========================================================================= Date: Mon, 1 May 1995 03:56:44 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Re: cordelia Well this maybe doesn't mean anything in terms of generalities and/or may say more about me than about the ostensible subject matter but i've taught both contemporary poetry and Shakespeare and the 'average person' seems to get Shakespeare more than the poetry i teach, now maybe if I taught say Gerald Stern (gag) rather than say Carla Harryman or Jack Spicer they'd get contemporary poetry more. Furthermore, they don't necessarily GET the lingo of Shakespeare but "get" the story and so they walk around with this illusion of understanding it which contemporary poetry doesn't give them---which may actually be WORSE! ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 1 May 1995 20:19:01 GMT+1300 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Wystan Curnow Organization: English Dept. - Univ. of Auckland Subject: Re: cordelia X-To: LS0796%ALBNYVMS.BITNET@UBVM.cc.buffalo.edu I'm with you Chris. I used to have this beef at dept meetings: why is it Shakespeare gets equal time with the rest of literature. That was the curriculum, THE CANON for a time. Not so much any more. I complained but the students...no. And now we have SHAKESPEARE ON FILM and do they beat the doors down to get into that. Wystan. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 1 May 1995 14:15:49 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: gimmicks/"poetry" that's got nothin' on zimmerman Awhile Back, Mark Wallace complained (or STATED) that a poet needs THEORY these days if s/he wants to teach. Either that or a really good hustler. Of course if one's a good hustler, why would one WANT to teach ? So, it seems this issue is coming up again. We see the SHAKESPEARE issue--and we see the ELECTRONIC and "audio/visual" culture issue... yes, poetry is not enough academically--one needs some kinda GIMMICK. Yeah, man, I DO like Bob Dylan (as a poet) better than Gerald Stern (who's may safe whipping boy, a metonymy for many others, many parts of me)--but there are so many silly hybrids out there. And not only that ALlen Ginsberg has a LOUSY voice! And not only that the Brannagh version of MUCH ADO could have been much better... It's all way to "middle brow" isn't it? It is far more fun (tis a far far better thing) to go to a loud thrash like concert and come back and read something like Wallace Stevens than to try to pretend that "poetry " that ain't got nuthin' on zimmerman, is more soulless than even your basic garage band IN ADDITION to being something that doesn't hold up under repeated readings, is going to be something we should like....heavy yawn "I used to be disgusted now I try to be amused...." CS ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 1 May 1995 15:30:32 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Andrew Joron Subject: Dirt More evidence of life beyond SPD: Today I received a chapbook in the mail (such free exchanges of publications being our own form of samizdat) which delighted & astounded me: _Dirt_ by Jim Leftwich (Luna Bisonte Prods, 137 Leland Ave., Columbus OH 43214, no price), saddle-stapled, tan cover w/ mutant calligraphy in green ink, containing 14 pp. of rapturous, recombinant "neo-prose" made partly of words you won't find in any dictionary: by rave brome scalp ledge has to that's. ark of retuse bathe. mesquite quota bort livid noel. elute is part of as, ring our cyme rust sea. to refuge the then of steel. thyme for knot he umbels in a cord, soft of sap, a silence salt as wheels sleep. seem the graphs of scalpel port. dash sharp shred dome, touch moat inhalation. exhale advertiseachine, if you splinter a game with mah. epos hade smear seta rasp. dial roil youth texture prayers wisp evil ration into which. Throughout the book, Jim is "morphing" morphemes with the speed of sound, maybe a verbal equivalent of saxophonist Evan Parker's circular breathing technique. *Here's* what poetry is like without SPD (I like SPD and am glad it exists, yet it has many limitations which less institutionalized, more grassroots forms of poetic interchange can & should circumvent.) Andrew Joron ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 1 May 1995 19:15:55 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: who wrote this??? The other day I found some poems laying on a quite boring quasi-suburban street in a tiny town that only has CHAIN bookstores (and some used) Suprisingly, the poem isn't totally hideous....and in some ways resemble H.D. There are four poems: "OLD MATH" "THE SEA OUTSIDE" :THE HIATUS" and "BREAKTHROUGH"---- I am curious if any one knows who wrote them? BREAKTHROUGH Fields migrate into gold the sea sprawls out of its chains the scene's torn the light patched water cuffs the air while the bay laughs starlings sown like grain with a knowing wink of dark an airplane crosses noon the equinox leaps through the clock clouds fall upwards the moon feels tall the sky keels south what blooms is the wind I want to say there's something really goofy about these poems,and maybe I'm only stopped because it may have been written by someone I'm SUPPOSSED to like---Yes, SPENCER, what's in a name? But what is poetr suppossed to do? to be? Chris ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 1 May 1995 22:09:29 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mn Center For Book Arts Subject: Re: intro oral & visual cultures to poetics @once! In-Reply-To: <2fa4553b56a2002@maroon.tc.umn.edu> Bravo to Chris Funkhouser! for pointing out the idiocy of seeing poetry more or less only as print, even though he admits that print has various important values. As one of the print book makers he values, I must say that I agree wholeheartedly, and have also committed my own work to various media, from taped to electronic to print. Radio has received some of the most valuable, although it doesn't add up to a lot of hours. And I had one of my greatest revelations when, after a long period of being disturbed about the closure (books are closed for 99.9% of their lives, but I'm sure someone will dispute that statistic) of print, I simply realized that, once read, a work is never closed. So, while I'll continue to make books which can be held and read (or at least as long as it doesn't seem too insane to use paper, and, if it gets to that point, I do know how to make paper), I hope to also keep on getting work into other media which I hold as no less valuable, some of them media for which we have yet to discover their sensual characteristics. charles alexander chax press ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 1 May 1995 22:24:27 -0500 Reply-To: Mn Center For Book Arts Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mn Center For Book Arts Subject: Re: Dirt In-Reply-To: <2fa56136564d002@maroon.tc.umn.edu> Thanks, Andrew Joron, for the excerpt from DIRT. But I think that, not only is Jim Leftwich morphing morphemes, he's sounding phonemes, something I've been finding, lately, more rare and more valuable. The value of DIRT is not fully experienced without sounding the work, and not only hearing/sounding, but feeling the mouth make those sounds. It's physical work of the highest order. Thank you for pointing it out. I think I'd like to find the book's physical equivalent of THAT. charles alexander ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 2 May 1995 00:28:27 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: John Byrum Subject: Re: Not definition 2 Tzara: all words are forgotten limitless ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 2 May 1995 02:50:59 +1000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Roberts MAY HAPPENINGS Australian Writing OnLine AWOL Happenings. A monthly guide to readings, book launches, conferences and other events relating to Australian literature both within Australia and overseas. If you have any item which you would like included in future listings please contact AWOL on email M.Roberts@unsw.edu.au or write to AWOL, PO Box 333, Concord NSW 2137, Australia. AWOL postings are also available by snail mail - please contact us for details. Unfortunately the May Happenings list contains mostly information relating to NSW events. We hope to expand the list to be fully national by the next posting in June. ************************************************************************ NSW SYDNEY ******** BOOK LAUNCHES ******** Marcelle Freiman's first collection of poetry. titled "Monkey's Wedding" (Island Press, Sydney) will be launched by Heather Cam. Upstairs at Gleebooks on May 16th, 6.30 for 7pm. (address Phone number) Island Press is a small co-operative press which has been publishing poetry since 1975. The motivating force behind it is Phillip Hammial, whose book "Just Desserts" (Island) is to be launched on June 3 at the Courthouse Hotel, Newtown. The third member of the Island triad for 1995 is Carolyn Gerrish, whose collection "Learning to Breathe Under Water" (Island) will be published later in the year. ************************************************************** ********** READINGS ********** SYDNEY 4th Monday of each month.......FUTURE POETS SOCIETY 8pm Lapidary Club Room, Gymea Bay Road, Gymea. Details phone Anni Featherstone (02) 528 4736. Every Tuesday .....POETRY SUPREME 9pm Eli's Restaurant, 132 Oxford Street, Darlinghurst. Details phone/fax (02) 361 0440 1st and 3rd Wednesday ......POETS UNION, 7pm The Gallery Cafe, 43 Booth Street, Annandale Details phone (02) 560 6209 2nd Wednesday.....WOMEN WRITERS' NETWORK 7.30pm, NSW Writers' Centre details Ann Davis (02) 716 6869 4th Wednesday.....LIVE POETS AT DON BANKS MUSEUM, 7.30pm 6 Napier Street North Sydney. Guest Reader plus open section. $6 includes wine. Details phone Sue Hicks or Danny Gardiner (02) 908 4527 Every Thursday.....POETRY ALIVE 11am-1pm, Old Courthouse Bigge Street Liverpool. Details phone (02) 607 2541. 1st Friday.....EASTERN SUBURBS POETRY GROUP 7.30pm Everleigh Street Waverly. Details phone (02) 389 3041. 2nd & 4th Saturday.....GLEEBOOKS READINGS 2pm Gleebooks 49 Glebe Point Road Glebe. Details Nick Sykes (02) 928 8607 3rd Sunday.....POETRY WITH GLEE: THE POETS UNION AT GLEEBOOKS. 2-4pm, 49 Glebe Point Road Glebe. $5/$2 Details Nick Sykes (02) 928 8607 Every Sunday.....THE WORD ON SUNDAY11.30pm Museum of Contemporary Art Circular Quay $8/ $5. Details phone (02) 241 5876. REGIONAL ARMIDALE 1st Wednesday 7.30pm Rumours cafe in the Mall. Details phone James Vicars (067) 73 2103 WOLLONGONG 2nd & 4th Tuesday 7.30pm Here's Cheers Restaurant, 5 Victoria Street, Wollongong. Details phone Ian Ryan (042) 84 0645 WAGGA WAGGA Tuesday May 9 8 pm at Firenze Italian Restaurant, 67 Johnston St, Wagga Wagga, (ph 069 214211) READINGS by John Foulcher (poet, Canberra), Susan Varga (biographer, NSW), Peter Bakowski (poet, Melbourne) plus 'Open Mike' ALSO AT WAGGA WAGGA Wednesday 10 May 7.30 pm at Booranga, the Riverina Writers' Centre at Charles Sturt University, EDITING WORKSHOP conducted by John Foulcher Weekend Workshop 13/14 Mayon Screenwriting conducted in association with Australian Writers' Guild at Booranga, the Riverina Writers' Centre at Charles Sturt University. Tutors include Steve J. Spears, Charlie Strachan and Ian David For details about Wagga Wagga events contact David Gilbey ph. 069 332465, fax 069 332792 email dgilbey@csu.edu.au LISMORE Stand Up Poets 3rd Tuesday 8pm. Lismore Club, Club Lane. Details phone David Hallett (066) 891318. NEWCASTLE 1st Sunday Illuminating Tales at the Commonwealth Hotel Union/ Bull Streets Newcastle. Details phone Bill Iden (049) 675 972 3rd Monday Poetry at the Pub. Newcastle Bowling Club, Watt Street. May 15 special guests North Sydney Live Poets. Details phone Bill Iden (049) 675 972 **************************************************************************** ** CONFERENCES ** GRIFFITH UNIVERSITY/JAMES COOK UNIVERSITY QUEENSLAND STUDIES CENTRE ANNUAL CONFERENCE - 8-9 JULY WAR'S END? August 1945 marked the end of the most harrowing and transforming collective experience in the history of modern Australia. How much of the 'old' Australia came to an end with the cessation of hostilities, and how much continued as before? What different meanings did the War's end have for different groups and institutions in Australian society? The Queensland Studies Centre will be holding its annual two-day conference, in association with the History Department of James Cook University, in Townsville, on 8-9 July of this year. The conference will be interdisciplinary in scope, embracing military, social and cultural history; politics and political economy; literary and cultural studies. Papers exploring any of the following aspects of the topic would be welcome: * literature and the arts * education and social policy * Aboriginal and ethnic communities * women's history * military and social history * politics and industrial relations * journalism and the media Venue: Townsville, Queensland. Date: 8-9 July, 1995. Enquiries to The Queensland Studies Centre (Director, Patrick Buckridge) Faculty of Humanities Griffith University Nathan QLD 4111. Ph.: (07) 85 5494 Fax: (07) 875 5511 E-mail: M.Gehde@hum.gu.edu.au *********** Association for the Study of Australian Literature ASAL 2-7 July 1995 Adelaide The 1995 ASAL conference will be held at the historic Institute Building on North Terrace in the heart of Adelaide. Keynote Speaker: Paul Carter, author of The Road to Botany Bay and Living in a New Country. Dorothy Green Memorial Lecture: Drusilla Modjeska, author of Exiles at Home and Poppy. Enquiries: Phil Butterss, Department of English, University of Adelaide, Adelaide 5005. Ph: (08) 303 4562. Fax: (08) 303 4341. Email: pbutters@arts.adelaide.edu.au (The 1995 ASAL program is available on AWOL's WWW link. Address http://www.anatomy.su.oz.au/danny/books/index.html then click on Australian Writing OnLine) ************** EUROPEAN ASSOCIATION FOR STUDIES ON AUSTRALIA Third conference: Copenhagen, October 6-9, 1995 Conference theme: Inhabiting Australia: The Australian Habitat and Australian Settlement. The conference aims to bring together contributions from a wide range of disciplines, from architecture to zoology. Papers which take up the theme from cultural, historical, social, scientific, literary and other perspectives are invited. Registration forms will be distributed by the beginning of January, 1995. Deadline for registration, May 1, 1995. Further information available from Conference organisers: * Bruce Clunies Ross (45) 35 32 85 82 internet: bcross@engelsk.ku.dk * Martin Leer (45) 35 32 85 87 internet: leer@engelsk.ku.dk * Merete Borch (45) 35 32 85 84 internet: borch@engelsk.ku.dk Copenhagen University, Department of English Njalsgade 80, DK-2300 Kobenhavn S Tlf. (45) 35 32 86 00 Fax (45) 35 32 86 15 * Eva Rask Knudsen Wiedeweldtsgade 50, st. 2100 Copenhagen O. (45) 35266025 ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 2 May 1995 16:35:49 +0900 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: John Geraets Subject: Zen & lango A friend who likes Leslie Scalapino's material asks about how Zen may figure in her writing practice. I notice names like Steve Benson,John Cage, Alan Davies,Jackson Mac Low,Leslie Scalapino and Armand Schwerner in _Beneath a Single Moon_ (ed. Kent Johnson & Craig Paulenich), which is an anthology of Bhuddist/Zen/Poetry related poets. If Zen (or another spiritual) practice has a part in your writing, or you know of material that may be interesting in this regard, please let me know. My friend and I thought maybe the porousness of language writing may be a very spiritual thing. But, as I say, would welcome any information, thoughts you may have. John Geraets frank@dpc.aichi-gakuin.ac.jp ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 2 May 1995 02:59:13 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Spencer Selby Subject: Re: who wrote this??? In-Reply-To: <199505020121.SAA06300@> Dear Chris, Poetry is supposed to be and do. what blooms is anonymous when clouds feel goofy in your paradox of knowing it's alright Love, Spencer ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 2 May 1995 10:18:09 CST6CDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Hank Lazer Organization: Arts and Sciences Dean's Office Subject: Re: Zen & lango John Geraets-- On Zen & poetry & Leslie Scalapino. Funny you should ask. You might want to take a look at the writing of Norman Fischer (recently elevated to the status of zen abbot -- based in San Francisco). His most recent book, from Chax, PRECISELY THE POINT BEING MADE, is quite marvelous. And zen-nish. I mention Norman in connection with Leslie because the two of them are currently writing back and forth, a series of poems and letters that definitely do push & pull around zen practice. You might try writing directly to Leslie Scalapino or to Norman if you're interested in looking at this exchange-in-progress. Hank Lazer ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 2 May 1995 12:18:01 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom Mandel Subject: Re: who wrote this??? What looms is synonymous (whence gouges yield clues free) It's tight all night (in your arid box of lowing) Tm ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 2 May 1995 10:07:46 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Federation Sand Subject: Intro & Question In-Reply-To: <199505020409.VAA21383@> Hello everybody, I'm new to this list, though a few of you may know(of) me...I publish the paper and web versions of the magazine _Cyanosis_ the second issue of which is recently out. Submission guides are available via e-mail (but one should see the publication before submitting). #1 is $8.00 for a sample. #2 is $10.00, they're 8.5x11, perfect bound, B&W #1=112pp, #2=212pp. Work by (2) Selby, Albon, Daniel Davidson, Gary Sullivan, Marta Dieke, Jeff Conant, John McNally, Steven Schutzman, Ben Marcus, Brian Schorn, and many others...a lot of very unusual graphic material as well as interviews with a robticist, a photographer and a nuerosurgeon! That aside (please pardon the plug)...a little about myself/interests and a question: I'm interested in most art forms, the relationship between science/art and the psyche. My writing is concerned primarily with what I would call 'shifts of attention' wherein refocussing of attention provides for a reinterpretation of the relationships between beings, objects and events. I would classify myself as a poet concerened both with metaphysics and music, passionately, sometimes violently involved with questions of the nature of being. Well...that sure sound pretentious in retrospect! And now a question to the list... I need help locating both Brian Schorn and Ben Marcus, if anyone knows anything about the whereabouts of these two helions I'd be glad to recive such info so that I can get them their contributor copies of the recent issue... I look forward to some inspiring interactions with ya'll Darin De Stefano Cyanosis Web Site: http://www.slip.net/syszero/syszero.html | \ | / \ | / \ | / | | o o - - O O | | ~ ~ ~ | | {:::} ___ <===> | !:: REMEMBER YOUR FIRST CELL ::! cyanosis@slip.net ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 2 May 1995 11:18:30 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: cordelia In-Reply-To: <199505010759.AAA25323@whistler.sfu.ca> from "Chris Stroffolino" at May 1, 95 03:56:44 am Re CXhris Stroffolino's message of May 1. Who is Gerald Stern? Is that an in-joke? One knows some of the work of Harryman, and one has been reading/teaching Spicer since 1963. But one has never heard of Gerald Stern. I thought that was the name of that New York radio morning guy with the long hair. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 2 May 1995 11:35:51 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: Small Press Traffic In-Reply-To: <199504290404.VAA26059@whistler.sfu.ca> from "Gary Sullivan" at Apr 28, 95 07:41:13 pm Not only was Pound being ironic in that advice to give up poetry, as there's nothing in it---he was quoting his figure who stands in for Arnold Bennett. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 2 May 1995 19:31:40 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: cris cheek Subject: Re: and desire / the 39 steps your terms are a couch to me. streams glowing rust under grounds provide means of transports out of sight. arguments overtaking home thorough honey from voices caught in several 'minds' - those outcrops from the desert plain that flower her e ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 2 May 1995 14:56:00 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Robert A Harrison Subject: Hermetic Gallery Visual Poetry Show There's been a change in plans for the Visual Poetry show to take place at the Hermetic Gallery in Milwaukee, WI. The new deadline for work is August 1, 1995. The show will now run from August 25 to September 30. Submissions preferred in but not limited to 8 1/2 by 11 format. Send work to Bob Harrison & Nick Frank PO Box 11166 Milwaukee, WI 53211 Thanks ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 3 May 1995 08:54:11 GMT+1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tony Green Organization: The University of Auckland Subject: Re: cordelia Hi Chris Stroffolino, I too walk around with illusions of understanding things, like Shaks plays & posts on the net. I crave true understandings, but have to make do with what I've got. Sadly, I find, often, not true enough. What to do? When will I ever learn? Best wishes, 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, 3 May 1995 08:58:56 GMT+1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tony Green Organization: The University of Auckland Subject: Re: Zen & lango Dear John Geraets, Richard von Sturmer is back in Auckland for a couple of months, another good person to ask about Zen and poetry. I'll get you his snail-mail address. Best wishes 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, 3 May 1995 09:02:36 GMT+1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tony Green Organization: The University of Auckland Subject: Re: Zen & lango Dear John Geraets, Your list does not include Philip Whalen ? (& too obviously omits? a large part of the Beat generation and friends of disembodied Kerouac....) Best 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, 2 May 1995 17:10:59 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: Real men read hardware poetry In-Reply-To: <199504282343.QAA13625@whistler.sfu.ca> from "Don Cheney" at Apr 28, 95 12:23:00 pm In Canada it is not unlikely to find that men who work with wood also read (and write) poetry. David Phillips is a terrific poet who works as a carpenter. Bob Fones is a very good poet who works as a carpenter. Bob Rose (who has moved back to Wash. State) is a good poet and carpenter, and here in Vancouver once workt at a wooden shipworks. I have poems by and bookshelves by both Rose and Phillips in my house. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 2 May 1995 19:47:28 -0500 Reply-To: Mn Center For Book Arts Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mn Center For Book Arts Subject: Re: Zen & lango In-Reply-To: <2fa669b76999002@maroon.tc.umn.edu> Just to correct Hank's note on Zen, Leslie Scalapino, & Norman Fischer, for John Geraets, that Norman's PRECISELY THE POINT BEING MADE is co-published by Chax & Leslie's O Books. Norman is a Zen monk and teacher, and yes, Leslie is exuberantly interested in his work, and is in dialogue with him in her work. In January they gave a talk together in San Francisco. Hi, Hank charles alexander ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 2 May 1995 20:53:57 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Edward Foster Subject: Re: and desire / the 39 steps until you reason, nothing darkens sight. in this demonic pleasure, transport overtakes the green regard, no desert but an intimate despair that doubles as delight. in this the voice is single until he is here, thus imititate my fear. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 3 May 1995 01:44:09 EDT Reply-To: beard@metdp1.met.co.nz Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: beard@MET.CO.NZ Subject: Re: Zen & lango X-cc: beard@metdp1.met.co.nz > Richard von Sturmer is back in Auckland for a couple of >months, another good person to ask about Zen and poetry. Tony, I think Riemke Ensing has an interest in Zen, if only as part of a general interest in Eastern aesthetics: The Katherine Mansfield Signature as Zen Painting:

        No doubt about that fine down line turning
        up the tail end of a winter
        branch. Definitely
        Niten's Shrike and maybe Tohaku
        is there making mountains
        in the morning mist.
 
(Ignore the <> bits, they're just HTML codes for italics and so on.)
 
Bernadette Hall's poetry has been described as having a `Zen-like concentration
on the spiritual behind the real', and of course Baxter was introduced to Zen
by his son Hoani. It's just a stab in the dark, but my reading of _Autumn
Testament_ leads me to think that Baxter was about to renounce Catholicism in
favour of something resembling Zen Buddhism before he died.
 
 
        Tom Beard
 
 
 =============================================================================
                                        Tom Beard
      "There was a way out of here..."  beard@metdp1.met.co.nz
                                        Auckland, New Zealand
 =============================================================================
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 3 May 1995 03:07:46 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Ron Silliman 
Subject:      Re: Gerald Stern
 
Gerald Stern is a poet in his 60s who I believe teaches in Florida
these days. He was one of the first academic free verse writers of the
post WW2 era to define a style that was pointedly "non Iowa City" but
no more interesting (to my eye) for it. He has had a profound (perhaps
devastating) influence on poets whose work I have some fondness for,
such as Jack Gilbert (the Yale Younger Poet of the early 60s who
attended Spicer's Magick Workshop) and Linda Gregg. Betwixt the three
there's a whole little Gerald Stern cult out there somewhere. He
occasionally does commentaries on NPR where he seems primarily to be
Andrei Codrescu without the professional accent.
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 3 May 1995 06:56:22 -0400
Reply-To:     Robert Drake 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Robert Drake 
Subject:      Re: poetry and the electronic
 
i'd encourage _everyone_ who publishes work to consider
adding their information to the UPC's WWW site, by filling
in the following templates & returning them to me, luigi,
at:
               au463@cleveland.freenet.edu
 
 
lbd
 
 
*****************************************************************
all this talk about puttin' stuff on the net makes it
sound hard-to-do & scary, but it's not.  it does take
a little time, which lots of us are short on.  so here's
a stab at distributing the work, & making it less
threatening...
 
okay, so here's 2 "templates" to use to construct
publisher's pages for the Electronic Poetry Center.
There are 2 parts here: the first part is a "publisher's
page", which will present overall information about your
press plus a list of publications that you have available.
the second part is a template that you'll fill out for
each individual title--if you have 5 titles, you'll need
to make 5 separate copies, one for each title.  in practice,
readers will see the first page describing the press, and
the list of titles will be "hotlinks", allowing them to
select and jump to the information about the specific title.
 
How to do it:
^^^^^^^^^^^^
-->instuctions relating to filling in these templates are
enclosed between rows of asterix *****, just like this
intro is.  you can delete the instructions, or i will.
 
-->the bits of information on the templates that you've
gotta fill in are [enclosed in brackets]--just replace all
the stuff in brackets (& the brackets themselves) with the
appropriate info.  for example, i'd replace:
 
     
[NAME OF YOUR PRESS--all caps]

 
with:
 
     
BURNING PRESS

 
ignore, _but leave in place_, all the other stuff ("" etc.--
that's the formatting stuff, and it becomes invisible to the reader
when they're viewing  the document; other text is just the framework
into which you're fitting your information--change it as appropriate).
some of the data may seem redundent--but different parts are used by
the system in different ways...  trust me.
 
after you're done, send it all back to me, i'll do a little
cleaning up (and installing the links), and send it on to Loss
for inclusion in the EPC.
 
this is an experiment, & i'll be interested to see how it works.
if you have any questions, just write me (luigi) at:
 
          au462@cleveland.freenet.edu.
 
asever
lbd
 
*****************************************************************
 
 
 
*****************************************************************
start of "publisher's page" template:
*****************************************************************
 
 

 [Title of Document--usually your press name] 

 [NAME OF YOUR PRESS--all caps] 

 

 
[put a general description of your press here;
history, mission, editorial perspective, etc.


it can go on for several paragraphs if you wish--
put "
" at the _beginning_ of every paragraph,
just as i did at the beginning of this paragraph.]
 


 
*****************************************************************
the next section will become the "hotlist"--a list of the titles
you're describing, each of which will "link" to each of the
separate titles' descriptions & samples.

ignore all the gibberish--replace the bracketed "[title #1]" etc.
with the titles & authors as you want them to appear (i did the
first one as a model).  you can add as many titles as you wish--
just duplicate the whole line & follow the same format.  and
there's a bracketed space available for publication date,
optional but helpful...
*****************************************************************
 



Titles Available from [your press name here]:


 




 
For further information about [your press name here],
or to place an order, contact:


 

[your name]

[your street address]

[your city/state/zipcode]



 
 
or email:



[your email address]



 
Back to EPC's Publisher's Bookshelf
 
 


 
 
*****************************************************************
end of "publisher's page" template
*****************************************************************
 
 
-----------------------------------------------------------------
 
 
*****************************************************************
start of "publication page" template;
you'll need to make one of these for _each_ publication you
listed under "Titles Available from Press" section, above:
*****************************************************************
 
 

[Title of Document,"Author: TITLE" (ie Joyze: USELESSYS)]

[Author of Book: Initial Caps]:


[TITLE OF BOOK: ALL CAPS]

 

 
[put a descriptive blurb about the book here; style content etc...
keep in mind that this may potentially reach a VERY diverse audience,
many of whom have _not a clue_ about things you take for granted...


again, you can go on for several paragraphs if you wish--
perhaps quotes from some reviews (one paragraph @)?--
as before, put "
" at the _beginning_ of every paragraph.]
 
 



About the Author:

 
[an optional short bio &/or list of other publications...
like sed, almost _anybody_ might wind up reading this,
might help clue some folks in...]
 


 
*****************************************************************
the next section should contain a sample of work from the book.
it will appear _exactly_ as typed, in standard monospaced font,
so type it in as you wish it to appear: spacing, indents, line-
breaks etc...


feel free to give a substantial taste of the author's work--
bytes are cheap--i'd suggest duplicating the heading information
(
[POEM TITLE] by [Author]
) for each poem, if you
include more than one.


some work (audio-poetry, concrete poetry, etc.) may not be able
to be represented adequately in plain-ASCII text formats.
if that's the case, contact me (au462@cleveland.freenet.edu),
& i'll work with you to get it right...
*****************************************************************
 



[POEM TITLE] by [Author]


From the book [Book Title]

 



 
[the poem (or other sample from the publication) goes here:
 
roses are read
violets are too
i'd write about tansy
but charlie sed it's taboo
 
(end ov poem)]
 






 

[BOOK TITLE] is available from  [your press name here]
for [book price, postpaid].

 
For further information, or to place an order, contact:


 

[your name]

[your street address]

[your city/state/zipcode]




 
or email:


[your email address]

 
*****************************************************************
optional bit if you're willing to consider trades--
tailor it to fit your individual terms...
*****************************************************************
 


The publisher is willing to consider trading with other publishers
or authors for this title--contact her via email to make specific
arrangements...


 
Back to list of titles available from
[your press name here]
 
 


 
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end of "publication page" template
*****************************************************************
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 3 May 1995 03:43:02 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Ron Silliman 
Subject:      Re: Zen & lango
 
Thinking of the influence of zen buddhism (and other traditions of
buddhism also) on poets like Alan Davies and Jackson Mac Low, I also
thought of how (if I have my facts straight) Alan was brought up in the
Seventh Day Adventist tradition, as was John Taggart, another poet with
both a strong spiritual and strong puritan streak. One could of course
ask these questions of other traditions as well....
 
