM>
Subject: Re: Book exchanges
In-Reply-To: <199504171038.DAA02406@mailhost.primenet.com>
Dear Cris:
A few thoughts on your book exchange idea...
* It doesn't matter to me whether or not books exchanged are of equal
(retail or production) value. I would happily exchange 5-10 copies of a
perfectbound for an equal number of either chapbooks or "mimeos." This is
because:
* I probably wouldn't try to sell the books I'd exchanged for. It
wouldn't matter to me if -- let's take you as an example -- if you
exchanged 5 copies of your most recent for mine, and then tried to sell
mine. However you got them out would be fine w/me. What I would do with
yours would be to give them to friends who I think would appreciate them,
and/or include them as "bonus freebies" w/things of our own that we sent
out. (I could take them to readings, too, though we don't have a lot of
readings here in the Twin Cities.)
* As far as "nuts & bolts," that seems to be something each publisher
would have to work out with other publishers on a publisher-by-publisher
basis. Unless ...
* You mean maybe a "place" online that would be a list of publishers
(including their e- and/or snail-addresses) who have expressed interest
in participating in this exchange. (I like this idea, actually.)
How does the above strike you? Anyone?
Yours,
Gary
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 17 Apr 1995 20:56:59 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ron Silliman <rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM>
Subject: Re: politics
1st SF Home Rainout Since. Bounce Tabby-Cat Giants.
Newspapers
Left in my house.
My house is Aquarius. I don't believe
The water-bearer
Has equal weight on his shoulders.
The lines never do.
We give equal
Space to everything in our lives. Eich-
Mann proved that false in killing like you raise wildflowers.
Witlessly
I
Can-
not
accord
sympathy
to
those
who
do
not
recognize
The human crisis.
From "Thing Language," 1964
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 17 Apr 1995 23:11:21 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Gary Sullivan <gpsj@PRIMENET.COM>
Subject: Re: politics
In-Reply-To: <199504180358.UAA25484@mailhost.primenet.com>
PEOPLE IN THEIR ABSENCE
for Ed & Ron
Starvation is a chemical. Poor men praise
whatever worse outweighs
hope's burn. They write in rags of light
over unevents. Each time a little colder
in the head, eating, like
say, some more words. & in my world
that's what people are supposed to do.
So, who are you to tell me
I'm entitled to my opinion? Such food
as outstretched hands an offering make
& make of itself a circle
w/out end. My favorite evenings are factory ones
but I could do the other.
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 18 Apr 1995 01:41:23 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Chris Stroffolino <LS0796@ALBNYVMS.BITNET>
Subject: Re: I feel pink
Or PINKO---Lind(Z)'s comments on LEFT-HANDEDNESS do strike home
as allegorical. "I've been Ayn Randed nearly branded a communist
coz I'm left handed that's the hand to use well never mine" Simon
(in response to McNamara's belated apology to KALI TAL's viet gen)
And one's LEFTIST tendency (as a southpaw) were put severely into
question during the 1992 Presidential debates--for CLINTON, BUSH
and PEROT were all revealed to be lefties---oops, there goes the
neighborhood--and not only that my two favorite Beatles were the
right handed ones, and Ringo and Paul were the lefties....CS
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 18 Apr 1995 01:46:45 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Chris Stroffolino <LS0796@ALBNYVMS.BITNET>
Subject: Re: Hallmark
Well Ron don't worry I think your HALLMARK message is surely "News
That Stays News" (stays as in "stay of execution"?--ah, the perils of
"close reading") and makes me wanna propose an open question to this
forum---Frank O'Hara writes somewhere "that those of us who thought
poetry was crap were throttled by Auden or Rimbaud"---well, what I'm
curious about is WHAT THROTTLED you "folks"??? What made you, uh,
"get religion" as it were....or did any of you actually enjoy the
FORCE FED FROST that signified "poetry" when you were younger so much
younger than today? CS
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 17 Apr 1995 19:47:57 -1000
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Susan Schultz <sschultz@UHUNIX.UHCC.HAWAII.EDU>
Subject: whiteness
In-Reply-To: <9504180401.AA05192@uhunix4.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu>
Chris--you should see Honolulu's New Caledonian society! Skirts,
bagpipes, Robbie Burns readings. It's a kind of ethnic envy, I think.
In a place where whiteness is next to ungodliness it's also an
interesting self-assertion.
When I taught at a small college in Williamsburg, Virginia and
included three works by African-American writers in an American lit
class, students responded by suggesting I should have included more
Italian-American literature (for example); or by saying they'd been made
to feel guilty enough already. But what was most disturbing was the way
in which they (not all, of course) considered it a course in American
literature, with some African-American stuff thrown in on the side. I
was finally reduced to telling them that Toni Morrison's a better writer
than F. Scott Fitzgerald, which was to give in to a series of assumptions
that were better left alone. A fine book on the canon is John Guillory's
_Cultural Capital: The Problem of Literary Canon Formation_ (Johns
Hopkins), which leaves no one's canonical myth unturned. Among his
points: there is no such thing as a canon; there are only syllabi.
There's also Michael Berube's book on the public debate over the canon,
where he rips William Bennett, et al, to shreds.
Susan Schultz
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 18 Apr 1995 03:43:01 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Mn Center For Book Arts <mcba@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
Subject: Re: Book exchanges
In-Reply-To: <2f9337d21ed7002@maroon.tc.umn.edu>
I'm with Gary on the exchange idea, including agreeing to exchange
perfectbound or smyth sewn books for chapbooks of various kinds. The only
worry is that, if I am only publishing two or three books per year (and
only getting back to that in 1995 after transition years after mid-1993
move) I may not be doing the quantity of work which many chapbook
publishers are doing. But these issues of quantity and value seem not the
point so much as getting the work around. In an edition of under 1000 I
would probably limit the quantity of books available for exchange, rather
than sale or author's copies or review copies, to 100 or less. I
particularly like the idea of exchanges with authors as well as
publishers, and I would not limit it to new books, either, although I
would like to exchange for books I don't already have and haven't already
read.
charles alexander
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 18 Apr 1995 03:52:42 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Mn Center For Book Arts <mcba@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
Subject: Re: whiteness
In-Reply-To: <2f9352ec64a1002@maroon.tc.umn.edu>
Susan, it is problematic to agree that Toni Morrison is a better writer
than F. Scott Fitzgerald, in several ways. Beyond the whiteness issue,
you have to define what "a better writer" means.
I was watching a late night locally produced arts television program last
year here in Minneapolis which featured Patrice Koelsch, in conversation
with artists and arts activists. Somehow the subject of Satchell Page's
autobiography, as literature, came up, and Patrice got rather angry that
such work was considered as literature, felt it was somehow an insult to
REAL writers like Toni Morrison and Alice Walker. I thought her position
was rather ludicrous, but realized I have might have been more in
agreement if the writers she cited were Amiri Baraka, Clarence Major, Bob
Kaufmann, Zora Neale Hurston, Gwendolyn Brooks, Nathaniel Mackey, Wanda
Coleman,or Langston Hughes. But then we're all back in the finding the
"better writer" game.
all best,
charles alexander
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 18 Apr 1995 13:44:34 +0000
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: cris cheek <cris@SLANG.DEMON.CO.UK>
Subject: Re: Book exchanges
I'm with Gary and charles. Committed to making something happen.
e-mail page yes - where? EPC facility?
Out of town for a couple of days so will come back more fully on this then.
But YES
cris
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 18 Apr 1995 08:52:04 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" <anielsen@SPARTA.SJSU.EDU>
Subject: Re: White Mystery Month
In-Reply-To: <9504180359.AA15847@isc.sjsu.edu>
Several replies in random order:
The full citation is -- Allen, Theodore W. _The Invention of the White
Race: Racial Oppression and Social Control Vol.1_ (Vol. 2 nowhere in sight
yet). New York: Verso, 1994.
Yeah, I know all about Omi and Whynot -- good stuff there -- but a point
is getting missed (_and_ the "one drop" rule is a peculiar institution of
the U.S. -- things look quite different in the other colonies) -- Of
course race is a social construction -- what I find curious is the
shifting attitudes among self-declared white people about their whiteness
-- (this also parallels their shifting beliefs about just what
characterizes blackness, none of which has much to do with skin color at
all).
That is, to link back to Chris's observations, most celebrations of white
ethnic traditions such as St. Patrick's parades and so forth are quite
apart from any celebration of whiteness (except when the neoAryan types
reppropriate them, as has happened with some Celtic and Scottish
celebrations in the NorthWest in recent years) -- and, interestingly
enough, many of these are among communities, like the Irish and the
Italians, who earlier in the century were not considered white people in
most of the U.S. -- It is sometimes an easy matter to shift such a
celebration immediately and forcefully into a "white" thing -- this often
happened in the bad old days when a black person wandered into the
proceedings --
My curiosity has been about the lack of content of the concept of
whiteness for most young people who think of themselves as white, coupled
with their, to me, odd attitudes about that very identification -- that
is, to repeat myself from last time, the students with whom I have this
conversation insist that they do not see the world racially at all, and
yet when they describe what they take to be the "norms" of US existence,
it is very clearly a description in which all non-whites are viewed as
deviating from what is posited as a norm --
I'll try to say this more coherently another time -- bottom line, most of
my white students would insist vehemently that they have _never_
benefitted in any way from being white -- indeed, they tend to believe
that "reverse discrimination" is _the_ social problem of our era (though
the overwhlemingly white senior faculty at even this school would seem to
indicate this isn't much of a factor in real academic employment) -- They
often react as if even to discuss the history of slavery is to accuse
them, as individuals, of something, and that to discuss history is to be
anti-white -- since most of them have little or no knowledge of that
history, I doubt that this is the result of their having been brow-beaten
with it in K-12 school.
On the other hand, there are some really exciting young students showing
up who actually read books and care about the textual past -- some of
them are rereading the works of the 19th century abolitionists (_and_ the
proslavery books) and producing analyses that are breathtaking in their
originality and usefulness --
Anybody out there read Thomas Wentworth Higginson's memoirs lately? He
was entirely wrong about both Dickinson and Whitman (quite a record
there!) but his autobiographical works are tremendous; almost on a par
with Melville.
Was Edward Taylor a white poet? Longfellow? W.S. Barithwaite?
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 18 Apr 1995 11:03:23 CDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: eric pape <ENPAPE@LSUVM.SNCC.LSU.EDU>
Subject: Re: I feel pink
In-Reply-To: Message of Mon, 17 Apr 1995 18:10:06 -0700 from
<lmichell@UNIXG.UBC.CA>
Lindz: I think you are right up to a point, but you don't go far enough.
All the interesting analyses of "whiteness" so far, except for Aldon's
fail to follow the chain of signfication adequately. Yes, whiteness signifies
lack but lack of what: ethnicity. Ethnicity, I would argue, is the second term
of the opposition European/ethnic, of simply white/ethnic. Ethnic, whether
Jew, Italian, Ethopian, etc, signifies difference from a normative whiteness,
thus it is possible even to place white trash as the supplement if the
normative whiteness is, for instance, white yuppie. White also (take a
look at Goethe's optics) signifies purity, cleanliness, while ethnic
signifies impurity, curruption, which is why this construction is so
hard to displace because the supplement, with all of its political implications
is a constuction of language and culture.
Lindz, you also seem to view genocide ahistorically, that is, to see
the genocide of Native Americans totally distinct from the genocide of Jews
that culminated in Auschwitz. Genocide is a historical process, perhaps the
apotheosis of our historical situation.
Which is why we cannot forget, or simply say, well, whoopdedoo, that all
happened a long time ago and has no relation to me at all. The fact is that
language and history has not changed, and the conditions are ripe for another
genocide and another and another, and if we keep saying that none of us are
implicated because we had nothing to do with it, it will never stop.
Lindz, you are absolutely correct when you say apologizing isn't enough,
but forgetting just allows it to keep happening. Thanks, Eric.
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 18 Apr 1995 19:18:16 CDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: eric pape <ENPAPE@LSUVM.SNCC.LSU.EDU>
Subject: Re: politics
In-Reply-To: Message of Mon, 17 Apr 1995 12:10:56 -0500 from
<EFOSTER@VAXC.STEVENS-TECH.EDU>
elephant guns anyone (but who distributes the ivory?)?
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 18 Apr 1995 19:02:57 CDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: eric pape <ENPAPE@LSUVM.SNCC.LSU.EDU>
Subject: Re: politics
In-Reply-To: Message of Mon, 17 Apr 1995 12:10:56 -0500 from
<EFOSTER@VAXC.STEVENS-TECH.EDU>
Ed: As usual I appreciate your wit and insight.
But I think that even saying art is not political is a profoundly
political stament that has a specific politica history, going back in
the English tradition to attempts to inculcate East Indian subjects
into Western values. Indians were very resistant to Biblical studies,
but English educators decided that in order to keep Indians "good
subjects of English rule," they had to give them Christian values.
They noticed that good Christians rarely attempt revolution in the
temporal world (although there are some attempts now to do so).
The English decided that Western literature was so steeped in
Christian values (not sure that this is correct either) that you could
teach that and make them Christian without making them Christians.
In order to do that they had to claim that lit. was not at all political,
and was in fact higher than that, beyond that, above that, or else
another form of resistence, they thought, was likely to develop.
This little story is surely flattened out, the processes made
simpler than they were, but I think it demonstrates the political
ease with which the claim to non-politics can be political.
Having said all this, I now admit that I do in some sense agree with
an earlier post that said that a poem, or other work of art can have
a political content as well as a content of "spirit." For me, though, even
spirit would be a political term as it would capture the ineffable sense
of a society in which nobody would starve, which seems as close to
transcendence as we are likely to get.
Thanks, Eric.
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 18 Apr 1995 21:02:21 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Edward Foster <EFOSTER@VAXC.STEVENS-TECH.EDU>
Subject: Re: poeticslist serve and desire / the 39 steps
angelica's a carrot in my book, but angelo is honey in my thigh. the angelus is golden and the repeitition wears a groove along the page. sir norman wears illusion on his sleeve. the island's set aside for thieves.
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 18 Apr 1995 21:11:37 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Charles Watts <cwatts@SFU.CA>
Subject: Panels, Panelists,
Readings at the Recovery of the Public World Conference,
June 1-4, 1995
X-cc: zaslove@sfu.ca
THE RECOVERY OF THE PUBLIC WORLD: A CONFERENCE AND POETRY FESTIVAL IN
HONOUR OF ROBIN BLASER, HIS POETRY AND POETICS. JUNE 1-4, 1995, AT
EMILY CARR INSTITUTE OF ART AND DESIGN, GRANVILLE ISLAND, VANCOUVER,
B.C. SCHEDULE OF EVENTS (AS OF TODAY, APRIL 18, 1995).
The following is the schedule of events at the Recovery of the Public
World Conference and Poetry Festival in honour of Robin Blaser, to be
held at Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design, Vancouver, B.C., June
1st through fourth, 1995, together with the names of people who will
be taking part:
Thursday, June 1st, 8:30 a.m. - 9:25 a.m. Conference registration;
pick-up of registration packets and other conference materials, in the
foyer of the theatre at Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design.
Note: all panels & lunchtime readings will be held in the theatre at
Emily Carr.
Thursday, June 1st, 9:30 a.m. - 12 noon. Panel: COMPANIONS: SELF,
OTHER, COMMUNITY. Chaired by Jenny Penberthy and Charles Watts.
Panelists: Michael Boughn, Daniel Burgoyne, Clayton Eshleman, Peter
Gizzi, Michael McClure, Kristin Prevallet, Nathaniel Tarn.
Thursday, June 1st, 12 noon - 1:15 p.m. Lunch break.
Thursday, June 1st, 1:15 p.m. - 1:55 p.m. Reading in the theatre,
Emily Carr. Readers: Deanna Ferguson, Aaron Shurin, Dorothy Trujillo
Lusk.
Thursday, June 1st, 2:00 p.m. - 5:00 p.m. Panel: COMPOSITION &
PERFORMANCE. Chaired by Daphne Marlatt & Phyllis Webb. Panelists:
David Bromige, Peter Middleton, Jed Rasula, David Sullivan, Phyllis
Webb.
Thursday, June 1st, 5:00 p.m. - 7:00 p.m. Opening of the gallery
exhibit, IN SEARCH OF ORPHEUS: SOME BAY AREA POETS & PAINTERS,
1945-1965. In the Charles H. Scott Gallery, Emily Carr Institute of
Art and Design.
(Thursday, June 1st, 5:00 p.m. - 7:30 p.m. Dinner break.)
Thursday, June 1st, 8:00 p.m. - 11:00 p.m. Festival opening, the
theatre, Emily Carr. Opening address by Charles Bernstein. Readings by
Charles Bernstein, Norma Cole, Daphne Marlatt, Michael Palmer.
Performance by Catriona Strang and Francois Houle. Michael Ondaatje
introduces Robin Blaser, who will give a talk. Doors open at 7:30 p.m.
Friday, June 2nd, 8:30 a.m. - 9:25 a.m. Conference registration,
continued.
Friday, June 2nd, 9:30 a.m. - 12 noon. Panel: 'NO LONGER OR NOT YET':
TRANSLATION & THE RECOVERY OF THE PUBLIC WORLD. Chaired by Norma Cole
and Michael Palmer. Panelists: Colin Browne, Hilary Clark, Pierre
Joris, Susan Vanderborg, Pasquale Verdicchio.
Friday, June 2nd, 12 noon - 1:15 p.m. Lunch break.
Friday, June 2nd, 1:15 p.m. - 1:55 p.m. Reading in the theatre, Emily
Carr. Readers: Bruce Boone, Andrew Schelling, Pasquale Verdicchio.
Friday, June 2nd, 2:00 p.m. - 5:00 p.m. Panel: HETEROLOGIES. Chaired
by Susan Howe and Nathaniel Mackey. Panelists: Steve Dickison, Michele
Leggott, D.S. Marriott, Leslie Scalapino, Andrew Schelling.
Friday, June 2nd, 7:30 p.m. - midnight: The Banquet, A FEAST OF
COMPANIONS, honouring Robin and invited guests. At Heritage Hall, 3102
Main Street, Vancouver. A salmon barbecue catered by Brian DeBeck.
Hosted by Kevin Killian and Ellen Tallman. Stories, music, greetings,
poems. Hilarity for all at Heritage Hall!
Saturday, June 3rd, 9:30 a.m. - 12 noon. Panel: ETHICS & AESTHETICS.
Chaired by Lisa Robertson and Jery Zaslove. Panelists: Michael
Davidson, Robert Hullot-Kentor, Paul Kelley, Andrew Klobucar, David
Levi Strauss, Anne Waldman.
Saturday, June 3rd, 12 noon - 1:15 p.m. Lunch break.
Saturday, June 3rd, 1:15 p.m. - 1:55 p.m. Reading in the theatre,
Emily Carr. Readers: David Bromige, Norman Finkelstein, Jed Rasula.
Saturday, June 3rd, 2:00 p.m. - 5:00 p.m. Panel: POETICS: THEORY &
PRACTICE. Chaired by Charles Bernstein and Miriam Nichols. Panelists:
Rachel Blau DuPlessis, Alan Golding, Steve McCaffery, Tom Marshall,
Miriam Nichols.
Saturday, June 3rd, 5:00 p.m. - 7:30 p.m. Dinner break.
Saturday, June 3rd, 8:00 p.m. - midnight: Reading at Freddy Wood
Theatre, University of British Columbia. Doors open at 7:30 p.m.
Readers: Peter Culley, Michael Davidson, Rachel Blau DuPlessis,
Clayton Eshleman, Robert Hogg, Susan Howe, Pierre Joris, Kevin Killian, Joanne
Kyger, Steve McCaffery, Michael McClure, Karen Mac Cormack, Nathaniel
Mackey, D.S. Marriott, Peter Middleton, Jerome Rothenberg, George
Stanley, David Levi Strauss, Nathaniel Tarn, Anne Waldman.
Sunday, June 4th, 9:30 a.m. - 12 noon. Panel: EROS & POIESIS. Chaired
by Bruce Boone and Sharon Thesen. Panelists: Kevin Killian, Daphne
Marlatt, Peter Quartermain, George Stanley, Alan Vardy.
Sunday, June 4th, 12 noon - 1:15 p.m. Lunch break.
Sunday, June 4th, 1:15 p.m. - 1:55 p.m. Reading in the theatre, Emily
Carr. Readers: Susan Clark, Peter Gizzi, Michele Leggott.
Sunday, June 4th, 2:00 p.m. - 5:00 p.m. Panel: POETICS: FORM &
STRUCTURE. Chaired by Pauline Butling and Wystan Curnow. Panelists:
Charles Altieri, Pauline Butling, Don Byrd, Joseph Conte, Norman
Finkelstein.
Sunday, June 4th, 5:00 p.m. - 7:30 p.m. Dinner break.
Sunday, June 4th, 8:00 p.m. - 11:00 p.m. Festival and conference
finale, at Freddy Wood Theatre, University of British Columbia.
Readers: E.D. Blodgett, George Bowering, Michael Ondaatje, Lisa
Robertson, Leslie Scalapino, Sharon Thesen, Fred Wah, Robin Blaser.
Please note that program times may vary slightly; the list of persons
reading is also subject to some change.
Please note also that some pre-conference events have been planned,
including a reading and talk by Michael McClure in the new Special
Collections and Rare Books rooms at the W.A.C. Bennett Library, Simon
Fraser University, Wednesday, May 31st, time to be announced. There
will also be a reading by Karen Mac Cormack at the Kootenay School of
Writing, 112 West Hastings, Vancouver, at 8:00 p.m., Wednesday, May
31st.
Changes in this program will be announced as they are confirmed.
Registration fees for the conference are as follows:
Entire Package, including panels, readings and banquet: $100; students
and fixed incomes: $60.
Panels and readings only: $80; students and fixed incomes: $40.
Banquet only: $25.
Please pay in Canadian funds. If this proves difficult, however,
international money orders in U.S. funds for the equivalent amount at
current exchange rates will be accepted.
Please note that seating for this conference is limited. If you plan
to register for the conference and/or the banquet, it is advisable to
do so by the beginning of May. Additional tickets to the Saturday and
Sunday night readings will be available at some Vancouver bookstores
and at the door on the evening of the reading; admission: $10, $5 for
students and fixed incomes.
ACCOMMODATION: Some Recommended Hotels.
The Sylvia Hotel: 1154 Gilford St, Vancouver, BC V6G 2P6, tel: (604)
681-9321. Regular rates: $55-$95 plus 17% tax.
The Buchan Hotel: 1906 Haro St, Vancouver, BC V6G 1H7, tel: (604)
685-5354; Fax (604) 685-5367. Rates: $75-$85 plus 17% tax.
The Granville Island Hotel: 1253 Johnston St, Vancouver, BC V6H 3R9,
tel: (604) 683-7373; fax (604) 683-3061. Rates: $150-$195 plus 17%
tax. N.B. Hotel rates are in Canadian funds.
More inexpensive accommodation:
Simon Fraser University Campus Accommodations: 212 McTaggart-Cowan
Hall, Burnaby, BC V5A 1S6, tel (604) 291-4503; fax: (604) 291-5598.
Dorm single: $19-$29. Dorm twin: $48.30. Townhouse unit: $105.80. On
the SFU campus, Burnaby Mountain, about 30-40 minutes' drive to the
conference site.
University of British Columbia: 5961 Student Union Boulevard,
Vancouver, BC V6T 2C9, tel: (604) 822-1010; fax: (604) 822-1001. Suite
for 3: $95; for 2: $74; for one: $56. Single: $24-$32. Twin: $48. On
the UBC campus, about twenty-thirty minutes' drive to the conference.
Other inexpensive accommodation listings available on request.
To register or for further information, write to The Recovery of the
Public World, c/o The Institute for the Humanities, East Academic
Annex, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, B.C. V5A 1S6; tel (voice
mail): (604) 291-5854; fax: (604) 291-3023. Or you can reach me by
e-mail at the following address: cwatts@sfu.ca
Charles Watts
for the organizers,
The Recovery of the Public World
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 19 Apr 1995 16:18:05 GMT+1200
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Tony Green <t.green@AUCKLAND.AC.NZ>
Organization: The University of Auckland
Subject: Cecil Taylor, poet
Over Easter, I remembered that Bob Callahan published a Taylor poem in
New World Journal, Spring, 1979. pp.7-15
from the Mysteries....
".....lamb's robe oxen tail
of such memories down'd in mud
Youth postulates presence unkempt
before weighted Deities whorish
to cave, back to knees, on all fours,
Genuflecting to the curvature of
forgotten caves painted bodies
you, them in age. pretend was
never a part, you in youth's arrogance
not knowing.
Hendrix, whatever he meant, was out of
Black church commercialized rodent
to Mafia spiel made palatable.
Those closest loved not waht he was
(Much less the ambivalences time would resolve)
but drawn, they were to figure
encapsulated in mythical invulnerability
modern capitalistic gold...."
Tony Green,
e-mail: t.green@auckland.ac.nz
post: Dept of Art History,
University of Auckland,
Private Bag 92019,
Auckland, New Zealand
Fax: 64 9-373 7014
Telephone: 64 9 373 7599 ext. 8981 or 7276
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 19 Apr 1995 13:54:27 GMT+1200
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Tony Green <t.green@AUCKLAND.AC.NZ>
Organization: The University of Auckland
Subject: re-politics again
The relation between something called poetry and something called
politics is deeply obscure.
To say that poetry is always political
collapses one into the other.
Poetry (and Art) likewise, and just as plausibly or impluasibly,
is always philosophy, always
religion, always sociolgy. In other words there is
no poetry, no
poetics, no "poetics"list as an in any way identifiable issue or set
of issues.
All its issues can be covered by political discourses,
religious discourses, theoretical discourses, sociological and
anthropological discourses?
Poetology becomnes a sub-branch of some
other - ology too glibly.
(What was that you were saying a
month or so ago Spencer Selby apropos theory
when I tried to
intervene in the debate over theory?)
Denying that poetry is political is necessary in the face
of the threat to submit poetry to the terms and judgments of
political doctrine or religious doctrine or the proposals of
some moral code.
Insisting that poetry is political, religious and moral is
just as necessary when poetry claims complete
autonomy from social process
The argument goes on, as if it can ever be resolved
on one side or the other. Well, can it? Isn't it
required for poetics to exist as something to write and talk
about that it be something other than politics etc, while
yet always adjacent to politics etc.
I hate to spoil a fun argument, but it's one of those arguments that
can only end up with a recognition of a measure of one and a measure
of the other.
When Spencer Selby wants to deny theory, I defend theory as
being a condition of any poem whatsoever. When Ron and Tom
want to insist on politics I want to side with Ed Foster and defend
poetry's distinctiveness (and autonomy).
Tony Green,
e-mail: t.green@auckland.ac.nz
post: Dept of Art History,
University of Auckland,
Private Bag 92019,
Auckland, New Zealand
Fax: 64 9-373 7014
Telephone: 64 9 373 7599 ext. 8981 or 7276
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 18 Apr 1995 22:43:02 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Lindz Williamson <lmichell@UNIXG.UBC.CA>
Subject: Not supposed to be here
You're not supposed to be here
Not supposed to looking for me
This is the poor side of silence
This is the with noise of abandoned appliance
This is captivity
You need details
You need the name of a street
You're not supposed to be here in the the name of G-d
You're waiting for me again
Waiting at the mouth of the tunnel of love
But where is the cold little river
Where is the painted boat
If only the hummingbird
would sip at your desire
If only the green leaves
could use your longing
If only a woman were looking over your shoulder
a at map of the eternal city
It seems that nothing can take you away
from this odd memorial
Nothing that's been made or born
seperate you from
the fiction of my absence
All the messiahs are with me in this
You're not supposed to be here
All the messiahs agree
You're not supposed to be looking for me.
