=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 30 Sep 1995 23:28:03 -1000
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Gabrielle Welford <welford@HAWAII.EDU>
Subject: Resisting Neiman-Marcus (fwd)
This message is in MIME format. The first part should be readable text,
while the remaining parts are likely unreadable without MIME-aware tools.
Send mail to mime@docserver.cac.washington.edu for more info.
--0-590200967-812235533=:21381
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Content-ID: <Pine.OSF.3.91.950927143547.29975W@pogonip.scs.unr.edu>
Teri Tynes (wife of Dan Streible, Radio, TV Film) sent this to me. Enjoy!
This message is sent to you with the hope you will forward it to
EVERYONE you have ever even seen the e-mail address of. In the spirit of
the originator,please feel free to post it anywhere and everywhere. * *
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Okay, everyone....a true story of justice in the good old U.S. of A.
Thought y'all might enjoy this; if nothing else, it shows internet
justice, if it can be called that.
My daughter & I had just finished a salad at Neiman-Marcus Cafe in
Dallas & decided to have a small dessert. Because our family are such
cookie lovers, we decided to try the "Neiman-Marcus Cookie". It was so
excellent that I asked if they would give me the recipe and they said
with a small frown, "I'm afraid not." Well, I said, would you let me buy
the recipe? With a cute smile, she said, "Yes." I asked how much, and
she responded, "Two fifty." I said with approval, just add it to my tab.
Thirty days later, I received my VISA statement from Neiman-Marcus and
it was $285.00. I looked again and I remembered I had only spent $9.95
for two salads and about $20.00 for a scarf. As I glanced at the bottom
of the statement, it said, "Cookie Recipe - $250.00." Boy, was I upset!!
I called Neiman's Accounting Dept. and told them the waitress said it was
"two fifty," and I did not realize she meant $250.00 for a cookie
recipe.
I asked them to take back the recipe and reduce my bill and they said
they were sorry, but because all the recipes were this expensive so not
just everyone could duplicate any of our bakery recipes....the bill
would stand.
I waited, thinking of how I could get even or even try and get any of my
money back.
I just said, "Okay, you folks got my $250.00 and now I'm going to have
$250.00 worth of fun." I told her that I was going to see to it that
every cookie lover will have a $250.00 cookie recipe from Neiman-Marcus
for nothing. She replied, "I wish you wouldn't do this." I said, "I'm
sorry but this is the only way I feel I could get even," and I will.
So, here it is, and please pass it to someone else or run a few
copies....I paid for it; now you can have it for free.
(Recipe may be halved.):
2 cups butter 4 cups flour
2 tsp. soda 2 cups sugar
5 cups blended oatmeal** 24 oz. chocolate chips
2 cups brown sugar 1 tsp. salt
1 8 oz. Hershey Bar (grated) 4 eggs
2 tsp. baking powder 3 cups chopped nuts (your choice)
2 tsp. vanilla
** measure oatmeal and blend in a blender to a fine powder.
Cream the butter and both sugars. Add eggs and vanilla;
mix together with flour, oatmeal, salt, baking powder,
and soda. Add chocolate chips, Hershey Bar and nuts. Roll into
balls and place two inches apart on a cookie sheet. Bake
for 10 minutes at 375 degrees. Makes 112 cookies.
Have fun!!! This is not a joke --- this is a true story..
************************************************************
That's it. Please, pass it along to everyone you know, single
people, mailing lists, etc.....
Ride free, citizen!
--0-590200967-812235533=:21381--
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 30 Sep 1995 23:58:14 -1000
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Gabrielle Welford <welford@HAWAII.EDU>
Subject: Re: spike it with saussure - begins the intramix...
In-Reply-To: <9509292007.AA00605@infolink.infolink.morris.mn.us>
> > In the books were dreams and in the dreams were books
> > of Palookaville & the dead heroes of Guadalajara
> > empowering scores of liberated mozos intent of Lacanian
> > libretti, salted with much, much more than roughage added to taste
> > or tremolo, finding the shores awash with alphabet, proclaiming nothing
> > nutting nothing a-merrily overbodies abandon
> > where wrote was written, stepping one four nine
> > passacaglia without the prefab little knobbed things on them
> > completely set on the sea as so much crabbiness
> > diverts attention from wars in three voices and the steady rain of hemlock
> > falling on the Concerns box & a sob distant as adventure capital
> >behind the exterior of the city was an interior composed
> of scar tissue recording the grain of farm house timbers
> a rubble of history in the grass where a decapitated statue
> unavoidably becomes an image of a nation without a true face
> ugh gotta change that line
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 1 Oct 1995 06:03:48 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Carlos Gallego <kritik@LELAND.STANFORD.EDU>
Subject: grad students beware (fwd)
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 10 Oct 1994 14:45:06 -0700 (MST)
From: Maricela I Valenzuela <maricela@GAS.UUG.Arizona.EDU>
To: kritik@leland.stanford.edu
Cc: maricela@GAS.UUG.Arizona.EDU
Subject: grad students beware (fwd)
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sat, 08 Oct 1994 00:01:26 -0700 (MST)
From: KGW@CCIT.ARIZONA.EDU
To: claire and george <georgej426@aol.com>, kavanagh@law.arizona.edu,
wexler@law.arizona.edu, lfs@gas.uug.arizona.edu,
maricela@gas.uug.arizona.edu, allison hughes <ahughes@CCIT.ARIZONA.EDU>,
peru and shih-chen <pchang@CCIT.ARIZONA.EDU>,
joann k <jwk@nauvax.ucc.nau.edu>, caz@CCIT.ARIZONA.EDU,
reed riner <rdr@dana.ucc.nau.edu>
Subject: grad students beware (fwd)
thought you might enjoy this:
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 07 Oct 1994 16:22:10 -0700 (MST)
From: Nancy H Vuckovic <vuckovic@gas.uug.arizona.edu>
To: womenfolk <curry@gas.uug.arizona.edu>, ec@gas.uug.arizona.edu,
har@gas.uug.arizona.edu, jfm@gas.uug.arizona.edu, kgw@CCIT.ARIZONA.EDU,
mimin@gas.uug.arizona.edu, mmacphee@anthro.arizona.edu
Subject: grad students beware (fwd)
At last! Medical verification for avoiding too much cognitive effort!
Ain't science grand! Better slow down now or face the consequences.
Don't say I didn't warn you!!
N.
[excerpt from a message posted to cybermind by Alan Sondheim]
*****From the WEEKLY WORLD NEWS, May 24, 1994**********
MOSCOW --
Doctors are blaming a rare electrical imbalance in the brain for the
bizarre death of a chess player whose head literally exploded in the
middle of a championship game!
No one else was hurt in the fatal explosion but four players and three
officials at the Moscow Candidate Masters' Chess Championships were
sprayed with blood and brain matter when Nikolai Titov's head suddenly
blew apart. Experts say he suffered from a condition called
Hyper-Cerebral Electrosis or HCE.
"He was deep in concentration with his eyes focused on the board,"
says Titov's opponent, Vladimir Dobrynin. "All of a sudden his hands
flew to his temples and he screamed in pain. Everyone looked up from
their games, startled by the noise. Then, as if someone had put a
bomb in his cranium, his head popped like a firecracker."
Incredibly, Titiov's is not the first case in which a person's head
has spontaneously exploded. Five people are known to have died of HCE
in the last 25 years. The most recent death occurred just three years
ago in 1991, when European psychic Barbara Nicole's skull burst. Miss
Nicole's story was reported by newspapers worldwide, including WWN.
"HCE is an extremely rare physical imbalance," said Dr. Anatoly
Martinenko, famed neurologist and expert on the human brain who did
the autopsy on the brilliant chess expert. "It is a condition in
which the circuits of the brain become overloaded by the body's own
electricity. The explosions happen during periods of intense mental
activity when lots of current is surging through the brain. Victims
are highly intelligent people with great powers of concentration. Both
Miss Nicole and Mr. Titov were intense people who tended to keep those
cerebral circuits overloaded. In a way it could be said they were
literally too smart for their own good."
Although Dr. Martinenko says there are probably many undiagnosed
cases, he hastens to add that very few people will die from HCE. "Most
people who have it will never know. At this point, medical science
still doesn't know much about HCE. And since fatalities are so rare
it will probably be years before research money becomes available."
In the meantime, the doctor urges people to take it easy and not think
too hard for long periods of time. "Take frequent relaxation breaks
when you're doing things that take lots of mental focus," he
recommends.
(As a public service, WWN added a sidebar titled HOW TO TELL IF YOUR
HEAD'S ABOUT TO BLOW UP:)
Although HCE is very rare, it can kill. Dr. Martinenko says knowing
you have the condition can greatly improve your odds of surviving it.
A "yes" answer to any three of the following seven questions could
mean that you have HCE:
1. Does your head sometimes ache when you think too hard? (Head pain
can indicate overloaded brain circuits.)
2. Do you ever hear a faint ringing or humming sound in your ears?
(It could be the sound of electricity in the skull cavity.)
3. Do you sometimes find yourself unable to get a thought out of your
head? (This is a possible sign of too much electrical activity in the
cerebral cortex.)
4. Do you spend more than five hours a day reading, balancing your
checkbook, or other thoughtful activity? (A common symptom of HCE is a
tendency to over-use the brain.)
5. When you get angry or frustrated do you feel pressure in your
temples? (Friends of people who died of HCE say the victims often
complained of head pressure in times of strong emotion.)
6. Do you ever overeat on ice cream, doughnuts and other sweets? (A
craving for sugar is typical of people with too much electrical
pressure in the cranium.)
7. Do you tend to analyze yourself too much? (HCE sufferers are
often introspective, "over-thinking" their lives.)
Well all, I hope this helps. I perceive FC as an intelligent bunch,
and as such, I want to urge all of you to keep an eye out for the
symptoms listed above. They're there for your sake.
carter
--
Apprentis, using television for prevention (until blipverts are invented)
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 1 Oct 1995 09:16:19 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Joe Amato <amato@CHARLIE.ACC.IIT.EDU>
Subject: Re: Resisting Neiman-Marcus (fwd)
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SV4.3.91.950930232747.6685K-100000@uhunix4.its.Hawaii.Edu>
well it looks like i can post this list again, finally... and just in time
to let y'all know, if you don't already, that that cookie recipe thing is
simply the electronic version of an old urban myth... saw it kicking around
last about four years back...
joe (amato)
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 1 Oct 1995 10:08:06 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Thomas Bell <tbjn@WELL.COM>
Subject: Re: Resisting Neiman-Marcus (fwd)
Found poetry?
"Okay, you folks got my $250.00 and now
I'm going to have
$250.00
worth fun.
" I told her that I was going to see to it that every
cookie lover will have a $250.00 cookie recipe
from Neiman-Marcus
for nothing.
She replied,
"I wish you wouldn't do this." I said,
"I'm sorry but this is the only way
I feel I could get even," and I will.
So, here it is, and please pass it to someone else or run a few
copies....I paid for it; now you can have it for free.
(Recipe may be halved.):
2 cups butter 4 cups flour
2 tsp. soda 2 cups sugar
5 cups blended oatmeal** 24 oz. chocolate chips
2 cups brown sugar 1 tsp. salt
1 8 oz. Hershey Bar (grated) 4 eggs
2 tsp. baking powder 3 cups chopped nuts (your choice)
2 tsp. vanilla
** measure oatmeal and blend in a blender to a fine powder.
Cream the butter and both sugars. Add eggs and vanilla;
mix together with flour, oatmeal, salt, baking powder,
and soda. Add chocolate chips, Hershey Bar and nuts. Roll into
balls and place two inches apart on a cookie sheet. Bake
for 10 minutes at 375 degrees. Makes 112 cookies.
Have fun!!! This is not a joke --- this is a true story..
************************************************************
That's it. Please, pass it along to everyone you know, single
people, mailing lists, etc.....
Ride free, citizen!
acknowledgements to Terri tyne
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 1 Oct 1995 09:18:23 -1000
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Gabrielle Welford <welford@HAWAII.EDU>
Subject: Re: Resisting Neiman-Marcus (fwd)
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SGI.3.91.951001091423.15048C-100000@charlie.acc.iit.edu>
On Sun, 1 Oct 1995, Joe Amato wrote:
> well it looks like i can post this list again, finally... and just in time
> to let y'all know, if you don't already, that that cookie recipe thing is
> simply the electronic version of an old urban myth... saw it kicking around
> last about four years back...
>
> joe (amato)
>
Uh oh. Sorry guys. I got suckered. Gab.
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 1 Oct 1995 14:28:32 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Joe Amato <amato@CHARLIE.ACC.IIT.EDU>
Subject: Re: Resisting Neiman-Marcus (fwd)
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SV4.3.91.951001091810.28884B-100000@uhunix4.its.Hawaii.Edu>
gab, you ain't the only one... i can recall announcing this to one of my
classes once---like, yknow, my naivete was positively touching...
joe
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 1 Oct 1995 17:18:49 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Gwyn McVay <gmcvay1@OSF1.GMU.EDU>
Subject: Re: Resisting Neiman-Marcus (fwd)
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SV4.3.91.950930232747.6685K-100000@uhunix4.its.Hawaii.Edu>
Oh dear God of Poetics, not the "Neiman-Marcus Cookie" urban legend
again. It's one of the oldest such legends on record, since it started as
the "Waldorf-Astoria Velvet Cake" legend around the turn of the century.
Hmm, maybe this is material--
Gwyn
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 2 Oct 1995 10:28:07 GMT+1200
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Tony Green <t.green@AUCKLAND.AC.NZ>
Organization: The University of Auckland
Subject: Re: the Wild Blue Yonder
The question is, Steve Carll, what is thing called "past"?
Tony Green,
e-mail: t.green@auckland.ac.nz
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 1 Oct 1995 12:47:19 -1000
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Gabrielle Welford <welford@HAWAII.EDU>
Subject: Forwarded mail....
I guess this is an answer to whether they're any good! :-) Gab.
------------------------------------------------------------
: Like you, I have seen this story for about a decade. I wonder if there
: may have been a thread of truth to it. If I were NM, and I had such a
: thing happen to me, I would quickly remove any mention of a "NM cookie"
: from my stores. That's easy to do. Actually, NM has been famous for
: cookies for ages. At presant they sell a line of cookies made in Japan,
: of all places, that are beautifully packaged and actually do taste very
: good. They do not taste as good as their price, however.
I think this is a well-recorded urban legend. As someone pointed out,
before the current re-incarnation of the story in its Neiman-Marcus form,
the exact same recipe (with a similar story) was going around claiming
they were Mrs. Fields Cookies. But of course, as most urban legends, it's
origins are even older. A similar story, concerning a red Velvet cake
from the Astoria hotel used to be popular in the 20's. Here is one
version of the account:
Our friend, Dean Blair, got on a bus in San Jose one morning and shortly
after, a lady got on the bus and started passing out these 3 x 5 cards
with the recipe for "Red Velver Cake." She said she had recently been in
New York and had dinner at the Waldorf Astoria and had this cake. After
she returned to San Jose, she worte to the hotel asking for the name of
the chef who had origniated the cake, and if she could have the recipe.
Subsequently she received the recipe in the mail along with a bill for
something like $350 from the chef. She took the matter to her attorney,
and he advised her that she would have to pay it because she had not
inquired beforehand if there would be a charge for teh service, and if
so, how much it would be. Consequently, she apparently thought this would
be a good way to get even with the chef. (recipe omitted). (Brunvard, Jan
H. 1981, The Vanishing Hitchhiker: American Urban Legends and Their
Meanings, New York: WW Nortin & Co. p. 154).
Of course, this is only one version. Sometimes the recipe is for "The
Million Dollar Fudge". There are variations about the lady's hometown,
the amount she paid, the lawyer's reasons por having to pay the bill, and
how she ordered the recipe (generally it seems to be in the restaurant
itself). (Id. p. 155)
Anyone can see the similarities in the stories. I recommend the
abovementioned book to anyone who is interested in urban legends. BTW, I
have made the "Mrs. Fields/neiman Marcus cookies" and they are OK, though
nothing out of the ordinary.
Take care,
Margarita
--
Margarita Lacabe and/or Mike Katz-Lacabe --- mlacabe@best.com
_______________________________________________________
"It's not the repression by the bad people that hurts-
it's the silence of the good" MLK
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 1 Oct 1995 23:27:56 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Rod Smith <AERIALEDGE@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: newpoets
Ode to my mom's cookie-tin repro of Pollock
for Jeff Hansen
&&9)$g4555 =444 {e32+} =
the rimshot & throp knot to
Maximus (bad painter, actually) ::::::
Jerry' s dead iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii
555%%%***>>>>>>>>>>>>>P:L_EF+ED
& rolls like needed lances on the busted
lunch of mine organic testament (more extra gorp
;-) <------------ weakends in DC,
all that +
THE GUZ
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 1 Oct 1995 21:20:27 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: George Bowering <bowering@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: grad students beware (fwd)
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SUN.3.91.951001060255.15715A-100000@elaine41.Stanford.EDU>
from "Carlos Gallego" at Oct 1, 95 06:03:48 am
Please! That exploding head one has been zooming arouind the web for
a year in various versions.
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 1 Oct 1995 21:43:16 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: George Bowering <bowering@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: Sitwell
In-Reply-To: <v01520d00ac934d771df9@[140.174.229.166]> from "Kevin Killian" at
Sep 30, 95 12:48:12 pm
Yeah, Kevin, but did Edith meet Lew Welch?
Have you read Bryher's account of Hd's meeting Edith Sitwell?
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 1 Oct 1995 21:47:13 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: George Bowering <bowering@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: Sitwell
In-Reply-To: <m0sz3h4-0000VoC@deep.rsoft.bc.ca> from "Lisa Robertson" at Sep
30, 95 08:19:14 am
Dear Lisa etc
Have you read Sitwell's biog of Alexander Pope? One of the plainest,
smartest and shortest biogs I have rtead. I recommend it for bedside
or other reading. It's pretty good on the bus, wher I read it, too.
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 1 Oct 1995 22:09:07 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: George Bowering <bowering@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: ssplits and weakenings
In-Reply-To: <m0syiLh-0000VhC@deep.rsoft.bc.ca> from "Lisa Robertson" at Sep
29, 95 09:31:42 am
Oops, Lisa, I just saw yr post mentioning Sitwell's biog of Pope, and
I probably merntioned this book years ago, and I cant remember
anything except my pin number.
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 1 Oct 1995 22:29:20 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Steve Carll <sjcarll@SLIP.NET>
Subject: Re: the Wild Blue Yonder
Tony Green asks (and it's a doozy):
>The question is, Steve Carll, what is thing called "past"?
Depends on the context in which you want to talk about it. My use of the
word "thing" was provisional; I'm somewhat wary of attempting to reify time
and all its little buddies. Larry Price, whose use of the term "past" I was
responding to, seemed to mean by it (and I'm sure I'll be corrected if I'm
wrong on this) some repository of cultural artifacts whose transformation
(through cultural activity) has made them unrecognizable. But maybe Larry
would be of more help on this.
Steve
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 2 Oct 1995 11:47:19 +0100
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "W. Northcutt" <William.Northcutt@UNI-BAYREUTH.DE>
Subject: Re: grad students beware (fwd)
HCE?????
Bet Joyce would have gotten a kick out of that.
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 2 Oct 1995 13:27:31 GMT0BST
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Peter Larkin <LYAAZ@LIBRIS.LIB.WARWICK.AC.UK>
Organization: UNIVERSITY OF WARWICK LIBRARY
Subject: Re: Wild Blue Yonder
Steve Carll is quite right, a total forgetting would be of the how as
well as the what; it would no longer be an act, as the forgetting
would itself be forgotten. In cultural terms, the process can be
nothing like as absolute, but where forgetting is "deliberate" it is
not in itself forgotten, but remembered either as a strategy
"clearing the decks", or can set off some sort of work of mourning.
The latter seems the David Jones area, though he also liked to think
of a healthy culture as baggily retentive and found it difficult to
let anything go .Perhaps some sort of ecological model might serve,
where cultures assimilate organically over long periods, but then
reach a "post-climax" stage defined by dissemination, absolute
innovation and depletion.But through all that are the minimal
attachments required to keep any sort of societal or cultural
possibility in play at all,a play not in itself within the terms of a
general dissemination.
I have been thinking about these things in a recent piece of
writing called "Let Attachment Assoil Us", and a couple of paras from
the Prefatory Note I would quite like to float here, to see if they
seem to mean anything:
Whatever has the instinct of attachment operates as a careful
fragment in our culture. The fragment's present form seems penetrated
(beyond break-point) by the liability of not being a discard, but
only gradually does it continue to own the vocation of an unsafe
unity.
The gift is ill-received as much as lost, and the former condition
must go on figuring within a poetics of retention that would revise
our habits of acceptance. Only out of this primal grasping can a
poetic offering, along a road of self-forgiveness rather than
negativity, be made. Without an acknowledgement of the charged nature
of burden, of the fact we are all owners of the fantasy of numinous
attachment, alterity itself would be a figment. The unpossessed has
transformed itself into the unreleasable, but until a gesture is made
in time with this burden, the resistance of the other cannot even
appear. And if it does appear it will not appear alone, the power of
resistance will no longer be confused with autonomy. The justified
weaker term will have won a freedom, beyond strategic manipulations
normalising opposition, to attach itself.
Peter Larkin Philosophy & Literature Librarian
University of Warwick Library,Coventry CV4 7AL UK
Tel:01203 524475 Fax: 01203 524211
Email: Lyaaz@Libris.Lib.Warwick.ac.uk
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 2 Oct 1995 09:52:04 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Willa Jarnagin <jarnagin@HULAW1.HARVARD.EDU>
Subject: Re: Resisting Neiman-Marcus (fwd)
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SV4.3.91.950930232747.6685K-100000@uhunix4.its.Hawaii.Edu>
I saw the Neiman-Marcus cookie story a couple years ago, then later read
that it was one of those "urban myths". Who knows? I used to have a
friend who worked as a sales person at NM and she said everyone who
worked there called the place Needless Mark-ups. Also new employees were
shown a training film in which a customer dropped $20,000 dollars in one
trip.
I hope those cookies are good.
Willa
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 2 Oct 1995 10:14:27 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Mark Wallace <mdw@GWIS2.CIRC.GWU.EDU>
Subject: and even more bland abstract lyrics
Let me urge all the people who took the time to respond to my query to
send their writing on the subject of current/emerging/whatever avant garde
writing and writers of the present moment to Jeff Hansen at Poetic Briefs:
Poetic Briefs
2510 Highway 100 South #333
St. Louis Park, MN 55416
Having gotten the public service message out of the way, I have a few
further comments (is it really my turn again?) on this subject.
I appreciate Gale Nelson's caution that Ron may be referring to a larger
swath of avant garde writing than I suggested earlier. But I don't think,
in fact, that he is, or at least to any huge extent. He has commented
before about the Writing From the New Coast anthology, and various other
projects having to do with avant garde writers who have only begun to
publish books in the 1990s (one possible way of defining "emerging,"
however tentatively).Although I think that Ron's critique is to a
certain extent incorrect, I think he means it seriously and his position
is not completely without justification--which is why, I think, it does
need refutation.
Look at it this way--Ron Silliman is an excellent poet, a first
rate critic, and one of the most thoroughly open commentators we have on
this poetics list--he's got the guts to constantly say exactly what he's
thinking. While I don't always agree (by any means) with the things he
says, I think he's got an uncanny knack for putting his finger exactly
where key problems are. And I think that emerging "post-language" avant
garde writers have, at the very least, a real identity problem. I mean,
if a committed avant gardist like Ron Silliman can't see the value in
what emerging writers are doing, who's going to? At least he READ Writing
From the New Coast.
For Jordan Davis and Al Nielson and others who questioned my
"definitions," I certainly agree that such definitions are always
problematic, but I also think that saying so may be to a certain extent
beside the point. Wittgenstein once said, when talking of language games,
"And for those who find my definition of language games too inexact, I
reply, isn't an inexact definition often what we need?" That is, the
inexactness of absolute definitions for terms is precisely the situation
we're in all the time--the inexactness of definition is the very ground
on which communication takes place. So, yes, terms like "avant garde,"
"emerging," "younger," "generation," and "Ron Silliman" for that matter
are problematic and inexact, but also highly USEFUL. Besides, Jordan, I'm
not "defending younger writers." It's my perception, I think a correct
one, that Ron has been guilty of too great a generalization regarding
emerging avant garde writers. I was not calling for some generalized
"defense," but for PARTICULAR RESPONSES.
While I agree with Jeff Hansen's comments that too much belief in the
social value of the "new" brings with it a whole host of problems, I
can't quite go as far as he does in what I think he's suggesting
also--that innovation is no longer possible in poetry. I don't think
that's true at all, although it may be true that innovation doesn't
necessarily happen in the places people often look for it--in the most
outrageous and "different" NEW THING. I find Jeff's work, for instance,
incredibly innovative--look at what he's doing in "Landscrapes" in the
most recent AVEC, or his chapbook "The Monologues of Joe Blow Only Artsy"
from Texture Press. So I think that Jeff is overstating his case against
innovation just a little bit, and in a way that distorts the insightful
innovations of his own work.
Rod Smith--yes, nonresponse does not equal implicit agreement,
but does it count as effective counterargument in this case? The question
comes down to, I suppose, whether one considers Ron's critique worth
responding to. I think it is, because I think he's a serious critic and a
great writer. I think that you probably think so too--correct me if I'm
wrong--so I think your support of nonresponse seems a little
disingenuous. Besides, you responded! As did many others who usefully
complicated my initial query--Mark McMorris' highly thoughtful piece
really embroils us in some necessary complexities.
So let me say, again, that I think there is a REAL identity
crisis haunting emerging avant garde writers, and one that's worth
talking about publicly. This problem is behind the idea of the Poetic
Briefs forum that Jeff will be doing in the next issue of Poetic Briefs,
both as response to my essay in #19, and on any other topic related to
questions facing the avant garde at this moment.
I have a lot more to say about all this (fortunately or unfortunately),
but I will, in self-conscious PR fashion, for now just point out that that's why
I wrote the essay in Poetic Briefs that I'm trying to get people to read and
respond to.
mark wallace
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Date: Mon, 2 Oct 1995 10:44:07 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Mark Wallace <mdw@GWIS2.CIRC.GWU.EDU>
Subject: Sorry
Sorry that I sent a private note of mine accidentally to Poetics list.
mark wallace
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 2 Oct 1995 13:19:17 EDT
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Comments: Converted from PROFS to RFC822 format by PUMP V2.2X
From: Alan Golding <ACGOLD01@ULKYVM.LOUISVILLE.EDU>
Subject: Po-gossip
Associate Professor of English, U. of Louisville
Phone: (502)-852-5918; e-mail: acgold01@ulkyvm.louisville.edu
Jordan: If you're going to check out Tom Clark's The Great Naropa Poetry Wars,
you'll also want to look at the project on that now-mythological
Merwin-Trungpa confrontation produced by Ed Sanders' 1977 Investigative Poetry
class at Naropa. It's called The Party: A Chronological Perspective on a
Confrontation at a Buddhist Seminary (Poetry, Crime and Culture Press:
Woodstock, NY, 1977). This does, I think, have implications for poetics beyond
the talk-show level, esp. if read along with Sanders' 1976 chapbook
Investigative Poetry (City Lights).
Alan
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 2 Oct 1995 13:32:18 -0400
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From: "David W. Clippinger" <dwclippi@MAILBOX.SYR.EDU>
Subject: Re: Origin, Bronk, and Olson
In-Reply-To: <199510010405.AAA03366@mailbox.syr.edu>
I am in need of finding out what poems appear in Origin #2 and
#3--especially which Bronk and Olson poems. Unfortunately, the special
collection at Syracuse University begins with the second series of the
journal, and the first three issues are unavailable.
I would appreciate whatever help anyone may be able to provide,
especially since that information is invaluable to my work at this moment.
Thank you,
David Clippinger
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 2 Oct 1995 12:46:47 -0500
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Eryque Gleason <gleaeri@CHARLIE.ACC.IIT.EDU>
Subject: Distribution bloos
Now that I can finally post to listservers again, I'm only a couple of
weeks late posting this announcement.
_bloo3_, the arts and literary journal of the Illinois Institute of
Technology is now available by writing to
bloo
c/o Humanities Dept., LS-106
Illinois Institute of Technology
3101 S. Dearborn
Chicago, IL 60616
or you can contact me, which will probably be faster.
_bloo3_ was edited by Andrew Levy, and contains work from student
contributers (incl. yours truly), as well as work by Pat Reed, Bob
Harrison, William Fuller, Dodie Bellamy, Robert Kocik, and Kevin Killian.
_____________________________________!________________________________________
Eryque "Just call me Eric" Gleason If I weren't a monkey, there'd
71 E. 32nd St. Box 949 be problems.
Chicago, IL 60616
(312) 808-6858
gleaeri@charlie.acc.iit.edu
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 2 Oct 1995 14:13:36 CST
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jeff Hansen <Jeff_Hansen@BLAKE.PVT.K12.MN.US>
Organization: The Blake School
Subject: wild blue yonder
Larry Price on 9-28 wondered how I could apply the term "wild blue yonder" to
a piece by Ron Silliman such as "Ketjak." I wasn't. In my posting of 9-27, I
was concerned less with the work of Silliman--which I admire for the most
part--than with the various ways that he has discussed the poetry of the
"emerging generation," both in the posting noted by Mark Wallace and in other
places. Silliman has made several comments that seem to indicate he
values new poetic techniques in younger poets, rather than their exploring the
possiblities within, between and around techniques already in existence. I
take issue with his seeming preference for the radically new over other types
of exploration. Both seem valuable to me, although I am skeptical about the
possibility of creating radically new forms right now--which is why I termed
preference for The New as "the wild blue yonder."
Best,
Jeff
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 2 Oct 1995 14:38:23 -0500
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From: Judy Roitman <roitman@OBERON.MATH.UKANS.EDU>
Subject: Re: Wild Blue Yonder
The discussion of memory & time amazes me, floating free as it does of the
sheer physicality at the root of these constructs (brain and all this
connotes).
For example, walking -- unbelievable, isn't it? (Okay, modulo massive
damage most of us "function" most of the "time".)
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 2 Oct 1995 17:00:00 -0400
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From: Jim Pangborn <V072GDXG@UBVMS.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Organization: University at Buffalo
Subject: Re: Wild Blue Yonder
Judy Roitman is right: we would need some working examples to root
or embody these abstractions. As it is, one wants more sense of
what ways fragments might be, besides careful; what ways unities might
be, besides unsafe; whether everything is either fragment, discard, or
unity; what kinds of threat demand this care and safety; etc., and we're
only through the first paragraph.
Naturally, ripped from a larger context, abstractions
will seem to loom and float disconcertingly in an unfamiliar universe.
(Ooo: did I say Naturally? as in: conforming to a principle of poetic
ecology? How cool . . . didn't know I knew that . . .
--Jim
p.s., Jeff H. started this thread with an incisive comment on the
overvaluation of formal innovative originality on this list.
G'awn, Jeff. Tell it.
Peter Larkin <LYAAZ@LIBRIS.LIB.WARWICK.AC.UK> writes:
> Whatever has the instinct of attachment operates as a careful
>fragment in our culture. The fragment's present form seems penetrated
>(beyond break-point) by the liability of not being a discard, but
>only gradually does it continue to own the vocation of an unsafe
>unity.
> The gift is ill-received as much as lost, and the former condition
>must go on figuring within a poetics of retention that would revise
>our habits of acceptance. Only out of this primal grasping can a
>poetic offering, along a road of self-forgiveness rather than
>negativity, be made. Without an acknowledgement of the charged nature
>of burden, of the fact we are all owners of the fantasy of numinous
>attachment, alterity itself would be a figment. The unpossessed has
>transformed itself into the unreleasable, but until a gesture is made
>in time with this burden, the resistance of the other cannot even
>appear. And if it does appear it will not appear alone, the power of
>resistance will no longer be confused with autonomy. The justified
>weaker term will have won a freedom, beyond strategic manipulations
>normalising opposition, to attach itself.
>
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 2 Oct 1995 18:02:01 -0400
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From: Jordan Davis <jdavis@PANIX.COM>
Subject: Poetry W
In-Reply-To: <950929175340_32741608@mail02.mail.aol.com>
On Fri, 29 Sep 1995, Charles Smith wrote:
>
> Even when serious issues of poetics are involved,
> going over all this 'dirt' seldom rises above the level of gossip &
> personalities. Guess I have doubts about the value of such a study.
>
I guess. But I was thinking more specifically of rifts, rivalries,
exclusions, oppositions, deletions and the school of writers that
(pre)dominate on this list. I had heard I could hear of stories among the
emerged, of the poetic and the personal being equated (and so being used
against people), that I could not (for whatever reason) hear told about
the still emerging. That is, the younger writers have not had rancor as
associated with them as their forebears did. That, anyway, was the subtext
I had in mind. What does Pound say, praise them and be done with them?
Jordan Davis
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 2 Oct 1995 18:55:41 -0500
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From: "B. Cassidy" <bcassidy@BLUE.WEEG.UIOWA.EDU>
Subject: The Art and Poetry Worlds
In-Reply-To: <POETICS%95100213141773@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
This past weekend I was reading in The New York times about the protest
by "realist painters" at the Whitney Museum (their exclusion at the
expense of more "experimental" and "avant-guard" artists), and realized
something rather curious, which in the settling wake of our "Corn"-y
debates seems interesting and relevant. (Apologies in advance for
opening this back up.)
In short, the artists at the Whitney were protesting the museums heavy
preference for "non-traditional," "experimental," and
"non-representational" works. What struck me while reading this is that
the situation they are protesting seems to be the exact opposite of what
we find in the poetry world. Whereas in the "Art World", what was
"avant-guard" has become rather accepted by the "establishment" (however
we choose to take that word) or at least respected, in the poetry worlds
this has yet to happen to the same degree.