Kathy Acker and Hannah Weiner, for example, both have had significant
encounters with hindu traditions.
 
Also, while we're noting zen poets, Alan Senauke, a priest at the
Berkeley Zen Center, was a NY School poet (trained by Koch et al at
Columbia where he co-edited an anthology of student writing that was
pretty lively, called The Cinch, as I recall) and later a bluegrass
musician. Steve Abbott died at the hospice run by Whalen's group in SF.
 
Ron
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 3 May 1995 13:25:30 +0000
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         cris cheek 
Subject:      Re: poetry and the electronic
 
I'd just like to openly thank Bob Drake for his very workable templates.
Also of course to Loss at the EPC and all those who have pegged away at
this discussion.
 
It'll be intriguing to watch the publisher sites flourish over the next
couple of months as we get to grips with making the mistakes   -   but put
the information up on-line.
 
sincerely terrific intervention Bob
love
cris
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 3 May 1995 08:19:25 CST6CDT
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Hank Lazer 
Organization: Arts and Sciences Dean's Office
Subject:      Re: Gerald Stern
 
I'm not joking, Ron, and others.  There are two Sterns (Gerry).  One
is Jerry Stern who does commentaries on NPR.  He's a fiction writer
based at Florida State.  Gerald Stern, who usually teaches at Iowa,
and who taught here at Alabama, is a poet who works in emotional
saturated long lines, has a reputation as a hip jewish version of
Whitman, etc.  Wins lots of awards.  Was a childhood buddy of Jack
Gilbert (as for Ron's sketch on influence, it could go the other
way, Gerry idolizes Jack and vice versa).  Gerry's career got a late
start with Lucky Life when Gerry was perhaps in his early to mid
forties.  Since then, an avalanche of books.  He's a "dramatic"
reader, very popular with the MFA gravy train, much anthologized,
awarded, and in some circles powerful.... etc. etc.etc.
 
Hank Lazer
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 3 May 1995 17:52:28 BST
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "I.LIGHTMAN" 
Subject:      aleatoric composition, using chance
 
Hallo everyone,
 
I just wanted to float a topic, because Ron mentioned Jackson MacLow, and
we've been talking about Zen.
        I'm very interested in aleatoric composition, in New Music
Composition, famously with John Cage, and also in writing, famously also
with Cage as well as MacLow and others.
        I'd be really interested in anyone off or on list discussing with
me (and informing me over) some things that have been interesting me.
        Mostly: how is chance conceived?
 
Does it have to be random?
 
Does the artist have to turn over the work to chance, for it to be proper
aleatoric work? Karlheinz Stockhausen uses chance as part of his process,
generating values within a composition he's set up, letting chance set
up the composition but putting in his own values, editing afterwards etc.
If chance is a kind of experimentation, where is the research write-up?
Shouldn't there be at least some, sometimes?
 
        Also: can chance be oracular?
 
If one is consulting an oracle, the I-Ching, the Tarot, isn't it potentially
sacriligeous to use it to generate non-ego, randomness etc? Isn't it a bit
colonialist, like picking up the I-Ching on one's travels and using it as
a toy? How much interest is there, or recognition, of artists using
aleatoric methods as a kind of rune casting, to produce something more true,
that surprises and sobers her/him?
 
I'd very much appreciate anyone's thoughts - especially you, Herb, as we've
been talking a bit about this privately, and I'd really like to hear your
New Music background come in, or you, Cris, ditto, or any of us who have
been talking from the mystical side of agnosticism rather than the athiest
secular side,
 
Ira
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 3 May 1995 09:13:15 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Kit Robinson 
Subject:      ZenLang
 
        Reply to:   ZenLang
John Geraets,
The visiting Chinese scholar Zhang Zing (sp? - Hank?) told me
he is working with two groups of poets in China--a "language"
group, with interest in parallel developments here, and a zen
group, whose work is naturalistic and lyrical. According to
Zhang, these groups are basically antithetical, with no overlap.
He was surprised when I told him about the common ground here
(Fischer, Davies, et al.) Subsequently, I wrote a brief essay for
Zhang on Zen & poetry, focusing on my own practice and quoting
a couple of koans from the Gateless Barrier (Mumonkan). I can
send it to you if you like.
Kit Robinson
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 3 May 1995 13:35:13 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         David Ball 
Subject:      Re: Zen & lango
 
I would include Philip Whalen in just about ANY positive list...
 
INCLUSIVE WHALEN-FAN
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 3 May 1995 11:24:16 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Kit Robinson 
Subject:      Reading
 
        Reply to:   Reading
James, Bill, Tony, Marisa, Kenny, Marc, & others in or near NYC,
 
I will be reading with Joe Elliot at:
The Mazer Theater of the Educational Alliance
197 East Broadway (corner of Jefferson St.), New York
(212) 475-6200 ext. 394
Sunday, May 14, 4 p.m.
 
Hope I see you there.
 
Kit Robinson
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 3 May 1995 16:06:37 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Ryan Knighton 
Subject:      Re: aleatoric composition, using chance
In-Reply-To:  <199505031939.MAA22391@ferrari.sfu.ca> from "I.LIGHTMAN" at May 3,
              95 05:52:28 pm
 
I too love this subject, as it happens. What interests me is the
role of agency. It seems, as with Jackson M., that the removal
of agency, if that is possible, calibrates as much chance as Oulipo
does by setting strictures, by heightening agency. Any thoughts on
this paradox? Or is it just a paradox to me?
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 3 May 1995 19:45:25 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Chris Stroffolino 
Subject:      Re: cordelia
 
  Dear George Bowering---
   I used to think Howard Stern was better than Gerald Stern, but then he
   helped get Pataki elected. Gerald Stern is a kind "Iowa School" poet
   who didn't get famous until he was mid-50's or so but has won over the
   "mainstream" "unpolitical" "suburban" proletariat crowd in many ways.
   When I was in college he read. The editor of my college poetry magazine
   was absolutely OBSESSED with him....he has a poem that ends with the
   lines:
          I lean on my right side for words
          And on my left side for music
  (something like that) this just knocked her out, for some reason i'll
  never understand...anyway, ironies of ironies, I read with the guy in
  Phila. in 1987....He would tell the "story behind the poem"--I wrote
  this when i was sitting on the back porch while my family was inside
  watching t.v." then he'd begin the poem, "I was on the back porch
  and my family was inside watching T.V." even my then 15 year old sister
  thought it was absurd....we prefered Paul Westerburg who had just released
   "Pleased To Meet Me"---
       "One foot in the door, the other foor in the gutter
        The sweet smells that you adore. I think I'd rather smother...."
    Hope this answers your question.....Chris Stroffolino
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 3 May 1995 19:55:17 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Chris Stroffolino 
Subject:      Re: Gerald Stern
 
   Hank---Gerald Stern as a "hip jewish version of Whitman"---he's about
   the opposite of hip i thought....not that hip should be a standard...
   but though people tend to like his "bodily disgust", I never heard
   him called "hip"--he's pretty much the paradigm of conventional.
   Phillip Levine and James Tate may be "hip" enough to redeem them
   from blandness, but Stern???? Explain. I agree with you about the
   MFA gravy train, though. Somebody in Phila., once referred to the
   "Gerald Stern poetry mafia." Yours, Abby Hoffa
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 3 May 1995 17:47:14 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         George Bowering 
Subject:      Re: cordelia
In-Reply-To:  <199504271238.FAA06870@whistler.sfu.ca> from "Lindz Williamson"
              at Apr 26, 95 09:25:37 pm
 
Well, you cant fault Shakespeare for not developing female
characters, either, L. Because the idea of a character in literature
had not yet been invented. Now that we dont believe in them any more,
we should be able to read Shakes better than people could 50 years
ago. Maybe not, but it seems as if it should be true. But I do agree
with you that Shakespeare's sonnets are a dream. One coulkd take them
for a year to a desert isle and survive on them.
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 3 May 1995 21:43:26 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Alan Sondheim 
Subject:      Re: Gerald Stern
In-Reply-To:  <199505040139.VAA29047@panix4.panix.com>
 
When this discussion started, I thought you were all talking about Gerd
Stern, who founded USCO and did some prescient writing in the 1970s - any
idea where he is now?
 
Alan
 
On Wed, 3 May 1995, Chris Stroffolino wrote:
 
>    Hank---Gerald Stern as a "hip jewish version of Whitman"---he's about
>    the opposite of hip i thought....not that hip should be a standard...
>    but though people tend to like his "bodily disgust", I never heard
>    him called "hip"--he's pretty much the paradigm of conventional.
>    Phillip Levine and James Tate may be "hip" enough to redeem them
>    from blandness, but Stern???? Explain. I agree with you about the
>    MFA gravy train, though. Somebody in Phila., once referred to the
>    "Gerald Stern poetry mafia." Yours, Abby Hoffa
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 3 May 1995 20:09:12 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Tenney Nathanson 
Subject:      Re: POETICS Digest - 1 May 1995 to 2 May 1995
 
Charles (A), Hank (L) et al:
does Leslie actually, ahem, sit?
Also: anybody have a sense of how to make the zen stuff engage the
Baudelaire/Benjamin stuff in her Trilogy?  I've done a rudimentary version
of an article on the latter aspect of the book, but ducked the former as too
lengthy for what I had room (or smarts) for.  Current hunch is that
Benjamin's Theses (on History) will be best avenue.  But suggestions/queries
very welcome....
Tenney
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 3 May 1995 18:27:28 -1000
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Susan Schultz 
Subject:      2 announcements
In-Reply-To:  <9505040358.AA06281@uhunix4.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu>
 
        _TinFish_, a journal of experimental poetry, with an emphasis on
work from the Pacific region, welcomes contributions.  Please write to
the editor, Susan M. Schultz, at 1422A Dominis Street, Honolulu, HI
96822, or Dept of English, 1733 Donaghho Road, University of Hawaii,
Honolulu, 96822.  The first issue will be free to anyone who asks for a
copy (and you can do this over email).  Please spread the word.  And many
thanks to those who responded to my earlier query.
 
        While I'm at it, let me advertise the publication, in June, of a
group of essays, _The Tribe of John: Ashbery and Contemporary Poetry_,
from the University of Alabama Press, which I edited.  Contributors
include Charles Altieri, Charles Bernstein, Bonnie Costello, Donald
Revell, Andrew Ross, and John Shoptaw.  The book offers new readings of
Ashbery's work, as well as investigations of the cultural contexts of
contemporary American poetry.
 
 
Susan S.
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 4 May 1995 02:56:25 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         John Cayley 
Subject:      Re: aleatoric composition, using chance
 
A similar thread came up in the experiwhat? discussions and I'm repeating
some remarks from previous posts.
 
'In this day and age' we can no longer ignore the possibilities of working
in 'real time' when composing *using* chance.
 
The machine allows us to generate results and adjust processes fast enough
for there to be subsequent composition of the procedures themselves, such
that these procedures may be adjudged/selected/devloped for their richness.
 
Processes can also be open-ended, feeding back into themselves. I have a
new piece that learns phrases selected from generated text by the reader.
The reader's copy of the piece is changed irreversibly by adding
selections. Since the generative process is based on frequencies of
collocations (word juxtapositions) the piece will eventually be dominated
by phrases selected by the reader. (It would probably also eventually choke
on the amount of text generated and selected. BTW this is probably also
properly 'chaotic' -- literary turbulence slowly drawn towards a 'strange
attractor', nudged into place by the reader.)
 
The aleatory is here being *used* and *composed* sometimes by the reader.
 
Cris and Ira, I know, have seen the work I have done for Macintosh machines
and which moves in this direction.
 
Other references -- I don't think they been mentioned yet -- are:
Charles O. Hartman & Hugh Kenner (yes, *the* Hugh Kenner) _Sentences_ by
Sun & Moon, 1995 (I've just rec'd it) which prints results from applying
O'Rourke & Kenner's 'Travesty' program and Hartman's programming of Mac
Low's diastic method (v. similar to my own 'mesostic hologograms').
Neither can we ignore the Fluxus and Emmett Williams, esp. say, his
'ultimate poetry' (_A Valentine for Noel_ etc.)
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 4 May 1995 00:27:16 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "Sheila E. Murphy" 
Subject:      Re: aleatoric composition, using chance
 
>Hallo everyone,
>
>I just wanted to float a topic, because Ron mentioned Jackson MacLow, and
>we've been talking about Zen.
>        I'm very interested in aleatoric composition, in New Music
>Composition, famously with John Cage, and also in writing, famously also
>with Cage as well as MacLow and others.
>        I'd be really interested in anyone off or on list discussing with
>me (and informing me over) some things that have been interesting me.
>        Mostly: how is chance conceived?
>
>Does it have to be random?
>
>Does the artist have to turn over the work to chance, for it to be proper
>aleatoric work? Karlheinz Stockhausen uses chance as part of his process,
>generating values within a composition he's set up, letting chance set
>up the composition but putting in his own values, editing afterwards etc.
>If chance is a kind of experimentation, where is the research write-up?
>Shouldn't there be at least some, sometimes?
>
>        Also: can chance be oracular?
>
>If one is consulting an oracle, the I-Ching, the Tarot, isn't it potentially
>sacriligeous to use it to generate non-ego, randomness etc? Isn't it a bit
>colonialist, like picking up the I-Ching on one's travels and using it as
>a toy? How much interest is there, or recognition, of artists using
>aleatoric methods as a kind of rune casting, to produce something more true,
>that surprises and sobers her/him?
>
>I'd very much appreciate anyone's thoughts - especially you, Herb, as we've
>been talking a bit about this privately, and I'd really like to hear your
>New Music background come in, or you, Cris, ditto, or any of us who have
>been talking from the mystical side of agnosticism rather than the athiest
>secular side,
>
>Ira
>
Ira, A few thoughts in response to the topic you've floated.  When trust
supplies the foundation for engagement with chance practices, miracles can
happen.  The process seems to require a complete letting go to work as it
can (note the absence of "should").  I became wildly interested in 12-tone
music during my undergrad studies in music theory and composition.  And
later in writing set up structures or configurations that could serve as
containers (not strong enough and at the same time too strong a word) that
released me from simultasking on infrastructure and sound or meaning.
 
I'm most interested in chance practices by Jackson MacLow and others, partly
because of what happens when confidence and the wide open possibilities
intersect.
 
The establishing of arbitrary (but are they?) structures that one finds or
invents for generative practice can lead to very worthwhile findings.  I
don't mean to preach my interest, as you obviously have yours.  Just a quick
say so.  Glad to be thinking about this again and again.
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 4 May 1995 03:14:48 -0500
Reply-To:     Mn Center For Book Arts 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Mn Center For Book Arts 
Subject:      Re: cordelia's westerbergian, stern as hell
In-Reply-To:  <2fa8419a699a002@maroon.tc.umn.edu>
 
Chris Stroffolino writes,
 
        we prefered Paul Westerburg (sic) who had just released
                "Pleased To Meet Me"---
                "One foot in the door, the other foor in the gutter
        The sweet smells that you adore. I think I'd rather smother...."
                Hope this answers your question
 
When I moved to Minneapolis year before last I thought, at first, that
Paul Westerberg being here and from here was one of the rare saving
graces. I've found a few more, but he's still near the top.
 
        charles alexander
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 4 May 1995 03:03:24 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Ron Silliman 
Subject:      Re: Gerald Stern
 
Hank,
 
The idea of two Gerald Sterns is too cruel to imagine,
 
Ron
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 4 May 1995 08:20:22 CST6CDT
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Hank Lazer 
Organization: Arts and Sciences Dean's Office
Subject:      Re: Gerald Stern
 
Yes, Ron, two Sterns is more stern a world than one ought to
have to inhabit....  I could tell stories (see G. Stern in panel discussion in
What Is a Poet?--interactions with C Bernstein etc)) -- but value the
use of my kneecaps, knowing how rough the poetry mafia can be.
 
Hank
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 4 May 1995 08:23:07 CST6CDT
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Hank Lazer 
Organization: Arts and Sciences Dean's Office
Subject:      Re: ZenLang
 
Kit--It's Zhang Ziqing (who is a scholar based in Nanjing at Nanjing
University--a wonderful person).  He has some translations and a
brief essay on the New Zen Poets in the current Talisman.--Hank
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 4 May 1995 08:25:56 CST6CDT
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Hank Lazer 
Organization: Arts and Sciences Dean's Office
Subject:      Re: Gerald Stern
 
Chris--I agree with your take on "hip" & GStern--I meant the term
ironically, as if it were a jacket blurb (with which I am in
disagreement).  Personally, I find most of his work formulaic safe
effusiveness, the finger pointing too insistently to the sensitive
poet's own tears... -- Hank
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 4 May 1995 08:30:13 CST6CDT
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Hank Lazer 
Organization: Arts and Sciences Dean's Office
Subject:      Re: POETICS Digest - 1 May 1995 to 2 May 1995
 
Tenney--Hello!  Sorry, I don't know the answers to your questions.
Might try writing directly to Leslie....
 
Hank Lazer
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 4 May 1995 09:52:48 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Madeline Gins 
Subject:      Recipients of Poetics Digest
 
Please send me an updated list of the recipients of Poetics Digest.
 
Thank you
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 4 May 1995 12:13:07 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Chris Stroffolino 
Subject:      Re: Gerald Stern
 
  Of course there's two Charles Bernstein's two (so maybe that cancels out
   the two gerald Sterns ha ha)...the other one edited a punk poetry zine
   in the late 80's in Illinois called "Cops Hate poetry"--I lost touch with
   him. I know there's two David Shapiros's two--the more famous one got upset
   I'm told when he found out the lesser one got published because he used
   the name.....Ah. The name game....and happy 25th anniversary of the Kent
   State Massacre everyone!!! (It's april. No, May. it's May--- as Frank
   said). CS
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 4 May 1995 12:37:59 EST
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "H. T. KIRBY-SMITH" 
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro
Subject:      Aleatory Poetry
 
As I understand it, John Cage uses --in his poetry--  an arbitrary
sequencing to guarantee perpetual freshness and spontaneity--to force
the poetic genius constantly to invent for itself and assert itself
in new ways.
 
If that's not quite right, perhaps all the better. After all, we are
not talking about reaching agreement on anything.
 
But what occurred to me some time ago is that in poetry written in
the  lnaguage we speak, call it English or American, the use of rhyme
does the same thing. What a crazy thing, rhyme! What an irrational
thing to do! To pick a word not for its meaning but just because it
happens to sound the same as another word! Especially to do so in
this language where rhyme words are so much harder to find than in
Italian where everything feminine rhymes with everything else
feminine.
 
Using rhyme is like using the random-number generator in a computer.
It automatically introduces irrationality or unpredictability--if you
want it to. For example, would it ever occur to anyone to write a
poem in which one went from "moon" to "pantaloon" in the space of a
few words. And as far as I can remember no one has.
 
Or "Prester John's Balloon." In this case someone has.
 
The problem may be that over the centuries the irrationality has been
squeezed out, and we need new and fresh sources of nuttiness. Too
many dried up peels and husks lying around--"June", "croon", etc.
 
There's nothing wrong with Cage's theory; it's just the practice.
Banging on pot lids is fun to listen to for a few minutes.
 Has anyone ever shouted out "Encore!" at the end of Cage's piece
 that requires nothing but a few minutes of total silence?
 
For real inventiveness try May Swenson's poem, "The Watch." Its
organization is determined by an irrational principle as well. Or
perhaps it would be better to say, its lines are dislocated by a new
type--found only in that poem--of random-number machine.
 
 
Tom Kirby-Smith
English Department
UNC-Greensboro
Greensboro NC  27412
 
Phone: (910) 334-3280
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 4 May 1995 13:55:49 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Mark Wallace 
Subject:      announcing Aerial #8
 
Aerial #8, special issue "Barrett Watten: Contemporary Poetics as
Critical Theory," edited by Rod Smith, is now available from Edge Books.
 
Contributors to the discussion on Watten's work and influence include
Bruce Andrews, Peter Baker, Daniel Barbiero, Manuel Brito, Steve Benson,
Bruce Campbell, Joseph Conte, Daniel Davidson, Michael Davidson, Alan
Davies, Ron Day, Jerry Estrin, Norman Fischer, Allen Fisher, Carla
Harryman, Lyn Heijinian, Kevin Killian, Jackson Mac Low, Bob Perelman,
Kit Robinson, Leslie Scalapino, and George Tysh. The issue also features
writing by Jack Spicer and Victor Shklovsky.
 
Aerial #8 (304 pgs., ISBN 0-9619097-4-9) is available for $12.50. Please
direct all payments and correspondence to:
 
Rod Smith
Aerial
Edge Books
P.O. Box 25642
Washington, D.C. 20007
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 4 May 1995 13:57:37 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Mark Wallace 
Subject:      Kevin Killian, please ring me via e-mail
 
Kevin Killian, will you please contact me over e-mail at the address
listed on this posting--I have the information you requested, but don't
have access to your e-mail address.
 
Mark Wallace
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 4 May 1995 11:42:59 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         William Slaughter 
Subject:      Re: Gerald Stern
In-Reply-To:  <9505041717.AA06282@mx4.u.washington.edu>
 
Two Gerald Sterns, two David Shapiros, and--for the record--two William
Staffords. The poet and the editor (of MODERN FICTION STUDIES). The poet,
early on, used his middle initial, "E," and the editor, later on, used his
middle initial, "T." I wonder what _difference_, if any, the initial-ing
made?
 
Bill
 
William Slaughter
________________________
wslaugh@u.washington.edu
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 4 May 1995 12:24:26 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Herb Levy 
Subject:      Re: aleatoric composition, using chance
In-Reply-To:  <199505040214.AA12459@mail.eskimo.com>
 
On Wed, 3 May 1995, Ryan Knighton wrote:
 
> I too love this subject, as it happens. What interests me is the
> role of agency. It seems, as with Jackson M., that the removal
> of agency, if that is possible, calibrates as much chance as Oulipo
> does by setting strictures, by heightening agency. Any thoughts on
> this paradox? Or is it just a paradox to me?
>
 
Ryan Knighton -
 
Maybe we're thinking of different aspects of Mac Low's work, but I think
both Mac Low and (some, at least, of) the Oulipians are doing similar
things.  I don't see the distinction you're making between chance and
strictures, when you look at the actual systems in use.  If you gave an
example it might help me understand what you mean.
 
For instance, I'm not sure that I see a functional difference between, say
selecting words by the position of letters from a certain index word or
phrase, or others of Mac Low's strategies and selecting, say the seventh
word after a noun in the dictionary.  They're both ways to get around
using the easy ways of writing that standard syntax allows us/forces us
to fall into.
 
 
- Herb Levy
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 4 May 1995 12:14:53 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Herb Levy 
Subject:      Re: aleatoric composition, using chance
In-Reply-To:  <199505031934.AA01519@mail.eskimo.com>
 
Since , the John Cage mailing list, is lately (& sometimes
interestingly) bogged down with bibliographic issues regarding the
provenance of various scores by Cage in chronological order, I guess it
makes sense to discuss chance composition here.
 
Ira raises asks the question  In most ways I
think the question is more accurately stated <_Can_ it be random?>.  I
don't think it can be entirely random though there are certainly a
wide range of how much the expected sound or word can be avoided.
 
Once a composer or poet or whoever has selected the gamut or aggregate
upon which the change processes are to operate, once the composer or poet
has decided how to interpret the chance operations, there are enough
elements of taste and choice involved to eliminaate any true, or at least
total .  Rather, the chance elements allow the artist to
arrive at an array of events and structures that are not prescribed by an
individual's sense of taste or rules.  In music this may include the rules
of melody or harmony, in poetry, rules of syntax or discourse.
 
(There is, BTW, a very good book on Cage's compositional processes called
 by James Pritchett, published by Cambridge
University Press.  At least those of you at colleges and universities
should be able to get it from a library.  As may be clear to those of you
who have heard and not just read about Cage's music, there is often a
structure to it, and sometimes its an audible one.  These structures
simply don't fit any of the standard musical syntaxes.  Does this sound
familiar to any poets out there?)
 
In, say,  for solo piano, or  or
(much later) , star charts are used as the original
source material for "randomly" selecting notes, but Cage determines how
the charts are used and follows this system with a degree of rigor.
 
In other works, say  and , performers use
materials provided by Cage to generate a score from which they perform.
In these cases, Cage has very little control over the actual sonic outcome
of the work, but he has _some_ control over how the sounds are chosen.
 
But very few of Cage's works are this free and, in many ways, he was
always in control of his music, he simply was not using the same systems
as others were to structure his music.  In fact, he rarely used the same
system more than a couple of times to generate his music.  It's this
constant move toward looking for new systems, rather than getting into a
stylistic schtick, that I find most appealing about Cage's music.
 
In Cage's poetry, his choice of source materials give the works form and
content to a great extent.  His various writings through Thoreau and
Finnegans Wake are about the source materials, as are his later Norton
poetry lectures, etc.  In his writing he was more upfront about the fact
that he made choices about how much of the source material to keep and
how much to discard in following through his formal structures.
 
In the various methodical writings of Jackson Mac Low, his selection of
the gamut of choices, works in similar ways. But, perhaps because he works
primarily as a writer, Mac Low has a wider range within his poetry than
Cage and isn't as simply dependent on formal decision structures.
 
As to Stockhausen, Ira, I don't see how your description of his use of
chance is much different than the way most artists have of trying stuff
out and seeing if it works.  (Our back channel mail about new music has only
let me know that my turntable needs a new part, so I still haven't
listened to the Stockhausen I have on hand lately.)
 
As to the colonialism implicit in the use of the I Ching by tourists for
non-oracular divination.  Well, as far as Cage goes, does it make it any
better if it turns out that Cage simply broke things down into no more
than 64 categories and used coins and or yarrow stalks to determine which
of the 64 categories to select?
 
Cage rarely used the oracular text of the I Ching to determine his
artistic choices.  I'm not sure how late it was developed but someone
eventually wrote a computer utility that randomly generated so in the
later years, he wasn't even using the tradition means of divination to
determine which of the categories to use.
 
There's plenty more to say, but I'll save it for now & see how others
respond.
 
- Herb Levy
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 4 May 1995 15:30:05 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Edward Foster 
Subject:      Re: ZenLang
 
kit robinson: re: zhang ziqing and the chinese "new zen poets" see his essay and translations in the new talisman.
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 5 May 1995 08:30:34 GMT+1200
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Tony Green 
Organization: The University of Auckland
Subject:      Re: Gerald Stern
 
Well remembered Chris Stroffolino. I'll observe a two minute silence for Kent,
Ohio.  Tom Beckett once showed me where the site had been levelled by
the University so that there is no physical geographic trace anymore.
Here our university capping parade that year was marked by hundreds of black
armbands, students and staff.
       I have a namesake in England, Anthony Green, R.A.  I once wrote
to him suggesting he change his name as I had exhibited paintings
publicly before him (humorously as I thought) but got no reply.  So
recalling Henri Matisse's action in the same circumstances -- adding
a hyphen between the two names, I changed my by-line to
Tony Green.  I toyed with the cumbersome "Anthony S.G.Green" for a
while.  The result is confusion in library catalogues.  And in London there are people who still think I painted
Anthony Green, R.A.'s pictures.  We're talking trade-marks and
trade-practices here.   I have a friend who has exhibited paintings
and published writing under three different names so far.... The
proper-name problem extends wider than we might think.
 
Best
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 4 May 1995 17:10:54 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Marisa A Januzzi 
Subject:      /advertising agency/
In-Reply-To:  <199505042037.AA21045@mailhub.cc.columbia.edu>
 
H.T. Kirby-Smith's interesting post about the "irrationality" of rhyme as
a way of organizing poetic choices brings the discussion of chance
composition, in a way, to rhetoric.  Did anyone else see the piece in the
NYTimes about the susceptibility of the brain, to rhyme? In other words
there are reasons babies love to hear recitations of Dr. Suess.  (Lyric
as cry for Mama, as Barbara Johnson might say.)
 
I composed a long poem with a friend using dice.  We were delighted with
the results, but predictably maybe, no one was very interested in reading
the whole thing.  I mean the (inexistant) (?) metapoem was more
interesting than the poem, and we who did it were more excited than
anyone who read it.....
 
Please send aleatory energy to an 87 year old man you don't know, who's
about to undergo surgery....
 
Thanks everyone
Marisa
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 4 May 1995 22:11:34 +0100
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "Dr L.A. Raphals" 
Subject:      Twelfth Night
In-Reply-To:  <"ppsw1.cam..392:04.04.95.02.09.00"@ppsw.cam.ac.uk>
 
To my mind that heart-stopping moment when Viola realized what has
happend beats anything in Hamlet (better theatre too).
-- Lisa Raphals
 
On Wed, 3 May 1995,
George Bowering wrote:
 
> Well, you cant fault Shakespeare for not developing female
> characters, either, L. Because the idea of a character in literature
> had not yet been invented. Now that we dont believe in them any more,
> we should be able to read Shakes better than people could 50 years
> ago. Maybe not, but it seems as if it should be true. But I do agree
> with you that Shakespeare's sonnets are a dream. One coulkd take them
> for a year to a desert isle and survive on them.
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 4 May 1995 23:36:26 +0000
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         cris cheek 
Subject:      Re: poetry and the electronic
 
Yes Loss, 'we're' with you.
Let's see how the templates work out.
 
love and love
cris
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 4 May 1995 23:36:19 +0000
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         cris cheek 
Subject:      Re: 2 announcements
X-cc:         Susan Schultz 
 
>        _TinFish_, a journal of experimental poetry, with an emphasis on
>work from the Pacific region, welcomes contributions.  Please write to
>the editor, Susan M. Schultz, at 1422A Dominis Street, Honolulu, HI
>96822, or Dept of English, 1733 Donaghho Road, University of Hawaii,
>Honolulu, 96822.  The first issue will be free to anyone who asks for a
>copy (and you can do this over email).  Please spread the word.  And many
>thanks to those who responded to my earlier query.
 