Leonard Cohen- Death of a Lady's Man
Warning
To love a man wholly
Love him
feet first
head down
eyes cold
closed
in depression
It is too easy to love
a surfer
white eyes
Godliness &
bronze
In the bright sun
Alice Walker- Her Blue Body
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 19 Apr 1995 04:47:23 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Blair Seagram <blairsea@PANIX.COM>
Subject: Re: Left handed and loving it
In-Reply-To: <199504190549.BAA01653@panix4.panix.com>
Eric to Lindz:
Lindz, you are absolutely correct when you say apologizing isn't enough,
but forgetting just allows it to keep happening. Thanks, Eric.
I haven't been following the last few days closely. And I would say to
Lindz, hang in there. And I would say to Eric, not apologizing, does not
mean forgetting. What it means for me is letting go of something that
cannot help me move forward. Things must change. They inevitably do
change. The question is how they will change. I think if one can try to
open and grow personally, it goes a long way, or perhaps it's the idea
that the longest journey is begun with the first step or whatever that
line is.
The thing that annoys me about politics and sides, is that it's so facile.
People not to mention circumstances are complex. It is good to look at as
many sides or perspectives as possible. When one speaks of governments
(not revolutions) one speaks of change at a snail's pace if one speaks of
change at all, in any real sense of the word. I think Foucault said something
in an essay on power, to the effect that what we need today is to break
away from the institutions that continue to mold us in ways we no longer
wish to be molded.
I am not so politically minded. I may stand here on one issue and there
on another. I don't buy into one agenda. For me it's a personal trip.
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 19 Apr 1995 04:55:16 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Blair Seagram <blairsea@PANIX.COM>
Subject: Re: Definition: Language Poetry
In-Reply-To: <199504190549.BAA01653@panix4.panix.com>
I have seen the problems that arose with definitions of post modern and
deconstruction. I sometimes wonder if it has to do with their use in
several disciplines or is it that we are still too close to it.
I am wondering if someone can give me a definition or several of language
poetry.
Blair
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 19 Apr 1995 11:45:31 WET
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "I.LIGHTMAN" <I.Lightman@UEA.AC.UK>
Subject: Re: Hello & more new music/new writing
Hallo all,
I just wanted to respond, in one post, to lots of different lines that
have developed since I logged on six days ago. This, no doubt, means that
if anyone is like me they will not read the comments not attached to the
strain they're following, or, read comments if they like the person, often
because that person has made a real connection (leading to a backchannel)
among all the hubbub of the list proper. I feel like I'm made some great
personal connections, but as a sort of parasite on the list, yet many seem
to feel like that too. POETICS is the city of us sub-urbs.
Anyway,
I really liked Aldon's detailed remarks, and all of the alerting to racism
issues, but I think some of what Lindz is saying about the *interpersonal*
dynamics is interesting; this expression "kissing ass" is interesting. One
can be very engaged with the struggle to end racism, and still be manoeuvred
into playing the feed for an acting-out against those who look like oneself
(white, male, bisexual, in my case) who have acted in a bigoted way towards
one's interlocutor in the past. Sorry, that's badly put. I mean, I can, in
an interpersonal connection with somebody who has been attacked by other
white male bisexuals in the past say "yes, that's really bigoted of them,
I won't treat you like that, I hate that behaviour", and what happens next,
and over some weeks in some of my experiences, is that the person (attacked
woman, attacked gay person who's been mistreated by a bisexual, attacked
mixed race person etc) takes out his/her revenge on me as if I were the
the other white male bisexual who attacked them. I know that the use of
psychology has often been to excuse racism eg Susan Schultz's point about
Ebert reading Once There Were Warriors as about alcoholism not pakeha racism
against maori. But there can be such a thing as a good psychology by someone
not racist. By which I mean, I have myself often stored up very angry feelings
of vengefulness against someone who mistreated me and shut their ears to
hearing my anger at their mistreatment of me; I dream what I'd say to them,
I see them in the street and imagine having a showdown there and then. If I
do this, I suspect others do too. And I see the situations I'm describing as
the attacked person saying "ah ha, a stage to deliver the lines I've been
writing in my head". This is human, and I'm not painting myself as a victim
of it; I often do now withstand this stored-up outburst and then quietly
comment that I agree, and I'm not like that myself. But I wonder if this
is in any way adjacent to what Lindz was saying...
I also wanted to welcome Herb, as another fan of New Music, and an enthusiast
for the human voice. I share Herb's frustration at the rhetorical use of
the term "voice" in poetic criticism. Voice-work, in music and sound
compositions, is very exciting, and poets who *are* proud of having a
"voice" often display none of the abilities to introduce warmth, space etc
into syllables and phonemes that singers have (indeed, what i *love* about
a lot of language poetry is precisely that it *does* use this kind of
singer's attention to syllables and phonemes). The singing voice doesn't
have to be singular anymore than the poetic voice; I think of the way that
someone like Bob Dylan loves the way his voice changes, and uses the new
feel of it as *material*, just as some poets use new font or new life
circumstances as *material*. What I like about Herb's emphasis is it stops
us attacking the voice per se, and reminds us that it is over-simplification,
trying too hard for consistency, that is at fault *in all arts*.
I'd better also, though it's a dead strain by now, respond a little to Miles's
response to my report on the now infamous London reading. He's right that
I read, though as part of an open floor not as an invited reader, for five
minutes at the very end of the reading, and he's right that I'm male too,
actually I do include myself in the sweeping attacks on over-representation
of males, but then I counter that a little by the odd fact of not really
being fully represented, since I am never invited, or put on the bill, as
Miles often is. I certainly don't condemn anyone for living in London, as
I think Miles knows that two of my very favourite poets, Denise Riley
and Caroline Bergvall, live in London. I think the point I made in both my
reports from England and New Zealand is that the scene is so stupidly small
that no-one can take honest criticism but has to think of the critic as
someone anti-male or anti-London and so the criticisms are discountable.
Ira
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 19 Apr 1995 08:00:48 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Michael Boughn <mboughn@EPAS.UTORONTO.CA>
Subject: The whiteness of the whale
"Social construction" is the "phlogiston" of 90's discourse.
Mike
mboughn@epas.utoronto.ca
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 19 Apr 1995 08:36:13 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: maria damon <damon001@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
Subject: Re: I feel pink
In message <2f9313722748002@maroon.tc.umn.edu> UB Poetics discussion group
writes:
> > Obviously we can't give back all those left hands, but we can do huge tv
> campaigns and say "oops sorry, leftis are cool", "Hire a lefty", " lefties
> do it better". NOw does that make you feel any better, or wouldn't you,
> the one handed, previously lefthanded person prefer that we, the right
> hands actually did something useful with all that publicity money and
> found a way to replace that hand or atleast compensate you for the emense
> inconvience and humiliation you've suffered for the last forty years.
>
> Lindz
it seems that if someone has been wronged, and feels a formal apology has
symbolic significance tht would restore his/her dignity and mark an
acknowledgment on the part of the wrongdoer, it is not the wrongdoer's task to
point out the practical futility of apologies and "refuse to apologize" on the
grounds that it is not in the interest of the wronged. that phenomenon, of the
power-majority deciding what is in the best interest of the subordinated,
perpetuates an unjust hierarchy where those in power don't think they have to
listen.--maria damon
>
>
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 19 Apr 1995 11:23:40 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ted Pelton <Notlep@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: pink
LindZ,
Yes, it was abrupt of me, and for that I "apologize." But you said you
valued my "incite" -- a clever pun if that's what you meant. Nonetheless,
the first time we talk and I begin by shouting. It's just I have heard the
argument "what are we supposed to do, keep kissing ass?" argument more times
than I care to, which where I live usually means, "Can we go back to the way
we used to do things," and usually doesn't even ask but simply glorifies a
past which never existed, in terms of, e.g., Norman Rockwell, Ronald Reagan,
whoever else you care to include.
Ted
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 19 Apr 1995 11:57:18 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Edward Foster <EFOSTER@VAXC.STEVENS-TECH.EDU>
Subject: Re: politics
no, eric, for me that's not the context, but rather a sense that poetry is rooted (bad word, but for now . . .) in something other than the theological, merely discursive, propositional (hey!), which is to say, political. wow! rather: mallarme, egypt usw.
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 19 Apr 1995 12:01:52 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Edward Foster <EFOSTER@VAXC.STEVENS-TECH.EDU>
Subject: Re: re-politics again
tony, yes/no, problem is not to have a god calling it/her/him "social process." maybe.
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 19 Apr 1995 10:58:42 CDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: eric pape <ENPAPE@LSUVM.SNCC.LSU.EDU>
Subject: Re: pink
In-Reply-To: Message of Wed, 19 Apr 1995 11:23:40 -0400 from <Notlep@AOL.COM>
Lindz: I think Ted is right on this point. I don't know where he is speaking
from, but in Louisiana, incidentally an extremely interesting and complex place
or I wouldn't be here, any discussion at all about "oppression," "genocide,"
the rights of women, are likely to draw the most antagonistic stares. One
of my students is the daughter of a state senator (Woody Jenkins who also
owns the only local TV station). THis senator recently said "at one time,
only people who owned property voted. We're a long way from that,
unfortunately." I just happened to catch this, and what amazes me is that
there has been no protest, no outcry, except from me and I am a, quote,
California yankee."
I should say that Louisiana folks are the most friendly I've ever
encountered, but keep the doors locked at night.
If I sound defensive on these posts, it's because I am. Forgive me
if I sound too doctrinairre, but I do it mostly to remind myself that
there are other points of view than the LA. Also, I urge you to remember
that we haven't even come to close to winning the elephant wars, and
they've got all the ammunition so far.
Thanks, Eric.
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 19 Apr 1995 14:55:41 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Marisa A Januzzi <jma5@COLUMBIA.EDU>
Subject: throttled by angels
In-Reply-To: <199504180549.AA25856@mailhub.cc.columbia.edu>
Hi Chris--
I would be very curious to hear about what poets you first read,
and everyone else, what got you into this. Partly I ask as a teacher who
is always looking for the best poetential seduction material.
For me it happened like this: I got excited by the existential
challenge of "My Shadow," by Robert Louis Stevenson, which I had to
memorize when I was six. (Isolation, overactive mind, imaginary friends
etc etc.) Then I only wrote the stuff until sixth grade,
when I began to rummage in the desk I used during my (very boring) class
on the history of the Americas. I don't know whose desk it was, but they
were male and older, and he was harboring a copy of Ferlinghetti's *Coney
Island of the Mind.* Maybe-- and this is interesting to me-- maybe I
responded out of curiosity about the Italian name. The book was color,
color, color all the way home, in a surrealistic sense.
You?
Marisa Januzzi
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 19 Apr 1995 12:49:50 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ryan Knighton <knighton@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: Jack Smith
In-Reply-To: <199504190422.VAA06034@whistler.sfu.ca> from "eric pape" at Apr
18, 95 07:02:57 pm
Anybody recognize where this came from:
"I don't think I like your manners, ma'am."
"Well, i'm not selling them."
and,
"Thanks for the ride, the three cigarettes and for not laughing
at my theories on life."
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 19 Apr 1995 13:19:19 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ryan Knighton <knighton@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: pink
In-Reply-To: <199504191542.IAA06628@whistler.sfu.ca> from "Ted Pelton" at Apr
19, 95 11:23:40 am
There is a quality in the discussion of "whiteness" and the arguments
that surface and re-surface which bothers me. Or perhaps i enjoy
it in an odd way. The quality is Faulknerian. I think Ted said/
wrote to Lindz that "It's just i have heard the argument "what are
we supposed to do, keep kissing ass?" argument more times than I care
to". True enough. It is a kind of re-telling of the same point (of
view) overnover in hopes that it will open and blossom into something
new and meaningful: in hopes that there is a point of arrival.
But the result, in my mind and senses, is suffocating. Instead
of arriving at some kind of closure in the discussion, we have
generated an enclosure in which nothing extra-ordinarily new
can be cultivated. Yes, i think it quite Faulknerian. Anyone?
Ryan
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 19 Apr 1995 18:34:11 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Blair Seagram <blairsea@PANIX.COM>
Subject: Re: Left handed etc.
In-Reply-To: <199504190549.BAA01653@panix4.panix.com>
Dear Lindz & Eric:
I sent you a message early this morning around 3am when I couldn't sleep,
so decided to read my mail. I can't locate that info about Foucault and
the power essay. I read it long ago and don't seem to have a copy. I may
not have said it quite right. I believe it is not just about breaking
away from the institution but also about changing the institution itself.
That another topic I won't get into now. A friend has arrived
for dinner.
TC/PG
Blair
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 20 Apr 1995 10:55:21 GMT+1200
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Tony Green <t.green@AUCKLAND.AC.NZ>
Organization: The University of Auckland
Subject: Re: re-politics again
Ed, yes/no & yes/no, on both "sides" of the issue. The issue's
topology is possibly *not* one with a polarity and opposite sides to
it. Shifting phases, eruptions of geysers, gaseous dispersal, --
instances of alternative models. It's to do with power of
adjudication, censure, censorial process (god is a good word for it).
And
can poems be subjected to political analysis without remainder?
And
can that political analysis be subjected to a further political analysis
without remainder?
And whose analysis in either case?
Maybe the ground needs to shift to rhetoric, to the advantages of
discourses which are inclusive of fable, scenarios, personae and
image as against those that seek to exclude them.
Figuring it that way Politics is a name for a species of
discourse and the results of poetry are apt to be indeterminate as
to their effects. Also beyond the intentional control of the
writer(s) or speaker(s). A lot of it is down to luck, not prior
theorizing of any kind.
What political discourse can do is isolate the factors of
publication and artist/audience relations and fasten on aspects of
content (mainly) and, with Langpo, maybe on formal structures too (from the
point of view of reception theory and reading and writing practice --defiance of syntactic norms, of
narrative forms for instance).
What else can it do?
What it can promote at its worst is PC (discipline-guilt
dominance-submission relations between theorist and poet).
The poet's role may not be easily contained. Transgression
has long been a part of it. That may be interpreted
politically. But if dogma, conventions, disciplines and rules,
judgments by academies, or similar gods, get in
the way of composiiton and performance, watch out for poetry.
Am I reading the continuing argument correctly?
By the way an attempt
to censor the net by NZ
politicians is following
the U.S. pattern. Becos
there's porn getting to minors,
institutions shd be held
responsible for employees
behaviour, and all net users
shd be subjected to control.
witrh
Tony Green,
e-mail: t.green@auckland.ac.nz
post: Dept of Art History,
University of Auckland,
Private Bag 92019,
Auckland, New Zealand
Fax: 64 9-373 7014
Telephone: 64 9 373 7599 ext. 8981 or 7276
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 20 Apr 1995 02:06:05 +1000
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Mark Roberts <M.Roberts@UNSW.EDU.AU>
Subject: ASAL 95 PROVISIONAL PROGRAM (Forwarded)
********************************************************************************
AUSTRALIAN WRITING ONLINE is a small press distribution service which we
hope will help Australian magazines, journals and publishers to reach a
much wider audience through the internet. As a first step we will be
posting information and subscription details for a number of magazines and
publishers to a number of discussion groups and lists. We hope to build up
a large emailing list which includes as many libraries as possible. If you
know of a list or discussion group which you think might be worthwhile
posting to or, if you would like to receive future postings, please contact
AWOL directly on M.Roberts@unsw.edu.au.
Please note that M.Roberts@unsw.edu.au is a temporary address until we set
up our own address sometime later this year
********************************************************************************
ASAL 95
PROVISIONAL PROGRAM
Association for the Study of Australian Literature
Annual Conference, 2-7 July 1995
Institute Building, Adelaide
SUNDAY 2 JULY
3.00-5.00pm REGISTRATIONS
St Mark's College
46 Pennington Terrace, North Adelaide
6.00pm WELCOME BUFFET
St Mark's College
MONDAY 3 JULY
9.00-10.30am KEYNOTE ADDRESS
Paul Carter
Crossing the Line: Space as Colonialism
11.00-12.30 CARTOGRAPHIES
Simon Ryan
Cartographic Eyes: Maps and Ideology
Heather Wearne
Post-Colonial Cartographies: Australian Maps of Belonging
Ian McLean
Imagining 'Australia': Paul Carter's Migrantology
2.00-3.00pm GENDER AND GEOGRAPHY
Susan K Martin
Gender, Genera, Genre and Geography: Colonial Women's Writing and the Uses
of Botany
Judith Johnston
'Woman's Testimony': Louisa Anne Meredith's Notes and Sketches of New South
Wales
3.30-5.00pm REGIONAL LANDSCAPES
Deane Fergie
Evanescent, Oscillating, Never Quite Settled Upon ... The Outback As
Cultural Mirage
Ruth Barcan
Natural Histories: Gender, Race and Regional Consciousness on the Gold
Coast
Martin Leer
Distance in Australian Literary Geography: The Case of Randolph Stow and
Thea Astley
5.15pm BOOK LAUNCH
8.00pm READINGS
SA Writer's Centre
Tom Keneally
Drusilla Modjeska
Peter Goldsworthy
Winner ALS Gold Medal
TUESDAY 4 JULY
9.00-10.30am SITES OF DESIRE
Ivor Indyk
The Place of Desire
Robert Dixon
Unfamiliar Selves: Ion L. Idriess' Torres Strait Trilogy
Catherine Pratt
"A Coupla Kings": Masculine Romance in Summer of the Seventeenth Doll
11.00-12.30 Panel: FICTOCRITICISM
Stephen Muecke
Anne Brewster
Heather Kerr
Gail Jones
2.00-3.00pm DOROTHY GREEN LECTURE
Drusilla Modjeska
Drawn From Life: A Portrait of Stella Bowen
3.30-5.00pm ABORIGINALITY AND TEXTUALITY
Leigh Dale
Living on the Ground: Lee Cataldi
Lyn McCredden
Mapping Religious Belief in Australian Culture
Kay Torney
Filling Terra Nullius: Boney in the Deathspace
5.15pm BOOK LAUNCH
8.00pm READINGS
Fotini Epanomitis
Matt Rubenstein
Gig Ryan
Winner, Mary Gilmore Award
WEDNESDAY 5 JULY
9.00-10.30am METAPHORS OF SPATIALITY
Kerryn Goldsworthy
The Space of Spinsterhood: Letters to the Female Middle Class Emigration
Society 1862-1882
Kevin Gilding
Space Exploration: Australia, The World, Catherine Martin and Whatever
Allison Cadzow
Home Making: Australian Women Explorers' Written Representations Of
Landscape/Space
11am DAY TRIP
LUNCH, WINE TASTING, AND READINGS
Woodstock Winery and Coterie
Barry Westburg
Jeri Kroll
Sudesh Mishra
Geoff Goodfellow
THURSDAY 6 JULY
9.00-10.30am CULTURE/IDENTITY/NATION
Graham Cullum
New Worlds and Words: The Poetry of Dimitris Tsaloumas
Anna Johnston
Australian Autobiography: The Politics of Making Post-Colonial Space
Manfred Mackenzie
Christina Stead and the "Natural Uncanny"
11.00-12.30 Panel: REWRITING THE MAINSTREAM
Rosemary Van den Berg
Maureen Watson
Ania Walwicz
Fotini Epanomitis
12.30-2.00pm AGM/LUNCH
2.00-3.00pm CAPTURED/CAPTIVITY NARRATIVES
Kate Darian-Smith
Captured Narratives
Gerry Turcotte
Mrs Fraser's Ravenous Appetite: The Taste for Cannibalism in Captivity
Narratives
3.30-5.00pm READINGS
Ania Walwicz
Rosemary Van den Berg
Maureen Watson
Dorothy Porter
5.15pm BOOK LAUNCH
8.00pm NOT THE PARODY NIGHT
St. Mark's College
FRIDAY 7 JULY
9.00-10.30am RE-FIGURING SEXUALITY
Carol Merli and Paul Salzman
(Im)Printing/Erasing Woman
Terry Goldie
Patrick White's Homo Australis
Deborah Hunn
'Basic Bullshit': lesbian detective fiction and the Australian lesbian and
gay press
11.00-12.30 Panel: SITUATING AUSTRALIAN LITERATURE Intersections with the
Multidisciplines
Sue Sheridan
John Docker
Christine Nicholls
Sue Gillett
2.00-3.00pm GLOBALIZATION/REGIONALISM
McKenzie Wark
Virtual Geography: Living with Global Media Events
Bernd Schulte
In Pursuit of Australian Cultural Theory - Impressions of a European
3.30-5.00pm FEMINIST READINGS
Rose Lucas
Tracking the Body: Dorothy Porter's The Monkey's Mask
Susan Midalia
The Contemporary Female Bildungsroman and the Politics of Optimism
Cath Ellis
Class War and Gender Conflict in The Goldfields Trilogy
5.15pm BOOK LAUNCH
7.30pm CONFERENCE DINNER
Henry's Brasserie, Ayer's House
For registration forms and further information please contact
Phil Butterss
University of Adelaide
Ph: (08) 303 4562 Fax: (08) 303 4341
e-mail: pbutterss@arts.adelaide.edu.au
Amanda Nettelbeck
Flinders University
Ph: (08) 201 2104 Fax: (08) 201 2556
e-mail: enaen@cc.flinders.edu.au
This project has been assisted by the Commonwealth Government through the
Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body. We are also very
grateful for assistance from the South Australian Department for the Arts
and Cultural Development.
---
Philip Butterss Email: pbutterss@arts.adelaide.edu.au
Department of English Tel: (08) 303 4562
University of Adelaide Fax: (08) 303 4341
ADELAIDE SA 5005
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 20 Apr 1995 02:29:03 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Chris Stroffolino <LS0796@ALBNYVMS.BITNET>
Subject: Re: throttled by angels
Well, Marisa, the beats were biggies...but the poets who came to my
undergraduate school were Gerald Stern (who I later read with, ugh!)
and Daniel Hoffman--he read from his Southian epic, BROTHERLY LOVE.
PBS was taping it and I think the camera panned the audience and caught
me nodding off...John Yau came (this was 1985) and turned me onto the
New York School (O'Hara, Koch, Ashbery) and this lead me to Tzara....
One night (wasted) i was reading Tzara to a friend of mine who just came
back from England and he pulled out his big Bertolt Brecht collected
and said you know what Bertolt would say about this, and then made a
reproachful noisy gesture...and so i experienced my first "poetry
battle"--but, hey, I like them both...and until this semester when
I worked with Pierre Joris neither of these writers were taught in
English departments (--no doubt coz they're "not in the american
grain")...and perhaps it was the fact that they weren't corrupted by
academia that I was able to enjoy them more than even the "alternative"
writers who were taught when i got my M.A. at Temple back when Jesse
Jackson was a brief frontrunner in the democratic primaries.... Well,
that's one version of my "THROTTLING" Any others? Chris
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 20 Apr 1995 02:26:16 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Spencer Selby <selby@SLIP.NET>
Subject: Re: re-politics again
In-Reply-To: <199504190458.VAA03525@>
Dear Tony,
Thanks for sensible thoughts. I would remind you that I never denied
theory per se. What I denied were claims that are made for theory and
uses to which it is often put.
Before that, I became Mr. AntiTheory simply because I maintained that art
has its own level. This was my way of saying that art/poetry exceeds all
the discourse surrounding it (a claim that seems obvious to me, but which
others were drawing ominous conclusions from).
You and I had an exchange in which you seemingly equated theory with
poetics. I responded that I'm interested in the space where theory and
poetics don't overlap.
Another thing I remember: Cris Cheek said every poem's a theory and I
answered that that's the kind of theory I like best.
My Best To You,
Spencer
On Wed, 19 Apr 1995, Tony Green wrote:
> The relation between something called poetry and something called
> politics is deeply obscure.
> To say that poetry is always political
> collapses one into the other.
>
> Poetry (and Art) likewise, and just as plausibly or impluasibly,
> is always philosophy, always
> religion, always sociolgy. In other words there is
> no poetry, no
> poetics, no "poetics"list as an in any way identifiable issue or set
> of issues.
> All its issues can be covered by political discourses,
> religious discourses, theoretical discourses, sociological and
> anthropological discourses?
> Poetology becomnes a sub-branch of some
> other - ology too glibly.
>
> (What was that you were saying a
> month or so ago Spencer Selby apropos theory
> when I tried to
> intervene in the debate over theory?)
>
> Denying that poetry is political is necessary in the face
> of the threat to submit poetry to the terms and judgments of
> political doctrine or religious doctrine or the proposals of
> some moral code.
>
> Insisting that poetry is political, religious and moral is
> just as necessary when poetry claims complete
> autonomy from social process
>
> The argument goes on, as if it can ever be resolved
> on one side or the other. Well, can it? Isn't it
> required for poetics to exist as something to write and talk
> about that it be something other than politics etc, while
> yet always adjacent to politics etc.
>
> I hate to spoil a fun argument, but it's one of those arguments that
> can only end up with a recognition of a measure of one and a measure
> of the other.
>
> When Spencer Selby wants to deny theory, I defend theory as
> being a condition of any poem whatsoever. When Ron and Tom
> want to insist on politics I want to side with Ed Foster and defend
> poetry's distinctiveness (and autonomy).
>
>
> Tony Green,
> e-mail: t.green@auckland.ac.nz
> post: Dept of Art History,
> University of Auckland,
> Private Bag 92019,
> Auckland, New Zealand
> Fax: 64 9-373 7014
> Telephone: 64 9 373 7599 ext. 8981 or 7276
>
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 20 Apr 1995 11:12:23 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Kenneth Sherwood <V001PXFU@UBVMS.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Organization: University at Buffalo
Subject: The poetics of whiteness
Latching on to and decontextualizing Tony Green's words, I want to
suggest that saying "all poetry is political" does not necessarily
collapse the two, not unless one's sense of poetry is
quite limited. (Not that I imagine Tony's is, but) poetry lives,
all poetry I'd argue, in a variety of neighborhoods simultaneously.
To say all poetry is political is not the same as saying: all poetry
is ONLY political. But then the temptation to modify political with
"only" may suggest a particular attitude toward politics.
It's just such a limiting or constraining definition/delimitation
of politics that seems implicit in the 'ass-kissing' interpretation
of revisionist (in the good sense) U.S. history.
To respond as if such political claims were only about "you" or "me"
(just as TG flinches gainst one collapse) is to collapse the political
into the personal--this is not the aim of the familiar slogan.
The scale of the issues most recently put to words by Pelton, Nielsen,
Schultz and others makes such a reduction--who me?, my politics?,
my grandparents?--absurd. Personal guilt is hardly sufficient or
even meaningful retribution for genocide.
I wonder if Ed and Lindz would be more or less revolted if I said
poetry is political because personhood too is political. This
is written several hours after watching Nightline coverage of the
OK disaster which began with a sequence of brief testimonials by
Americans across the country expressing their outrage, that this
could happen in a 'free society' (in three of 10 or so clips),
assuming an us/them, we're-at-war attitude within hours, before
it's even remotely clear what the cause of the blast is.