This seems especially odd when one considers that much of the work in the
two fields has been at many times roughly parallel in terms of techniques
and concerns/issues addressed. With the exception of an Ashbery (I
think, because the influence of French poetries and the ability to read
him in such a light) or a Ginsberg (because of the social issues that
surrounded him), who from the "avant-guard tradition" has really been
embraced by the "establishment"? Why is it that Olson, Duncan, Stein,
etc. seems to be mere footnotes in the history of the "establishment"'s
poetry, yet Johns, de Kooning, Pollock, Rauschenberg, etc. have a
decidedly more prominent position? (Okay, very rough equivalents here,
but you get what I mean :) ) Or, to put it another way, why is it
that Bruce Nauman's recent retrospective got so much press in the art
journals, and yet Michael Palmer and Lyn Hejinian (as Prof. Perloff
recently pointed out) can barely even be considered for a job at a major
American university? Or, yet one more way, why can Brice Marden have an
article about him appear in the current Harper's Bazaar, and yet Mark
Strand (as I recently heard him say at a Q&A session) claim, with no
apparent shame or regret, that he had never read Palmer's _Notes for
Echo Lake_? (Again, my comparisons are far from perfect, but hopefully
you see what I'm saying here.)
Is this discrepancy simply because of the differences in
structure/hierarchy/economics between the two "worlds"? Or, perhaps more
interestingly, might it have something to do with the nature of the two
mediums? Another option? Just thought I'd throw this out there since I
found it an interesting comparison....
Best,
Brian Cassidy
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 2 Oct 1995 20:09:24 -0400
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jordan Davis <jdavis@PANIX.COM>
Subject: awk/Deguy-Koch reading cancelled
Sorry about the gerrammar on that last post. Rancor mixes me up.
- The Deguy/Koch reading at NYU on Thursday has been called off. Deguy
is in Paris, recovering from (I think) a bad stomach bug.
Jordan Davis
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 2 Oct 1995 18:39:32 -0700
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: George Bowering <bowering@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: Origin, Bronk, and Olson
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SUN.3.91.951002132858.3715A-100000@rodan.syr.edu> from
"David W. Clippinger" at Oct 2, 95 01:32:18 pm
Fun getting my copies of _Origin_ down again.
#II has Olson's "The Escaped Cock," his notes on Lawrence, and the
poems, "Issue, Mood" and "A Po-sy, a Po-sy."
#III has Olsons "A Round & a Canon", and these by Bronk:
"The various Sizes of the World"
"The Rain of Small Occurences"
"The Tree in the Middle of the Field"
"My Father Photographed with Friends"
"The Winter Shrub"
"The Mind's Landscape on an early Winter Day"
"Certain Beasts--Like Cats"
"The Self Encountered in a Dream"
"The Acts of the Apostles"
"The Summer Airs"
"Supper Time"
---phew!
GB
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 2 Oct 1995 20:46:54 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Eryque Gleason <gleaeri@CHARLIE.ACC.IIT.EDU>
Subject: Distribution bloos (take 2)
Sorry for the re-post, but I just realized that I left out a couple of
details from the original post! Namely, each copy is 96 pages
perfectbound, and we're asking $6 per copy.
_bloo3_, the arts and literary journal of the Illinois Institute of
Technology is now available by writing to
bloo
c/o Humanities Dept., LS-106
Illinois Institute of Technology
3101 S. Dearborn
Chicago, IL 60616
or you can contact me, which will probably be faster.
_bloo3_ was edited by Andrew Levy, and contains work from student
contributers (incl. yours truly), as well as work by Pat Reed, Bob
Harrison, William Fuller, Dodie Bellamy, Robert Kocik, and Kevin Killian.
Copies are 96 pages, perfectbound, $6. (please make checks out to IIT Arts
& Literary Society)
_____________________________________!________________________________________
Eryque "Just call me Eric" Gleason If I weren't a monkey, there'd
71 E. 32nd St. Box 949 be problems.
Chicago, IL 60616
(312) 808-6858
gleaeri@charlie.acc.iit.edu
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 2 Oct 1995 18:43:25 -0700
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From: George Bowering <bowering@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: Po-gossip
In-Reply-To: <POETICS%95100213141773@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU> from "Alan Golding"
at Oct 2, 95 01:19:17 pm
In addition to the Clark and Sanders versions of the Merwin-Trungpa
occasion, there was a Ginsberg version published somewhere, I forget
where, in wch there is a little more sympathy for the Trungpa side.
And in Buffalo I heard bpNichol and Victor Coleman sing from the
operetta they wrote on the event. One of the songs was called "I'm
not a Witness, I wasnt there."
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 2 Oct 1995 19:28:35 -0700
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From: Ron Silliman <rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM>
Subject: Re: wild blue yonder
I really appreciate Jeff Hansen's argument for exploration between
formal (in the strictest sense) boundaries rather than, say, beyond
them, even if I don't know (understand?) whether or not that sentiment
might be shared by others. It raises a lot of interesting questions for
reading and interpretation and seems to me a terrific road into a lot
of work. I had not meant my comments to be strictly taken as referring
to an "emerging" generation (one that stretches out from people who are
my own age, more or less, a la Selby and Basinski, to people in their
early 20s), but I often hope to see my posts here as a prod to comment,
and here Jeff takes that phrase in very useful direction.
Here is a for instance: Peter Gizzi is a superb and subtle
craftsperson, so much so that his use of Spicer and the serial poem
turn into a demonstration of the Esthetic as such, a result that
strikes me as antithetical to Spicer's almost Celine-esque
anti-aesthetic tendencies. Gizzi's Spicer seems closer to Bonnefoy than
Celine or even Prevert. Clearly Gizzi is extending the mode of the
serial poem in a direction unanticipated by Spicer, creating in some
sense a different Spicer than the one I have read (where in fact I
often find a horror of the aesthetic). Is this the same or different
from the way in which (to pick a pseudoparallel) John Taggart and
Ronald Johnson might be said to have read a different Zukofsky than the
one read by Bernstein and Andrews?
I agree with Hansen that the idea of extending "innovation" to
predictable logical conclusions ("typing" as someone once said of
Kerouac's form) is of little interest, especially 80 years after zaum
first demonstrated a range of possibility there. Similarly, all sound
poetry "says the same thing" and it says it over and over.
Where formal innovation typically occurs (I'm making a wildly broad
generalization here) is when the society underlying a given mode of
verse production changes so that new writers (younger or
otherwise--Olson was a late bloomer and WCW wrote Spring & All in his
late 30s) bring in newly recognized territories and modes of the social
into their work as form. I don't want to reduce this to some crude
variation of base/superstructure economic determinism, but there is a
constant and dynamic tension. Next to Snoop Doggy Dog, exactly how
white does the French-inflected lyric poem sound? Next to Chuck D?
Hansen's argument echoes (consciously?) part of Robert Duncan's poetics
of derivation and does so in ways that are not reductive and
simplistic. I'd love to hear people open that line of thinking up
further.
Ron Silliman
rsillima@ix.netcom.com
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 2 Oct 1995 21:59:55 -0700
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From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" <anielsen@ISC.SJSU.EDU>
Subject: Re: oops snoops
In-Reply-To: <199510030359.UAA22098@sparta.SJSU.EDU>
Ron -- unusual spelling there for mr. SDD, who, when last seen up the
street at Village Recording Studio, was sporting Howard University sweats
-- dawg gone it -- easier to get Chuck D's name right, I suppose -- But
Chuck's actually been to a college, unlike friend Snoop, who buys his
college garb through the mail -- I'm of the opinion that "gangsta"
rap is about the whitest lyric form currently available -- and how did
the French lyric get white?? Large doses of Poe, perhaps? What _is_ a
white sounding lyric, and, to paraphrase Genet, what color is it?
Mark-- wasn't so much asking for definitions as wondering in public how
certain words came to share a definition -- All kinds of identity crises
available, but -- it's one thing to identify groups of poets who seem to
share common aesthetic interests, or presuppositions, or questions,, etc.
-- another thing to grab bunches of poets by the scruff of their
birthdate & ask an identity to emerge -- rather like the "Texas
Sharpshooter" phenomenon -- The shootist fired several rounds at the side
of the barn, went over to the bullet holes, drew a circle around them and
said, BULL'SEYE! The _Next Coast_ affair was said to have something to
do either with age or with when one began publishing, but a glance at the
table of contents shows that neither of these criteria actually was at
work -- Still a really interesting gathering, I think, but hardly the
statement of a generation, a school, or even an emerging ethos -- Not
that I'm looking for that in particular, just that I read a tension
between the desire for a "grouping" of some sort and what can be found
reading the actual publications --
For example, look at how often Will Alexander is produced in discussions
of a "post-language-poetry" scene,,, and Will, bless him, also gets
mentioned by the likes of such pre-anti-language poetry guys as Eliot W.
-- Does any of that have much to do with actually reading what Will is
actually writing? and _then_ trying to see how that might fit with
whatever may or may not be emerging?
But . . . I look forward to reading that Briefs issue --
are you ever coming to California????
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 3 Oct 1995 09:21:12 -0400
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From: Larry Price <Lppl@AOL.COM>
Subject: Pens fall and begin to harvest
Steve Carli wrote:
"When you forget something, when you erase it, aren't forgetting and erasing
modes of relating to that something?"
Amid the assorted food labels, brochures, and badly written yet impeccably
designed detritus that is my automaton's scramble for survival, the icons of
forgetting and erasure are perhaps understandably privileged. Still, I agree
with your reluctance to reify. So that particular notion of forgetting was
not what I found compelling in Peter Larkin's statement, nor what I intended
by using the term "erasure."
That is, not a forgetting (or erasing) in the sense of a toolbox (click on
icon and drag to trash), an amnesial or erasive intentionality directed
always and in nostalgia backward (the past as the desire that makes desire be
present), but rather in the sense of "Not this." That is, the perpetual vapor
trail that language in fact sprays before it, the head in arrears, Duchamp's
nickel-plated child which the "person" completes on the horizonal blank page
overwriting the master pages of autonomy. (At the very least, we know power
won't deny itself.)
(Although I have to say I like the Lacanian intrigue in the past coming to
presence as what is no longer presence. Which must be where all these careful
discriminations between sense and nonsense go to become nonsense.)
When I say "we are in relation to the present," this in itself is a heuristic
device, a machine devised-toward-the remedial present. I suppose it is
remedial because (I agree) it is never a clean break, shaped as it is within
an assumed, at least culturally imposed restricted economy of being. That
remedial ground is, of course, the text. It functions to process the
communicable intransigence of what is into the uncommunicated, hence
infinitely available outside of what isn't.
Power is one issue. As one, it falls to us in its compensatory claim of
mastery (or clarity) It seems to me it is this mastery/clarity that is at
issue (among other places, in Mark Wallace's usefully raised issues). That
is, mastery, when it arrives as the default version ("perfection is basic to
this mode"), takes as its register a simultaneity of face and facework,
reader and writer. It fulfills itself in this way as part of a guarantee that
having fulfilled itself once and as a one it won't have to do so again and
certainly not in its parts. The language of power is structured from the
neant on down.
But here Peter Larkin's notion of the "weak" intrigues me. It leads me to a
question for Mark Wallace: to what extent is the category of
post-language-avant-garde-emerging-publishing in the 90s-younger generation a
strategizing of attachment and dis-attachment (in the sense -- I think -- PL
is writing of it)?
Larry Price
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 3 Oct 1995 09:37:33 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jordan Davis <jdavis@PANIX.COM>
Subject: Re: The Art and Poetry Worlds
In-Reply-To: <Pine.A32.3.91.951002174137.71320A-100000@black.weeg.uiowa.edu>
Funny that they'd pick the Whitney, currently exhibiting Hopper and
Stettheimer. Staying out of the current streams of thought can help you
develop a strong sense of perversity.
With love,
Jordan
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 3 Oct 1995 12:11:03 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "CAROLYN L. FORCHE-MATTISON" <cforchem@OSF1.GMU.EDU>
Subject: Re: Influence query
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SUN.3.91.951003093549.13740C@panix2.panix.com>
Other than Michael Palmer and Andre du Bouchet, are there other poets who
might be read as having been particularly influenced by Paul Celan?
Any recommendations would be very helpful, as I am currently discussing
Celan in a graduate seminar.
Thank you so much for any assistance.
--Carolyn
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 3 Oct 1995 13:09:22 EDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Daniel Bouchard/College/hmco <Daniel_Bouchard@HMCO.COM>
Subject: 1 PM EDT
Not guilty, my ass. Unfucking real! There: had to say it. Couldn't exactly
shout it at work.
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 3 Oct 1995 15:55:02 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: tunguska <tunguska@TRIBECA.IOS.COM>
Subject: Re: fragments, mourning & derivation
Responding to what Peter Larkin says about attachment, connected to a
forgetting, those two themes in terms of the cultural fragment (paraphrasis,
I'll come back, excuse...)and his kind of involuted couple of paragraphs
from his piece "Let Attachment Assoil us". This reminds me of Heidegger
talking about retention and involvement of being, first in the common
everyday understanding, in terms of idle-talk, gossip and a concernful
being-towards-death, which never comes close to the anxiety neededNEEDED to
fathom the possibility of the death of one's own Dasein. You mention a
self-forgiveness, and that sounds right, but, again, in Being and Time
(which may or may not be of use here) guilty conscience is something we seek
out, to discover what the common everyday has determined to be one's Dasein,
one's own "being there", and this process of bringing on the guilt, so to
speak, and fleeing in the face of, anxiety at the possibility of death,
makes up the foundation of all this, consciousness, being, or what ever you
want to term it...kind of reminiscent of the early electrified Dylan, that
it was said he sought out a kind of impossible phrasing or rhythm or pitch
or version of an old tune, just to put himself into "trouble".
Again, what you have going there in your piece, hits home in terms of the
falsity of an autonomy of resistance, and which I think, echoing this whole
deal with the bland lyric et al, and young writers and the avant garde et
al. gets taken up as a stance, that I find to be best summed up by the
boston poet (renegade-hero, alone?, in his own right and day)Stephen Jonas,
from the Excercises for Ear, with his typical Poundian nod:
..... money always greases the palm
to the left
.....
Interesting to note that in his final "orgasms/dominations" Jonas virtually,
from what I've read so far, fell into total derivation from Pound's Cantos,
style, and, what looks like, some of the technique, although, maybe not with
such an emphasis on the luminous detail. But I haven't really gotten into it
that much yet, just bought it the other day.
But derivation, as continuity?, is this what David Jone's accomplished in
The Anethemata? What I heard reading that was: Bring out your dead! Bring
out your dead! as re-confirmation of the cycles of life and death that, can
be substituted for one another?!
I too put this out, to see what makes sense here, and want to get into that
sense of Duncan's calling himself Derivative. Always thought that comment on
the back of Opening the Field interesting, "to utilize my faculties at
large".....That book, so filled with sad death, black death, should've been
called opening the black tomb...
tod thilleman
tod thilleman
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 3 Oct 1995 15:07:18 EDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Gale Nelson <EL500005@BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU>
Subject: Re: Pens fall and begin to harvest
In-Reply-To: Message of Tue, 3 Oct 1995 09:21:12 -0400 from <Lppl@AOL.COM>
One of the issues that was brought forward by "Writing from the New
Coast" is the possibility of simultaneous communities of overlapping
writers -- that those invited to this conference represented a host
of aesthetic, political, social, intellectual and poetic considerations.
The question that Mark seems to want answered is, "Who are we???" And
the wonderful answer seems to be that we are a multitude, undertaking
a diverse range of projects. And that, in the wake of the success of
the challenging work written in the decades when we were in school (through
college), we have the opportunity to "assume the victories" of every 20th
century literary movement that catches our attention.
Perhaps my sense of overlapping and shifting communities of writing is too
fanciful, and I should be shooed off of this list, if it really is devoted
to group identity. I have to admit that I'm not worried about my identity
as a poet; nor am I particularly interested in banding with others to usher
in any this that or the other thing. I am more intrigued by what literature
can do each time out, by any writer. Having taught workshops for the larger
community here in Providence, I feel a certain belief that writers who are
willing to take risks can do so in a variety of ways -- and do so in
enormously exciting manners. I'm less intrigued by the notion that there
is a _right_ way to move literature forward than by the notion that there
are numerous _right_ ways.
The question, "who are we?" was intermingled, for me, with the question,
"am I part of some new coast"? And I found myself preferring the idea of
a Venn Diagram, with countless circles, all overlapping in the most
unexpected ways. This coast, to my mind, is a mirage. But if it does
exist, I'm too cantankerous by double to navigate based on someone else's
map.
Gale Nelson
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 3 Oct 1995 15:34:59 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Charles Alexander <chax@MTN.ORG>
Subject: Re: The Art and Poetry Worlds
I have often agreed with your surprise, Brian, at the embrace of the
avant-garde in the visual arts as compared with the ignoring or ostracism of
the avant-garde in the literary arts. But I don't think the question is that
easy. In some ways the figures you pick out, de Kooning, Johns, Pollock,
Rauschenberg, do not question the tenets of artistic genius, nor does their
work question the possibilities of coherence. You may disagree with this,
but I think a composition by de Kooning, for example, is a work of elegant
beauty which coheres quite well (and I love the work). On the other hand, I
don't think, for example, that the Fluxus artists have been embraced nearly
so decisively, precisely because they question the importance of works of
art. And while Dada artists are collected and shown, it seems to me that it
is the objects they created that fill the halls of such as the Philadelphia
Museum of Art, and that a major part of their work, or a major thrust of
their work (that is, the creation of non-art, the destruction of high art)
is either ignored, sidestepped, or co-opted. And I don't think any major art
critics have yet ventured to think that mail artists or book artists or
others who have opted out of the gallery/museum circuits are among the most
important visual artists of our time (which I think they are).
The literary situation isn't that neat, either. I don't think Stein is just
a footnote, although I think perhaps her elevation is just beginning. I
don't know if you think of Joyce as avant-garde or not, but he has been
consistently celebrated. More recently, John Ashbery has certainly been
granted entry into the great canon . . ., perhaps for the wrong reasons (?).
I hope your question opens up some discussion, and I just want to point out
that I don't think it's quite as neat as "avant-garde is accepted in visual
arts, not in literary arts." That doesn't mean there's not a basic imbalance
in here somewhere.
Charles Alexander
Chax Press
P.O. Box 19178
Minneapolis, MN 55419-0178
612-721-6063 (phone & fax)
chax@mtn.org
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 3 Oct 1995 14:17:56 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: George Bowering <bowering@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: The Art and Poetry Worlds
In-Reply-To: <Pine.A32.3.91.951002174137.71320A-100000@black.weeg.uiowa.edu>
from "B. Cassidy" at Oct 2, 95 06:55:41 pm
I think that the Canadians' view of U.S. poetry is somewhat diffrent
from the USAmerican one. Since the Sixties the poets of the Allen
anthology (and their "successors") have been more likely up here to
be taken for the main event. There are or have been some Canadians
(in the poetry "wor;ld") who have from time to time espoused a few
others, such as Berryman, but up here the "mainstream" US poets, as
far as I can see, have never had a following or a cachet. Olson and
Spicer and Duncan and O'Hara and Creeley are arguably the most
popular of the postwar poets in Vancouver, for instance, if yr
talking 60s etc. I think that you would have to go to an English
department and talk with an ex-U.S. prof, if you wanted to find
someone who had even heard of Wendell Berry (is that his name?).
Years ago in Montreal I tried teaching "creative writing" for the
last time (around 1968-70) and the poets they wanted to hear about
were Spicer and O'Hara.
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 3 Oct 1995 14:38:11 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Graham John Sharpe <gsharpe@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: fragments, mourning & derivation (was Wild BYonder)
In-Reply-To: <199510032109.OAA27396@ferrari.sfu.ca> from "tunguska" at Oct 3,
95 03:55:02 pm
while i won't jump into the heidegger chat, i can't help but place
this discussion of fragments (and their relation with history (past,
present & future)) in the context of David Jones WWI experience.
Fragments, while perhaps easier to displace or forget, necessitate
for Jones, i believe, the need to rebuild or reconstruct experience.
perhaps constructing from the pieces of what once was, but not
constructing that "was." It is a re-membering, as Jones himself
asserts in *Epoch & Artist*
yet with any such discussion of Jones and fragments, i always recall
the stretcher-bearers of *In Parenthesis*. Perhaps the poet is linked
for Jones to these "Carrying-parties":
burdened bearers walk with careful feet
to jolt him as little as possible,
bearers of burdens to and from
stumble oftener, notice the lessening light,
and feel their way with more sensitive feet--
you musn't spill the precious fragments, for perhaps these
raw bones live.
g
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 3 Oct 1995 17:09:25 CDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: eric pape <ENPAPE@LSUVM.SNCC.LSU.EDU>
Subject: Re: The Art and Poetry Worlds
In-Reply-To: <199510032034.PAA26056@freedom.mtn.org>
The question of visual vs. poetic modernism/postmodernism is a highly
complicated issue. And one I personally would like an answer to, and have
sought an answer to, but haven't found one at all.
The following are perhaps some gestures towards possible answers:
1) The nature of the English language. Might it be that English, being
a syntactical language is thus more referential and does not as easily
abstract itself (heard this once in a seminar)?
2)Language itself. Cannot be naked bricks. Must refer. Regardless.
3)Frank O'Hara. The evil genius behind modern art and poetry. He and
Lee Harvey Oswald had it all planned out.
4)Hate to say this, butthis seems most reasonable to me and that is
the differential institutionalization of the various arts. Visual
art was commodified by the museum system, New York based, etc., while
poetry was institutionalized in the various writing programs. One was
based on what could be sold, the other on what can be taught (a previous
posting applies here). Realistic imagism, as that which has been taught in
workshops for several decades, is a lot easier to teach. It seems as if
modern art, as long as it is painted in colors easily matched with trendy
interior decorating, is very commercial.
I am a product of that institutionalization, and it has its utopian
aspects as well as its implication in domination, etc. ad nauseum, but
I can't help think that one of the reasons that poetry in American has remained
at least officially stagnant for a very long time is its institutionalization.
It pains me to say this, as I respect Carolyn and Gwyn, and myself (though I am
certainly not at their level in any way) but we are the main part of the
problem as I see it.
Thanks Eric.
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 4 Oct 1995 11:47:44 GMT+1200
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Tony Green <t.green@AUCKLAND.AC.NZ>
Organization: The University of Auckland
Subject: Re: The Art and Poetry Worlds
Going along with Charles Alexander on visual arts and poetry --
compare as institutions: art museums, dealers and collectors,
Kunsthalle, auctioneers , art book publishing -----
with
libraries, poets exchanging chapbooks, readings, inclusion/exclusion in
academic courses
and compare say Poetics Journal or Aerial with ArtForum as magazines
the terms and conditions are very different as regards acceptance and
canonization for painters and sculptors as against poets
though, as Charles Alexander notes, it's not nearly so easy for
installational and conceptual artworkers, though I guess even they
get more public exposure than many poets through the artmuseums.
I've just been checking a list of recent art-catalogues for library
purchase and that gives some idea of the extent of market-penetration
by, say, Vito Acconci, Joseph Kosuth, Genevieve Cadieux, Christian
Boltanski just for instances of non-painter/sculptors.
Tony Green,
e-mail: t.green@auckland.ac.nz
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 4 Oct 1995 09:47:26 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Mark Roberts <M.Roberts@ISU.USYD.EDU.AU>
Subject: Re: 1 PM EDT
>Not guilty, my ass. Unfucking real! There: had to say it. Couldn't exactly
>shout it at work.
Who are we talking about here:
1. Your donkey ((jack)ass?)
2. A famous US poet
3. A famous NZ poet
4. A not very famous US poet
5. An obscue French anti-nuclear activist
6. A young Australian novelist who faked her ethenic background to win
a swag of literary awards.
or
7. An overrated B grade US tv star and ex sports star.
just wondering
ps where do you work (shout shout?)
mark
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 3 Oct 1995 20:06:25 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Phillips Patrick <PRPhillips@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: Influence query
Ben Friedlander is one 'non-canonical' poet who has been "influenced" by
Celan. His contribution is considerable - _Time Rations_ an O Book (the only
book I look for on my shelf having no title/name on the spine). Although this
may not be what you seek, he is valuable for his attention to parallel veins
and has translated Celan.
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 3 Oct 1995 20:57:05 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Gwyn McVay <gmcvay1@OSF1.GMU.EDU>
Subject: Re: The Art and Poetry Worlds
In-Reply-To: <951003.172447.CDT.ENPAPE@LSUVM.SNCC.LSU.EDU>
Eric,
Is there a dominant American poetic that consists of first-person,
strictly referential, free-verse lyrics that are narrative, personal in
tone, make no use of space on the page, etc.? Yep, you bet. Have writing
programs caused the dominance of that poetic? I dunno. I'm willing to
consider it, but I'd also bet that were it not for the madly
proliferating MFA programs, people would still be writing the same thing,
but even worse.
Gwyn
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 3 Oct 1995 21:15:11 EDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: paul <KLINDBE@CMS.CC.WAYNE.EDU>
Subject: Re: Influence query
In-Reply-To: Message of Tue, 3 Oct 1995 20:06:25 -0400 from
<PRPhillips@AOL.COM>
Allow me to move from the lurking mode for a moment and to
importune those of you who are MLA members.
I have been nominated to the Division Executive Committee of the
MLA in Twientient-Century American Literature.Don't know if you
noticed this on your ballot, but it can't hurt to have a fellow-
traveller on the board. I think that board members help select
MLA panels and perhaps essays for publication.
As I haven't been elected to anyghing so organized as this since
junior high school, it seems only right that this ever more revisionary
Post-Poundian should second my own nomination with an electronic flourish.
So, put your X next to the Kathryne Lindberg box and be among the select
few who voted for someone who has recently--not all that recently--
written about Bob Kaufman and a few others of that ilk.
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 3 Oct 1995 18:59:35 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Sheila E. Murphy" <semurphy@INDIRECT.COM>
Subject: Re: Pens fall and begin to harvest
Gale Nelson writes:
>The question, "who are we?" was intermingled, for me, with the question,
>"am I part of some new coast"? And I found myself preferring the idea of
>a Venn Diagram, with countless circles, all overlapping in the most
>unexpected ways. This coast, to my mind, is a mirage. But if it does
>exist, I'm too cantankerous by double to navigate based on someone else's
>map.
Gale, your perception of how different beings intersect seems congruent with
the notion of adhocracy, a joining created to fill a current need (in
contrast to the way that organizations have typically taken on a more
permanent cast). While there has always been comfort (for some, at least) in
more tangible-seeming (even everlasting seeming) structures and systems, I
suspect that this new direction taking shape is ultimately more flexible
(when not applied with steamrolling fervor) and potentially more satisfying.
This seems to apply to communities in the arts just as naturally as it does
in organizations. Perhaps one of the differences worth citing might be that
attempted organization-like formality has always seemed foreign when applied
to artistic processes (although some semblance of formality may have been
useful at times in procuring resources and the like). But with respect to
patterns of making, ideas, perceptions, it's just plain silly to cluster
into what sometimes seems "me-too-ism" that is thinly disguised,
genuflective and tiresome.
The stronger one-to-one ties and friendships are, and the more genuine they
are, the less the need for window dressing, propping up, and the like. Some
"communities" can come to feel oppressive, even if they don't start out that
way, by smothering their members.
I think that the list, and the Internet in general, can provide a wonderful
vehicle for linking with others and seems already to be spawning new
communities. The fresher and the more genuine these come to be, the better,
for me at least. I'm less eager to "nail down" a particular set of
boundaries than I am to feel the richness of relating to individuals. All
in time!
Sheila Murphy
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 3 Oct 1995 22:00:53 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Charles Alexander <chax@MTN.ORG>
Subject: Re: fragments, mourning & derivation
>I too put this out, to see what makes sense here, and want to get into that
>sense of Duncan's calling himself Derivative. Always thought that comment on
>the back of Opening the Field interesting, "to utilize my faculties at
>large".....That book, so filled with sad death, black death, should've been
>called opening the black tomb...
>
>tod thilleman
While Duncan certainly has dark moments, and while he could sometimes,
wearing all black, sweep through a room quite dramatically (although this
was not terribly sad), I can't agree with you about THE OPENING OF THE
FIELD, or at least it seems to me you're coming close to equating the
presence of death in that book with sadness and possibly a kind of dark
vision. That seems far too literal, and, as Duncan writes in that book, in
The Enamored Mage,
I, late at night, facing the page
writing my fancies in a literal age.
Death, in Duncan, partakes as much of light as of darkness, as much of joy
as of sadness. The Law which is Major Mover is a law of response, and life
and death, as responses to one another, become, in a sense, the same thing.
In Duncan the borders are always disappearing. One is always going into
despair/death to bring something out --
O god, from me upward the cry of all grievous being
a going up of pestilence into the crown,
for I went down into the end of all things
to bring up the spirit of Man before me
to the beginnings of Love.
(Out of the Black)
This is a poet of great complexity, not one of oppositions, finally, but one
for whom all possibilities exist in each moment, inseparable. The depths are
there, to be sure, but never alone. In a later poem, In Blood's Domaine
(from the Passages series), the fever is one of death, but it is a fever,
burning brightly --
Lovely then
that Death come to carry you away from the moment of this splendor
that bursts the cells of your body like a million larvae triumphant
comes to life in the fruit All the spreading seeds, the
viral array
taking oer flesh as the earth it is
and later in the same poem
What angel, what Gift of the Poem, has brought into my body
this sickness of living? Into the very Gloria of
Life's theme and variations
my own counterpart of Baudelaire's terrible Ennuie?
(My apologies if my tabs and spacing don't carry over to various people's
e-mail software. I would encourage you to go to THE OPENING OF THE FIELD for
all but the last poem I quote, which can be found in GROUND WORK II: IN THE
DARK. One of my entries into my work was, in the early '80's, hand setting
and printing "In Blood's Domaine" as a broadside for Woodland Pattern Book
Center. Duncan's encouragement then was something which helped me in that
work, as his encouragement in general and at other times helped me find
various paths.)
It is not death which is the site of darkness in Duncan (or at least not
darkness alone). But thank you for bringing this up and sending me back to
Duncan's work once again, where I seem to reside periodically.
charles
Charles Alexander
Chax Press
P.O. Box 19178
Minneapolis, MN 55419-0178
612-721-6063 (phone & fax)
chax@mtn.org
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 3 Oct 1995 21:46:26 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Steve Carll <sjcarll@SLIP.NET>
Subject: Re: 1 PM EDT
Daniel Bouchard shouts:
>Not guilty, my ass. Unfucking real! There: had to say it. Couldn't exactly
>shout it at work.
It was pretty shocking, at least in its sudden swiftness after dragging on
for all those months. Personally I still think he did it, but I can't
really find fault with the jury for thinking there was a reasonable doubt.
The LAPD has been notorious for its racism for decades, so no matter how
overwhelming the physical and circumstantial evidence, it doesn't take a
Johnny Cochran to get a jury to distrust the people who are gathering this
evidence enough to come back with an acquittal. It's pretty tragic that
this lesson has to come at the expense of two human lives and a lot of
anguish for several families, but if we're lucky, a few police departments
across the country may wake up and realize that, hey, keeping racist
officers on the force just might be a LIABILITY; having them involved tends
to create reasonable doubt in the minds of juries, and the DA's finding it
harder to get those convictions he needs so people will VOTE for him next
election! Duh!
Everyone drop this suggestion to YOUR local precinct; let's see what happens...
Steve
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 4 Oct 1995 01:07:14 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: jms <jms@TIAC.NET>
Subject: Re: The Art and Poetry Worlds
I can't begin to answer any of these questions. But I think they are good
ones and I wonder about them a lot. Like I haven't yet been able to figure
out why people who like experimental design or disruptive music don't
like similar things to happen with words. Or can't even begin to understand
how there is something similar between the different media's manipulations.
But when I read your post Brian, I kept wondering:
what does money have to do with all this?
While the art world boom is supposed to be over
the art world (and the design industry and the music industry) still
undeniably has an economic power that poetry will never have.
Could the public's (there does seem to be some sort of public here)
desire for innovative art might have something to do with the
one of a kindness of art? That is my best guess.
Juliana
>This past weekend I was reading in The New York times about the protest
>by "realist painters" at the Whitney Museum (their exclusion at the
>expense of more "experimental" and "avant-guard" artists), and realized
>something rather curious, which in the settling wake of our "Corn"-y
>debates seems interesting and relevant. (Apologies in advance for
>opening this back up.)
>
>In short, the artists at the Whitney were protesting the museums heavy
>preference for "non-traditional," "experimental," and
>"non-representational" works. What struck me while reading this is that
>the situation they are protesting seems to be the exact opposite of what
>we find in the poetry world. Whereas in the "Art World", what was
>"avant-guard" has become rather accepted by the "establishment" (however
>we choose to take that word) or at least respected, in the poetry worlds
>this has yet to happen to the same degree.
>
>This seems especially odd when one considers that much of the work in the
>two fields has been at many times roughly parallel in terms of techniques
>and concerns/issues addressed. With the exception of an Ashbery (I
>think, because the influence of French poetries and the ability to read
>him in such a light) or a Ginsberg (because of the social issues that
>surrounded him), who from the "avant-guard tradition" has really been
>embraced by the "establishment"? Why is it that Olson, Duncan, Stein,
>etc. seems to be mere footnotes in the history of the "establishment"'s
>poetry, yet Johns, de Kooning, Pollock, Rauschenberg, etc. have a
>decidedly more prominent position? (Okay, very rough equivalents here,
>but you get what I mean :) ) Or, to put it another way, why is it
>that Bruce Nauman's recent retrospective got so much press in the art
>journals, and yet Michael Palmer and Lyn Hejinian (as Prof. Perloff
>recently pointed out) can barely even be considered for a job at a major
>American university? Or, yet one more way, why can Brice Marden have an
>article about him appear in the current Harper's Bazaar, and yet Mark
>Strand (as I recently heard him say at a Q&A session) claim, with no
>apparent shame or regret, that he had never read Palmer's _Notes for
>Echo Lake_? (Again, my comparisons are far from perfect, but hopefully
>you see what I'm saying here.)
>
>Is this discrepancy simply because of the differences in
>structure/hierarchy/economics between the two "worlds"? Or, perhaps more
>interestingly, might it have something to do with the nature of the two
>mediums? Another option? Just thought I'd throw this out there since I
>found it an interesting comparison....