 
Hi Susan, might not be possible for your to post overseas, budget - wise ,
but if it is I'd love to see a copy of TinFish and will show others.
 
Cris Cheek
85 London Road South
Lowestoft, Suffolk NR33 OAS
UK
 
Also btw, I've just been sent the exchange between Silliman and Corn re-
Parallel Tradition on CAP-L (which I missed). Your name crops up in the
posts but I don't have your post itself. You wouldn't happen to have a copy
of what you contributed that you could e-me? And what was the Enslin poem
which instigated all of that?
 
Love
cris
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 5 May 1995 09:16:58 GMT+1200
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Tony Green 
Organization: The University of Auckland
Subject:      Re: aleatoric composition, using chance
 
Try:  " Chance " operations in the arts commonly involve the selection of materials by
locating  the intersection of (usually) two systems, e.g. sounds,
spaces, durations, words, phrases -- with -- finite sets of numbers.
 
Note: although all possible results of these operations could be
produced by computer-processing (provided the numbers involved are
limited), the effect is usually to select one or more) of the
available possibilities.  In this way the selection(s) are put beyond
the range of what might be selected by unaided brain-power.
 
Thus large intersecting systems are pitted against deliberate choice.
 
The purposes for such designs vary from user to user and, judging by
the elaborate descriptions of process provided by Jackson Mac Low (to
which one or other of the Charles Bernstein's has drawn attention
before "me", one of the Anthony Green's), the purposes also vary with
each individual occasion of use.
 
What is clearly still deliberate and purposive is the positioning of
the "artist" and of the "audience".   This purposive character is apt
to confuse those who regard only the "chance" of the procedures,
thus neglecting artist-work-audience relations.
 
Intrstng, no?  as ever a Formalist reading taken alone is ineffectual
-- because it lacks a  Contextual reading (i.e. social/political)
& round we go again, folks.
 
Best
it erst
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 4 May 1995 22:40:25 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         John Byrum 
Subject:      Re: aleatoric composition, us...
 
Ira,
 
Some random remarks on your interesting questions about chance.
 
In a sense, all composition is to greater or lesser degrees chance-generated.
 The conscious mind believes it is orchestrating things during writing,
making decisions, determining themes, etc, but often directions, lines of
investigation, phrases, words, etc., just pop in, get writtne down, edited,
etc.  These then lead in directions not originally envisioned...
 
Many so-called "chance-generated" texts (by Cage, Mac Low, myself, and
others) use very strictly structured methods to arrive at word choices, line
lengths, etc, etc.  Cage's computer-generated mesostics, for example.  Coin
tosses, dice throws, I Ching, random numbers keyed to dictionary entries are
all examples of structured approaches to opening the composition to "outside"
forces not usually thought of as directed by consciousness.
 
However, if one's sense of self includes the world (self as an "expanded
field" taking in "eveything"), these methods simply use other strategies,
forces, or parts of the world-self to formulate or generate the text.  "The
world is speaking through the pen or keyboard" is a natural feeling.
 Strictly speaking then, chance is not random, but directed in at least three
ways:
 
   - through the conscious mind apparently but not completely in charge of
its choices.
   - by using structured methods of text generation chosen and set into
motion by the conscious mind.
   - by allowing "natural forces" (such as gravity or random numbers) to
"have their say" in the outcomes of the above structured methods.
 
Hopefully others will also have ideas on this subject.
 
John
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 4 May 1995 22:25:14 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         George Bowering 
Subject:      Re: Gerald Stern
In-Reply-To:  <199505042310.QAA26677@whistler.sfu.ca> from "William Slaughter"
              at May 4, 95 11:42:59 am
 
Speaking of two Gerald Sterns, etc.
 
Peter Quartermain is on this list but Peter Quartermain isnt.
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 4 May 1995 22:51:56 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Ryan Knighton 
Subject:      Re: aleatoric composition, using chance
In-Reply-To:  <199505041935.MAA03408@whistler.sfu.ca> from "Herb Levy" at May 4,
              95 12:24:26 pm
 
Herb Levy--
 
In response to your response I see what you mean.  There is some
similarity in what I see as a distinction, given your index and
syntax example.  Perhaps I m thinking of particular poems/works.
For example, Cage's piece wherein he set the trip beams in a bank(?)
and connected each one to a note or chord.  I see this as not
unlike Mac Low's "Antic Quatrains", the computer program config-
ured to create words derived from the subject, which happens to
be a name.  In both cases, the parameters of the poetic occasion
are established by the poet, but the system is autonomous in its
movemnt and development--chance takes over, or at least a semblence
of chance insofar as control has been relinquished.
But in Oulipo, or Ashbery, sometimes, the strictures force the
poet to  work within the system parameters, not leave and watch
it go.  It's an exercise in anti-intention, a work against the
sprawl of ego.  In this case, you might consider Ashbery's
Popeye sestina, whch I just recently read.
I hope this at least approaches an explication of what i meant.
Sorry about the typhos.
 
Best,
Ryan
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 4 May 1995 23:09:41 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Herb Levy 
Subject:      Re: Aleatory Poetry
In-Reply-To:  <199505041724.AA27619@mail.eskimo.com>
 
Tom Kirby-Smith's post on rhyme as a  (not the term he
used) technique is a useful one.
 
Formal constraints, whether they're older ones like rhyme or rhythmic
structure, or newer ones like Mac Low's or the Oulipians, _can_ serv as a
kick in the butt to a writer.  The trick is for the writer to stay
surprised while trying to focus on what she wants to say and having to
follow a set of rules can keep both the surprise and the dsired statemnt
in a interesting tension.  And, as Kirby-Smith notes, it's rare that rhyme
alone can do that anymore, for either the writer or the reader.
 
To paraphrase a sentiment from George Perec's author's note at the end of
 (since I don't have the recently published translation at
hand, my own loos translation DOES include words containing the letter
 and doesn't pars quite rightly>:
 

 
Or something like that.
 
Making   is what poetry is all about, isn't it?
 
- Herb
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 4 May 1995 23:12:35 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Herb Levy 
Subject:      Re: Gerald Stern Gerald Stern
In-Reply-To:  <199505050528.AA22885@mail.eskimo.com>
 
This thread reminds me of the jazz record store that used to advertise
that their stock covered the whole history of jazz from George Lewis to
George Lewis.
 
- Herb
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 5 May 1995 09:38:07 BST
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "R.I.Caddel @ durham.ac.uk" 
Subject:      No Change
 
Good  to  read  the Exact Change Annual, with its fine selection of UK
poets introduced by Tom  Raworth  (Scully,  Walsh,  Mellors,  Marriott
etc).  And  to note his comments on the ways in which such writers are
still excluded from attention by the dominant literary culture in  the
UK.  And  to  note  the  publicity which Carcanet (who publish it over
here) put out for it, which mentions not one of the poets in Raworth's
bit, nor Raworth himself, and indeed glosses over the presence  of  UK
poets  in  the  publication,  in  favour of the "How exotic it all is"
approach.  It's  nice  to  have  the  evidence  distributed  with  the
assertion.
 
"For you and me it's better to be unknown - to do our work" Weiners to
Fanny Howe, op. cit. p350. No Change.
 
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
x                                                                    x
x  Richard Caddel,                E-mail: R.I.Caddel @ durham.ac.uk  x
x  Durham University Library,     Phone: 0191 374 3044               x
x  Stockton Rd. Durham DH1 3LY    Fax: 0191 374 7481                 x
x                                                                    x
x       "Words! Pens are too light. Take a chisel to write."         x
x                          - Basil Bunting                           x
x                                                                    x
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 6 May 1995 11:13:27 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         John Cayley 
Subject:      aleatoric composition
 
Tony Green:
 
>What is clearly still deliberate and purposive is the positioning of
>the "artist" and of the "audience".   This purposive character is apt
>to confuse those who regard only the "chance" of the procedures,
>thus neglecting artist-work-audience relations.
 
An important point, although the artist's actual (as oppsed to 'intended')
audience is indeterminate. Even the abdication of agency -- something which
does interest me -- implies an attitude to and a particular form of
engagement with even this form of literary production which the artist
presumably continues to view as such.
 
Which leads on the the OuLiPo, which had/?has an attitude to 'chance' that
was at best ambiguous and more often hostile. I think it is possible to
maintain a distinct between the application of arbitrary strictures
(anything in rhetoric really from lipograms and sestinas to rhyme and
metrics) and the use of (typically) random number generation to determine
the actual selection and recording of words/phrases/sentences (where the
medium is literary).
 
The OuLiPians wish to *overcome* the restrictions. Someone in the grip of
aleatoric processes wants to follow them and see where they will go.
 
Of course the distinction is never so clear. Arbitrary is arbitrary and
it's a matter of 'chance' that the artist (arbitrarily) applies a set of
strictures, however cleverly she overcomes the problems. Chance procedures
are always applied to previously structured and/or composed material and
the way they are applied is also chosen.
 
>the way they are applied ...
 
Once again: the machine you're sitting in front of is now a very flexible
tool for the composition of chance.
 
 
 
-----------
John Cayley  Wellsweep Press [in Chinese HZ: ~{?-U\02~}  ~{=[i@3v0fIg~}]
1 Grove End House  150 Highgate Road  London NW5 1PD  UK
Tel & Fax: 0171-267 3525  Email: cayley@shadoof.demon.co.uk
-----------
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 5 May 1995 13:15:02 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "Sheila E. Murphy" 
Subject:      Re: ZenLang
 
>        Reply to:   ZenLang
>John Geraets,
>The visiting Chinese scholar Zhang Zing (sp? - Hank?) told me
>he is working with two groups of poets in China--a "language"
>group, with interest in parallel developments here, and a zen
>group, whose work is naturalistic and lyrical. According to
>Zhang, these groups are basically antithetical, with no overlap.
>He was surprised when I told him about the common ground here
>(Fischer, Davies, et al.) Subsequently, I wrote a brief essay for
>Zhang on Zen & poetry, focusing on my own practice and quoting
>a couple of koans from the Gateless Barrier (Mumonkan). I can
>send it to you if you like.
>Kit Robinson
>
Kit, I'm replying on the list, suspecting that many others may have interest
in the essay that you referenced.  Would you be willing to post it here, or
to share it backchannel with me?  Thanks very much.
 
Sheila Murphy
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 5 May 1995 20:00:53 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "Sheila E. Murphy" 
Subject:      Re: aleatoric composition, us...
 
John Byrum wrote:
>
>In a sense, all composition is to greater or lesser degrees chance-generated.
> The conscious mind believes it is orchestrating things during writing,
>making decisions, determining themes, etc, but often directions, lines of
>investigation, phrases, words, etc., just pop in, get writtne down, edited,
>etc.  These then lead in directions not originally envisioned...
>
>Many so-called "chance-generated" texts (by Cage, Mac Low, myself, and
>others) use very strictly structured methods to arrive at word choices, line
>lengths, etc, etc.  Cage's computer-generated mesostics, for example.  Coin
>tosses, dice throws, I Ching, random numbers keyed to dictionary entries are
>all examples of structured approaches to opening the composition to "outside"
>forces not usually thought of as directed by consciousness.
>
>However, if one's sense of self includes the world (self as an "expanded
>field" taking in "eveything"), these methods simply use other strategies,
>forces, or parts of the world-self to formulate or generate the text.  "The
>world is speaking through the pen or keyboard" is a natural feeling.
> Strictly speaking then, chance is not random, but directed in at least three
>ways:
>
>   - through the conscious mind apparently but not completely in charge of
>its choices.
>   - by using structured methods of text generation chosen and set into
>motion by the conscious mind.
>   - by allowing "natural forces" (such as gravity or random numbers) to
>"have their say" in the outcomes of the above structured methods.
>
>>
>
John's remarks remind me that after using consciously selected chance
methods, one's writing habits may expand, such that the exercises employed
are not required in quite the same way. For me, patterns add discipline that
is inherently cumulative.  There's a little of Houdini in this process, in
that (in some time types of chance applications)one creates obstacle courses
that one does not exactly escape, but rather include the surrounding material.
 
I've heard some writers say, for example, about some of the experiments,
such as those that Charles Bernstein recently shared on this list, that as
you engage with them, these methods more naturally become a part of one's
"own" methods.  (An inadvertent acquisitive suggestion!)
 
I find the use of chance methods envigorating at least.  And I am delighted
by so many of the results of that process in the work of other writers.
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 5 May 1995 23:52:01 +0000
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         cris cheek 
Subject:      Re: aleatoric composition (longish)
 
Noting what's been posted to this subject to date a first stumble into the
thicket as requested:-
 
1. Among many influences MacLow identifies   -  in Vort 8 (Stein,
Schwitters, Duchamp via Cage, Maciunas) 'equally important . . . were
Pound's use of economic, historical, and other text materials in 'The
Cantos'.' So, it's the choosing and the processing of materials under
compositional pressure which is particularly cogent to his earlier work
exploring the possibilities of 'chance'. Of course he doesn't always
compose using chance. In fact he has probably constructed chance-like
collocations into his overall linguistic desire to an extent sufficiently
influencing all of his writing  -  much as Burroughs' experiences with
cut-ups have altered his. (oooh oooh - these boiling waters here).
 
            I would agree with Herb about the idiosyncratic (subjective)
aspects of 'choosing one's ground' that mitigate against attributions of
'randomness' being used as a basis for criticism of chance-generated or
chance-impacted or chance-controlled works. (one thing I felt on Cage's
death was how utterly ludicrous the accusations were of his having denied
or erased individuality / subjectivity - levelled at him through banal
parrotic obituaries in the British press  - quite the opposite, his work
had tested the vacuousness of such a project and proved it false).
 
The careful choosing of ground is very important it would seem in
minimising the possibilities of generating meaning that one really! did not
'want'  -  I'm thinking here of conversations I've had, for example with
Allen Fisher, about the creation of unchallenged oppressive meanings and
whether MacLow ever edits / rejects or intervenes in his works on such
bases. In the Vort 8 issue he clearly says that some of his chance poems,
as well as intuitive ones, are 'revisable'. And I realise, Ira, that this
begins to touch onto your question of producing 'something more true, that
surprises and sobers her / him' - but with an extra twist. I've got to
agree with Sheila, from my own limited experience in chance-compositional
related matters, that the full range from mundane to utterly extraordinary
(in relation to primary expectation / intention) can and does become
present.
 
2. In conversation Jackson once gleefully told me of how his use of
frequent instructions to the performers regarding tone and attitude and so
on had enabled him to achieve 'indeterminacy through overdetermination'.
This is a strand that is of particular interest to me.
There might be some corrolation to be explored with composers of the 'new
complexity' such as Brian Ferneyhough.
 
3. Phrases that have come up in this discussion which I 'like' are Ryan's
'heightening of agency'  - Tony's 'purposive character' in relation to
positioning and Herb's question 'Can it be Random? which seems worth asking
once more before the onward wash of this list deletes it.
 
4. I would agree with John Cayley about the possibilities of composing
using chance in real time being comparatively under-explored. I would
certainly recommend John's hypertext book 'Unbound' in this respect. It's a
terrific piece of work that put simply writes (adds) the reader's reading
into itself as the reading progresses. And each reader can choose (opt for,
in a hands on response) to create a more or less collocational versioning
which is explored in dynamic tension alongside and inside the 'original'
linear texts. His composition makes chance generation from the materials he
provides available to every reader in a real time improvisatory engagement
through the act of reading. An extension of the opportunities offered by
every book? 'Unbound' is a fascinating multilogue, with the machine acting
as exquisite interpreter. Huh? I can't believe I just wrote that! So I'll
re-post John's own description:
 
>Processes can also be open-ended, feeding back into themselves. I have a
>new piece that learns phrases selected from generated text by the reader.
>The reader's copy of the piece is changed irreversibly by adding
>selections. Since the generative process is based on frequencies of
>collocations (word juxtapositions) the piece will eventually be dominated
>by phrases selected by the reader. (It would probably also eventually choke
>on the amount of text generated and selected. BTW this is probably also
>properly 'chaotic' -- literary turbulence slowly drawn towards a 'strange
>attractor', nudged into place by the reader.)
 
5. Ira, am I mis-reading you, deliberately? Isn't the often exhaustive
documentation of procedures presented alongside the poems (the results of
the implementation of the procedures) in MacLow's work in itself a research
write-up? What other format do you envisage such taking?
 
 
expecting this topic to run far further - bamboozled for now
love
cris
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 5 May 1995 15:18:34 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Federation Sand 
Subject:      ZenLang
 
Hmmm....well there seems to be significant interest in this topic of
people who sit zazen and write poetry, or people who write poetry to
people who sit zazen and write poetry or....?   :)
 
I've been sitting zazen pretty seriously (i.e every day and some full day
and two or three day seshin once in a while) for about five years. I
would definietly say that it's 'influenced' my writing. I don't consider
myself a buddhist (in fact, some of why i sit is wrapped into the
question of 'what' i am...i think 'who' is irrelevent until the first one
is better explored). I think in general that zen is vastly misunderstood
(yes, even more than that) by those who do not practice it regularly (and
even by some who do!). Though it is clearly repeated that talking about
it is nearly useless, it is simultaneously true that human beings, being
talking machines, HAVE to talk about it (whoops! here I am!).
 
I feel personally that my spirituality, both within the zen paradigm and
without are a profound part of the reason, passion and form(s) of my
writing. These, coupled with my experiential explorations,
recollecctions, musings and emotings form the core of my inspiration and
content. Writing is a mystical act for me, it is an 'ordinary' opening
into the energetic realms of psyche and un/sub conscious mind, where the
separations fade to fog and then to a ringing silence! A silence which is
moving as though one had become the water in the river, without knowing
the concetps of water or river. (When it's at its best) Even when it (my
writing) is at its worst or most difficult, I recognize the symbolic
power of the act itself and take joy in my ability to join with the
poetic and prosaic elements of self and other.
 
Happy to answer other quries on this subject...
 
Darin De Stefano
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 5 May 1995 14:14:19 -0600
Reply-To:     quarterm@unixg.ubc.ca
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         peter quartermain 
Subject:      Re: Gerald Stern
 
Now which Peter Quartermain would that BE, George?
 
In message Thu, 4 May 1995 22:25:14 -0700,
  George Bowering   writes:
 
> Speaking of two Gerald Sterns, etc.
>
> Peter Quartermain is on this list but Peter Quartermain isnt.
>
__________________________________________________________________________
 
                            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:         Fri, 5 May 1995 10:59:00 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Don Cheney 
Subject:      Zen and Langwhich Poetry
 
Zen and the Art of Ron Silliman:
 
 
27. Your existence is not a condition of this work.  Yet let me,
for a moment, posit it.  As you read, other things occur to you.
You hear the drip of a faucet, or there's music on, or your
companion gives a sigh that represents a poor night's sleep.  As
you read, old conversations reel slowly through your mind, you
sense your buttocks and spine in contact with the chair.  All of
these must certainly be a part of the meaning of this work.
 
 
from "The Chinese Notebook"
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 5 May 1995 12:04:33 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Herb Levy 
Subject:      Re: aleatoric composition, using chance
In-Reply-To:  <199505050952.AA18823@mail.eskimo.com>
 
On Thu, 4 May 1995, Ryan Knighton wrote:
 
> Herb Levy--
>
> In response to your response I see what you mean.  There is some
> similarity in what I see as a distinction, given your index and
> syntax example.  Perhaps I m thinking of particular poems/works.
> For example, Cage's piece wherein he set the trip beams in a bank(?)
> and connected each one to a note or chord.
 
I haven't heard this piece, but if, as I assume, it's a musical piece for
dancers, there are a lot of composer choices of which sounds are heard by
movement in which sector of the grid.  Since at least most if not all of
the time, dancers will have to move through adjacent grid sectors, there
are quite strict constraints on the order of events.  These constraints
are further limited by Cage's choice of which sounds to trigger by light
beams in which sector.  Not knowing the piece, I don't know what sounds
were selected, but given these restraints this kind of technology could be
used to produce a fairly tonal, harmonically simple sounding work or an
extremely dissonant one.  Because of the kind of technology involved, it's
likely that this work was made in the sixties or late seventies, and given
Cage's history, it probably would have been  by the standards of
 music.  But there's nothing in the formal structure that requires
it to be so.
 
In fact, tonal music is so strictly rule-based that it is relatively easy
to put together computer algorithms to create works within a particular
style.  As a parlor trick, Mozart once wrote a short piece for solo
keyboard in which the order of the measures was to be selected by throwing
dice.  The formal constraints of harmonic progressions are such that it
doesn't sound , but, atleast on the level of movement from
measure to measure, it is exactly random.
 
> I see this as not
> unlike Mac Low's "Antic Quatrains", the computer program config-
> ured to create words derived from the subject, which happens to
> be a name.  In both cases, the parameters of the poetic occasion
> are established by the poet, but the system is autonomous in its
> movemnt and development--chance takes over, or at least a semblence
> of chance insofar as control has been relinquished.
 
In , Mac Low used a computer to somehow manipulate
anagrams on the letters of Anne Tardos' full name as derived in  (My copy of the text in
 is not clear about how the words were selected or ordered.)
Isn't this a lipogram (an ancient form revived by various Oulipians,
in which a writer uses only words that do not contain one or more specific
leters) on those letters that are not found in Tardos' name?  While their
vocabulary is odd,to my ear each quartrain is a parseable sentence.  Mac
Low even uses a standard lipogrammatic ploy by several times replacing the
word  with the odd, but recognizable .
 
In other words, I just don't see Cage or Mac Low standing back from some
kind of run away train that happens to be spewing out words or sounds in
its wake.  What they are doing is exactly writing _with_  as you put it below in your description
of Ashbery or the Oulipo group.  And, in fact, Cage often described his
work in quite similar phrases.
 
I just don't see a clear place to draw the kind of distinction you want to
make.  I think it's just a continuum & not some formal opposition.
 
> But in Oulipo, or Ashbery, sometimes, the strictures force the
> poet to  work within the system parameters, not leave and watch
> it go.  It's an exercise in anti-intention, a work against the
> sprawl of ego.  In this case, you might consider Ashbery's
> Popeye sestina, whch I just recently read.
> I hope this at least approaches an explication of what i meant.
> Sorry about the typhos.
>
> Best,
> Ryan
>
 
Bests,
 
Herb
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 5 May 1995 10:17:05 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         William Slaughter 
Subject:      Re: Gerald Stern
X-To:         w.curnow@auckland.ac.nz
In-Reply-To:  
 
Dear Wystan...
 
and, as you say, everyone else who is listening.
 
I've never actually met another WS, though I know from turning the pages
of phonebooks, including NYs, that we are many. And I take it for granted,
as you do, that I'm not the only one of us who has a collection.  I do get
calls, from time to time, having to do with a somewhat different kind of
collection. There's at least one of us, WSs, out there somewhere who
doesn't pay his bills. I don't think I can be of any help to you, Wystan.
So far as I know you ARE the only living Wystan, Auden being dead, but I'm
quite sure others know better. Aren't you? I hestitated to mention
Stafford in my original post and I hestitate to mention Roethke in this
one but I am posting from Seattle. In "In a Dark Time" Roethke asks the
question:  "Which I is I?" That IS the question, isn't it? And, having
asked it, I'll return to my own sure silence. Bill.
 
 
 
On 5 May 1995 w.curnow@auckland.ac.nz wrote:
 
> Dear bill,
>          Did you used to live in New York? I knew a William Slaughter
> there once, tenth avenue I recall. But seriously you people you've ALL got
> doubles, at least. There's a good number of Robert Duncans in the Auckland
> phonebook, most of them with collections to their name I'll be bound.But
> what about those lonely people who have their names all to themselves. Spare
> them a moment's thought. Is there, I ask you Bill, and everyone else who is
> listening, is there another living Wystan out there (forget about the
> Curnow). So far as I know there's only me. Help!
>         the one and only
>            Wystan
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 5 May 1995 11:52:58 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         maria damon 
Subject:      Re: Aleatory Poetry
 
 forgive my ignorance: who are the Oulipians?--maria damon
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 5 May 1995 09:33:49 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Carl Lynden Peters 
Subject:      Re: chance
 
read Marcel Duchamp.
 
c
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 5 May 1995 18:59:21 GMT+1300
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Wystan Curnow 
Organization: English Dept. - Univ. of Auckland
Subject:      Re: Gerald Stern
X-To:         wslaugh@U.WASHINGTON.EDU
 
Dear bill,
         Did you used to live in New York? I knew a William Slaughter
there once, tenth avenue I recall. But seriously you people you've ALL got
doubles, at least. There's a good number of Robert Duncans in the Auckland
phonebook, most of them with collections to their name I'll be bound.But
what about those lonely people who have their names all to themselves. Spare
them a moment's thought. Is there, I ask you Bill, and everyone else who is
listening, is there another living Wystan out there (forget about the
Curnow). So far as I know there's only me. Help!
        the one and only
           Wystan
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 5 May 1995 15:13:09 GMT+1300
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Wystan Curnow 
Organization: English Dept. - Univ. of Auckland
Subject:      Re: Aleatory Poetry
X-To:         KIRBYS@FAGAN.UNCG.EDU
 
Dear Kirby,
           Re-rhyme. Don't worry so. Look at Charles Bernstein, the one at
the net, always ready to serve poems which get from 'moon' to 'pantaloon' in
the space of a few words, and he's not the only one surely. The outlook for
rhyme seems very good to me right now. As to 'june' and 'croon'--don't write
them off. Someone will come along, singing
 
Mr Beggar & Mrs Davy--
Looney and CRUNEY,
I made a pome out of it,
Havent smoked Luney
    & Cruney
In a Long Time.
 
  Dem eggs & dem dem
  Dere bacons, baby,
  If you only lay that
     down on a trumpet,
     'Lay that down
        solid brother
 
     'Bout all dem
         bacon & eggs
      Ya gotta be able
         to lay it down
            solid--
         All that luney
              & fruney
 
or something like with more of the same in choruses to follow ending
William
Carlos
Williams
     in itself quite a rhyme.
Wystan
Curnow
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 5 May 1995 13:17:26 BST
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "I.LIGHTMAN" 
Subject:      aleatoric composition using chance
 
I've been away for a day, so want to say thank you to everyone who
responded to my floated questions. I got to read through the whole
discussion this morning, including seeing my own fresh - I kind of
didn't make clear that I do use aleatoric methods a lot myself,
and may have come across, in my politeness, as a bit more naif than
I am. But I'm really satisfied to see so much good introductory
discussion of chance, which I'm no good at providing myself.
 
John Cayley's right that I've seen his work. It's very lovely, using
interactiveness and hypertext, so that the lovely looking text slowly
materialises word by word on the screen, and as it does, one can
interact and make some choices to randomize it. Which is great, a
great use of a kind of chance, kind of "editing with chance", which
is a bit like what Cage does with source texts, as Herb pointed out.
 
The emphasis I'd like to add to this discussion, however, is less
about chance in the process of composition or editing/reading, and
more about chance in the process of personal growth as a person, in
the artist or reader, not necessarily both. Ashbery once said that
he finds his favourite, or most relevant, parts of books by opening
them at "random". I kind of want to talk about writing as horoscope,
maybe the artist does it cynically but it cues the reader, or maybe
the artist uses the process as a kind of personal horoscope and it also,
or instead, cues the reader.
 
Sheila E.Murphy said, among many other things:  "when trust supplies
the foundation for engagement with chance practices, miracles can happen.
The process seems to require a complete letting go to work as it can...
I'm most interested in chance practices because of what happens when
confidence and the wide open possibilites intersect."
 
Sheila, thanks for this, I agree that, as you really kindly put it, we are
"preaching different interests", but, still, thanks. I would draw some
attention, for my own purposes, to words that link to a dominant culture of
chance (that I don't want to lump you in) that I'm critical of, not because
I don't like it, but because *I* don't want to be subsumed into it or
confused with it (as you show, the best approach is for us all to see
we're preaching differently, but I don't always get this from other
chancers). The words I'd look at are "trust", "complete letting-go"
and "confidence". Of course, your (very seriously taken) phrase, "miracles
can happen" allows for so much room and open-mindedness that I think
I'm picking up on the phrasing, not the practice. But the issues I
want to raise here are: what is trust, does it involve trusting the process
to throw up only bearable miracles (what happens if it wants to say to
you "go onto the streets" or "murder the President" - and what if history
then showed that by murdering the President a whole awful world crisis
would have been avoided?); does complete letting-go involve suspending
emotional or intuitive response to the process as it is happening, even
if the best message or work might have been produced (people often hold
their breath when doing any kind of oracular work, does this equal the
biggest sin of all reading, waiting for the message and not observing
form, context and means of production?); is confidence intimacy, a
sense of invulnerability, or a sense of "this is a path, and I must
take it, and take the consequences" inspired courage?
 