Meanwhile Ted K. displays pictures of Beirut bombings and prods
guests to assert that the 'truck bomb' M.O. makes it likely
these are Islamic terrorists too!
Being at the Calumet Arts Cafe, listening to Steve Lacy and
Irene Aebi perform Creeley and Spicer poems instead of watching this
quote news unquote quote develop unquote becomes, in retrospect,
political too.
And, in response to Nielsen's earlier question about the constitution
of whiteness:
One can argue that Poetry is not Political; ONE name for the priviledge
to do so is 'whiteness'.
Ken Sherwood
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 20 Apr 1995 14:19:33 -0500
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Edward Foster <EFOSTER@VAXC.STEVENS-TECH.EDU>
Subject: Re: re-politics again
yes, maybe, i think what/where. hmmmm: analysis operates by rules, and rules are after the fact. analysis says it discovers or clarifies; in fact it continually reinvents itself, is propositional. analysis is not poetry, tho poetry may analyze. right?
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 20 Apr 1995 14:25:48 -0500
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Edward Foster <EFOSTER@VAXC.STEVENS-TECH.EDU>
Subject: Re: The poetics of whiteness
no, ken, i wouldn't be revolted. that business "the personal is political" is much ingrained (sp?) these days, and you can't escape the personal, i think, if only because the words are always yours. but that's the flaw, the reason every poem fails.
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 20 Apr 1995 14:32:41 -0500
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Edward Foster <EFOSTER@VAXC.STEVENS-TECH.EDU>
Subject: Re: The poetics of whiteness
i'd also be careful about the "privilege" business; look at it closely and you're still in discourse, pleasing to foucault's descendants, but perhaps (?) yet another god, another code, another thou shalt. in society necessary . . . but in the poem?
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 21 Apr 1995 09:00:24 GMT+1200
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Tony Green <t.green@AUCKLAND.AC.NZ>
Organization: The University of Auckland
Subject: 1st mark
Unreliable too. 1 Aus is ahead, not Team NZ.
Tony Green,
e-mail: t.green@auckland.ac.nz
post: Dept of Art History,
University of Auckland,
Private Bag 92019,
Auckland, New Zealand
Fax: 64 9-373 7014
Telephone: 64 9 373 7599 ext. 8981 or 7276
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 20 Apr 1995 18:31:40 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Marisa A Januzzi <jma5@COLUMBIA.EDU>
Subject: Re: throttled by angels
In-Reply-To: <199504200633.AA19207@mailhub.cc.columbia.edu>
Chris: Yeah!
Cendrars too. And Berrigan. They aren't taught much (yet) but when I
found them early on they made me weak in the knees! Still do.
Marisa
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 20 Apr 1995 23:38:13 +0000
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: cris cheek <cris@SLANG.DEMON.CO.UK>
Subject: Re: poeticslist serve and desire / the 39 steps
X-cc: Edward Foster <EFOSTER@vaxc.stevens-tech.edu>
pockets through whose opened threads books drop with protestable innocence
into lining - sustaining a greenness for learning. plastic-wrapped and
hidden in that honey was his out. corrupted dreams turning a blind form -
sweetness.
weeping an illusory ownership - our lot.
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 21 Apr 1995 08:58:05 GMT+1200
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Tony Green <t.green@AUCKLAND.AC.NZ>
Organization: The University of Auckland
Subject: Re: throttled by angels
Thinking slowly over Ken Sherwood and Spencer Selby's "re-politics
again posts" Poetry Always or Poetry Only Political? The space
between poetry and theory.
"Chthonic". Howling. Oklahoma horror,
grief and pity. Poetry as something that stems from beyond
words to speak. Ecstatic. That was at root of my sense of any/all art 1950's
teenage mutant years. Unlikely locations for this in writing in my
reading in Faber & Faber Eliot/Pound/Stevens/Louis MacNeice
--"Autumn Journal"+ Hopkins(Penguin) + Dylan Thomas collected, but not usually found. Lorca. Reading for
over a year through A la Recherche... writing clumsily little love
lyrics (Geez! how embarrassing) and participating in genteel poetry
society at school NETWORK ANNOUNCEMENT TEAM NZ AHEAD
OF I AUS BY l2 SECS AT FIRST MARK with vocal noise poetry piece,
phonemic but not words, sudden erupting"avant-gardism". With so much
engagement with process and question of where "authentic" poetry comes from (like music)and elimination
of "statement" + "content" I wd have been a sucker for Tzara? but
that was way outside what I could find then. Otherwise and later at
Cambridge, I got to read (other people's poems mainly) aloud at the
gatherings in Senior Tutor's rooms, Tom Henn, Yeats scholar
extraordinaire. This nostalgia stuff ends here -- Dept staff
meeting in 2 mins. Questions of Workloads.
Where I'm coming from there is political and other
discourses are simply irrelevant at most levels of composing. Is
that the space between Spencer. Seen from a distance by a Subject, I
guess the poet/poetry as Object can be subjected to any and every
-ology. No doubt it's proper to think of such things.
Tony Green,
e-mail: t.green@auckland.ac.nz
post: Dept of Art History,
University of Auckland,
Private Bag 92019,
Auckland, New Zealand
Fax: 64 9-373 7014
Telephone: 64 9 373 7599 ext. 8981 or 7276
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 20 Apr 1995 20:35:12 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Tom Mandel <tmandel@UMD5.UMD.EDU>
Subject: Re: Don't cut that 'Vette, hand me the Peruvian flake
Peruvian flake? Is it alright to mention Peruvian flake on
the Internet now that Newt et. al. have staged their conceptual
coup of the Infobahn? Does anybody remember Peruvian flake?
Remember anything before Peruvian flake?
Chris, I'm delighted by your notion that time in Stillwater
(or other) Prison wd be drug-free. Just say no?
On the 'vette; please! it's fiberglass and won't rust. But
I'll never push it on you. Hank, brake out the driving gloves.
Tom Mandel
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 20 Apr 1995 21:12:49 -0400
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Tom Mandel <tmandel@UMD5.UMD.EDU>
Subject: Re: re-politics again
> The relation between something called poetry and something called
> politics is deeply obscure.
Tony, I'd like you to unpack the logic of this assertion. In what
sense(s) is this an obscure relation? Do you mean that the relationship
of Dante's poetry to the politics of his life or era is "obscure?" (I
assume not). Do you mean the politics of Pasolini's poetry, or for that
matter of Montale's, is obscure? Again, I assume not. Do you simply
mean these relations are difficult or complicated? Sure, but this is
evidence for their importance, their inward deepness, not against. Or
do you mean the relations between two abstractions "poetry" and
"politics" are what is obscure? Watch out, that smacks of theory!
> To say that poetry is always political
> collapses one into the other.
To say that live beings are always breathing is reductive?
Tom Mandel
(!All-Italian examples unconscious response to Susan Schultz!?)
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 20 Apr 1995 23:21:45 +1000
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Mark Roberts <M.Roberts@UNSW.EDU.AU>
Subject: Re: 1st mark
>Unreliable too. 1 Aus is ahead, not Team NZ.
>
>Tony Green,
>e-mail: t.green@auckland.ac.nz
>post: Dept of Art History,
>University of Auckland,
>Private Bag 92019,
>Auckland, New Zealand
>Fax: 64 9-373 7014
>Telephone: 64 9 373 7599 ext. 8981 or 7276
Don't worry I'm sure 1 Aus will sink if it looks like winning!!
Mark Roberts
Australian Writing OnLine
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 20 Apr 1995 21:27:23 -0400
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Tom Mandel <tmandel@UMD5.UMD.EDU>
Subject: Re: re-politics again
Poetry may analyze as it may praise or criticize embrace or
shun. The claim that poetry is political is an altogether
different claim that all human life is political, a conviction
that individual life, individual consciousness, individual
action, occur subsequent to a political placement out of which
that individual that individuality grows. This is minimally
the claim; it is a simple one and to my way of thinking (I
mean my way of experiencing the world and the sum of those
experiences as well) it is true.
Authors, language, rhyme in no/every sense, these do not
exist in an eternity of unplaced place. Ideas are not in
dialogue but all humans are, those dead as those alive.
The life of the word, what we call poetry, is this emergent
fact or facet. To call it political is no more than to point
out that history cannot be reduced to a set of adjectives or
qualities, but is people speaking back consciously and
unconsciously out of their conditions and in response
to judgment. Poetry is out of that place, the minim
of the soul - when we can reach it - is from there too.
Paradise too, like poetry, is political.
Tom Mandel
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 20 Apr 1995 21:46:20 -0500
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Gary Sullivan <gpsj@PRIMENET.COM>
Subject: Re: Don't cut that 'Vette, hand me the Peruvian flake
In-Reply-To: <199504210146.SAA04946@mailhost.primenet.com>
Dear Tom:
>Peruvian flake?
Sure.
>Is it alright to mention Peruvian flake on the Internet now that Newt
et. al. have staged their conceptual coup of the Infobahn?
Newt et al. can kiss my arrogant young ass.
>Does anybody remember Peruvian flake?
Obviously.
>Remember anything before Peruvian flake?
Yes, but it'd take a hell of a lot of Peruvian flake to
kick-start the ol' memory. & by that time, who'd care?
>Chris, I'm delighted by your notion that time in Stillwater (or other)
Prison wd be drug-free.
Steve, I said "drugless" -- would you believe me, if I said I'd meant
"less drugs"? (I didn't, but, you know, "work with me here" ...)
>Just say no?
Never.
>On the 'vette; please! It's fiberglass and won't rust.
When Dan Davidson & George Albon & I'd go out bookhunting, if we
found an item all of us wanted (& simultaneously grabbed for), we'd
play: "Who Would Appreciate This Most?" Each had a couple of
minutes to whine, grovel, recite, make magnificent claims as to
"how many years" [Dan, George or] "I have been looking for this,"
etc. In this instance, because of my ignorance as to what the ding-
danged *body* of the car is made of, I think Hank'd win.
>I'd never push it on you.
Thanks. Don't back it up over me, either.
>Hank, break out the driving gloves.
Ibid.
Yours,
Gary
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 21 Apr 1995 15:47:16 GMT+1200
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Tony Green <t.green@AUCKLAND.AC.NZ>
Organization: The University of Auckland
Subject: Re: 1st mark
>Unreliable too. 1 Aus is ahead, not Team NZ.
Mark Roberts writes:" Don't worry I'm sure 1 Aus will sink if it
looks like winning!!
It was weird the newsflash came up. I half read it, assumed that NZ
was winning. But of course I had to get it off screen to go on
writing. And simply read what I "wanted" to happen..
Do you know what is happening with the superleague. I got that wrong
too it seems abt the Warriors.?
Tony Green,
e-mail: t.green@auckland.ac.nz
post: Dept of Art History,
University of Auckland,
Private Bag 92019,
Auckland, New Zealand
Fax: 64 9-373 7014
Telephone: 64 9 373 7599 ext. 8981 or 7276
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 21 Apr 1995 15:39:18 GMT+1200
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Tony Green <t.green@AUCKLAND.AC.NZ>
Organization: The University of Auckland
Subject: Re: re-politics again
> The relation between something called poetry and something called
> politics is deeply obscure. My sentence ran.
Tom Mandel writes:
# Tony, I'd like you to unpack the logic of this assertion. In what
sense(s) is this an obscure relation? Do you mean that the relationship
of Dante's poetry to the politics of his life or era is "obscure?" (I
assume not).
Oh but yes, selva oscura as it gets -- concerned with the moral
behaviour of contemporaries, can be read as if it were journalism. I
guess you mean it can be done with the *poetry * of Dante. Does that
though finish with it, does its effort and effect end there, or does
that leave a large remainder of unread aspect.
#Do you simply# (no I'm writing out of confused complexity) # mean these
relations are difficult or complicated?# Complicated by the
verse or song. And I agree, good thing that complexity.
# do you mean the relations between two abstractions "poetry" and
"politics" are what is obscure? #
Yes, it is terminology
that I'm bothered by. Not so much "abstractions" as very slippery
words.
Politics seems in the context of writing to cover sometimes
(often? usually?) the topic about which writing states positions and makes
arguments. There's a bbbut there, isn't there? Is that all that
the poem does? It can also be extended to consideration of the stance
implied by address to audience, publication. But isn't there
"something "in the movement of the hearer trough the perfomrance of the
poem (especially heard, but also read as if said or sung) that is
working?
" Poetry" in the context of political views and opinions tends to be
treated as instrumental.
#Watch out, that smacks of theory!#
Yes, of course, "smacks of", but what *theory* is that then?
"To say that poetry is always political collapses one into the
other." I said. Ken says "only political" would be more
appropriate there.
# To say that live beings are always breathing is reductive?#
Analogy has its moments. This may be one of them, but I don't think
so.
Montale, I've read a little of and I guess you're right there.
I'm not frightened by politics and by theory. But those, as
discourses, or topics, sometimes claim the right to the last word
in critical judgment and prescription. That, as I see it, is out of
order. (And isn't that what is complained of in the New Criticism?)
Tony Green,
e-mail: t.green@auckland.ac.nz
post: Dept of Art History,
University of Auckland,
Private Bag 92019,
Auckland, New Zealand
Fax: 64 9-373 7014
Telephone: 64 9 373 7599 ext. 8981 or 7276
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 21 Apr 1995 10:47:21 +0000
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: cris cheek <cris@SLANG.DEMON.CO.UK>
Subject: throttled by angels
When i was learning to read (aged 5-7) my dad would regularly read me 'The
Jabberwocky' or 'The Courtship of the Yongy-Bongy Bo' at bedtime. Left an
indelible impression re - playfulness and word invention, edge between
seeming nonsense and almost understanding being delightfully teased or
exquisitely interfered with.
School gave flashes in amongst the Chaucer / Shakespeare of something more
'parallel'. But, at that time, the short poems by Wordsworth or Keats or
Donne I was accessed to seemed too neat to interface with the complexities
of life as I was growing into it. I went to the same school as
Manley-Hopkins and liked his sound (particularly in something like 'Harry
Ploughman') but suspected his beliefs.
Primary influence was Jimi Hendrix (my socks spontaneously combusted!) -
seeing him in concert a couple of times when i was 12 years old (including
the guitar burning at the Albert Hall). The inter-related line between
improvisation and composition - melody, rhythm and noise in dynamic
tension - sensuality of engagement with textures of consciousness -
railing against closure - inclusion of failure - embracing energies.
Got me into poetry. Left school determined to learn something.
Hung out as a seventeen year old in bookshops and hit the Rimbaud / de
Nerval / Lautremont / Baudelaire / Jarry / Arp / Tzara trail pretty hard.
Also Shelley / Thomas Love Peacock and Blake.
At nineteen i 'lucked out' in meeting Eric Mottram, Allen Fisher, Bob
Cobbing, Bill Griffiths and many others. But between the four of them they
introduced me to poets from all of the Americas, art movements such as
Fluxus, Lettrism, DIAS and Mail Art, Sound Poetry and Text-Sound
Composition and Early English poetry (in particular Icelandic, Norse and
Anglo-Saxon fragments).
A few things to be going on with.
Over the past three weeks I've been reading Lorca and Brecht and yes Spicer
and listening to Tricky.
cris
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 21 Apr 1995 10:04:32 -0400
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Michael Boughn <mboughn@EPAS.UTORONTO.CA>
Subject: Politcal poultry
All poetry is political?
Well, all politics is spiritual. All religion is aesthetic.
Are these propositions anything more than an exercise in forcing one
human activity to signify in the terms of another? A violent translation
of one order of meaning into another? An assertion of the bottomless
interconnectednesss of every gesture we make?
Name the one that's true and you name your dream of foundation and kneel
before your priests (who Blake called Druids because of their sacrifice
of the human).
Mike
mboughn@epas.utoronto.ca
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 21 Apr 1995 09:55:47 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Joe Amato <HUMAMATO@MINNA.ACC.IIT.EDU>
Subject: Re: Politcal poultry
mike and others: if "all poetry is political" strikes you as a truism,
perhaps that's because you're operating out of (or in) a context (by which
i mean to say a historically situated place) in which such a statement is
viewed as such... where i've spent most of my time (in industry, and in
academe) MOST of the folks i've run into OBJECT to this assertion... despite
all of the brouhaha associated with pc and cultural studies and and and,
fact is a clear majority of academics (which includes in my anecdotal
recollection at least three generations of same) as well as a clear majority
of factory workers (blue, white and baby blue collar) would not quite
understand at first glance the connection twixt the poetic and the political...
all by way of saying, without going on too too long, that there's surely
a context *against which* "all poetry is political" resonates as something
other than a truism... so i take you to be saying that that context is
not particularly interesting, pertinent, what have you... but then i'd want
you to clarify how it is you perceive that context... quickly, from my pov,
the assertion gains currency as a connoisseurship notion of art loses
currency...
what do you say?...
joe
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 21 Apr 1995 09:55:12 CDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: eric pape <ENPAPE@LSUVM.SNCC.LSU.EDU>
Subject: Re: re-politics again
In-Reply-To: Message of Fri, 21 Apr 1995 15:39:18 GMT+1200 from
<t.green@AUCKLAND.AC.NZ>
Let's say that something escapes, something transcends, soemthing goes
beyond. Let's just say that.
What would it go beyond, what would be escaped? Onlyexchange.
Isn't it entirely political to say, in the context of all out
monopoly capitalism, that something escapes colonialization,
even if all we are saying is that some small part of some
art is all that goes beyond?
To say that, I think, would not be to "collapse art into the
political" at all but would in fact make a very bold claim
for art.
Thanks, Eric.
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 21 Apr 1995 11:14:24 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Edward Foster <EFOSTER@VAXC.STEVENS-TECH.EDU>
Subject: Re: re-politics again
careful, tom, using the word "political" as you do makes it mushy, i think, rather like yet another oversoul or collective unconscious, a good ground for theoretical elaborations, it may be, but in poetry, enough?
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 21 Apr 1995 11:23:02 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Edward Foster <EFOSTER@VAXC.STEVENS-TECH.EDU>
Subject: Re: poeticslist serve and desire / the 39 steps
not to move across the lot: these forests and the one to kneel. so i am, and in this watch him gather close. poet, there is nothing left to choose, or as the wise one said: be like god.
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 21 Apr 1995 13:20:00 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Loss Glazier <lolpoet@ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU>
Subject: Tyuonyi
Does anyone have a current address for Tyuonyi? Is it still being
published? Any mail I send gets returned...
Loss
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 21 Apr 1995 13:59:27 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Pierre Joris <joris@CSC.ALBANY.EDU>
Subject: Human Rights in Russia (fwd)
Forwarded message:
From GQuasha@aol.com Fri Apr 21 13:47:03 1995
From: GQuasha@aol.com
Date: Fri, 21 Apr 1995 13:43:51 -0400
Message-Id: <950421134350_91249566@aol.com>
To: 74404.1141@compuserve.com
Cc: 100043.1433@compuserve.com, Gary.Roy@tigerteam.com, secsra01@sivm.si.edu,
ikremen@acpub.duke.edu, DJB85, Joris, JRothenberg@ucsd.edu,
kallus@vms.huji.ac.il, norml@cruzio.com, umadk2@emh7.korea.army.mil,
Birrell@well.com, PEM@aol.com
Subject: Human Rights in Russia
Please help forward this to conscious beings everywhere. Thanks, GQ
---------------------
Forwarded message:
From: g.carlson1@genie.geis.com
To: 0003213076@mcimail.com, 100433.2236@compuserve.com,
71020.263@compuserve.com, 74740.506@compuserve.com,
75541.1673@compuserve.com, alanflo@interlog.com, becky@lclark.edu,
billp@pacifier.com, brooke.f@bonair.stanford.edu,
carla.j.perkins@state.or.us, dharma@netcom.com, dorothy@analogy.com,
doway@mhv.net, fmiller@teleport.com, gauthier@u.washington.edu,
gquasha@aol.com, haridass@aol.com, huyer@oce.orst.edu, jcbaran@aol.com,
karlm@cray.com, lnelson@fred.fhcrc.org, mccollum@ohsu.edu, mvetanen@aol.com,
olsonbeat@aol.com, paulconrad@aol.com, ramabai@aol.com,
rmishaga@pdx.ms.ch2m.com, ruhaniat@aol.com, sandyp@teleport.com,
shambhsun@aol.com, sharonsz@aol.com, stirling@darkwing.uoregon.edu,
tarabg@aol.com, tricycle@echonyc.com, vkc@plaza.ds.adp.com
Date: 95-04-21 01:26:17 EDT
This was forwarded to me recently. Make of it what you will. Kyogen
--------------------------------------------------------------------
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sun, 16 Apr 1995 19:14:57 -0700
From: Gary Lee Betts <gbetts@teleport.com>
To: kbretsch@teleport.com
Subject: nice
I received the following from a Czech mathematician friend of mine.
I should forward you a letter from three Russian mathematicians
- I'd be wondering whether anyone in the States cares about what's
going on in Russia. just explain you what's so important on this
letter - those three guys are definitely one of the best Russian
mathematicians of younger generation (between 30-40). One of them
- Drinfeld is a Fields medailist and he was first who introduced
quantum groups and recognized their importance in math. physics.
He's spent his whole life in Kharkov where he's still working,
in contrast to many Russian mathematician (usually of the world
top level) who immediately after 1990 escaped Russia and took
prof positions at prestigious universities over the world.
LETTER
Dear friends,
We are compelled to write to you from the feeling that terrible
crimes committed by Russian authorities and armed forces in Chechnya
are not accidental, and that we are all responsible for them.
These crimes, according to the testimony of the journalists,
defenders of human rights, and mothers of the soldiers fighting
there, include not only bombing towns and villages inhabited by
civilians but also the capturing of hostages, robberies, organization
of filtration camps where people, incarcerated on the basis of
their race, are cruelly beaten, tortured, maimed and murdered.
All these actions should be characterized as GENOCIDE and
Crime against Humanity. And they can not be considered merely as
an internal affair of Russia.
Chechen crisis is not accidental. It reveals the criminal
essence of the political regime that is being formed in Russia.
The most dangerous aspect of the present situation is the absence
of a clear appreciation of this fact.
Instead in the public opinion, especially in the West, there
still exists the myth that Russia is moving towards democracy and
reforms and, unless Yeltsin is supported, fascists of the type of
Zhirinovsky will take over.
We consider this opinion as deeply erroneous. Supporting
democracy and human rights by words, the regime is persecuting
them in the cynical and brutal way. Many facts give evidence for
this, such as beatings and killings of the honest journalists and
human rights defenders who get and publish information dangerous
for the regime, criminal and corrupted methods of the privatization,
and many other things. Now there is an attempt of annihilation
of a whole nation.
Acting by fascist methods the regime uses Zhirinovsky and
the threat of fascism for manipulating public opinion.
Russia is not moving by the path of democracy and human
rights. A new regime, unusual in its cruelty and falsehood, is
being born.
Whether the criminal regime or democracy with human face
will take over in Russia, will in the first place depend on people
in Russia, our ability to understand the danger and take
responsibility, our courage and will to stand against evil.
However the realization by people in the West of the true
state of affairs in Russia and the support of democracy, not
Yeltsin, are also crucial.
We ask your help in spreading our letter.
A.Belavin (e-mail: belavin@cft.sherna.msk.su)
V.Drinfeld (drinfeld@ilt.kharkov.ua)
B.Feigin (feigin@ium.ac.msk.su)
=======================================================================
Pierre Joris | He who wants to escape the world, translates it.
Dept. of English | --Henri Michaux
SUNY Albany |
Albany NY 12222 | "Herman has taken to writing poetry. You
tel&fax:(518) 426 0433 | need not tell anyone, for you know how
email: | such things get around."
joris@cnsunix.albany.edu| --Mrs. Melville in a letter to her mother.
=======================================================================
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 21 Apr 1995 14:09:16 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Pierre Joris <joris@CSC.ALBANY.EDU>
Subject: Human Rights in Russia (fwd)
Forwarded message:
From GQuasha@aol.com Fri Apr 21 13:47:03 1995
From: GQuasha@aol.com
Date: Fri, 21 Apr 1995 13:43:51 -0400
Message-Id: <950421134350_91249566@aol.com>
To: 74404.1141@compuserve.com
Cc: 100043.1433@compuserve.com, Gary.Roy@tigerteam.com, secsra01@sivm.si.edu,
ikremen@acpub.duke.edu, DJB85, Joris, JRothenberg@ucsd.edu,
kallus@vms.huji.ac.il, norml@cruzio.com, umadk2@emh7.korea.army.mil,
Birrell@well.com, PEM@aol.com
Subject: Human Rights in Russia
Please help forward this to conscious beings everywhere. Thanks, GQ
---------------------
Forwarded message:
From: g.carlson1@genie.geis.com
To: 0003213076@mcimail.com, 100433.2236@compuserve.com,
71020.263@compuserve.com, 74740.506@compuserve.com,
75541.1673@compuserve.com, alanflo@interlog.com, becky@lclark.edu,
billp@pacifier.com, brooke.f@bonair.stanford.edu,
carla.j.perkins@state.or.us, dharma@netcom.com, dorothy@analogy.com,
doway@mhv.net, fmiller@teleport.com, gauthier@u.washington.edu,
gquasha@aol.com, haridass@aol.com, huyer@oce.orst.edu, jcbaran@aol.com,
karlm@cray.com, lnelson@fred.fhcrc.org, mccollum@ohsu.edu, mvetanen@aol.com,
olsonbeat@aol.com, paulconrad@aol.com, ramabai@aol.com,
rmishaga@pdx.ms.ch2m.com, ruhaniat@aol.com, sandyp@teleport.com,
shambhsun@aol.com, sharonsz@aol.com, stirling@darkwing.uoregon.edu,
tarabg@aol.com, tricycle@echonyc.com, vkc@plaza.ds.adp.com
Date: 95-04-21 01:26:17 EDT
This was forwarded to me recently. Make of it what you will. Kyogen
--------------------------------------------------------------------
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sun, 16 Apr 1995 19:14:57 -0700
From: Gary Lee Betts <gbetts@teleport.com>
To: kbretsch@teleport.com
Subject: nice
I received the following from a Czech mathematician friend of mine.
I should forward you a letter from three Russian mathematicians
- I'd be wondering whether anyone in the States cares about what's
going on in Russia. just explain you what's so important on this
letter - those three guys are definitely one of the best Russian
mathematicians of younger generation (between 30-40). One of them
- Drinfeld is a Fields medailist and he was first who introduced
quantum groups and recognized their importance in math. physics.
He's spent his whole life in Kharkov where he's still working,
in contrast to many Russian mathematician (usually of the world
top level) who immediately after 1990 escaped Russia and took
prof positions at prestigious universities over the world.
LETTER
Dear friends,
We are compelled to write to you from the feeling that terrible
crimes committed by Russian authorities and armed forces in Chechnya
are not accidental, and that we are all responsible for them.
These crimes, according to the testimony of the journalists,
defenders of human rights, and mothers of the soldiers fighting
there, include not only bombing towns and villages inhabited by
civilians but also the capturing of hostages, robberies, organization
of filtration camps where people, incarcerated on the basis of
their race, are cruelly beaten, tortured, maimed and murdered.
