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Date: Mon, 15 May 1995 08:37:39 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: maria damon <damon001@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
Subject: Re: Olson and rhyme
In message <2fb6e9c948e7002@maroon.tc.umn.edu> UB Poetics discussion group
writes:
> 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.
Interesting! can you give us more information on this? in what context?--maria
d
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Date: Mon, 15 May 1995 11:37:32 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Tom Mandel <tmandel@UMD5.UMD.EDU>
Subject: Re: unsolo locus
Yes, let me concur about Locus Solus; this magazine, along with
Art & Literature, is (to me) the most essential reading ofthe
sixties.
Tom Mandel
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Date: Mon, 15 May 1995 11:41:25 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Edward Foster <EFOSTER@VAXC.STEVENS-TECH.EDU>
Subject: Re: really Real
this misreads Spicer and the privilege of correspondence. correspondence is neither creation nor transformation but recognition. even emerson, however absorbed he was with mutability, knew that. nor is there seeking, which is academic, willed.
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Date: Mon, 15 May 1995 11:00:01 EDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Bruce Comens <COMENS@TEMPLEVM.BITNET>
Subject: Re: promoting self & other
In-Reply-To: Message of Sat, 13 May 1995 11:39:44 -0700 from
<anielsen@SPARTA.SJSU.EDU>
First the other: Poetics list readers will likely enjoy Doug Gunn's
new book of stories, _The Invention of Violence_, available for $11.95
with free postage and handling from Cinco Puntos Press, 2709 Louisville,
El Paso, TX 79930, of 1-800-566-9072. 160 pages of work, blurbs by Creeley
and Olson (Toby, not Charles): "I know of no other recent writer whose
language has captured the world with such authenticity. Reading Douglas
Gunn's fiction, I think of John Berger on van Gogh: 'Wherever he looked
he saw the labour of existence; and this labour, recognized as such, for him
constituted reality.'"
Now the self: _Apocalypse and After: Modern Strategy and Postmodern Tactics
in Pound, Williams, and Zukofsky_, pub. 1995 by the University of Alabama
Press. $24.95 in paper (blurbs included)--and it actually seems to be
available in the Borders Book Chain.
I agree with Charles (Bernstein, not Olson): there should be more of this.
Awkward as it is to plug one's own work, it's good to hear directly about
others' books.
Bruce Comens
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Date: Mon, 15 May 1995 11:55:21 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Edward Foster <EFOSTER@VAXC.STEVENS-TECH.EDU>
Subject: Re: New Publications
the new talisman books include Gerrit Lansing's _Heavenly Tree / Soluble Forest_, Joseph Donahue's _World Well Broken_, and Gustaf Sobin's _Selected Poems_, all in bookstores now or soon. so they're there, reason for joy!
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Date: Mon, 15 May 1995 12:06:52 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Edward Foster <EFOSTER@VAXC.STEVENS-TECH.EDU>
Subject: Re: Nothing
well, aldon, D is hard to shake, and yes, he did try camping out there on the street, screaming, there's no outside the house, to whomever come who may, so we bundled him for recycling, which, given his ideas, was exactly what he deserved.
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Date: Mon, 15 May 1995 13:39:09 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Robert Kelly <kelly@BARD.EDU>
Subject: Re: Olson and rhyme
In-Reply-To: <199505150535.BAA42425@core.bard.edu>
My guess is that Olson would have known vaguely of the "Modernism" the
Church berated at the turn of the Century, that French thing with its
English influences, but I don't think that knowledge would have shaded
his sense of Modernism as the Joyce/Pound thing. (I can't in fact locate
in my reading or memory any period of Olson's life when he studied _as_ a
Catholic; his schooling was secular, and I never noticed the aura of
Catholic academic intellectualism about him. And Modernism was not
something inveighed against in church pulpits so much as in editorials in
the Catholic press. Though Modernism was _always_ a bad name.)
As far as I can tell, Postmodernism was first used by the Revd Bernard
Iddings Bell, an Episcopal divine buried a mile from me. I've seen the
reference, it dates to well before the man in the street thought of
Modernism in any but the ecclesiastical, Gallican, anti-ultramontane
position.
==================================================
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, 14 May 1995, George Bowering wrote:
> 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.
>
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 15 May 1995 11:05:08 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jeffrey Timmons <mnamna@IMAP1.ASU.EDU>
Subject: Re: Olson and Catholicism
X-To: maria damon <damon001@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
In-Reply-To: <9505151515.AA18569@imap1.asu.edu>
Just a note:
I don't believe he discusses Olson, but Paul Giles' Catholic
Fictions is a good source on the influence of catholicism on such figures
as Fitzgerald, Warhol, and, even Mapplethorpe (if I'm remembering correctly).
Jeffrey Timmons
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Date: Mon, 15 May 1995 14:43:49 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: David Ball <DBALL@SMITH.SMITH.EDU>
Subject: Re: unsolo locus
I agree: Locus Solus great journal. Having a poem in there pleases me still.
YOUNG IN THE SIXTIES
aka David Ball
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Date: Mon, 15 May 1995 11:52:58 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Carl Lynden Peters <clpeters@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: really Real
In-Reply-To: <199505151805.LAA05592@whistler.sfu.ca> from "Edward Foster" at
May 15, 95 11:41:25 am
>
> this misreads Spicer and the privilege of correspondence. correspondence is neit
> her creation nor transformation but recognition. even emerson, however absorbed
> he was with mutability, knew that. nor is there seeking, which is academic, will
> ed.
>
no. to re-cognize is to create. ok, it's to re-create. there are no artists
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Date: Mon, 15 May 1995 16:07:48 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Edward Foster <EFOSTER@VAXC.STEVENS-TECH.EDU>
Subject: Re: really Real
back to that really Real, if in fact "prose invents--poetry discloses," does it follow that the Real is that which does not alter? I think Spicer's lemon is a nice twist on Mallarme's flower not in any . . . .
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 15 May 1995 13:48:08 +0100
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Kevin Killian <dbkk@SIRIUS.COM>
Subject: Re: really Real
It's very difficult and bizarre to keep seeing all these subject lines with
the word Real in them, capitalized no less, since, as most of you don't
seem to know, that is the name of my Talsiman House book. These subject
lines make me feel very definitely unreal.
Real.
It's a word I've thought a lot about. I don't see how it could pass from
anyone's lips or slip off the tips of anyone's typing fingers, without the
deepest of irony.
That's my two cents.
Dodie Bellamy
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Date: Mon, 15 May 1995 19:12:40 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: maria damon <damon001@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
Subject: Re: really Real
In message <2fb7e6036cbb002@maroon.tc.umn.edu> UB Poetics discussion group
writes:
> It's very difficult and bizarre to keep seeing all these subject lines with
> the word Real in them, capitalized no less, since, as most of you don't
> seem to know, that is the name of my Talsiman House book. These subject
> lines make me feel very definitely unreal.
>
> Real.
>
> It's a word I've thought a lot about. I don't see how it could pass from
> anyone's lips or slip off the tips of anyone's typing fingers, without the
> deepest of irony.
>
> That's my two cents.
>
> Dodie Bellamy
yes --and to add to the maze of allusions, remember "it's got to be REAL" as the
theme song of Paris is Burning, in which the criteria for winning drag-contests
was "realness" --i.e. successful simulation --to the point of boundary-blurring
--calling "reality" into question. --then there's also the california version,
where "real" the adjective functions as "really" the adverb, so that things are
"real real." --maria d
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Date: Mon, 15 May 1995 20:31:20 -0400
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Chris Stroffolino <LS0796@ALBNYVMS.BITNET>
Subject: Re: really Real
yeah tim and then there's "I've Been Working" which repeats the word
"woman" I think 8 times in crescendo succession....
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Date: Mon, 15 May 1995 17:49:03 +0100
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Kevin Killian <dbkk@SIRIUS.COM>
Subject: Re: really Real
>yes --and to add to the maze of allusions, remember "it's got to be REAL"
>as the
>theme song of Paris is Burning, in which the criteria for winning drag-contests
>was "realness" --i.e. successful simulation --to the point of boundary-blurring
>--calling "reality" into question. --then there's also the california version,
>where "real" the adjective functions as "really" the adverb, so that things are
>"real real."
Very excellent, Maria.
--Dodie
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Date: Mon, 15 May 1995 18:20:16 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ron Silliman <rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM>
Subject: Re: really Real
It's the real thing. It's Coke.
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 15 May 1995 21:32:49 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" <anielsen@SPARTA.SJSU.EDU>
Subject: Re: really real postmodernity
In-Reply-To: <9505160409.AA01936@isc.sjsu.edu>
Ah, yes -- there it is, just as I remembered it -- on pg. 44 of the ND
Olson Selected Writings, in the piece titled "Quantity in Verse, and
Shakespeare's Late Plays," Olson refers to "a man as post-modern as
Lawrence . . ."!!! Jarrell had by that time already used the word,
indicating to us that Altieri didn't really have to "Enlarge the temple"
that much to get his guys in --
Second most annoying phrase of my sixties youth -- heard at high school
with some frequency -- "It was real!"
store near my office sells "real margarine"
and that was to have been "Armantrout" in my last, not "Amrantrout,"
which would be some evil conflation of David and Rae, a mistake I would
not want to make -- sorry Rae; you can call me alan nelson next time we
meet, like evrybody else does,,,,
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Date: Mon, 15 May 1995 21:55:31 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Lindz Williamson <lmichell@UNIXG.UBC.CA>
Subject: Hola
In-Reply-To: <199505160439.VAA26601@unixg.ubc.ca>
I'm back from Mehico and my cross Canada adventure. Picked up a copy of
Caprice in a Used book store on Queen St. Nice cover, did you pick it
out George? Might pop into pub night on Friday, tell me if you're
leaving town this weekend Ryan. Joanne's coming by tomorrow to get the
low down on my travels. Can someone fill me in on the latest list topics
so I can catch up? Thanks
Lindz
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Date: Tue, 16 May 1995 00:57:44 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: John Byrum <JMBYRUM@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: Aleatoric Spree: HAMBURGER
Chris:
Re the virtual evagination of hamburger line I let out awhile back: would
love to comment on it but now can't remember the specific message it was
addressing. Do you?
Best,
John
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 16 May 1995 16:58:25 GMT+1200
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Tony Green <t.green@AUCKLAND.AC.NZ>
Organization: The University of Auckland
Subject: Re: against quietism
Andrew Joron writes 10 May: "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."
There is an old dubious myth that "acceptance" must be somehow passive.
"Working with the given" (i.e. not wishing for the stars, accepting
the actualities) wd be an
attitude that could be useful. I don't know whether that is out of
accord with Buddhism or Taoism, but it sounds like
a sensible way of carrying on.
I'm off out again for a few days, thought I'd drop by and pick up the
mail (119 posts). Sandra Braman's been here for South Pacific
Economic Conference and gone and I forgot to buy
her a hokey-pokey ice-cream
And this is what I find when I come back in?
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 16 May 1995 17:11:17 GMT+1200
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Tony Green <t.green@AUCKLAND.AC.NZ>
Organization: The University of Auckland
Subject: Re: To all appearances... (fwd)
Dear Carl,
I've got no further with the labyrinth that Duchamp
specifically mentions which is the one "beyond space and time". The
puzzle is not what is a labyrinth but what is Marcel doing beyond the
frame of space and time, and trying to find his way out of that. I
can only guess that this is a recognition of a state of
consciousness, from which he has to find his way out, to the
particulars of these dimensions of the world.
" the realization of perfection "... ??
.
>
> 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, ...
>
Who knows?
>
> 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
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Date: Tue, 16 May 1995 01:11:58 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: John Byrum <JMBYRUM@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: really Real, really
I got glimpses of the really real when I used to work in construction,
standing at the bottom of a 10-foot deep trench installing sewer pipe.
Now I get glimpses of same seeing torn-apart bodies of deer, dogs or other
animals on the interstate on my way to work, also looking down at the
dinner-plate.
Funny how the real tends to invade civilized life now & again. We usually
manage just fine without it, though.
John
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Date: Tue, 16 May 1995 17:14:06 GMT+1200
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Tony Green <t.green@AUCKLAND.AC.NZ>
Organization: The University of Auckland
Subject: Re: lyric and/or
Dear Chris Stroffolino,
"...but knot for me".
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 16 May 1995 17:17:40 GMT+1200
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Tony Green <t.green@AUCKLAND.AC.NZ>
Organization: The University of Auckland
Subject: Re: Superleague
Dear Mark Roberts,
There I was apologising for getting it wrong and being
unreliable. I did hear it right first time, The Warriors has been
signed by Rupert as a team (then they pretethey hadn't said it, which
threw me. Moral never believe anything, even when you're in the room
with them.)
Cheers
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Date: Tue, 16 May 1995 17:43:40 GMT+1200
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Tony Green <t.green@AUCKLAND.AC.NZ>
Organization: The University of Auckland
Subject: Re: No change / exchange
Dylan Thomas also made use of patternings close to Welsh bardic
practice. An old friend, Robert Arnold, now dead, wrote abt this
in convincing detail
in the late 1950's. But, I think unpublished.
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Date: Mon, 15 May 1995 23:16:27 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ryan Knighton <knighton@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: really Real, really
In-Reply-To: <199505160513.WAA09600@whistler.sfu.ca> from "John Byrum" at May
16, 95 01:11:58 am
I find most movies are about the reel.
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 16 May 1995 01:45:13 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: George Bowering <bowering@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: Hola
In-Reply-To: <199505160456.VAA08715@whistler.sfu.ca> from "Lindz Williamson"
at May 15, 95 09:55:31 pm
Heey, Lindz; since yr using the whole network to write me messages, I
have to remind you about what happens when you do that. When you
mentioned that Willy was paying for brunch at Art's Cafe, it went out
on the network, and dozens of hungry poets and professors arrived in
Vancouver. Art had his limo at the airport, and Willy had to take out
a small loan at the Bank of Montreal to pay for all those eggs and
toast, etc! He;s really burned, so watch out for him on Friday at
TPN.
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Date: Tue, 16 May 1995 01:59:31 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: George Bowering <bowering@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: promoting self & other
In-Reply-To: <199505151752.KAA03751@whistler.sfu.ca> from "Bruce Comens" at
May 15, 95 11:00:01 am
People might forgive my latest novel called _Shoot!_, from Key Porter
Books, Toronto. It will be coming out in the U.S. from St. Martin's,
but I dont know when. The contract says, as they do, w/in 18 months.
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 16 May 1995 09:11:20 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jonathan A Levin <jal17@COLUMBIA.EDU>
Subject: Re: Olson and rhyme
In-Reply-To: <199505132210.AA26076@mailhub.cc.columbia.edu>
Kathryne & interested folk:
I remember Joe Riddel saying it (Olson's use of the word post-modern,
which I believe Olson was said to have hyphenated) was in The Special View
of History, but not having a copy I can't say just where. Hope that
helps.
Jonathan Levin
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 16 May 1995 11:11:56 CDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Prof. R. Prus" <prusr@BABBAGE.SOSU.EDU>
Subject: Olson/postmodernism
In-Reply-To: from "kathryne lindberg" at May 13, 95 6:07 pm
Olson uses the term postmodernism in a letter to Creeley in 1951.
It appears in volume 7 of the correspondence (I don't have the book here
to give the exact page). Randall Jarrell uses the term earlier (1948,
I believe) in a discussion of Lowell's Lord Weary's Castle which he
defines as "post or anti- modernist"
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Date: Tue, 16 May 1995 12:32:56 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Edward Foster <EFOSTER@VAXC.STEVENS-TECH.EDU>
Subject: Re: really Real
uh-uh, carl. there's more to it than recycling.
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 16 May 1995 12:41:51 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Edward Foster <EFOSTER@VAXC.STEVENS-TECH.EDU>
Subject: Re: really Real, really
i, too, saw the real once, i think in egypt, but it might have been iraq. it was, however, an experience, i'll never forget. just to know, finally, that it was there, empirically, rising like dawn, suffusing the heavens, joy, all over the place.
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 16 May 1995 13:03:12 EDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Comments: Converted from PROFS to RFC822 format by PUMP V2.2X
From: Alan Golding <ACGOLD01@ULKYVM.LOUISVILLE.EDU>
Subject: Outlaws, Classics, and others
Associate Professor of English, U. of Louisville
Phone: (502)-852-5918; e-mail: acgold01@ulkyvm.louisville.edu
Dear all--
Since luigi posted his request for a bit more info. on From Outlaw to Classic
on the list rather than backchannel, I thought I'd respond publicly, in case
others are interested. If you're not--sorry, bear with me, it'll only be one
paragraph.
So: the book's a fairly materialist (though not in any strictly Marxist sense)
literary history of canonical issues in mostly twentieth-century American
poetry. "Mostly" because one of the five chaps. goes back to the late
eighteenth century, the rest focus on post-1900. "Materialist" in that it
tries to come at questions of canonicity via engaging specific texts,
conflicts, lives, institutional politics, etc. rather than via a more
theoretical take; perhaps I can clarify by contrast--it's pretty much the
opposite end of the spectrum from Barbara Herrnstein Smith's Contingencies of
Value, Charlie Altieri's Canons and Consequences, or even much of John
Guillory's work, wonderful though those books are in various ways. More like
Cary Nelson's Repression and Recovery probably. Chap. 1 is a history of
American poetry anthologies from the Revolutionary Period up to Weinberger and
Hoover (only a few pages on these two, because the Hoover text wasn't even out
when I went to press); chap. 2 argues for a synthesis of two models of canon
formation, the aesthetic (briefly, the argument that poets make
canons--Vendler, Bloom, other) and the institutional (various forms of
literary instititution and those affiliated with them make canons). This chap.
has an extended (though reasonably polite, I think) argument with Vendler and
Blom that might appeal to readers of this list, and a section on the notion of
self-canonization using Berryman as an example. Chap. 3: "The New Criticism
and American Poetry in the Academy"--on the New Crit. construction of a
modernist American canon--chap. sections are "Evaluation and the Institutional
Politics of New. Crit.," "Amateurism, Professionalism, and the
Poet-Professor," "The New Crit., Whitman, and the Idea of a National Poetry"
(anti-Whitmanism as a factor in New Crit. canon-making), and a section on
Brooks and Warren's Understanding Poetry. Chap. 4: "Little Magazines and
Alternative Canons: The Example of Origin"--on the first series of Origin, and
the place/role of little mags. in poetic canon formation. Chap. 5:
"'Provisionally complicit resistance': Language Writing and the Institution(s)
of Poetry"--on how we can situate LP in relation to certain aspects of
contemporary institutional/critical politics, partly via "close readings"
(remember them?) of two Charles Bernstein poems.
Jeez, I did go on, didn't I? Sorry. Aldon--thanks for the kind plug from
elsewhere! It does feel awkward to plug one's own work, but personally I'm
very grateful for the information I've gotten about other books the last few
days, and hope everyone will keep this up.
Kathy L.--one early place that Olson used "pomo" is in a fall 1952 course
description for the BMC catalog. However, the earliest use by CO that I have a
note of handily is a letter to Creeley Aug. 9, 1951 (Correspondence vol. 7, p.
75). Maybe someone knows an earlier one. I don't have my notes on the
unpublished essays to hand, and can't remember if "pomo" shows up there.
Olson's use of the term wasn't the first use, period, and not even the first
"literary" use, but I figure you know that.
Marisa--I even teach Millay. From Am. Lit. surveys to graduate seminars. But
then I'm perverse.
Alan
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 16 May 1995 10:20:09 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Carl Lynden Peters <clpeters@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: really Real
In-Reply-To: <199505161717.KAA17415@whistler.sfu.ca> from "Edward Foster" at
May 16, 95 12:32:56 pm
can't argue with that.
c
>
> uh-uh, carl. there's more to it than recycling.
>
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 16 May 1995 10:34:06 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Carl Lynden Peters <clpeters@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: To all appearances... (fwd)
In-Reply-To: <199505160513.WAA09618@whistler.sfu.ca> from "Tony Green" at May
16, 95 05:11:17 pm
>
> Dear Carl,
> I've got no further with the labyrinth that Duchamp
> specifically mentions which is the one "beyond space and time". The
> puzzle is not what is a labyrinth but what is Marcel doing beyond the
> frame of space and time, and trying to find his way out of that. I
> can only guess that this is a recognition of a state of
> consciousness, from which he has to find his way out, to the
> particulars of these dimensions of the world.
>
> " the realization of perfection "... ??
hi tony, thanks for this. --it's the "beyond time and space" thing that
throws me, too. altho i did take the article to a friend working in
philosophy here, and he pointed out it's specific to Plato
take care,
carl
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 16 May 1995 10:37:29 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Carl Lynden Peters <clpeters@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: really Real, really
In-Reply-To: <199505160619.XAA12717@whistler.sfu.ca> from "Ryan Knighton" at
May 15, 95 11:16:27 pm
>
> I find most movies are about the reel.
>
reminds me of Barthes. i'm assuming he loved the movies, too, all that
grain and crackle and all. for me, tho, i have no trouble with the word
real. it's like Bernstein says in his poem: "Only the real is real"
i just thot of andy warhol!
c
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 16 May 1995 10:43:05 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Carl Lynden Peters <clpeters@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: really Real
In-Reply-To: <199505160128.SAA26930@whistler.sfu.ca> from "Ron Silliman" at
May 15, 95 06:20:16 pm
>
> It's the real thing. It's Coke.
>
Andy Warhol is the real!, altho he did the soup cans
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 16 May 1995 16:24:51 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jeffrey Timmons <mnamna@IMAP1.ASU.EDU>
Subject: Re: really Real
X-To: Carl Lynden Peters <clpeters@SFU.CA>
In-Reply-To: <9505161905.AA12006@imap1.asu.edu>
The REAL . . . although Real, can also be simulated. This message has
been sponsored by . . . .
Jeffrey Timmons
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 16 May 1995 20:33:56 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: FUNKHOUSER CHRISTOPH <cf2785@CSC.ALBANY.EDU>
Subject: JACK KEROUAC SCHOOL OF DISEMBODIED POETICS
Forwarded message:
From yates@naropa.edu Tue May 16 19:49:26 1995
Date: Tue, 16 May 1995 17:52:51 -0600 (MST)
From: Catherine Yates <yates@naropa.edu>
To: cf2785, yates@lungta.naropa.edu
Subject: JACK KEROUAC SCHOOL OF DISEMBODIED POETICS
Message-Id: <Pine.HPP.3.91.950516155626.5180A-100000@lungta.naropa.edu>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
Summer 1995 Program June 19-July15
Summer Faculty List
Abbott, Keith
Blaser, Robin
Berlin, Lucia
Berssenbrugge, Mei Mei
Bromige, David
Brown, Lee Ann
Bye, Reed
Cole, Norma
Collom, Jack
Corman, Cid
Cross, Elsa
Ducornet, Rikki
Fischer, Norman
Fraser, Kathleen
Frym, Gloria
Guest, Barbara
Hamill, Sam
Hawkins, Bobbie Louise
Hejinian, Lyn
Henderson, David
Hintze, Chistian Ide
Hollo, Anselm
Huerta, David
Krysl, Marilyn
Kutik, Ylya
Kyger, Joanne
McElroy, Colleen J.
Mikolowski, Ann
Mikolowski, Ken
Notley, Alice
Penberthy, Jenny
Patton, Julie
Rakosi, Carl
Rodney, Janet
Smith, Willie
Tarn, Nathaniel
Taylor, Steven
Tedlock, Barbara
Tedlock, Dennis
Schelling, Andrew
Seko, Julie
Selby, Hubert
Sikelianos, Eleni
Strauss, David
Sze, Arthur
Waldman, Anne
Waldrop, Rosemarie
Wang, Ping
Warsh, Lewis
Warshall, Peter
Wilson, Peter Lamborn
Yates, Katie
Introduction and History
The Summer Writing Program in Writing and Poetics at the Naropa
Institute is a month-long convocation of students, scholars, fiction writers,
Buddhist teachers, Sufi anarchists, feminist scholars, poets and translators.
In dialogue with renowned practioners of the poetic arts, students
confront the composition of poetry and prose. Each summer practioners of
visual and performance arts join poets and fiction writers in
collaborative situations. Faculty and students meet individually and in
small groups, so that beginning and experienced writers find equal
challenge in the program.
Participants work in daily contact with some of the most
accomplished and notoriously provocative writers of our times - scribes
and performers currently charting the directions American writing is
taking. The tradition emphasized belongs to the "outrider" or left-hand
lineage, which operates outside the cultural mainstream - a heritage of
powerful scholarship and counter poetics. Guest faculty change weekly,
magnetizing the summer program into a forum that confronts, responds to
and intensely challenges a range of writing practices and scholarly methods.
As political and ecological crises intensify across our planet,
the writer's role raises troubling questions. Bard, "unacknowledged
legislator," prophet - or marginal word monger? The program provides
three distinct forums which address these concerns: writing workshops
directed by guest and resident faculty; daily lectures, readings and
colloquia; and faculty-student interviews in which writings are discussed
in face-to-face intimacy.
The summer program developed out of the Jack Kerouac School of
Disembodied Poetics, founded in 1974 by Allen Ginsberg and Anne Waldman.
1995 is the Summer Program's 21st year. Regular features include a
month-long fiction track, MFA lectures by distinguished faculty, and an
ongoing examination of the environmental, cultural, and linguistic crises
occurring on our North American continent.
Open to any interested participant, the Summer Writing Program
also serves each year as a third trimester for the Naropa Institute's
accredited MFA degree track. Students from other institutions or degree
programs may elect to attend the month-long program with a six-credit
option (for BA credit) or eight-credit option (MFA credit). Masters
level credit requires permission of the program directors.
from the Summer Cataloge
* Week One
**The Poetry of Lust of Love
Sam Hamill
The poetry of lust and love...is rooted in spiritual longing, as
demonstrated by the poetics of Sappho and the amatory poems of the Greek
anthology and the classical poets of India, China, and Japan. Drawing on
these traditions, we explore the erotic lyrical imagination from a
layman's Zen perspective, including a look at the poetry of several Zen
masters.
**Illuminating Inscapes
Katie Yates
Writing is an expression which takes textural knowledges and puts
it into a textual form. Attention will be focused on the maitri rooms
which we will take to represent a study of/in sensory experience.
Writing and collage are the vehicles for this study. This is an
intensive investigation of the forms the artists seizes to carry the
weight of intellectual acuity inside the extraordinary space of creativity.
**Both, Both
Anne Waldman
This is a workshop inviting "negative capability." We explore
how jumpy imagination and eye and emotion work through various writing
experiments that embrace contradiction: being silent, being amitious,
being noisy, being deceptive. What's hidden/what's revealed? Writing on
top of writing. Can you ever really sit still?
**Writing, Walking
Andrew Schelling
"I wish to speak a word for Nature, for absolute freedom and
wildness--." That's how Thoreau began his essay on walking.
Naturalists, contemplatives, artists, poets, from Ice Age Magdalena to
T'ang Dynasty China to 20th century nuclear-powered America have gone to
the forests and mountains to find fresh thought and language. We go to
local mountain trails to practice a variety of procedures--direct
observation, cut-up of texts, study of field manuals. Also dream
states--particularly for those accustomed to higher altitudes. The
dakinis of poetry conceal themselves in solitary places. We "send back
our embalmed hearts only as relics--.'
Week Two
**Paradise,or the Theory and Practice of Poles
Lyn Hejinian
A course on "extreme latitudes," literal and figurative.
**Distilled Spirits
Wang Ping
This course explores how to translate your life into fiction. We
consider the way culture limits and distracts us and how we liberate
ourselves in writing from cultural and psychological boundaries.
**Chinese Poetics
Arthur Sze
This workshop incorporates various aspects of Chinese poetics,
including a brief look at poems by: Chang Chi, Li Po, Wang Wei, Li Ho,
and Li Ch'ing-chao, as well as discussion of the I Ching.
**Sound Poems
Ide Hintze
This course involves exercises with the voice: working beyond
the alphabetic code. Students compose two and three-voice poems, choric
and phonetic poems. Emphasis is also placed on the performance uses of
audio and video.
Week Three
**One's-Self I Sing
Steven Taylor
Everybody sings. Why? For thousands of years, poetry, history
and the law were sung, but this practice did not cease with the
development of writing. Culture, the story we tell ourselves about
ourselves about who we are, is performed in our relationships, political
systems, rituals, and in our art works. Song provides a forum for the
negotiation of identity. How do songs locate subjects in the framework
of subjection? How does song performance reproduce, problematize,
negotiate, or change subject positions in structures of dominance? The
class listens to music and discusses readings.
**Introduction to Letterpress Printing
Julie Seko
This class introduces letterpress printing. Students learn the
history of fine printing, setting type, locking type, operating the press
and work in small groups to design and produce broadsides.
**The Cut-Up Technique
Anselm Hollo
This offering includes a discussion of the "cut-up technique"
introduced by William S. Burroughs and Brion Gysin, its antecedents in
the visual art forms of montage and collage (Eisenstein, Schwitters), and
Dadaist methods of composition (Tristan Tzara). It also examines its
refinements and ramifications in the OULIPO group's compositional theory
and practice. Students create some texts of their "own" by various
related means.
Week Four
**This Side of Memory
Norma Cole
For centuries of lyric address--from Dante's "intelletto
d'amore"(Vita Nuova) to Roberto Tejada's "love's social intellect"
(The Gauntlet")--something has been going on record involving these
terms. WHAT ABOUT THIS GENEALOGY? Each of the three seminars are
structured around a brief introduction and a lot of reading together and
discussion in order to explore the geometry of love, social and
intellect: and how their relations and tensions motivate and shape,
along with memory and song, what we agree to call lyric. Students are
encouraged to choose and bring work to be included in the discussion.
**How to Read-How to Write
Lee Ann Brown
As readers, we are always writing and as writers we are always
reading. When we read, we actively produce our own unique interpretation
of that text. Our own poetry can be read (and written) as a map of our
readings (or misreadings) of other writer's words and of the world. What
would happen if we used Gertrude Stein's book "How to Write" as a
composition manual? Her "Poetry & Grammar" as a grammar primer? What
are our own ideas, beliefs and feelings about syntax, punctuation,
grammar, the alphabet--the very building blocks of language? We read
from great models for plans of study such as Pound's "ABC's of Reading,
Zukofsy's "A Test of Poetry" and Ed Sander's "Investigative Poetics."
This class serves as a forum for students to work out their own plans and
structures for long-term readings and writing projects.
**The Third Image
David Levi-Strauss
The Third Image is what can happen between words and images. A
short history of this phenomenon is presented from hieroglyphs and
illuminations to multimedia and we write into, on, and around images
found and made. "What I love is the relation of the image and the
text...The way poets used to enjoy working on difficult problems of
versification. The modern equivalent is to find a relation between text
and images." Roland Barthes
**Method and Madness
Rosemarie Waldrop
This class includes readings and practice in methods for
generating and manipulating ("translating") texts. We draw on procedures
of Dada, Surrealism, Oulipo, Cage, Mac Low, etc. while keeping in mind
the need to give an occasional nudge to any rule or constraint to keep
them from becoming mechanical.
**Current Poetic Music
Alice Notley
We discuss American poetic music at present, with a view towards
how one improves one's own sound and line creating variety,
individuality, and pleasure. There is in-class writing and assignments.
Special attention is paid to measure and music in longer narrative and
hybrid works.
*Sexing the Poem
Eleni Sikelianos
Language is a skin: I rub my language against the other. It is
as if I had words instead of fingers or fingers at the tips of my words
(Barthes). The song: first music from the first voice of love
(Cixous). Regardless of the subject or treatment, writing; language; has
an eros. We are full of "luminous torrents" which are then traced onto
the page. Pleasures of the text: words off in the mouth, fill the ear;
they form within and spill from the body/field. With erotogeneity in
mind, we write, we read. Not writing erotica, but writing corporeal--to
inject a little jouissance back into the poem.
****
FOR MORE INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT*
Max Regan: 303-546-5296
Monika Edgar: medgar@csn.net
Katie Yates: yates@naropa.edu
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 16 May 1995 18:29:39 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Andrew Joron <ajoron@EMF.NET>
Subject: irony
Dear Dodie, I beg to differ! I don't think the Real can be or
ought to be approached only through "deep irony." I capitalize
the term to indicate that it possesses, for me, some kind of
finality, sublimity even: as that which always, finally escapes
representation. However you choose to interpret it, though, it
makes a brilliant title!
-- Andrew Joron
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 17 May 1995 00:18:53 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: John Byrum <JMBYRUM@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: really Real Andy
Dear Carl,
> It's the real thing. It's Coke. (from Ron Silliman's recent message)
>
Andy Warhol is the real!, altho he did the soup cans (from your recent
message)
Andy also did the Disaster paintings, skulls, Mao & lots of other celeb
portraits, and all kinds of other neat stuff too. Go to Pittsburgh, see the
stuff. Now that's a great museum!
John
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 16 May 1995 21:37:10 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" <anielsen@SPARTA.SJSU.EDU>
Subject: Re: the reality check is in the mail
In-Reply-To: <9505170400.AA27104@isc.sjsu.edu>
this represents itself as being a real post from aldon nielsen; however,
it is not. it is from ed foster. you can tell 'cause it is three lines.
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 16 May 1995 22:51:12 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Lindz Williamson <lmichell@UNIXG.UBC.CA>
Subject: Re: really Real Andy
In-Reply-To: <9505170424.AA15821@hub.ubc.ca>
On Wed, 17 May 1995, John Byrum wrote:
> Dear Carl,
>
> > It's the real thing. It's Coke. (from Ron Silliman's recent message)
> >
> Andy Warhol is the real!, altho he did the soup cans (from your recent
> message)
>
> Andy also did the Disaster paintings, skulls, Mao & lots of other celeb
> portraits, and all kinds of other neat stuff too. Go to Pittsburgh, see the
> stuff. Now that's a great museum!
>
> John
>
Yes! Warhol is really real. He's the only one that admits art isn't art
unless it has streaks and smudges. Imperfection is the real art of being
artistic.
Lindz
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 16 May 1995 23:19:11 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Marjorie Perloff <perloff@LELAND.STANFORD.EDU>
Subject: Re: POETICS Digest - 15 May 1995 to 16 May 1995
In-Reply-To: <199505170403.VAA11483@leland.Stanford.EDU>
On the Postmodern from Olson on, etc.: I still think one of the best places
to look for discussion of this is in the very first issue of BOUNDARY 2,
which has, among other things, David Antin's symptomatic essay on the
postmodern. Read today, this represents a Utopian phase, very different
from the way the term postmodern was used later. the issue in question
appeared in 1972.
I've tried to trace the term and comment on its development in a piece in
CRITICISM, Summer 1993 that I first gave at Charlie Altieri's conference
on PoMo along with Kathryne Lindberg and others at U-Wash. a few months
earlier. I was amused to see that although most people here haven't read
it, it's been translated into Italian in a new poetry journal called BALDUS.
Whatever the case, the term is used today almost antithetically from what
was the case in Olson (for sure!) and even antithetically from Antin's
positive description of the postmodern as everything new, cutting edge,
avant-garde, exciting, anti-formalist, etc etc etc.
I agree with Aldon Nielsen that it's time we scrapped it!
Marjorie Perloff
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 17 May 1995 02:19:50 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Gary Sullivan <gpsj@PRIMENET.COM>
Subject: Ern Malley: A Real Cut-Up
In-Reply-To: <Pine.HPP.3.91.950516155626.5180A-100000@lungta.naropa.edu>
Reading the following course description (from Chris Funkhouser's
forwarding of Naropa material) ...
**The Cut-Up Technique
Anselm Hollo
This offering includes a discussion of "cut-up technique"
introduced by William S. Burroughs and Brion Gysin, its antecedents in
the visual art forms of montage and collage (Eisenstein, Schwitters), and
Dadaist methods of composition (Tristan Tzara). It also examines its
refinements and ramifications in the OUILIPO group's compositional theory
and practice. Students create some texts of their "own" by various
related means.
... and the current discussion re: "Real," makes me want to yammer on
uncontrollably about a recent (4 days ago) "groovy book" find: _The
Darkening Ecliptic_, by "Ern Malley," published in Melbourne, Australia
in 1944.
"Ern Malley" was a pseudonym made up by two Australian poets
(whose names aren't in this booklet) who wanted to "expose" "the sham" of
"modernism," the sort of thing being published in Australia at that time
through Max Harris' magazine _Angry Penguins_. These two poets got together one
afternoon and composed 16 poems (using what sounds like Ye Olde Berrigan
Methodology), and then spent the next couple of days fleshing out "Ern"'s
"life." Here's a sample description of their technique, in their own
words:
"We produced the whole of Ern Malley's tragic life-work in one
afternoon, with the aid of a chance collection of books which happened to
be on our desk: the Concise Oxford Dictionary, a Collected Shakespeare,
Dictionary of Quotations, etc.
"We opened books at random choosing a word or phrase haphazardly.
We made lists of these and wove them into nonsensical sentences.
"We misquoted and made false allusions. We deliberately
perpetrated bad verse, and selected awkward rhymes from a Ripman's
Rhyming Dictionary.
"The alleged quotation from Lenin in one of the poems, 'The
emotions are not skilled workers,' is quite phoney.
"The first three lines of the poem 'Culture as Exhibit' were
lifted as a quotation from an American report on the drainage of
breeding-grounds of mosquitoes."
Here were their "rules of composition":
"1. There must be no coherent theme, at most, only confused and
inconsistent hints at a meaning held out as a bait to the reader.
"2. No care was taken with verse technique, except occasionally
to accentuate its general sloppiness by deliberate crudities.
"3. In style the poems were to imitate not Mr. Max Harris in
particular, but the whole literary fashion as we knew it from the works
of Dylan Thomas, Henry Treece and others."
So, after making 16 poems as per above specs, said poets sent a letter
(allegedly from Ern's sister Ethel) to Max Harris, with a couple of poems.
The letter gave a brief account of Ern's life & death (to Grave's disease
-- which isn't fatal), stating that the poems were found by Ethel while
going through Ern's belongings.
Harris took the bait, asked for more poems, and "Ethel" sent the
whole batch. The poems were printed, with a laudatory preface by Harris,
in the next issue of _Angry Penguins_. Then, the hoax was leaked to the
press. _Angry Penguins_ sold out very quickly. So, Harris then decides to
reprint the whole manuscript, his laudatory preface, and a facsimile of
Ethel's initial letter to him, as a 48-page booklet, wanting (I guess) to
both take advantage of the sudden popularity of "Malley" as well as to
try to "save face." (This lovely, lovely booklet begins with an
introduction by Harris, which concludes: "...we do not wish to express an
opinion either on the literary merit of the poetry or on the value of the
hoax. These matters will be fully dealt with in the succeeding issue of
_Angry Penguins_ [God, if I could find a copy of *that*!], and all it is
desired to do here is to present, to as wide a public as possible, the
works of Ern Malley and the introductory material that was originally
published with them.")
Now, w/out further ado, here's the last 18 lines from Ern Malley's
"PETIT TESTAMENT," a *thoroughly* entertaining cut-up from the 40s:
It is something to be at last speaking
Though in this No-Man's-language appropriate
Only to No-Man's-Land.
Set this down too:
I have pursued rhyme, image, and metre,
Known all the clefts in which the foot may stick,
Stumbled often, stammered,
But in time the fading voice grows wise
And seizing the co-ordinates of all existence
Traces the inevitable graph
And in conclusion:
There is a moment when the pelvis
Explodes like a grenade. I
Who have lived in the shadow that each act
Casts on the next act now emerge
As loyal as the thistle that in session
Puffs its full seed upon the indicative air.
I have split the infinitive. Beyond is anything.
Apologies to everyone previously familiar with Malley. Everyone else, if
you're interested, a book was published maybe a year or two ago called
_The Ern Malley Affair_, which details the events, and, I think, includes
most or all of the material in this booklet.
Jonathan Brannen -- what were the names of the two poets? (I knew
to pick up _The Darkening Ecliptic_ because Jonathan had, only a month
prior, been telling me about _The Ern Malley Affair_, which he'd just read.)
TO SUM UP: _The Darkening Ecliptic_, by Ern Malley (Adelaide, 1944) ...
GROOVE FACTOR: A perfect 10.
Yours,
Gary
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 17 May 1995 00:52:12 +0100
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Kevin Killian <dbkk@SIRIUS.COM>
Subject: Re: irony
>Dear Dodie, I beg to differ! I don't think the Real can be or
>ought to be approached only through "deep irony." I capitalize
>the term to indicate that it possesses, for me, some kind of
>finality, sublimity even: as that which always, finally escapes
>representation. However you choose to interpret it, though, it
>makes a brilliant title!
> -- Andrew Joron
Andrew,
I would never question the authenticity of your experiences, and I agree
that those moments when representation breaks down are what make the rest
of the druggery bearable. But, I don't see how this necessarily has
anything to do with the real. I could call in a higher authority here and
quote something, but I don't think quoting is much fun unless you tweak and
twist the passage to the point of deformity.
How about an anecdote instead! I had drug flashbacks for a number of years
and during these experiences I felt, on a gut level, how random and faulty
are our capacities for filtering in the world.
The real is like god, Andrew, it will always elude you.
Dodie
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 17 May 1995 00:55:06 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Tenney Nathanson <tenney@AZSTARNET.COM>
Subject: Re: POETICS Digest - 15 May 1995 to 16 May 1995
Just want to second Marjorie's plug of the early Antin piece on pomo. I
guess it is utopian. But what I remember (cf. Beckett's Belaqua) is the
refutation not the proof: the essay is really smart and vitriolic about the
bad version of American new criticism's use of Eliot--Snodgrass, I think it
is, gets called a rebirth of "A Shropshire Lad" masquerading as the legacy
of modernism. Worth the price of admission. Altieri's take on so-called
so-called workshop poetry (/Sense and Sensibility/) is wonderfully smart and
vitriolic. Antin's piece is much nastier and even more fun. It's not
always necessarily right, but it's a ride.
here's to gorgonzola!
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 17 May 1995 03:13:25 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ron Silliman <rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM>
Subject: Re: really Real
This discussion of the "real" (if we can call it that) reminds me of
the one time in my life in which I "heard" silence...at dawn in Death
Valley at Zabriskie Point, no breeze, not even a lizard stirring. That
was 23 years ago and it still remains a profound memory in my life.
Ron Silliman
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 17 May 1995 08:08:28 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Herb Levy <herb@ESKIMO.COM>
Subject: Re: Ern Malley & others
In-Reply-To: <199505170721.AA27971@mail.eskimo.com>
Gary Sullivan's description of the <Ern Malley> business ties in nicely
with a discussion I was having on the back channel before my computer died
last week (please save me from stupid <intelligent> batteries) about the
implications of the use of an unacknowledged pseudonym with a false, and
provocative, biography.
My position was that the poems were pretty good regardless and that the
whole project fell into the tradition of avant garde identity-play. My
correspondent was less sure and took some offense at some of the
implications.
Who is being tricked, about what, and how much does it matter if the poems
seem pretty good?
Any comments?
- Herb
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 17 May 1995 08:13:48 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Herb Levy <herb@ESKIMO.COM>
Subject: Re: the reality check is in the mail
In-Reply-To: <199505170505.AA13440@mail.eskimo.com>
On Tue, 16 May 1995, Aldon L. Nielsen wrote:
> this represents itself as being a real post from aldon nielsen; however,
> it is not. it is from ed foster. you can tell 'cause it is three lines.
Nice try, but the look and feel is all wrong, on my computer at least. It
came in as two lines not three and wasn't broken up in the middle of words
like ed foster's postings usually are here. It's also not as compacted
as his postings are.
So who is this <really> trying to imitate Aldon Nielsen trying to imitate
ed foster, anyway?
- Herb
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 17 May 1995 12:59:41 EST
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: kathryne <KLINDBE@WAYNEST1.BITNET>
Subject: Re: Outlaws, Classics, and others
In-Reply-To: Message of Tue, 16 May 1995 13:03:12 EDT from
<ACGOLD01@ULKYVM.LOUISVILLE.EDU>
thanks, Alan. It seems like forever since I have seen you, but your
book will be present in one of my grad. student's independent study.
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 17 May 1995 13:19:02 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Tom Mandel <tmandel@UMD5.UMD.EDU>
Subject: Re: really Real
For another take on the real and realism, try my
"Realism" published by Burning Deck in 1991, and its title
poem in particular.
Tom Mandel
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 17 May 1995 11:27:11 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Charles Watts <cwatts@SFU.CA>
Subject: Recovery of the Public World
X-cc: bernstein@ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu
>
From: Charles Watts <cwatts@sfu.ca>)
Subject: Panels, Panelists, Readings at the Recovery of the Public
World Conference, June 1-4, 1995
THE RECOVERY OF THE PUBLIC WORLD: A CONFERENCE AND POETRY FESTIVAL IN
HONOUR OF ROBIN BLASER, HIS POETRY AND POETICS. JUNE 1-4, 1995, AT
EMILY CARR INSTITUTE OF ART AND DESIGN, GRANVILLE ISLAND, VANCOUVER,
B.C. SCHEDULE OF EVENTS.
PLEASE NOTE THAT AS OF TODAY, MAY 17, 1995, ALL SEATS FOR THE
CONFERENCE PANELS, THE BANQUET, AND THE OPENING NIGHT EVENTS HAVE
BEEN FILLED.
IF YOU
ARE INTERESTED IN PLACING YOUR NAME ON A WAITING LIST, PLEASE CALL THE
INSTITUTE FOR THE HUMANITIES, SFU, 604-291-5855, AND LEAVE YOUR NAME AND A
TELEPHONE NUMBER; PERSONS ON THE WAITING LIST WILL BE CALLED IN THE
EVENT OF CANCELLATIONS, FIRST COME FIRST SERVED.
THOSE OF YOU WHO
HAVE ALREADY REGISTERED SHOULD RECEIVE A LETTER OF RECEIPT IN THE
REGULAR MAIL, TELLING YOU WHEN AND WHERE TO PICK UP YOUR REGISTRATION
PACKET (IN THE FOYER OF THE THEATRE, EMILY CARR INSTITUTE OF ART AND
DESIGN, BEGINNING THURSDAY MORNING, JUNE 1ST, AT 8:30 A.M.), AND
INCLUDING A COPY OF THE CONFERENCE SCHEDULE.
IF YOU HAVE SENT IN A REGISTRATION FORM AND A CHEQUE ONLY VERY
RECENTLY, IT MAY NOT HAVE BEEN RECEIVED IN TIME BEFORE THE SEATS WERE
SOLD OUT. IF THAT'S THE CASE, WE'LL CONTACT YOU TO LET YOU KNOW THAT
WE WILL HOLD YOUR CHEQUE AND PUT YOUR NAME ON OUR WAIT LIST (UNLESS
YOU PREFER THAT WE SEND YOU BACK YOUR CHEQUE).
THERE
ARE STILL PLENTY OF SEATS FOR THE SATURDAY AND SUNDAY EVENING READINGS
AT THE FREDERIC WOOD THEATRE, UNIVERSITY OF B.C., JUNE 3RD & 4TH, 8 P.M.
TICKETS FOR THESE TWO READINGS ARE AVAILABLE AT DUTHIE BOOKS OUTLETS --
DUTHIE BOOKS DOWNTOWN, 919 ROBSON ST, VANCOUVER, B.C. (604) 684-4496;
DUTHIE BOOKS WEST FOURTH, 2239 W. 4TH AVE, VANCOUVER (604) 732-5344; &
DUTHIE BOOKS UNIVERSITY BRANCH, 4444 W. 10TH AVE, VANCOUVER (604)
224-7012. TICKETS FOR THE SATURDAY & SUNDAY NIGHT READINGS ARE ALSO
AVAILABLE AT BLACK SHEEP BOOKS, 2742 W. 4TH AVE, VANCOUVER (604) 732-5087.
THANKS TO ALL OF YOU ON THIS LIST, CONFERENCE PARTICIPANTS AND PEOPLE
WHO HAVE REGISTERED FOR THE CONFERENCE, FOR HELPING TO MAKE THE
RECOVERY OF THE PUBLIC WORLD THE FESTIVAL IT PROMISES TO BE.
> >
> > The following is the schedule of events at the Recovery of the Public
> > World Conference and Poetry Festival in honour of Robin Blaser, to be
> > held at Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design, Vancouver, B.C., June
> > 1st through fourth, 1995, together with the names of people who will
> > be taking part:
> >
> > Thursday, June 1st, 8:30 a.m. - 9:25 a.m. Conference registration;
> > pick-up of registration packets and other conference materials, in the
> > foyer of the theatre at Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design.
> >
> > Note: all panels & lunchtime readings will be held in the theatre at
> > Emily Carr.
> >
> > Thursday, June 1st, 9:30 a.m. - 12 noon. Panel: COMPANIONS: SELF,
> > OTHER, COMMUNITY. Chaired by Jenny Penberthy and Charles Watts.
> > Panelists: Michael Boughn, Daniel Burgoyne, Clayton Eshleman, Peter
> > Gizzi, Michael McClure, Kristin Prevallet, Nathaniel Tarn.
> >
> > Thursday, June 1st, 12 noon - 1:15 p.m. Lunch break.
> >
> > Thursday, June 1st, 1:15 p.m. - 1:55 p.m. Reading in the theatre,
> > Emily Carr. Readers: Deanna Ferguson, Aaron Shurin, Dorothy Trujillo
> > Lusk.
> >
> > Thursday, June 1st, 2:00 p.m. - 5:00 p.m. Panel: COMPOSITION &
> > PERFORMANCE. Chaired by Daphne Marlatt & Phyllis Webb. Panelists:
> > David Bromige, Peter Middleton, Jed Rasula, David Sullivan, Phyllis
> > Webb.
> >
> > Thursday, June 1st, 5:00 p.m. - 7:00 p.m. Opening of the gallery
> > exhibit, IN SEARCH OF ORPHEUS: SOME BAY AREA POETS & PAINTERS,
> > 1945-1965. In the Charles H. Scott Gallery, Emily Carr Institute of
> > Art and Design.
> >
> > (Thursday, June 1st, 5:00 p.m. - 7:30 p.m. Dinner break.)
> >
> > Thursday, June 1st, 8:00 p.m. - 11:00 p.m. Festival opening, the
> > theatre, Emily Carr. Opening address by Charles Bernstein. Readings by
> > Charles Bernstein, Norma Cole, Daphne Marlatt, Michael Palmer.
> > Performance by Catriona Strang and Francois Houle. Michael Ondaatje
> > introduces Robin Blaser, who will give a talk. Doors open at 7:30 p.m.