I really clicked with what H. T. Kirby-Smith said about rhyme being an
aleatory process, and in fact I came to aleatory process as an inveterate
rhymer, hoping to find some of the same specific pleasure which, as Sheila
says, are not what most chancers are in it for. Thanks, H.T., for bringing
this in. It raises for me the possibility that one could produce a work
of art by aleatory means, and yet pass it off, and have it have the effect
of, intentional, ego-written, lyric. Which was what I was trying to say
about oracles, and perhaps the idea of the muse. It's like, sometimes when
I write a piece that is more written by the requirements of the form, I
wind up with a product that I think "that's what I was *trying* to say".
In such a procedure, I don't think of my conscious mind as something
narrow but as something a little bit blocked and needing unblocking.
 
This is kind of what Herb says about my description of Stockhausen's
use of chance: "I don't see how... (it's)... much different than the
way most artists have of trying stuff out and seeing if it works".
But I think my, and Stockhausen's, framing of this is oracular or
religious. Stockhausen, after all, believes he has been reincarnated
from an earlier life on the planet Sirius (if I could, I'd make a
Star Trek: The Next Generation episode where the Enterprise visits
Sirius and proves Stockhausen was telling the truth, since there are
so many episodes in that series that take alien infiltration very
seriously). Stockhausen has always talked of a higher calling, and
being the servant, or channel, of higher forces. I'm very interested
in this framing of chance. Whenever I've seen anyone do any oracle
consulting, or rune-casting (and I do it a lot myself, and get results
that have often been very powerful for me), you can see the ones who
don't do it with seriousness, and then they get jumbled results and
then pooh-pooh the whole discipline - and like all spirualists/psychics,
I would say that you get out what you put in. Where might Hannah
Weiner's clairvoyant word-seeing come into all this?
 
Herb, your defence of Cage is admirable, and interesting, but didn't he
sell himself, just a tad, on the guru aspect (like Pound with chinese
culture) of recommending the Buddhist way of life - and, as I said
before, we have been talking about Zen...
 
John Byrum interestingly says "all composition is to greater or
lesser degrees chance-generated", but perhaps what I've been arguing
is that all composition could also be said to be written as intentional
lyric - in that there's so much incidental daily detail in a lot of
lyric, so much extra randomness. John goes on to say "if one's sense
of self includes the world (self as an "expanded field" taking in
"everything"), these methods simply use other strategies, forces, or
parts of the world-self to formulate or generate the text". But I want
to ask a little bit about what is "self" and "text" in this formulation;
can they be active as well as passive, not simply being open-minded &
taking things in & seeing one's connection to the world, but *using* that
perspective - not just to recommend it to others, not all of whom may
be receptive, but to *act* on it, directing others if they won't direct
themselves. And similarly what is "text"? Is it to be perceived largely,
in all its connections,  as a formal metaphor to describe and convey
the world; or might it also be a flare intuitively put into the world by
the artist following a sense of higher calling, presenting to one or
many readers a fragment you didn't think you were offering, that has an
impact on destiny?
 
I'm thinking of these kinds of interaction between art (and prophecy
involves art) and the world. Do they interest anyone?
 
 
 
Ira
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 6 May 1995 13:07:00 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         jena 
Organization: University at Buffalo
Subject:      CHAIN #2
 
Now available:
Chain/2: Documentary
Edited by Jena Osman and Juliana Spahr
 
The second issue of Chain questions the supposed neutrality/objectivity of
documentary forms. The concerns of this issue are: in what ways does the
topical world filter through language? how do creative forms actually capture
an event, a person, a place? The work included highlights the way we use
language/image to cut up our experiential encounters so as to (re)see them.
 
Contributing writers and artists: Alicia Askenase, Lutz Bacher, Merle Lyn
Bachman, Dodie Bellamy, Celia Bland, Pascale-Anne Brault, Sherry Brennan,
Laynie Browne, AnJanette Brush, Kathe Burkhardt, Juanita But, Catalina Cariaga,
Norma Cole, Leslie Davis & Hoa Nguyen, Connie Deanovich, Dubrovka Djuric, Sally
Doyle, Maggie Dubris, Carrie Moyer & Sue Schaffer, Ann Erickson, Liz Fodaski,
Darcy Frey, Susan Gevirtz, Phoebe Gloeckner, Lyn Hejinian, Lisa Hoke, Akua
Lezli Hope, Karen Kelley, Ike Kim, Basil King, Andrew Levy, Walter Lew, Tan
Lin, Pamela Lu, Lori Lubeski, Kimberly Lyons, Kevin Magee, Paul Maurice, Katie
Merz, Douglas Messerli, Harryette Mullen, Aife Murray, Susan Smith Nash,
Sianne Ngai, Erin O'Brien, Alix Pearlstein, M. Nourbese Philip, Stephen
Ratcliffe, Susan Rosenberg & Jacob Wisse, Leslie Scalapino, Jenny Scobel,
Eleni Sikelianos, Rod Smith, Meredith Stricker, Nathaniel Tarn, HT, Rodrigo
Toscano, Nicola Tyson, Cecilia Vicuna, Anne Waldman, Hannah Weiner, Karen
Yasinsky, Susan Wheeler, Alexander Zane, Janet Zweig.
 
Chain/107 14th St./Buffalo, NY  14213
$10 for one issue (6"x9", 250 pp.)
Make checks payable to UB Foundation.
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 6 May 1995 14:51:23 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Carl Lynden Peters 
Subject:      chance & theology
 
what abt chance and theology? seems to me there's a relation there.
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 6 May 1995 16:17:27 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Carl Lynden Peters 
Subject:      Re: theology nd chance
 
or rather a theological reading of chance seems appropriate, and worth
pursuing. which brings us back to Marcel Duchamp.
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 6 May 1995 16:34:13 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         George Bowering 
Subject:      Re: Aleatory Poetry
In-Reply-To:  <199505061533.IAA03880@whistler.sfu.ca> from "maria damon" at May
              5, 95 11:52:58 am
 
Message mainly for Maria Damon. The writers of OuLiPo were and are
descendents of the great Raymond Roussel (also claimed by the
Surrealists as a source) who challenged one another to perform
literary acts of recombinant composition. You have perhaps heard of
Italo Svevo's _If on a Winter's Night a Traveller_. In recent times
it has been the most popularly successful OuLiPo work. I reccomend
the feat of Georges Perec, who wrote an entire novel without using
the letter e. It has recently been published in English, if you
prefer that, in the U.S. A. Other prominent OuLiPo writers are
Raymond Queneau and Harry Mathews. There has always been an
association between poets of the New York so called school and the
OuLiPo guys. Some of this association you can find in your old copies
of _Locus Solus_, which was itself named after a great OuLiPo work.
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 6 May 1995 20:02:09 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Carla Billitteri 
Organization: University at Buffalo
Subject:      Re: Aleatory Poetry
 
errata corrige: italo calvino -not svevo- wrote _if on a winter night...._
 
calvino, by the way, was friend of perec and queneau and translator of both.
 
queneau's writings -like calvino's- stand at the convergence of the oulipo
 
poetics and a variety of playfully engaged meta-reflective narrative that
 
looks back at voltaire's and diderot's productions  -- good euroreadings
 
if anyone is interested (but not svevo -that is altogether something else)
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Carla Billitteri
v079sjwu@ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 6 May 1995 18:06:22 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Ron Silliman 
Subject:      Re: ZenLang
 
Darin De Stefano writes:
>
>
>I've been sitting zazen pretty seriously (i.e every day and some full
day
>and two or three day seshin once in a while) for about five years. I
>would definietly say that it's 'influenced' my writing. I don't
consider
>myself a buddhist (in fact, some of why i sit is wrapped into the
>question of 'what' i am...i think 'who' is irrelevent until the first
one
>is better explored).
 
When Kit and I spoke with Zhung Zhiqing last year, he identified a
practice that is common in the People's Republic among the
intelligentsia. The practice is called chi kung, which roughly
translates into "breathing practice," and amounts to a completely
secularized version of sitting zazen. It's so common that it does not
distinguish the zen poets, for example, from the "language" ones there.
 
Ron
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 6 May 1995 18:10:04 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Ron Silliman 
Subject:      Re: Aleatory Poetry
 
You wrote:
>
> forgive my ignorance: who are the Oulipians?--maria damon
>
The Society for Potential Literature, a wonderful internationalist
literary "school" out of Europe -- Jacques Roubaud (whose name I may be
misspelling), Georges Perec, Italo Calvino and Harry Matthews have all
been associated with this phenomenon.
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 6 May 1995 21:44:29 CST
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Charles Alexander 
Subject:      Not all chance, not at all??
X-To:         UB@maroon.tc.umn.edu, Poetics@maroon.tc.umn.edu,
              Discussion@maroon.tc.umn.edu, Group@maroon.tc.umn.edu
 
In part trying out a new program for e-mail and more, in part thinking
about the conversations on aleatory composition, in part wanting more poems
on this forum, here:
 
 
This is the year 1997 and there
are gale winds in the west, never
a note played in discontent and
 
in a place where animals play
the imagined margins soar with letters
flung at odd intervals and ink
spills a clear running relevance
moved to safer particles, absolved.
 
These are the words the heart makes
forgetting its injunction to exercise
while floating, fingers succumb to
the temptation to imply themselves
or another, waiting, presumptive.
 
Do not argue, I want to say, there
is not enough time, I don't even know
what thought might bring the third day
and something beats now, wanting
only to be subject, object too, yours.
 
What will the hospital say, the treadmill,
another language of not knowing, as if
anything else were possible, today or
another time, invisible, flags from porches
forego the year, the skin, the tissue.
We are flying on the ground.
 
 
      charles alexander
 
charles alexander
chax press
minnesota center for book arts
phone & fax: 612-721-6063
e-mail: mcba@maroon.tc.umn.edu
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 7 May 1995 02:45:59 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "B. Cass Clarke" 
Organization: University at Buffalo
Subject:      honor
X-To:         poetics@ubvm.buffalo.edu
 
The Ballroom
 
1.
the important thing: to keep yr backbone straight
the distance between this image
              & the one
inside the coffin
 
to clean the fungus under yr fingernails
just before you descend the grand staircase
this image & the other
the poised head pivoting
gently on the topmost bone of the spine
the smile
 
the important thing"
never to turn around when a shadow
falls across the threshold
the image that I put on with my rings
 
2.
I wonder what birds sing at yr bedroom window
in the morning?
All night my bed is borne by six faggots in ties & tails
Baron de Charlus among them
              all night long
they jog along to receding cemeteries
swaddled in mist, where disillusioned cows
browse out the summer,
             when the morning comes
it takes a while to relocate the sun
which in fact is, or shd be,
  in the region of yr hair.
to brush the dust of graveyard off my shoulders
slip the flesh & skin neatly over my skull
descend the brilliant staircase
              brilliantly
 
I wonder what cats yowl at yr bedroom window
nights
when I browse in a wagon thru the streets
 
3.
there has been no bloodshed, the chandelier
does not need to fall;  the windows
              are made of crystal
Mozart was seen capering thru the kitchen
  door & down a road that leads thru a
  hole in space.
my hoop swings lightly, my hands
 
rest lightly on yr shoulders.
do I need to tell you?
between my brain & gullet a pain
is becoming articulate
   approximately a toothache
it corresponds to another pain
               elsewhere.
why do I still keep thinking of the rain?
 
I edge to the kitchen window, the white lawn
spread w/a red & white cloth, sparkles w/dewdrops
beasts amble to the edge of it, simpering.
 
in the vicinity of my navel wells a strawberry cake
I am pregnant with pink icing
              & I smile
my hoop swings out, I place my hands
on yr shoulders . . .
 
 
 
   [a gift to readers:  The New Handbook of Heaven by  Diane di Prima,
The Poets Press, 1963] --this was the poem that sent me looking further-
 
 
 
 B. Cass Clarke
 V080g6j3@ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 6 May 1995 21:13:13 -1000
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Gabrielle Welford 
Subject:      Call Your Senator Free at EXXON's Expense (fwd)
 
This looks intriguing...
 
Gabrielle
 
 
 
Here's an 800 number that actually works and lets you call congress.
It was set up by some big business group that wants to destroy
regulations on the environment.  But anyone can use it to call their
senator and urge them not to cut Pell Grants and the Student Loan
Interest Exemption.  PASS THIS ON!!  the number is 800-444-1555.
 
> From: "C@USE EFFECT EFFECT" 
> Date:  May 5, 1995
> An ad in today's Washington Post provides a TOLL-FREE number for calling
> congress to lobby against environmental laws.  However, anyone can call,
> give some basic who/where-from info to an interactive recording, and be
> connected directly to their state Senator's office to comment on anything
> that they want!
>
> > > the number is 1-800-444-1555
>
> The service is intended to promote Sen. Dole's (R-industry) bill S. 343,
> which will gut environmental protections. But I just used it to register
> my opinion to Senators Helms and Faircloth that "the bill goes too far,
> protecting corporations at the expense of ordinary citizens," and urging
> them to vote against it and come up with something "better" (a
> frightening thought if they really try to do it).
>
> The toll-free number will likely be turned off once S343 is voted on, so
> use it now and use it often.
>
> The phone bill will go to your "friends" at the Alliance for Reasonable
> Regulation, working to increase corporation's freedoms to poison everyone.
> Sponsors include the Chemical Manufacturers Association, the National
> Association of Manufacturers and the Grocery Manufacturers Association.
>
> This posting made possible by info from Mark Robinowitz
> (mrobinowitz@agc.ipc.org)
>
> Have Fun Y'all,
> David Waller
>
 
 
--
 
 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 7 May 1995 09:06:22 EST
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "H. T. KIRBY-SMITH" 
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro
Subject:      aleatory poetry
 
Another good example of disruptive limitation or randomnizing is what
Marianne Moore did with syllabics. It was wonderfully absurd--making
poems in which every single stanza had lines with exactly the same
pattern --the same number of syllables for each corresponding line,
such as 13, 23,11,9,9,22. I just made that up but look at "The
Monkeys" or many another of hers. There is no way to know what the
pattern is other than counting on your fingers. But for her it
provided a dislocative framework that compelled unusual choices.
 
Dylan Thomas --I couldn't believe this when I first heard it-- did
the same thing for most of the lines in each stanza of "Fern Hill."
Even nuttier, the first poem in his COLLECTED POEMS has a pattern
whereby the last line rhymes with the first, second with
sceond-to-last, on in to the middle of the approx 50-line poem where
there is a couplet. He worked very hard at it and someone told me he
was hurt when nobody noticed what he had done.
 
But as for rhyme, probably everyone should quit using it for five
hundred years and then take it up again. It was a silly accident to
start with. The Norman Conquest caused rhyme. All that's needed to
explain that is a 500-page fotnote.
 
But here is a rhyme for Marisa, who probably already knows it--it was
Theodore Roethke's favorite, I think--
 
Hinx
Minx
The Old Witch Winks
The fat begins to fry.
There's nobody home
But jumping Joan
And Father and Mother and I.
 
 
 
 
Tom Kirby-Smith
English Department
UNC-Greensboro
Greensboro NC  27412
 
Phone: (910) 334-3280
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 7 May 1995 10:13:30 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Tom Mandel 
Subject:      Re: Aleatory Poetry
 
George Bowering refers to...
 
"your old copies of _Locus Solus_, which was itself named after a great
OuLiPo work"
 
... which may be a little misleading to some. _Locus Solus_ is a novel
by the aforementioned Raymond Roussel, a guide to the estate and
collections of the novel's main character (whose name escapes me
just now).
 
Roussel's compositional methods, wonderfully curious, are described
in his "How I Wrote Certain of My Works" -- fairly easily available,
but I can't tell you where as I write.
 
Perhaps, also, it is a little misleading too to think of OuLiPo as
coming out of Roussel exclusively, as the group is devoted to an open set of
procedural writing techniques whose forebears are equally to be sought
in late Latin pattern poetry as well as in mathematical modeling in all
fields. Jacques Rouboud, one of the leading Oulipiens, is a prof. of
math for example.
 
The very great writer Georges Perec (whom I had the good luck to meet
in Paris when I lived there more than twenty yrs ago) was an early
member of OuLiPo and recruited Harry Mathews, but I think the group
was founded by Raymond Queneau (?)
 
For those who don't know Perec's work, the novel without "e" is
called La Disparution (translated as Avoid), and there is also one
written using e as the only vowel. Surely his greatest work, and
one of the most amazing works of writing I've ever encountered,
is "La vie, mode d'emploi," translated as "Life, A User's Manual."
I would also recommend "W, or Memories of Childhood" and "A Man
Asleep" -- indeed just about anything he wrote.
 
Perec died in 1982 (of lung cancer, aged 46). Harry Mathews wrote
a wonderful memoir of his friend, but - continuing the bibliographic
bibliogaffes of this post - I can't remember the title and can't find
the book on my shelves. Continuing interest will prompt a more thorough
search (wearing my glasses for example).
 
        Venue de l'imperceptible
        convexite' de l'oeil
        -- ce par quoi on sait que la terre est rond --
        l'eternite' est circulaire
        mais plate
 
                GP, from L'eternite' - Orange Export 1982
 
Tom Mandel
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 7 May 1995 09:54:16 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         maria damon 
Subject:      Re: Aleatory Poetry
 
In message <2fac080c6982002@maroon.tc.umn.edu> UB Poetics discussion group
writes:
> Message mainly for Maria Damon. The writers of OuLiPo were and are
> descendents of the great Raymond Roussel (also claimed by the
> Surrealists as a source) who challenged one another to perform
> literary acts of recombinant composition. You have perhaps heard of
> Italo Svevo's _If on a Winter's Night a Traveller_. In recent times
> it has been the most popularly successful OuLiPo work. I reccomend
> the feat of Georges Perec, who wrote an entire novel without using
> the letter e. It has recently been published in English, if you
> prefer that, in the U.S. A. Other prominent OuLiPo writers are
> Raymond Queneau and Harry Mathews. There has always been an
> association between poets of the New York so called school and the
> OuLiPo guys. Some of this association you can find in your old copies
> of _Locus Solus_, which was itself named after a great OuLiPo work.
 
thanks george: it turns out i've read most of the works you mention, including
perec's la disparition, which i came across in paris in 1973 or 4 when i was
fresh out of high school, but i didn't know until now that they constituted a
"school" with a name.  just goes to show, when yr young and just folowing your
literary instincts, how much intellectual capital you can miss out on!  like,
also, that year, i took classes from a guy who went religiously to lacan's
weekly lectures and passed the info on to us --we read ecrits etc., but i never
knew the word "lacanian" until i got to grad school some 8 yrs later, where it
turned out that not only was there a whole apparatus of prestige set up around
using the word "lacanian" --but what my colleagues were talking about and
attributing to lacan had so little in common with what i thot i'd read and heard
that if not for the name and the book titles, i would never have guessed it was
the same guy.  now tht i'm a jaded academic, i wish i had some of that innocent
fresh take on ideas texts and language back!--again, thanks for the info, and
just a friendly reminder to one and all myself most of all, "un coup de des n'a
jamais aboli le hasard."
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 7 May 1995 09:55:36 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         maria damon 
Subject:      Re: Aleatory Poetry
 
In message <2fac080c6982002@maroon.tc.umn.edu> UB Poetics discussion group
writes:
> Message mainly for Maria Damon. The writers of OuLiPo were and are
> descendents of the great Raymond Roussel (also claimed by the
> Surrealists as a source) who challenged one another to perform
> literary acts of recombinant composition. You have perhaps heard of
> Italo Svevo's _If on a Winter's Night a Traveller_. In recent times
> it has been the most popularly successful OuLiPo work. I reccomend
> the feat of Georges Perec, who wrote an entire novel without using
> the letter e. It has recently been published in English, if you
> prefer that, in the U.S. A. Other prominent OuLiPo writers are
> Raymond Queneau and Harry Mathews. There has always been an
> association between poets of the New York so called school and the
> OuLiPo guys. Some of this association you can find in your old copies
> of _Locus Solus_, which was itself named after a great OuLiPo work.
 
by the way, what does OuLiPo stand for?  when it's written thus, it has the air
of an anagram of sorts.--md
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 7 May 1995 09:57:23 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         maria damon 
Subject:      Re: Aleatory Poetry
 
In message <2fac0e700b89002@maroon.tc.umn.edu> UB Poetics discussion group
writes:
> errata corrige: italo calvino -not svevo- wrote _if on a winter night...._
>
> calvino, by the way, was friend of perec and queneau and translator of both.
>
> queneau's writings -like calvino's- stand at the convergence of the oulipo
>
> poetics and a variety of playfully engaged meta-reflective narrative that
>
> looks back at voltaire's and diderot's productions  -- good euroreadings
>
> if anyone is interested (but not svevo -that is altogether something else)
>Carla Billitteri
> v079sjwu@ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu
 
as long as i've got u all on the line, what's the connection with voltaire?
diderot too, though i can begin to intuit an answer there.--maria d
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 7 May 1995 06:42:57 -1000
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Gabrielle Welford 
Subject:      Re: aleatory poetry
In-Reply-To:  <9505071301.AA28131@uhunix4.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu>
 
> But as for rhyme, probably everyone should quit using it for five
> hundred years and then take it up again. It was a silly accident to
> start with. The Norman Conquest caused rhyme. All that's needed to
> explain that is a 500-page fotnote.
>
Maybe rhyme, but not reason.  Or maybe too much reason.
 
Gabrielle
welford@uhunix.uhcc.hawaii.edu
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 7 May 1995 18:07:59 BST
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "I.LIGHTMAN" 
Subject:      being chancy with charles alexander's garden
 
never forgetting do safer
today at are to
discontent not I might
at forgetting is its
wantdo the
day the d
1997 its are or are
plamargins of
to to margins a what
the time the odd
gale time discontent might is
animals injunction waiting year know the
I where the to play waiting
not the and is
and the discontent
bring thought this the
the these is discontent at
heart and something to where bring
there floating
imagined might in
note
what and soar
day
flung spills
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 7 May 1995 14:11:07 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Kenneth Sherwood 
Organization: University at Buffalo
Subject:      Oulipo en Anglais
 
The fortuitious turn of topic toward "Oulipo" gives me the chance to
mention that the next  Rif/t (Transpoesis issue) will carry Katheryn
McDonald's translation of Jacques Roubaud's first book of poems:
_E_  (or 'sigma')
                _____
                \
                 \
                 /
                /
                -----
 
(to be added to the role, send "sub e-poetry Your Name" to
 "listserv@ubvm.cc.buffalo.edu" [w/o quotes], or check out
 the hypertext version of Rift04 at the Electronic Poetry
 Center next week)
 
_E_ 1967 (sigma, 18th letter of the Greek alphabet) incorporates
directions for aleotoric reading, though it's unclear to me if the
poem was also composed by chance, or what exactly  the structures/
strictures of composition are.
 
[See next post for Roubaud translator Katheryn McDonald's
 introduction.]
 
------------
Ken Sherwood
sherwood@acsu.buffalo.edu
e-poetry@ubvm.cc.buffalo.edu
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 7 May 1995 14:14:27 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Kenneth Sherwood 
Organization: University at Buffalo
Subject:      Roubaud /  brief introduction
 
Katheryn McDonald
 
Translator's Introduction  (ROUB04.01 /RIFT04.01 (c) 1995)
 
 
     Jacques Roubaud's poetry moves in two directions at once.  It is
resolutely complicated, structured by mathematical symbols and
many-optioned choices.  This  is poetry that draws attention to itself as
language, offering the reader the opportunity to move blocks of it around,
structure a book as she pleases.  The re-combinatory, repetitive conception
of poetry-as-words contrasts with the alternative, also present in
Roubaud's work, of a healing poetry, expressive of grief or joy.  The dual
aspect that characterizes Roubaud's poetry is in place from his first
published book of poems, _E_, which appeared at Gallimard in 1967.  This
volume presents itself in a dry and very formal manner, presaged by the
mathematical symbol that serves as the book's title.  The poems themselves
are at the intersection of several formal constraints: the movement of
white and black markers in a game of *go*; the structure of a sonnet of
sonnets; finally the order imposed by the poems' physical presence in a
book of poetry.  The possibilty of re-ordering the poems of _E_--presented
as an integral part of the work--presumes the idea of these poems as a sort
of game.  Their configuration can be changed, indeed is constructed around
the possibility of change, according to previously delineated rules.  It is
these rules that open the book, under the heading "mode d'emploi de ce
livre."  But across these poems, divided into paragraphs marked by
mathematical symbols, seemingly simply the markers in a complex and formal
game, we hear a very personal cry of loss at the death of a brother, and
the troubled search of a poet coming to terms with the place of poetry in
relation to his own life.
 
 
     Jacques Roubaud sets up the parameters of his search in the first
complete movement of _E_, which is the first sonnet of sonnets.  His
"conclusion" is a departure for the rest of the book.  Although each poem
can stand alone, the sonnet can also be read as a suite.  The reader can
follow the movement of thought that unfolds as the poet moves from
rejection of the outside world through an interrogation of language,
concluding with an acceptance of that world through the medium of his own
past.
           --Katheryn McDonald
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 7 May 1995 15:21:14 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Tom Mandel 
Subject:      Re: Roubaud /  brief introduction
 
Jacques Roubaud and Georges Perec, under a single pseudonym,
published an introduction to the game Go in the sixties (?).
 
Roubaud's "Some Thing Black," a very beautiful book, is
available from Dalkey Archive, as is his "The Great Fire of
London," a long novel.
 
Harry Mathews memoir of Georges Perec is called "Le Verger" (The
Orchard). Written in French it was translated by the author and
I remember having seen the translated edition -- but where?
 
The memoir is written in a form inaugurated (to my knowledge)
by the late Joe Brainard; discrete paragraphs each begin "I
remember." Perec had read Brainard's work of that title and
loved it and wrote a work himself in the same way. Harry
Mathews memoir is well worth reading even for those who
don't know Perec's work or his; it is a moving indication
and example of friendship.
 
Tom Mandel
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 7 May 1995 14:01:12 CST
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Charles Alexander 
Subject:      Re: being chancy with charles alexander's garden
 
Dear Ira:
 
Thank you. What you chancily did with my garden is marvelous.
 
all best,
charles
 
charles alexander
chax press
minnesota center for book arts
phone & fax: 612-721-6063
e-mail: mcba@maroon.tc.umn.edu
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 7 May 1995 15:23:41 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Tom Mandel 
Subject:      Ouvroir de Literature Potentielle: OuLiPo
 
... means Workshop of Potential Literature -- in response to someone's
question. But I may have already posted this translation; sorry, if so.
 
Tm
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 7 May 1995 22:10:38 EDT
Reply-To:     beard@metdp1.met.co.nz
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         beard@MET.CO.NZ
Subject:      Charles Alexander / Canadian sound poets
 
>In part trying out a new program for e-mail and more, in part thinking
>about the conversations on aleatory composition, in part wanting more poems
>on this forum, here:
 
Bravo Charles! It looked like this was turning into a poetics forum without
poetry. Your poem engaged my brain and senses, and above all, it's _memorable_.
If a text is a picnic where the author brings the words and the reader brings
the sense (Todorov?) then the words have to be tasty enough to make the reader
*want* to come to the picnic. Too many "open" works turn up with a tossed
salad of withered celery, stale croutons, mouldy turnips and week-old brussels
sprouts. You brought smoked salmon and a bottle of Kumeu River Chardonnay -
thank you.
 
>                      ... ink
>spills a clear running relevance
>moved to safer particles, absolved.
.
.
>These are the words the heart makes
>forgetting its injunction to exercise
>while floating, ...
.
>
>and something beats now, wanting
>only to be subject, object too, yours.
.
.
>another language of not knowing, as if
>anything else were possible, today or
>another time, invisible, ...
 
---------------------------------------
 
On another subject, there's a couple of Canadian sound poets giving a reading
here next week: Douglas Barber and Stephen Scobie. Is anyone on the list
familiar with their work? I haven't experienced much sound poetry (does this
mean that everything else is _un_sound poetry?) apart from Edwin Morgan ('The
Loch Ness monster's song' etc), so I'm intrigued, but I wonder whether anyone
has any opinions on these particular poets.
 
Thanks,
 
        Tom Beard.
 
______________________________________________________________________________
I/am a background/process, shrunk to an icon.   | Tom Beard
I am/a dark place.                              | beard@metdp1.met.co.nz
I am less/than the sum of my parts...           | Auckland, New Zealand
I am necessary/but not sufficient,              | http://metcon.met.co.nz/
and I shall teach the stars to fall             |  nwfc/beard/www/hallway.html
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 7 May 1995 15:10:02 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "Aldon L. Nielsen" 
Subject:      Re: Theme for the Oulipians
In-Reply-To:  <9505070402.AA03548@isc.sjsu.edu>
 
Maria -- I'm running late & see that your questions has already been
answered -- but thought you would like to know that there was an English
language Oilipo anthology pubd. in "86 by U of Neb. Press -- Titled
_Oulipo: A Primer of Potential Literature_, edited by Warren F. Motte.
It's in many libraries, but has also been remaindered & is thus available
CHEAP!  There was also a special Oulipo issue of some arts mag. last year
edited by Harry Matthews, I think the only American member of Oulipo, the
title of which I can't remember -- but when I get back to my office next
week I'll post the info. to you
 
& for the Jazz fans -- I've always heard an "accidental" echo in Roland
Kirk's "Theme for the Eulipians" -- listen to it and think of this note
by Perec:
 
A considerably diminshed echo of these vertiginous preoccupations seems
to me to resound still in the case of the lipogram.
 