All these actions should be characterized as GENOCIDE and
Crime against Humanity. And they can not be considered merely as
an internal affair of Russia.
Chechen crisis is not accidental. It reveals the criminal
essence of the political regime that is being formed in Russia.
The most dangerous aspect of the present situation is the absence
of a clear appreciation of this fact.
Instead in the public opinion, especially in the West, there
still exists the myth that Russia is moving towards democracy and
reforms and, unless Yeltsin is supported, fascists of the type of
Zhirinovsky will take over.
We consider this opinion as deeply erroneous. Supporting
democracy and human rights by words, the regime is persecuting
them in the cynical and brutal way. Many facts give evidence for
this, such as beatings and killings of the honest journalists and
human rights defenders who get and publish information dangerous
for the regime, criminal and corrupted methods of the privatization,
and many other things. Now there is an attempt of annihilation
of a whole nation.
Acting by fascist methods the regime uses Zhirinovsky and
the threat of fascism for manipulating public opinion.
Russia is not moving by the path of democracy and human
rights. A new regime, unusual in its cruelty and falsehood, is
being born.
Whether the criminal regime or democracy with human face
will take over in Russia, will in the first place depend on people
in Russia, our ability to understand the danger and take
responsibility, our courage and will to stand against evil.
However the realization by people in the West of the true
state of affairs in Russia and the support of democracy, not
Yeltsin, are also crucial.
We ask your help in spreading our letter.
A.Belavin (e-mail: belavin@cft.sherna.msk.su)
V.Drinfeld (drinfeld@ilt.kharkov.ua)
B.Feigin (feigin@ium.ac.msk.su)
=======================================================================
Pierre Joris | He who wants to escape the world, translates it.
Dept. of English | --Henri Michaux
SUNY Albany |
Albany NY 12222 | "Herman has taken to writing poetry. You
tel&fax:(518) 426 0433 | need not tell anyone, for you know how
email: | such things get around."
joris@cnsunix.albany.edu| --Mrs. Melville in a letter to her mother.
=======================================================================
=======================================================================
Pierre Joris | He who wants to escape the world, translates it.
Dept. of English | --Henri Michaux
SUNY Albany |
Albany NY 12222 | "Herman has taken to writing poetry. You
tel&fax:(518) 426 0433 | need not tell anyone, for you know how
email: | such things get around."
joris@cnsunix.albany.edu| --Mrs. Melville in a letter to her mother.
=======================================================================
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 21 Apr 1995 22:31:28 +0000
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: cris cheek <cris@SLANG.DEMON.CO.UK>
Subject: Re: poeticslist serve and desire / the 39 steps
X-cc: Edward Foster <EFOSTER@vaxc.stevens-tech.edu>
and God chose four dog foods instead of three - the better to rut up his
roots and thus shit on the supplicant, without even asking! his many forms
of preference auctioned. a memory of skins (mosses) by leaf-light
refreshing
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 21 Apr 1995 22:31:35 +0000
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: cris cheek <cris@SLANG.DEMON.CO.UK>
Subject: Re: poeticslist serve and desire / the 39 steps
X-cc: Edward Foster <EFOSTER@vaxc.stevens-tech.edu>
trading a confetti floor, paged "look Book, what a lot of got!" embracing -
distance - none the wiser (vamping) "un-der-nea-th th-e spre-a-din-g
po-e-t-re-e". her nuts gathering nankum with abandon 'til death stealing
angel-days a poverty of enlightenment pinched out
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 21 Apr 1995 17:35:45 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: FUNKHOUSER CHRISTOPH <cf2785@CSC.ALBANY.EDU>
Subject: Human Rights in Russia (fwd)
Forwarded message:
From GQuasha@aol.com Fri Apr 21 13:44:42 1995
From: GQuasha@aol.com
Date: Fri, 21 Apr 1995 13:44:00 -0400
Message-Id: <950421134358_91249685@aol.com>
To: LEisenb@aol.com
Cc: AIRFLAME@aol.com, Crohnb@rpi.edu, Steven.Goodman@tigerteam.org,
jliskin@hsc.usc.edu (jackliskin), JohnB310@aol.com,
cf2785 (funkhouserchristoph), SKVOGI@aol.com, jjwebb@cruzio.com,
75464.2260@compuserve.com
Subject: Human Rights in Russia
Please help forward this to conscious beings everywhere. GQ
---------------------
Forwarded message:
From: g.carlson1@genie.geis.com
To: 0003213076@mcimail.com, 100433.2236@compuserve.com,
71020.263@compuserve.com, 74740.506@compuserve.com,
75541.1673@compuserve.com, alanflo@interlog.com, becky@lclark.edu,
billp@pacifier.com, brooke.f@bonair.stanford.edu,
carla.j.perkins@state.or.us, dharma@netcom.com, dorothy@analogy.com,
doway@mhv.net, fmiller@teleport.com, gauthier@u.washington.edu,
gquasha@aol.com, haridass@aol.com, huyer@oce.orst.edu, jcbaran@aol.com,
karlm@cray.com, lnelson@fred.fhcrc.org, mccollum@ohsu.edu, mvetanen@aol.com,
olsonbeat@aol.com, paulconrad@aol.com, ramabai@aol.com,
rmishaga@pdx.ms.ch2m.com, ruhaniat@aol.com, sandyp@teleport.com,
shambhsun@aol.com, sharonsz@aol.com, stirling@darkwing.uoregon.edu,
tarabg@aol.com, tricycle@echonyc.com, vkc@plaza.ds.adp.com
Date: 95-04-21 01:26:17 EDT
This was forwarded to me recently. Make of it what you will. Kyogen
--------------------------------------------------------------------
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sun, 16 Apr 1995 19:14:57 -0700
From: Gary Lee Betts <gbetts@teleport.com>
To: kbretsch@teleport.com
Subject: nice
I received the following from a Czech mathematician friend of mine.
I should forward you a letter from three Russian mathematicians
- I'd be wondering whether anyone in the States cares about what's
going on in Russia. just explain you what's so important on this
letter - those three guys are definitely one of the best Russian
mathematicians of younger generation (between 30-40). One of them
- Drinfeld is a Fields medailist and he was first who introduced
quantum groups and recognized their importance in math. physics.
He's spent his whole life in Kharkov where he's still working,
in contrast to many Russian mathematician (usually of the world
top level) who immediately after 1990 escaped Russia and took
prof positions at prestigious universities over the world.
LETTER
Dear friends,
We are compelled to write to you from the feeling that terrible
crimes committed by Russian authorities and armed forces in Chechnya
are not accidental, and that we are all responsible for them.
These crimes, according to the testimony of the journalists,
defenders of human rights, and mothers of the soldiers fighting
there, include not only bombing towns and villages inhabited by
civilians but also the capturing of hostages, robberies, organization
of filtration camps where people, incarcerated on the basis of
their race, are cruelly beaten, tortured, maimed and murdered.
All these actions should be characterized as GENOCIDE and
Crime against Humanity. And they can not be considered merely as
an internal affair of Russia.
Chechen crisis is not accidental. It reveals the criminal
essence of the political regime that is being formed in Russia.
The most dangerous aspect of the present situation is the absence
of a clear appreciation of this fact.
Instead in the public opinion, especially in the West, there
still exists the myth that Russia is moving towards democracy and
reforms and, unless Yeltsin is supported, fascists of the type of
Zhirinovsky will take over.
We consider this opinion as deeply erroneous. Supporting
democracy and human rights by words, the regime is persecuting
them in the cynical and brutal way. Many facts give evidence for
this, such as beatings and killings of the honest journalists and
human rights defenders who get and publish information dangerous
for the regime, criminal and corrupted methods of the privatization,
and many other things. Now there is an attempt of annihilation
of a whole nation.
Acting by fascist methods the regime uses Zhirinovsky and
the threat of fascism for manipulating public opinion.
Russia is not moving by the path of democracy and human
rights. A new regime, unusual in its cruelty and falsehood, is
being born.
Whether the criminal regime or democracy with human face
will take over in Russia, will in the first place depend on people
in Russia, our ability to understand the danger and take
responsibility, our courage and will to stand against evil.
However the realization by people in the West of the true
state of affairs in Russia and the support of democracy, not
Yeltsin, are also crucial.
We ask your help in spreading our letter.
A.Belavin (e-mail: belavin@cft.sherna.msk.su)
V.Drinfeld (drinfeld@ilt.kharkov.ua)
B.Feigin (feigin@ium.ac.msk.su)
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 21 Apr 1995 15:45:46 +0100
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Kevin Killian <dbkk@SIRIUS.COM>
Subject: Throttled by angels
My ego can't resist telling the world (at least this small world) about my
early influences. Growing up a working class in Indiana it was difficult
to find out about anything. An art teacher at my high school lent me her
copy of Moholy Nagy's Vision in Motion, an old textbook for the Institute
of Design. The last hundred pages were about "contemporary" literature,
where I learned of Joyce, Stein, the writings of the insane and children,
and surrealism. I studied this book for a couple of years, as if it were a
bible, trying to ingest a conceptual framework to hang this stuff on. The
illustration on the cover of Women's Issue of Mirage comes from this book.
Then there was Baudelaire and more Baudelaire and more Baudelaire.
I was always reading A Controversy of Poets without much understanding.
Genet was god and Violette LeDuc was the goddess.
And Sylvia Plath continues to this day to be an unending source of
inspiration. I bow down to Jacqueline Rose for FINALLY writing about Plath
with the intelligence and respect she deserves.
Dodie Bellamy
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 21 Apr 1995 15:52:28 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Spencer Selby <selby@SLIP.NET>
Subject: Re: Tyuonyi
In-Reply-To: <199504211824.LAA03655@>
Good question. If you learn the answer, let me know. And I will ask
around also.
On Fri, 21 Apr 1995, Loss Glazier wrote:
> Does anyone have a current address for Tyuonyi? Is it still being
> published? Any mail I send gets returned...
> Loss
>
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 21 Apr 1995 16:13:36 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Spencer Selby <selby@SLIP.NET>
Subject: Re: re-politics again
In-Reply-To: <199504210130.SAA16796@>
On Thu, 20 Apr 1995, Tom Mandel wrote:
>
> Authors, language, rhyme in no/every sense, these do not
> exist in an eternity of unplaced place.
This seems either an extreme exaggeration or a misunderstanding of what
I, Ed, Tony and others have maintained.
Poetry exists within all these contexts, political and otherwise. But it
also exceeds all these contexts, in so far as it is alive and has its own
artistic kind of totality. This life isn't nowhere or totally autonomous
or in eternity, but it is autonomous to the degree that it cannot be
entirely pinned down or explained. Often, if the work is very good, there
will be more disagreement than agreement regarding its positions,
meaning, significance. We can and should be concerned with the
work's positions, we can and should grapple with and even argue about the
work's value and meaning, if it comes to that. But we should do this
always keeping in mind that the work exceeds all of this thought and
discourse. To me, this is not elevating the work to some eternal beyond,
it is just showing respect for life--the same kind of respect I would
give to any living organism or entity.
Spencer Selby
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 21 Apr 1995 23:25:52 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Tom Mandel <tmandel@UMD5.UMD.EDU>
Subject: Re: re-politics again
Ed Foster writes:
"careful, tom, using the word "political" as you do makes it mushy, i
think, rather like yet another oversoul or collective unconscious, a
good ground for theoretical elaborations, it may be, but in poetry,
enough?"
in response, I guess, to my:
"Authors, language, rhyme in no/every sense, these do not
exist in an eternity of unplaced place. Ideas are not in
dialogue but all humans are, those dead as those alive.
The life of the word, what we call poetry, is this emergent
fact or facet."
"I guess" in the sense that I can't find anything else in my words that
reasonably could suggest "politics" in relation to (much less "rather like")
"yet another oversoul."
But, my words really read the opposite, don't they, Ed? People in dialogue.
The part the dead play in this dialogue is me echoing Bakhtin's beautiful
words:
"There is no first or last discourse, and dialogical context
knows no limits...At every moment of the dialogue, there are
immense and unlimited masses of forgotten meanings, but, in
some subsequent moments, as the dialogue moves forward they
will return to memory and live in renewed form...Nothing is
absolutely dead: every meaning will celebrate its rebirth."
(I've just cut/pasted that from some notes of mine on B; can't supply
the reference immediately, but wd find it for anyone interested.)
In other words, I don't think I'm occulting the poetic object by
calling it political, merely pointing out the act of witness and
the transmission thereof, which is something that comes back and
is capable of new meaning. The specificity and multiplicity of each
poetic act arise out of the political condition of that witness.
No doubt I'm simply convinced, and my puzzlement that anyone should
not just and plainly see that as the difference between one language
and another is a political fact, so is the difference between one
word and another - and so is the rhyme between one word and another...
this puzzlement I say must just be me thinking a thing straightforward
which to another doesn't exist...
It's funny, Ron Silliman and I first encountered each other nearly
twenty years ago on a panel at Intersection (in SF) called "Politics
& Poetry" where I said more or less what I'm saying now. (I say "encountered"
because we'd certainly met a few times before, but never entered
any kind of dialogue).
My argument that night long ago turned on a passage quoted from
Mao's little red book, beginning "Where do correct ideas come
from?"
I don't think they fall from the sky. No oversouls.
Tom Mandel
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 21 Apr 1995 21:24:20 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: AARON SHURIN <ashurin@MERCURY.SFSU.EDU>
Subject: Re Mandel/Mao
In-Reply-To: <9504220328.AA28012@mercury.sfsu.edu>
There are no correct ideas.
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Date: Sat, 22 Apr 1995 01:19:42 -0400
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From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@PANIX.COM>
Subject: Re: Re Mandel/Mao
In-Reply-To: <199504220429.AAA29862@panix4.panix.com>
On Fri, 21 Apr 1995, AARON SHURIN wrote:
> There are no correct ideas.
Your idea is incorrect.
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Date: Sat, 22 Apr 1995 01:43:40 -0500
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From: Mn Center For Book Arts <mcba@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
Subject: Re: Re Mandel/Mao
In-Reply-To: <2f9886134d24002@maroon.tc.umn.edu>
On Fri, 21 Apr 1995, AARON SHURIN wrote:
> There are no correct ideas.
>
Are there, then, any incorrect ideas?
Or are all ideas incorrect?
charles alexander
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Date: Sat, 22 Apr 1995 10:58:21 +0000
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From: cris cheek <cris@SLANG.DEMON.CO.UK>
Subject: the 38 (?) steps / the 39 steps
as Herb Levy kindly pointed out this post should in fact read:
trading a confetti floor, paged "look Book, what a lot of got!" embracing -
distance - none the wiser (vamping) "un-der-nea-th th-e spre-a-din-g
po-e-t-re-e". her nuts gathering nankum with abandon 'til death stealing
angel-days a poverty of enlightenment pinched out -
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Date: Sat, 22 Apr 1995 08:35:40 -0400
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From: Michael Boughn <mboughn@EPAS.UTORONTO.CA>
Subject: Re: Political poultry
In-Reply-To: <199504211633.MAA29355@jazz.epas.utoronto.ca> from "Joe Amato" at
Apr 21, 95 09:55:47 am
Dear Joe:
Well, if you find yourself on the horns of that dilemma, I guess
you've gotta use what you've got to get what you need.
Just don't forget where your categories come from, and what they do to
the world.
And be careful what you think you need, because you just might get it.
Aphoristically yours,
Mike
mboughn@epas.utoronto.ca
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Date: Sat, 22 Apr 1995 06:12:17 -0700
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From: "Sheila E. Murphy" <semurphy@INDIRECT.COM>
Subject: CHANGE OF ADDRESS
Please note new address for Sheila E. Murphy, effective immediately.
Thanks.
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 22 Apr 1995 10:50:33 CDT
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From: eric pape <ENPAPE@LSUVM.SNCC.LSU.EDU>
Subject: Re: Re Mandel/Mao
In-Reply-To: Message of Sat, 22 Apr 1995 01:43:40 -0500 from
<mcba@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
"Are there then any incorrect ideas?"
I find it funny such a question is asked (however rhetorically) in the wake
of the Oklahoma City bombing, where it now seems apparent that the car
bomb was placed by a rightist militia group, or someone associated with a
rightist militia group (already, on NET �an ultraconservative sydicated
network popular here� they are bemoaning the "lefty media" that is
"persecuting" these militia groups).
Ed, the elephants, big dumb creatures that they are, have turned to wolves
(no harm to actual animals was intended by his post). And the thing is,
they've already started feeding.
Thanks, Eric.
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Date: Sat, 22 Apr 1995 12:39:52 -0500
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From: Edward Foster <EFOSTER@VAXC.STEVENS-TECH.EDU>
Subject: Re: Throttled by angels
dodie, i share, in some degree, that pleasure in plath, and only wish someone, surely not an academic, could salvage her from those who use her for ends she never imagined. -ed
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Date: Sat, 22 Apr 1995 12:43:43 -0500
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From: Edward Foster <EFOSTER@VAXC.STEVENS-TECH.EDU>
Subject: Re: re-politics again
i think that's absolutely right, spencer; otherwise, the integrity is reflectionand the work loses its joy.
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Date: Sat, 22 Apr 1995 12:49:13 -0500
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From: Edward Foster <EFOSTER@VAXC.STEVENS-TECH.EDU>
Subject: Re: re-politics again
no, tom, i don't think one writes in that emphasis; bakhtin is actually pernicious, seeing movement in the work as in the experience as namable rather than merely manifest. i have no problem with "occult" but with "theologians" (such as jung).
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Date: Sat, 22 Apr 1995 12:54:57 -0500
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From: Edward Foster <EFOSTER@VAXC.STEVENS-TECH.EDU>
Subject: Re: Re Mandel/Mao
true, eric, and that's why a safari is called for, the trouble being that it is a diversion from the real work. still, i guess from time to time you have to sweep the floor and sharpen the pencils.
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Date: Sat, 22 Apr 1995 23:14:32 -0700
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From: Lindz Williamson <lmichell@UNIXG.UBC.CA>
Subject: Re: Definition: Language Poetry
In-Reply-To: <199504190857.BAA03161@unixg.ubc.ca>
On Wed, 19 Apr 1995, Blair Seagram wrote:
> I have seen the problems that arose with definitions of post modern and
> deconstruction. I sometimes wonder if it has to do with their use in
> several disciplines or is it that we are still too close to it.
>
> I am wondering if someone can give me a definition or several of language
> poetry.
>
> Blair
>
I'm interested in the concept of language poetry, writing into and away
from language. Poetic manipulation of form and connotation is an art form
that I quite admire. I also wonder if we are somewhat too close to
define post modernism, although I consider myself too young to ever be a
post modernist. I was recently writing on Atwood and Marian Engel and both
of them admitted they never consciously wrote in a post modern frame of
mind, yet their wrote is typically suited to this genre.
Any thoughts?
Lindz
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Date: Sun, 23 Apr 1995 09:36:22 -0700
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From: Carl Lynden Peters <clpeters@SFU.CA>
Subject: definitions...
dear blair and lindz,
you've ruined it once you've defined it
best,
carl
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Date: Sun, 23 Apr 1995 09:44:21 -0700
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From: Carl Lynden Peters <clpeters@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: genre!?
...can someone tell me what a postmodern genre is? --i mean just the word
genre, itself, that's a dirty word, right -- (??
and who/m really thinks and writes in terms of genre anymore. maybe it's
me, i know, i hate the word. but i,m interested in hearing what you think...
best,
carl
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Date: Sun, 23 Apr 1995 10:00:51 -0700
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From: Ryan Knighton <knighton@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: Definition: Language Poetry
In-Reply-To: <199504231535.IAA19877@whistler.sfu.ca> from "Lindz Williamson"
at Apr 22, 95 11:14:32 pm
It's interesting this should come up right now. I was talking
with Georges (STanley and Bowering) the other night and Stanley
raised that wonderful Spicer quote "language is the furniture in
the room". But he placed an emphasis on it I hadn't heard before:
"language is _only_ the furniture in the room". I love the
analogy but I don't know if I agree with "only". I tend to
feel that Blaser is right: language is never a tool that one
employs or a device or anything like that. It is older than
you, it is bigger than you and if anything it employs you.
The other issue which was hot in our talk was the potential
of language poetry. What more can it do? Its role in the
feminist discourse is essential, I think. But when history
is interrogated syntactically and the fragments are thrown
to the wind, what or can anything be erected in its place?
)no phallic pun intended( Than again, everything's still
kinda fuzzy so we may have been talking about something else.
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 23 Apr 1995 14:43:00 EST
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From: kathryne lindberg <KLINDBE@WAYNEST1.BITNET>
Subject: Re: re-politics again
In-Reply-To: Message of Fri, 21 Apr 1995 11:14:24 -0500 from
<EFOSTER@VAXC.STEVENS-TECH.EDU>
every once in a regretable while something like an Aristotelean moment
descends. Therefore
I want to say something like
everything that is directed even individually to/from people is
polis/political
The study of the cause effect and cost effectiveness of any communications
might be called Politics. Then, again, it might be called Rhetoric.
Now and AGAIN, it might be called Poetics.
When such moments roughly related to Aristotle strike, I try to remind
myself that Aristotle was after discursive power, in need of throwing off
Plato, struck by a categorical imperative that would, in the fullness of
Hericlitan time,travel under names like Hegel, Kant, and yourselves.
In any case, when one says poetry is political, nothing much has been said.
Neigh pa, it's just the old Trojan Horse fucking around at Oedipal
and editorial crossroads making us mulishly repeat old saws. Whether in
French or cross-linguistically, poetry and politics partake, punningly,
of more references than one would wish to police--in this lifetime.
Both terms, it seems to me, participate in a general effort to get from
this one here to you all out there; both, intimately involved in choosing
or bearing an assigned ethos/position, involve us everywhere and all the time.
Once again to mistranslate, Jacques Derrida, there is no outside to the
interstices. For this condition poetry--rather poetics--and/or politics is
a prodcutive moniker, if not a proper name or useful category. No?
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Date: Sun, 23 Apr 1995 12:24:01 +0100
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From: Kevin Killian <dbkk@SIRIUS.COM>
Subject: Re: re-politics again
>every once in a regretable while something like an Aristotelean moment
>descends.
Bravo, Kathryne!
Dodie Bellamy
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Date: Sun, 23 Apr 1995 13:59:42 -0700
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From: Carl Lynden Peters <clpeters@SFU.CA>
Subject: : Language Poetry
ryan,
when i think of language poetry, i think of creeley.
best,
carl
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 24 Apr 1995 09:37:27 GMT+1200
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From: Tony Green <t.green@AUCKLAND.AC.NZ>
Organization: The University of Auckland
Subject: Re: Definition: Language Poetry
My machine would not oblige
--Beep beep cannot answer question. Beep Search for Dictionary
Definition INCOMPLETE: State dictionary-protocols. Search for Expanded
Definition for Encyclopaedia Entry INCOMPLETE: State
encyclopaedia-protocols. Beep.
I tried Definition as clarification of essence; as setting of category
limits?
-- beep beep beeep INAPPROPRIATE PROCEDURES.
Conclusions: Attitude and positioning factors in writer-reader relations,
i.e.specifics of attempts at organization or re-organization of
political relations in writing-reading, most likely open-ended
discourse as description/hermeneutics of LangPo.
Attempts to descry
a common style, characteristics etc, characteristic biographies,
reinserts LangPo in the discourses that it seeks to oppose: there's
something! an opposition of discourses, something positive to get on
with. Seekers for definitions need to ask themselves a lot of
questions about the epistemology (I typed * epistewmology *) and the
systems of learning and their protocols implied by DEFINITION when
applied to materials not easily subjected to Cartesian mathesis, i.e.
the human sciences, arts (as we understand them).
The thing to do is to begin reading and check out what is happening
in the reading. L=etc magazine is obviously crucial. If anyone has
read through that, the question of definition probably could not
arise.
Is the purpose of definition to create a category of experiences in
literature that can be explained BEFORE the texts themselves are
attempted? I'd begin with Peter Seaton's THE SON MASTER and his
critical writing as well, just to begin with something tough
to read...
It is an interesting fact (as CB has indicated) that several exacting
NYC "Language Writers" are not on this list.
Tony Green,
e-mail: t.green@auckland.ac.nz
post: Dept of Art History,
University of Auckland,
Private Bag 92019,
Auckland, New Zealand
Fax: 64 9-373 7014
Telephone: 64 9 373 7599 ext. 8981 or 7276
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 24 Apr 1995 09:59:11 GMT+1200
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From: Tony Green <t.green@AUCKLAND.AC.NZ>
Organization: The University of Auckland
Subject: Re: re-politics again
Kathryne Lindberg's comments, interesting. Add to bibliography the
essay "L'ART ETAIT UN NOM PROPRE" in T De Duve" Au Nom de L'art" Ed
de Minuit. 1988. esp pp.55-61 "Exit".
Tony Green,
e-mail: t.green@auckland.ac.nz
post: Dept of Art History,
University of Auckland,
Private Bag 92019,
Auckland, New Zealand
Fax: 64 9-373 7014
Telephone: 64 9 373 7599 ext. 8981 or 7276
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 24 Apr 1995 01:15:01 +0000
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From: cris cheek <cris@SLANG.DEMON.CO.UK>
Subject: new series, first publication
Public Works announces its first publication:
Spanish Poems
by Elizabeth Burns
This sequence, excerpted in Mirage Periodical, of poems originally
written in Spanish, finds the poet drawing, Beckett-like, on the
directness of another tongue to articulate herself through difficulty
in the most plangent lyric. Burns translates herself back into English
at the foot of every page. The Spanish reads like a primer text
for beginning students to the language, so one can feel one's way with
the aid of the translations. Its statements, of course, would appear
in no existing primer text for teaching Spanish; they are passionate
and surreal and political all, and their respect for the way that the
surface of language, and the digressions of surrealism, can in fact
lead one to one's subject, rather than the other way around, brings
contemporary American experimentalism in touch with Spanish poetry,
promising some of the important cultural exchange already in place
with current Russian poetry.
Subscribers to this series, including forthcoming work by Juliana Spahr
and Lizbeth Keiler, welcome. Exchanges of books considered as payment.
Please contact the series editor, Ira Lightman, at I.LIGHTMAN@UEA.AC.UK
or 48 Gloucester Street, Norwich, NR2 2DX.
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Date: Sun, 23 Apr 1995 23:46:38 -0400
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From: Kenneth Sherwood <V001PXFU@UBVMS.BITNET>
Organization: University at Buffalo
Subject: Poe(li)tics
As I'm reading Bakhtin at present, I was surprised to hear him called
'pernicious.' Is this because (in Marxist fashion) his politics
exceeds his poetry? Or is there some other gripe?
I like Mike Boughn's formulation (poetry is political, religion:
aesthetic, etc.) about forcing of once category of human activity
to signify in terms of another. I assume M. means it as a point
against so forcing poetry, escpecially allowing it to be subsumed
by the political.
It's just because 'politics' seems so able to swallow the world
that I want to jam poetry in its mouth and dare it to swallow.
Isn't this part of what Charles Olson, Susan Howe, Rosemarie
Waldrop, Walt Whitman, William Blake, et al engage in their
poetry?
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Date: Sun, 23 Apr 1995 22:00:01 +0100
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From: Kevin Killian <dbkk@SIRIUS.COM>
Subject: Throttling
From Kevin Killian: I don't remember what poets we read in school. The
book we had to read was called "A Separate Peace." But I remember being
furious and moping around my parents' house when Time magazine said Frank
O'Hara had been killed by a dune buggy on Fire Island.