> >
> > Friday, June 2nd, 8:30 a.m. - 9:25 a.m. Conference registration,
> > continued.
> >
> > Friday, June 2nd, 9:30 a.m. - 12 noon. Panel: 'NO LONGER OR NOT YET':
> > TRANSLATION & THE RECOVERY OF THE PUBLIC WORLD. Chaired by Norma Cole
> > and Michael Palmer. Panelists: Colin Browne, Hilary Clark, Pierre
> > Joris, Susan Vanderborg, Pasquale Verdicchio.
> >
> > Friday, June 2nd, 12 noon - 1:15 p.m. Lunch break.
> >
> > Friday, June 2nd, 1:15 p.m. - 1:55 p.m. Reading in the theatre, Emily
> > Carr. Readers: Bruce Boone, Andrew Schelling, Pasquale Verdicchio.
> >
> > Friday, June 2nd, 2:00 p.m. - 5:00 p.m. Panel: HETEROLOGIES. Chaired
> > by Susan Howe and Nathaniel Mackey. Panelists: Steve Dickison, Michele
> > Leggott, D.S. Marriott, Leslie Scalapino, Andrew Schelling.
> >
> > Friday, June 2nd, 7:30 p.m. - midnight: The Banquet, A FEAST OF
> > COMPANIONS, honouring Robin and invited guests. At Heritage Hall, 3102
> > Main Street, Vancouver. A salmon barbecue catered by Brian DeBeck.
> > Hosted by Kevin Killian and Ellen Tallman. Stories, music, greetings,
> > poems. Hilarity for all at Heritage Hall!
> >
> > Saturday, June 3rd, 9:30 a.m. - 12 noon. Panel: ETHICS & AESTHETICS.
> > Chaired by Lisa Robertson and Jery Zaslove. Panelists: Michael
> > Davidson, Robert Hullot-Kentor, Paul Kelley, Andrew Klobucar, David
> > Levi Strauss, Anne Waldman.
> >
> > Saturday, June 3rd, 12 noon - 1:15 p.m. Lunch break.
> >
> > Saturday, June 3rd, 1:15 p.m. - 1:55 p.m. Reading in the theatre,
> > Emily Carr. Readers: David Bromige, Norman Finkelstein, Jed Rasula.
> >
> > Saturday, June 3rd, 2:00 p.m. - 5:00 p.m. Panel: POETICS: THEORY &
> > PRACTICE. Chaired by Charles Bernstein and Miriam Nichols. Panelists:
> > Rachel Blau DuPlessis, Alan Golding, Steve McCaffery, Tom Marshall,
> > Miriam Nichols.
> >
> > Saturday, June 3rd, 5:00 p.m. - 7:30 p.m. Dinner break.
> >
> > Saturday, June 3rd, 8:00 p.m. - midnight: Reading at Freddy Wood
> > Theatre, University of British Columbia. Doors open at 7:30 p.m.
> > Readers: Peter Culley, Michael Davidson, Rachel Blau DuPlessis,
> > Clayton Eshleman, Robert Hogg, Susan Howe, Pierre Joris, Kevin
> Killian, Joanne Kyger, Steve McCaffery, Michael McClure, Karen Mac Cormack, Nathaniel Mackey, D.S. Marriott, Peter Middleton, Jerome Rothenberg, George
> > Stanley, David Levi Strauss, Nathaniel Tarn, Anne Waldman.
> >
> > Sunday, June 4th, 9:30 a.m. - 12 noon. Panel: EROS & POIESIS. Chaired
> > by Bruce Boone and Sharon Thesen. Panelists: Kevin Killian, Daphne
> > Marlatt, Peter Quartermain, George Stanley, Alan Vardy.
> >
> > Sunday, June 4th, 12 noon - 1:15 p.m. Lunch break.
> >
> > Sunday, June 4th, 1:15 p.m. - 1:55 p.m. Reading in the theatre, Emily
> > Carr. Readers: Susan Clark, Peter Gizzi, Michele Leggott.
> >
> > Sunday, June 4th, 2:00 p.m. - 5:00 p.m. Panel: POETICS: FORM &
> > STRUCTURE. Chaired by Pauline Butling and Wystan Curnow. Panelists:
> > Charles Altieri, Pauline Butling, Don Byrd, Joseph Conte, Norman
> > Finkelstein.
> >
> > Sunday, June 4th, 5:00 p.m. - 7:30 p.m. Dinner break.
> >
> > Sunday, June 4th, 8:00 p.m. - 11:00 p.m. Festival and conference
> > finale, at Freddy Wood Theatre, University of British Columbia.
> > Readers: E.D. Blodgett, George Bowering, Michael Ondaatje, Lisa
> > Robertson, Leslie Scalapino, Sharon Thesen, Fred Wah, Robin Blaser.
> >
> > Please note that program times may vary slightly; the list of persons
> > reading is also subject to some change.
> >
> > Please note also that some pre-conference events have been planned,
> > including a reading and talk by Michael McClure in the new Special
> > Collections and Rare Books rooms at the W.A.C. Bennett Library, Simon
> > Fraser University, Wednesday, May 31st, time to be announced. There
> > will also be a reading by Karen Mac Cormack at the Kootenay School of
> > Writing, 112 West Hastings, Vancouver, at 8:00 p.m., Wednesday, May
> > 31st.
> >
> > Changes in this program will be announced as they are confirmed.
> >
> > Registration fees for the conference are as follows:
> >
> > Entire Package, including panels, readings and banquet: $100; students
> > and fixed incomes: $60.
> >
> > Panels and readings only: $80; students and fixed incomes: $40.
> >
> > Banquet only: $25.
> >
> > Please pay in Canadian funds. If this proves difficult, however,
> > international money orders in U.S. funds for the equivalent amount at
> > current exchange rates will be accepted.
> >
> > Please note that seating for this conference is limited. If you plan
> > to register for the conference and/or the banquet, it is advisable to
> > do so by the beginning of May. Additional tickets to the Saturday and
> > Sunday night readings will be available at some Vancouver bookstores
> > and at the door on the evening of the reading; admission: $10, $5 for
> > students and fixed incomes.
> >
> > ACCOMMODATION: Some Recommended Hotels.
> >
> > The Sylvia Hotel: 1154 Gilford St, Vancouver, BC V6G 2P6, tel: (604)
> > 681-9321. Regular rates: $55-$95 plus 17% tax.
> >
> > The Buchan Hotel: 1906 Haro St, Vancouver, BC V6G 1H7, tel: (604)
> > 685-5354; Fax (604) 685-5367. Rates: $75-$85 plus 17% tax.
> >
> > The Granville Island Hotel: 1253 Johnston St, Vancouver, BC V6H 3R9,
> > tel: (604) 683-7373; fax (604) 683-3061. Rates: $150-$195 plus 17%
> > tax. N.B. Hotel rates are in Canadian funds.
> >
> > More inexpensive accommodation:
> >
> > Simon Fraser University Campus Accommodations: 212 McTaggart-Cowan
> > Hall, Burnaby, BC V5A 1S6, tel (604) 291-4503; fax: (604) 291-5598.
> > Dorm single: $19-$29. Dorm twin: $48.30. Townhouse unit: $105.80. On
> > the SFU campus, Burnaby Mountain, about 30-40 minutes' drive to the
> > conference site.
> >
> > University of British Columbia: 5961 Student Union Boulevard,
> > Vancouver, BC V6T 2C9, tel: (604) 822-1010; fax: (604) 822-1001. Suite
> > for 3: $95; for 2: $74; for one: $56. Single: $24-$32. Twin: $48. On
> > the UBC campus, about twenty-thirty minutes' drive to the conference.
> >
> > Other inexpensive accommodation listings available on request.
> >
> > To register or for further information, write to The Recovery of the
> > Public World, c/o The Institute for the Humanities, East Academic
> > Annex, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, B.C. V5A 1S6; tel (voice
> > mail): (604) 291-5854; fax: (604) 291-3023. Or you can reach me by
> > e-mail at the following address: cwatts@sfu.ca
> >
> > Charles Watts
> > for the organizers,
> > The Recovery of the Public World
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
>
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 17 May 1995 11:39:37 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Carl Lynden Peters <clpeters@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: really Real Andy
In-Reply-To: <199505170553.WAA00280@whistler.sfu.ca> from "Lindz Williamson"
at May 16, 95 10:51:12 pm
>
> On Wed, 17 May 1995, John Byrum wrote:
>
> > Dear Carl,
> >
> > > It's the real thing. It's Coke. (from Ron Silliman's recent message)
> > >
> > Andy Warhol is the real!, altho he did the soup cans (from your recent
> > message)
> >
> > Andy also did the Disaster paintings, skulls, Mao & lots of other celeb
> > portraits, and all kinds of other neat stuff too. Go to Pittsburgh, see the
> > stuff. Now that's a great museum!
> >
> > John
> >
> Yes! Warhol is really real. He's the only one that admits art isn't art
> unless it has streaks and smudges. Imperfection is the real art of being
> artistic.
>
> Lindz
>
wow! glad to see all those warhol fans out there! i just finished an
article on frank o'hara, and in it is quoted o'hara's thots on warhol.
sounds like he didn't much care for warhol. that's kind of interesting
carl
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 17 May 1995 10:39:48 -0600
Reply-To: quarterm@unixg.ubc.ca
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: peter quartermain <quarterm@UNIXG.UBC.CA>
Subject: Olson and postmodern
I've come into this thread late, so I may be repeating an
earlier message from someone else. If so, please bear
with and excuse me.
Robin Blaser, in the process of writing notes on his
correspondence with Olson for the Minutes of the Charles
Olson Society, tells me (and he got it from Ralph Maud
who got it from George Butterick) that Olson adopted the
term postmodern ("we are the post-modern") from Arnold
Toynbee, who attaches the term to the year 1875 in A
Study of History, volume ONE (1933), p. 171. Olson
probably (according to Butterick via Maud via Blaser --
though there is no record of Toynbee in Olson's reading
as compiled by and according to Maud) took it from
Somervel's abridgment of the first six volumes of
Toynbee's A Study of History (1946) page 39, where
Toynbee's graph of chifting civilisations labels, in
single quotes, the period "1875 - ?" as "'post-modern' ?"
Full documentation of this (and a great deal else
besides) will be in the next issue of the
Minutes of the Charles Olson Society,
published by Ralph Maud at
1104 Maple Street
Vancouver BC Canada V6J 3R6
and available for a modest fee from the Society at that
address.
PeterQ
__________________________________________________________________________
Peter Quartermain
128 East 23rd Avenue voice and fax (604) 876 8061
Vancouver
B.C. e-mail: quarterm@unixg.ubc.ca
Canada V5V 1X2
__________________________________________________________________________
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 17 May 1995 14:01:48 CST6CDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Hank Lazer <HLAZER@AS.UA.EDU>
Organization: Arts and Sciences Dean's Office
Subject: Re: four poems
Four for Larry Eigner
1
from childhood you remember
not the consecutive
his voice emphatic
as if it mattered
she seemed there & not
and so you to
your son
urging the next
to learn it
hawk with squirrel in talons
2
after all the singing faces, you
with your mouths out of sight
among the singing faces you
are walking away having said no
among the turning faces yours
the shadows retiring unto itself
after all the facial arpeggios dip
& descend with your mouths
out of sight pianissimo to
whisper to echoing silence
3
he had now
in no way
had it it
ran though his
hands his mouth
made representations
it was all
along beside
& through & of
he had no toe hold
4
there had been these
exact iterations
in
or after an interval
not the cumulus drama
but the indifferentiated
or nearly so
gray
befriending / partnering
sudden utterances
Hank Lazer
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 17 May 1995 15:09:43 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Edward Foster <EFOSTER@VAXC.STEVENS-TECH.EDU>
Subject: Re: the reality check is in the mail
aaaaaaallllllllllllllllllldddddddddddddddooooooooooooooooooooonnnnnnnnnnnn, three looks like tttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttthhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhiiiiiiiisssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 17 May 1995 15:26:23 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Edward Foster <EFOSTER@VAXC.STEVENS-TECH.EDU>
Subject: Re: really Real
ah, ron, yes, silence. i remember zabriskie point, but the sands were shifting, the hawks were hooting. no, for me, it was the north pole when santa's helpers took a break in all that tap-tap-tap and you could almost feel the heart of light, the silence
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 17 May 1995 15:33:18 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Gary Sullivan <gpsj@PRIMENET.COM>
Subject: Re: Herb Levy & Tom Mandel
Dear Herb (& Tom, a few words re: your & Dan's _Absence Sensorium_
conclude this):
As you're probably well aware from your back-channel discussion,
"authenticity" and "value" are hardly cut & dry. I've given a lot of
thought to these issues and have never reached any comfortable (static)
position with respect to either.
When I was in college 10 years ago, I perpetrated a kind of "hoax" of
my own -- though my intentions were relatively benign compared to "the Ern
Malley affair."
I had developed a pretty serious crush on one of the editors of the
university's "experimental poetry" magazine. This was many years before
I'd begun reading & writing poetry w/any seriousness. At the time, I
didn't much appreciate the kind of work published in this magazine. But, I
had a crush on one of the editors, and was too shy to try (as a "normal"
person might) to simply engage her in conversation. I assumed she wouldn't
have any interest in me because I didn't (then) write poetry, or for that
matter, know anything *about* poetry.
I got it into my head that, if I could write poetry like the work in
this editor's magazine, she might suddenly become "interested" in me, or
at the very least, it might be a way to see that our paths would
eventually cross. I decided to study the poems in her magazine and try to
make up some of my own, using pretty much the techniques described by Ern
Malley's creators. I cribbed from much less "lofty" sources; took material
from things found in the San Francisco _Chronicle_, mostly from the
crossword puzzle.
My roommate at the time was a poet whose work had been in this
magazine, and he knew how I felt about the editor, as well as about the
magazine's contents. So, I told him my plan, and showed him my poems. He
liked the poems, felt I could probably get the magazine to publish them,
but said that it was a mistake for me to look at them as "hoaxes." I went
ahead and submitted the poems, and two of them were published. I think my
friend then told the editors that I considered my poems "hoaxes," but
nothing much ever came of that, as I think the editors (rightly) felt that
it didn't matter much how *I* felt about the poems, as they were, by the
standards of the people writing for & reading that magazine, perfectly
appropriate things for someone to be writing.
The poems I wrote for that magazine I *still* don't think much of,
think they were failures even by that magazine's standards (which favored,
as Dodie might call it, "seductive surfaces"). But, I don't disrespect the
people who thought enough of them to publish them. The magazine valued a
particular aesthetic, an aesthetic I value today, and I'd supplied them
with work that more or less "worked."
I picked up the Ern Malley book because Jonathan had given me a great
description of the whole "affair," but also because, at that time,
Jonathan had read me some of "Ern"'s poems, which I actually *liked*. But,
then, my liking them is -- for better or worse -- linked up to the fact
that I know what the poets' intentionality was. I think they failed (well,
obviously) to "expose" the "sham" of "modernism," but I really appreciate
their work, in part, because of I guess you could call it the "high
spirited nature" of the project. The poets were having fun, & the finished
product *is* a lot of fun to read.
But, of course, Max Harris (_Angry Penguins_'s editor) had no idea
the poems were pranks, was appreciating them by whatever standards he
might have brought to an appreciation of, say, Eliot. And that does make
me wonder, maybe about Eliot's notion of the "objective correlative" --
I've never thought much of that, and reading Ern Malley's work, which was
accepted not for its "high spirited nature," but for the "seriousness" &
"depth" of the work; well, I think even less of Eliot's theory (if not
his poetry; though, admittedly, I don't care much for either).
When Dodie Bellamy speaks of the "seductive surface" of writing --
well, that's pretty much what Malley's work offers me. Heck, it's to a
great extent what Shakespeare's sonnets offer me. I certainly don't
ultimately care whether or not Shakespeare's Sonnets were begun as an
attempt to convince Henry Wriothesley to marry -- though, reading (say)
Robert Giroux's _The Book Known As Q_ does indeed amplify my overall
appreciation for the work. (Even though much of what Giroux says is,
ultimately, speculation.)
The poets of the Romantic period who valued Thomas Chatterton's hoax
created their own standards for an appreciation of that work, standards
that didn't exist as such in Chatterton's time. Likewise, we live at a
particular point in time wherein people like Jonathan and I (& lots of
others I'll bet) can appreciate the poems of Ern Malley *as* poems, above
& beyond what I'd call the "pre-game hype."
When Ted Berrigan composed a fake interview with John Cage, & a panel
including Susan Sontag awarded it "Best Interview of the Year" (or
something like that), well, when it came out that the interview had been a
hoax, there wasn't a lot of hullabaloo about that. Likewise, when I
discovered that transcripts of three Japanese "poet/scholars" discussing
Ron Silliman's work and the Japanese tradition of renga in an issue of
_Aerial_ a couple years back was a hoax, I thought no less of the editor
who'd published them. (I myself had enjoyed the transcripts prior to
knowing they were fake.) I agree with Dodie that "the real" is hardly an
easily pinned down thing, "place" or value. "Authenticity" isn't a black &
white issue. I'd bet anyone on this list could, using OULIPO techniques on
found material, come up with a "memoir" that'd win first prize in one of
The Loft's annual contests. (They're a local, very conservative, literary
center.) Likewise, the people at the Loft could probably use whatever
methods to generate a series poems, sign 'em "Charles Bernstein," and get
a number of magazines to publish the stuff *as* Bernstein poems.
This brings us back, I think, to questions about the ultimate value
of theory -- at least as used by readers as a method of entry into any
particular work. If I determine that Eliot was wrong, that no such thing
as an "objective correlative" exists, does that mean his poetry's
unreadable? I don't think so. If I believe that "objective correlative" is
valid, does that mean that his work is any good? Hardly.
If "the author is dead," in part by virtue of the fact that one's
"authenticity" is never above question, then, isn't by the same token
*theory* also "dead"?
What, besides "personal taste" do we -- and I mean collectively --
have left?
Anything?
Everything?
Tom Mandel, even better than your poem "Realism" (in terms of this
topic) is the poem you've just written with Daniel Davidson, _Absence
Sensorium_. I love it. Would you post some of it for poetics readers, or
at the very least talk a little about how you & Dan generated it? It's
fascinating to me how you used the poem -- which contains a lot of
personal material (as well as, according to Dan, a lot of bogus, made up
autobiography) -- to collapse, each of you, into this singular-voiced
text. Wonderful work.
Ciao for niao,
Gary
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 17 May 1995 17:26:28 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Marisa A Januzzi <jma5@COLUMBIA.EDU>
Subject: Re: really Real
In-Reply-To: <199505152339.AA02251@mailhub.cc.columbia.edu>
Hello--
Hope and think I've got this right-- it's a message to Kevin Killian, who
said on poetics something to the effect that "contemporary writers will
be judged on how they responded to the AIDS crisis"-- and also for Dodie
Bellamy, whose work "responds"--
I just wanted to let you know that I taught a series of plague texts at
the end of my humanities class-- response to plagues being the best index of
'humanity' maybe-- and it was the most engaging and emotional
experience. Boccaccio's DECAMERON back to back with ANGELS IN AMERICA
and Jim Powell's It Was Fever That Made The World.
My students really dove in. Some of them volunteered time. Anyway I have
been remembering what you said and I wanted to thank you.
--Marisa
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 17 May 1995 15:47:35 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Sheila E. Murphy" <semurphy@INDIRECT.COM>
Subject: Re: Ern Malley & others
Herb's comment of 5/17:
>Who is being tricked, about what, and how much does it matter if the poems
>seem pretty good?
reminds me of a fellow music student during college who could imitate the
voice teacher who was a marvelous mezzo soprano, deliciously proficient at
operatic work. The student was of the ilk who had raised goofing off to the
level of a fine art. She took great delight in playing with her Dana
Carvey-like capability in the vocal department.
But all that time, I kept wondering just what it meant that Jill could do
all of this. What was the difference between her and the vocal teacher?
Many theoretical ones, plus the root versus derivation thing. But for sound
quality, no diff at all.
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 17 May 1995 17:28:21 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: George Bowering <bowering@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: really Real
In-Reply-To: <199505172335.QAA18951@whistler.sfu.ca> from "Marisa A Januzzi"
at May 17, 95 05:26:28 pm
Just a question without malice.
Is Jane Austen usually judged by the way she responded to
Napoleon's invasions?
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 17 May 1995 17:42:46 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: George Bowering <bowering@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: POETICS Digest - 15 May 1995 to 16 May 1995
In-Reply-To: <199505170621.XAA01489@whistler.sfu.ca> from "Marjorie Perloff"
at May 16, 95 11:19:11 pm
I think that when Olson was using the term post the modern, he was
thinking about history, about somethiunbg we could in some terms call
post-historical, or at least histoprical as redefined by his famous
BM lecture.
For the turn of the century Catholic church it seems to have meant,
Modernism, the attempt to gether 19thC science and Darwinism into the
same system with biblical-liturgical teaching. It was condemned by
the Pope, the same Pope who wanted to get the Jews out of Jerusalem.
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 17 May 1995 18:20:28 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Reginald Johanson <reginalj@SFU.CA>
Subject: Really real
I'm new to the list, so I thought I'd address a question without
mischief.
It's a question my brother asked Ryan Knighton when we were getting
drunk and having a problem with the really real and what it was and
meant. My brother works with street kids. I think the whole problem
was needlessly abstract for him. He simply asked, "But what do you do
in a crisis?"
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 17 May 1995 22:09:44 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Tom Mandel <tmandel@UMD5.UMD.EDU>
Subject: Absence Sensorium
I don't know how much I want to say about this poem that
no one but Dan and I have seen -- altho I read some
from it at the Poetry Project in January, and I believe
Dan has read part of it aloud too in San Francisco at
some point. Certainly, I can comment on how we were
able to collaborate: I mean that it was made much
easier by the net, in that we sent our work to each
other by email, buyt this is not much of a point
to make. Some of you will know that I make a living
in the networking industry (consulting and selling
internetworking gear and configuration services and
developing information architectures for on-line
implementation - well, I don't actually *do* the
latter but exploit the talents of others [if you
like] and my own conceptual abilities such as they
remain), but none of this entered into our
writing of AS.
I don't think Gary maeant any load on the word
"bogus" when he said that bogus autobiographical
material was part of the poem, but I don't think
it's the rite word - some is imagined, or
someone else's autobiography is sketched, but
most of it is "real," including a lot that might
not be taken as such.
The poem is out being read for publication (at
least I hope it is being read!) and for whatever
reason it feels awkward to say too much about
it and at least a little premature to "print" any
of it here - tho maybe we'd feel differently in
a while, or maybe Dan feels differently than I
right now; I haven't checked and I will.
most of it is "real," including a lot that might
not be taken as such.
The poem is out being read for publication (at
least I hope it is being read!) and for whatever
reason it feels awkward to say too much about
it and at least a little premature to "print" any
of it here - tho maybe we'd feel differently in
a while, or maybe Dan feels differently than I
right now; I haven't checked and I will.
(ooops I just cut/pasted the same bit twice. shit)
This external description begins to seem a little
silly; I guess I could give you two stanzas, from
different parts of the poem. (just give me a second...)
finally. But in what ways can these windings
connect with thought? Beginning
not as modern but as here, or so says my
body leaning from this chair.
Embracing fiction, a functioning desire
makes for strange and wonderful ceremony,
like the salve of tongues and language in my ear
...
A straight score crossed the window
between the alley and his basement room
where the pane had been quietly removed. His
mattress, soaked in blood, twisted off its box spring.
Interior walls of the rooms were pocked with
bullet holes, trajected inward. No outward
facing holes -- the dead don't fire.
and
Turn and turn it; everything is in it.
Bridge made of cracked glass whose edge
defies you to cross. Winter,
copying in your notebook
the recipe for a color long unseen
amid objects glinting on your desk. Yet, know:
its color may still appear.
...
Is the world still glowing?
Is the night still making rounds?
Is something still pushing up ahead of us,
whittling out the unimaginable?
I sit here and sip my tea
the most ordinary act I can think of,
moon spinning 'round my body.
...
I can offer no adequate exclusions;
we all live in the same lie,
breathe in the same atmosphere.
So it becomes a question
of participation and resistance, or
simply participation.
I most heartily recommend the former.
words spoken by someone else
what sympathies ruled the hunt
what we heard in confidence, and soon forgot
whose tongue turned then, or was stopped,
words slurred, gait canted, spirit spinning awry,
that it's not our life to rise
nor ours to fall. Not to listen. Not to speak.
More than a couple....
Tom Mandel
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 17 May 1995 22:47:20 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: John Byrum <JMBYRUM@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: really Real Andy
Lindz:
Yes! Warhol is really real. He's the only one that admits art isn't art
unless it has streaks and smudges. Imperfection is the real art of being
artistic. (your recent message)
For me, Warhol's work is sheer surface, utter blank, which (precisely in that
surface blankness) holds many depths for our guesses (i.e., interpretations,
feelings, desires) to plunge into. His work is empty/ full, impersonal,
machinelike, and very humanly alive/anguished, all at once. It is facade,
mask, fake, and a multiply-faceted portrait of a consciousness attempting to
come to terms with a singular interpretation of our current situation, a sort
of existential commodification.
John
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 17 May 1995 23:13:33 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: John Byrum <JMBYRUM@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: irony and the Really real
Dodie concluded a message to Andrew with the following:
>The real is like god, Andrew, it will always elude you.
>Dodie
I agree that the real can always seem elusive (allusive??), but think that
all our experiences must finally be the Real. After all they are all we
have, call them what you will. No need to bring in some notion of a
"transcendent" "Real" as somehow more "real", because that is also
comprehended under our "experience". We choose the words and the feelings
that we bring to them are ours also.
John
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 17 May 1995 23:51:05 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Chris Stroffolino <LS0796@ALBNYVMS.BITNET>
Subject: Re: four poems
dear hank--enjoyed your eigner tribute...and then i got worried....DID HE
DIE? If so, could you illuminate us? Thanks, Chris
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 17 May 1995 22:55:26 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Gary Sullivan <gpsj@PRIMENET.COM>
Subject: Re: Absence Sensorium
In-Reply-To: <199505180235.TAA04391@mailhost.primenet.com>
Dear Tom:
Thanks for that. I hope at some point you will feel more comfortable
talking about the piece en length -- it's a very rare kind of
collaborative poem I think, lots in the first person (& some material in
the second person), and very (this is probably the wrong word too)
"sincere." (No wonder you liked _Locus Solus_ -- a whole HUGE issue
devoted to collaborations!) I hope I didn't put you on the spot asking
you to write about it "prematurely." I'm used to corresponding w/people
who don't get books published, most of 'em, so the notion of "premature"
w/respect to finished work is kind of a foreign one to me. (Dan said that
the version of the poem he sent me was "finished" -- I've read earlier
drafts of it, too.) But, your situation is different, & also, there's
another writer involved, so I'll respect that.
By the above parenthetical, please note that people other than you & Dan
*have* read this; also because I run w/a generally unpublished pack, we
tend to do a lot of "manuscript exchanges" -- meaning, er, um, I believe
maybe there're a few *others* ('sides me) who've read _AS_ as well. (Oh,
now, I'm sure they'll be buyin' the book version too, when it comes out.
I definitely will.)
"Bogus" not at all loaded. I use a lot of bogus autobiographical material
myself, & not because I have any Big Ideas about identity blurring, but
because sometimes the bogus stuff *is* "real." (I'm from California, Tom;
thus "bogus.") (Dude.)
Yours,
Gary
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 17 May 1995 22:59:54 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Gary Sullivan <gpsj@PRIMENET.COM>
Subject: Re: really Real Andy
In-Reply-To: <199505180317.UAA13174@mailhost.primenet.com>
Dear John:
Your take on Warhol sounds very much like Carter Ratcliff's (a wonderful
poet, by the way; just picked up his _Fever Coast_ at Woodland Pattern).
Ratcliff wrote one of those Abbeville Moderns or Contemporaries or
Whathaveyous on Warhol -- check it out if you've not yet seen it. You'll
like, I think. Gold cover, w/a Marilyn repro.
Yours,
Gary
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 17 May 1995 23:59:13 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Chris Stroffolino <LS0796@ALBNYVMS.BITNET>
Subject: Re: irony and the Really real
LindZZZZZZZ---I am off for Washington D.C. to read a school prayer
this weekend ("ON Your Knees, Citizen") and remember when i lived there
in '83-'84 a huge graffiti mural that on a side of a wall (not one of
those lamo 'official' ones either that said "Art Is Anything You Can Get
Away With"--Andy Warhol....
(there should be a '
')' after 'either' and before 'said'....
I wonder if it's still there...and what's become of the artist...CS
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 17 May 1995 23:25:58 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Gary Sullivan <gpsj@PRIMENET.COM>
Subject: Re: Really real
In-Reply-To: <199505180338.UAA17859@mailhost.primenet.com>
On Wed, 17 May 1995, Reginald Johanson wrote:
> It's a question my brother asked Ryan Knighton when we were getting
> drunk and having a problem with the really real and what it was and
> meant. My brother works with street kids. I think the whole problem
> was needlessly abstract for him. He simply asked, "But what do you do
> in a crisis?"
Dear Reginald:
I work at the Legal Aid Society of Minneapolis/Housing Discrimination Law
Project. The people who come into our office for help/advice are living
in public housing, most receiving various forms of welfare/General
Assistance/SSI benefits. When I began working there, I assumed there was
little correlation between my writing/editing life and the lives of
either the people who came in for help, or the lawyers who help them deal
with various issues of the law. I assumed that existence for these people
was not "needlessly abstract" in the way poetry, writing & theory can be.
Not one of the people who comes into our office isn't in
what most of us on this list (or anyone) would call "a crisis." Being
locked out of their apartments (life or death in winter in Minnesota). Being
denied benefits they need in order to purchase food. Being turned away
from housing because of race, disability, etc.
Not "needlessly abstract"? I was wrong.
These people's lives, the issues they are (at the time they
come in to us) dealing with aren't at all simple, nor can they be solved
(typically) by any simple means. Because most of what Legal Aid offers
people is *advice* (as opposed to representation, which is saved for only
those cases which might seemingly "drag on" in court), and because this
advice, being able to act on this advice, requires a clear understanding of
what tend to be "needlessly" abstract as well as complexly verbose laws,
I'd hesitate to ever suggest that these people do not, in times
of crisis, have to deal with "needlessly abstract" issues.
I'd say, in fact, that these people, perhaps because their crises tend to
be more let's say "immediate" than the crises poets & writers face (or
create or ourselves), they tend to deal w/"needlessly abstract" issues
incredibly well -- they have to, otherwise, they're even worse off.
Life -- at no level -- is simple. & that ain't something I read about in
any book.
Yours,
Gary
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 17 May 1995 18:45:07 -1000
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Gabrielle Welford <welford@UHUNIX.UHCC.HAWAII.EDU>
Subject: Phoning White House to Save the Trees of Life (fwd.(
Thought ye all might be interested in this.
Gabrielle
welford@uhunix.uhcc.hawaii.edu
The Rescissions Bill (rescinding large parts of last year's
Federal; budget, including massive cuts in aid to college students,
environmental enforcement, etc.) is now before the President.
**IT INCLUDES A PROVISION CALLED THE "SALVAGE" RIDER" THAT REQUIRES THE SALE
OF SIX BILLION BOARD FEET OF LUMBER FROM THE NATIONAL FORESTS IN THE NEXT
TWOP YEARS, AND PROHIBITS ALL COURT CHALLENGES AND NULLIFIES ALL
ENVIRONMENTAL-PROTECTION LAWS THAT MIGHT PREVENT THIS DESTRUCTION.**
The White House has said the President is considering vetoing the bill,
partly because of this provision. The White House has added this issue as
Question # 2 on its daily opinion survey. There follow simple instructions
for calling the White House -- a 15-second call, unless you want to talk to a
live person -- to register your opinion on this.
The White House has now added the "salvage" rider to the list of questions
for
which they are conducting a survey.
This question is number 2 in a series. YOU CAN NOW CALL THIS LINE
24 HOURS A DAY, SEVEN DAYS A WEEK. CALL IMMEDIATELY,
ASK YOUR FAMILY AND NEIGHBORS TO CALL. REGISTER YOUR
VOTE!
(202) 456-1111
After this number answers, you press (1)
and (1) to enter the survey (listen to the operator and respond). After
the first question, the second question will be on the timber "salvage"
rider. You will be asked if you support the rider (hell, no!) or oppose
the rider (press 2). If you call between 9-5 M-F, East Coast time, you
can also stay on the line and at any time in the survey, press O for an
operator (chance to record a vote in the mechanical survey and talk to a
real person). If this message sounds confusing, don't worry, once you try
it, you'll find it is really very easy, and takes only 10-15 seconds of
your time, once you are connected.
REMEMBER, THIS LINE IS OPEN 24 HOURS A DAY, SO YOU NO
LONGER HAVE TO WAIT FOR EAST COAST BUSINESS HOURS
Don't give up!
ONLY YOU CAN CONVINCE THE PRESIDENT TO VETO THE
RESCISSIONS BILL--AND THE TIMBER RIDER
CALL NOW!
And please forward this message wherever you can.
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 17 May 1995 23:55:06 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Gary Sullivan <gpsj@PRIMENET.COM>
Subject: addendum
The parenthetical statement in second to last paragraph of post to
Reginald Johanson should read "(or create *for* ourselves)."
Also, Reginald: I can't emphasize enough how wrong (not to mention
condescending) it is suppose the poor are a "simple lot." I know you
didn't mean anything bad by it, but then, I'm sure none of the writers
who've created "simple" poor (or working class) characters out of
"pity" "nostalgia" "romanticism" or whatever (& they always seem
"symbolic" of something, don't they?) meant anything bad by it, either.
The poor are just like you & me, Reg, they just have a lot less money.
But don't take my word for it. Read Dambudzo Marechera's _Mindblast_ or
Bob Kaufman's _Solitudes Crowded with Loneliness_ if you think life at the
(economic) bottom is simple or that people who find themselves
(temporarily or permanently) "there" have less going on in their skulls
(or read any less) than Harold Bloom or whoever, Raymond Carver et al. to
the contrary.
Okay. I'll shut up now.
Yours,
Gary
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 17 May 1995 22:15:57 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Carl Lynden Peters <clpeters@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: really Real Andy
In-Reply-To: <199505180317.UAA04772@whistler.sfu.ca> from "John Byrum" at May
17, 95 10:47:20 pm
ya, he's the best only after duchamp.
in fact, one of the very few who got him right. or maybe half right
carl
> > Lindz:
>
> Yes! Warhol is really real. He's the only one that admits art isn't art
> unless it has streaks and smudges. Imperfection is the real art of being
> artistic. (your recent message)
>
> For me, Warhol's work is sheer surface, utter blank, which (precisely in that
> surface blankness) holds many depths for our guesses (i.e., interpretations,
> feelings, desires) to plunge into. His work is empty/ full, impersonal,
> machinelike, and very humanly alive/anguished, all at once. It is facade,
> mask, fake, and a multiply-faceted portrait of a consciousness attempting to
> come to terms with a singular interpretation of our current situation, a sort
> of existential commodification.
>
> John
>
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 18 May 1995 03:10:47 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Marisa A Januzzi <jma5@COLUMBIA.EDU>
Subject: Re: really Real
In-Reply-To: <199505180031.AA06031@mailhub.cc.columbia.edu>
A response without malice: you'd be surprised. Beyond the usual
undergraduate rejections of her work as being devoid of labor, war and
sex (!), there are the new and unusual readings which move the peripheral
detail of, for instance, the sugar plantations in Antigua which fuel the
local economy to the center of _Mansfield Park_.
BTW, I didn't intend that message for the whole list-- the one about
plagues! But I did mean what I said. Partly it was triggered by hearing
an emotional reading from Powell's book _It was Fever That Made The World_.
--Marisa
On Wed, 17 May 1995, George Bowering wrote:
> Just a question without malice.
>
> Is Jane Austen usually judged by the way she responded to
> Napoleon's invasions?
>
>
>
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 18 May 1995 03:02:34 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ron Silliman <rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM>
Subject: Re: The REAL Ern Malley
Gary,
re your comment:
>
> When Ted Berrigan composed a fake interview with John Cage, & a
panel
>including Susan Sontag awarded it "Best Interview of the Year" (or
>something like that), well, when it came out that the interview had
been a
>hoax, there wasn't a lot of hullabaloo about that. Likewise, when I
>discovered that transcripts of three Japanese "poet/scholars"
discussing
>Ron Silliman's work and the Japanese tradition of renga in an issue of
>_Aerial_ a couple years back was a hoax, I thought no less of the
editor
>who'd published them. (I myself had enjoyed the transcripts prior to
>knowing they were fake.)
And I, of course, was taken in by these same folks in their translation
of an imagined poet in the Conjunctions "translation" issue -- the
Japanese follower of Spicer & Barthes -- even posting an enthusiastic
note here (which I think Luigi-Bob may have reprinted in Taproot). But
it doesn't erase the fact that these are genuinely interesting poems,
regardless of their ambiguous relation to "authenticity."
How does this differ from, say, someone like Curtis Faville in the
1960s who would do a flawless "take" on anyone (Stanzas for an Evening
Out remains a pretty great book, even tho in some ways it's an
anthology of Curtis' own enthusiasms, a "reading" in Dahlen's sense of
the word of the poetry of that time)?
Ron Silliman
rsillima@ix.netcom.com
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 18 May 1995 03:06:36 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ron Silliman <rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM>
Subject: Yo, Ed
That
Was
Four
Lines
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 18 May 1995 03:20:31 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ron Silliman <rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM>
Subject: Re: really Real Andy
I saw the big Warhol retrospective at the Chicago Art Institute a few
years back and was taken with how well his work has stood up over time,
whereas Rauschenberg seems to me as dated as Life Magazine covers from
the 1950s, utterly limited and only of historical interest. Warhol
remains not only the most political artist of his generation, but
surprisingly one most committed to visual values in his work. My guess
is that it will still look pretty damn great in another 50 years, when
all the media hype will have faded.
Ron Silliman
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 18 May 1995 03:38:09 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ron Silliman <rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM>
Subject: Re: Absence Sensorium
Tom,
Didn't know Dan had email. What's his address?
The excerpts look great, but you are one big tease! Post the whole
thing!
Love,
Ron
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 18 May 1995 03:40:14 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ron Silliman <rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM>
Subject: Re: four poems
Hank,
They're wonderful. This is a great way to use the list. It's terrific.
Ron
PS, "facial arpeggios"?
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 18 May 1995 08:14:31 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Tom Mandel <tmandel@UMD5.UMD.EDU>
Subject: Re: Absence Sensorium
I didn't mean to overreact to the word "bogus" - and I shd have
recognized the california spin on the word (I spent 2 decades
there myself), but maybe others wdn't have either. In any case,
there's really nothing there that looks like it's personal that
isn't. I.e. the poem is constructed; the life is not.
Tom Mandel
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 18 May 1995 08:22:50 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Tom Mandel <tmandel@UMD5.UMD.EDU>
Subject: Re: The REAL Ern Malley
Just to concur with Ron Silliman re: Stanzas for an Evening Out
by Curtis Faville. A kind of NY school ne plus ultra, in
which the poet writes himself into a corner with paint that
'll never dry. Curtis Faville wrote no more (unless I'm
wrong: anyway, it shd read "has written").
I guess too that the news (just reached me; always the last one
unless it's abt gadgets or cars, then I'm the first one - and
I recommend my methods) of the imaginariness of that Japanese
Spicer-following personally-blistered avantgardist poet whose
family died in a-bomb blast doesn't take away from the interest
of the poems - imagined poems by imagined poet - but it does
give one a slightly lugubrious sense of the imaginers' character
given the material they used.
Tom Mandel
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 18 May 1995 08:45:14 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Tom Mandel <tmandel@UMD5.UMD.EDU>
Subject: one big tease
Ron,
I'd be kind of surprised if the other 220 participants here
wanted to find a 100+ page poem in thier emailboxes! But
I'll ask Dan what he thinks (& if he wants to come out of
the email shadows).
Love,
tom
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 18 May 1995 08:24:14 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" <anielsen@SPARTA.SJSU.EDU>
Subject: Re: Ern Malley's antecedents
In-Reply-To: <9505180400.AA14495@isc.sjsu.edu>
similar episode in U.S. -- the Spectra Hoax -- look up those ole spectral
poets -- they may be the last remaining unrecovered modernists!
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 18 May 1995 08:27:36 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" <anielsen@SPARTA.SJSU.EDU>
Subject: Re: the reality check bounces
In-Reply-To: <9505180400.AA14495@isc.sjsu.edu>
well, of course it made two lines (in three sentences) instead of three.
you may have noticed that ed's 3 liners often wrap around to 4 or 5.
the subject heading is a clue as to who really wrote it. I didn't.
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 18 May 1995 11:03:06 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Gary Sullivan <gpsj@PRIMENET.COM>
Subject: Re: The REAL Ern Malley
In-Reply-To: <199505181224.FAA29184@mailhost.primenet.com>
Dodie, I hope you'll forgive us for continuing to use the word "Real"
in subject headings, despite our knowledge that it freaks you out, what
with your book title & all. (& it's a wonderful book, I think.) But, you
know, taking the word for your title doesn't take the word out of
circulation otherwise -- & I can't imagine you'd believe that'd ever
happen, anyway ...
Ron & Tom, please, please, could one or either of you (or anyone else
w/the goods) please deliver more in re: Curtis Faville? The publisher of
his _Stanzas_? The year it was published? More about the work? What
little's been said about him has got my fingers all itchin', & when my
fingers are all itchin' ... well, I'll leave the rest to imagination.
The Japanese poet/scholar hoax: Well, Tom, I think you're right to
question the hoaxer's character. I don't know the hoaxer myself, but I've
heard (from a friend of his) that the hoax was *racially* motivated:
specifically, this guy decided he could get things published more easily
in the States if he came up with an "ethnic" persona to attach to the
work. Assuming the person who told me that ain't lyin', it is indeed
troubling.
It is true that, at least as far as nonprofit presses go (ones
that rely heavily on grants for continued operation), manuscripts by
otherwise unknowns who have Asian or Hispanic or Native American sounding
names are going to get pulled from the slush pile for immediate consideration
-- the publicly supported arts, including funding orgs, largely in
response to public pressure, practice a kind of affirmative action. But,
what the hoaxer didn't seem to take into consideration was *why*
affirmative action's being practiced, what lead to that: specifically,
the fact that very few presses (especially smaller & independent ones)
publish people they don't know (either personally, or as in "have heard
of"). And anglos tend to know mostly other anglos.
To me, the hoaxer has proven nothing we didn't already know; and not only
that, has shown himself to be either unaware of (or unsympathetic to) larger
social issues. This doesn't mean that his poems are no good, or
uninteresting, but that yes, Tom, this specific instance is a
particularly troubling one; while I feel no disrepect for the editors (or
readers) taken in by the hoax (being again one of the readers taken in),
my feelings w/respect to the hoaxer -- assuming, again, that my source
for this info about his motives ain't lyin' (& who knows?) -- is quite
another story.
Yours,
Gary
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 18 May 1995 11:05:43 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Gary Sullivan <gpsj@PRIMENET.COM>
Subject: Re: Absence Sensorium
In-Reply-To: <199505181215.FAA28071@mailhost.primenet.com>
Tom:
Assuming it'd be okay w/Dan, maybe you could, instead of posting the poem
(which is quite long) here (since some people's e-mail only holds so
much, reportedly), maybe you could get it set up in the EPC center, so
interested people could read it there?
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 18 May 1995 09:07:12 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Lindz Williamson <lmichell@UNIXG.UBC.CA>
Subject: Re: really Real Andy
In-Reply-To: <199505181023.DAA06257@unixg.ubc.ca>
On Thu, 18 May 1995, Ron Silliman wrote:
> I saw the big Warhol retrospective at the Chicago Art Institute a few
> years back and was taken with how well his work has stood up over time,
> whereas Rauschenberg seems to me as dated as Life Magazine covers from
> the 1950s, utterly limited and only of historical interest. Warhol
> remains not only the most political artist of his generation, but
> surprisingly one most committed to visual values in his work. My guess
> is that it will still look pretty damn great in another 50 years, when
> all the media hype will have faded.
>
> Ron Silliman
>
I've done a couple studies on Warhol and I am totally amazed by
his ability to manipulate. His art goes beyond the silkscreen. He was a
business man first and then an artist. He did 100 portraits of German
business men and their families for $25 000 each which he admits were not
art. Along the same line he made the Skull serious as a pure fluke and
everybody raved about his genius. ( in case anyone does know the print he
took a photo of a skull and the shadow produced was in the shape of a
baby's head) He did prints to bring home the bacon to support the " family"
and then he did "art"
What I admire is Interview, it is or was one of the
greatest entertainment magazines. Andy was a sort of Martha Stewart of the Pop
generation; he sold a lifestyle. He told us what was hip and cool and
made Studio 54 and the Factory places we'd died to go to.
Even his work in film and video was incredibly influential and
revolutionary for the time. The Philosophies of Andy Warhol is one of my
favorite books, it doesn't matter that he didn't write it, he thought of
it, and that's enough.
Lindz
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 18 May 1995 11:18:35 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Gary Sullivan <gpsj@PRIMENET.COM>
Subject: Re: really Real Andy
In-Reply-To: <199505181023.DAA18450@mailhost.primenet.com>
On Thu, 18 May 1995, Ron Silliman wrote:
> I saw the big Warhol retrospective at the Chicago Art Institute a few
> years back and was taken with how well his work has stood up over time,
> whereas Rauschenberg seems to me as dated as Life Magazine covers from
> the 1950s, utterly limited and only of historical interest. Warhol
> remains not only the most political artist of his generation, but
> surprisingly one most committed to visual values in his work. My guess
> is that it will still look pretty damn great in another 50 years, when
> all the media hype will have faded.
Ron, I agree that Warhol'l definitely be remembered (& thought & spoken
highly of) for a long, long time. But Rauschenberg ... "dated"? "Utterly
limited"? "Only of historical interest"?
Dude. That is like, totally bogus. I mean, ruhlly. Reminds me of when the
Jess retrospective came to the Walker & a friend of mine, when I asked
him "You go check this shit out, man?" replied: "Oh, that's just 60s
'trippy' art." *Pardohn, eskyoozay*?!?
Anyway, that stuff about the Rausch-man, them's fightin' words! But,
fortunately for you, I smoke too much, & you could easily keek mah ass if
it came down to that. (I do plan to quit, tho, & when I do, I'll have
lots of pent-up energy to release ...)
Caio baby,
Gary
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 18 May 1995 11:24:14 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Gary Sullivan <gpsj@PRIMENET.COM>
Subject: Re: Ern Malley's antecedents
In-Reply-To: <199505181618.JAA13402@mailhost.primenet.com>
On Thu, 18 May 1995, Aldon L. Nielsen wrote:
> similar episode in U.S. -- the Spectra Hoax -- look up those ole
spectral > poets -- they may be the last remaining unrecovered modernists!
Aldon, MORE ON THIS, POR FAVOR! Names, dates, pub's, secondary materials,
etc.!
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 18 May 1995 10:10:06 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Herb Levy <herb@ESKIMO.COM>
Subject: Re: The REAL Araki Yasusada
In-Reply-To: <199505172037.AA26584@mail.eskimo.com>
Looking back at yesterday's post about poetic hoaxes, in my haste to
delete a couple of sentences that mentioned my back channel correspondent
without permission, I also deleted Araki Yasusada's name, but yeah, that's
who we'd been discussing, the same "poet" brought up by Gary Sullivan,
Ron Silliman, and Tom Mandel.
I still don't have the details entirely straight. Clearly the post-WWII
Japanese avant garde group is fake, but I've also been told that the trio
of contemporary Japanese writers who "translate" the poems are also fake
and the whole thing is the work of one person.
Does anyone have more information on this?
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 18 May 1995 10:36:44 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Carl Lynden Peters <clpeters@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: really Real Andy
In-Reply-To: <199505181712.KAA17369@whistler.sfu.ca> from "Gary Sullivan" at
May 18, 95 11:18:35 am
>
> On Thu, 18 May 1995, Ron Silliman wrote:
>
> > I saw the big Warhol retrospective at the Chicago Art Institute a few
> > years back and was taken with how well his work has stood up over time,
> > whereas Rauschenberg seems to me as dated as Life Magazine covers from
> > the 1950s, utterly limited and only of historical interest. Warhol
> > remains not only the most political artist of his generation, but
> > surprisingly one most committed to visual values in his work. My guess
> > is that it will still look pretty damn great in another 50 years, when
> > all the media hype will have faded.
>
> Ron, I agree that Warhol'l definitely be remembered (& thought & spoken
> highly of) for a long, long time. But Rauschenberg ... "dated"? "Utterly
> limited"? "Only of historical interest"?
>
> Dude. That is like, totally bogus. I mean, ruhlly. Reminds me of when the
> Jess retrospective came to the Walker & a friend of mine, when I asked
> him "You go check this shit out, man?" replied: "Oh, that's just 60s
> 'trippy' art." *Pardohn, eskyoozay*?!?
>
> Anyway, that stuff about the Rausch-man, them's fightin' words! But,
> fortunately for you, I smoke too much, & you could easily keek mah ass if
> it came down to that. (I do plan to quit, tho, & when I do, I'll have
> lots of pent-up energy to release ...)
>
> Caio baby,
>
> Gary
>
right on!, gary. raushenberg is a genius!
c
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 18 May 1995 10:35:50 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Herb Levy <herb@ESKIMO.COM>
Subject: Re: Ern Malley, Nancy Sinatra, & Bette Midler
In-Reply-To: <199505172248.AA13605@mail.eskimo.com>
Sheila Murphy's music school anecdote reminds me of some recent legal
landmarks in intellectual property law.
In the late sixties or early seventies, Goodyear Tire asked Nancy Sinatra
if they could use her recording of <These Boots Are Made for Walkin'> in a
TV ad. She declined and they hired someone who sounded just like her.
Nancy Sinatra sued and lost, she hadn't written the song and had no
ownership rights.
In the 1980s, Pontiac, I think, asked Bette Midler if they could use her
recording of <Do You Wanna Dance> in a TV ad. She declined and they hired
someone who sounded just like her. Bette Midler sued and won, because her
vocal style was recognized as her artistic property which had been
infringed.
Of course, we all know many other, far more creative, uses of other people's
material. But it's interesting to note the laws pertaining to these
issues aren't made by people know or care about the history of collage
and artistic appropration.