 
Somebody once threatened to give me at fat oulipo.
 
--aldon
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 7 May 1995 18:27:12 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Robert Kelly 
Subject:      Re: Oulipo en Anglais
In-Reply-To:  <199505071804.OAA38239@core.bard.edu>
 
No, wait, it's not a flaming sigma,
it's an EPSILON.
 
Roberto , el greco
 
(and there are trans. from [epsilon] in Paul Auster's fine anth of a
decade back, some by me and some by my betters)
 
RK
 
==================================================
Robert Kelly
Division of Literature and Languages, Bard College
Annandale-on-Hudson NY 12504
Voice Mail: 914-758-7600 Box 7205
kelly@bard.edu
 
On Sun, 7 May 1995, Kenneth Sherwood wrote:
 
> The fortuitious turn of topic toward "Oulipo" gives me the chance to
> mention that the next  Rif/t (Transpoesis issue) will carry Katheryn
> McDonald's translation of Jacques Roubaud's first book of poems:
> _E_  (or 'sigma')
>                 _____
>                 \
>                  \
>                  /
>                 /
>                 -----
>
> (to be added to the role, send "sub e-poetry Your Name" to
>  "listserv@ubvm.cc.buffalo.edu" [w/o quotes], or check out
>  the hypertext version of Rift04 at the Electronic Poetry
>  Center next week)
>
> _E_ 1967 (sigma, 18th letter of the Greek alphabet) incorporates
> directions for aleotoric reading, though it's unclear to me if the
> poem was also composed by chance, or what exactly  the structures/
> strictures of composition are.
>
> [See next post for Roubaud translator Katheryn McDonald's
>  introduction.]
>
> ------------
> Ken Sherwood
> sherwood@acsu.buffalo.edu
> e-poetry@ubvm.cc.buffalo.edu
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 7 May 1995 20:50:12 -0400
Reply-To:     Robert Drake 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Robert Drake 
Subject:      Re: Oulipo en Anglais
 
for those interested in Oulipo, and Queneau particularly, there's
an online version of his "a story as you like it" online at:
 
http://fub46.zedat.fu-berlin.de:8080/~cantsin/Welcome.html
 
i'm not certain, but i believe this is the first extant example
of what is now commonly known as "hypertext", w/ interactive
multiple examples, etc...
 
lbd
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 7 May 1995 17:52:12 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Ryan Knighton 
Subject:      Re: rhyme
In-Reply-To:  <199505071653.JAA10744@whistler.sfu.ca> from "Gabrielle Welford"
              at May 7, 95 06:42:57 am
 
I don't htink rhyme is a simple, ugly or simply ugly issue at all.
What about Levertov's various kinds of rhymes and rhyming.  I n
one essay she explains how rhyme chime and echo are the signatures
of the mind's return, the ceaseless movements of perception which
are invariably "intently haphazard".  Perhaps the typical end
rhyme is a dead issue, but i think, as in Levertov, its face and
function is evolving.
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 7 May 1995 21:06:22 EDT
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Jed 
Subject:      Re: Gerald Stern
In-Reply-To:  Message of Fri, 5 May 1995 18:59:21 GMT+1300 from
              
 
Wystan--my sympathies, but you did have W(ystan) H. Auden for namesake once
upon a time. You do prompt me to wonder what names have to do with our perspect
ival inclinations. I mean, do the Mary Jones and Bill Smiths of the world feel
a deep intuitive solidarity with those around them, their own names mirrored
back with some regularity? Or is it the pinch of the uncanny? I can only
wonder, as I know literally all the people in the world named Rasula (less than
a dozen), because the name comes from a few mailboxes on a dirt road in central
Finland, a place name adapted by ancestor immigrants because they took it (righ
tly) that it would be less mangled in pronunciation than the patronymic, which
was Jaskari. Not that being named Jed is any less singular, although I have met
a few--most recently in Seville last summer, of all places.
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 7 May 1995 21:15:22 EDT
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Jed 
Subject:      Re: Aleatory Poetry
In-Reply-To:  Message of Sat, 6 May 1995 16:34:13 -0700 from 
 
Maria-- to adjust George Bowering's note on OuLiPo slightly, that's Italo
Calvino, not Joyce's buddy Italo Svevo.
                                        There's a handy collection of Oulipian
manifestos edited and translated by Warren Motte, published by U.Nebraska about
6 or 8 years ago, if you're interested.
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 7 May 1995 19:16:29 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         George Bowering 
Subject:      Re: Aleatory Poetry
In-Reply-To:  <199505080119.SAA26385@whistler.sfu.ca> from "Jed" at May 7,
              95 09:15:22 pm
 
Yikes, did I write Italo Svevo? I dont think that Svevo made many
joues at all, though he was an interesting man. I mean how many other
writers have a bookstore named after them, I mean a bookstore that
uses up a city block? Calvino, exactly. I think that his most amazing
project was _The Path of Crossed Destinies_ if that's what it is in
English.
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 7 May 1995 19:18:16 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         George Bowering 
Subject:      Re: Gerald Stern
In-Reply-To:  <199505080118.SAA26359@whistler.sfu.ca> from "Jed" at May 7,
              95 09:06:22 pm
 
Yep, my wife's name is Luoma, and I think they took that name from
the place they lived in Finland too. Maybe Bill wd know that.
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 7 May 1995 19:28:25 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         George Bowering 
Subject:      Re: Roubaud /  brief introduction
In-Reply-To:  <199505071924.MAA15416@whistler.sfu.ca> from "Tom Mandel" at May
              7, 95 03:21:14 pm
 
If I remember correctly, the Mathews text _The Orchard_ was published
by Bamberger Books. I'm sort of 67% sure.
 
I published 2 years ago a memoir done in the same fashion for the
great painter Greg Curnoe, killed on his bicycle. Called it _The
Moustache_, made proper homage to Mathews, Perec and Brainard.
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 7 May 1995 19:33:43 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         George Bowering 
Subject:      Re: aleatory poetry
In-Reply-To:  <199505071653.JAA10744@whistler.sfu.ca> from "Gabrielle Welford"
              at May 7, 95 06:42:57 am
 
It would seem to me that it is impossible not to use rime in poetry,
although I have heard some dreadful stuff and seen some dreadfgul
stuff in magazines that seems to give it a try. Hell, I bet someobody
with a good ear could even do interesting stuff with rime at the ends
of lines.
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 7 May 1995 19:42:40 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         George Bowering 
Subject:      Re: Aleatory Poetry
In-Reply-To:  <199505071415.HAA07152@whistler.sfu.ca> from "Tom Mandel" at May
              7, 95 10:13:30 am
 
Tom Mandel is certainly right in his praise of Perec. I have some
friends at University of Queensland, and they apparently did not see
him when he was there for a little while.
 
By the way, the name of the guy who owns the estate in Roussel's
_Locus Solus_ is Martial Canterel, I think. I am not sure that we can
call it a novel, but what the hell, why dont we?
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 7 May 1995 20:06:26 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         George Bowering 
Subject:      Re: jazz/music
In-Reply-To:  <199504150251.TAA03555@whistler.sfu.ca> from "Herb Levy" at Apr
              14, 95 07:49:39 pm
 
Dear Herb,
 
I havent got any further with my enquiry about Don Ayler. I went to
Black Swan Records, Pickering's store, and it was kaput, a few
forlorn posters on the window, but empty inside. Phew.
 
I will try to phone Ken, and if I get something, I'll post it.
Pickering, by the way, is the only person I know who has a better
Paul Bley collection than mine.
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 7 May 1995 23:07:43 EST
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Ted Maier 
Subject:      Re: rhyme
In-Reply-To:  Message of Sun, 7 May 1995 17:52:12 -0700 from 
 
Regarding the rhyme thread:
 
KEEPING THE RHYME
 
By stress and syllable
by change-rhyme and contour
we let the long line pace even awkward to its period.
 
The short line
we refine
and keep for candor.
 
This we remember:
ember of the fire
catches the word if we but hear
    ("We must understand what is happening")
and springs to desire,
a bird-right light
    sound.
 
This is the Yule-log that warms December.
This is new grass that springs from the ground.
 
     --Robert Duncan, _The Opening of the Field_
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 8 May 1995 01:23:06 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Tom Mandel 
Subject:      Re: jazz/music
 
Sure, what the heck, lets...
 
I've wondered whether Martial Solal took the name from
Roussel, amalgumming Martial Canteral and Locus Solus.
Thots?
 
Tm
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 8 May 1995 07:56:45 EST
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "H. T. KIRBY-SMITH" 
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro
Subject:      rhyme
 
As to the impossibility of writing poetry without rhyme, well there
was this fellow named Bill Williams and this guy named Olson and then
there was someone a while back who wrote an epic poem--Homer, Milton,
Vergil--that didn't have any rhyme--as a matter of fact Milton called
it this "troublesome bandage [sic]"--and then there was a long time
back Horace and Sappho and then there was a whole lot of people who
wrote plays in blank verse and I don't remember seeing a rhyme in
Ginsberg but who knows what he is capable of?
 
 
Tom Kirby-Smith
English Department
UNC-Greensboro
Greensboro NC  27412
 
Phone: (910) 334-3280
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 8 May 1995 12:43:57 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "Jordan Davis." 
Subject:      pathos and chance
 
Do aleatory methods ever yield anything people tend to save and go back to?
Aren't novels basically rule-based systems? Aren't we going one too many
differentials out?
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 8 May 1995 18:46:09 +0000
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         cris cheek 
Subject:      chance / trust
 
Hi,
 
Some of the Vocabulary being used for this subject is in danger of becoming
conflated into dangerous goo:
 
Religious / Miracles / Trust / Oracular /  Horoscope  /  Reincarnated /
Consulting / Prophecy and such are being inveigled into these discussions
and I want to know more about what they mean to differing people. I'm going
to need convincing that such terms can be useful tools of communication
either today or tomorrow. Don't they convey an overbearing excess baggage?
 
I'm not at all suggesting that certain words can't be used. Just that it
might be more user-friendly to adopt or co-opt other words through which to
discuss what they are being used to signify - rather than clogging the
discussion with ballast which is vague unless clarified at some
considerable length.
 
Many such terms invoke a 'higher' sense or power. This immediately opens a
huge and prickly discussion. 'Higher' than what - 'higher' than whom? Let's
get particular here please. I'd be just as worried by anyone using chance
methods in the understanding that by so doing they can by-pass or somehow
circumnavigate subjectivity (taking what's been said about curbing the
sprawl of the ego into account here) as by the assertion that one accept
'fate' as dictated by a horoscope constructed by rote to the extensive
purposes of political manipulation as documented in 'Religion and the
Decline of Magic' by Keith Thomas (an important book on the subject from
the viewpoint of 16th and 17th century england - wicca, astrology,
Protestant rationality and Magiq from which, opening that book at 'random'
i quote 'the medieval church thus did a great deal to weaken the
fundamental distinction between a prayer and a charm, and to encourage the
idea that there was virtue in the mere repetition of holy words' or 'the
very impenetrability of the formaula helped to give it its power').
 
There is also a tremendous difference between a 'conscious' exploration and
the unquestioning acceptance of either a doctrine or of a meaning generated
by a system whose pre-determined fashionings are taken at the simplistic
face value of being defended as necessary merely because they validate the
integrity of the method. In other words it is equally reprehensible to
invoke chance or trance as an excuse. Perhaps an incisive discussion could
be revealed by paraphrasing Jackson Pollock 'mistakes don't exist'. What do
you feel about that?
 
In these meanings there is a difference as you pointed out between the
secular and the 'other' 'wise'.
 
How about
 
prescience / consciousness / attention / interference / energies /
transferral / occurence / attenuation / exquisition
 
love, truth and beauty
the weasel  -  cris
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 8 May 1995 15:41:10 EDT
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Jed 
Subject:      Re: Aleatory Poetry
In-Reply-To:  Message of Sat, 6 May 1995 18:10:04 -0700 from
              
 
Happy birthday to Ron Silliman --I think I've got that right, May 8th Ron? Last
of your forties?
                It also happens to be Gary Snyder's 65th birthday today, AND
Thomas Pynchon's (not 65 though). An all around poetry birthday week in fact:
Charlie Simic, Chris Dewdney, Jorie Graham, Michael Palmer, Norma Cole, and
Bernadette Mayer all in the next couple days.
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 8 May 1995 16:17:57 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Chris Stroffolino 
Subject:      Re: Aleatory Poetry
 
    Birthdays----and Jennifer Moxley is the 12th of May i think, and
                  Brett Ralph the 13th (with Stevie Wonder and Peter Gabriel)
                   ah, be bullish on amerika! cs
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 8 May 1995 14:33:16 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Herb Levy 
Subject:      Re: jazz/music
In-Reply-To:  <199505080526.AA23637@mail.eskimo.com>
 
On Mon, 8 May 1995, Tom Mandel wrote:
 
> Sure, what the heck, lets...
>
> I've wondered whether Martial Solal took the name from
> Roussel, amalgumming Martial Canteral and Locus Solus.
> Thots?
>
> Tm
>
 
Or perhaps his parents were early members of the Swiss/Canadian based cult
that committed suicide en masse a while back.  Wasn't that , or some such?
 
- Herb
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 8 May 1995 14:34:50 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Herb Levy 
Subject:      Re: aleatoric composition using chance
In-Reply-To:  <199505061759.AA00146@mail.eskimo.com>
 
Amidst the flurry of postings about who the Oulipians were, Ira Lightman's
response Friday to the aleatory/chance thread he'd started a day or two
before, seems to have been ignored.
 
Or maybe I'm the only one who has trouble with Ira's posting.  Let's
see.  If this seems like it's heading too far into the music &
isn't of interest to folks here, please let me know.
 
Ira, as I read your posts on this topic, you have some difficulties with
Cage's use of chance and have posited Stockhausen's use of chance as a
model that, in your eyes, is somehow more effective.  To help me see the
distinction you are drawing here, could you please give a specific example
of what you see as Stockhausen's use of chance, so we can discuss how the
two differ.
 
I'm not exactly sure what your issues with Cage are, though you clearly
have some concern about his commitment to Buddhism.  But in your posting
you describe some aspects of Stockhausen's spirituality in detail and then
dismiss Cage's as selling
 
> himself, just a tad, on the guru aspect (like Pound with chinese
> culture) of recommending the Buddhist way of life.
 
This is hardly a fair way to compare the two, especially given
Stockhausen's own efforts to proselytize both musically and spiritually,
so again, could you please give some specific examples so we can discuss
how the two differ.
 
My concern is that very few people on  seem to have any sense of
Stockhausen's work at all, and most people, even the erudite folks here,
have little more than the odd received mis-information about Cage's work.
 
Without getting a clarification of what you mean in your characterizations
of both artists, I don't see much here besides the fact that you clearly
respond more favorably to Stockhausen's work than to Cage's.
 
I'd like to know more.  When I want to compare top ten lists, I read
.  I look forward to a deeper discussion here.
 
 
- Herb
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 8 May 1995 14:32:41 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Herb Levy 
Subject:      Oulipo (Sorry I'm late)
 
I was away from my computer for a while, so I missed out on any real-time
action in the big, big OuLiPo LoveFest here on .  I mostly just
want to say, as they do all too often on talk radio shows, .
 
But I did also want to mention that David Bellos, who has translated most
of the Perec that's now available in English, has also written a biography
of Perec.  It's no stylistic gem, but it is full of interesting OuLiPo lore.
 
- Herb
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 8 May 1995 14:41:26 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Carl Lynden Peters 
Subject:      chance, chanson, chant
 
    MARCEL DUCHAMP MARCEL
 
DUCHAMP MARCEL DUCHAMP MARCEL
DUCHAMP MARCEL DUCHAMP MARCEL
DUCHAMP MARCEL DUCHAMP MARCEL
DUCHAMP MARCEL DUCHAMP MARCEL
DUCHAMP MARCEL DUCHAMP MARCEL
DUCHAMP MARCEL DUCHAMP MARCEL
DUCHAMP MARCEL DUCHAMP MARCEL
DUCHAMP MARCEL DUCHAMP MARCEL
DUCHAMP MARCEL DUCHAMP MARCEL
DUCHAMP MARCEL DUCHAMP MARCEL
 
   DUCHAMP MARCEL DUCHAMP
 
 
thanks,
carl
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 8 May 1995 14:44:39 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Herb Levy 
Subject:      Re: jazz/music
In-Reply-To:  <199505080308.AA09653@mail.eskimo.com>
 
Dear George -
 
I'm sorry to hear of the closure of Black Swan, though it had changed
quite a bit over the years, there were still things there which I couldn't
find elsewhere.  In fact, I think I got my LP of Bunting reading
 there.
 
Ah, well, there's already been much talk about the lamented demise of
various book stores on , do we now begin elegies for records shop
closings as well?
 
Anyway, this is the time of year when it's hard to get through to Ken
Pickering,'cause of planning for the DuMaurier Festival.  I called him
a week or so after your posting about the Aylers (about something else,
actually) & haven't heard back yet.
 
I will see him when I'm in Vancouver for BlaserFest '95, though. I look
forward to meeting you then as well.
 
Of course, that last  is a shifter including everyone reading this
message on .
 
- Herb
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 9 May 1995 09:45:23 GMT+1200
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Tony Green 
Organization: The University of Auckland
Subject:      Re: Aleatory Poetry
 
Chris Stroffolino-- by chance I share a birthday with Delacroix and
Wittgenstein, so that makes me a brainy painter --not.
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 8 May 1995 18:04:17 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         maria damon 
Subject:      Re: Aleatory Poetry
 
In message <2fae944d10cb002@maroon.tc.umn.edu> UB Poetics discussion group
writes:
> Happy birthday to Ron Silliman --I think I've got that right, May 8th Ron?
> Last
> of your forties?
>                 It also happens to be Gary Snyder's 65th birthday today, AND
> Thomas Pynchon's (not 65 though). An all around poetry birthday week in fact:
> Charlie Simic, Chris Dewdney, Jorie Graham, Michael Palmer, Norma Cole, and
> Bernadette Mayer all in the next couple days.
 
i'm thrilled to know there are so many fellow taureans whose work i admire.
we're not generally known as a super-creative sign, so i'm always glad of
evidence to the contrary.--maria d
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 8 May 1995 16:19:37 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Carl Lynden Peters 
Subject:      Re: chance/trust
 
cris, hi: pollock was right on the mark when he said that. but then he
was a high thinking painter, too.
 
take care,
carl
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 8 May 1995 17:01:05 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Carl Lynden Peters 
Subject:      To all appearances...
 
are there any duchamp -- sorry to keep bringing him up -- experts out
there, -- i'm a duchamp fanatic, that can tell me what this sentence
means. it's from his brief, very, very brief but oh God so brilliant
lecture on "the creative act":
 
"To all appearances, the artist acts like a mediumistic being who, from
the labyrinth beyond time and space, seeks his way out to a clearing."
 
i get the mediumistic part of it, which i interpret as the artist as
shaman, but what does he mean: "... the labyrinth beyond time and space,
seeks his way out to a clearing." ???
 
i'm starting to think about this sentence in relation to benjamin's essay
"the destructive character," i think, primarily because of my focus on the
word: "clearing."
 
i'd appreciate any insights you may have.
 
thanks for this,
 
carl
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 8 May 1995 17:48:54 +0100
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Kevin Killian 
Subject:      Directory assistance
 
Does anybody have Dennis Barone's e-mail address?  He *must* have one.
 
Thanks,
Dodie Bellamy
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 8 May 1995 18:01:37 +0100
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Kevin Killian 
Subject:      Looking for . . .
 
Anyone with the RL addresses of Jackson MacLow and Denise Levertov.
 
Please!  Thank you!
 
-Kevin Killian
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 9 May 1995 09:56:06 GMT+1200
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Tony Green 
Organization: The University of Auckland
Subject:      Re: Oulipo en Anglais
 
Re-  R .Kelly's note on sigmas and epsilons. The " E "  (epsilon)  AT
DELPHI? as in Plutarch's essay?
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 9 May 1995 11:14:14 GMT+1300
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Wystan Curnow 
Organization: English Dept. - Univ. of Auckland
Subject:      Re: rhyme
X-To:         KIRBYS@FAGAN.UNCG.EDU
 
Dear H.T.,
        As to the fellow, he rhymes like this:
               In houses
               the priceless dry rooms
               of illicit love
               where we live
               hear the wash of the
                                  rain--
 
               There
                     paintings
 
               and fine
 
                     metalware
               woven stuffs--
               all the whorishness
               of our
 
                    delight
 
               sees
               from its window
 
               the spring wash
               of your love
 
                           the falling
 
               rain--
 
 
and as for your guy,he rhymes like this:
 
             I, MAXIMUS OF GOUCESTER, TO YOU
 
             Off-shore, by islands, hidden in the blood
             jewels & miracles, I , Maximus
             a metal hot from boiling water, tell you
             what is a lance, who obeys the figures of
             the present dance
 
etc., etc. But this you know already?? if you say this ain't rhyme, what
you're really mean is it aint in regular metre. Rhyme is actually one of the
conventions of 'free verse', so what might might be of interest then are the
rules of its distribution. Back to you.
 
Wystan
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 8 May 1995 21:16:30 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Susan Clark 
Subject:      Re: Looking for . . .
In-Reply-To:  <199505090230.TAA05117@whistler.sfu.ca> from "Kevin Killian" at
              May 8, 95 06:01:37 pm
 
Hi Kevin
 
I have Mac Low, street tel and fax, if you want to email me "backchannel".
 
Susan [Clark]
clarkd@sfu.ca
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 9 May 1995 00:38:34 -40962758
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Jim Rosenberg 
Subject:      chance / choice spaces
 
re Jackson Mac Low:
 
Jackson once told me (perhaps this is common knowledge) that he started using
chance operations because he was concerned that his writing had become too
sentimental.  He stopped using chance operations -- because he found the
writing too sentimental!
 
re Cage:
 
The thing that has always blown my mind about John Cage is that back in the
'30s -- long before the technology of electronic music existed -- he
understood that it was coming, that technology would exist that would allow
any sound theoretically possible to actually be heard, and thus needed a
basis for composing music based on the geometry of sound itself.  Before
Cage, composing music meant creating instructions either for the singing
human voice or for manipulating a particular (read ideosyncratic to each
particular culture) set of historical artifacts known as musical instruments.
Cage enumerated the dimensions of sound:  pitch, timbre, loudness, duration,
morphology (more typically called envelope these days, I think).  His
confrontation with the world of sound was whole, was total, was so completely
central that this "acoustical" point of view has influenced hundreds of
composers who might deny vehemently any aesthetic connection with Cage.
 
Chance is a mechanism for providing answers; the composer provides the
questions.  Cage would constantly explore to find the geometry of the *choice
space* to know how to forumulate these questions.  (It is one of the many
paradoxes of work with chance operations that chance is a more effective
method of filling a choice space than choice ...)  E.g. he would constantly
go to musicians and ask them to show him the whole range of everything they
could do with their instrument -- working out the dimensions of that
musician's practice.
 
What are the dimensions of the choice space of language?  Of language itself?
John's mesostics leave this as a question not really undertaken.  The very
word 'dimension' sounds odd with respect to language.  What do we do with
syntax?  How many dimensions are there to syntax?  The question sounds very
odd.  Yet *dimension* is exactly the kind of thing you seek in doing chance
operations:  the scale against which to apply the random number.  In fact,
Cage's mesostics did not apply operations to language, but to *text*.  In the
face of an intractable choice space one retreats to a much more tractable
space, the space of text *finding* operations.  It gave me no pleasure at all
when I was told that John used one of the programs I wrote for him every day
-- for years on end -- instead it leaves me with a haunted sense of unease.
What would we think of John Cage as a composer if he had written no other
music than the pieces for radios?  Had stuck to the exact identical method
making pieces for radios for years at a time?
 
So we are back to the question:  what is the geometry of the choice space of
*language* -- the total space of all conceivable circumstances of language,
text or no text.  I don't have an answer, would never claim to have even
*started* on an answer.
 
--
 Jim Rosenberg                                  http://www.well.com/user/jer/
     CIS: 71515,124
     WELL: jer
     Internet: jr@amanue.pgh.net
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 8 May 1995 22:12:03 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "Sheila E. Murphy" 
Subject:      Re: Aleatoric Spree
 
Responding to a couple of points recently made in the general subject area
of aleatoric procedures:
 
Since someone's referenced the comparison between Stockhausen and Cage, I'd
have to say that, on reflection, the pairing of these individuals seems
unlikely, perhaps a chance occurrence in itself.
 
Initially positioned as a departure from tradition, 12-tone music easily
evolved into an alternative classical system of its own.  In spite of its
detractors (seems that every gesture needs to spawn some little mosquito of
a battle), 12-tone music gathered clout, probably because of its packaging
and therefore susceptibility to surface understanding.
 
As a part of studies in music theory and composition, we were assigned to
create in this vein, and I remember fondly the making of charts, and the
kinds of discoveries they helped spawn.  These later factored into some of
my chance procedures in writing, providing ways to turn out equivalent
disposable containers (as distinct from focusing on more traditional foundry).
 
I think it was Chris who suggested that a scope (or an ear trumpet?) might
be applied to the squishy vocabulary that has slithered out of this
discussion.  Having been responsible for some of the language, I'll just say
that the concern with it represents a fair call.
 
The only thing in response might be this:  I don't look upon chance
procedures as the components of a religion.  The process and the results are
engaging and stimulating enough to warrant some excitement, I think. But in
a bigger picture, I believe there is a spectrum that runs from expectation
and surprise, with chance as one form of expression representing heavily the
surprise side.  Compositional methods and procedures comprise the respected
instrument, or an extension of whatever instrument we might construe for
making.  The "woo woo" factor is not a stopping place, but is hard to ignore
sometimes.
 
The more one makes a place for chance occurrences in one's writing, the less
of a fuss needs to be made about it.  I know I'm not unique in doing this
without announcement.  While some works wind up being named after their
progenitor (the method), many just slip by and arrive wearing other
nomenclature.  It just depends upon the sort of birth announcement that
seems warranted.
 
I don't mean to denigrate any focus on this subject, because it represents a
stimulating aspect of writing.  But, finally, the process can't be islanded
off on its own and looked at independent of the creative process.  That
would mean a partial view of the actual process.
 
Sheila Murphy
semurphy@indirect.com
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 8 May 1995 22:34:47 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         George Bowering 
Subject:      Re: Aleatory Poetry
In-Reply-To:  <199505090033.RAA27033@whistler.sfu.ca> from "Tony Green" at May
              9, 95 09:45:23 am
 
Hey, I share a birthday with Woody Allen. I wonder about the
implications.
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 9 May 1995 01:35:01 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Chris Stroffolino 
Subject:      Re: Aleatory Poetry
 
   tony green--sure the self is a construction (though some times it
   feels further away than others i guess) and the collagist aspects of
   ontology "might as well" be seen only in impersonal terms of
   "religious"/"miracles"/"oracular"/and the economic term cheek used,
    nonetheless I was born the day Ginsberg wrote Death News about WCW,
    (3-20-63), and share the day with Spike Lee, Mr. Rogers, Ovid/Ibsen/
    that woman who does Piano jazz but whose name i forget/Hal Linden/
    Jerry "Amos Moses" Reed/and Jerome Rothenberg's wife....
    Hey Silliman does this make me a NY school poet????? CS
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 8 May 1995 22:37:58 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         George Bowering 
Subject:      Re: Aleatory Poetry
In-Reply-To:  <199505082347.QAA23335@whistler.sfu.ca> from "maria damon" at May
              8, 95 06:04:17 pm
 
Dont forget Robin Blaser's birthday this week.
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 8 May 1995 22:41:24 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         George Bowering 
Subject:      Re: jazz/music
In-Reply-To:  <199505090054.RAA28752@whistler.sfu.ca> from "Herb Levy" at May 8,
              95 02:33:16 pm
 
Naw, I figure Martial Solal took his name from the Roman writer and
the west coast shrub, only he spelled salal wrong.
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 9 May 1995 01:45:38 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Chris Stroffolino 
Subject:      Re: Aleatoric Spree
 
   I'm wondering if there is a certain "unwritten law" of an "interpretative
   community" informing the discussion on aleatory music and conferring on it
   a certain legitimacy denied to more lyrically based forms such as punk
   and rap and grunge and blues and 60's rock...Because to talk about rock
   it seems to talk about "hybrids" that isn't as sophisticated lyrically as
   poetry nor is as sophisticated musically as Stockhausen etc. and thus is
   low culture and worse, it SELLS! (and either there is envy or contempt of
   such)...and if we put poetry in dialogue with rock lyrics surely poetry
   can not be said to aspire to "THAT KIND OF MUSIC"....movies, theatre,
   theory, painting....of the "sister arts" to poetry rock music ain't one
   of them.....
   I saw Joan Retallack read the other day she said that Emerson gave her
   an early authoritative defense of "inconsistency"---
   And then there was an accessibility panel and I asked Bill Luoma if
   he considered "angst" more "accessible" than "flippancy"....and he said
   "angst, unless you are....."(he named someone here from the New York
   scene, it doesn't matter who. The point is he gave a quick answer.)
   Yours from the gossip beat, Chris
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 9 May 1995 14:36:41 GMT+1200
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Tony Green 
Organization: The University of Auckland
Subject:      Re: Aleatory Poetry
 
Maria, add Shaks to yr list of creative Taureans  --  even if
Cordelia was a bit of a mess,as some think.  Trad date of birth 23
April (conveniently St George's day)   best
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 9 May 1995 04:44:40 CST
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Charles Alexander 
Subject:      Re: Looking for . . .
 