I was very pouty for weeks & my dad said, "Why don't you write to Louis
Zukofsky?" I perkled up & asked him who he was. He didn't really know,
but LZ had been on the same TV program (NET) that O'Hara was. "And plus,"
he said, "he lives in Port Jefferson. And he's always writing letters to
the editor" [of our nearby paper, The Port Jefferson "Record"]-"complaining
about this or that."
Well I got on my bike, I was like 13 or 14, and headed to Port Jefferson
which was about 10 miles away and went to the house of Louis Zukofsky. He
would always write letters to the paper about traffic in front of his
house, etc.
He was not happy to see me-I don't think he cared for school children. I
was about 13. He was a mean curmudgeon, but the garden was beautiful to my
eyes. I resolved as soon as I was old enough to get a drivers license, to
take a big station wagon and drive right through his hedges, in the middle
of the night. I think my brief encounter with Zukofsky colored the rest of
my reading of him, ever since. "99 Flowers" indeed! He wouldn't have had
1 flower left if I had had my way! Luckily my childhood anger faded by the
time I was 15 or so and started to drive. I didn't meet any other poets
until I was about 17 and met Paul Blackburn in New York. But Alex Haley
did come to our classroom & told us all about writing the "Autobiography of
Malcolm X."
I'm reading this over & I'm, like, stunned at how stupid I sound.
> Well,
> that's one version of my "THROTTLING" Any others? Chris
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 23 Apr 1995 22:31:04 -0700
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From: George Bowering <bowering@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: Definition: Language Poetry
In-Reply-To: <199504231535.IAA19877@whistler.sfu.ca> from "Lindz Williamson"
at Apr 22, 95 11:14:32 pm
Re Linz's I mean Lindz's recent swipe. I have a hard time gettinmg
around the idea of Atwood or Marian Engel as postmodern writers. As a
novelist, Atwood is primarily a writer of comedies of manners, and
quite happy to go along with agreementsd that we agree on the values
and referentialities of wqords and syntax. Engel wrote mainly
fictions about an individual who was trapped in conflicts and
situations caused by her environment. Neither of them was much into
constructing fictions but rather happy to pretend that fictions were
kind of synechdoches of life.
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 24 Apr 1995 15:55:59 GMT+1200
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Tony Green <t.green@AUCKLAND.AC.NZ>
Organization: The University of Auckland
Subject: Not a definition - 1
It is February 1978. Rae Armantrout in L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E :
" The writers I like are surprising, revelatory. They bring the
underlying structures of language/thought into consciousness."
Tony Green,
e-mail: t.green@auckland.ac.nz
post: Dept of Art History,
University of Auckland,
Private Bag 92019,
Auckland, New Zealand
Fax: 64 9-373 7014
Telephone: 64 9 373 7599 ext. 8981 or 7276
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 24 Apr 1995 07:56:29 -0700
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From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" <anielsen@SPARTA.SJSU.EDU>
Subject: Re: Don Pullen
In-Reply-To: <9503290504.AA27580@isc.sjsu.edu>
I hate to be the bearer of this kind of bad news twice in such rapid
order, but I have just learned that Don Pullen died Saturday of lymphoma.
Don was one of the great pianists and composers of our time, and, like
Julius Hemphill, he was a great friend of poets and a supporter of
communities of writers. He was only 53 when he died. As a soloist and
as the leader of a series of remarkable jazz groups, Pullen recorded
prolifically and he has left us a body of work that we will be listening
to and thinking about for generations to come.
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 24 Apr 1995 10:53:58 -0500
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From: Edward Foster <EFOSTER@VAXC.STEVENS-TECH.EDU>
Subject: Re: re-politics again
kathryne, if i read you correctly, you are insisting that poetry is necessarily, or somehow essentially, communication. well, i don't think that's true; i think you just found the bar of soap that rexroth slipped on. no one listens to poetry.
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 24 Apr 1995 08:35:22 -0700
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From: Lindz Williamson <lmichell@UNIXG.UBC.CA>
Subject: Re: Definition: Language Poetry
In-Reply-To: <199504240538.WAA02328@unixg.ubc.ca>
On Sun, 23 Apr 1995, George Bowering wrote:
> Re Linz's I mean Lindz's recent swipe. I have a hard time gettinmg
> around the idea of Atwood or Marian Engel as postmodern writers. As a
> novelist, Atwood is primarily a writer of comedies of manners, and
> quite happy to go along with agreementsd that we agree on the values
> and referentialities of wqords and syntax. Engel wrote mainly
> fictions about an individual who was trapped in conflicts and
> situations caused by her environment. Neither of them was much into
> constructing fictions but rather happy to pretend that fictions were
> kind of synechdoches of life.
>
I agree with what you've said about Atwood and Engel, but I've read a
couple articles that have classified both these writers as post modern.
Possibly this is due more to the time in which they are writing rather
than the actual style and content. I also really liked Ryan's answer.
As usual he smacked me on the nose with some thing witty and thoughtful.
Hey George, it's Linzed not Linz, remeber. See you at Art's, and hey is
Bill really picking up the tab, or is that some rumor Ryan is spreading?
LIndz
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Date: Mon, 24 Apr 1995 08:44:55 -0700
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From: Lindz Williamson <lmichell@UNIXG.UBC.CA>
Subject: Re: Definition
In-Reply-To: <199504231833.LAA24171@unixg.ubc.ca>
Ryan ,
I was at the other end of the table holding up Reg, so I missed
this conversation. WhAt exactly do you mean by feminine discourse? Are
you refering to the concept of Herstory? I was just talking to someone
the other day hos I have been taught to accept the first person male as
the typical narrative and therefore my sense of language is dominated by
masculine words. Of course this is less obvious as English appears to
neuter. I seem to remeber discussing this before online and I like that
it keeps coming up. I'm reading Ondaatje's Coming through Slaughter at
the moment and although it is mostly written from the male perspective,
he does sometimes slip into a female voice and I find it very effective.
I know I have more to say but it's too early, we'll pick this up later.
Lindz
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 24 Apr 1995 09:36:11 -0700
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Andrew Joron <ajoron@EMF.NET>
Subject: First Intensity
I would like to call attention to a worthwhile new magazine, currently in
its fourth issue, _First Intensity_. Editor Lee Chapman seems to have
learned a lot from _Talisman_'s model of providing pluralism,
unpretentious production, and a passion for innovative writing.
The mag's title comes from Pound's "Vorticism" essay: "The work of art
which is most 'worth while' is the work which would need a hundred works
of any other kind of art to explain it. . .Such works are what we call
works of the 'first intensity.'" Subscriptions are $17.oo per year
(2 issues), payable to Lee Chapman, P.O. Box 140713, Staten Island NY
10314.
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 24 Apr 1995 13:42:57 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Edward Foster <EFOSTER@VAXC.STEVENS-TECH.EDU>
Subject: Re: Poe(li)tics
no, bakhtin "pernicious" because it sounds so plausible, until one sees what's left out. also, his thinking was everywhere in academia (it seemed) ten or so years ago. or rather his thinking about. and that's what it was/is, another "about."
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 24 Apr 1995 19:18:14 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Tom Mandel <tmandel@UMD5.UMD.EDU>
Subject: Re: Re Mandel/Mao
re: "there are no correct ideas," perhaps Aaron (hi from Washington,
Aaron; come visit and give a reading) would like to expand on
this.
Shabtai Zwi, the Jewish false messiah of the 17th century, introduced
a blessing that went as follows: "Blessed be the Lord our God,
King of the universe, who permittest that which is forbidden."
Tom Mandel
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 24 Apr 1995 19:36:02 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Tom Mandel <tmandel@UMD5.UMD.EDU>
Subject: Re: First Intensity
Did not Lee Chapman's press (?) also publish a very interesting
book of poetry called _Tokenish_ ? I'm embarrassed to say
that I've forgotten the author's name and hope someone can
recall, providing biblio. details -- or am I wrong?
Tom Mandel
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 24 Apr 1995 19:27:51 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Tom Mandel <tmandel@UMD5.UMD.EDU>
Subject: Re: re-politics again
Ed, I think we'll have to disagree about Bakhtin, and maybe about
the meaning of the term "theology" too, since I don't see Jung,
who I certainly would classify as pernicious, in that light whatever.
But I'm interested in what you mean by the phrase "seeing movement
in the work as in the experience as namable rather than merely
manifest."
Without anticipating your response to that interest -- I mean it as
a query -- I would just say that "manifest" as you use the term
is to me a theological term, if a term of Greek theology and
perhaps also gnosticism rather than of Xtian theology.
To "manifest" I would not oppose "namable" but rather
speak-able, subject to commentary, to response, to something
further. Reading, again to me, is this "further" or "other"
and it makes and remakes the poem which is not an object
(again, to me) but a subject, a speaking being.
Tom Mandel
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 25 Apr 1995 00:23:31 +0000
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: cris cheek <cris@SLANG.DEMON.CO.UK>
Subject: and desire / the 39 steps
come buy my binaries? not me. (whispering) face it - being there is
questionable. join the queue bud. weave your ropes of spittle. grass, go
tell the trees, 'cause the trees don't need to know - the dried is more
combustible.
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 25 Apr 1995 00:20:34 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Colleen Lookingbill <Zorlook@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: Throttled by angels
Dodie and Ed - Since you both like Plath here is a recent poem from me.
For Sylvia
Well on the air
ordinary Elm street
a naked mouth
pulling death
by accident
This level of intense
see what I see
persona near the hive
lightning to envision
self-absorption
having genius
baked beside you
Time to write
so ideas rush
a third presence
riderless won't sleep
retrograde gift
hard as rock
noon through night
Suspend
lack of attention
no matter what
serious crossings
ignite the landscape
Fountains are dry
an underworld force
gaps weird elegance
this was life
because of us
to say it for us
how to come home
cross your fingers
in company of priests
Blame the dark
which passed around
gets too close
dissolves for another
drag out of hiding
this spelling mind
mailed into space
should remind us
who has come to call
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 25 Apr 1995 00:20:42 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Colleen Lookingbill <Zorlook@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: Throttling
Kevin - I liked your story - didn't sound stupid - sounded real.
Colleen
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 25 Apr 1995 02:15:28 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Spencer Selby <selby@SLIP.NET>
Subject: Re: First Intensity
In-Reply-To: <199504250358.UAA26108@>
James Thomas Stevens' poem TOKINISH, hovers over the abyss between one
language and another, one culture and another, one body and another.
Taking his cue from Roger Williams' dictionary of Narragansett, _A Key
Into the Language of America_, Stevens (whose Mohawk name is Aronhiotas)
discovers, or re-collects, America at the moment of catastrophic
translation, which is both *agon* and *conjunctio*, and in whose
lingering wreckage we make our uneasy homes.
_Tokinish_ was co-published by First Intensity and Shuffaloff books. It
sells for $7, and I would imagine that it can be ordered from either Lee
Chapman or Mike Boughn, who is on this list. If anyone wishes to email
Lee, her address is Leechapman@aol.com.
On Mon, 24 Apr 1995, Tom Mandel wrote:
> Did not Lee Chapman's press (?) also publish a very interesting
> book of poetry called _Tokenish_ ? I'm embarrassed to say
> that I've forgotten the author's name and hope someone can
> recall, providing biblio. details -- or am I wrong?
>
> Tom Mandel
>
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 25 Apr 1995 08:28:00 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Lakritz, Andrew" <alakritz@USIA.GOV>
Organization: USIA
Subject: Re: POETICS Digest - 23 Apr 1995 to
In-Reply-To: <8BDA9C2F02A6AAAA>
Your message has been received in the mailbox of Dr. Andrew M. Lakritz,
Scholar-In-Residence at the U.S. Information Agency. He will reply to
your message within 24 hours, or will forward your request to the
appropriate office. You may also telephone or send a facsimile to the
numbers listed below. Thank you for your patience.11:02p 4/24/95
~ * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * ~
Andrew Lakritz
US Information Agency
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Division for the Study of the United States
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Washington D.C. 20547
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=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 25 Apr 1995 09:01:59 -0400
Reply-To: Robert Drake <au462@cleveland.Freenet.Edu>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Robert Drake <au462@CLEVELAND.FREENET.EDU>
Subject: Re: First Intensity
i haven't yet seen Stevens' book, but hope to now, as i'm currently
enjoying Wosmarie Waldrop's _A Key Into the Language of America_,
which also jumps off from Williams' dictionary, but w/ a very
different (relatively recent German immigrant) tho praps not
inconsistant perspective... recommended.
>James Thomas Stevens' poem TOKINISH, hovers over the abyss between one
>language and another, one culture and another, one body and another.
>Taking his cue from Roger Williams' dictionary of Narragansett, _A Key
>Into the Language of America_, Stevens (whose Mohawk name is Aronhiotas)
>discovers, or re-collects, America at the moment of catastrophic
>translation, which is both *agon* and *conjunctio*, and in whose
>lingering wreckage we make our uneasy homes.
lbd
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 25 Apr 1995 08:41:19 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Andrew Joron <ajoron@EMF.NET>
Subject: _Tokinish_
Dear Tom Mandel, in response to your post yesterday: Yes, Lee Chapman
is also the publisher of _Tokinish_ by James Thomas Stevens, under
the imprint of First Intensity / shuffaloff books in 1994. Stevens,
a Native American (his Mohawk name is Aronhiotas), has written (as
Rosmarie Waldrop has also done recently) a poetic response to
Roger Williams' _A Key into the Language of America_ (1643).
Williams, a clergyman who is considered the "founder" of Providence,
Rhode Island, was a church renegade and attempted in _Key_ to
document the language of the Narragansett people. "Tokinish" is
a Narragansett imperrative meaning: "Wake him."
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 25 Apr 1995 11:13:13 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Edward Foster <EFOSTER@VAXC.STEVENS-TECH.EDU>
Subject: Re: re-politics again
no, tom, i'll stay with jung as theologian (as indeed his father literally was) by which i read interpreter of the spiritual, tho that's too blunt, i'm understand, in view of later work/utterance.
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 25 Apr 1995 11:17:47 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Edward Foster <EFOSTER@VAXC.STEVENS-TECH.EDU>
Subject: Re: re-politics again
tom: in previous, "understand" should be "sure." whether "manifest" is/is not a theological term, as such it is an act (not, as the Big O would say, wisdom). as to poem as "speaking being," ahhhhhhhhhhh, there's too much "i" in that, for me.
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 25 Apr 1995 11:21:14 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Edward Foster <EFOSTER@VAXC.STEVENS-TECH.EDU>
Subject: Re: Throttled by angels
thank you, colleen
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 25 Apr 1995 11:54:19 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Edward Foster <EFOSTER@VAXC.STEVENS-TECH.EDU>
Subject: Re: and desire / the 39 steps
dry winter grass, my binary one: what orchid morning, a cappella, where we speak of andes, grass along the plain, the spirit of the others grey, the passersby stone cold, yet i know what is dry will also burn.
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 25 Apr 1995 10:48:28 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: AARON SHURIN <ashurin@MERCURY.SFSU.EDU>
Subject: Re: Re Mandel/Mao
In-Reply-To: <9504250025.AA07726@mercury.sfsu.edu>
On Mon, 24 Apr 1995, Tom Mandel wrote:
> re: "there are no correct ideas," perhaps Aaron (hi from Washington,
> Aaron; come visit and give a reading) would like to expand on
> this.
>
> Shabtai Zwi, the Jewish false messiah of the 17th century, introduced
> a blessing that went as follows: "Blessed be the Lord our God,
> King of the universe, who permittest that which is forbidden."
>
> Tom Mandel
>
Yikes, Tom, you're generous-spirited response has managed to de-lurk me
again! I guess I'd say I'm with Shabtai Zwi in the sense that I'm as
interested in false messiahs as correct ones.
Aaron
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 25 Apr 1995 11:31:27 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ryan Knighton <knighton@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: Definition
In-Reply-To: <199504241848.LAA05748@whistler.sfu.ca> from "Lindz Williamson"
at Apr 24, 95 08:44:55 am
Lindszed, what i meant was, or what i was thinking about was,
the kind of syn-tactics you find in Susan Howe. the idea
being that Cordelia stands to inherit herself fromthe king
unless she holds or breaks the tongue he gave her. Women,
according ot Howe and others, have been written. That is
where my head was at.
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 25 Apr 1995 11:47:56 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ryan Knighton <knighton@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: Definition: Language Poetry
In-Reply-To: <199504241733.KAA26353@whistler.sfu.ca> from "Lindz Williamson"
at Apr 24, 95 08:35:22 am
sorry lindz, didn't mean to smack you on the nose, as youve
described it.
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 26 Apr 1995 08:40:58 GMT+1200
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Tony Green <t.green@AUCKLAND.AC.NZ>
Organization: The University of Auckland
Subject: Re: Throttling
I enjoyed yr story Kevin, like all such tales of behind the scenes,
of the serious public personage shown life-size or smaller. You sure
thought of a really big interruption for LZ...how wd he have relished
that one? Have you got any more such tales?
Tony Green,
e-mail: t.green@auckland.ac.nz
post: Dept of Art History,
University of Auckland,
Private Bag 92019,
Auckland, New Zealand
Fax: 64 9-373 7014
Telephone: 64 9 373 7599 ext. 8981 or 7276
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 25 Apr 1995 17:53:53 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Marshall H. Reese" <risarano@ECHONYC.COM>
Subject: PHONE CONGRESS FOR FREE
Date: Fri, 21 Apr 1995 12:21:29 -0700 (PDT)
>From: Joshua Lurie-Turrell <luriete@ccshp1.ccs.csus.edu>
>Subject: Phone Congress for FREE!-while charging the Right (fwd)
I'm sure you've all heard about this already but here it is anyway:
You can call Capitol Hill to tell your Congressperson or
Senator what you think AND charge the religious right for your call.
Far-right Traditional Values Coalition leader Rev. Lou Sheldon paid for
a toll-free number so anti-gay supporters
could call congressional members and express their political views.
Well, anyone can use the same number and give opposite views directly to
DC. The 1-800-768-2221 phone number
connects you directly to Capitol Hill.
Spread this post and the phone number as far as possible. Make some
calls and push up the phone bill for the religious right. (I have
There are 9 lines left (83%). Press <space> for more, or 'i' to return.
Message 1/26 From Tom Damrauer
Page 3
calls and push up the phone bill for the religious right. (I have
tried the number and it does get you through to the "Capitol"
receptionist. Just ask for the Congress person
by name and you will be connected to that office.)
--- end forwarded text
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 25 Apr 1995 18:42:13 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Chris Stroffolino <LS0796@ALBNYVMS.BITNET>
Subject: Re: Definition
Ryan----Oh the implication that Shakespeare (and other males) WROTE
WOMEN...why do people wish to claim it is some incontrovertible backdrop
truth against which to "usher in the new era"--There are men reading
women--the playwrite (or "the language" if you must totally reject the
"authorial fallacy") quite self-consciously shows the men misreading
women. "Your actions are my dreams" etc. It seems it's the realization
that women AREN'T written by men that allows women a freedom that is not
some Gyatri Spivackian nihilism--that men only go so far...in sofar as
men are conscious of this there can be a solidarity. Yet there must be
a recognition that it's one thing to prove a writer "male" or 'female"
and another to prove them "good" or "evil." Just a thought, CS
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 26 Apr 1995 09:01:47 GMT+1200
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Tony Green <t.green@AUCKLAND.AC.NZ>
Organization: The University of Auckland
Subject: Not definition 2
June 1978 Rosmarie Waldrop [ {(alias Wosmarie Waldrop?)} ] in L=...
writes:
"What interests me most in poetry now is the shift of emphasis from
the image (i.e.relation of similarity) to contiguity: problems of
combination, syntax, sequence, structure".
[ original lineation
Tony Green,
e-mail: t.green@auckland.ac.nz
post: Dept of Art History,
University of Auckland,
Private Bag 92019,
Auckland, New Zealand
Fax: 64 9-373 7014
Telephone: 64 9 373 7599 ext. 8981 or 7276
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 25 Apr 1995 20:06:48 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Tom Mandel <tmandel@UMD5.UMD.EDU>
Subject: Re: Throttled by angels
Colleen Lookingbill's poem is wonderful. Thank you.
Tom Mandel
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 25 Apr 1995 20:11:23 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Tom Mandel <tmandel@UMD5.UMD.EDU>
Subject: Re: First Intensity
Spencer's brief comment on James Thomas Stevens' _Tokenish_ seem
write on the mark to me, and I'd concur in recommending this
piece of work to you all. I'd borrowed it from (and returned
it to) Joan Retallack, which explains my forgetfulness of the
author's name (i.e. explains in very small part...).
Tom Mandel
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 25 Apr 1995 20:16:20 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Tom Mandel <tmandel@UMD5.UMD.EDU>
Subject: Re: re-politics again
I both love and hate Ed Foster's imposed limitation of 3 lines of text;
love it because of the implosive intensity it forces on him and because
of the simple fact that his posts are short not long; hate, because
I keep wanting a more extensible dialogue. I don't, for example,
mean by calling a poem a subject rather than an object to impart an
ego to the poem.
Tom Mandel
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 25 Apr 1995 20:19:07 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Tom Mandel <tmandel@UMD5.UMD.EDU>
Subject: Re: Re Mandel/Mao
Aaron, if one is to be interested in messiahs, I guess one would
have to be interested false ones, or it's a long wait (admittedly
in a crowd). Anything to delurk you. What's the latest in the
Western world?
Tom
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 25 Apr 1995 21:06:21 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Edward Foster <EFOSTER@VAXC.STEVENS-TECH.EDU>
Subject: Re: Standing
karl orend (alyscamps press) now compiling book of tributes to Gascoyne. send prose, poetry, photographs, artwork, etc. ("any language," "any reasonable length") by 9/1/95 alyscamps press, 35 rue de l'esperance, 75013 Paris, France.
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 25 Apr 1995 20:27:51 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Herb Levy <herb@ESKIMO.COM>
Subject: subtext 3
Hi -
I just received the mailing for a reading series this May here in Seattle
that should be of interest to people on the poetics-list. It's the third
series organized by Ezra Mark and Nico Vassilakis in a year or so. They
say on the flyer that they'll be producing a collection from these and
previous readings.
This time all events are at 7PM at Wessel & Lieberman Booksellers, 121
First Avenue, Seattle.
Friday May 5:
Noemie Maxwell
Spencer Selby
John Olson
Friday May 12:
Tom Malone
Ezra Mark
Robert Mittenthal
Wednesday May 17:
Joseph Keppler
Nico Vassilakis
Wednesday May 24:
Marvin Sackner
Crag Hill
Friday May 26:
Susan Clark
Jeanne Heuving
Catriona Strang
See you there.
- Herb
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 25 Apr 1995 22:57:33 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Mn Center For Book Arts <mcba@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
Subject: Re: Throttling
In-Reply-To: <2f9bd2cc6d9a072@maroon.tc.umn.edu>
Up again online after my internet provider (univ. of minnesota) had a
disk crash and systems were down for a few days.
Kevin, your story was certainly not stupid. But don't hurt the flowers,
they didn't mean you ill.
I just read your SANTA, published by Leave Books, and thought it was
marvelous. Congratulations!
I wasn't throttled. Sure, I had to read Longfellow and didn't like it
much. At home about the only poet to hand was R.L. Stevenson, and my
father loved "Requiem," and so did I as a young boy. Somehow, early on, I
found Dickinson on my own and she has remained a major influence. I
remember in high school, when I began to write (age 14) liking Keats and
Tennyson (the Tennyson of In Memoriam and a few short works, not the
Tennyson of Idylls of the King). I still think Tennyson can make the
language sing and at his best does not overdo it (although his best is
perhaps not as prevalent as his worst). First poets read in college were
W.C. Williams & Ginsberg, so, I'm afraid, not much throttling. Then
studies in linguistics just seemed to open everything up. It still is.
charles alexander
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 25 Apr 1995 23:27:44 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Gary Sullivan <gpsj@PRIMENET.COM>
Subject: Re: For Sylvia
In-Reply-To: <199504250431.VAA18806@mailhost.primenet.com>
Dear Colleen:
Wow, what a wonderful poem! I showed it to Marta and your second stanza:
This level of intense
see what I see
persona near the hive ...
prompted her to say: "You know, if anyone came close to realizing Laura
Riding's idea of 'purity,' it was Plath."
Thanks for your beautiful poem. I wish there was at least one poem posted
by someone here every day. It'd almost make up for the fact that there
aren't any in our daily newspapers ...
Yours,
Gary
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 26 Apr 1995 00:49:18 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: John Byrum <JMBYRUM@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: Mail before Malls!
The first good laugh I've had in reading all these postings came from a (by
now) old one from Ron Silliman (note unabashed use of both names):
"Language Poetry is puke."
Good one!
JMB
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 25 Apr 1995 22:50:06 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ryan Knighton <knighton@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: Not definition 2
In-Reply-To: <199504260400.VAA07882@whistler.sfu.ca> from "Tony Green" at Apr
26, 95 09:01:47 am
Howe-language surrounds chaos
spicer-words shrivel around the real like flesh
hejinian-language lets you discover what you might know
)paraphrases off the top of my head and tip of my tongue from
"there are not leaves enough...", "after lorca", and "the
rejection of closure", in that order and their ardour.
(i like the wald. quote, tony. thanks.)
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 25 Apr 1995 23:04:17 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Spencer Selby <selby@SLIP.NET>
Subject: Re: re-politics again
In-Reply-To: <199504260131.SAA09715@>
On Tue, 25 Apr 1995, Tom Mandel wrote:
> I don't, for example, mean by calling a poem a subject rather than an
> object to impart an ego to the poem.
That's good to hear, since we've got more than enough ego and egos
surrounding all the work.
I might add that I'd like to take credit for the paragraph I posted on
_Tokinish_, but the truth is, I lifted it off the back of the book.
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 26 Apr 1995 00:55:24 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Lindz Williamson <lmichell@UNIXG.UBC.CA>
Subject: cordelia
In-Reply-To: <199504252022.NAA24752@unixg.ubc.ca>
I never liked Cordelia all that much in Lear, Will never painted
her fully in my mind and he wimped out at the end by having her die. I
know she's commonly considered the" redeemer", but in that sense she
loses her feminine aspect. Her character and actions are masculine, just
as Goneril and Regan.
A piece I've always liked but puzzled over was Tennyson's The
Princess, inparticular " The Woman's cause is the Man's"
For Woman is not undeveloped man,
But diverse: could we make as the man,
Sweet Love were slain: his dearest bond is this,
Not like to like, but like in difference.
Lindz
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 26 Apr 1995 01:17:44 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Spencer Selby <selby@SLIP.NET>
Subject: Email Virus (fwd)
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 25 Apr 1995 13:48:00 +0000
From: RCMNET!RCM03!BOM@rcm.attmail.com
To: selby@slip.net
Subject: Email Virus
-------------------------------- Virus Alert
--------------------------------------
The FCC released a warning last Wednesday concerning a matter of
major importance to any regular user of the InterNet. Apparently, a new
computer virus has been engineered by a user of America Online that is
unparalleled in its destructive capability. Other, more well-known
viruses such as Stoned, Airwolf, and Michaelangelo pale in comparison
to the prospects of this newest creation by a warped mentality.