- Herb
On Wed, 17 May 1995, Sheila E. Murphy wrote:
> Herb's comment of 5/17:
>
> >Who is being tricked, about what, and how much does it matter if the poems
> >seem pretty good?
>
> reminds me of a fellow music student during college who could imitate the
> voice teacher who was a marvelous mezzo soprano, deliciously proficient at
> operatic work. The student was of the ilk who had raised goofing off to the
> level of a fine art. She took great delight in playing with her Dana
> Carvey-like capability in the vocal department.
>
> But all that time, I kept wondering just what it meant that Jill could do
> all of this. What was the difference between her and the vocal teacher?
> Many theoretical ones, plus the root versus derivation thing. But for sound
> quality, no diff at all.
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 18 May 1995 11:25:40 +0100
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Kevin Killian <dbkk@SIRIUS.COM>
Subject: Re: The REAL Ern Malley
>Dodie, I hope you'll forgive us for continuing to use the word "Real"
>in subject headings, despite our knowledge that it freaks you out, what
>with your book title & all. (& it's a wonderful book, I think.) But, you
>know, taking the word for your title doesn't take the word out of
>circulation otherwise -- & I can't imagine you'd believe that'd ever
>happen, anyway ...
Gary,
I do think the sun rises and sets in my you-know-what. But with a girl
like me, Gary, you can use any words you want.
Love,
Dodie
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 18 May 1995 14:39:31 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Edward Foster <EFOSTER@VAXC.STEVENS-TECH.EDU>
Subject: Re: Ern Malley's antecedents
actually some of the lines in the spectra poems are pretty terrific. his chinese translations aside, i don't think bynner ever did better.
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 18 May 1995 12:27:08 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Andrew Joron <ajoron@EMF.NET>
Subject: drugs
Dodie, I think we're in agreement on the elusiveness of the Real.
And gazing on that vanishing point is definitely a drug-like
experience! In fact, your mention of drugs puts me in mind of
one of my favorite passages from Bernstein's _Artifice of
Absorption_, where he says
poetry does have a mission to be as powerful as
the strongest drug, to offer a vision-in-sound
to compete with the world we know so that we can find
the worlds we don't.
Interestingly, he goes on to say that "there are no limits
language cannot reach," which to me is another way of confirming
that language *does* have limits (all of which can be reached).
What lies beyond those limits? Perhaps Duchamp's "labyrinths
outside of space and time."
-- Andrew Joron
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 18 May 1995 14:44:23 CST6CDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Hank Lazer <HLAZER@AS.UA.EDU>
Organization: Arts and Sciences Dean's Office
Subject: Re: eigner, address, reality
First, since I am in touch with several of you (and via
subscriptions!--Talisman, Taproot, etc.), and since my mail gets
re-routed and only sometimes delivered, my new address:
Hank Lazer
2945 N Hampton Dr
Tuscaloosa, AL 35406-2701
Same phone #, same e-mail, same humid city.
#
Chris--On Eigner. Sorry for the scare. Larry is well. I spoke
this morning with Jack Foley, who lives near Larry and is in touch
with him daily, and Jack confirms that Larry is doing fine. But you
did pick up the tone/mood all too well. The sadness, elegy, tragedy
creeping into these poems has to do with my father, who is 68, a year
older than Larry, and is dying of leukemia. I will be going out to
California (Carmel) in a couple of weeks to be with him. Larry's
poems, which I've liked for quite some time, helped me out. And I
suppose that Larry's work--its ability to enact quick shifts of mind,
almost word by word--is for me familiar and kin. I've been working
in a ten-line form for nearly a year now, and I find myself
re-examining poets who have done well with a short line
form--Creeley, of course, but lots of others, Niedecker, Plath,
Oppen, Dickinson, Susan Howe--and went back to Larry's Selected Poems
(1968?). In my group of four, #2 begins with two lines from Larry's
Selected Poems (p. 25). But to the point: sorry for the scare, and
Larry is well. OK, then, to write tributes to the LIVING?
Hank
#
To those interested in the "real"--I've been reading through
bpNichol's Martryology (all 9 volumes reissued & available from Coach
House, or, through the dreaded distributor Consortium) and found in
Book 5 near the end an amusing reference to the REAL's cousin,
"reality":
asleep (later) i dreamt
me & all my friends these past 12 years
headed out to eat at THE REALITY
found it closed & boarded
upset because REALITY was not where they supposed it to be
i couldn't understand them
told them this was always happening
'REALITY is always closing down
opens up again
somewhere else'
woke smiling & laughing
sensing some solution
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 18 May 1995 13:22:29 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ryan Knighton <knighton@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: addendum
In-Reply-To: <199505180542.WAA11866@whistler.sfu.ca> from "Gary Sullivan" at
May 17, 95 11:55:06 pm
I'm sorry if this is unwarranted, but it seems Gary and Reg are
discussing, or positing, two discssions bound by a gap. I'm not
sure if Reg was implying anything about class situation and the
abstract. When REg and his brohter and I were having this chat,
his brother was essentially asking me if, in a crisis of some kind,
like the fact i"m losing my vision, I take my theories about
the page and poem and apply them elsewhere in my life. The fact
that he works with street kids was incidental.
Or maybe I'm missing to what Gary was responding. Gary?
Best,
Ryan
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 18 May 1995 13:28:01 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Carl Lynden Peters <clpeters@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: really Real Andy
In-Reply-To: <199505181023.DAA21133@whistler.sfu.ca> from "Ron Silliman" at
May 18, 95 03:20:31 am
>
> I saw the big Warhol retrospective at the Chicago Art Institute a few
> years back and was taken with how well his work has stood up over time,
> whereas Rauschenberg seems to me as dated as Life Magazine covers from
> the 1950s, utterly limited and only of historical interest. Warhol
> remains not only the most political artist of his generation, but
> surprisingly one most committed to visual values in his work. My guess
> is that it will still look pretty damn great in another 50 years, when
> all the media hype will have faded.
>
> Ron Silliman
>
"...one most committed to _visual_values in his work..." (my emph.).:
what's that mean? in 50 yrs his work will still be great because it _is_
great
carl
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 18 May 1995 16:40:50 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Jordan Davis." <Jordan70@AOL.COM>
Subject: United Artists Sale
50% OFF--SALE ON SELECTED UNITED ARTISTS TITLES
Judyism by Jim Brodey * $5.00
The California Papers by Steve Carey * $4.00
Personal Effects by Charlotte Carter * $6.00
The Fox by Jack Collom * $4.00
Columbus Square Journal by William Corbett * $5.00
Smoking in the Twilight Bar by Barbara Henning * $5.00
Poems for the Whole Family * $7.00
Head by Bill Kushner * $5.00
Love Uncut by Bill Kushner * $6.00
One at a Time by Gary Lenhart * $5.00
Songs for the Unborn Second Baby by Alice Notley * $5.00
Fool Consciousness by Liam O'Gallagher * $5.00
Cleaning Up New York by Bob Rosenthal * $4.00
Political Conditions/Physical States by Tom Savage * $7.00
Along the Rails by Elio Schneeman * $6.00
Echolalia by George Tysh * $7.00
Selected Poems by Charlie Vermont * $4.00
Blue Mosque by Anne Waldman * $6.00
Information from the Surface of Venus by Lewis Warsh * $6.00
The Maharajah's Son by Lewis Wawrsh * $5.00
Clairvoyant Journal by Hannah Weiner * $5.00
The Fast by Hannah Weiner * $6.00
Deduct 50% from all orders. We will pay postage on all pre-paid orders over
$10.00. Make check payable to United Artists Books, Box 2616, Peter
Stuyvesant Station, New York NY 10009. (Say you saw it on the Poetics List.)
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 18 May 1995 14:11:20 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jeffrey Timmons <mnamna@IMAP1.ASU.EDU>
Subject: Re: POETICS Digest - 15 May 1995 to 16 May 1995
In-Reply-To: <9505170620.AA18831@imap1.asu.edu>
On Tue, 16 May 1995, Marjorie Perloff wrote:
>
> Whatever the case, the term is used today almost antithetically from what
> was the case in Olson (for sure!) and even antithetically from Antin's
> positive description of the postmodern as everything new, cutting edge,
> avant-garde, exciting, anti-formalist, etc etc etc.
>
> I agree with Aldon Nielsen that it's time we scrapped it!
Are practices too diverse to be generalized about or is there a sense in
which we can describe something--roughly or not equivalent to
pomo--without using the term we feel should be scrapped?
Jeffrey Timmons
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 18 May 1995 14:26:22 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jeffrey Timmons <mnamna@IMAP1.ASU.EDU>
Subject: Re: irony and the Really real
In-Reply-To: <9505180323.AA25488@imap1.asu.edu>
On Wed, 17 May 1995, John Byrum wrote:
>
> I agree that the real can always seem elusive (allusive??), but think that
> all our experiences must finally be the Real. After all they are all we
> have, call them what you will.
Forgive me for editing the comments as I have done . . . . I am
intrigued by this discussion of the real, but must insist upon my earlier
statement that The Real Can Be Simulated. I'm thinking of an anecdote or
an example of this . . . but in the mean time . . . doesn't John's post
suggest . . . albeit in my own twisted reading of it . . . that there is
the possibility that are experiences are not necessarily the real? It's
this possibility that I believe opens the door for simulations of the
real, even the replacement of the real by simulations. I'm trying to
think of an example . . . a Baudrillard-sort of example . . . any
suggestions?
Jeffrey Timmons
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 18 May 1995 15:48:37 CST
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Charles Alexander <mcba@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
Subject: Re: one big tease
Tom, Ron, Dan if you're listening, & all others:
I for one would absolutely like to find such a 100-page poem in my mailbox.
But then I find 100-page poems rather frequently in my real mailbox. But
please post it. Those who want to delete, delete with glee.
And I'll second Ron and others on the terrific four poems, Hank. Thank you.
charles
charles alexander
chax press
minnesota center for book arts
phone & fax: 612-721-6063
e-mail: mcba@maroon.tc.umn.edu
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 18 May 1995 14:59:21 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: George Bowering <bowering@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: The REAL Araki Yasusada
In-Reply-To: <199505181924.MAA04805@whistler.sfu.ca> from "Herb Levy" at May
18, 95 10:10:06 am
Speaking of which: who wrote _The Complete Poetical Works of T.E.
Hulme_? And who wrote T.E.H.'s claim that EP had exaggerated his age?
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 18 May 1995 15:05:18 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: George Bowering <bowering@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: really Real Andy
In-Reply-To: <199505181730.KAA19739@whistler.sfu.ca> from "Lindz Williamson"
at May 18, 95 09:07:12 am
I saw a reference to Martha Stewart in some comioc strip, and now I
see her referred to on the Buffnet.
Who is Martha Stewart?
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 18 May 1995 15:10:16 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: George Bowering <bowering@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: Yo, Ed
In-Reply-To: <199505181008.DAA20819@whistler.sfu.ca> from "Ron Silliman" at
May 18, 95 03:06:36 am
This is
a qua-
train, n'
est pa?
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 18 May 1995 15:17:59 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: George Bowering <bowering@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: really Real
In-Reply-To: <199505180712.AAA15447@whistler.sfu.ca> from "Marisa A Januzzi"
at May 18, 95 03:10:47 am
I guess I have, over the years, heard writers and books reviled for
not writing about what they didnt write about. It doesnt make sense
to me. I get the picture of a person who is interested in, say, labor
struggle, condemning books that were not about labor struggle. Of
course, I am interested in baseball, and so I started reading Jerome
Charyn, and Fee Dawson.
I still dont really know how Marxism can be a theory used to apply to
literature. I can see how it can be used to discuss economics, and
that one might, in writing about economics, have a chapter about the
economics of book-publishing, or economics as visioned in a novel.
But is a Marxist reading of Pound any more sensible than an Imagist
reading of the Politburo?
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 18 May 1995 18:22:34 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Jordan Davis." <Jordan70@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: really really really
Poetry Society of America
15 Gramercy Park, NY NY 10003 * (212) 254-9628 * Fax (212) 673-2352
PRESS RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT DIANA BURNHAM
212.254.9628
EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: POEMS BY WRITERS' DOGS
On Wednesday, June 7th (raindate, June 8th) poets and their dogs will gather
to read dog persona poems. The event will begin at *6:30 p.m. in Madison
Park, near the James Dog Run, Fifth Avenue at 24th Street, New York.* Dogs
welcome. Free admission, bring a blanket, reception to follow (dog treats and
people treats).
Writers Mark Doty, Anderson Ferrell, Pamela Hadas, Honor Moore, Gerald Stern,
and Terese Svoboda will all read poems "by" and about dogs, as will
Commissioner of Parks, Henry Stern. Amy Hempel, co-editor of the forth-coming
*Unleashed: Poems by Writers' Dogs* (Crown Publishers Inc., 1995) will
introduce the participants.
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 18 May 1995 15:31:00 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Reginald Johanson <reginalj@SFU.CA>
Subject: real classist assumptions
Gary--it seems that in responding to my brothers question, or the
framing of that question, I have been mistook. Thanks Ryan for
clarifying, but that's not completely it either. I don't really have
anything to say about the "poor" one way or another. I thought the
detail about my brother's profession was relevant because the
debate--and I know I'm a late comer to it so excuse the
presupposition--only rarely touched on those moments when the real is
constellated so powerfully that there is no opportunity for
reflection, only action, response. And in those moments the Hamlet
question about real or not real does, in fact, seem needlessly
abstract. Those are the moments of definition, of consequence, after
which there is no going back. These are moments in which class is
irrelevant. I interpreted my brother's question as coming out of his
work because I happened to know, from other conversations with him,
that when he deals with people in crisis he is dealing with people
who have staked a great deal on a notion of the real, and that that
stake is often a matter of life and death. If we survive our initial
investment in a notion of the real, we can go back and evaluate it.
IF we survive. And so the question is still the same: what do you DO
in a crisis?
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 18 May 1995 18:48:55 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jim Pangborn <V072GDXG@UBVMS.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Organization: University at Buffalo
Subject: postpostmodernism
I like the fact that there is a word "postmodernism": it figures
forth the possibility that there might be significant, systemic differences
between our time--our culture(s), our attitude(s) toward history--and that of,
say, Oscar Wilde.
I say "might be," though: postmodernity stands for me as a possibility,
not a fact. For one thing, as we've seen, when one tries to date its inception,
it recedes. I think the latest is 1847? How about the French Revolution, come
to that? (Just kidding: revolution itself seems pretty much a modern thing.)
More importantly, it eludes precise definition, or at least we don't agree on
one.
So I'll continue to use the term, all due respect to Marjorie Perloff
to whom very much respect indeed is due, all the while admitting that I/we
don't know for sure whether it names something (here comes the kicker:) real.
It's important to keep admitting the extent of our ignorance, to whatever small
extent we can really know it--oxymoron intended.
Bruno Latour has written interestingly on this topic. He argues that
_We Have Never Been Modern_ in the sense that what he calls "the constitution
of modernity" is itself unworkable, and "modern" people have always adhered
partly to premodern constitutions anyway. Consistency, or as some have put
it, hideous purity, has never been imperative in such matters *except*
according to the (bogus) modern constitution. Of course, if there is "really"
no modernity, where does that leave POSTmodernity? Ans: Limbo limbo lim-BO.
Do we contradict ourselves? Very well.
Concepts of this type are tools. If J-F Lyotard or Charles Olson or
Pope Homogeneous III invents a nail gun, does that "contradict" hammers?
Ridiculous notion. Nor does it prevent someone from using the flat of a
monkey wrench to drive nails. Just so the work gets done. Does confused and
sometimes contradictory wondering about our place in history get anything
accomplished? Poets and fictioneers had better hope so. It's part of our job.
--Jim
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 18 May 1995 19:25:59 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@PANIX.COM>
Subject: Re: really Real Andy
In-Reply-To: <199505182033.QAA15055@panix4.panix.com>
What is a great work of art.
What is visual value.
Are great works of art those works which are considered to be great works
of art.
Why are some works of art great and other works of art not great.
I tire quickly of Warhol, quickly of Rauschenberg. They seem the death of
the 50s and 60s to me. Am I wrong.
Am I wrong to not recognize a great work of art as a great work.
Could it be that "great" is problematic in this context.
Perhaps one needs to look further at art and then at aesthetic systems.
Perhaps I need gusto.
Everyone has favorites. For me, nothing beats Sue Williams or Jenny
Holzer at the moment, her Lustmord. But I wouldn't know about great.
Alan
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 18 May 1995 16:27:08 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jeffrey Timmons <mnamna@IMAP1.ASU.EDU>
Subject: Re: really Real Andy
In-Reply-To: <9505182322.AA28984@imap1.asu.edu>
On Thu, 18 May 1995, George Bowering wrote:
> I saw a reference to Martha Stewart in some comioc strip, and now I
> see her referred to on the Buffnet.
> Who is Martha Stewart?
>
Oh, I'm on this one: Martha Stewart, if I'm not mistaken, is a writer of
cookbooks (or is it gardening? or both) and she's become something of a
icon for a particular generation (who shall go nameless). She's also
made the transition to public television. Catch me if I'm wrong.'
Jeffrey Timmons
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 18 May 1995 21:26:40 -0400
Reply-To: Robert Drake <au462@cleveland.Freenet.Edu>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Robert Drake <au462@CLEVELAND.FREENET.EDU>
Subject: announce: _tribe of john_ [ashbery]
this will be old news to some here, but...
-----------------------------------------------------------------
_The Tribe of John: Ashbery & Contemporary Poetry_, Susan
Schultz, ed; Univ. of Alabama Press. 280 pp., $28.95.
TOC:
(Part 1: New Readings of Ashbery)
"Typical Ashbery"--Jonathan Morse
"Ashbery as Love Poet"--Charles Altieri
"Coming Full Circle"--JA's Later Poetry
"JA's Landscapes"--Bonnie Costello
(Part 2: Explorations of Influence)
"The Absence of a Noble Presence"--John Koethe
"Purists Will Object: Some Meditations on Influence"--
Donald Revell
"Nimbus of Sensations: Eros and Reverie in the Poetry o
JA and Ann Lauterbach"--James McCorkle
"A's Menagerie and Anxiety of Affluence"--John Gery
"Periodizing A and His Influence"--Stephen Paul Miller
"Fossilized Fish and the World of Unknowing: JA & William
Bronk"--John Ernest
(Part 3: A & Postmodern Poetics)
"Taking the Tennis Court Oath"--Andrew Ross
"The Music of Construction: Measure & Polyphony in A
and Bernstein"--John Shoptaw
"Afterword: The Influence of Kinship Patterns upon Perception
of an Ambiguous Stimulus"--Charles Bernstein
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 18 May 1995 19:49:24 CST
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Charles Alexander <mcba@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
Subject: Re: really Real Andy
Is it cookbooks from Martha Stewart? I thought she was some arbiter,
somewhere between the middle class & the very rich, of taste in interior
design and furnishings. But my sense is admittedly murky on this point. I
did once see a television commercial in which she had cut up credit cards
(American Express) & put them back together, mosaic-like, at the bottom of
a swimming pool. Very real.
charles alexander
chax press
minnesota center for book arts
phone & fax: 612-721-6063
e-mail: mcba@maroon.tc.umn.edu
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 18 May 1995 19:32:47 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jeffrey Timmons <mnamna@IMAP1.ASU.EDU>
Subject: Re: really Real
X-To: George Bowering <bowering@SFU.CA>
In-Reply-To: <9505190208.AA04602@imap1.asu.edu>
On Thu, 18 May 1995, George Bowering wrote:
> But is a Marxist reading of Pound any more sensible than an Imagist
> reading of the Politburo?
Ha. That's great, an Imagist reading of the Politburo. I'd see it
something along the lines of WCW's poem about the firetruck and the
number five . . . I don't recall the poem's title (The Great Figure? hm):
I saw a red star
Upon the granite spire
something like that . . .
Jeffrey Timmons
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 18 May 1995 19:51:13 +0100
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Kevin Killian <dbkk@SIRIUS.COM>
Subject: Re: one big tease
>Tom, Ron, Dan if you're listening, & all others:
>
>I for one would absolutely like to find such a 100-page poem in my mailbox.
>But then I find 100-page poems rather frequently in my real mailbox. But
>please post it. Those who want to delete, delete with glee.
>
>And I'll second Ron and others on the terrific four poems, Hank. Thank you.
>
> charles
Charles,
While I appreciate your enthusiasm, some of us do actually PAY for our
internet access, pay by the megabyte for mail. I think Gary's suggestion
of posting the memory monster with the EPC center is a kinder solution.
Dodie
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 18 May 1995 22:58:47 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: John Byrum <JMBYRUM@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: irony and the Really real
Dear Jeff,
I agree that simulated experiences are as "real" as "real" experiences. We
could also agree that our "real" experiences are "simulated"; i.e.,
"simulations" of events in some sense "external" to our "experience". This
is getting deep into the intertwining convolutions of epistemology & ontology
& definitions of terms, though.
Best,
John
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 18 May 1995 20:06:34 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Carl Lynden Peters <clpeters@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: really Real Andy
In-Reply-To: <199505190207.TAA19898@whistler.sfu.ca> from "Alan Sondheim" at
May 18, 95 07:25:59 pm
>
> What is a great work of art.
> What is visual value.
> Are great works of art those works which are considered to be great works
> of art.
> Why are some works of art great and other works of art not great.
>
> I tire quickly of Warhol, quickly of Rauschenberg. They seem the death of
> the 50s and 60s to me. Am I wrong.
--ya, in this instance i take issue to that. my recent rethinking of the
duchamp ready-made, dada over all, has caused me to re-examine warhol's
work. i've always felt the relation between he and warhol profound. i
wish i could go on abt that right now, but am in a rush. i'd like to
come back to this tomorrow
--Holzer is wondeful too. what are yr thots on smithson? any comments. a
real blending of science and art in those 2. relating to this, is anyone
familiar with jack burnham's 73 or 74 book _The Structure of Art_???
for me, CARL ANDRE is still the most important sculptor of our time. but
that's a completely personal opinion. well, sort of. he's really had a
big influence on me and my critical thinking
carl
> Am I wrong to not recognize a great work of art as a great work.
> Could it be that "great" is problematic in this context.
>
> Perhaps one needs to look further at art and then at aesthetic systems.
> Perhaps I need gusto.
>
> Everyone has favorites. For me, nothing beats Sue Williams or Jenny
> Holzer at the moment, her Lustmord. But I wouldn't know about great.
>
> Alan
>
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 19 May 1995 03:49:15 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ron Silliman <rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM>
Subject: Re: one big tease
Dodie,
>
>While I appreciate your enthusiasm, some of us do actually PAY for our
>internet access, pay by the megabyte for mail.
Netcom is $19.95 per month for all you can eat, full internet access &
40 hours of free "prime time" (M-F, 9:00 AM to midnight) that I never
once have come close to using up (but then I'm most often up and doing
this, like now, at 6:00 AM). Don't pay by the message or the MB!
Maybe Tom could "back channel" us who want to read the whole thing.
Ron
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 19 May 1995 03:26:19 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ron Silliman <rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM>
Subject: Re: really Real Andy
Rauschenberg has always struck me as somebody who included the "pretty"
in his work just in case you didn't like the ideas. But over time
neither wear that well.
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 19 May 1995 03:24:05 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ron Silliman <rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM>
Subject: Re: Curtis Faville
Stanzas for an Evening Out were (was?) published by L Publications
(Curtis' own press, which also brought out the Blue is the Hero,
Berkson's selected poems) in both hard and paperback in 1977. 203
pages. I think that Small Press Distribution may still carry it.
Otherwise, Faville lives in Kensington (just north of Berkeley, tho
technically part of Contra Costa county), works in SF for the Social
Security Administration in a job he's had for 20 years at least,
although there was a break in there as his wife was in Japan for a few
years.
Faville was a Berkeley student who, like Watten, went to Iowa at
Grenier's behest around 1970. He published L magazine there for awhile
before coming back to the Bay Area. He's always avoided readings like
the plague (and poets, generally, finding them flawed in ways that
poems presumably aren't).
Lyn published a second, smaller collection called (I think)
Wittgenstein's Door (an allusion to LW's attempt as an architect for
his sister's house, a phenomenon that Faville seems to have followed in
designing his own home with the aid of the fellow who wrote A Pattern
Language). I don't think he's written in at least a decade.
Faville is such a chameleon in his writing that it's difficult to pick
a characteristic sample, but here are two short ones to give a flavor:
POEM
What is a pause
before the cause ceases
to be a river. It is
never the muscle of
ARM & HAMMER BAKING SODA.
America was a horse.
****
IOWA
Prehistoric
farm
collection.
The fussiness of that final period is an absolutely identifiable
Favillism, come to think of it. There's a long poem in the book,
"Aubade," which may be the best Schuyler poem that Jimmy never wrote.
When I was editing In the American Tree, Faville's "critiques" of other
poets in his poems was something I thought about including long and
hard. If that book was one poet thicker, Faville would have been it.
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 19 May 1995 15:23:25 +0900
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: John Geraets <frank@DPC.AICHI-GAKUIN.AC.JP>
Subject: re- drugs
Andrew,
I enjoyed the lovely way the words you quoted
from Charles Bernstein sounded. But then I got
stuck. How is poetry druglike - and how on
earth does it open up worlds?
I've gone right off greatness and insight and
longevity in poems. Poetry ain't such clean
business, don't know why it's so often
wanted to appear that way.
John Geraets
frank@dpc.aichi-gakuin.ac.jp
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 18 May 1995 22:47:59 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ryan Knighton <knighton@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: really Real Andy
In-Reply-To: <199505190208.TAA19945@whistler.sfu.ca> from "Alan Sondheim" at
May 18, 95 07:25:59 pm
what the hell, why not ask it all, while we're at it. Not just
is there such a thing as a great work of art, why not is there
scuh a thing as *a* great work of art. Can it be removed
from the anxiety of influence (get a load of my dimples)
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 18 May 1995 22:39:43 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ryan Knighton <knighton@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: Yo, Ed
In-Reply-To: <199505190149.SAA18991@whistler.sfu.ca> from "George Bowering" at
May 18, 95 03:10:16 pm
-
-
-
- is this four or eight lines
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 18 May 1995 22:29:11 -0700
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Steve Carll <sjcarll@SLIP.NET>
Subject: Re: really really really
>Poetry Society of America
>15 Gramercy Park, NY NY 10003 * (212) 254-9628 * Fax (212) 673-2352
>
>PRESS RELEASE
>
>FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT DIANA BURNHAM
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> 212.254.9628
>
> EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: POEMS BY WRITERS' DOGS
>
>On Wednesday, June 7th (raindate, June 8th) poets and their dogs will gather
>to read dog persona poems. The event will begin at *6:30 p.m. in Madison
>Park, near the James Dog Run, Fifth Avenue at 24th Street, New York.* Dogs
>welcome. Free admission, bring a blanket, reception to follow (dog treats and
>people treats).
>Writers Mark Doty, Anderson Ferrell, Pamela Hadas, Honor Moore, Gerald Stern,
>and Terese Svoboda will all read poems "by" and about dogs, as will
>Commissioner of Parks, Henry Stern. Amy Hempel, co-editor of the forth-coming
>*Unleashed: Poems by Writers' Dogs* (Crown Publishers Inc., 1995) will
>introduce the participants.
>
>
Woof.
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 18 May 1995 21:20:45 -0700
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From: Lindz Williamson <lmichell@UNIXG.UBC.CA>
Subject: martha again
In-Reply-To: <199505190158.SAA06247@unixg.ubc.ca>
On Thu, 18 May 1995, Charles Alexander wrote:
> Is it cookbooks from Martha Stewart? I thought she was some arbiter,
> somewhere between the middle class & the very rich, of taste in interior
> design and furnishings. But my sense is admittedly murky on this point. I
> did once see a television commercial in which she had cut up credit cards
> (American Express) & put them back together, mosaic-like, at the bottom of
> a swimming pool. Very real.
>
Sorry but I'm a big fan, it was botticelli's birth of venus done in credit
cards on the bottom of the pool. It's really funny if you know the size of
a Martha Stewart Home project.
> Lindz
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 18 May 1995 23:11:38 -0500
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From: Gary Sullivan <gpsj@PRIMENET.COM>
Subject: Who you are in a crisis
In-Reply-To: <199505190143.SAA06990@mailhost.primenet.com>
Dear Reginald:
Many thanks for your clarification of your brother's question. I'm sorry
I misread it; there wasn't much to go on -- what I read was a leap
between "works with street kids" and "what do [we] do in a crisis?" &
from there, began projecting, mainly things *I* used to think. My
apologies (very real) for then being Mr. Preacherman.
Anyway, the question, as you've reframed it, is an excellent one.
I don't think there is any one answer to the question "what do you do in
a crisis" -- even postulating the same crisis across the board for a
number of "fairly similar" people. I also am not convinced that, at that
moment, you're not w/out speculation, even "theory."
Here's an anecdote, though maybe inappropriate given that it wasn't quite
as immediate as having a gun to the head (though it was similar). My wife
& I, on our honeymoon (in Brooklyn -- a lover's paradise) were on a rush
hour subway train that suddenly stopped, & then the driver came over the
intercom to tell us there was a fire on the tracks ahead & that he was
"shutting off the air." Almost immediately after that, the tunnel filled
with black smoke, and people from the car in front of us began to force
their way (difficult, as crowded as it was) into our car. As they did
that, smoke began pouring into our car. People began screaming,
panicking, some praying. More smoke poured into the car & it got to the
point where we couldn't breathe. I can't describe the looks on people's
faces. I "knew" we were going to die, and the first image that popped
into my head was of the friends we were staying with, and realizing THEY
DIDN'T KNOW WE WERE DOWN HERE. The second image was of all of us in the
train, lying in heaps on each other, dead -- the "thing" whoever first
reached us would find. I began to scream to Marta that I loved her, over
and over. I'm an atheist. I don't believe in life after death. But I do
believe in love. And I loved -- and still do love -- Marta very, very
much. So, at that moment, what became important to me was that she *know*
that I loved her, that she had *been* loved. I felt that Marta had a kind
of "object permanence" problem, that even though she'd married me, she
didn't *really* believe I'd love her, be there, our whole lives together.
So, it became crucial to me to GET THIS INFO ACROSS TO HER. It was
physically impossible to hold her (too many people, crammed in) or to
somehow PHYSICALLY impart this "information," so I used language,
screamed over & over "I LOVE YOU! I LOVE YOU!" Then, it became impossible
to scream any more, & I basically just resigned myself to death -- which
itself didn't seem like such a bad thing at that moment. Or, that was the
scenario I was playing in my head. Marta tells me that, after I stopped
screaming "I LOVE YOU!" I began screaming sort of a coarse, hoarse noise
of some kind -- which I don't at all remember doing.
It was a crisis, and some of what I did during that crisis, I did
based on earlier (& immediate, actually) thought, speculation, opinion,
& theory. I don't know if this is an appropriate anecdote w/respect to
your brother's question, because I didn't feel that there was any way
"out" of the situation, that we had any options. Everyone on the train
basically just waited the situation out, covering their faces with
scarves, some passing out, a couple of people died. (Two, I think.)
I didn't bring any speculation about "poetry" to this event, but I did
bring (I think) a belief in the power of language, which is obviously
related. If I had come to that situation with a complete disillusionment
or mistrust of language, I don't think I'd have tried to get Marta to
believe that I loved her by merely *saying* it. (Would I, if I didn't
believe in the power -- or ability? -- of language, have believed in love?)
I say this based only on the above experience, but I think it's
interesting that, when faced with death, the need to "communicate" (or
"connect" if you're uncomfortable w/"communicate") became THE MOST
IMPORTANT THING TO DO. Which is no different than my "every day" life,
writing, reading, & publishing. (Or, for that matter, as a secretary/
receptionist at the L.A.S.)
Yours,
Gary
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 18 May 1995 21:15:51 -0700
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Lindz Williamson <lmichell@UNIXG.UBC.CA>
Subject: martha
In-Reply-To: <199505182332.QAA23394@unixg.ubc.ca>
On Thu, 18 May 1995, Jeffrey Timmons wrote:
> On Thu, 18 May 1995, George Bowering wrote:
>
> > I saw a reference to Martha Stewart in some comioc strip, and now I
> > see her referred to on the Buffnet.
> > Who is Martha Stewart?
> >
>
> Oh, I'm on this one: Martha Stewart, if I'm not mistaken, is a writer of
> cookbooks (or is it gardening? or both) and she's become something of a
> icon for a particular generation (who shall go nameless). She's also
> made the transition to public television. Catch me if I'm wrong.'
>
> Jeffrey Timmons
>
to quote my roommate "Martha is the guru of easy living". She will aid
you in all your fine dining, decorating and entertaining needs. She has
packaged a beautiful lifestyle and feeds it to the public in her tasteful
magazine Martha Stewart's Living. She is every housewife's nightmare,
but I love her.
Lindz
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 19 May 1995 15:47:14 GMT+1200
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From: Tony Green <t.green@AUCKLAND.AC.NZ>
Organization: The University of Auckland
Subject: Re: lyric and/or
" And there's no knot for me " but the k is silent.
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 18 May 1995 20:21:35 -0700
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From: Carl Lynden Peters <clpeters@SFU.CA>
Subject: Returned mail: Host unknown (Name server: ubvm.cc.buffalo: host
not found) (fwd)
>
> the brief messages re duchamp (written, i think, mostly by me, but
> anyway), warhol, raushenberg... are making me think of conceptual art.
> has any one read joseph kosuth's landmark essay (came out in the 70's i
> think and is in gregory battcock's anthology_Idea Art_), "Art After
> Philosophy I and II ??? it's his best work, in my critical judgement
>
> to add to that, jack burnham has a piece in it which came out before The
> Structure of Art: "Problems of Criticism." in it he begins to foreground
> his re-reading of levi-strauss and introduces his - what would you call
> it - sign inversion theory (?), the culturalization of
> nature/naturalization of culture. i wrote my part of my masters thesis on
that, so with respect to American art, i'm very interested in what was
done in soho in the 60s and 70s
> carl
>
>
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 19 May 1995 08:38:56 -0400
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From: Michael Boughn <mboughn@EPAS.UTORONTO.CA>
Subject: Really real Martha
George:
Martha is the reigning queen of the bourgeois domestic. She arbitrates
all matters of taste, as others have indicated, from dinner to drapes:
a kind of Miss Manners of decor without the humor.
Don't tell anybody, but at Christmas we used her recipe for turkey
with a pomegranate glaze and sausage stuffing. It was good, but, man,
juicing those pomegranates was a pain in the butt.
Best,
Mike
mboughn@epas.utoronto.ca
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 19 May 1995 08:13:14 -0500
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: maria damon <damon001@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
Subject: Re: really Real
But is a Marxist reading of Pound any more sensible than an Imagist
> reading of the Politburo?
both are sensible, and may, if done sensitively, yield fabulous mind-altering
results. marxist theory in the humanities social sciences and physical
sciences, or in general as a way of understanding the everyday, i think, will
turn out to be far more powerful --as a humane critique --than marxism the
"dictatorship of the proletariat" whose experiments in eastern europe have
foundered in the last years.--maria d
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 19 May 1995 10:05:14 -0400
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From: Jonathan A Levin <jal17@COLUMBIA.EDU>
Subject: Re: martha again
In-Reply-To: <199505191226.AA20470@mailhub.cc.columbia.edu>
According to the cover of my May 13 issue of New York (Martha pictured
holding lovely wooden basket with gardening tools): "She's Martha Stewart
and You're Not: Go ahead, snicker. But that crazed blue-chip
perfectionism has made her the definitive American woman of our time."
Yikes. But she's always funny with Letterman.
Jonathan Levin
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 19 May 1995 15:39:30 +0000
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From: cris cheek <cris@SLANG.DEMON.CO.UK>
Subject: a genuine alt.fan.silliman for Ketjak
X-cc: Ron Silliman <rsillima@ix.netcom.com>
I've been borrowing Ron Silliman's Ketjak from Cris Cheek (ah poetry
as contraband, I'm sending this message from Cris' account because I'm
handing the book back personally, in best hand-delivered condition) and
*adoring* it. I'd already read Tjanting, What and Paradise with great
pleasure and stimulation, but Ketjak is mindblowing, elegant in design,
perfect in minute detail. So, cutting to the chase, could anyone sell me
or swap me a copy? In return for the effort, here is a brainteaser: is
there one (the only one I could find) proof-reading error in the following
sentence, or is there some lyricism sneaking in....:
"When Zukofsky debuted Reich's Violin Phase on the west coat, the first
person to stomp out was Mario Savio" (Ketjak, p.21)
For anyone who doesn't know, sentences from earlier paragraphs nearly
always get repeated (sometimes fascinatingly revised) in later paragraphs
in the book. In this case, the sentence appears without the possible typo,
only as
"The first person to stomp out, when Zukofsky debuted Reich's Violin Phase
in the west, was Mario Savio" (p40).
Was this use of the word coat "for" coast" especially put in, as a
deliberate apparent mistake, for the attentive to notice?
Anyone have a copy, though?
Ira
I.LIGHTMAN@UEA.AC.UK
48 Gloucester Street
Norwich NR2 2DX
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 19 May 1995 15:39:40 +0000
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From: cris cheek <cris@SLANG.DEMON.CO.UK>
Subject: more on Ketjak
X-cc: i.lightman@uea.ac.uk
I'm back at Cris Cheek's terminal, with a few more words about Ketjak,
which I've now read through to the end - apologies if anyone's posted
about it since I last posted, I don't know how to retrieve new mail
on this machine!
Just noting a few more features of this wonderful book.
First, I saw another possible typo reading today in Cris' car, but
didn't have a pen (it was around p.55-60), thought I'd marked the page
with a train ticket, but now can't find the typo. However the page I'd
marked I had to re-read thoroughly, and only by this aleatoric reading
accident did I discover the occurrence of the sentence "Revolving
door" in *mid-paragraph*, on p.61. As even cursory readers of Ketjak
will know, "revolving door" is the sentence that usually begins each
paragraph of the book - yet this means that the book rebels against
its own system and again tests the alertness of the reader. Moreover,
two big sentences recur *within* the last paragraph, even after this
occurrence of the "revolving door" sentence, thus breaking the system of
having sentences recur *once* from paragraph to paragraph, ie breaking
the parallelism of paragraphs or indeed the pattern that makes a
paragrah a paragraph eg "let a paragraph, in Ketjak, be a collection
of sentences that includes one of each of the sentences of a previous
paragraph, sometimes reworked, plus new sentences new to the book so far";
this rule is also broken early, as not all the sentences from an earlier
paragraph recur in the next paragraph every time.
Oh, the big sentences that recur within the last paragraph, after, as
far as I've noticed the last (buried) incidence of the sentence "revolving
door" are:
"Dark brown houseboats beached at the point of low tide - men atop their
cabin roofs, idle, play a dobro, a jaw's harp, a 12 string guitar -
only to float again when the sunset is reflected in the water of
Richardson bay" (p.63)
"Dark brown houseboats beached at the point of low tide - men atop their
cabin roofs, shirtless and in overalls, idle, play a dobro, a jaw's harp,
a 12 string guitar - only to float again when the sun is reflected
in Richardson bay" (p.68)
AND
"We stopped for hot chocolate topped with whipped cream and to discuss
the Sicilian Defense" (p.63)
"We stopped for hot chocolate topped with whipped cream, and to discuss
the Sicilian Defense" (p.72)
I also really like the way that the paragraphs don't expand
uniformly, they sometimes contract, as do the sentences that recur. I
also like the way that the system is broken sometimes by making the
base not only number/formalism, but also, more "conventionally",
imagism and poetry of place. One of the first sentences to appear is,
for example, "fountains of the financial district" and then "fountains
of the financial district spout"; this then gets returned to not always
as a *sentence* but as a *description*; there are later sentences where
is described someone passing a fountain, or through a financial district,
just as there are many different sentences describing refuse collectors
and coastal Bay Area scenes. In other words there isn't the initially
likely-looking structure of "let a paragraph of Ketjak only include
sentences that do not add together at all as a description of a scene",
which Ron brilliantly argues is an automatism and fetish on the part of
most idle paragraph and sentence makers, in _The New Sentence_, which
must be resolutely avoided in order to draw attention to its
omnipresence; in Ketjak, Ron both does draw attention to the sentence
and the paragraph, but does also "lapse", which is tinglingly exciting,
like a moment of melody in the middle of a free improvisation! Not
purist or systematic-to-the-point-of-missing-an-opportunity.
"Stood there broke and rapidly becoming hungry, staring at nickels
and pennies at the fountain's bottom." (p.58)
"We walked through the financial district at midnight, the street
deep between these buildings , a film crew working down an alley,
artificial twilights, pausing as we passed to stare at great
tapestries in bank lobbies" (p.59)
"The fountain forms a geometry of the particular, five waterfalls,
six spouts, all of which arrive in the general pool" (p.66)
"I sat atop the fountain, which, at midnight, was shut off, all
concrete and still pools of water" (p.87)
"The tenor sax is a toy" (p.60 and throughout)
"The tenor sax is a phallus or cross" (p.92 - penultimate page in the
book - pathos in concluding moment of Silliman book, read linearly,
scandal! NOT!)
I don't want to detract from the incredible abstract skill with
the sentence per se in Ketjak, trying out everything, trying out
wonderful sonic patterns and artificial hilarious rhymes - it is moment
by moment really fulfilling to read, for versatility and for detail
of observation -
Sorry to write a rave review twenty years after composition
date and seventeen after publication date, but I just wanted to supplement
my endorsement of the (I think, affectionate) recent Alt.fan.silliman
adventure with some detailed appreciation - and also to demonstrate
the qualities of a work that is formal and experimental but also human
and non-programmatic - to show what I think is the unbudgeable and
unignorable sea-change that stereotyping and ignoring the actual works of
"Language Writers" (as, as I've said - and now got into trouble for in
Cambridge and London [people have blanked or eyeballed me at events] - ,
avant-garde British poetry is doing) ignores, making for ignorance.
Ira Lightman
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 19 May 1995 11:21:35 EDT
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Kali Tal <kalital@MINERVA.CIS.YALE.EDU>
Subject: CFP--1995 Sixties Generations Conference
!!!CALL FOR PAPERS!!!
1995 SIXTIES GENERATIONS CONFERENCE
An Interdisciplinary Conference of
Scholars, Activists and Artists
October 5-8, 1995
Western Connecticut State University
Danbury, Connecticut
Proposals due: July 15, 1995
I invite you to join us for the third annual Sixties Generations Conference:
From Montgomery to Viet Nam on October 5-8, 1995. Last year over 400 scholars
and students joined us at Western Connecticut State University to hear more
than one hundred presentations by academics, activists, and artists. The
Sixties Generations Conference is a showcase for intelligent and lively academic
work in a variety of disciplines and studies fields, but what makes it special
is the interdisciplinary emphasis and the collegial atmosphere. We've
demonstrated that mixing academics with artists, crossing disciplines, and
spanning generations fosters a creative and collaborative excitement that can't
be matched. Our evaluation forms showed that over 95% of those who attended
last year will be back in 1995. Here are some comments we received:
"The Conference provided a rare opportunity to not only learn from
scholars and artists but to engage in fruitful discussion that
multiplied the impact of the meetings many times over. The organization
and administration of the conference was superb and the facilities
excellent. What was most gratifying was how so many of the scholars and
artists in their lives and work sought to cut across traditional
boundaries of gender, academic disciplines, and even of age: there was a
lively mix of younger students and scholars and well-established
teachers and professors. I look forward to next year's meeting knowing
it will be a highlight of my academic annual activities."
"The conference was an outstanding mix of scholars, students, artists,
participants, participant-observers, etc. One could sample informal
networking and heavy-duty scholarship. The interactions of panels and
audience was lively and informative. Keep it up!"
"I particularly appreciated the interdisciplinary nature of the
conference. If not unique, it is extremely rare. Vietnam veterans,
scholars, antiwar activists, artists, musicians, and writers all
dealing with the same subject--in a better society, Vietnam
Generation would be recognized and nurtured as a national resource.
We remain committed to interdisciplinary work and to seeking diverse
presentations. We particularly encourage the participation of those
traditionally under-represented in academic discourse, and we do not shrink
from controversial topics. In addition to soliciting work from traditional
disciplines, we enthusiastically invite presentations in African American
Studies, Chicano Studies, Women's Studies, Native American Studies and other
studies programs.
This year we have broadened our international perspective. Grants from the Ford
Foundation and the Asia Resource Council have enabled us to arrange the
attendance of three Vietnamese scholars at the 1995 conference. Duong Tuong is
Viet Nam's leading art critic and the translator of Gone With the Wind and other
modern American fiction; he is currently working on translations of Flannery
O'Connor. He was associated with Ha Noi's "Prague Spring," the Literary
Humanism movement of the 1950s. Hoang Hien is the teacher and critic of Viet
Nam's doi moi (perestroika) writers. He was the teacher of Bao Ninh and Duong
Tuong, the two Vietnamese war novelists who have published in English in the
U.S. Huu Ngoc is Viet Nam's senior cultural journalist, formerly editor of the
Foreign Languages Publishing House, author of the first Vietnamese language book
on American civilization. These scholars were invited to participate by Viet
Nam Generation, Inc. editor Dan Duffy, who has lived and worked in Ha Noi for
nine months setting up our program of translating Vietnamese literature into
English, and Viet Nam Generation publications into Vietnamese.
We know that most of the best work at conferences is done between sessions, when
people get the chance to talk, to share stories, to set up collaborations. So
we do our best to make sure that there is plenty of time for these activities-we
arrange for meals to be available at the conference site, set up a lounge for
refreshments, and keep coffee and tea available all day long. We also arrange
evening events--our Sixties style coffeehouse reading was so successful last
year that we will do it again, breaking it up into two nights of poetry,
fiction, multimedia and performance art.
As usual, we are doing all this work on a shoestring. Viet Nam Generation,
Inc., is a literary and educational nonprofit which cannot yet afford to salary
its staff. This conference has been supported entirely by volunteer efforts,
the registration fees of participants and by our book sales. The facilities are
generously provided by Western Connecticut State University. We know that many
conferences can afford to waive fees for those presenting papers, but we cannot.
We do waive fees for those who would not otherwise be able to participate, and
we do our best to find alternative housing for those who cannot afford hotel
rooms. We're committed to the notion that no one should be turned away for lack
of funds. To meet this goal we rely on support from those who do have
funds-faculty members or others with full-time positions and decent incomes. In
fact, we encourage you, if you can afford it, to pay an extra registration fee
to cover someone else with fewer resources.
We also encourage you to subscribe to our journal, Viet Nam Generation, a forum
for interdisciplinary written work on the war. We publish many of the Sixties
Generations Conference papers in the pages of the journal, which is now
entering its seventh volume year. Your support enables us to continue our
efforts.
Part of our philosophy is that we do not rank those who attend the Sixties
Generations Conference-there are no "stars" here; we don't even put your
institution on your name tag. We have no "keynote" speakers or "special"
sessions. Those who attend don't do it for their c.v. They do it-and we do
it-because the work we all do is vital, because we believe in an alternative to
the rest of the deadly dull gatherings which pass for conferences in academia,
and because we are dedicated to building a community of scholars, activists, and
artists who can support each other in our work.
I look forward to seeing you in October.
Kali Tal
Sixties Project & Viet Nam Generation, Inc.
18 Center Rd., Woodbridge, CT 06525
203/387-6882; fax 203/389-6104
email: kalital@minerva.cis.yale.edu
home page: http://kalital.polisci.yale.edu
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 19 May 1995 11:26:30 EST
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: kathryne <KLINDBE@WAYNEST1.BITNET>
Subject: Re: really Real
In-Reply-To: Message of Fri, 19 May 1995 08:13:14 -0500 from
<damon001@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
Marxisms proliferate, due in part to the fact that Marx had a great deal
to offer many interpretive machines. THere is no one Marxism, and,
indeed, reading Marx's American essays recently, I can say again that
thre might well--as with most of us?--be more than one Marx.
The question of the never-achieved "dictatorship of the proletariat"
is a different kettle of fish. The recent arguments, about to
turn bloody as soon as Jameson's book on Derrida comes out, about
spectres of Marx and COMMUNISM (site specfic to Eastern Europe, mostly)
seem a kind of prosthesis for more direct and current engagement.
I don't guess this is at all a response to the post to which it is attached.
But I feel a bit steamed by our present (inter) national spiral
into meanness and reaction, and dead guys like Marx can only help
a bit more than vain arguments over which Marxism is correct//WAS possible.
Still, one lives, in a sense by engaging the fight indirectly, poetically.
By the way, I hear that all of Whitman's recently discovered notebooks
are available on-line. I hear the spectre of Pound screaming for joy.
Oh, my, there are ghosts--and there are ghosts--dancing spectrally in
this machine.
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 19 May 1995 13:00:44 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jorge Guitart <MLLJORGE@UBVMS.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Organization: University at Buffalo
Subject: no leo mas
after sampling recent mail (having been away for a while) i have decided to
delete without reading any further messages that show on the Subject line the
words Really, Real, Andy, Martha, or Stewart, or any combinations of those words,
in the conviction that i will not be missing anything relevant, entertaining, or important.
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 19 May 1995 15:33:14 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Edward Foster <EFOSTER@VAXC.STEVENS-TECH.EDU>
Subject: Re: Yo, Ed
na,
words
qua
train
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 19 May 1995 15:35:57 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Edward Foster <EFOSTER@VAXC.STEVENS-TECH.EDU>
Subject: Re: Yo, Ed
depends on the number of fingers you're counting with.
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 19 May 1995 12:42:30 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" <anielsen@SPARTA.SJSU.EDU>
Subject: Re: hoax spectral
In-Reply-To: <9505190400.AA15851@isc.sjsu.edu>
Gary -- don't have any of the info. here at the moment, but there was a
book about "The Spectra Hoax" pub'd some decades ago that lingers in many
libraries; I seem to remember Yvor Winters or folk of his ilk being
involved -- at any rate, it was a parody of modernist movements that,
like many such parodies, turned out to be be far more interesting as a
phenomenon than anything else the poets involved ever did -- several
"fake" spectrists were created, and their poems appeared in a number of
mags & newspapers before the ruse was revealed --
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 19 May 1995 14:48:38 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: maria damon <damon001@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
Subject: Re: Yo, Ed
In message <2fbcf4e808cf002@maroon.tc.umn.edu> UB Poetics discussion group
writes:
> na,
> words
> qua
> train
blue
note,
thought-
trains
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 19 May 1995 17:20:15 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jim Pangborn <V072GDXG@UBVMS.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Organization: University at Buffalo
Subject: Re: really Real Andy
re: Marvelous Martha, really--
Her teevee show and magazine are titled "Martha Stewart Living";
the "content" is anything from cooking to home furnishing to gardening,
including lots of tips on how to put an old-money veneer on a nouveau-
bourgeois (there--I said it) lifestyle. Tag line: "It's a *good* thing."