On Mon, 8 May 1995 18:01:37 +0100,
Kevin Killian   wrote:
 
>Anyone with the RL addresses of Jackson MacLow and Denise Levertov.
>
>Please!  Thank you!
>
>-Kevin Killian
>
>
Kevin, I'm not certain what an RL address is. I have Jackson's home
address,
 
42 North Moore St.
New York, NY 10013
 
and I have his phone & fax number, which are the same number, 212-226-3346.
I don't have an e-mail address.
 
I don't have anything for Denise Levertove, but I thought she was, at least
part of the year, a member of the faculty at Stanford, so you might try her
through the English Department there.
 
And let me know what an RL address is.
 
all best,
 
charles
 
charles alexander
chax press
minnesota center for book arts
phone & fax: 612-721-6063
e-mail: mcba@maroon.tc.umn.edu
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 9 May 1995 04:57:12 CST
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Charles Alexander 
Subject:      addresses
 
Sorry, I meant to send my last message direct to Kevin Killian, and hit a
wrong key, sending it to all of poetics. My embarrassed apologies to all,
particularly to Jackson. Unfortunately one can't retrieve e-mail before
delivery.
 
charles alexander
chax press
minnesota center for book arts
phone & fax: 612-721-6063
e-mail: mcba@maroon.tc.umn.edu
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 9 May 1995 13:12:31 BST
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "I.LIGHTMAN" 
Subject:      working papers from chancy gardiner
 
From:   CPCMB::P280         "I.LIGHTMAN"  7-MAY-1995 17:25:30.88
To:     P280
CC:
Subj:   numbers
 
14, 56, 75, 46
129, 34, 8, 65
19, 76, 87, 93
34, 56, 83, 57
79, 64, 24, 1
97, 53, 75, 3
5, 57, 8, 71, 50
23, 56, 67, 9
45, 65, 29, 40, 91
27, 86, 53, 35
9, 86, 19, 93, 2
25, 58, 73, 4, 90, 12
35, 65, 47, 8
87, 24, 95, 80, 26, 73
84, 51, 37, 2
6, 66, 19
94, 92, 01, 03
12, 49, 83, 19, 34
54, 6, 99, 80, 24, 94
7, 62,
28, 93, 18
16
91, 6, 30
97,
33, 39
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 9 May 1995 13:12:55 BST
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "I.LIGHTMAN" 
Subject:      working papers from chancy gardiner (2)
 
From:   CPCMB::P280         "I.LIGHTMAN"  7-MAY-1995 17:33:34.25
To:     P280
CC:
Subj:   mumble
 
1 This 2 is 3 the 4 year 5 1997 6 and 7 there
8 are 9 gale 10 winds 11 in 12 the 13 west, 14 never
15 a 16 note 17 played 18 in 19 discontent 20 and
 
21 in 22 a 23 place 24 where 25 animals 26 play
27 the 28 imagined 29 margins 30 soar 31 with 32 letters
33 flung 34 at 35 odd 36 intervals 37 and 38 ink
39 spills 40 a 41 clear 42 running 43 relevance
44 moved 45 to 46 safer 47 particles, 48 absolved.
 
49 These 50 are 51 the 52 words 53 the 54 heart 55 makes
56 forgetting 57 its 58 injunction 59 to 60 exercise
61 while 62 floating, 63 fingers 64 succumb 65 to
66 the 67 temptation 68 to 69 imply 70 themselves
71 or another, waiting, presumptive.
 
75 Do not argue, I want to say, there
83 is 84 not 85 enough 86 time, 87 I 88 don't 89 even 90 know
91 what 92 thought 93 might 94 bring 95 the 96 third 97 day
98 and 99 something 100 beats now, wanting
only to be subject, object too, yours.
 
What will the hospital say, the treadmill,
another language of not knowing, as if
anything else were possible, today or
another time, invisible, flags from porches
forego the year, the skin, the tissue.
We are flying on the ground.
 
 
      charles alexander
 
charles alexander
chax press
minnesota center for book arts
phone & fax: 612-721-6063
e-mail: mcba@maroon.tc.umn.edu
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 9 May 1995 13:10:30 BST
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "I.LIGHTMAN" 
Subject:      chance / trust cris to object
 
> "get particular here please. I'd be just as worried by anyone using chance
methods in the understanding that by so doing they can by-pass or somehow
circumnavigate subjectivity (taking what's been said about curbing the
sprawl of the ego into account here) as by the assertion that one accept
'fate' as dictated by a horoscope constructed by rote to the extensive
purposes of political manipulation as documented in 'Religion and the
Decline of Magic' by Keith Thomas (an important book on the subject from
the viewpoint of 16th and 17th century england - wicca, astrology,
Protestant rationality and Magiq from which, opening that book at 'random'
i quote 'the medieval church thus did a great deal to weaken the
fundamental distinction between a prayer and a charm, and to encourage the
idea that there was virtue in the mere repetition of holy words' or 'the
very impenetrability of the formaula helped to give it its power')."
 
Waal, sometimes there is. What if you look at the huge number of daily
and weekly and monthly magazines that carry horoscopes - that makes not
a unitary astro-church producing one horoscope which clearly I would be
an idiot to read as if it linked me with all Aries - no, it makes a
range of magazines, and I might find a Daily Mail, or a Times, or a
Cosmopolitan, in a train carriage or the street or a friend's or a
rival's house, and *that* issue's horoscope in *that* magazine that I
don't normally read might be instructive on *that* day. (As it is, I
also find that the Aries horoscope in the Pink Paper, the free lesbigay
weekly, is pretty reliably right about my life).
        Plus one can hardly say that a horoscope one has generated for
oneself by chance methods (eg my favourite game is picking a book off the
shelves, a page number, a line number, then a sequence of numbers - eg, 2,
5, 1, 8 - and writing down the 2nd then 5th then 1st then 8th word on that
chosen line, and seeing what message you get - I did my procedure on Charles'
poem >thanks for the thanks, Charles< by noting swiftly that his poem had
100 to 150 words and then switching to a blank screen and writing a poem
of numbers in that range, then going back and substituting each number for
the word at that point in Charles' poem - I'll post my working papers in a
minute - then trying to edit the result, goofing up and producing, by
chance interaction with the machine, the poem I sent to the list)
has been imposed by a
totalising state or religion. You can say that I am acting as if I wanted
to be subject to a regime that took away my decision-making will and let
me off responsibility for my fate, but it aint that way for me - I often
bicker with most new Age people and astrologers, because, in fact, they
prove to have very fixed beliefs about how one should act and use chance
methods to come to what they probably would have advised you or themselves
anyway - advice which may well, as Cris indicates, partake of suspicious
"higher" agendas, like "love money", "put your family ahead of society",
or "I recommend you sign up for a course of twenty sessions with my friend
the expensive Shaitsu counsellor, and don't forget to remind him about my
cut... I mean, to tell him I sent you". But so do many people have such
higher agendas, based on complicity with bullying power blocks/capitalism/
anti-intellectualism/anti-emotionalism - that isn't an issue of figuring
chance as a divining instrument, not part of the language or logic. There
are plenty of groups that use words like
 
"prescience / consciousness / attention / interference / energies /
transferral / occurence / attenuation / exquisition"
 
and fuck you over, bully you, want you to join their church; sometimes,
in the context where such "hypocrisy" (if one links language with behaviour)
operates behind the nice words, it is an act of dissent, not high church,
to use words with a religious "history", to keep things unorthodox thus
creative
 
truth is beauty is easily reordered
 
Ira
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 9 May 1995 13:18:39 BST
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "I.LIGHTMAN" 
Subject:      Re: rhyme
 
I think Thom Gunn's rhymes in "The Man With Night Sweats" do more for
AIDS awareness than William Carlos Williams or any others (like myself
soon) with doctorates, not as a spoonful of sugar on the medicine going
down, sometimes what is good about the ear is the way it circulates
widely, the bloody nose for the bleeding heart bellying up,
 
Ira
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 9 May 1995 09:20:10 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Mark Wallace 
Subject:      two of everybody
 
I like this idea of there being more than one of everybody. I've now
figured out that it's true in my case two.
 
The Mark Wallace who makes consistently intelligent comments is me. The
foolish, overbearing one is the other guy.
 
But if that's true, how come I like the other one better?
 
I'll have to ask him.
 
mw
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 9 May 1995 09:33:39 EST
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "H. T. KIRBY-SMITH" 
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro
Subject:      rhyme
 
It is helpful if one wants to chime in about rhyme to take time to
watch out for what it isn't. For example, "live" and "love" echo one
another but what you have is consonance, not rhyme. Rhyme has to do
with vowel sounds being the same or losely similar, followed by one
identical consonant sound. Beyond that are all the degrees of slant
rhyme, quasi-rhyme, and assonance. Some of the most remarkable
inventions along this line are in Sylvia Plath's pre-Daddy poems,
written about 1956-1958. I don't think I have ever in my life used
the word "Protean" before but that describes rhyme to me.
 
Edmund Wilson onece made up something called "reverse rhyme"--i.e. in
one line you ended with "grab" and the next with "brag" or "barge"--I
think. It made no sense at all but did sound pretty funny.
 
Since there are only a limited number of combinations of sounds in
any given language there are always going to be rhyming words. To
point out accidental, or even semi-intentional echoing is like
pointing out the dandelions in a lawn. Yeah, they are there all
right and they look pretty. But they planted themselves.
 
 
Tom Kirby-Smith
English Department
UNC-Greensboro
Greensboro NC  27412
 
Phone: (910) 334-3280
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 9 May 1995 10:16:11 EST
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "H. T. KIRBY-SMITH" 
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro
Subject:      Williams poem
 
Just wanted to acknowledge seriously my gratitude to Wystan for
putting on the Williams poem. I don't know why it wasn't one of my
favorites before but it is now. You know, Williams was enormously
admiring of Keats when he was a teenager and his earliest poems were
Keats imitations. In this poem I think that we see a progression of
interwoven sounds much like Keats at his best--the Keats of "To
Autumn." Both H.D. and Williams, it seems to me, took things that had
been ancillary to Romantic poetry and extrinsic ornament in some
Victorian poetry, and made them organically functional in their own
poems. It doesn't seem to me there are any rules for what they did;
but I do think that we can look at what they did and arrive at a
consensus, or at least a set of overlapping perceptions, as to what
they did.
 
 
Tom Kirby-Smith
English Department
UNC-Greensboro
Greensboro NC  27412
 
Phone: (910) 334-3280
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 9 May 1995 08:17:08 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "Aldon L. Nielsen" 
Subject:      Re: unsolo locus
In-Reply-To:  <9505080425.AA15334@isc.sjsu.edu>
 
but there are also "your old copies of _Locus Solus_ the mag.!  not to be
forgotten; name drawn from same novel Tom describes.  ed. by Ashbery,
Mathews, Koch & Schuyler out of Paris in early 60s.  Check your nearest
univ. library to see if they have a copy.  Some good work in the mag that
wasn't reprinted in later books.
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 9 May 1995 16:27:30 +0000
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         cris cheek 
Subject:      birthdays
 
I'm turning over a new year on Thurs 11th. Feeling pretty and bullish. Must
be the May buds. There, even my friends don't know  - but now I've just
told
 
strangers  -  well, what do all those people who don't write poetry do?
Who notices their passages?
 
love cris
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 9 May 1995 16:45:44 BST
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "I.LIGHTMAN" 
Subject:      Re: Aleatoric Spree
 
I sent a run of messages this morning, then got more to respond to afterwards,
so sorry for sending this one too:
 
I want to respond to Chris Stroffolino, and Sheila and Herb - like all of
you, I don't want to bash any kind of music, or just state idle preferences.
Like you say, Herb, so many say things about Cage who don't seem to know
the music but, rather, the seemingly graspable aesthetic theory. And like
you say, Chris, there's a lot of snobbery vs punk, pop, amplified guitars
etc. And like you say, Sheila, the twelve tone system can just solidify
into another classicism (though will it survive as such, is this a kind
of sulky - bad for them - intransigence?).
 
All I want to do is quiz some of the oppositions that underlie loyalty
to *one* kind of music at the expense of all others, not keep saying
"Stockhausen" over & over till everyone listens to him or ignores me.
One of my first posts to the list, Herb, was to say like you that Cage
is too readily appropriated, and seems to stand for some very narrow-minded
avant-garde approaches to music in non-musicians; or, in other words,
if a poet doesn't want to put in the hard work involved taking music
seriously, he/she can say "I like Cage" and thus, in one foul swoop,
justify never wanting to listen to pre-Cage classical music or any
New Music done by those who differ from Cage eg (for my tastes) Boulez
and Stockhausen AND (in the same swoop) seem to be into avant-garde music
by being a fan of John Cage. Let me rush to say that this formulation
does not apply, in the slightest, to you Herb, or any of the others who
have posted about Cage on this list in this discussion, there's been some
wonderful discussions of sound and texture, which are issues for pets
(poets?) too.
 
I guess it's like the discussion on rhyme too, in that I don't believe
one strikes a blow against the establishment by being anti-rhyme (ie
consciously teasing a reader who wants rhyme) or "anti-classical",
since there's a hugely dominant hatred of most classical music by
people afraid to engage with it, so it seems to me, except via a few
of the greatest hits (in this case, Chris S., I would worry about
popularity, not that one thing is popular but that it is used in an
Eighties way, to justify streamlining out more marginal things, and
there is this love of say melody that inspires lazy record producers
to ignore soundscape, bass, and polyphony in order to produce a sound]
Beavis and Butthead can headbang too - though I think Beavis and
Butthead are cool). So it doesn't worry me that twelve tone music
might get classical, except in so far as you get music that suits the
intellectual rules of musicologists and don't move me or nuthin'.
 
Chris S, me, I like Alternative Television, Boulez's settings of Rene
Char, Bjork, Sleeper, Mo Tucker's first solo album, Stockhausen's
Samstag. I really like silence and I really like noise. Some people
really like delicacy and are dillweeds about noise; some people love
noise and can't cope with lack of a beat or oddity or silence. I'm
not anti punk, but I am anti anything that thinks it's outdated
everything previous when all that means is you can't be a fan and
also listen to anything previous; I also think this society of mine
lacks for nothing punk, rude, harsh, anti-bourgeois, yet lacks all
the time in gentleness, open ears, complex thinking; so, at the moment,
I turn to classical music to be challenged by the way it's complex,
intense, yet grounded in the ability to be still - then I might make
art that is nothing like classical music, but still has these things,
which this society of mine lacks. Oh, and I write in a guitar band that
uses rhythm (even if it is sometimes 7/8) and limited chords (even if
some do come from Stravinksy), and lyrics out of Language Poetry but
also Liz Phair. And I try to be open to what others are doing, and
encourage those who cross the boundaries as I describe them, cos I
never felt that much encouragement or recognition of my attempts by
anyone older than me.
 
I think Pound was right that poetry mustn't stray too long from
music(s); if the poet only buys into one music, especially one that
sells itself as superceding all others, things ossify quickly,
 
Ira
 
 
p.s. anyone who doesn't want to read Herb and me talking about Cage
and Stockhausen should leave this message here...
 
Herb, I agree with you that Stockhausen proslytises too, I was
only making that jibe in response to your earlier message suggesting
one might think of Cage's use of the I-Ching just in terms of numberm]
, and it wouldn't be such an issue then; and I was just responding that
(since I think Cage *does* use the I-Ching mostly as a number system)
that the question remained of being a bit of a guru and yet not
being part of a complex sacral system, but in fact an easily grasped
rite in isolation. I don't mind Stockhausen being a guru, because I
think he's very serious about setting up a complex sacral system that'
one cannot grasp quickly or easily.
 
Anyway, fulfilling your kind request, here's some specific examples
of Stockhausen's aleatoric work:
 
Discussion of Klavierstuck XI, from Stcokhausen, by Michael Kurtz,
trans Richard Toop, Faber, London, 1992:
 
"Nineteen groups of notes - all derived from the same basic principles,
whereby the pitches and the rhythmic structures are interrelated - are
distributed irregularly over a sheet of paper measuring 53 by 93
centimetres. The pianist is to look 'without prior intent' at the
sheet of paper, and begin with whatever group his or her eye happens
to light on first. Tempo, dynamics and mode of attack are free. At
the end of each group is a tempo indication, a dynamic level and a
mode of attack, all determining the way the next group (again, selected
by a random glance) is to be played." (pp 86-87)
 
Stockhausen interviewed in "Towards a Cosmic Music", Element Books,
Shaftesbury, Dorset, England, 1989:
 
"We know from tradition that composers' moments of intuitive
inspiration have constantly been seen as decisive. Viewed intellectually,
that is 'indeterminacy' in terms of tradition. From the standpoint
of intuition, however, which is also a human experience albeit little
utilised today, the outcome involves a highly specific 'determined'
music."
 
(my commentary - I love this, it looks like paradox, but it is a way
of saying that one movement often begins with pseudo-explanations
of what it is doing, simply in order to get the new vibe out
there, to get people to engage with the art, take it seriously,
feels its shape and texture and resonances - sometimes you even
need to kid *yourself* you have (intellectual) "reasons", when
you are simply letting historical change occur through your ministry;
like all those sci-fi time-travel films where we share in the sense
of the good guys forcing a crucial historical event which we know
in the future went really well - "Backbeat", the film about the
Beatles, for example)
 
"For the moment there are only very few such musicians, completely
dedicated to their work which they don't just see as a job - musicians
of extremely great sensitivity ready to follow intuitive inspiration.
They must also carry out specific preparatory spiritual exercises
before they play. Their entire way of life must be dedicated to this
kind of intuitive music. They can't drink a beer and then start playing
five minutes later, unaware of their responsibility"
 
(This interests me, especially the not drinking beer, where I *agree*
with Cage on the value of macrobiotics and care over one's intake and
what specific foods *do* to one's state; I'd cross-reference this with
the point that this doesn't have to mean "don't listen to other
music" as the composer himself wrote a piece sampling national anthems
and letting them interact with each other)
 
"my music is absolutely dependent on intuitive players capable of
working in a group...a traditional string quartet doesn't offer any
comparison since it plays rationally determined music... in free
Jazz and in other traditions, such as Indian music, there are,
however, always rules, schemata, etc., providing a framework for
'improvisation'. A group of musicians playing *purely intuitively*
is an innovation in *all* traditions."
 
(Cris Cheek has said this before on this list about much improv)
 
"In my Aus Den Sieben Tagen pieces, the musicians sometimes play
for forty minutes on the basis of two or three sentences. The
music provides spiritual orientation derived from the text. The
players are much more relaxed than if I demand that they rehearse
for a week when they would have to work much harder, physically
and intellectually, to decipher something that I encoded in the
eye language of musical notation. The written directives bring them
into more direct contact with intuition than paper covered with
notation."
 
(Sometimes it is not a question of expanding the syntax *on the
page*, but of giving that task a rest and opening up the current
syntax of musicality in writers or writing in music or performance
or the life of the artist or reader, their horoscopes and paths)
 
"That's xactly what's involved in intuition. Musicians establish
a direct link with intuition by way of my texts. In the years ahead
I must investigate whether, for instance, a specific written
instruction leads to a specifically archetypal music - as compared
with another instruction. How can we discover ways of regulating
the process of intuitive music making?"
 
1969, pp.35-39
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 9 May 1995 11:47:29 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Joe Amato 
Subject:      Re: birthdays
 
well speaking of may babies---i was born on the 31st., which brings an
end to my fourth decade as a twin (love boasting about how i share this
day with whitman)...
 
posting this to the list is so-------
 
i'm not proud////
 
hey kali, what about tu? or should i hush up?
 
joe
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 9 May 1995 11:17:31 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Ryan Knighton 
Subject:      Re: two of everybody
In-Reply-To:  <199505091321.GAA00225@whistler.sfu.ca> from "Mark Wallace" at
              May 9, 95 09:20:10 am
 
read george's "little me".  i guess when george reads it there's
three of him.
 
ryan
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 9 May 1995 11:53:59 +0100
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Kevin Killian 
Subject:      Re: birthdays
 
I don't understand this birthdays thing, but.........
 
I was born on the same day as Jimmy Hoffa.
 
Top that.
 
Dodie Bellamy
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 9 May 1995 18:00:11 +0000
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         cris cheek 
Subject:      chance / trust cris to object
X-cc:         "I.LIGHTMAN" 
 
                  Ira, I'm not down on chance at all. And I'm susceptible
to dowsing.
 
However to say that -
 
> it is an act of dissent, not high church,
> to use words with a religious "history", to keep things unorthodox thus
> creative
 
evades the question about meaning. Are we each in a hermetically sealed
world- corridor of mirrors gleefully transgressing (dissent rapidly
becoming a norm) or are we in clusters of suchlike each replicating, within
the music of the spheres of its own codes, a whole  -  the ballroom mirror
ball of the Divine Santa Maria della Bolognese?
 
The secondary list of words was there to re-inforce exactly that request
for context and use. Yes, we can play the 'good - bad' substitution
inversions and the punk nazi regalia sneers BUT you underline my question
acutely by saying, and I agree with you the -
 
>fuck you over, bully you, want you to join their church; sometimes,
>in the context where such "hypocrisy" (if one links language with behaviour)
>operates behind the nice words
 
It's not a corner Ira shop, it's a let's get specific in the cause of which
I'd also support Herb re the assertions towards Stockhausen and Cage.
Ok - I 'm off into the bathroom now to sing a couple of verses of 'FEELINGS'.
 
yours in perpannuity, from your loving trust object 'the self'
luther von beatty
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 9 May 1995 13:03:21 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         John Keeling 
Subject:      Thank you
In-Reply-To:  <199505090454.VAA09079@leland.Stanford.EDU> from "Jim Rosenberg"
              at May 9, 95 00:38:34 am
 
Dear Jim,
 
You package arrived in the mail yesterday and I want to send along my
gratitude.  Although I have only glanced at "Diffractions" I think it
looks very very interesting.  I will be bothering you with more detailed
responses in the future if you don't mind.
 
In any case, I'm swamped right now but did wnat to thank you so much
for your poetry.
 
best wishes,
 
john keeling
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 9 May 1995 23:39:01 +0000
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         cris cheek 
Subject:      Re: No Change
 
  It's  nice  to  have  the  evidence  distributed  with  the
>assertion.
 
I saw the yearbook and was surprised that Schmidt was running with it. Glad
to have your spot on rejoinder as to his real interest with it.
 
I've just published Miles Champion's first book 'Sore Models' and have an
Allen Fisher 'Civic Crime'  - don't know if you've seen that.
Eager and happy to trade with you if you're up for that stuff.
 
love
cris
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 9 May 1995 18:50:56 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Patrick Phillips 
Subject:      Re: birthdays
 
May 1's "my day" - a haymarket, lawyer fest here in the U.S., May Day has
crept back into an undercurrent of discontent/content. The Bacchanalia of
signs. May pole, bar pole, step up to the bar, barred from representative
gov. (or saddled with it.) I was born on International Workers Day,
International Lawyers Day  (hokum), and the day of fertility rituals - as
you say Chris, vat Irony... that who of history... what who?
 
in all fatness
 
Pat
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 9 May 1995 17:53:27 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         maria damon 
Subject:      Re: Aleatory Poetry
 
In message <2faf0d6c59b0002@maroon.tc.umn.edu> UB Poetics discussion group
writes:
> Maria, add Shaks to yr list of creative Taureans  --  even if
> Cordelia was a bit of a mess,as some think.  Trad date of birth 23
> April (conveniently St George's day)   best
 
thanks but shaks is apocryphal --or jsut about everything about "him" is, no?
hey I gotta question passed on from someone else, who remembers a street poet of
greenwich village circa 1050-60s who had a poem called
Religion
In the winter I'm a Buddhist
In the summer I'm a nudist.
 
that's it in its entirety.  I told my friend i'd ask around to find out who this
might be --any ideas?--maria
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 9 May 1995 18:01:29 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Gary Sullivan 
Subject:      Oracular Editions (fwd)
 
Everyone:
 
What follows is an ad for a cassette of spoken word material some of you
might be interested in. Erik Belgum, who put the cassette together, is
also interested in trading with presses, etc. His e-mail address is:
 
        belgu003@gold.tc.umn.edu
 
Here goes:
 
The Oracular Editions (OED) cassette label, dedicated exclusively to the spoken
word, has just released Oracular Editions #1, an audio anthology of spoken
word performance, audio art, soundtexts, poetry readings, etc.  Oracular
Editions #1 contains works by Paul Dutton, Robert Gregory & Jason Gibbs,
John M. Bennett, Richard Kostelanetz, Alex Ferguson, Philip Blackburn,
Warren Burt and Nicolas Collins.  Price:  $10 (includes shipping).
 
In addition to the ongoing series of audio anthologies, future projects include
a series of experimental short stories produced for radio and a series of
documentary tapes covering often discussed, but seldom experienced, natural
language phenomena such as glossalalia and Tourette's Syndrome.
 
Please direct all orders and inquiries to:  Erik Belgum, Oracular Editions, 3010
Hennepin Avenue South, #74 Minneapolis,  MN    55408  USA
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 9 May 1995 16:19:45 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         George Bowering 
Subject:      Re: birthdays
In-Reply-To:  <199505091831.LAA14719@ferrari.sfu.ca> from "Joe Amato" at May 9,
              95 11:47:29 am
 
Hey, my kid brother Jim was born on May 31, 1949, and he isnt at all
like Whitman.
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 9 May 1995 19:19:49 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Chris Stroffolino 
Subject:      Re: Aleatory Poetry
 
   Well, Dodie, Sean Killian is born on the Marquis DeSade's birthday
    (6-2-95), and he wouldn't be if he were related to Kevin....
     later, Abby Hoffa...
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 9 May 1995 16:27:06 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         George Bowering 
Subject:      Re: rhyme
In-Reply-To:  <199505091346.GAA01391@whistler.sfu.ca> from "H. T. KIRBY-SMITH"
              at May 9, 95 09:33:39 am
 
It has been a long time since I have heard of rime's being identified
with a pairing of words that have the "same" vowel and "same" last
consonants. I remember that my highschool teacher (who was from
England) used to tell us that. She also mentioned all those fictions
we had to learn: slant rime, half rime, quarter rime, assonance. Etc.
I always wondered whether half rime included 12/13 rime. But to limit
the term rime to cloud and proud is a little strange after all these
years after Duncan, etc. I think that that definition would make some
sense to the people in the rumoured "new traditionalist" or whataver
those US poets are called's netlist.
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 10 May 1995 09:16:00 GMT+1200
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Tony Green 
Organization: The University of Auckland
Subject:      Re: Aleatory Poetry
 
To Chris Stroffolino et al, birthdates  on homepages  bring in  cards
and presents (chapbooks, perfects, hardbacks, book tokens)?
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 10 May 1995 09:17:54 GMT+1200
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Tony Green 
Organization: The University of Auckland
Subject:      Re: birthdays
 
Dear chris, happy passage to you, etc
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 10 May 1995 09:10:00 GMT+1200
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Tony Green 
Organization: The University of Auckland
Subject:      Re: unsolo locus
 
I note apropos Roussel and New York that J Ashberry wrote intro to M Foucault ^ Death and the
Labyrinth: the world of Raymond Roussel^ trans Charles Ruas, Athlone
Press 1987.
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 9 May 1995 16:43:23 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         George Bowering 
Subject:      Re: rhyme
In-Reply-To:  <199505081202.FAA13460@whistler.sfu.ca> from "H. T. KIRBY-SMITH"
              at May 8, 95 07:56:45 am
 
I think that I know what the problem is in this discussion with H.T.
Kirby-Smith. Says "I don't remember seeing a rhyme in Ginsberg." Now,
in my experience, one is much more likely to HEAR a rime. And one
hears a lot of it in Ginsberg. As to Williams, well, he and H.D. were
the 2 Modernist poets who taught me a sense of rime, and my actual
(later) teacher was Robert Duncan. I strongly suggest reading his
great serial poem, "The Structure of Rime." Or go back to page 51 of
_The Opening of the Field_, to read "Keeping the Rhyme"
 
By stress and syllable
by change-rhyme and contour
we let the long line pace even awkward to its period.
 
The short line
we refine
and keep for candor.
 
This we remember:
ember of the fire
catches the word if we but hear
        ("We must understand what is happening")
and springs to desire,
a bird-right light
        sound.
 
This is the Yule-log that warms December.
This is the new grass that springs from the ground.
...
 
Or listen to the first line of the Pindar poem and explain how it is
not singing with rime.
 