>
>Best,
>Brian Cassidy
>
>
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 3 Oct 1995 23:12:49 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Tenney Nathanson <tenney@AZSTARNET.COM>
>Date: Tue, 3 Oct 1995 12:11:03 -0400
>From: "CAROLYN L. FORCHE-MATTISON" <cforchem@OSF1.GMU.EDU>
>Subject: Re: Influence query
>
>Other than Michael Palmer and Andre du Bouchet, are there other poets who
>might be read as having been particularly influenced by Paul Celan?
>
>Any recommendations would be very helpful, as I am currently discussing
>Celan in a graduate seminar.
>
>Thank you so much for any assistance.
>
>--Carolyn
probably Paul Auster, though I know this via chit-chat and thus can't append
any smart partikklers....
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 4 Oct 1995 09:51:23 EST
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "H. T. KIRBY-SMITH" <KIRBYS@FAGAN.UNCG.EDU>
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro
Subject: The Art and Poetry Worlds
Eric Pape's convincing statement that art has been based upon what
could be sold and poetry upon what could be taught, by New York
dealers and by writing programs, respectively, set me to thinking
about the nineteenth century.
I think maybe Baudelaire would have said the opposite of the France
of his day, that art was what could be taught (in the sanctioned
studios) while literature was driven by what could be sold. Most
people for the last 75 years have assumed that the "salle de refuses"
people, the Impressionists, the ones outside the "establishment,"
were in the end the only real artists, though since the Orsay opened
more people are willing to look at salon paintings.
I do know that Baudelaire felt keenly the lack of any remunerative
"market" for his poetry; I think his Spleen de Paris has a large
element of contempt for his non-readers. Yet for all his smothered
demonic romanticism here was an extraordinary formalist who often
enough wrote about scenes and feelings that touch the lives of
less-anguished souls. When he turned to prose poetry--as you can tell
from the irony of his introduction--it was less as an experimentalist
than as an outraged artist saying in effect, "Let them eat prose!"
Luckily for painters there are other places than Manhattan where one
can live and work and have friends and even sell paintings. (Not
speaking as a painter, but as someone some of whose friends think him
foolish for buying a painting instead of a new refrigerator).
To end on an inflammatory note: hasn't Ashbery--one of the best art
critics of our age, particularly in the public-education service he
used to do in his columns on art for Newsweek--hasn't Ashbery made
use of dealer-like promotion for his poetry? I met James Dickey in
1958 or so when he was working for Coca-Cola and hadn't published a
book; he was learning a lot from his advertising experience. Is
publicity an essential part of American poetics? Is this a good
thing?
Tom Kirby-Smith
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 4 Oct 1995 10:03:03 -0400
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Mark Wallace <mdw@GWIS2.CIRC.GWU.EDU>
Subject: identity problems in the wild blue
I'm glad to see the subject of contemporary avant garde writing move out
to embrace the intense multiplicity of poetic possibilities at the
present moment--which is exactly, I would argue, one of the main
"virtues" of avant garde writing of the moment. Far from closing down
in the direction of one form, direction, what have you, my sense is that
the avant garde is continuing to branch out in all sorts of interesting
ways. I'm glad to see Gale, Sheila, Jeff, Ron, Al and others point this out
in various ways.
However, while I agree also that too narrow a labelling of what a
writer or a "group" of writers is doing can only end up causing damage,
I'm also a little bit resistant to the implication "well, nothing can be
said about my writing because I resist definition so completely that
anything that can be said about what I do will inevitably be wrong." Let
me make clear that no one said this exactly, but I do think that it was an
assumption that might potentially arise out of some of the comments
recently on this list. "Defining limits" or "labelling practices" is not the
only kind of characterizing of poetic practice that is
possible--characterization is, to my mind, at its best much more
situational, specific, and tentative, but nonetheless valuable. There are
some things specific writers are doing, and there are some things they're
not doing, and some level of commentary about such things is possible.
It's not correct, as for instance I think Foucault would point out, to
say that poetry is absolutely resistant to other kinds of social power
and social discourse, or that poets, by the multiplicity of their
activities, can avoid specific activities with specific meanings. Saying
that poetry has multiple meanings is not the same thing as saying poetry
resists meaning, which in fact it does not--although it does resist
certain notions about what meaning is.
I also think that sociological and cultural problems of any given
historical moment have real effects on poetic practice. This I think is
the significance of Rod Smith's comments of several days
ago--that the tendency towards serial poems of a certain length (10-20
pgs?) might need to be seen in relation to the fact that for a lot of
writers I know, chapbooks are possible but actual full-length bound books
much less so. As Rod pointed out in his introduction to the recent
Barrett Watten issue of Aerial, for Watten language poetry simply can't
be understood without the context of the Vietnam war and an intense
search on the part of Watten and others for a way to best respond to that
particular crisis. Was that the only impetus for early Language poetry?
Probably not, but it certainly has to be considered extremely important.
While resistance to easy characterizations or labelling, etc, is
certainly necessary, I want to question whether or not the resistance to
all characterization, even situational and specific, would really be a
good tactic for poets who at this moment are trying to get first, or
second books of poetry published, or who are even still struggling to get
chapbooks in print. More importantly even, I want to question
whether it's a good tactic for poets who care if they work gets
READ. Language poetry was and is a complicated phenomena,
but one of the things I value about many of the people whose names have
been associated with its practice is that they were willing to discuss
its cultural and political implications, and that they also saw the
importance of group endeavor--that is, they saw the value of accepting
tentative areas of
similarity as a way of challening currently dominant relations of
cultural and aesthetic and intellectual power. "Hey, don't label me" has
a certain anarchistic visceral pleasure, but it's also true that the
bravery to step forward and BE LABELLED or to label oneself (for instance
"Yes, I AM homosexual," or "I AM a language poet") has also been a mode of
some of the most productive political and cultural action in this country.
This is a question about "anxiety of identity"--and saying "I don't have
one" reveals more about the identity of the anxious than they perhaps intend.
Please continue this debate not only on e-mail by sending responses to Jeff
Hansen and Elizabeth Burns at Poetic Briefs.
mark wallace
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 4 Oct 1995 10:04:18 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Mark Wallace <mdw@GWIS2.CIRC.GWU.EDU>
Subject: my apology
My apology about "sorry for sending a private message to the list" was
actually about a private message that I found out I didn't send to the
list. So everything I've said recently on this list has definitely been
intended to be public.
mark wallace
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 4 Oct 1995 10:21:02 -0400
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: ULMER SPRING <ulmer@COOPER.EDU>
Subject: poetry and visual art
Poets we must stop feeling sorry for ourselves. I do agree that poetry
deserves a greater audience, yet when I look at what is happening in the
visual arts world today, the majority of the work created is directly or
indirectly about fame, money, immortality. Old world values. I am
more interested in representing myself, that subscribing to a system
that tells me what I am. Andera Rosen, a 31 year old 'hot' gallerist in
Soho, claims that (money) is all 'her artists' want. Hello! one of the
reasons why I have come to love and respect poetry and the 'poetry world'
is because it lacks the elitism that floods the art world.
I also argue that those who are really interested in the
'avant-guard,' are those poets, artists, musicians, etc whose interests/
practices don't end within their fields. My question: what audience
does one want? It's not hard to get a show in Soho if you act right -
poets too. Sean Landers wrote a (bad) novel on a legal pad and
exhibited it at Andrea Rosen gallery.
Someone brought up the question about artists who make installations,
etc and their economic status. Andrea Rosen specializes in selling
'non-sellable' art (forgive me for using her so often as an example, but
she's in my head because I heard her speak last night) and she is doing
quite well, despite the recession. Many collectors buy the art she
sells, but do not end up possessing it. Felix Gonzales-Torres has made
billboards and collector's paid to finance his public message.
I mean only to point out that economics definitely defines who is
popular. There are plenty of artists who do not wish to enter the
corrupt museum/gallery system, or who do not sell their work, and
are hence unknown.
If one's aim is to have one's work available to a large audience/
popular culture, it seems as if hypermedia could be a start to another
accessiblity to creative work, without having to get that interview
with/spread in such and such magazine...
If one wants fame, then it seems as if another story. I struggle
with hermetic and also collaborative practices, unable as yet to define
my audience, other than those I know - joining this listserv is a
step onto another 'coast.'
I think the visual arts has a lot to learn from poetry happenings
today. In terms of community support and working together, the major
poets I know/have come in contact with (Anne Waldman, Susan Howe,
Leslie Scalapino, Sam Hamill, Allen Ginsberg to name a few) have been
amazingly open, personal, and unpretentious which is more than I can
say about those NY artists I know. I think though, that this subject
of comparing the visual arts and poetry is too large and filled with
too much speculation - Perhaps some people would like to address their
own practices and how far reaching they are, or want them to be.
Spring Ulmer
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 4 Oct 1995 10:39:28 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Mark Wallace <mdw@GWIS2.CIRC.GWU.EDU>
Subject: even further wild blues
I think my last comments need a short addendum. What Gale Nelson and many
of the others I mention in my post are talking about is the possibility
of multiple and situational identities as poets, and multiple and
situational ways of reading poetry. I can't agree with them more. So my
comments about the "identity of the anxious" is not directed at anyone
who said anything on the poetics list but towards the potential and
general danger of not discussing specific new directions in avant garde
work. Recent posts have precisely discussed these new directions, which I
think is great.
mark wallace
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 4 Oct 1995 09:38:17 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "B. Cassidy" <bcassidy@BLUE.WEEG.UIOWA.EDU>
Subject: Re: The Art and Poetry Worlds
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SUN.3.91.951003093549.13740C@panix2.panix.com>
In the article the author quotes one of the protesters who, addressing
this very question said, "For the Whitney, the only good realist is a
dead one."
--Brian
On Tue, 3 Oct 1995, Jordan Davis wrote:
> Funny that they'd pick the Whitney, currently exhibiting Hopper and
> Stettheimer. Staying out of the current streams of thought can help you
> develop a strong sense of perversity.
>
> With love,
> Jordan
>
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 4 Oct 1995 09:50:06 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jordan Davis <jdavis@PANIX.COM>
Subject: Re: The Art and Poetry Worlds
In-Reply-To: <199510040507.BAA19389@zork.tiac.net>
Juliana
Money has less and less to do with it. Sales were still declining in 1993
when I quit my gallery job. Now any Saturday in soho you can find enough
red dots on the wall or on the price list to reassure you that some
people will keep their studios, sure. But the unquestioned alliance of
capital and art seems to have stopped making new points of contact.
Meanwhile, the Academy of American Poetry, the Poetry Society of America,
and the 92nd St Y (three main connectors of poetry with money) are
plugging along.
But there is the old idea that abstract expression tailed into
fashionable design, and that any painting with words in it instantly
falls to half the value it would have if it had not those words. And that
words mean in a way that colors do not. So to mess around with words is
to confuse. If you can do it in a fiercely adorable way, as Stein did,
as say Salinger did, you can make that saleable connection. (Design for
living?)
Forgot what I meant to say
Jordan
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 4 Oct 1995 10:05:58 -0500
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "B. Cassidy" <bcassidy@BLUE.WEEG.UIOWA.EDU>
Subject: Re: The Art and Poetry Worlds
In-Reply-To: <199510032034.PAA26056@freedom.mtn.org>
Charles --
Thank you for your post calling me on some of my more imprecise
statements. Allow me to clarify...
> In some ways the figures you pick out, de Kooning, Johns, Pollock,
> Rauschenberg, do not question the tenets of artistic genius, nor does their
> work question the possibilities of coherence. You may disagree with this,
> but I think a composition by de Kooning, for example, is a work of elegant
> beauty which coheres quite well (and I love the work).
Absolutely (agree, that is). But just because these artists don't
question these assumptions, so much as attempt to find new ways to
"cohere", does this exclude them from the "experimental" or
"avant-guard"? Couldn't the same be said for many of the poets we've
been talking about here (that it's not a question of assumptions so much
as new methods of being "whole")? And yet, again, as I said before these
roughly equivalent (to the visual artists) poets are excluded to a far
greater degree.
> On the other hand, I
> don't think, for example, that the Fluxus artists have been embraced nearly
> so decisively, precisely because they question the importance of works of
> art. And while Dada artists are collected and shown, it seems to me that it
> is the objects they created that fill the halls of such as the Philadelphia
> Museum of Art, and that a major part of their work, or a major thrust of
> their work (that is, the creation of non-art, the destruction of high art)
> is either ignored, sidestepped, or co-opted.
This is true, but it seems to me that if you are a visual artist, you must
still reckon with these figures. You certainly know and are aware of their
work. This isn't necessarily the case in poetry, where the situation
seems to be that either the "avant-guard" is dismissed out-of-hand,
ignored, or, perhaps even worse, barely even known to exist. Are the
Fluxus and the Dada artists often misunderstood? Surely. But they are
at least _addressed_ by the "establishment." I'm not sure the same can
be said for poetry.
> The literary situation isn't that neat, either. I don't think Stein is just
> a footnote, although I think perhaps her elevation is just beginning. I
> don't know if you think of Joyce as avant-garde or not, but he has been
> consistently celebrated. More recently, John Ashbery has certainly been
> granted entry into the great canon . . ., perhaps for the wrong reasons (?).
I don't think that Stien is a footnote either. I do believe she is
barely more than that for most of the "establishment", though. Consider:
how often is GS taught for her own sake? Not as often it seems to me as
she is dealt with as an "influence" on Hemingway, or as a "personality."
Her work seems to take a back seat (WAY in the back) to the "IDEA" of GS
and her work.
> I hope your question opens up some discussion, and I just want to point out
> that I don't think it's quite as neat as "avant-garde is accepted in visual
> arts, not in literary arts." That doesn't mean there's not a basic imbalance
> in here somewhere.
True, true. Again, thanks for the clarifications. When one is typing
largely off the top of one's head (as this medium is prone to have one
doing), one's ideas and thought are usually not as sharp as they
could/should be.
Best,
Brian Cassidy
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 4 Oct 1995 08:47:00 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" <anielsen@ISC.SJSU.EDU>
Subject: Re: Celan Salon
In-Reply-To: <199510040403.VAA13143@sparta.SJSU.EDU>
Don't forget both Waldrops, Keith and Rosmarie! and Tom Mandel is an
important reader of Celan, though I'd leave it to him to say whether or not
there's any more direct stylistic influence -- in the sense, for example,
that I read and think about and am influenced by Melvin Tolson, but don't
take much that I can see from the surface style of his writing --
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 4 Oct 1995 11:35:50 EDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Gale Nelson <EL500005@BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU>
Subject: Re: identity problems in the wild blue
In-Reply-To: Message of Wed, 4 Oct 1995 10:03:03 -0400 from
<mdw@GWIS2.CIRC.GWU.EDU>
Mark,
Tactics for getting published? Write poetry that moves an editor! I have
done this rarely, but would far rather see years go by between titles
than understand that a book (or chapbook, or magazine entry) was driven
by something other than editorial engagement.
Through paradigm press, I've just brought out Gail Sher's Kuklos, a
remarkable text. It took me a few years to pull the book together (I'm
equally behind on chapbooks by Bill Fuller, Ray Jordan and David Miller);
of the four authors listed, I know one of them personally. I did not
take into account the tactics these authors might have used to convince
me that their work was necessary to be published. I found myself excited
by their work, and believed that the work needed to come to light. Now,
of course, I'm feeling the sense of failure that comes with overcommitment,
and anxiety for the authors who are still waiting...
If poetry is a commodity, and tactics are necessary, then I'd rather throw
my lot with, well, with whom?
Gale Nelson
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 4 Oct 1995 12:02:55 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: David Kellogg <kellogg@ACPUB.DUKE.EDU>
Subject: Re: my apology
In-Reply-To: <Pine.3.89.9510041005.A21444-0100000@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu>
I want to apologize for not sending a public message to this list. I
sent the message to one person by mistake. What was meant to be a public
conversation has turned inexplicably, uncomfortably private. So remember:
nothing that you read by me is meant for somebody.
Cheers,
David
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
David Kellogg No ideas but in things.
University Writing Program --W.C. Williams
Duke University
Durham, NC 27708 No ideas in things, either.
kellogg@acpub.duke.edu --John Ashbery
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 4 Oct 1995 09:07:10 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ryan Knighton <knighton@SFU.CA>
Subject: Blair & Loss
In-Reply-To: <2CB1FE484F@fagan.uncg.edu> from "H. T. KIRBY-SMITH" at Oct 4,
95 09:51:23 am
Sorry Poetics, but I can't find the two backchannel addresses.
Blair and Loss,
I received both your packages yesterday: they look wonderful. I will
be going over submission with George Stanley in two weeks and will let you
know where things are at.
All the best,
Ryan Knighton
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 4 Oct 1995 10:53:05 CDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: eric pape <ENPAPE@LSUVM.SNCC.LSU.EDU>
Subject: Re: The Art and Poetry Worlds
In-Reply-To: <Pine.OSF.3.91.951003205520.15753B-100000@osf1.gmu.edu>
Gwyn: Here's the problem as I see it: What means "worse?" THe problem
is that workshops have to supply value, and to do so, it has to use
some sort of uniform criteria. Up to now, that criteria has been
supplied nicely by residual new criticism, even as the rest of the world
moves on. As some smart folks argued not that long ago when dealing with
Mr. Corn, assigning value is a questionable enterprise. But is unavoidable
in the classroom situation. How else do we grade our students?
So let's say we change criteria. Say to more "language based" poetries.
The problem remains. We haven't changed that at all. We are still stuck with
evaluation, over and over, everyday.
I applaud the efforts to change from within. It is after all what I
find myself doing as well, though on a much much smaller scale. There are
a great deal of good things about writing programs. Not least the inclusion
of voices we would never hear otherwise. Writing programs have allowed more
people to write than ever before, and I may be naive, but I think that is a
good thing. I revel in the proliferation of styles. What I am interested in
is a way to encourage, rather than discourage, that proliferation in the
workshop, but I am not sure we can do that without fundementally changing
the structural limitations of the workshop (authority, administration, etc).
But the fact that I am having this discussion at all with you is a very
good sign. Thanks, Eric.
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 4 Oct 1995 12:12:48 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Charles Alexander <chax@MTN.ORG>
Subject: Re: The Art and Poetry Worlds
Thanks for your clarifications, Brian. I'm interested in the notion that if
you put words on a painting, the value goes down. As Charles Bernstein
points out in an essay in the forthcoming collection TALKING THE BOUNDLESS
BOOK, a piece of paper, blank, has a certain value, which is lessened
(market-wise) when poetry is printed on it.
As for the role of money in the visual arts, not in literary, I have some
trouble swallowing that. Money plays a role in both, but a quite different
one. On the one hand, to a lot of people literature consists ONLY of what
the NY Times Book Review writes about plus what appears as mass market at
the supermarkets. Like it or not, there's a lot of money involved in that
world. And in terms of non-market literature, money has a role to play in
terms of what institutions/organizations/presses get what grants, as well as
how private philanthropy works in this country. The playing fields of
literature are in no way free of the influence of money.
But in terms of particular writers/artists and how they are accepted or not
by the "establishment" (as you put it), I think you and I have more
agreement than disagreement.
>I don't think that Stein is a footnote either. I do believe she is
>barely more than that for most of the "establishment", though. Consider:
>how often is GS taught for her own sake? Not as often it seems to me as
>she is dealt with as an "influence" on Hemingway, or as a "personality."
>Her work seems to take a back seat (WAY in the back) to the "IDEA" of GS
>and her work.
I like to think this is changing, but perhaps not. I know lots of people
have seen and celebrated a local production of the play GERTRUDE AND ALICE
here during the last two years, and I have more than a suspicion that many
of those have not read Stein, or, at most, have read only THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
OF ALICE B. TOKLAS. My guess is that's also true of those who celebrated the
movie some years ago now in which Linda Hunt played Alice B. Toklas. I liked
the movie, too, but it's not nearly as nice as reading Stein.
all best,
charles
Charles Alexander
Chax Press
P.O. Box 19178
Minneapolis, MN 55419-0178
612-721-6063 (phone & fax)
chax@mtn.org
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 4 Oct 1995 13:23:36 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Dodie Bellamy <BellaDodie@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: poetry and visual art
I've been following the poetry and visual art discussion with much interest,
since these past few years I've felt much more in tune with the visual art
world than the poetry--or prose--worlds I come in contact with.
I was amused this morning when I read the following passage by Spring Ulmer:
"one of the reasons why I have come to love and respect poetry and the
'poetry world' is because it lacks the elitism that floods the art world."
I feel like a shriveled up old skeptic beside Spring's hopeful vision, but I
don't see how anybody could not call the contemporary poetry world,
particularly the world represented by the members of this list, elitist. I
don't say that as a criticism. In fact, the elitism of avant-garde poetry,
in a way, works in its favor, not financially certainly, but in terms of its
growth as art. Outsiders' fear of it keeps it pure. Since I write
"experimental" prose, I envy this privileged position of poetry, in terms of
the common person. Not being intimidated by prose, every dope in the world
seems to think they have a right to comment on prose, making the most innane
declarations, tossing off grating terms such as "plot development" and
"character development" with abandoned zeal. A non-writer would have to be
oafish on the level of Animal House, however, to say something equally
idiotic to an avant-garde poet like, "Why doesn't it rhyme?"
All of the visual artists I know are doing cutting-edge work, and most of
them are on the level in their careers where it's not an incredibly big deal
for them to get written about in Art Forum, for instance. Hanging out with
them is lots of fun because you get to go to fabulous parties and dinners at
nice restaurants, paid for by their galleries. In the poetry world, in
California at least, if you're lucky, you get to juggle for a glass of
$3.99-a-bottle Chilean merlot and a wedge of brie--and there's no point,
ever, really, in dressing up.
Many of the artists I know are doing work that's involved with in-your-face
sexuality, which is treated by (everyone but the NEA, of course) as
interesting, but no big deal. That's what I'm really jealous about, artists'
ability to do sexually explicit work and not somehow feel tainted or
whispered about.
The conservatism in this country concerning literature is something that
drives me up the wall. If there is a financial reason for the disparity
between the more general acceptance of a visual avant-garde, I think it's
because a piece of art is bought by one person in one large wad, while
writing, for it to make any money, has to be bought by tons of people.
Because of mass reproduction, the very physical form of writing is populist.
There's also something to do with most people not recognizing the materiality
of words. With art, the viewer is always aware that it's made out of
Something. But, with writing, I think that, other than the most
sophisticated, people do not see that it's made out of words. It's about
Feelings, Truth, Experience. I'm currently reading Viktor Shklovsky's Theory
of Prose, which was written in 1925, and it seems to me, sadly enough, that
the contents therein would still be news to most people, including most
writers. I recently was a co-judge for the literary applicants to an
artists' colony, and I was amazed how out of the 70 or so applications,
hardly any of them, including the poets, showed any awareness that, bottom
line, their material was language. The only "experimental" writer who
submitted was Avery Burns, who I chose as one of my three choices. When the
larger panel (who laughed at conservative visual art, and chose wild,
interesting stuff), voted to reduce my choices from three to two, the panel's
decision was reached quicker than OJ's jury, like instantly: no Avery. When
I suggested that Avery's work would mesh well with the avant-garde composers
and visual artists, the response was that they couldn't "relate" to his
poetry. Like they could "relate" to music made from clanking steel objects.
Remember: wallowing in obscurity is good for the soul.
Dodie
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 4 Oct 1995 14:21:03 EST
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Burt Kimmelman -@NJIT" <kimmelman@ADMIN.NJIT.EDU>
Subject: Re: Influence query
Kathryne Lindberg,
I threw out my darn ballot already!
How quickly the culture absorbs its own experimenters and otherwise outsiders.
Anyway, it's comforting to learn of your doings in the MLA.
Burt Kimmelman
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 4 Oct 1995 14:22:18 -0400
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: tunguska <tunguska@TRIBECA.IOS.COM>
Subject: Re: Duncan's derivation
Yes, death as a presence in Opening of the Field. Also, what I was
trying to get at, (and thanks Charles, for bringing Blood's Domaine
in) is the medievalness of that book. In fact, am very interested to
see what has been written, in total, on this in Duncan. Wanted to get
at, what Silliman referred to as that "sense of Derivation a la Duncan"
and what is a convergence here, is that medievalism, those "passages" in
Duncan, at the very door, like they say, of death, representing a passage
into afterlife, and also a passage into manhood. You hit the stanza right
that I was thinking of in the enamored mage, but I'm also wantin to get
into this mix here, with David Jones in mind, and that section again, lovely,
that Graham gives of the stretcher-bearers in In Parenthesis--wanted to get
at this:
...as if a host of readers will join the beloved
ready to dance with me, it's for the
unthinking
ready thing I'm writing these poems.
--from Opening of the Field by Robert Duncan.
tt
tod thilleman
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 4 Oct 1995 14:33:12 -0400
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: tunguska <tunguska@TRIBECA.IOS.COM>
Subject: Re: fragments, mourning/wild blue yonder still
Graham, great, those stretcher-bearers. But do you mean, Jone's literally
has the idea of construction, building, in mind, or is there some sense of
re-animation, or, more precdisely perhaps, inter-animation, between two
sides of something....
couple with, maybe you know, or someone has some insight into, what John
Montague refers to as the four poets of the british renaissance. I believe
it was MacDiarmid, Graves, Yeats, and Jones. In other words, is there some
old tradition revived in Jones. I'm still trying to relate this to derivation,
a la Duncan (where one can view the Structure of Rime series as a continual
reification, from doubt, to surety, so to speak, in the heart of the poet,
among other reifications, that show forth that "structure") I mean to find,
of course, like the rest here, some ground to work from, so that we are not
flying off about young versus old, bad versus good, or, more to the point,
abstract versus non-abstract, solid (believable?) poetry.
thilleman
: was it the death of Davie, that brought Jones in, or was it from something
else?
tod thilleman
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 4 Oct 1995 17:50:50 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Bill Luoma <Maz881@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: wild blue yonder
Ron,
You wrote: "Similarly, all sound poetry 'says the same thing' and it says it
over and over."
che cosa?
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 4 Oct 1995 19:21:13 EDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Steve McCaffery <MCCAFFER@QUCDN.QUEENSU.CA>
Subject: Change of Address
People interested might want to take note of the new address of
STEVE McCAFFERY & KAREN MacCORMACK:
1086 Bathurst St 2nd floor
TORONTO ON M5R 3G9
CANADA
Phone (416) 535 8930.
An announcment on Mac Cormack's new book "Marine Snow" & of its Toronto &
Buffalo launches to follow shortly
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 4 Oct 1995 21:24:53 -0400
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From: "SUSAN E. TICHY" <stichy@OSF1.GMU.EDU>
Subject: Re: 1 PM EDT
In-Reply-To: <199510040446.VAA11530@slip-1.slip.net>
For 24 hours I too thought the jury couldn't be blamed that they got a
fucked up case to hear, with reasonable doubt personified. But today
one of the jurors said she believed OJ to be innocent because he
had no motive. She couldn't see any domestic violence in this case; it
was a murder.
Susan
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 5 Oct 1995 16:43:49 GMT+1200
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Tony Green <t.green@AUCKLAND.AC.NZ>
Organization: The University of Auckland
Subject: Re: fragments, mourning/wild blue yonder still
what brought David Jones In ... was Joris Rothenberg anthology naming
him but against a Faber & Faber induced blank ... admirations
expressed
Tony Green,
e-mail: t.green@auckland.ac.nz
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 5 Oct 1995 02:38:35 GMT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Tom Beard <beard@MET.CO.NZ>
Subject: Re: identity problems in the wild blue
Mark Wallace wrote -
>As Rod pointed out in his introduction to the recent
>Barrett Watten issue of Aerial, for Watten language poetry simply can't
>be understood without the context of the Vietnam war and an intense
>search on the part of Watten and others for a way to best respond to that
>particular crisis. Was that the only impetus for early Language poetry?
>Probably not, but it certainly has to be considered extremely important.
This interested me, since most of the critical/theoretical writing in _In the
American Tree_ has an emphasis on politics that to me seems very much a product
of the sixties. Is it possible that those of us who did most of our growing up
_after_ the Vietnam war, and whose _parents_ were of the protest generation,
might subscribe to a different poetics? Some of the poetic/political goals of
langpo and post-structuralist theory (e.g. breaking down the assumption of a
single, given meaning for a text) have almost become second nature for more
recent generations, who have a much-vaunted mistrust of _any_ imposed
narratives.
Are we more likely to have an apolitical outlook (which is itself a political
stance), or ecological concerns, or gender/sexuality/race concerns for those
who feel disadvantaged by these factors? Or are we more likely to be interested
in information technology and the mass media? One movement that sees itself as
replacing the domesticated postmodernism of a past generation is 'Avant-Pop'
literature, with the likes of Mark Leyner, Kathy Acker, William Gibson,
Eurudice and Douglas Coupland realizing that disrupted narratives, a
multiplicity of voices and ironic plagiarism are no longer cutting edge
(they're a Levi's commercial) and that Bob Dylan lyrics no longer count as pop-
culture references. Most of these writers use prose as a medium: who would you
count as an Avant-Pop poet?
The generational change has probably been exacerbated in NZ by the rapid change
in the latter half of the 80s from a stiflingly over-protected Albanian style
of economy to what some see as an overly laissez-faire regime. Global popular
culture has exploded into this country in the last 5-10 years, and the literary
establishment has _no_ idea how to handle it. The Left is now conservative,
trying to regain a welfare state that now glows with nostalgia. This
rightwards movement economically, simultaneous with a belated diversification
of cultures, is the extent of the political concerns in my writing. Has anyone
else felt the need to react against the assumption that a writer _must_ take
certain political stands?
Tom Beard
______________________________________________________________________________
I/am a background/process, shrunk to an icon. | Tom Beard
I am/a dark place. | beard@metdp1.met.co.nz
I am less/than the sum of my parts... | Auckland, New Zealand
I am necessary/but not sufficient, | http://metcon.met.co.nz/
and I shall teach the stars to fall | nwfc/beard/www/hallway.html
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 5 Oct 1995 17:35:27 GMT+1200
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Wystan Curnow <w.curnow@AUCKLAND.AC.NZ>
Organization: English Dept. - Univ. of Auckland
Subject: Re: poetry and visual art
Comments: To: BellaDodie@AOL.COM
Dodie,
I was amused, too. Bemused. Actually I know plenty of NY artists
who are 'amazingly open, personal, and unpretentious' but I also like my
artists reserved, cool, and up with the play, here in Auckland but, you
know, especially in New York. The city, seems to me, is more than it's
moneyed dealer/museum structure--calling it corrupt is a symptom of
poet's self-pity more than a cure for it--and US campuses are almost be
definition islands of teaching/learning devoid of culture, in the sense
of the culture sustained by major urban centres. University professors
can be open, personal and unpretentious, but do they dress well? What
are their tastes in art, music and poetry? So, one of the great
advantages enjoyed by visual artists has been the cultural life of New
York. I don't know that the workshop culture on campuses is a key,
because in New Zealand the difference between the mainstreams of the two
arts is much the same and there are hardly any courses in creative
writing here.
Jordan Davis said the view that any painting with words in it
instantly fell to half the value it would have had had it not those
words still had substance. For much of the 80s it was arguably the other
way around. And certainly, the likes of Lawrence Weiner, Joseph Kosuth,
make a decent living installing words on gallery walls and even selling
them to collectors and museums for good prices.
There seems little doubt that the prestige of literature (and of
poetry especially) has fallen over the century, and that of the visual
arts has risen. The process has accelerated over the second half. This
has something to do with the rise of visual media generally. there is
probably a connection, then, between the greater prestige of the visual
arts and the more avant-garde character of its mainstream.
I was interested in George Bowering's comment that in Canada the
poetics of avant-garde were the mainstream. Even if he is exaggerating,
and given that it's not the case in New Zealand, I nevertheless suspect
that internationally it is the US avant-garde tradition that is the more
widely known and followed. Am I wrong? How this has a bearing on the
art/poetry relation is that in the visual arts the mainstream is--and
over the last 15 years as New York's dominance has declined--an
international construction.
wystan
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 4 Oct 1995 22:09:59 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Thomas Bell <tbjn@WELL.COM>
Subject: Re: Identity problems in the wild blue
On October 4 Tom Beard said:
>Has anyone else felt the need to react against the
>assumption that a writer _must_ take certain
>political stands?
I think that this is part of the difficulty but in a different
way than your post reads. A poet would do better to write
through concrete reality. My reading of "bland" which
started this discussion is that the blandness relates to
a distancing from the concrete into the abstract and formal.
From my point of view(and I am open to correction on this)
both "the wild blue yonder and new formalist schools are
a move away from a harsh concrete reality we live with. One
the aims of the avant-garde was to direct attention to
a reality that was not as pleasant and bland as it was
presented.
I also think that if you think the sixties and Vietnam
protest were about politics, you have subscribed to
an inadequate presentation. The sixties protests were
anti political and _radically_ opposed to the left as
well as the right.
Bada Shanren
Tom Bell
.
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 5 Oct 1995 01:40:07 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Wendy Battin <wjbat@CONNCOLL.EDU>
Subject: Re: The Art and Poetry Worlds
Brian Cassidy wrote:
>Is this discrepancy simply because of the differences in
>structure/hierarchy/economics between the two "worlds"? Or, perhaps more
>interestingly, might it have something to do with the nature of the two
>mediums? Another option?
Money & "objectness," certainly. Also perhaps the fact that the
currency of language keeps being devalued; more people know they're
being lied to most of the time, but increase of cynicism doesn't
necessarily make for an increase in attention to the saying. Quite
the contrary, usually. It drives many who care about words at all
back to what they already know & trust, and those who care less
simply stop listening.
Wendy
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 5 Oct 1995 02:10:20 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Rod Smith <AERIALEDGE@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: identity problems in the whyld blue
Mark mentioned my talk abt Vietnam in the Aerial 8 intro & there have been a
few posts about politics as they might now exist for the poet. We're
confronted now with a much worse situation politically even than the 60s I
think. Simply because people know that what they think doesn't matter. Party
politics in the U.S. still has some significance, I don't want to overstate
this, but increasingly real political power is in the hands of corporations
which run national governments & economies. A two-tiered global economy of
haves & have-nots is in place & rapidly developing. This is not ok. The first
step in trying to change this is for enough people to understand what is
going on & trust that they are not alone in their understanding.
--Rod
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 5 Oct 1995 15:25:50 +0800
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Schuchat <schuchat@ARC.ARC.ORG.TW>
Subject: Re: Celan Salon
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SOL.3.91.951004084216.12249B-100000@athens>
Why is it that German literature, especially poetry, is less important
("influential") in American literature than, e.g., French?