She's easy to despise, except that a lot of those things *are* good,
as such things go. The latest mag features a troutfishing camping trip
into the wilds of Idaho: pretty pictures, the poop on avoiding hassles with
bears, and, of course, recipes for fresh-caught trout, skillet scones, and on
and on. Sounds yummy, don't it?
She doesn't come from old money (would someone who did go on TV with it?),
more or less inventing herself and her gig as she's gone along, a Horatio Alger
story for our time. Impressive, my research on this topic, eh? Actually
my wife subscribes.
--Jim
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 19 May 1995 17:28:56 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Tom Mandel <tmandel@UMD5.UMD.EDU>
Subject: Hank's 4 poems
... which I read and enjoyed a lot and then forgot to report
that back to you, Hank, and to you, Oh List. good goin'
Tom Mandel
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 19 May 1995 17:39:25 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Tom Mandel <tmandel@UMD5.UMD.EDU>
Subject: mail by the megabyte?
I left the bay area a year or so before the internet craze hit, but
I'd have to agree that paying for mail is pretty unusual. Dunno
who "sirius.com" is, but there has to be a better way than that.
You can get a list of access providers from pdial (let me know;
I'll send you the email address -- or maybe somewhere here can
supply it in the meantime).
Tom Mandel
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 19 May 1995 16:27:16 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Herb Levy <herb@ESKIMO.COM>
Subject: Re: mail by the megabyte?
In-Reply-To: <199505192202.AA12078@mail.eskimo.com>
On Fri, 19 May 1995, Tom Mandel wrote:
> I left the bay area a year or so before the internet craze hit, but
> I'd have to agree that paying for mail is pretty unusual. Dunno
> who "sirius.com" is, but there has to be a better way than that.
> You can get a list of access providers from pdial (let me know;
> I'll send you the email address -- or maybe somewhere here can
> supply it in the meantime).
>
> Tom Mandel
>
Two places I know of to get a list of dial-up services are as follows:
Internic (because of their address structure I assume they have some
information for providers outside the US)
<ftp://is/internic.net/infoguide/getting-connected/united-states/internic-us-provider-all>
or via web
<http://www.internic.net/internic/provider.html>
or you can try
Providers of Commercial Internet Access (POCIA) (I don't know if they
have info about providers outside the US.)
<ftp://ftp.teleport.com/vendors/cci/pocia/pocia.txt>
or via web
<http://www.teleport.com/~cci>
or for e-mail, you can send a <blank message> to
<cci@olympus.net>
Both of these lists are organized by telephone area code and include some
information about rates, etc. for most providers in most areas. There
are cheap providers in most areas, but you often get what you pay for.
I won't go into the problems with my provider, <eskimo.com> which I
assume operates from someone's closet in a suburb north of Seattle. I'll
just say that it is _ridiculously_ cheap.
I hope the above addresses are useful to anyone looking for cheaper and/or
better on-line service.
Bests,
Herb
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 19 May 1995 19:32:40 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Loss Glazier <lolpoet@ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU>
Subject: Re: one big tease
In-Reply-To: <199505191221.IAA02106@mailhub.acsu.buffalo.edu> from "Ron
Silliman" at May 19, 95 03:49:15 am
> Maybe Tom could "back channel" us who want to read the whole thing.
Or contact me and see what we might put up at the EPC!
Loss
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 19 May 1995 16:59:27 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Sheila E. Murphy" <semurphy@INDIRECT.COM>
Subject: Re: martha
If I'm mot mistaken, Martha Stewart appears on the cover of the current NEW
YORK magazine, with the caption "She's Martha Stewart and you're not." Or
did I dream this?
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 19 May 1995 17:41:55 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Carl Lynden Peters <clpeters@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: really Real Andy
In-Reply-To: <199505191227.FAA12994@whistler.sfu.ca> from "Ryan Knighton" at
May 18, 95 10:47:59 pm
>
> what the hell, why not ask it all, while we're at it. Not just
> is there such a thing as a great work of art, why not is there
> scuh a thing as *a* great work of art. Can it be removed
> from the anxiety of influence (get a load of my dimples)
>
--duchamp said it's all art. like emotions. good emotion, bad emotion.
good art, bad. it's art
carl
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 19 May 1995 19:35:08 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jeffrey Timmons <mnamna@IMAP1.ASU.EDU>
Subject: Re: irony and the Really real
In-Reply-To: <9505190347.AA07649@imap1.asu.edu>
On Thu, 18 May 1995, John Byrum wrote:
> I agree that simulated experiences are as "real" as "real" experiences. We
> could also agree that our "real" experiences are "simulated"; i.e.,
> "simulations" of events in some sense "external" to our "experience". This
> is getting deep into the intertwining convolutions of epistemology & ontology
> & definitions of terms, though.
Yes, and rather confusing too. I'm interested--as if it hadn't already
been said--in how the real comes to be a sublime category of experience
or, rather, of roping off of experience as unmediated by . . . ideology
or other means of perceiving or creating experience. I've been reading
Judith Butler's Bodies That Matter recently and am intrigued at her claim
that sex is enunciated and culturally produced--and not essential or
biological. That producing sexual difference is a way of maintaining
social order. I'm reducing . . . . But what is interesting is how the
real is produced as somehow outside of cultural production--much as
Butler suggests sex is--when it is as mediated as any other thing.
Consequently, as John suggests, epistemologically and ontologically these
categories--the real and the simulated--come to stand in the place of
each other (it gets confusing, I know).
Jeffrey Timmons
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 19 May 1995 22:39:39 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Tom Mandel <tmandel@UMD5.UMD.EDU>
Subject: Re: one big tease
I'll ask Dan what he might want to do abt putting AS online.
Tom Mandel
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 20 May 1995 02:50:06 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: John Byrum <JMBYRUM@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: Rauschenberg
Ron's recent post:
>Rauschenberg has always struck me as somebody who included >the "pretty"
>in his work just in case you didn't like the ideas. But over time
>neither wear that well.
Ron,
Rauschenberg couldn't really paint very well (& he certainly couldn't draw in
any academic sense), which may be one reason among many that he took to
assembling junk and then silkscreening all sorts of photos. But in his
earlier years he could slather a blob of paint so exquisitely on a piece of
canvas that it meant nothing & everything. Those paint dithers evoke (for me
at least) nothing but the paint, send-ups of ab-ex pieties, assisted
readymades (i.e., he MUST have just found them somewhere), randomness of the
non-human, & both inspired and purposeless play, all at once. No one else
has managed such blank/full soulfulness in paint smears.
In his later years, of course, his quick laying-on of paint fields among the
silkscreens came to look pretty lame.
John
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 20 May 1995 00:04:01 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Steve Carll <sjcarll@SLIP.NET>
Subject: Re: irony and the Really real
Jeffrey Timmons writes:
>On Thu, 18 May 1995, John Byrum wrote:
>
>> I agree that simulated experiences are as "real" as "real" experiences. We
>> could also agree that our "real" experiences are "simulated"; i.e.,
>> "simulations" of events in some sense "external" to our "experience". This
>> is getting deep into the intertwining convolutions of epistemology & ontology
>> & definitions of terms, though.
>
>
>Yes, and rather confusing too. I'm interested--as if it hadn't already
>been said--in how the real comes to be a sublime category of experience
>or, rather, of roping off of experience as unmediated by . . . ideology
>or other means of perceiving or creating experience. I've been reading
>Judith Butler's Bodies That Matter recently and am intrigued at her claim
>that sex is enunciated and culturally produced--and not essential or
>biological. That producing sexual difference is a way of maintaining
>social order. I'm reducing . . . . But what is interesting is how the
>real is produced as somehow outside of cultural production--much as
>Butler suggests sex is--when it is as mediated as any other thing.
>Consequently, as John suggests, epistemologically and ontologically these
>categories--the real and the simulated--come to stand in the place of
>each other (it gets confusing, I know).
>
>
Butler's claim reminds me of Foucault's, that "we must not place sex on the
side of reality and sexuality on the side of confused ideas and
illusions...against the machinery of sexuality the strong point of the
counter-attack should not be sex-desire, but the body and its pleasures"
(History of Sexuality Vol. 1, 157).
Steve Carll
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 20 May 1995 00:20:07 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Steve Carll <sjcarll@SLIP.NET>
Subject: Actually actual?
It might be fruitful to think back to the roots of "real" in the Latin
*res*, or "things". Now I know Silliman doesn't trust etymology, but I feel
that traces of the original "readings" of words still lurk in the
(back)ground of a historical word's meaning as much as the more current
readings and misreadings of it.
Hiedegger points out in view of this origin that the real is the set of
properties which belong to res, to a thing, whether or not the thing
actually exists. Reality and actuality are thus not necessarily the same.
I think of reality as being the way actuality is constructed for us, or
expressed by and through us. The real *as* the actual is that highly
elusive space that Andrew and Dodie have been speaking of, but (I have to
hope) every reality opens out into actuality someplace.
The relation of poetry to the real could be seen then as an attempt to a)
mirror, b)create, c)transform the actual by means of the real. The poem
establishes some kind of reality which, with varying degrees of "success",
holds open that opening in the reality in which it finds itself, so that the
actual can be beheld.
Also--to Jeffrey Timmons--it might be said here that the real is already a
kind of simulation of the actual (unfortunately, since this assertion is so
abstract, anything could be an example of it, and every example could be
challenged.)
Steve
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 20 May 1995 03:33:32 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: John Byrum <JMBYRUM@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: next steps after art
Carl writes in a recent message:
--duchamp said it's all art. like emotions. good emotion, bad emotion.
good art, bad. it's art
carl
Has anyone read Suzi Gablik's The Re-Enchantment of Art?
What comes after art? What might art evolve into?
Perhaps all our involvements, all our experiences, multiply feeding into the
continuous flow of our lives... a continuously heightened awareness..?..
what forms would this take, what could we become?
John
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 20 May 1995 03:47:01 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: John Byrum <JMBYRUM@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: irony and the Really real
Jeffrey, in your last message you concluded with:
...But what is interesting is how the
real is produced as somehow outside of cultural production--much as
Butler suggests sex is--when it is as mediated as any other thing.
Consequently, as John suggests, epistemologically and ontologically these
categories--the real and the simulated--come to stand in the place of
each other (it gets confusing, I know).
Jeffrey Timmons
Jeff:
Perhaps our notion of the Real descends from ancient fears about what lurks
outside the campfires and later the walls of the compound... danger.
John
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 20 May 1995 02:30:41 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Susan Clark <clarkd@SFU.CA>
Subject: ... for Dodie B.
Dodie,
Could you please send me your email address. Here comes that phone call.
... and others who may have peeked at this "private correspondence,"
wouldn't it be wonderful if everyone signed their notes with email
addresses so we could talk about things irrelevant to the list
backchannel?
Apologies for taking up your boxes' spaces in this instance, all.
Susan Clark
clarkd@sfu.ca
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 20 May 1995 10:53:28 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: maria damon <damon001@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
Subject: Re: Actually actual?
In message <2fbd98bf4ce2002@maroon.tc.umn.edu> UB Poetics discussion group
writes:
> It might be fruitful to think back to the roots of "real" in the Latin
> *res*, or "things".
just a random comment --when this msg flashed on my screen, i initially read it
as "it might be frightful..."--md
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 20 May 1995 12:56:09 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Blair Seagram <blairsea@PANIX.COM>
Subject: Re: POETICS Digest - 17 May 1995 to 18 May 1995
In-Reply-To: <199505190403.AAA20094@panix4.panix.com>
> I agree that the real can always seem elusive (allusive??), but think that
> all our experiences must finally be the Real. After all they are all we
> have, call them what you will.
Forgive me for editing the comments as I have done . . . . I am
intrigued by this discussion of the real, but must insist upon my earlier
statement that The Real Can Be Simulated.
.) In his book "The Concept of Irony with Constant Reference to Socrates"
Kierkegaard
states that irony in its simplest instance is to say the opposite of what
is meant.
The inner and the outer do not form a harmonious unity, for the external
is in opposition to the internal.
Kierkegaard plots three points which describe the beginning, the middle,
and the end of the career of irony. The first is its inception in the
figure of Socrates. The second is its illusory zenith in the Romantics,
from which Hegel coins his dialectic of opposites (i.e. Romantic Irony).
This is where I would situate Ortega.* And the third is the point at
which irony disappears, having gone through a metamorphosis by way of
experience, resulting in self-mastery.
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 20 May 1995 12:57:58 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Blair Seagram <blairsea@PANIX.COM>
Subject: Re: POETICS Digest - 17 May 1995 to 18 May 1995
In-Reply-To: <199505190403.AAA20094@panix4.panix.com>
2.) Published in 1925, Ortega Y Gasset =D5s essay called "The=20
Dehumanization of Art" maintains that among other things, modernism tends=
=20
to " be essentially ironic"
In the section "Doomed to Irony", Ortega continues, "It is not that the=20
content of the work is comical...To look for fiction as fiction, which we=
=20
have said modern art does, is a proposition that cannot be executed=20
except with one's tongue in one's cheek.. Art is appreciated precisely=20
because it is recognized as farce....Thanks to this suicidal gesture art=20
continues to be art, its self-negation bringing about its preservation=20
and triumph.=D3
Nor is this ironical reflection of art upon itself new as an idea. *In=20
the beginning of the last century a group of German romanticists, under=20
the leadership of the two brothers, Schlegel, pronounced irony the=20
foremost aesthetic category their reasons being much the same as those of=
=20
our young artists.... Art has no right to exist if, content to reproduce=20
reality, it uselessly duplicates it. Its mission is to conjure up=20
imaginary worlds. That can be done only if the artist repudiates reality=20
and by this act places himself above it. Being an artist means ceasing to=
=20
take seriously that very serious person we are when we are not an artist."
And finally Ortega maintains that "to the young generation art is a thing=
=20
of no consequence. I do not mean that the artist makes light of his or=20
her profession, but they are of interest precisely because they are of no=
=20
transcending importance."
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 20 May 1995 13:00:43 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Blair Seagram <blairsea@PANIX.COM>
Subject: Re: POETICS Digest - 17 May 1995 to 18 May 1995
In-Reply-To: <199505190403.AAA20094@panix4.panix.com>
#3) Present in all forms of irony is the understanding that the
phenomenon is not the essence, but the opposite of the essence where the
essence is defined as the IDEA or thought and phenomenon is defined as
the medium and in the case of Socrates the rhetorical word.
If, when I speak, I am conscious that what I say is my meaning, and an
adequate expression of my meaning, and if I assume that the person to
whom I am speaking understands perfectly what I have said, then I am
bound by what I have said. That is, I am positively free. Furthermore, I
am bound in relation to myself and cannot detach whenever I wish. This is
an identity.
If, on the other hand, what I say is not my meaning or the opposite of my
meaning, then I am free both in relation to myself and in relation to
others. That is, I am negatively free.
With irony the subject is always seeking to get outside the object and
this is done by becoming conscious, at every moment, that the object has
no reality. The subject constantly retires from the field and proceeds to
talk every phenomenon out of its reality in order to preserve their
negative independence of everything.
With doubt, on the other hand, the subject tries to destroy the
phenomenon in order to get at the essence. The subject seeks to penetrate
the object and the misfortune consists in the fact that the object
constantly eludes him or her.
It might be said that doubt is for philosophy what irony is for the
personal life. Just as the philosopher claims no true philosophy is
possible without doubt, so one may say that no authentic life is possible
without irony.
One might think that since irony is conscoius of the fact that reality
has no existence, it was a type of religious devotion. In religious
devotion the relationship to the world loses its validity, but only
insofar as the reality of God asserts absolute reality Irony however, is
nothingness. It is a deadly stillness that returns to haunt and jest. If
irony is not a type of religious devotion, neither is it a form of
hypocrisy, for hypocrisy belongs to the moral shpere and irony to the
metaphysical.
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 20 May 1995 13:02:36 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Blair Seagram <blairsea@PANIX.COM>
Subject: Re: POETICS Digest - 17 May 1995 to 18 May 1995
In-Reply-To: <199505190403.AAA20094@panix4.panix.com>
4.) Irony in terms of the BIG picture differs in quality from the irony
discussed thus far. In this sense irony directs itself against the whole
given actuality or essence of a certain time and situation, which has
become alien for the ironic subject and lost all validity.
Just as the world spirit throughout every age is within itself, so
individuals within an age must follow the actuality which presents
itself to them. Hegel remarked: " All dialectic accepts as valid what
shall become valid as if it were valid and allows the internal
destruction to develop within it. Such is the universal irony of the
world. " To a certain extent every world historical turning point must
exhibit this formation.
An individual may be world historically justified and at the same time
without authority. And just as his or her lack of authority must make
them a sacrifice, so the fact that they are historically justified makes
them a triumph. That is to say they triumph by becoming a scarifice.
As the new comes forth we meet three types of individuals:
1. The Prophetic Individual.
2. The Tragic Hero.
3. The Ironic Subject.
The prophetic individual does not possess the future but envisages it and
imitates it. He or she cannot assert it because they are lost to the time
in which they live. The tragic hero fights for the new and endeavors to
destroy what for him is vanishing actuality. The ironic suject displaces
the old and shows us all its imperfections. For him or her the given
actuality, having lost its validity, has become an imperfect form where
everything constrains. The ironic subject does not work hand in hand
with their age, like the prophet, but rather has advanced beyond it and
opened up a front against it. That which shall come is hidden from him or
her.
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 20 May 1995 13:07:45 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Blair Seagram <blairsea@PANIX.COM>
Subject: Re: POETICS Digest - 17 May 1995 to 18 May 1995
In-Reply-To: <199505190403.AAA20094@panix4.panix.com>
5.) Just as historical actuality is a criteria in Kierkegaard's concept
of irony, so too is actuality for the individual. In so far as the
individual remains ironic he or she is negatively free and thus,
unassimilated into a larger context and unable to feel the responsibility
of consequences, the ironic subject is unable to fulfil his or her task
as an acting individual.
The last stage in the life of irony is when its truth is revealed as the
mastered moment. Shakespeare is considered the great master of irony.
There is neither too much nor too little, so everything receives its due.
Irony is not present at some particular point in the poem, but
omnipresent in it, so that visible irony in the poem is ironically
mastered. This renders both the poet and the poem free. However, because
a poet is successful in mastering irony in the moment of artistic
production does not mean he has mastered irony in actuality.
Usually the personal life of an artist does not concern us in regard to
his or her work, but in the case of irony it is of some relevance. If an
artist steps outside the label of genius, they will become, in some
measure a philosopher. In which case their work will not have a mere
external relation to him or herself, but rather the artist will see in a
particular work, a moment of their own development.
It was in this respect that Goethe's life as a poet was so great. For
Goethe irony was, in the strictest sense, a mastered moment, a spirit
ministering to the world.
Once it has been mastered, irony undertakes a movement in the opposite
direction. It now limits, renders finite, defines and thereby yields
truth, actuality and content. Hence if one must warn against irony as a
seducer, one must praise it as a guide.
Any question as to the eternal validity of irony can only find its answer
through an investigation into the sphere of humor. Humor contains a much
deeper skepticism than irony...but humor also contains a much deeper
positivity than irony.
Notes on Irony, mainly from Kierkegaard
I had to do this and I promise never to send such a long thing again.
By the way I couldn't get a subject line for some reason, so I let it go.
Blair
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Date: Sat, 20 May 1995 10:41:05 +0100
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Kevin Killian <dbkk@SIRIUS.COM>
Subject: Re: mail by the megabyte?
Ron, Tom, Herb,
Thanks for your concern over my access provider situation, but really,
really, do you think this is a suitable topic for the poetics listserv? I
must say I feel somewhat patronized here, would have felt less so if you'd
each written to me backchannel.
Honestly, guys, I'm capable of handling my internet situation. My other
listserv, Women On-Line, gives me lots of support in treading the male
dominated waters of the net. They say, by the way, the figures have
changed for 9 to 1 to 2 to 1, as far as the male/female percentages go.
I pay $15 a month for unlimited access and sadistic customer service at
Sirius-and 1mb e-mail. I could camp out on this thing if I wanted to.
Actually, last month I know I went over the 1-mb limit and they didn't
charge me extra. Plus you get to go to coffee parties in the Haight with
other Sirius customers.
The Women's On-Line listserv is having a brunch in Mountain View soon. Why
don't the members of the poetics listserv ever get together and eat? I
visualize a memo tacked on a bulletin board at the Blaser Conference.
POETICS LISTSERV BREAKFAST.
Doesn't it make your mouth water?
Dodie
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 20 May 1995 10:53:37 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" <anielsen@SPARTA.SJSU.EDU>
Subject: Re: Spectra-scope
In-Reply-To: <9505200405.AA07853@isc.sjsu.edu>
Ed's memory is again better than mine -- It was Whitter Bynner at the
heart of the Spectra hoax -- the book I read about the hoax (back at the
neighboirhood library when I was in Junior High and libraries could still
afford to have books for kids to read) was complied by Wiiliam Jay Smith
(a thorouhly despicable person), who also edited Bynner's complete works
some years ago.
Does Jorge really delete mail he suspects of being uninteresting? How dull!
after some tries at composition by erasure and found poetry, I decided to
try a different tack. I began attempting to smuggle lines of my own
composition into the published works of others. Since I was having such
trouble finding anyone to publishe a book of poems under my own name (a
trouble I still have) this also got my "work" circualted more rapidly. I
started small. First I planted an allusion to my own first chap book
inside a prose piece by Juan Felipe Herrera. This now appears on page 16
of his book _Night Train to Tuxtla_, from U of Arizona Press, one hell of
a good book with or without my contribution. Emboldened by that success,
I went on to write several passages of Toni Morrison's _Playing in the
Dark_, my first such spectral best seller. I have on several occasions
attempted to smuggle my work inside Joe Ross's poems in progress, but he
keeps finding them and editing them out before publication. Who will be
my next target???
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 20 May 1995 17:03:57 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Gary Sullivan <gpsj@PRIMENET.COM>
Subject: Re: Blair Seagram's post(s) on irony
In-Reply-To: <199505201710.KAA28200@mailhost.primenet.com>
Dear Blair:
No need to apologize for the length of your post, and I genuinely hope you
*break* your promise never to post anything that length again.
I have a question, probably very mundane (covered elsewhere?), about
mimesis: isn't structure (or form), by its very nature, "mimetic"? It
occurred to me, while reading Ira's wonderful reading of _Ketjak_, that
structure (or form, or "frame" even) is the one thing all works of art
(including wholly "conceptual" artworks) have in common. No duh, but it
struck me for some reason. & then, it immediately struck me that, well,
for an artwork to have a structure, doesn't that alone make it "mimetic" of
"reality," however (& by whomever) that "real" is structured?
In other words, no work of art, whether actualized or at any point of
conception, is "another world." While our ideas of how the world is
"structured" vary from age to age & from person-within-an-age to
person-within-an-age, the notion of an underlying structure -- whatever
differences we might have about the specific attributes -- seems across
the board unquestioned/unquestionable. Since the one defining
characteristic of "the world" we all might agree on is that it *is*
(however, even randomly) structured -- how can there *be* "another" world?
Yours,
Gary
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 20 May 1995 16:55:52 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jeffrey Timmons <mnamna@IMAP1.ASU.EDU>
Subject: Re: Actually actual?
X-To: Steve Carll <sjcarll@SLIP.NET>
In-Reply-To: <9505200722.AA16836@imap1.asu.edu>
On Sat, 20 May 1995, Steve Carll wrote:
> I think of reality as being the way actuality is constructed for us, or
> expressed by and through us.
Yes, Steve, I agree with your comments, especially as you bring up
Foucault in light of Butler, but I would--just for sake of furthering
this line of thought--suggest that part of Butler's thesis (and
Foucault's, if I am not mistaken) is that we don't simply think but are
thought. In your example for instance, actuality is not simply
constructed for us, by us, but has the emphasis you suggest when you say
it is constructed through us. That is, it thinks us. The real--oops--the
ACTUAL thinks us, not necessarily we it. This, of course, is scary. But
then again, reading the newspaper the other day when Ralph Reed and his
Republican hench-men (The Real?) were out in force was scary too. My
point? Perhaps I'll defer to Richard Rorty here and repeat his idea that
the real is out there and we have no access to it--all we have is our
descriptions of it, descriptions that come and go through time,
descriptions that are perceived as better or less suited to accounting
for particular phenomena in the world. Poetry--Art (and I'll include
science here)--are those areas of imaginative experience where those
descriptions are forged. I need to jump over to the Gasset stuff and
follow this up . . . .
Jeffrey Timmons
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 20 May 1995 17:02:08 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jeffrey Timmons <mnamna@IMAP1.ASU.EDU>
Subject: Re: irony and the Really real
X-To: John Byrum <JMBYRUM@AOL.COM>
In-Reply-To: <9505200747.AA17086@imap1.asu.edu>
On Sat, 20 May 1995, John Byrum wrote:
> Perhaps our notion of the Real descends from ancient fears about what lurks
> outside the campfires and later the walls of the compound... danger.
Yes, perhaps. And if that were the case then our fears would be a
strange conglomeration of real (I feel funny using this word now) and the
imagined. I mean, not all the time are fears . . . given validity by
their object. Sometimes what lurks out there isn't there. Sometimes it
is though. What I find interesting about this sort of observation about
experience (real, actual) and the imaginary (fears, creativity) is that
there is sense in which one might say that John's fears give rise to the
condition of creativity itself. I wonder, though, if this isn't a
masculine conception of creativity? That is, perceiving it as developing
out of a response to a perceived threat (I'm thinking of Cixous in
Castration and Decapitation). Anyway, thanks for the thought, John.
Jeffrey Timmons
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Date: Sat, 20 May 1995 17:17:31 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jeffrey Timmons <mnamna@IMAP1.ASU.EDU>
Subject: Re: POETICS Digest - 17 May 1995 to 18 May 1995
X-To: Blair Seagram <blairsea@PANIX.COM>
In-Reply-To: <9505201659.AA22495@imap1.asu.edu>
On Sat, 20 May 1995, Blair Seagram quoted Gasset, I believe, to the effect:
Art has no right to exist if, content to reproduce reality, it uselessly
duplicates it. Its mission is to conjure up imaginary worlds. That can
be done only if the artist repudiates reality and by this act places
himself above it.
This is essentially a modernist postion, one I find a bit too hubristic
for my taste. Perhaps I'm missing the overall gist of Blair's posts by
latching onto this fragment, but I do so because I am interested in not
only how there is a phenomenological desire to explain the
world--accompanied by the ironic inability and rejection of being bound
to doing so--as well as a desire to "transcend" the world. What I find
disturbing is that the first position--which I like--is accompanied in
modernist formulations of the function of art by a desire that seems to
me to smack of aestheticist withdrawal from the phenomenological
(otherwise known here as the real or actual). I want to be able to
maintain that sense of irony that remains sceptical about verbal
descriptions of the world--and here Rorty's irony is more
relevant to my concerns than the modernists Blair alludes to
(Gasset)--while being able to maintain contact with the world. I desire
not transcendence. I was reading Ashbery's Three Poems the other day and
am reminded of a section near the end of the second poem about just this
idea--I'll track it down if anyone's interested in how JA handles this
dilemma. I am also reminded of Whitman's sentiment in Song of Myself
where he says something to the effect of being mad with desire to be in
contact with the earth . . . .
Jeffrey Timmons
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 20 May 1995 20:29:11 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Gary Sullivan <gpsj@PRIMENET.COM>
Subject: Re: Ira/Cris
...or, Cris, were those enthusiastic _Ketjak_ posts you "doing" Ira?
Just finished Michael Heyward's _The Ern Malley Affair_, which Jonathan
kindly lent me, & now I'm in a world of doubt.
The book, btw, is incredible, includes trial transcript material -- after
Ern Malley was revealed to be a hoax, Max Harris was put on trial for
publishing "obscene" or "indecent" work. Harris is forced to do a wonderful
close reading of Malley's work while on the witness stand, in which both
prosecuting attorney and Harris refer to Malley as tho very real (again,
after the hoax had been made public).
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 20 May 1995 22:14:23 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Loss Glazier <lolpoet@ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU>
Subject: Poet/Artist "Collaboration"
I'm interested in recommendations on writings that specifically
address poet/artist *active* collaborations. That is, what would
be called a "true" or active collaboration versus what might be
more of a kind of "mere" illustrations with text.) Can anyone
recommend articles or other works that explore this distinction?
Thanks,
Loss
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Date: Sat, 20 May 1995 21:27:37 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: maria damon <damon001@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
Subject: Re: Poet/Artist "Collaboration"
In message <2fbea24b73a2002@maroon.tc.umn.edu> UB Poetics discussion group
writes:
> I'm interested in recommendations on writings that specifically
>
> address poet/artist *active* collaborations. That is, what would
>
> be called a "true" or active collaboration versus what might be
>
> more of a kind of "mere" illustrations with text.) Can anyone
>
> recommend articles or other works that explore this distinction?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Loss
hi loss, this isn't exactly what you were asking about, but i want to plug an
extraordinarily beautiful intermedia book anyway, Excerpts from Dikte for
Dictee, by Walter K. Lew. It's a response to Theresa Hak-Kyung Cha's book
Dictee; walter's bk started as an essay for a volume of criticism on the piece,
but he came to feel that using standard critical language and form wd violate
Cha's project, so what evolved was what he calls a "critical collage," a series
of textual fragments from Dictee and its various intertexts, as well as his own
notes etc., and film stills, photos and charts that evoke and resonate with
broad and specific themes in Dictee. All 350 copies are signed with his blood,
thus actualizing one of Cha's wordplays, "sangencre," which dramatic sight led
to some copies being returned after purchase on the buyers' mistaken assumption
that the smear indicated a flawed copy. So it's more of a living artist/poet
collaborating with a dead one (more so than Spicer/Lorca...)...md
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 20 May 1995 23:25:22 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Tom Mandel <tmandel@UMD5.UMD.EDU>
Subject: Re: Poet/Artist "Collaboration"
No articles to offer, but fyi the poet Beth Joselow and the
poet I will be in Moscow next month visiting the Moscow
Studio- an international visual arts studio founded by
the
(ooops) Washington artist Dennis O'Neal. We'll be
undertaking collaborative projects with a couple of
Russian artists (in my case, it looks like I'll
work with the 'paper architect' Yuri Avakkumov).
I think this will be rather true than mere, but
hey, who knows? The idea is to do silk-screen
books in small editions. Yuri's fantastic
conceptual work I find thrilling; I'm writing
poems in the form of ladders (line-rungs and
line-poles) in preparation.
Tom Mandel
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Date: Sat, 20 May 1995 23:30:08 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Tom Mandel <tmandel@UMD5.UMD.EDU>
Subject: Re: Poet/Artist "Collaboration"
...I terminated that message with finger not mind, meaning
to continue by saying that Beth will be working with Pavel
Makov of Ukraine. Beth visited the studio abt 18 months
ago, but it is my maiden voyage.
Tom
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 20 May 1995 23:47:34 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Tom Mandel <tmandel@UMD5.UMD.EDU>
Subject: Re: Absence Sensorium
Re: Absence Sensorium online...
Dan Davidson and I agree that this is a great idea, and
we want to pursue it. At present, however, AS is out - being read
for publication; we can't think about an alternative or additional
publishing paradigm (i.e. online) until we know whether our
potential publisher is interested in printing AS, in which case
that person surely would have a say in determining the best
way(s) to distribute the work.
So... we are asking for the chance to come back to you, Loss -
perhaps as soon as a month from now, perhaps sooner - and discuss
this some more. Thank you for encouraging this idea (and, to
take the occasion, for all the good work of the EPC).
Tom Mandel
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 20 May 1995 21:44:20 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Steve Carll <sjcarll@SLIP.NET>
Subject: Re: really Real
kathryne writes:
>But I feel a bit steamed by our present (inter) national spiral
>into meanness and reaction, and dead guys like Marx can only help
>a bit more than vain arguments over which Marxism is correct//WAS possible.
>
>Still, one lives, in a sense by engaging the fight indirectly, poetically.
>By the way, I hear that all of Whitman's recently discovered notebooks
>are available on-line. I hear the spectre of Pound screaming for joy.
>Oh, my, there are ghosts--and there are ghosts--dancing spectrally in
>this machine.
>
>
I agree; I think any approach that, however well-thought-out in its
political philosophy, doesn't ground and frame itself in compassion, and
acknowledge the importance of listening, won't slow the spiral.
Let's not give up the ghost! :) (uh-oh; did i really use a smiley?)
Steve
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 21 May 1995 01:19:54 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: John Byrum <JMBYRUM@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: Actually actual?
Excerpt from Jeffrey Timmons' recent posting:
Poetry--Art (and I'll include
science here)--are those areas of imaginative experience where those
descriptions are forged.
Jeff, I agree with you here in at least two senses:
Forged as in Joyce's "forged in the smithy of the soul"; and forged in the
sense of "inventing a fictitious story, a lie, etc." and "to fabricate by
false (I would rather say by metaphoric) imitation." (Random House
Dictionary of the Eng Lang definitions of "forge" sense 1)
And of course metaphors work by relating/comparing two pictures or areas of
the language network; i.e., one picture gets mapped onto another. And
obviously, not all the "points" or aspects of one picture align or map onto
those of the other picture. Hence metaphors are not actually "false"
comparisons, but dreamlike yokings-together which produce a third body (or
picture), allowing us to draw new insights, make new and further connections
between areas of language and experience we previously thought were
relatively unconnected, etc.
John
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 21 May 1995 01:40:44 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: John Byrum <JMBYRUM@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: POETICS Digest - 17 May 1...
Jeffrey Timmons concludes a recent post with:
I am also reminded of Whitman's sentiment in Song of Myself
where he says something to the effect of being mad with desire to be in
contact with the earth . . . .
Jeffrey Timmons
To that we might reply: "Dammit Walt take your shoes off."
John
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 21 May 1995 01:48:24 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: John Byrum <JMBYRUM@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: Poet/Artist "Collaboration"
Loss writes in a recent post:
I'm interested in recommendations on writings that specifically
address poet/artist *active* collaborations. That is, what would
be called a "true" or active collaboration versus what might be
more of a kind of "mere" illustrations with text.) Can anyone
recommend articles or other works that explore this distinction?
Thanks,
Loss
Visual poetry collapses this "collaboration" into a single presentation
embodying both visual and language modes/elements. See, for example, "CORE,
A Symposium on Contemporary Visual Poetry", edited by John Byrum and Crag
Hill, GENERATORSCORE Press, 1993.
To forestall any requests for copies, I need to say here that the first
edition is sold out, but Crag & I are contemplating a 2nd expanded edition.
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 21 May 1995 10:29:28 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: George Bowering <bowering@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: Actually actual?
In-Reply-To: <199505200722.AAA06823@whistler.sfu.ca> from "Steve Carll" at May
20, 95 00:20:07 am
It has always seemed to me that the notion of the "real" and the
notion of "truth" are both things that have to be defined by the
arguer, that they are both philosphical propositions, and that they
are specific to each arguer's frame. That thing that (seems to?)
happens when you cut your hand thru the dustmotes in the window sun
shaft is what I refer to as the "actual," and hope that whatever the
arguments, ut happens. I.e. it could be real or it could be a
platonic simulacrum.
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 21 May 1995 10:34:10 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: George Bowering <bowering@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: martha
In-Reply-To: <199505200219.TAA26762@whistler.sfu.ca> from "Sheila E. Murphy"
at May 19, 95 04:59:27 pm
Hey, this Martha Stewart may be on the cover of a regional magazine,
NEW YORK MAG, but I havent seen her on the cover of, say VANCOUVER
magazine. I now know where she is, but I still dont know who she is.
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 21 May 1995 11:05:48 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Carl Lynden Peters <clpeters@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: next steps after art
In-Reply-To: <199505200737.AAA07144@whistler.sfu.ca> from "John Byrum" at May
20, 95 03:33:32 am
>
> Carl writes in a recent message:
>
> --duchamp said it's all art. like emotions. good emotion, bad emotion.
> good art, bad. it's art
>
> carl
>
> Has anyone read Suzi Gablik's The Re-Enchantment of Art?
>
> What comes after art? What might art evolve into?
>
> Perhaps all our involvements, all our experiences, multiply feeding into the
> continuous flow of our lives... a continuously heightened awareness..?..
> what forms would this take, what could we become?
>
> John
>
hi, john, that's an interesting post. i think hegel (i'm not exactly
certain, tho) said art would collapse and become philsophy. i've had several
discussions recently with some friends here in philosophy, and it may be the
revese that's true or truER. philosophy into art. but then there's kosuth:
"art after philosophy"
the genius of rausneberg, cage, even warhol i think is that they erase
the boundaries between art and life -- sounds godawfully cliche, i know,
and like burnham writes in "problems of criticism," the question is no
longer what is good art and what is bad art, but why isn't everyone an
artist?
take care,
carl
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 21 May 1995 14:58:25 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Charlotte Pressler <V273FS6S@UBVMS.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Subject: Kiosk #8
K I O S K #8 just published.
Yearly subscription: $6.00 to
KIOSK
c/o English Department
306 Clemens Hall
SUNY at Buffalo
Buffalo, NY 14260.
Issue #8 includes:
Fiction/prose by Robert Creeley, Richard Russo, Mark Jacobs,
Bonnie Jo Campbell, Bill Morris, Howard Saunders, and Susan Raffo.
Poetry by Jake Berry, Jeff Gburek, Richard Hague, Richard Roundy, Nava Fader,
Wendy Kramer, Joseph Conte, Loss Pequen~o Glazier, Carl Dennis, John Marvin,
Bill Tuttle, Celia White, Kristen Ban Tepper, Joel Kuszai, Nico Vassilakis,
Cacy Forgenie, William Howe, Ike Kim, Jorge Guitart, John M. Bennett,
Valerie Marek, and Jena Osman.
Photographs by Mark Maio, Martin J. Desht, and Jim Clinefelter.
Poetics list subscribers are invited to submit work for issue #9. Fiction,
poetic prose, poetry, visual poetry, photography, and collage/photomontage
are all welcome.
We'll be reading from November 1995 through February 1996. The fiction editor
for issue #9 is Jon Pitts; the poetry editor is Charlotte Pressler; the
editor-in-chief is Lia Vella. Write us (address above) or send e-mail if you
have questions or want guidelines.
Thanks to all contributors, and to outgoing editors Mary Obropta, Robert
Rebein, and A.M. Allcott.
Charlotte Pressler/v273fs6s@ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu/SUNY at Buffalo
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Date: Sun, 21 May 1995 21:16:33 -0700
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From: Steve Carll <sjcarll@SLIP.NET>
Subject: Re: Actually actual?
On March 20, George Bowering wrote:
>It has always seemed to me that the notion of the "real" and the
>notion of "truth" are both things that have to be defined by the
>arguer, that they are both philosphical propositions, and that they
>are specific to each arguer's frame. That thing that (seems to?)
>happens when you cut your hand thru the dustmotes in the window sun
>shaft is what I refer to as the "actual," and hope that whatever the
>arguments, ut happens. I.e. it could be real or it could be a
>platonic simulacrum.
I agree, although the definers of these propositions are not always arguers
(I prefer to do so as a "discourser" or something like that, myself). But
it is interesting that, frame-specific as they are, these notions are
intercommunicable, that there is a significant overlap between my frame and
yours because both are concerned with the actual in a fundamental way.
Steve
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Date: Sun, 21 May 1995 21:45:07 -0700
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From: Steve Carll <sjcarll@SLIP.NET>
Subject: Re: Blair Seagram's post(s) on irony
Gary Sullivan writes:
>I have a question, probably very mundane (covered elsewhere?), about
>mimesis: isn't structure (or form), by its very nature, "mimetic"? It
>occurred to me, while reading Ira's wonderful reading of _Ketjak_, that
>structure (or form, or "frame" even) is the one thing all works of art
>(including wholly "conceptual" artworks) have in common. No duh, but it
>struck me for some reason. & then, it immediately struck me that, well,
>for an artwork to have a structure, doesn't that alone make it "mimetic" of
>"reality," however (& by whomever) that "real" is structured?
>
>In other words, no work of art, whether actualized or at any point of
>conception, is "another world." While our ideas of how the world is
>"structured" vary from age to age & from person-within-an-age to
>person-within-an-age, the notion of an underlying structure -- whatever
>differences we might have about the specific attributes -- seems across
>the board unquestioned/unquestionable. Since the one defining
>characteristic of "the world" we all might agree on is that it *is*
>(however, even randomly) structured -- how can there *be* "another" world?
>
>Yours,
>
>Gary
>
>
It seems like if structure is something that underlies(and so transcends)
the world, though, if the world is (passive) structured, couldn't this
structure just as easily express itself in an otherworld that accesses
different structures than are possible in our world, or accesses them in
combinations impossible here?
Andrew Joron, help!
Steve
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Date: Sun, 21 May 1995 21:45:12 -0700
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From: Steve Carll <sjcarll@SLIP.NET>
Subject: Re: Actually actual?
>On Sat, 20 May 1995, Jeffrey Timmons wrote:
I would--just for sake of furthering
>this line of thought--suggest that part of Butler's thesis (and
>Foucault's, if I am not mistaken) is that we don't simply think but are
>thought. In your example for instance, actuality is not simply
>constructed for us, by us, but has the emphasis you suggest when you say
>it is constructed through us. That is, it thinks us. The real--oops--the
>ACTUAL thinks us, not necessarily we it. This, of course, is scary. But
>then again, reading the newspaper the other day when Ralph Reed and his
>Republican hench-men (The Real?) were out in force was scary too. My
>point? Perhaps I'll defer to Richard Rorty here and repeat his idea that
>the real is out there and we have no access to it--all we have is our
>descriptions of it, descriptions that come and go through time,
>descriptions that are perceived as better or less suited to accounting
>for particular phenomena in the world. Poetry--Art (and I'll include
>science here)--are those areas of imaginative experience where those
>descriptions are forged. I need to jump over to the Gasset stuff and
>follow this up . . . .
You don't think it's scary to think that "the real is out there and we have
no access to it", but it is scary to think that actuality thinks us? (I
agree that Ralph Reed et al. are scary). To me, that we are thought implies
no lack of freedom, only the acknowledgement that we are produced (produced
like produce, not produced like products) as part of an organic process
called "the world". This can indeed be scary sometimes, but if it lies at
the roots of what we are, we are deeply involved in it, and access is always
possible, not by attempts at "explaining" the world or "transcending" it,
but simply by allowing it to unfold in our presence, since it will unfold
anyway regardless of our participation. This is another way of maintaining
contact with the world. Thanks for your response; I think we agree more
than we disagree on this question...
Steve
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Date: Mon, 22 May 1995 18:37:58 GMT+1300
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From: Wystan Curnow <w.curnow@AUCKLAND.AC.NZ>
Organization: English Dept. - Univ. of Auckland
Subject: Re: Poet/Artist "Collaboration"
X-To: lolpoet@ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU
Dear Loss,
Such articles may be hard to find. I have had some * experience*
of collaboration. I have involved myself with the work of a New Zealand
conceptual I think is the tag to use artist named Billy Apple, which is not
his (real) name for about 15 years, first as an art critic but also in
recent times as poet, but all through as a consultant you might say, so that
no work of his got into the public arena without its going through a process
which involved my participation. Meanwhile, I continued to write as a critic
about the work. Complicated.
The collaborations concern a series works called Tales of Gold.
The first group were text silk-screened in black on largish sheets of gold
pacificated steel. A diagram of golden rectangle divisions was silk-screened
on this and the text occurred within each area, with the type reducing in
size in proportion--this was all done with a computer--so that the text in
the smallest rectangle is almost unreadable. The sheet was then cut into the
seven parts, each with its segment of text, and the work was sold in
pieces--although some buyers were quick enough to buy a whole work before
the piecemeal process began, and some quick re-sale activity also
occurred--although hung as a unit. After that we stopped cutting the sheets
up. The texts are stories concerning gold, my versions of tales told by
others. I have read these at readings, sometimes projecting slides of the
work. We plan to publish a book designed so as to duplicate some of the
results of the passivated steel works. I would not have written these pieces
were it not for this artist's interest in the meaning of gold, the golden
rectangle and the life. I am also, however, confused about my relation to
his work as a whole. What I have described represents one of the clearer
moments but these occur against a background of not knowing the extent of my
responsibility for his work. I published something on this called' Working
with Billy Apple', in SPLASH, in 1985, but so much has happened since then
it onlt tells part of the story.
So it seems to me there are ad hoc collaborations, chance meetings,
then there are these on-going relationships which I consider especially
interesting:conceptual art, oddly (?) has produced a few double acts: like
Marina Abramovic and Ulay, like Gilbert & George, Clegg & Guttman, and
are you there Madeline Gins?--Arakawa and Gins--I was pleased to read your
message to the net, I have just come back from Sydney and Imants Tillers who
has your new book of course since you sent it to him, HELEN KELLER OR
ARAKAWA which I'm anxious to read. And in some of these a division of roles
is apparent, and sometimes that is a matter of the media sometimes not.....
I am eager to hear of the experience others on the net have had, whether ad
hoc or not.
Wystan Curnow
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Date: Mon, 22 May 1995 02:39:45 -0400
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Blair Seagram <blairsea@PANIX.COM>
Subject: Re: Gasset and Kierkegaard on irony:
In-Reply-To: <199505220404.AAA27301@panix4.panix.com>
Dear Jeffrey:
P.S. About the quote I cut off and gave you no credit for. Originally I
put your initials there but for some reason they got lost in the
transfer. Even so, using initials is pretty relaxed I'm sure.
Also, all those * =20Us * in #2 on Gasset. I thought that was some poetic
technique people were using. One of Kenny Goldsmith's posts on the Top 10 kept
saying =20, so I thought he was trying to say, forget 10, let's go to 20.
Now I find out it's unix doing its second conversion of quotes,
the first being a U.
Gasset and Kierkegaard on irony:
(I'm not too keen on Gasset.)
There are ideological differences, as witnessed by Ortega identifying
himself and modernism with 19th century Romantic Irony, by way of the
Schlegel brothers, who both Kierkegaard and Hegel had great disdain for.
Socrates was irony as INFINITE ABSOLUTE NEGATIVITY. And yet it was irony
at work within a given time and situation. This concrete view of irony
through historical actuality is understood by both Hegel and Kierkegaard
as authentic. And even though Hegel did not see in Socrates what
Kierkegaard did, Kierkegaard gives credit and thanks to Hegel for
illuminating the deceptive irony present in certain 19th century
romantics. Nineteenth century Romantic Irony was not practiced or
conceived as a present moment that was to be displaced by a new moment .
Rather it condemned and denounced every philosophical standpoint without
investigating any. It negated all historical truth to make room for a
self-centered truth. It was not subjectivity that arose, but subjectivity
raised to the second power.
There is an interesting essay on Goethe that Ortega Y Gasset was asked to
write at the time of Goethe's centenary. In the essay he assails Goethe
for taking the easy way out in life, for allowing his talents to
degenerate into hobbies rather than struggling to make his ideas realized
in a more profound way. He criticizes Germany for romanticizing Goethe as
the quintessential classicist, the same way Kierkegaard criticizes 19th
Romantics for not connecting their ideas to the truth in front of them.
I appreciate your remarks about the dilemma between transcendence and irony.
Am I to take it you're not into transcendence but you are into Rorty's
book on irony? What was it called? The book was in my vicinity
at one point, but I forget the gist. What is it?
As far as JA's take on irony or whatever it was is concerned, I'm interested!
take care, Best wishes
Blair
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Date: Mon, 22 May 1995 03:05:25 -0400
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From: Blair Seagram <blairsea@PANIX.COM>
Subject: Re: POETICS Digest - 20 May 1995 to 21 May 1995
In-Reply-To: <199505220404.AAA27301@panix4.panix.com>
Dear Gary:
Thanks for your message. Are you asking me whether structure isn't itself a
form of imitation or representation. Or are you saying that we make sense of
things by creating a structure which is isomorphic with respect to our dna.
That the distinction between inner and outer is negligible. That the work
of an artist is no different than the life they live, both exist in the
same continuum. That every artist must confront the world through a frame
of reference. Please comment.
I'm not sure whether this has anything whatever to do with your second point
but I don't think about another world, I know I'm in this one. In this world
of mine, there is transcendence or at least the possibility for it. Now
I may be ignorant of some argument which might convince me otherwise,
however I am certainly open to hearing it.
take care, Best wishes
blair
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Date: Mon, 22 May 1995 04:24:34 -0400
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From: Jake Berry <BugsD@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: next steps after art
John,
Perhaps the next steps after art would be the observations of the various
ways by which we create what unfolds as the dominant strata of our lives.
documentaion would serve no purpose except to ackledge that we are are aware
of it. of course there would be perhaps modes of the process that would
function as post-poetic or post-art that would produce something that would
be exchanged as items, as books, painting and other document forms are now.
The idea though would be a general enhanced field of awareness that would
require a broader perspective than is currently in practice.
Just a reaction,
Jake
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 22 May 1995 06:22:25 -0700
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ron Silliman <rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM>
Subject: Re: Actually actual?
I used to love (and quote often, probably with greater accuracy than
I'm about to here) Williams' comment from Spring & All,
The perfection of forms as additions to nature.
Now, 25-30 years later, that seems too passive, simply cumulative. Now
I would rewrite it:
The perfection of forms as interventions in nature.
And I'm not so sure about that word "perfections" either.
Ron Silliman
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Date: Mon, 22 May 1995 10:26:52 -0400
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From: Jim Pangborn <V072GDXG@UBVMS.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Organization: University at Buffalo
Subject: The Etymology of Things
To those still reading posts on "the real," etc.--
The history of "reality" is indeed scary, but I find it even spookier
to look up "thing" in the Oxford English Dictionary, there to find that the
origin of that word in English is inseparable from issues of authority, power,
and the arbitrariness thereof. A thing is whatever authority (king) designates
as an object worthy of attention & discussion. Which came first, the object or
the attention? OED doesn't say, can't say, nor can you nor I, because to do
so would require a god's-eye view of the world. Our confusion over these
"things" may well be in-built, permanent. That's as real as it gets, no?
--Jim.
Maria Damon observes:
>In message <2fbd98bf4ce2002@maroon.tc.umn.edu> UB Poetics discussion group
>writes:
>> It might be fruitful to think back to the roots of "real" in the Latin
>> *res*, or "things".