 
---I think that W.T. is taking the concept of endrime and giving it
the term rime. That is, to my mind, like taking iambic pentameter and
calling it rhythm.
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 9 May 1995 17:11:18 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         George Bowering 
Subject:      Re: jazz/music
In-Reply-To:  <199505082155.OAA11233@whistler.sfu.ca> from "Herb Levy" at May 8,
              95 02:44:39 pm
 
Got a message from Susan Clark (the poet, not the actress), who said
that Black Swan is in business at another address; she says that the
new place looks less funky, and she didnt recognize the people
working there, but I am going to check it out.
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 9 May 1995 18:32:20 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "Aldon L. Nielsen" 
Subject:      Re: second epistle to the oulipites
In-Reply-To:  <9505050400.AA02718@isc.sjsu.edu>
 
Maria & other interested parties --
here's the info. on that mag. I mentioned earlier --
 
the January/February 1994 issue (#99) of _New Observations_, guest edited
by Harry Mathews and Lynn Crawford, is a special "Oulipo * Oupeinpo" issue--
 
"Oupeinpo" stands for Ouvoir de Peinture Potentielle
 
lots of good stuff here -- my own favorite being Thieri Foulc's "New
Observations on Harry Mathew's Face"-- though Queneau's "The Foundations
of Literature" will be of special interest to those (and you know who you
are) who follow the study of mathematics and poetry.
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 9 May 1995 23:54:31 -0400
Reply-To:     Robert Drake 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Robert Drake 
Subject:      Re: second epistle to the oulipites
 
forgot to mention, too, that Martin Gardner devoted one of his
"Mathematical Recreations" columns in Scientific American some
years back to Oulipo--was my first introduction, & praps easier
to dig out than most...
 
lbd
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 9 May 1995 14:53:44 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "Sheila E. Murphy" 
Subject:      Re: birthdays
 
>I'm turning over a new year on Thurs 11th. Feeling pretty and bullish. Must
>be the May buds. There, even my friends don't know  - but now I've just
>told
>
>strangers  -  well, what do all those people who don't write poetry do?
>Who notices their passages?
>
>love cris
>
 
Happy birthday, Chris!  I've often wondered what non-writers do in general,
not to mention in recognition of passages!
 
Sheila E.
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 9 May 1995 23:48:14 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         braman sandra 
Subject:      Starfish Cellular
 
Signing off while I wander for a month.... so a few parting words....
Sandra Braman
 
 
STARFISH CELLULAR
 
Organization, but every now and again an arm
walks
away,
 
grows its own brain,
mouth and
feeds.
 
                       At some point the change comes.
                       At some point the swift.
 
Timing is everything, worn down
elephant estrus, sixteen weeks,
and in between the bulls go
mad
 
Fielding the warrant
Star directory
Star cellular
 
There is the warrant dormant.
The bench warrant, the desk, the warrant court-
martial.
 
                  "Nothin' feels better than blood on blood."
 
The heart, as an organ, responds
to being cut open with "irritability,"
it is said to be
"unforgiving," wild dreams, and thrashing,
voice scat over
night.
 
   Collateral facts
 
   Dispositive facts
 
   Evidentiary facts
 
   Fabricated fact
 
   Fact question
 
There, gathering the sheaf,
long skirt damp and arms as wide as
tai, tai, tying Texas,
the leaves of cases,
bundled, a memory complete.
 
Starfish organizational.
We are at that point
of evolution
when the child I love most strongly is
most probably NOT to be my
own.  Starfish gestational.
 
Starfish investigatory.
 
Surviving cellular.  Surviving New Jersey and
heirloom brass turned green;
putting the warrant out,
 
wanting that protection.  "I'm going to keep
moving on," he said, and
walked away.
 
 
 
Sandra Braman
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 10 May 1995 10:44:53 BST
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "R.I.Caddel @ durham.ac.uk" 
Subject:      No change / exchange
In-Reply-To:  <199505100422.FAA00154@tucana.dur.ac.uk>
 
DEAR  CHRIS,  I'm  always up for swaps - let me know what you'd like -
how about Roy Fisher's It Follows That (Pig 1994) with its nice  fable
"A  Modern  Story"  where  Fisher  dreams  he's  made a fortune out of
running poetry competitions and vanity presses, and ends up buying the
Arts Council of Great Britain  at  a  knockdown  price.  Or  strictly,
doesn't,  because,  as  he  says,  he's a straight businessman by that
stage.
 
I  couldn't  possibly  tell  you the story about how Oxford refused to
publish that poem in one of their RF collections...
 
RHYME:  Bunting spent much of the back end of his life on an intensive
investigation of Welsh rhyme, which he described as  "all  the  things
that  hold  poetry  together"  -  including  assonances, alliteration,
half-rhyme, slip-rhyme, and other patterning devices  way  beyond  the
formalist straightjacket - but then, he also wrote:
      Follow the clue patiently and you will understand nothing
- which, of course, is where chance comes in.
 
BIRTHDAYS: congratulations to all concerned, and to their familiars. I
share July 13th with John Clare, John Dee and Julius Ceasar (depending
on  how  you  split the year with the old calandar). To date my global
conquest achievement is low, my black magic distinctly poor,  but  I'm
doing ok on the lyric environmentalism and insanity.
 
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
x                                                                    x
x  Richard Caddel,                E-mail: R.I.Caddel @ durham.ac.uk  x
x  Durham University Library,     Phone: 0191 374 3044               x
x  Stockton Rd. Durham DH1 3LY    Fax: 0191 374 7481                 x
x                                                                    x
x       "Words! Pens are too light. Take a chisel to write."         x
x                          - Basil Bunting                           x
x                                                                    x
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 10 May 1995 03:39:42 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Ron Silliman 
Subject:      Re: Aleatory Birthdays
 
Sorry Jed,
 
I turn 49 in August. (Isn't it obvious that I'm a Leo?)
 
Ron
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 10 May 1995 08:05:18 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Gary Sullivan 
Subject:      Funding for the arts (fwd)
 
Dear Minnesotans:
 
What follows is a forwarded message that may interest you. All others, I
apologize for clogging this list w/this, but this is the quickest way I
could think of to impart this info:
 
The Minnesota Legislature has recommended a modest increase in arts funding.
The legislation, however, is still vulnerable to the veto pen of Governor Arne
Carlson.  Please call the governor's office today (May 9) or tomorrow (May 10)
at 296-3391 to express your support for the arts appropriation.  When you get
the governor's answering maching, leave a message something like the following:
"My name is ------- and I live in ----------.  My phone number is ---------.
Please support the legislature's recommendation for increased arts funding."
 
If many of us call, we can make a difference.  Thanks.
 
--Lane Stiles
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 10 May 1995 08:45:13 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "Aldon L. Nielsen" 
Subject:      Re: lyric and/or
In-Reply-To:  <9505100419.AA26755@isc.sjsu.edu>
 
Chris S. -- found your nearly immediate move from interesting remark re:
lyric to a radical narrowing of the question to just a few forms of music
odd -- and the opposition even odder, as most poets & critics of my
acquaintance (an admittedly unrepresentative sampling) seem, if anything,
obsessed with punk and rap (though they may argue that the audience
produces "resistant" readings) and most listen to Stockhausen too!
 
ok, so maybe they only have one Stockhausen recording -- but he doesn't
usually include lyrics anyway,,, so you got to make up your own words,,,
but you _can_ dance to it --  and I usually make up my own words to
popular recordings anyway 'cause most of the lyrics printed on the sleeve
are so pathetic, but then I do that with Wagner as well, cause I don't
speak German --
 
This isn't exactly aleatoric, but some of my poetry has its origins in my
misunderstandings on first hearing of a piece of music -- as on the
occasion, while driving through the streets of D.C. with Rosmarie Waldrop
some years ago, when I could have sworn the gospel song playing on the car
radio was titled "Rise and Annoy the Lord."
 
but I'm not usually so orhpic -- and milk light isn't good for your eyes --
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 10 May 1995 08:56:07 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Andrew Joron 
Subject:      against quietism
 
In celebrating the virtues of Zen and the Aleatory, I'm afraid we
may be losing sight of the still-important notion of struggle,
as opposed to the Zen idea of accepting whatever the Aleatory
hands out.
I would rather validate an Activist stance in both poetry &
politics, and promote the idea that the Real is something to
be transformed.
The Aleatory in this light becomes a provocation rather than
an end-point. It's only through resistance that we are led
to wonder.
                       -- Andrew Joron
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 10 May 1995 12:41:11 EST
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "H. T. KIRBY-SMITH" 
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro
Subject:      Ginsberg's rhymes
 
You know, if you listen real hard to HOWL it is really a series of
Petrarchan sonnets.
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 10 May 1995 09:41:31 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Herb Levy 
Subject:      Re: Aleatoric Spree
In-Reply-To:  <199505091648.AA08177@mail.eskimo.com>
 
Ira -
 
Those Stockhausen quotes are quite useful, thanks for providing them.
I'll respond to them after I've had a chance to to hear some of the music.
 
I'm afraid, though, that no amount of listening, to Stockhausen or
otherwise, will help me understand some aspects of your posting entitled
, particularly the section about the spiritual side of
Cage and Stockhausen.
 
I find it interesting that you make these statements directly after
warning people that the following section may be too specifically musical
for general readers of .  As you say elsewhere, .
 
In any case, I'm asking for further help & clarification from you here.
There's a lot that I simply don't understand in your posting.
 
On Tue, 9 May 1995, I.LIGHTMAN wrote:
 
> All I want to do is quiz some of the oppositions that underlie loyalty
> to *one* kind of music at the expense of all others, not keep saying
> "Stockhausen" over & over till everyone listens to him or ignores me.
> One of my first posts to the list, Herb, was to say like you that Cage
> is too readily appropriated, and seems to stand for some very
> narrow-minded avant-garde approaches to music in non-musicians; or, in
> other words, if a poet doesn't want to put in the hard work involved
> taking music seriously, he/she can say "I like Cage" and thus, in one
> foul swoop, justify never wanting to listen to pre-Cage classical music
> or any New Music done by those who differ from Cage eg (for my tastes)
> Boulez and Stockhausen AND (in the same swoop) seem to be into
> avant-garde music by being a fan of John Cage.
 
You're projecting an awful lot of your position onto my own brief
statements.
 
One, I really don't care if someone else's taste in music, poetry, food,
or whatever is  or not.  It's hard enough to take
responsibility for one's own taste, let alone that of another.  If someone
chooses to listen only to Cage or Mozart or Presley, why do you care?
 
Two, these days I think most avant garde/intellectual posturing in regard
to music revolves around artists like Brian Eno, or noise bands like
Einzstuerzende Neubauten or Crash Worship.  Cage's music isn't hip enough
for most poseurs (this may be somewhat different in England, but, if I can
believe what I read in _The Wire_, not too much so.)
 
Three, While we seem to agree that Cage's music is often misunderstood, I
really think this is more often true for those who dismiss his music.  Can
you provide sources for the kind of misunderstanding you mean?
 
> Let me rush to say that this formulation
> does not apply, in the slightest, to you Herb, or any of the others who
> have posted about Cage on this list in this discussion, there's been some
> wonderful discussions of sound and texture, which are issues for pets
> (poets?) too.
 
Very flattering, perhaps, but before you  anything of the
sort here, you really should know more than you can about my taste in
music.
 

 
> I think Pound was right that poetry mustn't stray too long from
> music(s); if the poet only buys into one music, especially one that
> sells itself as superceding all others, things ossify quickly,
 
That parenthetical  and the semi-colon indicate how much you're
stretching here.  It really isn't clear that the paraphrase from Pound
supports your views.  & could you please quote a source where Cage says
his music supercedes all others.
 
Ira, you then continue with a comparison of the spritual beliefs of
Stockhausen & Cage.  But you don't compare them using equal terms.  As I
said above I am most uncomfortable with and unclear about this part of your
argument.  I look forward to your guidance in how to read the following:
 
> Herb, I agree with you that Stockhausen proslytises too, I was
> only making that jibe in response to your earlier message suggesting
> one might think of Cage's use of the I-Ching just in terms of numberm]
> , and it wouldn't be such an issue then; and I was just responding that
> (since I think Cage *does* use the I-Ching mostly as a number system)
> that the question remained of being a bit of a guru and yet not
> being part of a complex sacral system, but in fact an easily grasped
> rite in isolation.
 
Unless I totally misread you here (& this is a very convoluted statement
so I admit this could be the case), you seem to be saying that Cage's use
of a Confucian text,the I Ching, primarily as a tool, somehow calls into
question his belief in Buddhism.  Could you please explain how this is so?
Further in this sentence you seem to imply that Buddhism is _not_ a
, Cage's belief in Buddhism is not , or,
that Cage's sense of Buddhism can be too easily grasped by his audience.
Could you please clarify which, if any, of these readings you meant.  If
you mean that Cage's belief in Buddhism is not complex, how you mean this
& how do you know this?  If you mean that Cage's sense of Buddhism is too
easily grasped by his audience, how do you mean this, how do you know this
and why is it Cage's fault?
 
> I don't mind Stockhausen being a guru, because I
> think he's very serious about setting up a complex sacral system that'
> one cannot grasp quickly or easily.
 
I will readily agree with you, regardless of what you meant in the
previous sentence, that Stockhausen's sense of the spiritual cannot be
easily grasped.  Can you explain why you think this is a good thing?
Are you criticizing Cage for not devising his own ?
 
I'm still confused by much of this & I'd appreciate help in clarifying
these points.
 
Bests,
 
Herb
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 10 May 1995 13:59:13 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Michael Boughn 
Subject:      Re: Rhyme
 
For those interested in following through on the rhyme question, three
places come immediately to mind: Donald Wesling's *The Chances of
Rhyme* tracks the history of it's definitons and usages from the 18th
to the 20th c's; Kenneth Burke's "On Musicality in Verse" (in *The
Philosophy of Literary Form*) distinguishes some of it's amazing
diversity; and TVF Brogan in *English Versification 1570-1980*
discusses significant linguistic issues. He, in fact, argues, that
rhyme is not a "literary device" at all, but a crucial linguistic
strategy "in reduplication and word-formation". His point being
"poetry is not made out of language; poetry _is_ language."
 
All of this really goes to back up George's points that what we call
"full rhyme" is only a minor manifestation of rhyme, and that it
functions in profound and incalculable ways as a fundamental
organizing power of language itself.
 
 
Mike
mboughn@epas.utoronto.ca
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 10 May 1995 13:14:53 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         maria damon 
Subject:      Re: Starfish Cellular
 
In message <2fb046d02dfe002@maroon.tc.umn.edu> UB Poetics discussion group
writes:
> Signing off while I wander for a month.... so a few parting words....
> Sandra Braman
>
>
> STARFISH CELLULAR
>
 
thanks sandra for that lovely meditation.  reminds me of january chris
funkhouser and i rescued a starfish lying on the median strip of a beachside
road --dropt by seagull no doubt --still thick intact and living.  we drove by i
sd stop wasnt that a starfish on the rd, we turned back, i made chris pick it up
and we walked it down to the ocean's edge.  it felt like an augur, auspicious no
less, but of what i know not.  --maria damon
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 10 May 1995 13:23:05 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         maria damon 
Subject:      Re: Aleatory Birthdays
 
In message <2fb098132be5002@maroon.tc.umn.edu> UB Poetics discussion group
writes:
> Sorry Jed,
>
> I turn 49 in August. (Isn't it obvious that I'm a Leo?)
>
> Ron
 
aw rats! after all that.
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 10 May 1995 15:11:03 EST
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "H. T. KIRBY-SMITH" 
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro
Subject:      Paul Christenson on Olson
 
    In his book CHARLES OLSON: CALL HIM ISHMAEL, Paul Christenson
    wrote:
 
  As Olson became convinced that the success of the open poem lay in
its being a model of expanded consciousness, he gradually abandoned
interest in those other features of of his original poetic: the
emphases of breath and ear on the generation of lines and syllables
in the poem. In fact, in the second triad of the MAXIMUS, these
vestiges of artifice, the play of sound and the rhythms of line
lengths, disappear altogether. [88]
 
At the beginning of the book, Christenson wrote: "It is a pleasure to
thank those who joined me in celebrating the life and work of a great
poet . . ."  It therefore seems reasonable to believe that the first
quotation above was not intended as hostile criticism. It seems to me
an accurate description of the poetry.
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 10 May 1995 15:21:49 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Edward Foster 
Subject:      Re: against quietism
 
quietism. and, really, when one comes right down to it, is there any reason, not self-indulgent or moral, to slip off the planet? why so? and does that implicate the poem? andrew, there can be struggle, tho why? there's no real outside what's said.
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 10 May 1995 15:58:15 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Alan Sondheim 
Subject:      Re: Rhyme
In-Reply-To:  <199505101845.OAA11016@panix4.panix.com>
 
I've constantly wondered about the presence of rhyme and alliteration
(for example Anglo-Saxon) anywhere - it would seem to have a cognitive
basis - I wonder what could be traced in neural circuitry? Neural
networks utilize repetition, similarity, competition; combine these
elements with the frame problem (beginnings and endings of structures
like line endings), and rhyme could indicate neurally a conclusion and a
reinforcement of sound that interplays with the symbolic as well. In
which case, rhyme would emerge out of the Kristevan chora (what a sight!/
site!), the _matter_ of language (as in Deleuze's _matter_ of cinema),
simultaneously deflecting/ground the poem in the inchoate...
 
Just thinking out loud here -
 
Alan
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 10 May 1995 16:17:06 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "Jordan Davis." 
Subject:      affect[ed/less]ness
 
anybody up for a little polyvalent montage?
 
JD
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 10 May 1995 14:07:49 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         George Bowering 
Subject:      Re: Starfish Cellular
In-Reply-To:  <199505100453.VAA27594@whistler.sfu.ca> from "braman sandra" at
              May 9, 95 11:48:14 pm
 
MUSING ON SOME POETS
 
 
 
 
 
 
Those poets, heads coming out of collars,
advised us, showed us how to hold paper and look good,
did we sometime grow tired of them, those
who lived for us,
died for us,
rotted under ground for us,
are still
so we may move.
 
Not friends, really, not teachers,
poets, whose names glittered when we were alone,
whose books dropped like gleaming newborn calves into our unsteady
hands,
did we read them as if pulling shavings off our souls,
never stepped out of the Pacific combers with shine on morning face,
never twisted body out of grip of coal giant ogre
save with inspiration of our poets,
and who knows what our
means?
 
What are we now besides older;
a young man newly graduated from university,
black gown still on him said I envy you and your friends,
you got to make the last ones,
there isnt anything to make now, or no one knows what there is.
I said it seems that way but there is always something,
and I showed him my teeth through yellow beer.
 
 
 
Do we old farts say thank you every genuflecting morning
to those poets with agate names who showed us their synapses?
Nowadays the young want us to love the earth,
And I never say out loud to them that my dear old people
Are columns of earth, walk around, sit in chairs,
discard cigarettes and write thatUs left of poems.
They were low lights between mountains visible
To the evening gaze, they were evaporate mornings,
They are not mulch but stones in the earth, they are not
specimens but the authors of words should be whispered inside a dark
bowl
from Siena.
 
I have no remaining skill for form,
 just feel words jostle each other in doorways on the way out, sit
here this
evening remembering a former life, IUm with friends
all lovely all restrained by hope, all agreed without saying so
Qthose poets gave us a way to waste our lives
saying useless things, smiling indulgently at each otherUs personal
diaspora,
carrying mismatched goodies on the way to the grave,
trip, fall into hole, write on dirt walls
a first and last sonnet,
solving all, coming to rest, combing hair, adjusting socks,
kissing no one but the image of Jesus, disbursing mind as if it were
mercury,
listening for the voices to arrive with the worms.
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 10 May 1995 17:49:44 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Carl Lynden Peters 
Subject:      Re: To all appearances... (fwd)
 
a friend of mine just wrote me this. i'm passing it along for any duchamp
fans out there: tony, what do you think:
 
> >"To all appearances, the artist acts like a mediumistic being who, from
> >the labyrinth beyond time and space, seeks his way out to a clearinbg."
>
> Labyrinths have often signified the human's journey through the various
> "twists and turns" of life to the centre, the source of all things and all
> inspirations beyond time and space, the realization of perfection,...
>
> In a related way, the labyrinth may signify a journey towards an ordeal to
> be faced at the centre of the labyrinth, and then the challenge of finding
> one's way out .... on the journey of maturation, to the source ....  The
> myth of the legendary bull-human, the Minotaur at the centre of the Cretan
> labyrinth, is powerfully of this type.
>
> Strikingly, references to mediumistic beings generally refer to shamans.
> (This links back, of course to Tim's work and the book Skin, Bones and
> Stones [exact title?].)  In general, it would mean the transcending of
> material conditions (time and space) to commune with the divine, receive
> inspiration, ...
>
> Also, the shamanistic act is done in service for the collective group and
> humanity. Duchamp may have had this in mind in this subtle, yet powerful
> way, in the identifaction with the artist.
>
> The clearing will definitely be a transformed and transmuted place on
> coming out from the labyrinth -- very much a place of creativity, and it
> would awaken and instill the drive for profound expression.
>
> Thus in outling the above, I would say that this statement from Duchamp, is
> very powerful, compact, and comprehensive, providing a key to us on the
> deeper how and why of creative work.
>
> (Penelope Doob Reed, a York U. English professor, has written a helpful
> book on labyrinths/mazes, The Idea of the Labyrinth from Classical
> Antiquity through the Middle Ages, 1990.  I have heard of another book, The
> Maze in the Mind and the World, by Donald Gutierrez, but I have not read
> it.)
 
carl
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 10 May 1995 21:02:47 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Chris Stroffolino 
Subject:      Re: lyric and/or
 
    aldon---since many of the things i was questioning about preconceptions
           about "popular lyrical music" were "between the lines" of the
           discussion (or "only in my mind"), let me consider, for instance,
           a quote i heard attributed to Robert Kelly that claims that
           while rock lyrics are like looking in a mirror, poetry breaks
           the mirror....
           (end quote--sic). Now, this of course makes poetry more like
           "aleatory" music than lyrics....and is a valuable distinction
           up to a point but one could argue the chance elements in many
           songs, the mixed metaphors even in tin pan alley (or songs like
           "chek to cheek" about "cares" vanishing like a gambler's winning
           or is it loosing streak), and the alea that occurs (perhaps
   unintentionally---but in this day of "author constructs" and authors as
   FALLACIES this shouldn't matter, right?) when the "sentiments" of the
   lyrics seem to clash with the melody they are "couched" in....These
   phrasings, and lyrical hooks, can teach one much about "craft"---and
   about the enigmatic power of cliches....and also why three chords and
   their "lyrical equivalent" are not necessarily "naive" as they might
   seem......Now, sure, maybe I wouldn't have meditated on the "double
   entendres to be found in songs like Tom Wait's "Time," Suzanne Vega's
   "Marlene On The Wall" or even whether the Moody Blues intended quotes
   around "Just what you want to be/You'll be in the end" had they appeared
   in poems rather than in melodies that one rides through the silence...
   but then I'm not one of those who agrees with the Literary Historian who
   calls the "olde English Ballad" a "hybrid" form either...It's only such
   from a specialized perspective that sees music and words as essentially
   distinct. The point I'm trying to make is that it seems why there is so
   little attention devoted SERIOUSLY to rock songs is that it's ultimately
   harder to discuss than either poetry or instrumental music in isolation
   is....(and i certainly don't claim to have found a way to do so, but I
   am curious about moves towards it). Chris Stroffolino
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 10 May 1995 20:15:29 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Herb Levy 
Subject:      Re: lyric and/or
In-Reply-To:  <199505110114.AA04746@mail.eskimo.com>
 
Chris -
 
I don't want to spend too much space on yet another of the music issues
popping up here, but you may want to look at  by Susan
McClary for a couple of chapters looking at Madonna and Laurie Anderson
from the point of view of words set to music.
 
And don't forget songwriter/actor/painter Martin Mull's favorite question
during interviews (it apparently came up with some regularity):
 
Which do you write first, the words or the lyrics?
 
- Herb
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 10 May 1995 22:37:26 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         maria damon 
Subject:      Re: birthdays
 
In message <2fb1505e5985150@maroon.tc.umn.edu> UB Poetics discussion group
writes:
> May 1's "my day" - a haymarket, lawyer fest here in the U.S., May Day has
> crept back into an undercurrent of discontent/content. The Bacchanalia of
> signs. May pole, bar pole, step up to the bar, barred from representative
> gov. (or saddled with it.) I was born on International Workers Day,
> International Lawyers Day  (hokum), and the day of fertility rituals - as
> you say Chris, vat Irony... that who of history... what who?
>
> in all fatness
>
> Pat
 
happy birthday. in minneapolis, may day is THE big holiday of the year, the
leftist and pagan countercultural equivalent to christmas --there's a big parade
and pageant with larger-than-life size puppets which yearly acts out the rescue
and resurrection of the tree of life by the sun, who comes rowing across a lake.
then all the puppets and paraders dance to a jazzy version "you are my
sunshine"-- all the while, off to one side, a platform with the haymarket
martyrs hanging in effigy reminds one and all of that part of history.  like
christmas or the high holidays, its when everyone gets high emotions about who
theyre going to run into at mayday (old lovers , family, etc), whose brunch they
got invited to , etc., all the kids have sparkles and face paint and the little
girls wear tiaras and may-pole like wands, everyone brings blankets and picnics
in the park where the parade ends --etc.  someone shd write something cultural
studiesish about it. it's very charming and rough-hewn, and personally i can't
stand it.--maria
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 11 May 1995 13:25:43 BST
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "I.LIGHTMAN" 
Subject:      Re: Aleatoric Spree
 
Herb,
 
Without flattery, you are great. I retreat. All apologies,
 
Ira
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 11 May 1995 11:25:38 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         David Ball 
Subject:      Re: Ginsberg's rhymes
 
Yeah, *sure* HOWL is "really a series of Petrarchan sonnets."  What isn't?
 
BALL FROM MISSOURI
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 11 May 1995 09:29:01 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Andrew Joron 
Subject:      outside the sign
 
Dear Ed, when you write"There's no real outside what's said"
should I understand you to be in agreement with that famous
statement of Derrida: "Nothing exists outside the sign" ?
Would poetry exist if there wasn't something real that
always manages to defeat or elude signification? I think
we are moved to transform language poetically in the direction
of the unsayable. And our means to do so is an active
principle which you, in a different context, invoked
recently: "the subversive imagination."
                 -- Andrew Joron
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 11 May 1995 11:00:28 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Herb Levy 
Subject:      Re: Aleatoric Spree
X-To:         "I.LIGHTMAN" 
In-Reply-To:  <199505111526.AA10563@mail.eskimo.com>
 
Ira -
 
I didn't want to beat you into retreat or submission.  You really _haven't_
been very clear about the distinction you're trying to draw.
 
While I'm often blunt, I am sorry that my honest requests for
clarification were read in this way.
 
- Herb
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 11 May 1995 20:54:48 +0000
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         cris cheek 
Subject:      Re: Stockhausen and aleatoric composition
X-cc:         "I.LIGHTMAN" 
 
Thought it might be worth posting some other Stockhausen (anybody tuned
into wonderful English band Stock Hausen and Walkman yet?) quotes. He has
rather come to dominate the chance discussion and quite unfairly in my
opinion as he has little to do with it. And I do want this thread to
meander further.
 
'Sung sounds are individual "organic" members of the more comprehensive
"synthetic" sound family. At certain points in the compostion, the sung
sounds become comprehensible words; at others, they remain pure sound
values; between these extremes there are various degrees of
comprehensibility of the word. WHenever speech momentarily emerges from the
sound-symbols in the music, it is to praise GOd (Daniel 3, "Song of the Men
in the Fiery Furnace").
(Notes for 'Gesang der Junglinge' - 1955/56)
 
'. . . the voice of a boy in the unfamiliar surroundings of electronic
sounds. Suppose you would find an apple or an ashtray on a distant star.
What is so common here takes on magic there.'
 
'. . . in Kurzwellen, the players react, while they are actually
performing, to completely unforeseeable events which they receive on
short-wave radios. I composed the process of transformation: HOW they react
to what they hear on the radio; HOW they imitate and modulate it, transpose
it in time - longer or softer; WHEN and HOW and HOW OFTEN they play
synchronously or alternatingly, in duos, trios or quartets; HOW they call
and invite one another to hear 'together' an event wandering for a long
period of time among them, to let it shrink or glow, to compress it or
expand it, to darken it or to lighten it, to concentrate it or to decorate
it playfully.
What could be more general, more suprapersonal, inclusive, universal,
instantaneous than the 'broadcasts' that become musical 'material' in
Kurzwellen? How can we break out of the sealed world of radio waves that
encase our globe like a musical retina? Does not a great deal of what we
receive on our short-wave radios already sound as if it came from quite
different spaces, beyond speech, reportage, "music", morse code?'
(Stockhausen, translated by Rolf Gehlhaar in 1968)
 
These are just two examples but they illustrate Stockhausen as being more
concerned with the borders between Composition and Improvisation than with
chance and aleatoric procedures  -  for me. He goes on to use terminology
such as 'human spirit', 'unity', 'higher unity', 'preconsciousness', While
not being totally humourless (obvious paradoxes such as musical retina
aside) I find the invocation of such 'concepts' (without definition to
focus their use) to be a party to utopian mystification. Quite honestly I
enjoy listening to these earlier pieces (including in addition 'Mikrophonie
I' and 'Mikrophonie II' and 'Mantra') but am bugged by his increasingly
mystical justifications. I feel that Stockhausen really wants to retain
CONTROL whilst appearing to be offering a generous and improvisatory space
to his musicians and chipping away at the block of creator's absoluteness
which was the hard scree of sixties art politics fashion. In fact he often
comes across as being self-important  -  not at all as humble as he might
have tried to act. I found this to be especially true of him 'in person'.
 