What makes this virus so terrifying, said the FCC, is the fact that
no program needs to be exchanged for a new computer to be infected.
It can be spread through the existing e-mail systems of the InterNet.
Once a computer is infected, one of several things can happen. If the
computer contains a hard drive, that will most likely be destroyed.
If the program is not stopped, the computer's processor will be placed in
an nth-complexity infinite binary loop - which can severely damage the
processor if left running that way too long. Unfortunately, most
novice computer users will NOT realize what is happening until it is far
too late.
Luckily, there is one sure means of detecting what is now known as
the "Good Times" virus. It always travels to new computers the same
way in a text e-mail message with the subject line reading simply "Good
Times". Avoiding infection is easy once the file has been received - by not
reading it. The act of loading the file into the mail server's ASCII
buffer causes the "Good Times" mainline program to initialize and execute.
The program is highly intelligent - it will send copies of itself to
every one whose e-mail address is contained in a received-mail file or a
sent-mail file, if it can find one. It will then proceed to trash the
computer it is running on.
The bottom line here is - if you receive a file with the subject line
"Good Times", delete it immediately! Do not read it! Rest assured that
whoever's name was on the "From:" line was surely struck by the virus.
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 26 Apr 1995 02:13:33 +0100
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Kevin Killian <dbkk@SIRIUS.COM>
Subject: Re: Email Virus (fwd)
Spencer,
My service provider, sirius, who may be sadistic in their customer support,
but who has lots of online support, says this goodtimes virus is a hoax.
They even explained how it was impossible for it to work the way it's said,
but I deleted the message that said this because--why not? My mind,
unfortunately, works the same way with most facts--like they're some hoax
to be deleted.
I hope I see you at Langton on Friday.
Love,
Dodie
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 26 Apr 1995 02:15:51 +0100
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Kevin Killian <dbkk@SIRIUS.COM>
Subject: Re: Email Virus (fwd)
Spencer,
>I hope I see you at Langton on Friday.
Ooops! That's a week from Friday.
DB
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 26 Apr 1995 08:40:52 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Loss Glazier <lolpoet@ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU>
Subject: Re: Email Virus (fwd)
In-Reply-To: <199504260818.EAA04019@mailhub.acsu.buffalo.edu> from "Spencer
Selby" at Apr 26, 95 01:17:44 am
Word here is that the "Good Times" virus is a hoax.
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 26 Apr 1995 09:46:43 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Chris Stroffolino <LS0796@ALBNYVMS.BITNET>
Subject: Re: Not definition 2
Spicer--words shrivel around the real like flesh
Tzara---I think of the warmth spun by the word
Around its center the dream called ourselves (tr.)
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 26 Apr 1995 16:42:27 +0000
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: cris cheek <cris@SLANG.DEMON.CO.UK>
Subject: Re: poetry and the electronic
>Date: Wed, 26 Apr 1995 16:39:48 +0000
>To:Kenneth Sherwood <V001PXFU@ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu>
>From:cris@slang.demon.co.uk (cris cheek)
>Subject:Re: poetry and the electronic
>
>>Cris:
>>
>>Thanks for writing and clarifying. I hadn't made the connection
>>between your desire to 'distribute' via EPC and the 'book swap'
>>idea.
>>
>>I personally think the idea is quite good; and perhaps EPC could help.
>>Do you think there needs to be a separate 'area' for bookswap
>>notices? I mean, we could do this, I suppose. But, thinking
>>only now as I type, wouldn't it work just as well to integrate
>>this with the general Press-announcements section we already
>>have? This way Charles Alexander would read your page and
>>perhaps swap with you, while someone else without a press
>>to swap from might contact you to buy the books.
>>
>>Have I missed something?
>>
>>Ken
>
>Hi Ken,
>
>I think it needs a separate focus partly because I sense a desire for author
>to author exchange as well. Yes, of course that can be done simply through
>this e-space and some people are doing it happily already BUT as time rolls on
>and others come and go and some blow more or less active for many many reasons
>maybe one clear focus for this purpose is worth exploring. It might be easier
>to be directed straight to the 'Book Exchange - Timezone Distribution' site.
>There would be an Author-Author availability and a Press-Press availability.
>Any press could say very concisely its terms.
>
>Negotiable. Send sample. Equivalent value no problem. Chaps and perfect bound
>and books on disc acceptable. - (for example for a press maybe)
>
>Otherwise any casual browser or frequent (had to delete 'regular') user has to
>open and close numerous sites.
>
>Couldn't a swap page also have a click-on sample facility when possible and
>so on to add guidance to follow up choices.
>
>Bob - i'll ask you here if you feel TAPROOT is the appropriate host for this
>or if a separate EPC site makes more sense? I'd go with whatever solution can
>be made to work with the minimum of work and the maximum of user-friendliness.
>
>
>My concerns are about openness and ease of access rather than passwords and
>in-ness. But maybe it's felt generally that some form of 'masonry' is
>'necessary'?
>
>
>maybe I'm just dumping too much time-consuming work by even suggesting this
>possibility, but . . .
>
>regards
>cris
>
>
>
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 26 Apr 1995 12:32:01 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: maria damon <damon001@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
Subject: Re: cordelia
In message <2f9e05d4022c002@maroon.tc.umn.edu> UB Poetics discussion group
writes:
> I never liked Cordelia all that much in Lear, Will never painted
> her fully in my mind and he wimped out at the end by having her die. I
> know she's commonly considered the" redeemer", but in that sense she
> loses her feminine aspect. Her character and actions are masculine, just
> as Goneril and Regan.
what is feminine and masculine?--maria d
> A piece I've always liked but puzzled over was Tennyson's The
> Princess, inparticular " The Woman's cause is the Man's"
>
> For Woman is not undeveloped man,
> But diverse: could we make as the man,
> Sweet Love were slain: his dearest bond is this,
> Not like to like, but like in difference.
>
>
>
>
>
> Lindz
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 26 Apr 1995 09:32:29 -0600
Reply-To: quarterm@unixg.ubc.ca
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: peter quartermain <quarterm@UNIXG.UBC.CA>
Subject: Brian Coffey 1905-1995
"Dennis Devlin and Brian Coffey are
without question the most interesting of
the younger generation of Irish poets."
Samuel Beckett, 1934.
WHOSE WHO
Dad not at eighty cured
shapes under clouds fair girls
where sunshafts lie
while Pete or somesuch chasing
Pussy homes on Doll
the Bod who's Babs the Mind
Bab's interests cross Doll's
Dad she phones sighs "I want
to talk" meaning to stalk
in Dad what Doll refuses
Babs the Peeper Doll the Tease
Dad self-deceiver
Pete at graze
-----
Too little known Irish poet Brian Coffey died on Good
Friday, 14 April 1995. Born 8 June 1905, his father
Professor of Anatomy (and first President, 1904-1940) at
University College, Dublin. Baccalaurate in Classics 1924,
studied Chemistry Mathematics and Physics at UCD (master's
degree in 1930), research in Physical Chemistry in Paris in
early 1930s, gradually switching to "the philosophical
problems which arise out of any fundamental research." Works
with Jacques Maritain 1933-1936. Meets Samuel Beckett,
London 1934; begins doctoral studies on Thomas Aquinas,
Sorbonne 1937 (completed 1947); meets Joyce at Beckett's,
1938: as he later wrote, "in that quite informal atmosphere
he profited, as the young always do, from the opportunity to
see and listen to an eminent elder in unpremeditated action,
but he felt no deire to follow up the chance encounters."
Works mainly teaching school till 1972, when he retired,
with a brief interval as Assistant Professor of Philosophy,
St Louis University MO 1947-1952. Learned printing 1966 and
established Advent Press in 1967, published work by Dennis
Devlin and others (including himself). Translator of
Mallarme (Coup Des Des), Neruda, Bonheur, Eluard, Nerval,
etc etc.
A representative sampling of his work is in the Brian
Coffey issue of the Irish University Review 5.1 (Spring
1975); his Selected Poems (1983) are (I think) still
available from The Raven Arts Press, 31 North Frederick
Street, Dublin 1, and his long poem _Advent_ (1986) might
(like his _Death of Hektor_) still be available from Menard
Press, 8 The Oaks, Woodside Avenue, London N12 8AR,
distributed by SPD. Harry Gilonis has recently (1994)
published the pamphlet _Salute/Verse/Circumstance_ through
his Form Books, 42A Lowden Road, Herne Hill, London SE24 0BH
_Advent_ occupies a place in Irish writing similar to
that occupied in English-language poetry at large by
Bunting's _Briggflatts_ and Oppen's _Of Being Numerous_.
Another major poet who we only learn to read after he's
dead.
__________________________________________________________________________
Peter Quartermain
128 East 23rd Avenue voice and fax (604) 876 8061
Vancouver
B.C. e-mail: quarterm@unixg.ubc.ca
Canada V5V 1X2
__________________________________________________________________________
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 26 Apr 1995 13:40:48 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: David Ball <DBALL@SMITH.SMITH.EDU>
Subject: Re: PHONE CONGRESS FOR FREE
Don't look now, but that number has been Off for months. I think! (worth
checking, & I will)
Anyway, thanks for the effort.
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 26 Apr 1995 17:05:11 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: George Bowering <bowering@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: First Intensity
In-Reply-To: <199504260404.VAA09106@ferrari.sfu.ca> from "Tom Mandel" at Apr
25, 95 08:11:23 pm
One line
oops
three lines
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 26 Apr 1995 17:17:03 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: George Bowering <bowering@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: Don Pullen
In-Reply-To: <199504241559.IAA14981@whistler.sfu.ca> from "Aldon L. Nielsen"
at Apr 24, 95 07:56:29 am
Agree that is awful news about Don Pullen. Anazing to think that he
was just that young. I thought he must be 60 by now. God, the way
that man illuminated the 60s and 70s! Especially during that time
when so many great groups were abandoning the piano. Ah shit.
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 26 Apr 1995 21:18:51 -0400
Reply-To: Robert Drake <au462@cleveland.Freenet.Edu>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Robert Drake <au462@CLEVELAND.FREENET.EDU>
Subject: Re: poetry and the electronic
>
>I think it needs a separate focus partly because I sense a desire for author
>to author exchange as well. Yes, of course that can be done simply through
>this e-space and some people are doing it happily already BUT as time rolls on
>and others come and go and some blow more or less active for many many reasons
>maybe one clear focus for this purpose is worth exploring. It might be easier
>to be directed straight to the 'Book Exchange - Timezone Distribution' site.
>There would be an Author-Author availability and a Press-Press availability.
>Any press could say very concisely its terms.
>
>Negotiable. Send sample. Equivalent value no problem. Chaps and perfect bound
>and books on disc acceptable. - (for example for a press maybe)
>
>Otherwise any casual browser or frequent (had to delete 'regular') user has to
>open and close numerous sites.
>
>Couldn't a swap page also have a click-on sample facility when possible and
>so on to add guidance to follow up choices.
>
>Bob - i'll ask you here if you feel TAPROOT is the appropriate host for this
>or if a separate EPC site makes more sense? I'd go with whatever solution can
>be made to work with the minimum of work and the maximum of user-friendliness.
>
>
>My concerns are about openness and ease of access rather than passwords and
>in-ness. But maybe it's felt generally that some form of 'masonry' is
>'necessary'?
>
cris--
well, i like where this is going, & yes fr openness/access--but if
by 'masonry' you mean structure, i think that a well-thotout
framework actually _increases_ access, rather than limits... and
my initial response, not thot thru very hard, is that a separate area
for swaps makes more sense to me, rather than adding that to TRee
(tho hotlinks from TRee to a swapshop would be possible, & easy to
implement).
one goal of TRR is to get books noticed, _bought_, & read, knowing
firsthand how hard that middle step is, & how necessary for the
survival of micro-presses. conversely, despite the generosity-bordering-
on-cheerleaderly tone of many of TRRs "blurbs", we do sometimes pan
a book, & i'd have reservations about direct connections to distribution
systems potentially influencing editorial decisions...
& my most immediate problem, i suppose, is time--after i finish
formating the remaining backlog of reviews (approx 1200 separate
documents), my next priority will likely be adding links from
individual reviews to samples from selected titles... plus
continuing to edit the next paper version, & a few other sideprojects
like the dayjob...
asever
luigi
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 26 Apr 1995 21:44:08 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Loss Glazier <lolpoet@ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU>
Subject: Re: poetry and the electronic
In-Reply-To: <199504261626.MAA22278@mailhub.acsu.buffalo.edu> from "cris
cheek" at Apr 26, 95 04:42:27 pm
To Cris, Ken, Luigi, and others,
Just looking over some of the exchanges over the topic of an online
swap shop. I think it's a good idea, as others do, as the discussion
has developed.
Both points of view of course are right, it should fit in to the press
listings and it could be separate!
Here's my point. The staff here is incredibly heavily worked. I would
be willing, if someone wanted to take responsibility for the creation
of a monthly list that would be sent to me or Ken (we can work that
out) as an e-mail message. Then it could be posted in the EPC under a
menu item say, "Publisher's Swap List." Are the interested publishers
wanting to swap everything on their lists or selected items? The list
could just be (1) a list of publishers or (2) list of publishers and
titles offered for swap. At the head of the list could be the e-mail
contact for publishers who wish to be added or subtracted from the
list.
Whew, seems a terribly laborious project. Maybe the solution is for
all interested publishers to put up their own press home page in the
EPC!!! This is an area that could use a good shot in the arm. You
could have a note in your home page that indicateds you are interested
in exchanging with other publishers.
There are great possibilities for press home pages. (As you may know
the EPC had what - 8,000 - transactions in Feb.?) You can set up a
press home page with minimal effort, including a graphic, etc. BUT
SUCH A PAGE SHOULD BE UPDATED REGULARLY. In other words, send a home
page to me to get going. When you want to update it send an updated
home page ("Updated Home Page for X Press" in subject line) so that I
can simply replace the previous home page.
Thus, swaps would be accommodated, orders could be instigated, links
from the massive and extraordinary TapRoot project could me made...
Are you with me?
All best,
Loss
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 27 Apr 1995 13:22:48 GMT+1200
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Tony Green <t.green@AUCKLAND.AC.NZ>
Organization: The University of Auckland
Subject: Not a definition -- 3
June 1978, L=... Lyn Hejinian writes:
"In such are we obsessed with our own lives, which lives being now
language, the emphasis has moved. The emphasis is persistently
centric, so that where once one has sought a vocabulary for ideas,
now one seeks ideas for vocabularies".
Tony Green,
e-mail: t.green@auckland.ac.nz
post: Dept of Art History,
University of Auckland,
Private Bag 92019,
Auckland, New Zealand
Fax: 64 9-373 7014
Telephone: 64 9 373 7599 ext. 8981 or 7276
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 26 Apr 1995 20:15:19 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Lindz Williamson <lmichell@UNIXG.UBC.CA>
Subject: Holiday
In-Reply-To: <199504252022.NAA24752@unixg.ubc.ca>
Off to sun and fun, be back on the 14th. George and Ryan see you
at the next pub night when i get back. GBAD was great, we'll have to do
it again. I'll say hi to the locals.
Ciao, Lindz
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 26 Apr 1995 20:31:20 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Herb Levy <herb@ESKIMO.COM>
Subject: Subtext 3 update
Charles Alexander has called my attention to the fact that I left out some
useful information about this series. There are several talks among the
readings.
Here's a slightly annotated list, sorry for the partial redundancy.
Friday May 5
Noemie Maxwell - reading
Spencer Selby - talk "Alternative Making"
John Olson - reading
Friday May 12
Tom Malone - reading
Ezra Mark - reading
Robert Mittenthal - reading
Wednesday May 17
Joseph Keppler - talk "Writing's Ethic"
Nico Vassilakis - reading
Wednesday May 24
Marvin Sackner - talk "Concrete & Visual Poetry"
Crag Hill - reading
Friday May 26
Susan Clark - reading
Jeanne Heuving - reading
Catriona Strang - reading
You now have sufficient information to schedule your trip to Seattle.
Stop by on your way to <The Recovery of the Public World> in Vancouver.
- Herb
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 26 Apr 1995 20:42:07 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: George Bowering <bowering@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: cordelia
In-Reply-To: <199504260835.BAA20447@whistler.sfu.ca> from "Lindz Williamson"
at Apr 26, 95 00:55:24 am
Hey, Lindzed,
If _Lear_ had been a regular comedy, Cordelia would have married at
the end. As it is more like a tragedy, she has to leave this plane,
just like Desdemona and Cleopatra. Them's the rules. So it wasnt
because Shakespeare was a wimp; it was because he was a hightone
Elizabethan playwright.
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 26 Apr 1995 20:44:20 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Herb Levy <herb@ESKIMO.COM>
Subject: Re: Re Mandel/Mao
In-Reply-To: <199504262127.AA10791@mail.eskimo.com>
On Mon, 24 Apr 1995, Tom Mandel wrote:
>
> Shabtai Zwi, the Jewish false messiah of the 17th century, introduced
> a blessing that went as follows: "Blessed be the Lord our God,
> King of the universe, who permittest that which is forbidden."
<permittest>?
I hope that's not your own translation.
Respectfully,
Herb
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 26 Apr 1995 21:25:37 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Lindz Williamson <lmichell@UNIXG.UBC.CA>
Subject: Re: cordelia
In-Reply-To: <199504270344.UAA18155@unixg.ubc.ca>
On Wed, 26 Apr 1995, George Bowering wrote:
> Hey, Lindzed,
> If _Lear_ had been a regular comedy, Cordelia would have married at
> the end. As it is more like a tragedy, she has to leave this plane,
> just like Desdemona and Cleopatra. Them's the rules. So it wasnt
> because Shakespeare was a wimp; it was because he was a hightone
> Elizabethan playwright.
>
I don't really think of it as being successful as a comedy or a
tragedy, but as the lack of development of a female character. Desdemona
has the same mystery around her and probably the same amount of lines,
but she is never given motive. We never know why she's willing to
disobey her father to marry Othello. One of the better female portraits
presented by Will, I'd say is Volumina. She has depth and strength,
possibly this is a result of her Roman background. I think what causes
me to think of Will being a wimp is that when he has the chance to do
great things in portraying "liberated" free thinking women, he kills them
off and we end up with the Mirandas. Shakespeare seems to be more
concerned with crossdressing than really attacking the politics of a
female monarch. I'm not really a fan of Will's plays, I sort of pick out
the good speeches and never got beyond that, I really prefer his sonnets.
CXIII
Since I left you, mine eye is in my mind
And that which governs me to go about
Doth part his function and is partly blind,
Seems seeing, but effectually is out;
For it no form delivers to the heart
Of bird, of flower, or shape, which it doth latch;
Of his quick objects hath the mind no part,
Nor his own vision holds what it doth catch.
For if it see the rud'st or gentlest sight,
The most sweet favor'd or deformed'st creature,
The mountain or the sea, the day or night,
The crow or dove, it shapes them to your feature.
Incapable of more, replete with you,
My most true mind thus makes mine eye untrue.
Lindz
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 26 Apr 1995 21:26:19 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: George Bowering <bowering@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: poetry v history
In-Reply-To: <199504022247.PAA19256@whistler.sfu.ca> from "Tony Green" at Apr
3, 95 10:29:37 am
Thanks for your note. I recently got the idea of doing what the young
methodical historians dont do, going to the sites and describing
whatever traces I can find in the ground, places where mines used to
be, etc. I recall that either Herodotus or Thucydides did that. I
cant remember which,. I can only remember that Olson claimed that one
of them did, and some historian I was talking to, 25 years agho, said
no, it was the other one. But really, has Olson ever been mistaken?
Jeez!
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 27 Apr 1995 03:36:18 +1000
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Mark Roberts <M.Roberts@UNSW.EDU.AU>
Subject: AUSCERT Alert AL-95.02.virus.hoax.returns (fwd)
>X-UNSW-POPserver: s9005086@sam
>Date: Thu, 27 Apr 1995 11:03:33 +0800 (WST)
>From: Sarah Lane <slane@uniwa.uwa.edu.au>
>Subject: AUSCERT Alert AL-95.02.virus.hoax.returns (fwd)
>Sender: LISTSERVER@banks.ntu.edu.au
>To: Australian Literature Discussion <AUSTLIT@banks.ntu.edu.au>
>Reply-to: AUSTLIT@banks.ntu.edu.au
>X-Mailer: Mercury MTS v1.20
>X-listname: <AUSTLIT@banks.ntu.edu.au>
>
>
>
>---------- Forwarded message ----------
>Date: Wed Apr 26 17:38:59 1995
>From: Australian Computer Emergency Response Team <auscert@AUSCERT.ORG.AU>
>To: auscert-public@AUSCERT.ORG.AU
>Cc: auscert@AUSCERT.ORG.AU
>Subject: AUSCERT Alert AL-95.02.virus.hoax.returns
>
>=============================================================================
>AL-95.02 AUSCERT Alert
> April 26, 1995
> "Good Times" Virus HOAX returns.
>-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>There is a message circulating that warns of a email virus called
>"Good Times".
>
>********* THE "Good Times" VIRUS IS A HOAX. **********
>
>Please do NOT pass on any warnings about this virus.
>
>Please notify anyone who sends you such a warning that it is not valid.
>
>(HINT: Do not use the words "good times" in the subject line as anyone
>who believes the hoax will simply delete the message unread.)
>
>This is a similar hoax to the "Good Times" virus hoax that had very
>wide circulation in December of 1994.
>
>If you are interested in more details, a PCERT Advisory on the subject is
>included below this message. AUSCERT would like to thank PCERT for the use
>of this material.
>
>If you believe that your system has been compromised, contact AUSCERT or your
>representative in FIRST (Forum of Incident Response and Security Teams).
>
>AUSCERT is the Australian Computer Emergency Response Team, funded by the
>Australian Academic Research Network (AARNet) for its members. It is
>located at The University of Queensland within the Prentice Centre.
>AUSCERT is a full member of the Forum of Incident Response and Security
>Teams (FIRST).
>
>Internet Email: auscert@auscert.org.au
>Facsimile: (07) 365 4477
>Telephone: (07) 365 4417 (International: +61 7 365 4417)
> AUSCERT personnel answer during Queensland business hours
> which are GMT+10:00 (AEST).
> On call after hours for emergencies.
>
>-------------------------->>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
> PCERT Advisory
> (Purdue Computer Emergency Response Team, <pcert@cs.purdue.edu>)
> "Good Times" Virus Hoax Circulating Again
> April 24, 1995
>
>Summary
>--------
>The "Good Times" virus warnings are a hoax. People are circulating the
>warnings without verifying the information contained therein, thus
>leading to unnecessary worry and concern. Please do not circulate the
>"Good Times" warnings further. Please send this advisory on to anyone
>who has mailed you such an advisory.
>
>In this advisory:
> Summary
> Background
> More Recently
> What you can do
> Additional Discussion
> More Information
> Contact information for FIRST
>
>
>Background
>-----------
>In early December 1994, a mail message was circulated in several mailing
>lists and bulletin boards warning of a "Good Times" virus. This "virus"
>was allegedly being circulated in e-mail on bulletin boards and several
>commercial services. The report stated that simply reading the message
>in a mail reader would cause it to activate, causing various forms of
>damage. Some versions of the message cite the FCC and/or America
>On-Line as authoritative sources of warnings about "Good Times." A
>related "virus" is sometimes also reported, alleged to have the string
>"xxx-1" (or similar) in the subject.
>
>Several of the FIRST teams, including the Department of Energy's CIAC
>and Purdue's PCERT, responded by posting advisories stating that this
>report appeared to be a hoax. Actually, the hoax posting was allegedly
>traced to a student at a college in the northeast U.S. who had made the
>whole thing up as a prank that got somewhat out of hand. In the time
>since that first posting, none of the response teams has reported any
>credible sighting of such a virus. (It is possible, in some very
>specialized, very rare circumstances, that e-mail might contain a
>destructive sequence or characters, but this is highly unlikely, and NOT
>the case in this instance. Some further details are given in the
>"additional discussion" below. We repeat, this is NOT the case in
>regards to "Good Times.")
>
>More Recently
>--------------
>In the past few weeks, we have received e-mail and phone calls from a
>number of people who have seen new instances of "warnings" about the
>"virus." It seems that many people did not see the original series of
>postings, or forgot the earlier advisories. It is also an unfortunate
>reality that many people will forward on warnings, even if of
>questionable technical merit, without making an attempt to verify them
>with an authoritative source. This leads to worry and further copies
>as the warnings spread.
>
>Please DO NOT repost warnings or reports of the "Good Times" virus! It
>is important that we try to stop the spread of the false and potentially
>damaging warning about "Good Times." It is in the same class of rumors
>and out-dated information as other urban legends such as the "Craig
>Shergold" (requests to send postcards/business cards to a dying boy)
>rumor. These stories continue to keep appearing and disturbing people as
>time goes on.
>
>What you can do
>----------------
> * If you have received a warning about "Good Times" then send this
>advisory to everyone you know who received that warning. To ensure
>that it is read, DO NOT put the phrase "Good Times" in the subject
>line. We suspect that some people never saw the original advisories
>because they set their mailers to automatically delete mail with those
>words in the subject line.
>
> * Save this advisory. If you receive a warning about "Good Times"
>anytime in the future, simply send a copy of this advisory back to
>whomever it is who sends you the warning.
>
> * If you ever get a warning like this, or similarly get a warning or
>notice of some widespread problem with computers, VERIFY it with
>credible sources before passing it on. Rumors, especially when spread
>by well-meaning individuals, can cause significant panic and damage.
>FIRST response teams (FIRST == Forum of Incident Response and Security
>Teams) will be more than willing to respond with definitive information
>to a query on these topics; it is one of their missions. We are
>enclosing a copy of the list in this advisory, current as of April 24,
>1995.
>
> * We also note the possibility that someone is using this as a
>precursor to a real attack. That is, someone is repeatedly circulating
>the "Good Times" rumor to condition people to believing there is no
>danger, and will then circulate some damaging code under that name. To
>that end, if you ever get any mail labelled "Good Times" that is in some
>way executable (i.e., is a program or command file), DO NOT run it!
>Instead, contact your appropriate FIRST team for assistance and
>analysis. Again, we stress that we view this possibility as very, very
>unlikely.
>
>Additional Discussion
>----------------------
>Informally, a computer virus is code that, when executed, causes some
>action to occur, including some form of reproduction of the virus. In
>a similar manner, a "Trojan Horse" program is code that when executed
>has some unexpected (and usually unwanted effect). What is important
>to note here is that the virus and trojan horse code must be
>*executed* in some way to have an effect. That is, it must be run as a
>program, or passed as instructions to some interpreter program.
>
>When e-mail arrives at a system and is read by the user, it is seldom
>"executed" by anything that could damage the system, let alone
>reproduce the code itself. There are only two general exceptions to
>this for systems in wide-spread use, to our knowledge:
>
>1) On a MS-DOS PC-based system with an ANSI.SYS driver, it is possible
>that a carefully-crafted control code sequence could execute some
>unwanted actions. This would only work if the mail was displayed in
>text mode (not in a window or specialized application). However, there
>are three good reasons to believe that this would never act to spread a
>virus:
> * First, the necessary control characters would be unlikely to pass
> through various mail gateways and forwarders without modification.
