========================================================================= Date: Sat, 1 Jul 1995 07:02:14 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: braman sandra Subject: Re: writing as technology In-Reply-To: <00992AB7.49F96914.46@admin.njit.edu> from "Burt Kimmelman -@NJIT" at Jun 30, 95 09:16:54 pm Burt -- It's been 15 years literally since I've been in the Fuller literature (I think I told the story publicly that doing the dictionary of his thinking was when I knew I should go to graduate school, and once I did I never went back). But it seems to me it's in the opening of SYNERGETICS. I frankly no longer have my own materials on hi8m -- only the books. Why not go through indexes for "writing" "alphabet" "paper" (seems to me he said something extremely interesting about the fact that everyone always ignored the surface, the paper, when they thoughht about writing). If you find anything, please share it! Sandra Braman Or, hey, post the question on the Buckminster Fuller list that I seem to have just joined out of curiosity.... want the address? ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 1 Jul 1995 06:00:11 CST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Alexander Subject: Re: tech and aesthetics / how to teach? Meow Press (Joel Kuszai's inventive imprint) has recently published, as a Meow Press Textbook, TECHNOLOGY/art: 20 Brief Proposals for Seminars on Art & Technology. These brief proposals were made in 1984 by a group of poets (Bruce Andrews, Charles Bernstein, and James Sherry), at the request of Jesse Ausubel, who was then Director of Programs at the National Academy of Engineering, to increase the dialogue between artists and scientists and engineers. It was this book which provoked my recent consideration of the alphabet as a technology. But thanks for giving me credit, Maria. And the responses provoked of more ways to look at the art/technology nexus through the writings of a variety of women have been most welcome. charles charles alexander chax press minnesota center for book arts phone & fax: 612-721-6063 e-mail: mcba@maroon.tc.umn.edu ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 1 Jul 1995 07:07:42 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: braman sandra Subject: apology Poetics List -- Apologies. I don't know why I continue to do this, and some day I'm going to lose my job and/or life over really sending the wrong message to the wrong folks. I meant to send the long message only to Burt Kimmelman this time. Ouch. Sorry. Sandra B ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 1 Jul 1995 06:28:48 CST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Alexander Subject: Re: writing as technology Sandra Braman, thanks for the notion to look at B. Fuller for comments on the paper, the "surface" of writing. That appeals to me particularly as a bookmaker who seems to talk widely about the context of the text, in my case mostly about the physical contexts of representation. So, yes, I will find SYNERGETICS and look for remarks on paper. And, if you send the address of the fuller list, I may put a query there. Are you still coming to Minneapolis this summer? Can we still get together? all best, charles charles alexander chax press minnesota center for book arts phone & fax: 612-721-6063 e-mail: mcba@maroon.tc.umn.edu ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 1 Jul 1995 10:21:11 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: braman sandra Subject: Fuller list The address for the Buckminster Fuller list, for those of you who've asked, should be familiar: geodesic@ubvm.cc.buffalo.edu. It's the regular listserv rigamarole -- you write to listserv at buffalo, live subject line blank, in text say "subscribe geodesic firstname lastname". Sandra Braman ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 1 Jul 1995 11:44:38 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Edward Foster Subject: Re: tech and aesthetics / how to teach? burt: how about lunch at this tech or yours opening invite to all and sundry in the area who want to discuss topic? i'm esp. interested in blake, heidegger, and their good friend thoth, but can even tolerate williams, briefly. -ed ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 1 Jul 1995 11:56:37 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Edward Foster Subject: Re: writing as technology burt asks whether reason is "subcat. of rhyme out of Plato." no, even heraclitus privileges reason, tho not herodotus. horrible conclusive moment, methinks, wasvictory of church fathers (theology; i.e. reason) over gnostics (correspondance). ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 1 Jul 1995 11:59:18 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Wallace Subject: readings in Washington, D.C. READINGS IN WASHINGTON, D.C. We are trying to get our reading series for the fall (and possibly spring too) set here in D.C. If there's anyone coming through who is interested in a reading, please let me know, and I'll see what can be worked out. At this point we have no travel money, but can offer you a committed, only slightly delusional audience. Mark Wallace ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 1 Jul 1995 18:10:26 BST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "I.LIGHTMAN" Subject: some thoughts: will they rub one's rhubarb? The modernist focusses on her/his purity, ignoring others' responses, is loved as unreachable by non-experts eg non-poets for a modernist poet, non-musicians for a modernist musician, or found intense by fellow experts - and oneself by oneself by the same logic. But there is always the need for the "feminine" reader who can see how the freedom to have time to listen and read and create is endangered and must be fought for, as a social space (eg Harryman saying she loves polemicists but can't herself be one as is too busy looking at all the whole picture, faux polite sarcasm?). You have an intense evening or year with Bach and feel the fullness not just of Bach as an object, but of the time he could/did steal to make so much art, of having all that time to appreciate it - like Joyce responded, it should take you a lifetime to read Ulysses, it took me a lifetime to write it - but then maybe it is easier to read something after its author's death, just because of all sorts of reasons, prime perhaps the socially required (it seems) need to tease the person who's really ahead while alive. You have that intense evening or year, then you say "it's human, albeit a brave human, who can feel like this; many more could if there were fewer frighteners put on people for them to have to be brave in defiance of"; and you stop making art and make utopia nearer. What kind of utopia, to not be a modernist yourself; to be modern, not postmodernist either. What Derrida's work does is place itself in this problem of wanting to, and being hugely sensitively able to, make or teach art and philosophy; and yet wanting to express this as forever deferred, while you get on with not becoming the freak who got through the frighteners, and is personally ok, but instead remind people that you aren't especially special, everyone's special, and there's too many frighteners. Ira ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 1 Jul 1995 18:16:48 BST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "I.LIGHTMAN" Subject: a request for poems from another list (forward) Hallo everyone, I just got this questionnaire across the "modern-british-fiction" list - a request for poems that I thought might interest people on this list. If anyone wants to answer it, fill it in and send it to either mbrodie@arts.glasgow.ac.uk, or modern-british-fiction@ mailbase.ac.uk. There's been one respondee so far, offering a Fleur Adcock poem, one of her best in my own opinion but still I wonder if people on this list might be able to see less conventional poems included in the final research. Ira ******************************************************* Message follows: From: BRODIE MARGARET Organization: Glasgow University - Arts Faculty To: modern-british-fiction@mailbase.ac.uk Date sent: Tue, 27 Jun 1995 12:17:48 GMT Subject: got a minute? Priority: normal Send reply to: modern-british-fiction@mailbase.ac.uk Apologies for any cross posting. Hello out there! I need a poem Any possibility that you might know one If you do and if you can Send it to me by return; So that I might reach my target And complete my poetry project. 1. What is the title of your chosen poem? ( Title only ) 2. The poet's name and sex. 3. What is your name? 4. " " sex? 5. " " occupation? 6. " " residence ?(town/country only). Thank-you for responding to my request. 0ptional questions : 1. Does the poem you chose have personal associations for you? If so please let me know. 2. What is your personal philosophy/tip for coping with the stress of life in the nineties. Thanks for replying to my request. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 1 Jul 1995 18:20:41 BST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "I.LIGHTMAN" Subject: anyone know of any teaching work for a Brit? I'll keep this brief, and be ready to accept reprimand if this amounts to advertising outside the list's remit, but I'm *desperate" to get to North America, am just finishing a Ph.D, and can teach most lit periods, prosody/versification, critical theory, child abuse studies, gender theory, modernism/postmodernism... Just in case anyone happens to be able to help... Ira ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 1 Jul 1995 16:35:57 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: bedside reading In-Reply-To: from "Issa Clubb" at Jun 29, 95 11:33:26 am Glad to be back in my bed after three weeks in Helsinki and St Petersburg (checking out Lyn Hejinian's take). Find still by my bed a recent _Review of Contemporary Fiction_ and, of course, George Stanley's _Opening Day_, which I have been reading in bed since it came out a few years ago. A book of poems anyone could benefit from rereading. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 2 Jul 1995 01:27:05 EDT Reply-To: beard@metdp1.met.co.nz Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: beard@MET.CO.NZ Subject: Geoffrey Hill/Modernism & PoMo in England I was intrigued when, in response to a mention of John Ashberry's exam question comparing an Ern Malley poem to that of a modernist, someone replied "it wasn't even a modernist, it was Geoffrey Hill". Is there a box into which Hill's poetry can be slotted? He doesn't seem exactly modernist to me (although Ira's remark that "The modernist focusses on her/his purity, ignoring others' responses" could be applied to him), and not postmodernist either. This seems a general problem with English poets - the easy categorisation into a modernist/postmodernist tradition that appears less problematic when considering American poetry seems to break down for post-war English poetry (of course, this is a problem with the categorisation rather than with the poets). Although they followed modernism chronologically, would anyone categorise the Movement or Group poets as postmodern? It seems rather that they've taken the MacSpauday strand of modernism and developed a kind of anti- modernism, whereas the US took the Pound strand and turned it into what most would categorise as PoMo. Perhaps postmodernism is an American/European phenomenon, and England (& hence the Commonwealth) has been left with a more traditional mainstream. In New Zealand, the boundaries are blurred a little by the fact that many 'amateur' poetry-lovers complain of the prevalence of what they see as postmodernism in the journals, when they're really talking of a kind of 'post-Manhirism' practised by Borholdt/Johnston/Wilkins/Orsman and so on. These poets seem to me to bear the same relationship to postmodernism as Auden or perhaps Larkin did to modernism - the experiments of an older generation have been absorbed and domesticated. Auckland poets such as Michele Leggott, Alan Loney and Wystan Curnow are perhaps closer to what people on this list would see as postmodernists, and the mainstream journals seem a little wary of their work (viz Jane Stafford's review of Leggott's _DIA_ and Murray Edmond's _The Switch_). I'm not sure where this leaves me. I started writing poetry in Wellington, where Bill Manhire is seen as God, and I still have a tremendous admiration for much of his poetry, but moving to Auckland and joining this list have given me some idea of what LangPo and postmodernism have to offer. I still think it's best to read as widely as possible, not restricting oneself to one particular movement or genre. Leigh Davis, Edwin Morgan, Dinah Hawken, Craig Raine, Karl Stead, Cilla McQueen, Wallace Stevens, Dennis Lee, Ian Wedde and T.S. Eliot have all left their traces in me. I've never dared to try writing like Geoffrey Hill, but his writing moves me immensely. I hope that there will always be room for poets who span or fall between the boundaries. Tom. ______________________________________________________________________________ I/am a background/process, shrunk to an icon. | Tom Beard I am/a dark place. | beard@metdp1.met.co.nz I am less/than the sum of my parts... | Auckland, New Zealand I am necessary/but not sufficient, | http://metcon.met.co.nz/ and I shall teach the stars to fall | nwfc/beard/www/hallway.html ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 1 Jul 1995 22:15:14 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Burt Kimmelman -@NJIT" Subject: Re: tech and aesthetics / how to teach? ed, if this is an open invitation then maybe others would want to weigh in with their culinary or ambiencian desires. hoboken or newark--either is okay, though the food on the Stevens campus is i'm afraid almost as bad as at NJIT, but Rutgers across the street is satisfactory but is only open around the lunch hour. burt ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 3 Jul 1995 01:40:58 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: cris cheek Subject: Lizard Talk (Longish) Hi, thought some might be intrigued by this: from the Chiapas list ................................................................ The following text is part 1 of the sixth in a series of postings on cholera and the political economy of disease prepared in response to the present epidemic of cholera in Chiapas and Mexico. ................................................................ LIZARD TALK OR TEN PLAGUES AND ANOTHER An Historical Reprise in Celebration of the Anniversary of Boston ACT UP February 26, 1989 by Peter Linebaugh Midnight Notes, P.O.Box 204, Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, 02130 INTRODUCTION WELL, WELL, WELL. Happy Birth Day, ACT UP, and Many Happy Returns of the Day! The AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power has just begun to flex its muscles. We are all beginning to feel better in the reflection of your struggle against AIDS. Although you may sometimes feel like the little boy whose thumb in the dike is all that stands between the next breath and the deluge, your supporters gain courage by your example. AIDS, like the pestilences before it, has been used as a principle of division --division between genders, between the races, between the nations and the continents. But it has backfired, and the struggle against it brings us greater power than we knew, for we are beginning to understand that there is not a single question of struggle that is not involved in yours. The struggle against sex and racial discrimination, the struggle of workers at our places of employment, the struggle for civil liberties, the struggle for housing, the struggle to chose our own life-style, the expression of solidarity with those struggling in Africa, in Haiti, in the Philippines, and in Latin America, the struggle against medicine-for-profit, the struggle for education, the struggle for prisoners' rights, the struggle against identity papers, the struggle to sleep when, where, and with whomever, the struggle to retain some of the breakthroughs of the 1960s to create our own forms of sociality, the struggle against drug abuse, the struggle for gay liberation, the struggle for women's liberation, the struggle for the environment, the struggle for science for the people, the struggle for sex and the struggle for safe streets, have gained strength from your vigilance, creativity and staying power. Here is a birthday present. It is a history of ten plagues. It contains warnings and danger signals. It shows us how far we have come. It is a collective present which could not have been written without the help of Michaela Brennan, Silvia Federici, George Caffentzis, Evan Stark, John Wilshire, Monty Neill, Nancy Kelly, Bettina Berch, Harry Cleaver, John Roosa, Kate Linebaugh, and all the "whores, sluts and martyrs" who supped on minestrone last Friday beyond midnight. So, as they say in San Francisco, "let us go gayly forward". HIV made its active appearance in the late 1970s in the United States. At the same time, in Chicago, an economic theory was propagated ("monetarism") that organized poverty, famine, disease, and dislocation all over the world in the interests of the ruling classes whose corrupt desperation was personified by an aphasic actor, Ronald Reagan. Chicago also became a center noted for the adoption of free-market economic models to the interpretation of law (Stephan Possner) which ceased to pretend to justice and quantified instead the cost-benefit of life and death, and such jurists gained political ascendancy. Not long after, under the barking leadership of William Bennett, other dogs of the liberal arts joined the howling chorus for "Western Civilization". A Chicago historian, William McNeill, published PLAGUE AND PEOPLES in 1979, shortly before the AIDS pandemic appeared. He takes a long view, indeed the longest view he can, beginning with "Man the Hunter" and placing "him" within a very deterministic ecology. He notes that our survival is contingent upon survival against micro parasites which inhabit our bodies (bacteria, viruses) and against macro parasites (ruling classes in their many mutations) who raid, enslave, exploit, tax, kill, and otherwise mess us up. Any kind of parasite is dependent upon its host, the HIV no less than a ruling class, and therefore it is in the interest of the parasite not to annihilate its host completely, as otherwise, the parasite too is dead. A balance, or stasis of some kind, must be accommodated. The host is permitted to live only to the extent that it works to produce a surplus for the parasite. While McNeill does not prattle, as Hitler does in MEIN KAMPF, about "sacrifice for the race", or "ruthless measures for survival," he is at ease with that cool distance from events that permits him to speak of "Nature" and our "species." Susan Sontag warned against the metaphorical treatment of disease, and that is a danger McNeill has not resisted. He retains a lay person's knowledge of disease and a Chicago person's knowledge of ruling classes. He does not, for all the suggestion of a class analysis of plague and history, tell us about the lost history of our own communism. Nor does he know about the lizard. 1. LIZARD TALK IN ANCIENT EGYPT "AIDS!" her lips curl about the syllable. "There is no such thing. It is a false disease invented by the American government to take advantage of the poor countries. The American president hates poor people, so now he makes up AIDS to take away the little we have." --Prostitute in Port-au-Prince, quoted in LIFE, August 1987. What about the famous plagues of ancient Egypt? They provide an atavistic component to the whisperings and prayers of the bourgeoisie. They are the "fundamentals" of the Fundamentalists. Did not the Lord of Hosts, the wrathful Yahweh, sling down plague and pestilence to those who got in the way of the "Chosen People"? Listen to the voice of the chief physician of the Baptist Mission Hospital outside of Port-au-Prince (one-third of whose beds are unoccupied): "Fornication. It is Sodom and Gomorrah all over again, so what can you expect from these people?" (LIFE magazine, August 1987). In Lutheran, in Calvinist, in Vatican, in Zionist ideological practice, these are the fool "fundamentals" dividing "darkest Africa" from the "glory that was Greece", the slave mode of production based upon the empire of irrigation (ancient Egypt) from the slave mode of production based upon the democracy of the city-state (ancient Greece), the ancient Third World from the ancient First World. The plagues of the Old Testament took place in the 13th century B.C.E. They are the pestilences described in the Book of Exodus. But what is this book? It was composed at least three hundred years afterwards, during the reign of Solomon. It summarizes cultic recitation, song, and chronicle: or, the official myths of an ancient state, and must therefore be treated accordingly. Zora Neale Hurston speaks of them as pan-African stories. The pestilences are exercises of the magical machismo of Moses, a man with a stick, a rod of power, a serpent god who leads slaves to freedom. He must fight the Egyptian oppressor and the Egyptian gods. The victory over Pharaoh is a victory of superior magic. Moses throws down his stick, and it becomes a serpent. He dips it in the waters of the Nile, and the waters turn to blood. He stretches his staff over the streams, and frogs fall all over, even into ovens and kneading troughs. He strikes the dust on the ground, and maggots spring up everywhere on man and beast. Flies, hailstorms, locusts, eclipses, pestilences, boils: Moses and his stick bring all of them, and Pharaoh's magicians are stumped at every turn. Thus does Yahweh defeat the frog goddess, the sun god, and the cattle deities. Such serpent-and-stick power is a living power in Haiti and in Dahomey as Zora Neale Hurston discovered. How did Moses, the leader of slaves and outlaws (for these are the Egyptian meanings of the word "Hebrew") obtain his magic? He learned it from Pharaoh's stable boy, Mentu. Moses says to him, "I love you because you know all about the beginnings of things and you tell me about them. You tell me such nice lizard talk." But Mentu did not give his knowledge for nothing. Moses brought him scraps from Pharaoh's kitchens. "Roast pork at Pharaoh's table meant boiled hog head for the help." With his new pupil Mentu could say, "I am eating further back on the hog now." The class relations of magic-knowledge are made clear. It is concocted in kitchens and stables, exchanged for a price, and only then comes the familiar, ambiguous story of rebellion, massacre, and new kingdom. "'No more toting sand and mixing mortar! No more taking rocks and building things for Pharaoh! No more whipping and bloody backs! No more slaving from can't see in the morning to can't see at night! Free! Free! So free till I'm foolish.' They just sat with centuries in their eyes and cried." Certainly, this is a version that only is possible after the liberation of the Afro-American, the historic person who straddles Christianity, Judaism, and Voodoo. The reading of the Egyptian pestilences supplied as a result of that experience is the opposite of Luther and Calvin, the gods of capitalism, whose Gospel was really "Work or be Hanged." 2. "WHAT THEY HAD FORMERLY DONE IN A CORNER ..." "ANCIENT GREECE Thucydides. Let us call him "Thuc." He belonged to the "glory that was Greece," and no wonder for he came from an aristocratic family. He was the manager of a gold mine on the frontier of the Athenian empire. He was a failed general and an exile of twenty years. We're supposed to study his book, THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR as part of "western civilization." OK. Let's have a look. He praised maritime imperialism. He recounted the Athenian bid for Mediterranean hegemony. He lived in the transition to commodity production, and to the money-form of human creation. It is the transition from piracy to commerce (smile). In methodology his book is no less revolutionary, as it departs from the magic of Moses. It is influenced by the sophist theories of disease propounded by Hippocrates: there is the observation of symptoms, the chronicling of the course, the identification of the crisis, and the analysis of causes. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 2 Jul 1995 19:15:04 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: Sappho In-Reply-To: <0099244C.C0BF3040.3565@cpcmg.uea.ac.uk> from "I.LIGHTMAN" at Jun 22, 95 05:19:10 pm The Sappho transl. I was brought up on was Mary Barnard's. It was amusing way back then, to see WCW's Sappho transl. in _Paterson_ and see that Barnard had made a better one. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 2 Jul 1995 19:18:36 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: breath rules In-Reply-To: from "H. T. KIRBY-SMITH" at Jun 22, 95 10:08:53 am The idea that Olson's idea was that you stop and breathe after each line is a little bricky. But you can or could see the lines if you heard him. I remember in 1963, "Maximus of Dogtown II" had not been in print, but Olson read it in Vancouver a couple times. Dan McLeod taped him, and then a month later sent a transcription of the tape to Olson, and it turned out that the transcription agreed with Olson's manuscript except for 3 times, which is pretty good for such a long poem! ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 2 Jul 1995 19:20:43 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: Fuzzy Logic Poetics In-Reply-To: <01HS01XT0CK28ZFK7H@albnyvms.BITNET> from "Chris Stroffolino" at Jun 22, 95 09:06:58 am George Stanley once explained the relationship between fuzzy logic and poetry, but I had so much beer in me that I couldnt understand the next morning. So I just read some of his poetry. That snapped me to! ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 3 Jul 1995 09:26:04 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Re: women & tech This has happened again---what I hoped would be at least an INTERESTING debate (or something) about "women and tech" has just turned once again into a "wow--books are great" thing---So, Lisa S. and Sandra B. have mentioned this issue and the (in)famous Haraway book (and Silliman says it's great)---but one may wonder if Haraway is actually empowering to women or not? It seems she just builds an elaborate thesis around what may perhaps be an historical "accident"--that the increased number of women in the work-force or service industry (a phenomenon often attributed to "women's lib") happens to occur just as technology (computers, etc) is accelerating---thus, there's a cause effect relation, right? Sure, at least Haraway doesn't argue an "essentialist feminist" position and in this sense may seem to open up all kinds of possibilities--- BUT she does seem to erase class issues, issues of access, and posits some vague FUTOPIA that doesn't give a fuck about ecologic depletion and the rich getting richer---at least it seems so....chris s. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 3 Jul 1995 10:09:18 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: braman sandra Subject: well, if we're going... In-Reply-To: <01HSFFMHDB2U8Y4X8J@albnyvms.BITNET> from "Chris Stroffolino" at Jul 3, 95 09:26:04 am Well, if we're going to get into it, Cris S, don't be essentialist in your reading of comments from women. I for one have never recommended Haraway -- you'll note the items I recommended were studies of the impact of specific information technologies historiclly on women, and vice versa. For where I stand on the question of cultural critiques of the impact of technology on society (and vice versa, again), see a review of Mark Poster's MODE OF INFORMATION in the JOURNAL OF COMMUNICATION a couple of years ago. And of course I should not be guilty of over-generalizing either. While Paul Virilio, for example, reads as quite abstract and metaphorical, in fact his insights into the nature of war are extremely useful in its analysis and in, again, impacts of the development of new information technologies on the theory and practice of war. Sandra Braman ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 3 Jul 1995 10:13:29 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Carl Lynden Peters Subject: Re: Fuzzy Logic Poetics In-Reply-To: <199507030220.TAA27687@fraser.sfu.ca> from "George Bowering" at Jul 2, 95 07:20:43 pm _scientific american_ had a recent article (june/95) entitled "from complexity to perpelexity." it included some wide-ranging definitions of complexity. in this century, various scientists have thought they had found a theory that explained almost everything (but more than science is, of course, required to realize that project) ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 3 Jul 1995 12:04:15 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ryan Knighton Subject: Re: Fuzzy Logic Poetics In-Reply-To: <199507030220.TAA27687@fraser.sfu.ca> from "George Bowering" at Jul 2, 95 07:20:43 pm George Stanley also thought "what fresh hell is this?" is a good title for a book of poems. He hadn't even left the bar, let alone tasted the hangover. There's fuzzy foresight. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 3 Jul 1995 12:16:51 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Re: ReTurn of the Depressed In-Reply-To: <199507030413.VAA10087@isc.SJSU.EDU> The San Jose State computers have been up and down for weeks, but now appear to be up for real, or for virtue (and Lana Turner has again collapsed!) Unable to participate in the poetics list, I've returned to my bedside reading (though next time I think I'll actually get into the bed to read; knees get sore after hours spent at bedside). Anyway, if anyone sent me mail again, send it again again. New e-mail address is anielsen@isc.sjsu.edu Great collaboration between Joe Ross & Rod Smith in first issue of _Membrane_, new mag out of DC -- New piece by Joe coming from UPPER LIMIT MUSIC soon! ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 3 Jul 1995 14:52:47 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: Music, Sentimentality, and a discrete indiscreet BlaserCon comment In-Reply-To: from "Herb Levy" at Jun 11, 95 12:55:42 pm Thanks to Herb Levy for making me think about why I loved Albert Ayler and thought Hole was a void. Maybe it is because when I first heard the Aylers I thought, gee, I havent heard this before and it makes me clear away the sludge of what a lot of jazz had got into during a long time of people trying other people's riffs. But when I heard Hole on , I think, Saturday Night Ugh, it seemed that I was hearing some people doing what I had heard other people doing. I remember hearing Grandmaster Flash for the first time, and sitting up as if I had a bullet against my eyebrow, but now I sit in a hotel room in Helsinki and watch a Finnish rap group step up and down with baseball hats on backward and chanted couplets and think why bother. It seems to me that when I am turned on by something in pop music, what I am hearing is something different from its surround but shining with something back there in the what, tradition. That's why I do like, say, ZZ Top. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 3 Jul 1995 18:29:53 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom Mandel Subject: Re: bedside reading piles near the bed: so many wonderful books of poetry by friends... this has been a 3 month knockout flowering whammo year for the art Moscow Conceptualism, 1970-1990 (book upstairs, don't remember the author, alas) Golf Digest - yes, Hank! Levinas: In the Time of the Nations ditto: Outside the Subject Wm. Burroughs: Letters 1945-59 Caldera Network Desktop: Getting Started King: Sea of Words This is a rather sloppily confected companion to the inestimable Aubrey/Maturin novels of Patrick O'Brian. Don't waste your money, I think. And, for my sins, I'm on a second tour of teh above-mentioned Aubrey/Maturin novels by O'Brian. Just now in the middle of _The Mauritius Command._ Anyone not having read these (now 17) books is invited to cease all other activities and really begin to enjoy life for the first time. Tom Mandel ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 3 Jul 1995 20:30:06 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: maria damon Subject: Re: women & tech chris s.--chill. keep in mind we were responding to a request for bibliographic references. i haven;t noticed any mindlessly essentialistic celebration of "woman"ness in these messages. at the same time, it's interesting how quickly the list turned to critiques by women of how men "do" science --which is not the same thing as women writing about technology. what it pointed out to me was the paucity of such materials, that we had to go somewhat far afield. anyway, that meandering is one of the interesting things about the list, for me.--md ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 4 Jul 1995 01:17:48 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Re: well, if we're going... Thank you Sandra and Maria for your responses--Though the tone of my last posting may suggest otherwise, I wasn't trying to claim that there was a "mindless essentialism" going on--I too find the meandering inter- esting and i was trying to direct it towards such issues as "critiques by women of how men do science"(damon) and "the impact of specific information technologies historically on women" and away from the more depoliticized illusion of mere "writing about technology" and though my interests tend to be more "class" oriented (and find 'technology' if not a false issue at least a "vehicle" that has gotten too large for its tenor and thus often a huge mystifier of "social processes" ---which is not a critique i'd make of poetry--even if one retrospectively defines poets from Sir Thomas Wyatt to Emily Dickinson as "technology" as Fuller did), I am curious in both of your (and others') speculations about women and science, and what "the next phase" (if you will) would be, say, without the notion of CYBORG----Again, thanks. Chris ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 3 Jul 1995 23:03:09 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Lindz Williamson Subject: Re: women & tech In-Reply-To: <2ff8999d1fd0002@maroon.tc.umn.edu> On Mon, 3 Jul 1995, maria damon wrote: > chris s.--chill. keep in mind we were responding to a request for bibliographic > references. i haven;t noticed any mindlessly essentialistic celebration of > "woman"ness in these messages. at the same time, it's interesting how quickly > the list turned to critiques by women of how men "do" science --which is not the > same thing as women writing about technology. what it pointed out to me was the > paucity of such materials, that we had to go somewhat far afield. anyway, that > meandering is one of the interesting things about the list, for me.--md > I'd say this was extremely true that man are awarded the ability to practice science, but women are only perceived to study the theory enabling them to write about tech and science, but not contribute. ( this is a generalization) It seems to me after talking to friends in MSC programs that there is bias against the female ability to remain logical at all times of the month. Interesting theory, I'd like to see the stats and the case study based on this observation. I also wonder if there was a similar study done on the male ability to retain ones senses when in the presence of breast. Lindz ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 4 Jul 1995 10:11:42 +0200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "WILLIAM M. NORTHCUTT" Subject: Bedside Reading Here's my list: Ron Silliman, Jones Charles Reznikoff, Collected Poems (again and again and again) John Irving, Son of the Circus Sulfur (latest issue) H.D., Asphodel Pound/Lewis letters Mark Lewisohn, The Abbey Road Recording Sessions Schizoid reading seems to make sense. doesn't it??? William Northcutt ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 4 Jul 1995 10:24:41 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Blair Seagram Subject: checking Eudora/bside reading I realize I haven't responded to this list from my new mail program, so this is a test. Re: Bside reading, there has been a lapse too long to carry on more over I am slowing, getting through Ulysses, and saw a great documentary and performance on Beckett. I have a copy of 7 Types of Ambiguity and The Structure of Complex Words by William Empson. I look at them and they look back at me. I also have near me Blake's Poetry and Designs, a Norton Critical Anthology, which I was inspired to buy because of discussions on this list. As well Pomes All Sizes, by Kerouac, The Pocket Poets Series #48. A beautiful book I was given is The Inferno of Dante, a new verse translation by Robert Pinsky. The list continues. Many contemporary names known by the list. All this around me but I barely get to it. Re: Fuzzy Logic- Is this discussion related to the comments by Charles Bernstein on rules vs no rules? Re: Defoe by Leslie Scalapino. Can anyone give me an address where I can order this book? Best wishes this 4th of July. Blair ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 4 Jul 1995 14:09:02 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "H. T. KIRBY-SMITH" Organization: University of NC at Greensboro Subject: breath rules As long as it is clear that by "breath" Olson did not really mean breathing, the inhalation and exhalation of air, there is no problem. Some people, however, think that by breath he meant breath, and imagine that his lines of poetry really have something to do with a physical part of the poet. Actually his lines were a typographical display on the page, which one is expected to "see." Others are bothered by the fact that Olson simultaneously insisted on the poem as a personal performance, and attacked the effect of the printing press on poet, yet was much interested in seeing his poems in print. But to worry about things like this is to betray the foolish consistency that Emerson told us is the hobgoblin of little minds, and to ignore the "Do I contradict myself? Very well, I contradict myself" of Whitman. Olson meant by breath the incontrovertible spirit of the poet. "But breath is man's special qualification as animal," he says. Even in praising the typewriter he saw a technical method for expressing the breath: "It is the advantage of the typewriter that, due to its rigidity and its space precisions, it can, for a poet, indicate exactly the breath, the pauses, the suspensions even of syllables, the juxtapositions even of parts of phrases, which he intends." Breath, like technique, is a way of asserting power: If I hammer, if I recall in, and keep calling in, the breath, the breathing as distinguished from the hearing, it is for cause, it is to insist upon the part that breath plays in verse which has not (due, I think, to the smothering power of the line by too set a concept of foot) has not been sufficiently observed or practiced, but which has to be if verse is to advance to its proper force and place in the day, now, and ahead. I take it that PROJECTIVE VERSE teaches, is, this lesson, that that verse will only do in which a poet manages to register both the acquisitions of his ear and the pressures of his breath. Responses from quite a number of those who knew Olson and heard him read make it clear that "breath" is really an inimitable transcendental quality of the poetry and is a function of the immortal poetic soul. Next question: Olson says that "breath is man's special qualification as an animal." Did he allow women breath as well? ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 4 Jul 1995 15:00:41 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Blair Seagram Subject: Blake Correction: Blake's Poetry and Designs A Norton Critical Edition (not Anthology) BS ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 4 Jul 1995 13:43:21 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Shaunanne Tangney Subject: Re: women & tech In-Reply-To: On Mon, 3 Jul 1995, Lindz Williamson wrote: > On Mon, 3 Jul 1995, maria damon wrote: > > > chris s.--chill. keep in mind we were responding to a request for > bibliographic > references. i haven;t noticed any mindlessly > essentialistic celebration of > "woman"ness in these messages. at the > same time, it's interesting how quickly > the list turned to critiques by > women of how men "do" science --which is not the > same thing as women > writing about technology. what it pointed out to me was the > paucity of > such materials, that we had to go somewhat far afield. anyway, that > > meandering is one of the interesting things about the list, for me.--md > > > > > I'd say this was extremely true that man are awarded the ability > to practice science, but women are only perceived to study the theory > enabling them to write about tech and science, but not contribute. ( this > is a generalization) It seems to me after talking to friends in MSC > programs that there is bias against the female ability to remain logical > at all times of the month. Interesting theory, I'd like to see the stats > and the case study based on this observation. I also wonder if there was > a similar study done on the male ability to retain ones senses when in > the presence of breast. > > Lindz > --not to get all pop-culture on y'all, but. . . I live next door to a three-year old, and the other night I was baby-sitting, and he was showing me his _Pocahontas_ (underlined as they are after the Disney movie) figurines, and John Smith comes with a sword AND a compass; Pocahontas is just/of course buxom, scantily clad, doe-eyed, and somehow always=already persecuted looking. . . There is something here--perhaps Old/New World, but male/female, too, and worth thinking about. I'm not going to jump on the Disney-is evil bandwagon (was driving that particular wagon long, long ago) but there are still these mindless misrepresentations that because they are available at any burgerstand in the nation become fact/truth/history--accepted, and worse, acceptable. Happy 4th of July, everyone. . . ShaunAnne ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 4 Jul 1995 17:45:44 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Lindz Williamson Subject: pocahantus In-Reply-To: Oh please don't start me on this one. Usually I'm a big Disney fan due only to the skill of the animation, the stories are so-so and I've never recovered from the butchering of the original Little MErmaid story ( it's not supposed to have a happy ending). But Pocanhantus wins the big loser award. I can see how they tired to make a fair representation, but hollywood politics of $$$$$$ won instead. Their big mistake was choosing a historical figure rather than opting for pure fiction. And come on, is MEl GIbson really that good of a voice actor, I thought he graduated from the 12 step facial expression school of acting, especially after witnessing Hamlet. Anyway for a better recommendation I watched "MRs. Parker and the Vicious Circle" last night and I'd give it the thumbs up. LIndz ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 5 Jul 1995 00:26:52 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: women & tech In-Reply-To: from "Shaunanne Tangney" at Jul 4, 95 01:43:21 pm I think that "Happy 4th of July, everyone. . ." is a little ambitious. For some of us it should be "Happy 1st of July." Or 14th of July. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 5 Jul 1995 00:52:22 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: bucky fuller In-Reply-To: <199506211356.GAA17525@slip-1.slip.net> from "Steve Carll" at Jun 21, 95 06:56:22 am We were riding thr elevated train that went right thru the big Fuller geodesic dome at Expo '67 in Montreal, when George Stanley said "I feel as if I am in the middle of a big Bucky brain!" ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 5 Jul 1995 01:25:10 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: sensitive In-Reply-To: from "Lindz Williamson" at Jun 7, 95 09:02:42 pm Hey. Linz. Read thru the file of TISH. All the way thru the 60s ther writers in TISH went on and on about the local as the most important fact in Vancouver writing. Then jump ahead to my essay of a decade later, I guess, in which I explain the difference between local (B.C. consept) and regional (Ont. concept.) ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 5 Jul 1995 01:31:07 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: sentimentality In-Reply-To: from "Alan Sondheim" at Jun 7, 95 07:30:39 pm I would not be surprised to hear that rock players take their work seriously. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 5 Jul 1995 10:57:13 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Boughn Subject: Re: breath rules In-Reply-To: from "H. T. KIRBY-SMITH" at Jul 4, 95 02:09:02 pm Where did this strange, reductionist idea that Olson equated the length of a line with the length of a breath come from anyway? What I read is "the HEAD, by way of the EAR, to the SYLLABLE, the HEART, by way of the BREATH, to the LINE". I don't quite understand how this gets translated into "the length of a breath should equal the length of a line". It seems to me that what's at stake here is a fundamental prosodic principle. Do we base our verse on verse forms abstracted from speech and regularized (historically) in print, or do we root them in the human voice and all of its breathy irregularities in which we can hear, as Olson would have it, the passionate speech of the heart. To finish the quote TH Kirby-Smith starts: "But breath is man's special qualification as animal. Sound is a dimension he has extended. Language is one of his proudest acts. And when a poet rests in these as they are in himself (in his physiology, if you like, but the life in him, for all that) then he, if he chooses to speak from these roots, works in that area where nature has given him size, projective size." What seems clear to me from this is the push in poetry to get back to language as spoken, as voice--not as a distinguishing identity, manifestation of self, but as root of our relation to the world. We're in Walter Ong country here, or Stanley Cavell country when he criticizes Derrida's graphocentrism and argues for voice as the mark of the human and the limit of the metaphysical. Because language is breath, ontologically speaking. Or as Chaucer has it in Olson's favorite poem of his: "Speech is nought but ayre ybroken." Also, lest we foget, "Projective Verse" is a polemical piece. It was written in response to specific repressive, dominant practices, and it's concerns are with creating an opening for other work to get done. It is not prescriptive in the same way that 18th century handbooks were. Rather, it's meant as an attack on prescription, as an opening up. (For a very interesting discussion on the differences between the traditional prescriptive handbooks and the proclamations and manifestoes of modern poets after 1795, check out Donald Wesling's *The Chances of Rhyme*.) There's also, I think, a whole unopened can of worms here that has to do with the relation of poetry to this kind of expository prose. I just read an essay by a guy named Lawrence Rainey that attacks HD and judges her to be a "minor" poet partially because she only wrote poetry and never engaged in the polemical battles that so occupied many of her male companions. As if your poetry can only be interpreted and validated in terms of these abstract arguments, rather than the other way around. Best, Mike mboughn@epas.utoronto.ca ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 5 Jul 1995 10:14:44 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Lindz Williamson Subject: Re: sensitive In-Reply-To: <199507050825.BAA25454@fraser.sfu.ca> On Wed, 5 Jul 1995, George Bowering wrote: > Hey. Linz. Read thru the file of TISH. All the way thru the 60s ther > writers in TISH went on and on about the local as the most important > fact in Vancouver writing. > Then jump ahead to my essay of a decade later, I guess, in which I > explain the difference between local (B.C. consept) and regional > (Ont. concept.) > Yeah, somebody finally agrees with me! I'm not mental after all. Lindz ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 5 Jul 1995 13:36:06 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Re: sensitive LindZ--well if you want agreement, I agree with what you say about men's "logic" too. I was just hoping the woman who told me to chill and once called you irresponsibly young or something would respond to it as well...reactively yours, chris ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 5 Jul 1995 13:07:23 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Edward Foster Subject: Re: tech and aesthetics / how to teach? i recommend the garden at tanya's on grove street in jersey city; good, terrific food for the price (very reasonable), good setting, good place to sit and talk. out of the way but central for ny/nj area. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 5 Jul 1995 12:34:09 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Lindz Williamson Subject: Re: sensitive In-Reply-To: <01HSIH34ZGTE8Y52AM@albnyvms.BITNET> On Wed, 5 Jul 1995, Chris Stroffolino wrote: > LindZ--well if you want agreement, I agree with what you say about > men's "logic" too. I was just hoping the woman who told me to chill > and once called you irresponsibly young or something would respond > to it as well...reactively yours, chris > NOw, now Chris Let's not get snarky. I don't want to shatter everyone's image of one big happy poetic circle. I just like it when someone as repsectable (not sure if that really fits) as George Bowering has had the same observations as myself. Funny how no one attacks him isn't it? Lindz ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 5 Jul 1995 14:01:27 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: breath rules In-Reply-To: <199507051457.KAA21757@blues.epas.utoronto.ca> from "Michael Boughn" at Jul 5, 95 10:57:13 am Not only is "Projective Verse" a polemical piece; it was written in a flash; and I remember Olson saying he was surprised at its canonization. Worse was the dumb response of (often unsympathetic) academics, who started talking about "Projectivist" poets, and the "breath-line"; a highly instructive article was written a few years ago by a U. of T. woman who showed that Williams's lines are not oral lines but something to read AGAINST the breath, as a tight music. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 5 Jul 1995 14:06:20 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: sun & moon/blue M&Ms In-Reply-To: from "Kevin Killian" at Jun 15, 95 06:07:39 pm Dodie is right: I would never leap imaginatively from S&M to M&M's. I would have thought of Smarties, as in, "That smarts!" ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 6 Jul 1995 12:07:13 +1000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Roberts July 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. Our email address is changing. By late July we hope to have our new address up and running. Until then you can contact AWOL by emailing K.Mann@unsw.edu.au (we may take a day or so to respond), writing to AWOL, PO Box 333, Concord NSW 2137, Australia or by phoning 02 7475667. 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 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. 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. 2 Admission $8/ $5. Details phone (02) 241 5876. NSW WRITERS' CENTRE EVENTS WOMEN WRITERS' NETWORK 2nd Wednesday.7.30pm, NSW Writers' Centre. Details Ann Davis (02) 716 6869. FEMINIST & EXPERIMENTAL WRITERS' GROUP meets every second Friday 6.30-9.30pm. Details Margaret Metz (02) 231 8011 or Valerie Williamson for details of venues. LIFE STORIES TEN WEEK COURSE WITH PATTI MILLER.. Have you started your life story? Need some fresh writing ideas and encouragement? This ten week course is open to anyone who has already participated in a Life Stories workshop as well as those who have not attended a workshop before. $150 for NSWWC members, $200 for non members. Beginning Thursday 20 July. Details and bookings (02) 555 9757. IS MY SHIT FUNNY? COMEDY WRITING WITH SUE INGLETON. Where does it come from? Can you do it? $120 Saturday 22 and Sunday 23 July 9.30 -5pm. Details and bookings (02) 555 9757. Unless otherwise stated all NSW Writers' Centre events are held at the Centre in Rozelle Hospital Grounds, Rozelle. Enter from Balmain Road opposite Cecily street and follow the signs. Seminars Women In Publishing (WIP). DESIGNING BRIEFS. Good design is a crucial part of any publishing project. In the DESIGNING BRIEFS seminar on 24 July WIP will cover briefing designers so that you will achieve the best possible presentation of your message. For further information contact Anne Reilly on 02 690 6951, fax 02 690 6390 or write to Women in Publishing PO Box 1515, North Sydney, NSW 2059. 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. 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. 25 July Downtown - Street kids and kids in the street. With Helen Demidenko, James Moloney and Sue Gough. Chaired by Rosie Fitzgibbons. Queensland Writer' Centre, 535 Wickham Terrace, Spring Hill. 7.30 pm. Admission $10 for QWC members. $15 for non-members. Short stories and fiction writing. Jane Hyde is again part of the Queensland Writers' Centre Writers in the Library Project in 1995. After her success at Bulimba library last year, she is moving to New Farm library to commence a five week course teaching short storiesand fiction writing. The course commences on Thursday 6 july from 3.30 to 5.30 pm. 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. REDCLIFFE Library, 7 July - 4 August, a once a week course with Sue Gough, on Writing for young people. Contact the library for registration form. At MACKAY Library on 20 July, Gary Crew conducts a Writing for young people workshop. Again, contact the library. In Brisbane, the workshops are at New Farm (6 July - 3 August) with Jane Hyde and short story and fiction writing, Toowong (1 - 29 August) with five separate tutors on separate topics and Writing with young people at Everton Park library commences 8 August, for 11-15 year olds. At the Centre in Wickham Terrace a course on contemporary novels largely set in Brisbane, commences on 9 August, with Vivienne Muller and Adam Shoemaker. Novels to be discussed include: Johno (David Malouf), Romeo of the Underworld (Venero Armanno) and Praise (Andrew McGahan). Ph (07) 864 4563, Adam Shoemaker for details. VICTORIA MELBOURNE Poets, Poetry and Poetoric La Mama Poetica at La Mama Theatre, Faraday Street, Carlton Monday 19th June, 8.00pm $5.00(conc.)& $7.00 Featuring Jennifer Strauss, Lauren Williams and Geoff Prince. Join us for fine poetry and spirited discussion. Enquiries; Catherine Bateson Ph (03) 9383 5677 ************************************* CONFERENCES WAR'S END? GRIFFITH UNIVERSITY/JAMES COOK UNIVERSITY QUEENSLAND STUDIES CENTRE ANNUAL CONFERENCE 8-9 JULY 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 Phone. (45) 35 32 86 00 Fax (45) 35 32 86 15 * Eva Rask KnudsenWiedeweldtsgade 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). The Centre for Australian Studies in Wales, University of Wales, Lampeter, is hosting a conference next year entitled "Australian Studies and the Shrinking Periphery: Surfing the Net for Australia." Organisers are calling for papers. "In recent years the consolidation of Europe into the 15 states of the EU, the integration of east and west within Europe, and the progressive turning of Australia to its own Pacific backyard have furthered the impression of periphery: one world's edge looking distantly at the other." The contacts are: Dr Graham Sumner and Dr Andrew Hassam Centre for Australian Studies in Wales University of Wales Lampeter Dyfed, SA48 7ED, Wales, UK. Telephone: Graham Sumner +44 (0) 1570 424760 or 424790 (secretary) Andrew Hassam +44 (0) 1570 424764 (secretary) Fax: Graham Sumner +44 (0) 1570 424714 Andrew Hassam +44 (0) 1570 423634 E-mail: sumner@lamp.ac.uk or alh@www.lamp.ac.uk Offers of papers should reach the organisers by 31 December 1995, and comprise a full title and an abstract of no more than 100 words. Further information will be sent when available, and will appear on the Centre's WWW home-page (htp://www.lamp.ac.uk/oz). 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. WARANA WRITERS' WEEK 1995 LIBRARY BOARD OF QUEENSLAND YOUNG WRITERS AWARD. The best piece of unpublished creative writing relevant to Queensland, length 2,000 to 2,500 words, entrants aged from 18 -25 years as of 1 January 1995. Prize $1,500. Details (07) 840 7776. Closing date 28 July WARANA WRITERS' WEEK CITY OF BRISBANE SHORT STORY AWARD. Unpublished stories 1,000 to 5,000 words. Prize $1,000 and certificate. Entry fee $5. Details and entry forms from Wendy Mead, Director, Warana Writers' Week, PO Box 993 Fortitude Valley Qld 4006. Closing date 28 July WARANA WRITERS' WEEK THE PREMIER'S POETRY AWARD. Unpublished single poem or related group of poems to 300 lines. Prize $1,000 and certificate. Entry fee $5. Details and entry forms from Wendy Mead, Director, Warana Writers' Week, PO Box 993 Fortitude Valley Qld 4006. Closing date 28 July QUEERLIT FICTION PRIZES. The Bookshop Darlinghurst prize for pre-eminent entry ($300): Pop Shop prize for humorous fiction ($200), Aussie Boys Prize for youth (under 30) for fiction ($200), Tool Shed Prize for erotic fiction (hamper of sex toys to the value of $150), Feminist Bookshop 21st Anniversary prize for lesbian fiction ($100 book voucher). Entries expected to have a 'queer' theme. Send to QueerLit, PO Box 359, Glebe NSW 2037. Entries will not be returned. Details (02) 3583686. Closing date 31 July. **************************************************************************** While AWOL makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of Happenings listing we suggest you confirm dates, times and venue. AWOL would like to thank the following organisation who provided information for this list: NSW Writers Centre, Queensland Writers Centre, AusLit discussion group (internet), WIPround (Women in Publishing) and the other individuals and organisations who supplied information about their events directly to AWOL. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 5 Jul 1995 22:08:16 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Burt Kimmelman -@NJIT" Subject: Re: breath rules I am reminded of the original meaning of *inspire*--to be breathed into by the muse. So much of Olson has to do with the visceral, and he was let's face it a heavy breather (how could a guy as big as he not be?) and his breaths when reading, as I recall, made the poem dramatic. as for the visual: when we stop connecting poems to the flesh and blood and breath and tempo, then maybe we're no longer talking about poems but rather about painting-drawing-sculpture (paging Ms. Holzer) or whatever but not poetry. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 6 Jul 1995 12:18:29 +1000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Roberts Subject: Re: unsubscribe I unsubscribed last friday and received a message saying that I was unsubscribed. But I am still receiving mail. As my address will be shut down in the next few days could somebody please un sub me Mark ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 5 Jul 1995 22:14:00 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Burt Kimmelman -@NJIT" Subject: Re: breath rules continuing from my last msg: what about olson's "the resistance" (am i recalling the title right?) about the tendons and ligaments and so forth? ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 5 Jul 1995 22:18:03 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Burt Kimmelman -@NJIT" Subject: Re: tech and aesthetics / how to teach? Ed, your suggestion of garden at tanya's sounds fine. but anyway i didn't mean to imply that we had to eat in one of two cities--newark or hoboken. i'd be willing to travel to bklyn or manhattan too. but tanya's is okay. anyone else coming? burt ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 5 Jul 1995 23:35:18 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: John Fowler Organization: GRIST On-Line Subject: summer reading For summer reading you might check GRIST On-Line WWW-- http://www.phantom.com/~grist You'll find poetry from more than 100 authors, reviews, essays, calendars of events, and some pretty interesting links as well. Thanks, fowler@phantom.com GRIST On-Line ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 5 Jul 1995 21:22:40 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steve Carll Subject: Re: sensitive >NOw, now Chris Let's not get snarky. I don't want to shatter everyone's >image of one big happy poetic circle. I just like it when someone as >repsectable (not sure if that really fits) as George Bowering has had the >same observations as myself. Funny how no one attacks him isn't it? Lindz, weren't you reading when George bagged on Hole? Or did i get suckered by sarcasm? Steve ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 5 Jul 1995 21:22:47 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steve Carll Subject: Re: breath rules Burt K writes: >as for the visual: when we stop connecting poems to the flesh and blood >and breath and tempo, then maybe we're no longer talking about poems >but rather about painting-drawing-sculpture (paging Ms. Holzer) or >whatever but not poetry. Really? Are poems the only things that are poetry? And is it even possible, even given an emphasis on the visual, that poems *can* be disconnected from flesh, blood, breath and tempo? Or is there an everpresent connection to these things that is merely reshaped by that visuality? Are painting, drawing and sculpture not connected to flesh and blood, breath and tempo? This paragraph makes me think of a lot of questions (which probably should have remained unsaid). Please elaborate, Burt. Thanks, Steve ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 6 Jul 1995 01:52:54 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rod Smith Subject: Olson's mouthwash I'm teaching an advanced poetry workshop in the fall & wld welcome any comments on collections I might use. At this point I'm thinking the Hoover _Norton Postmodern_, _In the American Tree_, _o blek 12_, & maybe _Chain 2_ or _Disembodied Poetics_. Curious if people have found the Messerli book "better" in the classroom, but it lacks the critical material which I think wld be useful. Thanks. --Rod Smith ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 6 Jul 1995 07:47:29 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Boughn Subject: Re: breath rules In-Reply-To: from "H. T. KIRBY-SMITH" at Jul 4, 95 02:09:02 pm George: Can you be any more specific on the Williams essay you referred to? I'd be very interested to read it. Thanks, Mike mboughn@epas.utoronto.ca ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 6 Jul 1995 06:23:03 CST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Alexander Subject: Re: breath rules >as for the visual: when we stop connecting poems to the flesh and blood >and breath and tempo, then maybe we're no longer talking about poems >but rather about painting-drawing-sculpture (paging Ms. Holzer) or >whatever but not poetry. I really dislike it when people start proselytizing on what's poetry and what's not poetry, what's music and what's not music, what's book art and what's not book art, etc. Can't you just say you don't like something, without trying to cast it out of the pool? By these standards the work of William Blake is, for the most part, not poetry at all. Do you want to cast him out, too? Shall we begin making lists of artists whose work doesn't fit in? please charles alexander chax press minnesota center for book arts phone & fax: 612-721-6063 e-mail: mcba@maroon.tc.umn.edu ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 6 Jul 1995 10:06:35 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Jordan Davis." Subject: lists are fun (except when they're not) Charles Alexander wrote: I really dislike it when people start proselytizing on what's poetry and what's not poetry, what's music and what's not music, what's book art and what's not book art, etc. Can't you just say you don't like something, without trying to cast it out of the pool? By these standards the work of William Blake is, for the most part, not poetry at all. Do you want to cast him out, too? Shall we begin making lists of artists whose work doesn't fit in? But: lists are fun. Sorry. Love, Jordan (Registered in the Mormon book of the Dead) ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 6 Jul 1995 16:43:37 +0100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: R I Caddel Subject: bedside books etc I've enjoyed these lists, which in many cases sent me back to my own shelves - a process which throws up Feynmann (fine drummer, yes?), Chatwin's Songlines and Julian of Norwich has to be worth continuing. In my case the bedside/chairside/deskside/briefcase distinction doesn't work, because the bedside books tend to move to the breakfast table, the breakfast books come to work and so on - i.e. they all move. Which is what a good book should do... Here goes: 1. Active in Airtime 4 : latest ed, of Essex University based magazine edited by John Muckle & Ralph Hawkins. 2. Robin Blaser: The Holy Forest. 3. Ulla Dydo's Stein Reader. I needed this book years ago. 4. Ian Hamilton Finlay: Brount (Peninsula, 1995). I think this is the only bilingual English/Dutch publication I have. " : Ein Projekt fur das Bankhaus Schroder Munchmeyer Hengst & Co (Wild Hawthorn, 1995). 5. F.C.Happold: Mysticism (this penguin anthology came off the shelf when Julian was mentioned and I began a revisiting tour of the English Mystics). 6. Eric Mottram: Selected Poems (North & South). " : Blood on the Nash Ambassador (Hutchinson). 7. Michael Palmer: At Passages (Haven't got beyond the lovely Ben Watkins cover yet). 8. Terry Pratchett: Reaper Man (Arrgh! go back three spaces! this isn't the kind of book serious people are supposed to like!)(But I do - apart from anything else I like the Orang-utan Librarian, who gets paid peanuts...). 9. Micheal Tippett: Those 20th Century Blues. 10. Gilbert White's Journals v.III, ed. Mabey, found on a remainder stall. Tom Beard writes that he's moved by G.Hill, and that he hopes there's room for that: me too: it's always room for a multiplicity of voices that I'm interested in. But, in our over-crowded island, it's the Hill/Heaney/ Hughes/Harrison axis (more strictly, their critical supporters) which endangers the wide view, and becomes - willingly or otherwise - a part of the dominant culture. The other elements of poetry in the British Isles - and there are many - often get squeezed into the margins and neglected in one way or another. I'm sure this isn't news to anyone. G.Hill in his early days did indeed produce some moving poetry - but he's been taken up by the critical formalists and used as a stick with which to beat other ways of writing. I'd like to believe he was an unwilling victim in this, but nothing he's said or done could support such a reading. I'm afraid on the whole mainstream British poetry audiences like their poets GLUM, and the 4-H gang certainly give 'em that. Years ago I went to an RSThomas reading where he berated his listeners solidly for fortyfive minutes, miserable sinners, clods of earth and so on, and blow me, everyone came out saying how wonderful it was! Against that, it's certainly the non-dominant poetries which need the attention, the room. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx x x x Richard Caddel, E-mail: R.I.Caddel @ durham.ac.uk x x Durham University Library, Phone: 0191 374 3044 x x Stockton Rd. Durham DH1 3LY Fax: 0191 374 7481 x x x x "Words! Pens are too light. Take a chisel to write." x x - Basil Bunting x x x xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 6 Jul 1995 08:55:11 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Carl Lynden Peters Subject: Re: lists are fun (except when they're not) In-Reply-To: <950706100634_26399697@aol.com> from "Jordan Davis." at Jul 6, 95 10:06:35 am > > Charles Alexander wrote: > > I really dislike it when people start proselytizing on what's poetry and > what's not poetry, what's music and what's not music, what's book art and > what's not book art, etc. Can't you just say you don't like something, > without trying to cast it out of the pool? By these standards the work of > William Blake is, for the most part, not poetry at all. Do you want to cast > him out, too? Shall we begin making lists of artists whose work doesn't fit > in? > --just to add to this, charles is right on the mark! what's insightful abt his statement is the underlying apprehension of _interdisciplinarity_ in art, scholarship and reseach, the whole thing. and in the final analysis, what charles' comment reminds me of is the crucial relation between interdisciplinarity and the real cutting edge of art. --and that's a great place to be if you really want to be there c ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 6 Jul 1995 13:18:46 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rod Smith Subject: Re: lists are fun (except win they're knot) I don't think Charles A. was off base at all. In o blek 12 I used a line, which I can't remember right now whether it was appropriated-- "What is poetic is necessarily defined by what it is not." I think the question re Olson needs to be framed in terms of -- A) did he consider his theories contingent? & B) did he need to? On 7/2 George Bowering cited an instance in which transcription from a reading of an unpublished Olson poem led to surprisingly correct lineation. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 6 Jul 1995 13:22:58 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rod Smith Subject: Re: lists are fun (except when they're not) . . . . more: (sorry gang, hit enter when I meant to hit return)-- & then 7/5 Mike Boughn considered the idea that Olson equated the line with the breath "strange & reductionist." Does anyone need to be right here? I don't mean that snidely. I tend to think that good poems cld be written with either idea in mind. --Rod Smith ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 6 Jul 1995 14:29:26 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rod Smith Subject: Re: lists are fun (except when they're not . . . . more: (sorry gang, hit enter when I meant to hit return)-- & then 7/5 M, Boughn considered the idea that Olson equated the line with the breath "strange & reductionist." Does anyone need to be right here? I don't mean that snidely. I tend to think good poems can be written with either idea in mind. --Rod Smith (this addendum was sent to list once & didn't seem to get posted) ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 6 Jul 1995 15:34:40 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Boughn Subject: Re: Olson and breath In-Reply-To: <950706132249_26512864@aol.com> from "Rod Smith" at Jul 6, 95 01:22:58 pm Dear Rod Smith: You're absolutely right. Poems can be written any way the writer wants to write them. My point was simply that in all the discussions of breath in Olson's work that I'm aware of (and specifically in the essay "Projective Verse,") I can find no proposal that the length of a line should equal the length of a breath. The discussion of breath and its relation to the line is much more complex than that. But this is not to say that you can't write poems that way if you want. Best, Mike mboughn@epas.utoronto.ca ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 6 Jul 1995 15:34:52 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Carl Lynden Peters Subject: WR-EYE-TINGS this is to announce that the concrete/ visual, sound and performance poetries mail list is now up and running. if interested, you can subscribe by posting a message to: majordomo@sfu.ca this is the message you post: subscribe wr-eye-tings@sfu.ca end there's the dogma for use. that should get you in the machinery, to paraphrase olson N.B.: tony (green) and w. curnow your backchannels don't work, so i hope you catch this. c ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 6 Jul 1995 16:57:16 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: bedside books etc In-Reply-To: from "R I Caddel" at Jul 6, 95 04:43:37 pm I had to go to lunch with Geoffrey Hill once, and all he did was sit there looking glum. Not even manic. Just glum. So I read some of his poems. Then I felt glum. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 6 Jul 1995 17:01:48 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: breath rules In-Reply-To: <199507061147.HAA17885@blues.epas.utoronto.ca> from "Michael Boughn" at Jul 6, 95 07:47:29 am Damn, Mike, I cant remember the name of the woman who wrote it, but it was really persuasive to me. It might have been a thesis at U. of Toronto, say 7 years ago or so. She said that WCW sets up these (she is mainly talking about the poems that look like, say, the poems in CEP, ) poems that look as if they have regular short-line quatrains, but read with different enjambments etc than the visual; says that WCW was setting up the regular-looking and then forcing you to read it differently, adding a complexity you might now expect. If I run across her name I will send it along. There's a CHANCE that she's now the woman teaching Williams-HD at Queen's, but that is a wild and tenuous guess, sort of the way I was at my visual field test examination at the eye care clinic this morning. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 6 Jul 1995 17:12:03 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: Olson's mouthwash In-Reply-To: <950706015254_26276473@aol.com> from "Rod Smith" at Jul 6, 95 01:52:54 am I have used the Hoover collection, which has a small poetics collectiuon at the end. It is usable, and has lots of stuff from recent folks. But it does not contain Oppenheimer, Welch and a few others I wd hope to find. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 6 Jul 1995 17:28:04 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: yeah, re open mike In-Reply-To: <199506090308.UAA25753@slip-1.slip.net> from "Steve Carll" at Jun 8, 95 08:08:48 pm Yeah, the late great crackpot anaimateur Fred Hill a few years ago entered me in a poetry slam in Toronto under a silly fake name and I read some poetry I wrote while the other contenders were reading, and I won. I got a ridiculous but beautiful sweatshirt, and gave it to the second-place finisher, saying that his stuff was way better. That was a frisson of some sort. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 6 Jul 1995 20:28:27 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Burt Kimmelman -@NJIT" Subject: Re: breath rules Steve, Historically speaking, I'd say that my definition of poetry stands (not unlike in the way that my metaphor, "stands"--actually, technically it's a catachresis in the original sense of the word--is indeed metaphoric because it derives from the flesh and blood human who stands; but I am wandering off . . .). Are we perhaps needing to make a distinction between *poetry* and *poetic*? In any case, visual art (versus verbal or just plain musical "art") is spatially oriented, whereas poetry and music are temporally oriented (notwithstanding some mixed/blurred avant-garde art and/or performance art), which means that experiencing one or the other will be essentially different, I think. But okay, let's divorce verse from the bard. There has been plenty of concrete and other kinds of poetry. But then I gotta compare that stuff with the thrill of hearing (better yet hearing and seeing) Olson read, and not just cause he was star either. And Olson subscribed at times in writing to the belief that poetry and the human body were connected. Didn't he? Burt ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 6 Jul 1995 20:33:36 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Burt Kimmelman -@NJIT" Subject: Re: breath rules Charles, Cast Blake out?! Of what? No, no. Please, no lists. Sorry, I just thought that I was answering someone's query. To hell with breathing! Burt ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 6 Jul 1995 20:39:46 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Burt Kimmelman -@NJIT" Subject: Re: lists are fun (except win they're knot) Sorry Rod and everyone, but my fingers hit the wrong key and maybe sent off half a message. anyway there's the weinberger anthology that my students liked but i don't think i'll use again. there's also the norton postmodern americanpoetry ed by Paul Hoover, which I have not really had a changa chance to look at. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 6 Jul 1995 17:43:15 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ryan Knighton Subject: Re: Olson's mouthwash In-Reply-To: <199507070012.RAA21141@fraser.sfu.ca> from "George Bowering" at Jul 6, 95 05:12:03 pm George used the Hoover edition on me, actually. As a student, I thought is was wonderful. Ishmael Reed is also missing. But, hey, anthologies are just like that. George Stanley thinks there are too many language poets in it. But, hey, George Stanley is just like that. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 6 Jul 1995 18:24:48 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: Poetic Briefs is not dead In-Reply-To: <199505242249.PAA20139@whistler.sfu.ca> from "Mark Wallace" at May 24, 95 02:44:41 pm Is Mark Wallace out there reading? If so, West Coast Line claims to have lost the mailing address I gave them for you, and they have a SMALL cheque, and, shortly, copy of the mag for you. .George Bowering 2499 West 37th Ave., Vancouver, B.C. V6M 1P4 Canada ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 6 Jul 1995 21:45:54 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steve Carll Subject: Re: Olson's mouthwash Hey Rod: How 'bout _The Art of Practice_ from Potes and Poets ('94)? Steve ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 6 Jul 1995 22:00:37 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Graham John Sharpe Subject: Jabes query greetings, been reading Edmond Jabes' *The Book of Questions* lately, picking up what's available in the library, as oppose to working from vol.1 thru to vol.7 am working on a response piece to my reading and am so stuck on a certain concept that i cant seem to place, but i think is "real". the reading experience is like reading the commentaries (and this is where i get confused) on the Talmud, or the Cabala. was this done by Rabbis or family members, marginal notes they would make, questions and such on the text they are reading. is this sort of commentary done? and is it done stricktly by Rabbis or is a family/generational practice? i'm certain my ideas are coming from some where, and i dont think it was derrida's piece on jabes. i can only think about A.M.Klein, and maybe reading related to him. in any case i'm slightly stuck and looking for a gentle shove or pull. i think there is a article in *The Sin of the Book* (Gould, ed.) that relates to what i'm vaguely trying to pin down, but i wont have access to that book for a few weeks, and my curiosity can't wait. in anticipation, graham ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Jul 1995 01:23:46 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rod Smith Subject: Re: Olson's mouthwash (rinse & spit) Steve Carll writes > How 'bout _The Art of Practice_ I do like _The Art of Practice_ but the _o blek_ has the advantage of the statements. & actually I'm thinking interviews cld be good. Maybe the Hoover, o blek 12, _The Talsiman Interviews_, &/or the Berrigan interviews O Books did. I mean it seems that they usually come in w/ enthusiasm & the trick is not to squelch that. Berrigan is great that way, his dedication to the art, I think, is contagious. --Rod Smith ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Jul 1995 01:45:00 -0400 Reply-To: Robert Drake Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Robert Drake Subject: Re: Olson's mouthwash (rinse & spit) >I do like _The Art of Practice_ but the _o blek_ has the advantage of the >statements. & actually I'm thinking interviews cld be good. Maybe the Hoover, >o blek 12, _The Talsiman Interviews_, &/or the Berrigan interviews O Books >did. I mean it seems that they usually come in w/ enthusiasm & the trick is >not to squelch that. it's an old suggestion, but maybe teach from current little magazines rather than anthologies? many in AoP or oblek are pretty actively publishing; talisman would certainly be a prime candidate fr poetry & criticism--and you could get a dozen+ chaps (frm leave, texture, generator, potes & poets, standing stones, &&&....). nothing to help enthusiasm than to have hold of something fresh & new & not- yet-known. plus the chance to keep a press or two in the black (or less in the red). PLUS, the chance to point to a coupla less- than-perfect poems, give a flavor of what can go wrong in a poem, as well as what's right th usual luigi ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Jul 1995 03:26:19 CST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Alexander Subject: Re: breath rules Burt, concerning -- "Cast Blake out?! Of what? No, no. Please, no lists. Sorry, I just thought that I was answering someone's query. To hell with breathing!" not to hell with it -- I like breathing, too As for going to definitions of poetry, its etymology, "to stand," etc., it seems to me that we want it both ways, want words to mean something eternally, to contain their origins, but also to allow them to evolve, to continue to develop and change their meanings. This morning I'm not certain whether I'm more excited by Olson's human breath, Mac Low's aleatoric generations (which may or may not involve breathing as a compositional idea), bp Nichol's visual compositions, or something else. I love the quiet of Bev Dahlen's work, where one feels (in much of A Reading, at least) one is not so much hearing speech, as hearing/reading "thought taking shape." But the idea of something being poetry because of feeling the blood move -- I don't know. Emily Dickinson said she knew something was poetry if it took her head off. I love Dickinson & Olson, but I don't know if I want to allow that I have to either have the blood boiling or be lobotomized before I see something as poetry. But I do like the passion with which you speak for Olson's ability to move one who reads or hears him. charles charles alexander chax press minnesota center for book arts phone & fax: 612-721-6063 e-mail: mcba@maroon.tc.umn.edu ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Jul 1995 08:46:20 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Jordan Davis." Subject: taking the top of your head off Charles What did Dickinson mean by that, anyway? That poetry had to produce a strong sensation to be classified genus poetry species good enough? Jordan Charles Alexander wrote: Emily Dickinson said she knew something was poetry if it took her head off. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Jul 1995 09:34:15 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Re: Poetic Briefs is not dead Just talked to Jeff Hansen last night--he and Elizabeth Burns are moving to Minneapolis which CHAX and GASU should know (re. their desire to make a scene there---cs.) ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Jul 1995 10:13:37 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Re: fuzzy bookside bedding Dear Rod--I think the suggestion that you teach your students stuff from contemporary magazines (suggested by who---someone from ohio? lbd or byrum, i forget) is good--maybe AERIEL---- but I tend to find all anthologies pretty limiting and have taken to bootlegging (though that, too, involves bootlicking)--last year I used the sun and moon anthology--The Creeley section is eminantly teachable---especially the one about the tree and the one about the airplane (the latter can be usefully juxtaposed with the talking heads song "the big country")---but this time I taught an INTRODUCTION TO LITERATURE CLASS and wanted a better sense of new york school stuff than Messerli can do, but at the same time wanted older people like Stevens and Stein and Riding and NON-AMERICANS (oh horrors, horrors!) like Gig Ryan (from magazine--actually Hoover's mag.) and many Germans in translation.... Of course Rod, you should teach my CUSPS poems too. chris ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Jul 1995 10:33:05 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Re: fuzzy bookside bedding Someone mentioned the EXACT CHANGE thing earlier, but John Godfrey's pieces in it remind me very specifically of a certain kind of prose poem O'Hara wrote. One is called "DIDO" from which i take the following line----in memory of the "sentimentality" thread (from a few months ago): "if only I weren't feeling sentimental, but how else can you get passionate, and I at least know that's my devoir."(74) So--Rod, Joe Ross's new work seems definitely more O'Hara than Ashes (but I do agree with you definitgely more Ashes "compared to his other work') ---You see, I can play the name game too. "Breath rules, dude"! CS ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Jul 1995 10:14:58 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Loss Glazier Subject: Re: Poetic Briefs is not dead In-Reply-To: <01HSL18PB10I8Y5906@albnyvms.BITNET> from "Chris Stroffolino" at Jul 7, 95 09:34:15 am Chris, can you post a new _Poetics Briefs_ address when there is one? > > Just talked to Jeff Hansen last night--he and Elizabeth Burns are moving > to Minneapolis which CHAX and GASU should know (re. their desire to make > a scene there---cs.) > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Jul 1995 11:31:13 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Willa Jarnagin Subject: Re: taking the top of your head off In-Reply-To: <950707084620_109747082@aol.com> > What did Dickinson mean by that, anyway? That poetry had to produce a strong > sensation to be classified genus poetry species good enough? > > Jordan > > Charles Alexander wrote: > Emily Dickinson said she knew something was poetry if it took > her head off. > Maybe she meant something as straightforward as her poems: something is poetry when it makes you think/see/feel differently. It suprises. Must a poem surprise? And what does that have to do with "newness"? Every breath is new, even if the air isn't fresh. A thought on poetry=ink on a page/is a drawing?: Draw in a breath. Willa (I'm new) (born yesterday) (new to this group, I mean) (fresh too) (well, a little polluted) ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Jul 1995 12:15:57 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jorge Guitart Organization: University at Buffalo Subject: breathing Have there ever been poetry readings underwater? and if so were there any problems associated with breathing and the line? ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Jul 1995 10:53:41 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: maria damon Subject: Re: Jabes query In message <199507070500.WAA06948@fraser.sfu.ca> UB Poetics discussion group writes: > greetings, > > been reading Edmond Jabes' *The Book of Questions* lately, picking up > what's available in the library, as oppose to working from vol.1 thru > to vol.7 > am working on a response piece to my reading and am so stuck on a > certain concept that i cant seem to place, but i think is "real". the > reading experience is like reading the commentaries (and this is > where i get confused) on the Talmud, or the Cabala. was this done by > Rabbis or family members, marginal notes they would make, questions > and such on the text they are reading. is this sort of commentary > done? and is it done stricktly by Rabbis or is a family/generational > practice? i'm certain my ideas are coming from some where, and i dont > think it was derrida's piece on jabes. i can only think about > A.M.Klein, and maybe reading related to him. > > in any case i'm slightly stuck and looking for a gentle shove or > pull. i think there is a article in *The Sin of the Book* (Gould, > ed.) that relates to what i'm vaguely trying to pin down, but i wont > have access to that book for a few weeks, and my curiosity can't > wait. > > in anticipation, > > graham It shouldn't be too hard to find the answer to your question of whether it was rabbis or generations of male family members --ask your resident talmudist, if you have a judaic studies program or dept. also, check out daniel boyarin's work if you haven't done so already --he's a talmudic scholar and has a post-sstructuralist, emancipatonist approach, thoug lately he's been into lacanian psychoanalysis. have fun w/ jabes, he's a dreamboat though i admit i float in and out of relating to his work. the stuff on being jewish, and on the book, is absolutely yummy --the stuff on death...well, maybe it's too deep for me.