Any takers on Miles Davis, Sun Ra or Hermeto Pascoal and more rough hewn
humourous dynamics?    And then what about chance? Hasn't this discussion
been hovering in differentials between 'aleatoric compositon' and
extemporisation / improvisation?
 
cris
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 11 May 1995 18:00:05 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Charles Bernstein 
Organization: University at Buffalo
Subject:      The List Itself (2): How to Unsub and Other Stories
 
In the "Welcome" message for this list I give a misleading instruction on how
to unsubscribe to the list.  To do this send a one line message (no subject
line) to listserv@ubvm.cc.buffalo.edu:
 
unsub poetics
 
do not include your name in this command.
 
You can temporarily stop getting mail (for example if you will be off line for
a while) by sending this message:
 
set poetics nomail
 
and then get mail again by:
 
set poetics mail
 
*this is easier than subbing and unsubbing*
 
& y'all know about:
 
set poetics digest
 
which can be turned off by "set poetics mail"
 
I hope this is all correct!  Let me know if not.
 
****
 
As of today, there are 222 subscribers to Poetics.
 
*****
 
I want to add my thanks to Loss Glazier for the pioneering work he is doing
with EPC.  As things are getting tougher at SUNY, I know there is a greater
squeeze on him at his official library job.  While EPC is exactly the sort of
thing a public university should be committed to supporting, Loss's work on EPC
is all on his own time -- as, of course,  is much of the work of the other
editors and publishers, and poets, hereabouts.
 
If you haven't checked into EPC via WW or lynx, I encourage you to do so, and
to let us know what you think:
 
URL=gopher://writing.upenn.edu/hh/internet/library/e-journals/ub/rift
 
You will find a month by month archive of the Poetics List going back to the
December 8, 1993, announcement of Robin Blaser's The Holy Forest and taking us
through March 1995.  Loss has spent a good deal of time reformatting this
archive to make it easier to read and to search (we also had to manually put
together the files for the first several months of Poetics).
 
AND just out -- the new Rif/t, which I assume most of you get by direct
subscrition, but which is also available at the EPC.  Especially recommend
in the hypertext versions.
 
*****
 
One final note, especially to those who don't post much: PLEASE
post information on your recent publications, books or articles or works
just out or immediately forthcoming.  There are some people on the list
who have had books out in the past few years but never announced them here.
Now is the time!
 
V*i*r*t*u*a*l*l*y y*o*u*r*s,
 
--Charles Bernstein
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 11 May 1995 18:57:32 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Edward Foster 
Subject:      Re: outside the sign
 
andrew, yes, but the big D. (a voice outside my house from the start) said it was all writing. to me, anyway, augustine was wrong; "signification
 
 
 
" isn't it. we don't mean, tho critics try. the phrase is leonard's, but i love subversion, so agree.
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 12 May 1995 04:13:46 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         John Byrum 
Subject:      Re: against quietism
 
The first & arguably only systematically aleatoric piece produced through me
was titled GENERATOR & eventually led (via twists & turns) to my deciding to
do GENERATOR Press.
 
How much Real really gets transformed via poetry?
 
Corollary:  How much Real really gets transformed via poetry in the USA?
 
Is it like Beckett's heap of sand grains blown one by one in the wind?
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 12 May 1995 04:21:47 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         John Byrum 
Subject:      Re: Aleatoric Spree
 
It is important to virtually evaginate hamburger
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 12 May 1995 13:42:12 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         David Ball 
Subject:      Re: The List Itself (2): How to Unsub and Other Stories
 
this is one of the "Other Stories".  Since you point out that "some people on
the list...have books out in the past few years but never announced them here"
--I'm one of them, with the great visionary Henri Michaux, thus:
 
DARKNESS MOVES: AN HENRI MICHAUX ANTHOLOGY 1927-1984
Selected, translated and presented by David Ball
University of California Press, 1994
 
342 pages
 
Selections from all Michaux's major collections.  30 pp. of plates (b&w,
unfortunately--choice of Michaux's drawings and paintings).
 
$30 well worth it.
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 12 May 1995 10:59:05 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Ryan Knighton 
Subject:      Re: really Real
In-Reply-To:  <199505120815.BAA20576@whistler.sfu.ca> from "John Byrum" at May
              12, 95 04:13:46 am
 
John Byrum throws out the question "How much Real is transformed
via poetry?"
 
I favour Spicer's idea of correspondings, as put in "After
Lorca".  The idea that the real is not in poetry, but that
poetry creates corresponding times and places.  It carries the
real across making this lemon correspond with your lemon.  I suppose
there isn't transformation happening, as the real is not being
treated, but seeking some kind of agreement, maybe.
 
By the by, did anyone catch today's interview with the translator
of Perec's eless work? It was on CBC this morning.
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 12 May 1995 16:12:09 EDT
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
Comments:     Converted from PROFS to RFC822 format by PUMP V2.2X
From:         Alan Golding 
Subject:      Self-promotion
 
Associate Professor of English, U. of Louisville
Phone: (502)-852-5918; e-mail: acgold01@ulkyvm.louisville.edu
 
Thought some of you might like to know of my recent book publication, which
arrived in my own hot little hands this Wed: From Outlaw to Classic: Canons in
American Poetry (Univ. of Wisconsin Press). $52.00 cloth (!! I thought of
trying to claim it's cheap at the price, but . . .), $19.95 paper.
 
Alan
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 12 May 1995 16:37:16 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Michael Boughn 
Subject:      Re: Olson and rhyme
 
Forget Christensen, here's Charlie Hisself:
 
        Astride
        the Cabot
        fault,
 
        one leg upon the Ocean one leg
        upon the Westward drifting continent,
 
        to build out of sound the wall
        of a city
 
        . . .  (from Max III.37)
 
and later
 
        Each Night is No Loss,  It is a daily eclipse,
        by the Earth, of the Sun
 
                the universe unfolded in sound, light
                is only the drum--the hourglass--of the earth's atmosphere
                not the sun which is an orange lozenge
                nailed on blackness above our air, sound first
                even before color of the darkness and the blue
                or green or red, of eyes, night itself
                only an eclipse by the earth of the sun, so air
                or night conducts as dreams: we are
                wrapped in the elephant's
                skin, all the outside of
                all above deadly
                destruction which the species now craves
                wrapping itself in impenetrable garments
                & chasing in little cars motion
                of a receding
                universe, rushing
                to return, helplessly in time, out of time, outside
                the lucky
                sky, dancing
                Ganesh, all cock
                and axe, Him in
                skin, right foot stamp on
                Sloth, fear-not
                any thing, left foot lifted--_gaja_
                --delight
 
                (from Max III.78)
 
Say those last 8 lines real carefully and you can begin to hear "the
universe unfolded in sound" and glimpse the wall of his city
 
Mike
mboughn@epas.utoronto.ca
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 12 May 1995 22:19:38 +0000
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         cris cheek 
Subject:      Re: and desire / the 39 steps
X-cc:         Edward Foster 
 
now is the season for light. lines of hot skin and leisure spills.
exhuberant buds trumpet green domestic slips breath between scented wet
fingers. beneath beach - houses cooked by profusions of moss over failure a
midsummer fog forms allure
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 12 May 1995 22:19:53 +0000
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         cris cheek 
Subject:      Re: and desire / the 39 steps
X-cc:         Edward Foster 
 
fear not. and captains of restraint. chances are honey that hover jack
home. uncurling ferns will occupy this caption writ in red. a rude calling
its voice out past the melting poles to bloom. bruising his life from him.
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 13 May 1995 00:41:01 +0000
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         cris cheek 
Subject:      Re: chance/trust
 
>cris, hi: pollock was right on the mark when he said that. but then he
>was a high thinking painter, too.
>
>take care,
>carl
 
Hi Carl  -  as one Duchamp 'fan' to another  -  in what ways can thinking
be 'high' painting?
 
love and love
cris
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 12 May 1995 17:09:00 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "Sheila E. Murphy" 
Subject:      Re: New Publications
 
At Charles Bernstein's suggestion, here are two publications I'll make you
aware of:  one half new; the other, just off the press:
 
PURE MENTAL BREATH was brought out by Gesture Press at the end of 1994.
Features photography by Blaine Spiegel and Poetry by me.  81 pages of text.
Ordering information:  Nick Power, Editor.  Gesture Press 68 Tyrrel Avenue
Toronto, Ont. Canada M6G 2G4.  Price in U.S. is $12.00, I believe.  And
$15.00 Canadian, if I'm not mistaken. AVAILABLE THROUGH SMALL PRESS
DISTRIBUTION.
 
A CLOVE OF GENDER by yours truly just emerged from Stride Press. 158 pages.
Ordering information:  Rupert Loydell, Editor.  Stride Press.  11 Sylvan
Road, Exeter, Devon. EX4 6EW England. English price 7.95, so I assume the
U.S. price will be about $16.00, but don't have final information yet.
AVAILABLE THROUGH SMALL PRESS DISTRIBUTION.
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 12 May 1995 23:57:52 -0400
Reply-To:     Robert Drake 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Robert Drake 
Subject:      Re: Self-promotion
 
alan--
 
could you give us a bit more info about your "Outlaw to Classic..."
release?
 
lbd
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 13 May 1995 16:26:03 GMT+1300
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Wystan Curnow 
Organization: English Dept. - Univ. of Auckland
Subject:      Re: chance/trust
X-To:         cris@SLANG.DEMON.CO.UK
 
Dear Cris 'n Carl,
                Just to extend this to another generation of high thinking--
as in 'high steppin'' I took it--Sigmar Polke, and his famous HOHERE WESEN
BEFAHLEN: RECHTE OBERE ECKE SCHWARZ MALEN! (Higher Beings Command: Paint the
top right hand corner black!) c.1966. Apart from these words, the canvas is
blank except for its black corner on the top right. he also did a painting
of flamingos which was accompanied by the following text ( it was in german)
       I stood in front of the canvas and tried to paint a bunch of
       flowers. Then I received fromhigher beings the command: No
       bunches of flowers! Paint flamingos! At first I tried to continue
       painting. But then I realised that they meant business.
 
Wystan
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 13 May 1995 00:10:02 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Gary Sullivan 
Subject:      Re: really Real
In-Reply-To:  <199505122129.OAA10979@mailhost.primenet.com>
 
On Fri, 12 May 1995, Ryan Knighton wrote:
 
> John Byrum throws out the question "How much Real is transformed
> via poetry?"
>=20
> I favour Spicer's idea of correspondings, as put in "After
> Lorca".  The idea that the real is not in poetry, but that
> poetry creates corresponding times and places.  It carries the
> real across making this lemon correspond with your lemon.  I suppose
> there isn't transformation happening, as the real is not being
> treated, but seeking some kind of agreement, maybe.
 
Dear Ryan:
 
                           REFUSAL OF THE REAL
 
                The world must be mediated by art--fat
                Inklings, cruelty to admire, & tears
                Falling into lines of human habitation.=20
                Why is the highway straight? The easier
                To carry battle-goods across the Rock-
                Ies. Day breaks through this thin lens,
                From our mouth to yours, the taste of a
                Piece with the style. There are only two
                Kinds of people in this world: Those
                Herding animals & those of us clinging
                To buses, sweet noise wrapped around
                Our every neck. Waking up a thousand
                Times a day, we just move along, fists
                Full of beer, bees, whatever. Rattling
Light, the mouth a birdcage, words birdshot through this stable world of=20
=09mostly solid objects, always jumping out of
Hand. Head spinning down the spine=FE& what else can you do? It's not about=
=20
=09accumulation, & it's really nothing like
Love; It's about change drilling up through the earth, flower noise,=20
=09intense levels of energy below particularities on a
Shelf fanning out by itself. Are we willing to accept any
=09situation--however false--and make it true? Any piece of writing
Patterned to the effect that everyone is everywhere in bondage, this
=09substitution of language. But where will we go to-
Night? You were watched as you took this upstairs to your room, if
=09that gives you any idea; the brightness of a forgotten
Sun is placed gratis at our disposal. Countless are the beauties of land=20
=09& sea we've already seen, shining brilliantly in the
Light of our eyes. Take a little sun, & make love when you want to make=20
=09love, however long it's kept. Pool ideas into
Mail, literally, & grow vague. The stone's poisonous vapors are as yet=20
=09unspent, and bees & moths lay dead in such
Heaps that we cannot see the color of the earth beneath. We don't have to=
=20
=09get every detail. Do we? To the sides of the
Road, the country is flat, the soil dry & rectangular. We are, as far
=09as we know, the only ones here. The only thing the
Matter with this is that, when we leave, "it" will still be here. Its=20
=09direction. What separates men is not a question, but
Water, smiles against each evened shore. Someone to stand with for a=20
=09distance. Someone twisting through every previous
Example. Dreams & memory on the stairs, other windows facing it--yet this=
=20
=09still fails to explain how objects fly through
                Air, burst into flame: that is, fails to ex-
                Plain (a) anything, and/or (b) what, if
                Anything, we can do about it. To insist,
                On anything, whoever's driving, who-
                Ever's giving signals, we laugh with our
                Teeth, veer earthward toward its feeble
                Salute. Back on our back, the battle echo-
                Ing overhead near the exit. The waters
                Part; a belch shakes you; a lot of talk
                Follows. Silence is convincing, a bond.=20
                The infinite trembling of stars mocking
                Emptiness, indifferent to our beseeching
                Hands, careless of the consequences of
                What could never, will never take place.=20
=20
Yours,
 
Gary
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 13 May 1995 01:47:11 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Jake Berry 
Subject:      Re: really Real
 
 "How much Real is transformed
via poetry?"
 
Poetry is the unfolding courses of the real. Jack Foley, in his STANZAS FROM
DJERASSI says,
 
to stay
at the edge
of blackness
to
keep
faith
with
light
 
Poetry is the real projecting in one of the million directions into the
unknown, shedding light, advancing outward. Poetry is the real at the
threshold, authenticity before reality checks in.
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 13 May 1995 02:51:34 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Jake Berry 
Subject:      Re: chance/trust
 
re Duchamp, and chance/ trust,
 
imagine this space without the projection
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 13 May 1995 01:45:37 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         George Bowering 
Subject:      Re: Ginsberg's rhymes
In-Reply-To:  <199505111817.LAA08960@whistler.sfu.ca> from "David Ball" at May
              11, 95 11:25:38 am
 
If you read aloud, in Latin, and carefully, I think that you will
find that Petrarch was writing free verse.
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 13 May 1995 11:11:00 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Kenneth Goldsmith 
Subject:      call for spoken word/sound-text works
 
I am a producer and DJ at a New York radio station, WFMU-FM 91.1. We are
100% Freeform and 100% Listener-Sponsored. (For what it's worth, for the
past 4 years Rolling Stone has named us as  the best radio station in the
US).
 
I run a weekly show featuring spoken-word,sound-text works, New Music,
and experimental pop. Good spoken-word/sound-text work is hard to come by
and I would like to encourage all who engage in this activity to send me
tapes, CD's, LP's, reel-to-reels, or DAT's for broadcast.
 
Kenneth Goldsmith
611 Broadway #702
New York, NY 10012  USA
ph/fax 212-925-6931
 
I have already featured the _Live At The Ear Inn_ CD several times as
well as work by Jackson Mac Low, Joan La Barbara, Gregory Whitehead,
Jacki Apple, Alison Knowles, Coyle & Sharpe, Ulla Dydo on Gertrude Stein,
Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, James Joyce, Decio Pignitari, David Antin,
Wildman Fischer, John Cage, Allen Ginsberg, Marcel Duchamp, Paul Dutton,
Richard Klein & Mark Hosler, Negativland, Derek Bailey, Henri Chopin, F.T.
Marinetti...the list could go on forever but you get the point. I tend to
broadcast stuff that I love over and over.
 
I am also interested in getting my hands on historical/obscure recordings
for airplay. If anyone knows of great resources for this sort of
material please contact me.
 
Thanks,
 
Kenneth
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 13 May 1995 10:22:11 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Gary Sullivan 
Subject:      Re: really Real
In-Reply-To:  <199505130541.WAA05340@mailhost.primenet.com>
 
Whoops! Sorry about the totally fucked up formatting job. Those "90="
dealies were *not* intentional. (But, admittedly, they're real.)
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 13 May 1995 10:29:05 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Carl Lynden Peters 
Subject:      Re: chance/trust
 
hi cris,
 
lets not even think in terms of painting, but to paraphrase levi-strauss,
art's only as good as it thinks.
 
take care,
carl
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 13 May 1995 10:40:05 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Carl Lynden Peters 
Subject:      known/real/unknown
 
--just to add this to the discussion on poetry and the real
("jouissance!"), is any one familiar with this essay by canadian artist
vera frenkel: "Benign Ignorance"? it first came out in a 1977 edition of
what was then artscanada (now canadian art, i think). "Benign ignorance
can be described as a state of unfocused awareness that permits us to
link the confusing world with the deep metaphoric formulations inside us
which are strategies for its apprehension. To reach these and give them
form in art requires setting knowledge aside, reclaiming it later as
necessary.
        It follows from this that a work of art is as good as the amount
of knowledge and ignorance it holds in balance. The more conflicting
knowledge a work can hold suspended in a transforming ignorance, the
better it teaches us to see" (27).
 
interesting to note that the opening epigram is lionel kearns' great
concrete poem: "The Birth of God."
 
carl
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 13 May 1995 10:52:11 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Carl Lynden Peters 
Subject:      Polke
 
Wystan,
 
--enjoyed _reading_ Polke's painting, as you articulate it. He's a
radical painter, because he doesn't think like a painter
 
take care,
carl
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 13 May 1995 11:31:16 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "Aldon L. Nielsen" 
Subject:      Re: Nothing
In-Reply-To:  <9505120719.AA20258@isc.sjsu.edu>
 
Here we go again, to paraphrase our memoriuos ex-president, Ronald X.
 
Please!  Before anyone again refers to the notoripus"nothing outside the
text" line, go read Michael Berube's discussion of the translation of
that line in his book _Public Access_, (Verso eds.)
 
For a long list of philosophers who have had something to say about
nothing, see the Encyclopedia of Philosophy, where nothing is summed up
rather nicely.
 
Ed, is Derrida still outside your old house, or did he follow along to
the outside of your new place?
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 13 May 1995 11:39:44 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "Aldon L. Nielsen" 
Subject:      Re: promoting self & other
In-Reply-To:  <9505130453.AA14097@isc.sjsu.edu>
 
lbd -- Alan's probably already answering your call for a description, so
I will simply add a testimonial.  I have heard Alan present individual
sections of his critical study of anthologies over recent years, and the
work has been consistently insightful and valuable.  I would think it
just the thing you'd like to read, given your historicizing efforts in
poetry.
 
& a plug of my own --
 
Writing between the Lines: Race and Intertextuality.  pub'd last Summer
by U of Georgia Press at an unconscionable price (but cheaper than Alan's
hardback!) -- not yet in paper so look for it in the library at your
nearest college. -- next one will be in simultaneous paper & cloth from
Cambridge,, next year.
 
Do all Sun Ra fans know that the peculiar address he published some years
ago in Nate Mackey's Hambone is now available on CD, along with a concert
from the same era, ?? title is Live from Sounscape, on DIW.
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 13 May 1995 18:07:36 EST
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         kathryne lindberg 
Subject:      Re: Olson and rhyme
In-Reply-To:  Message of Fri, 12 May 1995 16:37:16 -0400 from
              
 
I can't seem to remember right off hand, bookless, where Olson uses
"postmodern."  Jamming to finish a piece of cyberspace before
Johnnt Mnemonic comes out at the local cinema, I hope you will
forgive this simple query.  My flu prvents my crossing town to
get the book from the office.  So, where does Olson use the term
"postmodern" for his now?  Thanks.  By the way, his engagement of Norbert
Wiener is most interesting and not.
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 13 May 1995 23:36:24 +0000
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         cris cheek 
Subject:      Re: Aleatoric Spree
 
>It is important to virtually evaginate hamburger
 
John I'd like to take issue with you on this matter but I agree. More
ple3ase. Nothing but admiration.
 
love
 
cris
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 13 May 1995 21:01:10 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Bob Perelman 
Subject:      Re: Olson and rhyme
In-Reply-To:  <9505132211.AA15016@dept.english.upenn.edu> from "kathryne
              lindberg" at May 13, 95 06:07:36 pm
 
As I remember, Olson uses postmodern in a letter to Creeley in 1951
(52?); in Vol 1 (Vol 2?) of their correspondence. On some scrap of paper
somewhere I may have the page number; I looked it up once.
 
Bob Perelman
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 13 May 1995 21:03:21 EST
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         kathryne 
Subject:      Re: Olson and rhyme
In-Reply-To:  Message of Sat, 13 May 1995 21:01:10 -0400 from
              
 
Thank you, Bob, I think I do have those letters here at home, too.
Good to hear your voice; I am sure Olson would say "voice."  Perhaps
I shouldn't, then.  I am hoping that I find another of those paper scraps
if it turns out not being the correspondence.  Pretty sure, though, it's
not the "Mayan Letters."  I'll give this a shot.
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 14 May 1995 01:43:50 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Marisa A Januzzi 
Subject:      atavistic ref. to rhyme...
In-Reply-To:  <199505071310.AA06250@mailhub.cc.columbia.edu>
 
Stein's
lines
misaligning
chime
inclining
rhymes
 
Words for H.T. Kirby-Smith, explainer of Dylan Thomas poems (I thought
the lines in "Fern Hill" got small at the belly of each stanza to
connote navel-gazing, but wondered what I was missing)
 
speaking of revenence
 
Does rhyme give a structure to nostalgia?
 
Does anyone read Edna Millay any more ("We were very young, we were very
merry") whose work typifies the problem, but also occasionally breaks out
of it?
 
Bye for now--
--Marisa
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 14 May 1995 01:51:01 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Alan Sondheim 
Subject:      Re: atavistic ref. to rhyme...
In-Reply-To:  <199505140546.BAA07786@panix4.panix.com>
 
Well, I read Edna, on the ferry and elsewhere, and don't find a problem
there, it's still east-village now.
 
If rhyme gives structure to nostalgia, I'd think it's on the level of
repetition in neural networks at the first, also the infolding or
implicate order of the poem, collapse into auto-fetishization, neither
sound nor meaning: not-language, incantation. But the buildup of a
structure in the mind, and not memory in the sense of recall, but in the
sense of the fit of a frame.
 
Would always read Edna. By the way, some of her best work is in her
translations from Baudelaire. Not Baudelaire, not Edna, but definitely
late-night, like the Smiths who are playing in this room as I write.
 
Alan
 
On Sun, 14 May 1995, Marisa A Januzzi wrote:
 
> Stein's
> lines
> misaligning
> chime
> inclining
> rhymes
>
> Words for H.T. Kirby-Smith, explainer of Dylan Thomas poems (I thought
> the lines in "Fern Hill" got small at the belly of each stanza to
> connote navel-gazing, but wondered what I was missing)
>
> speaking of revenence
>
> Does rhyme give a structure to nostalgia?
>
> Does anyone read Edna Millay any more ("We were very young, we were very
> merry") whose work typifies the problem, but also occasionally breaks out
> of it?
>
> Bye for now--
> --Marisa
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 14 May 1995 11:06:55 EST
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "H. T. KIRBY-SMITH" 
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro
Subject:      Maximissima
 
If you read Petrarch's sonnets in Italian in just the right way they
sound exactly like Olson, especially the famous one in which he
addresses Laura as "cara maximissima."
 
 
Tom Kirby-Smith
English Department
UNC-Greensboro
Greensboro NC  27412
 
Phone: (910) 334-3280
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 14 May 1995 17:42:16 BST
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "I.LIGHTMAN" 
Subject:      Re: really Real
 
Gary Sullivan, you are the *best*! Thanks for the poetry, Ira
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 14 May 1995 18:07:38 BST
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "I.LIGHTMAN" 
Subject:      Re: Aleatoric Spree
 
Herb (and Cris)
 
As I said, thanks for all the stuff you posted about Cage, which has
been really illuminating; and thanks to John Byrum whose post on Jackson
MacLow, chance and sentimentality was great, as Cris has already said
(to me anyway). I hope you don't really mind that I'm retreating, it's
what I *want* to do.
 
I'm a fan of lots of MacLow's Pieces of Six book, don't know about
"sentimentality" as what I think is likeably found or avoided, *in*
the text, I thought sentimentality was a good description of the hopes
and claims invested in the genre at the point MacLow ducked it, I
like the freshness, the feeling of discovery, in the Pieces of Six.
But one thing that's been on my mind since I read it has been the way
that in the explicit sex scene in the book MacLow uses phrases like
"then I was inside her", and I'm amazed that explicit sex scene
language thus seems to evade MacLow's concern elsewhere through the
book to see language as surface sometimes, to take metaphors literally
and explore why metaphors have mystified themselves into realist
"descriptive" language.
 
I mean, surely he doesn't mean his entire body from head to toe *was*
inside a sexual partner's entire body from head to toe, especially
without specifying how this happened!Transporter beam, phase-shift?
 
Anyone else interested in the chances writers take in using metaphors
about the body?
 
Ira
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 14 May 1995 10:22:25 +0100
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Kevin Killian 
Subject:      body metaphors
 
>Anyone else interested in the chances writers take in using metaphors
>about the body?
>
>Ira
 
Ira,
 
Totally, totally.
 
I learned how to write about the body from gay men, I learned how to write
about my own body from gay men.  I remember reading a passage in one of
Kevin's pieces where he compares his penis to the logo of a world's
fair--and it was like click, shift--I got it.  And my writing changed right
there on the spot.
 
I'm not sure how to describe it, but it's certainly not about description,
or equivalences even.  The text as its own seductive surface.
 
XOX,
Dodie
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 14 May 1995 13:28:09 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Ryan Knighton 
Subject:      Re: really Real
In-Reply-To:  <199505131524.IAA03046@whistler.sfu.ca> from "Gary Sullivan" at
              May 13, 95 10:22:11 am
 
Well I guess this is aleatoric realism.  thanks for the wonderful reply.
 
Gary Sullivan writes:
 
>
> Whoops! Sorry about the totally fucked up formatting job. Those "90="
> dealies were *not* intentional. (But, admittedly, they're real.)
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 14 May 1995 13:36:01 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Ryan Knighton 
Subject:      Re: body metaphors
In-Reply-To:  <199505142011.NAA05722@whistler.sfu.ca> from "Kevin Killian" at
              May 14, 95 10:22:25 am
 
i loved Nichol's Selected Organs for this reason.  Teh body was
a narrative into itself.
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 14 May 1995 16:03:14 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "Aldon L. Nielsen" 
Subject:      Re: it's hard to get the news
In-Reply-To:  <9505140359.AA12777@isc.sjsu.edu>
 
This morning's LA Times Book Review reprints a poem by Rae Amrantrout!
You New Yorkers can get the LA Times even if you can't find the book.
 
Also -- re: Olson's postmodern -- think the early parts of the ND
Selected also use the term -- book is at office, so I can't check till
tomorrow.
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 14 May 1995 21:46:59 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Chris Stroffolino 
Subject:      Re: really Real
 
   Is it just me, or when others see this discussion "really Real" does that
   song "Spanish Harlem Incident" start dancing in one's (I'll say) head
   ---"So I can know if I am really real." chris
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 14 May 1995 22:50:51 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Tim Waples 
Subject:      Re: really Real
In-Reply-To:  <9505150203.AA18407@dept.english.upenn.edu> from "Chris
              Stroffolino" at May 14, 95 09:46:59 pm
 
According to Chris Stroffolino:
>
>    Is it just me, or when others see this discussion "really Real" does that
>    song "Spanish Harlem Incident" start dancing in one's (I'll say) head
>    ---"So I can know if I am really real." chris
 
Chris: It's just you. For me, it's Van Morrison's "You're My Woman," which
goes extra-heavy on the reallys. That's how you know it's poetry.....Tim
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 14 May 1995 22:26:52 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         George Bowering 
Subject:      Re: really Real
In-Reply-To:  <199505150252.TAA20474@whistler.sfu.ca> from "Tim Waples" at May
              14, 95 10:50:51 pm
 
I dunno about all that talk re songs that remiond one of the "really
real". I havent spent much time listening to kids' music, so I have
always tried to get the real somewhere else.
 
Like Randolph Scott movies!
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 14 May 1995 22:39:59 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         George Bowering 
Subject:      Re: Olson and rhyme
In-Reply-To:  <199505132210.PAA17673@whistler.sfu.ca> from "kathryne lindberg"
              at May 13, 95 06:07:36 pm
 
I am curious as to whether Olson's Catholicism influenced his use of
the term "postmodern" 44 years ago---because the Church used the
terms "modernism" and "postmodernism" before the First World War.
=========================================================================