> Any change would render the sequence inoperable.
> * To spread effectively, the code would need to be written such that
> it would use pathnames and code present on almost every machine
> where received, including ANSI.SYS MS-DOS machines are seldom so
> predictable!
> * Any such change would only map one or more keys to a damaging
> command; the user would have to press a certain key (or sequence)
> to actually trigger the damage. This involves more than simply
> reading a mail message!
>
>2) On systems using MIME-capable mailers (or similar), it is possible
>that a message could be crafted that would trigger an external agent on
>the receiving machine to do harm. For example, it might be possible
>to embed commands in a PostScript file that would cause a PostScript
>interpreter to modify files. For this to succeed, it requires that
>users automatically execute those applications upon receipt of
>appropriate mail, and that those applications have enabled operations
>that might unduly affect the system. Again, this does not seem to be a
>viable way to spread a virus.
>
>Note that we are not claiming that a harmful agent cannot be distributed
>in mail. To the contrary, the "Good Times" message *is* damaging -- as a
>rumor! It is also possible to circulate code that, if executed by an
>unwary user, could cause damage. However, the possibility is effectively
>nil of a virus being constructed that will circulate via e-mail, affect
>any of several dozens of operating systems when run through any of
>scores of different mail agents, and launch by being listed to the
>screen.
>
>More Information
>-----------------
>Further discussion of this rumor may be found in the following CIAC
>Notes, available via WWW:
> http://ciac.llnl.gov/ciac/notes/Notes04c.shtml
> http://ciac.llnl.gov/ciac/notes/Notes05d.shtml
> http://ciac.llnl.gov/ciac/notes/Notes09.shtml
>or via ftp:
> ftp://ciac.llnl.gov/pub/ciac/notes/notes04c.txt
> ftp://ciac.llnl.gov/pub/ciac/notes/notes05d.txt
> ftp://ciac.llnl.gov/pub/ciac/notes/notes09.txt
>
>
>
>
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 26 Apr 1995 23:34:28 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Spencer Selby <selby@SLIP.NET>
Subject: Re: Email Virus (fwd)
In-Reply-To: <199504260914.CAA23503@>
I'm glad to hear that the virus is a hoax. That message was forwarded to
me by a friend.
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 27 Apr 1995 08:47:18 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Michael Boughn <mboughn@EPAS.UTORONTO.CA>
Subject: Re: cordelia
In-Reply-To: <199504262251.SAA11059@jazz.epas.utoronto.ca> from "maria damon"
at Apr 26, 95 12:32:01 pm
>
> what is feminine and masculine?--maria d
>
Maria:
H.D. called them vibrations, which may be another name for a dream of
difference that animates our thinking the world for better and worse
Mike
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 27 Apr 1995 09:47:57 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Loss Glazier <lolpoet@ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU>
Subject: Swap at EPC
Ken sent me what seemed a most reasonable suggestion:
> perhaps a compromise would be one index page...a SWAP page...that
> listed all presses willing to swap with links to their pages (ie.
> already existing) in the small press area?
This could be done. It would still involve presses establishing and
maintaining their press home pages and would also allow complete
linkage to other EPC resources.
Loss
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 27 Apr 1995 10:47:00 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Tom Mandel <tmandel@UMD5.UMD.EDU>
Subject: Re: Re Mandel/Mao
My error, Herb, and thanks for pointing it out, in the Sabbatean
antinomian blessing, which should read:
Blessed be the Lord our God, King of the universe,
who permitteth that which is forbidden.
It might also be translated "which permitteth" as the rabbis
tried to avoid formulations that would anthropomorphize God,
often inserting the phrase "as it were" where the language led
them to such forms -- this despite God's showing Moses his
ass in the desert.
Tom Mandel
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 27 Apr 1995 09:57:47 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Herb Levy <herb@ESKIMO.COM>
Subject: Distribution Evolution
In-Reply-To: <199504270425.AA13382@mail.eskimo.com>
Hi -
Just thought I'd comment on the recent evolution of the recurring
distribution discussion. It's a little long, but it's been paragraphed
for easy consumption.
This thread began with someone, Rae Armantrout I think, saying that they
wished that people she knew could find her new book (Made to Seem, which
as several others have said, is quite good) in stores.
After being seconded by several others, this quickly became a series of
complaints against SPD's ability to place books in stores and a list of
the great poetry book store in the US.
For the sake of those who got here late, this list seems to be Woodland
Pattern in M'woky.
At least one person who said SPD never seemed to get their books into
stores said that SPD was also a major source of income, without which they
could not continue.
Someone else said that most stores end up buying at least the larger small
presses through Consortium, not SPD. Someone else noted that many of the
books sold in the US at least, are sold through the mail.
The remains of the thread, as they continue to this day, have been taken
up with hammering out the details of a way in which writers and publishers
could trade publications with each other.
This is fine, and I may be the only non-writers, non-publishers here, so
this may be sour grapes, but doesn't it avoid the original issue?
Oh, well, we'll just get this work to its audience by using the always
glamourous INTERNET. Of course, how could I be so naive!
As Loss Glazier notes there is a great potential for home pages. Still, I
don't think putting the work on the WWW and calling it good is the answer,
certainly not for the next few years anyway.
It's great that EPC is getting 8,000 hits a month. But this isn't very
much considering how many people are on the internet. & It's not very
much compared to what a lot of home pages get.
& when you consider how many of these hits are people looking for
something weird to show their friends how they've mastered the
WideWorldWeb, this number seems even worse.
"Hey, Stevie, look at the weird thing I found on the net last night. They
said it was a poem, but I can't make any sense out of it. It's not about
how when their lover left them it reminded them of their first pet dying."
In the long run, yeah, the internet may be a way to get work to more
people than are going to find their way to it now. And it makes sense to
be ready for that.
But most people, even most people who are interested in the kind of poetry
we're interested in (add that to the thread on <definitions>), despite how
nice & cozy it feels here on <poetics-list>, are not on-line.
And they won't be for some time yet.
So, now that you've got a better system of trading publications between
writers and publishers started and you're ready for on-line distribution,
how are you going to get the work in front of people NOW?
Just thought I'd ask.
Bests,
Herb Levy
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 27 Apr 1995 13:44:51 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jonathan Brannen <jbrannen@INFOLINK.MORRIS.MN.US>
Subject: Re: cordelia
George,
Shakespeare "was a hightone Elizabethan playwright"??? There are
certainly those who would argue he had the populist touch.
Jonathan
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 27 Apr 1995 13:59:24 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jonathan Brannen <jbrannen@INFOLINK.MORRIS.MN.US>
Subject: Re: poetry and the electronic
Loss,
Interested publishers setting up a home page for their presses seems
like a logical approach. How's it done?
What do the rest of you think? It's certainly less labor intensive
than some approaches.
Jonathan Brannen
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 27 Apr 1995 12:10:03 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Herb Levy <herb@ESKIMO.COM>
Subject: Re: Re Mandel/Mao
In-Reply-To: <199504270544.AA23421@mail.eskimo.com>
I should have sent this together with the below but I couldn't find it
yesterday.
There's a traditional Jewish prayer called the <Shechecheyanu> (pardon my
transliteration). It's said whenever you do something for the first time,
seasonally (eating your first fresh tomato of the year) or more
universally (birth of a child, etc.).
I couldn't find the translation I grew up with, but it's roughly as follows
(dropping the archaicisms past the formulaic opening): "Blessed art
Thou, O Lord our God, King of the Universe, who has sustained us and
allowed us to reach this time."
In combination with the blessing from Shabtai Zvi that Tom Mandel cites,
these cover an awe-ful lot of what's interesting in the world, no?
On Wed, 26 Apr 1995, Herb Levy wrote:
> On Mon, 24 Apr 1995, Tom Mandel wrote:
>
> >
> > Shabtai Zwi, the Jewish false messiah of the 17th century, introduced
> > a blessing that went as follows: "Blessed be the Lord our God,
> > King of the universe, who permittest that which is forbidden."
>
> <permittest>?
>
> I hope that's not your own translation.
>
> Respectfully,
>
> Herb
>
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 27 Apr 1995 14:47:01 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Maria Damon <damon001@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
Subject: Re: poetry v history
an antrhopologist, jonathan boyarin, has edited a book called remapping memory:
the politics of time/space, in which he himself has done just that with
palestinian/israeli ruins/monuments, and has an entire book forthcoming on that
subject...it's halfway between fieldnotes, theory, ethnography and poetics of
process...worth checking out--maria d
In message <2f9f70ad2023002@maroon.tc.umn.edu> UB Poetics discussion group
writes:
> Thanks for your note. I recently got the idea of doing what the young
> methodical historians dont do, going to the sites and describing
> whatever traces I can find in the ground, places where mines used to
> be, etc. I recall that either Herodotus or Thucydides did that. I
> cant remember which,. I can only remember that Olson claimed that one
> of them did, and some historian I was talking to, 25 years agho, said
> no, it was the other one. But really, has Olson ever been mistaken?
> Jeez!
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 27 Apr 1995 15:02:49 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jonathan Brannen <jbrannen@INFOLINK.MORRIS.MN.US>
Subject: Malls, Mail and Romance
Ron,
Forty percent of all books sold in the US are NOT romance novels.
Approximately 94% of all books sold in the US are text books.
Of the remaining six percent, four percent are non-fiction, one and
a half percent are fiction, and one half of one percent consists of
all other book publications (including, of course, poetry).
I feel, too, that somebody should plug Small Press Traffic in
San Francisco. They carry all the good stuff that SPD in
Berkeley has become too elitist to bother with, i.e. chapbooks
and new lit journals. I discovered Spenser's work there, Dan
Davidson's, Generator Press books, Score Press books, etc., long
before SPD carried them. Small Press Traffic has led a pretty
precarious existence, but they're interested in literature before
its been embalmed, and if they survive, they won't be dumping
their chapbook publications in order to make shelf space as
SPD in Berkely has.
Let me restate that last: they won't be dumping their chapbook
selection in order to make shelf space for University Press Publications
as SPD in Berkeley has.
Small Press Traffic is a nice place to go rummage amid the new.
Thought I mention it in case there's someone reading this that
(Death to all line editors)
Thought I should mention this in case there's someone reading
this that doesn't worship at the altar of the perfect bound book.
Anybody out there remember Doones Press? Excellent early titles
by Ron and Tom Raworth and others, all memeo and staples and
hard to find. If you're "in the business of selling books"
then you shouldn't be publishing poetry. If you're in love
with poetry and you publish it for that reason, there are always
alternative ways to readers.
Ron, most of this hasn't actually been addressed to you, but I
do have a question, aren't major writing centers interior?
Best,
Jonathan Brannen
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 27 Apr 1995 15:17:54 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jonathan Brannen <jbrannen@INFOLINK.MORRIS.MN.US>
Subject: elephant safari
Ed,
Are there no giraffes left in New Jersey?
best,
Jonathan
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 27 Apr 1995 15:14:23 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jonathan Brannen <jbrannen@INFOLINK.MORRIS.MN.US>
Subject: George Julian Harney
Noted that Cris mentioned Harney and poetry as though they were enemies.
George Julian Harney, should you not know, has the distinction of being
the first working class communist as well as the publisher of the first
English translation of The Communist Manifesto. Harney was in fact a
reader of poetry. Byron seems to have been his favorite, but his
personal library contained volumes of poetry by others as well.
Let the record note,
Jonathan Brannen
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 27 Apr 1995 15:38:23 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Gary Sullivan <gpsj@PRIMENET.COM>
Subject: seeking M/MLA respondent: poetry (fwd)
Dear Academics:
The following is a forwarded message calling for two papers: one on Olson &
one on Creeley. Dig how they want you to drag Wittgenstein into the latter.
Poets, sorry, they don't care what you think. Groove on paragraph 5's
"... please submit ... standing at your institution (MA 2, PhD 3, etc.), and
any other information you feel would better inform us of your commitment to the
study of contemporary American poetry." (!?!?)
I don't know about you folks, but I'm just going to Xerox Olson's "Letter
for Melville 1951" and submit that.
Hugs & big comfy sweaters to all,
Gary
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 27 Apr 1995 10:17:25 -0500 (CDT)
From: Karen M Frederickson <frede005@maroon.tc.umn.edu>
To: englgrad@maroon.tc.umn.edu
Subject: seeking M/MLA respondent: poetry
Seeking respondent for panel at M/MLA Annual Convention in St. Louis,
November 2-4, 1995.
We are involved with a panel new to this year's Midwest Modern Language
Association Annual Convention: "Mimetic Ends: Representational Shifts
in Post-WWII Poetry". In order to ensure a dynamic exchange of scholarly
views, we seek and welcome potential respondents from other universities.
Respondents are welcome for two papers in particular. Charles Olson's
position on the cusp of postmodernism and the philosophic scope of his
poetic ideology offer his work as an instructive site for theoretical
analysis. The paper to be present attempts to move Olson beyond strict
phenomenological re-readings and into a discussion of the material
implications of Olson's "projective" economy of image. The second paper
will explore the work of Robert Creeley as influenced by William Carlos
Williams. A reliance on Wittgenstein's writings should offer a unique
reading of Creeley's response.
We hope to select a single respondent for these papers. The respondent's
primary responsibility is to prepare a ten-minute response designed to
promote discussion for all in attendance at the session. Ideally, the
respondent will be able to bring the papers into dialogue with each other
and with the broader concerns of the panel (two other papers will be
presented).
If interested, please submit a brief letter summarizing your principal
scholarly interests, standing at your institution, (MA 2, PhD 3, etc.),
and any other information you feel would better inform us of your
commitment to the study of contemporary American poetry. Address letters to:
James Zeigler - Dept. of English
601 S. Morgan St. (m/c 162)
Chicago, IL 60607
Direct any questions to either Zeigler at (312) 281-7109 or Pat Roberts
at (3120 989-7918. We will reply to all who express interest and the
selected respondent will receive paper drafts by August 31. The selected
respondent will need to join Midwest Modern Language Association prior to
the conference.
Thank you for your interest.
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 28 Apr 1995 08:58:54 GMT+1200
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Tony Green <t.green@AUCKLAND.AC.NZ>
Organization: The University of Auckland
Subject: Not a definition -- 4
June 1978, L= magazine,Peter Seaton writes:
"Some reason a few kids see you straighten up is the pronounced
difference developed into something that inches or fractions of
inches could shrink to almost zero by covering the other side of
a hard and fast rule: no one saw the inside the letters for, who was
with us for hours."
Tony Green,
e-mail: t.green@auckland.ac.nz
post: Dept of Art History,
University of Auckland,
Private Bag 92019,
Auckland, New Zealand
Fax: 64 9-373 7014
Telephone: 64 9 373 7599 ext. 8981 or 7276
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 27 Apr 1995 16:27:29 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Carl Lynden Peters <clpeters@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: First Intensity
In-Reply-To: <199504270324.UAA15423@whistler.sfu.ca> from "George Bowering" at
Apr 26, 95 05:05:11 pm
george, this is as good as tjhe creeley poem, what was it -- how'd it go:
one/ 2/ and 3
> > One line
>
> oops
>
> three lines
>
carl
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 27 Apr 1995 18:36:22 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jonathan Brannen <jbrannen@INFOLINK.MORRIS.MN.US>
Subject: Re: Swap at EPC
Ken's suggestion sounds workable to me.
Jonathan Brannen
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 27 Apr 1995 16:36:29 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Carl Lynden Peters <clpeters@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: first intensity
george, this one's
one line
oops
three lines
as good as the creeley poem, what was it -- how'd it
go: one, 2, and 3,,,
carl
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 27 Apr 1995 23:25:43 +1000
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Mark Roberts <M.Roberts@UNSW.EDU.AU>
Subject: AWOL: The Write Stuff
AUSTRALIAN WRITING ONLINE is a small press distribution and information
service which we hope will help Australian magazines, journals and
publishers to reach a much wider audience through the internet.
As a first step we will be posting information and subscription details for
a number of magazines and publishers to a number of discussion groups and
lists. We also post a monthly 'Happenings' list (an Australian Literature
what's on). If you would like to receive AWOL postings directly, please
contact AWOL directly on M.Roberts@unsw.edu.au.
AWOL is also offering to distribute Australian small magazines and presses
within Sydney. If you are interested in finding out more about our
distribution service please contact us.
AWOL: M.Roberts@unsw.edu.au.
PO Box 333
Concord NSW 2137 Australia
Please note that M.Roberts@unsw.edu.au is a temporary address until we set
up our own address sometime later this year
***************************************************************************
* THE WRITE STUFF *
ISSN 1323-7721
'Light the candle and write!'
The Write Stuff is an electronic journal with an eclectic
range of book reviews, interviews with writers, articles
on writing and original prose and poetry.
EDITORS: Giles Hugo and Anne Kellas
GREETINGS from the remote antipodes of Cyberia. The Write
Stuff has evolved out of a weekly lit-crit newspaper column I
used to write ('88-'92) and the desire to promote good writers
and writing in the most eclectic sense. We ain't peddling no
critical creed -- Giles Hugo
IT seems not too much to expect that readers of fiction and
poetry might also be users of the Internet, and that to use
this medium to point back to the printed world of books and
writing can only be of service to writers and their readers.
I hope this proves to be so! -- Anne Kellas
=================================
(1) HOW TO ACCESS THE WRITE STUFF
(2) CONTENTS OF ISSUE ONE
(3) ABOUT CONTRIBUTIONS
(4) HOW TO CONTACT THE WRITE STUFF
=================================
(1) HOW TO ACCESS The Write Stuff
GOPHER version:
gopher://info.utas.edu.au:70/11/Publications/The%20Write%20Stuff
or info.utas.edu.au and through gopher: -- open top
level document called Publications -- open The Write Stuff
HTML version:
under construction at
http://info.utas.edu.au/docs/ahugo/tws/
PRINT version:
A limited print version will be made available in Australia at
selected bookstores soon after electronic publication.
EMAIL correspondence:
WriteStuff.Editor@utas.edu.au
(2) CONTENTS OF ISSUE ONE
Over 27 book reviews, original prose and poetry, articles on
writing, and an interview
* Can you grok Cyberia? From William Gibson to virtual
reality, hackers, crackers, cyberdelia, cultural viruses;
* Hunter S. Thompson back on the Gonzo trail; Tobias Wolff;
Jack Kerouac's Good Blonde; Bob Adamson's poetry; Gabrielle
Lord; Bret Easton Ellis;
* The Australian AIDS Quilt Project - lest we forget;
* Is tabloid biography juicing up the Biosphere?
* Conspiracy theories from JFK to Freud's fraud; 'Forrest
Gump', the book before the movie; Poetry in Motion on CD-ROM.
* Winnie Mandela and the painful birth of the New South
Africa;
* Free at Last - Survivors tackle the devastation of childhood
sexual abuse;
* Tasmanian writer Richard Flanagan talks about his novel,
Death of a River Guide, reprinted three times in as many
months;
* Articles by Geoffrey Dean on short stories, and Anne Kellas
on the state of writing in South Africa;
* A story by G. W. Robinson, poems by Michael Dargaville
(3) ABOUT CONTRIBUTIONS
PLEASE do not send us unsolicited manuscripts, we simply
cannot afford to return them. Poetry and prose is included by
invitation only. However, we welcome your comments and views.
(4) HOW TO CONTACT The Write Stuff
E-mail: send a message to
WriteStuff.Editor@utas.edu.au
Or write to The Write Stuff at
P O Box 368,
North Hobart,
Tasmania 7002,
Australia.
Phone (002) 28 0189
internationally dial (+61 02) instead of (002)
Acknowledgments:
University of Tasmania, Australia
=================================
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 27 Apr 1995 21:00:11 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Gary Sullivan <gpsj@PRIMENET.COM>
Subject: Re: Small Press Traffic
In-Reply-To: <199504280022.RAA25397@mailhost.primenet.com>
Dear Jonathan:
I hate to be the messenger of this, but I'm told Small Press Traffic
closed. Yes, it was a great place. The first time I went in I thought "is
*this* the bookstore Brautigan was writing about in _The Abortion_?"
People literally brought in books they had made, sometimes in editions of
like five copies. (Including me.) The best press name I ever saw was in
SPT: "The Photocopy Machine at Work."
They also, thanks largely to Kevin & Dodie, had what I thought was the single
best reading series in the Bay Area. Also, also, they used to put out a
newsletter every couple of months or so w/brief reviews, etc.
Them days, sadly, are over. Or, so I'm told. Unfortunately, you're right:
"If you're 'in the business of selling books' then you shouldn't be
publishing [or otherwise making available] poetry." (That's not true,
though, in at least a few other countries.)
Yours,
Gary
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 27 Apr 1995 22:58:26 -0400
Reply-To: Robert Drake <au462@cleveland.Freenet.Edu>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Robert Drake <au462@CLEVELAND.FREENET.EDU>
Subject: Re: Malls, Mail and Romance
>I feel, too, that somebody should plug Small Press Traffic in
>San Francisco. They carry all the good stuff that SPD in
>Berkeley has become too elitist to bother with, i.e. chapbooks
>and new lit journals. I discovered Spenser's work there, Dan
>Davidson's, Generator Press books, Score Press books, etc., long
>before SPD carried them. Small Press Traffic has led a pretty
>precarious existence, but they're interested in literature before
>its been embalmed, and if they survive, they won't be dumping
>their chapbook publications in order to make shelf space as
>SPD in Berkely has.
lovely as the storefront is (a regular stop fr me whenever
i visited SF), & also many of the individuals involved; Small
Press Traffic has _consistantly_ ripped me off, taking stuff
on consignment and then refusing to pay... i wish it were
not so but...
lbd
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 27 Apr 1995 23:20:41 -0400
Reply-To: Robert Drake <au462@cleveland.Freenet.Edu>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Robert Drake <au462@CLEVELAND.FREENET.EDU>
Subject: Re: Distribution Evolution
herb--
>
>But most people, even most people who are interested in the kind of poetry
>we're interested in (add that to the thread on <definitions>), despite how
>nice & cozy it feels here on <poetics-list>, are not on-line.
>
>And they won't be for some time yet.
the conception of who "we" are, and "the kind of poetry we're interested in",
is, i think, far from a definable singularity... ^^^^^
>So, now that you've got a better system of trading publications between
>writers and publishers started and you're ready for on-line distribution,
>how are you going to get the work in front of people NOW?
>
>Just thought I'd ask.
_TapRoot Reviews_ appears first, & primarily, as a traditional paper
publication (the various electronic versions contain only a subset of
the information in the the paper version); and the reviews therein
are primarily of _paper_ publications, on the premise that those
publications are most accessible to "people NOW." the use of new
technologies does not necessarily imply the abandonment of the old.
& conversely--the _potential_ for online communication/distribution
far exceeds the present reality of traditional hardcopy dissemination
of info. sure, that potential is not yet realized, and limited techno-
access is still a barrier... that's no reason not to lay the groundwork
now for future possiblities...
yr friendly techo-ludite
lbd
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 27 Apr 1995 22:00:38 +0100
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Kevin Killian <dbkk@SIRIUS.COM>
Subject: Re: Malls, Mail and Romance
>I feel, too, that somebody should plug Small Press Traffic in
>San Francisco. They carry all the good stuff that SPD in
>Berkeley has become too elitist to bother with, i.e. chapbooks
>and new lit journals. I discovered Spenser's work there, Dan
>Davidson's, Generator Press books, Score Press books, etc., long
>before SPD carried them. Small Press Traffic has led a pretty
>precarious existence, but they're interested in literature before
>its been embalmed, and if they survive, they won't be dumping
>their chapbook publications in order to make shelf space as
>SPD in Berkely has.
>
>Let me restate that last: they won't be dumping their chapbook
>selection in order to make shelf space for University Press Publications
>as SPD in Berkeley has.
>
>Small Press Traffic is a nice place to go rummage amid the new.
As of three weeks ago I am now Small Press Traffic's (only) employee, a
very part-time (paywise at least) position. SPT hasn't had an employee for
two months. Officially I am the manager, but since there isn't enough
money to hire a director, directorship duties are planned to be performed
by myself and the much-overworked board.
A couple of poets I recently talked with didn't know we still existed.
We're now housed (meaning we have two bookcases) at Lodestar, a (very nice)
new age bookstore in the Castro, on Noe at Market. Much of the store's
stock is in storage in Colma. SPT's mailing address is now 2215-R Market
Street #449, San Francisco, CA 94114. Voice mail: 415/281-9338. And, of
course, I can always be e-mailed.
Financially, things are in a crisis state. Unfortunately, this is true of
many arts organizations in the Bay Area (Intersection just did a major
lay-off of their staff, for example). The board is trying to come to a
decision as to what to do, to just put it in its grave, to downsize, to
become a presenting organization (i.e., get rid of the bookstore, which has
never supported itself). I would like to see SPT continue to be involved
in distribution in some way. I think the ideas expressed here about online
distribution alternatives are very exciting. I would welcome any
suggestions from any of you on the listserv, concerning directions to take
the organization. We're having a Saturday board meeting in two or three
weeks to discuss SPT's direction.
Though we no longer have a space for readings, I've recently been given a
grant for a reading series to administer. Once I figure out what exactly
it is that will fulfill the grant, hopefully SPT will be able to continue,
for a bit, to present some interesting readings, at who knows what
location.
I've been involved with this organization since the early 80's. Writing
workshops at SPT, and the literary community that gathered around it
changed my life. Your kind words about the organization are deeply
appreciated.
Dodie Bellamy
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 27 Apr 1995 23:35:02 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ron Silliman <rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM>
Subject: Re: Malls, Mail and Romance
I loved Small Press Traffic, but it shut down earlier this year
(reduced actually to four shelves in a new age bookstore in the
Castro). Shut down in part by stock that never turned but ate up
capital in the form of shelf space. The largest debtor was SPD.
I do think a store like Traffic is do-able, but it has to be done
absolutely perfectly -- which is pretty much what Woodland Pattern
seems to be -- or else it will get sucked in by its own good
intentions. Carrying books on consignment for 15 years that never sell
is no more a form of distribution than is doing a terrific four-color
perfect bound book that the publisher keeps in the garage or basement
and never advertises.
The idea of SPD as "big, exclusive" or whatever seems to me
preposterous. They aren't perfect but they continue to do the job,
carry lots of non-perfect bound material, and have managed to
accomplish the most important task of all -- to stay in business
without having to depend entirely on a charismatic leader selflessly
supporting the store itself out of some other source of $$.
Imagine what poetry would be like without SPD?
Ron
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 27 Apr 1995 22:16:12 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ryan Knighton <knighton@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: cordelia
In-Reply-To: <199504271238.FAA06870@whistler.sfu.ca> from "Lindz Williamson"
at Apr 26, 95 09:25:37 pm
Lindz, or anyone interested, in your last post you wrote "female
character" was undeveloped in Lear. Which kind of character do you
mean?
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 28 Apr 1995 13:45:27 +0000
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: cris cheek <cris@SLANG.DEMON.CO.UK>
Subject: Re: George Julian Harney
>Noted that Cris mentioned Harney and poetry as though they were enemies.
>George Julian Harney, should you not know, has the distinction of being
>the first working class communist as well as the publisher of the first
>English translation of The Communist Manifesto. Harney was in fact a
>reader of poetry. Byron seems to have been his favorite, but his
>personal library contained volumes of poetry by others as well.