--md ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Jul 1995 11:00:25 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: maria damon Subject: Re: Poetic Briefs is not dead In message <01HSL18PB10I8Y5906@albnyvms.BITNET> UB Poetics discussion group writes: > Just talked to Jeff Hansen last night--he and Elizabeth Burns are moving > to Minneapolis which CHAX and GASU should know (re. their desire to make > a scene there---cs.) wow, just as i'm leaving mpls for a year, i'm beginning to meeet all the groovy folks there. charles alexander, gary sullivan, marta deike, mark nowak, carolyn erler (and anyone else i might be leaving out, don't feel hurt) and now encore plus groovy folks. well, maybe the scene will be more tolerable by the time i get back...its's a tough place to make things happen, a tough place to be happy. by the way, chris s, didn't respond to your chicks & tech thing cuz was in transit, by the time i wuz hookt up again seemed like a dead issue, don't take it personally, don't take it serious, it's too mysterious. anyway, give hanssen and burns my e-mail address and also i'm in phone book if they get there before labor day...md ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Jul 1995 09:51:22 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ryan Knighton Subject: Re: breath rules In-Reply-To: <27938.mcba@maroon.tc.umn.edu> from "Charles Alexander" at Jul 7, 95 03:26:19 am i was curious if anyone knows anything about breathing in Eigner? I love feeling like staccato (SP?), if indeed that is how his lines rupture. Ryan ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Jul 1995 15:27:30 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Juliana Spahr Organization: University at Buffalo Subject: Re: Poetic Briefs is not dead Here is Jeff Hansen's and Elizabeth Burns's new address: 2510 Highway 100 South No. 333 St. Louis Park, Minnesota 55416 I don't think it is good until the end of the month. Poetic Briefs does still exist. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Jul 1995 17:07:16 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jonathan A Levin Subject: Re: Jabes query In-Reply-To: <2ffd58823511002@maroon.tc.umn.edu> Since we're talking Talmud, everybody should check out the recently published Nine Talmudic Readings, by Emmanuel Levinas--I'm sure this has everything to do with Jabes, but I haven't the slightest idea how to go about saying just what that is. I am, though, sure it's bigger than the fact that Derrida writes essays on both in Wrtg and Diff. Jonathan Levin NYC ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Jul 1995 17:14:32 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Loss Glazier Subject: Olson conference? Has anyone heard of a proposed Olson conference in Gloucester in the fall? ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Jul 1995 17:25:42 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Loss Glazier Subject: EPC Magazine Entries -- For those of you thus engaged -- I'd like very much to include information about your little magazine in the Electronic Poetry Center so that people can get in touch with you, order from you, etc. Please fill in info below and send to me either on the list or personally to lolpoet@acsu.buffalo.edu - THANKS! Loss ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Little Magazine Alcove Bibliographic Entry Created/Revised: Annotator: (ie, who is filling out this form?) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Title: Editor(s): Address: E-mail address: Frequency: Sub. Cost: Ed. Stmt: (a short paragraph here) Annotation: (any other comments about your magazine?) Issue Info: (if you'd like to note special issues, etc.) ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Jul 1995 15:37:23 PDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jerry Rothenberg Subject: Re: breathing I don't usually talk about this, but many years ago Michael Davidson and I did underwater readings as part of a musical performance & event by Michel Redolfi. We performed in the swimming pool of Ginger Rogers' former bungalow in Bird Rock (La Jolla), where Michael was then living. There was a mask-like device that gave us a minute -- maybe half a minute -- before it filled with water. Redolfi recorded it for playback within a longer underwater piece in the olympic swimming pool at UCSD. Michael's part was to read actual written poetry set down with special waterproof ink, while I decided to go with chanted translations of songs from (Seneca) Shaking the Pumpkin. The breathing part of it -- a constant struggle -- had nothing to do with projective verse. I think I ended up sounding like a beached whale, but I actually looked pretty trim in the wet suit -- of which there are still some photographs. The naive breath notion -- of breath & line coinciding in length -- is of course Ginsberg rather than Olson. Allen used to be pretty boastful about how long he could hold his breath & all of that. (I don't mean "naive" pejoratively, by the way -- just straightforward in the way that some of the conversation about this has gone. Allen is most eloquent & moving with regard to this in the Notes for Howl. But I don't think he ever tried it under water. All best Jerome Rothenberg ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Jul 1995 21:46:18 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Burt Kimmelman -@NJIT" Subject: Re: breath rules Charles, Okay. Anyway, as you imply, words are just stepping stones. Burt ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Jul 1995 22:05:08 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Burt Kimmelman -@NJIT" Subject: Re: EPC Magazine Entries Loss, Please list Poetry New York: A Journal of Poetry and Translation, which comes out yearly, and which is not seeking subscriptions but encourages people to buy it in bookstores. It is eclectic. It is archived at SUNY Buffalo, Poets House, NYC Research Library, Brown U. and other places. It is distributed by DeBoer. I am the Senior Editor. Tod Thilleman is the Editor.Emmy Hunter is the Associate Editor. We've just put the upcoming issue to bed (it will be out in late fall at the earliest), but otherwise we welcome submissions along with contributor's note of no more than, say, four poems and/or translations of poems (and send in original language too if possible); but we do NOT welcome submissions from JUne-August. Best time to send is early spring. I say that the magazine is eclectic but it does lean toward the experimental (though one can find traditional verse in it too). Any more questions can be directed to me at my email address or to PNY, P.O. Box 3184, Church Street Station, NYC 10008. Burt ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 8 Jul 1995 15:33:25 GMT+1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tony Green Organization: The University of Auckland Subject: Re: fuzzy bedside reading logic lately, Don Quixote (why didn't I read it tears ago, beats the hell out of Descartes as a guide to the 17th c, -- who DIDN'T read that book? And Robert Creeley's Gnomic Verses!! ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Jul 1995 23:40:32 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Scheil Subject: Re: breathing In-Reply-To: <9507072237.AA23806@carla.UCSD.EDU> On Fri, 7 Jul 1995, Jerry Rothenberg wrote: > I don't usually talk about this, but many years ago Michael Davidson and I did > underwater readings as part of a musical performance & event by Michel > Redolfi. We performed in the swimming pool of Ginger Rogers' former bungalow > in Bird Rock (La Jolla), where Michael was then living. There was a mask-like > device that gave us a minute -- maybe half a minute -- before it filled with > water. Redolfi recorded it for playback within a longer underwater piece > in the olympic swimming pool at UCSD. Michael's part was to read actual > written poetry set down with special waterproof ink, while I decided to go > with chanted translations of songs from (Seneca) Shaking the Pumpkin. The > breathing part of it -- a constant struggle -- had nothing to do with > projective verse. I think I ended up sounding like a beached whale, but I > actually looked pretty trim in the wet suit -- of which there are still some > photographs. Hmm... By any chance, this piece wasn't called "til human voices reach us, or we drown...," was it? I love the idea of stuff like this--a sort of spectacular (in the SI sense?) hyper-literalist performative action poem. The possibilities are endless. An insomniac High-church prelate reading Keats' Bright Star while out on a tethered space-walk: "And Watching, with eternal lids apart,/ Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,/ The moving waters at their priestlike task...," George Burns (cigar intact) lashed to the mast of a Carnival Cruise Line ship, reading Sailing To Byzantium as it (the ship, with an Luau in full swing on the Lido deck) passes through the Hellespont, a Greek chorus of Arkansas poultry processing workers chanting Williams's Red Wheelbarrow as an endless line of all-organic, range-fed gamehens whizz by on a conveyor belt. Cut! Thats a take! Get Bill Moyers on the phone! Chris ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Jul 1995 21:49:14 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steve Carll Subject: Re: breath rules Burt: Sure, poetry is connected with the human body, as is dance ("poetry in motion"), which, if I'm not mistaken, is very spatially-oriented, though it unfolds in time as well. I guess my questions weren't directed so much at the historical standing of your definition, but at how sturdy its ontological "legs" are. This dichotomy between spatiality and temporality may have worked for Lessing in 1775 in the "Laocoon", but wasn't Einstein's contribution to point out that trying to isolate space and time from each other is an illusion, however historically stable an illusion it may be, and however different the experience of different media with their differing locations within spacetime? When you say "(better yet, hearing and seeing) Olson read", doesn't that indicate that there's something that's really important that's visual about poetry even when it's not on the page? To put it on the page may be to move it closer to painting, etc., but I don't think it moves it outside the realm of poetry, nor do I think its connection with the body withers. It simply takes a different approach to the body by creating a simulacrum of a body, by embodying itself as writing, but with inspiration still breathed into it, just like if there were a bard. To belabor the point even further (sorry!) Heidegger asserts that "all the arts are essentially poetry" because they're all kinds of language. Poetry is the original art because it most "preserves the essential nature of language." (Origin of the Work of Art) If it's just a matter of taste--concrete poetry vs. seeing and hearing a poet speak--that's one thing, but to define "poetry" around such a choice and, by implication, exclude concrete poetry, Apollinaire, Cummings, Blake (as someone pointed out--Michael Broughton?), a possible ESL poetry, etc., etc., seems to me a bit rash. If it was just an attempt to be provocative--good work! I took the bait! :-) Best to you and all, Steve ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 8 Jul 1995 03:15:16 CST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Alexander Subject: Re: Poetic Briefs is not dead Re: "Just talked to Jeff Hansen last night--he and Elizabeth Burns are moving to Minneapolis which CHAX and GASU should know (re. their desire to make a scene there---cs.)" Yes, Chris. Charles Bernstein had told me this, and I'm looking forward to hearing from them. If you have an address or phone for them, please back channel it to me and I'll get in touch with them directly. I think GASU (Gary Sullivan) has left this list for a while, but I see him regularly and will let him know. charles charles alexander chax press minnesota center for book arts phone & fax: 612-721-6063 e-mail: mcba@maroon.tc.umn.edu ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 8 Jul 1995 03:20:33 CST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Alexander Subject: Re: taking the top of your head off Welcome, Willa, and thanks. "Must a poem surprise? And what does that have to do with "newness"? Every breath is new, even if the air isn't fresh. A thought on poetry=ink on a page/is a drawing?: Draw in a breath." A poem is a surprise, and a breath is sometimes suspended, sometimes heavy, sometimes not taken, sometimes even visual or audible. So is ink on a page. Very nice comment. charles alexander chax press minnesota center for book arts phone & fax: 612-721-6063 e-mail: mcba@maroon.tc.umn.edu ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 8 Jul 1995 05:01:04 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ron Silliman Subject: Re: breathing You wrote: > >Have there ever been poetry readings underwater? and if so were there any >problems associated with breathing and the line? > As I recall, Jim Rosenberg, whom I believe is on this list, had a show at a gallery in SF back in the 1970s (and reasonably early in that decade as well) which include a series of word imprinted on clear plastic cards that were to be thrown into a swimming pool, so that readers would swim from word to word, a poem in constant drift. The same show had an "oscilloscope" (I believe that was the machine) printout of a record of Pound reading one of his Cantos, a registration of the voice and breath therein. It was a pretty great show and has returned to my mind a thousand times since I saw it. Ron Silliman ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 8 Jul 1995 05:11:03 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ron Silliman Subject: Re: breath rules You wrote: > >i was curious if anyone knows anything about breathing in Eigner? I love >feeling like staccato (SP?), if indeed that is how his lines rupture. > >Ryan > Well, because of his cerebral palsey and related physical problems (some of which were helped considerably by some surgery that he had in his 30s), he was publishing his early books before he learned to speak. His parents did not think that he even "had" language before he learned to use a typewriter in his late teens. The line in his work is an extraordinary physical act, given his ability to use three fingers on one hand and a basic grasping motion with the other. When I first read his poems on the page in the mid-60s, I "heard" that voice too and it was not until I tried calling him on the phone that I first realized exactly how much of a projection that was. Eigner may in fact have been drawn to Olsonian poetics precisely because it was there that he could in fact "speak." Once his parents got to be too old to care for him and he first moved to California, he was set up in a group home in North Berkeley where his brother bought him a desk that had the drawers on the wrong side (Larry can only reach to the right), so for him to reach a piece of paper to get (with some difficulty) into the typewriter meant spinning the wheelchair 360 degrees. Those "light, airy" poems are in fact the complex choreography of one whose total physical vocabulary is in use in the composition of the poem. Ron Silliman ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 8 Jul 1995 10:19:33 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "H. T. KIRBY-SMITH" Organization: University of NC at Greensboro Subject: Underwater Poetry readings Porpoises have underwater poetry readings. I feel sure that one of them has said, "breath is porpoise's special qualification as an animal." No, I think that must have been a WHALE. Tom Kirby-Smith English Department UNC-Greensboro Greensboro NC 27412 ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 8 Jul 1995 10:57:58 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Burt Kimmelman -@NJIT" Subject: Re: breath rules Steve, I didn't mean to be restrictive. If you like it, good. If you want to call it art, all well and good (I guess). But--setting Derrida's supplement aside-- I can't help going back to Ong and to the fact of time-scansion-musical accompaniment-sceop who was historian before writing takes hold (okay, in China this maybe doen't and didn't hold). But regarding E's 4th dimension and all, doesn't art create illusions? Burt ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 8 Jul 1995 10:30:23 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Re: Emily's Head In-Reply-To: <199507080401.VAA13961@isc.SJSU.EDU> Re: Charles's post -- Dickinson didn't speak of the removal of her _entire_ head, just the one portion of it -- think she wanted to leave the reading & writing appartus intact -- ceilings must have needed regular cleaning in her house! Ever read Thomas Wentworth Higginson's descriptions of his first meeting with E.D.?? remarkable stuff -- ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 8 Jul 1995 14:50:36 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Loss Glazier Subject: EPC Magazine entries -- status report -- Here is a list of magazines currently having entries in the EPC. (With the exception of Juxta, just received.) Obviously, there are many more relevant entries. Hopefully, we can develop these entries, but this is where we are this moment: ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ELECTRONIC POETRY CENTER Chain / Buffalo (Cite) Coppertales / Australian Writing Online / Sidney, Australia (Cite) El-e-phant: A Language Arts Review / Los Angeles (Cite) First Intensity / Staten Island (Cite) Impercipient / Providence (Cite) Interruptions / Kent OH (Cite) Kiosk / Buffalo (Cite) Little Magazine / Albany (Cite) M/E/A/N/I/N/G / New York (Cite) Minutes of the Charles Olson Society / Vancouver (Cite) North American Ideophonics Annual / Minneapolis (Cite) Poetic Briefs / Albany (Cite) Poetry New York / NYC (Cite) Raddle Moon / Vancouver (Cite) Situation / Washington DC (Cite) Southerly / Australian Writing Online / Sidney, Australia (Cite) Tinfish / Honolulu (Cite) ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 8 Jul 1995 14:57:03 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Loss Glazier Subject: EPC Magazine entries -- sample I sent the attached as an example of an entry. Obviously not all entries need to be this lengthy; short entries get results too and can be all that is necessary in given instances. But in the case of this one, I'd like to suggest that the person new to poetics - or an interested student - would get a good sense of the "activity" here inscribed. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Electronic Poetry Center Little Magazine Alcove Bibliographic Entry Created/Revised: 7-8-95 Alcove Ed. by Loss Glazier ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Title: Chain Editor(s): Jena Osman and Juliana Spahr Address: 104 - 14th St. Buffalo, NY 14213 E-mail: V231SEY9@ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu Issn: 1076-0520 Frequency: Annual Sub. Cost: $7.95 for 1 issue/$14 for 2 (Payable to UB Foundation) Ed. Stmt: Chain is a new journal that investigates language and its various frames. It includes poetry, prose, and visual work. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Issue Info: Chain 1: "Special Topic: Gender and Editing" (282 p.) 107 - 14th Street / Buffalo, New York 14213 edited by Jena Osman and Juliana Spahr appears annually $7.95 6x9, 288 pages issn: 1076-0520 isbn: 0-922668-12-4 publication date: October 1, 1994 This first issue explores its editor's apprehension about editing. It attempts to create a dialogic space through its investigation of the (im)possibility of an unmediated reception and the (im)possibility of detaching a writing from its presentational/ideological form. Chain 1 begins with a forum on how and why journals are created and in what ways questions of gender have informed those decisions. As such it investigates the implications behind making taste public and the manner in which taste presents itself in the public sphere. This section includes an interview between Dodie Bellamy (of Mirage) and Andrea Juno (of Research) on Angry Women and "sex positive" editing practices; Dubravka Djuric (of Mental Space) on editing in communist and post- communist societies; Heather Findlay (of On Our Backs) on collaborative editing; Susan Gevirtz (of HOW(ever)) reading editing as medical diagnosis; Holly Laird (of Tulsa Studies in Women's Litera ture) on the difficulties and rewards of editing feminist journals in the academy as well as pieces from a number of small press and feminist editors. Instead of a collection that claims over and over the ability of the editor to know and define, Chain is a journal that claims instead "this made itself and here is what it's made of; it is just part of what continues." In order to facilitate a journal that could make itself, Chain used the model of the chain letter. A number of writers from the U.S., Canada, and England were asked to send a piece of writing to another writer. These writers responded by writing a poem and then send ing both poems onto a third participant, and so forth. This section includes work by Abigail Child, Gail Scott, Norma Cole, Sianne Ngai, Kate Rushin, Fiona Templeton and others. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Chain/2: Documentary Edited by Jena Osman and Juliana Spahr 107 - 14th St./Buffalo, NY 14213 $10 for one issue (6"x9", 250 pp.) Make checks payable to UB Foundation. The second issue of Chain questions the supposed neutrality/objectivity of documentary forms. The concerns of this issue are: in what ways does the topical world filter through language? how do creative forms actually capture an event, a person, a place? The work included highlights the way we use language/image to cut up our experiential encounters so as to (re)see them. Contributing writers and artists: Alicia Askenase, Lutz Bacher, Merle Lyn Bachman, Dodie Bellamy, Celia Bland, Pascale-Anne Brault, Sherry Brennan, Laynie Browne, AnJanette Brush, Kathe Burkhardt, Juanita But, Catalina Cariaga, Norma Cole, Leslie Davis & Hoa Nguyen, Connie Deanovich, Dubrovka Djuric, Sally Doyle, Maggie Dubris, Carrie Moyer & Sue Schaffer, Ann Erickson, Liz Fodaski, Darcy Frey, Susan Gevirtz, Phoebe Gloeckner, Lyn Hejinian, Lisa Hoke, Akua Lezli Hope, Karen Kelley, Ike Kim, Basil King, Andrew Levy, Walter Lew, Tan Lin, Pamela Lu, Lori Lubeski, Kimberly Lyons, Kevin Magee, Paul Maurice, Katie Merz, Douglas Messerli, Harryette Mullen, Aife Murray, Susan Smith Nash, Sianne Ngai, Erin O'Brien, Alix Pearlstein, M. Nourbese Philip, Stephen Ratcliffe, Susan Rosenberg & Jacob Wisse, Leslie Scalapino, Jenny Scobel, Eleni Sikelianos, Rod Smith, Meredith Stricker, Nathaniel Tarn, HT, Rodrigo Toscano, Nicola Tyson, Cecilia Vicuna, Anne Waldman, Hannah Weiner, Karen Yasinsky, Susan Wheeler, Alexander Zane, Janet Zweig. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 8 Jul 1995 15:01:40 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Loss Glazier Subject: Poll: Which magazines to read? -------------------- MAGAZINES _YOU_ READ: -------------------- I wanted to also ask people to post (or send to me) names of magazines they read, think are important, should really be mentioned! (I thought to compile this list for the EPC as an added resource - and to help fill in the blanks where entries do not exist.) Maybe a word or two, if you feel like it, about why the magazine is one you read would also be useful. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 8 Jul 1995 16:55:29 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Scheil Subject: literary hoaxes Hello all, Followed the recent discussion of the Ern Malley Affair with some interest. Can anyone out there direct me to other examples of literary hoaxes (besides the famous ones like Chatterton & the Ossian poet), particularily in the 20th century? Most appreciative, Chris ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Chris Scheil | Please, sir, I don't like this trick, sir. cschei1@grfn.org | My tongue isn't quick or slick, sir. snail mail: | I get all those ticks and clocks, sir, 317 Prospect #4 | mixed up with the chicks and tocks, sir. Grand Rapids, MI 49503 | I can't do it, Mr. Fox, sir. ______________________ | | I'm so sorry, Mr. Knox, sir. | --Seuss |______________________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 8 Jul 1995 17:01:19 -40962758 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jim Rosenberg Subject: Offsets to the Frame The discussion of WCW's rhythm working as offsets to the frame of the graphical line on the page interests me very much. I've made similar observations with respect to some of Creeley's poems. The details can get quite lengthy, but: I use a concept of "measure", which is not quite the same thing as the classical concept of "foot"; many of Creeley's lines are two measures, with the natural "grammatical framing" going from one mid-line measure boundary to the next mid-line measure boundary. I posted a quite lengthy article that deals with this and many other things under the subject "Notes Toward a Non-linear Prosody of Space" to ht_lit some moons back; it is available on the web at http://www.well.com/user/jer/nonlin_prosody.html If there is interest I can repost it here; it's about 345 lines long. -- Jim Rosenberg http://www.well.com/user/jer/ CIS: 71515,124 WELL: jer Internet: jr@amanue.pgh.net ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 8 Jul 1995 17:35:55 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Loss Glazier Subject: Prosody piece In-Reply-To: from "Jim Rosenberg" at Jul 8, 95 05:01:19 pm Jim, I see now that your piece is linked so maybe we should leave it the way it is. (Though we can also archive here if it becomes necessary.) Loss ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 8 Jul 1995 19:36:37 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kenneth Goldsmith Subject: POETICS READING LIST JUNE 1995 1/2 Folks-- I'm happy to post the "Poetics Reading List June 1995." I'm pleased that so many people seem to think this to be a good idea. I'd like for it to be a monthly/bimonthly feature on this list and I'm willing to do the gathering & organization of it. All I need is your cooperation. Feel free to post what you are currently reading or if it seems more appropriate, email me backchannel at: kgolds@panix.com or kennyg@wfmu.org. I'll continue as long as there is interest. I hope you won't mind if every once in a while I post a reminder message to the group. This month there seemed to be a couple of threads converging on recommended reading. I've thrown 'em all in together as they all look like good reading to me. Peace, Kenny G P.S.--March's reading list is available through me. If you want a copy email me or if there is enough interest, I'll re-post it. ============================================================ POETICS READING LIST FOR JUNE 1995 ============================================================ Date: Fri, 23 Jun 1995 13:41:28 -0400 From: "Jordan Davis." Subject: Bedside reading Books on the windowsill by my bed: First Love and other stories, Ivan Turgenev The Witch, Anton Chekhov Wayfarers, Knut Hamsun The Art of Telling, Frank Kermode Tulsa Kid, Ron Padgett The Silver Dove, Andrey Biely Defoe, Leslie Scalapino Torque #1, #2, #3 The Impercipient #9 (I think) My Trip to New York, Bill Luoma Vexillum, Bob Hale Lapsis Linguae, Marcella Durand And in heavy rotation: The Exact Change Yearbook 1995 cd (esp. Berrigan/Mayer) ============================================================ Date: Fri, 23 Jun 1995 09:27:00 -0700 From: Don Cheney Subject: workside reading I find the books I'm reading broken into 3 distinct PLACES. The first is literally what is on my bedside table. The second is books located on my desk at home. The third is books located at work (as opposed to work-related). The latter books are either in transition to home or are books I read during lunch breaks. I'm at work now and these are the books on my shelf: ZEN BUDDHISM AND PSYCHOANALYSIS (Fromm, Suzuki...) ZEN FLESH, ZEN BONES A DAY AT THE BEACH (Grenier) POESIES (Catullus translated into French) DUSK ROAD GAMES (Grenier) POETAS NORTEAMERICANOS (Blackburn/Corman/Eshleman/Enslin translated into Spanish) SOBRE LA PROSA LITERARIA (Shklovsky in Spanish) TOO HOT TO HANDLE (Juvenile baseball novel for my son Max) THE BEAST 2 (Juvenile horror for my son Max) HAND SHADOWS (TO BE THROWN UPON THE WALL) a republication of an 1859 book of hand shadows (for my brother John in prison--I photocopied the various drawings of hand shadows and sent them to him) HOW TO PITCH (Bob Feller) MODISMOS (Familiar English-Spanish expressions) (by Mrs. Anness. & Mr. Boughton. (a random selection gives us: "That codfish smells to Heaven. Ese bacalao huele a rayos." THE GATELESS BARRIER (Aitken) SOCCER FOR JUNIORS (I'm an assistant coach for my son's team this year) CATULLUS'S COMPLETE POETIC WORKS (RABINOWITZ, tr.) just got this on sale at UCSD bookstore yesterday AREAS LIGHTS HEIGHTS (Eigner) just got this also NOW ZEN (Charlotte Joko Beck) ============================================================ Date: Fri, 23 Jun 1995 14:38:04 -0500 From: maria damon Subject: current summer reading 1. johanna drucker, dark decade 2. the new yorker 3. bruce robbins, ed. The Phantom Public Sphere 4. weekly rob breszny horoscope 5. a student paper on paul bowles 5. the floating bear compilation 6. daily mpls star tribune horoscope 7. roadmaps to colorado 8. a dictionary of word origins ("slam" "open" etc) 9. various insurance policies so i can be covered during my upcoming sabbatical 10. other randomly fluffy stuff ============================================================ Date: Fri, 23 Jun 1995 16:00:32 -0400 From: Chris Scheil Subject: Re: Reading lists Well, I've got a few books of interest I've been looking at lately--hope nobody minds if I chime in here... 1. Raising Holy Hell (Bruce Olds) A fictionalized life ofJohn Brown, due out in September. Amazing book--very powerful, though it bogs down in the last fifty or so pages, after Lee and JEB Stuart crash Brown's party at Harpers Ferry. This is by far the best review copy to cross my desk this year... 2. Manuscript Found in Saragossa (Jan Potocki) This was mentioned in Perec's bk (A Void) & just came out in an English translation. Hallucinatory & dense--imagine a new Decameron co-written by Goya & Hoffman, wardrobe by Edith Head, sets by Lautremont... 3. Exact Change Yearbook, At Passages, From the Other Side of the Century: all part of my vacation Michael Palmer festival. Very interesting to hear Palmer read his new Poems. I'd not imagined his voice sounding like it does; the surprise I felt was akin to the first time I heard Creeley or Williams read--how hearing the poets voicing radically changes the way one reads the written work--the way theauthors diction & intonation get somehow ingrained in yourhead & you find yourself internalizing their vocalization. A bit disturbing, that--almost as if the very act of listening to a recording imposes some kind of individualized canonic reading, underming whatever tactical method of poetic speech you've brought to the written text... 4. Passing Duration, Four Lectures: I've always gotten the sensethat Rodefer's work is somehow out there pacing the Langpo boundaries (maybe event horizon is a better term...). Ghosts of events in those sentences, gesturing toward some alien narrative in hopes of arriving at atmosphere--The same thing I feel reading Coolidge sometimes. Is there anything available since Passing Duration that I might have missed? ============================================================ Date: Fri, 23 Jun 1995 18:38:34 +0100 From: Kevin Killian Subject: Bedside reading This is Kevin Killian. I'm glad to see this feature return, as I too read Vanity Fair regularly tho' the book list is not my favorite. The true crime articles are. Here is what I've just picked up from around my bed: "Vel" by Peter Inman-fantastic. Four stars to you, P. Inman. We printed one of these poems in"Mirage #4/Period[ical]" but now I see, it was not the best one after all, there are many, many just as good or better! "Castle King Four," by Jim Reagan, who sent me this book, haven't read it yet, don't know why he sent it. He said it was a peace offering. I don't know who he is! Seems to be a novel that pits Nazis against the OSS. "Sliver," by Ira Levin. I read it about every six months. Dodie wrote a paper about it once, for Todd Baron and Carolyn Kemp's zine "REMAP," on "narration." "A zillion times better than the movie," she says. When is the Ira Levin Conference happening? Claude Royet-Journoud, "A Descriptive Method," tr. Keith Waldrop-it's small, I should have finished this last week. Didn't. Just found it. "Berlin Diptychon" by John Yau & Bill Barrette. I'm copying one of the poems here, "The Night Beast is Best," for my new poem, which will have a better title. This book is very luxe, glossy, heavy ink smell, has Berlin written all over me. "Tender Agencies," by Dennis Denisoff. Why this book isn't a best seller I'll never know. Dennis D. is so smart & so accessible. He is a former member of the Kootenay School and from what I understand will be working at Princeton this fall. Yay Dennis. "Abusing the Telephone," by Dennis Barone. We had Dennis B. read at Small Press Traffic where he read some of this. We were screaming, kind of. I mean it was sedate in a way. This is a very fiction collective kind of book, tho published by Drogue. Dennis, any one of these tales could have been a novel, I say, expand, don't contract, be expansive like Whitman. 2 new books by Alice Notley. Haven't opened it yet. Thom Gunn, "The Man with Night Sweats." Thom Gunn is a local hero & a swell guy. This book is his best one yet. "Arshile #4" ed. Mark Salerno. Arshile #4 features an interview with Gilbert Sorrentino. I always wondered why I had never met GS since he works at Stanford and I'm in San Francisco. Now I find that "the Bay Area is so utterly antithetical to me that I find myself, at all times, struggling against its cuteness, its apathy, its general air of paralysis, its relentless small-townishness, so that it's hard to imagine being 'mellowed out' in the throes of battle. I don't quite know what it is about the place, but the entire Bay Area, with the source of infection being, of course, that citadel of provincialism, San Francisco, has the air of an amateur stage production set in sinister natural surroundings." What a jerk. How about that "source of infection" metaphor Mr. Sorrentino? Are we afraid of the AIDS virus at Stanford University? Anyhow Arshile #4 has this wonderful piece in it by Yoko Ono and as usual a marvelous cover, this time by Jasper Johns. Bruce Andrews, "Ex Why Zee," collected, I don't know, work for the "theater"? Black and white drawing on the front, "pathetic masculinity" as the art forum says. "Abject art" my favorite. All these little men running around doing disgusting things, . . . four stars for the cover alone, belongs in the Whitney. "Apex of the M" #3. Read it from cover to cover searching for the explanation from the editors, why on earth they went ahead last time and printed that work by King Homophobe Ed Dorn! No explanation, still. One editor told me that if they explained every editorial policy they made it would be too long a magazine. Fine. Just wanted to put in my 2 cents on this subject. Again. "Everything as Expected," by James Herndon. This book, from the 70's, is the essential insider's guide to the collaboration between Jack Spicer & Fran Herndon. Color plates. Seven of these collages were shown at recent Blaser conference. Five stars. "Tony & Susan," by Austin Wright. I think I got this mixed up with "Austin and Mabel" but instead of being about the relatives of Emily Dickinson it is some kind of literary horror novel. Check it out. I'm up to Chapter Five. "Esther: Her Murder Haunts a Small Town in Oklahoma." True crime book. Esther is a schoolteacher, in her seventies I think, I think she was murdered in her sleep by some former students, but she's just gone to bed just now at the place I've put it down. "Written in Blood," by Caroline Graham. She is my new favorite detective writer. Okay, so the ends of her books are always stupid. "Empire of Words: the Reign of the OED," by John Willensky. This guy teaches at UBC and this book studies the use of citation in the different editions of the OED to come to some conclusions about cultural studies. Work it, girl. Finally I've come to the floor. Okay and one last book I've just finished from the library, "The Juror," by George Dawes Green. had to get this one since it's the basis of the upcoming Demi Moore picture. The back jacket says that Dawes Green is a poet and the author of "the acclaimed novel "The Caveman's Valentine" and he looks about 12. Excellent! George Dawes Green are you on this poetics list? Come on down! ============================================================ Date: Sat, 24 Jun 1995 00:54:01 -0400 From: Juliana Spahr Subject: Re: Bedside reading I love these lists also. Although Kevin's has made mine feel inadequate. My excuse is moving. I've been trying to refile but I've also pulled out all these old books that I found while trying to alphabetize: Mary Butts Imaginary Letters; Crystal Cabinet; Traverner Novels; (by the way, any Butts fans out there, would love some info back channel about any good criticism, I haven't found much at all good or bad, and info about the Crowley-Butts connection and her opium addiction (?). Don DeLillo, Libra Keri Hulme, Bone People (which has been abandoned as unreadable) Ben Friedlander (there is an image of a knot for the title) (this is available from Meow Press); recommended Rachel Tzvia Back, Litany (also Meow Press and recommended) Prosodia / 5 (nice mix of writers, mainly west coast; put out by the students of the New College of California Poetics Prog) Bloo (good pieces by Dodie Bellamy and Kevin Killian and Pat Reed) Lesli Scalapino, Defoe (I love this book and have become obsessed with it in the same way that I became obsessed with Fanny Howe's Saving History last year) a large stack of fashion magazines where I have actually been spending most of my reading time I would like it if people on this list would just post a brief message about something good they have read whenever they read it and how to get it. I mean both stuff that is available at any Barnes and Noble and stuff that comes in the mailbox. In more cases than not that usually motivates me to obtain said item and in more cases than not I am glad that I did. ============================================================ Date: Fri, 23 Jun 1995 21:55:22 -0700 From: Steve Carll Subject: bedside reading list Hi all--here's what's threatening to fall on me and crush me in my sleep: _How Things Work: Science For Young Americans_, a 1941 textbook with some truly freaky illustrations. _Earth and Sky Every Child Should Know_, similar, except w/a 1910 copyright. Mark Twain, _The Innocents Abroad_. Thich Nhat Hahn, _The Blooming of a Lotus_, a wonderful book of simple meditations. Levi-Strauss, _The Savage Mind_. Learned a new word ("moiety") from this one. Means "half." Not a hapax--he uses it twice. A stack of submissions to Antenym, the magazine I edit (#7 due out in August, featuring [at least] George Albon, John Olson, Colleen Lookingbill, Darlene Tate, J.R. Willems, John Taggart, Charles Borkhuis, Michael Basinski, Brian Boury, Andrew Joron, Michael Price, Kristin Burkart, Sheila E. Murphy, Carol Ciavonne, Larry Eigner, Mike Kettner, I.E. Skin, Jean Day, and Bob Heman). Now if I can only figure out in what order to present them! _Six By Seuss_. Of course. And soon-- Buckminster Fuller, _I Seem To Be A Verb_. Soon as I can get my hands on a copy. ============================================================ Date: Sat, 24 Jun 1995 03:16:55 -0400 From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Re: bedside reading list Okay--I'll chime in--- I'm reading these unpublished manuscripts--- I am extremely knocked out by Ben Friedlander's reading of Frank O'Hara AND YOU BIG NAME PUBLISHERS OUT THERE ARE FOOLS NOT TO JUMP ON IT WHILE YOU CAN---- This is the kind of "literary criticism" one does not see often-- Then I'm reading THE FATE OF THE SELF (By Corngold--first time in paperback of a 1985 book---I'm reading this for possible "academic use" so i'm reluctant to mention it here, as is my reading in Shakespeare criticism--Susan Snyder, H.T. McCrary, etc. etc--- ) Also got the EXACT CHANGE BOOK---The Stein piece (and Spahr's intro.) is great. Peter Gizzi's new manuscript has a great poem to Mark McMorris in it...and I got the new Garret lansing HEAVENLY TREE book... I'm sure I'm leaving things out...I read "Marriage" by Marianne Moore the other day---I often spend a whole night on one page! I read O'Hara's "To An Actor Who Died" because it's original title was "To Laura Riding" and "everybody" is telling me I should read Agamban very soon--- It would be interesting if we could talk more about why we're reading (or what is happening why reading) than merely about WHAT--but perhaps that is not a function of the list....chris ============================================================ Date: Sat, 24 Jun 1995 19:12:19 -0400 From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Re: bedside reading list I "forget to mention" (or "censored") that I'm also reading a lot of student papers in this summer class i'm teaching. A "reading literature" course that is weighted towards poetry and the reading of "non-poetic" texts "poetically"--I organized the course loosely around the theme of "NOTHING" and have not used official anthologies so i could include Stevens ("Adagia"), Mayer (Sonnets and "the obfuscated poem") O'Hara, Cage, Stein, Riding, Kafka, Beckett, Ellison, Baraka, Ferlinghetti, Dickinson, Shakespeare, Dudley Randall, Blake in one class (also Brecht and Rilke)---I've selfishly swept up my students in my summer reading--but I "commit" to the list and so it's no more "free" in a way than had i gone with a "conventional" commercial anthology---thank "god" for copy shops that 'pirate" things--- Chris S. ============================================================ Date: Sat, 24 Jun 1995 17:37:10 -0700 From: Ryan Knighton Subject: Re: Bedside reading Not much at the moment: Two by George Stanley: "You" and "Opening Day". He said to me last night that "Tacoma" was one of the worst hangovers. bill bissett's "Animal Uproar", iwth a wonderful Kerouac tribute in it. Al Purdy's "The Woman on the Shore". You have to be in the mood. Joyce, "Ulysses". It has to be done. ============================================================ Date: Mon, 26 Jun 1995 21:39:37 -1000 From: Susan Schultz Subject: Re: POETICS Digest - 25 Jun 1995 to 26 Jun 1995 I, too, really like the "bedside reading" feature of the list. Here are some that are, actually, closer to the couch: 1) VOLCANO, by Garrett Hongo, in which he recounts his search for the Big Island childhood he never had. An honest attempt, woefully written (he puts Keats and Shelley in a cuisinart and pours the remains over fields of lava). 2) THE WINGED SEED, Li-Young Lee. A memoir/prose poem about growing up in Indonesia and rural Pennsylvania, as the son of a Chinese fundamentalist Christian father. Interesting experiment, which most often works, except when he addresses his beloved. 3) TURNING JAPANESE, David Mura. Yes, there's a theme here. Memoir of an Asian-American poet from Minnesota who lived for a year in Japan; interesting "identity" study. I like his prose better than his poetry, which sounds more like, well, prose. 4) DICTEE, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha. Memoir in experimental pieces, which I haven't yet finished. But there's a strong article on her by Shelley Wong in _Feminist Measures_, edited by Lynn Keller and Cristane Miller (Michigan)--good on the "problem" with Asian-American experimental writing and identity politics. 5) Lots and lots of Gertrude Stein. 6) XENIA, by Arkadii Dragomoschenko. Wonderful meditative passages. 7) CANNIBAL, by Terese Svoboda. OK, so she's a friend of mine. I heard her read sections of this book about her travels in the Sudan at our new Barnes and Noble; they put her in the cookbook section. 