>
>just a random comment --when this msg flashed on my screen, i initially read it
>as "it might be frightful..."--md
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 22 May 1995 10:41:37 -0400
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jim Pangborn <V072GDXG@UBVMS.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Organization: University at Buffalo
Subject: Re: POETICS Digest - 17 May 1...
According to the allegedly groovy Firesign Theatre (mordant, hilarious,
but irritatingly moralistic late-60's satirists), Guru Lethar Ji says:
"If you want to get closer to the Earth,
sit down."
May 21 John Byrum notes:
>Jeffrey Timmons concludes a recent post with:
>
>I am also reminded of Whitman's sentiment in Song of Myself
>where he says something to the effect of being mad with desire to be in
>contact with the earth . . . .
>
>Jeffrey Timmons
>
>To that we might reply: "Dammit Walt take your shoes off."
>
>John
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 22 May 1995 10:58:06 -0400
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From: Jim Pangborn <V072GDXG@UBVMS.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Organization: University at Buffalo
Subject: Re: next steps after art
Mon, 22 May, Jake Berry <BugsD@AOL.COM> writes, in part:
>
>John,
>Perhaps the next steps after art would be the observations of the various
>ways by which we create what unfolds as the dominant strata of our lives.
>documentaion would serve no purpose except to ackledge that we are are aware
>of it. . . . The idea . . . would be a general enhanced field of awareness
>that would require a broader perspective than is currently in practice.
>
>Just a reaction,
>Jake
This is a pretty good description of at least part of the socially useful
work good art already does. Like most utopic projections, it tells us
something about ourselves, now--in this case right elegantly.
--Jim
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Date: Mon, 22 May 1995 14:25:23 -0400
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Chris Stroffolino <LS0796@ALBNYVMS.BITNET>
Subject: Re: eigner, address, reality
dear hank--of course it's okay to write tributes to the living...
it's just that it's so rarely done in a MOVING way...
anyway thank you for the clarification.. chris stroffolino
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Date: Mon, 22 May 1995 13:42:21 -0500
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From: Gary Sullivan <gpsj@PRIMENET.COM>
Subject: To Steve and Blair: Re irony
In-Reply-To: <199505220708.AAA28462@mailhost.primenet.com>
Dear Steve & Blair:
The gesture may be meant and/or read as ironic, negative, but the
fact of the gesture is genuine, positive: the structure's the one thing
you can't not mean. (Maybe that's why they call it "the means.")
The "impossible" or "otherworld" for us living, is absolute silence,
complete negation, total irony. We can't be "in" such a state any more or
less than we always are, though we can, strategically, give or create for
ourselves the illusion of its "presence." (Or "nonpresence," if you want.)
Carter Ratcliff's argument for Warhol, if I remember, was that the
pieces were completely empty of meaning, & as such, put the viewer "in
touch" with "the void"--that one state of being that humans never fully
experience while alive. (We get intimations, thru art, contemplation,
near-death experiences, etc.) Ratcliff was, I think, arguing that Warhol's
works were "transcendent" in that respect, because they were fully
expressive of that "otherworld."
But his argument never took into account the specific structures of
Warhol's pieces--which aren't themselves valueless. One can speak of the
physical properties of his Brillo boxes, of their shape. So, Warhol is
postulating (as he's negating) existence, giving a thing precise value (as
he's emptying it of value).
Marjorie Perloff talks about the *structures* of Duchamp's
ready-mades, invests them with aesthetic values--values they certainly
have whether or not intended by the maker/user. Duchamp said that he chose
his ready-mades by virtue of their aesthetic neutrality, but Marjorie's
sense was that Duchamp wasn't being completely honest w/us. I disagree, at
least w/respect to his ready-mades, though that doesn't negate the
argument that these things aren't w/out aesthetic value. I think Duchamp
was after what Ratcliff credits Warhol as achieving. (What was that line
someone posted about "out of the labyrinth..."? I think this might be what
that was referring to: the labyrinth being existence, out of the labyrinth
being entrance into that "otherworld.")
Xavier Villaurutia's _Nostalgia for Death_--Paz thought that title
"too cute" or "clever"--but it makes perfectly reasonable sense to me,
reading those poems; he's nostalgic for a state prior to (& post-) being,
writes poems in an attempt to evoke absolute silence.
Art meant (or said) to evoke the "otherworld" (silence, negation,
total irony) is trafficking in illusion, & requires faith on the part of
the audience member (if not necessarily on the part of the artist). The
artist in this sense is a magician of sorts, the audience reduced to a
state of awe or artificial innocence.
In this sense, all art works in the same general way: creating the
illusion of something not really (or not provably) there. What Ratcliff
gets from Warhol, how he talks about getting it, and Ed Foster's "Poetry
Has Nothing to Do with Politics" (about evoking silence) both sound very
much like Fiction Writing 101: "Believable characters" is simply
substituted with "the void" or "emptiness." Both require conscious
attention to "craft."
Anyway. My main point I guess was that "total irony" is impossible,
that only the creation of the illusion of "total irony" is possible.
Artists do not--ever--completely negate the general idea or value of
"art." By being artists, creating art, with however much irony, they're
still positing art in general as a "positive," whatever the message or
meaning.
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 22 May 1995 15:10:01 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Loss Glazier <lolpoet@ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU>
Subject: Re: Poet/Artist "Collaboration"
In-Reply-To: <199505210551.BAA11329@mailhub.acsu.buffalo.edu> from "John
Byrum" at May 21, 95 01:48:24 am
> Visual poetry collapses this "collaboration" into a single presentation
> embodying both visual and language modes/elements.
I thank everyone for their responses. It is interesting, though, isn't
it, that though we have a clear "sense" of this
(i.e., a collaboration is when an artist and poet work
together, etc., for a sort of joint goal rather than the text
being superimposed or vice versa)
that no citations for articles or statements have clearly emerged?
I had hoped that there would be _something_ in print or
online... since I thought there'd be some definitive +ground+ for
this...
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 22 May 1995 12:25:46 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Carl Lynden Peters <clpeters@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: next steps after art
In-Reply-To: <199505221550.IAA28945@whistler.sfu.ca> from "Jim Pangborn" at
May 22, 95 10:58:06 am
>
> Mon, 22 May, Jake Berry <BugsD@AOL.COM> writes, in part:
> >
> >John,
> >Perhaps the next steps after art would be the observations of the various
> >ways by which we create what unfolds as the dominant strata of our lives.
> >documentaion would serve no purpose except to ackledge that we are are aware
> >of it. . . . The idea . . . would be a general enhanced field of awareness
> >that would require a broader perspective than is currently in practice.
> >
> >Just a reaction,
> >Jake
>
> This is a pretty good description of at least part of the socially useful
> work good art already does. Like most utopic projections, it tells us
> something about ourselves, now--in this case right elegantly.
>
> --Jim
>
...like poetry, science and religion
carl
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 23 May 1995 08:21:52 GMT+1300
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Wystan Curnow <w.curnow@AUCKLAND.AC.NZ>
Organization: English Dept. - Univ. of Auckland
Subject: Re: The Etymology of Things
X-To: V072GDXG@UBVMS.CC.BUFFALO.EDU
Dear Jim Pangborn,
On this list we have wolfgang staehl, initiator of The Thing,
a mainly art net discussion group which I believe pre-dates the setting up
of this list. Before we add this to our collection of SPOOKY words maybe
Wolfgang will come forward with a different etymology. Unless I am wrong
The Thing has is origins in the early political history of the British
Isles, pre-Celt? and is the name for a gathering at which issues of social
and religious moment were discussed, weddings held and so on.In large part a
discussive occasion/place which is to say a precursor to the net, this list,
etc. Am I right, wolfgang?
Wystan Curnow
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 22 May 1995 15:46:04 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Carl Lynden Peters <clpeters@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: To Steve and Blair: Re irony
In-Reply-To: <199505222217.PAA22270@whistler.sfu.ca> from "Gary Sullivan" at
May 22, 95 01:42:21 pm
> Marjorie Perloff talks about the *structures* of Duchamp's
> ready-mades, invests them with aesthetic values--values they certainly
> have whether or not intended by the maker/user. Duchamp said that he chose
> his ready-mades by virtue of their aesthetic neutrality, but Marjorie's
> sense was that Duchamp wasn't being completely honest w/us. I disagree, at
> least w/respect to his ready-mades, though that doesn't negate the
> argument that these things aren't w/out aesthetic value. I think Duchamp
> was after what Ratcliff credits Warhol as achieving. (What was that line
> someone posted about "out of the labyrinth..."? I think this might be what
> that was referring to: the labyrinth being existence, out of the labyrinth
> being entrance into that "otherworld.")
>
this is the quotation from "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 think it's important to note that any "aesthetic" (a much improperly
used word today) value that one places on the ready-mades is more revealing of
the epistemological preferences of the viewer than it is of duchamp
himself. that's not to suggest there isnt the tongue-in-cheek mentality
operating throughout his project (clearly that adds to his "indifference"
strategically). but i dont understand suggestion that duchamp
wasnt being completely honest with us. duchamp was warhol before even
warhol was warhol. both are important shamen. but it seems awkward to
name them as shamen. as one who has gone thru art school at both the
undergraduate and graduate levels, i still contend that the majority of
readings re the ready-mades are wrong. i think koons has had a lot to do
with that
> Anyway. My main point I guess was that "total irony" is impossible,
> that only the creation of the illusion of "total irony" is possible.
> Artists do not--ever--completely negate the general idea or value of
> "art." By being artists, creating art, with however much irony, they're
> still positing art in general as a "positive," whatever the message or
> meaning.
>
...duchamp made art. he also made non-art. that's how i perceive the
famous large glass
even the mona lisa didnt really make much sense to me until he completed
it with the 'tash
carl
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 22 May 1995 16:52:46 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jeffrey Timmons <mnamna@IMAP1.ASU.EDU>
Subject: The Feminine
On Sun, 21 May 1995 JMBYRUM@aol.com wrote:
> What would a feminine conception of creativity look like?
Again, I don't know, but I have an idea. I recreate here--if you're
not familiar with it--some of Cixous's statements.
She suggests an "affirmation of difference: the constitution of a
feminine not defined in reference to the masculine; it would be an
"economy" defined by forms specific to women: "a regime, energies, a
system of spending not necessarily carved out by culture. A feminine
textual body is recognized by the fact that it is always endless, without
endin: there's no closure, it doesn't stop, and it's this that very often
makes the feminine text difficult to read. For we've learned to read
books that basically pose the word "end." But this one doesn't finish, a
feminine text goes on and on and at a certain point the volume comes to
and end but the writing continues and for the reader this means being
thrust into the void." A feminine text "takes the metaphorical form of
wandering, excess, risk of the unreckonable: no reckoning, a feminine
text can't be predicted, isn't predictable, isn't knowableand is
therefore very disturbing." Just a few suggestions of a direction for an
answer to your question. For all the claims of essentializing sexual
difference, though, I find cixous interesting. And yes, men can write
the feminine--poets, though, not novelists. According to her....
Jeffrey Timmons
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 22 May 1995 20:04:31 -0400
Reply-To: Robert Drake <au462@cleveland.Freenet.Edu>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Robert Drake <au462@CLEVELAND.FREENET.EDU>
Subject: Re: Poet/Artist "Collaboration"
>> Visual poetry collapses this "collaboration" into a single presentation
>> embodying both visual and language modes/elements.
>I thank everyone for their responses. It is interesting, though, isn't
>it, that though we have a clear "sense" of this
> (i.e., a collaboration is when an artist and poet work
> together, etc., for a sort of joint goal rather than the text
> being superimposed or vice versa)
>that no citations for articles or statements have clearly emerged?
>I had hoped that there would be _something_ in print or
>online... since I thought there'd be some definitive +ground+ for
>this...
loss--
already in the mail to you is the issue of TapRoot devoted to
CoLaboration... personal reflections by various folks who'd done
collaborative projects, plus samples. published 5 years ago,
it's covers a pretty proscribed area ov th field, embarrasing
what i didn't know at the time that it appeared. still, the
bibliography has +150 entries...
asever
luigi
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 22 May 1995 22:35:31 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: John Byrum <JMBYRUM@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: next steps after art
In a recent message, Carl Peters concludes with the following:
>the genius of rausneberg, cage, even warhol i think is that they >erase
>the boundaries between art and life -- sounds godawfully cliche, i >know,
>and like burnham writes in "problems of criticism," the question is >no
longer what is good art and what is bad art, but why isn't >everyone an
artist?
Carl,
I don't think the people you mention "erase the boundaries between art and
life", but they may blur them a bit by integrating aspects of each in the
other. My notion of erasing the boundaries would be more like conceiving
your entire life and all your thoughts and experiences as art. But even that
is not really what I want to mean, if for no other reason than that if
everything is subsumed under the one category, art, then you have basically a
superfluous category (categories are meaningful or useful only in relation to
other categories). I may mean something like realizing the complexity and
interwoven unity in multiplicity of everything, but that sounds suspiciously
academic and even religious in overtone, so that's not quite it either. In
fact, I think I mean I don't have the words yet to say what I mean.
I do have the feeling that continuing to make art (i.e., writing "poetry" and
publishing it, or making visual art, etc) may not really accomplish all that
I/we want to accomplish. And I don't mean just social change or changes in
our ways of thinking, although those are certainly worthwhile changes to
strive for. I just don't think that art is finally that effectual in doing
that. (Of course I continue to believe that art accummulates small changes
over time which can lead to shifts in the culture.) But, the culture is
becoming ever more adept at swallowing any artistic production whole and
commodifying thus neutralizing it. Our productions can have an effect in our
small circles of readers/correspondents (such as this discussion group, and
the readers of our small presses) and change can build and evolve and even
leak out slightly, but will probably never become a significant factor in
the culture at large.
Enough rambling. This is a conflicted subject for me.
John
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 22 May 1995 23:14:23 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: John Byrum <JMBYRUM@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: next steps after art
Dear Jake,
Thanks for your thoughts on the next steps after art.
Could it be that we might discontinue making art as it is currently
understood because we finally realize that its forms and modes of
understanding can no longer express quite what we want to say?
And what would we do then? Not an Art Strike. That's not what i mean it
all. And is simply living it without producing documents or relics somehow
going to be enough?
We need a new idea of a supple communication fine-grained enough to
accommodate a wide range of new approaches. We need to somehow re-think the
entire enterprise. Art has become mere decoration.
John
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 22 May 1995 23:42:57 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: John Byrum <JMBYRUM@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: next steps after art
Following are some replies to my question about the next evolution "after
art":
>
> Mon, 22 May, Jake Berry <BugsD@AOL.COM> writes, in part:
> >
> >John,
> >Perhaps the next steps after art would be the observations of the various
> >ways by which we create what unfolds as the dominant strata of our lives.
> >documentaion would serve no purpose except to ackledge that we are are
aware
> >of it. . . . The idea . . . would be a general enhanced field of
awareness
> >that would require a broader perspective than is currently in practice.
> >
> >Just a reaction,
> >Jake
>
> This is a pretty good description of at least part of the socially useful
> work good art already does. Like most utopic projections, it tells us
> something about ourselves, now--in this case right elegantly.
>
> --Jim
>
>...like poetry, science and religion
>carl
This is good thought here, but perhaps we need to somehow try to think
outside received categories like poetry, art, science or religion. All these
modes of enquiry have their own pre-conceived notions and filters. We just
might need new ones.
John
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 22 May 1995 23:51:39 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: John Byrum <JMBYRUM@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: To Steve and Blair: Re irony
Gary Sullivan concludes a recent message with:
Artists do not--ever--completely negate the general idea or value of
"art." By being artists, creating art, with however much irony, they're
still positing art in general as a "positive," whatever the message or
meaning.
Gary,
Can people evaginate "the general idea or value of "art""? i.e., turn it
inside out so that its former inside becomes the whole world of our
experience, thoughts, desires...
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 22 May 1995 21:16:22 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: George Bowering <bowering@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: martha again
In-Reply-To: <199505191521.IAA22362@whistler.sfu.ca> from "Jonathan A Levin"
at May 19, 95 10:05:14 am
Okay, according to that regional magazine, this Martha Stewart is
"the definitive American woman of her time." But who is she? Or, what
does she do? Is she a shrink? A professor? An actress? A Politician?
I have heard of a lot of American (sic) women of our time, but I have
never, before this netstuff, heard of her. Is it the fact that in New
York they take what happens there to be the real U.S. the way the
U.S. calls all their sports winners the "world champions"?
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 22 May 1995 21:18:50 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: George Bowering <bowering@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: Really real Martha
In-Reply-To: <199505191245.FAA13788@whistler.sfu.ca> from "Michael Boughn" at
May 19, 95 08:38:56 am
Thanks, Michael, for telling me a little abt this Stewart woman. I
take it that she comes on TV and in regional NY magazines telling
people recipes and furniture placement?
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 22 May 1995 21:22:07 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: George Bowering <bowering@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: Yo, Ed
In-Reply-To: <199505191224.FAA12880@whistler.sfu.ca> from "Ryan Knighton" at
May 18, 95 10:39:43 pm
I wanted to write a
line
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 22 May 1995 21:48:48 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Steve Carll <sjcarll@SLIP.NET>
Subject: Re: The Feminine
Jeffrey Timmons writes:
>Again, I don't know, but I have an idea. I recreate here--if you're
>not familiar with it--some of Cixous's statements.
>
>She suggests an "affirmation of difference: the constitution of a
>feminine not defined in reference to the masculine; it would be an
>"economy" defined by forms specific to women: "a regime, energies, a
>system of spending not necessarily carved out by culture. A feminine
>textual body is recognized by the fact that it is always endless, without
>endin: there's no closure, it doesn't stop, and it's this that very often
>makes the feminine text difficult to read. For we've learned to read
>books that basically pose the word "end." But this one doesn't finish, a
>feminine text goes on and on and at a certain point the volume comes to
>and end but the writing continues and for the reader this means being
>thrust into the void." A feminine text "takes the metaphorical form of
>wandering, excess, risk of the unreckonable: no reckoning, a feminine
>text can't be predicted, isn't predictable, isn't knowableand is
>therefore very disturbing." Just a few suggestions of a direction for an
>answer to your question. For all the claims of essentializing sexual
>difference, though, I find cixous interesting. And yes, men can write
>the feminine--poets, though, not novelists. According to her....
>
>Jeffrey Timmons
I think it's precisely this fact that indicates that cixous is not
essentializing sexual difference; she makes very sure to say the "feminine"
and not the "female"; both men and women incorporate all of those qualities
called "masculine" and all of those called "feminine", but in different
"mixtures", I'll call it on the fly here. It's only through various
processes of cultural history that the masculine has come to seem so
exclusive and "desirable" in men only and the feminine for women only.
What is intriguing is this notion of writing "engendering" itself; not only
that it situates itself along a sort of spectrum of gender, but that it can
do so independently of the identity of the writer, and effectively so when
the writer is able to abandon his/her identity to the writing.
By the way, I once saw Cixous and she mentioned Shakespeare and Genet as
convincing writers of the feminine voice--& Shakey in the character of
Cleopatra, no less!
Steve
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 22 May 1995 21:48:25 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Steve Carll <sjcarll@SLIP.NET>
Subject: Re: The Etymology of Things
Jim Pangborn writes:
> The history of "reality" is indeed scary, but I find it even spookier
>to look up "thing" in the Oxford English Dictionary, there to find that the
>origin of that word in English is inseparable from issues of authority, power,
>and the arbitrariness thereof. A thing is whatever authority (king) designates
>as an object worthy of attention & discussion. Which came first, the object or
>the attention? OED doesn't say, can't say, nor can you nor I, because to do
>so would require a god's-eye view of the world. Our confusion over these
>"things" may well be in-built, permanent. That's as real as it gets, no?
>
>--Jim.
My _Dictionary of Word Origins_ says that "The ancestral meaning of *thing*
is 'time': it goes back to a prehistoric Germanic *thingam, which was
related to Gothic *theihs* 'time,' and may come ultimately from the
Indo-European base *ten-* 'stretch' (source of English "tend", "tense",
etc.) In Germanic it evolved semantically via 'appointed time' to 'judicial
or legislative assembly.' This was the meaning it originally had in English..."
So, while the word may be bound up with power and authority, the way power
and authority bind up everything they come in contact with, it's also bound
up with something that eludes power and authority: time, which is more
fundamentally grounded.
Steve
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 23 May 1995 09:14:36 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jim Pangborn <V072GDXG@UBVMS.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Organization: University at Buffalo
Subject: Re: The Etymology of Things
Steve Carll <sjcarll@SLIP.NET> writes,
>My _Dictionary of Word Origins_ says that "The ancestral meaning of *thing*
>is 'time': it goes back to a prehistoric Germanic *thingam, which was
>related to Gothic *theihs* 'time,' and may come ultimately from the
>Indo-European base *ten-* 'stretch' (source of English "tend", "tense",
>etc.) In Germanic it evolved semantically via 'appointed time' to 'judicial
>or legislative assembly.' This was the meaning it originally had in English..."
>
>So, while the word may be bound up with power and authority, the way power
>and authority bind up everything they come in contact with, it's also bound
>up with something that eludes power and authority: time, which is more
>fundamentally grounded.
>
>Steve
The OED says pretty much the same as the above. The word comes into English,
though, out of the mouths of kings saying "OK, here's what we have to sit
down and discuss now." One of the earliest recorded instances is in
_Beowulf_, just so. Perhaps, in the Old Scandinavian whence it derives, it
signifies something more democratic. If so, I'd be glad to hear it. Who
would know?
To be precise, wouldn't we have to say that the "time" that's cognate with this
convocational "thing" means something more like what we mean when we say
"appointment"? This was way before Heidegger, Augustine, or any of the other
heroes of abstract thought who represent time as so "fundamentally grounded."
I don't want to exaggerate the importance of these word-origins. Time passes,
regimes come and go, and the originary violences (if such they were) of our
social order recede in importance beside our prospects for freedom and justice.
My comments on "thing" were intended to lend another voice to an ongoing theme,
though the point is as often forgotten as raised in the larger discussion here:
our things, the very shapes of our attention, are haunted by authorities long
dead and discredited. The implications of this are variously under discussion
here, under several headings.
--Jim
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 23 May 1995 10:10:33 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Edward Foster <EFOSTER@VAXC.STEVENS-TECH.EDU>
Subject: Re: Yo, Ed
Williams
is
bor-
ing
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 23 May 1995 11:33:49 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jorge Guitart <MLLJORGE@UBVMS.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Organization: University at Buffalo
Subject: boundary between art and life
quoting from an old poem
the boundary between art and life looks like a frame
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 23 May 1995 10:41:29 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Carl Lynden Peters <clpeters@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: next steps after art
In-Reply-To: <199505230345.UAA08515@whistler.sfu.ca> from "John Byrum" at May
22, 95 11:42:57 pm
>
> This is good thought here, but perhaps we need to somehow try to think
> outside received categories like poetry, art, science or religion. All these
> modes of enquiry have their own pre-conceived notions and filters. We just
> might need new ones.
>
> John
>
john, hi: this may be an unfair question for anybody but can you expand
on that. this is an important issue. one of the ways i've hit upon that
challenges these modes and pre-conceived notions is through working
within an interdisciplinary context. i see this as especially relevant in
regards to my study here in the university. looking forward to further
exchange on this topic
take care,
carl
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 23 May 1995 10:43:07 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Carl Lynden Peters <clpeters@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: next steps after art
In-Reply-To: <199505230319.UAA07311@whistler.sfu.ca> from "John Byrum" at May
22, 95 11:14:23 pm
>
> Could it be that we might discontinue making art as it is currently
> understood because we finally realize that its forms and modes of
> understanding can no longer express quite what we want to say?
>
> And what would we do then? Not an Art Strike. That's not what i mean it
> all. And is simply living it without producing documents or relics somehow
> going to be enough?
>
> We need a new idea of a supple communication fine-grained enough to
> accommodate a wide range of new approaches. We need to somehow re-think the
> entire enterprise. Art has become mere decoration.
>
> John
>
...or go underground
c
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 23 May 1995 12:48:54 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Carl Lynden Peters <clpeters@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: next steps after art
In-Reply-To: <199505230237.TAA05666@whistler.sfu.ca> from "John Byrum" at May
22, 95 10:35:31 pm
hi, john,
point well taken in regards to the erasing vs blurring the boundaries
distinction. once again, if i can refer to burnham's essay and offer a
loose paraphrase, art, at least on the psychic level, allows a culture to
remain in contact with its boundaries facing nature. that's always struck
me as such an important definition, for lack of a better term, of art and
the purpose underlying art. on one level, tho, i think there does exist
that erasing of distinctions between art and life in that there is a
certain state, call it a frame of mind, that you come to and there is no
more art, there's no need for it, it ceases to exist. maybe that relates
to transcendence, which is something i take very seriously
but then, on the other hand, there is the "work" of art. my notion of
the _work_ of art is that it's an indexical sign -- crudely, indexical of
something sacred
i disagree with respect to your notion of the failure of art to inspire
change or a realignment of consciousness. maybe that's just over-wrought
idealism on my part (hell, there's a phrase!), but it's something i've
taken a lot of heat over...
...i think you hit on the essence of art, tho: "I may mean something like
realizing the complexity and interwoven unity in multiplicity of
everything, but that sounds suspiciously academic and even religious in
overtone..."
right on!, i think; and what's wrong with sounding those over-tones:
suspiciously academic and even religious. i'm convinced that that's how
i'm perceived. maybe not the religious part, but for sure the other. i
presented a paper on bpNichol's poetics in april in which i attempted
to work within his texts of bliss by inventing and writing my own text
of bliss, and the result was performance-like, altho it wasn't no
performance but the real thing. suffice it to say it didnt go over
very well, altho, in the final analysis, i did my job. and it signifies
to me that i might be on to something here, but that's another discussion
altogether
'to go beyond the point where it is even neces-
/sary to think in terms of words'
--bpNichol (_TM bk 4_)
take care,
carl
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 23 May 1995 14:41:06 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: George Bowering <bowering@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: Yo, Ed
In-Reply-To: <199505231457.HAA01744@whistler.sfu.ca> from "Edward Foster" at
May 23, 95 10:10:33 am
The bored
are
boring
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 23 May 1995 14:12:00 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Don Cheney <Don_Cheney@UCSDLIBRARY.UCSD.EDU>
Subject: The concrete poem
This is a (partial) transcription of a Home De(s)pot radio
commercial. This commercial seems more serious about its poetry
tie-in than a previous h.d. (another poetry tie-in?) commercial.
[clears throat]
[microphone feedback sound]
"The Concrete Poem by A.C. Benningfield
Concrete by the yard
Concrete by the foot
I mix it, I mix it
I mix it, man [sound of page being turned]
When my forms hold tight
And the mortar's just right
I mix it, I mix it,
I mix it, man"
[Home Despot blurb -- jazz style bass in the background -- the
textual tie-in to poetry being "passion"(?): "at h.d. we're as
passionate as you are about the building materials you use" wow!
another tie-in ("building materials")! wouldn't Shklovsky have
loved (or have written!) that!]
"Concrete so clean
Concrete so cool [microphone feedback sound]
I mix it [microphone feedback sound]
Man, can I mix it"
(more home despot blurb)
Don Cheney
dcheney@ucsd.edu
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 23 May 1995 15:33:57 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Lindz Williamson <lmichell@UNIXG.UBC.CA>
Subject: bored
In-Reply-To: <199505232151.OAA08031@unixg.ubc.ca>
> The bored
> are
> boring
because
they should be
bowering,
Oops
I mean
writing.
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 24 May 1995 00:01:00 +0000
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: cris cheek <cris@SLANG.DEMON.CO.UK>
Subject: Re: desire / and the 39 steps
This hour of pungent lilacs comes my friend - the hour of honeysuckle
bees and peonies. Silver and violet clouds thread jags from 'core'
disguise. A lockbird slang wounds blur gathering dark. Time flinging its
things onto that copper hook.
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 23 May 1995 16:16:26 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jeffrey Timmons <mnamna@IMAP1.ASU.EDU>
Subject: Re: Yo, Ed
X-To: Edward Foster <EFOSTER@VAXC.STEVENS-TECH.EDU>
In-Reply-To: <9505231450.AA10292@imap1.asu.edu>
On Tue, 23 May 1995, Edward Foster wrote:
> Williams
> is
> bor-
> ing
Seriously?
And so is life....
Jeffrey Timmons
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 23 May 1995 17:31:18 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ryan Knighton <knighton@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: Yo, Ed
In-Reply-To: <199505232150.OAA22455@whistler.sfu.ca> from "George Bowering" at
May 23, 95 02:41:06 pm
pro
fun
ditty
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 23 May 1995 21:41:04 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Patrick Phillips <Patrick_Phillips@BROWN.EDU>
Subject: Re: The Etymology of Things -> Instances
Jim and Steve's discussion of power and "things" judicial has another
parallel found recently in an essay I've been reading by Castoriadis in
"Thesis Eleven" 24 "The State of the Subject Today." Just that "time,"
"thing" draw an etymological/use similarity in Castoriadis' use of
"instances." In referance to Freud's use of "instanz" as conflicts between
opposing instances, or the multiplicity of "phychical persons." Instanz as
Freud meant it carries a juridical flavor and "instance" in French can have
this same "authoritative" connotation. But we can use time and thing to get
at the meaning of instance. In this (an) instance, some "thing" takes
"place" at a particular "time" - instance is a situation.
What concerns me is not that these words have a juridical, or power-based
etymology - this is not really surprising but that the "instance" of
"things" (human) act at all "times" within this "juridico-administrative
space." That we "take our place" in this space along side/within words as a
mode of being points not to an etymological root, as Jim rightly points
out, but out to a connotative function of the state in word-use. Lest we
forget that speaking is a "state"-ment.
This is what I've always thought R. Grenier meant by I HATE SPEECH. That
the "multiplicity of phychic persons" taken in/taking up a poetic critique
of "state" as "juridico-administrative" enterprise can intervene in this
juridical (be-it democratic) process of "state"-ment. That there is a
conflict between opposing instances (the juridical and the "liberatory") of
the word, of "statement" and that the highlighting of this conflict is a
process of intervention.
As an aside, I like Ron's update of "addition" to "intervention" in -
>The perfection of forms as interventions in nature.
I'm not sure that even "form" is permited here though Ron. You have said
something like "Perhaps poetry is not a form at all but an activity."
So, in this instance, we act.
This haphazardly said, someone really must do a clear analysis of the
successes and failures of this "project" of intervention.
Pat Phillips
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 23 May 1995 22:53:56 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: John Byrum <JMBYRUM@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: next steps after art
Carl,
thanks for your perceptive points on "the next evolution of art".
your bpNichol quote "to go beyond the point where it is necessary even to
think in terms of words" is one aspect of my notion of the next evolution.
words (language) oversimplify, place thick outlines (cuts) around
pieces/parts of our fluid thoughts & perceptions. They straitjacket our
imagination of the possible as much as they propell it.
And, I don't think silence is the only alternative to words.
John
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 23 May 1995 23:05:04 -0400
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: John Byrum <JMBYRUM@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: next steps after art
Carl,
I agree that attempting to think outside categories may be THE issue
currently. Interdisciplinary studies linking formerly isolated areas of
inquiry has been an invaluable method with many bright results (such as chaos
theory in physics). However, at this point i'm trying to imagine jettisoning
the notion of categories, trying to forget most things, opening the mind amid
an emptiness, and simply being in that awhile to see what floats up. I have
a friend (a visual artist) who has been letting go of language in various
ways (for instance by not speaking for days at a time and just thinking) for
quite awhile now and then returning. Lately, she sits in her studio and
thinks as she does things in her sketchbooks which she insists are not
drawings. (Though they look like what you or I would call drawing) And she
says she doesn't remember most of what she does or thinks about during these
hours. She and I have developed a distinction between "thought" (which is
conscious, ego-directed) and "thinking" which is unconscious,
multi-dimensional, the tips of which surface as "thought". This might be
something like what I mean. But there aren't words for it (or may not be or
at least i haven't found them yet).
Best,
John
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 23 May 1995 22:30:23 -0500
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Gary Sullivan <gpsj@PRIMENET.COM>
Subject: To John Byrum, re: Mere Decoration, etc.
Dear John:
Can't resist this re: your "Art has become mere decoration":
WHITE LILY
Hungry and humming in the world's weeds
I staggered aimless into focus & generally
avoided work. My life was bearable
tho I never slept, grew incoherent
with the excellence of art, which gave me
peace. I could have worked. Why didn't I work?
Instead, at 19, I found savage friends
a tribe, who clothed me & gave me money
to be serious, my obscurity
part of the atmosphere. "I'm beating my brains out"
"I'm stuck." We fucked for hours after the funeral
slept in hammocks, woke to drink coffee
& read. Osamu Dazai's NO LONGER HUMAN
and the complete works of Philip K. Dick.
We went in on THE WRITER'S MARKET
treated everyone as audience, our lives
an exiguous silver flood of action seen at a distance
went to, & abandoned, the university
& did what we did outside. We learned
to tell lies, to tread dangerously on everything
that moved. We insisted on ourselves w/smoke
in the blood, redeemed all bogus weight
for cruder pleasure. I wish that today was yesterday.
Today, when all tendency is "mere decoration"
I'm unpopular everywhere because they expect nothing
either way, accept me or reject me, not this.
* * *
I actually didn't take that "mere decoration" from your post, but from a
statement Ron Silliman made in Lally's _None of the Above_ anthology of
1976. (There's a great photo of Ron in there, too -- long hair, 'burns,
"blues" sunglasses, outstanding (what?) Panama hat? I think? (Ron?) --
'stash, OUTRAGEOUS stripes goin' on in the pattern of his shirt, cup of
coffee (I think?) gripped tightly (will he throw it at the photographer?),
posture all aslouch, but an *energetic* slouch -- to put it in plain English:
the dude is lookin' like Charles Williford's younger, more intense brother.)
Anyway, that word "evaginate" again: Well, you know who I've always
thought fits this description? Bern Porter. He's still alive, as far as I
know, still one of the most active mail artists in the world (art created
w/the understanding it'll be received, experienced & then likely dumped in
the wastecan -- tho I'm sure there's a few well-meaning U's of Anyplaces
that're archiving the stuff). The guy gave up a fairly stable life as a
nuclear physicist (I'm sure that's not the technical name for what he
did), published books for a while (including Robert Duncan's first),
wrote the Sci-Art Manifesto, made plans for works of art that've never
been created, put together a number of books of founds that very few
people have probably ever seen (tho they've got an outstanding number of
'em at Woodland Pattern), opens his FRONT LAWN every summer to -- what?
-- spontaneous art activity (or "non" activity?) of some kind, and has
managed to never have been taken seriously or spoken of by any academic
-- at least, not that I've seen (please don't ruin my day by telling me
someone's doing their thesis on him), & when you mention his name to
people, your response is typically a perfect blank stare. (Tho, I've been
surprised on more than one occassion.)
I don't know if he fits your description, John. But if anyone's managed
to "turn 'the general idea or value of "art"' inside out so that its
former inside becomes the whole world of our experience, he's the most
likely candidate I can think of off the top of my head for anyone who's
ever come close. Well, him and Jack Smith, what I'm learning (or
deceiving myself into believing I'm learning, I should say) about him.
Actually, there are undoubtedly hundreds of others, thousands, perhaps,
sprinkled all over the world.
But we're fetishists, John. The artproduct -- we can't get around it --
whether it's the artpiece, or the account.
Yours,
Gary
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 23 May 1995 22:03:11 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Steve Carll <sjcarll@SLIP.NET>
Subject: Re: The Etymology of Things
Jim Pangborn writes,
>our things, the very shapes of our attention, are haunted by authorities long
>dead and discredited.
--which is beautifully put and certainly something (oops!) I feel as well.
I guess what I was reacting to was a sense that words, which must inevitably
enter a historical culture that includes power and authority, cannot also
open (or at least point) out of power structures. I don't see it that way,
although it's certainly not as easy as "language always transcends
power-structures." But your other point--that it's tricky to go mucking
about with word-meanings from thousands of years ago--is also well-taken.
Steve
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 24 May 1995 12:55:17 BST
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "I.LIGHTMAN" <I.Lightman@UEA.AC.UK>
Subject: Re: mail by the megabyte?
Great message, Dodie!
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 24 May 1995 08:12:14 -0400
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Michael Boughn <mboughn@EPAS.UTORONTO.CA>
Subject: Re: Really real Martha
In-Reply-To: <199505230428.AAA00484@jazz.epas.utoronto.ca> from "George
Bowering" at May 22, 95 09:18:50 pm
No, George, you haven't quite got it yet. *Martha Stewart Living*, as
her magazine is called, is a major international publication. I'm
looking at the November 1994 issue (where the turkey recipe came
from). Defending her "Calendar" ("Martha's Calendar" it's called) she
writes in "A Letter from Martha": "I know that the calendar is full,
but it is full so that it can coax all of us into balancing our lives
so that there will be time to plant daffodils, cook a special meal, or
collect old-fashioned Christmas ornaments. For me, 'living' is filling
my day with activity that is meaningful, productive, and interesting.
I truly believe that organization, deep-seated curiosity, and
attention to what's really important will give each of us fuller and
more special lives."
Philosophy for the nineties.
Also included are tips on winterizing the garden, canning brandied
pears, grouting and caulking, and a guide to her TV show.
Let me know if you're interested in the turkey recipe.
See you next week, I hope.
Mike
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 24 May 1995 14:55:56 BST
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "I.LIGHTMAN" <I.Lightman@UEA.AC.UK>
Subject: some Lorca
Hallo all, I thought I'd post the opening speech from a translation I've
been commissioned to write (for no fee!), from Lorca's first play, Bad
Dream of the Butterflies (cos I'm quite proud of it, and it took about
a week, maybe forty hours, of solid focussed concentration and work):
ESTEEMED guests: the show you've come to see's minor and unsettling -
sadly someone grasps for the full moon, and winds up his hands full
of shards from a broken heart.
LOVE perplexes and shocks men all the time. Love is set tonight in a
closeted orchard, where long ago lived bugs - who we show nibbling
their way through peaceable and settled lives. The bugs contentedly
existed, only to suckle on dew and breed awe of their gods into their
young. They loved, and believed in, a natural love only concerned with
HOW to love. Like grandfather to father, father preached it to son, like
an ancient pure pearl the first in the family line got handed by God. Like
the LOVE that relaxes and takes the POLLEN all the time from the unstinting
flowers to come into the air, so natural love accepted their surrender
in the sweet fumes of grass.
BUT there was one bug one day who grasped at a radical love, who had an
intuition to rework things for himself. Working perhaps through poetry
a literature student of the few who ever go for a walk forgetfully left
in a field, the bug earnestly swallowed lines like "I want the one I can't
have, and it's driving me mad...." Oh, how I entreat all my esteemed guests
not to litter the countryside with their purchases: if they find out the
sincere who have not become deadened like us, our overdone cliches can
actually do them over.... Words that ask who MADE the God who made the
heavens can DESOLATE those who think with the guru absent.
COME useless words, register a sincere life thus was lost, love was DEATH.
THE ENDLESS portering of the scythe to us by Mr Skull and Bones! It is a
primal image our holy books have copywrit, moral: the caress that makes
the head spin secretly turns the handle on Death's Door; Cupid's got his
feet up in the spacious cockpit of the Death's Head; roses, kisses and
pining clad a blade to finish you off.
******************************************************************
A VETERAN Shakesperean fairy who escaped to the living wood pulp of a
real heath, and still flutters about with his cane, is the one who gave
Mr Lorca the plot, one dusky equinox when the herd were all indoors in bed.
So did our spooky show come to be rendered! WE'VE nearly got to it, but
first I ask of you all the SAME favour that the heath-sprite asked Mr
Lorca that dusky equinox when the herd were all indoors in bed: really
explore where you STAND, on these refined utopian bugs swanning about
in grass. Who ARE Europeans, with all our drinking "problems" and "human
nature", to recoil from these tranquilly closeted and merry vermin taking
in the sun in the morning? What DRIVES you so to be rid of these of nature's
simpletons? WHO CANNOT SEARCHINGLY love gravel and vermin cannot feel God's
reign!
The veteran fairy said these words especially to the poet:
"Coming is the flora and fauna's reign. Men blunder about God's
creation but the
fauna and flora stay always in God's light. Lorca, tell these
men LOVE is born in sameness of PASSION in all the walks of life.
Sameness in what ripples the flower in the air and the big star.
Sameness in the words that spout cool in a water
fountain and echo in the same key in the big sea. Lorca, make
them humble, equals we all are in Nature."
And no more would the veteran say.
SO, ON with the show! STRUGGLE with your reflex tittering at these bugs,
these seeming children, seeming unmanly. And if tonight's at all instructive,
go to the heath to give your thanks: to the veteran fairy with the cane,
tranquilly taking in the dusk, while the herd are all indoors in bed.
Federico Garcia Lorca
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 24 May 1995 10:31:37 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jorge Guitart <MLLJORGE@UBVMS.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Organization: University at Buffalo
Subject: art after art
Art after art will sacralize all ***truly artistic*** After Art projects. It has
happened before and it will happpen again. Trust me. (I have a
Master's degree in Science and credits enough for another in Fine Arts.)
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 24 May 1995 10:50:22 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jim Pangborn <V072GDXG@UBVMS.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Organization: University at Buffalo
Subject: Re: The Etymology of Things
Thanks, Steve, for showing me how my first post on this topic seemed much
more pessimistic than I actually feel. Your response points up a problem
in academic discourse that troubles me greatly, tho. I write of how a certain
term is or seems "spooky" or "haunted," and people naturally take it as a call
to abandon the use of that term. The thing is, "thing" is indispensible.
Its troubling political dimension (I won't call it baggage, since that
term paints a false picture of how words work) will not go away, but neither
does it necessarily always dominate. Power and hierarchy are ubiquitous,
but they certainly aren't every"thing"! I would respectfully ask that poets
and other artists resolutely confront the things that bid to needlessly
dominate us (and by opposing end them? heh heh . . . good luck!) and also that
they (we) resolutely believe, even if utopically, in freedom. Of course, I
can't tell y'all what to do. But yes, folks, this *is* about poetics.
Steve Carll writes, beginning by quoting me:
>>our things, the very shapes of our attention, are haunted by authorities long
>>dead and discredited.
>
>--which is beautifully put and certainly something (oops!) I feel as well.
>I guess what I was reacting to was a sense that words, which must inevitably
>enter a historical culture that includes power and authority, cannot also
>open (or at least point) out of power structures. I don't see it that way,
>although it's certainly not as easy as "language always transcends
>power-structures." But your other point--that it's tricky to go mucking
>about with word-meanings from thousands of years ago--is also well-taken.
>
>Steve
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 24 May 1995 11:41:21 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Edward Foster <EFOSTER@VAXC.STEVENS-TECH.EDU>
Subject: Re: Yo, Ed
boring
something
new,
George?
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 24 May 1995 12:02:02 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Edward Foster <EFOSTER@VAXC.STEVENS-TECH.EDU>
Subject: Re: desire / and the 39 steps
pungent in clear water, grasp the root, velvet, sweet. all words they tell us to forget, and so transform oneself, empirical in wit, and dry. the real pearl moves from root to tongue, as fingers (dark) releave the core
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 24 May 1995 11:39:56 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Edward Foster <EFOSTER@VAXC.STEVENS-TECH.EDU>
Subject: Re: Yo, Ed
re:
ing
see
Spicer
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 24 May 1995 11:18:37 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: George Bowering <bowering@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: Really real Martha
In-Reply-To: <199505241215.FAA11203@whistler.sfu.ca> from "Michael Boughn" at
May 24, 95 08:12:14 am
Jeez, Mike, how did anyone in NY etc know how to do anything around
the house before this Martha person showed them? No wonder my place
is a mess, terrible garden, lousy meals, etc. I have been using Paul
Blackburn as a guide.
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 24 May 1995 11:36:39 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: George Bowering <bowering@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: Yo, Ed
In-Reply-To: <199505241819.LAA13788@whistler.sfu.ca> from "Edward Foster" at
May 24, 95 11:39:56 am
see
zoo
cow
ski
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 24 May 1995 11:38:50 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ryan Knighton <knighton@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: Yo, Ed
In-Reply-To: <199505241819.LAA13788@whistler.sfu.ca> from "Edward Foster" at
May 24, 95 11:39:56 am
simply
this evening
stretched canvas
o'er tired eyes yawing to focus
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 24 May 1995 14:40:17 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Marshall H. Reese" <risarano@ECHONYC.COM>
Subject: republicans threaten artists
Ligorano/Reese
67 Devoe Street, Bklyn, NY 11211
For Immediate Release Contact: Nora Ligorano/Marshall Reese
fax/phone (718) 782-9255
Republican National Committee threatens artists over use of
RContract with AmericaS
Did you know that the Contract with America is a registered
trademark? ThatUs right. In yet another sign that the rights of free
debate and public discussion are under attack, the Republican
National Committee has threatened artists Nora Ligorano and
Marshall Reese over the use of the name RContract with AmericaS
in their latest artwork.
Last month the artists presented their new limited edition of
RContract with AmericaS underwear in an installation at the Center
for Book Arts in New York City. The new art piece follows the
artistsU successful edition of the Bible Belt. It continues their
fascination with producing wearable art that addresses political
topics, as well as their concerns about the packaging and
marketing of political ideas.
Their new limited edition artwork consists of 120 signed and
numbered pairs of mens and womens briefs. The artists have
recontextualized the RepublicansU Contract with America by screen
printing it on the seats of mens and womens cotton underwear.
The face of Newt Gingrich adorns the crotch. The Associated Press
reported on the art work after the artists sent pairs of the
underwear to President Clinton, Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole,
Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and other elected officials in
Washington, D.C.
Allison Fahrenkopf Brigati, the Republican National Committee
Associate Chief Counsel, wrote the artists Rto discontinue [their]
unauthorized use of the Contract with America logo and text
immediately.S
The ACLU Arts Censorship Project and cooperating attorney
Elizabeth McNamara of the law firm Lankenau, Kovner and Kurtz
have written to Ms. Brigati that Rthe art project is a classic
example of political satire. Each limited edition work is
accompanied by a statement explaining the message intended by
its creators. The combined impression is clearly humorous, and
obviously meant to parody the Contract with America. Such a
limited use on what is not a commercial product but rather an art
work carrying the strong political speech message of its creators,
we believe, constitutes protected political expression.S
For more information, contact
Ligorano/Reese by phone or fax at
(718) 782-9255.
risarano@echonyc.com
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 24 May 1995 14:44:41 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Mark Wallace <mdw@GWIS2.CIRC.GWU.EDU>
Subject: Poetic Briefs is not dead
For all those who have expressed confusion or concern as to what is
happening with Poetic Briefs:
PB has been put on temporary hold due to financial reasons, but expects
to be in operation again as soon as possible. Do not assume your
subscription has run out, or leap to other dire conclusions.
Mark Wallace
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 24 May 1995 16:06:42 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@PANIX.COM>
Subject: Re: Yo, Ed
In-Reply-To: <199505241818.OAA13892@panix4.panix.com>
[7m [4m [5m pure
[7m [4m [5m intru-
[1m sion/scion
[0m
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 24 May 1995 15:23:56 CST6CDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Hank Lazer <HLAZER@AS.UA.EDU>
Organization: Arts and Sciences Dean's Office
Subject: Re: yo, ed, boring?
so mush descends
upon
a read wheel
barrow
glazed with brain
water
beside the fried
chicken?
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 24 May 1995 12:11:00 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Don Cheney <Don_Cheney@UCSDLIBRARY.UCSD.EDU>
Subject: radio commercials
there's another commercial on the radio here in san diego
and i don't know what it is a commercial for but every time
i hear it all i really hear is:
"...more on sale..."
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 24 May 1995 22:48:08 +0000
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: cris cheek <cris@SLANG.DEMON.CO.UK>
Subject: crisis
I'm forwarding some selections from posts on Ht-Lit that might be of
interest to readers here in relation to recent discussion under this
subject: -
I believe it was Stuart Moulthrop who first observed, in his introduction
to J. Yellowlees Douglas' I HAVE SAID NOTHING, that there seem to be an
exceptional number of car crashes and dismembered bodies in serious
hypertext fiction. Collisions feature prominently in:
Michael Joyce, AFTERNOON
J. Y. Douglas, I HAVE SAID NOTHING
Monica Moran, AMBULANCE (Electronic Hollywood)
Michael van Mantgem, COMPLETING THE CIRCLE (Eastgate, in press)
and less prominently in
John McDaid, UNCLE BUDDY'S PHANTOM FUNHOUSE
Dismembered bodies appear in:
J. Y. Douglas, I HAVE SAID NOTHING
Monica Moran, AMBULANCE
Kathryn Cramer, IN SMALL AND LARGE PIECES
Shelley Jackson THE PATCHWORK GIRL (Eastgate, in press)
and the threat of dismemberment, or at least puncture, pervades
Mary-kim Arnold, LUST.
Moulthrop's VICTORY GARDEN includes a car chase (suggesting crash) and
explosion (suggesting dismemberment).
Note that neither the authors nor the audience of these works include
the adolescent boys whose preoccupation with violence is proverbial; I
think it safe to assert that these works are totally unlike Mortal
Kombat and its kin.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Why *are* there so many crashes and body parts?
Moulthrop, in his introductory essay to I HAVE SAID NOTHING, suggests that
the crash enacts the hypertextual breaking of the line. Dismemberment,
too, might by extension reflect the dismemberment of the unitary text
through which a richer hypertext may emerge.
Mary-kim Arnold, in the course of a really remarkable reading and lecture
at the "Serious Hypertext" symposium in Boston last weekend, suggested that
the violence of these images reflects the effort required by women to
wrestthe tools of writing from (predominantly male) control and bend them
to their purposes.
Kathryn Cramer, in an earlier "Serious Hypertext" meeting in Ann Arbor, had
noted instead the importance of violent expression in writing for and by
women, in horror and literary fiction and well as in literary hypertext.
If I understand Diane Greco's viewpoint correctly in her forthcoming
hypertext, CYBORG: ENGINEERING THE BODY ELECTRIC (also in press), the theme
of dismemberment arises naturally from the female construction of the body,
and from the cyborg's resistance to the masculinization of technology.
In an offhand, improvised remark during a recent talk at Gettysburg, I
myself ascribed crashes and dismemberments alike to the hypertext writer's
desire to disrupt surfers, browsers and grazers, to grab the reader and
shake her and get her to STOP and PAY ATTENTION.