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 5 Oct 1995 08:43:55 +0100
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: R I Caddel <R.I.Caddel@DURHAM.AC.UK>
Subject: Poets n visuals
In-Reply-To: <199510050457.FAA06376@tucana.dur.ac.uk>
A cheer for Spring reminding the poets not to be sorry for themselves,
albeit they don't get to glitzy parties. One certainly defines ones
audience as one goes along over here, usually ending up on first name
terms with them - if that's a problem, a more appropriate artform would
seem to be advertising. Or, if it's the dressing up you like, why not try
for high court judge?
The alternative, as exhibited in UK poetry by the hyped (and then
remaindered) New Generation Poets (or rather, by their promoters) is
unthinkable: soundbite poetics at best. Verily, they have their reward...
Actually, I like Merlot n Brie, if the latter be unsanitised and ripe.
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, 5 Oct 1995 07:14:13 GMT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Tom Beard <beard@MET.CO.NZ>
Subject: whyld blue (TM)
Rod wrote:
>We're confronted now with a much worse situation politically even than the 60s
>I think.
>increasingly real political power is in the hands of corporations
>which run national governments & economies. A two-tiered global economy of
>haves & have-nots is in place & rapidly developing.
So why is there not the atmosphere of political activism that we associate with
the 60s? Has the new generation of educated youth divided up into those content
with a McJob & dreaming of a bit part in a Richard Linklater film, and those
intent on working their way up in those corporations that now run the world? Is
the role of social activist now left to those few remaining survivors of the
60s who haven't found a job in the marketing department of Coca-Cola?
Okay, I'm being overly simplistic and cynical. But picture this: a young poet,
perhaps experimenting with linguistic forms, perhaps carving out delicate
lyrics, while working 8 til 7 as a financial analyst for MegaBank (TM)
Corporation. She or he may be oblivious to the plight of the have-nots, or may
actively support a free-market economy. Are we to demand that this poet "get
with the programme" and start deconstructing the dominant ethos of late
Capitalism? Or do we dismiss the gedankenexperiment as unrealistic, saying
"no-one who works for the corporate exploiters could possibly be an interesting
poet" (shades of Helen Vendler's "you have to be a facist to like the Cantos")?
Or perhaps we claim that this poet's work, if it is linguistically innovative,
must be unconsciously working against his or her own political assumptions.
> This is not ok. The first
>step in trying to change this is for enough people to understand what is
>going on & trust that they are not alone in their understanding.
I don't want to sound snide, but I don't see how poetry in print runs of a few
hundred are going to help the oppressed masses, especially when the readers are
likely to already be converts to the writer's cause. It could be argued that
experimenting with typographical marks on a piece of paper is a game for the
idle bourgeois, especially when you consider the level of education required
to read the critical writings of language poets. But hey, I've got no problems
with games for the idle bourgeois, whether they be interior design, wine
collecting or writing poetry.
Tom Beard
______________________________________________________________________________
I/am a background/process, shrunk to an icon. | Tom Beard
I am/a dark place. | beard@metdp1.met.co.nz
I am less/than the sum of my parts... | Auckland, New Zealand
I am necessary/but not sufficient, | http://metcon.met.co.nz/
and I shall teach the stars to fall | nwfc/beard/www/hallway.html
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 5 Oct 1995 00:52:49 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: George Bowering <bowering@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: fragments, mourning & derivation
In-Reply-To: <199510040300.WAA01905@freedom.mtn.org> from "Charles Alexander"
at Oct 3, 95 10:00:53 pm
I got a little worried when Tod T. quoted Duncan as saying he made
poetry utilize my faculties at large." That is not the way I have
always quoted him, and I could not believe that Duncan would use that
horrid verb. So I had to go and haul it out, the book; and much to my
relief see that Duncan did say "exercise", not [shudder} "utiliza."
[I mean not "utilize"]
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 5 Oct 1995 08:47:26 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "CAROLYN L. FORCHE-MATTISON" <cforchem@OSF1.GMU.EDU>
Subject: Re: The Art and Poetry Worlds
In-Reply-To: <951004.111152.CDT.ENPAPE@LSUVM.SNCC.LSU.EDU>
On Wed, 4 Oct 1995, eric pape wrote:
> Gwyn: Here's the problem as I see it: What means "worse?" THe problem
> is that workshops have to supply value, and to do so, it has to use
> some sort of uniform criteria. Up to now, that criteria has been
> supplied nicely by residual new criticism, even as the rest of the world
> moves on. As some smart folks argued not that long ago when dealing with
> Mr. Corn, assigning value is a questionable enterprise. But is unavoidable
> in the classroom situation. How else do we grade our students?
Eric: I missed the Corn discussion but would assume that this list
dispatched his arguments with some ease. While mindful of academy's
function as a reproductive site of the culture/superstructure of
late/hyper/global/multinational capitalism, is it not possible for the
"classroomed" poets to reject the (New Criticism) critique-based
"workshop," and restore to that term its generative implications? Why
should "workshop" (a post-war construct) consist in the dubious
collective "repair" of unchallenging literary "products"?
> So let's say we change criteria. Say to more "language based" poetries.
> The problem remains. We haven't changed that at all. We are still stuck with
> evaluation, over and over, everyday.
Why is this so? Innovate poetries are only "difficult" to "discuss" in the
so-called "traditional" (again, 50 yr. old) workshop because those
poetries resist submission to a limited set of critical assumptions--upon
-closer- readings in the same space, however, they provoke the same
rigorous and provocative discussion in the classroom as in the cafe, on
this list, or anywhere else. Once the arrogant and presumptive project
of "repair" has been suspended, the poet is free to present his/her
poetics and engage readers in open exploration of possibilities. As for
the ritual of grades, any active participant receives an "A," as is true,
in my observation, of most graduate seminars in the academy.
> I applaud the efforts to change from within. It is after all what I
> find myself doing as well, though on a much much smaller scale. There are
> a great deal of good things about writing programs. Not least the inclusion
> of voices we would never hear otherwise. Writing programs have allowed more
> people to write than ever before, and I may be naive, but I think that is a
> good thing. I revel in the proliferation of styles. What I am interested in
> is a way to encourage, rather than discourage, that proliferation in the
> workshop, but I am not sure we can do that without fundementally changing
> the structural limitations of the workshop (authority, administration, etc).
The workshop's "structural limitations" are precisely what must
be changed.
--Carolyn
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 5 Oct 1995 08:49:30 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jonathan A Levin <jal17@COLUMBIA.EDU>
Subject: Re: The Art and Poetry Worlds/Stein
In-Reply-To: <199510041712.MAA09910@freedom.mtn.org>
List buds--
There seems to be a lot of skepticism out there that anyone is
reading/"getting" Stein these days. If anything is working in the world
of academic criticism/teaching, it is getting writers like Stein back
into circulation, and in meaningful ways. Sure, most people who go see a
broadway play about Stein don't know the first thing
about her (and they don't know the first thing about Vietnam when they
see Miss Saigon, I'm sure). Broadway's not the point. I don't know
anyone who teaches Stein's "personality" or her influence on Hemingway.
FRankly, I don't see how I could have made my way through graduate school
with that kind of approach. Anyway, I've taken a stab at Stein and
canonization, arguing (obviously?) that personality was an anxious
defense against a modernist practice that undermined assumptions about
history and form that slowly became classic between the 20s and WWII.
It's in a book called Rereading the New: A Backward Glance at Modernism,
edited by Kevin Dettmar (Michigan, 1992). It was miserably promoted by
Michigan (my alma mater, alas), to the point even of indicating in
advertising copy that it was a collection of essays by Kevin Dettmar!
Lots of good stuff in it, in any event, on modernism and canonization, as
well as on the "postmodernism" in modernism. (If I had time, I'd try to
be more clever in saying that last bit. Oh well.)
On with Stein! If you haven't yet had the pleasure of Ulla
Dydo's A Stein Reader (Northwestern, 1993), have it soon. I'm
switching! Others?
Jonathan Levin
NYC
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 5 Oct 1995 08:58:09 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "SUSAN E. TICHY" <stichy@OSF1.GMU.EDU>
Subject: Re: whyld blue (TM)
In-Reply-To: <95100507141351@met.co.nz>
Hey, folks, we all know how to be cynical. It's a requirement for the
job. But I keep wondering why people who are teaching at universities
are on line asking each other questions about young people and young
poets. Don't you know any? I compare the generalizations made here to
the poets I work with every week. I compare them to poets I meet in
my community in real life, elsewhere, and I don't see these cardboard
monsters anywhere. Whether they are saving the world is a pretty old
horse to beat on. But I know more poets than I can count on my hands who
have saved THEMSELVES by writing, and some of them come from families
where they are the first to attend college, or the first to leave their
home town or neighborhood. I know a rural Latino family in which the
only two males left alive, not dead by homocide, suicide, or auto wreck,
are artists. Romantic? Explain that to them. What makes me chuckle is
that if we all believed in the terrible futility of what we do, we'd be
doing something else. It's our privilege to despair.
Going off the list for ten days. I'll see the new news when I get back.
Susan
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 5 Oct 1995 09:04:05 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "SUSAN E. TICHY" <stichy@OSF1.GMU.EDU>
Subject: Re: The Art and Poetry Worlds
In-Reply-To: <Pine.OSF.3.91.951005075610.15155E-100000@osf1.gmu.edu>
Bravo, Carolyn. The only barrier to changing the workshop is that we
have internalized it. Susan
On Thu, 5 Oct 1995, CAROLYN L. FORCHE-MATTISON wrote:
> On Wed, 4 Oct 1995, eric pape wrote:
>
> > Gwyn: Here's the problem as I see it: What means "worse?" THe problem
> > is that workshops have to supply value, and to do so, it has to use
> > some sort of uniform criteria. Up to now, that criteria has been
> > supplied nicely by residual new criticism, even as the rest of the world
> > moves on. As some smart folks argued not that long ago when dealing with
> > Mr. Corn, assigning value is a questionable enterprise. But is unavoidable
> > in the classroom situation. How else do we grade our students?
>
> Eric: I missed the Corn discussion but would assume that this list
> dispatched his arguments with some ease. While mindful of academy's
> function as a reproductive site of the culture/superstructure of
> late/hyper/global/multinational capitalism, is it not possible for the
> "classroomed" poets to reject the (New Criticism) critique-based
> "workshop," and restore to that term its generative implications? Why
> should "workshop" (a post-war construct) consist in the dubious
> collective "repair" of unchallenging literary "products"?
>
> > So let's say we change criteria. Say to more "language based" poetries.
> > The problem remains. We haven't changed that at all. We are still stuck with
> > evaluation, over and over, everyday.
>
> Why is this so? Innovate poetries are only "difficult" to "discuss" in the
> so-called "traditional" (again, 50 yr. old) workshop because those
> poetries resist submission to a limited set of critical assumptions--upon
> -closer- readings in the same space, however, they provoke the same
> rigorous and provocative discussion in the classroom as in the cafe, on
> this list, or anywhere else. Once the arrogant and presumptive project
> of "repair" has been suspended, the poet is free to present his/her
> poetics and engage readers in open exploration of possibilities. As for
> the ritual of grades, any active participant receives an "A," as is true,
> in my observation, of most graduate seminars in the academy.
>
>
> > I applaud the efforts to change from within. It is after all what I
> > find myself doing as well, though on a much much smaller scale. There are
> > a great deal of good things about writing programs. Not least the inclusion
> > of voices we would never hear otherwise. Writing programs have allowed more
> > people to write than ever before, and I may be naive, but I think that is a
> > good thing. I revel in the proliferation of styles. What I am interested in
> > is a way to encourage, rather than discourage, that proliferation in the
> > workshop, but I am not sure we can do that without fundementally changing
> > the structural limitations of the workshop (authority, administration, etc).
>
> The workshop's "structural limitations" are precisely what must
> be changed.
>
> --Carolyn
>
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 5 Oct 1995 10:00:49 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "CAROLYN L. FORCHE-MATTISON" <cforchem@OSF1.GMU.EDU>
Subject: Re: Influence query
In-Reply-To: <Pine.OSF.3.91.951003120751.25601B-100000@osf1.gmu.edu>
I would like to thank this list for assisting me in suggesting poets, in
addition to Michael Palmer and Andre du Bouchet, who might have been
influenced by Celan. Among others, you suggested Pierre Joris, Keith and
Rosmarie Waldrop, Tom Mandel, David Fox, Ben Friendlander, Susan Howe,
Norma Cole, and Jerry Estrin.
David Fox wrote:
I've read his work & have been influenced, but I'm rather inarticulate
about influences: I don't understand how they (influences) show up.
What do you want to explain? To grad-students, I mean.
In order to "justify" hosting seminars on such poets as Celan and Jabes,
as I am doing this semester, I must include the ways in which these poets
have influenced American poetry, and hence my request for the assistance
of this list. The question of influence is, perhaps, best articulated by
those who lay claim to it. My pedagogical practice tends to resist the
explanatory mode. In this particular instance, I was provided with an
opportunity to introduce the work of US poets not otherwise extensively
read in the academy.
So to the list, my gratitude.
--Carolyn
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 5 Oct 1995 09:58:43 EDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Daniel Bouchard/College/hmco <Daniel_Bouchard@HMCO.COM>
Subject: Re: Celan Salon
>>Why is it that German literature, especially poetry, is less important
>>("influential") in American literature than, e.g., French?
This probably isn't the answer you're looking for but your question reminded me
immediately of a poem by Charles Reznikoff:
Reading some of the German poets of the last century;
sad, yes, but sweet and gentle.
Just then a knock on the door
and I opened it: Hitler!
That's as best I can do without the poem before me. It's somewhat of an
answer, no?
daniel_bouchard@hmco.com
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 5 Oct 1995 10:30:04 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Willa Jarnagin <jarnagin@HULAW1.HARVARD.EDU>
Subject: Re: poetry and visual art
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SOL.3.91-941213.951005083054.18634A-100000@deneb.dur.ac.uk>
On Thu, 5 Oct 1995, R I Caddel wrote:
> A cheer for Spring reminding the poets not to be sorry for themselves,
> albeit they don't get to glitzy parties.
Hey, that's New York. In Boston, where several years ago I went to Mass.
College of Art and got a BFA in Painting, I've been to many more "glitzy"
parties revolving around poetry than visual art. (Which is to say I've
only been to one really glitzy party, where I met John Ashbury and he
told me about his medical condition that has the likely name of
"Wandering Legs.") In Boston the galleries SUCK, art school is
comparable to trade school in most people's eyes (that is, if you're
actually getting your hands dirty; if you're an art HISTORIAN you
can get a job in a museum). Maybe it's because this is a university town
and universities value writing more than visual art (or why would they
have so many writing programs and so few studio arts classes? Visual art
is relegated to tiny underfunded colleges like Mass. Art) that poetry is
so much more 'visible' than visual art. As for the art world valuing the
avant garde more so than does the literature world.....huh? Who is this
art world? If museum curators buy more abstract paintings and exhibit
more installations, it's usually because they have no idea what they're
looking at, because they're all ART HISTORIANS! They still buy crap while
the good stuff is exhibited only in artists' studios, such as the Vernon
Street studios in Somerville which is probably going to close soon
because the building is being sold. (A friend of mine has a studio there
and breathes fumes all day from the sneaker foam being manufactured
downstairs. This is not a Funded operation here....)
I suppose the bottom line is: there is ALWAYS going to be a division
between the artist and the buyer/supporter of the art, be it visual,
verbal, olfactory, whatever.
Well, actually most of the work exhibited at Vernon Street was crap too.
But their party was pizza and bowls of pretzels. No wandering legs.
Willa
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 5 Oct 1995 10:43:43 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Willa Jarnagin <jarnagin@HULAW1.HARVARD.EDU>
Subject: Re: whyld blue (TM)
In-Reply-To: <Pine.OSF.3.91.951005084736.28058E-100000@osf1.gmu.edu>
On Thu, 5 Oct 1995, SUSAN E. TICHY wrote:
> ... I know more poets than I can count on my hands who
> have saved THEMSELVES by writing, and some of them come from families
> where they are the first to attend college, or the first to leave their
> home town or neighborhood. I know a rural Latino family in which the
> only two males left alive, not dead by homocide, suicide, or auto wreck,
> are artists. Romantic? Explain that to them. What makes me chuckle is
> that if we all believed in the terrible futility of what we do, we'd be
> doing something else. It's our privilege to despair.
YES, YES, YES!
Willa
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 5 Oct 1995 10:38:36 EDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Daniel Bouchard/College/hmco <Daniel_Bouchard@HMCO.COM>
Subject: whyld political blue
Rod wrote:
>>We're confronted now with a much worse situation politically even than the 60s
>>I think.
>>increasingly real political power is in the hands of corporations
>>which run national governments & economies. A two-tiered global economy of
>>haves & have-nots is in place & rapidly developing.
And Tom wrote back:
>So why is there not the atmosphere of political activism that we associate with
>the 60s? Has the new generation of educated youth divided up into those content
>with a McJob & dreaming of a bit part in a Richard Linklater film, and those
>intent on working their way up in those corporations that now run the world?
And then he kept writing:
>I don't want to sound snide, but I don't see how poetry in print runs of a few
>hundred are going to help the oppressed masses, especially when the readers are
>likely to already be converts to the writer's cause. It could be argued that
>experimenting with typographical marks on a piece of paper is a game for the
>idle bourgeois, especially when you consider the level of education required
>to read the critical writings of language poets. But hey, I've got no problems
>with games for the idle bourgeois, whether they be interior design, wine
>collecting or writing poetry.
For anyone unfamiliar with the magazine, this months issue of Z Magazine has an
invigorating discussion between Michael Albert and Noam Chomsky in which
Chomsky talks about the radical changes in American society over the past 30
years. This is important reading for anyone (like me) who was born in the 60s
and takes those changes for granted- social relationships for example, or
notions of duty in regard to the government and military. Z is also a great
resource to see (& become involved in) the vast amount of political activism
going on in this country on a daily basis. Rod's right about "a much worse
situation politically" and the activism that is attempting to counter that
situation goes unreported (save marches on Washington) because the very
problem, or part of the problem, controls the outlets of mass information. It's
no wonder people feel isolated about concerns for society. According to the
mainstream press, we're all interested celebrities and athletes and their
glamorous lifestyles or aberrant behavior. According to the Other press, there
are some wonderful things being attempted in the face of great odds.
As it becomes more and more difficult for college-educated poets to reject a
well-paying job with a corporation on the basis of ideals, so too will the
concerns of those poets be able to remain socially oriented (if they were in
the first place) in terms of progressive change. This is one of the major
challenges facing young poets today.
daniel-bouchard@hmco.com
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 5 Oct 1995 10:56:17 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Willa Jarnagin <jarnagin@HULAW1.HARVARD.EDU>
Subject: Re: Celan Salon
In-Reply-To: <9510051409.AA06088@mars.hmco.com>
On Thu, 5 Oct 1995, Daniel Bouchard/College/hmco wrote:
> >>Why is it that German literature, especially poetry, is less important
> >>("influential") in American literature than, e.g., French?
>
>
> This probably isn't the answer you're looking for but your question reminded me
> immediately of a poem by Charles Reznikoff:
>
> Reading some of the German poets of the last century;
> sad, yes, but sweet and gentle.
> Just then a knock on the door
> and I opened it: Hitler!
>
> That's as best I can do without the poem before me. It's somewhat of an
> answer, no?
Funny reply, but I don't think it's an answer, because if it is, what
country is so sweet and innocent? America should be more influenced by
the French than the Germans because the French are nicer? Even if France
has a less hideous history than Germany, why would America, home of the
slaughter of American Indians, lynchings of black people, encampment of
Japanese Americans, radiation experiments on unwitting pregnant women,
snuffing of AIDS information, etc. etc, give a shit? Anyway, what of
German poetry by Jews?
Willa
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 5 Oct 1995 08:16:21 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" <anielsen@ISC.SJSU.EDU>
Subject: Re: oj can you see
In-Reply-To: <199510050452.VAA15483@sparta.SJSU.EDU>
I was a bit confused about that defense, but now that O.J. has testified
on the Larry King show, I think I'm beginning to understand the defense
timeline. Simpson was chipping golf balls on his lawn when he got an
urge to call Paula. He sliced his finger getting his phone out of the
Bronco, so he went into the shower to clean his finger. After that big
burger from Mac's, he was a bit tired, so he fell asleep in the shower.
Still asleep, he dressed in dark clothing, packed his bags and put them
by the driveway. Back in his room, the sound of the phone ringing awoke
him. Answering the call, he told Alan Park that he had overslept,
neglecting to mention that he was asleep in the shower. He quickly
changed into more appropriate clothing for his trip. On the way to
the airport his finger healed, so _nobody_ saw any cut on his hand on the
flight to chicago. In Chicago he cut the back of his finger in the same
place he had previously cut it, on a drinking glass.
sounds airtight to me --
_______
This wouldn't bother me so much if I believed for a minute that either
the LAPD or the Prosecutors' office would in fact learn something from the
episode (such as, don't put officers on the stand who have been branded
as liars by their own department). But what the nation seems bent upon
learning from this instead is that we should change the rules of
evidence, alter the jury system, and stop rich people from spending their
own money on their defense. When Willie Williams and Daryl Gates both
announce on the same day that the LAPD doesn't need to be changed, we're
in deep trouble indeed.
What a country!
Amiri Baraka had to spend ninety days in jail for resisting arrest. He
should have gone into football instead of poetry.
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 5 Oct 1995 11:41:52 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "CAROLYN L. FORCHE-MATTISON" <cforchem@OSF1.GMU.EDU>
Subject: Re: Influence query (fwd)
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 5 Oct 1995 10:00:49 -0400 (EDT)
From: CAROLYN L. FORCHE-MATTISON <cforchem@osf1.gmu.edu>
I would like to thank this list for assisting me in suggesting poets, in
addition to Michael Palmer and Andre du Bouchet, who might have been
influenced by Celan. Among others, you suggested Pierre Joris, Keith and
Rosmarie Waldrop, Tom Mandel, David Fox, Ben Friendlander, Susan Howe,
Norma Cole, and Jerry Estrin.
David Fox wrote:
I've read his work & have been influenced, but I'm rather inarticulate
about influences: I don't understand how they (influences) show up.
What do you want to explain? To grad-students, I mean.
In order to "justify" hosting seminars on such poets as Celan and Jabes,
as I am doing this semester, I must include the ways in which these poets
have influenced American poetry, and hence my request for the assistance
of this list. The question of influence is, perhaps, best articulated by
those who lay claim to it. My pedagogical practice tends to resist the
explanatory mode. In this particular instance, I was provided with an
opportunity to introduce the work of US poets not otherwise extensively
read in the academy.
So to the list, my gratitude.
--Carolyn
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 5 Oct 1995 11:54:05 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jordan Davis <jdavis@PANIX.COM>
Subject: Stein the Art and Poetry Worlds
In-Reply-To: <199510041712.MAA09910@freedom.mtn.org>
New from Dalkey Archive: The Making of Americans by Gertrude Stein. $16.95.
Almost as long as War and Peace.
Just thought I should mention it,
Jordan
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 5 Oct 1995 11:46:59 EDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Daniel Bouchard/College/hmco <Daniel_Bouchard@HMCO.COM>
Subject: Re: Celan Salon
> >>Why is it that German literature, especially poetry, is less important
> >>("influential") in American literature than, e.g., French?
>
>
> This probably isn't the answer you're looking for but your question reminded
me
> immediately of a poem by Charles Reznikoff:
>
> Reading some of the German poets of the last century;
> sad, yes, but sweet and gentle.
> Just then a knock on the door
> and I opened it: Hitler!
>
Willa responded:
Funny reply, but I don't think it's an answer, because if it is, what
country is so sweet and innocent? America should be more influenced by
the French than the Germans because the French are nicer? Even if France
has a less hideous history than Germany, why would America, home of the
slaughter of American Indians, lynchings of black people, encampment of
Japanese Americans, radiation experiments on unwitting pregnant women,
snuffing of AIDS information, etc. etc, give a shit? Anyway, what of
German poetry by Jews?
Willa,
My point was, indirectly, that American poetry is less influenced by German
poetry than French, not because one population is "nicer" than another but
because German poetry of the 19th century was less concerned with doing new
things in poetry and on the page than it was with making a point: Germans and
German culture are superior and pure. Such nationalistic art- taught in
schools and widely admired- led, as Reznikoff implies, to Hitler.
But in today's political climate, I shouldn't be suprised to see such ugly
tendencies in poetry enjoying a resurgence.
daniel-bouchard @ hmco.com
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 5 Oct 1995 09:02:42 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Herb Levy <herb@ESKIMO.COM>
Subject: Re: identity problems in the wild blue
Tom Beard writes:
>One movement that sees itself as
>replacing the domesticated postmodernism of a past generation is 'Avant-Pop'
>literature, with the likes of Mark Leyner, Kathy Acker, William Gibson,
>Eurudice and Douglas Coupland realizing that disrupted narratives, a
>multiplicity of voices and ironic plagiarism are no longer cutting edge
>(they're a Levi's commercial) and that Bob Dylan lyrics no longer count as pop-
>culture references. Most of these writers use prose as a medium: who would you
>count as an Avant-Pop poet?
Leyner, Acker, & Gibson are, chronologically at least, in the same
generation as the "past" generation you say they're reacting to (I don't
know about Eurydice, Coupland's younger), so the genealogy isn't that
simple.
And, in the case of Acker,
>disrupted narratives, a multiplicity of voices and ironic plagiarism
is just as good a description of her current work as it is for her earlier
writing. I think a case could be made for reading Leyner's current work in
the same light, though he has a smoother narrative surface than Acker.
As to who might be an "Avant-Pop" poet, how about Gregory Corso?
Herb Levy
herb@eskimo.com
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 5 Oct 1995 09:02:50 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Herb Levy <herb@ESKIMO.COM>
Subject: Re: The Art and Poetry Worlds
There's one important economic difference between the visual art world and
the poetry world that I haven't seen mentioned in this discussion.
Because visual artists make and sell unique objects, there are numerous
visual artists who make comfortable livings from their work despite the
fact that they do not exhibited at the Whitney or get written about in the
national art magazines.
This is just as true outside of New York. In most U S cities of more than
500,000 people, there are visual artists who don't have to teach or work at
day jobs. And the work that these artists create and sell often has nothing
to do with what is shown or written about in the major institutions.
There are very few poets (regardless of style) who can survive, let alone
thrive, on their work alone. Very few writers of any kind, really. And I
can't think of any way that a writer can make a living from their creative
work on a local or regional level. Some kind of national recognition or
presence is necessary even for many teaching positions, etc.
Writing is not unique in this way. There are also very few opportunities
for generative artists in the performing arts (composers, choreographers,
etc.) to succeed without national recognition. This is not as true for
performing artists who recreate the work of others (musicians, dancers,
etc.).
On another note, in response to Juliana Spahr's comments about artists from
other fields who only read narrative work. There are also folks who make
"experimental" writing whose taste in music or visual arts is nowhere near
as adventurous as their own work.
Herb Levy
herb@eskimo.com
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 5 Oct 1995 12:13:12 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jordan Davis <jdavis@PANIX.COM>
Subject: Re: poetry and visual art
In-Reply-To: <E04D5667FF@engnov1.auckland.ac.nz>
Re price and words: Um, the medium I was thinking of was painting.
It'strue, Nauman's One Hundred Live or Die sold for a LOT at auction, but
onlyafter Gogo drove up the price, no? And it's true, Ed Ruscha
sellspaintings along the lines of "What do you guys want, Pontiac
Catalinas"regularly. But I don't believe Kossuth sells, and I don't think
Weinersells for that much. Prints with words probably run about the same
as prints without words. But I don't think, say, Sarah Rapson's painting
"Linda Evangelista" would have sold for _less_ if it were an
appropriation of an image of the model we love to hate instead of a
scrawling of her name in white on a black background (repeated and
getting smaller).
Jordan
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 5 Oct 1995 12:41:39 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Dodie Bellamy <BellaDodie@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: Poets n visuals
Dear Richard,
I suggest you watch some old Mae West movies to get a grasp of American camp
humor. In talking about the parties I was making a JOKE. In actuality,
several poets in San Francisco have thrown parties with really good
spreads--but they paid for it themselves. I work for a nonprofit literary
organization, and funding for emerging writing in the States is dire.
I was intrigued by what you had to say about knowing your audience on a first
name basis. Even though that comes out of a devaluing of poetry, it is an
incredibly priviledged position. The text remains yours, even though others
have access to it. Your audience tends to be incredibly sophisticated and
interactive. It's a comfy, sweet world. Sometimes I will come across
someone who has read my writing, whom I don't know, and when this happens I
always feel a tiny bit raped. I know it's a silly feeling, but it's there:
some stranger has had access to me.
There is a yuppie bookstore not far from my apartment called A Clean Well
Lighted Place for Books. Occasionally, for a hoot, Kevin Killian and I will
go to readings there. We always go see the most trashy, glitzy people, such
as Donald Spoto, biographer of the stars--or Linda Gray Sexton talking about
mommy's insantity. Hardly ever will I see a writer in the audience, which
is, obviously, the opposite case for most poetry readings, where a non-writer
is usually assumed to be a relative of one of the readers. I'm amazed by the
middle brow pretentions of these Clean Well Lighted Place readings, the
fetishization of books and authors, the pervasive sense of elitism--like the
people there really think they're a class above the rest of humanity for
reading a biography of Lawrence Oliver, or "Larry," as Donald Spoto
affectionately called him in his presentation. One one level, I find this
all humorous, but on another level, there is an edge of panic, like I never
want my books to be carried at That Store or for Those People to touch them.
I get monstrous flashes of The Picture of Dorian Gray, like something's
bound to disintegrate, grow corrupt.
Despite all its pitfalls and its disregard by the rest of the world, the
experimental writing world is cozy.
Dodie Bellamy
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 5 Oct 1995 12:58:59 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Dodie Bellamy <BellaDodie@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: identity problems in the wild blue
Herb Levy wrote:
"And, in the case of Acker,
>disrupted narratives, a multiplicity of voices and ironic plagiarism
is just as good a description of her current work as it is for her earlier
writing."
Herb,
I was thinking the same thing about Ms. Acker. Thanks for verbalizing.
Dodie
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 5 Oct 1995 13:20:41 EDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Gale Nelson <EL500005@BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU>
Subject: Re: Celan Salon
In-Reply-To: Message of Thu, 5 Oct 1995 10:56:17 -0400 from
<jarnagin@HULAW1.HARVARD.EDU>
Might French poetry have a greater influence because more people learn
French in school, and then go on to translate work into English?
Gale Nelson
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 5 Oct 1995 13:39:40 EST
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Burt Kimmelman -@NJIT" <kimmelman@ADMIN.NJIT.EDU>
Subject: Re: poetry and visual art
Dodie,
What artist colony was that?
burt
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 5 Oct 1995 13:29:20 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: ULMER SPRING <ulmer@COOPER.EDU>
Subject: wild blue and art/writing
As a kid of folks who worked in the SCLC during the Civil Rights
movement, and who left when whites were asked to leave the movement
during the middle sixties when the Black National movement and the
anti-war movement took over SNCC, I am currently interviewing my
father (my mother says she doesn't want to talk about it, and says that my
father was much more involved than she) and writing (mostly not in
sentences, but language poetry was a 'freedom' I found and lost long
before I began thinking about it's origins) about this time of his life. I
got interested in really asking my parents questions because of my
involvement with current feminist critique that grew directly out of the
Abolition in the 1830-40's and the civil rights movement of the 1960's.
My father's inability to treat sexism with the same concern that he
treats racism, and my mother's silence, affected the way I was raised.
My politics have not only grown from where my parents left off (I do not
mean to demean the fact that they both have continued to lead political
lives, building their own house, growing their own food, working for
themselves, trying not to pay taxes, etc.), but also from my own experience
as a woman in this world.
Writing from concerns, be they concerns about writing, race, sex,
etc... has raised my consciousness and appreciation of certain
histories. I think we must first take the responsibilities ourselves to
write about what we care about (writing to SAVE ourselves YES, yes, yes),
before worrying about whether or not our audience is large enough.
Movements start small. Brother Soledad, and Soul on Ice, are two books
written by Black Nationalists who idenitified with a group of eight.
Sit-ins began in schools. The Feminist Art Program in Fresno, was
started by two women.
(ok, so I'm idealistic :) (plus I'm not as cynical of poets, primarily
because I'm in art school).
Spring Ulmer
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 5 Oct 1995 14:02:37 EST
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Burt Kimmelman -@NJIT" <kimmelman@ADMIN.NJIT.EDU>
Subject: Re: The Art and Poetry Worlds
Carolyn,
I don't see how "workshop" has to mean only "repair" and in fact that
definition may more easily fall under the sway of
"repair shop" or whatever. Workshop is where one does work; and I guess
in modern terms where something is made. So now maybe the problem is that
poems in these places are viewed as made things (like in the ME "makyr"--
but then there it also included "trobar," "to find"). Anyway, I guess
the problem is that these "workshops" have become too rules based.
Is this what Paul Engle envisioned for Iowa way back when? I remember
when I attended a workshop run by Joel Oppenheimer at St. Mark's
Church in the mid sixties--now that was a really wild, free wheeling
and thrilling experience, everyone shouting and having a great time
(and the implication was that rules could only take you so far); I
learned a lot there.
But I think that that workshop was a success finally because--setting
aside the talent of its member-students--Oppenheimer led it in the sense
that he personified it (or rather that its procedures and textures
echoed him); he was a freewheeling soul himself, full of excrutiatingly
witty and at times wickedly ironic humor, a big smile, a booming voice,
long wild hair, and so on. His verse, too, in its time, was irreverant
yet it had rigor and intelligence too.
I for one copied him. He for one let me and others copy him. He did not
say: do this or do that. He had opinions. So did we.
RIP, Joel.
Burt
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 5 Oct 1995 14:08:48 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Marshall H. Reese" <risarano@ECHONYC.COM>
Subject: Re: The Art and Poetry Worlds
here's something I would like to add to the mix on this subject; i.e.,
the conservatism of the poetry world and the avant-gardism of the visual
arts... just an observation...
that of all the individual artists fellowships funded by the NEA only the
writers' and folk artists' remain...
let's remuninate on what that means?
is it that the "powers that be" think writers are safer than painters,
photographers, et al., or that they know that no one reads or pays
attention to the stuff???
hasta la vista, baby...
