========================================================================= Date: Mon, 15 May 1995 08:37:39 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: maria damon 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 ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 15 May 1995 11:37:32 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom Mandel 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 ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 15 May 1995 11:41:25 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Edward Foster 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. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 15 May 1995 11:00:01 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Bruce Comens Subject: Re: promoting self & other In-Reply-To: Message of Sat, 13 May 1995 11:39:44 -0700 from 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 ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 15 May 1995 11:55:21 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Edward Foster 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! ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 15 May 1995 12:06:52 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Edward Foster 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. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 15 May 1995 13:39:09 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Robert Kelly 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jeffrey Timmons Subject: Re: Olson and Catholicism X-To: maria damon 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 ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 15 May 1995 14:43:49 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Ball 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 ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 15 May 1995 11:52:58 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Carl Lynden Peters 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 ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 15 May 1995 16:07:48 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Edward Foster 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kevin Killian 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 ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 15 May 1995 19:12:40 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: maria damon 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 ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 15 May 1995 20:31:20 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino 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.... ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 15 May 1995 17:49:03 +0100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kevin Killian 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 ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 15 May 1995 18:20:16 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ron Silliman 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" 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,,,, ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 15 May 1995 21:55:31 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Lindz Williamson 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 ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 16 May 1995 00:57:44 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: John Byrum 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tony Green 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tony Green 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 ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 16 May 1995 01:11:58 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: John Byrum 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 ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 16 May 1995 17:14:06 GMT+1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tony Green 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tony Green 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 ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 16 May 1995 17:43:40 GMT+1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tony Green 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. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 15 May 1995 23:16:27 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ryan Knighton 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering 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. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 16 May 1995 01:59:31 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jonathan A Levin 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Prof. R. Prus" 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" ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 16 May 1995 12:32:56 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Edward Foster 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Edward Foster 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: Converted from PROFS to RFC822 format by PUMP V2.2X From: Alan Golding 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Carl Lynden Peters 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Carl Lynden Peters 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Carl Lynden Peters 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Carl Lynden Peters 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jeffrey Timmons Subject: Re: really Real X-To: Carl Lynden Peters 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: FUNKHOUSER CHRISTOPH 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 To: cf2785, yates@lungta.naropa.edu Subject: JACK KEROUAC SCHOOL OF DISEMBODIED POETICS Message-Id: 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Andrew Joron 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: John Byrum 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Lindz Williamson 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Marjorie Perloff 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gary Sullivan Subject: Ern Malley: A Real Cut-Up In-Reply-To: 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kevin Killian 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tenney Nathanson 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ron Silliman 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Herb Levy Subject: Re: Ern Malley & others In-Reply-To: <199505170721.AA27971@mail.eskimo.com> Gary Sullivan's description of the 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 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Herb Levy 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 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: kathryne Subject: Re: Outlaws, Classics, and others In-Reply-To: Message of Tue, 16 May 1995 13:03:12 EDT from 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom Mandel 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Watts Subject: Recovery of the Public World X-cc: bernstein@ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu > From: Charles Watts ) 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Carl Lynden Peters 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 From: peter quartermain 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Hank Lazer 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Edward Foster 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Edward Foster 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gary Sullivan 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Marisa A Januzzi 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Sheila E. Murphy" 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Reginald Johanson 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom Mandel 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: John Byrum 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: John Byrum 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gary Sullivan 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gary Sullivan 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gary Sullivan 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gabrielle Welford 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gary Sullivan 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Carl Lynden Peters 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Marisa A Januzzi 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ron Silliman 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ron Silliman Subject: Yo, Ed That Was Four Lines ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 18 May 1995 03:20:31 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ron Silliman 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ron Silliman 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ron Silliman 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom Mandel 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom Mandel 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom Mandel 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gary Sullivan 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gary Sullivan 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Lindz Williamson 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gary Sullivan 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gary Sullivan 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Herb Levy 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Carl Lynden Peters 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Herb Levy 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 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 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kevin Killian 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Edward Foster 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Andrew Joron 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Hank Lazer 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ryan Knighton 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Carl Lynden Peters 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Jordan Davis." 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jeffrey Timmons 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jeffrey Timmons 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Alexander 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Jordan Davis." 