(These summaries to terrible violence to the arguments advanced by their
original authors, and I do urge readers to refer to their writings and not
to rely on my flawed readers).
---------------------------
Why *are* there so many crashes and so much dismemberment?
(Mark Bernstein of Eastgate)
While I can understand women feeling that it's reflective of their
experience, I think we all, male and female, are experiencing and
metaphorising our own losses in this move to digital space. Hypermedia is a
very disembodied communication. And we've lost our books, which were
physical experiences, extensions of our bodies as well as our minds.
Perhaps we are representing, even mourning our past.
And we are also perhaps trying to free the reader from the old ideation
patterns: crash! and cut off your expectations. Crash!: crisis, and things
don't have to act according to normal. Time shifts. Perception shifts.
Awareness expands. Crisis may be more easily and accurately portrayed in
hypertext because the experience (which most of us have had) of a
crash/crisis is multilinear. It does make sense to evoke this in the
reader, although it seems clearly in danger of becoming a cliche, doesn't
it.
(Ellen Chait)
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 24 May 1995 17:02:01 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ryan Knighton <knighton@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: Yo, Ed
In-Reply-To: <199505242236.PAA18466@whistler.sfu.ca> from "George Bowering" at
May 24, 95 11:36:39 am
no,n no, george: it's
sea
zoo
cough
ski
>
> see
> zoo
> cow
> ski
>
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 24 May 1995 19:34:28 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "M. Magoolaghan" <mmagoola@U.WASHINGTON.EDU>
Subject: Re: Poetic Briefs is not dead
In-Reply-To: <9505242249.AA24039@mx4.u.washington.edu>
Mark,
Should I take it as symptomatic er something that your notice re: Poetic
Briefs showed up immediately after a posting about the "new limited
edition of Contract with America underwear"? Is THAT where you're
getting your funding?
Just wondering.
MM
On Wed, 24 May 1995, Mark Wallace wrote:
> For all those who have expressed confusion or concern as to what is
> happening with Poetic Briefs:
>
> PB has been put on temporary hold due to financial reasons, but expects
> to be in operation again as soon as possible. Do not assume your
> subscription has run out, or leap to other dire conclusions.
>
> Mark Wallace
>
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Michael Magoolaghan ! untraceable wandering/
University of Washington ! the meaning of knowing
Dept. of English !
Box 354330 ! Susan Howe, "Articulation of
Seattle, WA 98l95-4330 ! Sound Forms in Time"
mmagoola@u.washington.edu !
!
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 25 May 1995 15:08:30 GMT+1300
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Wystan Curnow <w.curnow@AUCKLAND.AC.NZ>
Organization: English Dept. - Univ. of Auckland
Subject: Re: Yo, Ed
X-To: knighton@SFU.CA
Dear Ryan,
earth's
the diff-
erence
Wystan
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 25 May 1995 15:13:29 GMT+1300
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Wystan Curnow <w.curnow@AUCKLAND.AC.NZ>
Organization: English Dept. - Univ. of Auckland
Subject: Re: Yo, Ed
X-To: bowering@SFU.CA
Dear george,
is that
LN
see
zoo
Yst
an
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 24 May 1995 23:55:59 -0400
Reply-To: Robert Drake <au462@cleveland.Freenet.Edu>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Robert Drake <au462@CLEVELAND.FREENET.EDU>
Subject: legislative alert (forward)
Subject: legislative alert: Telecommunications Decency Act
CAMPAIGN TO STOP THE EXON/GORTON COMMUNICATIONS DECENCY ACT
Update: -Bill is on the Senate floor
-Please act to help Leahy stop the Exon censorship bill
PETITION TO HELP SENATOR LEAHY STOP THE UNCONSTITUTIONAL
COMMUNICATIONS DECENCY ACT
May 19, 1995
PLEASE WIDELY REDISTRIBUTE THIS DOCUMENT WITH THIS BANNER INTACT
REDISTRIBUTE ONLY UNTIL June 9, 1995
REPRODUCE THIS ALERT ONLY IN RELEVANT FORUMS
Distributed by the Voters Telecommunications Watch (vtw@vtw.org)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TABLE OF CONTENTS
The Time Is Now
Another Petition?
What Is Sen. Leahy Proposing?
How To Sign The Petition
The Petition Statement
Signing the petition from Fidonet or FTN systems
For More Information
List Of Participating Organizations
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE TIME IS NOW
HELP SENATOR LEAHY STOP THE EXON COMMUNICATIONS DECENCY ACT
The Senate is expected to on vote the Communications Decency Act (CDA,
a.k.a. the Exon Bill) within the next three weeks.
The Communications Decency Act, in its current form, would severely
restrict your rights to freedom of speech and freedom of expression
online, and represents a grave threat to the very nature and existence
of the Internet as we know it today. Without your help now, the
Communications Decency Act will likely pass and the net may never be
the same again.
Although the CDA has been revised to limit the liability of online
service providers, it would still criminalize the transmission of any
content deemed "obscene, lewd, lacivious, filthy, or indecent,"
including the private communications between consenting adults. Even
worse, some conservative pro-censorship groups are working to amend the
CDA to make it even more restrictive.
Currently, Senator Exon is negotiating with pro-censorship groups and
commercial entities that would be affected by the CDA. The voices of
Internet users must be heard now. We need to demonstrate that we are a
political force to be reckoned with.
In an effort to preserve your rights in cyberspace, Senator Patrick
Leahy (D-VT) has introduced the only legislative alternative to the
Communications Decency Act. Senator Leahy is willing to offer his bill
as a substitute for the CDA, but needs your support behind his efforts.
Senator Leahy's legislation would commission a study to examine the
complex issues involved in protecting children from controversial
content while preserving the First Amendment, the privacy rights of
users, and the free flow of information in cyberspace.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
ANOTHER PETITION?
Yes. With a strong showing of support from the net.community, Senator
Leahy can offer his bill as a substitute for the Communications Decency
Act when the Senate votes on the issue later this month. Senator Leahy
needs and wants to demonstrate to his colleagues in the Senate that the
net.community is behind him in his efforts. We must rise to the task
and demonstrate that we will not sit idly by as our rights are
threatened.
Senator Leahy, a strong civil liberties advocate, has been the Senate's
most vocal critic of the Exon/Gorton Communications Decency Act, and
has taken a leading role in defending the rights and civil liberties of
Internet users. Senator Leahy has taken a great political risk in
representing the interests of Internet users on Capitol Hill. The time
has come for us to show our appreciation and our support for his
efforts.
The previous petition against the Communications Decency Act generated
over 108,000 signatures, and was instrumental in Senator Leahy's
decision to offer his alternative As the Senate moves to vote on the
CDA, we must act quickly to ensure that our collective voice continues
to be heard.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
WHAT IS LEAHY PROPOSING?
Senator Leahy's bill, S. 714, would direct the Department of Justice and
the Department of Commerce to commence a 5 month study to examine:
* Current law enforcement authority to prosecute the distribution of
pornography over computer networks;
* Whether any additional law or law enforcement resources are necessary;
* The availability of technological capabilities, consistent with the
First Amendment and the free flow of information in Cyberspace, to
protect children from accessing controversial commercial and non-
commercial content;
* Ways to promote the development and deployment of such technologies.
After conducting the study, the Justice Department must report to
Congress on its findings, and, if necessary, recommend changes in
current law.
Leahy's bill represents the only substantive legislative alternative to
the Communications Decency Act, and will buy important time to have a
detailed and rational discussion about the issues involved in
protecting children from controversial content, and avoid the rush to
censorship which is occurring now on the Senate Floor.
Without a strong show of support for Leahy's bill, the Communications
Decency Act is very likely to pass.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
WHAT CAN I DO?
Please Sign the petition in support of Senator Leahy's alternative.
There are two ways to sign:
1. World Wide Web:
URL:http://www.cdt.org/petition.html
Please follow all instructions carefully. Please also put a link
to this page on your homepage.
2. email:
send email to petition@cdt.org.
Please provide the following information EXACTLY AS SHOWN.
INCORRECT SUBMISSIONS CANNOT NOT BE COUNTED!
Be sure that you make a carriage return at the end of each line
Your Name
Your email address
Are you a US Citizen (yes or no) (** IF NO, skip to last line)
Your Street Address (** USE ONLY ONE LINE)
Your City
Your State
Your Zip Code (**VERY IMPORTANT)
Country
PRIVACY POLICY: Information collected during this campaign will not be
used for any purpose other than delivering a list of signers to
Congress and compiling counts of signers from particular states and
Congressional districts. It will not be reused, sold, rented, loaned,
or available for use for any other purpose. All records will be
destroyed immediately upon completion of this project.
--- sample email submission ---
To: petition@cdt.org
From: everybody@ubiquitous.net
Subject: signed
Every Body
everybody@ubiqutious.net
YES
1111 State Street, Apt. 31 B
Any Town
CA
94320
USA
--- sample email submission ---
Multiple signatures will not be counted, so please only sign once.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE PETITION STATEMENT
We the undersigned users of the Internet are strongly opposed to the
"Communications Decency Act" (Title IV of S. 652), which is currently
pending before the Senate. This legislation will severely restrict our
rights to freedom of speech and privacy guaranteed under the
constitution.
Based on our Nation's longstanding history of protecting freedom of
speech, we believe that the Federal Government should have no role in
regulating the content of constitutionally protected speech on the
Internet.
We urge the Senate to halt consideration of the Communications Decency
Act and consider in its place S. 714, the "Child Protection, User
Empowerment, and Free Expression In Interactive Media Study Bill", an
alternative approach offered by Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT).
Signed:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
SIGNING THE PETITION FROM FIDONET OR FTN SYSTEMS
To sign the petition from FidoNet or other FTN systems, create a netmail
message to your local UUCP host. Search the nodelist for the GUUCP
flag, and use the address of that system:
To: UUCP, [GUUCP system's address here. "To:" name MUST be set to UUCP]
From: [you]
Subject: signed
---------------------------------------------------------------
To: petition@cdt.org
Every Body
everybody@ubiqutious.net
YES
1111 State Street, Apt. 31 B
Any Town
CA
94320
USA
[Message starts on 3rd line. The second "To:" line with the internet
email address MUST be the first line of the message body, and the blank
line following that is REQUIRED. Mail will not be delivered by the
gateways without it.]
If you are unsure whether your FTN has an Internet gateway, or suspect
it may use something other than a GUUCP nodelist flag, ask your network
coordinators.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
PETITION RATIONALE
We oppose the "Communications Decency Act", sponsored by Senators James
Exon (D-NE) and Slade Gorton (R-WA), for the following reasons:
* It criminalizes the transmission of constitutionally protected speech,
including the private communications between consenting individuals;
* It would violate privacy rights by protecting system administrators
who take steps to ensure that their networks are not being used to
transmit prohibited content, even if those steps include reading all
messages, in violation of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act
(ECPA).
* It fails to account for the unique characteristics of interactive
media, including the tremendous control users have over the content
they or their children receive.
* It would give the Federal Communications Commission jurisdiction over
online speech by giving the FCC authority to establish rules
governing the distribution of content online;
The Internet and other interactive communications technologies offer a
unique opportunity for the free exchange of information and ideas, and
embody the very essence of our nation's democratic traditions of
openness, diversity and freedom of speech.
As users of these technologies, we know perhaps better than anyone that
there are other, less restrictive ways to protect children from
controversial materials while preserving the First Amendment and the
free flow of information.
Senator Leahy's bill provides an opportunity to address the issues
raised by the Communications Decency Act without restricting the free
speech and privacy rights of users.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
FOR MORE INFORMATION
Petition updates will be posted to appropriate newsgroups and other
forums on a regular basis.
To have the latest status report sent to you automatically, send email
to: p-update@cdt.org
If you have specific questions, or if you are interested in mirroring
the petition page, contact Jonah Seiger <jseiger@cdt.org>
Other petition related information can be found on the CDT petition
page.
URL:http://www.cdt.org/petition.html
For More information on the Communications Decency Act issue:
Web Sites
URL:http://www.cdt.org/cda.html
URL:http://www.eff.org/pub/Alerts/
URL:http://www.panix.com/vtw/exon/
FTP Archives
URL:ftp://ftp.cdt.org/pub/cdt/policy/freespeech/00-INDEX.FREESPEECH
URL:ftp://ftp.eff.org/pub/Alerts/
Gopher Archives:
URL:gopher://gopher.eff.org/11/Alerts
URL:gopher://gopher.panix.com/11/vtw/exon
Information By auto-reply email:
If you don't have www/ftp/gopher access, you can get up-to-date
information from the following autobots:
General information on the CDA issue cda-info@cdt.org
Current status of the CDA issue cda-stat@cdt.org
Chronology of events of the CDA issue vtw@vtw.org with
the
subject "send
events"
-------------------------------------------------------------------
----
LIST OF PARTICIPATING ORGANIZATIONS
In order to use the net more effectively, several organizations have
joined forces on a single Congressional net campaign to stop the
Communications Decency Act.
In alphabetical order:
Californians Against Censorship Together
BobbyLilly@aol.com
Center For Democracy And Technology (CDT)
info@cdt.org
Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)
info@eff.org
Feminists For Free Expression (FFE)
FFE@aol.com
Florida Coalition Against Censorship
pipking@mail.firn.edu
Hands Off! The Net
baby-x@phanton.com
National Libertarian Party
73163.3063@compuserve.com
National Public Telecomputing Network (NPTN)
info@nptn.org
National Writers Union (UAW Local 1981 AFL-CIO)
kip@world.std.com
Panix Public Access Internet
info@panix.com
People for the American Way
jlessern@reach.com
Society for Electronic Access
sea@sea.org
The WELL
info@well.com
Voters Telecommunications Watch (VTW)
vtw@vtw.org
If you would like to add your organization to this list, contact
Shabbir
Safdar at VTW <shabbir@vtw.org>
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 24 May 1995 21:16:24 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Lindz Williamson <lmichell@UNIXG.UBC.CA>
Subject: Re: Yo, Ed
In-Reply-To: <199505242236.PAA23045@unixg.ubc.ca>
> see
> zoo
> cow
> ski
>
don't forget
chicken
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 25 May 1995 00:45:53 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: John Byrum <JMBYRUM@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: art after art
we have a very narrow definiton of art which needs to be opened out & reopend
out again all the time.
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 25 May 1995 01:00:06 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: John Byrum <JMBYRUM@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: Yo, Ed
zoos
&
cows
kant
ski
see
saw
say
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 25 May 1995 15:36:57 +1000
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Mark Roberts <M.Roberts@UNSW.EDU.AU>
Subject: Poetry happenings: London, UK, July 1995
I am forwarding this request to the list in the hope that someone may have
some information about poetry events in the UK (london) during July. You
could either email David directly, or post to the list and I'll forward it.
Thanks
Mark Roberts
*********************************
>X-UNSW-POPserver: s9005086@sam
>From: "DAVID GILBEY" <DGILBEY@whum.riv.csu.edu.au>
>Organization: Charles Sturt University
>To: M.Roberts@unsw.edu.au
>Date: Thu, 25 May 1995 14:46:26 GMT-10
>Subject: Poetry happenings: London, UK, July 1995
>X-Pmrqc: 1
>Priority: normal
>X-Mailer: Pegasus Mail/Windows v1.11
>
>Dear Mark,
>
>I'm heading off to London for a couple of weeks in July, 3 - 20. Do
>you know of any poetry or writerly happenings there then. Or who I
>could contact?
>
>
>Cheers,
>
>David
>
>
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 25 May 1995 02:05:21 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Marisa A Januzzi <jma5@COLUMBIA.EDU>
Subject: in vitro...
In-Reply-To: <199505242238.AA29403@mailhub.cc.columbia.edu>
Flash:
In the window
of the Grolier in Cambridge:
Niedecker letters to Zukofsky ($59?!)
and Joe Donahue's latest next to
Ed Foster (on Black Mountain) next to
Gerrit Lansing
had to leave the letters for now but in addition snagged some op Parker
Tyler some Christopher Logue some Coffey (thank you Peter
Quartermain)(thank you, day in Cambridge)(and you too poetics list!)
They take Visa! ---Marisa
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 25 May 1995 02:48:00 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jake Berry <BugsD@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: yo, ed, boring?
Hank,
You've got WCW spinning in his grave, and I love it. Not to knock the good
Doc. But this rewrite is a yowling howling invitation to ludic heaven.
Thanks.
Jake
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 25 May 1995 02:48:20 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jake Berry <BugsD@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: John - next steps after art
John,
You're absolutely right, we must get beyond these categories and the
assumptions that attend them. It is almost as if the label poet, or painter,
or whatever is a means of dismissing the entire project.
We could attempt radical new mediums, but we see what happened with
'happenings'. They quickly became just as classified as anything else. And
you're right, an Art Strike is not the answer, since those who are profiting
from the system as it is will not strike, at least most of them will not. So
all you have is people assuming they have more power than they do, and the
mindset that produces these power games is precisely the origin of the
problem to begin with. Nothing is resolved.
Going underground, as, who was it, I'm sorry, I can't remember who,
suggested, is a possibility as long as we don't call ourselves underground
poet, painters etc. Duchamp said the solution for the great man of art for
tomorrow is to go underground. (I paraphrase, but I think that's the sense of
it.)
Finally we must move beyond our own sense of self individually, to move
beyond our own tendency to rely on easy categorization and description and
beginning from that point we might produce a way of living, thinking (or
other mental states), and externalized modes that would be the next step.
Though being post-art they would not be seen as steps after, as in
post-modern, but as something entirely other in relevance to anything that
had gone before.
Sorry to ramble so long, that's my take on it. Today, at any rate.
Jake
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 25 May 1995 04:00:03 -0300
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: english is mandarin --Tom Raworth <NDORWARD@AC.DAL.CA>
Subject: Re: Poetry happenings: London, UK, July 1995
I was in London and Cambridge last month, and picked up a few flyers about
readings there just for interest's sake: only two seem applicable here:
POETS/WRITERS readings--"bi-weekly, Mondays 8pm, plus added special events".
At the east/west gallery, 8 Blenheim Crescent, London W11. Ladbroke Grove
Tube. 4 pounds/2 pounds 50 p concessions. For information, phone
(0181)-740-9818. Looking at the schedule for the next couple of months it
lists:
June 12. FIRST IN A SERIES OF TALKS ON BRITISH SMALL PRESSES OF THE 60'S
AND 70'S: 1. Trigram Press: run by poet Asa Benveniste, published Tom
Raworth, Jack Hirschman, J.H.Prynne, David Meltzer, Lee Harwood. Talk with
John Latimer Smith by Pip Benveniste, followed by films of Trigram poets
reading.
June, date t.b.a.: Ed Dorn reading.
July 12: Fran Landesman: poet, songwriter, humorist; her songs recorded by
Ella Fitzgerald, Shirley Bassey.
July 17: Gavin Selerie: poet, critic; work included in _New British Poetry_
(Paladin 1988), reads from recently completed work _Roxie_.; and Miles
Champion: new poet whose work has been praised by John Ashbery; reads from
_Sore Models_ (Sound and Language 1995).
----
I saw Champion read in Cambridge, & he's certainly worth seeing--rather
influenced by Raworth in the incredible speed at which he reads, I'd
imagine. Anyways, I also have a flyer for the SubVoicive reading series:
unfortunately it looks like there's not much for the month of July, but
I'll type this in anyways for those who might be interested:
SubVoicive readings, at The Three Cups, Sandland Street, Holborn Tube;
Admission 4 pounds/2 pounds concs. To confirm details phone Robert
Sheppard at (0181) 672 4027.
6 June Bill Griffiths
20 June Latin American Evening presented by Will Rowe
27 June Gilbert Adair and Lawrence Upton
4 July Bob Cobbing
12 Sept. Aaron Williamson
26 Sept. Spencer Selby & Gavin Selerie
10 Oct. John Muckle & poet t.b.a.
24 Oct. Tim Fletcher & poet t.b.a.
7 Nov. Allen Fisher and Adrian Clarke
(Never seen any of these authors read, but I did pick up a cassette of
Allen Fisher reading, called _Scram_, at Compendium Books, which is very
good.)
OK: hope this is of some assistance. --Nate Dorward (ndorward@ac.dal.ca).
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 25 May 1995 01:09:57 CST
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Charles Alexander <mcba@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
Subject: Re: art after art
From John Byrum,
"we have a very narrow definiton of art which needs to be opened out &
reopendout again all the time."
After Duchamp, after Cage, WHO has a very narrow definition of art?
Although I'd be interested in points of view who found even those artists
with a narrow point of view.
Why define (divine, de-vine) art at all? I had a teacher once who wanted
to define it, admittedly awkardly, as "anything seen in an art-seeing
context." But what's the line between art and non-art? and why?
charles
charles alexander
chax press
minnesota center for book arts
phone & fax: 612-721-6063
e-mail: mcba@maroon.tc.umn.edu
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 25 May 1995 08:14:59 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ernesto Grosman <grosman@MINERVA.CIS.YALE.EDU>
Subject: Rift: On Translation
To retrieve RIFT...
gopher://writing.upenn.edu/hh/internet/library/e-journal/ub/rift
Send contributions or correspondence to:
e-poetry@ubvm.cc.buffalo.edu
lolpoet@acsu.buffalo.edu
From RIFT, the translation issue.
QUESTIONNAIRE/CUESTIONARIO
*How would you define translation? As a process or as product?
*Who is translating?
*What is being translated?
*Do you consider some texts to be untranslatable? If so, how would you
describe the obstacle?
*Isn't the idea of "version" a funny place for the translator to be left in?
*When see some of your own texts translated into a different language from
the one you wrote them in, what kind of relation would you established
between the two of them?
*Is it true that today there are fewer people translating? If so, why?
*What does it say about our present situation that translation
seems to occur almost only when the "original" material is has been
canonized within its own culture?
*And what would be the possible relation between this kind of selection and
that other relationship between imperialism & translation?
*Are you ready to accept translation as another way of writing?
*When you or somebody else refers to a text as illegible, what do you
does she/he mean by that? Do you see any connection between the notion
of a text being illegible and the task of translation?
*Do you think of some texts as more worthy of a translation than others?
Could you elaborate on it?
*Would you say that you translate a text or a person?
*Do you consider yourself a translation?
*Could you imagine life without translation?
e.l.g.
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 25 May 1995 08:29:09 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Michael Boughn <mboughn@EPAS.UTORONTO.CA>
Subject: Re: Really real Martha
In-Reply-To: <199505242224.SAA23257@jazz.epas.utoronto.ca> from "George
Bowering" at May 24, 95 11:18:37 am
So, George, exactly what kind of glaze does Blackburn recommend for turkey?
Mike
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 25 May 1995 06:33:01 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
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From: Ron Silliman <rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM>
Subject: Re: 2 announcements
X-cc: woodland@tmn.com
Effective June 5:
Ron Silliman & Family
116 Biddle Road
Paoli, PA 19301
(610) 293-6099 (work)
(610) 251-2214 (probable home #)
Email remains rsillima@ix.netcom.com
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 25 May 1995 09:47:03 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Carl Lynden Peters <clpeters@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: yo, ed, boring?
In-Reply-To: <199505250652.XAA22033@ferrari.sfu.ca> from "Jake Berry" at May
25, 95 02:48:00 am
> Going underground, as, who was it, I'm sorry, I can't remember who,
> suggested, is a possibility as long as we don't call ourselves underground
> poet, painters etc. Duchamp said the solution for the great man of art for
> tomorrow is to go underground. (I paraphrase, but I think that's the sense of
> it.)
> Finally we must move beyond our own sense of self individually, to move
> beyond our own tendency to rely on easy categorization and description and
> beginning from that point we might produce a way of living, thinking (or
> other mental states), and externalized modes that would be the next step.
> Though being post-art they would not be seen as steps after, as in
> post-modern, but as something entirely other in relevance to anything that
> had gone before.
> Sorry to ramble so long, that's my take on it. Today, at any rate.
>
> Jake
>
jake: that was me, i think, paraphrasing duchamp's idea to go
underground. i guess a similar notion is barthe's "death of the author"
and foucault's neat idea to publish books without the author's name
printed across them. anonymity. that entails a great sacrifice, but may
be one way of subverting the western box. sacrifce. but that's were the
prophecy is
carl
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 25 May 1995 11:21:27 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: David Ball <DBALL@SMITH.SMITH.EDU>
Subject: Re: Rift: On Translation
No, I can't imagine life without translation, translation of many kinds, pro-
cess, product, lifeblood of literature, way of understanding--anyone can add
to this list, & I'll be with her/him all the way.
As Baudelaire said (in French), "How is it that any human being in reasonably
good health can go without eating for two or three days--without translation,
never!"
INTENTIONALLY INACCURATE TRANSLATOR
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 25 May 1995 17:18:56 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Edward Foster <EFOSTER@VAXC.STEVENS-TECH.EDU>
Subject: Re: yo, ed, boring?
so much pretends
within
a red po
tato
glazed with
honey
beside the fried
chicken.
i mean, hank, would YOU trust a doctor? let's get a second opinion.
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 25 May 1995 17:30:52 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Edward Foster <EFOSTER@VAXC.STEVENS-TECH.EDU>
Subject: Re: Yo, Ed
NOT
boo
cough
ski
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 25 May 1995 14:41:04 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Carl Lynden Peters <clpeters@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: art after art
In-Reply-To: <199505250717.AAA23075@whistler.sfu.ca> from "Charles Alexander"
at May 25, 95 01:09:57 am
this may relate, tho indirectly:
SEVEN:
G.
.G
G.
.G
G.
.G
G.
.G
G.
.G
G.
.G
G.
.G
G.
.G
G.
.G
G.
.G
G.
.G
G.
.G
G.
.G
G.
.G
G.
.G
G.
.G
thanks,
carl
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 25 May 1995 15:49:01 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ryan Knighton <knighton@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: yo, ed, boring?
In-Reply-To: <199505252126.OAA26395@whistler.sfu.ca> from "Edward Foster" at
May 25, 95 05:18:56 pm
so much for depending
upon
a red fire
truck
glazed by
heat
inside
the burning station
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 25 May 1995 15:52:37 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ryan Knighton <knighton@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: radio commercials
In-Reply-To: <199505250019.RAA00181@whistler.sfu.ca> from "Don Cheney" at May
24, 95 12:11:00 pm
George's and my friend Willy likes the van advertising
"Blind Cleaners". Brilliant.
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 25 May 1995 17:48:26 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Carl Lynden Peters <clpeters@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: Yo, Ed
In-Reply-To: <199505260039.RAA19068@whistler.sfu.ca> from "Edward Foster" at
May 25, 95 05:30:52 pm
ed
rhymes with
dead
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 26 May 1995 11:49:33 +1000
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Mark Roberts <M.Roberts@UNSW.EDU.AU>
Subject: Re: radio/tv commercials
You know with just one look
we've got the world's best chook
MR
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 25 May 1995 19:18:51 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Steve Carll <sjcarll@SLIP.NET>
Subject: Re: The Etymology of Things
Jim Pangborn writes:
>Thanks, Steve, for showing me how my first post on this topic seemed much
>more pessimistic than I actually feel. Your response points up a problem
>in academic discourse that troubles me greatly, tho. I write of how a certain
>term is or seems "spooky" or "haunted," and people naturally take it as a call
>to abandon the use of that term. The thing is, "thing" is indispensible.
>Its troubling political dimension (I won't call it baggage, since that
>term paints a false picture of how words work) will not go away, but neither
>does it necessarily always dominate. Power and hierarchy are ubiquitous,
>but they certainly aren't every"thing"! I would respectfully ask that poets
>and other artists resolutely confront the things that bid to needlessly
>dominate us (and by opposing end them? heh heh . . . good luck!) and also that
>they (we) resolutely believe, even if utopically, in freedom. Of course, I
>can't tell y'all what to do. But yes, folks, this *is* about poetics.
Right on. I very much believe in "retrieving" language from these spectres
of power that tend to haunt it. Sometimes this involves an attempt to delve
back to its (the?) source, and sometimes it involves puahing envelopes of
meaning out to places they've maybe never been before.
Steve
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 26 May 1995 14:57:35 GMT+1200
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Tony Green <t.green@AUCKLAND.AC.NZ>
Organization: The University of Auckland
Subject: Re: radio/tv commercials
What cd be better than a petit poussin?
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 25 May 1995 22:57:19 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: John Byrum <JMBYRUM@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: John - next steps after art
Excerpt from Jake Barry's recent message re next steps after art:
>Though being post-art they would not be seen as steps after, as in
>post-modern, but as something entirely other in relevance to >anything that
had gone before.
Jake,
Many thanks for your message. I agree completely with all your comments and
particularly with the excerpt above. We each need to discover our own ways
of proceeding, ways which will be largely or even entirely "other" than
anything which could be called "art". Some may be communicable and others
may not. Some may include production, others may not.
John
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 25 May 1995 23:33:40 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: John Byrum <JMBYRUM@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: art after art after art
Excerpt from recent message by Charles Alexander:
After Duchamp, after Cage, WHO has a very narrow definition of art?
Although I'd be interested in points of view who found even those artists
with a narrow point of view.
Why define (divine, de-vine) art at all? I had a teacher once who wanted
to define it, admittedly awkardly, as "anything seen in an art-seeing
context." But what's the line between art and non-art? and why?
charles
charles alexander
chax press
Charles,
Thanks for the difficult questions in your reply. I think many people have
underlying "expectations" of what art has come to mean in our culture. These
expectations differ among individuals of course, but most do distinguish some
of their experiences as belonging to an art context and others which do not.
Perhaps I'm asking if it is possible for us to think of all of our
experiences as art, which would have the effect of eliminating "art" as a
separate category of experience in our lives. If everything is "art", then
nothing is "only art" (i.e., non-functional esthetic experience), but the
rich complexity and interwoven unity in multiplicity of esthetic experiences
could be lived in all aspects of our lives, and not only those bits of our
lives spent in producing and consuming "art" as it is currently our
enculturated habit to do.
Art has meant different things in different cultures and times, and has not
been a separate category in many. I'm asking if it is possible for us here
and now to so completely open the notion of art out into all aspects of our
individual and social/cultural existence that it would to all intents and
purposes disappear; i.e., become an inseparable component of the textures of
our living.
I'm aware this sounds utopian and/or simplistic. It is.
John
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 25 May 1995 22:02:31 CST
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Charles Alexander <mcba@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
Subject: Re: art after art after art
John, I hope what you want is possible, i.e.
"I'm asking if it is possible for us here
and now to so completely open the notion of art out into all aspects of our
individual and social/cultural existence that it would to all intents and
purposes disappear; i.e., become an inseparable component of the textures of
our living.
I'm aware this sounds utopian and/or simplistic. It is."
I'm not certain it would be either utopian or simplistic. Sometimes it
would be terrible. It would always be living, which is complex, not
simplistic.
For some people, living is already close to this. I am not certain that
such living is better or truer than any other, but it does seem to move in
a direction which feels true to me. For many people, art simply doesn't
exist, it's not part of their consciousness. This does not necessarily mean
that their "individual and social/cultural existence" is any less
integrated with art than if they were more aware of art.
I feel like I'm confusing the possibilities here rather than clarifying
them, so I will stop.
so much descends
upon red real
ballerinas
grazing with refrain
and potters
astride the wide
thick lens
charles
charles alexander
chax press
minnesota center for book arts
phone & fax: 612-721-6063
e-mail: mcba@maroon.tc.umn.edu
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 26 May 1995 00:32:50 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: John Byrum <JMBYRUM@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: yo, ed, boring art past art?
Carl,
Excerpt from your reply to Jake B:
>jake: that was me, i think, paraphrasing duchamp's idea to go
underground. i guess a similar notion is barthe's "death of the author"
and foucault's neat idea to publish books without the author's name
printed across them. anonymity. that entails a great sacrifice, but may
be one way of subverting the western box. sacrifce. but that's were the
prophecy is
carl
Publishing books without the author's name is a beginning, but may not go far
enough. Maybe our lives should or even could become what we hoped our books
would be.
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 26 May 1995 00:42:04 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: John Byrum <JMBYRUM@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: art after art after art
Charles,
Yes! We don't need the lens of art to move toward what I think I'm after.
All that's needed is an open, enquiring mind which will not settle for
received habits of thinking.
I'll stop before further muddying also.
John
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 25 May 1995 16:41:01 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Sheila E. Murphy" <semurphy@INDIRECT.COM>
Subject: Art, etc.
Maybe the discussion of post-art needs no more(?) A perfect time, it seems
to me, to add something.
Art seems principally an orientation capable of accommodating, being with,
transforming, ignoring (pick your verb!) any raw material. Another
possibility is leaving the raw material right there and having something
different from (or perfectly identical to) it in mind. It's all something
about state of consciousness, not unlike homeopathy, whereby the greater the
distillation, the smaller the actual substance, the higher the frequency.
And in that practice, "like cures like." (wonderfully enough)
Something else about art is not a necessary condition, but certainly
associated: human competence. Anybody out there know of, hold deep
affection for, Thomas Gilbert's HUMAN COMPETENCE? 1960 was the year, if I'm
not mistaken. It's performance technology stuff, but moves all over the
scape in relation to doing things well. It's not necessary to agree with
Gilbert. It's only a pleasure to breeze around the subject of things done
well and what makes various practices "good." A brave book, running counter
to the mediocrats.
Art offers an avenue that makes having discipline a tremendous bonus. You
get to choose your time, your materials, your path, whether or not to have a
destination, whether to make it palatable. (Or maybe anyone is powerless in
relation to these things?)
Well, I've made a short story long, that's clear. Let's just say that what
comes after art is higher frequency. And with each of these, the
possibility of greater pleasure, greater clarity, more subtle movement
(thought or physical). Or absolutely nothing at all.
SEM
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 26 May 1995 04:59:46 CST
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Charles Alexander <mcba@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
Subject: loss of the name/art & sacrifice
" . . . foucault's neat idea to publish books without the author's name
printed across them. anonymity. that entails a great sacrifice, but may
be one way of subverting the western box," as John Byrum says.
A good friend in Tucson, Larry Evers, asked me several times in the mid to
late 1980's, during discussions of language poetry and its decentering of
authorial personality and identity in the work (I'm not certain anymore
that there is any such decentering), if there was a movement away from the
person to something like "language itself," why the authors didn't just
publish texts without their names attached. Larry works with oral Native
American traditions, living ones, where, although contemporary singers and
drummers and dancers do make their own contributions to the tradition,
such personal ownership of the work is just not part of the system. I
never had a good answer for him. I am not quite ready for such anonymity,
and few I know are. Perhaps we are just part of the western box.
charles
charles alexander
chax press
minnesota center for book arts
phone & fax: 612-721-6063
e-mail: mcba@maroon.tc.umn.edu
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 26 May 1995 05:04:57 CST
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Charles Alexander <mcba@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
Subject: loss of the name/art & sacrifice
Apologies . . .
In my last post I attributed a statement about "foucault's neat idea to publish books without the author's name
printed across them. anonymity . . ." to John Byrum, when I had read John
excerpting it from a message from Carl Peters. So it is Carl's.
charles alexander
chax press
minnesota center for book arts
phone & fax: 612-721-6063
e-mail: mcba@maroon.tc.umn.edu
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 26 May 1995 11:35:09 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: David Ball <DBALL@SMITH.SMITH.EDU>
Subject: ANNOUNCEMENT (self-promotional)
You can hear HENRI MICHAUX at BIBLIO'S in NYC (Church St. betw. Lispenard &
Walker) on Wednesday evening, May 31 at 6:30.
And David Ball.
That is, David Ball is reading, mostly from DARKNESS MOVES, his big Michaux
anthology, but also some of his own work.
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 26 May 1995 08:50:05 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ron Silliman <rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM>
Subject: Re: art after art after art
>After Duchamp, after Cage, WHO has a very narrow definition of art?
Checked out the CAP-L list lately?
There is no avant-garde. Merely folks who got left behind...
(That's a quote but I forget the source.)
Ron Silliman
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 26 May 1995 12:22:49 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jim Pangborn <V072GDXG@UBVMS.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Organization: University at Buffalo
Subject: Re: Art, etc.
Sheila, thank you for your intervention in the afterart discussion. Art,
however one defines it, is not going to go away anytime soon. I think John
and Jake are "after" something that already exists, though there could and
maybe should be more of it--and I think Charles A. agrees. Charles is right,
too, that attempts to define art usually lead more to muddle than to clarity.
(I wonder, while we're on the subject: where are the voices opposed to
generalizing about art? Is there no one here who thinks poetics is
something fundamentally different from the principles of painting, the
principles of music, etc?)
But I say, if there's a muddle let's jump right in. If I may, Sheila, pick
apart one of your sentences, "[a]rt seems principally an orientation. . . ."
This term implies a map or world, a topos in which one might wander. The
political dimension of life seems that way too: left and right, for example,
amount fundamentally to orientation, to facing. In the case of the political
"sphere," orientation is vis a vis something like history, the ongoing account
of where "we"'re headed. Classically, conventionally, it's progress for
progress's sake on the left, order for order's sake on the right, although
these have gotten truly muddled now. In art, what might correspond to these
specific axes of orientation?
You write of "accommodating, being with, transforming, ignoring (pick your
verb!) any raw material" or "leaving the raw material right there and having
something different from (or perfectly identical to) it in mind." What sort of
thing in mind? To what end(s), specifically?
"It's all something about state of consciousness, not unlike homeopathy,
whereby the greater the distillation, the smaller the actual substance, the
higher the frequency." This is intriguing. I don't believe in homeopathy--
it seems a rather wishful mysticism--except in the sense of vaccine, of "what
don't kill you makes you stronger." But what is "frequency," and why is its
being "higher" a good thing?
Further, is art's progress always toward the more subtle?
I think the generalizable part of art is made of questions, not answers--a
matter of balances, some of which you enunciate well: regarding competence and
discipline, for example. Art plays with these as it works with them, throwing
the very distinction work/play into question. As Kant points out, it throws
the concept of purpose or destination into question. Also delectation. Also
power.
Far from making a short story long, you/we have only grazed the surface.
Oscar Wilde, in the intro to _Dorian Gray_, warns us not to go below that
surface, that terrible danger waits there--but then again, he may have been
just kidding. Heh heh.
--Jim
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 26 May 1995 10:21:02 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Herb Levy <herb@ESKIMO.COM>
Subject: Re: art after art after art
In-Reply-To: <199505261629.AA23961@mail.eskimo.com>
On Fri, 26 May 1995, Ron Silliman wrote:
> >After Duchamp, after Cage, WHO has a very narrow definition of art?
>
>
> Checked out the CAP-L list lately?
>
> There is no avant-garde. Merely folks who got left behind...
>
> (That's a quote but I forget the source.)
>
> Ron Silliman
>
Yes, CAP-L seems only to respond to obituaries or the "major" prizes. But
that seems to be it's function; few folks over there (including those who
are "here" too) didn't rise to the occasion of discussing Michael Palmer
or Ezra Pound when their names recently came up there.
(At virtually the same time there were about 20 posts on <poetics>
nominally about Gerald Stern. But, then, that's something else again.
They just don't have much "fun" over on CAP-L. Who _were_ they discussing
while Martha Stewart was explained to death here.)
But be careful when you start talking about <folks who get left behind>,
'cause a lot of that may just be fashion or name-checking.
Consider this: there are an awful lot of people these days for whom the
term <avant garde> means warmed-over 1960s-70s art with drum machines
and/or body piercing added.
Or did us old farts just get left behind?
Herb
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 26 May 1995 10:22:05 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "M. Magoolaghan" <mmagoola@U.WASHINGTON.EDU>
Subject: Re: art after art after art
In-Reply-To: <9505261628.AA10556@mx5.u.washington.edu>
On Fri, 26 May 1995, Ron Silliman wrote:
> >After Duchamp, after Cage, WHO has a very narrow definition of art?
>
>
> Checked out the CAP-L list lately?
>
Yup--and then quickly checked out. Bracing to recall how tidy-tight the
mainstream/academic's definitions of "great poetry" are. But then they
_have_ to be, or they couldn't reap their "rewards". . .
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Michael Magoolaghan ! untraceable wandering/
University of Washington ! the meaning of knowing
Dept. of English !
Box 354330 ! Susan Howe, "Articulation of
Seattle, WA 98l95-4330 ! Sound Forms in Time"
mmagoola@u.washington.edu !
!
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 26 May 1995 10:28:56 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Carl Lynden Peters <clpeters@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: art after art after art
In-Reply-To: <199505261629.JAA06466@whistler.sfu.ca> from "Ron Silliman" at
May 26, 95 08:50:05 am
hi, ron: i've always lovd that quote. it's edgard varese: "there is no
avant-garde. there are only people who are a little late."
take care,
carl
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 26 May 1995 10:34:23 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Carl Lynden Peters <clpeters@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: yo, ed, boring art past art?
In-Reply-To: <199505260448.VAA05049@whistler.sfu.ca> from "John Byrum" at May
26, 95 00:32:50 am
mallarme said this: "all earthly existence must ultimately be contained
in a book" (from "the book: a spiritual instrument") -- i love that, too:
the bk as spiritual _Instrument_!
carl
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Date: Fri, 26 May 1995 10:46:17 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Carl Lynden Peters <clpeters@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: Art, etc.
In-Reply-To: <199505260637.XAA09462@whistler.sfu.ca> from "Sheila E. Murphy"
at May 25, 95 04:41:01 pm
>
> Art seems principally an orientation capable of accommodating, being with,
> transforming, ignoring (pick your verb!) any raw material.
"The creative act takes on another aspect when the spectator experiences
the phenomenon of transmution; through the change from inert matter into
a work of art, an actual transsubstitution has taken place, and the role
of the spectator is to determine the weight of the work on the esthetic
scale" (Marcel Duchamp: "The Creative Act"). --apologies fr keeping the
duchamp quotes going. he's so important, i think, to our continuing
interests in and theorizing of poststructuralism.
yr title, "Art, etc.," reads to me like a poem! just wanted to add that.
take care,
carl
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 26 May 1995 14:37:45 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Jordan Davis." <Jordan70@AOL.COM>
Subject: where were you born
Poetics (and anybody else)
It seems to me you might have some ideas about some things that have been
bothering me for a while.
What do we mean when we call someone's work sentimental?
What is the relation between poetry and capital?
How do readers of ths list know when a work of theirs is
finished/complete/abandonable?
How do we know when a work is good?
Curious in and from NY
Jordan
PS Happy Memorial Day
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 26 May 1995 12:46:15 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Reginald Johanson <reginalj@SFU.CA>
Subject: yo, ed
flip
flop
and
fly
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 26 May 1995 12:47:20 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Carl Lynden Peters <clpeters@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: Art, etc.
In-Reply-To: <199505261932.MAA29559@whistler.sfu.ca> from "Jim Pangborn" at
May 26, 95 12:22:49 pm
re the definition of art -- that's easy: anything made with the working
unity of hand eye and mind. no mystery there whatsoever. the simplest
thing in the world: art. however you write it or conceive it. writ with a
small a or write large with a big A. low art. high art. mind is everywhere.
carl
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 26 May 1995 13:24:34 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Reginald Johanson <reginalj@SFU.CA>
Subject: yo, ed
so many
renege upon
promises made
under the blue lights
over the curried chicken
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 26 May 1995 15:13:30 -0700
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Andrew Joron <ajoron@EMF.NET>
Subject: ed's new book
It was reported on the list yesterday that Ed Foster's new book
was sighted in the window of Grolier's (alongside Joe Donahue's
new one). I'd like to report that I have received, in my non-
virtual mailbox, and to my great pleasure, a copy of Ed's new
book, _All Acts Are Simply Acts_, published by Rodent Press in
Boulder ($7).
The book itself is a beautiful artifact, with letterpress cover,
perfectbound. Inside, the work, poems and prose poems, span a
range from the caustic to the gnostic. On the surface, the
writings are possessed of meditative calm, while their deep
structure roils & boils with recurring motifs of alchemy & loss.
Such lines resound: (from "Basic Rules")
"It is the sacred work of poetry to let the violence through
. . . The universe is not consistency but radical confusion,
and poetry opens there the crevices through which this can
be seen."
YES! In fact, all of the poems in the book are confirmations of
these "Basic Rules" -- like Benjamin's Angelus Novus, bearing
witness to cataclytsms both historical & personal, they are
renderings of something that's been rended.
The book collects poems from two of Ed's previous chapbooks,
_The Space Between Her Bed and Clock_ and _The Understanding_.
Among the new poems are two co-translations from the Russian
(of Zhdanov). Here's a quote from one of them:
"Dying nations are driven away,
but before they vanish like clouds in a storm,
they tear the leaves from the trees.
All that indifference in your face will pass.
The bird will cry out.
The leaves will be torn away.
Your hand will leave its trace."
There's an almost Gothic sensibility that is active in this work,
an awareness of "dark transcedence" and "intricate release" which
I was not expecting, although maybe it's explained by what Ed calls,
on the final page of the book, his "New England ways" -- the ways
of Poe, repossessed from Baudelaire?
It's a definitive collection, which I hope defeats Spicer's dictum,
quoted in the book: "No one listens to poetry." Or was this supposed
to be poetry's salvation?
-- Andrew Joron
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Date: Fri, 26 May 1995 19:12:57 -0400
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Blair Seagram <blairsea@PANIX.COM>
Subject: Re: Warhol and irony
In-Reply-To: <199505230404.AAA26980@panix4.panix.com>
Gary Sullivan wrote:
Carter Ratcliff's argument for Warhol, if I remember, was that the
pieces were completely empty of meaning, & as such, put the viewer "in
touch" with "the void"--that one state of being that humans never fully
experience while alive. (We get intimations, thru art, contemplation,
near-death experiences, etc.) Ratcliff was, I think, arguing that Warhol's
works were "transcendent" in that respect, because they were fully
expressive of that "otherworld."
But his argument never took into account the specific structures of
Warhol's pieces--which aren't themselves valueless. One can speak of the
physical properties of his Brillo boxes, of their shape. So, Warhol is
postulating (as he's negating) existence, giving a thing precise value (as
he's emptying it of value).
Dear Gary:
What you say about Warhol sounds very good. And I know Carter Ratcliff
was crazy about him. At least he was before he wrote the book. And maybe
he was afterwards as well. I always wondered about that. I didn't read
the book, but I did take a class with Ratcliff at the time he was writing
it.
The more I know about Warhol, the more I like him, on the whole. I think
he did some great stuff. For me, he was able to take certain European
values and push them in an American way, more than any other artist in
America. It's the fact that he made movies, did a magazine, was open to the
society at large. If you like, was more like a Renaissance artist, and when
I say that I should add a court artist. An artist to "high society" which he
so craved to be accepted by. And which he finally was.
There was nothing intellectual about Warhol. The fact that we have all
these theories about him, is irrelevant to the man. What I like about that,
is his irreverence for the angst driven world that went before him. I
once saw a TV program that interviewed many blue chip artists around
Warhol's generation. After listening to Warhol, they all sound so puffed
up and full of it. Warhol was funny and in a way straight forward.
Having said all this, there is something about Warhol that disturbs me.
Something about the way he could treat people around him. I know there are
those who would agree with me and I know there are those who loved him
and believe he didn't have a mean bone in his body. I never knew Warhol,
but I have met his business manager Fred Hughes. And I know Fred truly
loved the man and I know that without Fred, Warhol would never have hit
the big time like he did. Meeting Fred Hughes was like meeting the other
half of Warhol. After that things fit together for me much better. And
what I think about Hughes, is that he may be a tough business man,
but he is also totally open to people and ideas. And in fact was probably far
more generous than Warhol. Warhol could be odd about money, really tight
I understand. Whereas Fred would straighten things out, make them fair.
And I know some people, like Bob Colacello, got hurt by both Hughes and
Warhol and finally quit Interview, where he had been the editor for 13
years, because Andy and Fred wouldn't let him own any part of the
magazine he had busted his ass for.
It's stuff like this which is disturbing. It's the fact that Warhol rose
while so many of those around him burnt out. I think if I had been in
Warhol's little circle I would have been destroyed. I guess Warhol didn't
mean to do it, but he had a way of bringing down those around him. It's
almost eerie. If you were around Warhol and a creative person, you had to
be very, very careful not to be seduced and in so doing become a sacrifice.
I read an interesting article once, that criticized Warhol for remaining
an adolescent. It went on to say that the grid of America, the finely
knit fabric of our society was being destroyed by peolpe like Warhol.
There was no continuum. There were those at the top and those at the
bottom and nothing in between to connect the two. The only way to
identify with the top was through an image. Something like a bottle of
Heinz Ketchup. I may not have that quite right. But the point was, Warhol
did not encourage real communication or depth. It was all a glorious facade,
glamorous and full of starlight and hollywood, although I admit he had
his darker moments.
Enough said
BS
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 26 May 1995 19:37:19 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Blair Seagram <blairsea@PANIX.COM>
Subject: Re: Total Irony
In-Reply-To: <199505230404.AAA26980@panix4.panix.com>
Total irony may not be possible in art because art exists within a frame
of reference that is suppose to be outside the so-called objective world.
We make a space and say what happens here is not the world of everyday
'reality" but may be a reference to it.
Okay, fine. But I'm with Kierkegaard that total irony can exist and did
exist in the figure of Socrates, who died because of it. He could have
saved himself, but chose to go down by irony, leaving us with a type
of irony, we call "Socratic". Another type is "dramatic" irony.
Bye for now!
BS
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 26 May 1995 16:41:50 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Carl Lynden Peters <clpeters@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: where were you born
In-Reply-To: <199505262145.OAA13401@whistler.sfu.ca> from "Jordan Davis." at
May 26, 95 02:37:45 pm
>
> Poetics (and anybody else)
> It seems to me you might have some ideas about some things that have been
> bothering me for a while.
> What do we mean when we call someone's work sentimental?
--i would say we mean it's self indulgent.
> What is the relation between poetry and capital?
--huge question. with i guess zillion answers. what immediately comes to
mind is that there isn't one. if you write poetry that's what you do. if
you want to sell it then you figure out a way of selling it. and if you
cant, then you just get another job. but hopefully you still write poetry
because that's what you're compelled to do.
> How do readers of ths list know when a work of theirs is
> finished/complete/abandonable?
--intuition. you know. you just know.
> How do we know when a work is good?
--intuition. intellect also. but that has its roots in intuition.
> Curious in and from NY
> Jordan
>
> PS Happy Memorial Day
--take care,
carl
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 26 May 1995 19:48:44 -0400
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From: Blair Seagram <blairsea@PANIX.COM>
Subject: Re: What happens next
In-Reply-To: <199505230404.AAA26980@panix4.panix.com>
Dear John:
I've been thinking about your post to me last week and since I am a
little late getting to my messages this week, I am only now coming across
your posts to the list, concerning this concern.