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 5 Oct 1995 14:22:01 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Steve Evans <Steven_Evans@BROWN.EDU>
Subject: Out Beyond Its Edge / Keaton Centennial
The centennial of Buster Keaton's birth was yesterday, in honor of which I
hope Jackson Mac Low won't mind my posting the following:
36th Light Poem: _In Memorium_ Buster Keaton--4:50-6:18 A.M. Sat 1 Jan. 1972
1
As a Mad Scientist
Buster lights a Bunsen-burner flame
that starts a series of processes
that eventually releases The Monster
As an Undertaker
Buster lights a Bunsen-burner flame
that starts a series of processes
that awakens a drunk who was about to be buried as a corpse
As a Muscovite
Buster lights a sisal wick in a sesame-seed-oil lamp
that suddenly lights a mystical orgy
officiated over by Rasputin
As a Boater
Buster beats a cascade by floating out beyond its edge
borne by a balloon
lit by a wintry sun
As an Unwilling Passenger on a Drifting Liner
Buster the Millionaire & his rich Girl Friend
learn to cope Alone Without Servants
when forced to rely on the light of their Upper-Class Intellects
As a Worker
Buster arouses the Compassion of the Nation
in whose light the Corporations
sell themselves to their Workers
As a Key Man
Buster carries around with him
an enormous bunch of keys
lighting his way with a Keats lamp
As a Beatnik
Buster meditates in a Redwood forest
seated where the Selenic light
first falls at Moonrise
As a Leaf-&-Feather Gatherer
Buster Means Well but bugs everyone in the Park
spearing ladies' hats & picknickers' salads
in featureless Hollywood Light of the century's first quarter
As William Butler Years
Buster addresses an irate Irish crowd
that thinks that Poety makes Nothing Happen
but lets itself be bathed by its Truthful Light
As a Cannoneer
Buster explodes his own ship's magazine
treads water in Gunpowder Light at a safe distances
& blushes in embarrassment at his Clumsiness
As a Violinist
Buster surpasses Paganini
until Boston-Concert-Hall Light
Poisons him with Love for a Proper Bostonian Maiden
2
Spirit of Buster Keaton
if you survive as yourself
receive Please our honor & praise
you conscientious Workman
Hard-working Buster Keaton
when you arouse the laughter of children
as you live in Projector Light
Your Karmic Residue dissolves in Joyous Shouts
[from Jackson Mac Low's _Representative Works: 1938-1985_ (New York: Roof,
1986): 224-25]
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 5 Oct 1995 14:07:20 -0500
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Charles Alexander <chax@MTN.ORG>
Subject: Re: The Art and Poetry Worlds
>here's something I would like to add to the mix on this subject; i.e.,
>the conservatism of the poetry world and the avant-gardism of the visual
>arts... just an observation...
>
>that of all the individual artists fellowships funded by the NEA only the
>writers' and folk artists' remain...
>
>let's remuninate on what that means?
To put this into some perspective, we should know that the Literature
Program of the NEA was one of the smallest of all the programs (something
like 2.8% of the Endowment's funds, even though the percentage of applicants
in the program was comparatively much higher); yet of all programs it had
the highest percentage of funding to individuals. The most common argument
put forward about why this was true (and the argument would also seem to
make sense about why there are still individual fellowships for writers) is
that nonprofit literary organizations and institutions are very weak when
compared to visual arts, music, opera, dance, and other arts organizations.
Another is that there has been no national service organization for literary
organizations (CLMP has tried to fill part of this gap, but not all of it).
So, since it wasn't very clear how to give the money to institutions, two
things ensued -- not much money was given out, and most of it was given to
individuals.
There may be other arguments as to why individual fellowships for writers
have survived (thus far), but I haven't heard them.
Since you (Marshall Reese) know that individual funding for writers has
survived, do you know what the current status is for funding of presses,
literary centers, reading series, residencies, etc.? If you do, I'd like to
know.
all best
Charles Alexander
Chax Press
P.O. Box 19178
Minneapolis, MN 55419-0178
612-721-6063 (phone & fax)
chax@mtn.org
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 5 Oct 1995 15:43:14 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: tunguska <tunguska@TRIBECA.IOS.COM>
Subject: Re: situationism in the wild blue
Mark;
Obviously, any writing that cops the attitude that it is, of a corpus whose
experimental thrust is omni-resistant to meaning, to interpretation, hell,
to penetration, let's not mince words, then one IS in the Wild Blue. And I
hear you, there is a need to bring it down to earth, so to speak, and find
situations and cultural contexts for which that resistance can speak. I
think, and thanks for latching onto "anxiety" per se, that I, personally,
have gotten involved with philosophy (as opposed to history or theater or
pop culture) is that philosophy IS the ability, the spectre of a dangerous
muddle, whether in thought or word, and that, interesting enough, in ITS
history, there have been people who have met that respective challenge that
has seemed to threaten their sense of conscience, or what have you. In a way
that I think poetry, and the "playful literary" hasn't, or hasn't been
over-ripe with (someone catch me on this one!). Obviously, labels and
characterizations---no body wants it---and to defend "absolute freedom" in
resistance to it, has its heroic moments, its situations. But, like that
Foucault statement, I can't help feeling that, in the writing of poetry, I'm
doing nothing more than adding to, or contributing to, or "bouncing" off of,
a poetry-generated characterization (as Tom Beard said, who or what says
that I have to write about socio-political so called situations!). And
whether you think it's poetry-generated, or driven by assumptions from other
regions, it IS something you, as a poet, are becoming involved with.
Furthermore, any writer who feels that he needs to align, or seek out a
clarification of current cultural contexts et al, to get in to print, to get
the ball rolling, MUST soon realize the inherent theatricality in that. Who
wants their work to flutter into a pool of mere resemblance and
representation, and NOT of their own intention. I think, for this reason, I
myself got involved in "serial form", where, a certain syntagm reared itself
where I would not have thought there to be one. The only place for
clarification of that, and that process, I find in philosophy. After all, it
was a philosopher, Wittgenstein, who said: philosophy's sole work now, is
with language (sic). Is this a "cultural context" to be defined by popular
events, by the weather, by hurricane opal and the oj trial?! (The other
night, the boys, before the nightly rap session: OJ OJ OJ...FFFFuck nicole,
man, fuck nicole! then non-stop rapping, of which the sole understandable
was: "ev'ry other line rhymes!" and I laughed, was not enough to move me to
write, tho the entire civilized world, to hear the news say it, was moved to
do something, to take sides....) Maybe, but maybe NOT.
So, I'm afraid, it appears to me, that what I've presented to you, again, is
that same ol' dialectic. But let's get even more specific, for the sake of
this wild blue yonder. I've recently written a review of a young poet's
first book, Stephen Ellis, a New Englander whose work on :that: may be
familiar to readers here. The collection is entitled Site Drafts (Loose
Gravel Press). What holds the book together, and the reason I find the
writing both pleasing AND intelligent, is that it does not seem to be making
a grab at inter-steller avant-gardisms. It is, in fact, a pretty basic
collection, with the one difference, it doesn't use the substantive as a
crutch, it doesn't cluster overmuch to "things", but straddles the
predicative and the substantive thru a relatively controlled polysemy.(!)
What I mean to say is, what I ended up talking about in the review, was
neither a complete emphasis on form, nor one on content, but rather, brought
the whole collection under inspection within the context of "being", as
opposed to simply "feelings". The centerpiece, a serialized poem, observing
and comparing the "work" (read language) habits of a group of construction
workers, and the attitude expressed in the composition of the poet's book.
It didn't seem important to me to speak of method's, but, it being only a
short review, I felt that if I showed a habit of thought, or identity, it
would allude more accurately to Ellis's poetry. So, a kind of
characterization? I think so too. But, dare I say it, a characterization
that waved a free hand toward primordiality. But is this something to be
avoided in the "production" of art, of poetry, of literature? In other
words, does the "situation" the cultural context, have to be of a certain
narrowness, OR of a certain expansiveness to command "Attention" "respect"
and just plain "interest?" I think that, tho, presumes as much as
presumption itself (anxiety setting in...hell is other people....where's my
beret, my gitanes, where did they go?!...)...
thilleman
tod thilleman
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 5 Oct 1995 15:20:18 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "B. Cassidy" <bcassidy@BLUE.WEEG.UIOWA.EDU>
Subject: Re: Influence query
In-Reply-To: <Pine.OSF.3.91.951005094445.31105E-100000@osf1.gmu.edu>
Prof. Forche --
Thought of one more for your list, though the influence may not be as
direct as some of the others mentioned. I'm thinking about Heather
McHugh. She has translated Celan, and thought the influence may be a bit
more opaque, I think her way of self-conciously thinking THROUGH the
medium of language owes something to Celan...
--Brian Cassidy
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 5 Oct 1995 13:40:30 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Graham John Sharpe <gsharpe@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: fragments, mourning/wild blue yonder still
In-Reply-To: <199510050113.SAA10720@ferrari.sfu.ca> from "tunguska" at Oct 4,
95 02:33:12 pm
tod,
perhaps a led you a little astray with that re-membering as oppose to
remembering. the first one is mine as i have interpreted the process
of remembering in first world war fiction. i can't help but see it as
a very physical event - in terms of body parts, or creating liveable
structures in their subterranean world. i think blunden, manning,
barbusse and sassoon would support me on this. and chapman too, who
had a wonderful line:
"I could find nothing to say in letters. All communication
was `dissed` as though the lines had been broken by a shell."
a very physical quality to their re-membering and communication.
perhaps for jones in works on several levels, including your notion
of inter-animation. that sense of working between. there is i think
for jones a notion of a linguistic transubstantion. the words and
fragments used to "make-present" to turn, as Jones says "tokens into
signs".
jones quote on remembering runs as follows:
I think we can assert that the poet is a `rememberer` and that it is
a part of his business to keep open the lines of communication. One
obvious way of doing this is by handling on such fragmented bits of
our own inheritance as we have ourselves received.
(Past & Present, in *Epoch and Artist*)
of jones and the renaissence poets. i'm affraid i know little of
that. perhaps Peter Larkin has some ideas, or George can ask the
Jones expert in his family. i do know however that there was a
special issue on David Jones in *Renascence* 38:2, Winter 1986.
hope that helps.
oh yes, and that should be Lingusitic _transubstantiation_. i forgot
a few letters.
graham
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 5 Oct 1995 14:24:09 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: George Bowering <bowering@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: The Art and Poetry Worlds/Stein
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SUN.3.91.951005083643.18456A-100000
@namaste.cc.columbia.edu> from "Jonathan A Levin" at Oct 5,
95 08:49:30 am
I dont think that in 1995 there can be any question regarding
Gertrude Stein's bein in the canon. Certainly that has happened long
ago. [sorry if yr seeing glitches on this page] It was happening
before she became a figure for feminist writers and critics. There is
a huge outporing of books on every level, from picture books to
decent criticism and even some scholarship. Theses galore. I will
admit that when I was teaching her in the late sixties in Montreal I
was the only one doing so at my little university, but in those days,
when the women's bookstores were finding her stuff in print again, I
spent most of my time trying to tell the store managers who HD was.
Now she too has been canonized. I would hope that HD and Stein are on
the syllabus even at Northeast Illinois State or the like. If not,
what the hell is happening down there?
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 5 Oct 1995 17:25:29 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Maria Damon <MDamon9999@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: An especial danger to hard working poets (fwd)
jorge, yr the greatest! if i must die, i'd like it to be through
brain-explosion. but i don't think i stand a chance, i'm too slow and
mellow. but wait --balancing a checkbook is considered intense mental
activity???? as a compulsive e-mail checker, crossword puzzler and budget
figure-outer, maybe i've got a shot at going down in flames!--md
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 5 Oct 1995 14:32:31 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: George Bowering <bowering@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: The Art and Poetry Worlds
In-Reply-To: <009976B3.B09FF4CE.36@admin.njit.edu> from "Burt Kimmelman
-@NJIT" at Oct 5, 95 02:02:37 pm
Thanks to Burt, who brought up that wonderful poet Joel Oppenheimer
[who was LEFT OUT of the Norton postmod anthol]. Yr right Burt, in
joining his enthusiasm with his care as a poet. I loved him. When we
paid him a lousy $100 to do a reading {he also got swank hotel and
meals and party etc and travel] in Montreal in 1969 or thereabouts,
he cashed the cheque and bought a hundred dollars worth of really
nice underwear for his significant other.
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 5 Oct 1995 17:38:10 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Maria Damon <MDamon9999@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: Poetry Wars
and don't forget Denise levertov's fallings-out w/ practically anyone you cd
care to mention. however, while i have some sympathy w/ charles's suspicions
about a study of splits, i'm curious about the theoretical or analytical
framework yr using. is this a counterbalance to all the work being done on
"collaborations" (the homoerotics of, the feminist anti-individualism of, the
subversive natures of, etc. etc) --if so that's kinda interesting. actually i
think a related subject that has been way way undertheorized is friendship.
not that i've investigated the subject deeply on a scholarly level, but
simone weil is the only person i've read on the subject who even focuses on
it as a phenomenon worthy of analysis. it seems crucial though, in a look at
artistic collaborations and/or rifts.--maria d
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 5 Oct 1995 15:04:00 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: George Bowering <bowering@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: An especial danger to hard working poets (fwd)
In-Reply-To: <951005172528_117067641@mail06.mail.aol.com> from "Maria Damon"
at Oct 5, 95 05:25:29 pm
I have recently heard a story about a terrible danger to
"investigative reporters." Apparently once in a while their noses
will just explode right off their faces! Have to wear prosthesis. Can
make a little cash from stories in the New York News and the checkout
mags.
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 5 Oct 1995 15:06:57 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: George Bowering <bowering@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: wild blue and art/writing
In-Reply-To: <199510051729.AA16371@zeus.cooper.edu> from "ULMER SPRING" at Oct
5, 95 01:29:20 pm
I have been trying, and I cant figure out how trying to save one's
self is idealistic.
And trying not to pay taxes? Isnt that what the lawyers for the
corporations are paid to do?
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 5 Oct 1995 14:41:17 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Edward Foster <EFOSTER@VAXC.STEVENS-TECH.EDU>
Subject: Re: ay sixes and sevens
aldon: sorry to have taken so long to respond, but our e-mail system here
(technological school, of course) has not been working. i've been able
to move out of the 3-line format thanks to advice from a poet. the
engineers around here had told me it couldn't be done. -ed
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 5 Oct 1995 15:47:53 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Sheila E. Murphy" <semurphy@INDIRECT.COM>
Subject: Re: Poetry Seams
Maria D. writes:
> actually i think a related subject that has been way way undertheorized is
> friendship.
> not that i've investigated the subject deeply on a scholarly level, but
>simone weil is the only person i've read on the subject who even focuses on
>it as a phenomenon worthy of analysis. it seems crucial though, in a look at
>artistic collaborations and/or rifts.
Maria, I couldn't agree more. The rifts seem lazier and less
interesting--certainly less refined. The linkages that work seem more
intriguing to me.
Sheila
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 6 Oct 1995 09:39:48 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Mark Roberts <M.Roberts@ISU.USYD.EDU.AU>
Subject: AWOL: ARTS ONLINE CONFERENCE
The Arts Law Centre of Australia presents
ARTS ONLINE: Getting Started in Multimedia and Online Publishing
A conference on fundamental business and legal aspects of multimedia and
online publishing
Tuesday 24 October 1995 :1.30 to 4.30pm
Domain Theatre, Level 1
The Art Gallery of New South Wales
PROGRAM:
SESSION 1: Project Development
Chair: Michael Hill, coordinator of New Media, Australian Film Commission.
The following topics will be discussed: project development of multimedia
and online works, accessing funds, multimedia and online platforms,
appropriate software, training facilities, budgeting, contracting and
maintaining creative control .
Speakers :
Phillip Keir, publisher, Rolling Stone and Next On-Line
Laura Tricker, producer, Monitor Information Systems
Phillip Tanner, producer, A Couple 'A Cowboys
John Colette, multimedia artist; coordinator of the new media program at the
Australian Film, Television and Radio School
SESSION 2: Legal Issues
Chair: Samantha Mostyn, consultant to the PM on multimedia
Part 1:
Roleplay on the practical steps of copyright clearance for interactive
multimedia works: what rights do I need? how do I locate the copyright
owner? how much do I pay?
Speakers:
Laura Tricker, producer, Monitor Information Systems
Morris Averill, solicitor, Heidtman and Co.
Part 2:
The legal responsibilities of online publisher: Can an online publisher be
liable for pirated material or defamatory statements transmitted via their
systems? what risk management steps can be used?
Speaker:
Stephen Peach, solicitor, Gilbert and Tobin Technology Lawyers
Costs: Individual $50; Subscriber to the Arts Law Centre $40; Full time
student/unemployed $25. $
For further information contact the Arts Law Centre on
Ph: 02 356 2566
Fax: 02 358 6475
email: artslaw@ozemail.com.au
************************
Australian Writing OnLine is a publicity and distribution service for
Australian writers and publishers. For further information please email us
at M.Roberts@isu.usyd.edu.au, write to AWOL PO Box 333 Concord NSW 2137
Australia, phone (02) 747 5667 or fax (02) 747 2802.
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Date: Thu, 5 Oct 1995 20:20:24 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Charles Alexander <chax@MTN.ORG>
Subject: Joel Oppenheimer
>Thanks to Burt, who brought up that wonderful poet Joel Oppenheimer
>[who was LEFT OUT of the Norton postmod anthol]. Yr right Burt, in
>joining his enthusiasm with his care as a poet. I loved him. When we
>paid him a lousy $100 to do a reading {he also got swank hotel and
>meals and party etc and travel] in Montreal in 1969 or thereabouts,
>he cashed the cheque and bought a hundred dollars worth of really
>nice underwear for his significant other.
Just to echo Burt and George. Joel was a gentleman, in the greatest sense, a
fine wit, and a hoot. It was a pleasure to have known him.
charles
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Date: Fri, 6 Oct 1995 02:37:12 GMT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Tom Beard <beard@MET.CO.NZ>
Subject: whyld blue avant-pop
Herb Levy writes:
>Leyner, Acker, & Gibson are, chronologically at least, in the same
>generation as the "past" generation you say they're reacting to (I don't
>know about Eurydice, Coupland's younger), so the genealogy isn't that
>simple.
I mentioned some of the better-known names - most of the people mentioned in
Mark Amerika's "Smells like Avant-Pop" are presumably younger, but I have heard
little about them, and can't find their books in this dusty corner of the
Pacific. Leyner, Acker & Gibson (that well-known law firm) are, however,
younger than Pynchon and Burroughs, who are regarded as the forerunners of
Avant-Pop.
Now that you mention it, I remember being surprised when I saw a dust-jacket
photo of Mark Leyner - the blurb made him out to be some sort of enfant
terrible, and I looked at him and thought "My God, he's old!"
>And, in the case of Acker,
>
>>disrupted narratives, a multiplicity of voices and ironic plagiarism
>
>is just as good a description of her current work as it is for her earlier
>writing. I think a case could be made for reading Leyner's current work in
>the same light, though he has a smoother narrative surface than Acker.
I think that the claims being made for Avant-Pop being different from PoMo rest
more upon content than form: A&P takes the "Avant" techniques of earlier
generations and applies them to "Pop" material. An A&P writer is more likely to
look to music videos, hip-hop, comics, B-movies, virtual reality, drug culture
and advertising for material and formal inspiration than an "older" (not
neccesarily chronologically) post-modern writer such as Calvino, Barnes or Eco.
Julian Barnes might not be much older than the more senior Avant-Popsters, but
he has an air of smug, middle-class cleverness that gets up the collective nose
of the more aggressively Gen-X A&P writers. I still prefer Barnes, myself - I
guess I relate to smug, middle-class cleverness :-).
>As to who might be an "Avant-Pop" poet, how about Gregory Corso?
I'll check him out, thanks.
Tom Beard.
______________________________________________________________________________
I/am a background/process, shrunk to an icon. | Tom Beard
I am/a dark place. | beard@metdp1.met.co.nz
I am less/than the sum of my parts... | Auckland, New Zealand
I am necessary/but not sufficient, | http://metcon.met.co.nz/
and I shall teach the stars to fall | nwfc/beard/www/hallway.html
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 6 Oct 1995 03:24:29 GMT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Tom Beard <beard@MET.CO.NZ>
Subject: whyld, comfy blue
Dodie writes:
>I was intrigued by what you had to say about knowing your audience on a first
>name basis. Even though that comes out of a devaluing of poetry, it is an
>incredibly priviledged position. The text remains yours, even though others
>have access to it. Your audience tends to be incredibly sophisticated and
>interactive. It's a comfy, sweet world. Sometimes I will come across
>someone who has read my writing, whom I don't know, and when this happens I
>always feel a tiny bit raped. I know it's a silly feeling, but it's there:
>some stranger has had access to me.
>Despite all its pitfalls and its disregard by the rest of the world, the
>experimental writing world is cozy.
I thought that experimental writing was supposed to be dangerous? If one's
entire audience (both of them) shares one's concerns and preconceptions,
there's little chance of offending, surprising or challenging, and it seems to
me that the only danger that one faces is that of becoming bland and
complacent.
To me, one of the reasons that I aim to have my work published is that the text
is _no longer_ mine: it's out there in the textual world, being read,
discussed, rewritten, misunderstood, loved, loathed, whatever. Perhaps this is
a male thing: we want recognition, fame (some hope!) and the impression that
our texts are striding the face of the earth, being proactive and manly;
whereas women invest more of themselves in their writing and want to protect
it (I realise that this is an oversimplification - but the word "raped" in
Dodie's post ivites a reading along these lines). When I do write something
to which I want strangers to have no access, I don't submit it for publication.
But I can't imagine _not_ being flattered if a stranger told me that he or she
knew my work.
>Hardly ever will I see a writer in the audience, which
>is, obviously, the opposite case for most poetry readings, where a non-writer
>is usually assumed to be a relative of one of the readers.
I still feel profoundly sad at the fact that hardly anyone other than poets and
professional critics reads contemporary poetry. Someone (it might have been
Barrett Watten) was quoted in one of the articles from _In the American Tree_
as saying that he saw this as an advantage - that readers play an equal part in
the creative process. Perhaps so, but I still hope that "open works" can turn
readers who are otherwise non-writers into participants in the poem, rather
than realizing the equation reader=writer by narrowing down the field of
readers until it is the same size as the field of writers.
To do this, the text must answer the reader's question, "why should I create my
own field of meanings from this poem here, rather than this other poem, or this
movie, or this page of the telephone book?" If we are asking readers to put
some work into our poems, shouldn't we offer them something in return? The
challenge, as I see it, is to write poems that are challenging, polysemic and
subtle, but that have some "hook" that will make the reader _want_ to come back
to the poem again and again. Maybe if I live to 130 I'll write one such poem.
>there is an edge of panic, like I never
>want my books to be carried at That Store or for Those People to touch them.
>the people there really think they're a class above the rest of humanity
These two statements read interestingly when juxtaposed. I just wish that the
so-called "yuppies", the well-educated professionals who might read literary
fiction, go to art-house movies and buy contemporary artworks, might read
poetry from time to time. Where does the problem lie - with the non-readers,
with their education, with the way that poetry is presented, or with the kind
of poetry that we write?
Tom Beard
______________________________________________________________________________
I/am a background/process, shrunk to an icon. | Tom Beard
I am/a dark place. | beard@metdp1.met.co.nz
I am less/than the sum of my parts... | Auckland, New Zealand
I am necessary/but not sufficient, | http://metcon.met.co.nz/
and I shall teach the stars to fall | nwfc/beard/www/hallway.html
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 5 Oct 1995 21:32:50 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Sheila E. Murphy" <semurphy@INDIRECT.COM>
Subject: Re: AWOL: ARTS ONLINE CONFERENCE
>The Arts Law Centre of Australia presents
>ARTS ONLINE: Getting Started in Multimedia and Online Publishing
>
>A conference on fundamental business and legal aspects of multimedia and
>online publishing
>
>Tuesday 24 October 1995 :1.30 to 4.30pm
>Domain Theatre, Level 1
>The Art Gallery of New South Wales
Mark (and others) - What about holding a conference of this nature online?
Several years back, I chaired such an effort as a part of university duties.
We spent about two or three weeks, as I recall, conferring about specific
topics in structured formats. We maintained a running chat line (simulating
the hallways and break areas). I'm sure it could be argued that we're
already doing something like that here. The difference, of course, lies in
the focus, the preparation, and the manner of responding. Less of an
off-the-cuff arrangement can be quite interesting and productive.
Sheila
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 6 Oct 1995 02:33:51 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Dodie Bellamy <BellaDodie@AOL.COM>
Subject: Consumer Item
Tom Beard writes:
"To me, one of the reasons that I aim to have my work published is that the
text
is _no longer_ mine: it's out there in the textual world, being read,
discussed, rewritten, misunderstood, loved, loathed, whatever. Perhaps this
is
a male thing: we want recognition, fame (some hope!) and the impression that
our texts are striding the face of the earth, being proactive and manly;
whereas women invest more of themselves in their writing and want to protect
it (I realise that this is an oversimplification - but the word "raped" in
Dodie's post ivites a reading along these lines)."
Tom,
I thought, from previous posts, you were into being young and hip. I
shouldn't need to remind you that these days this kind of essentialism, even
if you try to undercut it, simply won't fly.
Dodie
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 6 Oct 1995 17:12:06 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Mark Roberts <M.Roberts@ISU.USYD.EDU.AU>
Subject: Re: AWOL: ARTS ONLINE CONFERENCE
>>The Arts Law Centre of Australia presents
>>ARTS ONLINE: Getting Started in Multimedia and Online Publishing
>>
>>A conference on fundamental business and legal aspects of multimedia and
>>online publishing
>>
>>Tuesday 24 October 1995 :1.30 to 4.30pm
>>Domain Theatre, Level 1
>>The Art Gallery of New South Wales
>
>
>Mark (and others) - What about holding a conference of this nature online?
>Several years back, I chaired such an effort as a part of university duties.
>We spent about two or three weeks, as I recall, conferring about specific
>topics in structured formats. We maintained a running chat line (simulating
>the hallways and break areas). I'm sure it could be argued that we're
>already doing something like that here. The difference, of course, lies in
>the focus, the preparation, and the manner of responding. Less of an
>off-the-cuff arrangement can be quite interesting and productive.
>
>Sheila
Sheila and others
I've asked the Arts Law Centre if they would be prepared to allow me to
post extracts of some of the papers. I'm not sure how it would work - I
suppose it depends on the size of the papers. Maybe an introductory
document might be useful.
Mark
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Date: Fri, 6 Oct 1995 07:34:52 GMT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Tom Beard <beard@MET.CO.NZ>
Subject: Re: Consumer Item
I wrote:
>To me, one of the reasons that I aim to have my work published is that the text
>is _no longer_ mine: it's out there in the textual world, being read,
>discussed, rewritten, misunderstood, loved, loathed, whatever. Perhaps this is
>a male thing: we want recognition, fame (some hope!) and the impression that
>our texts are striding the face of the earth, being proactive and manly;
>whereas women invest more of themselves in their writing and want to protect
>it (I realise that this is an oversimplification - but the word "raped" in
>Dodie's post ivites a reading along these lines)."
to which Dodie replied,
>>I thought, from previous posts, you were into being young and hip. I
>>shouldn't need to remind you that these days this kind of essentialism, even
>>if you try to undercut it, simply won't fly.
Dodie,
I'm not sure what you're referring to as "essentialism" - my wish to have my
poems be no longer my own, but "public property" in some sense; or my question
as to whether such wishes could be characterised as male.
In the first case, I'm not trying to evoke some sort of New-Critical impression
that texts are essentially autonomous objects - far from it. I meant to imply
that what we write ceases to be _entirely_ ours when someone else reads it -
any reader makes what he or she reads partly his or her own, and this
multiplicity of "hybrid" texts is what I want to evolve from my original,
static work. There are as many versions of a poem as there are readers of it,
and since I view this cross-fertilisation process as exciting and creative, I
would like there to be as many active readers as possible.
In the second case, I wasn't claiming some essential difference between the
sexes. I was just anticipating a response along the lines of "huh, typical
male, wanting all the attention", and caricaturing my own position a little in
order to invite some debate. _Do_ women feel that men want their texts to be
active, aggressive and famous, whereas women want their texts to remain their
own?
As far as being young and hip goes, I'm not sure that I'm into being either.
I'm Generation W: too young to make a killing during the 80s like everyone else
was supposed to be doing, but too old to indulge in Gen X self-pity. In terms
of poetry, Langpo hasn't made much of a dent here, so I'm coming to it late,
finding that much of it began in the 70s, and wondering what's regarded as the
cutting edge in the Americas in the 90s. In terms of Theory (a term that's
always seemed a little arrogant to me, implying that cultural/literary/semiotic
theory is all there is, and that quantum electrodynamic theory, post-Darwinian
evolutionary theory, information theory, quasi-geostrophic theory or whatever
are all subsets thereof), I'm also a beginner, finding much that intrigues,
amuses, bewilders or infuriates me. Besides, no-one with a BSc could ever be
_truly_ hip.
Tom Beard.
______________________________________________________________________________
I/am a background/process, shrunk to an icon. | Tom Beard
I am/a dark place. | beard@metdp1.met.co.nz
I am less/than the sum of my parts... | Auckland, New Zealand
I am necessary/but not sufficient, | http://metcon.met.co.nz/
and I shall teach the stars to fall | nwfc/beard/www/hallway.html
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 6 Oct 1995 04:25:27 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@PANIX.COM>
Subject: Re: Consumer Item
In-Reply-To: <95100607345221@met.co.nz>
I always feel ill at ease when the phrase "whereas women" or "whereas
men" appears. Whatever differences there may be among the sexes vis-a-vis
cognitive psy studies, it's always been clear that the bandwidths within
the varying positions are far greater. Ambition, foreclosure, etc. are
the province of no one. Certainly there are areas to explore vis-a-vis
the positions of the feminine (Brossard comes to mind strongly here), and
certainly the hegemonic position of the name-of-the-father (I hesitate to
use 'masculine' because the field is problematic to the extent that it is
rendered transcendent and invisible) across our cultures creates at best
fissured structures, hardly oppositions in the traditional structuralist
sense. The "whereas" seems to collapse gender troubles to rigidified po-
sitions, and therein lie problems.
And what does it mean to know women or men, to describe them?
Alan
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Date: Fri, 6 Oct 1995 09:59:35 +0100
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
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From: R I Caddel <R.I.Caddel@DURHAM.AC.UK>
Subject: poets n parties
In-Reply-To: <199510060404.FAA06276@tucana.dur.ac.uk>
Funny how important those parties seem to be...
Thanks, Dodie, for stressing the joke. Actually my bit about being on
first name terms etc. was also a joke, or at least an ironic piece of
British self-deprecation (sorry, I can't direct you to the film archetypes
for this). My "audience" is fairly interactive, but not universally
sophisticated, I'm happy to say. Only the other day - literal truth - a
new student (social sciences) saw my nameplate on the library's public
information desk where I was working and said - Oh - Are you Richard
Caddel The Poet - etc etc. But (a) I can count on one hand the times
anything approaching this has happened, and (b) by the end of that
encounter we were on 1st name terms - another Unknown Reader bites the
dust (I'm thinking of the Duncan quote, where he imagines his unknown
reader as a little old Beatrix Potter like person...)
Having to defend the space for the whole idea of my work (and that of
others I like) amongst people who on my off-days I'd call philistine, (who
think because I'm "a poet" I want to read Carol Ann Duffy or the like) I
don't consider it a "cozy" or "comfy" world, but it's one I choose. The
main "priviledge" of working in a low-funding, low-exposure form is that
you get to work in you own terms undisturbed, and that I like. Today
Heaney ("Shameless Ninny" as Eric Mottram called him) got his gong, and
that's great - he's a nice fellow and has a coupla good lines - which puts
him ahead of many - he can front it and face the ballyhoo, and I can get
back to the coalface.
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
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Date: Fri, 6 Oct 1995 07:42:22 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "CAROLYN L. FORCHE-MATTISON" <cforchem@OSF1.GMU.EDU>
Subject: Re: The Art and Poetry Worlds
In-Reply-To: <199510051907.OAA29669@freedom.mtn.org>
Dear Charles,
Your analysis of the NEA literary program (proportion of overall
budget/applicannt ratio and reasons for the high percentage of individual
fellowship grants is on the mark. The individual fellowships to writers
were saved for the reasons mentioned, and also because a very focussed
lobbying effort organized by LitNet (AWP, CLMP, Poets&Writers, Curbstone
Press) argued for retention of these particular fellowships. I have no
idea why folk arts retained individual fellowships. Poets and writers
haven't been uncontroversial for the NEA (Allen G. and Peter O. drew
congressional attention about ten years ago, and in the past years,
several applicants have been "flagged" for denial by the Council). It is
by no means certain that the literature fellowships will survive final
mark-up, this year or next.
--Carolyn
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Date: Fri, 6 Oct 1995 07:49:33 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "CAROLYN L. FORCHE-MATTISON" <cforchem@OSF1.GMU.EDU>
Subject: Re: The Art and Poetry Worlds
In-Reply-To: <009976B3.B09FF4CE.36@admin.njit.edu>
Dear Burt,
I agree. I was attempting to describe the workshop which seems (perhaps
I'm wrong about this?) to prevail in the academy at the moment, with
notable exceptions. St. Marks has remained exemplary (and like Just
Buffalo, Woodland Pattern and others, operates outside/beyond the academy
to the great benefit of everyone).
--Carolyn
On Thu, 5 Oct 1995, Burt Kimmelman -@NJIT wrote:
> Carolyn,
>
> I don't see how "workshop" has to mean only "repair" and in fact that
> definition may more easily fall under the sway of
> "repair shop" or whatever. Workshop is where one does work; and I guess
> in modern terms where something is made. So now maybe the problem is that
> poems in these places are viewed as made things (like in the ME "makyr"--
> but then there it also included "trobar," "to find"). Anyway, I guess
> the problem is that these "workshops" have become too rules based.