>
>Let the record note,
>Jonathan Brannen
Hi Jonathan, if you'd read my original post carefully (in its
full list context at that time) you'd have read that it was in fact
focussed onto Helen MacFarlane, being the first translator of the Community
Manifesto published in Britain by Harney (which was mentioned - what's
your point?) in his (and I dated the issue in which he did so as well) The
Red Republican, and onto her translation.
My point, although I did list and credit Harney fully, was
about her translation having added a somehwhat idiosyncratic 'image' (of
the 'hobgoblin' stalking europe) into the firt line of The Community
Manifesto and of how this (and I know I was being ironic) had set up a
mutual suspicion between Marxist Revolutionaires and poetry lasting until
this day.
Nothing in that post suggested animosity between Harney and poetry. I'd
have been irresponsible indeed if I had. But you arguably responded
'irresponsibly' - to get back to an earlier strain.
There - that's my bristling tetchiness for this week gone. And since
bones are being picked among bristles your phrase 'the distinction of being
the first working class communist' is useless in any respect other than
provoking questions of how do you know? card carrying membership number 1?
there were other communists before him but they weren't really working
class ( such as O'Brien)? well maybe they weren't exactly communists? or
did I miss a definition there? and so on. Cause he's also been called 'a
Jacobin in an English setting'. Marx and Engels quarrelled with him and
were suspicious of the catch-all attitude towards 'revolutionaries'
generally embraced in his internationalist editorship of The Red Ruplican.
Come on. Let the record what?
And this is really tedious list-clogging stuff.
cris
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 28 Apr 1995 13:12:26 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Edward Foster <EFOSTER@VAXC.STEVENS-TECH.EDU>
Subject: Re: seeking M/MLA respondent: poetry (fwd)
terrific, gary; glad you found the ziegler piece: it says all. forget the safari to elephantland; all able-bodied poets join the midwest mla now!
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 28 Apr 1995 13:21:54 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Edward Foster <EFOSTER@VAXC.STEVENS-TECH.EDU>
Subject: Re: elephant safari
hey, jonathan, whadda ya want? we got gazelles, zebras, a cuppla water buffalos, but the elephants, man, they're the prize.
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 28 Apr 1995 13:27:13 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Edward Foster <EFOSTER@VAXC.STEVENS-TECH.EDU>
Subject: Re: Standing
new great mag: radical poetics (ed. michael hrebeniak, others), "new internsational journal of creative action" in "spirit of eric mottram." poetry, prose, music, essays, visuals. #1, this summer. 58 crowshott ave., stanmore, midd;esex, HA7 1HT Eng.
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 28 Apr 1995 14:37:10 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: David Ball <DBALL@SMITH.SMITH.EDU>
Subject: Re: Small Press Traffic
...or as Pound put it in Hugh Selwyn Mauberley,
"and give up poetry, my boy
There's nothing in it."
--but he was ironic
David Ball
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 28 Apr 1995 12:23:00 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Don Cheney <Don_Cheney@UCSDLIBRARY.UCSD.EDU>
Subject: Real men read hardware poetry
I work in a warehouse in San Diego and I hear a lot of daytime
radio. The latest commercial theme for some hardware store chain
(I forget who it is) is poetry. The first commercial I heard
with this theme had a man reading a poem about wood. He seems
really uncomfortable reading the poem, like he can't believe what
he's doing. As I remember, you can even hear him turning a page
after reading one line. Maybe he's supposed to be nervous. My
own sense of the guy's nervousness is that reading a poem is not
something that men who work with wood do, or admit to. But the
man's voice also has that kinda-mumbling monotone that has become
a fixture of many radio commercials (much like the wandering,
jerky camera shot was once so entrenched in television
commercials), so maybe his delivery is supposed to be "cute."
The second commercial at least has a pun. The voice over says
that this man is going to read his "concrete poem." And, of
course, the guy starts reading (again with a sense of self-
consciousness) a poem "about" concrete.
Makes me want to yell out, "Pinch me, Alfredo and pass the hot
sauce!"
Don Cheney
dcheney@ucsd.edu
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 28 Apr 1995 16:53:37 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Bill Luoma <Maz881@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: first intensity
I think grenier's:
Three
legged
Dog
is better.
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 28 Apr 1995 16:48:38 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jonathan Brannen <jbrannen@INFOLINK.MORRIS.MN.US>
Subject: Romancing the Mall
Ron,
Thanks for reminding us that selfless acts never go unpunished.
I don't think anyone would suggest that Small Press Traffic
is/was a model business venture. Nor do I believe that this
is/was its driving motivation. I also hesitate to assign a
shelflife to any book. I've found marvelous books in various
places that have been eating "capital in the form of shelf
space" for more than fifteen years and have been delighted
that someone had the foresight or, as you suggest, was
negligent enough to keep them available.
I agree that SPD performs a valuable service. The only
"bookstore" where I live is a greeting card shop run by
apostolic christians who promote family values. So SPD
is something of a life-line. But if you believe that SPD
still carries "lots of non-perfect bound material" you're
living in a time-warp. I can't fault their business acumen.
They've defined their market niche and seem to be effectively
pursuing it. SPD is settling gracefully into middle-age.
Along with increased knowledge and comfort with the status quo,
has come the fear of risk-taking. SPD can't meet everyone's
needs. They continue to do part of the job and this in itself
is admirable.
"Imagine what poetry would be like without SPD?" Probably not
much different than it is. It strikes me as preposterous
to suggest otherwise. Would you start writing differently
if SPD ceased to exist? Poetry finds a way to survive and
to evolve (more often than not, outside of official channels).
Best of all possible worlds,
Jonathan
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 28 Apr 1995 17:59:04 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Carla Billitteri <V079SJWU@UBVMS.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Organization: University at Buffalo
Subject: Re: Real men read hardware poetry
don -your story abt. the radio commercials is terrific- but please
write them down & pass them around-commercials are definitively my
kind of (+/-) "concrete" poetry -thanks- carla
P.S. not that i particularly want to open another discussion on the
"poetics of the everyday"-the stuff on hallmark was enough-and yes-
i am fully aware of the politics of the "goods" implied in my query
hope it doesn't hurt the feelings of some folks out there- -cheers-
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 28 Apr 1995 16:50:01 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jonathan Brannen <jbrannen@INFOLINK.MORRIS.MN.US>
Subject: Re: elephant safari
Ok, Ed, keep tickling those ivories.
best, Jonathan
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 28 Apr 1995 14:28:47 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: David Ball <DBALL@SMITH.SMITH.EDU>
Subject: Re: Malls, Mail and Romance
Well, *I* remember DOONES, the journal, because they published some of my
poems. Otherwise I might not. Didn't know they did a lot of Tom
Raworth, but glad to hear it.
Will definitely check out Small Press Traffic in SF; wasn't clear whether it
was a bookstore or...? and where...?
Thanks,
David Ball
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 28 Apr 1995 16:31:51 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" <anielsen@SPARTA.SJSU.EDU>
Subject: Re: Reading Calls for Respondents
In-Reply-To: <9504281158.AA16149@isc.sjsu.edu>
Gary -- You need to take a closer look at that M/MWMLA circular you
circulated to us -- They are not asking for papers applying Witt. etc. to
the poets etc. -- Those papers are already on the panel, and the chair is
looking for someone to respond to them! In which case the Olson letter
might make a good start indeed! Wild thing about that conference is that
they circulate papers in advance, and the audience is supposed to read in
advance and come prepared to argue (my experience has been that this
system does not hold up in practice)
But what do those numbers after the degree abbrevs. in the line on status
portend? Am I a 2 or a # or do I add up to a five???? what is 1 to do?
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 28 Apr 1995 19:41:13 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Gary Sullivan <gpsj@PRIMENET.COM>
Subject: Re: Small Press Traffic
In-Reply-To: <199504282322.QAA03065@mailhost.primenet.com>
On Fri, 28 Apr 1995, David Ball wrote:
> ...or as Pound put it in Hugh Selwyn Mauberley,
> "and give up poetry, my boy
> There's nothing in it."
>
> --but he was ironic
>
> David Ball
& so are we.
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 28 Apr 1995 20:23:20 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Mn Center For Book Arts <mcba@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
Subject: Re: poetry and the electronic
In-Reply-To: <2fa0643d3507002@maroon.tc.umn.edu>
I still don't know how to set up a home page, but I'm game. As someone
who publishes some editions with artists/papermakers limited to as few as
50, but also publishes some editions of 1000 which are, as of yet, never
perfectbound (a lone holdout for smyth-sewing), I'd be willing to trade
some titles but not the most limited ones.
charles alexander
chax press
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 29 Apr 1995 00:33:30 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Gary Sullivan <gpsj@PRIMENET.COM>
Subject: Re: Reading Calls for Respondents
In-Reply-To: <199504290155.SAA28883@mailhost.primenet.com>
Dear Aldon:
Thanks for correcting me on that. When they said they were looking for
"respondents" to two papers, I really thought they were looking for
people to respond by *writing* these papers, which had been sort of
boiler-plated as to subject & approach, & as such sort of already
existed. It totally did not surprise me that an academic institution
would ask for such a thing. (It still wouldn't.) That was, in fact, how
we we asked to write a number of our papers when we were in school. (One
teacher, if you didn't write about, say, Hemingway, using this sort of
vaguely "Jungian" approach he'd developed (& used in class), he'd dock
you points. That was, as far as he was concerned, how you read a thing,
and if you weren't reading it on/in his terms, you simply weren't
"getting it." (It involved finding "the line" and "the circle"; whether
someone was drinking alcohol "the spirit, masculine" or water "nature,
the feminine.") For a year after that class, that's how I assumed
everyone wrote, what they thought about. (I'm admittedly impressionable.)
Now, those numbers after MA and PhD, God knows what they stand for. A
color TV for the first person who posts the answer!
Yours,
Gary
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 29 Apr 1995 01:15:16 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Gary Sullivan <gpsj@PRIMENET.COM>
Subject: Mails, Malls and Romance
Dear Ron:
>The idea of SPD as "big, exclusive" or whatever seems to me preposterous.
Shakespeare: "Nothing can seem foul to those that win."
As a publisher whose various projects have been carried by SPD since
1990, and as a poet who does not have a chapbook out or forthcoming, I
hope you won't find my opinion of SPD the product of imagined
exclusion. I agree with Jonathan: SPD simply doesn't carry very many NEW
chapbooks, & new chapbooks by emerging writers in particular. The reason
they don't carry them is their exclusionary policy: A press must be
publishing at least 2 books a year, and the books must be "sellable" to
bookstores. Again, if you know someone there, and they like you, they
*may* take your stapled books on. Or, if you're publishing writers who
people already know about.
Yes, SPD is valuable, a very valuable resource. But they aren't what they
were in '80s. They're pretty much as Jonathan's described them.
Now, as to:
>Imagine what poetry would be like without SPD?
I don't have to; I know where to get Standing Stones, Texture, _Compound
Eye_, & dozens of others I don't have time right now to list. (My server
just notified me they're going to reboot. Thanks, Ron, for warning us
about that, btw.)
Yours,
Gary
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 29 Apr 1995 01:54:14 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Spencer Selby <selby@SLIP.NET>
Subject: Re: Mails, Malls and Romance
In-Reply-To: <199504290645.XAA11304@>
Jonathan makes good points about Small Press Traffic and SPD. And Ron is
right when he implies that there were problems with the way Small Press
Traffic was run. Best thing about the store, in my opinion, was the
reading series Kevin Killian put on. And this is the greatest loss.
(Kevin, you must start another series soon. The scene misses your
events and needs them badly.)
It is certainly true that SPD has moved away from carrying material that
is not perfect bound. The most active chapbook presses of the past five
or so years, such as Leave, Texture, Runaway Spoon and Standing Stones,
are not carried by SPD. (I believe they have taken a title or two from
Leave, but not most of their list, which includes around 60 chaps.) This
is significant because it is these presses that are publishing most of
the emerging writers. It is to these presses and others like them that
emerging writers must increasingly turn if they are to begin publishing
books.
One of the reasons why Taproot Reviews is such a valuable publication is
that it carries so many listings of magazines and chapbook presses that are,
for the most part, not distributed by SPD.
It would be terrible if SPD folded; I think everyone will agree on that.
But that does not mean we should ignore or deny the downside of changes
SPD has made over the last 5-10 years. This downside becomes more and more
significant as a new generation of poets struggles to find publishers and
an audience.
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 29 Apr 1995 03:54:43 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ron Silliman <rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM>
Subject: Re: Romancing the Mall
Jonathon Bramen wrote
" But if you believe that SPD
>still carries "lots of non-perfect bound material" you're
>living in a time-warp."
No, but for the past 6 years I've been living one block east of SPD and
have bought saddle-stitch books there as recently as this week. (Julia
Blumenreich's Meeting Tessie, to be exact, which has a prominent place
at the front table, right near Rae Armantrout's perfect bound Made to
Seem and the new Palmer New Directions & Duncan's Selected Prose). SPD
has sold all of Zasterle Press' books and a number of others as well.
But I must admit that SPD's focus is not the micropublisher so much as
the small press. Non perfect bound books have a different form and
function -- they're the perfect mail object and when I get a big
package from Leave Press (as I did this week) it makes me ecstatic --
the Giscombe there caused me to walk to SPD and buy his Dalkey Archive
book _Here_.
Having said all this, I must admit that I'm moving 3,000 miles from SPD
in the next 45 minutes.... It will be the Bay Area institution that I
miss the most.
Ron
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 29 Apr 1995 04:02:26 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ron Silliman <rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM>
Subject: Re: poetry and the electronic
Percentage increase in number of hosts in Europe during March, 1995: 11
Number of people requesting information from Fidelity Investments over
the Internet in March and April: approx. 250,000
Average number of requests, per person: 4
Percentage of overall fund inquiries that came in via the Internet: 5.5
Time, in minutes, to download America On-Line's web browser (at 14.4
Kbits/sec): 25
Average number, per hour, of new subscribers to Netcom over the past
year: 11
Number of books about love and sex on the Internet: 5
Suggested donation, in dollars, for subscribers to the inet-marketing
mailing list: 25
Percentage increase in number of hits on FEMA web server in the week
following the Oklahoma City bombing: 150
Number of web pages indexed by the Lycos Internet catalog: 3.6 million
Number of WWW servers known to Lycos: 23,550
Number of subscribers to NiftyServe: 1 million
Number of subscribers to CompuServe in Europe: 300,000
Percentage of NSFnet traffic from WWW during March, 1995: 19
Number of users on the Internet: No one really knows
Number of Internet Draft documents issued in March, 1995: 142
Number of new domain requests, per working hour, handled by InterNIC
Registration Services in March, 1995: 37
Number of Massachusetts localities with domains registered in March,
1995: 92
Number of Norwegian television shows with a WWW home page: 4
Rank, by traffic volume, of rec.games.trading-cards.marketplace: 12
"Harper's Index" is a registered trademark of Harper's Magazine
Foundation.
Copyright 1995 by Win Treese. Send updates or interesting statistics to
treese@OpenMarket.com.
Past issues and citations to sources can be found at
http://www.openmarket.com/info/internet-index/. To subscribe to future
issues of the Internet Index, send a message saying "subscribe
internet-index" in the body to internet-index-request@OpenMarket.com.
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 29 Apr 1995 06:12:05 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Mn Center For Book Arts <mcba@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
Subject: Re: Romancing the Mall/Mail
In-Reply-To: <2fa21b7d42d8002@maroon.tc.umn.edu>
Just to echo Ron's excitement at receiving the Leave pamphlets in the
mail. I received these last week as well, and they are marvelous. Thanks,
Juliana. As to the micropress, stitched pamphlets in SPD or other
bookstores, I wish there were more everywhere, but I even think that, in
the context of most bookstores they are rather lost, whereas they are so
convenient and not terribly expensive, to mail. Getting them in the mail
is a wonder rarely found in a bookstore. Perhaps, then, there is simply a
need for more access to finding out about such works so that more people
can order them or trade for them. I think this list and other electronic
forums are already helping in that regard.
charles alexander
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 29 Apr 1995 13:45:17 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Bill Luoma <Maz881@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: Real men read hardware poetry
Don,
Announce to the new drake that you skillfully shear allocation buffers.
(Tell us more cultural analysis stories.)
Bill
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 29 Apr 1995 09:07:33 -1000
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Gabrielle Welford <welford@UHUNIX.UHCC.HAWAII.EDU>
Subject: Re: Small Press Traffic
In-Reply-To: <9504280203.AA29923@uhunix4.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu>
Ah, this is terrible. I knew they were struggling but didn't know they
had closed. Does anyone know what happened?
Gabrielle
welford@uhunix.uhcc.hawaii.edu
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 29 Apr 1995 23:10:06 +0000
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: cris cheek <cris@SLANG.DEMON.CO.UK>
Subject: Re: Distribution Evolution
1. Loss says online swap shop listings should fit into both press listings
and be separate. I'd also agree with that.
2. It does seem as if work needs to happen from the press side on
constructing of home pages. Now I'm very willing to be put in the work on
doing that, but feel nervous on the techno side. Loss, I take it you need
this info in HTML - am I right? That's where my own, and I think I might
not be alone on this, technophobias emerge as my knowledge of HTML is
pretty much limited - as yet. But I did find what Bob Drake posted in
that respect very useful. And the www site for 'A Beginner's Guide to HTML'
is worth a quick visit for downloading what is a very useful (though still
to me daunting) introduction to the 'language'.
In one way Loss what would be a useful exercise for me would be to put in
the s-nail to yourselves the kind of info I'd like a home page I might
design to accomodate and then get e-back about viability. (I'm not
suggesting for a minute that you do any of the work - you're all and both
and all doing a great job already !).
I'd just like for you to see the stuff more tangible so that when we talk
marmot there's some 'concrete' ground.
3. Bob - thanks for your response. What remains useful is the positive
energy and intent to gererate new possibilities which this discussion is
apart of.
4. Herb - doesn't my taking (for the sake of argument) books I have
swapped with X Press along to a reading series in Norwich or London or
Cambridge already suggest a way in which what was not previously put before
'a public' can become so? It's only a litle one but it gets close to the
source and turns up the heat a touch.
cris
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 29 Apr 1995 22:37:19 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: George Bowering <bowering@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: Malls, Mail and Romance
In-Reply-To: <199504280022.RAA14430@whistler.sfu.ca> from "Jonathan Brannen"
at Apr 27, 95 03:02:49 pm
In a recent letter Jonathan Brannen said "Forty percent of all books
sold in the US are NOT romance novels."
This means that 60% ARE romance novels. I find that hard to believe.
I thought that at least 25% were gun manuals.
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 29 Apr 1995 22:41:01 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: George Bowering <bowering@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: cordelia
In-Reply-To: <199504280750.AAA06145@whistler.sfu.ca> from "Jonathan Brannen"
at Apr 27, 95 01:44:51 pm
Well, maybe Shakespeare was a populist in those days, but he's
hightone now. I would be amazed were I to find (a) that the average
freshperson could understand the lingo, and (b) someone on the
average B747 were reading Shakespeare, much less the average AM/TRAK.
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 30 Apr 1995 12:44:03 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jonathan Brannen <jbrannen@INFOLINK.MORRIS.MN.US>
Subject: Re: Malls, Mail and Romance
George,
The NRA is literate?
Best,
Jonathan
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 30 Apr 1995 18:17:36 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jonathan Brannen <jbrannen@INFOLINK.MORRIS.MN.US>
Subject: Bristling tetchiness
Hi Cris,
Relax Cris, your use of irony was so subtle that it was
lost on no one. And yes, you mentioned the date that the
Communist Manifesto was published in the Red Republican.
You were even gracious enough to include its retail price
of one penny.
My point was that Harney, a revolutionary in his day,
was an enthusiastic fan of poetry. Either this
extends the irony, since Harney was responsible for the
publication of "A frightful hobgoblin stalks through Europe",
or it points out the questionable nature of generalities
such as: "Resultant mutual suspicions between revolution
and poetry have been a struggle ever since." Mutual
suspicions, as used in your post, does suggest a degree
of animosity. But if it makes you feel better, sign me
up for the next Glee Club sing of "Call Me Irresponsible."
I had intended to type that Harney "has the distinction
of being one of the first working class communists...." I
assume full responsibility for my shoddy proof-reading. Glad
it provided you with the opportunity to vent the last of
last week's spleen.
But Harney was indeed one of the first working class
communists. Is this useless information, as you claim?
If you already know who Harney was, I suppose it may seem so.
But George Julian Harney is hardly a household word. I felt
it was a unfair to mention him as though he warranted only
a footnote to Helen MacFarlane's translation of the Communist
Manifesto which you held up for derision. There are those
who believe Harney played a note-worthy role in disseminating
Marxist philosophy to the working class at a pivotal point.
Did you miss a definition of communism? Since it was
Harney's publication of the Communist Manifesto you were
discussing and all remarks about Harney were made in that
context, I'd say you didn't miss it, you were willfully
ignoring it. As for card carrying, I believe Harney's
game was chess.
On Friday, April 28 Cris Cheek wrote:
Hi Jonathan, if you'd read my original post carefully (in its
full list context at that time) you'd have read that it was in fact
focussed onto Helen MacFarlane, being the first translator of the Community
Manifesto published in Britain by Harney (which was mentioned - what's
your point?) in his (and I dated the issue in which he did so as well) The
Red Republican, and onto her translation.
My point, although I did list and credit Harney fully, was
about her translation having added a somehwhat idiosyncratic 'image' (of
the 'hobgoblin' stalking europe) into the firt line of The Community
Manifesto and of how this (and I know I was being ironic) had set up a
mutual suspicion between Marxist Revolutionaires and poetry lasting until
this day.
Nothing in that post suggested animosity between Harney and poetry. I'd
have been irresponsible indeed if I had. But you arguably responded
'irresponsibly' - to get back to an earlier strain.
There - that's my bristling tetchiness for this week gone. And since
bones are being picked among bristles your phrase 'the distinction of being
the first working class communist' is useless in any respect other than
provoking questions of how do you know? card carrying membership number 1?
there were other communists before him but they weren't really working
class ( such as O'Brien)? well maybe they weren't exactly communists? or
did I miss a definition there? and so on. Cause he's also been called 'a
Jacobin in an English setting'. Marx and Engels quarrelled with him and
were suspicious of the catch-all attitude towards 'revolutionaries'
generally embraced in his internationalist editorship of The Red Ruplican.
Come on. Let the record what?
And this is really tedious list-clogging stuff.
cris
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 30 Apr 1995 18:32:03 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jonathan Brannen <jbrannen@INFOLINK.MORRIS.MN.US>
Subject: Re: Bristling tetchiness
Cris,
Sorry to further clog your list, but I forgot to
sign off on the last Harney note.
Let the record note that the note beginning "Relax
Cris" was from,
Jonathan Brannen
stay frosty, jb
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 30 Apr 1995 23:26:05 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: FUNKHOUSER CHRISTOPH <cf2785@CSC.ALBANY.EDU>
Subject: intro oral & visual cultures to poetics @once!
X-cc: FUNKHOUSER CHRISTOPH <cf2785@sarah.albany.edu>
Stirred by this week's babble about SPD:
To be clear from the beginning, my views are in no way aimed at
the replacement of print culture, books, broadsides, xeroxed zines &
staple-job chapbooks/literature by digitized versions, or TV, or
something. No need to resist what I have to say with that charge or
fear. There are teen & adult spirits & beauty (synthesis, etc.) about
print which I hope never meet extinction. Especially appreciated are
poetry & other books which have visual elements and qualities to
them (from Illuminated manuscripts through Blake (much more like
"poetry" than the Declaration of Independence), DADA & up through
Katie Yates & Brathwaite & so on). There are certainly titles
published by Chax, Leave, Roof & other presses mentioned around
here which are of unquestionable value to the pro/motion of poetry
& the poetic(s) arts into the next century. Long may those presses
run (to strike a paraphrase). So, if you can bear with it: what I have
to say is non-oppositional, though querulous.
Once again I want find it necessary to promote alternative
publishing platforms (though I noticed my brief comments on the
subject were omitted from the transcript of the New Coast session on
small press publishing which was published in CHAIN vol. 1). I
experience a mild dismay realizing that the primary focus of poets,
as far as producing their work goes, remains tuned to print
technology. Since it is what we are accustomed to, what we have
easily at our disposal in our age of commercial & pirate xerox
reproduction? But can we hang a moment to problematize "print"?
Any way you want? I was talking with a close friend last night, 30
April 1995, a very intelligent woman who said, "it's a failure of the
imagination to think that poetry has to be limited to black words on a white
page." That sounds harsh, "yeah," but the idea that most printed poetry, as
much as it might contain beauty and meaning via language, is far from
always best enacted through book technology.
I have actively been involved as a small press publisher (&
"writer") since 1986, putting out approximately 27 print volumes (+
broadsides), a half dozen or more cassettes, one compact disc, a video,
and 1+ magazines/newsletters on the internet as co-editor with We Press.
It's especially ridiculous to me that SPD will not carry items in unprinted
media because their "purchase points" and warehousers can't find a way to
handle them conveniently. So, we're out on that level. (Which is fine,
actually, considering that when I hear Ron Silliman say "Imagine
poetry today without SPD..." I think, gee, look at / who's looking at
American Poetry today with SPD!). Audio recordings we have already
published by Jack Foley & Adele Foley, Joanne Kyger, Tory Miller,
Jean Gier & Sybl Glebow, Eric Curkendall, Andy Clausen, H.D. Moe,
Richard Kostelanetz, Richie West, Allen Ginsberg, Jennifer Joseph,
Marc Olmsted, Teresa Clark & Carletta Wilson, Dashka Slater, Jennifer
Stone, Francisco X. Alarcon, Morton Marcus, Richard Loranger, Angela
Coon, Elisabeth Belile, Victoria Stone, Michael Weaver, Anne
Waldman, Nathaniel Mackey, William Everson, Trudy Morse, Cecil
Taylor, Wanda Phipps, Lee Ann Brown, Steven Taylor, Victor
Hernandez Cruz, Steve Benson, Roddy Potter, Katie Yates, Stephen
Cope, Will Alexander and others are circulated through "grass-roots"
methods & the occasional indie-music distributor, though the people
who buy & support "independent" music distributors generally want
more than a voice in their ears.
To a certain degree, I'm wondering what Dr. Perelman says in his
upcoming book about the marginalization of poetry. Whether we
need to be marginalized, want to be marginalized, or are necessarily
marginalized, it seems like sticking close to printed text ensures just
that in our audio/visually based culture.
chris funkhouser, albany
cf2785@csc.albany.edu
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 1 May 1995 15:15:23 GMT+1200
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Tony Green <t.green@AUCKLAND.AC.NZ>
Organization: The University of Auckland
Subject: Not a definition -- 5
April 1978, Barrett Watten in L= mag.:
"IF at some point language walked in the open door, we would show it
some respect. Our response would be more immediate than to use it as
a sign. A sign of respectability, or connections to the art world.
So we respect language by not being content to operate in any one
part of it. it's greater than we are. This has implications for
the form. That sense is larger than one can say."
Tony Green,
e-mail: t.green@auckland.ac.nz
post: Dept of Art History,
University of Auckland,
Private Bag 92019,
Auckland, New Zealand
Fax: 64 9-373 7014
Telephone: 64 9 373 7599 ext. 8981 or 7276