I think you are right. Something must change. More on this later.
blair
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Date: Fri, 26 May 1995 11:10:11 -0700
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Sheila E. Murphy" <semurphy@INDIRECT.COM>
Subject: Re: art after art after art
>hi, ron: i've always lovd that quote. it's edgard varese: "there is no
>avant-garde. there are only people who are a little late."
Carl, You've just brought back the memory of the piece by Varese for flute
alone, entitled "Density 21.5." Lots of nice percussive thumps in there
with keypads. And I love the quote.
Thanks. Sheila
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 26 May 1995 12:19:26 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Sheila E. Murphy" <semurphy@INDIRECT.COM>
Subject: Re: Art, etc.
Jim, Glad to have your interested and interesting response. Point on
orientation as concept is well taken.
>You write of "accommodating, being with, transforming, ignoring (pick your
>verb!) any raw material" or "leaving the raw material right there and having
>something different from (or perfectly identical to) it in mind." What sort of
>thing in mind? To what end(s), specifically?
This has to be unknown a priori, I believe, or the process satirizes itself.
My position (there goes that old geography again!) on the matter relates to
an observation that there's a consciousness that "takes in" or somehow
juxtaposes with another substance (or being, or consciousness). And when
that happens, anything can happen on the continuum that runs from heavy
manipulation at one end to complete absorption at the other (I'm willing to
haggle on the determination of what those ends might be!). So I wouldn't
want to say "to what ends," because that would spoil the surprise, itself a
necessary condition for worthwhile art, as I perceive it. (I am
continuum-happy today. I like the extreme surprise end of the spectrum
running from expectation to surprise.)
> I don't believe in homeopathy--
>it seems a rather wishful mysticism--except in the sense of vaccine, of "what
>don't kill you makes you stronger." But what is "frequency," and why is its
>being "higher" a good thing?
Homeopathy (not to be confused with any variety of less precise alternative
health areas) is actually the antithesis of allopathic medicine, which is
the prevailing "drugs and knives" kind of medical practice that people have
grown accustomed to in our culture. There's a statue to Dr. S. Hannemann in
Washington, D.C., the individual who brought about the practice of
homeopathy. The practice is quite scientific. It lost the war that made the
American Medication Association version of medicine the one that reigns.
I'm not using the word "frequency" haphazardly. Higher frequency is, in
general, a more desirable state on account of its correlative greater
accuracy, clarity. More precise attunement to events, movement, and just
plain stodgy mass.
Not an expert in homeopathy, I'm just an interested consumer and supporter
(No longer do I seem to need it for what it helped me address, a plus for
the practice!) I do NOT profess expertise, but I've read a great deal about
it, examined with fascination the Materia Medica on which it is based.
You may or may not know that in rural parts of Europe, homeopathic doctors
would be able to visit people maybe only once per six months or so. The
remedies (as they are called) would be provided to people who would benefit
from them long-term, on account of the relative power of the substance, as
it would have been "found" as right for the individual, not the condition
(Allopathy addresses a cold as a cold as a cold. Homeopathy would give you
a different remedy from what would be given me for the same condition.)
I don't mean to transfer the topic to homeopathy, as this was simply a
bridge to our REAL focus. But I think it's important to mention some things
about the concept.
Your point that:
>Further, is art's progress always toward the more subtle?
adds to this point, I think.
>I think the generalizable part of art is made of questions, not answers--a
>matter of balances, some of which you enunciate well: regarding competence and
>discipline, for example. Art plays with these as it works with them, throwing
>the very distinction work/play into question. As Kant points out, it throws
>the concept of purpose or destination into question. Also delectation. Also
>power.
Jim, I appreciate your perspective and what you've added to my sketching! I
agree about the questions versus answers. I'll give your eyes and my fingers
a rest just now.
Sheila
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 26 May 1995 23:40:24 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@PANIX.COM>
Subject: Re: where were you born
In-Reply-To: <199505262145.RAA20143@panix4.panix.com>
On Fri, 26 May 1995, Jordan Davis. wrote:
> Poetics (and anybody else)
> It seems to me you might have some ideas about some things that have been
> bothering me for a while.
> What do we mean when we call someone's work sentimental?
That it thrusts backwards with a whisper, that it is a memory of what we
once called truth.
> What is the relation between poetry and capital?
The list itself, professionalization of writing, is a guarantee of poetry
as a discursive formation, power following, capital yes or no depending
on congressional weather.
> How do readers of ths list know when a work of theirs is
> finished/complete/abandonable?
For me when the thought runs out, no room for insertion, when the caress
couples as a closed manifold.
> How do we know when a work is good?
When it is finished and complete.
Alan
Caught down and out NY
> Curious in and from NY
> Jordan
>
> PS Happy Memorial Day
>
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 26 May 1995 22:33:00 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Lindz Williamson <lmichell@UNIXG.UBC.CA>
Subject: Re: Warhol and irony
In-Reply-To: <199505270042.RAA25632@unixg.ubc.ca>
It was all a glorious facade,
glamorous and full of starlight and hollywood, although I admit he had
his darker moments.
Yes Blair, that's it that is the beauty of it all. We bought into it.
He packaged it and made millions and we called it art. If I could do
that I would be so happy.
Lindz
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 27 May 1995 12:49:38 -40962758
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jim Rosenberg <jr@AMANUE.PGH.NET>
Subject: Sentiment
Jordan Davis:
> What do we mean when we call someone's work sentimental?
The fear that the work is too much comprised of the emotional substance of a
single self; the fear the emotional substance of that self is unreliable.
(Please note this is meant as a *personal* definition of what I would mean in
pronouncing *my own* work too sentimental.)
--
Jim Rosenberg http://www.well.com/user/jer/
CIS: 71515,124
WELL: jer
Internet: jr@amanue.pgh.net
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 27 May 1995 11:44:23 CST
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Charles Alexander <mcba@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
Subject: Re: Sentiment
I appreciate Jim Rosenberg's sense that his definition of "too sentimental"
is a personal one related to his own work, but still, when he says that to
say a work is "too sentimental" is to express
"the fear that the work is too much comprised of the emotional substance of
a single self; the fear the emotional substance of that self is unreliable,"
more questions are raised.
How comprised is "too much comprised?"
What is the "emotional substance of a single self?" -- although I like the
conjoining of the words "emotional" and "substance."
How does one determine what is unreliable? Is anything entirely reliable?
charles
charles alexander
chax press
minnesota center for book arts
phone & fax: 612-721-6063
e-mail: mcba@maroon.tc.umn.edu
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 27 May 1995 11:57:09 CST
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Charles Alexander <mcba@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
Subject: Re: Art, etc.
If I might muddle things even more, since Jim P. says I probably agree with
some of the things he and Sheila are saying about art. I'm involved,
because I do various sorts of things I consider art, with his question,
"Is there no one here who thinks poetics is something fundamentally
different from the principles of painting, the principles of music, etc?)"
I've made music and studied it and used it in writing in various ways, I've
made visual art in the form of books and prints, and collaborated with many
far more involved in the visual arts, as well as with dancers and
composers. I think that these various arts are different from one another,
possibly even radically different, but not fundamentally different. I
usually shy away from wholistic/holistic definitions like Carl's that art
is what involves hand, heart, and mind. But I do think all of these arts
involve utterance, silence, space, movement, structure, context, and other
concepts in common, though how these concepts achieve form may be quite
different. I am also certain that there may be more variation within an
artistic practice than among various artistic practices. For example, my
work in language has more to do with Steve Nelson-Raney's work in music
than it has to do with Dana Gioia's work in language.
charles
charles alexander
chax press
minnesota center for book arts
phone & fax: 612-721-6063
e-mail: mcba@maroon.tc.umn.edu
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 27 May 1995 18:17:39 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: John Cayley <cayley@SHADOOF.DEMON.CO.UK>
Subject: real real
A very late addition to this thread. Not really a hoax, but worth checking out:
John Peck's _Poems and Translations of Hi Lo_
...one reviewer referred to 'Hi Lo' as Peck's (I think this was the
neologism:) 'alteronym'. An interesting way to put it.
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 27 May 1995 20:03:00 +0100
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Kevin Killian <dbkk@SIRIUS.COM>
Subject: Re: Sentiment
Jim Rosenberg:
>The fear that the work is too much comprised of the emotional substance of a
>single self; the fear the emotional substance of that self is unreliable.
Jim, Jim, Jim,
Lots of us are afraid of our emotions, but it's beyond me to think of an
"emotional substance" that *is* reliable-or to see that as a problem.
Dodie Bellamy
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 28 May 1995 00:47:56 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: John Byrum <JMBYRUM@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: loss of the name/art & sa...
Dear Charles,
I did not put the following into this discussion:
>" . . . foucault's neat idea to publish books without the author's >name
printed across them. anonymity. that entails a great sacrifice, >but may be
one way of subverting the western box," as John Byrum >says.
someone else did. Can't think now who it was. Perhaps this person will
remind us both (sorry). I did quote from this passage in a previous message
though.
Best,
John
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 28 May 1995 00:46:46 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: John Byrum <JMBYRUM@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: loss of the name/art & sa...
Charles,
Guess I should read all posts before replying. Thanks for cleaning the heads
on this one.
John
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 28 May 1995 01:09:53 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: John Byrum <JMBYRUM@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: art after art after art
Quote from recent message from Ron Silliman:
>>After Duchamp, after Cage, WHO has a very narrow definition of >>art?
>Checked out the CAP-L list lately?
>There is no avant-garde. Merely folks who got left behind...
>(That's a quote but I forget the source.)
>Ron Silliman
Forked over the price of a VCR lately? Images get easier & easier.
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 28 May 1995 09:26:10 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Carl Lynden Peters <clpeters@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: loss of the name/art & sa...
In-Reply-To: <199505280450.VAA13492@whistler.sfu.ca> from "John Byrum" at May
28, 95 00:47:56 am
hi, john: that was me again. it happens a lot. anonymity, i mean. it's an
accomplishment!
take care,
carl
>
> Dear Charles,
>
> I did not put the following into this discussion:
>
> >" . . . foucault's neat idea to publish books without the author's >name
> printed across them. anonymity. that entails a great sacrifice, >but may be
> one way of subverting the western box," as John Byrum >says.
>
> someone else did. Can't think now who it was. Perhaps this person will
> remind us both (sorry). I did quote from this passage in a previous message
> though.
>
> Best,
>
> John
>
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 28 May 1995 09:30:54 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Carl Lynden Peters <clpeters@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: Art, etc.
In-Reply-To: <199505271804.LAA24371@whistler.sfu.ca> from "Charles Alexander"
at May 27, 95 11:57:09 am
...my mind's eye
...my imaginary hand
..."as writing is the thing/ carries the whole soul forward"
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 28 May 1995 09:35:55 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Carl Lynden Peters <clpeters@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: loss of the name/art & sa...
In-Reply-To: <199505281628.JAA24984@whistler.sfu.ca> from "Carl Lynden Peters"
at May 28, 95 09:26:10 am
>
> hi, john: that was me again. it happens a lot. anonymity, i mean. it's an
> accomplishment!
>
> take care,
> carl
> >
>
...rather, an _Art_
c
>
> > Dear Charles,
> >
> > I did not put the following into this discussion:
> >
> > >" . . . foucault's neat idea to publish books without the author's >name
> > printed across them. anonymity. that entails a great sacrifice, >but may be
> > one way of subverting the western box," as John Byrum >says.
> >
> > someone else did. Can't think now who it was. Perhaps this person will
> > remind us both (sorry). I did quote from this passage in a previous message
> > though.
> >
> > Best,
> >
> > John
> >
>
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 28 May 1995 10:27:55 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Carl Lynden Peters <clpeters@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: Art, etc.
In-Reply-To: <199505271804.LAA24371@whistler.sfu.ca> from "Charles Alexander"
at May 27, 95 11:57:09 am
---
"Is there no one here who thinks poetics is something fundamentally
different from the principles of painting, the principles of music, etc?"
---
what follows are some quotations from joseph kosuth's essay "Art After
Philosophy I and II" (first published in _Studio International_, oct. and
Nov.; it's also in Battcock's anthology _Idea Art_ 1973):
-
"Indeed, it is nearly impossible to discuss art in general terms without
talking in tautologies... what art has in common with logic and
mathematics is that it is a tautology; i.e., the 'art idea' (or 'work')
and art are the same thing..."
-
"It is necessary to separate aesthetics from art because aesthetics deals
with opinions on perception of the world in general... Above all things
Clement Greenberg is the critic of taste. Behins every one of his
decisions is an aesthetic judgement, with those judgements reflecting his
taste. And what does his taste reflect? The period he grew up in as a
critic, the period "real" for him: the fifties."
-
"But in the philosophic tabula rasa of art, 'if someone calls it art,' as
Don Judd has said, 'it's art.'"
-
"All art (after Duchamp) is conceptual (in nature) because art only
exists conceptually."
-
"Art "lives" through influencing other art, not by existing as the
physical residue of an artist's ideas."
-
"Works of art are analytic propositions. That is, if viewed within theor
context -- as art -- they provide no information whatsoever about any
matter of fact. A work of art is a tautology in that it is a presentation
of the artist's intention, that is, he is saying that that particular
work of art _is_ art, which means, is a _definition_ of art."
-
"I do not make art," Richard Serra says, "I am engaged in an activity; if
someone wants to call it art, that's his business, but it's not up to me
to decide that. That's all figured out later."
-
"Formalist criticism is no more than an analysis of the physical
attributes of particular objects that happen to exist in a morphological
context... Formalist art is only art by virtue of its resemblence to
earlier works of art. It's a mindless art. Or, as Lucy Lippard so
succinctly described Jules Olitski's paintings: 'they're visual _Muzak_.'"
-
carl
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 29 May 1995 09:36:40 GMT+1200
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Tony Green <t.green@AUCKLAND.AC.NZ>
Organization: The University of Auckland
Subject: Re: really Real Andy
Thinking of Carl Lynden Peters' recent comments, after returning from
a break from the List, especially this thing about Art.
I would like to insert an alternative possibility into the
discussion. Duchamp and I hope Kosuth are covered by it. Theatre and
Music arts come in as performance:-
My hypothesis is that Art is Cunning and it is Wit in Europe before
about 1660:
Beauty confuses everything after about 1660. Aesthetics, then ( not
so long ago and now, can be founded on
assessments of an action on the social in which widespread delusions
are seen to be just that. (The notes on irony are very useful.
Representations of all kinds in text and image and in performance can
be measured by their sometimes enduring interest to those of us who
encounter them who value them when we want to do something
effective ourselves.
Beauty is one among many devices, like realism
is a device, in this account of Art. Contents, Forms, Chance
Procedures are all devices or instruments, not criteria for value.
[A note apropos C.Olson's Post-Modern. Isn't it the case that his
location of the Modern is somewhere around 500 B.C.? (Someone will
remember, at present I can't think of Chapter and Verse. The
discussion is in any case somewhat broader than that regarding modern as
industrial revolution in its steam phase onwards....
The difference between pre- and post- 1660 in this proposal is the
difference between say a painter making devotional images, received
as such before 1660, and the academies of painting then turning same
into museum pieces, as instruction in how to produce fitness and
beauty. So doing, the said images cease to be received as devotional
images and become Art as we are now accustomed to it.
My point is that what we call Art, is something we have detached
from its occasions of social functioning. We have also detached it from its craft/guild
methods of instruction, over a relatively short period of time. And
that it has taken a whole lot of struggle in the 19th and 20th
centuries to maintain whatever is left of our knowledge of how to be
effectively Cunning and Witty.
(I say "we", I wish I could say "they".
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 28 May 1995 15:57:12 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Carl Lynden Peters <clpeters@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: really Real Andy
In-Reply-To: <199505282143.OAA04800@whistler.sfu.ca> from "Tony Green" at May
29, 95 09:36:40 am
ya, _cunningly straight forward... tony: your comments are much
appreciated at this end. they relate to a course i'm taking on 17th c
prose and verse. my main area of focus is herbert's pattern poetry: image
and text/ unity in duality
got a run now, but more on this later
take care,
carl
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 28 May 1995 21:34:33 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Chris Stroffolino <LS0796@ALBNYVMS.BITNET>
Subject: milo deangelis
I have this vague memory (I wasn't really paying attention to this
thread) that a couple of months ago there was some kind of discussion
on Milo DeAngeli (FINITE INTUITION-sun and moon, 1995) on this list--
My vague recollection was that there were alot of people deriding him
as either sexist or elitist or something. Does anybody remember the
nature of that discussion? Or debate? Is anybody who participated in it
still on this list for the summer? I ask, because I'm writing a review
and I am curious what others said....(or even what others may say--
coz I guess it's possible I was imagining the whole thing---)
(i mean "merely imagining")---chris stroffolino
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 29 May 1995 14:43:47 GMT+1200
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Tony Green <t.green@AUCKLAND.AC.NZ>
Organization: The University of Auckland
Subject: Re: art after art after art
dear Herb & other old farts on the list,
isnt it just great to watch the young folks do it all again thinking
it's for the first time...heh heh (wheeze wheeze
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 29 May 1995 14:51:51 GMT+1200
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Tony Green <t.green@AUCKLAND.AC.NZ>
Organization: The University of Auckland
Subject: Re: some Lorca
I. Lightman's translation of May 24 : What's that mean for Lorca:
"sweet fumes of grass" -- fumes? What does the Spanish text have there?
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 29 May 1995 13:06:43 +1000
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Mark Roberts <M.Roberts@UNSW.EDU.AU>
Subject: Re: some Lorca
>I. Lightman's translation of May 24 : What's that mean for Lorca:
>"sweet fumes of grass" -- fumes? What does the Spanish text have there?
Before the car was invented LA's air pollution could have been described as
"sweet fumes of grass" I suppose
MR
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 29 May 1995 15:38:10 GMT+1200
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Tony Green <t.green@AUCKLAND.AC.NZ>
Organization: The University of Auckland
Subject: Re: Actually actual?
A PARADOX?
You only get the real picture when you see it without the
intervention of any thought or imagination or projection
or analysis.
Or
You only get the real picture when you see it with the continuation of
thought and imagination and projection to the point where you see it
as something that has furnished you with the occasion for what you
have just accomplished thereby. What you have accomplished is,
precisely arriving at this conclusion.
The position of subject in relation to the real in one account has to
be blank, in the other full, in the sense of having completed a
process.
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 28 May 1995 22:51:37 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Gary Sullivan <gpsj@PRIMENET.COM>
Subject: Re: milo deangelis
In-Reply-To: <199505290137.SAA10697@mailhost.primenet.com>
Dear Chris:
I think Bernstein posted a brief selection from an essay (included in the
S&M book?) on this list a couple of months ago. "Deriding him"--that
would've been me. Not for being sexist or elitist. For a statement (this
is from memory) like "Perhaps there can be no great poet who has not
produced a serious study of some previous great poet." I took Bernstein's
quoting that particular passage but doing so as part of an ad for _Finite
Intuition_ to be Charles's way of entering into the (then ongoing) debate
about "theory" without soiling his pantlegs.
I don't remember everything I said, but it came out of that quote, which I
thought (& still think) was bullshit. Not for being elitist -- elitism
doesn't bug me. But simply that it isn't true -- assuming everyone
agrees on what a "great" poet is (good luck) -- that to be a "great"
poet, you necessarily produce a serious study of another, previous,
"great" poet. (& this is coming from someone who *writes* about poets I
think are "great," & who plans on writing about more of them.)
Spencer also responded to the quote from the ad; and, again, while I
don't remember the specifics, the argument wasn't either that DeAngeli
was being sexist or elitist. (I don't think it was, anyway.)
*Limited*, maybe. And this criticism, Chris, limited to the contents of
the brief, posted quote. (He may be a perfectly wonderful poet or
essayist for all I know.)
Yours,
Gary
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 28 May 1995 21:27:30 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Carl Lynden Peters <clpeters@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: art after art after art
In-Reply-To: <199505290247.TAA14047@whistler.sfu.ca> from "Tony Green" at May
29, 95 02:43:47 pm
> dear Herb & other old farts on the list,
> isnt it just great to watch the young folks do it all again thinking
> it's for the first time...heh heh (wheeze wheeze
>
...what's old is new again, eh
c
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 28 May 1995 23:34:46 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Gary Sullivan <gpsj@PRIMENET.COM>
Subject: Re: art after art after art
In-Reply-To: <199505290247.TAA18297@mailhost.primenet.com>
On Mon, 29 May 1995, Tony Green wrote:
> dear Herb & other old farts on the list,
> isnt it just great to watch the young folks do it all again thinking
> it's for the first time...heh heh (wheeze wheeze
Dear Buffy, Tad, Biff & other Teen Team-ers,
Isn't it just sooper deelux having for role models a generation who
in all earnestness & with all evidence to the contrary refer to themselves
as "Generation 1," and who are simultaneously dismissive of our own
ludicrous notions? [Reaches for gum, pulls out fresh stick.] Wow! I just
realized! Buffy ... this is *double* bubble! Does that mean, like,
"second generation"? That is so cooool. What? Whaddaya mean "Awreddy Been
Chewed"?
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 29 May 1995 01:42:02 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Chris Stroffolino <LS0796@ALBNYVMS.BITNET>
Subject: Re: Actually actual?
Less McCann & Eddie Harris---"Real compared to what?"
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 29 May 1995 16:44:29 +0900
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: John Geraets <frank@DPC.AICHI-GAKUIN.AC.JP>
Subject: Re: art's after
Two questions intrigue me are, what is art
without quality, and, what is art with
quality removed? This clear?
John Geraets
frank@dpc.aichi-gakuin.ac.jp
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 29 May 1995 05:47:35 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jake Berry <BugsD@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: art's after - John
John,
I know its an old question. But how do we define quality?
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 29 May 1995 22:25:48 GMT+1300
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Wystan Curnow <w.curnow@AUCKLAND.AC.NZ>
Organization: English Dept. - Univ. of Auckland
Subject: Re: art's after
X-To: frank@DPC.AICHI-GAKUIN.AC.JP
Hi John,
The only great teacher I ever had was Morse Peckham. Among his one
liners were: 'the function of criticism was to postpone value judgement'
Does that answer your question, or one of them?
Wystan
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 29 May 1995 10:25:20 -0300
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: english is mandarin --Tom Raworth <NDORWARD@AC.DAL.CA>
Subject: New Web site
I've recently been working at putting some information about the U.K.
small-press poetry scene online--as far as I can tell (from a glance at the
links here at Buffalo) this info is not otherwise available. The URL is:
http://ac.dal.ca/~ndorward/homepage.html
This is still under construction, but does include: info on small press
books, pamphlets and journals; specialist bookdealers and distributors; and
poetry events and readings. There is also a fairly comprehensive
bibliography of J.H. Prynne. More presses, books, bibliographies, etc.
will be added as I pull stuff down from the shelves.
Any comments, questions, additions, corrections, etc. etc. would be much
appreciated. Also, any suggestions about presentation and cosmetics would
be welcome: I'm using a VT100 term., and it looks fine here, but I was
dismayed to see it look rather different & occasionally wrong on MOSAIC--
made a few fixes, but need to know if there's any more trouble.
Nate Dorward (ndorward@ac.dal.ca)
"Clan destiny rules OK" --Alan Halsey.
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 29 May 1995 11:25:31 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jim Pangborn <V072GDXG@UBVMS.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Organization: University at Buffalo
Subject: Re: Art, etc.
26 May 1995 15:49:47 -0400 (EDT) Carl Lynden Peters <clpeters@SFU.CA> writes:
>
>re the definition of art -- that's easy: anything made with the working
>unity of hand eye and mind. no mystery there whatsoever. the simplest
>thing in the world: art. however you write it or conceive it. writ with a
>small a or write large with a big A. low art. high art. mind is everywhere.
>
Ah Carl . . . so you think it's easy . . .
Well, art is no mystery, true. *Definition* is tricky, tho.
Moment to moment, we all (I bet) use the Jesse Helms method for sorting
art from not-art: I know it when I "see" it. ("See" is figurative here, of
course--a metonymy. But signifying *what*, exactly? (No need to answer right
away!)) You're right that art is fundamental, not a thing that needs to be
explained in terms of other, supposedly more basic things.
Terms like "working unity" sound like bedrock common sense, which in itself
is grounds for suspicion, but let's let that pass. Blind people do sometimes
make art, and so do hand-icapped ones. Even the incurably split-minded may,
as far as I know, do this thing too. Therefore the definition you offer is,
if true, practically all metonymic, wherefore the terms "hand," "eye," and
even "mind" all cry out for further definition. That's what all this babble
has been about: perhaps not the simplest thing after all. The *best* one does
in response to this problem is make more art, maybe in the form of poetic
images and aphorisms like the one you have offered above. But those of us who
teach are called upon to explain, to define, as best we can. My students have
been trained to expect facts, sadly--not koans. (Of course I set them koans
too, but I want to let them *feel* they get their moneysworth of facts.)
In order to be useful, a definition has to be reasonably complete. What
about memorability, for example, which finds no place in your formula?
And why imply a focus on the product ("-thing made") when it's the process
that obviously constitutes the heart of the matter? That is, if it has a
heart. . .
With the sound of one eyelid winking,
--Jim
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 29 May 1995 08:57:56 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ryan Knighton <knighton@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: Art, etc.
In-Reply-To: <199505291526.IAA05289@whistler.sfu.ca> from "Jim Pangborn" at
May 29, 95 11:25:31 am
Hmm,
Well, it seems to me, sometimes, like when I don't sleep, like now, for
lack of a better example, that a "definition" of art is better served,
as Creeley writes, when it is as large as its infinitive: i.e. "to
define". There seems to be something silent in the infinitive, or
perhaps imperative, which compels art to to grow, break, contradict
and continue like an Escher (sp?) work (his schtuff is more like
a defintion, defining, if it's a good day). To define is an
animation of what is already alive and hunted. Whew! I think
I can sleep now.
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 29 May 1995 09:45:41 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Carl Lynden Peters <clpeters@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: Art, etc.
In-Reply-To: <199505291526.IAA05289@whistler.sfu.ca> from "Jim Pangborn" at
May 29, 95 11:25:31 am
>
> 26 May 1995 15:49:47 -0400 (EDT) Carl Lynden Peters <clpeters@SFU.CA> writes:
> >
> >re the definition of art -- that's easy: anything made with the working
> >unity of hand eye and mind. no mystery there whatsoever. the simplest
> >thing in the world: art. however you write it or conceive it. writ with a
> >small a or write large with a big A. low art. high art. mind is everywhere.
> >
>
>
> Ah Carl . . . so you think it's easy . . .
>
> Well, art is no mystery, true. *Definition* is tricky, tho.
>
---
jim, hi: --i didnt say that. of course it's a mystery. it's the greatest
mystery in the world. nor did i say it's easy. i said it was simple.
which it is. simple. thoreau: life is fretted away in detail. simplify.
simplify. of course it has to be simple. but not too simple
---
> Moment to moment, we all (I bet) use the Jesse Helms method for sorting
> art from not-art: I know it when I "see" it. ("See" is figurative here, of
> course--a metonymy. But signifying *what*, exactly? (No need to answer right
> away!)) You're right that art is fundamental, not a thing that needs to be
> explained in terms of other, supposedly more basic things.
>
> Terms like "working unity" sound like bedrock common sense, which in itself
> is grounds for suspicion, but let's let that pass. Blind people do sometimes
> make art, and so do hand-icapped ones. Even the incurably split-minded may,
---
--my comment wasnt meant to be read that way. you're over simplifying my
words here, to risk a contradiction. a paradox on the metaphorical plane.
---
> as far as I know, do this thing too. Therefore the definition you offer is,
> if true, practically all metonymic, wherefore the terms "hand," "eye," and
> even "mind" all cry out for further definition. That's what all this babble
> has been about:
---
it has to have wonder for me. else it aint art. simple!
carl
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 29 May 1995 09:52:55 +0100
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Kevin Killian <dbkk@SIRIUS.COM>
Subject: Re: Art, etc.
Ryan Knighton:
>To define is an
>animation of what is already alive and hunted.
It's nice to see somebody making some sense around here, Ryan.
Dodie Bellamy
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 29 May 1995 09:51:58 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Carl Lynden Peters <clpeters@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: art's after
In-Reply-To: <199505290747.AAA23362@whistler.sfu.ca> from "John Geraets" at
May 29, 95 04:44:29 pm
>
> Two questions intrigue me are, what is art
> without quality, and, what is art with
> quality removed? This clear?
>
> John Geraets
> frank@dpc.aichi-gakuin.ac.jp
>
---
--the one is good art, the other bad art, but we've already been there,
altho it's always a constant interest to me.
what abt those artists who/m go out of their way to make bad art! --like
the brilliant advice sol le witt gave to eve hesse: :JUST DO BAD ART! DO
SHIT! JUST DO SHIT! --and the work is so extraordinary...
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Date: Mon, 29 May 1995 15:20:38 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jonathan Brannen <jbrannen@INFOLINK.MORRIS.MN.US>
Subject: Re: The Etymology of Things revisited
from THING IS THE ANAGRAM OF NIGHT by Jonathan Brannen
(forthcoming from Texture Press)
the birds funtion as though reconvened on a prepared piano before
a one-act monologue in the bifocal distance of a mutual landscape
the channel currents are too strong for swimming too unsettled for
water burial the churning body is speaking to fish who fail to grasp
the urgent conceptual underpinnings of crisis intervention
if the order is not executed where is the shadow of its execution
a man can pretend to be unconscious but conscious everry eternity
is a measure of things eternal and every time of things in time it
rests by changing stretched out along the light and shadow some sen-
tences have to be read several times to be understood as sentences
look in the drawer where you think you will find it the drawer is
empty you see a picture of a chair you are then told it represents
a construction the size of a house now you seet it differently you
don't see change of aspect you see change of interpretation no end
but among words
birds prepared distance currents grasp
the executed shadow
stretched light
represents
too unsettled for burial
crisisisexecuted but conscious
every time
of things
sentences as sentences will
find the drawer empty
the size of change
among words
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Date: Mon, 29 May 1995 16:02:24 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jonathan Brannen <jbrannen@INFOLINK.MORRIS.MN.US>
Subject: Re: Actually actual?
"Nothing is real. Everything is permitted."
(quote from the leader of the assassins, can't recall his name
at the moment),
Jonathan Brannen
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Date: Mon, 29 May 1995 16:03:17 CST
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Charles Alexander <mcba@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
Subject: Re: The Etymology of Things revisited
Jonathan Brannen revisits things, and in that revisiting finds a world,
"no end but among words," yet the living of the words/work is among words
and much more.
If this excerpt is telling, as I imagine it is, knowing Jonathan's work as
a fine tuning/turning of the word and senses, I look forward to the Texture
Press book and congratulate Susan Smith Nash at Texture for publishing it.
charles
charles alexander
chax press
minnesota center for book arts
phone & fax: 612-721-6063
e-mail: mcba@maroon.tc.umn.edu
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Date: Mon, 29 May 1995 15:43:47 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Stephen Galen Cope <scope@UCSCB.UCSC.EDU>
Subject: DIU (Long Post Warning)
This message rec'd from one Edgar Allen Poe (or a critic
who goes by that name) w/ the request that I forward it
here. It's rather lengthy, and the author has recommended
that it not be suffered through by those who find it ir-
relevant or otherwise out of place. Delete as you see fit...
5 / 29 / 95
The Raving
Once upon a schoolday dreary one plus one
was written clearly "what's the answer to
this query?"
quoth the student, "I don't know"
Ah, distinctly I remember it was science in
September when the teacher said "Remember?"
quoth the student, "I don't know"
And the weary, sad, uncertain social students
listened while the teacher lectured like a preacher
"Name a demographic feature"
quoth the student, "I don't know"
And in English never flitting always sitting
as she teaches she asked the correct
position of the words in a composition
quoth the student, "I don't know"
-a student
THE ANTI-HEGEMONY PROJECT
A satire, pointedly such, at the present day, and
especially by American writers, is a welcome novelty, indeed. We
have really done very little in the line upon this side of the
Atlantic--nothing, certainly, of importance--Kenneth Koch's
clumsy poems and Mark Twain's after-dinner sketches to the
contrary notwithstanding. Some things we have produced, to be
sure, which were excellent in the way of burlesque, without
intending a syllable that was not utterly solemn and serious.
Poems, plays, fictions, essays, epigrams, and pop songs,
possessed of this unintentional excellence, we would have no
difficulty in designating by the dozen; but, in the matter of
directly-meant and genuine satire, especially in or concerning
verse, it cannot be denied that we are sadly deficient. And yet,
let it be said, while we are not, as a literary people, exactly
equal to "The Dunciad"--while we have no pretensions to echoing a
Popish meter--in short, while we are no satirists ourselves,
there can be no question that we answer sufficiently well as
_subjects_ for satire.
We repeat that we were glad to see this work of Mr.
Funkhouser and company abroad on the Internet; first, because it
was something new under the sun; secondly, because, in many
respects, it was well executed; and, thirdly, because, in the
universal corruption and rigmarole amid which we gasp for breath,
it was really a pleasant thing to get even one accidental whiff
of the unadulterated air of _truth_.
For those unfamiliar with the AHP, a brief history is
sufficient to give the satire's overall dimensions. In February
of 1995, a series of news briefs, modeled in style and format on
those of the "clari.* news hierarchy," began to appear on Charles
Bernstein's "Poetics List," which originates out of SUNY Buffalo.
The contents of these items invariably reflected current goings-
on on the Poetics List, and in the "poetry world" more generally.
Many of these flashes were surreal, but some had an almost
prosaic verisimilitude. In one, the loquacious Tom Mandel became
a bounty hunter; in another; Ken Sherwood and Loss Glazier were
called "Poetics Police"; in another, Language Poetry was blamed
on tainted baby formula; in another, a "Save the NEA" effort was
termed a cross-dressing fashion show. All of these interventions
were identified as products of the "bleari.* nooz hierarchy," and
further attributed to "The Anti-Hegemony Project." With
surprisingly little distortion, the various jargons of politics,
fashion, crime, sports, and economics were used to explain the
ideological workings of the Art of the Muse--and quite
adequately. The point, as soon became clear, was simple: to
show that poetry's sublime particularity is no such thing.
More remarkable than the AHP itself, however, was the
utter silence which greeted these stories' sudden broadcast.
Indeed, until an item appeared transforming Barrett Watten into a
killer whale--adapted from an item on the film "Free Willy"--
there was no public comment of _any_ sort. And even in this
instance, in the chivalrous outcry of James Sherry, response was
focused on the matter of authorship, the AHP's mysterious
provenance having become a focal point for counter-critique. We
say authorship and not source, for while the stories _had_ been
posted from real accounts, the stories themselves were unsigned,
and rumor began to circulate _privately_ that the true author--if
such there was--was keeping himself (or herself) hid. Chris
Funkhouser, from whose account many of the stories had been sent,
quickly came forward to make a public statement, to the effect
that "AHP" was a cooperative project. And soon enough,
discussion died down again--or appeared to. Inevitably, however,
the rumors themselves became subjects for AHP satire. In one, a
tapeworm named "Benji" was said to have burrowed deeply into
Charles Bernstein's personal computer; in another, attributed to
CNN (the Co-Poetry News Network), AHP activity was blamed on a
sentient robot gone mad on too much literature.
For the record, the AHP's interventions originated from
the following persons' accounts, at the following institutions:
Carla Billitteri, Nick Lawrence, and Martin Spinelli (SUNY
Buffalo), Don Byrd, Christopher Funkhouser, and Belle Gironda
(SUNY Albany), Sandy Baldwin (NYU), Stephen Cope (U.C. Santa
Cruz), Greg Keith (unaffiliated), Nada (unaffiliated). A few
other accounts were also utilized, but as of yet we are unable to
identify the owners.
But this was not the end. In a final hurrah, the AHP,
after 12 days of relative silence, produced _en masse_ a blitz of
items of a different sort altogether. These appeared on the last
day of Feb. and first of March, 1995. No longer taking the form
of fake news items, these final messages were modeled on the
adolescent chit-chat of the Internet's many Newsgroups--the
'Net's discourse of choice. Presented as postings to an
imaginary group called "alt.fan.silliman" (the model, we believe,
was alt.fan.madonna), this later set of AHP posts again used real
names, and again satirized the goings-on on Poetics and in the
poetry world. But where the "bleari" stories had adopted a sober
language, and had appeared at discreet intervals, the
"alt.fan.silliman" items flirted with incomprehensibility, and
were so voluminous as to overwhelm altogether the Poetics List's
normal flow of activity. (In a mere two days, there were 24
"alt.fan" messages. By contrast, across a period of 25 days,
about 30 "bleari" messages had been generated.) This last
onslaught, unlike the prior intervention, met with immediate
outcry--an outcry that took two basic forms. _First_, it was
said that the sheer volume transformed the AHP's satire into a
theft of the airwaves; _second_, that the focus on Ron Silliman
amounted to a smear campaign. In response, the AHP's defenders
pointed out that the satires were in many ways a _tribute_ to Mr.
Silliman. (The aggrieved poet himself weighed in with a bemused
admission that he _was_, all in all, tickled by the attention--
indeed, he responded to many of the "alt.fan" posts as if they
had really been the outpourings of fandom.) The second critique
--that the volume was inherently prohibitive of a fair exchange of
ideas--was never directly countered, but in retrospect this point
too seems debatable. To be sure, the swelling of traffic due to
AHP intervention was sizable, but such swelling is itself within
the bounds of predictable occurrence on a List. Moreover, when
such swells draw criticism, it is usually on account of their
_content_--a subject that Poetics still seemed unwilling to
broach. The real source of ire was more probably something else
--something never stated directly. The "bleari" satires, for all
the * * * * * **
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 29 May 1995 16:08:08 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Stephen Galen Cope <scope@UCSCB.UCSC.EDU>
Subject: DIU (continued)
...The "bleari" satires, for all
their vehemence, treated poetry and Poetics as a matter of some
importance. The "alt.fan" items treated these same affairs as
adolescent twaddle. Could it be that the "alt.fan" postings--
unlike the "bleari" items--wounded the vanity of the List as a
whole, and not merely the figures named directly? So much, in
any event, for history.
As a work of the imagination and otherwise, the AHP had
many defects, and these we shall have no scruple in pointing out
--although Mr. Funkhouser is a personal friend of ours, and we are
happy and proud to say so--but it also had many remarkable
merits--merits which it will be quite useless for those aggrieved
by the satire--quite useless for any _clique_, or set of
_cliques_, to attempt to frown down, or to affect not to see, or
to feel, or to understand.
Its prevalent blemishes were referrible chiefly to the
leading sin of _appropriation_. Had the work been composed
professedly in paraphrase of the whole manner of our culture's
self-satirizing discourse, we should have pronounced it the most
ingenious and truthful thing of the kind upon record. So close
is the copy, that it extends to the most trivial points--for
example, the use of fancy, personalized sig. files in Newsgroup
postings. The turns of phraseology, the forms of allusion, the
use of the screen, the general conduct of the satire--everything
--all--are the property of the culture as a whole. We cannot
deny, it is true, that the self-satiric model of the discourse in
question is insusceptible of improvement, and that the
contemporary satirist who deviates therefrom, must necessarily
sacrifice something of merit at the shrine of originality.
Neither can we shut our eyes to the fact, that the appropriation,
in the present case, has conveyed, in full spirit, the subliminal
critical qualities, as well as, in rigid letter, the inadvertent
elegances of the journalistic and chit-chat modes of the day. We
have in the AHP the bold, vigorous, and semi-lucid prose, the
biting sarcasm, the pungent opinionation, the unscrupulous
directness, of the world beyond poetry. Yet it will not do to
forget that Mr. Funkhouser et al. have been _shown how_ to
achieve these virtues. They are thus only entitled to the praise
of close observers, and of thoughtful and skilful copyists. The
analyses are, to be sure, their own. They are neither clari.'s,
nor alt.fan.madonna's--but they are moulded in the identical
mould used by these uncredited agencies of meaning.
Such servility of appropriation has seduced our authors
into errors which their better sense should have avoided. They
sometimes mistake intention; at other times they copy faults,
confounding them with beauties. In the opening salvo, we find
the lines--
The palace dispatched Crown Prince Gizzi and
Crown Princess Willis on a Southern
California tour three days after the quake.
Following oblique criticism, the pair cut
short their trip and returned to Rhode
Island.
The royal attributions are here adopted from a clari.
story about the Imperial family of Japan, frequent subjects of
news stories; but it should have been remembered that _Prince_
and _Princess_ enjoy very different meaning when applied to the
ordinary citizens of a modern democracy, than they do when
applied to the Royal Family of Japan.
We are also sure that the gross obscenity, the slander
--we can use no gentler name--which disgraces the "AHP," cannot be
the result of innate impurity in the mind of the writers. It is
part of the slavish and indiscriminating imitation of a culture
inured to such sins. It has done the AHP an irreperable injury,
both in a moral and intellectual view, without effecting anything
whatever on the score of sarcasm, vigor or wit. "Let what is to
be said, be said plainly." True; but let nothing vulgar be
_ever_ said, or conceived.
In asserting that this satire, even in its mannerism,
has imbued itself with the full spirit of the polish and pungency
of the extra-literary, we have already awarded it high praise.
But there remains to be mentioned the far loftier merit of
speaking fearlessly the truth, at an epoch when truth is out of
fashion, and under circumstances of social position which would
have deterred almost any man in our community from a similar
Quixotism. For the dissemination of the AHP--an undertaking
which brought under review, by name, most of our prominent
_literati_, and treated them, generally, as they deserved (what
treatment could be more bitter?)--for the dissemination of this
attack, Mr. Funkhouser, whose subsistence lies in his pen, has
little to look for--apart from the silent respect of those at
once honest and timid--but the most malignant open or covert
persecution. For this reason, and because it is the truth which
he and his companions have spoken, do we say to him from the
bottom of our hearts, "God speed!"
We repeat it:--_it_ is the truth which he and his
committee have spoken, and who shall contradict us? They have
said unscrupulously what every reasonable person among as has
long known to be "as true as the Pentateuch"--that, as a poetic
people, we are one vast perambulating humbug. They have asserted
that we are _clique_-ridden, and who does not smile at the
obvious truism of that assertion? They maintain that chicanery
is, with us, a far surer road than talent to distinction in
letters. Who gainsays this? The corrupt nature of our ordinary
criticism has become notorious. Its powers have been prostrated
by our own arm. The collusion between government and publisher,
publisher and critic, critic and poet, poet and academy, academy
and government, constitutes at once the most unbreakable ring of
corruption, and the most vicious circle of ideological
contamination, yet to become manifest in our letters. But to
keep our comments focused on a single link in this chain: the
intercourse between publisher and critic, as it now almost
universally stands, is comprised either in the paying and
pocketing of black mail, as the price of a simple forbearance, or
in a direct system of petty and contemptible bribery, properly so
called--a system even more injurious than the former to the true
interests of the public, and more degrading to the buyers and
sellers of good opinion, on account of the more positive
character of the service here rendered for the consideration
received. We laugh at the idea of any denial of our assertions
upon this topic; they are infamously true. In the charge of
general corruption there are undoubtedly many noble exceptions to
be made. There are, indeed, some very few magazine editors, who,
maintaining an entire independence, will receive no books from
publishers at all, or who receive them with perfect
understanding, on the part of these latter, that an unbiased
_critique_ will be given. There are even some editors who refuse
backing from the Federal government (or any other granting
agency) as well. But these cases are insufficient to have much
effect on the popular mistrust: a mistrust heightened by late
exposure of the machinations of _coteries_ in New York, San
Francisco, and now all cyberspace--_coteries_ which, at the
bidding of leading small press publishers, manufacture, as
required from time to time, a pseudo-public opinion by wholesale,
for the benefit of any little hanger on of the party, or well-
"Fed" protector of the firm...
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Date: Mon, 29 May 1995 16:28:05 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Stephen Galen Cope <scope@UCSCB.UCSC.EDU>
Subject: DIU (continued)
...We speak of these things in the bitterness of scorn.
It is unnecessary to cite instances, where one is found in almost
every issue of a book. It is needless to call to mind the
desperate case of Sherry--a case where the pertinacity of
the effort to gull--where the obviousness of the attempt
at forestalling a judgment--where the woefully over-done
be_roof_ment of that man-of-straw, together with the pitiable
platitude of his production, proved a dose somewhat too potent
for even the well-prepared stomach of the mob. We say it is
supererogatory to dwell upon _Our Nuclear Heritage_, or other by-
gone follies, when we have, before our eyes, hourly instances of
the machinations in question. To so great an extent of
methodical assurance has the _system_ of puffery arrived, that
publishers, of late, especially author-publishers, have made no
scruple of keeping on hand an assortment of commendatory notices,
prepared by their men of all work, and of sending these notices
around to the multitudinous potential reviewers within their
influence, tucked within the pages of the book. The grossness of
these base attempts, however, has not escaped indignant rebuke
from the more honorable portions of the community; and we hail
these symptoms of restiveness under the yoke of unprincipled
ignorance and quackery (strong only in combination) as the
harbinger of a better era for the interests of real merit, and of
American poetry as a whole.
It has become, indeed, the plain duty of each
individual connected with our poetry, heartily to give whatever
influence he or she possesses, to the good cause of integrity and
the truth. The results thus attainable will be found worthy his
or her closest attention and best efforts. We shall thus frown
down all conspiracies to foist inanity upon the public
consideration at the obvious expense of every person of talent
who is not a member of a _clique_ in power. We may even arrive,
in time, at that desirable point from which a distinct view of
our persons of letters may be obtained, and their respective
pretensions adjusted, by the standard of a rigorous and self-
sustaining criticism alone. That their several positions are as
yet properly settled; that the positions which a vast number of
them now hold are now maintained by any better tenure than that
of the chicanery upon which we have commented, will be asserted
by none but the ignorant, or the parties who have the best right
to feel an interest in "the way things are." No two matters can
be more radically different than the reputation of some of our
_litterateurs_, as gathered from the mouths of the people, (who
glean it from the paragraphs of magazines, and the screens of
cyberspace,) and the same reputation as deduced from the private
estimate of intelligent and educated persons. We do not advance
this fact as a new discovery. Its truth, on the contrary, is the
subject, and has long been so, of every-day witticism and mirth.
Why not? Surely there can be few things more
ridiculous than the general character and assumptions of the
ordinary critical notices of new books! An editor, sometimes
without the shadow of the commonest attainment---often without
brains, always without time--does not scruple to give the world
to understand that he or she is in the _daily_ habit of
critically reading and deciding upon a flood of publications one
tenth of whose title-pages he or she may possibly have turned
over, three-fourths of whose contents would be Hebrew to his or
her most desperate efforts at comprehension, and whose entire
mass and amount, as might be mathematically demonstrated, would
be sufficient to occupy, in the most cursory perusal, the
attention of some ten or twenty readers for a month! What he or
she wants in plausibility, however, is made up in obsequiousness;
what he or she lacks in time is supplied in temper. Such an
editor is the most easily pleased person in the world. He or she
admires everything, from the fat anthology of Douglas Messerli to
the thinnest chapbook of Jessica Grim. Indeed, such editor's
sole difficulty is in finding tongue to express his or her
delight. Every saddle-stitched pamphlet is a miracle--every
perfect-bound book is an epoch in letters. The editors' phrases,
therefore, get bigger and bigger every day, and if it were not
for talking trash, we might very well accuse these persons of
"doing the nasty."
Yet in the attempt at getting definite information in
regard to any one portion of our poetic literature the merely
general reader, or the foreigner, will turn in vain from print
journals to cyberspace. It is not our intention here to dwell
upon the radical and over-hyped hyper-textual rigmarole of the
'Net. Whatever virtues the 'Net may hold, they are ill-suited to
the propagation or discussion of _poetry_, save in the satiric
mode advanced by the AHP. And the demand that the AHP unmask
itself rings especially hollow, resounding in the vacuous and
unindividuated depths of cyberspace. Alas, the poetic discourse
found on the 'Net is _virtually_ anonymous. Who writes?--who
causes to be written? A volley of names cris-crossing the world,
with no more character than one expects of bums--drunks who seek
out odd-jobs to earn the price of a bottle--_this_, we say, is
the class of person who subscribes to our poetics lists. And who
but a missionary could put up with such company? Who but an ass
will put faith in tirades which _may_ be the result of unwanted
abstinence, or in panegyrics which nine times out of ten may be
laid, directly or indirectly, to the charge of intoxication?
It is in the favor of these saturnine pockets of
electricity that they are charged, now and again, with a good
comment _de omnibus rebus et quibusdam aliis_, which may be
looked into, without decided somnolent consequence, at any period
not immediately subsequent to dinner. But it is useless to
expect literary criticism from a "List" or "Newsgroup," however
useful these may be as sources of information regarding tawdrier
realities. As all readers know, or should know, these venues are
sadly given to naught but verbiage. It is a part of their
nature, a condition of their being, a point of their faith. A
veteran subscriber loves the safety of generalities, and is
therefore rarely particular. "Words, words, words" are the
secret of his or her strength. He or she has one or two original
notions, and is both wary and fussy of giving them out. Such a
person's wit lies with his or her truth, in a well, and there is
always a world of trouble in getting it up. Such person is a
sworn enemy to all things simple and direct. He or she gives no
ear to the advice of the runner--"_Put your toe to the starting
line_," but either jumps at once into the middle of the pack, or
breaks in through the ribbon at the finish, or sidles up to the
race with the gait of a crab. No other mode of approach has
sufficient profundity. When fairly into it, however, such a
_runner_ becomes dazzled with the scintillations of his or her
own wisdom, and is seldom able to see a way out. Tired of
laughing at these antics, or frightened by the spectacle, we shut
off the argument altogether, with the computer. "What song the
Syrens sang," says Sir Thomas Browne, "or what name Achilles
assumed when he hid himself among women, though puzzling
questions, are not beyond _all_ conjecture"--but it would puzzle
Sir Thomas, backed by Achilles and all the Syrens of Heathendom,
to say, in nine cases out of ten, _what is the object_ of a
thorough-going Poetis List posting.