> Is this what Paul Engle envisioned for Iowa way back when? I remember
> when I attended a workshop run by Joel Oppenheimer at St. Mark's
> Church in the mid sixties--now that was a really wild, free wheeling
> and thrilling experience, everyone shouting and having a great time
> (and the implication was that rules could only take you so far); I
> learned a lot there.
> But I think that that workshop was a success finally because--setting
> aside the talent of its member-students--Oppenheimer led it in the sense
> that he personified it (or rather that its procedures and textures
> echoed him); he was a freewheeling soul himself, full of excrutiatingly
> witty and at times wickedly ironic humor, a big smile, a booming voice,
> long wild hair, and so on. His verse, too, in its time, was irreverant
> yet it had rigor and intelligence too.
>
> I for one copied him. He for one let me and others copy him. He did not
> say: do this or do that. He had opinions. So did we.
>
>
> RIP, Joel.
>
>
> Burt
>
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 6 Oct 1995 08:13:49 EST
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "H. T. KIRBY-SMITH" <KIRBYS@FAGAN.UNCG.EDU>
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro
Subject: Prosody List
Just wanted to mention that the PROSODY list has suddenly blossomed.
(subscribe at listserv.msu.edu). Originally set up, to judge from its
description, as a forum for questions of meter, structure, form, etc,
it has in recent years been the site of postings mainly having to do
with linguistics, phonology, etc.; it seems the word "prosody" was
appropriated some time back for the study of natural sound patterns
in language.
All of a sudden quite a number of postings have appeared there on
poetry, though. None on current events so far and no group-therapy
for angst yet.
Tom Kirby-Smith
English Department
UNC-Greensboro
Greensboro NC 27412
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 6 Oct 1995 07:14:48 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "B. Cassidy" <bcassidy@BLUE.WEEG.UIOWA.EDU>
Subject: Re: Out Beyond Its Edge / Keaton Centennial
In-Reply-To: <199510051822.OAA16538@Brown.EDU>
Speaking of Keaton...
Does anyone know if or how one could get a video copy of Beckett's "Film"
which Keaton starred in? Been looking for it for a couple of years now.
Thanks.
--Brian
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Date: Fri, 6 Oct 1995 09:27:43 -0800
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Blair Seagram <blairsea@PANIX.COM>
Subject: Visual Art & Poetry
Juliana
"Could the public's (there does seem to be some sort of public here)desire
for innovative art might have something to do with theone of a kindness of
art?
That is my best guess."
Andy Warhol is the most popular artist in the art world today, I believe.
And his entire philosophy was geared toward mass production, even if his
output was minute compared with a corporation's or a CD of the Stones.
Maybe the reason he sold was ironic. And lots of networking.
I think for some painters and sculptors one of a kindness is important, but
for "conceptual" artists, not so much. Conceptual is a lousy word. Let's
just say certain artists are not interested in one of a kind at all. It has
no bearing on their message.
Spring Ulmer
" I think the visual arts has a lot to learn from poetry happenings
today. In terms of community support and working together, the major
poets I know/have come in contact with (Anne Waldman, Susan Howe,
Leslie Scalapino, Sam Hamill, Allen Ginsberg to name a few) have been
amazingly open, personal, and unpretentious which is more than I can
say about those NY artists I know. I think though, that this subject
of comparing the visual arts and poetry is too large and filled with
too much speculation - Perhaps some people would like to address their
own practices and how far reaching they are, or want them to be."
As one NY artist, I can say the gallery system never worked for me.
Although I know people who have done quite well, thank you, from this
system.
But you have to know the game. Or know people in the game that believe in
you. And you need a little hype to make it "big". And I think perhaps in
every field that happens. Some fields may be more comfortable than others,
or perhaps you learn to disregard the system and do it for the sheer
enjoyment of it. As an experiment.
I think its true that there isn't much community support in the art world.
I have seen very little leadership among older successful artists. I read
an article on Frank Stella a while back, in WW Mag I think. About his
relationship to younger artists he said something like, "we're two ships
passing in the night". I hate to pick on Stella but he had a lot of power.
He could have used it to promote certain directions he thought were
important in art. He didn't. I know that musicians need each other more
than visual artists or poets do, but when I worked for Isaac Stern I saw a
totally different way of handling a creative environment and working with
younger artists, than I did in the art world. And believe me, I think it
makes a difference. The art world's stagnation may have to do with a lack
of continuity. Then again perhaps this was in the cards from the start.
There is an attitude problem with some NY artists and dealers for sure. I
started losing interest in the NY art scene about two years ago. And I
don't think I am alone. There is simply no energy. Certainly I have very
little interest or time to devote to it. Something is dead I am quite sure
about that. And that is just fine by me. Like the financial world, the art
world in the 1980's was mainly hype with not much substance. I have a
feeling the gallery scene is still in the 80's and the 90's are somewhere
else.
Visual work is easier to grasp than poetry. But finally I think poetry is
more personal than any of the other arts and perhaps that is why it remains
sequestered. Although it seems to me, that I see, hear and read far more
about poetry in the media these days than I did five years ago. But what is
the media hyping? Certainly not the poets I hear about on this list. The
media has a way of reducing just about everything to the lowest common
denominator.
As far as the comment someone made about the price of visual work dropping
as soon as language was inserted. I think that is untrue. Jenny Holtzer is
extremely succesful. Now I have forgotten some of the other names, but what
I find curious is that most of the language stuff and arguably the best,
done in the visual arena, has been by women.
There are dozens of visual artists whose work has become more and more
concerned with language. I have a tendency to think one of the main thrusts
of the 80's was language in the visual arts. Certainly it had more on the
ball than the expressionist plate-breaking of Julian Schnabel.
Mark Wallace
" While resistance to easy characterizations or labelling, etc, is
certainly necessary, I want to question whether or not the resistance to
all characterization, even situational and specific, would really be a
good tactic for poets."
I got into an impossible position this past weekend, with a couple of friends
(one an art dealer the other a journalist.) I used the term "Language
Poetry" and the f-cking wrath of god came down upon me. What did I mean by
this term? And if I couldn't give an explanation, I had absolutely no
right to use the phrase. Well the truth is, I couldn't give an explanation,
because I really am so unclear as to the meaning. Is language poetry based
on sound? Is it about the deconstruction of language? Or maybe the
reconstruction? Is it a sensitivity to the way a word is formed in the
mouth and/or constructed on the page? What is it? How many things is it? Is
there one particular reason why a person gets dubbed a language poet. Did
anyone write an article or maybe a book about language poetry? What is it
in the work of Bruce Andrews and Bernadette Mayer, for instance, that makes
them LPoets?
Dodie Bellamy
"Many of the artists I know are doing work that's involved with in-your-face
sexuality, which is treated by (everyone but the NEA, of course) as
interesting, but no big deal. That's what I'm really jealous about, artists'
ability to do sexually explicit work and not somehow feel tainted or
whispered about."
As far as writers go, you don't find Kathy Acker sexually explicit?
Didn't I read somewhere that she's performing at Albert Hall. Some whisper.
Best,
Blair
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 6 Oct 1995 09:56:32 -0400
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Maria Damon <MDamon9999@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: Influence query
it seems that most of the folks being cited as influenced by celan are people
that have translated his work. i guess this is intuitively obvious --why wd
one undertake such a task unless one were profoundly moved by the work --but
it leads me to ask: how are each of these people --or how wd they see
themselves as --influenced by celan's work> i know that i might cite as
influences writers whose work does not resemble mine in the least; and i can
imagine (tho i've never translated) someone taking up a challenge to
translate a work for reasons other than "influence." so, maybe the question
is, sort of like what i was saying about friendship the other day, what is
"influence"? on one level it is intangible, on another level utterly
palpable.
carolyn forche, i'm glad yr on the list! your contributions are smart and
nice.--md
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 6 Oct 1995 10:16:37 -0400
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Maria Damon <MDamon9999@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: whyld blue avant-pop
i'm assuming gregory corso as avant-pop is a joke? if not, please
explain.--md
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 6 Oct 1995 10:00:01 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Charles Alexander <chax@MTN.ORG>
Subject: Re: whyld, comfy blue
>I thought that experimental writing was supposed to be dangerous? If one's
>entire audience (both of them) shares one's concerns and preconceptions,
>there's little chance of offending, surprising or challenging, and it seems to
>me that the only danger that one faces is that of becoming bland and
>complacent.
But we do find within smaller groups the ability to say what might be
offending to a larger group, and most challenging artists in history at
least had a small group of friends/colleagues who supported what they were
doing.
> Perhaps this is
>a male thing: we want recognition, fame (some hope!) and the impression that
>our texts are striding the face of the earth, being proactive and manly
Really? Speak for yourself (I know you're being somewhat tongue in cheek,
but please . . .).
>whereas women invest more of themselves in their writing and want to protect
>it (I realise that this is an oversimplification - but the word "raped" in
>Dodie's post ivites a reading along these lines). When I do write something
>to which I want strangers to have no access, I don't submit it for publication.
>But I can't imagine _not_ being flattered if a stranger told me that he or she
>knew my work.
Yes, I want people to read/hear the work and even approach me about it, but
I can't imagine having no mixed feelings at all about this. The work does
span a delicate bridge between/among private and public. When I have given
readings where I knew almost noone there (it does happen sometimes, even a
couple of times to audiences of a couple of hundred people), it almost felt
like it was someone else standing there, some me/not me, doing the reading.
Like the public/private chasm, there is both a sense of
identification/disassociation from a finished work, particularly when the
writer experiences it in front of an audience.
>>Hardly ever will I see a writer in the audience, which
>>is, obviously, the opposite case for most poetry readings, where a non-writer
>>is usually assumed to be a relative of one of the readers.
I once gave a reading in the city where my mother lives, and the audience
comprised a couple of writers, a couple of academics, and my mother with
about fifteen of her friends, most of whom had never been to a poetry
reading. It was a marvelous audience, wondrously free of preconceptions
about what might constitute a poetry.
>I still feel profoundly sad at the fact that hardly anyone other than poets and
>professional critics reads contemporary poetry.
I think it's true that they don't, but not true that they won't; and I
believe that if they do, they can respond in unique and intelligent ways.
One of my best critics/supporters has been my daughter's German day care mom
(tages mutti). I like to think I write for such people as much as for other
poets or critics.
>To do this, the text must answer the reader's question, "why should I create my
>own field of meanings from this poem here, rather than this other poem, or this
>movie, or this page of the telephone book?"
No, it doesn't have to answer that question, it just has to keep the work
alive enough to invite the reader to try and answer it (invite being the
operative word here).
>If we are asking readers to put
>some work into our poems, shouldn't we offer them something in return? The
>challenge, as I see it, is to write poems that are challenging, polysemic and
>subtle, but that have some "hook" that will make the reader _want_ to come back
>to the poem again and again. Maybe if I live to 130 I'll write one such poem.
I agree, except the word "hook" seems loaded, manipulative. I like to think
of it more as a gift.
all best wishes,
Charles Alexander
Chax Press
P.O. Box 19178
Minneapolis, MN 55419-0178
612-721-6063 (phone & fax)
chax@mtn.org
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 6 Oct 1995 11:03:14 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Larry Price <Lppl@AOL.COM>
Subject: Politics and derivation
Allen Ginsberg once noted that being an anarchist didn't mean you could throw
your trash in the street. Similarly, saying poetry won't feed the hungry
masses has about the same meaning as saying a rice grower's fields won't scan
or are overly committed to closure. The political can just as easily begin in
the rejection of an easy forgetfulness, of saying, Since so many others DO
(throw trash, etc.), what would be the point etc. of my not? That sense of
resistance is not, I think, about autonomy only, but equally has implications
for the intersubjective.
That said (and because I do think it has to do with form), I'd like to air
thoughts about Duncan's poetics of derivation. Pushed by Charles Alexander's
note on THE OPENING OF THE FIELD, I also went to the shelf, to FICTIVE
CERTAINTIES and to AFTER LORCA.
"I find again how Emersonian my spirit is. All of experience seems my trust
fund to me; I must CULTIVATE THE MISTRUST THAT ALONE CAN GIVE CONTRAST AND
THE NEEDED INNER TENSION FOR VITAL INTEREST. In this I stand almost
heretically disposed to Olson's insistence on Melville's sense of inner
catastrophe against the Emersonian bliss." [caps mine]
That poetry is a contagion does seem like a good place to start, but Duncan's
sense of "back and back and back" seems too comfortably located:
"When I first decided to be a poet...this itself was a disordering of the
world and its orders in which I had been raised...I had been preparing to
enter that world...but my conversion to poetry was experienced...as being at
war with every hope the world before had had of me...to give one's life over
to poetry, to become a poet, was to evidence a serious social disorder."
On the other hand, Spicer:
"Things decay, reason argues. Real things become garbage...Yes, but the
garbage of the real still reaches out into the current world making its
objects, in turn, visible -- lemon calls to lemon, newspaper to newspaper,
boy to boy. As things decay, they bring their equivalents into being."
Two senses of disorder, as also many more times than one real, which may be
why devotion towards them must be so disordered.
So regarding form, it's interesting to read Duncan's sense of contagion as
not being a resistive annihilating rod plied AGAINST convention, to read
convention itself as having bred the contagion. The disorder that ensues is
WITHIN THE TERMS OF CONVENTION. Whereas the disorder that is Spicer's I read
as issuing from the events TOWARDS WHICH his devotion runs. It's difficult
not to appear reductive, but, for me, that's the divide in this discussion of
form, new or otherwise.
Larry Price
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 6 Oct 1995 10:06:49 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Charles Alexander <chax@MTN.ORG>
Subject: friends
What Maria and Sheila say about the importance of friends, and how it seems
more crucial to discuss that than literary tiffs, seems absolutely right.
One difficulty, though, is that some of the friendships meaning most, even
to the writing, are not specifically literary ones. I think of the
friendship (and more) of Cage & Cunningham. I think that friends who have
made a difference to my writing include musicians and visual artists
(probably more than other poets). Even childhood friends made a difference.
Sorting it all out is difficult.
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 6 Oct 1995 12:27:32 -0400
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Bill Luoma <Maz881@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: Oops Snoops
Aldon made some good comments concerning communitas:
>>All kinds of identity crises available, but -- it's one thing to identify
groups of poets >>who seem to share common aesthetic interests, or
presuppositions, or questions,, etc. >>-- another thing to grab bunches of
poets by the scruff of their
>>birthdate & ask an identity to emerge -- rather like the "Texas
>>Sharpshooter" phenomenon -- The shootist fired several rounds at the side
>>of the barn, went over to the bullet holes, drew a circle around them and
>>said, BULL'SEYE! The _Next Coast_ affair was said to have something to
>>do either with age or with when one began publishing, but a glance at the
>>table of contents shows that neither of these criteria actually was at
>>work -- Still a really interesting gathering, I think, but hardly the
>>statement of a generation, a school, or even an emerging ethos -- Not
>>that I'm looking for that in particular, just that I read a tension
>>between the desire for a "grouping" of some sort and what can be found
>>reading the actual publications --
I am in favor of calling such attempt the Next Coast, a dyslexic tactic
shared by my colleague Tony Door, who did have something to say about the
Buffalot effent, which I reproduce below with persimmon from the author:
Writhings of a Nude Ghost: A Report from the Bluffalot Festival of Nous
Poverty.
-Tony Door Sept. 7, 1993
What follows is a bunch of gripping & carping by a typical New York Poetry
type, on what was essentially a worthwhile & noteworthy endeavor, whose only
real flaw was that though the possibilities, potentialities, & ramifications
of this confluence was multitude, i for one have unfortunately heard nothing
from, nor of, it but a few vague peeps.
Let me begin, for those of you who have not yet forgotten that you were not
invited & therefore did not attend, by describing how the skene was set. In a
rather large, comfortable room filled with your typical Academic Library
sofas & chairs, about 75 to 80 rather groggy looking persons {at least 50 of
them men} gathered together late in the morning on April Fools Day, 1993.
Cups of bad coffee in hand, they waited for the first rumble from that first
poet in this now officially contextual-ized conference. As i looked around
me, thinking to categorize & observe, {much as Charles Darwin might have done
upon first reaching his archipelago galapagos}, i saw:
*Five men who hadn't bothered to shave *Four men with beards *Three men with
mustaches & goatees *Two men with hipster 70's side-burns *One man with a
small Tom Waites style Van Dyke under the lower lip *Seven women wore their
long hair down *Six women wore glasses *Five men glued their hair in place
with mousse *Four men wore their long hair in ponytails *Three women had very
short hair *Three men had buzz cuts *Three women wore very red lips *Three
men wore ties *Two men wore denim jackets *One woman wore a dress *One woman
had dyed her hair "red" *Five men over the age of 35 decided to attend *Four
men had baseball caps on their heads *Three women also wore baseball caps
*Two men wore regular hats *Three men dressed in "tweedy" professorial sport
coat attire {leathern patches intact} *Two men dressed for the late 60's were
in attendance *One woman dressed for the late 60's also came *One man in a
leather jacket from the early 80's with zippers all over it argued
philosophically about prescience & *One man had on a short, very fashionable,
navy monkey jacket with a Lenin pin on the lapel.
In short, not many of those people who reek poetry, whom you night see at the
Nyorican on any given Thursday in any given year. Nor were there many in
attendance that you would regularly encounter at St. Marks in the hipster
crowds who frequent that venue on Monday or Friday. Nor even those of the
Wednesday night John Yau reduced size crowd that you get to see full blown at
the occasional 92nd Street Why. Much more so, these poets were
non-specifically cut from the fabric of a Rob Fitterman run Saturday
afternoon at the Ear Inn. This is not to say everyone from the Ear went, just
that if you went to the Ear you would not be surprised to see any one of
them. & almost without exception, those people whom i did know who attended
Bluffalot, i have met at the Ear.
Of the conflagratience itself these moments stand in my mind like beacons:
Iconographic representations, if you will, of larger arguments we have yet to
formulate & pass judgment on. For the events themselves let this description
stand as a partial listing of the shape of things to come.
The unintimatible Leanne Brown publishing the unpublishable in the library of
time. Who, upon singing a song about fairies during a panel discussion on the
Ethics of Small Press Publishing, was chastised for not being solemn enough,
by someone who probably should have known better.
From the man who has everything, the heroic Algonquin figure of
[cf2785@albanyums.bitnet] Chris {he who carries his} Funkhouser {on his
back}, passing out cassette tapes, cd's & his bitnet address like candy to
babies. Who challenged the whole conference with the immediacy of the
egalitarianism of his poetry as music for everyone, & the unintentional
elitism of his live by the modem die by the modem future of poetry as an
electronic medium. An idea, which, although appropriately utopian, i for one
neither have access to nor can really afford to make manifest at this moment
in my life.
A most maligned & neglected joke: Potato as Rhizome was presented, to all
those willing to brave the arduous journey {"Who are these guys? I'm tired."}
to the Media Lab, by John Byrum, during the Alternative Modes & Media
reading. At this reading he, Miekal And, Liz Was & Liaison, made poetry
humor, process & participation. If Helen Keller made a joke in the forest &
no one were around to hear it, would it be a poem about sound?
Chris Stroffolino reached the heighest heights attainable during the
conference at a panel discussion on Word & World, when he suddenly insisted
that he was himself baseless & groundless. The poet, troubled by the
giantesses from Toronto, found himself treed when he climbed onto his chair &
crouched there, as proof that he was in fact not grounded. {Causing many to
wonder: "Isn't' there an electrical socket somewhere nearby?"}
The panel on Reading & Refiguring steadfastly refused to answer anyone's
questions. This reticence seemed at first to be an attempt to refuse the
refiguring implied by the questioning, & then it seemed a refusal to attempt
a question which required refiguring. Finally, Melanie Neilson left everyone
stunned & satisfied by completely refiguring herself & reading the audience.
The most useful piece of information to come out of the whole meeting was an
observation made during the discussion on the Ethics of Small Press
Publishing made by Wisten Cornell, a visiting lecturer from New Zealand. He
suggested that if a book or magazine sold only 1,000 copies, this did not
represent a segment of the public interested in reading poetry, but was
instead a mailing list of people who might be know.
Eventually, things began to get a bit weird. The best talk given by someone
who was not actually invited was given by the Barscheit Nation. Who with an
almost imperceptable nonchalance, & an astoundingly imperialist {& they
aren't even American.} swager, just short of walked right in & took over.
Brought about by an event whose causes ran parallel to this invasion, the
best reading of the conference was given at the very end by someone who
wasn't even there.
One panelist, having only moments before called for "a new imaginary tense"
blasted away at the only one of the poets at the conference who even seemed
to have come close to making that new tense real. The splendor blaster of the
incendiary, pyro-classical verbotage of tense, an individual who had so
thoroughly reworked the language that the meanings of such simple & yet
rigidly defined words as combustible took on whole new meanings when issuing
from his mouth. My question finally is, "How can you be sure you disagree
with someone when you can't actually be sure he is saying the same thing you
think you hear?"
Which brings to mind some of the most important things about this conference,
the conversations one was able to either get into or even just overhear.
Unfortunately these existed merely as a residue of the structure of the
conference more than as an element of its design. {There were too many Panels
& Readings & not nearly enough "down time" during the day.}
So much so was this true that, one might never have gotten the chance to
speak with those to whom one really wanted to talk. From my perspective the
people most likely to be stood in line in order to be talked to at this
conference were Peter Gizzi, Steve Evans & Ben Friedlander. However, there
were many pleasant suprises. It is possible that Rod Smith does not ever
actually sleep, but if you were still up at 3:00 AM it was well worth your
time to stay up the rest of the night with him. {Because if nothing else, he
told the funniest stories about other people you might ever hear.} Quite
unexpected were the appearence of two women from George Mason College, who
have studied with Carolyn Forsche. Lacking any formal ties to either this
particular "poetic movement" or any of the individuals involved, & providing
an especially irreverent & insightful point of view, they claimed to have
actually enjoyed themselves, & even found the poetry to be for the most part
of some interest.
Of overheard conversation, one of the very few "established" poets who came
to the confugence, {ostensibly to "see what was happening"} was caught
marveling, as if having been just visited by those from outer space, "Last
night these people went to a party & after having already listened to poetry
for three days, organized a reading at the party! & except for a few people
who were in the kitchen, everyone sat quietly & listened. But what was really
amazing was that when the people in the kitchen got a little loud, everyone
turned around & told them to be quiet."
Oddly for such a pessimistic profession, (& such a pessimistic group
individually), there was a feeling of optimism & well being overlaid by a
strange sense of reverence, all embodied in the answer to the question,
"Divine emanation or Earthly paramour?" which was Robert Kocih. To speak with
the man was to be as if one speaking in a dream. Most disappointing was the
apparent lack of interest by those slightly older poetry types in even
showing up & seeing what was going down. i hope that in the future i find
myself interested enough in finding out what's going on to take a couple of
days off work & go upstate to have me a look around. There was for all its
posture & lack of prescience, something uplifting about this contraversy of
poets, which occurred early last April near a still frozen lake.
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 6 Oct 1995 12:01:33 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Sandra Braman <s-braman@UX1.CSO.UIUC.EDU>
Subject: poetry
Comments: To: Charles Alexander <chax@MTN.ORG>
Charles Alexander -- Have been batting back and forth to Urbana for a
variety of frustrating reasons, but am now ensconced at cabin in northern
Minnesota at least through October and probably November.
Any chance of getting together a poetry evening late in October, or?
Sandra Braman
218/682-2555
s-braman@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu
218/682-2555
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 6 Oct 1995 13:36:34 EST
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Burt Kimmelman -@NJIT" <kimmelman@ADMIN.NJIT.EDU>
Subject: Re: Joel Oppenheimer
Why aren't people writing about Joel Oppenheimer's poetry?
61-_a"|+pbWhy aren'Why aren't people writing
about Joel Oppenheimer's poetry? (I will, as soon as I get some other obligations out of the way--but am i
one voice--well, there's george and charles too--in the wilderness?)
burt
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 6 Oct 1995 13:02:12 CDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: eric pape <ENPAPE@LSUVM.SNCC.LSU.EDU>
Subject: Re: The Art and Poetry Worlds
In-Reply-To: <Pine.OSF.3.91.951005075610.15155E-100000@osf1.gmu.edu>
Carolyn: Great post. I am very glad to hear that you think the structural
limitations of the workshop need to be changed. If that _can_ be done,
then the historical domination of one type of "official" poetics may
end.
But let's not underestimate these limitations. Most of them have to
do with the dynamics of the classroom itself and are not going to go away
by re-arrangingthe desks and assuring everybody an A (a luxury that most
of us whoteach only undergraduates are not allowed incidentally -- I
just received my third notice this morning in fact that my grade
distribution is outside of the department norm.)
I think, historically, that the pressures exerted by administrations
to explain what happens in workshops and the pressures exerted by the AWP
in the past to compete with other schools, and the pressures exerted by
the structure of authority in the workshop haveresulted in the consolidation
of criteria that has dominated the official poetry scene for a long time.
Have these pressures been eliminated? My concern is that we simply
replace the old criteria with the new without fundementally changing the
way the workshop operates. To change that, I think we have to re-think
workshops. Do stuff like get rid of grades entirely, so that even the threat
of a lower grade (a threat which is real to grad students I promise) does
not exist. I think we need to get rid of the single instructor as well.
Team teaching would seem to me to obviate some of the authority problems,
but since I have no experience with that, I wonder what other people think?
Also, what do we do about the demands ofthe departmentswhere we work? I'd
be interested in any ideas you or anyone else has.
Again, I am delighted that this discussion is taking place with someone
who has real authority in the AWP. There is hope-----
Thanks, Eric.
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 6 Oct 1995 14:02:33 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Charles Alexander <chax@MTN.ORG>
Subject: Re: poetry
>Charles Alexander -- Have been batting back and forth to Urbana for a
>variety of frustrating reasons, but am now ensconced at cabin in northern
>Minnesota at least through October and probably November.
>
>Any chance of getting together a poetry evening late in October, or?
>
>Sandra Braman
>
>218/682-2555
>
Certainly! Any lurkers here who are interested please give me a call.
Otherwise I'll talk with several people here and get back to you. Do you
want to suggest a time? Anyone not in Minnesota who wants to drop by is also
welcome.
Charles Alexander
Chax Press
P.O. Box 19178
Minneapolis, MN 55419-0178
612-721-6063 (phone & fax)
chax@mtn.org
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 6 Oct 1995 15:19:25 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Charles Smith <CharSSmith@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: Celan Salon
Has anyone mentioned Benjamin Hollander, who directly acknowedges/works out
of Celan in his writing? (& edited the Celan issue of _ACTS_)
cs
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 6 Oct 1995 14:47:01 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Judy Roitman <roitman@OBERON.MATH.UKANS.EDU>
Subject: Re: whyld, comfy blue
I really liked Charles Alexander's response. Why be elitist? My old high
school English teacher, with whom I remain very close, is troubled because
she cannot "explicate" my work, but I too have found that people without
preconceptions can often enter into supposedly difficult work. "Gift"
rather than "hook" -- yes indeed.
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 6 Oct 1995 16:19:53 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Fred Muratori <fmm1@CORNELL.EDU>
Subject: Giants and LIPS
Does anyone know if the pozine _Giants Play Well in the Drizzle_ (out of
NYC) is still a going concern? Ditto for _LIPS_ (Montclair, NJ). Have had
work at those theres going on almost a year now, and -- ever mindful of
the etiquette that applies to writers if not to editors -- I'd want to know
that said zines are dead before plying goods elsewhere. (And yes I do
usually query directly, but most of the time the queries -- complete with
SASsomethings -- are ignored, too.) Thank you.
***********************
Fred Muratori "Certain themes are incurable."
(fmm1@cornell.edu) - Lyn Hejinian
Reference Services Division
Olin * Kroch * Uris Libraries
Cornell University
Ithaca, NY 14853
***********************
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 6 Oct 1995 17:18:04 -0400
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Fred Muratori <fmm1@CORNELL.EDU>
Subject: Re: Joel Oppenheimer
>Why aren't people writing about Joel Oppenheimer's poetry?
>61-_a"|+pbWhy aren'Why aren't people writing
> about Joel Oppenheimer's poetry? (I will, as soon as I get some other
>obligati
>ons out of the way--but am i
>one voice--well, there's george and charles too--in the wilderness?)
>
>burt
I wonder about that, too. For what it's worth, I wrote a piece titled "Joel
Oppenheimer's Urban Architecture" (on _New Spaces_), for _Creeping Bent_,
Spring 1987, #5, pp. 41-47. Oppenheimer sent me a very kind note as a
result, with an invitation to visit. Unfortunately, he died not long
afterward. I never did meet him, but I've heard he was a very generous
man.
***********************
Fred Muratori "Certain themes are incurable."
(fmm1@cornell.edu) - Lyn Hejinian
Reference Services Division
Olin * Kroch * Uris Libraries
Cornell University
Ithaca, NY 14853
***********************
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 6 Oct 1995 18:40:13 -0400
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: tunguska <tunguska@TRIBECA.IOS.COM>
Subject: oj can you see...the glove
Aldon's synopsis of the Simpson defence's timeline
shows what fetishism is really all about.
***
Ode To The Glove
When our day was dark and weary
Sittin' on the void amongst the jury
You came along and spotted our light
The brightest quick fix of the nation's sight
A bath to take, no worry to fake
That great evidence that make me quake
Divine intervention come a-rainin' they say
Down in the form of a leathery lay
tod thilleman
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 6 Oct 1995 18:46:38 -0400
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: tunguska <tunguska@TRIBECA.IOS.COM>
Subject: derivation passage
George;
You are so correct, it is a horrid verb (shudder...click, creak....shudder).
The excercise
sees us thru, saw us thru, is a passage now
tthilleman
tod thilleman
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 6 Oct 1995 19:14:48 -0400
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: tunguska <tunguska@TRIBECA.IOS.COM>
Subject: Stephen Jonas, gentleman
from EXCERCISES for ear (Talisman House, 1994):
VI
you too would yell
a plague upon
the heads of all
bankers
if I held you
by yr so
three hundred bil-
lion dollar debt
XV
youth
of my generation
repaired
to The Moon
thither
did their sen-
timents piti-
fully meet
-- broken phrases
& abbreviations grope
in the
half-light
LXXXIV
... nor, in this common light, have we
fared better, most
unhappy lot
made no-
toriously reasonable;
chance and circumstance turns all to
cold metallic purpose
setting no sights to move or to dance
the image, dismantled
all that machinery
departed,
leaving the scene to
maudlin abstractions,
passions too powerful to be believed
or if believed,
too long endured
*** ***
originally published by Andrew Crozier, The Ferry Press, London, 1968.
tod thilleman
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 6 Oct 1995 20:10:11 -0400
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: tunguska <tunguska@TRIBECA.IOS.COM>
Subject: The History of Lies: Derrida @ New School NYC 10/6 4 p.m.
The History of Lies, an hour and one half lecture by Jacques Derrida, was
delivered at the New School, as part of this year's symposium on the philosophy
of Hannah Arendt.
What we took from this address, one aimed specifically at Arendt's later papers
gathered around the idea of truth et al in relation to totalitarianism, was the
current air of pessimism regarding american media.
Coupled with Arendt's ideas, Derrida first set off to define a lie as that
which
is bounded by the strict notion that one MUST tell the truth. This is the level
at which the lie operates. The nature of politics, and history, were evoked thru
the course of this "descriptive" oration, which, as we said, lasted for
about an hour.
One of Arendt's central ideas, is that, to tell a lie, the teller must also be
telling a lie, to himself. Duping himself, also. Part of this has to do with
the nature of individual address, which always, in some way, says in effect,
this is the truth, and I'm telling it to you and I want you to believe it. This
characterization, if you will, of truth and the lie, so intertwined as to become
one another, operates at the level of civic responsibility. And then he went
into
Kant and his definition of a lie, as, basically, that which is dangerous to the
"state".
Derrida then takes this, and shows that the performative aspect of oration, or,
what he likened to testimony, is constantly bounded by the machination of
"telling the truth". An obligation that, tacitly, brooks no interference from
the individual (that that, classically, is defined as having no part to play in
politics, security of the state etc. those political assumptions, so operative
at the very root of truth-telling). Yet it is this individuality, or what,
in the
big picture, so to speak, was, definately before WW II for example, bounded by
"secret" obligations, and operated within the domain of a secret, that now comes
under a radical universilization of "good conscience" of full and total
disclosure, setting up an interaction, at the state level, and also the
intra-personal, a sameness, whose receptive other is always the object of
this "truth." This is evident in the way the media operates, it needs to
know the limits of its audience, in order to de-limit them, and render them
categorically pre-disposed to the above-mentioned machination.
It is precisely the possibilities that "secrets", or what he likens to
"Civil Disobediences" bring to bear upon this truth-telling, this
universilization of
the lie (what Arendt likened to a great arch of narrative, crumbling into
fragments, from which she believed, but not corraborated by Derrida, that
truth would arise and triumph over) enters into the performative aspect of
"testimony"
as THE problematic of our time. That this taking of an "indestructible
specificity" in the light of the difference between testimony, and the
history of the lie--the victory of the "stable" of multiple teleologies,
over individual,
not just conscience, but being and ITS attendant assumptions, the
possibility of totalitarianism must, always, be recognized, and never let to
leave the area of
this problematic.
Many questions, of course, and assertions, were put forth, regarding eastern
europe and the fall of THAT totalitarian obviousness. But one speaker,
talked about the events in Timosoara (romanian rev.) 1989, relating it to
one of the contributing factors that assisted in the crumbling of yugoslavia
some years later, as manifest in the populace's participation in the media
coverage of those events and time, where what was seen, and acted upon, were
different opinionizations feeding off of media coverage, creating a mosaic
of realities to choose from. Media, that is, used not for a totalitarian
view, but for its fragments. We found this interesting, because, what
yugoslavia is generating, is seperate units, under all-encompassing ideas of
race and totalization, which looks to all other world media distrustingly,
as against their selves. Hardly a starting point for a "new and better age."
We've tried to impart first impressions of the breadth of this event, and
offer it here in "good conscience."
tod thilleman
Matt Seidman
Meredith Brosnan
tod thilleman
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 6 Oct 1995 19:40:32 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Lindz Williamson <lmichell@UNIXG.UBC.CA>
Subject: thanksgiving
In-Reply-To: <199510062246.SAA04693@tribeca.ios.com>
Happy 503 years of genocide everbody!