8) Poems by Sudesh Mishra, a poet from Fiji who lives in Australia. Rather Walcottesque in its metaphorical density; his claim is, however, that this work IS experimental in his context. I also confess to an over-fondness toward Nirvana's Unplugged cd, though I'm perhaps too late for the rock lyric discussion of a while back. Great rendering of a Leadbelly song. ============================================================ Date: Tue, 27 Jun 1995 10:54:35 -0400 From: Jorge Guitart Subject: bedside reading recommended for bedside reading and also for when you are considerably more alert: "The Great Limbaugh Con and Other Right-Wing Assaults on Common Sense" by Charles M. Kelly Santa Barbara: Fithian Press, 1994 (14.95 at Barnes & Noble) ============================================================ Date: Tue, 27 Jun 1995 11:06:38 -0500 From: Edward Foster Subject: Re: Bedside Reading bedside reading this week includes autobiography of annie besant, james wilhelm' s new anthology of gay poetry from antiquity, various motorcycle mags, alice not ley's new book, travel guide to italy (for dreams), book on egyptian art, huysma n. -ed ============================================================ Date: Tue, 27 Jun 1995 10:18:35 CST6CDT From: Hank Lazer Subject: Re: Reading lists Bedside, officeside, studyside readings: 1. Nathaniel Mackey - _Discrepant Engagement_ and _School of Udhra_ 2. Golf Digest 3. Video: John Coltrane: The Coltrane Legacy (includes cuts with Eric Dolphy) 4. bpNichol - The Martyrology - long-term reading, have made my way through books 7&8 and am dipping into the 9th & last 5. Zukofsky _A_ - another long-term reading; oddly enough found the first 100 or so pages not so hot (as in what's the big deal here?) though now into A-12 ok I see the big deal.... 6. Creeley - _Windows_ 7. _Larry Rivers_ - big retrospective book of paintings 8. Barbara Guest _Selected Poems_ 9. Emily Dickinson 10. Gil Ott - _Wheel_ - a beautiful Chax Press book (beautiful work both by Gil & by Charles Alexander!) 11. Northwestern University Press's _Stein Reader_ ============================================================ Date: Tue, 27 Jun 1995 10:31:28 -0700 From: Herb Levy Subject: Doom Patrols (Reading list) As long as I'm giving out URLs, one of my summer reading books is not yet in print and only available on-line, Steve Shaviro's "Doom Patrols." It can be found at . Based on the chapters I've read so far, I highly recommend it to anyone on poetics list. It's not, and not about, poetry, but it's the first prose book I've read in a while that's given me the same buzz as the all-over, personal inner-mind sprawl of many recent longpoems. "Doom Patrols" is an autobiographical work of literary theory; a rich blend of gender theory, electronic culture, comic books & films, true confessions, (very) revisionist post-structuralist thought, rock & roll, self-exposition, new (&old) abjectionists) and more. Chapter titles include: David Cronenberg, Kathy Acker, Dean Martin, Daniel Paul Schreber, Walt Disney, Cindy Sherman, et al. ============================================================ Date: Tue, 27 Jun 1995 13:43:48 EST From: "Burt Kimmelman -@NJIT" Subject: Re: bedside reading I'm in the middle of revising a book length manuscript on medieval lit. so i won't include the "stuffy" reading surrounding my bed. but other things include: Richard A. Lanham, THE ELECTRONIC WORD: DEMOCRACY, TECHNOLOGY AND THE ARTS The latest New York Review of Books (article by Kempton on THE SECRET WORLD OF AMERICAN COMMUNISM; and I hope to get to Menand's review of Gass's THE TUNNEL) The latest issue of Nutrition Action Newsletter (great summer fruit soup recipes) Rochelle Owens, RUBBED STONES ============================================================ Date: Tue, 27 Jun 1995 13:56:55 -0400 From: Mark Scroggins Subject: Re: bedside reading I'm a sucker for bedside reading lists (and desert island lists, and really all sorts of lists). Leon Howard's biography of Herman Melville; way out of date, but beautifully printed. Richard Ellmann's Joyce biography. Erwin Panofsky's Studies in Iconology. Christopher Hill's Milton and the English Revolution. Louis Untermeyer's unintentionally hilarious anthology of Robert Frost poems. Gil Sorrentino's Aberation of Starlight. Hugh Kenner's The Counterfeiters (again). Various offprints from various friends and acquaintances. The latest Talisman, and (of course) Ed Foster's book of poems. ============================================================ Date: Tue, 27 Jun 1995 17:00:00 -0400 From: Alan Sondheim Subject: Re: bedside reading I'm on the road (talking in LA) so my reading's what I have here: Heiner Muller, Material (just got it in German to correlated with the English texts of his I've read - his writing continues to amaze), the three new translations of Michel Serres' work (which has always affected my own), the new James Ellroy, Kroker's Spasm, and Inside the Information Super- highway, one of my course books, by Nicholas Baran, simple, up-to-date, thorough.. ============================================================ Date: Tue, 27 Jun 1995 18:33:08 -0700 From: Carl Lynden Peters Subject: Re: Reading lists inspired by all that's out there, here's my list fr the month: _the presocratics_, by philip wheelwright. a general text chosen fr its contextualizing approach. interested in pursuing pythagoreanism and cont. art. might have some value _on christian doctrine_, st. augustine -revelations of divine love_, julian of norwich -the temple-, george herbert: interesting -- i found a copy of _the temple_ in the UBC bkstore a few days before the blaser conference. colin browne presented a paper on herbert there which was incredible! timing is everything everything and anything by bpNichol. re reading bk 1 for the 3rd or 4th time. the first few pages always astound me! everything he does in the other bks is set down there: "premonition of a future time or line we will be writing" ... "a future music moves now to be written" ... _the surrealist parade_, by wayne andrews (i'm certain he's the author: just picked it up at a used bkstore. it looks like it's written part documentary/part journal, which is why i bought it. it also contains some hugo ball quotes which i've never come across previously ============================================================ Date: Wed, 28 Jun 1995 03:02:32 EDT From: beard@MET.CO.NZ Subject: Re: bedside reading My bedside/coffeetable/briefcase reading lists: Bedside: _Selected Poems 1950-65_ Robert Creeley _Lacan_ by Malcom Bowie (a good cure for insomnia) _Back in the USA_ by Wystan Curnow Coffeetable: _Holding Company_ by David Howard 1995 Film Festival Programme 1995 Spring/Summer catalogue, V2 by Versace Latest issues of _Sport_ and _Landfall_ Briefcase: _DIA_ by Michele Leggott Latest issue of _Printout_ _Laura's Poems_ by Laura Ranger (material for found poetry) _Smells like Avant-Pop_ by Mark Amerika and Lance Olson (downloaded from Alternative-X) _Mid-latitude Cyclone Models_ (work, not play) ============================================================ Date: Thu, 29 Jun 1995 01:16:43 -0500 From: Brian W Horihan Subject: bedreading PRISON NOTEBOOKS, A Gramsci WHAT IS CINEMA? V.1, Andre Bazin UNDERGROUND CINEMA, Parker Tyler SONNETS and MEMORIES, Bernadette Mayer (thanx for these md, enjoying and trying to get through them) MIRACLE OF THE ROSE (again), J Genet APPARATUS, ed. Theresa Hak Kyung Cha TEARS OF EROS, G Bataille Various things on ancient Greece for summer class i think i'll have to look at that MS FOUND AT SARAGOSSA people have been mentioning. and a film w/ music by penderecki, wow ============================================================ Date: Thu, 29 Jun 1995 02:52:36 -0700 From: Ron Silliman Subject: Re: bedside reading My two cents: Snow Crash by Neil Stephanson (very good, but not as good as the blurbs on the jacket make out) Heat, by Stuart Woods (his worst--I may never read another...) Pronto, by Elmore Leonard (he's become very gentle and humorous since he stopped drinking) Sessions, by Eli Goldblatt (Chax Press! Some wonderful pieces here that reminds me a lot of my own impulses in the poem "Hidden"--I haven't met Eli yet, but since we now live in the same area, I'm looking forward to it) Culture on the Brink: Ideologies of Technology, edited by Gretchen Bender & Timothy Drucker (lots of "celebrity" critics--Aronowitz, Laurie Anderson, Andrew Ross, Paula Treichler, Kathleen Woodward, Langdon Winner--mostly showing how little knowledge of technology they really have) CIO magazine Service News Information Week--the best technology mag around PC Week Been waiting for my sub to The Nation to catch up w/ me on this coast.... ============================================================ Date: Thu, 29 Jun 1995 03:08:24 -0700 From: Ron Silliman Subject: Re: tech and aesthetics / how to teach? Society of the Spectacle by Guy DeBord, Writing Degree Zero by Roland Barthes, What is Literature? by Sartre, recent writing (about PCs and poetry) by Charles Bernstein, Mayakovsky's How are Verses Made, Williams Spring & All, Perelman's The Trouble with Genius, Fred Jameson on Late Capital As for Blade Runner (a great movie I've seen 5 or 6 times), I'd use it only if/as I used Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick. (Also Dr. Bloodmoney, The Man in the High Castle). Good point for talking about essentialism in forms... Gravity's Rainbow by Pynchon, Dhalgren by SR Delaney, Geek Love, work by Cage and Duchamp ============================================================ Date: Thu, 29 Jun 1995 09:20:12 -0400 From: "Jordan Davis." Subject: Re: tech and aesthetics / how to teach? You might for argument's sake teach some letterpress books from Toothpaste or Burning Deck or Tuumba, or even something mimeoed, as a way to talk about slippage, or restricted access, or receding possibilities. "A Funny Place" by I think Richard Snow about the history of Coney Island from Adventures in Poetry might be suitably perverse about this (and the "period" quality all technological advances keep latent until they're renovated--viz letterpress, mimeo, super-8, pixelvision). ============================================================ Date: Thu, 29 Jun 1995 11:33:26 -0400 From: Issa Clubb Subject: Re: bedside reading Hi all. Well, seeing that another young lurker has come out of the shadows emboldens me to also appear. Besides, what better way to join a poetics list than to list what you read? Anyway, here goes: Defoe, Leslie Scalapino At Passages, Michael Palmer Leviathan, Paul Auster Resisting the Virtual Life (anth) about to begin the Decameron ======================================================================= CONTINUED IN NEXT MESSAGE ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 8 Jul 1995 19:37:34 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kenneth Goldsmith Subject: POETICS READING LIST JUNE 1995 2/2 POETICS READING LIST JUNE 1995 CONTINUED ============================================================ Date: Thu, 29 Jun 1995 16:41:25 -0400 From: "Jordan Davis." _The Ern Malley Affair_ by Michael Heyward, Faber & Faber, (London, Boston) 284 pp., $12.95 US, $19.99 Canada in paper and available through Barnes & Noble (they have several copies at the Astor Place branch,) is notable for the clarity with which it deals with the complexities of taste, literary identity, and experimental writing. The book seems (from here) a subtle treatment of the literary scene in Australia in the 40s, particularly of the self-regard of Max Harris and the stance of his magazine, _Angry Penguins_, that so irritated James McAuley and Harold Stewart, two poets in an OSS-sounding organization called the Directorate of Research and Civil Affairs, that they manufactured, with the aid of a collected Shakespeare, the Concise Oxford Dictionary, a Dictionary of Quotations, and a US Army report on mosquito control, Ern Malley and his poems. In an afternoon. Ahem. Anti-hegemony and Edgar Allen (sic!) Poe take note: Malley was born in an idle moment that afternoon in the spring of 1943. After lunch McAuley and Stewart had the place to them- selves: there were no urgent telegrams to deal with, no research jobs to finish on the double. Here was their chance to do something they'd fantasized about, take _Angry Penguins_ down a peg or two. Another issue was just out--they thought it reached new heights of pretension. They set to work improvising Ern Malley, their Primitive Penguin, writing his poems out on an army- issue, ruled quarto pad, tearing each page off as they filled it. Heyward is not _totally_ convinced of the merit of the poems, which are collected in the book (as are Malley's Ernst-ish collages), but he does cite defenders of the work including Judith Wright, John Tranter, John Ashbery and Kenneth Koch. Some effects of the hoax were: to unbalance the equation of value between a work of poetry and the name on it; to suggest, very early on, the possibility that work generated by chance and mischief (and with deliberate disregard for taste) can be taken for beautiful and meaningful; and to turn public attention to poetry (albeit disastrously). ============================================================ Date: Thu, 29 Jun 1995 17:48:19 -0400 From: Rod Smith Subject: fuzzy bookside bedding Hello poetics, Suppose it may have been noted, but Joe Ross has poems in _Avec_ & _Impercipient_ from something called "The Fuzzy Logic Series"-- he's referred to them as "Ashberyan" and they do seem so. Particularly compared to other of his work. Re my own bed: I'm taken at the moment by _Touch Monkeys: Nonsense Strategies for Reading Twentieth-Century Poetry_ by Marnie Parsons. U.Toronto Press overpriced hardcover. Interesting reading of Stein/Zukofsky/Language through Lewis Carroll, Edward Lear, etc. using Kristeva to very good end. Though she gets Cage wrong I think. But I would. Also the new Hobsbawm _Age of Extremes_ very excellent. Really wanted to like Deirdre Bair's _Anais Nin_ --more interested in Bair than Nin, i.e. why did she choose to write about her following Beckett & Beauvoir-- but it's fallen to the wayside. Also I have many copies of _Aerial 8: Barrett Watten_ beside my bed which I certainly recommend. $12.95 to Aerial/Edge, POBox 25642, WDC 20007. I'll be posting soon a longer description of that as well as backlist info. Lightning w/ logic: dogs bark at strangers. Not enough & too much? or Maybe you had too much too fast. Can the Fuzzy be more than metaphorical? as Chaos Theory was a hot metaphor in the arts a few years ago. Not to dismiss description but I want to see it happen. I mean, The sun _is_ one foot wide. How? ============================================================ Date: Thu, 29 Jun 1995 15:02:01 -0700 From: Ryan Knighton Subject: Re: tech/aesth/photography "The Marriage Btwn Art and Culture". Both essays can be found in a book called _All Consuming Images_, Basic Books, 1988. ============================================================ Date: Thu, 29 Jun 1995 20:33:42 EST From: "Burt Kimmelman -@NJIT" Subject: READINGS FOR COURSE IN AESTHETICS AND TECHNOLOGY From: TESLA::KIMMELMAN 29-JUN-1995 20:31:36.96 To: ADMIN::KIMMELMAN CC: Subj: aesthetics and technology To All Tech-Aesthetes: Here as promised is a list, one which I myself have added to though this is not reflected here, which I threw together a couple of years ago when I was first proposing my 20th century Tech and Aesthetics course for college juniors and seniors: Auster, Paul, City of Glass. Barrett, Edward. The Society of Text: Hypertext, Hypermedia, and the Social Construction of Information. Benjamin, Walter. "Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction." Bolter, J. David. Writing Space: The Computer, Hypertext, and the History of Writing. Bullock, Alan. "The Double Image." Carson, Rachel. Silent Spring. Derrida, Jacques, Paraesthetics. ____, The Truth in Painting. Ferguson, Eugene S. Engineering and the Mind's Eye. Goldberger, Paul. The Skyscraper. Hacker, Andrew. Two Nations: Black and White. Hans, James, The Forms of Attention. ____, The Play of the World. Hardison, O. B. Disappearing through the Skylight. New York: Viking. Hindle, Brooke. Emulation and Invention. Heidegger, Martin., Poetry, Language, Thought. ____. The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays. Huizinga, Johann. Homo Ludens. Johnson, Philip and Mark Wigley. Deconstructivist Architecture. Keller, Evelyn Fox. Secrets of Life, Secrets of Death: Essays on Gender, Language and Science. Kraus, Rosalind E., The Optical Unconscious. Landow, George P. Hypertext: The Convergence of Contemporary Critical Theory and Technology. Malloy, Judy. Its Name Was Penelope. Marx, Leo. The Machine in the Garden: Technology and Pastoral Ideal in America. Miller, Carolyn. "Technology as a Form of Consciousness." Ong, Walter J. Orality and Literacy. Orwell, George. 1984. Perloff, Marjorie. The Futurist Moment. Rothenberg, David. Hand's End. Snyder, Gary. Good, Wild, Sacred. Steinman, Lisa M., Made in America: Science, Technology, and American Modernist Poets. Segal, Howard P. Technological Utopianism in American Culture. Slatin, John. "Reading Hypertext: Order and Coherence in a New Medium." Winner, Langdon. The Whale and the Reactor. ============================================================ Date: Thu, 29 Jun 1995 20:42:33 EST From: "Burt Kimmelman -@NJIT" Subject: Re: bedside reading Have you seen Ark by Ronald Johnson? ============================================================ Date: Thu, 29 Jun 1995 20:56:17 EST From: "Burt Kimmelman -@NJIT" "The Double Image" by Alan Bullock. In a book called Modernism. Ed. by Malcolm Bradbury and James McFarlane. Penguin 1976 (but still worth the read). ============================================================ Date: Fri, 30 Jun 1995 10:01:21 -0700 From: "M. Magoolaghan" Subject: Re: fuzzy bedside reading logic 1) Richard Shusterman, _Pragmatist Aesthetics_, Blackwell 1992. Chap. 2 gives a concise history of the study of aesthetics that might be relevant to those involved with the thread on art & aesthetics a while back. 2) Hilary Putnam, _Realism with a Human Face_. Pragmatism in a non-Rortian/poststructuralist key. 3) Theodor Adorno, _Kierkegaard: Construction of the Aesthetic_, trans. & intro. by Robert Hullot-Kenter. Hullot-Kenter read a mind-blowing paper at BlaserFest '95 on the link between ethics & aesthetics. In view of the dominance of the market in shaping aethetic values and reception and the cancellation of the possibility of meaningful ethical reflection by pervasive multinational corporate capitalism, he asked, what's the point of beating this non-issue to death? Touche'. 4) Rod Smith's _The Boy_ & Jeff Derkson's _Dwell_ (poems). 5) Aerial 8 (fantastic issue) and Raddle Moon 13, special section on "Woman/Writing/Theory." And just in: Situation 9 (thanks Mark!). 6) Edgar O'Hara, _Cedazo Tan Chucaro_. Anyone else interested in this dynamite Peruvian poet? 7) Leslie Anne Boldt-Irons, _On Bataille: Critical Essays._ 8) Don Byrd, _The Poetics of the Common Knowledge_. Indispensable wisdom. 9) Paul Fry, _A Defense of Poetry_. Possibly dispensable wisdom. 10) Robert Musil's _The Man without Qualities_. Where has this guy been all my life? A serious revelation. _Five Women_ (just finished) also amazing. 11) _The Guitar Handbook_. Oh, and if Hank Lazar can mention Coltrane as bedside reading, let me mention Mingus' _Ah hum_ and _Mingus Dynasty_, serious jazz for serious hepcats. ============================================================ Date: Fri, 30 Jun 1995 13:54:31 -0400 From: John F Roche Subject: Tech and aesthetics/how to teach I'd add Henry Adams' chapter "The Virgin and the Dynamo," from _The Education_. Also, Dos Passos, _Manhattan Transfer_, and Tillie Olsen, _Yonnondio_. Anything by Louis Sullivan, Frank Lloyd Wright, Lewis Mumford, or Paolo Soleri. Critical studies include Miles Orvell, _The Real Thing_; John Kasson, _Amusing the Million: Coney Island at the Turn of the Century_; Jeffrey Meikle, _Twentieth Century Limited_; Richard G. Wilson, et. al., _The Machine Age in America_; and John Kouwenhoven's chapter on "Steel, Stone, and Jazz" in _Made in America_, Eileen Boris, _Art and Labor_; Jeanne M. Weimann, _The Fair Women_; and Alan Trachtenberg, _Brooklyn Bridge, Fact and Symbol_.. Also Chaplin's "Modern Times" and documentaries like "The City," "The River," "The Plough That Broke the Plains," and "The World of Tomorrow." ============================================================ Date: Fri, 30 Jun 1995 14:50:01 -0700 From: Shaunanne Tangney Subject: Re: women & tech Elizabeth Gaskell's _North And South_ ============================================================ Date: Fri, 30 Jun 1995 18:00:37 -0700 From: Steve Carll Italo Calvino's _Cosmicomics_ ============================================================ Date: Fri, 30 Jun 1995 21:05:57 EST From: "Burt Kimmelman -@NJIT" Subject: Re: tech and aesthetics / how to teach? I enthusiastically recommend for a solid intro. Walter Ong's book Orality and Literacy (re. alphabet as tech, etc.). I guess the alphabet is inevitably to be seen as a technology since it comes with writing. You might want to look at Hand's End by David Rothenberg who builds on Heidegger; R argues that language is a technology (I'm only half convinced and doubt I'll go the other half but who knows?). Also I recommend Evelyn Fox Keller's books especially the earlier stuff though the later is more elaborated but more hastily written and thus for me not as satisfying a read. Also Marion Namenwirth's stuff. Both address women and science / women and technology mostly having to do with the way the cultures of science and tech work and showing how scientific knowledge is "skewed" by male perceptions. Very interesting and at times even exciting stuff. ============================================================ Date: Fri, 30 Jun 1995 18:31:03 -0700 From: Ron Silliman Subject: Re: tech and aesthetics / how to teach? Have there been any suggestions of books by wwomen other than Johanna Drucker? Wouldn't it be an exciting task to imagine and teach a course on twentieth century technology and aesthetics >using only texts by women? Somebody mentioned Avital Ronnell and I think Stein was also cited. I would add Donna Haraway's _Simians, Cyborgs and Women_ (her "Manifesto for Cyborgs," included here, was first published in Socialist Review). Still the best single source on "pomo" topics there is. Anything by Sandra Harding on feminism & science would also be of value, tho she is, by nature, a more "normative" academic author. Meaghan Morris (sp?) has done work on malls that would be good to juxtapose with Baudelaire & w/ Benjamin on Baudelaire. (and, generally, I don't agree that people have gone beyond Benjamin in writing on technology, with the possible exception of Haraway. Benjamin's work has brought forth an enormous amount of deritive drivel, attempts at a politicized MacLuhanism. But it's precisely how he is NOT a MacLuhan that is of interest. I'd add Kathy Acker and several poets whose work shows up in discussion on this list. ============================================================ Date: Sat, 1 Jul 1995 06:00:11 CST From: Charles Alexander Subject: Re: tech and aesthetics / how to teach? Meow Press (Joel Kuszai's inventive imprint) has recently published, as a Meow Press Textbook, TECHNOLOGY/art: 20 Brief Proposals for Seminars on Art & Technology. These brief proposals were made in 1984 by a group of poets (Bruce Andrews, Charles Bernstein, and James Sherry), at the request of Jesse Ausubel, who was then Director of Programs at the National Academy of Engineering, to increase the dialogue between artists and scientists and engineers. It was this book which provoked my recent consideration of the alphabet as a technology. ============================================================ Date: Sat, 1 Jul 1995 16:35:57 -0700 From: George Bowering Subject: Re: bedside reading Find still by my bed a recent _Review of Contemporary Fiction_ and, of course, George Stanley's _Opening Day_, which I have been reading in bed since it came out a few years ago. A book of poems anyone could benefit from rereading. ============================================================ Date: Mon, 3 Jul 1995 18:29:53 -0400 From: Tom Mandel Subject: Re: bedside reading piles near the bed: so many wonderful books of poetry by friends... this has been a 3 month knockout flowering whammo year for the art Moscow Conceptualism, 1970-1990 (book upstairs, don't remember the author, alas) Golf Digest - yes, Hank! Levinas: In the Time of the Nations ditto: Outside the Subject Wm. Burroughs: Letters 1945-59 Caldera Network Desktop: Getting Started King: Sea of Words This is a rather sloppily confected companion to the inestimable Aubrey/Maturin novels of Patrick O'Brian. Don't waste your money, I think. And, for my sins, I'm on a second tour of teh above-mentioned Aubrey/Maturin novels by O'Brian. Just now in the middle of _The Mauritius Command._ Anyone not having read these (now 17) books is invited to cease all other activities and really begin to enjoy life for the first time. ============================================================ Date: Tue, 4 Jul 1995 10:11:42 +0200 From: "WILLIAM M. NORTHCUTT" Subject: Bedside Reading Here's my list: Ron Silliman, Jones Charles Reznikoff, Collected Poems (again and again and again) John Irving, Son of the Circus Sulfur (latest issue) H.D., Asphodel Pound/Lewis letters Mark Lewisohn, The Abbey Road Recording Sessions ============================================================ Date: Tue, 4 Jul 1995 10:24:41 -0800 From: Blair Seagram Subject: checking Eudora/bside reading Re: Bside reading, there has been a lapse too long to carry on more over I am slowing, getting through Ulysses, and saw a great documentary and performance on Beckett. I have a copy of 7 Types of Ambiguity and The Structure of Complex Words by William Empson. I look at them and they look back at me. I also have near me Blake's Poetry and Designs, a Norton Critical Anthology, which I was inspired to buy because of discussions on this list. As well Pomes All Sizes, by Kerouac, The Pocket Poets Series #48. A beautiful book I was given is The Inferno of Dante, a new verse translation by Robert Pinsky. The list continues. Many contemporary names known by the list. All this around me but I barely get to it. ============================================================ Date: Tue, 27 Jun 1995 21:57:48 -0700 From: Reginald Johanson Subject: bedside reading Next to my bed-cum-magic carpet are nothing but travel books--the good stuff, mind you: Bruce Chatwin, "The Songlines", "What Am I Doing Here" Paul Theroux, "Paddling the Pacific" Paul William Roberts, "A River in the Desert", "Empire of the Soul". ============================================================ Date: Wed, 28 Jun 1995 08:10:26 -0400 From: Michael Boughn Subject: Re: bedside reading >I'm on the road (talking in LA) so my reading's what I have here: Heiner >Muller, Material (just got it in German to correlated with the English >texts of his I've read - his writing continues to amaze), the three new >translations of Michel Serres' work (which has always affected my own), >the new James Ellroy, Kroker's Spasm, and Inside the Information Super- >highway, one of my course books, by Nicholas Baran, simple, up-to-date, >thorough.. ============================================================ Date: Wed, 28 Jun 1995 11:36:23 -0400 From: Alan Sondheim Subject: Re: bedside reading The Natural Contract, Genesis, and Between Science and History w/Bruno Latour - there are also the older volumes, Detachment, Hermes, and The Parasite. ============================================================ Date: Wed, 28 Jun 1995 12:51:22 -0400 From: Lee Chapman Subject: Bedside reading The latest pile of not-read-yets (purchased at my local Waldenbooks couple of weeks ago) includes: DISTANT RELATIONS (Carlos Fuentes) THE ALIENIST (Caleb Carr) ASPHODEL (H.D.) TRINITY FIELDS (Bradford Morrow) THE PUSHCART PRIZE '94/'95 (I actually ordered this; glad to see a story from Lucia Berlin's Black Sparrow book, SO LONG, in there; more people should know her work.) CHAIN/2 (Juliana Spahr was nice enough to send a copy; haven't had time to read much yet, but was entirely knocked out by Janet Zweig's HER RECURSIVE APOLOGY, an exercise in extremist excellence.) The list of have-reads includes: ALL ACTS ARE SIMPLY ACTS by Ed Foster (Lovely, thanks, Ed. By the way, is the new TALISMAN out? Any chance I could get a copy??) THE GEOGRAPHICS by Albert Mobilio STROMATA by David Miller BERLIN DIPTYCHON, poems by John Yau, photographs by Bill Barrette I'm in the middle of Bradford Morrow's THE ALMANAC BRANCH (whew! weird! just my style!). Like another on this list (I'm afraid I've forgotten who), I recently received a 1990 novel by one Jim Reagan (Castle King-Four) with that same cryptic note; mine reads: ....this is a peace offering made to you in the memory of (not knowing who the mentioned people are, I'll leave that out)... Never heard of any of them before either. You have to admit, though, he got our attention! ============================================================ Date: Wed, 28 Jun 1995 12:10:43 -0700 From: Lindz Williamson Subject: Re: bedside reading NExt to my lumpy futon is Mikhial Bulgakov's The White Guard Daphne MArletts's Ghost Works Hyemeyohsts Storm's Lightningbolt ============================================================ Date: Wed, 28 Jun 1995 15:46:42 -0400 From: Rae Armantrout Subject: Re: Bedside reading My list isn't as long as some, but... Alan Golding's FROM OUTLAW TO CLASSIC Agamben's STANZAS Messerli's GERTRUDE STEIN AWARDS FOR INNOVATIVE POETRY Hardy's A PAIR OF BLUE EYES I don't have the books right here so apologies if I got any titles wrong. ============================================================ Date: Wed, 28 Jun 1995 16:35:29 -0400 From: Jake Berry Subject: Re: Reading lists Reading several at once as usual. And other things. 1. French Poetry 1820-1950 2. Hank Lazer - THREE OF TEN 3. Selected Poems of Stephan Mallarme 4. Complete Poems of Hart Crane 5. Fellini's 8 1/2 6. The Ellington Suites (CD) 7. Tao Magic (Calligraphy and Talismans) ============================================================ Date: Wed, 28 Jun 1995 15:08:01 -0700 From: Ryan Knighton Subject: Re: Bedside reading New list (I love this list idea) Bowering A Place to Die (a great spicer circle story opens this) Delilo Mao II Brautigan Willard and his Bowling Trophies (I was reading my brother's copy of The Alligator Report and wanted something in that ilk) M. Duras 2 by Duras (a wonderful wee treasure pblsht by the Coach House gooody basket) Philip K. Dick Puttering about in a Small Land (now, I'm not much of a sci fi fan, but George Stanley insisted I read this. In reture he would read Ethel Wilson's Swamp Angel. Apparently Puttering isn't as good as Scanner Darkly. Anyone read him before?) ============================================================ Date: Wed, 28 Jun 1995 16:24:12 -0700 From: Shaunanne Tangney Subject: Re: tech and aesthetics / how to teach? Kern's _The Culture of Time and Space_ Clarke's _Rendevouz with Rama_ John Bradley, ed. _The Atomic Ghost_ (GREAT poetry anth) Rand's _The Fountainhead_ (yeah, I know. . . but. . . ) DeLillo's _Ratner's Star_ Foster's _New York by Gaslight and Other Urban Sketches_ ============================================================ Date: Wed, 28 Jun 1995 21:58:58 -0400 From: Jim Pangborn Subject: Re: tech and aesthetics / how to teach? What a territory to cover! I'm muy jealous. Some things you might want to look at (a very incomplete list): Marshall Berman, _All That Is Solid Melts Into Air_ Hugh Kenner, _The Mechanic Muse_ Daniel Czitrom, _Media and the American Mind_ McLuhan, _Understanding Media_ or one of the Fiore collaborations Cecilia Tichey, _Changing Gears_ Heidegger, "The Q. Concerning T." (already suggested, here seconded despite its big-time abstruseness) Benjamin, "On Some Motifs in Baudelaire" Sigfried Giedion, _Mechanization Takes Command_ Peter Jukes, _A Shout in the Street_ Jackson Lears, _No Place of Grace_ Marjorie Perloff, _The Futurist Moment_ Friedrich Kittler, _Discourse Networks_ ============================================================ Date: Wed, 5 Jul 1995 23:35:18 -0400 From: John Fowler Subject: summer reading For summer reading you might check GRIST On-Line WWW-- http://www.phantom.com/~grist You'll find poetry from more than 100 authors, reviews, essays, calendars of events, and some pretty interesting links as well. ============================================================ Date: Thu, 6 Jul 1995 01:52:54 -0400 From: Rod Smith Subject: Olson's mouthwash I'm teaching an advanced poetry workshop in the fall & wld welcome any comments on collections I might use. At this point I'm thinking the Hoover _Norton Postmodern_, _In the American Tree_, _o blek 12_, & maybe _Chain 2_ or _Disembodied Poetics_. ============================================================ Date: Thu, 6 Jul 1995 16:43:37 +0100 From: R I Caddel Subject: bedside books etc I've enjoyed these lists, which in many cases sent me back to my own shelves - a process which throws up Feynmann (fine drummer, yes?), Chatwin's Songlines and Julian of Norwich has to be worth continuing. In my case the bedside/chairside/deskside/briefcase distinction doesn't work, because the bedside books tend to move to the breakfast table, the breakfast books come to work and so on - i.e. they all move. Which is what a good book should do... Here goes: 1. Active in Airtime 4 : latest ed, of Essex University based magazine edited by John Muckle & Ralph Hawkins. 2. Robin Blaser: The Holy Forest. 3. Ulla Dydo's Stein Reader. I needed this book years ago. 4. Ian Hamilton Finlay: Brount (Peninsula, 1995). I think this is the only bilingual English/Dutch publication I have. " : Ein Projekt fur das Bankhaus Schroder Munchmeyer Hengst & Co (Wild Hawthorn, 1995). 5. F.C.Happold: Mysticism (this penguin anthology came off the shelf when Julian was mentioned and I began a revisiting tour of the English Mystics). 6. Eric Mottram: Selected Poems (North & South). " : Blood on the Nash Ambassador (Hutchinson). 7. Michael Palmer: At Passages (Haven't got beyond the lovely Ben Watkins cover yet). 8. Terry Pratchett: Reaper Man (Arrgh! go back three spaces! this isn't the kind of book serious people are supposed to like!)(But I do - apart from anything else I like the Orang-utan Librarian, who gets paid peanuts...). 9. Micheal Tippett: Those 20th Century Blues. 10. Gilbert White's Journals v.III, ed. Mabey, found on a remainder stall. ============================================================ END OF "POETICS READING LIST JUNE 1995" ============================================================================= Kenneth Goldsmith http://wfmu.org/~kennyg/ kgolds@panix.com kennyg@wfmu.org ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 8 Jul 1995 20:54:30 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steve Carll Subject: Re: breath rules Burt: Sure, the music is poetry is an absolutely crucial part of it. All I'm trying to get at is that the visual aspect of it is crucial *too*. What about the role drama played in Greek poetry and in the poetry of the man we've come to call "The" Bard? Certainly there's a massive visual emphasis present as well. And even before writing, what do we know about the role of gesture in language (essence or history?) Seems to me neither Ong nor Derrida (at least in _Orality and Literacy_ and _On Grammatology_) deal with the gestural component of language, and the role of the body and the eye in that, and I think it might add an interesting dimension to this debate. Anyone have any insights into this? Sure, art creates illusion, language creates illusion, reality creates illusion too. But that's not all any of these things create, and I hope it's not the intention of art, language or reality to leave us stranded in illusion (what a bummer that would be!) Steve ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 9 Jul 1995 00:50:05 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rod Smith Subject: Jesture Steve Carll, Yes! Gesture! This has actually been the term I've been using to describe to myself recent writings of my own. It's about duration & is a quality much Zen poetry has. So, maybe, _through_ duration the graphic aspect is more, I almost want to say "powerfully" or "perfectly" inscribed-- but no, it's that the illusion (concrete &/or abstract) is more particularly revealed. The speed of it fuks up the artifice, not to remove it, but revel/reveal it as/at-- well it's actually making "the world" or the room or _something_. The mistake of any writing is the given & the procedure. The mistake is doing it, not the before or after. In recent work I think Grenier's box & Scalapino generally are operating in this area. Sometimes Howe perhaps, but in another sense, it seems more 'polished' yet it keeps that, to refer to another conversation, ability to take yr top off. & Ron S. (if you're out there, what's the role of revision in N/O? or the alphabet generally-- do you not do it?) & Carla H, & M. Neilson, you can talk abt a lot of work usefully with these terms I think, but there's danger of stretching the term too far. Raworth! Gesture that just keeps going. Makes it live. God I hardly ever use exclamation marks. I'm gonna go have a beer. --Rod ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 8 Jul 1995 22:01:50 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: Poll: Which magazines to read? In-Reply-To: <199507081901.PAA21300@conciliator.acsu.buffalo.edu> from "Loss Glazier" at Jul 8, 95 03:01:40 pm I couldnt get by without reading _Open Letter_, Frank Davey's venerable journal about recent poetics etc. Partly because it is one of the few places in which contemporary lit-thinking from the US and Canada (and sometimes other places) can be found and connected. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 8 Jul 1995 22:06:43 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: EPC Magazine entries -- sample In-Reply-To: <199507081857.OAA21070@conciliator.acsu.buffalo.edu> from "Loss Glazier" at Jul 8, 95 02:57:03 pm Forgot to put in the address for _Open Letter_ (though I expect that most subscribers to this list get it or read it. OPEN LETTER, 499 Dufferin Ave., London, ON, N6B 2A1 Canada The Spring '95 issue, foir instance, has Dennis Denisoff's article, "Merger, She Wrote: Politicubism in Gertrude Stein and Erin Moure." ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 8 Jul 1995 22:12:04 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: Offsets to the Frame In-Reply-To: from "Jim Rosenberg" at Jul 8, 95 05:01:19 pm Re Jim Rosenberg's posting: Interesting. Somewhere Creeley admits that when he started reading WCW he tried to read it with a pause after every line, and that was the way he, Creeley, was writing; he found out that it doesnt work with WCW. As usual, the best way to test it is by listening to WCW. The new collection of readings ought to get us over the hassle of the post-stroke reading on that old Cadmon record. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 9 Jul 1995 17:14:51 GMT+1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tony Green Organization: The University of Auckland Subject: Re: breathing have you got some more suggestions for spectaculars, Chris Scheil? ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 8 Jul 1995 22:16:48 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: breath rules In-Reply-To: <199507081211.FAA09472@ix6.ix.netcom.com> from "Ron Silliman" at Jul 8, 95 05:11:03 am Nice post from Silliman re Larry Eigner. The wonderful nouny-ness of Larry's Mass. poetry was also part;y aided by virtue of the fact that he had a towerish room with windows on all sides, so he could look at Swampscott he could not walk thru. Get it all by eye. There was an old story that when Olson was taken up the road to see Eigner, he could not handle Larry's condition and appearance. Gad, what a comparison he must have felt. Eigner's poetry, so many years of it, needs some critical work, doesnt it? Where are the young ones with energy? ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 9 Jul 1995 17:23:27 GMT+1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tony Green Organization: The University of Auckland Subject: Re: Jesture for Rod Smith: also Robert Grenier's pieces printed not from his typewriter but from his hand-writing -- after the box are interesting in this context ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 8 Jul 1995 22:24:52 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: breath rules In-Reply-To: <27938.mcba@maroon.tc.umn.edu> from "Charles Alexander" at Jul 7, 95 03:26:19 am "Breath sucks!" -George Stanley ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 9 Jul 1995 05:29:45 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ron Silliman Subject: Re: Jesture Rod, you wrote" & Ron S. (if you're out there, what's the role of >revision in N/O? or the alphabet generally-- do you not do it?) _Force_was composed almost entirely via revision. Most of the rest of the Alphabet uses it very sparingly (most finished manuscripts are 99.99 percent unrevised, but it seldom ever gets quite all the way to 100 percent--I find spelling errors or realize an inversion that would do wonderful things to the prosody or discover I've forgotten a word). As I recall, O had a little revision in it, but N almost none whatsoever, given its methodology that anything went. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 9 Jul 1995 11:33:42 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom Mandel Subject: Re: Jabes query Graham, Cd you re-pose your query in a backchannel message to me? I seem to have lostit, but I think I may have some of the experience to give you a useful response. Unless you've already gotwhat you wanted/needed, in which case... Tom Mandel ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 9 Jul 1995 12:52:27 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "H. T. KIRBY-SMITH" Organization: University of NC at Greensboro Subject: Free Verse I'd like to ask some questions. 1. Is there a distinct difference, according to any criterion at all, between free verse and formal verse, or is there a spectrum ranging from most formal to most free? 2. Are there different distinguishable kinds of free verse? 3. Is free verse more visual than formal verse--does it have more spatiality, either in the imagination or on the page or both? 4. Does anyone talk about "cadence" any more? 5. Can there be a free-verse "foot" ? I am not sure whether asking these questions is more like throwing matches into a haystack or throwing matches into a pond, but I guess I will find out. Tom Kirby-Smith English Department UNC-Greensboro Greensboro NC 27412 ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 9 Jul 1995 13:40:54 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Graham John Sharpe Subject: Re: Jabes -4Tom Mandel In-Reply-To: <199507091533.LAA24587@yorick.umd.edu> from "Tom Mandel" at Jul 9, 95 11:33:42 am Tom, i would like to backchannel you the info because im still looking for help, but your address doesnt show - so i cant find you. the system here at simonfraser doesnt show anyones local email address. i'll provide mine below so we can try this again. looking forward to hearing from you... graham gsharpe@sfu.ca ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 9 Jul 1995 17:11:13 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Burt Kimmelman -@NJIT" Subject: Re: breath rules Steve, Okay, I'm convinced (especially since I'm a Paul Blackburn fan from way back, and nowadays a fan of Richard Kosetelanetz). But of course if I were to close my eyes and just listen to the Bard, I'd get something that possessed a sense of unity. On the other hand what you say has been getting me to do some serious reexaminations (timed with a piece on NPR today about a multi-sense entry at the Biennale), and you are convincing me, I'm afraid. Help! ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 10 Jul 1995 10:49:58 GMT+1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tony Green Organization: The University of Auckland Subject: Re: Exercise(s) I've been "away" a lot from my machine lately found this in note-book , dated 2 July, that began with various problems to do with a narrative in progress (slow) and got round to affairs of this list, so: " reverse thinking : is a good EXERCISE but it is like EXERCISES not the performance itself unless it is an end in itself to improve one's aerobic capacities " even chance activities do not escape the Rules governing the Space of production or performance (set by the owners of spaces) and also the "scene" of writing for the writer is another hidden determinant (there was more, but there's something missing from the scribbled entry and the above is a gist) in a back-channel re-exercises or experiments for writers to Charles Bernstein some moons ago I suggested that the rules governing cut-up and chance procedures with appropriated texts were applicable ONLY to the texts in hand and were not generalizable to all and any occasions (certainly my experience with that), so that "exercises and experiments" or "rehearsals" as they seemed were in practice "performances" the categories merge are Chopin Studies "exercises"? or J.S.Bach Inventions or B Bartok Mikrokosmos? [Emptying note-book on to screen for list...may be useful to someone ? ] ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 9 Jul 1995 18:21:30 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Lindz Williamson Subject: Re: Free Verse In-Reply-To: To the question: Does anyone talk about "cadence" any more? I'd say yes in the realm of open mike readings the rising of voice and meter is essential in claiming the ear of your audience. It is more difficult to achieve on the page, but thrilling when heard by the author in a live reading. Personally I use cadence often when doing a reading; I find using a breathless voice that allows the words to tumble out of my mouth and land in a hurried jumble builds anticipation and appreciation for the softer slow phonetic sounds that I like to end with, however the trick is to still be understood and interpreted by the audience. This takes great skill that I haven;t quite mastered. Verse form doesn't matter so much as cadence is purely a live thing. How to read a poem is purely subjective in my mind. After hearing tapes of Tennyson read it has greatly affected the way I read him now. Lindz ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 9 Jul 1995 21:24:19 CST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Alexander Subject: Re: Free Verse Regarding Lindz's belief that "Verse form doesn't matter so much as cadence is purely a live thing. How to read a poem is purely subjective in my mind." The live utterance can certainly put its stamp on cadence, but the language used has something to do with it as well. I know that in years when I was teaching, reading Emily Dickinson aloud was useful, but it was meant to bring the written magic out, not to inject something that wasn't really there at all in the writing. So, no, cadence is not "purely a live thing." Reading a poem is also not purely subjective, although it may be subjective within limits established by the language of the poem. As to your description, Lindz, of your own readings, are you talking about a voicing of the words entirely disassociated from the writing, or are the "words that tumble out of [the] mouth and land in a hurried jumble" and the "softer slower phonetic sounds" represented in the language as written. If not, I don't see why they can't be. The language is capable of accomplishing such acts, written or voiced. Hearing it is something else, and we're (the big WE of culture) not teaching that very well, I don't think. It would be useful to know, from those of you who teach poetry, what percentage of time you take in your classes to read poems aloud, and to have students read poems aloud. Sounds terribly simple, but I always found it to be perhaps the most useful thing to do, at any level in the educational experience. charles charles alexander chax press minnesota center for book arts phone & fax: 612-721-6063 e-mail: mcba@maroon.tc.umn.edu ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 10 Jul 1995 15:33:18 GMT+1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tony Green Organization: The University of Auckland Subject: Re: Free Verse re Charles Alexander's post. I've only "taught poetry" a couple of times, but agree that reading aloud is rather important. Otherwise I would be puzzled how to begin, when the poem says something, but not very much, and too little when compared with someone actually doing a performance of it (reciting/reading). Hearing Robert Creeley sounding entirely like Robert Creeley, reading William Carlos Williams a couple of weeks back gave me a lot of what I took to be the pleasure of Williams poem. It was nice to hear Creeley enjoy it, and that enjoyment was what got me going: (to hell with the old subjective/objective talk). I guess an accomplished practitioner of poetry can hear someone else's poem move off the page and into the air, as they'd like their own to do. Anything else interesting is the talk generated by the reading and hearing it. I can't believe in an interpretative attempt on painting/sculpture etc that doesn't stem from a performance of "looking", or music crit that has not been listening. The effort, and it is a big effort of attention, is one of the important things that makes any art-writing live. So if, as Charles says, this is not much done (hard to believe people on this list don't do it!), something could be wrong with teaching somewhere. [Sure it's a hobby-horse and I've said this before in similar circumstances, for which I don't apologise.] writing ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 9 Jul 1995 20:47:59 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: Free Verse In-Reply-To: from "Lindz Williamson" at Jul 9, 95 06:21:30 pm I use a lot of cadence too. Just about every time I do a reading I fall down. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 9 Jul 1995 20:58:31 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: Free Verse In-Reply-To: from "H. T. KIRBY-SMITH" at Jul 9, 95 12:52:27 pm Sure, there can be a free verse foot. In fact there cannot not be. A foot is any principal stress with any number (say from 0 to 4) of secondary etc stresses. Or in quantity the equivalent. Just walk while you're reading the poem. It wasnt called an "elbow." ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 10 Jul 1995 00:07:04 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steve Evans Subject: LitNet Call-In Day Defending NEA Dear Friends: I am writing to all of you who helped with *Freely Espousing* in the first months of 1995 with some information that I hope you will consider acting on. LitNet, the advocacy organization that has been struggling these past months (and years) to preserve federal arts funding for the writing community, has announced a Congressional call-in day on Tuesday, 11 July. The goal of the action is to ensure that a Senate reauthorization bill (S.856), scheduled for mark-up in the Committee on Labor & Human Relations sometime this week, not be crippled by amendments that would adversely affect literature. Although the bill is not ideal, its current form does allow for individual writers and literary publishers and organizations to apply for federal grants; budgetary reductions are set at 2% per year over five years. (As most of you know,this is a much less draconian vision of the NEA's future than the one recently articulated in the House.) LitNet recommends the following specific messages: 1) If you live in Indiana, Kansas, Michigan, Missouri, New Hampshire, Ohio, Tennessee or Vermont, consider using the following argument: I am a resident of your state and a member of the Literary Network. I'm calling to ask you to support a reauthorization bill for the National Endowment for the Arts that does *not* increase the amount of money already allocated to the state arts agencies. Literature is a uniquely national art form--sending more money to the states would effectively eliminate the NEA literature program. Also, please support federal funding for direct grants to individual writers and grants that require small arts organizations (such as non-profit publishers and literary centers) to raise only 1:1 matching funds. Thank you for your time and attention. 2) If you live in New Mexico or Oregon: I am a resident of your state and a member of the Literary Network. I'm calling to ask you to support as large an appropriation as possible for the National Endowment for the Arts in FY96. Also, please support an appropriations bill that *does not* increase allocations to the state arts agencies and that *does* continue to fund fellowships for individual writers and grants to small arts organizations such as non-profit publishers and literary centers. Thank you for your time and attention. 3) If you live in Washington, Senator Gorton is a member of both committees. Please tell him you wish to leave two messages and then tell him (1) and (2) above. If you can't call on Tuesday, call on Monday or Wednesday. If you have friends living in any of the mentioned states, please take five minutes and contact them about this very important effort. Finally, Anne Burt can only hone LitNet's efficacy if she knows what people out there are doing: call her at 1-212-741-9110 and let her know what action you have taken, or fax her at 1-212-741-9112. ==========For Your Reference========== Selected Members of the Senate Labor & Human Resources Committee and the Senate Approproations Committee Nancy Landon Kassebaum (Kansas), 1-202-224-4774 James M. Jeffords (Vermont), 1-202-224-5141 Dan Coats (Indiana), 1-202-224-5623 Judd Gregg (New Hampshire), 1-202-224-3324 Bill Frist (Tennessee), 1-202-224-3344 Mike DeWine (Ohio), 1-202-224-2315 John Ashcroft (Missouri), 1-202-224-6154 Spencer Abraham (Michigan), 1-202-224-4822 Slade Gorton (Washington), 1-202-224-3441 Mark Hatfield (Oregon), 1-202-224-3753 Pete Domenici (New Mexico), 1-202-224-6621 ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 9 Jul 1995 21:21:30 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: Free Verse In-Reply-To: from "Tony Green" at Jul 10, 95 03:33:18 pm I could not imagine teaching a poetry course without reading the poems aloud (as well as using tapes etc, such as the CD-ROM of "Poetry in Motion"), but more important, reading the poems aloud. It would be like teaching an art course without looking at any paintings etc. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 10 Jul 1995 00:23:39 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Donald J. Byrd" Subject: Re: Olson's revisions In-Reply-To: <199507100401.AAA07482@sarah.albany.edu> Ron Silliman: Olson was actually a heavy reviser, though to be sure there are passages in which he seems to be saying "first thought, best thought." I did a lot of work in the Archive at Connecticut when it was still very primitively cataloged, and I would find a manuscript of this or that poem, and I point it out to George Butterick who would say, "Oh, yes, there are alot of those." Olson would completely re-copy or "re-vision" poems-- often changing only a few words or line breaks, etc. Later he did not so much revise as throw away. Poems begin on whatever piece of paper at hand and frequently end with increasingly illegible scribbles. It appears that the more or less completed poems (always a question, of course, what is complete?) did get written straight through, but sometimes after several stabs. You could say that he didn't revise much, but he wrote many poems that were very similar to one another. Don Byrd ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 9 Jul 1995 21:56:10 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Lindz Williamson Subject: Re: Free Verse In-Reply-To: <199507100421.VAA01148@fraser.sfu.ca> Charles wrote: As to your description, Lindz, of your own readings, are you talking about a voicing of the words entirely disassociated from the writing, or are the "words that tumble out of [the] mouth and land in a hurried jumble" and the "softer slower phonetic sounds" represented in the language as written. If not, I don't see why they can't be. The language is capable of accomplishing such acts, written or voiced. Hearing it is something else, and we're (the big WE of culture) not teaching that very well, I don't think. I agree that the initial play is in the writing of the poem, but a certain life comes from the skill of the reader. It's partciallly the personal aspect that is added, the intimacy of the poet reading. But I often think I'd like to hire and direct an actor to read my poems, because I can't always present them in the exact way I see them in my head or on the page. I also found when friends share poems and read each other's works aloud two very different products emerge. In live reading I have two goals. First,I like to make poetry less a part of myself and more of a moment, a dramatic experience rather than a revelations of myself. I think the page is something we can hide behind as writers. Symbols on a page conveying images of thoughts and moments that have already past. Live readings alter this perception as they audience thinks they are witnessing the exposure of the poet. Which isn't necessarily true, but an excellent form of manipulation by the poet. Second, how to read a poem must be taught, and among my non-post secondary educated friends written works do not reach them. Yet bring them to a live experience and they are transformed. I try to include them in my writing. I take the skills I have learned in my education and apply them in a form that they will understand and enjoy. Poems were never read aloud in my experience until I took a 3rd year English course that surveyed 20th century lit. My prof did an amazing reading of Plath's "Daddy", now that is cadence in action. Most of my profs were too shy to read aloud to the class. Lindz ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 10 Jul 1995 00:33:02 -40962758 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jim Rosenberg Subject: Re: breathing Ron Silliman: > As I recall, Jim Rosenberg, whom I believe is on this list, had a show > at a gallery in SF back in the 1970s (and reasonably early in that > decade as well) which include a series of word imprinted on clear > plastic cards that were to be thrown into a swimming pool, so that > readers would swim from word to word, a poem in constant drift. Now this gives me a jolt! I had no recollection of *water* being involved in that piece, but now that Ron mentions it I do have a vague glimmer of a proposal involving water. Was it in a text on the wall at that show? Was it just something we talked about? I'm not sure, but I don't remember ever actually executing a piece in water. Now days, of course, what would be fun is holography: project the words into the whole space. (The person who has done the most work with words and holography to my knowledge is Eduardo Kac.) The show Ron is talking about (how nice to have it remembered!) was called Temporary Poetry 10/73. I do still have some documentation of it, and one of these days I'm going to get a scanner and put some of that stuff up on my web. (Right now all I have there is a brief paragraph describing it.) I did one other installation, at the Kitchen in NY in May of 75. -- Jim Rosenberg http://www.well.com/user/jer/ CIS: 71515,124 WELL: jer Internet: jr@amanue.pgh.net ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 10 Jul 1995 03:26:11 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rod Smith Subject: new Stein Johns Hopkins has just reprinted _The Geographical History of America_ pb. $14.95. The full title is _The Geographical History of America or the Relation of Human Nature to the Human Mind_. As many know, this is the text which includes the line "I am I because my little dog knows me." Also Dalkey Archive will be reprinting _The Making of Americans_ in the fall. I think just a re-shoot of the Something Else edition, all those mistakes we know & love will remain. Also, let me encourage people to pick up Joan Retallack's _Afterrimages_ recently published by Wesleyan (pb. $12.95). We need to send the right message when an established press does a _living_ "experimental" (the following should be bold) writer. Support independent booksellers. Go to Barnes & Noble last, please. --Rod Smith ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 10 Jul 1995 02:40:33 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ron Silliman Subject: Job Just saw the following on the Nude Formalist List. Job anyone? Ron ----------------------------------------------- Job for poet/writer. Please help get the word out. Temporary English Faculty The Department of English at Salem State College is seeking to fill two one-year temporary faculty positions for the fall of 1995. For both positions, experience in and commitment to teaching in a multiracial, multiethnic environment with students od diverse backgrounds and learning styles is a preferred requirement. Salaries are competitive and commensurate with education and experience. CREATIVE WRITING. Specialist in poetry to teach undergraduate and graduate courses in writing. Courses range from composition to advanced levels of fiction, poetry and drama. MFA or appropriate doctorate, a minimum of two years of college teaching experience and publications required. Managerial experience in editing a literary magazine, coordinating visiting writers series, writers conferences, etc. preferred. ESL/LINGUISTICS. Ph.d. in ESL/Linguistics with flexibility to teach in both areas.... Application review will begin immediately and continue until the positions are filled. To apply, send letter of application, resume, appropriate transcripts and three letters of reference to: Office of Equal Opportunity and Human Rights, Salem State College, 352 Lafayette Street, Salem, MA 01970. Salem State College is an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer. Persons of color, women and persons with disabilities are strongly urged to apply. (Ad ran in July 9th Boston Sunday Globe) ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 10 Jul 1995 02:51:49 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ron Silliman Subject: Re: breathing Jim, but now that Ron mentions it I do have a vague glimmer of a >proposal involving water. Was it in a text on the wall at that show? Was it >just something we talked about? It was, as I recall, the series of cards on the floor, a word per card. There's this overpriced "poetry magnet" game, little words on magnetized squares for play on the refrigerator or wherever, these days, and it was modeled after that. (Actually, that game has never much appealed to me, but I have thought of using computer programs to pull out characteristic vocabularies and do Stein, Kerouac, Hemingway, Faulkner, etc. versions of that.) Just saw the big Cage show here in Philadelphia yesterday. Very much in that same spirit. There's a "program your own score" computer game in it, move the mouse and click to get different effects and one of my three year olds, Jesse, did such for about 10 minutes with a half dozen adults all wearing headphones nodding appreciatively. Ron ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 10 Jul 1995 06:57:05 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jorge Guitart Organization: University at Buffalo Subject: DON'T BE SO PHONOCENTRIC To everyone concerned with breathing, etc.: Though it is wonderful to hear a great reader read, don't forget deaf poets & readers. [Isn't most poetry produced and consumed in silence?] Does anybody know anything about poetry in American Sign Language or in sign language in non-English cultures? ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 10 Jul 1995 10:27:32 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Jordan Davis." Subject: Cadenza Lindz wrote about performance cadence. >In NY this seems to be a monochrome sprechstimme, returning to the same pitch (the same note) at every stress. Try it at your next performance poetry--read an item about the candidacy of Pete Wilson reTURNing to the SAME NOTE EVery STRESS. For bonus points at the Nuyorican, let your voice fall at the end of the line, or better yet, hold the last word of each paragraph (we don't use stanzas here) an extra beat or two. They'll probably hate you for it... Charles wanted writers who teach to talk about how much time they spend reading poetry and having their students read out loud. >I read children's poems to my students for a few minutes at the beginning of each lesson, I read work while my students are writing as it's being written, and then half to all of the class reads their work at the end, depending on the time. I found they liked Williams, Dante and Herrick. Work by children remained the most inspiring. Jordan ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 10 Jul 1995 10:28:28 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "H. T. KIRBY-SMITH" Organization: University of NC at Greensboro Subject: free verse foot "Sure, there can be a free verse foot. In fact there cannot not be. A foot is any principal stress with any number (say from 0 to 4) of secondary etc stresses. Or in quantity the equivalent. Just walk while you're reading the poem. It wasnt called an 'elbow.' " Does the statement above seem congruent with the statement below? "The foot which I have used consists of one heavily accented syllable, an unlimited number of unaccented syllables, and an unlimited number of syllables of secondary accent. This resembles the accentual meter of Hopkins, except that Hopkins employed rhyme." Tom Kirby-Smith English Department UNC-Greensboro Greensboro NC 27412 ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 10 Jul 1995 10:31:02 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Jordan Davis." Subject: Re: Olson's revisions Donald Byrd wrote (about Olson): You could say that he didn't revise much, but he wrote many poems that were very similar to one another. That was my understanding of D.H. Lawrence's revision, too. Anybody know anything about Ashbery and revision? Or Coolidge? Jordan PS Re jesture, Marisa Januzzi used to talk about the gestural quality of certain poetries--Are you there, Marisa? ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 10 Jul 1995 10:46:34 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Willa Jarnagin Subject: Re: Poll: Which magazines to read? Comments: cc: ange_mlinko@pws.com In-Reply-To: <199507081901.PAA21300@conciliator.acsu.buffalo.edu> On Sat, 8 Jul 1995, Loss Glazier wrote: > -------------------- > MAGAZINES _YOU_ READ: > -------------------- > I wanted to also ask people to post (or send to me) names of magazines > they read, think are important, should really be mentioned! (I > thought to compile this list for the EPC as an added resource - and to > help fill in the blanks where entries do not exist.) Maybe a word or > two, if you feel like it, about why the magazine is one you read would > also be useful. > Compound Eye, edited by poet Ange Mlinko (see a poem of hers in the latest Talisman), is a great little zine. The next issue features Bernadette Mayer. Ange has a fresh eye, good gut instinct, and writes book reviews that are almost poems in their own right. Write her at: 52 Park Street Somerville, MA 02143 --Willa ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 10 Jul 1995 10:55:53 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Willa Jarnagin Subject: Re: Offsets to the Frame In-Reply-To: On Sat, 8 Jul 1995, Jim Rosenberg wrote: > I posted a quite lengthy article that deals with this and many other things > under the subject "Notes Toward a Non-linear Prosody of Space" to ht_lit some > moons back; it is available on the web at > > http://www.well.com/user/jer/nonlin_prosody.html > > If there is interest I can repost it here; it's about 345 lines long. > I'm putting in my vote for posting it here. I don't have access to the Web and I'd like to read it. --Willa ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 10 Jul 1995 11:09:18 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Edward Foster Subject: Re: Olson conference? yes, there's an olson conference in gloucester august 12 with Gerrit Lansing, Ed Sanders, Robert Creeley, many more. best to contact the library there, i'd guess, for details. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 10 Jul 1995 11:18:18 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Edward Foster Subject: Re: Free Verse no verse, as they say, is free, and yes, they do talk about cadence; why not? but all this got chewed through many generations ago--many, many generations ago. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 10 Jul 1995 11:27:51 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Kellogg Subject: Re: Olson's revisions In-Reply-To: <950710103059_111568102@aol.com> On Mon, 10 Jul 1995, Jordan Davis. wrote: > Donald Byrd wrote (about Olson): > You could say that he didn't revise much, but he wrote many poems > that were very similar to one another. > > That was my understanding of D.H. Lawrence's revision, too. Anybody know > anything about Ashbery and revision? Or Coolidge? With Lawrence's *novels*, however, there was much revision. Three complete versions of *Lady Chatterley's Lover*. It would be interesting to hear some talk about revision and spontenaeity as generically differentiated values. With regard to Ashbery, this is from the Appendix to John Shoptaw's pretty interesting new book, *On the Outside Looking Out*: "Soon after finishing 'A Wave,' Ashbery articulated his poetics of revision: 'I like the idea of being as close to the original thought or voice as possible and not to falsify it by editing.' (*Paris Review* 90, Winter 1983, 53). When working not with a 'thought or voice' but with pages of written text, Ashbery keeps to the original by keeping new writing to a minimum. Rather than changing the fabric of his text by rewriting or interpolating phrases and lines, Ashbery revises from the outside by cutting and restitching -- scrapping what doesn't work and leaving the reconnected pieces relatively intact. When this method fails, he starts over with a new original performance. Thus Ashbery can revise heavily and still keep close to an, if not the, original. (Shoptaw p. 343, cite added to text from endnote). Cheers, David ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ David Kellogg The moment is at hand. University Writing Program Take one another Duke University and eat. Durham, NC 27708 kellogg@acpub.duke.edu --Thomas Kinsella ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 10 Jul 1995 11:36:47 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Kellogg Subject: Re: Geoffrey Hill/Modernism & PoMo in England In-Reply-To: <00992BA3.67795980.19@met.co.nz> In Ireland the fate of modernism is also very complicated, partly by the overwhelming "International Modernist" presence of Joyce. But certainly the post-Yeats Irish poet who has gotten the most play in the States (Heaney) could be called po-mo only by the most elastic of definitions, and some of the most startlingly experimental (Devlin, Kinsella) are barely read at all here. Of course, McGuckian and Muldoon are relatively well-known, but their language practices are tamed (and partly produced) by American theoretical discourse. Cheers, David ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ David Kellogg The moment is at hand. University Writing Program Take one another Duke University and eat. Durham, NC 27708 kellogg@acpub.duke.edu --Thomas Kinsella ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 10 Jul 1995 08:45:05 PDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jerry Rothenberg Subject: Re: DON'T BE SO PHONOCENTRIC Regarding Ameslan [American Sign Language] poetry, you might check the anthology SYMPOSIUM OF THE WHOLE (edited by myself & Diane Rothenberg) for the article "Poetry without Sound" by Edward S. Klima and Ursual Bellugi. Bellugi has done terrific work in this area & early contacted me on the relation of signing poetry to the way in which I and others had been approaching oral poetry in the course of doing (so called) "total trans- lation." Dennis Tedlock and I then published this piece in Alcheringa (our magazine of ethnopoetics) with my very strong sense that what was involved touched on a dimension of poetry that made pure oralism inadequate, however much we had then been (or continued to be) commited to a speech model. I made an attempt (around 1976/77) to work out an experimental approach to a total translation from Ameslan, collaborating with the deaf poet Joe Castronovo, who was himself a native signer. But circumstances got in the way & we never followed through on it, although since then I've come on the work of performance poets composing in ASL & have been hoping to see how much further it would go. I'll print out the headnote I wrote for Bellugi piece, in case it's of interest. Jerome Rothenberg POETRY WITHOUT SOUND. Even in its early, tentative stages, the signing poetry emerging as an aspect of the "culture of the deaf" challenges some of our cherished preconceptions about poetry and its relation to human speech. Ameslan (American Sign Language) represents, literally, a poetry without sound and, for its practitioners, a poetry without access to that experience of sound as voice that we've so often taken as the bedrocks of all poetics and all language. In the real world of the deaf, then, language exists as a kind of writing in space and as a primary form of communication without reference to any more primary form of language for its validation. It is in this sense a realization of the ideogrammatic vision of a Fenollosa -- "a splendid flash of concrete poetry" -- but an ideogrammatic language truly in motion and, like oral poetry, truly inseparable from its realization in per- formance. (Ethnopoetic analogues -- for those who would care to check them out -- include Hindu and Tantric mudras, Plains Indian and Australian Aborigine sign languages, and Ejagham [southeastern Nigerian] "action writing": a history of human gesture languages that would enrich our sense of poetry and language, should we set our minds to it.) // The reader may also want to relate this piece to recent discourse about "written-oral dichotomies, etc., but the revelation of Ameslan, in that sense, isn't a denial of the powers of oral poetry but the creation of its possible and equally impermanent companion in performance. -------- A few additional thoughts. We had around that time seen an extraordinary performance of Four Saints in Three Acts by the Theater of the Deaf -- a startling and revelaing interplay between spoken and signed language. And I'm remembering too that in Shaking the Pumpkin -- the Indian assemblage I did in early 70s -- I included a signing piece (& probably compared it to something or other, altho I'm not going to bother to check). Also, the Klima-Bellugi essay didn't originally appear in Alcheringa, but in the followup magazine, New Wilderness Letter, that I had started up in 1976. It remains, anyway, an area of interest, and I'm hoping someone out there may have information on more recent happenings, etc. (And, needless to say, the Klima-Bellugi essay is of much more interest than my intro to it.) ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 10 Jul 1995 11:59:00 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Scheil Subject: Re: breathing In-Reply-To: On Sun, 9 Jul 1995, Tony Green wrote: > have you got some more suggestions for spectaculars, Chris Scheil? > Just one off the top of my egotistical bean... 2nd Intl Conference on Scheilianism: Extensions, Corruptions, & "Blague" Papers presented: A. The Signifying Bowel: "Weltanscheilung" & the Rise of Forensic Recreation B. Scheil at Meyerling: The Facts C. Was Scheil a Hypnocentrist? D. Illusion, Collusion, Delusion: Mary Baker Eddy's Letters to Ektarina Scheil, 1907-1913 E. "Vast Rivers of Taint in Which to Immerse my Luminous Pelt": Scheil, Spengler, & the Moravian Lieder Dispute. F. His Hummels, His Whippets, His Bakelite Snifters: Scheil's "Commodity Fetish & The Lithocultural Imperative" Revisioned Plus: A Scheilian Miscellany, featuring manuscripts, photographs, & Rememberances. Saturday Oct. 19 Through Wednesday Oct. 23 Universitaet Baden-Wurtenburg "With the destruction of history, contemporary events themselves retreat into a remote & fabulous realm of unverifiable stories, uncheckable statistics, unlikely explanations and untenable reasoning." --Debord In the mackuling drift, Chris ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 10 Jul 1995 13:45:13 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rod Smith Subject: Re: Ashbery's process Jordan Davis wrote: >Anybody know anything about Ashbery & revision? Or >Coolidge? The recent Shoptaw book gets into his process (_On the Outside Looking Out: John Ashbery's Poetry_ Harvard $24.00 pb geeze). Similar actually to what Byrd was describing re Olson. Apparently, he tends to cut more than rewrite, & when cutting doesn't work he'll write "the same poem" over again. The body of Shoptaw's text contains quite a bit of discussion of process. There's also an appendix which reprints early drafts of "A Wave." Coolidge is another & very good question. --Rod Smith ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 10 Jul 1995 16:33:37 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Burt Kimmelman -@NJIT" Subject: Re: Free Verse Lindz, Couldn't a Tennyson poem pose, say, a "range" of possible cadences? I mean, as you see it on the page and read it to yourself? Burt ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 10 Jul 1995 16:35:25 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Burt Kimmelman -@NJIT" Subject: Re: Free Verse Charles, to my mind, a poetry course where both students and teacher do not read aloud as part of a discourse about the poetry is not worth the effort. Burt ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Jul 1995 10:30:08 GMT+1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tony Green Organization: The University of Auckland Subject: Re: breathing thanks Chris Scheil, cheering up my Tuesday. The Debord quote is cute. As a "historian" I'd appreciate it if them intellectuals realised that "history" is not dead but displaced. Yesterday, I said, (and this is without a word of a lie, I swear on my New Mail Folder, ) the Death of the Author must be "the displacement of the author". I should now add "The End of Art" must be the displacement of art. Is Ron Silliman (rather than T.Pynchon) the novelist of our time? Now, there's a historian's question? Or should it be that a reading of say Ketjak quickly reaches into the moment of the reader's on-going fragmentary narrative of what she/he is doing these days and out to a projection onto the figure of the writer of the book of a like situation of narration. If "history" proves to be once more no more than narration, however, displaced, it could supercede the notion of that "history" that old D.Bored evokes (The Onward March of Time in which our acts are supposed to be irrevocably immersed as we muse on its telos). The needs of one person for another have not ceased and that means families and generations and their narratives are forever investing in narrative, linking presents and pasts and futures. All that is required to transfer this kind of historicising to more public issues is the contemplation of the insubstantial but necessary artifices of narrative. (in midst of Don Quixote) best ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Jul 1995 10:36:29 GMT+1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tony Green Organization: The University of Auckland Subject: Re: Free Verse interesting Ed Foster the problems keep recurring because they can only be solved in relation to a particular urgency that cannot resolve them forever? There's no such lunch as a free voice ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 10 Jul 1995 19:54:05 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Jordan Davis." Subject: motorcycle diaries Worth a look (if not necessarily a purchase) is the book titled _The Motorcycle Diaries_ by Ernesto Che Guevara. A 23 or 24 yr old Che tours South America with a medical school friend, they fall off their motorcycle repeatedly, they stow away in the toilet of a riverboat, ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 10 Jul 1995 19:56:29 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Jordan Davis." Subject: motorcycle diaries II was trying to fix that syntax when the button clicked. Anyway, along the way, Che dispenses keen economic analysis, a brief description of the process of smelting copper, and much about lepers! Have to consult Gary Sullivan re groove factor when he returns. Jordan ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 10 Jul 1995 20:25:49 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Edward Foster Subject: Re: Ashbery's process on coolidge, revision, etc., see his interview in talisman 3, also in _postmodern poetry_ ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 10 Jul 1995 20:34:21 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Edward Foster Subject: Re: Free Verse and no such voice, tony, as a free lunch, which brings about the deeper problem, why care, why care that people care; this huge carousel of concerns: must i metricize, can i be free. uuuhhhhhhhhh: what's does it mean? why care? i do care; why? ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 10 Jul 1995 20:35:19 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steve Carll Subject: language modes Burt: That sense of unity is an interesting area, too, since the page also creates one. Is it "composed" in the brain, as I suspect, out of all the input from all the senses (wish I'd caught the NPR program)? I'm told that people blind from birth can visualize. Do deaf people similarly audiate? Steve P.S. Don't be afraid. We're all walking the same tightrope here. Actually, that's a lot of weight for one tightrope. Maybe we should all be afraid. Nah. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Jul 1995 01:59:06 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Marisa A Januzzi Subject: Re: motorcycle diaries In-Reply-To: <950710195403_111950175@aol.com> JORDAN: pure gesture! he points, we ride, one falls (is deposited elsewhere, as one of the wingier Olson lines arcing through middle maximus) --Marisa-- happy for an example On Mon, 10 Jul 1995, Jordan Davis. wrote: > Worth a look (if not necessarily a purchase) is the book titled _The > Motorcycle Diaries_ by Ernesto Che Guevara. A 23 or 24 yr old Che tours South > America with a medical school friend, they fall off their motorcycle > repeatedly, they stow away in the toilet of a riverboat, > > > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Jul 1995 02:06:46 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Marisa A Januzzi Subject: private press survey (fwd) Hello litmongers I don't know what this guys motives are precisely but he says he wants to start a small press and he seems harmless enough and I told him I'd forward this from my book arts list to you. --Marisa ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Tue, 20 Jun 95 08:46:58 BST From: Scott Coombs To: jma5@columbia.edu Subject: private press survey ------ cut here -------------------------------------------------------------- Purely out of curiosity, I have prepared a questionnaire for private presses. The purpose of this questionnaire is to discover the nature and behaviour of private presses as businesses. As an amateur printer, I am interested in how those who charge for their wares go about doing it. I was inspired by an article called "The Economics of Printing Limited Editions" which appeared in "Fine Print" in 1987. If I get a reasonable sample, I may be able to compile the information in some useful format. Anyway, if anyone is interested in seeing the survey, mail me at scoombs@ie.oracle.com (or scoombs@us.oracle.com, if the first doesn't work). Note that this has nothing to do with Oracle Corporation. Regards, Scott Coombs ------ cut here -------------------------------------------------------------- ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Jul 1995 02:27:39 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Marisa A Januzzi Subject: McGuckian... and Bunuel In-Reply-To: Hello, David Kellogg: How would you say Medbh McGuckian's "language practices" are "tamed" and/or "partially produced by American theoretical discourse"? I just don't see it. A fondness for metaphysical abstraction/surreal metaphor, maybe. Now I'm wondering what you make of Nuala Ni Dhomnhaill. On a different thread: has anyone seen Bunuel's film BELLE DE JOUR? If so, would you say it was "tamed" and/or "partially produced by" bourgeois sex fancies? (thanks for the handy formulation, David!) I was talking with Jonathan Levin about this and we can't figure out if this is an offensively unselfconscious film or a knowing revolt against its own quasi-banality From the span of my own movie seat, Scorsese's involvement in its revival doesn't clarify the situation any!! Bye for now--- (wondering about yr bedside movies) Marisa ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Jul 1995 03:18:22 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: history In-Reply-To: from "Tony Green" at Jul 11, 95 10:30:08 am It looks to me as if history (which means a certain kiond of writing) (forgive typing--I had a bone graft today) is a very good example of Derrida;s supplimentarity. Adding by its act and replacing without denying adding. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Jul 1995 03:33:51 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: DON'T BE SO PHONOCENTRIC In-Reply-To: <9507101545.AA28080@carla.UCSD.EDU> from "Jerry Rothenberg" at Jul 10, 95 08:45:05 am Jerry's message about nonsounded poetry is much appreciated. Here's a correction from me. I cant think of a poetry class without reading aloud and/or use of blackboard and/or overhead projections, etc. bp Nichol should have taught us all that. So shd Jerry have. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Jul 1995 03:46:55 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: Free Verse In-Reply-To: from "Lindz Williamson" at Jul 9, 95 09:56:10 pm Good posting, Linz... I cant imagine profs not reading poems aloud. Even TA's? Gad. Yr esp. right when you say that what the person is reading is (or shd not be) the poet but the poem. The words were there before she was, so why should anyone orentend that the poet is somehow using them to present her? ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Jul 1995 09:55:51 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Kellogg Subject: Re: McGuckian... and Bunuel In-Reply-To: It was a toss-off comment, to be sure. As to what I meant.... I was thinking about some reviews in American litmags of McGuckian which seemed to connect almost gleefully to her type of experimentation. This reaction I attribute to her confirming (brilliantly I'd hasten to add) certain reviewer expectations about what an experimental poet should be up to, expectations themselves fueled by the lit-theory mindset. Nuala Ni Dhomnhaill hasn't yet provoked that sort of exhileration among American reviewers. It's not a bad thing; please don't think I'm slagging Medbh. I actually think she's an outrageously good poet. All I'm saying is that "theory" is part of her context, and that we might well take into account the local institutional consequences of that context (how "theory" is different in Ireland and America, for example) in a transnational literary environment. Cheers, David ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ David Kellogg The moment is at hand. University Writing Program Take one another Duke University and eat. Durham, NC 27708 kellogg@acpub.duke.edu --Thomas Kinsella ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Jul 1995 10:11:54 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Lindz Williamson Subject: Re: Free Verse In-Reply-To: <199507111046.DAA10866@fraser.sfu.ca> On Tue, 11 Jul 1995, George Bowering wrote: > I cant imagine profs not reading poems aloud. Even TA's? Gad. > Yr esp. right when you say that what the person is reading is (or shd > not be) the poet but the poem. The words were there before she was, > so why should anyone orentend that the poet is somehow using them to > present her? > I think the only reason the poem gets mistaken for a representation of the poet is because writing can come from two places; experience and the soul. It is difficult to mask these qualities. the artist emerges some where in the middle. LIndz ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Jul 1995 14:50:34 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rod Smith Subject: Re: Free Verse Lindz writes: ". . .writng can come from two places; experience and the soul." I tend to think the writing comes from any number of places, probably more than two. Returning to the Ashbery process discussion for a minute. In the _Code of Signals_ interview he has a useful statement-- "I'm interested in the way experience filters through me." You could say Cage was interested in the same thing, he just had a cleaner filter, maybe the cleanest. --Rod Smith ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Jul 1995 15:25:46 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rod Smith Subject: Re: Free Verse . . .a little more on this question of where it ("the writing") comes from. Perhaps best to say: from multiplicity, through multiplicity, to multiplicity. Even that too linear. Seems one needs to include contingency and cognitive limits. I mean the terms "experience" and "soul" could just as well be "assumptions" and "sensibility"-- neither set of terms telling us all that much. This is why the gestural, again. To include the contingency, the not knowing maybe is what makes the beauty. Which is it's own set of problems. I guess. --Rod Smith ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Jul 1995 12:37:00 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Don Cheney Subject: Re: Free Verse >. . .a little more on this question of where it ("the writing") comes > from. My son, Max, is 9 years old and has been writing stories since he was 6. He has about 9 stories posted at a WWW site called KidPub. At the end of each of his stories is the chance to write to Max via my email address. He's gotten about 10 responses and this is how he responded to a question on how he came up with his story "World Leaders Become Zombies": "I didn't really get an idea off the top of my head. It just came to me while I was writing the story. The hardest part was trying to think of the title. What I do with all my titles is that I think of a monster like a vampire or some other scary creature then I give it a finishing touch." His response reminded me of a writing process class I had at UCSD as an undergraduate. We read an article that put forth the idea that when we write we don't think and then write down what we are thinking, we simply write. I totally identified with this idea but the rest of the class thought the author had gone Bali Ha'i. Don Cheney dcheney@ucsd.edu ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Jul 1995 14:00:04 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Reginald Johanson Subject: free verse I don't know where writing comes from, only where it sometimes comes from for me. It comes in the fog of the thoudsand-and-one things like a sharp prick in the bum/ribs/eye andf the little shout/gasp/curse I exhale is a poem/story/poemstory and then I have this piece of writing and the thousand-and-one things--again. reg ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Jul 1995 14:08:40 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Lindz Williamson Subject: World Leaders Become Zombies In-Reply-To: I think the creative process is a drive, a need that I must satisfy, therefore it makes complete sense(to me anyway) that actual thought is not the initial element in writing. Writing is an action, if I just thought about it I'd never do it. I once had to go through an interview for an advanced painting class because I had had no formal training, the prof asked me " Why do you paint?" I replied, " I don't know I just do, it's something that just happened." He let me in the class. I think the same happens in writing. Children are the best examplesof this because they haven't been tainted by the thoery or the philosophy behind the process. Lindz ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Jul 1995 16:20:15 CST6CDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Hank Lazer Organization: The University of Alabama Subject: Re: teaching There have been, of late, several comments related to issues of teaching poetry. As I prepare for a course this Fall in Modern American Poetry, I've found myself thinking over a few similar issues. First, I agree with those who have argued for reading aloud in class. Of course. Over the years, I have collected a good many audio and video tapes. I read aloud in class; the students read aloud in class (and, presumably, at home). And I am able to present in class a reading of poems by the poet. (And, at times, point out that the poet has often read a poem aloud, over time, in different ways.) Second issue is, for me, a practical one. Any recommendations for how to present Zukofsky? I have about two weeks set aside, and cost of books is an issue. If you were to pick a few things by Z to teach (to graduate students--most in the MFA program, most of whom will have read nothing by Z, virtually nothing by Stein or Williams, probably familiar with Eliot, passing acquaintance maybe with Pound) what would you teach? Third is a perhaps apocryphal story about Robert Duncan. I heard the story nearly 25 years ago, and it concerned the way Duncan allegedly began a poetry (poetry writing?) class at UC Santa Cruz. He said that there would be two basic rules in the course: 1) they would not be discussing students' poetry in class; 2) he would do almost all of the talking. When I frist heard the story, I though, what an arrogant asshole. I had begun to take a few writing workshops, and thought ill of Duncan's anti-democratic rules. Over the years, I can see what he may have been doing. The workshop methodology has indeed proven to be trivial and narrow--a kind of auto repair approach to tinkering with the unambitious and tidy poem. And the students will inevitably form their most important associations (for discussing poems too) outside of class among themselves. Duncan could certainly meet individually with students to talk over their poems. And needless to say, he did have a lot to say. Fourth has to do with the issue that Rod Smith raised about the importance of teaching via not-knowing. I offer the following excerpt from Bob Perelman's fine book _The Trouble with Genius_ (p. 165): But her [Stein's] account of first being invited to teach is revealing. The invitation was the result of an angry blowup upon meeting Robert Hutchins and Mortimer Adler of the University of Chicago. This is the only place I can recall in her work where she represents herself as losing control. Adler's list of "all the ideas that had been important in the world's history" causes Stein first to get "excited" and then "violent" (EA, 205-7). She is invited to teach Adler's class the next week, where, predictably, she triumphs. Afterward she explains to Hutchins: "You see why they talk to me is that I am like them I do not know the answer, you you say you do not know but you do know if you did not know the answer you could not spend your life in teaching but I I really do not know ... that is the trouble with governments and Utopia and teaching, the things not that can be learnt but that can be taught are not interesting" (EA, 213). I'd be very curious to hear how others go about basing their teaching on what they don't know. Or how various ones of you balance teaching between an orientation toward a "delivery" of what you know and a shared exploration of what you don't know. Personally, I hope that Stein is wrong. It is, I hope, possible to sustain a career in teaching precisely by basing that activity in a substantial amount of not knowing. (Though such an approach has a great capacity to annoy and baffle some students.) If not--if Stein's right--my career's about over.... Hank Lazer ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Jul 1995 14:01:00 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Davidson Subject: Tapes of Brathwaite? Does anyone know where I can locate a tape of Kamau Brathwaite reading--especially MIDDLE PASSAGES? Any help would be appreciated. Michael Davidson ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Jul 1995 18:51:46 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jorge Guitart Organization: University at Buffalo Subject: metaphors we live by 1. How can we know if a poem has come from experience or from the soul? 2. If cage's filter was the cleanest, whose was the dirtiest? ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Jul 1995 16:07:29 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Shaunanne Tangney Subject: Re: where it comes from In-Reply-To: <950711152545_30483971@aol.com> --ironic--have been reading MHAbrams mirror and lamp (comps!) all day to day, and here we are rehashing what we have been since Aristotle, Plato, et.al. . . . MHA employes a triangle, something like this: UNIVERSE WORK ARTIST AUDIENCE Arrows point up from work to universe, and down from work to artist and audience, implying that the work (writing) mediates between the artist and the audience. I would argue that in todays postmodern writing, thinking, criticism, being, the arrows would all have to be double. That is to say all of these elements mediate one upon--for and against--the other. Where does writing come from--my soul/your soul, my experience/your experience--today I am working on a poem about Appolo, the sun, my skin, and knowledge--where does this come from? Partly a centuries old myth--a work (and does that include the soul, experience, whatever of its author, lost to us (except in this text) forever? And his/her audience? Universe?)--it "works" on me-- I like that! I like to think of writing as labor--and now I can add work to that, too! Best, ShaunAnne ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Jul 1995 08:31:53 GMT+1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tony Green Organization: The University of Auckland Subject: Re: history Get well soon George Bowering. The best cure wd be a 2kg of Hokey-Pokey, but it doesn't travel. I'm unsure that "histories" "replace" anything, except by review of documentation of other older histories purporting to relate to the same "event" (i.e. witness accounts). But --- yes, thanks for the connection to J.Derrida. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Jul 1995 12:35:25 GMT+1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tony Green Organization: The University of Auckland Subject: Re: teaching off the top thinking of Hank Lazer and teaching. (the G Stein episode is fascinating, I must get hold of Perelman's book) : monologue is often useful as a delivery style, yes, but always seems most useful when it is made plain at some point that it stems from a reading that has posed questions that cannot be finally layed to rest by anyone....announcing "I wish I knew,( or that I could know, or could think of a way to find out") is a way of asking for collaborative effort over a question, seeking help, proposing "research"....monologue can be useful to put questions and to put into the "class" a summary of the story so far...I wonder whether it is a useful approach to teaching to propose that its purpose is to induct or introduce students to a continuing dialogue over certain questions with uncertain answers....I have enjoyed working this way with students in recent years....this list actually suggests a model....talking with Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett (folklorist) in New York, she showed me her computer operation in which she and her students shared a list-server ( I believe) so that there was a continuing discussion going on electronically among the class members. I liked that a lot. A bulletin-board for paper equivalents is ok, but the electronic version seems to me very useful.... I'd like to hear (as this list often says) what otheres think about this.... best The issue of French nuclear tests in the Pacific is of serious and immediate concern to those living in the vicinity. Anyone opposed to the resumption of these tests: please take whatever action you can. Thanks. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Jul 1995 21:27:28 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Burt Kimmelman -@NJIT" Subject: Re: McGuckian... and Bunuel maria, who are dahmnhaill and mcguckian (I hope i spelled the former right as it is on the next screen)? Burt ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Jul 1995 21:28:42 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Burt Kimmelman -@NJIT" Subject: Re: history does historiography require writing, then? ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Jul 1995 21:29:49 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Burt Kimmelman -@NJIT" Subject: Re: history poor choice of word, since "graphy" means writing. but anyway, does history need literacy (according to ong, derrida, bowering)? ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Jul 1995 21:41:33 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Burt Kimmelman -@NJIT" Subject: Re: teaching Hank, People learn when they do. thus students must have their say (no matter how stupid or awkward what they say is) and their sayings must be honored but still can be emended, amended AMENed etc. so I am saying what is old hat, but there, i've said it just the same. I like to teach stuff I don'tunderstand; i know more than my students though I may not be as smart as some of them; they sense that we are all exploring together and get confident. and in fact I have learned some amazing stuff from them. again,I 'm saying the old things here, but . . . My Zukofsky all time hit parade: A "11". "Little Wrists," the Don Giovanni poem, and "Mantis"--I don't pretend to be a Zuk scholar and have not read it all. Ahearn's book would seem a good starting place for grad students to read. And how about Mike Heller's *Conviction's Net of Branches* and how about the Man and pOet. Burt ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Jul 1995 21:54:53 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jim Pangborn Organization: University at Buffalo Subject: Re: where it comes from Lindz's post made me think of Pierre Macherey, think it was, posits this structure helps account for persistent confusion over where "it" comes from: the uncertainties built into language (especially literary) constitute something like a wall between sender and receiver; writers, uncertain, toss their stuff up top of this; readers project a spectral author presumed to mean the text completely. Sort of an open-air Plato's cave: Idealized Writer \ \ \ Text // | \ // W \ // A \ Actual L \ Writer L Audience ------------------------------------(Ground)--(?)---- Macherey's seems a resolutely materialist view. The diagram renders its participants as weirdly naive, tho, which people often but not always are. A part-perspective, then. Anyone espouse and use a similar notion, playing with projected implications of the self supposed to lie (or lie) behind the writing? --Jim ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Jul 1995 23:51:04 -0400 Reply-To: Robert Drake Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Robert Drake Subject: Re: metaphors we live by >How can we know if a poem has come from experience or from the soul? experience/soul aren't things i'd want to polarize as sources ov poetry... >If cage's filter was the cleanest, whose was the dirtiest? if cage's filter was the cleanest, it wasn't filtering much--everything got thru? artaud maybe a candidate for catching & keeping "impurities" lbd ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Jul 1995 23:16:14 +0000 Reply-To: jzitt@humansystems.com Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: Authenticated sender is From: Joseph Zitt Organization: HumanSystems Subject: Re: Free Verse Comments: To: Lindz Williamson On 11 Jul 95 at 10:11, Lindz Williamson wrote: > I think the only reason the poem gets mistaken for a representation of > the poet is because writing can come from two places; experience and the > soul. It is difficult to mask these qualities. the artist emerges some > where in the middle. Only from those two places? But then, of course, that begs the question of what, if anything, the word "soul" might mean. ---------1---------1---------1---------1---------1---------1---------- |||/ Joseph Zitt ==== jzitt@humansystems.com ===== Human Systems \||| ||/ Organizer, SILENCE: The John Cage Mailing List \|| |/ Online Representative, Austin International Poetry Festival \| / Joe Zitt's Home Page\ ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Jul 1995 21:16:36 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Carl Lynden Peters Subject: Re: metaphors we live by In-Reply-To: <01HSR5HTTXGI8X2ZCS@ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu> from "Jorge Guitart" at Jul 11, 95 06:51:46 pm > > 1. How can we know if a poem has come from experience or from the soul? > 2. If cage's filter was the cleanest, whose was the dirtiest? > --i'll risk an answer to question 2: warhol. it's the first name that came to me, right or wrong. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Jul 1995 00:38:13 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jorge Guitart Organization: University at Buffalo Subject: metaphors we live by The soul is inexperienced while experience is soulless, especially in this pre-postpostmodern world of ours where the universe and the artist,the mirror and the lamp, are distinct ***loci*** (or perhaps ***foci**) in the supplement that is its own complement, or as Borges said once (paraphrasing Hindrawan) "All the filters are the Filter". ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Jul 1995 21:52:06 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steve Carll Subject: Re: DON'T BE SO PHONOCENTRIC Jorge Guitart asks: >[Isn't most poetry produced and consumed in silence?] In some senses (pardon the pun) and not in others. There may be an actual physical silence in reading, but I always experience an inner voice reading "aloud" to me, as it were, so I don't experience it as silent. But then again, there is the silence from which all sound arises that I am sometimes aware of (if I'm being mindful and relaxed). I still wonder if people deaf from birth can "hear" sound in their mind somewhere, or is this a manifestation of phonocentrism? Steve ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Jul 1995 00:57:32 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rod Smith Subject: Re: metaphors we live by Jorge's questionnaire read: 1. How can we know if a poem has come from experience or from the soul? 2. If Cage' s filter was the cleanest, whose was the dirtiest? Mine reads: 1. "If you don't know, why do you ask?" 2. X ______________ . havin' some fun tanight, --Rod ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Jul 1995 16:58:23 GMT+1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tony Green Organization: The University of Auckland Subject: Re: where it comes from Macherey diagram needs redoing author is also displaced and also projects an "idealised" audience in writing author is wildly displaced in my view i.e. is a figure projected by the actual scribe so summing up diagram needs 1.writer who projects both a writer and a reader 2. a reader who projects both "a reader" and "a writer" note, in mid-Don Quixote how can anyone believe the "I" of the text == the author named on the cover and when the reader says of herself" "I" read this " who is the reader? better to take both parties, reader and writer as fictions constructed in the writing/reading CONFUSED ? yes, I guess, and yes I HOPE SO also see J.-L.Nancy EGO SUM 1979 for Descartes's autobiographical and fabling confusions (Montaigne/Cervantes generation's problem of fiction/fabling and the reflexive self.....) also see David Carrier and O.Batschmann on one of the equivalents in painting, Nic Poussin's 1650 self-portrait and also Foucault and others on Velazquez Las Meninas and any explanation of the illusionism of Annibale Carracci in the Farnese Gallery etc ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Jul 1995 01:11:55 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jorge Guitart Organization: University at Buffalo Subject: what the deaf hear in their heads to steve carl suppose you ask deaf people if they "hear" something in their minds and they say yes. how do you know that what they call hearing is what you call hearing. wondering if deaf people "hear", isn't it like like wondering if what you call red is seen by other people as what you call green? it is one of those things. is there a foreign language of which you have only a reading knowledge? what happens to you when you read poetry in that language? do you hear an inner voice reading with some kind of accent or what? ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Jul 1995 00:40:19 -40962758 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jim Rosenberg Subject: Non-linear Prosody Article Well, I've decided to post this; apologies if the length offends anyone. A good half of this at least is directly relevant to recent discussions here on prosody, and the hypertext part may be interesting to some. Some of what I am saying here directly echoes [prefigures?] what George Bowering had to say about foot, though in somewhat more detail. A few caveats. Since I wrote this, the word "agency" has generated a good deal of discomfort, and I'm not sure I'm crazy about it myself, but I haven't yet thought of a better word, so I've left it in. There is a passing reference here to "conjunctive hypertext"; this is a concept I introduced at the European Conference on Hypermedia Technology last fall (detail in http://www.well.com/user/jer/NNHI.html); to make a long story very short, conjunctive hypertext is hypertext where the components have a logical relation of "and" to one another rather than "or" (you can choose this link *or* that one, etc.) -- I can explain this in more detail if need be, but this article is already long enough. This was originally posted to ht_lit, which is a list for literary hypertext. ------------------------- Cut here ----------------------------------------- Notes Toward a Non-linear Prosody of Space I. Linear Metrics 1. Background: Dimensions of inequality among syllables The fundamental axiom of prosody in English is that all syllables are not created equal. (This is not the case in all languages; in Japanese, apparently, syllables are considered equal enough, metrically, that they are simply counted rather than being distinguished by structural patterns.) By plotting the time sequence of how these inequalities occur one obtains metrics -- a double plural, meaning a multitude of metrics. The most well known is the stress degree metric, which forms most of the discussion below, but there are several others. (1) Pitch Degrees. Although I have not analyzed this in detail, there is a prosody at work in many American communities, most notably in a style of reading in the black community, in which I believe *pitch degrees* play a more important role than stress degrees. This forms the basis of an incredibly rich prosody, a different prosody than the classical one, which must be analyzed on its own terms. Whereas stress is a linguistic property, pitch is a purely acoustical property; thus a pitch degree prosody is more absolutely musical -- in a literal sense -- than a stress degree prosody. A pitch degree prosody is more free to use an absolute musical sense of time and structure; the sound structure balance is different -- not all phonemes carry pitch. Where a pitch degree prosody and a stress degree prosody are present at the same time, incredibly subtle effects are possible. Pitch degree prosody deserves extensive analysis in its own right. (2) Vowel Position Degrees. Again, my impressions here are based on intuition rather than detailed analysis. My understanding of this goes back to a somewhat delphic comment by Robert Duncan. Duncan spoke often of "tone leading vowels" in talking about Pound. Not understanding what he meant by this, but wanting to know more, at a reading once I asked him where in Pound's writings I could find the discussion of tone leading vowels. To my total astonishment, he replied that it *wasn't anywhere*; Pound had used the term in letters to Duncan, simply assuming that Duncan would understand what he meant; Duncan was left to figure it out for himself. Hearing this I simply couldn't resist: "Well, what is it??" Duncan said two things, one of which was quite straightforward, the other of which was extremely obscure. He explained that when a diphthong (a glide from one "pure vowel" to another) occurs, the "leading tone", i.e. the pure vowel at which the glide begins, plays a special role in terms of later reinforcement. So far so good. Then he said: "When you hear a sound, it's reinforced when you hear it again. But it can also be reinforced when you *don't* hear it again." Just as Duncan was left to figure out on his own what Pound meant by "tone leading vowels", I felt strongly that I should simply accept this remark as a gift and work on my own to figure out what it meant; I didn't ask anything else. I certainly don't wish to be in the business of interpreting Robert Duncan, even less interpreting Duncan interpreting Pound; but the train of thought that started with Duncan's remark has ended up with the idea of a vowel position degree metric. Vowels are sometimes diagrammed as a trapezoid which plots the position of the tongue in the mouth. I believe (again this is based on intuition, not analysis) that the possible vowel positions tend to cluster into just a few groupings, and that the plot of which grouping occurs at a given moment forms a metric. This metric is probably superimposed on the stress degree metric, again giving a very fluid effect. (I don't know if this has anything at all to do with "tone leading vowels", but I certainly do hear something like this frequently when I read or listen to Pound.) 2. The Classical Stress-Degree Metric Stereotype Before giving my own approach to the stress-degree metric, let me briefly sketch the stereotype most people have for how this works. If you want to argue that the stereotype is not accurate in scanning this or that poet, I would hardly disagree; but I think this stereotype does have a lot to do with attitudes towards metrics. Hopefully, by presenting a different approach, the stereotype can be broken. There exist -- a priori, in advance of any particular poems -- a collection of abstract patterns of stress degrees. These patterns may be called *templates*. They tend to have names, e.g. iamb ('|), trochee (|'), anapest (|'') etc. (I'm using ' for an unstressed syllable, | for a stress.) *Scanning* is an activity consisting of pattern-matching template instances against the words of the poem. In the most formalized case, we say a line "scans" if repeated instances of the same template, end to end, match against the words of the line. There is a tendency to speak of poets "writing in" a meter, which means choosing a template in advance and writing lines which will scan to that template. Readers familiar with prosody terminology may note with some surprise that so far I have not mentioned the word 'foot'. Unfortunately, the word 'foot' is deeply ambiguous: It has at least two wildly different uses in prosody. Because I believe this plays a crucial role in the widespread prejudice against and misunderstanding of metrics by many people, I want to explain this in detail, and will propose a different terminology to avoid the problem. Meanings of the word 'foot': (1) 'Foot' is often used to designate *a type of template*. (E.g. one speaks of "an iamb".) As such it is part of an a priori scheme, given in advance of the poem. (2) 'Foot' is used to designate the group of syllables *in the actual poem* which is matched by one of the templates. In this usage, a foot is a unit of meter: just above the syllable, which is the atomic unit for metrics, and below the metric line. (Of course this is not meant to deny that a foot can contain just one syllable or a line one foot.) I.e. here foot is a living breathing part of the poem, with a specific tangible identity in a metrical structure. Many different strains in poetics, such as the Open Forms of the Black Mountain poets and Improvisational Composition of the beats, have led in directions away from the a priori, away from choosing a fixed form given in advance. Because the concept of 'foot' is so closely linked with a system of a priori templates, this has led to a sad neglect of metrics generally, and to interest in the concept of mapping the metrical structure of living breathing poems specifically. To avoid this problem, in what follows I will use the term *measure* for a unit of meter intermediate between the syllable and the line where we make no assumption in advance for what shape a measure may take. 3. Bonding Strength I wish to propose yet another dimension along which syllables can vary: bonding strength. Actually bonding strength applies not to syllables but to the boundaries between adjacent syllables. Before going into the details of how this works, it is important to note two important points about this methodology. (1) The methodology applies against *the sound* of the poem. In some cases this may be difficult to infer from a printed text absent a live or recorded reading by the poet. This idea will be quite threatening to those academics who believe that all there is to know about a poem is contained in the printed text. However, there is nothing terribly original in the idea that prosody means looking at the structure of *the sound*: it was Ezra Pound who said if you want to know about the prosody, open up your ears and listen to the sound it makes. (2) The methodology -- and I emphasize that it is a *methodology*, not a theory! -- is ruthlessly empirical. It works by examining a recitation and trying to answer the question: what is the metrical structure of this recitation. It may or may not yield useful results for any given recitation. It is not designed to answer what may be a fallacious question -- what meter did the poet "write in" -- but simply to discover whatever metrical structure happens to be there. Because poets build a voice, there is a reasonable chance that in many cases conclusions can be drawn about metrical structure, but perhaps not. Each syllable has a *bonding strength* for the syllable before it and after it. By bonding strength is meant: (artificially) inject a pause at the syllable boundary in question, and then judge how natural the pause is against the recitation. There will be different degrees of naturalness -- different degrees of resistance to the injection of pause -- at different syllable boundaries. We say a syllable boundary has a high bonding strength if an injected pause is extremely unnatural compared to the recitation; where the pause is natural (or already there, of course) bonding strength is low. I will call a *measure* a string of syllables bounded on either side by low bonding strength and having only high bonding strength in any internal syllable boundaries. It is this empirical, overtly sound-based concept of measure which I wish to use as a replacement for usage (2) of 'foot' above. Of course this will work with any recitation; it does not have to be poetry. I propose that the speech rhythm of English prose tends toward what I will call *The Standard Measure*, defined by the following rules: (1) A measure has only one major stress; (2) the stress tends to come at the end of the measure, but (3) if there are only unstressed syllables following the major stress out to the end of a natural grammatical boundary, those syllables will be incorporated into the measure. (You can think of this as an attempt to reformulate the classical idea that English is "predominantly iambic" while institutionalizing the counter-examples.) The concept of "grammatical boundary" is really the same concept of bonding strength applied to syntax. Although I haven't analyzed this in detail, a simple explanation would relate grammatical bonding strength to the distance that must be traveled in a parse tree to get the closest common antecedent to two consecutive words. This is not to say that "the standard measure" will in fact always occur. Robert Creeley, for instance, is well known for having many non-standard measure breaks in his poems, and many other poets use non-standard measure breaks quite prominently. Detailed analysis can produce some interesting results. For instance, in some of Creeley's poems, lines are predominantly either one or two measures; interestingly in the two-measure lines the internal measure boundary is a *standard* measure break. (I.e. the celebrated Creeley line-break is exactly that, a line-break, not a measure- break.) The non-standard measure boundaries are easy to hear, but the internal standard measure boundaries do not stand out so prominently. (Of course you would "hear their absence" as a lifeless regularity.) In these poems one could say that the grammatical structure goes from the middle of one line to the middle of the next; but the line endings are articulated sonically by the prominent non-standard measure boundaries. This is a familiar metrical structure going back hundreds of years, all the way to Anglo-Saxon poetry. II. Non-linear Metrics Prosody is traditionally the study of poetic sound structure as mapped in time. Because of the inherent linearity of time, this poses an obvious problem for non-linear poetry. Shall we say that prosody only applies within the lexia, thus punting the problem completely? Some may take this view, but I find it personally distasteful. It exempts from prosody details of hypertext structure which I think clearly need to be considered. In Michael Joyce's work, the names of links are so clearly musical it takes one's breath away: they are part of the prosody. Given that I am on record as advocating taking hypertext into the fine structure of language, thereby fragmenting the lexia, I simply can't accept leaving prosody as an inherently linear concept that applies only *inside* of lexia. It would be nice if what follows were as well worked out as what preceded, but at this point I have only questions and some launching points for a view of non-linear prosody. 1. Linear prosody as a prosody of *space* There are some concepts in prosody that are so overtly time-based that one simply has to give up on them in non-linear poetry. Isochrony -- the tendency of major stresses to fall in an even musical beat -- is one such concept. There may be isochrony within the lexia, but given that outside the lexia *there is no concept of time*, in non-linear prosody one can only treat isochrony locally. However: In a one-dimensional structure, time and space are very nearly the same thing. What may appear to be a time-based concept may in fact be a space-based concept. The concept of bonding strength, as articulated above, occurs between *adjacent* syllables. 'Adjacent' is clearly a spatial concept, not a time-based concept. I defined bonding strength as the resistance by a recitation to the injection of an artificial *pause* -- time language again -- but one could just as well speak of injecting space into the poem as time. Thus: 2. Spatial Bonding Strength The concept of bonding strength works in any kind of topology. One may speak of the bonding strength of two adjacent units as their resistance to the injection of artificial space. The replacement for the concept of measure above is a *spatial clustering*. This has some interesting consequences for "traditional" hypertext rhetoric. Whereas the classical hypertext link is typically discussed using travel vocabulary, a spatial prosody would ask the question: What is the bonding strength *THROUGH* the link? (This has an interesting resonance with the Kaplan/Moulthrop concept of hypertext warping space.) It may be objected that in trying to assess bonding strength through the link, one is reversing the direction of the arrow (assuming a one-directional link, and recalling Ted Nelson's caution that *all* links should really be bidirectional). Well, having no problem measuring bonding strength "against" the arrow of time in linear poetry, I have no problem doing the same thing "against" the arrow of the link. Travel may be the right vocabulary to use, but one can also speak of the *attraction* of two nodes for one another; yes, there may be an asymmetry in link direction, but there is always an asymmetry between "located here" and "could be located there". In discussing hypertext there is an overt tendency to discuss following links based on *similarity* to where one is; but perhaps not! Perhaps one wants to take a link based on *dissimilarity* to where one is! (Robert Duncan: "A sound is reinforced when it is *not* heard again ...") Prosody may form an overt basis for following links. I find myself following links in Michael Joyce's work based on sound structure all the time. Perhaps I'm "not supposed to do that", but I do, and without having asked him about this I think Michael wouldn't mind that I do. Prosody must work *THROUGH* links, not just inside "the lexia" (if one has lexia ...) I speak about "links" here only because that is the most familiar form of hypertext structure; this discussion generalizes to conjunctive structures as well. 3. Agencies By "agency" I mean a *unit of doing*. Because there is an overt structure resulting from hypertext linkage, we have a bit of a tendency to focus on that structure rather than the structure of what the reader *does*. Consider the familiar node/link/lexia model. A reader follows a series of links, then -- for whatever reason -- decides to backtrack. That series of nodes is a *unit of doing*. Unfortunately, most of the software does not treat it that way. For instance I can't *save the series*. Perhaps I can save my entire history, but I typically can't *mark it* to denote the way I think the links clump together. Perhaps the best I may be able to do is save my history to a text file and then import it into some tool where I can annotate it. Doing has boundaries, has a shape, has units. The structure of doing unfolds against the skeleton of the hypertext structure, but it may not be the same. The hypertext structure may appear to be disjunctive, but the reader can *do* conjunctive things with it anyway. (E.g.: "*These* are the links I really like, they seem to work together ...) In a hypertext with conventional lexia, there is a concept of bonding strength among lexia. When I speak of agency, I am *not* speaking of *history*. Agency and history are related but are not the same. The structure of history is relentlessly linear: "this is the sequence of what happened ..."; the structure of agency is likely not to be linear. There will be clusters of doing that include the same event. Some agencies will stand out clearly in the reader's mind; these may clump together even though they are isolated in time by navigations that don't stand out in the reader's mind as a clear agency: agencies don't always happen. 4. The Granularity of Agency We have, perhaps, come far afield of prosody. I am propounding a view of linear prosody as clustering in one-dimensional space; from this one generalizes to clustering in a space of arbitrary topology. The granularity of this clustering as it traditionally affects prosody is very fine: down to the level of the syllable. A hypertext prosody granularity of space can become this fine only when hypertext is taken into the fine structure of language. I am always (it seems) advocating for this, but with few takers at present. With a more "traditional" lexia, there is a "granularity boundary" concerning units of prosody that are inside the lexia vs. those that transcend the lexia. Is the poetic lexia a stanza? Is it a line? Is it yet larger than the stanza? Even I would balk at taking hypertext inside the *word*. The words are given to us, by and large; it does not seem reasonable to me to intervene in that natural process with an external administration of hypertext structure. It should be noted that in the discussion of linear prosody above, the "standard" speech rhythm of English does not interpose measure boundaries inside the word either. If I will not intervene inside the word with hypertext structure, and the natural rhythm of English does not intervene inside the word, that leaves the entire measure in a hypertext context likely to be linear. At its finest granularity, hypertext structure relates measures. In the large, the structure of agency extends to the *session*. While surely multiple sessions will associate in the mind of the reader, just as there is a natural limit at the measure boundary -- even though measures contain still smaller units, namely syllables -- there is a natural boundary at the large end of the granularity of agency at the session. You have a well defined cut in doing when you sign off, surely. As obvious as this sounds, there is still a great deal of work to be done in understanding what the identity of the session should be. Hypertexts tend often to be large; it can take many sessions before the reader even begins to get a feel for how a particular hypertext "is supposed to work". Because the number of paths is genuinely infinite, the reader may have no help at all in deciding when a session should end. Shall we say as writers, overtly and explicitly, that we *want* the reader to compose a structure of agency? Shall we say that even if the writer does not want the reader to do this, readers will want to anyway? It seems the prosody of hypertext needs new terminology. I am comfortable with the terms syllable/word/measure/lexia, but up from there the familiar terminology breaks down completely. 5. Multiplicity of Agency There are clearly multiple concurrent agencies in a multiuser hypertext that is being used by several users at once. An interesting rhetorical question arises from this: do we need to discuss multiplicity of agency in the context of a single reader reading a single hypertext? Put differently this is the question: How does a single mind apprehend a network? Must one simulate multiple concurrent agencies in one's own mind? (It is interesting to note in this regard that some theorists of mind -- notably Dennett -- have proposed that despite the illusion that the mind is a singular stream of agency, in fact the mind *is* a multiplicity of concurrent agencies.) Many in the hypertext community will surely object that in this whole discussion so far, I have spoken as if reader and writer are different people -- i.e. the hypertext is "closed". It seems reasonable to me to entertain the idea that writing and reading are *separate agencies* even if done by the same person in a single session. Writing-as-reading simply becomes yet another dimension to the structure of agency. Concluding Question: How do we -- or do we at all -- *code* the hypertext for the structure of agency? -- Jim Rosenberg http://www.well.com/user/jer/ CIS: 71515,124 WELL: jer Internet: jr@amanue.pgh.net ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Jul 1995 22:26:05 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Lindz Williamson Subject: ?????????? In-Reply-To: What does the soul gain from experience? Does knowledge nuture or tarnish one's "soul"? And does knowledge and experience survive this life? ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Jul 1995 01:36:11 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rod Smith Subject: Re: where it comes from Tony Green's comments on this seem to me right on & are in some ways reminiscent of Watten's "XYZ of Reading" in _Conduit_. "The speaker no longer hears only himself [sic]; he must also hear what the absence of himself would mean to another. . . . The reader is implicated in the structure of the writer's displacement, and the effaced intentions of the work are the reader being taken into account." Actually, that entire piece is relevant & useful & ends with the rather buddhist take on Wittgenstein-- "The world is everything that is _not_ the case." Have you read your Tsong Khapa today? _The Essence of True Eloquence_ ! only in the Robert Thurman translation, please. There must be a way to secretly substitute that book for the party platforms in '96. --Rod Smith ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Jul 1995 22:47:45 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Marjorie Perloff Subject: Re: POETICS Digest - 10 Jul 1995 to 11 Jul 1995 In-Reply-To: <199507120403.VAA24085@leland.Stanford.EDU> Re: Hank Lazer's question about teaching Zukofsky. I taught Zukofsky recently in a ten-week (quarter) course--short space!