Should the opinions quacked by our poetic geese at
large, supplemented now and then by the bubblings of fish caught
in the 'Net, should such opinions be taken, in their wonderful
aggregate, as an evidence of what American poetry absolutely is,
(and it may be said that, in general, they are really so taken,)
we shall find ourselves the most enviable set of people upon the
face of the earth. Our fine writers are legion. Our very
atmosphere is redolent of genius; and we, the nation, are a huge,
well-contented chameleon, grown pursy by inhaling it. We are
_teretes et rotundi_--enwrapped in excellence. All our poets are
Bards, good as Whitman and not yet gray; all our poetesses are
"latter day Dickinsons;" nor will it do to deny that all our
youthful enthusiasts are wise and talented moderns, of the Known
and Unknown variety, and that every body who takes pen in hand to
attack the canon, our Republic of Letters, is as great as
Caesar, or at least great Caesar's ghost. We are thus in a
glorious condition, and will remain so until forced to disgorge
our ethereal honors. In truth, there is some danger that the
jealousy of the rest of the world will interfere. It cannot long
submit to that outrageous monopoly of all that is worth seeking
"from the other side of the century," which the gentlemen and
ladies of the scene betray such undoubted assurance of
possessing.
But we feel angry with ourselves for the jesting tone
of our observations upon this topic. The prevalence of the
spirit of puffery is a subject far less for merriment than for
disgust. Its truckling, yet dogmatical character--its bold,
unsustained, yet self-sufficient and wholesale laudation--is
becoming, more and more, an insult to the common sense of the
community. Trivial as it essentially is, it has yet been made
the instrument of the grossest abuse in the elevation of
imbecility, to the manifest injury, to the utter ruin, of true
merit. Is there any man or woman of good feeling and of ordinary
understanding--is there one single individual among all our
readers--who does not feel a thrill of bitter indignation, apart
from any sentiment of mirth, as he or she calls to mind instance
after instance of the purest, of the most unadulterated quackery
in letters, which has risen to a high post in the apparent
popular estimation, and which still maintains it, by the sole
means of a blustering arrogance, or of a busy wriggling conceit,
or of the most barefaced plagiarism, or even through the simple
immensity of its fawning--fawning not only unopposed by the
community at large, but absolutely supported in proportion to the
vociferous clamor with which it is made--in exact accordance with
its utter baselessness and untenability? We should have no
trouble in pointing out, today, some twenty or thirty so-called
literary personages, who, if not idiots, as we half think them,
or if not hardened to all sense of shame by a long course of
disingenuousness, will now blush, in the perusal of these words,
through conspicuousness of the shadowy nature of that purchased
pedestal upon which they stand--will now tremble in thinking of
the feebleness of the breath which will be adequate to the
blowing it from beneath their feet. With the help of a hearty
good will, even _we_ may yet tumble them down...
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 29 May 1995 16:36:27 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Stephen Galen Cope <scope@UCSCB.UCSC.EDU>
Subject: DIU (continued)
...So firm, through a long endurance, has been the hold
taken upon the popular mind (at least so far as we may consider
the popular mind reflected in ephemeral letters) by the laudatory
system which we have deprecated, that what is, in its own
essence, a vice, has become endowed with the appearance, and met
with the reception of a virtue. So continuously have we puffed,
that we have at length come to think puffing the duty, and plain
speaking the dereliction. What we began in gross error, we
persist in through habit. Having adopted, in the earlier days of
our literature, the untenable idea that this literature, as a
whole, could be advanced by an indiscriminate approbation
bestowed on its every effort--having adopted this idea, we say,
without attention to the obvious fact that praise of all was
bitter although negative censure to the few alone deserving, and
that the only result of the system, in the fostering way, would
be the fostering of folly--we now continue our vile practices
through the supineness of custom, even while, in our national
self-conceit, we repudiate that necessity for patronage and
protection in which originated our conduct. In a word, the
community of poets has not been ashamed to make a head against
the very few bold attempts at independence which have, from time
to time, been made in the face of the reigning order of things.
And if, in one, or perhaps two, insulated cases, the spirit of
severe truth, sustained by an unconquerable will, was not to be
so put down, then, forthwith, were private chicaneries set in
motion; then was had resort, on the part of those who considered
themselves injured by the severity of criticism, (and who were
so, if the just contempt of every ingenuous man and woman is
injury,) resort to arts of the most virulent indignity, to
untraceable slanders, to ruthless assassinations in the dark. We
say these things were done, while the community in general looked
on, and, with a full understanding of the wrong perpetrated,
spoke not against the wrong. The idea has absolutely gone
abroad--had grown up little by little into toleration--that
attacks however just, upon a literary reputation however
obtained, however untenable, were well retaliated by the basest
and most unfounded traduction of personal fame. But is this an
age--is this a day--in which it can be necessary to advert to
such considerations as that the words of authors are the property
of the public, and that the publication of these words is the
throwing down the gauntlet to the reviewer--to the reviewer whose
duty is the plainest; the duty not even of approbation, or of
censure, or of silence, at his or her own will, but at the sway
of those sentiments and of those opinions which are derived from
the authors themselves, through the medium of their written and
published work? True criticism is the reflection of the thing
criticized upon the spirit of the critic.
But _a nos moutons_--to the "AHP." This satire has
many faults besides those upon which we have commented. The
title, for example, is not sufficiently distinctive, although
otherwise good. It does not confine the attack to an _English-
language_ hegemony, while the work does. Also, the individual
portions of the satire are strung together too much at random--a
natural sequence is not always preserved--so that although the
lights of the picture are often forcible, the whole has what, in
artistical parlance, is termed an accidental and spotty
appearance. In truth, the parts of the satire have evidently
been composed each by each, as separate themes, and afterwords
fitted into the general project, in the best manner possible.
But a more reprehensible sin than any or than all of
these is yet to be mentioned--the sin of indiscriminate censure.
Even here Mr. Funkhouser and friends have erred through
unthinking appropriation. They have held in view the sweeping
denunciations of the news media, and of the juvenile spewings of
the Internet. No one in his or her senses can deny the justice
of the general charges of corruption in regard to which we have
just spoken from the text of our authors. But are there _no_
exceptions? We should indeed blush if there were not. And is
there _no_ hope? Time will show. We cannot do everything in a
day--_We've only just begun_, as Karen Carpenter tells us, _to
live_. Again, it cannot be gainsaid that the greater number of
those who hold high places in our poetical literature are
absolute nincompoops--fellows and ladies alike innocent of reason
and of rhyme. But neither are we _all_ brainless, nor is Yakub
himself so white as he is painted. The AHP must read a little in
Jabes' _Book of Margins_--for there is yet _some_ difference
between "_carte blanche and white page_." It will not do in a
civilized land to run a-muck like a Zapatista. Mr. Evans and
Miss Moxley _have_ done some good in the world. Mr. Watten isn't
_all_ killer instinct. Mr. Silliman isn't _quite_ an ass. Mr.
Mandel and Mr. Sherry _will_ babble inanely, but perhaps they
cannot help it, (for we have heard of such other things,) and
then it must not be denied that _at an uncertain hour, / That
agony return: / And till the ghastly tale is told, / The heart
within them burns_.
The fact is that our authors, in the rank exuberance of
their zeal, seemed to think as little of discrimination as Jimmy
Swaggart did of the Bible. Poetical "things in general" are the
windmills at which they spurred their rozinante. They as often
tilted at what was true as at what was false; and thus their
lines were like funhouse mirrors, which represent the fairest
images as deformed. But the talent, the fearlessness, and
especially the _design_ of the project, will suffice to save it
from that dreadful damnation of "silent contempt" to which
readers throughout the country, if we are not very much mistaken,
will endeavor, one and all, to consign it.
-Edgar Allen Poe
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 29 May 1995 19:54:58 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: maria damon <damon001@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
Subject: Re: Actually actual?
In message <2fca3606427c002@maroon.tc.umn.edu> UB Poetics discussion group
writes:
> "Nothing is real. Everything is permitted."
>
>
> (quote from the leader of the assassins, can't recall his name
> at the moment)
hassan i sabba,
>
> Jonathan Brannen
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 30 May 1995 15:29:09 +0900
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: John Geraets <frank@DPC.AICHI-GAKUIN.AC.JP>
Subject: Re: art's after
Dear Jake, Carl, Wystan
Thanks for the comments.
Maybe like you're suggesting Wystan, I too feel the
double cut of quality frees us from the labour
of definition (judgement). Quality here suggests
poetry is that which constantly is wishing to
abnegate itself. I guess, then, poetry doesn't even
like itself. It's what wants to rid itself of itself.
Now I'm really confused.
John
frank@dpc.aichi-gakuin.ac.jp
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 30 May 1995 03:10:18 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Gary Sullivan <gpsj@PRIMENET.COM>
Subject: AUNTIE HEGEMONY & UNCLE POE
In-Reply-To: <199505292247.PAA18294@mailhost.primenet.com>
Hey, kids:
This chapter rec'd from one W.R. Titterton (or a biographer who goes by
that name) w/ the request that I forward it here, and that it be
re-forwarded to members of the AHP for fact-checking, and then on to the
critic Edgar Allan Poe for a final proof. It's rather lengthy, but the
author claims to have suffered greatly through it, & now asks the same of
you.
AUNTIE HEGEMONY & UNCLE POE
by W.R. Titterton
[This is the first _portrait_ of the great Auntie Hegemony and her
side-kick, Uncle Poe. The author knew neither personally, but watched them
both at work and play.]
[In these sentences Auntie and Uncle live again, in all their
towering humanity.]
This is the portrait of wise children. Matilda "Auntie" Hegemony was
none of your Peter Pans who won't grow up and face their responsibilities.
She was always aware of her responsibilities, and eager to face them; and
she was always a child.
In a way, Auntie did not grow at all--except in physical bulk.
Writing of poetry world characters, she says that they don't progress,
they don't change, they are _there_, as if eternal. If you turned a corner
and met Mr. Watten, you would know just what he would look like and very
much what he would say. So it was with Auntie. When I opened my e-mail, I
was always expecting to see her striding towards me, a winged vision of
jovial Victory; the big proud humble face, under the huge soft hat,
puckered into a thoughtful smile behind the negligent pince-nez; a
cigarillo sprouting from the corner of her mouth; well-crafted satires,
entertainments and insults bulging from the pockets under the flapping
coat.
I hope you know what I mean by a child. I hope that you remember how
Our Lord said: "A little child shall lead us." This big little child led
me for many months, and she leads me now.
I have said that Auntie Hegemony did not change. She did not. She
changed her opinions, but not her beliefs. Well, let us say rather that,
though she was a grown woman before she said "_Credo in unum Deum_," as a
very small child she knew God.
Even so, she -- and her companion, the equally God-fearing Edgar
"Uncle" Poe -- were creatures of paradox; while their eyes were on Heaven,
they plunged their very souls into Hell. Neither Virgil nor Dante
accompanied them; they'd read neither thoroughly outside of school, and
were, suitably, too embarrassed to seek _practical_ guidance from either
on such short notice. Once plunged into Hell, they shrieked and gasped at
Simoniacs, Barrators, Hypocrites, Panders and Seducers, spat epithets at
the Lustful and Gluttonous, feinted in terror on Level Five at their own
Wrathful visages mirrored in Styx just below, but all of this willy nilly,
as in _reaction_, or perverse Pleasure, giving no one, themselves
included, any True or Complete Picture or Map of the Underworld. And
lacking that, they lacked, simply put, The Way Out.
Anyhow, it was meat and drink to me to find a couple who loved
discourse, but hated this discourse; who were ready to die for their
calling, but not to lie for it, and who were of such blind passion that
they cursed the denizens of Hell, forgetting where they had doomed
themselves to spend their days and nights. I hadn't this particular "food
for thought" since Laura (Riding) Jackson passed through, years ago. While
Jackson's meals were comparatively bland, they occasionally nourished;
Auntie's spicy noodles passed quickly through the system, the tea that
accompanied even quicker; and what Uncle served up on his unannounced
Memorial Day Picnic was leftovers, the spinach wilted, the milk soured.
And so, as I say, there are Auntie and Uncle's lively jabs in
fragments. That at present is all we can see; if they are either still
among us, they've made no apparent attempts to strike up conversations or
friendships with anyone but each other, though both vocally detest
_cliques_. Uncle's final statement to the denizens of Hell was an
unusually somber _portrait_ of his own of Auntie Hegemony, casting his
companion as America's Only Satirist, compared to whom he finds Twain
scribbling, Koch stumbling, and is apparently ignorant of (or presumes
irrelevant) the likes of Acker, Ackerman, Ahern, Anderson, Barthelme,
Bergman, Berrigan, Black Bart, Bruce, etc., indeed a list thrice
twenty-six and then some of merely Recent Practitioners of the Art. But
then when one travels in such small cliques, one can imagine one's clever
friends to have invented the Wheel.
As a matter of convenience, Uncle casts the Other denizens of Hell as
having been _completely_ silent upon Auntie's arrival -- save one outburst
-- forgetting that comments about specific newsjabs were indeed made, that
at least one (should memory serve me) offered "Auntie was actually too
kind [to me]." But this was from one (then) recently fallen, and not a
terribly important soul at that. Neither does Uncle seem to have spent
much contemplation on the _nature_ of Auntie's newsjabs, that they were
not _presented_ as opening lines of a possible dialogue, but ends in and
of themselves. Uncle seems to forget, again as a matter of convenience
(perhaps in a weak effort to establish the newsjabs as vessels of
Irrefutable Truth, or to cast Auntie as an Outsider, Other, her white
sleeves unsoiled) that numerous posts of the same _content_ (Hegemony,
Blind Fashion, and the like), those posted _as dialogue_ and involving
_actual people & events_, *were* commented on, some at great length, and
with a good many denizens of Hell offering a variety of Opinion,
Speculation, Rebuttal and Expansion upon them. That one finds it more
rewarding to reply to Persons than to Bumperstickers, Banners, or News
Bulletins, should surprise no one. That it surprised Uncle suggests that
he, after a short time in Hell, grew as Vain and Uncontemplative as anyone
in Dis. "Not everyone gets corrupted," as Muriel Hemingway tells Woody
Allen (a Satirist, like his precursor Benchley, unknown or not considered
as Important as Auntie to Uncle), but we are all of us human, and have
occasion to lapse.
But, now I come near to the time when I must bid good-bye to my
Auntie and my Uncle. I, who am a dry-eyed man, feel my eyes fill with
tears for the first time in fifteen years. Auntie, Uncle, I have done this
little _portrait_ in a rush white hot. Does it content you? Please God
that it does not. As Karen Carpenter once sang ... ah, then, but you do
know the words.
--W.R. Titterton
PS: Edgar, if you're reading this, your statement suggesting that
criticism ought to *be* criticism (in the largest sense of that word),
you'll find echoed in the summer issue of _Exile_ (a satire and review
journal you've probably never seen) in an essay on just that topic by Gerald
Burns. Contact Mr. Sullivan by e-mail should you ever care to read it.
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 30 May 1995 08:36:19 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Chris Stroffolino <LS0796@ALBNYVMS.BITNET>
Subject: Re: milo deangelis
Thanks gary for filling me in on the debate---
I think the quote you're referring to is
"The Greek theoria signifies "reflection" but also "solemn embassy,"
"spectacle." And perhaps there can be no great poet who has not had
theoretical insights into other great poets...."
The way i see it (aside from the adjective "great'--maybe it should
be GROOVY--) is very qualified and not prescriptive but an attempt
to widen the range of the meaning of the word "theory" to include
what perhaps is too derided as "loose talk," and thought "as such."
Certainly Auntie Hegemony would be theory then---and not just because
of certain overstatements---for instance one (in an article on
Mandel that came out last week) that claims just the opposite of
DeAngeli--that no true poet should or would (though could) squander
his life away on textual exegesis...etc...
Thanks, gary, for filling me in. Chris
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 30 May 1995 09:09:41 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Edward Foster <EFOSTER@VAXC.STEVENS-TECH.EDU>
Subject: Re: Art, etc.
"mind is everywhere"? uh, carl, sounds like _science and health with key to the scriptures_.
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 30 May 1995 09:01:56 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Edward Foster <EFOSTER@VAXC.STEVENS-TECH.EDU>
Subject: Re: Yo, Ed
carl, your lynes
are petering out
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 30 May 1995 09:23:25 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Edward Foster <EFOSTER@VAXC.STEVENS-TECH.EDU>
Subject: Re: Art, etc.
to pick up, sheila, on homeopathy, not strictly in terms of your exchange but generally in terms of literature; it's rather fascinating and deeply interworked w
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 30 May 1995 09:28:18 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Edward Foster <EFOSTER@VAXC.STEVENS-TECH.EDU>
Subject: Re: Art, etc.
re: homeopathy as poetics: not writing as editing, avoidance, which is as the academic has it. rather to introduce exactly what poisons. poetry that is essentially editing (i.e., propositional) is poetry that denies transcendence. so we know.
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 30 May 1995 09:31:16 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Edward Foster <EFOSTER@VAXC.STEVENS-TECH.EDU>
Subject: Re: Sentiment
What do we mean when we call someone's work sentimental? that it refers to that which it does not/cannot contain. i.e., it lies.
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 30 May 1995 09:52:30 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Edward Foster <EFOSTER@VAXC.STEVENS-TECH.EDU>
Subject: Re: Art, etc.
to pick up, sheila, on homeopathy, not strictly in terms of you exchange but generally in terms of literature; it's rather fascinating and deeply interworked with 19th century aesthetics (cf. hawthorne). ted enslin knows a lot about this.
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 30 May 1995 10:52:50 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jim Pangborn <V072GDXG@UBVMS.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Organization: University at Buffalo
Subject: Re: Art, etc.
Carl: (re: "Simplify! Simplify!")
Thoreau referred specifically to material culture--trains, telegraphs,
all the little boxes into which we civilizands stow pieces of our lives--not
to his writing, which he viewed as transcendent thereof. You think _Walden_
is simple? Guess again.
I don't believe I distorted your words at all, the way I read them back
to you. Of course I knew it wasn't what you *thought* you were saying. You
thought to contradict my assertion (not "mine" in the sense of original with
me) that art's definition is constitutionally elusive, but instead you
illustrated it very well, thank-you.
When you amend yourself to say "it has to have wonder for me . . .
else it aint art" I simply couldn't agree more. That was my main point when
this started. Wonder as a defining characteristic, however, has no explicit
connection to your previous wording, and it is but one defining marker, not, as
far as we can tell, a complete or exhaustive definition. And what in the
world (or out of it, where so many imagine they can place themselves) leads
you to characterize wonder as simple? Have a care, man.
If I might intervene a bit further, I take it that what you "meant" was
something more like, "defining art is no problem for me because it's not my
job--I can recognize art, make art, and that's enough." And that *is* enough,
provided it really isn't your job to try, knowing the historical difficulty,
to define it anyway. Ignoring the historical difficulty won't make it go away.
With trepidation, because Silicon Diogenes is abroad in the land,
--Jim
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 30 May 1995 10:22:26 CST6CDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Hank Lazer <HLAZER@AS.UA.EDU>
Organization: Arts and Sciences Dean's Office
Subject: Re: art's after
John Geraets--
not rid itself [poetry] of itself
but call itself into question
ask that it change
that its own disruption
is part of its joy
Hank Lazer
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 30 May 1995 12:10:56 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Marisa A Januzzi <jma5@COLUMBIA.EDU>
Subject: Re: where were you born
In-Reply-To: <199505270341.AA09278@mailhub.cc.columbia.edu>
Ed Foster's book *is* amazing and really engrossing, the poems tell
intricate stories and ask to be read and reread and rereread (and I'm
just at the reread stage, so I can't say anything more articulate right
now other than to thank the poet for doing this work on the page). The
printed cover is really strinkin; whoever did it must have sacrificed the
type to get so deep an impression, and I keep running my fingertips over
it and wondering if that's an intended part of the text itself, which
seems so much about pressure and touch and weight of past.
which brings me to sentiment: and Alan Sondheim's answer to Jordan:
"thrusts backwards with a whisper, that it is a memory of what we once
called truth"
It's a marked answer-- the "thrusts/backwards/truth" combo, I mean.
Isn't this more like the meaning of "nostalgia"? (And also, doesn't it
reinscribe the gender binary which usually comes into play, if only as an
initial point of reference, whenever 'nostalgia' is invoked?)
There has to be a way to hold onto 'nostalgia' without being
self-indulgent; in fact the nostalgic elements in a writer like...uh,
Joyce...are what first made the self-indulgent (as in, high-wire wonderful)
parts accessible for me.
But now I have a question-- a former student asked if it were possible
for a writer to"write beautifully about absolutely nothing." I told him to try
it... all the writers I could think of were writing "about" "nothing" qua
something... language, absence, estrangement, silence. Can anyone think
of a better response to this kid, I mean, beyond "try it"? "The bride is
never bare" [more nostalgia]?!
so
much
de(e)pending
Marisa--
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 30 May 1995 11:07:58 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Carl Lynden Peters <clpeters@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: Yo, Ed
In-Reply-To: <199505301321.GAA25666@whistler.sfu.ca> from "Edward Foster" at
May 30, 95 09:01:56 am
ya, back at ya
!
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 30 May 1995 11:11:58 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Carl Lynden Peters <clpeters@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: art's after
In-Reply-To: <199505300633.XAA14493@whistler.sfu.ca> from "John Geraets" at
May 30, 95 03:29:09 pm
john, hi:
i always thot bp's comments on the death of the poem were profoundly
insightful, consistent thruout his writing and a theme which might, on an
other level, tell us something abt _guilt_, --something i hope to
research further within the context of various on-going projects
take care,
carl
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 30 May 1995 11:24:00 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Carl Lynden Peters <clpeters@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: art, etc...
hi, jim:
i can't recall for sure but i'm certain i didn't say that you "distorted"
my words. i said that you over-simplified them. i can say that without
the slightest fear of contradiction.
i think it was yeats who said: guessing is always more fun than knowing.
wonder, again. there it is
take care,
carl
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 30 May 1995 12:49:37 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Federation Sand <cyanosis@SLIP.NET>
Subject: Cyanosis Publication Party in SF
Hi everyone,
Just wanted to pass along an open invitation to the 2nd Cyanosis
publication party. It's Friday, June 2nd at The Ghia Gallery 2648 Third St
SF CA 95448 282-2832 info: 566-3661 (415)
You're all invited. There should be some extremely unusual readings and
very unusual dance. $5.50 at the door 7:30 pm till ??
If you're in the area, don't miss it!
Darin
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 30 May 1995 14:27:13 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: George Bowering <bowering@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: some Lorca
In-Reply-To: <199505290303.UAA14580@whistler.sfu.ca> from "Mark Roberts" at
May 29, 95 01:06:43 pm
Well, Garcia Lorca (to give him his Spanish surname) was a fan of
Whitman, and perhaps a secret toker. Thus "fumes of grass"
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 30 May 1995 14:33:02 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: George Bowering <bowering@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: Sentiment
In-Reply-To: <199505271723.KAA23053@whistler.sfu.ca> from "Jim Rosenberg" at
May 27, 95 12:49:38 pm
Puzzled by Jim Rosenberg's message of May 27 (I have been away for an
eye injury), in which he mentioned the work being "comprised of"
emotional something. I dont understand trhe usage. How can something
be "comprised of" something? Souldnt it be "comprised by" something?
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 31 May 1995 11:12:49 GMT+1200
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Tony Green <t.green@AUCKLAND.AC.NZ>
Organization: The University of Auckland
Subject: Re: art's after
Quality, John, in Poetry, is its entrance qualification for
somebody's version of Literature.
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 31 May 1995 13:45:06 GMT+1200
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Tony Green <t.green@AUCKLAND.AC.NZ>
Organization: The University of Auckland
Subject: Re: Actually actual?
Maria and Jonathan: Hassan is Abba.
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 31 May 1995 13:58:04 GMT+1200
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Tony Green <t.green@AUCKLAND.AC.NZ>
Organization: The University of Auckland
Subject: Re: really Real
More smileys please, Steve Carll
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 30 May 1995 21:45:23 -40962758
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jim Rosenberg <jr@AMANUE.PGH.NET>
Subject: Re: Sentiment
Me:
> Jordan Davis:
> > What do we mean when we call someone's work sentimental?
>
> The fear that the work is too much comprised of the emotional substance of a
> single self; the fear the emotional substance of that self is unreliable.
Dodie Bellamy:
> Lots of us are afraid of our emotions, but it's beyond me to think of an
> "emotional substance" that *is* reliable-or to see that as a problem.
The central issue is the singularity of self. We all do what we can to combat
this problem; there are as many "solutions" as there are poets. For some
it may mean a formal meditation program to transcend the physical limits of
the self; for others it may mean process work or precompositional devices; for
others using found material, or just plain spending a lot of time listening
to found speech -- one could go on endlessly.
While I don't want to speak for Jackson Mac Low, when he told me that he both
started and stopped using chance operations because of a concern with
sentimentality, I believe he was trying to tell me that in the constant battle
against singularity of self there is no free lunch: One cannot presume to
have simply solved this problem once and for all time by a single act of
invention.
I agree with you, Dodie, emotional substance -- per se -- is not a problem;
what is a problem is where you see that emotional substance sticking out like
bones from under the skin through gaps in what you had thought were reasonable
efforts to work against the singularity of self.
--
Jim Rosenberg http://www.well.com/user/jer/
CIS: 71515,124
WELL: jer
Internet: jr@amanue.pgh.net
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 30 May 1995 20:14:10 +0100
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Kevin Killian <dbkk@SIRIUS.COM>
Subject: Re: Sentiment
> Jim Rosenberg:
>I agree with you, Dodie, emotional substance -- per se -- is not a problem;
>what is a problem is where you see that emotional substance sticking out like
>bones from under the skin through gaps in what you had thought were reasonable
>efforts to work against the singularity of self.
I agree with what you're saying about the pitfalls of the singular self,
but this violent eruption that you're describing here sounds wonderful to
me, Jim.
Lover of the abject,
Dodie Bellamy
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 31 May 1995 13:15:58 +1000
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Mark Roberts <M.Roberts@UNSW.EDU.AU>
Subject: AWOL: fourW magazine
********************************************************************************
AUSTRALIAN WRITING ONLINE is a small press distribution service and
writers' resource service designed to help Australian writers, magazines,
journals and publishers to reach a wider audience through the internet. As
a first step we will be posting information and subscription details for a
number of magazines and publishers to a number of discussion groups and
lists. We hope to build up
a large emailing list which includes as many libraries as possible. If you
know of a list or discussion group which you think might be worthwhile
posting to or, if you would like to receive future postings, please contact
AWOL directly on M.Roberts@unsw.edu.au.
AWOL also posts a monthly Happenings list. This is a 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.
Please note that M.Roberts@unsw.edu.au is a temporary address until we set
up our own address sometime this year
********************************************************************************
"fourW" .
"fourW" is a small literary magazine edited by David Gilbey from the School
of Humanities and Social Science, Charles Stuart University, Wagga Wagga.
The title apostrophises Wagga Wagga Writers Writers and while there's a
particular desire to publish new work from the Riverina, like all small
magazines we consider and publish work from all over Australia (and overseas)
The most recent issue Number 5 contains new work by Dorothy Porter, Kate
Llewellyn, Tim Thorne, Ken Bolton, Jeff Guess, Steve Evans, Adrian
Caesar and many more - runs to more than 150 pages. We received
about 400 submissions and managed to publish about 100. We don't
pay (can't - no funding) but aim to produce a fairly classy looking
mag. Deadline for this next issue - due out in the Spring - is 30
June.
Usually we like to receive MSS typed, double-spaced etc but you can
send it email if you like.
order form cut here
*********************************************************************
"fourW"
"fourW" is available for $9.00 plus postage (email
DGILBEY@whum.riv.csu.edu.au to determine postage)
Name ......................................................................
Address ...................................................................
Mail this form, together with your payment to
David Gilbey, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Charles Sturt
University, Waggga Wagga NSW, Australia 2678.
Further information is available from DGILBEY@whum.riv.csu.edu.au.
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 30 May 1995 23:18:35 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: FUNKHOUSER CHRISTOPH <cf2785@CSC.ALBANY.EDU>
Subject: satan
To the Owner of the Poetics List.
DEAR SIR AND KINSMAN.--Let us have done with this
frivolous talk. The Anti-Hegemony Project accepts contributions
from me every year: then why shouldn't it from Mr. Poe? In all
the ages, three-fourths of the practitioners of the great art of
parody have been regular devils, as my archives will show: then
what becomes of the sting when that term is applied to the gifted
Mr. Poe? The AHP's wares are accumulated mainly from the
graveyards. Revisitation of an old crime and deliberate
perpetration of a new one; for deceased's contribution is a
slander of his heirs. Shall the AHP decline bequests because
they stand for these offences every time and generally for both?
Allow me to continue. The charge most persistently and
resentfully and remorselessly dwelt upon is, that Mr. Poe's
contributions are incurably tainted by bad faith--bad faith
proved against him most recently by Mr. W.R. Titterton. _It
makes us smile_--down in my place! Because there isn't a writer
in cyberspace who doesn't exhibit bad faith in the daily disparity
between public and private opinion. They are all caked with
bad faith, many layers thick. Iron clad, so to speak. If there
is one that isn't, I desire to acquire him for my museum, and
will pay Dinosaur rates. Will you say it isn't infraction of
ethics, but only a kindly evasion? Comfort yourselves with that
nice distinction if you like--_for the present_. But by and by,
when you arrive, I will show you something interesting: a whole
hell-full of evaders!
To return to my muttons. I wish you to remember that
my bad-faith writers are contributing to the Anti-Hegemony
Project with frequency: it is writing filched from the sworn-off
public honesty; therefore it is the wages of sin; therefore it is
my writing; therefore it is _I_ that contribute it; and, finally,
it is therefore as I have said: since the AHP daily acccepts
contributions from me, why should it decline them from Mr. Poe--or
Mr. Twain--who are each as good as I am, let Mr. Titterton say
what he will?
SATAN.
_May 30, 1995_
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 30 May 1995 22:21:27 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: maria damon <damon001@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
Subject: Re: Sentiment
> what is a problem is where you see that emotional substance sticking out like
> bones from under the skin through gaps in what you had thought were
> reasonable efforts to work against the singularity of self.
>
> --
> Jim Rosenberg http://www.well.com/user/jer/
> CIS: 71515,124
> WELL: jer
> Internet: jr@amanue.pgh.net
aren't bones showing thru under skin quite beautiful horrifyingly
un"sentimental"? gaps are where beauty is, not in seamless prettifying...
md--it's the "flaws" that make my heart beat.
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 30 May 1995 22:23:56 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: maria damon <damon001@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
Subject: Re: Actually actual?
In message <2fcbd4af7295002@maroon.tc.umn.edu> UB Poetics discussion group
writes:
> Maria and Jonathan: Hassan is Abba.
imagine: i can't read janine pommy-vega's Poems to Fernando anymore without that
dumb abba song cantering thru my head. if everything were abba...i might cross
over the line to the high-art crowd--oy!
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 30 May 1995 22:27:18 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: maria damon <damon001@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
Subject: Re: Sentiment
In message <2fcbde7d177f002@maroon.tc.umn.edu> UB Poetics discussion group
writes:
> > Jim Rosenberg:
>
> >I agree with you, Dodie, emotional substance -- per se -- is not a problem;
> >what is a problem is where you see that emotional substance sticking out
> like
> >bones from under the skin through gaps in what you had thought were
> reasonable
> >efforts to work against the singularity of self.
>
> I agree with what you're saying about the pitfalls of the singular self,
> but this violent eruption that you're describing here sounds wonderful to
> me, Jim.
>
> Lover of the abject,
> Dodie Bellamy
amen to that, as i indicated in my own reply-button skirmish not 10 minutes ago.
by the way dodie, do you know liz kotz? if so, tell me by back channel how to
reach her please. we used to hang out in sf, then she wrote to me and i took 6
months to answer. so naturally i suspect the return address i used is no
good.--abjectly sincere, maria d
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 31 May 1995 00:03:41 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: John Byrum <JMBYRUM@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: loss of the name/art & sa...
Carl,
Sorry I forgot so quickly your source. I lose track easily apparently.
Usually think of what's called "myself" as a spreading field composed of
brief glints of recognition melded with darker areas of "oh yeah" and lots of
blank that never get known in any "recognizable" ways. But knowing is a
deepness we aren't exactly familiar with or even always aware of. I'm
satisfied with letting experiences percolate into aquifers deeper than can
always be retrieved in the forms they had when they seeped in. They surface
transformed in memory & my writing.
Best,
John
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 31 May 1995 00:16:35 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: John Byrum <JMBYRUM@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: Art, etc.
Carl,
Thanks for putting those quotes on art & aesthetics out. As usual, I find I
agree and disagree with various points taken in various ways in all of them.
And all of them are pertinent and provoking.
There is a point of view from which one can say that all our productions are
"muzak" or decoration, just as there are other points of view from which one
can say that any individual production has important contributions to make to
our awareness of our situation. There is a point of view that allows us to
state (and feel) that art is the production and embodied realization of
difference, and of the intertwined difference (multiplicity) in unity.
Everywhere is the center. Centers everywhere radiating. And etc.
John
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 31 May 1995 00:28:23 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: John Byrum <JMBYRUM@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: Actually actual?
I say the real is anything we go through, all our experiences. I say even
what we imagine we cannot imagine is the real. What is unimaginable is
equally real in its way as the pain we feel when we cut a finger or lose a
loved one.
John
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 31 May 1995 00:33:09 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: John Byrum <JMBYRUM@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: art after art after art
>> dear Herb & other old farts on the list,
>> isnt it just great to watch the young folks do it all again thinking
>> it's for the first time...heh heh (wheeze wheeze
>
>...what's old is new again, eh
>c
I'm appropriating my father's increasingly sagging jowls and death wheeze.
I'm taking on my mother's increasing forgetfulness as she grows older sitting
alone in her apartment.
I see how each of us curls and coils through these little lettered curls &
coils time & time again.
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 30 May 1995 22:40:51 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Steve Carll <sjcarll@SLIP.NET>
Subject: really actual yoed
for hassan, tony green, etc.:
nothing
to get
hungabout
--Steve (fresh from Salt Lake City, no less!)
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 31 May 1995 03:11:39 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jake Berry <BugsD@AOL.COM>
Subject: John, Hank - Re: art's after
Yes, a definition of quality that I can agree with. The constant movement
beyond, before that which is, is even set down.
Artaud said, "x clear ideas are ideas that are dead and finished." This act
then would be what's after art, and any poetry or any other form would
reflect that, though there would be no absolute necessity to perpetuate the
forms, or calling what results by any single label. The point is, as you said
Hank, the disruption which is a joy, an exquisite agony I think. In our
recent e-mail discussions, Jim Leftwich speaks of "proprioceptive gnosis",
the nerves and muscle that drives, fuels the process. It is a form of living
that discharges as poetry or paint, or any medium and under any name, or lack
thereof - to constantly act beyond your own preconceptions, even beyond your
own perceptions. In a sense, if it doesn't kill you a little its not worth
living.
Jake
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 31 May 1995 08:29:55 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Michael Boughn <mboughn@EPAS.UTORONTO.CA>
Subject: AHP
In-Reply-To: <199505310320.XAA08018@jazz.epas.utoronto.ca> from "FUNKHOUSER
CHRISTOPH" at May 30, 95 11:18:35 pm
Welcome back, AHP, we missed ya! Really real missing . . .
Mike
mboughn@epas.utoronto.ca
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 31 May 1995 10:22:29 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Edward Foster <EFOSTER@VAXC.STEVENS-TECH.EDU>
Subject: Re: Art, etc.
"The icon painting aims to convey not the face but the gaze." --Sergij Bulgakov
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 31 May 1995 09:57:34 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Edward Foster <EFOSTER@VAXC.STEVENS-TECH.EDU>
Subject: Re: where were you born
thank you, marisa. but the cover is wholly the work of brad o'sullivan, hand done on naropa press. typeface (with which i'm very pleased) is the choice of matt corry. one couldn't not ask for better work than what these terrific people gave.
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 31 May 1995 11:39:44 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Gary Sullivan <gpsj@PRIMENET.COM>
Subject: from PARADOX AND EVOL
from PARADOX AND EVOL
by G.K. Bataille
Kim Urizen, trans.
In the midst of the rowdy imperial epic
the blasted head flashes
w/thrill on the lips. Each vein, a bayonet
vibrates the latrine of the heart.
--Ted Swinburne
Why should a period of revolution lend a lustre to the arts and the
world of letters? Few events in e-space have a greater symbolic value than
the storming of the Poeticslist by Auntie Hegemony, despite the fact that
the "storming" was itself symbolic. (Can one already inside the compound
be said to have "stormed" it?) My concern here is not with the mode of her
poetic realization, and the judgment must be that the realization is less
poetic, more intellectual. The contemplative _sees_. (Note the homophonic
"seize.")
Auntie Hegemony is not so much great because of her published
achievement as great because she is right. Her achievement deserves a
homage less indiscriminate than it has yet been accorded; thus I do more
than praise what she wrote: I praise what she knew. She cannot be praised
too highly so long as praise is confined to what is praiseworthy. Her
especial gift was her physical intuition of being; her especial triumph
was her exploitation of paradox to embody that intuition.
W.R. Titterton is a biographer, Uncle Edgar a critic, and both of
their limits are those of their respective professions. To cast, oneself
as with another, as "professional" -- and the biographer, the critic,
neither is more or less a "professional" than the academic or the
publisher -- is to cast limits. Titterton and Poe are both businessmen.
Titterton is an idiot. Edgar, a bitter materialist.
Auntie Hegemony decided on an event that was to shake, if not to
deliver, the world. She appears to have employed the pipe used for
emptying dirty water as a loud speaker and one of her many provocative
actions was to yell out that the prisoners were being slaughtered. This
was truly a liberation, but in the cryptic sense of a dream, a dream of
"Evol" -- not quite Revolution or Evolution, not quite Evil, the mirror
image of Love (which is not Hate, but, simply, Evol).
Q: Who is Satan?
A: What is poetry?
The grave filled in, sewn with acorns so that, in the future, the
ground will be covered with vegetation ...
is/isn't poetry.
My lips move as I write it down as it happens ...
is/isn't poetry.
What do you want? ...
is/isn't poetry.
The Hegelian may say that an egg is really a hen, because it is part
of an endless process of Becoming; the Berkeleian may hold that poached
eggs only exist as a dream exists; since it is quite as easy to call the
dream the cause of the eggs as the eggs the cause of the dream; the
Pragmatist may believe that we get the best out of scrambled eggs by
forgetting that they ever were eggs, and only remembering the scramble.
But no pupil of Auntie Hegemony needs to addle hir brains in order to
addle hir eggs; to put hir head at any peculiar angle in looking at eggs,
or squinting at eggs, or winking the other eye in order to see a new
simplification of eggs:
A pose is a pose is a pose.
The Auntie Hegemonist stands in the broad daylight of the brotherhood
of women, the sisterhood of men, in their common consciousness that eggs
are not hens or dreams or mere practical assumptions; but things attested
by the authority of the Senses:
Appose is appose is appose.
All poets are amateurs, white gleams of water that shine suddenly
like swords or spears in the green thickets.
Can they honestly be compiled?
--G.K. Bataille
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 31 May 1995 11:44:33 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Gary Sullivan <gpsj@PRIMENET.COM>
Subject: Summer is here...
Dear Poeticslist People:
Due to a combination of outside forces (specifically, good weather,
bad finances and a backlog of things to attend to), I'll be temporarily
unplugging my Internet package, including Poeticslist. I'll have e-mail
for a couple more days at least (I have to cancel it by written request),
if anyone wants to get in touch with me that way. Otherwise, my address is
as follows:
Gary Sullivan
1506 Grand Avenue, #3
St. Paul, MN 55105-2222
Note that the above is also the address for Detour Press. If you'd
like to send poetry, fiction, drama, visual work, etc., for consideration,
send it to that address, and state, specifically, that you'd like what
you're sending to be considered for publication. (I get a lot of
manuscripts in the mail, and a couple years ago made the mistake of
"rejecting" something that hadn't been intended for publishing
consideration.) So, please, be specific with your intentions, if you'd
like your work considered for publication.
Also, for those unfamiliar with the press, while I can't speak for my
co-editor Marta Deike, I tend to be generally interested in work of
"satirical nature." (Which isn't to say, strictly speaking, "satire.")
Marta has her own interests w/respect to the press; the things that we've
published constitute a common ground or compromise (take your pick) of our
combined interests. Also note: we are only able to publish 1 or 2 books a
year; this limits the focus (and output) of the press considerably. We are
not (obviously) New Directions.
I owe several of you on this list books; if I promised you them and
you haven't yet received them, you know who you are. I'll send them
shortly when I can afford to. (Not too long, I hope.) I also owe a number
of you responses to work, letters, etc.--you'll be hearing from me soon
via snail-mail.
We're interested in exchanging books for other books or magazines;
so, anyone who wants any of the following, but would rather trade than
buy, send your wares w/an explanation that that's what you're doing, or
query first if you're more comfortable doing that.
DARK DECADE, a novel (w/illustrations) by Johanna Drucker, 128 pp.,
1995, $10.95
FEAR & PHILOSOPHY, fiction by Stephen-Paul Martin, 128 pp., 1994,
$8.95
I SHOT THE HAIRDRESSER, fiction by David Gilbert, 128 pp., 1994,
$8.95
SOUND OFF, poetry by Spencer Selby, 64 pp., 1993, $7.95
We have a couple of other books planned -- if they come out & I'm not
on-line at that time, I'll have Spencer or someone post notices.
Have fun, everyone, and remember: THERE IS NO ULTIMATE AUTHORITY.
Yours,
Gary
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 31 May 1995 10:34:50 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Carl Lynden Peters <clpeters@SFU.CA>
Subject: After Art: Last Words
BRANCUSI'S LADDER: T a
Ta sa
Tab asa
Tabu rasa
Tabul rasa
Tabula rasa
Tabul rasa
Tabu rasa
Tab asa
Ta sa
T a
Ta sa
Tab asa
Tabu rasa
Tabul rasa
Tabula rasa
Tabul rasa
Tabu rasa
Tab asa
Ta sa
T a
Ta sa
Tab asa
Tabu rasa
Tabul rasa
Tabula rasa
Tabul rasa
Tabu rasa
Tab asa
Ta sa
T a
Ta sa
Tab asa
Tabu rasa
Tabul rasa
Tabula rasa
Tabul rasa
Tabu rasa
Tab asa
Ta sa
T a
Ta sa
Tab asa
Tabu rasa
Tabul rasa
Tabula rasa
Tabul rasa
Tabu rasa
Tab asa
Ta sa
T a
carl
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 1 Jun 1995 08:33:28 GMT+1200
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Tony Green <t.green@AUCKLAND.AC.NZ>
Organization: The University of Auckland
Subject: Re: art after art after art
Dear John Byrum,
It's gone quiet this a.m. -- all the traffic going to Vancouver I guess.
Yesterday, looking at The Death of Eudamidas and the Extreme Unction
by Nicolas Poussin, it occurred to me to ask my students, some twenty
of them, if any of them had ever been at a death-bed. Not one and nor
have I and that makes it difficult to inhabit the figures of the
paintings in the way the painter and his contemporaries could. The
best I could manage that way was seeing my father barely conscious
after his last stroke in London, full of the usual tubes and wires.
The doctors had sat in committee and decided they
had to leave all the gear in place. When he made a partial recovery
he was not altogether pleased by their decision.
Arguments about the real branch out in all directions from there.
Best wishes to you and Generator Press.
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 31 May 1995 20:11:39 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jonathan Brannen <jbrannen@INFOLINK.MORRIS.MN.US>
Subject: Re: Actually actual?
tony and maria,
ABBA? high art?
how about a little reggae instead?
best, jonathan
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 31 May 1995 19:55:12 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jonathan Brannen <jbrannen@INFOLINK.MORRIS.MN.US>
Subject: Re: Actually actual?
Maria,
Thanks for filling my memory lapse!
"Nothing is real. Everything is permitted."
hassam i sabba
adios,
Jonathan
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 1 Jun 1995 13:11:17 +1000
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Mark Roberts <M.Roberts@UNSW.EDU.AU>
June 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.
AWOL posts are archived on the WWW at the following address
http://www.anatomy.su.oz.au /danny/books/index.html then click on
Australian Writing OnLine.
************************************************************************
NSW
SYDNEY
******** BOOK LAUNCHES ********
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 DESERTS (Island) is to be launched by Leith Morton on 3 June at 3pm at
the Courthouse Hotel, Newtown.
As part of Martin Smith's Bookshop's second series of 'Writers on the
Beach' INKLINGS journal presents INKLINGS ON THE BEACH: READINGS FROM THE
JOURNAL. Wednesday 28 June 1995 7pm at Ravesi's Hotel, Bondi Beach (corner
Campbell Parade and Hall Street). Admission $7/$4 concession: Refreshments
provided. INKLINGS gratefully acknowledges assistance from the NSW Writers'
Centre, The Literature Board of the Australia Council and Martin Smith's
Bookshop Bondi Beach.
**************************************************************
********** 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. Admission $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. Admission $5/$2 Details Nick Sykes (02) 928 8607.
Every Sunday...THE WORD ON SUNDAY11.30am Museum of Contemporary Art,
Circular Quay. Admission $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
6 JUNE, 8pm, An Evening of WRITERS' READINGS, Firenze Italian Restaurant
ph (069) 214211. JACKIE HUGGINS - aboriginal biographer: "Aunty Rita",
POLONIUS POETS - from Canberra: Robert Verdon, Kathy Kituai, Francesca
Rendle-Short and possibly Russell Irwin. MARK BRENNAN - first performance
of his chamber opera for four voices. Admission: $8, $6 and $5
JUNE 9, 7.30 pm, ABC Radio Riverina Studio: Local media identity, Jennifer
Sexton will open the exhibition "LOOKING AT THE WORLD THROUGH WOMEN'S EYES"
- a travelling exhibition of visual poetry. This is the fifth 'suitcase
exhibition' originated by the School of Women Artists Network (SWAN) and
allows local writers to submit works to be included as the exhibition tours
(a kind of rolling stone that DOES gather moss). For information, contact
Debra Luttrell ph 069 315488.
28 JUNE 7.30 pm, Booranga Writers' Centre at Charles Sturt University,
Wagga Wagga. EDITING WORKSHOP - run by David Gilbey. Participants to bring
recent work in multiple copies. Cost: $12, $10.
For details about Wagga Wagga events contact David Gilbey ph. (069) 332465,
fax (069) 332792 email dgilbey@csu.edu.au
LISMORE 3rd Tuesday 8pm. Stand Up Poets, 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.
Details phone Bill Iden (049) 675 972
****************************************************************************
QUEENSLAND
Queensland Writers Centre Events
Exciting Writing: Reading of New Works at the Queensland Writers' Centre.
27 June 'The House is Live' with Maryanne Lynch, Daynan Brazil and Clive
Williams. Chaired by Hilary Beaton. Queensland Writer' Centre, 535 Wickham
Terrace, Spring Hill. 7.30 pm. Admission $10 for QWC members. $15 for
non-members.
Proof Reading and Editing Skills. Susan Addison conducts a basic skills
workshop at the Queensland Writer' Centre, 535 Wickham Terrace, Spring Hill
on Saturday 3 June 10am-4pm. Admission $40 for QWC members and $70 for
non-members. Phone (07) 8391243 for further details.
Illustrating for young people: a course for adults. Greg Rogers conducts
this five week course starting on Tuesday 6 June at 5.30pm at Hamilton
Library. A booking fee of $10 for QWC members and $20 for non-members
applies. Contact the Queensland Writer' Centre, 535 Wickham Terrace, Spring
Hill or any Brisbane City Council Library or phone (07) 839 1243 for
further details. This is a part of the Queensland Writers' Centre 'Writers
in the Library' Project.
********************************************************************************
** 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, July 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
*****************************
SYMPOSIUM: (POST) COLONIAL FICTIONS: RE-READING ELIZA FRASER AND THE WRECK
OF THE STIRLING CASTLE. University of Adelaide, 25-26 Nov., 1995.
Contact: Kay Schaffer, Department of Women's Studies, 08 303 5267 direct,
08 303 3345 FAX, e-mail: kschaffe@arts.adelaide.edu.au
Post-colonial studies within Australia have attempted to re-evaluate and
re- write colonial history to include those people either marginalised or
subjugated by the colonial process. This two day symposium will explore a
different aspect of post-colonial discourse through the exploration of one
of the best known events in Australian colonial history. In 1836 the
'Stirling Castle' was wrecked off the Queensland coast and many of the crew
together with the Captain's wife, Eliza, were marooned on Fraser Island.
Events surrounding the rescue of the castaways, in particular Mrs. Fraser,
received international media attention. In the last 160 years the story of
Eliza Fraser has become the subject of popular myth, fiction, opera, art,
film and scholarly research in the areas of cultural studies, literature,
history, anthropology, archaeology, women's studies, and the visual arts.
(Post) Colonial Fictions will examine critically the Eliza Fraser saga by
bringing together, for the first time, an interdisciplinary team of
academics, authors, artists and members of the Fraser Island community.
Discussions will include feminist analyses of the incident, textual and
iconographic representations of Aboriginal people, and Eliza Fraser as a
creative inspiration for the arts.
Speakers on 19th century ethnography, visual arts, and Fraser Island
history include: Ian Mc Niven, Lynette Russell, Rod McNeil, Olga Miller,
Elaine Brown; on 20th century cultural studies and Batdjala representations
include: Kay Schaffer, Sue Kossew, Jim Davidson, Jude Adams and Fiona
Foley. We are hopeful that the symposium will include an exhibition of
Fiona Foley's works and a performance by University of Adelaide
Conservatorium of Music students of the theatre opera: "Eliza Fraser Sings"
(arranged by Peter Sculthorpe/libretto by Barbara Blackman).
********************************************************************************
CONTESTS & COMPETITIONS
The Mattara Poetry Prize is back, and is now known as the Newcastle Poetry
Prize. As in previous years, the prize is $10,000. This year we are
looking for an unpublished poem or group of poems (not necessarily
thematically connected) of fewer than 200 lines. There is a $5 entry fee
this year, and the closing date is 17 JULY 1995. The judges are Dorothy
Hewett, Antigone Kefala and Paul Kavanagh.
To enter: Send 2 stamped addressed envelopes plus $5 to:
The Newcastle Poetry Prize
Newcastle Community Arts Centre
PO Box 5267D
Newcastle West NSW 2302
No personal details should appear on the manuscript. Any enquiries can be
directed to the Arts Centre on (049) 611696 or the English Department at
Newcastle University on (049) 215175. Alternatively, e-mail Tim Dolin:
eltpd@cc.newcastle.edu.au.
**********************************
While every effort has been made to ensure that the information on this
list is correct, AWOL recommends that you contact individual organisers to
confirm details.