And on that happy note I'd like to say it has been a blast not
really knowing all of you. I'm shutting down my server this friday (the
13th) so if anyone wants my address backchannel soon and I'll give it to
you. I know some of you will be expecting christmas cards from me soon
so include yours as well.
Take care and maybe I'll catch up with y'all later.
Lindz
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 6 Oct 1995 22:54:41 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Charles Alexander <chax@MTN.ORG>
Subject: Re: The Art and Poetry Worlds
Eric & Carolyn, regarding poetry workshops.
My guess is there are some great examples of workshops. The one led by Joel
Oppenheimer already mentioned, perhaps workshops of Robert Duncan's, maybe
current ones by people on this list. I feel like I've led ones (11 years ago
now, and in more of an extended university kind of setting) which weren't
team taught, but which also weren't like most MFA ones I hear about, but
which had their own sense of rigor and intense involvement of students
learning new possibilities. We wrote regularly, did exercises aimed at
learning to hear words/sounds both as meaning and in some ways independent
of meaning; we read works ranging from Emily Dickinson to Jackson Mac Low,
also listened to sound/performance poetry and saw some on video; we used
some of the videos from the American Poetry Archive -- Zukofsky, Olson,
Daphne Marlatt, Duncan; we strived not to learn rules but to find and make
works which individually had their own rules we could come to understand and
learn from. I hope to be able to teach such courses again.
While I like your notion, Eric, of team teaching, I also think there is room
for the single inspiring teacher. The studio art class in which I first
learned typography, printing, bookmaking, functioned as a workshop. The
teacher was Walter Hamady (take my word for it, a marvelous
printer/publisher). In a sense, though, Walter functioned as inspiration,
and the students taught each other, with periodic lessons, critiques, and
encouragement from Walter. In a way, vision and absolutely challenging and
demanding standards were provided by him, and the students (advanced mixed
in with beginners, which was a real help) learned the nuts and bolts
together (and argued about what those nuts and bolts might include). The
course gave me a sense of bookmaking as exploration which has sustained me
through the present, and has given me an ongoing set of difficulties with
what I've found to be the majority of fine bookmakers who have a more
strictly craft-bound definition of their work.
Perhaps others on this list could talk about positive models for workshops
they've actually taught or taken, as well as speculating on what might work.
I'd love to hear from people who were in Duncan's workshops, people who have
studied with others they found particularly instrumental in their own
formation of a poetics.
Charles Alexander
Chax Press
P.O. Box 19178
Minneapolis, MN 55419-0178
612-721-6063 (phone & fax)
chax@mtn.org
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 7 Oct 1995 04:54:07 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ron Silliman <rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM>
Subject: Re: The Art and Poetry Worlds
Carolyn,
I've always thought that the support for presses had greater value for
poetry than the individual fellowships, but I admit I find your comment
that "in the past years, several applicants have been "flagged" for
denial by the Council" disturbing.
Can you give some idea as to who the blacklisted writers might be? And
what the methodology is for "flagging" them? I.e., who initiates it and
what is done?
Ron Silliman
rsillima@ix.netcom.com
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 7 Oct 1995 09:41:57 -0400
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "CAROLYN L. FORCHE-MATTISON" <cforchem@OSF1.GMU.EDU>
Subject: Re: The Art and Poetry Worlds
In-Reply-To: <199510071154.EAA16249@ix3.ix.netcom.com>
Dear Ron,
I agree with you regarding the importance of the presses, which is
why I agreed to serve on that panel. With the demise of the
discipline-based programs at the NEA, the Literature Program among
them, there are fears that as many as a third of the small presses
formerly supported by public funds will close down. While the
individual fellowships have arguably made a different in their
recipients' lives, there is an argument to be made that these are the
"elite grants," and are politically easier to preseve than grants to
infrastructure (presses). As it happens, without the preservation of
the individual grants at this time, it is unlikely that any public
money would be apportioned to literature in the re-structured NEA.
There was a story several years ago in the AWP Chronicle regarding the
"flagged" grants. I don't remember the names of the poets/writers involved, but
I do recall that they were gay/lesbian writers. Reportedly, NEA staff
felt incomprehensibly obliged to warn the Council of possible
controversies. This staff is no longer at the NEA.
As you know, US public subsidy of the arts has always been markedly
lower than that of Europe, Canada and Japan. The $2.8 million given by
the NEA to literature (presses, magazines, individuals,
organizations) was paltry but will be missed. I am not an admirer of
the NEA becuase I believe that it has inappropriately politicized its
subsidies.
--Carolyn
On Sat, 7 Oct 1995, Ron Silliman wrote:
> Carolyn,
>
> I've always thought that the support for presses had greater value for
> poetry than the individual fellowships, but I admit I find your comment
> that "in the past years, several applicants have been "flagged" for
> denial by the Council" disturbing.
>
> Can you give some idea as to who the blacklisted writers might be? And
> what the methodology is for "flagging" them? I.e., who initiates it and
> what is done?
>
> Ron Silliman
> rsillima@ix.netcom.com
>
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 7 Oct 1995 09:46:11 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Maria Damon <MDamon9999@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: The History of Lies: Derrida @ New School NYC 10/6 4 p.m.
thanks for the detailed precis, thilleman (welcome to the list by the way)
--this lecture has fascinating implications for the oj trial and the whole
system of american justice, but i'm too fuzzy headed to dope it out here in
any rigorous linear fashion. anyone else wanna give it a try?--md
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 7 Oct 1995 09:47:29 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Maria Damon <MDamon9999@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: thanksgiving
hey lindz its been (sorta) (un) real--maybe catch u at an mla or 2 at some pt
--don't know if i'll ever make it to the status of "learned"---md
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 7 Oct 1995 09:48:13 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Maria Damon <MDamon9999@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: thanksgiving
ps will u accept cards representing other "faiths"?--md
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 7 Oct 1995 09:50:16 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Maria Damon <MDamon9999@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: The Art and Poetry Worlds
the people who have inspired me most were those who allowed me the illusion
that they were interlocutors rather than "teachers..."--md
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 7 Oct 1995 09:53:47 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Maria Damon <MDamon9999@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: Stephen Jonas, gentleman
there's lots of interest in Jonas these days. i'm particularly intrigued by
his obscure genealogy (similar to Bob Kaufman in that both of them played a
large role in keeping this genealogy obscure). in fact will be writing a
chapter on him ...someday... also, what do you make of his virulent
anti-semitism, so fierce and pronounced that everyone who writes on him feels
compelled to address it?--md
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 7 Oct 1995 10:31:29 -0400
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "CAROLYN L. FORCHE-MATTISON" <cforchem@OSF1.GMU.EDU>
Subject: Re: The Art and Poetry Worlds
In-Reply-To: <951006.131835.CDT.ENPAPE@LSUVM.SNCC.LSU.EDU>
On Fri, 6 Oct 1995, eric pape wrote:
> Carolyn: Great post. I am very glad to hear that you think the structural
> limitations of the workshop need to be changed. If that _can_ be done,
> then the historical domination of one type of "official" poetics may
> end.
> But let's not underestimate these limitations. Most of them have to
> do with the dynamics of the classroom itself and are not going to go away
> by re-arrangingthe desks and assuring everybody an A (a luxury that most
> of us whoteach only undergraduates are not allowed incidentally -- I
> just received my third notice this morning in fact that my grade
> distribution is outside of the department norm.)
If one chooses to work in the academy, one is more or less committed to
working within, while intelligently assaulting, its constraints.
I don't advocate blanket "A"'s. Only "active partipants" receive an
"A." Such participation includes extensive reading, the completion of
exercises and experiments, collaborative work, written responses to peer
work, and a serious commitment to one's own project. In graduate school
the A/B grade is essentially "satisfactory," while "C" or lower is not.
Implicitly, this system is "pass/fail."
> I think, historically, that the pressures exerted by administrations
> to explain what happens in workshops and the pressures exerted by the AWP
> in the past to compete with other schools, and the pressures exerted by
> the structure of authority in the workshop haveresulted in the consolidation
> of criteria that has dominated the official poetry scene for a long time.
I was away from the academy for some years, and can't claim special
knowledge, but it seems that if there is "pressure" on workshop pedagogy,
it originates in the traditional, "periodist" English Department rather
than in university administration. As so-called "creative writing"
enrollments during the '70's boosted FTE and hence saved those
departments at many institutions, the usual power struggles ensued.
Scholars grew resentful of the presence of writers in their departments
because of the perceived ease with which the latter could publish, and
hence win promotion and raises. There were also other issues. The AWP
has been historically regarded as overly "populist," and disregarded by
the so-called "elite" MFA programs, which exert much more force over the
poetics of the academy.
> Have these pressures been eliminated? My concern is that we simply
> replace the old criteria with the new without fundementally changing the
> way the workshop operates. To change that, I think we have to re-think
> workshops. Do stuff like get rid of grades entirely, so that even the threat
> of a lower grade (a threat which is real to grad students I promise) does
> not exist. I think we need to get rid of the single instructor as well.
> Team teaching would seem to me to obviate some of the authority problems,
> but since I have no experience with that, I wonder what other people think?
> Also, what do we do about the demands ofthe departmentswhere we work? I'd
> be interested in any ideas you or anyone else has.
> Again, I am delighted that this discussion is taking place with someone
> who has real authority in the AWP. There is hope-----
> Thanks, Eric.
Dear Eric,
I, too, am pleased to have this discussion. I don't, however,
have "real authority" in the AWP. I served as President of its Board of
Directors last year, and was able to establish WritersCorps (wherein 57
poets and writers work in homeless shelters, after-school programs,
jails, etc. in three inner-city communities), which has now been
transferred away from the AWP. I don't expect WritersCorps (which is
part of the National Youth Service Corps) to survive congressional budget
cuts. I am not sure that AWP is going to survive either.
I suspect that when the curtain is withdrawn on a number of
perceived centers of literary power in the United States, the little
wizard will be visible.
--Carolyn
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 7 Oct 1995 11:55:46 EDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: kat <KLINDBE@CMS.CC.WAYNE.EDU>
Subject: Re: The History of Lies: Derrida @ New School NYC 10/6 4 p.m.
In-Reply-To: Message of Sat, 7 Oct 1995 09:46:11 -0400 from
<MDamon9999@AOL.COM>
It would seem that Derrida's talk, along with his recentmeditations
on ethics via Kierkegaard, also has implications for the upcoming (?)
trials (should they occur and address any other than footsoldiers)
at the Hague. One of the problems in trying GENOCIDE cases is that
the original UN definitions and the trials at Nuremburg rest on
strict notions of individual agency and on admission of guilt by
the nation behind the individual. Not all that long ago, 1970, The
Civil Rights COngress, which had worked on documents from 1951, presented
a charge of genocide to the UN, re: historical and ongoing treatment of
black AMericans by US govt. This is recorded in a book called
<We Charge Genocide.> The history of the uncessful attempts to launch
genocide trials, including the one I mention, might be critiqued by
the means or with the tools Derrida seems to be using re: lies and
self-deception and Arendt's articulation and inhabiting of these
legal/ethical categories.
I am saying this rather flabbily, but we all need to think about
Bosnia as well as OJ and media obfuscations of the world crises by
means of a largely irrelevant trial, etc.
Also, it seems that the recent piece by Edward Said in <Nation,>
where he notes that the Mideast Peace is another ruse for the ruling
classes (something he might have noted decades ago!!), is part of the
same practical and theoretical stew we are stirring--no simmering in.
There are many threads of careful analysis and meditation that seem
in one way or another to tie into the questions arising from ethical
crises that it would be a shame to fall for facile battles among
the proponents of this or that school of cartography. I have
been hearing that there is a need for opening doors, work places, workshops,
borders. True. There are dangers well worth risking; these are exciting
times, and it matters that even the most hermetic ethical thinkers are
bubbling over with (dare I use a retro word) relevance. There are
stunning new revelations about relationships between X and politics.
These revelations are not stunning to Blacks nor to some Others. So. . .
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 7 Oct 1995 11:04:58 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" <anielsen@ISC.SJSU.EDU>
Subject: Re: the workshop and the outside
In-Reply-To: <199510060359.UAA25446@sparta.SJSU.EDU>
"So baby, baby, don't panic--
I'm a shade tree mechanic."
--Z. Z. Hill
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 7 Oct 1995 15:18:53 EST
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Burt Kimmelman -@NJIT" <kimmelman@ADMIN.NJIT.EDU>
Subject: Re: oj can you see...the glove
okay
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 7 Oct 1995 15:21:04 EST
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Burt Kimmelman -@NJIT" <kimmelman@ADMIN.NJIT.EDU>
Subject: Re: The Art and Poetry Worlds
Eric,
Outside of the normal distribution of grades?!! Yikes, am I glad I don't work
at your school!
Burt
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 7 Oct 1995 15:37:58 EST
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Burt Kimmelman -@NJIT" <kimmelman@ADMIN.NJIT.EDU>
Subject: Re: The Art and Poetry Worlds
Just a footnote to Carolyn's latest post: Not only are literary presses,
magazines and writers being adversely affected at the federal level,
but at the state and local levels too. (this of course is obvious to
all but i mention it anyway, if for not other reason then to lick my
own wounds). For instance, Poetry New York (of which I am a part)
has been "zeroed out" by the New York State Council on the Arts.
i won't go into the reasons that were given for this action, but i
will report that i have learned through candid conversation with the
people responsible at NYSCA that my mag was one of seven and that there
will be many more to follow.
incidentally, PNY will continue to publish annually.
Burt Kimmelman
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 7 Oct 1995 16:49:22 -0400
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Rod Smith <AERIALEDGE@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: The History of Lies: Derrida @ New School NYC 10/6 4 p.m.
kat wrote:
>There are dangers well worth risking; these are exciting
times, and it matters that even the most hermetic ethical
>thinkers are
bubbling over with (dare I use a retro word) relevance. There are
>stunning new revelations about relationships between X and >politics.
>These revelations are not stunning to Blacks nor to some >Others. So. . .
Would be interested to hear more about how you think all this might shake
out, &/or what people can/should be doing to shake it in useful directions.
Of course resources are being withdrawn as these questions (reflected not
only in the Derrida posts but in several recent strings) are coming to the
fore. . .
--Rod
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Date: Sat, 7 Oct 1995 19:29:11 -0400
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From: Steve Evans <Steven_Evans@BROWN.EDU>
Subject: Bien Pensant Pinking Shears
Not that the happy thoughts seem so prevalent now that acquiescence gives
itself out as grim realism, but that phrase--"bien pensant pinking
shears"--from Michael Gottlieb's impeccable transcript of a pessimistic
intellect, NEW YORK (Figures, 1993) names so precisely both a value and a
limit for critical consciousness that I had to hang it over the following
scattered remarks about recent reading. Some of what follows may be news
to some of you, much of it will not be. As a reading list, it's partial &
Providence-centric; as a set of evaluations, it's probably inexcusable.
Still, I know less and less how to participate in discussions about
"generation" except by such particulars....
THE BAFFLER 7 (1995). An 128 page issue ("Twentieth Century Lite: The City
in the Age of Information") is out, including poems by Damon Krukowsi,
Jennifer Moxley, Peter Gizzi, Rosmarie Waldrop, and David Trinidad.
Krukowski, who runs Exchange Change Press along with Naomi Yang, has also
been serving as the Baffler's poetry editor for the past two issues.
Number 6 (1994) included poetry by Charles Bernstein, Charles Simic, Rod
Smith, Margaret Young, David Trinidad, Steve Healey, and Jennifer Moxley.
The Baffler, which comes out of Chicago, bills itself as "the journal that
blunts the cutting edge." It is also one of the (desperately few) signs of
political intelligence in print just now, whatever the generation of
origin. $5 per issue; $16 for subscription of 4 issues; correspondence to:
P.O. Box 378293, Chicago, IL 60637
Speaking of Damon, 5000 MUSICAL TERMS (Providence: Burning Deck, 1995)
collects 17 previously fugitive pieces by this writer and musician (first
of Galaxy 500 and now Music Hour) whose earlier chapbooks include FAILURES
and PORTRAIT (A VOYAGE TO ITALY), both done in extremely limited private
runs.
Burning Deck also recently (mid-September) brought out Brian Schorn's first
book, STRABISMUS. The title refers to a pathology of the eye (it's Greek
for "to squint") and the book opens with a poem/manifesto "Entering Poetic
Blindspots," where Schorn writes: "Let a fatal combustion take place at the
core of the retina in order to explode it into a million pieces of useless
abstraction. What a joy in the blindness of really seeing the poem at any
point before it ever imagined itself in a word to see, to say this
completely blind, to know this in the meat of the poem that will never come
to the surface of the poem. So we enter from here now, completely naked,
completely confused, completely poetic" (13). Schorn is out of the matrix
that made Christopher Dewdney, Joel Peter Whitkin, and the Surrealists.
PAUSE BUTTON by Kevin Davies (Vancouver: Tsunami, 1992) is a serious
candidate for the single best book of the first half of the 90s. Davies
keeps a steady gaze where even Lacan flinched ("The unconscious is
structured like a / Shriners' convention") and he does more to deroutinize
reflexivity than anyone since Steve Benson scaled back on his performance
schedule. The cumulative effect of the many internestled em-dashes,
brackets, and sub-brackets in PAUSE BUTTON is to render cognitive forms,
more than any contingent content, the basal units of composition. For more
recent work, check out the excerpts from DUCKWALKINGAPERIMETER in EXACT
CHANGE YEARBOOK 1 (1995; 108-11), from THROB in THE IMPERCIPIENT 7 (1995;
61-67), and from MEANSTREAK in RADDLE MOON 14 (1995; 57-63).
Patrick Phillips has already announced the publication of RUIN, his first
book and the inaugural volume of =BFwhat books here on the Poetics List, but
I thought I'd second that promotion, well into a fourth or fifth pass
through the book as I currently am. The small format (4.5 x 6.25) is
custom-scaled to Phillips's linguistic minimalism cum conceptual maximalism
and the book is wrapped in a stunning cover photograph (also by Phillips).
Phillips lands on my map somewhere in the neighborhood of Monk, Eigner, and
Ward, but I suspect he'd chide me for keeping a map in the first place.
Jennifer Moxley's THE FIRST DIVISION OF LABOUR ([Boston]: Rosetta, 1995)
and "The Ballad of Her rePossession" (in re:Chapbook #1, 1995) both came
out on the same day in late July. The re:Chapbook series is a new venture
by poet Beth Anderson. Each chapbook brings together three writers at
various stages of their careers (early, mid-, established). Thus along
with Moxley's poem, re: Chapbook #1 presents three poems by Angela Littwin
and an excerpt from Keith Waldrop's THE HOUSE SEEN FROM NOWHERE. You can
order the chapbook directly from Anderson at 154 Doyle Street, Providence
RI 02906; the price is $5.
As we all get set to dive into Object 5 (affectionately referred to in my
household as the "total Rodomy" issue, in honor of course of the 25-page
Rod Smith feature), it seems worth mentioning that Object 4 (Spring/Summer
1995) was devoted to Robert Kocik's brilliant work AUKSO (GAIN). Where
other works strain to produce any one determinate cognitive event, Kocik's
pages teem with complex specifics (figured in the work's opening section,
"Opifex Makes Oneself by Trial," as van Leeuwenhoek's water drop teeming
with animate forms) and Kocik's intellectual project has a sweep scarcely
attempted since Olson. Kocik's piece in BLOO 3 (1995), OVERLY CONSTRUCTIVE
INDIFFERENCES THEMSELVES (44-53), is an excellent companion piece to AUKSO
(GAIN) and both link up in interesting ways to Bruno Latour's theory of
"quasi-objects" in the polemic book-length essay on science, WE HAVE NEVER
BEEN MODERN (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1993).
Like Juliana Spahr, who mentioned it several months ago, I've been reading
& enjoying Ben Friedlander's A KNOT IS NOT A TANGLE (Buffalo: Meow, 1995)
and through it back (appropriately enough) to ANTERIOR FUTURE (Buffalo:
Meow, 1993). Friedlander's work over the past 10-15 years is probably one
of the main reasons so many people pin so much hope on the lyric and by the
same token his unerring sense of how to get mind into line is a standing
rebuke to the "bland abstract lyric" as recently diagnosed/thundered
against on this list. Dumb luck alone put me in the way of DIM SPARSE and
A PINFOLD PENTACLE (1984 and 1988 respectively, and both done David
Scheidlower's wonderful, too short-lived Coincidence Press out of Oakland),
but since then I've tried to pay attention. Meow books get out via SPD.
a t s u o o o s
r i a t n m u
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Date: Sat, 7 Oct 1995 20:08:28 -0400
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From: Chris Stroffolino <LS0796@CNSVAX.ALBANY.EDU>
Subject: Re: The Art and Poetry Worlds
I'm jumping in here late( so may be redundant), but Carolyn's def. of
"active participation" may need to be questioned on the grounds that while
I do agree that the reading assignments should be done, the imposition of
collaborations and other workshop assignments may do more harm than good
in a long term level (as oppossed to short term). I am operating on a
particular assumptiion here--and perhaps generalizing from my own experience
which is that I've never been able to write poetry as well when in a workshop
environment than when "on my own" as it were---the pressures of performance, etc and also the particular audience (rather than the
faceless(sic) one of not being in a workshop) may present
obstacles to certain students--and I think this
should be accounted for by workshop teachers---chris stroffolino
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Date: Sat, 7 Oct 1995 20:21:44 -0400
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From: Chris Stroffolino <LS0796@CNSVAX.ALBANY.EDU>
Subject: Re: Bien Pensant Pinking Shears
Dear Steve Evans--You put the address on where to get Jennifer's Chapbook,
but you did not put the address on how to order the other book of hers--
the full length book...Actually, I can't believe it came out in July and
I just found out now...Didn't I visit you in July? Talk about modesty...
Anyway---please post the address (please please please) and I will try not
to say anything bad about some of your other choices(!)----thanks,
chris stroffolino
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Date: Sat, 7 Oct 1995 18:28:15 -0700
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From: Steve Carll <sjcarll@SLIP.NET>
Subject: Workshops that work
I took a workshop a couple of years back with Leslie Simon at New College of
California here in S.F. entitled "Poetry Like Jazz" (which turned out to be
a compression of "Reading Poetry Like Playing Jazz.") I'd been hesitant for
a couple of years before that about workshops, having taken a couple and
spending more time defending my poetics than getting useful feedback on my
poems.
We treated the poems brought in to be workshopped as "standards" to be
improvised off of, the way jazz musicians improvise off a familiar melody.
So one of us would read a poem and hand out copies of it, and the rest of us
would go off with the poem for ten minutes and come back with a poem which
was responsive in some way to that first one. Instead of ten people using
the language of criticism to tear your poem apart, ten people would respond
from their source of creativity to your poem as a seed. It was much more a
process of affirmation; we'd developed a kind of "group mind" by the end, 11
very individual voices learning how to speak each other's languages.
I'd definitely participate in something like this again.
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 7 Oct 1995 22:52:00 -0800
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From: Blair Seagram <blairsea@PANIX.COM>
Subject: identity crises
Bill Luoma <Maz881@AOL.COM>
>>All kinds of identity crises available, but -- it's one thing to identify
groups of poets >>who seem to share common aesthetic interests, or
presuppositions, or questions,, etc. >>-- another thing to grab bunches of
poets by the scruff of their
>>birthdate & ask an identity to emerge -- rather like the "Texas
>>Sharpshooter" phenomenon --
Dear Bill:
I'm not sure who you are directing this comment to, but in case it was
something I said, let me say this:
I guess it is unfair to ask a group of poets who have come to be known by a
specific name to explain that name. Probably if one had asked Willem de
Kooning what Abstract Expressionism was, he would have shrugged his
shoulders and said, beats me!
My guess is that Language Poetry probably has as many variations as the
term Conceptual Art. And certainly if one looks at Barnett Newman and de
Kooning in the same breath, it is not all that apparent why they both get
defined as Abstract Expressionists. However, in the case of Abstact
Expressionism, I think it was a generational thing. I think it has less to
do with their similarities than it has to do with a voice that was
expressing a broad sentiment in different ways.
In any event I thought your post was very amusing and worth reading twice.
Best wishes,
Blair
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Date: Sat, 7 Oct 1995 23:13:53 -0500
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From: Eryque Gleason <gleaeri@CHARLIE.ACC.IIT.EDU>
Subject: Re: The Art and Poetry Worlds
A little bit ago Chris S. wrote:
> I'm jumping in here late( so may be redundant), but Carolyn's def. of
> "active participation" may need to be questioned on the grounds that while
> I do agree that the reading assignments should be done, the imposition of
> collaborations and other workshop assignments may do more harm than good
> in a long term level (as oppossed to short term). I am operating on a
> particular assumptiion here--and perhaps generalizing from my own experience
> which is that I've never been able to write poetry as well when in a workshop
> environment than when "on my own" as it were---the pressures of
>performance
>, etc and also the particular audience (rather than the
> faceless(sic) one of not being in a workshop) may present
> obstacles to certain students--and I think this
> should be accounted for by workshop teachers---chris stroffolino
to which I responded:
I'm jumping even later and haven't read my mail for a while so I
just trashed the whole pile last night. At any rate, my experience with
workshops is pointedly different than Chris', I find that when I'm part of
a workshop or work collaboratively, I seem to be much more focussed and
productive. In my faceless (is there another way to spell that?) room, I
usually write blurry crap, and never finish it anyway. I don't know for
sure whether my current surroundings don't lend themselves to an atmosphere
in which I can write, or if I need the (slight!) pressure of an immediate
audience.
At any rate, I agree with you, Chris, that this issue should be
carefully attended by teachers. It might be particularly difficult to keep
a few people that write well in a workshop environment from dominating a
class (paritcularly a small one) if those that do better work outside of
the class atmosphere don't share their work. t heck with it might, it is.
_____________________________________!________________________________________
Eryque "Just call me Eric" Gleason If I weren't a monkey, there'd
71 E. 32nd St. Box 949 be problems.
Chicago, IL 60616
(312) 808-6858
gleaeri@charlie.acc.iit.edu
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 8 Oct 1995 02:25:45 -0400
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From: Rod Smith <AERIALEDGE@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: Bien Pensant Pinking Shears
Steve Evans made the following statement:
>PAUSE BUTTON by Kevin Davies (Vancouver: Tsunami, 1992) is a serious
>candidate for the single best book of the first half of the 90s.
It is my stated opinion that he is entirely correct in this evaluation.
--Rodomy
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Date: Sun, 8 Oct 1995 19:25:43 GMT
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From: Tom Beard <beard@MET.CO.NZ>
Subject: Re: whyld, comfy blue
Charles,
>But we do find within smaller groups the ability to say what might be
>offending to a larger group, and most challenging artists in history at
>least had a small group of friends/colleagues who supported what they were
>doing.
Very true, but one would hope that that support is not unconditional, and that
one's supporters were not afraid of giving constructive criticism. I've been in
situations where the only response was a pat on the back, "good boy, you've
written a poem", and I wished that someone would give my work the courtesy of
some serious, rigorous, critical attention. There's also the danger, when a
group sees itself as representing some sort of movement, that the members will
praise one another simply for using the methods that the group supports,
without any attention to whether these methods are being used effectively, or
any critique of the basic ethos of the group. These are the connotations of the
words "cozy" & "comfy" that I see as being a problem.
>> Perhaps this is
>>a male thing: we want recognition, fame (some hope!) and the impression that
>>our texts are striding the face of the earth, being proactive and manly
>
>Really? Speak for yourself (I know you're being somewhat tongue in cheek,
>but please . . .).
I'm beginning to regret this statement (& I'm learning how poorly irony comes
across in cyberspace). I know some people who might have reacted to my
other statements by caricaturing my position thus, and my ploy of countering an
anticipated objection my including it within my statement fell flat on its
face.
I still intended to ask a serious question, so perhaps I'll rephrase it. How do
people here feel about what readers do with their texts? Do you relish the idea
of your poems being (mis)interpreted by readers, perhaps being used as material
for responses or found poems? Or do you feel that your poems are precious
pieces of yourself, and that when strangers read them this feels like some sort
of violation? And do you think that there might be a _tendency_ for the
responses to show a division according to gender?
>Yes, I want people to read/hear the work and even approach me about it, but
>I can't imagine having no mixed feelings at all about this. The work does
>span a delicate bridge between/among private and public. When I have given
>readings where I knew almost noone there (it does happen sometimes, even a
>couple of times to audiences of a couple of hundred people), it almost felt
>like it was someone else standing there, some me/not me, doing the reading.
>Like the public/private chasm, there is both a sense of
>identification/disassociation from a finished work, particularly when the
>writer experiences it in front of an audience.
Yes, I know the feeling - more than just stage fright. When I get the
impression that my work and the audience have little in common (this often
happens at open-mike readings) that "me/not me" certainly does take over. I
also find, however, that the "private" side of my writing evaporates (or more
likely metamorphoses) somewhere during the process experience -> writing ->
editing -> reading. This may be more a reflection of my own writing style and
the content of my work, but by the time of publication or public reading, I
find that disassociation has thoroughly set in, and what was once private
becomes almost abstract.
The transformations that occur during the writing process can be really
fascinating, and even revealing. I find that what were once ironic personae in
my poems become almost confessional, and vice versa. When I read some of my
earlier work in new contexts, I often find myself coming to new and even
sobering conclusions about myself. Sometimes, when a reader (or friend)
responds to my poems, perhaps by saying "that's really sad", or "I like the
erotic subtext", they catch me by surprise and make me re-evaluate those poems
(and myself). It's a process that I find exhilarating and vital, and it's one
of the reasons that I want my poems to be read.
>>I still feel profoundly sad at the fact that hardly anyone other than poets
>>and professional critics reads contemporary poetry.
>
>I think it's true that they don't, but not true that they won't; and I
>believe that if they do, they can respond in unique and intelligent ways.
>One of my best critics/supporters has been my daughter's German day care mom
>(tages mutti). I like to think I write for such people as much as for other
>poets or critics.
I agree entirely. Part of the answer lies in, as you say, "writ[ing] for such
people as for other poets or critics". This need not be "writing down" to them,
but involves considering the concerns and tastes of one's intended audience.
>>To do this, the text must answer the reader's question, "why should I create
>>my
>>own field of meanings from this poem here, rather than this other poem, or
>>this
>>movie, or this page of the telephone book?"
>
>No, it doesn't have to answer that question, it just has to keep the work
>alive enough to invite the reader to try and answer it (invite being the
>operative word here).
I think that this is what I meant. A poem that is alive and invites the reader
back has, in a sense, answered this question. "Why should I read this poem?"
Because it is alive, and is extending an invitation to me.
We're probably saying the same thing, just differing as to whether it's the
poem or the reader that's answering the question.
>>If we are asking readers to put
>>some work into our poems, shouldn't we offer them something in return? The
>>challenge, as I see it, is to write poems that are challenging, polysemic and
>>subtle, but that have some "hook" that will make the reader _want_ to come
>>back
>>to the poem again and again. Maybe if I live to 130 I'll write one such poem.
>
>I agree, except the word "hook" seems loaded, manipulative. I like to think
>of it more as a gift.
Yes, "gift" is a good word. I used the word "hook" (in quotes) as an analogy to
the "hook" of a popular song, and I suppose that some might see that as
manipulative.
I think of this gift/hook as being some sort of benign textual virus, one that
finds fertile breeding grounds within a reader's brain. There are phrases from
poems that continue to worm their way through my subconscious, popping up when
I least expect them, changing the way that I think, write and feel. They are
beautiful.
Thanks for the thoughtful reply,
Tom Beard.
______________________________________________________________________________
I/am a background/process, shrunk to an icon. | Tom Beard
I am/a dark place. | beard@metdp1.met.co.nz
I am less/than the sum of my parts... | Auckland, New Zealand
I am necessary/but not sufficient, | http://metcon.met.co.nz/
and I shall teach the stars to fall | nwfc/beard/www/hallway.html
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 8 Oct 1995 23:07:00 GMT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Tom Beard <beard@MET.CO.NZ>
Subject: Gift
Thinking of Charles' idea of a "gift", something that a poem gives to the
reader and makes them want to give their attention in return, reminded me of
this old poem of mine. Also, poem as gift as virus as hook, "gift" as noun or
verb, gratitude vs obligation, gift vs bribe, temptation vs generosity, leading
you down the garden path...
Gift
sleep thickens and stops stone at my throat
muttering hints tapping on my sternum, yes
a stone the colour of silence, your hand
cool among the forests of my chest
sunlight fallen earthwards, slow, filtered,
tapu river curling in its bed, volcanic, the skin
of your stone, stones
of my skin shaking, recalling their birth
one stone entwined in undergrowth monolith menhir
reaching sky through sheets and ceiling
burrowing faultlines, tearing ribs
already my bloodstream swells
with tiny stones, beating upstream, stars of light
touching water, rumour of rain through blinds
or wind or train or cars humming filtered
white noise yes, yes your skin a poem
a place to get lost in
______________________________________________________________________________
I/am a background/process, shrunk to an icon. | Tom Beard
I am/a dark place. | beard@metdp1.met.co.nz
I am less/than the sum of my parts... | Auckland, New Zealand
I am necessary/but not sufficient, | http://metcon.met.co.nz/
and I shall teach the stars to fall | nwfc/beard/www/hallway.html
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 8 Oct 1995 18:43:43 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ron Silliman <rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM>
Subject: Re: wild blue yonder
You wrote:
>
>Ron,
>
>You wrote: "Similarly, all sound poetry 'says the same thing' and it
says it
>over and over."
>
>che cosa?
>
What, in days of yore, we called the surplus of the signifier....
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 9 Oct 1995 10:32:17 +0100
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: R I Caddel <R.I.Caddel@DURHAM.AC.UK>
Subject: Giants play well in the drizzle
In-Reply-To: <199510070404.FAA26551@tucana.dur.ac.uk>
Someone asked about this magazine/newssheet, yes? As far as I know it's
folded (- er - that is, it is no more), Martha King having gone into other
publishing ventures, including various chapbooks well-printed on good
materials: the latest I saw was a superb one by UK poet Tony Baker called
... yellow blue tibia ...
Martha's still at: 326A 4th St Brooklyn NY11215. Send her large
quantities of $$$ and order the Tony Baker title.