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Reginald Johanson 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jim Pangborn 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Sondheim 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jeffrey Timmons 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Robert Drake 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Alexander 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jeffrey Timmons Subject: Re: really Real X-To: George Bowering 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kevin Killian 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: John Byrum 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Carl Lynden Peters 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ron Silliman 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ron Silliman 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ron Silliman 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: John Geraets 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ryan Knighton 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ryan Knighton 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 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steve Carll 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 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Lindz Williamson 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 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gary Sullivan 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 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Lindz Williamson 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 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tony Green 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 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Carl Lynden Peters 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 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Boughn 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 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: maria damon 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 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jonathan A Levin 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 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: cris cheek Subject: a genuine alt.fan.silliman for Ketjak X-cc: Ron Silliman 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 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: cris cheek 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 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kali Tal 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: kathryne Subject: Re: really Real In-Reply-To: Message of Fri, 19 May 1995 08:13:14 -0500 from 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jorge Guitart 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Edward Foster Subject: Re: Yo, Ed na, words qua train ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 19 May 1995 15:35:57 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Edward Foster 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: maria damon 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jim Pangborn 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom Mandel 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom Mandel 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Herb Levy 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) or via web or you can try Providers of Commercial Internet Access (POCIA) (I don't know if they have info about providers outside the US.) or via web or for e-mail, you can send a to 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, 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Loss Glazier 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Sheila E. Murphy" 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Carl Lynden Peters 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jeffrey Timmons 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom Mandel 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: John Byrum 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steve Carll 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steve Carll 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: John Byrum 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: John Byrum 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Susan Clark 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: maria damon 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Blair Seagram 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Blair Seagram 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Blair Seagram 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Blair Seagram 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Blair Seagram 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 ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 20 May 1995 10:41:05 +0100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kevin Killian 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gary Sullivan 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jeffrey Timmons Subject: Re: Actually actual? X-To: Steve Carll 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jeffrey Timmons Subject: Re: irony and the Really real X-To: John Byrum 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 ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 20 May 1995 17:17:31 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jeffrey Timmons Subject: Re: POETICS Digest - 17 May 1995 to 18 May 1995 X-To: Blair Seagram 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gary Sullivan 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Loss Glazier 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 ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 20 May 1995 21:27:37 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: maria damon 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom Mandel 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 ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 20 May 1995 23:30:08 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom Mandel 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom Mandel 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steve Carll 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: John Byrum 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: John Byrum 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: John Byrum 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Carl Lynden Peters 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charlotte Pressler 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 ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 21 May 1995 21:16:33 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steve Carll 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 ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 21 May 1995 21:45:07 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steve Carll 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 ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 21 May 1995 21:45:12 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steve Carll 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 ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 22 May 1995 18:37:58 GMT+1300 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Wystan Curnow 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 ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 22 May 1995 02:39:45 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Blair Seagram 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 ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 22 May 1995 03:05:25 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Blair Seagram 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 ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 22 May 1995 04:24:34 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jake Berry 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 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ron Silliman 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 ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 22 May 1995 10:26:52 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jim Pangborn 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 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jim Pangborn 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 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jim Pangborn Organization: University at Buffalo Subject: Re: next steps after art Mon, 22 May, Jake Berry 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 ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 22 May 1995 14:25:23 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino 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 ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 22 May 1995 13:42:21 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gary Sullivan 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Loss Glazier 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Carl Lynden Peters 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 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Wystan Curnow 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Carl Lynden Peters 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jeffrey Timmons 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Robert Drake 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: John Byrum 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: John Byrum 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: John Byrum Subject: Re: next steps after art Following are some replies to my question about the next evolution "after art": > > Mon, 22 May, Jake Berry 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: John Byrum 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steve Carll 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steve Carll 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jim Pangborn Organization: University at Buffalo Subject: Re: The Etymology of Things Steve Carll 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Edward Foster Subject: Re: Yo, Ed Williams is bor- ing ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 23 May 1995 11:33:49 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jorge Guitart 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Carl Lynden Peters 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Carl Lynden Peters 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Carl Lynden Peters 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Don Cheney 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Lindz Williamson 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: cris cheek 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jeffrey Timmons Subject: Re: Yo, Ed X-To: Edward Foster 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ryan Knighton 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Patrick Phillips 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: John Byrum 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 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: John Byrum 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 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gary Sullivan 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steve Carll 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "I.LIGHTMAN" Subject: Re: mail by the megabyte? Great message, Dodie! ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 24 May 1995 08:12:14 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Boughn 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "I.LIGHTMAN" 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jorge Guitart 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jim Pangborn 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Edward Foster Subject: Re: Yo, Ed boring something new, George? ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 24 May 1995 12:02:02 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Edward Foster 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Edward Foster Subject: Re: Yo, Ed re: ing see Spicer ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 24 May 1995 11:18:37 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ryan Knighton 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Marshall H. Reese" 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Wallace 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Sondheim 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Hank Lazer 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Don Cheney 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: cris cheek 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ryan Knighton 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "M. Magoolaghan" 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Wystan Curnow 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Wystan Curnow 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Robert Drake 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 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 ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 24 May 1995 21:16:24 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Lindz Williamson 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: John Byrum 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: John Byrum 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Roberts 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" >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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Marisa A Januzzi 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jake Berry 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jake Berry 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: english is mandarin --Tom Raworth 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Alexander 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ernesto Grosman 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Boughn 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: RFC822 error: CC field duplicated. Last occurrence was retained. Comments: RFC822 error: CC field duplicated. Last occurrence was retained. Comments: RFC822 error: CC field duplicated. 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From: Ron Silliman 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Carl Lynden Peters 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Ball 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Edward Foster 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Edward Foster Subject: Re: Yo, Ed NOT boo cough ski ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 25 May 1995 14:41:04 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Carl Lynden Peters 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ryan Knighton 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ryan Knighton 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Carl Lynden Peters 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Roberts 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steve Carll 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tony Green 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: John Byrum 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: John Byrum 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Alexander 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: John Byrum 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: John Byrum 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Sheila E. Murphy" 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Alexander 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Alexander 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Ball 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ron Silliman 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jim Pangborn 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Herb Levy 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 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 , '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 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "M. Magoolaghan" 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Carl Lynden Peters 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Carl Lynden Peters 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 ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 26 May 1995 10:46:17 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Carl Lynden Peters 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Jordan Davis." 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Reginald Johanson Subject: yo, ed flip flop and fly ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 26 May 1995 12:47:20 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Carl Lynden Peters 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Reginald Johanson 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 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Andrew Joron 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 ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 26 May 1995 19:12:57 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Blair Seagram 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Blair Seagram 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Carl Lynden Peters 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 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Blair Seagram 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 ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 26 May 1995 11:10:11 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Sheila E. Murphy" 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Sheila E. Murphy" 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Sondheim 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Lindz Williamson 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jim Rosenberg 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Alexander 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Alexander 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: John Cayley 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kevin Killian 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: John Byrum 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: John Byrum 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: John Byrum 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Carl Lynden Peters 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Carl Lynden Peters 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Carl Lynden Peters 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Carl Lynden Peters 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tony Green 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Carl Lynden Peters 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tony Green 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tony Green 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Roberts 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tony Green 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gary Sullivan 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Carl Lynden Peters 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gary Sullivan 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: John Geraets 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jake Berry 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Wystan Curnow 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: english is mandarin --Tom Raworth 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jim Pangborn Organization: University at Buffalo Subject: Re: Art, etc. 26 May 1995 15:49:47 -0400 (EDT) Carl Lynden Peters 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ryan Knighton 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Carl Lynden Peters 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 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kevin Killian 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Carl Lynden Peters 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... ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 29 May 1995 15:20:38 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jonathan Brannen 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 ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 29 May 1995 16:02:24 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jonathan Brannen 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 ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 29 May 1995 16:03:17 CST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Alexander 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 ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 29 May 1995 15:43:47 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Stephen Galen Cope 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Stephen Galen Cope 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... ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 29 May 1995 16:28:05 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Stephen Galen Cope 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Stephen Galen Cope 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: maria damon 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: John Geraets 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gary Sullivan 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Edward Foster 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Edward Foster 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Edward Foster 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Edward Foster 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Edward Foster 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Edward Foster 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jim Pangborn 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Hank Lazer 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Marisa A Januzzi 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Carl Lynden Peters 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Carl Lynden Peters 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Carl Lynden Peters 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Federation Sand 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tony Green 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tony Green 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tony Green 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jim Rosenberg 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kevin Killian 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Roberts 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: FUNKHOUSER CHRISTOPH 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: maria damon 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: maria damon 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: maria damon 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: John Byrum 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: John Byrum 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: John Byrum 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: John Byrum 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steve Carll 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jake Berry 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Boughn 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Edward Foster 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Edward Foster 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gary Sullivan 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gary Sullivan 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Carl Lynden Peters 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tony Green 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jonathan Brannen 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jonathan Brannen 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 Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Roberts 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.