--where we read about 8 poets. I didn't have more than 2 weeks for Zuk either. We read ALL and then (xeroxed) just portions of "'A'" and at least that whetted their appetite and many of the students (incl. Susan Vandenborg, Ming-Quian Ma) went on to work on Zukofsky. The short poems in ALL are really challenging for them. As for reading aloud, yes,--but I am the one who does most of the reading. And as to tapes: I don't like to use class time (so limited) to listen but try to get the students to do so. Or attend the readings in the Bay area (since Stanford offers so little). Marjorie Perloff ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Jul 1995 00:54:54 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: maria damon Subject: Re: Free Verse re charles alexander's post about teaching poetry/reading it aloud; while i do have students read poems aloud in class, i also make undergrads attend at least one poetry event of their choosing during the course of the quarter. for many, it's the first time they've ever done such a thing, and it seems to have an impact that reading a poem aloud in a classroom doesn't have. it shows them the degree to which poetry is embodied not only in "voice" or sound, but in a social atmosphere/context, in a particular voice and sound, in a particular body, in the interaction between voice/presence of reader and audience, setting (bar or lecture hall or bookstore, etc). i also show videos. having a great time in boulder though it's all somewhat overwhelming, having lived in 3 places in 2 weeks, and missing my cats and my privacy. finally got to see robin blaser, it's helping to abate my fest-envy of last month.--md ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Jul 1995 00:59:16 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: maria damon Subject: Re: new Stein > > Also, let me encourage people to pick up Joan Retallack's _Afterrimages_ > recently published by Wesleyan (pb. $12.95). > We need to send the right message when an established press does a _living_ > "experimental" (the following should be bold) > writer. > > --Rod Smith yes, was just introduced to retallack's icarus falling (thanks j spahr) and wuz knocked out, kay-o'ed on the spot.--md ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Jul 1995 02:03:07 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Marisa A Januzzi Subject: Re: McGuckian... and Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill In-Reply-To: <0099335D.96421A60.15@admin.njit.edu> Hello Burt, David et al: Medbh (pronounced maeve) McGuckian and Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill (she pronounces that something like Noola Nee Gonal... my apologies for the awful phonetics here) are friends but very different poets currently writing in Ireland-- Nuala in Dublin and Medbh in Belfast (I think) when not seaside. Nuala writes in Irish-- she discusses that in a January 8 1995 piece in the NYTimes BookReview-- and her stuff is usually presented bilingually; she has a selected poems called SELECTED POEMS: ROGHA DANTA (tr. Michael Harnett, from Raven Arts Press). Medbh's last book is called CAPTAIN LAVENDER-- but I think her best so far is MARCONI'S COTTAGE. My friend Laura O'Connor is writing about the colonial tensions animating Yeats's poems and she helped me hear the same in Nuala's stuff-- it's not hard, what with strategic leavings of certain words in English (there is no Irish for 'Black &Decker'...) When David Kellogg said they were writing against a context of American lit theory, postcolonial theory was all I could think of as relevent, though the wisdom is flowing east to west there and not vice versa. I would rather be reading a poem by each *out loud* than trying to explain for instance the sexual, abstract ceremonies of metaphor constituting Medbh's poems, the tough/ready mythic acoustics in Nuala's. Neither is quite the Iowa poet (Chris?!) that Eavan Boland's become, though I like her work too (in small doses) Bye---- Marisa (no slur on the state of Iowa intended) ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Jul 1995 18:06:50 GMT+1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Wystan Curnow Organization: English Dept. - Univ. of Auckland Subject: Re: Free Verse Comments: To: AERIALEDGE@AOL.COM Dear Rod, I'm with you on where does it come from, more than two places. thank goodness as I'm one of those unfortunates who was born without a soul. pray for me. Wystan ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Jul 1995 18:18:16 GMT+1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Wystan Curnow Organization: English Dept. - Univ. of Auckland Subject: Re: where it comes from Comments: To: t.green@AUCKLAND.AC.NZ Tony, Missed you at the Creeley reading at Alba last night. It wasn't that widely bruited--place was too full anyway--and i fear somehow the knowledge didn't reach you. Anyway, this is to advise you of his Dept. reading tomorrow at 3.00 in our Common Room. Wystan. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Jul 1995 01:24:39 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: maria damon Subject: Re: Tapes of Brathwaite? In message UB Poetics discussion group writes: > Does anyone know where I can locate a tape of Kamau > Brathwaite reading--especially MIDDLE PASSAGES? Any help > would be appreciated. > > Michael Davidson hi michael, there's a watershed tape of kamau brathwaite reading, it's called --oh shoot, i'm here in boulder, can't remember the name, starts with an A. it came out before middle passages, has some stuff from The Arrivants, and other than a long and rambling introduction by carolivia herron, is a magnificent tape. Atumpan, something like that? am i way off base? i'll let you know for sure after the 18th, unless someone else comes to your aid before then. --md ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Jul 1995 02:26:49 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Marisa A Januzzi Subject: Re: teaching In-Reply-To: <2F72885FB3@as.ua.edu> Thanks for the great post, Hank Lazar... the remarks teaching from 'unknowing' remind me strongly of an article by Barbara Johnson in the Yale French Studies pedagogy issue, where she uses the RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER to articulate a productive pedagogy of... gapsmanship (sorry!! it's been years). You might enjoy it. In what we each know, we're unequal, but in the face of the vastness of what we don't we're properly equal For all that I know I was squeamish about issues of power and 'discipline' when I began to teach, but sometimes I think in all seriousness that students need to feel they're experiencing 'training' (to see "with" before seeing "through" the pretenses entailed in teaching as a managed activity) In other words, Vicki Hearne, not Yale French Studies! Flame on!! I care too much about the subject to be shy here. Best-- Marisa ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Jul 1995 23:42:08 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Spencer Selby Subject: Re: number three In-Reply-To: <2F72885FB3@as.ua.edu> 1) Stein was right. 2) Hank's career is in no danger. 3)_______________________________ On Tue, 11 Jul 1995, Hank Lazer wrote: > Fourth has to do with the issue that Rod Smith raised about the > importance of teaching via not-knowing. I offer the following > excerpt from Bob Perelman's fine book _The Trouble with Genius_ (p. > 165): > > But her [Stein's] account of first being invited to teach is > revealing. The invitation was the result of an angry blowup upon > meeting Robert Hutchins and Mortimer Adler of the University of > Chicago. This is the only place I can recall in her work where she > represents herself as losing control. Adler's list of "all the ideas > that had been important in the world's history" causes Stein first to > get "excited" and then "violent" (EA, 205-7). She is invited to > teach Adler's class the next week, where, predictably, she triumphs. > Afterward she explains to Hutchins: "You see why they talk to me is > that I am like them I do not know the answer, you you say you do not > know but you do know if you did not know the answer you could not > spend your life in teaching but I I really do not know ... that is > the trouble with governments and Utopia and teaching, the things not > that can be learnt but that can be taught are not interesting" (EA, > 213). > > I'd be very curious to hear how others go about basing their teaching > on what they don't know. Or how various ones of you balance teaching > between an orientation toward a "delivery" of what you know and a > shared exploration of what you don't know. Personally, I hope that > Stein is wrong. It is, I hope, possible to sustain a career in > teaching precisely by basing that activity in a substantial amount of > not knowing. (Though such an approach has a great capacity to annoy > and baffle some students.) If not--if Stein's right--my career's > about over.... > > Hank Lazer > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Jul 1995 02:45:27 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rod Smith Subject: Re: metaphors we live by Jorge, yes, all the filters are the filter (in Wittgenstenian not Platonic sense? i.e. language games). But "the universe and the artist, the mirror and the lamp"? Is not so clear. . . --Rod ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Jul 1995 21:30:55 -1000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Susan Schultz Subject: Re: Brathwaite tape In-Reply-To: <95Jul11.130814hst.11485(4)@relay1.Hawaii.Edu> To Michael Davidson: There's a Watershed tape, "Atumpan," recorded in 1988 by Brathwaite, thus no MIDDLE PASSAGES. There's a short reading on the EXACT CHANGE cd. Must be others elsewhere. Susan ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Jul 1995 23:21:10 -1000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gabrielle Welford Subject: teaching/reading aloud In-Reply-To: <300363a755be002@maroon.tc.umn.edu> As well as going to poetry readings, a great hit and a joy for all is bringing real honest to live poets to class and just let them do what they want to do for however long. Most of my students hadn't been aware that there were local poets who write about local issues in local voices. A tremendous poet and very emotional in her reading, Mahealani Kamauu, had us all crying. She works with a lot of Native Hawaiian prisoners. I don't think my stduents had realized that poetry is actually written by people who breathe and cry. One of the people I asked to come was the same age as my students. I completely agree about the teaching what we don't know. I used to be frightened by how much I don't know but now see it as whta makes the class come alive. Of course all this backed by everything I do know--just because I've lived so much longer than most of teh people I'm teaching. Gabrielle welford@uhunix.uhcc.hawaii.edu ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Jul 1995 02:53:02 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: number three In-Reply-To: from "Spencer Selby" at Jul 11, 95 11:42:08 pm I teach a different course every semester that I teach, and always put on books that I have never taught before, and always at least one that I have not read. One of the best courses was one I gave in 20thC stuff in Montreal years ago; it was ALL made of texts I didnt know, and I let this be known when the course started, and I guess there were some students who thought I was conning them. Started with Joyce's _Exiles_ and went from there. We all learned a lot that term. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Jul 1995 02:53:45 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: number three In-Reply-To: from "Spencer Selby" at Jul 11, 95 11:42:08 pm i ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Jul 1995 03:04:53 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ron Silliman Subject: Re: teaching I wish the old Grossman "A" 22-23 was still available. That would have been the perfect teaching text for LZ (it's perhaps the best poetry he ever wrote as well). I had a great experience a year ago at Naropa working hard with the students to define the core values of their own writing processes (first a discussion of "how do you write" then one of "how do you really write" that went into pen vs. computer, kind of paper, time of day, location, whether other people were around, etc, etc, then had them all write a single word on a 3x5 card of what, once you removed all else, was the single thing you would find in their poems (my favorite answer was "pivot"). Then I had them do work that left that out (and which violated all the terms of their methodologies). Teach what you don't know is a pretty good program Write what you don't know is likewise Ron rsillima@ix.netcom.com ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Jul 1995 03:07:15 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ron Silliman Subject: Re: where it comes from Machery's view seems resolutely to set itself up to require an intervention (the critic!) to get us from the reader back to the writer, no? I distrust theories that serve as employment programs for grad schools. Ron ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Jul 1995 03:14:09 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: Non-linear Prosody Article In-Reply-To: from "Jim Rosenberg" at Jul 12, 95 00:40:19 am Addendum to Jim Rosenberg's long posting. Esp re Duncan's point of a sound setting the reader up not to hear it. I dunno, about 30 some years ago Duncan was speaking of a "scale of resemblances, which is the story of whole rime. That is the poet is uring what he can do with rime when he makes thinghs slound similar, or somewhat similar or not similar at all, so: chicken .......................dear dear ....................thumb if you can hear what I mean. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Jul 1995 06:45:42 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Abby Coykendall Organization: University at Buffalo Subject: doing the one-two writing/teaching Two questions lately posed to this list seem inextricably intertwined: That of "whence writing comes" [an apparent mystery] & that of "how to teach from ignorance" [an apparent absurdity]. To begin with the second, by way of implicitly talking of the first, Marx comes in handy. In "Contribution to Critique," he configures a certain kind of critic, one who "PRACTICALLY interests a large party" by not "confronting the world dogmatically with a new principle: 'Here is the Truth, kneel before it," but instead by "developing new principles for the world out of principles of the world." [when writing, this world is writing. and despite the language, this need not be a tauntology. and, by the by, experience finds its way in both these worlds, too] When teaching, I also find that what I have least mastered is precisely that which comes in most handy. I especially like taking the transparent, ignorable, everyday as the place to most incite suspicion, or critique. And by using everyday materials (e.g. pop culture), it is most easy to interest a large party, one as conflictually heterogeneous as possible. Teaching [writing] is an extreme battle over the modes of cultural recognition, and as such, marks "humanity's" very problematic, and entangled, relation to temporality. As Walter Benjamin remarks in _One Way Street_: "The mastery of nature, so imperialists teach, is the purpose of all technology. But who would trust a cane-wielder who proclaimed the mastery of children to be the purpose of education? Is not education above all the indespensible ordering of the relationship between generations and therefore mastery, if we are to use that term, of that relationship and not of children? and likewise technology is not the mastery of nature but of the relation of nature and man." The subject of mastery, that upon which it WORKS, is not isolated to those "natures" supposedly distinct from "man" (or, metaphorically, the student). The subject of mastery is in fact the recognition (or non-recognition) of the irreparably entangled, and mutually constituting, relation between both. Thus, pedagogy's site of control and co-ordination, that upon which its power is exerted, is not that which it ostensibly addresses--students--but instead generational recognition itself--the continuity and contiguity of what is recognized as "man." In the cane-weilding case, mastery is "man's" attempt to (re)member "himself" as self-same, as owning or possessing what is seen as "his" "nature." The drive to order is a drive both to map a field of recognition and a drive to mask the interlocked relations of these multifarious natures. Paradoxically, or perhaps not too surprisingly, this supposed mastery steps in precisely where these relations are beyond a controllable play of recognition. [and I would add: the word "soul" is a dangerous way to step in precisely where the relations of sender/addressee, me/I, spirit/text are beyond a controllable play of recognition, that in fact to designate them as such, is to suture what is essentially problematic & conflictual about these relations, and to likewise suture the "drive to writing" itself] ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Jul 1995 03:17:39 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: World Leaders Become Zombies In-Reply-To: from "Lindz Williamson" at Jul 11, 95 02:08:40 pm All my life, (since Wordsworth, eh?) I have been hearing about Children being the real artists, philosophers, etc. I think that Children are just children. Although I did get my playschool fingerpainting kid's art framed once. But as for magnetic blocks on the fridge--my wife and I just used them to make comic obscene sentences, sort of the way she played scrabble. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Jul 1995 08:27:47 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "A. Morris" Subject: Re: Tapes of Brathwaite? Comments: To: Michael Davidson In-Reply-To: Michael: Some Brathwaite material is out on Watershed Tapes C-229. The title is Atumpan. Side 1: Soweto, Prelude (from Work Song and Blues), New World a-coming' (section 1). Side 2: New World a-comin' (section 2), Folkways, The Journeys (section 1), the Twist, Wings of a Dove, Shar/Hurricane Poem. The tape comes from a 1988 reading at Harvard. If you'd like a copy, let me know & I tape it for you. Dee On Tue, 11 Jul 1995, Michael Davidson wrote: > Does anyone know where I can locate a tape of Kamau > Brathwaite reading--especially MIDDLE PASSAGES? Any help > would be appreciated. > > Michael Davidson > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Jul 1995 10:37:04 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Jordan Davis." Subject: flaming children George Bowering wrote: All my life, (since Wordsworth, eh?) I have been hearing about Children being the real artists, philosophers, etc. I think that Children are just children. Hmm. I disagree, or I agree with a corollary: poets are just poets. The set of poets can include the subset of children who write poetry. Viz. Smart Like Me, and Bullseye from Hanging Loose Press, two pretty good collections of poetry by "writers of high school age." (Especially good are the poems by Jendi Reiter and Alissa Quart.) Giant clam of me. A hat of be. Amy of Emerald! Amy of flower! Amy of Hat! Amy of Bird! Amy of Happiness! --Amy Bender, 3rd grade, Beecher Road School, Woodbridge CT Jordan ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Jul 1995 11:52:21 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Judy Schwartz Subject: Re: DON'T BE SO PHONOCENTRIC In-Reply-To: <199507120452.VAA24979@slip-1.slip.net> This is a reply to Steve Carll's posting of July 11 (on silence). I'm new to this list and a bit shy so I thought I'd just offer a quote from Lorine Niedecker on the subject: "Nobody, nothing/ever gave me/greater thing/than time/unless light/and silence/which if intense/makes sound" --Judy Schwartz ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Jul 1995 12:55:31 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jorge Guitart Organization: University at Buffalo Subject: child poets anyone who has taught poetry in the schools know that those children who are naturally untrite come up with stupendous things. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Jul 1995 09:15:00 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Don Cheney Subject: flaming children >George Bowering wrote: > All my life, (since Wordsworth, eh?) I have been hearing > about Children being the real artists, philosophers, etc. I > think that Children are just children. > >Hmm. >I disagree, or I agree with a corollary: poets are just poets. The set > of poets can include the subset of children who write > poetry. Viz. Smart Like Me, and Bullseye from Hanging Loose > Press, two pretty good collections of poetry by "writers of > high school age." (Especially good are the poems by Jendi > Reiter and Alissa Quart.) > > >Giant clam of me. >A hat of be. >Amy of Emerald! >Amy of flower! >Amy of Hat! >Amy of Bird! >Amy of Happiness! > >--Amy Bender, 3rd grade, Beecher Road School, Woodbridge CT > > >Jordan Guess what, kids? It doesn't even have to be "great" writing. Have you heard the new San Diego Padres slogan (since they gutted the team of "great" players?): "Hey, it's baseball." Well, "Hey, it's writing!" A kid is a kid is a kid. A kid who kids is a kidder. A kid who writes is a writer. I worked with a whole classroom of 8 and 9 year old writers this past school year. I agree with Jordan, the set of poets includes the subset of ANYONE who writes poetry. And, beyond that, anyone who writes knows something about the writing process and can contribute to the dialogue. Even people who are "not qualified," such as kids. Don Cheney dcheney@ucsd.edu ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Jul 1995 13:43:31 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: maria damon Subject: Re: flaming children And, beyond that, > anyone who writes knows something about the writing process > and can contribute to the dialogue. Even people who are "not > qualified," such as kids. > > Don Cheney > dcheney@ucsd.edu yay. this is what i like to see on the list. i've started, since my visit to albany for a conference i found very exciting but nonetheless felt like an outsider at, to feel somewhat embarrassed about my populist orientations vis a vis poetry --like a yahoo or something, or a cheap "culti-multuralist" (to crib from fusco and gomez-pena) which isn't where i think i'm coming from. another question i've been wanting to put to listers for a while now: what wd happen if we took seriously robert duncan't dictum that "there is no good or bad poetry"?--md ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Jul 1995 11:58:43 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Reginald Johanson Subject: where it comes from "Can we say soul here?", asked Ryan Knighton in one of his poems. It's a good question because it makes people effulgent, or they cringe. Some people can, and some people can't, talk about it without blushing, or making apologies for saying it. Isn't the soul one of the organs of experience itself, like the intellect and the body? There are (at least) five senses belonging to the body, all of which are wired simultaneously to intellect and soul, which are wired to each other, and the whole damn system hums and the humming is poetry. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Jul 1995 13:36:33 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Shaunanne Tangney Subject: Re: call for help! In-Reply-To: <01HSS7IZULKI8X31N9@ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu> Hello, all-- As many of you know from my posts, I am studying for my comps right now, and as many of you also know from a very recent post, I am currently reading MHAbrams _The Mirror and the Lamp_ (almost done!). While I certainly cannot accept TMATL as a manifesto--and indeed don't think it was intended to be--it is a great little book in that is concisely and coherently brings together ALL of 19th C. poetics. My question: Do any of you out there know of a book that does this for 20th C. poetics? I find myself making suibstantial marginalia "cf pomo", but it would be so nice if I had a "source book" of the 20th C. to quickly refer to! Thanks in advance, ShaunAnne st@scs.unr.edu -- if you want to reply to me personally ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Jul 1995 14:09:17 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steven Howard Shoemaker Subject: teaching Zuk In-Reply-To: <199507120403.AAA78655@fermi.clas.Virginia.EDU> from "Automatic digest processor" at Jul 12, 95 00:03:26 am Dear Hank Lazer: When I had the chance to teach Zuk, I found it fascinating to teach "Poem Beginning 'The'" as a kind of Jewish, leftist, American anti- "Waste Land" (which seems to be pretty much how Zuk thought of it). Now I say *I* found it fascinating, but I'm not sure I really had enough to time to both introduce my beginning students to Eliot and provide a way into Zuk's equally dense and unfamiliar poem. It would probably take several weeks to do this right. And oh yes, I also taught Martin Rowson's clever and hilarious graphical (i.e. sophisticated comic book) "Waste Land," which crosses Eliot with Raymond Chandler (so that Christopher Marlowe goes in search of answers to Eliotic conundrums). I got a surprising, or not so surprising, resistance from many of the students to the very idea of parodying the Waste Land. Even though they didn't know the poem, they knew of it, were ready for a serious dose of High Culture, and were rather offended when the course didn't present Eliot in those terms. As you acknowledge elsewhere in your post, students are often heavily invested in you, the teacher, having the answers. Perhaps even more, they want Literature to have the answers, and want you to "channel" them--the teacher as direct pipeline to the mysteries of Culture. The Stein anecdote gives a delightful take on all this. I also taught "Lifting Belly" to that same class. It seems to me an interesting exercise to ask students to imagine Stein or Zuk as occupying that modernist cultural "center" ususally given over to Eliot--still interesting even if your intent is not really to propose any one new centering. As I said, tho, I'm not sure how good a job i really did with "The," and i haven't yet had a chance to try it again. My most successful Zukofskyan teaching venture, then, has probably been using "Mantis," and "'Mantis': An Interpretation." The sestina form provides a recognizable way into Zuk's habitual mental and linguistic "torsion," the clarity of the actual physical encounter and the poem's moral imperatives shine through its difficulties, and comparing the original poem with its poetic "interpretation" provides useful grounds for talking about what makes a poem a poem anyway. Hope this helps, steve shoemaker PS. I hope you'll either post your results or back-channel me when you teach Zuk in the fall. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Jul 1995 18:42:54 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Willa Jarnagin Subject: Re: Lorine says it all (ha) In-Reply-To: <950712.115521.EDT.JSCHWA@TEMPLEVM> On Wed, 12 Jul 1995, Judy Schwartz wrote: > This is a reply to Steve Carll's posting of July 11 (on silence). I'm new to > this list and a bit shy so I thought I'd just offer a quote from Lorine > Niedecker on the subject: "Nobody, nothing/ever gave me/greater thing/than > time/unless light/and silence/which if intense/makes sound" > --Judy Schwartz Yes! Leave it to Lorine. I think this woman INVENTED the space between words. But which better expresses her silence: reading the poem aloud so as to 'hear' the silences, defined by the sounds of the words; or to not read the poem aloud at all? Admittedly her poems are musical and thus demand to be spoken; but on the other hand, when I read poems I 'hear' the voice in my head, perfectly. What is silence anyway? Is it merely lack of sound? --Willa ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Jul 1995 15:49:56 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Carl Lynden Peters Subject: Re: where it comes from In-Reply-To: <199507121858.LAA10924@fraser.sfu.ca> from "Reginald Johanson" at Jul 12, 95 11:58:43 am > > "Can we say soul here?", asked Ryan Knighton in one of his poems. > It's a good question because it makes people effulgent, or they > cringe. Some people can, and some people can't, talk about it without > blushing, or making apologies for saying it. > Isn't the soul one of the organs of experience itself, like the > intellect and the body? There are (at least) five senses belonging to > the body, all of which are wired simultaneously to intellect and > soul, which are wired to each other, and the whole damn system hums > and the humming is poetry. > --intellect of the brain/ --intellect of the soul ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Jul 1995 15:57:10 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Carl Lynden Peters Subject: Re: flaming children In-Reply-To: <300417cd2e69002@maroon.tc.umn.edu> from "maria damon" at Jul 12, 95 01:43:31 pm > > another question i've been wanting to put to listers for a while now: what wd > happen if we took seriously robert duncan't dictum that "there is no good or bad > poetry"?--md > maria, your question brought to mind earlier comments on duchamp and chance a while back. duchamp said something similar re good art and bad art: it's still art. in regrads to duncan, i love what he says abt seeing himself as a derivative poet, abt writing and adding to the tradition. one long, long poem. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Jul 1995 14:12:14 -1000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gabrielle Welford Subject: Re: flaming children In-Reply-To: <300417cd2e69002@maroon.tc.umn.edu> Funny that on three lists I'm on at the moment there are or have recently been discussions of what happens to children in this society. Is the universe trying to send us a message? Gabrielle ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Jul 1995 14:13:24 -1000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gabrielle Welford Subject: Re: child poets In-Reply-To: <01HSS7IZULKI8X31N9@ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu> On Wed, 12 Jul 1995, Jorge Guitart wrote: > anyone who has taught poetry in the schools know that those children who are > naturally untrite come up with stupendous things. > Yesyesyesyesyesyes Gabrielle ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Jul 1995 20:59:31 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Re: flaming children dear md---what would happen if took seriously duncan's dictim may be actually what happens now, depending on who the "we" is (no doubt) --that people would read poetry that moves them and poetry that doesn't, that they wouldn't know what moves them until they read it, and perhaps all poetry (even if we take the widest possible sense of it) moves one--but to disgust sometimes. And if a poem moves one to disgust, need we call it bad--not necessarily if it's what one needs-- and so all these notions of "interpretive communities" does not work for a lot of people. Perhaps no two are alike--for, in the abstract, we may all "marry" "high culture" and "low culture" in various, conflicting ways--yet, even if we all decided to call ourselves "populists" there'd no doubt be disagreements about the virtues of WHICH "low art" we find ourselves more drawn to--and most likely disagree with ourselves-- "Why did I like THAT in 1987?" etc. And, it's only if we inflexibly and dogmatically claim a certain definite zone, draw a certain line in the sand (and I'm not saying that I don't find myself doing that provisionally for "academic career reasons" and a "research project" that I sometimes believe actually fulfills a "real need"--Or should I say "feel" instead of "believe"), that terms like "good" and "bad" matter. I am a GOOD person. I am married to a GOOD person but a have a BAD job. Rejecting the terms "good" and "bad" (if not "evil") may be something aspires to, and may be the the "ideal condition" good and bad lurk behind, playing dead. But when you are drowning in the ocean a shark is definitely "bad" and a liferaft "good" (unless, of course....) Chris ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Jul 1995 21:52:37 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Halvard Johnson Subject: Child poets On Wed, 12 Jul 1995, Jorge Guitart wrote: > anyone who has taught poetry in the schools know that those children who are > naturally untrite come up with stupendous things. > And isn't the fact that it's all so natural one of the reasons we don't value such things very much? They've got to grow up, go to school and have all that natural ability pounded out of them and then earn it back inch by inch. That's when appreciation of their efforts really begins. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 13 Jul 1995 13:46:23 GMT+1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tony Green Organization: The University of Auckland Subject: Re: doing the one-two writing/teaching Abby Coykendall Subject: doing the one-two writing/teaching "[and I would add: the word "soul" is a dangerous way to step in precisely where the relations of sender/addressee, me/I, spirit/text are beyond a controllable play of recognition, that in fact to designate them as such, is to suture what is essentially problematic & conflictual about these relations, and to likewise suture the "drive to writing" itself]" No soul allowed? Oh dear, bang goes Descartes for a start. The word is terrifying in 1990's? ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 13 Jul 1995 13:58:19 GMT+1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tony Green Organization: The University of Auckland Subject: Re: number three I like the thought of teaching a book not yet read...it's fun to teach a course you haven't taught for fifteen years...not to think what to say until you are actually with the students...to get them to look up facts you've forgotten...to get them to solve one another's problems in class with lots of discussion... ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Jul 1995 20:44:48 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steve Carll Subject: Re: what the deaf hear in their heads Jorge wrote: >suppose you ask deaf people if they "hear" something in their minds and they >say yes. how do you know that what they call hearing is what you call hearing. >wondering if deaf people "hear", isn't it like like wondering if what you call r >ed is seen by other people as what you >call green? it is one of those things. good point. So how do I know if you and I are talking about the same thing when we're using the word "hearing"? At what point can we make the epistemological "call" and assume we're communicating? >is there a foreign language of which you have only a reading knowledge? what >happens to you when you read poetry in that language? do you hear an inner >voice reading with some kind of accent or what? The inner voice, partly recognizable as my own and partly other (I've never been quite able to put my finger on it), is speaking a language more musical than linguistic (although that aspect is there too); no matter what language I read in, every text has its own unique "accent". ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Jul 1995 20:45:03 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steve Carll Subject: Re: where it comes from Reginald Johanson writes: >"Can we say soul here?", asked Ryan Knighton in one of his poems. >It's a good question because it makes people effulgent, or they >cringe. Some people can, and some people can't, talk about it without >blushing, or making apologies for saying it. >Isn't the soul one of the organs of experience itself, like the >intellect and the body? There are (at least) five senses belonging to >the body, all of which are wired simultaneously to intellect and >soul, which are wired to each other, and the whole damn system hums >and the humming is poetry. Hear hear! Many people have an acquired aversion to talking about soul and spirit because organized religions hijacked the words and have been abusing them for centuries. And religion's replacements, science and money, don't want anything to do with such notions because discussion along spiritual lines points up the poverty of science and money with regard to the soul. Steve ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Jul 1995 20:45:38 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steve Carll Subject: The rest is silence... >What is silence anyway? Is it merely lack of sound? > >--Willa Much more. Silence is the source of sound. Sound arises from silence. It is the mysterious voice of silence which first calls us to speak. Steve ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 13 Jul 1995 16:17:32 GMT+1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tony Green Organization: The University of Auckland Subject: Re: what the deaf hear in their heads interesting for one who has been in Italy several times for short visits & who speaks Italian only haltingly to read aloud, as I did this morning from a 17th century Italian text and all I got was a kind of movie English-with-Italian accent, like a movie version of Italian-speakers of English as in mafioso talk or memories of the flat tones of Italian TV newsreaders, knowing I could not possibly sound authentic, nevertheless the syllables of the words going together are so compelling when you know, kind of, what they are saying that something seems to happen that is striking to hear...or so I hope... what does happen if you've never heard the language spoken is what you do with Latin (public school English accent maybe)? ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 13 Jul 1995 00:47:38 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rod Smith Subject: Re: call for help! Shaunanne posted looking for a sourcebook of 20th century poetics. There should be such a book, or attempt at one, but I don't think there is. I'd be interested to hear from folks on the list re what should be in such a book. Or even what it might begin with-- Dickinson letters? Rimbaud letters? (not 20th c. but...) Pounds "A Retrospect"? The Donald Allen & Warren Tallman book _The Poetics of the New American Poetry_ (which is not available though Grove reannounced it few years ago they never put it back out) is a good collection though of course not up to date. Published in 1973 it includes only 3 women-- Lenore Kandel, Levertov, & Stein. It begins with Whitman (to Emerson), then Fenollosa, then Pound. Less historical breadth but worth mentioning-- Waldman's _Disembodied Poetics_ , _The L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E Book_, there's something called _Conversant Essays_ Wayne State put out a couple years ago, ranges across the current field pretty well, tho I don't think ethnopoetics or nuyoricans get a hearing, but "confessionals" & new formalists (not a very good term huh) alongside Sir Silliman (one of his best essays I think-- "'Postmodernism': Sign for a Struggle, Struggle for a Sign"), I believe Bernstein, Retallack, et al. Anthologies of poetics anyone? --Rod The Allen/Tallman book also of note for inclusion of materials from Spicer's Vancouver lectures. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Jul 1995 21:57:16 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: child poets In-Reply-To: from "Gabrielle Welford" at Jul 12, 95 02:13:24 pm Yes, kids come up with wonderful combinations of words. Let's not screw them up by exclaiming that they are poets! ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Jul 1995 22:00:42 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: Lorine says it all (ha) In-Reply-To: from "Willa Jarnagin" at Jul 12, 95 06:42:54 pm I will admit that Niedecker is very good at the silences (which are really reverberating with the tune of the words) between words. But have another good listen to Mina Loy! ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Jul 1995 22:12:21 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: doing the one-two writing/teaching In-Reply-To: <01HSRTSZTRHE8X309N@ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu> from "Abby Coykendall" at Jul 12, 95 06:45:42 am Thinking more about the business of deciding to teach a book one has not read much, I remember that when I was a graduate student and a bunch of topics were suggested, I would always take the one I knew least about. It made for learning instead of whatever we do with our favourite things. Simil;ar process when teaching a book: you have to learn something, and who wants to keep on teaching what he knows? ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Jul 1995 23:28:45 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "M. Magoolaghan" Subject: Re: call for help! In-Reply-To: <950713004736_113817429@aol.com> > Shaunanne posted looking for a sourcebook of 20th century poetics. > > There should be such a book, or attempt at one, but I don't think there is. Gary Geddes edited an anthology called _20th Century Poetry & Poetics_ which was published by Oxford University Press (Canadian Division) in 1973. It has a large selection of essays on poetics by poets as diverse as Auden, Pound, Stevens, Williams, Yeats, Creeley, Al Purdy, Robert Graves, Olson, Syvia Plath and Gary Snyder. Hope that helps. MM ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Smile, reality is exactly as it is represented in our conceptual scheme. --Norm Mooradian Michael Magoolaghan ! Box 354330 University of Washington ! Seattle, WA 98l95-4330 Dept. of English ! mmagoola@u.washington.edu ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 13 Jul 1995 05:15:10 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Abby Coykendall Organization: University at Buffalo Subject: drive/soul "soul" equals a word, that in my experience, often with a false glee, patches over the decenteredness that centers all "passionate" activity (which I, or Freud, or whoever before him called "drive," or Lacan who configures it as a metonymically skating-figure eight, incited by and "circling" a vacuum, an impossible/Real space between which there is a demand for a home, or placement, ... a resting) e.g. "the soul of the nation" gives a truncate to the very impossiblity of there being a uniform, embodied nation people in the first place, the "passion" of patriotism is a "soul"-like covering-over of the dis-ease of there never being possible an addressible "people" as such (i've stolen this argument from claude lafort, _Democracy & Political Theory_) e.g. "the soul of the lover/beloved" But, this, I think needs no explaining..., the experience of the veiled bullshit involved here is at-hand daily, and romantic comedies are a sure- fire way to fill in this hole (with the largest laugh of all, being able to --in the last and climatically-- stuff it in her) (isn't it possible that the populace's supposed beloved, Hugh Grant, solicited & fucked the whore less because of what she offered than to--in a truly heroic, perhaps revolutionary way--displace his name from "he, King of Romance" to "he, exposer of the traumatic, comedic root of Romance veiled by romancing" and in so doing, risk sacrificing the celebrity right/rite of possesing and gaining interest (money, otherwise) from his name/signature in the body politic? Although perhaps "cynical" love-wise, I should think this reading nonetheless offers the utmost pleasure) e.g., and finally, "the soul which inspires writing" leave it to say, it takes no genius to figure out that everyone is always talking far too loudly and writing non-stop, only some like to package, and pass this on as "genuis" whereas others just keep mouthing on, in their own way (cf. any of the talk shows which best get your gun, or to be less oral-biased, the massive amount of "first-novels" from which I can make money editing) and by the by, isn't e-space the ideal vent for all these vast verbal highways, as a very convienent by-way from the world in its so sublime splitting? yet what happens in this particular split, and perhaps all of them, is something uniquely political, and as such, e-space is the true seat of the "new" politics, one that may both sit on its ass, or get quite a many asses moving with love, abby c [Note: if this post seems somehow onanistic, as not addressing any that may have addressed my last, please forgive one who spends her nights as days and thereby has failed to recieve the poetics digest in any true timely fashion, having only heard vicariously of there being a "discussion" going on about something like this and having wanted to carry on in a more clear fashion than in my last] ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 13 Jul 1995 10:00:38 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: cris cheek Subject: Re: doing the one-two writing/teaching Which book that has yet to be written would you teach what would it do and why? love cris ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 13 Jul 1995 09:11:09 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jorge Guitart Organization: University at Buffalo Subject: 20th c poetics Shaunanne T: i think that a must read for 20th c poetics ***in the U.S.*** is Marjorie Perloff's The Dance of the Intellect. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 13 Jul 1995 09:42:23 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Kellogg Subject: Re: child poets In-Reply-To: <199507130457.VAA07862@fraser.sfu.ca> On Wed, 12 Jul 1995, George Bowering wrote: > Yes, kids come up with wonderful combinations of words. > Let's not screw them up by exclaiming that they are poets! I have no children, but a friend of mine used to play a metaphor game with his son, who is slightly autistic. He explained the concept of comparison, and how many ordinary designations have metaphorical roots (e.g., hands of a clock -- cf., of course, Nietzsche). The boy would make up all sorts of wonderful and 'ridiculous' metaphors for objects, people, faces, events. One day he looked at some stone steps that were covered in glittering moonlit ice (they lived in Alaska and there had apparently been a thaw followed by a freeze), pointed, and said "flight of stairs." My friend had NO idea if he had heard this expression before, but he's now convinced himself that "Flight of stairs" originated in such a moment. He later noted that his son's ability to create novel metaphor began to disappear the day he entered school. Cheers, David ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ David Kellogg The moment is at hand. University Writing Program Take one another Duke University and eat. Durham, NC 27708 kellogg@acpub.duke.edu --Thomas Kinsella ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 13 Jul 1995 09:47:31 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jorge Guitart Organization: University at Buffalo Subject: child poets George Bowering wrote < Yes, kids come up with wonderful combinations of words. < Let's not screw them up by exclaiming that they are poets" say what? praise leads to neurosis? what, don't tell a kid who excels in school sports that he is an athlete because s/he might believe it? ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 13 Jul 1995 10:07:47 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Jordan Davis." Subject: Re: child poets G Bowering wrote: >Yes, kids come up with wonderful combinations of words. >Let's not screw them up by exclaiming that they are poets! Likewise, I'm sure. Or, I'm not sure who it'll "screw" up. Do you feel screwed up by exclaiming you're a poet? I think I see the problem. You think that identity (as a grown-up) is a one to one relation, and that it's conferred from outside, by praise. If someone says "I like that poem" to a child (what's with the word "kid" anyway?) that mark of respect will turn them into a poet. And they'll be stuck like the rest of us. I suspect identity is a little more flexible. A child who can think of herself as a giant clam or as some snow, "a stretched cat on a wide branch," may think of herself for a few seconds as a poet, or as a violinist writing poetry, or as tough, or shy, or as not worth listening to. Maybe that isn't the problem. Maybe you're W.C. Fields. That's fine. But I think you're recapitulating what Charles Alexander posted about--the need to exclude certain kinds of poetic production from the domain of poetry. Which, as he rightly suggested, is the wrong thing to do. If, instead, you want to talk about quality, I'll read all your posts. Respectfully Jordan ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 13 Jul 1995 13:13:10 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steven Howard Shoemaker Subject: filtered and unfiltered In-Reply-To: <199507130402.AAA143207@fermi.clas.Virginia.EDU> from "Automatic digest processor" at Jul 13, 95 00:01:38 am The sea anemone dreamed of something, filtering the sea water thru its body, Nothing more real than boredom--dreamlessness, the experience of time, never felt by the new arrival, never at the doors, the thresholds, it is the native Native in native time... The purity of the materials, not theology, but to present the circumstances --George Oppen ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 13 Jul 1995 13:17:52 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rod Smith Subject: Re: 20th c poetics Jorge Guitart wrote > i think that a must read for 20th c poetics ***in the U.S.*** >is Marjorie Perloff's The Dance of the Intellect. yes, it is very useful, & is being reissued next year by Northwestern. --Rod "bookstore guy" Smith ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 13 Jul 1995 14:17:44 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rod Smith Subject: Re: filtered and unfiltered & also "The self is no mystery, the mystery is/ That there is something for us to stand on." Oppen, "World, World--" Which seems in some ways exact. It's art when it makes you remember this fact. --Rod Smith ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 13 Jul 1995 14:54:35 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jim Pangborn Organization: University at Buffalo Subject: Correction RE: where it comes from Oops-- Some days ago I posted a diagram purporting to illustrate a thing that can and does go wrong in the relating of where "it" comes from, but I attributed the schema, via wild guess, to the wrong guy. Not Macherey's style to posit a structure so undialectical; it really comes from Jurij Lotman as construed (and no doubt skewed) by me. It came to me that night in bed beside my fishing and camping catalogs, my _Roadside Geology of New York_, and my Proust and H James with their looping, soporific (in the good sense) sentences; but, because I've been singlehandedly looking after one 4-yr-old nephew (who may or may not be properly labeled a poet but certainly makes a crack amateur ethicist), I haven't found time to post this correction until now. As I say, it was meant to schematize something that happens, not to explain the whole writing situation. Ron Silliman zeroes in on an important problem with it--that it looks cooked-up as job security for professional explainers--but, fortunately or not, that's not a refutation. I'd love to see it redesigned according to Tony Green's specs, but wouldn't it take an Escher or a Magritte to draw that out? Ceci n'est pas un conceptual schema? One can only hope. . . . 12 Jul 1995 16:58:57 GMT+1300 Tony Green writes: > >Macherey diagram needs redoing author is also displaced and also >projects an "idealised" audience in writing author is wildly >displaced in my view i.e. is a figure projected by the actual >scribe so summing up diagram needs 1.writer who projects >both a writer and a reader 2. a reader who projects both "a >reader" >and "a writer" note, in mid-Don Quixote how can anyone >believe the "I" of the text == the author named on the cover and >when the reader says of herself" "I" read this " who is the reader? >better to take both parties, reader and writer as fictions >constructed in the writing/reading CONFUSED ? yes, I guess, and >yes I HOPE SO > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 13 Jul 1995 15:03:15 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jim Pangborn Organization: University at Buffalo Subject: philtres Q: If the War-hole and the Art-haud are dirty and the Cage is clean, then what is a rhetorical question? --Jim ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 13 Jul 1995 16:19:55 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: philtres In-Reply-To: <01HSTQDFOYXK8X4PX3@ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu> from "Jim Pangborn" at Jul 13, 95 03:03:15 pm ARTHUR RIMBAUD ARTHU IMBAUD ARTH MBAUD ART BAUD ART AUD ART AUD ART AUD ART AUD ART AUD ART AUD * *AHA! ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 13 Jul 1995 16:24:50 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: child poets In-Reply-To: <950713100747_31839299@aol.com> from "Jordan Davis." at Jul 13, 95 10:07:47 am That's it exactly. Identity is what other people give you. It is what you carry in your wallet. It is on your driver's licence, etc. Self is something else entirely. First you have self. Then someone says "You're my kid." That's identity. Read Stein on the subject. Read _Ada_. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 13 Jul 1995 16:26:03 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: child poets In-Reply-To: <01HSTED8PNVC8X3YFQ@ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu> from "Jorge Guitart" at Jul 13, 95 09:47:31 am Jorge: trouble with your retort is that you seem to be saying that telling someone he/she is a poet equals praise. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 13 Jul 1995 19:28:47 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Jordan Davis." Subject: Okay teach George Bowering wrote: That's it exactly. Identity is what other people give you. It is what you carry in your wallet. It is on your driver's licence, etc. Self is something else entirely. First you have self. Then someone says "You're my kid." That's identity. Read Stein on the subject. Read _Ada_. Okay teach. Jordan ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 13 Jul 1995 20:52:10 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Edward Foster Subject: Re: doing the one-two writing/teaching you don't teach books, chris, you teach yourself. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 14 Jul 1995 13:39:17 GMT+1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tony Green Organization: The University of Auckland Subject: Re: doing the one-two writing/teaching correct, Ed, I don't teach the book, the book teaches me ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 13 Jul 1995 19:04:36 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Carl Lynden Peters Subject: Re: doing the one-two writing/teaching In-Reply-To: <01HSU2PZEWS2D1INUC@VAXC.STEVENS-TECH.EDU> from "Edward Foster" at Jul 13, 95 08:52:10 pm > > you don't teach books, chris, you teach yourself. > --i appreciate this post! i've often felt that when you're passionate abt your subject something else, something more, gets across... comes thru ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 13 Jul 1995 23:59:00 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rod Smith Subject: Re: philtres Jim Pangborn wrote: >Q: If the War-hole and the Art-haud are dirty and the Cage is clean, then what >is a rhetorical question? A: "That's what I love about philosophy, no one wins." ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 13 Jul 1995 21:23:17 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Lindz Williamson Subject: Re: child poets In-Reply-To: <199507132326.QAA15286@fraser.sfu.ca> A friend and I have been discussing this topic of child poets as well. We came up with the conclusion that the child has no concept of being a poet or an "artist", that is something we label them with and place on their heads. I think the pure fact that they are unaware of themselves as "being" anything but a child expresses the purity of their actions. I agree with George that the "self" is a learned state of being, but I don't think we can discard the creative efforts of children as merely pretty pictures and charming rhymes. There is a sophistication in the lack of trained technical expression. The child may begin without direction but experimenting within a medium eventually leads to a theory and a goal. Children develop their own patterns and aesthetic values which is why they have favorite stories and teddy bears, etc . Have you ever watched kids finger painting? They do have an idea of what they are trying to produce, but they haven't learned the skill to translate the visions within their heads to the paper in a form that can be interpreted by others. Poetry may be slightly different as children are bombarded by language while still in the womb, while visual concepts develop later, sound is always present. Who's to say that that alone is not the beginning of a poetic license Lindz ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 13 Jul 1995 21:48:47 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steve Carll Subject: Re: child poets Jorge Guitart wrote: >George Bowering wrote >< Yes, kids come up with wonderful combinations of words. >< Let's not screw them up by exclaiming that they are poets" > >say what? > >praise leads to neurosis? > >what, don't tell a kid who excels in school sports that he is an athlete >because s/he might believe it? I think George wasn't objecting so much to the praising of children (in fact he gave some in the first line), but rather, under the guise of praise, to impose a label that the kid is then supposed to adopt as an identity and live up to. This can and does lead to neurosis, even in us adults. I know I don't want to "be a poet", I just want to write. But I didn't aways feel this way, and I used to be quite a nervous child until I decided it was OK just to want to be, without predicating that being on something else. Not that I've succeeded in that task, mind you... Steve ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 13 Jul 1995 22:21:11 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ryan Knighton Subject: Re: child poets In-Reply-To: from "Lindz Williamson" at Jul 13, 95 09:23:17 pm I'm back from the road with my two-bits. I agree with George: children aare children. The attraction to childhood as an artistic state bewilders me. It seems, among other reasons, that it's the lack of control and discipline we, as adults, admire and want to defend. Picasso sd something to the effect that it took him a lifetime to learn how to paint like a child. Or, unlearn, I guess. The process contradicts its destination. It is still painting _like_ a child, out of a definition of "children's painting". I find this issue alive in aleatoric comp., as well as in Pablo's pictures. My drawings and storys, as a pre-tad, didn't have this struggle. I guess my point is that trying to develop a means to a child's perceptions is more the issue than children's perceptions. (my god, British Columnbia is big. Even as an adult.) ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 13 Jul 1995 22:24:03 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ryan Knighton Subject: Re: child poets In-Reply-To: <199507140448.VAA11475@slip-1.slip.net> from "Steve Carll" at Jul 13, 95 09:48:47 pm children are childish. Unadulterated. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 13 Jul 1995 22:44:02 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ryan Knighton Subject: Re: doing the one-two writing/teaching In-Reply-To: from "Tony Green" at Jul 14, 95 01:39:17 pm I'm not sure if this is what started this subject, or if it has already been a part of it, but what does it mean to teach a book? As an undergrad, oh so many months back, a book arrived in class, occurred, became books, and we spent the rest of the semester, as a group of individuals, trying to become a class with a book. The book that arrived was not the one that left, usually. Sometimes two or three or more left. Profs who played show and tell offered. Those who engaged in the above process taught. They recognized it as agonistic. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 14 Jul 1995 02:34:28 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rod Smith Subject: Re: doing the one-two writing/teaching It's interesting this message arrives as I'm flipping through various anthologies etc. feeling I have to call very soon with my decision abt what books to assign for a workshop I'll be teaching. But isn't it a matter of how the book is used? I mean is it possible, really, to approach teaching a book with the understanding that it will be a different book for each person? It may be hopeless. Yet a book can offer a basis, a context from which to proceed. Cage left college after a few years because he didn't understand why everyone should read the same book. Certainly that was the right decision for him. Maybe I'll assign Silence, but whether to make them pay $16.95 for it. . . --Rod Smith Ryan Knighton wrote: I'm not sure if this is what started this subject, or if it has already been a part of it, but what does it mean to teach a book? As an undergrad, oh so many months back, a book arrived in class, occurred, became books, and we spent the rest of the semester, as a group of individuals, trying to become a class with a book. The book that arrived was not the one that left, usually. Sometimes two or three or more left. Profs who played show and tell offered. Those who engaged in the above process taught. They recognized it as agonistic. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 14 Jul 1995 08:09:37 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Burt Kimmelman -@NJIT" Subject: Re: doing the one-two writing/teaching Here's a twist on the subject: Should students be required to compose poetry in a poetry course (I don't mean in a poetry-writing course)? ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 14 Jul 1995 12:39:09 BST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "I.LIGHTMAN" Subject: Re: 20th c poetics I really agree with Jorge about Marjorie Perloff's Dance of the Intellect - more so than many offered so far, it is clear, friendly to the beginner, plays a nice Socratic game of identifying the beginner's likely loyalties and hostilities and dancing them, as Leonard Cohen says, to the end of love, Ira Lightman ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 14 Jul 1995 12:43:41 BST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "I.LIGHTMAN" Subject: Re: child poets Also George, isn't it a bit like school, the way it, as has been said, rewards the creativity surviving at fifteen that has been crushed up till then, to greet a list lurker's love for Lorine Neidecker with a "hey, if only you read someone Neidecker reminds me of, not stylistically but because she's another female, Mina Loy, then I could talk about what I like and stop having to engage with what you like at all"...? Ira ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 14 Jul 1995 09:23:55 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Boughn Subject: Re: 20th c poetics In-Reply-To: <0099356F.475F4BC0.3690@cpcmg.uea.ac.uk> from "I.LIGHTMAN" at Jul 14, 95 12:39:09 pm Another interesting book on modern poetics (or at least poetic form, the concrete manifestation of poetics) is Donald Wesling's *The New Poetries*. Interestingly, he treats the whole run since 1798 (*Lyrical Ballads*) as of a piece, rather than proposing differences organized around "centuries". Mike mboughn@epas.utoronto.ca ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 14 Jul 1995 08:30:07 CST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Alexander Subject: Re: child poets Yes for poets, writers, or artists, disregarding age. We had to fill out a grant application at Minn. Center for Book Arts, and one question had to do with number of artists participating in our projects. One of our exhibitions this year is a children's book art exhibition, and one staff members wanted to exclude the children from being counted as artists. I think that is NOT a good idea. charles charles alexander chax press minnesota center for book arts phone & fax: 612-721-6063 e-mail: mcba@maroon.tc.umn.edu ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 14 Jul 1995 11:55:56 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: cris cheek Subject: Re: doing the one-two writing/teaching I like the emphasis that Ed gives - you don't teach a book you teach yourself Arguably the processes of engagement with producing of a book are them-selves forms of teaching the book though? So, I'd ask the question again - which books that have YET to be written would you teach? I was hoping that responses might reveal hopes and ambitions for both poetry and the book and therefore inevitably some optimism for 'yourselve[s]' and some marker space-cadet projects to fuel discussion - maybe action. love and love cris ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 14 Jul 1995 14:44:00 BST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "I.LIGHTMAN" Subject: 20th century poetics and child poetry Just to connect some themes: Does anyone else feel there's an interesting use of child-like language, also beginner's guide to grammar type language, in modern poets like Robert Grenier (in Sentences) or Lyn Hejinian (in My Life) or Carla Harryman (especially in In The Mode Of), or Leslie Scalapino's early work with its feel of lullaby and nonsense poetry quote unquote, or Bruce Andrews' Wobbling, or Bernadette Mayer's Studying Hunger; can this be just put down to the spirit of play, or camp? It seems to me to be a vital distinction between some Language Writing and, on the one hand, fifties and sixties Concrete Poetry, on the other hand, the always urbane Ashbery? That there is a kind of defiant, politicised, fascinating use of child-like language, that only a forceful radical group could do, to make potentially hostile readers frightened of it, so that it doesn't just get dismissed as childish? Don't children also get dismissed as childish when they want to include something normally excluded? Isn't Carla Harryman's work in particular interested in using Language Writing "idiom" ( or labelling or identification of her as a Language Writer) to open up this very area of children not having the power to make people frightened, as the Language Writers could? Isn't Harryman locating childlikeness and play as not merely jouissance and pleasure, but in fact a mode of intuitive purer vulnerabe being unjustly brutalised? So that Language Writing becomes figured as not a departure from, reaction to, but a return to, a reclaiming from? Just some questions... Ira ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 14 Jul 1995 09:54:33 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Willa Jarnagin Subject: Re: doing the one-two writing/teaching In-Reply-To: <00993549.A034A5E0.2@admin.njit.edu> On Fri, 14 Jul 1995, Burt Kimmelman -@NJIT wrote: > Here's a twist on the subject: Should students be required to compose > poetry in a poetry course (I don't mean in a poetry-writing course)? > Maybe not REQUIRED, but I think students should be encouraged to write in any poetry class. Trying to write the stuff may make poetry more alive for them. It'll make them more interested and maybe more interestING too. Also, you never know, there might be a beaten-down discouraged kid in the class for whom a nudge to write poetry would open a world. (When I say "kid" I don't mean "child" in relation to the other argument going around.) (Or do I?) Willa ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 14 Jul 1995 09:57:08 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Jordan Davis." Subject: Jeff Morley Ryan Knighton wrote: They recognized it as agonistic. George, Ryan, I'm sorry if anybody hurt you by praising you. For an Apted-like review of the lives of the children Kenneth Koch praised like crazy in _Wishes, Lies & Dreams_, see Jeff Morley's article in Teachers & Writers Magazine (collected in _Educating the Imagination, Vol. 1_, ed. by Christopher Edgar & Ron Padgett--available from Teachers & Writers Collaborative, 5 Union Square West, NY NY 10003-3306, or, (212) 691-6590--many other books edited by Padgett are available). And, George, you'll be happy to know that he feels that the praise Koch gave him was bewildering, and that he gave up writing poems soon after. And _I'll_ be happy to tell you that Morley grew up to be an editor at the Washington Post, and a reporter and essayist whose work has been in the Village Voice, The Nation. Here, by the way, is his poem: THE DAWN OF ME I was born nowhere And I live in a tree I never leave my tree It is very crowded I am stacked up right against a bird But I won't leave my tree Everything is dark No light! I hear the bird sing I wish I could sing My eyes, they open And all around my house The Sea Slowly I get down in the water The cool blue water Oh and the space I laugh swim and cry for joy This is my home For Ever --Jeff Morley, Fifth Grade, P.S. 61 --poetry is praise-- Jordan ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 14 Jul 1995 10:01:13 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Jordan Davis." Subject: writing/I ching you don't (only) teach yourself you teach other people don't you only teach yourself other people teach you people don't you only yourself teach other you teach teach teach people don't you you only other yourself yourself you teach other people you only don't teach (okay teach) ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 14 Jul 1995 10:46:13 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jorge Guitart Organization: University at Buffalo Subject: child poets I am with Charles Alexander that it is NOT a good idea not to count children as artists. What can we do to combat grownupism* (both individual and institutional)? --------- *the irrational belief that children are intellectually & emotionally inferior to grownups. ---0--- Some children are good poets and some are not. But I include the good & the bad in the anthology I make up at the end of each workshop (this is every year, in an urban public school where many of the students are classified as "at risk"). I have noticed that grownup anthologies do not exclude the bad either (& some of the bad poets were never "at risk"). Jorge Guitart Member, Writers in Education, Just Buffalo Literary Center Member, Alternative Literary Programs in the Schools ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 14 Jul 1995 12:08:47 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jorge Guitart Organization: University at Buffalo Subject: sound symbolism Anybody out there interested in the translatability of sound symbolism? 1.el murmullo de abejas innumerables works in Spanish as well as the murmuring of innumerable bees does in English but what do you have to do if you are translating into a language that shares nothing with yours? 2. Here is a different (and perhaps more interesting) issue: If every poem is a bundle of symbols (and indices and icons) on the phonological plane, how much of this bundle appears in a "normal" translation, one that is not aiming consciously at preserving sound? [noP;o+s%q R?FG6"zf74Sa]Eo[;zM' Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steven Howard Shoemaker Subject: writing/teaching In-Reply-To: <199507140412.AAA53298@fermi.clas.Virginia.EDU> from "Automatic digest processor" at Jul 14, 95 00:01:29 am Funny how there is now room on this list for passionate talk about teaching, in a way there didn't seem to be back during the academic/non-academic turf wars of a few months ago. Or i guess maybe passionate *and* un-defensive is what i mean. I like it. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 14 Jul 1995 11:38:33 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: maria damon Subject: Re: doing the one-two writing/teaching In message <00993549.A034A5E0.2@admin.njit.edu> UB Poetics discussion group writes: > Here's a twist on the subject: Should students be required to compose > poetry in a poetry course (I don't mean in a poetry-writing course)? i don't know about "should," but i often ask, at the beginning of a class, that students write quickly, for example, a "frank o'hara" poem. they usually like that. o'hara's perfect, of course, because he did compose off-the-cuff, but i've tried it w/ others as well, and often, for undergrads, i ask them to keep a reading journal in which they are required, sometimes, to imitate the author being studied. i was surprised at, for example, how well this worked with lyn hejinian's my life. students who thought the work cryptic suddenly fell in love with it and with themselves writing and remembering. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 14 Jul 1995 09:48:39 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Carl Lynden Peters Subject: Re: child poets In-Reply-To: <199507140521.WAA07046@fraser.sfu.ca> from "Ryan Knighton" at Jul 13, 95 10:21:11 pm you learn so much tho from children who follow their bliss. jouissance! follow your bliss ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 14 Jul 1995 09:43:40 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Carl Lynden Peters Subject: Re: doing the one-two writing/teaching In-Reply-To: <00993549.A034A5E0.2@admin.njit.edu> from "Burt Kimmelman -@NJIT" at Jul 14, 95 08:09:37 am > > Here's a twist on the subject: Should students be required to compose > poetry in a poetry course (I don't mean in a poetry-writing course)? > --yes, and it should go without saying. i don't think you can teach art if you can't make art ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 14 Jul 1995 12:00:02 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: maria damon Subject: Re: child poets In message <44531.mcba@maroon.tc.umn.edu> UB Poetics discussion group writes: > Yes for poets, writers, or artists, disregarding age. We had to fill out a > grant application at Minn. Center for Book Arts, and one question had to do > with number of artists participating in our projects. One of our > exhibitions this year is a children's book art exhibition, and one staff > members wanted to exclude the children from being counted as artists. I > think that is NOT a good idea. > > charles > > charles alexander > chax press > minnesota center for book arts > phone & fax: 612-721-6063 > e-mail: mcba@maroon.tc.umn.edu i agree w/ charles and with others who think it's okay for kids to be considered paraticipants in creative activity, whether you want to label them as "poets" or not --i think that latter consideration is contextual --there are times when it's important, as in charles's example, to be advocates for children as artists, and then it's also at other times important to avoid labels that create anxiety about performance and adult expectations of kids. charles, your post reminds me of something i heard on the radio, about a nine-year-old girl who had invented a board game, or something like that, that threatened a major corporation because (i may be getting the details wrong) she used one of their advertizing slogans. or maybe it was the other way around, they cribbed for one of their slogans a phrase that came from a board game she'd invented and marketed. anyway, the fascinating and salient thing about their argument, which became a lawsuit, was that the corporation argued that because of her age she was too young to have a right to claim intellectual property. or whatever--her age became the disqualifying criterion. this seems to me to be a clear example of discrimination against creative children as children -- a form of discrimination i believe most people on this list find objectionable --not to hegemonize or colonize the nature of the list's participants --i guess i mean i hope most people on the list would recognize this as blatant discrimination. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 14 Jul 1995 06:57:02 -1000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gabrielle Welford Subject: Re: number three In-Reply-To: On Thu, 13 Jul 1995, Tony Green wrote: > I like the thought of teaching a book not yet read...it's fun to > teach a course you haven't taught for fifteen years...not to think > what to say until you are actually with the students...to get them to > look up facts you've forgotten...to get them to solve one another's > problems in class with lots of discussion... > This is wonderful. I'm definitely going to leave a book unread in the fall. I do usually leave what I'm going to say unthought until I'm right there. This surprises my students and leaves room for lots of confusion and enthusiasm from every quarter. Gabrielle ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 14 Jul 1995 07:27:33 -1000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gabrielle Welford Subject: French Nuclear testing petition (fwd) In Gaelic, a forbidden chain letter, from the flings of the flights of the earth, and a serious matter. Gab. A Chairde, < Dear Sirs, < < Seo litir slabhrach ag iarraidh ar < This is a chain letter to urge the ar Rialtas na Fraince na teisteanna < french government to stop nuclear tests. nuicleach a stopadh. < < Ma/ aontai/onn tu/ linn, chuir do < If you agree with us, please add your ainm leis an liosta thi/os agus < name to the list below, and send seol co/ipeanna do/ do do chairde! < copies to your friends. Ta/imi/d chun na liostai/ a thagann < We will add up the lists that had ar ais chugainn chuig Rialtas na < come back to us, and send it Fraince < to the French Government. Ma/s tusa an ce/adu, no/ an dha/ < If you happen to be the hundredth, che/adu/, tri/ cheadu/ 7rl, ar an < two hundredth, three hundredth, liosta seol co/ip den teachtaireacht < and so on, on the list, please send chuig an seoladh thi/os lu/ite ionas < a copy of the mail back to the gur fe/idir su/il a choimead ar an < addresses below, so that we can keep bhfeachtas. Ma/ ta/ aon rud le ra/ > track of this project. If you have mar gheall ar an bhfeachas seo scri/ > any comment please send mails to us. chgainn ag an seoladh thi/os! Ma/s fe/idir leat an teachtaireacht > And also, if you are multi-lingual seo a aistriu/ go teanga eile seol > and have friends who may not e/ i dteanta an cheann seo. > understand English, please translate > this message and add it to the end of > the mail. Go raibh maith agat > Thank you very much. ******* addresses of the organizers shimizu@femto.phys.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp keshi@uticeaix1.icepp.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp <- please use this adress # # # # # #### # ###### ## ### # ## # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # ##### # # # # # # # # # # # # # ###### ##### # # ## # # # # # # # # # # # # # #### #### ###### ###### # # # # # # ##### ###### #### ##### #### # # # # # # # # # # ##### #### # #### # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # ###### #### # #### # # # #1 SHIMIZU Seishi Physics,University of Tokyo,Japan #2 Yuichi Nishihara Physics,University of Tokyo,Japan #3 Hirohisa TANIGUCHI Physics,University of Tokyo,Japan #4 Takashi Tomoeda Physics,University of Tokyo,Japan #5 Tomoki KOBAYASHI Physics,University of Tokyo,Japan #6 Munehito ARAI Physics,University of Tokyo,Japan #7 Akira Okazaki Physics,University of Tokyo,Japan #8 Atsushi Matsumura Physics, Tohoku University, Japan #9 Kouta Yamamoto Chemistry,Tohoku University,Japan #10 Yasushi UJIOKA Degremont S.A., France #11 Toru Hara Universite de Paris Sud, France #12 Rene Bakker CEA - Sacley, France #13 David Garzella Universite de Paris Sud, France #14 Henk Blok Vrije Universiteit/NIKHEF, Amsterdam #15 Igor Passchier NIKHEF, Amsterdam #16 Ard van Sighem NIKHEF, Amsterdam #17 Johan Noordhoek KOL Leiden #18 C.M.C.M. van Woerkens Kamerlingh Onnes Laboratory, Leiden #19 Annemarie Borst, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam #20 Gijs Nelemans Universiteit Utrecht #21 Susanne Buiter Universiteit Utrecht #22 Stan Schoofs Universiteit Utrecht #23 Edward Prendergast Universiteit Utrecht #24 Manon Kluytmans Universiteit Utrecht #25 Edmar Weitenberg Utrecht #26 Harry Blom Ruimteonderzoek Utrecht #27 Henk Marquering Seismology, Utrecht #28 Marlies ter Voorde Amsterdam #29 Anco Lankreijer Amsterdam #30 Hans Veldkamp Bilthoven #31 Lyande Eelderink Enschede #32 Christine Pohl Enschede, NL #33 Gottfried Schneiders DLR, Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany #34 Simon White DLR, Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany #35 Dietmar Pfahl Muenchen, Germany #36 Eduardo Alonso University of the Basque Country #37 Esther Mondragon Universidad del Pais Vasco, Spain #38 F.J.D. Ausin University of the Basque Country, Spain #39 Maria Baghramian University College Dublin, Ireland #40 Peter Carruthers University of Sheffield, UK #41 Annette Karmiloff-Smith, University College London #42 Geoff Ward, University of Essex, England #43 Jon Chalmers, Ipswich, England #44 Jodie Ward, Colchester, England #45 Peter Canty, Cork, Ireland #46 Garry O'Neill, Limerick, Ireland #47 Sea/n Mac Suibhne, Baile Atha Cliatha, Eire ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 14 Jul 1995 12:53:51 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Shaunanne Tangney Subject: Re: writing/I ching In-Reply-To: <950714100111_114772585@aol.com> and gladely would he teche and gladely lerne --geoffrey chaucer i close every syllabus with this. . . --shaunanne ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 14 Jul 1995 16:55:58 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Burt Kimmelman -@NJIT" Subject: Re: 20th century poetics and child poetry Ira, you're suggesting that Language poetry is like language acquisition by children, the way they come to inhabit and manipulate discourse forms? Burt ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 14 Jul 1995 12:08:53 -1000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gabrielle Welford Subject: Re: filtered and unfiltered In-Reply-To: <950713141743_31998664@aol.com> On Thu, 13 Jul 1995, Rod Smith wrote: > & also > > "The self is no mystery, the mystery is/ That there is something for us to > stand on." > > Oppen, "World, World--" Did Oppen read Wittgenstein? Gabrielle ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 14 Jul 1995 17:28:57 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Brian W Horihan Subject: Re: where it comes from In-Reply-To: <199507130345.UAA11141@slip-1.slip.net> > > Hear hear! Many people have an acquired aversion to talking about soul and > spirit because organized religions hijacked the words and have been abusing > them for centuries. And religion's replacements, science and money, don't > want anything to do with such notions because discussion along spiritual > lines points up the poverty of science and money with regard to the soul. i acquired this aversion after abandoning the family religion, realizing these words didnt mean, signify, anything to me. it's one of the reasons i hate translating "animus" in latin class. i still cannot find anything in these words that does not bring back the ol' immaterialism, irrationalism... what i find is the poverty of the soul with regard to science. so i'd like to know, then, what did soul and spirit mean before they were "hijacked" and "abused"? was there a before, or merely our projection in order to gain ancient authority? maybe I'M reading "soul" too religiously--but i'm afraid to use it otherwise, expand it, to apply it to something mysterious that was once concrete (or definable, at least, if not material) b/c this is the history of the word god. --brian ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 14 Jul 1995 12:32:04 -1000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gabrielle Welford Subject: Re: doing the one-two writing/teaching In-Reply-To: On Fri, 14 Jul 1995, Willa Jarnagin wrote: > > Maybe not REQUIRED, but I think students should be encouraged to write in > any poetry class. Trying to write the stuff may make poetry more alive > for them. It'll make them more interested and maybe more interestING too. > Also, you never know, there might be a beaten-down discouraged kid in the > class for whom a nudge to write poetry would open a world. (When I say > "kid" I don't mean "child" in relation to the other argument going > around.) (Or do I?) > > Willa > Yes, I've seen this happen a few times already--even after only 3 years of teaching. How can you learn that poetry is in your body and therefore understand it in your body without giving it a hand/foot/head/throat... Gab. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 14 Jul 1995 12:32:49 -1000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gabrielle Welford Subject: Re: child poets In-Reply-To: <44531.mcba@maroon.tc.umn.edu> On Fri, 14 Jul 1995, Charles Alexander wrote: > exhibitions this year is a children's book art exhibition, and one staff > members wanted to exclude the children from being counted as artists. I > think that is NOT a good idea. > I do I do agree. Gab. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 14 Jul 1995 15:32:47 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Re: Brathwaite Tapes In-Reply-To: <199507120402.VAA00813@isc.SJSU.EDU> Brathwaites _Middle Passage_ was made available years ago on a series of LP's. I've got about two thirds of the set. I also have tape of Brathwaite reading at UC Santa Cruz a few years ago. Tapes may be in San Jose, Michael, which means I may not be able to retrieve them till late August, but I'll let you know. Maybe I've got at least one here in L.A. -- Meanwhile, I wanted everybody to know about that older set -- might check local media collections to see if they have any of it. Brathwaite reads beautifully, thoug, as veterans of his readings know, the program may go on for hours! a.l.nielsen ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 14 Jul 1995 12:48:16 -1000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gabrielle Welford Subject: Re: 20th century poetics and child poetry In-Reply-To: <00993580.B8676440.3699@cpcmg.uea.ac.uk> Ira, your connection of childspirited writing and Lang Po definitely feels right to me. especially this-- not merely jouissance and pleasure, but > in fact a mode of intuitive purer vulnerabe being unjustly > brutalised? So that Language Writing becomes figured as not a > departure from, reaction to, but a return to, a reclaiming from? > I think of Mervyn Peake and other "non-sense" writers too. The return to a different sense through supposed nonsense. Gab. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 14 Jul 1995 19:08:32 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Judy Schwartz Subject: Re: child poets In-Reply-To: Message of Fri, 14 Jul 1995 12:43:41 BST from Hmmmm....I. Lightman's "personal" message to "George" regarding a "list lurker' s love for Lorine Niedecker" . . . Perhaps there would be fewer "list lurkers" if so many of the messages posted here weren't aimed at particular people.And as for Mina Loy resembling Niedecker only in that both are female. . . have you read "Love Songs"? Have you read Niedecker for that matter? "Smallness" plays a part in both. --Judy Schwartz (officially no longer a "list lurker") ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 14 Jul 1995 19:21:41 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Judy Schwartz Subject: Re: where it comes from In-Reply-To: Message of Fri, 14 Jul 1995 17:28:57 -0500 from In response to Brian's message of July 14: I'm not sure of the exact etymology of the word "soul," and I'm too lazy to go out in this 97 degree heat to find out, but the word has certainly "branched out," so to speak. What about music having "soul"? Rhythm, depth from within, and so on. . . ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 14 Jul 1995 18:34:08 +0000 Reply-To: jzitt@humansystems.com Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: Authenticated sender is From: Joseph Zitt Organization: HumanSystems Subject: Re: 20th c poetics Comments: To: "I.LIGHTMAN" On 14 Jul 95 at 12:39, I.LIGHTMAN wrote: > I really agree with Jorge about Marjorie Perloff's Dance of the Intellect - For what it's worth, I first heard about a lot of the writing I'm now reading (such as Clark Coolidge, Ron Silliman, P. Inman) (I was already reading Cage and Mac Low) from stumbling across Marjorie Perloff's "Radical Artifice: Writing Poetry in the Age of Media" about a year ago. It was a good intro, and I've been recommending it to people ever since. I *think* it's still in print, but I'm not sure. ---------1---------1---------1---------1---------1---------1---------- |||/ Joseph Zitt ==== jzitt@humansystems.com ===== Human Systems \||| ||/ Organizer, SILENCE: The John Cage Mailing List \|| |/ Online Representative, Austin International Poetry Festival \| / Joe Zitt's Home Page\ ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 14 Jul 1995 16:57:39 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Shaunanne Tangney Subject: Re: call for help! In-Reply-To: <950713004736_113817429@aol.com> to every one who replyed to my call for help-- THANKS!! i wish i would have sent out my call when i was beginning my lists! i wish i could thank you each individually, but i gotta go _study_! bless you, shaunanne ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 14 Jul 1995 23:02:28 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Nick Lawrence Organization: University at Buffalo Subject: Re: 20th century poetics and child poetry Getting ready to have been frightened? For those who want to follow up on Ira's theses re children and Language poetry, check out the mag _I Am A Child_ (#1, 1994) for its bearing specifically on Bruce Andrews's work (paired with Duncan's). Copies I believe still available c/o editor Bill Howe, 418 Richmond #2, Buffalo, NY 14222.