Meanwhile her husband Basil King is just starting a tour of the UK, and
will be reading with slides of his work in Morden Tower, Newcastle, on
October 20th (a joint Bunting Centre/Morden Tower production).
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: Mon, 9 Oct 1995 10:39:04 -0700
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" <anielsen@ISC.SJSU.EDU>
Subject: Re: Signifier Surplus
In-Reply-To: <199510090359.UAA21476@sparta.SJSU.EDU>
There's a sale on gift hooks at the local book store!
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 9 Oct 1995 10:40:14 -0700
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" <anielsen@ISC.SJSU.EDU>
Subject: Re: line & sinker
In-Reply-To: <199510090359.UAA21476@sparta.SJSU.EDU>
where are the renga of yesteryear?
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 9 Oct 1995 15:23:01 -0400
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Mark Wallace <mdw@GWIS2.CIRC.GWU.EDU>
Subject: I want to help it, but I can't
I appreciate Gale Nelson's response to some of my recent comments. But I
can't, Gale, really agree with what you've said there.
Although poetry may not be a successful mass market commodity (altho some
types of poetry come pretty close), there are markets for poetry
(several, not nearly enough) and poets are greatly influenced--I don't
say entirely controlled--by what the poetry marketplace will bear. A poem
may not be a commodity in and of itself, but the moment it is produced,
it IS a commodity, however unlike certain other kinds of commodities. So
in response to your comments, and admitting some complexities, I'd have
to say this:
Poetry IS a commodity.
Poets need tactics. And they use them.
The tastes that "move an editor" are not determined solely in individual
isolation, but are greatly shaped by the politics of the production
market. The tastes that "move a writer" are not determined solely in
isolation, but are greatly shaped by the work they have access to, which
is to say, by the politics of the production market.
People who deny that poetry is a commodity are often doing so because
they don't want others to have access to their markets, or because they
think there's something fundamentally wrong with the very idea of
production. As an editor, do
you really publish "just what I like"? Or does what one likes tend
towards certain kinds of poetry, and certain kinds of poets (people with
similar outlooks, aesthetics, maybe even one's personal friends), and are
those tendencies not ideological? I think
the latter is true, and not necessarily wrong, as long as one makes some
conscious effort to articulate where one is coming from. There's nothing
wrong with production per se. But what does
seem to me wrong is to deny that ideological/cultural/political problems
have a bearing on the poetry that any editor--even and especially
oneself--publishes. My decisions, as an editor of a magazine, are based
on the huge variety of cultural problems that greatly determine my "taste."
mark wallace
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 9 Oct 1995 15:42:25 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Dodie Bellamy <BellaDodie@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: line & sinker
A. Nielsen writes:
>where are the renga of yesteryear?
Dear Al,
Please don't even whisper that hideous 'R' word. Terrible things have been
known to have been summoned back from the grave.
Dodie
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 9 Oct 1995 18:13:09 -0500
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Edward Foster <EFOSTER@VAXC.STEVENS-TECH.EDU>
Subject: Re: Politics and derivation
i have a sense that the passage larry price quotes from after lorca is derived
from mallarme and considerations of purity. the formal difference is
theological. emerson for duncan was more than metaphor; the key perception
is movement. tho in spicer there is mention of reaching out, the key
peception is rest. -ed
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 9 Oct 1995 18:16:54 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Edward Foster <EFOSTER@VAXC.STEVENS-TECH.EDU>
Subject: Re: Joel Oppenheimer
yes, burt, we need someone to take us through oppenheimer; david landrey
where are you?
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 9 Oct 1995 18:18:11 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Edward Foster <EFOSTER@VAXC.STEVENS-TECH.EDU>
Subject: Re: Giants and LIPS
yes, lips is indeed going very strong; laura boss has an issue on its way
at present. -ed
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 9 Oct 1995 16:50:01 -0700
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Shaunanne Tangney <st@SCS.UNR.EDU>
Subject: Re: Gift
In-Reply-To: <95100823065986@met.co.nz>
On Sun, 8 Oct 1995, Tom Beard wrote:
> Thinking of Charles' idea of a "gift", something that a poem gives to the
> reader and makes them want to give their attention in return, reminded me of
> this old poem of mine. Also, poem as gift as virus as hook, "gift" as noun or
> verb, gratitude vs obligation, gift vs bribe, temptation vs generosity, leading
> you down the garden path...
>
i love the idea of the gift. . . i think that a poem is the reality of
gift. . .
cixous speaks of both the gift and of pure spending. she alludes to the
pot latch in which we are made richer by what we give away.
pure spending seems to me a headdy concept, full of love and potential.
i am always about trying to do it. . . and most especially in my writing.
consider also derrida, and the concept of play here--that significance
arrises in the play btw. signifiers--this seems to me very close to a
gift,as well--something unexpected, but magical, and delightful. . .
h, the gift, the gift! how to at once give and recieve--purely, cleanly,
w/ purpose and intent and yet w/ surprise and joy!
--shaunanne
>
>
>
> Gift
>
>
>
> sleep thickens and stops stone at my throat
> muttering hints tapping on my sternum, yes
>
> a stone the colour of silence, your hand
> cool among the forests of my chest
>
> sunlight fallen earthwards, slow, filtered,
> tapu river curling in its bed, volcanic, the skin
> of your stone, stones
> of my skin shaking, recalling their birth
>
> one stone entwined in undergrowth monolith menhir
> reaching sky through sheets and ceiling
> burrowing faultlines, tearing ribs
>
> already my bloodstream swells
> with tiny stones, beating upstream, stars of light
> touching water, rumour of rain through blinds
> or wind or train or cars humming filtered
> white noise yes, yes your skin a poem
> a place to get lost in
>
>
>
>
>
> ______________________________________________________________________________
> 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: Mon, 9 Oct 1995 19:29:03 -0700
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ron Silliman <rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM>
Subject: Re: The South
A dumb question, but my dictionary is mute on this point. How, dear
friends south of the Equator, does one spell "diggery do"?
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 9 Oct 1995 23:21:01 +0000
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: cris cheek <cris@SLANG.DEMON.CO.UK>
Subject: Re: yonder lies a surplus of the signifier....
Ron, what are we calling sound poetry under this pithy rebuttal? I like the
brio of your take but
To lead you on a little - the following are but a low tech sampling of
poets who have deliberately presented work in contexts identified as Sound
Poetry:
Bernard Heidsieck (hope you know at least some of his magnificent Poemes
Partitions series, particularly Partitions V) / Jerome Rothenberg /
Gerhard Ruhm / bp nicol / Steve McCafferty / bill bissett / Franz
Mon / Henri Chopin / Jackson MacLow / Bob Cobbing / let alone their
earlier twentieth century peers such as Schwitters / Sitwell (and a
considerable swathe of those who appear in the anthology just out from
Jerry and Pierre's labor of love - I can't wait to begin using that)
admittedly this list could hardly be more beefcake (it could ceratinly be a
lot longer), but a surplus of signifiers? I've, also deliberately, chosen a
range of practitioners whose work challenges your reductivist take -
granted you're probably making one of your usefully deliberate provocative
opening gambits.
And to leap from discussion to discussion under the mutating subject
heading - isn't this a little like the sense I've read in some more
recent posts here that it's possible to write without the presence of
politics (with a small p) - even if that presence is signified by its
absence - let alone choice of context, conceptual framing, choice of
vocabulary, syntactical strategies, formal modes and so on? I would worry
about 'sound' poetry becoming too cheaply over-characterised unless again
we're talking detail and example. Same with too easy hooks such as 'visual'
poetry or 'performance' poetry for that matter.
here's to hearing that paint dry
love and love
cris
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 9 Oct 1995 21:25:12 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" <anielsen@ISC.SJSU.EDU>
Subject: Re: verbatim gift from my TV set
In-Reply-To: <199510100401.VAA18127@sparta.SJSU.EDU>
"When people are asked
what kind of lawn tractor they'd
like for a gift,
most say the same thing."
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 10 Oct 1995 01:20:23 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Rod Smith <AERIALEDGE@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: didgeridoo lips
Ron,
Not below the equator but gave instructions in print for performance of poems
of mine using the instrument-- at least doubly encountered spelling--
"didgeridoo."
Ed,
Cld you post an address for _Lips_?
--Rod
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 10 Oct 1995 01:40:26 -0400
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Charles Smith <CharSSmith@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: The South
"A dumb question, but my dictionary is mute on this point. How, dear
friends south of the Equator, does one spell "diggery do"?"
Ron,
Liner notes here give both didjeridu & didjeridoo. Take yer pick.
cs
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 10 Oct 1995 09:38:32 GMT0BST
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Peter Larkin <LYAAZ@LIBRIS.LIB.WARWICK.AC.UK>
Organization: UNIVERSITY OF WARWICK LIBRARY
Subject: Fragments, mourning and derivation
------- Forwarded Message Follows -------
This post is now a bit behind the times. I had trouble getting
through before. Peter
------- Forwarded Message Follows -------
From: Self <LIBRIS/LYAAZ>
To: Poetics@ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu
Subject: Fragments, mourning and derivation
Date sent: Wed, 4 Oct 1995 13:18:29
I was interested in the responses/contributions from Larry Price and
Tod Thilleman, but being the first week of term here there isn't time
for more than a few derived and rehashed thoughts. Re: "the past" I
wonder whether the phenomenological distinction between the past as a
past present (to some degree retrievable) and the past as the
phantasmic Past (always already past) may not be useful; both terms
operate within our common term,past. By "weak" I was thinking not so
much in terms of Vattimo's "weak ontology" as Nemoianu's idea of the
secondary, that which is recessively, non-oppositionally other, and
may now be the only place, at our cultural moment for such twilight
terms as the classical or traditional, if those terms can ever
remain alive within a context of non-dominance.
As for attachment, a few more self-quotes from an essay on D Jones:
"It is the property of diversity...to attach itself...In what
sense can fragments attach themselves? They can never again be
integral components, but rather like the chosen but random or already-
used elements which go to make up a nest or section of dry-stone
walling, fragments may be recombinative of more basic patterns of
nurture (ie. the improvisatory recombinations find their way to
those basic patterns).
But perhaps the discussion has moved on...
Peter
Peter Larkin Philosophy & Literature Librarian
University of Warwick Library,Coventry CV4 7AL UK
Tel:01203 524475 Fax: 01203 524211
Email: Lyaaz@Libris.Lib.Warwick.ac.uk
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 10 Oct 1995 02:42:48 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ron Silliman <rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM>
Subject: Yonder
My friend, Mr. Cheek, writes,
>
>Ron, what are we calling sound poetry under this pithy rebuttal? I
like the brio of your take but To lead you on a little - the
following are but a low tech sampling of poets who have deliberately
presented work in contexts identified as Sound Poetry:
>
>Bernard Heidsieck (hope you know at least some of his magnificent
Poemes Partitions series, particularly Partitions V) / Jerome
Rothenberg / Gerhard Ruhm / bp nicol / Steve McCafferty / bill
bissett / Franz Mon / Henri Chopin / Jackson MacLow / Bob
Cobbing / let alone their earlier twentieth century peers such as
Schwitters / Sitwell (and a considerable swathe of those who appear
in the anthology just out from Jerry and Pierre's labor of love - I
can't wait to begin using that)
>
>admittedly this list could hardly be more beefcake (it could ceratinly
be a lot longer), but a surplus of signifiers? I've, also deliberately,
chosen a range of practitioners whose work challenges your reductivist
take - granted you're probably making one of your usefully deliberate
provocative opening gambits.
>
>And to leap from discussion to discussion under the mutating subject
>heading - isn't this a little like the sense I've read in some more
>recent posts here that it's possible to write without the presence of
>politics (with a small p) - even if that presence is signified by
its absence - let alone choice of context, conceptual framing, choice
of vocabulary, syntactical strategies, formal modes and so on? I would
worry about 'sound' poetry becoming too cheaply over-characterised
unless again we're talking detail and example. Same with too easy hooks
such as 'visual' poetry or 'performance' poetry for that matter.
>
>here's to hearing that paint dry
>love and love
>cris
>
Franz Mon is the one person on that list with whom I'm not familiar. I
do in fact almost always enjoy sound poetry (some more than others,
with the Four Horsemen very much at the front of the line), but the
problem I come up with, like trying to think about a certain kind of
enjoyable movie the morning after, is that of "close reading." What
would it mean to "close read" specific sound texts and how much would
they then differ? Invariably I come up with the importance of sound
itself as such as a signifier that transcends sense. What is then made
of that transcendance is, it seems, ultimately a wall. Differences
between texts tend to be rooted in the source material, which oft times
is "found," or in a psychographics of the resonating body. But beyond
that? Well, I'd have to be shown. (As always, I'm willing to learn....)
Ron
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 10 Oct 1995 12:17:59 +0100
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: R I Caddel <R.I.Caddel@DURHAM.AC.UK>
Subject: pens are too light (fwd)
A rare example of audience overlap: I sent this one to my European
Information cronies and then thought the Poetics crowd might like it
too... Of course, the ultimate minimal text is the British constitution
(0 words) - so much easier for the police to administer...
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 10 Oct 1995 11:45:37 +0100 (BST)
From: R I Caddel <R.I.Caddel@durham.ac.uk>
To: eurodoc <eurodoc@durham.ac.uk>
Subject: pens are too light
Note which appeared in the UKRHEEO office in Brussels (thanks to Carl
Woolf) :
The Ten Commandments 130 words
Sermon on the Mount 320 words
American Declaration of Independence 485 words
EU internal memo on the role of the aubergine 9800 words
Caddel adds:
Anyone like to count the number of words in the ECOSOC Opinion on Plain
Language (CES 797/95)?
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: Tue, 10 Oct 1995 22:25:28 +1000
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ann Louise Vickery <avickery@ARIEL.UCS.UNIMELB.EDU.AU>
Subject: Re: The South
Hi Ron and all those interested in the correct spelling of 'diggery do.'
According to our Oz dictionaries, it's spelt 'didgeridoo.' Unfortunately,
it is perhaps still best known in association with Rolf Harris, who is
famous (or more appropriately, infamous) for that lovely ditty,"Tie my
kangaroo down, sport"! Although the instrument was popularized and to a
certain extent, Westernized, through his use, it can resound with some
wonderfully deep tonal variations. The Aboriginal musicians that I've
actually heard play a didgeridoo sound nothing like him!
I'm getting Poetics list through the digest mechanism so I hope I'm not
repeating old news. All the best from an Antipodean lurker,
Ann Vickery
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 10 Oct 1995 10:41:51 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ann Lauterbach <Annotate@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: POETICS Digest - 7 Oct 19...
Re: the gift: on a wider canvas, you might look at Lewis Hyde's The Gift:
Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property (Vintage) which explores the art
of the gift of art giving in other cultures as well as our own. "There's no
irony in cyberspace" ....isn't that a line from O'Hara, you know the one that
ends "Lana Turner we love you get up"?
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 10 Oct 1995 11:03:48 -0400
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: ULMER SPRING <ulmer@COOPER.EDU>
Subject: Re: Yonder
Can someone tell me where I can find recordings of the Four Horsemen.
I would greatly appreciate it. Thank you.
Spring Ulmer
ulmer@cooper.edu
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 10 Oct 1995 10:30:44 CST
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jeff Hansen <Jeff_Hansen@BLAKE.PVT.K12.MN.US>
Organization: The Blake School
Subject: poetry and politics
I have been enjoying the discussion about the political merits of poetry, and
I thought that I would add the following.:
It seems to me that poetry, and especially so-called avant-garde poetry, has
been haunted by Percy Shelley's claim that poets are unacknowledged
legislators for some time. Behind Shelley's claim seems to be the highly
Romantic ideal of being the sole creator -- think of "Kubla Khan" -- the
originator par excellence. Shelley wanted to claim that politics emerges from
poetry, however much the debt is hidden, and therefore poetry is the potent,
original source. This desire to be New, to b Original, to owe a debt to no one
else did not, if my understanding of literary history is correct, gain much of
a hold before the Romantics.
And we are still stuck with it. How often is a poet praised because of being
"wholly original"? What the hell does it mean to be "wholly original" when the
language predates every user, including the poet?Why is it that relevancy
seems to be attached to the political? Perhaps because the political obviously
orders our lives, and if poetry is to be originary for experience then it must
scoop politics?
I'm becoming much more interested in the relationship between friendship and
poetry than poetry and politics. It seems more grounded, since so many of my
friends are poets and artists: none are politicians. Politics is what we can
do when we are not writing, working, or enjoying our friends. But it seems to
me that worrying about the political relevancy of poetry just gets us into the
old Shelleyian trap: poetry should be at the origin of everything.
I don't write in order to create rules (i.e. legislate); I write to explore.
And I publish to plume my ego and to see what happens to my explorations. And
my explorations are not original, they are among, between and alongside those
of my poet friends and other poets I don't know, and just plain friends.
Why ask of poetry more than it can deliver? We don't ask the same of cooking.
Jeff Hansen
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 10 Oct 1995 11:50:04 EDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Gale Nelson <EL500005@BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU>
Subject: Re: I want to help it, but I can't
In-Reply-To: Message of Mon, 9 Oct 1995 15:23:01 -0400 from
<mdw@GWIS2.CIRC.GWU.EDU>
Mark,
I think we must accept the fact that we disagree. A book, of course, is a
commodity, in that it is for sale. I would argue that a small press
publisher is not a business person in the way a hardware store owner is
in that hardware stores have an expectation of making profits -- most
presses have expectations of losing money. We give away "product" to lots
of people, who might review the book, might be interested in the writer/
writing, etc. When many of those persons respond to review copies with a
copy of their catalogue, it is, of course, discouraging, and, from my
perspective, a suggestion that they're projects are more important than,
say, paradigm's. So be it. We publish the books and try to get them into
the hands of readers -- not to build our own libraries -- because we care
about the work (and in many cases the writer) involved. I certainly have
appreciated the caring work undertaken on my behalf by editors, and feel
a certan failure for not being able to make their time and financial
commitments bear more fruit in terms of sales and recognition for those
presses.
I remain unconvinced that poets should be using tactics to get ahead. I
worked in public relations right out of college, so I may be overly
concerned about the differences between that world and one involving
poetry. The world of public relations (at least the one in which I was
immersed) was what provided me with a chronic bad back, difficulty
breathing and a constant desire to rinse from my mouth the bad taste
that comes with trying to fleece your client, while pulling the wool
over the eyes of anyone who could do you or your client an ounce of
good. Consider the comments of prosecutor, Christopher Darden, who,
during parts of the double murder case of Nicole Brown Simpson
and Ronald Goldman, stated that he would reflect upon his role in
his profession at the case's end. Poetry is, for me, a refuge from
the worst and most commercial aspects of American capitalism. Talk of
tactics makes me feel a certain level of unease that makes me take at
least a few steps toward the bathroom, instinctively. I hold poetry
to a higher standard than is perhaps appropriate. But if poetry is nothing
more than a commodity to most poets, then I reaffirm my sense of
idealistic confusion -- where then should I turn?
If poetry is about nothing more than getting something tangible (a job, a
book contract, recognition), then why do it? Why not participate in more
well-paid professions; why not write celebrity bios, why not run for
political office?
From the pit of my stomach's stomach,
Gale Nelson
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 10 Oct 1995 11:15:37 -0800
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Angus Cleghorn <cleghorn@SFU.CA>
Subject: Gift
On Mon. Oct. 9, Shaunanne Tangney wrote:
>i love the idea of the gift. . . i think that a poem is the reality of
>gift. . .
>cixous speaks of both the gift and of pure spending. she alludes to the
>pot latch in which we are made richer by what we give away.
Shaunanne, where does Cixous write of the gift? Derrida's _Given Time:
Counterfeit Money_, analyses the economy of the gift in Baudelaire's poem
"Counterfeit Money". JD also writes about the gift in context of the
potlatch, and narrows down the gift as the space of time in any exchange.
(forgive me if this ground has been covered, I'm new to the list)
another gift speaking of gift:
A flick which added to what was real and its vocabulary,
The way some first thing coming into Northern trees
Adds to them the whole vocabulary of the South,
The way the earliest single light in the evening sky, in spring,
Creates a fresh universe out of nothingness by adding itself,
The way a look or a touch reveals its unexpected magnitudes.
- Wallace Stevens, "Prologues to What is Possible"
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 10 Oct 1995 14:12:16 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: tunguska <tunguska@TRIBECA.IOS.COM>
Subject: politics (cultural contexts) & derivation
>
That sense of
>resistance is not, I think, about autonomy only, but equally has implications
>for the intersubjective.
...going on from there to relate duncan's sense of the world, and Spicer's, two
"examples" if you will, of this.
I can't help but think of that TV commercial, so absolutely brilliant, on
the "new Visa Gold Card". Eeeeverybody's quarreling about the common
currency in europe, but, "excuse me guys", says the american pulling his
card from the ATM, cash procured and worry free, a common currency's already
taken hold in trans-europa, thousands of machines already in place. "Visa,
it's everywhere
you want to be" So much for identification.
Alot of my friends, in NYC, grew up in a very similar, americanized,
culture, even tho they were born in Ireland, England, Baghdad, Russia,
France, Holland & Germany. "The medium is the message, the nightmare, from
which we are trying to awaken" to quote a famous 'canadian from Dublin'.
I think, also, Ed Foster, you mean 'onto-theology' instead of simply
theology. There's where movement is, you mean by not so simply
metaphoric--if metaphor is seen here as that which only satisfies linguistic
impertinence. My belief is that a poetics that refuses offensive strategies,
is doomed to go down in the flood. We must "move" toward the centers of
"philosophy". It's a mediator already anyway.
t thilleman
tod thilleman
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 10 Oct 1995 14:45:38 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: tunguska <tunguska@TRIBECA.IOS.COM>
Subject: Derrida on the episteme of lies
In reply to Maria and Kat in re the Derrida/Arendt/totalitarianism lecture,
I would simply want to add that yes, the law is highly implicated (let's not
forget, if OJ IS guilty, he won't be the first to walk, and vice versa etc
etc) as well as the evolution of current strategic peace plans, projected
both from a "domestic" stand-point, and a "european" standpoint, as well as
still a "middle eastern" standpoint, as well as those not even projected
yet. The implication being held on the same legs as the "explication" of the
lie. Derrida characterized the lie, with the help of Arendt and a couple
other coevals to her writings, time, and subject matter, as that which seeks
to "arouse" others to "go do something." The other day, the Pope did just
this at his mass in Giants Stadium and Central Park. He told all the
faithful, to join action to their faith (obviously, this is linked, almost
solely, to "abortion")and go out and change the world. The most repeatable
characteristic, or filip, of the lie, is that it shows the world not the way
it is, because it wants to "change the world." So it, of course, shows it
not the way that it is, but the way that it could be.
The implications set forth by the "reality" of the lie, are such as to
effect both the left and the right, the black and the white, missionaries in
the wild, policy planners at NATO, as well as the cuckolded, the mortified,
and chagrined.
That is how "deep" this goes. It determines, for it's realization, an episteme.
tod thilleman
tod thilleman
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 10 Oct 1995 14:46:34 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: tunguska <tunguska@TRIBECA.IOS.COM>
Subject: Stephen Jonas/gentleman
No doubt, Maria, his anti-semitism must hit one smack in the head. I'm sure
it's a motivating center for many. Interesting, for me, tho, was his love &
worship
of JFK. But that is simply, I'm sure, because I were born in '62. The JFK
and the banks thing is far more strange, to me, than his anti-semitism.
Thanks, and will get back about this mysterious gentleman, when I've spent
more time on his "orgasms/dominations"
tod thilleman
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 10 Oct 1995 14:39:10 EDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Daniel Bouchard/College/hmco <Daniel_Bouchard@HMCO.COM>
Subject: Re: poetry and politics
Jeff Hansen wrote:
>I'm becoming much more interested in the relationship between friendship and
>poetry than poetry and politics. It seems more grounded, since so many of my
>friends are poets and artists: none are politicians. Politics is what we can
>do when we are not writing, working, or enjoying our friends.
>Why ask of poetry more than it can deliver? We don't ask the same of cooking.
There's the old/new adage again: Poets can't set the world on fire, so quit
collecting kindling and leave the lighter for the professionals. "Old/new," of
course, depends on which sage you're hearing it from.
I haven't met a poet yet who isn't a closet politician to some degree. Some are
better schooled in diplomacy than others.
There are millions of hobbies available in the world: why pick politics?
We barely know how a fertlized egg develops into a complex life form; when were
the limitations on what poetry can deliver declared? To state that they are
definitive and exhaustible makes "exploration" look futile.
daniel_bouchard @ hmco.com
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 10 Oct 1995 11:58:38 -0700
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Herb Levy <herb@ESKIMO.COM>
Subject: Re: Yonder
Ron Silliman writes:
> What
>would it mean to "close read" specific sound texts and how much would
>they then differ? Invariably I come up with the importance of sound
>itself as such as a signifier that transcends sense. What is then made
>of that transcendance is, it seems, ultimately a wall. Differences
>between texts tend to be rooted in the source material, which oft times
>is "found," or in a psychographics of the resonating body. But beyond
>that? Well, I'd have to be shown. (As always, I'm willing to learn....)
I don't have an easy answer for the question, but I think that one of the
possible problems with "sound poetry" is that people try to read or hear it
more as "poetry" than as "sound."
So I have another question for you, Ron:
Does all instrumental music "say the same thing"?
In other news, I've seen didgeridoo spelled all of the ways that the Smiths
have posted, though perhaps it makes sense to defer to Ann Vickery's
Australian dictionary.
FWIW, the word "didgeridoo" is an onomatopoetic transcription of one of the
instrument's sounds, coined by British settlers. It has no relation to any
of the native terms for the instrument.
Herb Levy
herb@eskimo.com
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 10 Oct 1995 15:02:56 -0400
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Dodie Bellamy <BellaDodie@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: poetry and politics
Jeff Hansen writes:
>Why ask of poetry more than it can deliver? We don't ask the same of
cooking.
Jeff,
As a vegetarian, I can tell you that there's plenty of politics involved in
cooking. Also, I'm sure if you look at food in terms of the history of
colonialism, you'd overturn a whole other can of worms (which I'm sure would
be yummy to some). I doubt if there's any area of human life that doesn't
have some political implications.
Dodie
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 10 Oct 1995 16:35:33 -0400
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: tunguska <tunguska@TRIBECA.IOS.COM>
Subject: New Release from Spuyten Duyvil//Alice Rose George
CEILING OF THE WORLD
poems by Alice Rose George
pbk: $10.95
70 pages
ISBN: 1-881471-13-6
available direct from SD (add $2 for shipping)
Spuyten Duyvil
PO Box 1852
Cathedral Station
New York, NY 10025
phone: 212-978-3353
"Harder on herself than we expect our poets to be,
Alice George passes the Monuments with a sigh, the
Ruins with a shudder, and affords (at what cost) a
lyric account of a woman's life stared down with re
markable clarity, no indulgence at all. The poem "Cor-
respondence," for example, is an authentic scandal--
and there are others of the sort, truth being the scandal,
of course; nothing so contingent as mere behavior. The
poems impart a stoic thrill."
-- Richard Howard
"Alice Rose George's poems have an exquisite lightness
of being: they RISE before our eyes, slip free the bonds
of gravity, open upward like prayers or wings, up to
the ceiling of the world. I am amazed at their daring
weightlessness-- it is never ephemeral, rather intensely
ECSTATIC--the headlong, imperative joy of the child, Sufi,
poet-debauchee. A way to levitate and yet hold tight to
this world: what the best poetry does for us."
-- Carol Muske
A Note on the Author:
Alice Rose George was born in Mississippi. She received a degree in English
Literature from Sophie Newcomb College/Tulane University. Her junior year
was spent at the University of London at Westfield College. She studied for
one year at the New York University Graduate Program for Creative Writing.
Photography editor formerly with GRANTA, she now freelance picture edits and
lives in NYC.
Spuyten Duyvil also distributed by Small Press Distribution: 800-869-7553.
tod thilleman
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 10 Oct 1995 15:39:17 -0500
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Charles Alexander <chax@MTN.ORG>
Subject: Re: Gift
I think it's great that Derrida and Cixous and others have written of gift
and potlatch, but I also think it's a great benefit of being in this nation
(oh my that sounds awfully patriotic, which isn't the intent) that you can
witness potlatch. I certainly don't know the customs of all the peoples in
various communities, pueblos, and reservations in this country, but I know
that a lot of ceremonies in various places are open. The first potlatch I
witnessed was during the Chief Lookingglass Festival on Nez Perce lands in
Idaho. The acts of giving thanks and honoring by giving in a very public way
was extremely moving, but also quite practical as a way of sharing goods in
a community. And how can you not love the concept that one is wealthy by
virtue of what one gives away. I can only hope this has a great deal to do
with our poetry, with our poetics.
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 10 Oct 1995 15:50:53 -0500
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Charles Alexander <chax@MTN.ORG>
Subject: Re: I want to help it, but I can't
>I think we must accept the fact that we disagree. A book, of course, is a
>commodity, in that it is for sale.
I learned first to make books with my hands, using type and paper, thinking
of it as both a means of verbal expression and a visual exploration of
possibilities related to the written words. In other words, very much like
writing a poem. But I wanted people to see these books, and they cost money
to make, so I also started selling them. I really don't give a damn if
someone thinks of them as a commodity or not, or whether I think of them as
a commodity or not, except in that I have become interested in what happens
with them in the world. But I don't think a book is any more of a commodity
than a poem, at least as soon as the creator of that poem wants to find an
audience.
>If poetry is about nothing more than getting something tangible (a job, a
>book contract, recognition), then why do it? Why not participate in more
>well-paid professions; why not write celebrity bios, why not run for
>political office?
I'm not sure where you draw the line here, Gale. Do you really object as
soon as one wants an audience for one's work? Or is it only when finding
that audience is attached to status of various sorts, or to money from
various sources? Do you think all poets are meretricious? Do you think all
publishers are? Is it bad to like the job of poet (provided one can find a
way to get a job as poet) better than liking the job of writing celebrity
bios or the job of holding political office (not that I necessarily believe
it's more honorable, but I will grant either desire its legitimacy)? If
you're simply trying to state that some poets are manipulative and power
hungry, I probably have to agree at some level -- but if you're trying to
state that all poets are manipulative and power hungry and ought to admit
it, I don't think I can agree. If wanting attention is a sinful thing, then
I should be punishing my two-year old daughter all the time. I don't think
so, not for her or a poet or a publisher.
So, IS poetry about something more? It sounds as though you don't think so.
Is that true?
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 10 Oct 1995 17:13:12 -0400
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jordan Davis <jdavis@PANIX.COM>
Subject: Re: poetry and politics
In-Reply-To: <230759.ensmtp@blake.pvt.k12.mn.us>
Since we're in the config menu for G2 let me set the preference for tone to
the following paragraph >
> I'm becoming much more interested in the relationship between friendship and
> poetry than poetry and politics. It seems more grounded, since so many of my
> friends are poets and artists: none are politicians. Politics is what we can
> do when we are not writing, working, or enjoying our friends. But it seems to
> me that worrying about the political relevancy of poetry just gets us into the
> old Shelleyian trap: poetry should be at the origin of everything.
>
I think it was Steve Evans who set the default book to: Kevin Davies'
_Pause Button_. Could we have that ordering info one more time?
Jordan
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 10 Oct 1995 17:17:33 -0400
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From: FUNKHOUSER CHRISTOPH <cf2785@CSC.ALBANY.EDU>
Subject: cd-rom announcement
Dear Poetics,
The following piece is about to go out in Mark Nowak's excellent
assemblage, _North American Ideophonics Annual_, & hopefully it's
ok to post it to this list as well . . . as publication announcement . . .
- Chris F
*
_The Little Magazine Volume 21_:
A Fresh and Complex Platform For Poetry
We recently endured the extreme privilege and task of editing and
co-producing Volume 21 of _The Little Magazine_, the literary
annual created by graduate students at the University at Albany. The
initial call-for-work for the journal, composed by faculty advisor, Don
Byrd, announced we were "looking for writing and visual art work
which exists in the imagination of media still uncreated," and
"interested in work which will call forth the media of the future."
At the outset, we were unsure of what format the magazine would
take. Interested in exploring the possibilities of digital multimedia,
we ended up challenging ourselves to invent a new type of literary
journal, one to be presented on cd-rom. Ben Henry, a poet and
formidable computer programmer, also a graduate student at Albany
(and technical editor for the magazine), assured us it would be
possible to produce such a project given the resources at hand. We
were starting, literally, at "square one:" none of the magazine's five
editors had produced anything for this medium before. Most of us
had no familiarity with multimedia software; we did not even know
many people who were working in this area of creative expression.
While building the magazine, we felt we were operating without any
useful models or precedents to follow. There were, to our knowledge,
only three cd-roms available which treated poetry. One of them is
the well-known _Poetry In Motion_ (published by Voyager),
essentially a transfer of a documentary film by Ron Mann, which
makes extensive, if problematic, use of digitized video (which is, at
this time, better handled by laserdisc technology). Our approach was
to be, conceptually and due to technological limitations -- quite
different than this. The other titles, concerned mainly with
conservative presentations of canonical poetry, offered little for
readers interested in adventurous contemporary writing.
In September 1994 our advisors gave us the go-ahead in support
of our vision. Our methodology in producing the journal was at first
quite typical: we sent out letters of solicitation to potentially
interested/interesting writers and artists. We also posted
announcements in appropriate places on the Internet. For several
months, almost nobody -- with the exception of Charles Bernstein
(who conceived an audio/visual collaboration with Susan Bee), and
Robert Grenier (who sent a series of his color-xeroxed scrawl poems)
-- responded to our invitation. The gathering of materials continued
to proceed quite slowly, until it became necessary for us to begin the
production-phase of the magazine in January, 1995. Then we began
to work with various print texts which had been submitted (i.e.
words on paper), and ideas proposed, converting them from the page
or concept to computerized multimedia. We soon realized that we
were not so well-equipped to handle the project. We had no
convenient ways of digitizing either static or moving visual images,
and no way of efficiently storing the large amounts of digital data
which would inevitably accumulate. Eventually, we found a couple of
local resources through which we could translate images onto the
computer, and invested in a removable harddrive (SyQuest), and
several large (200 megabyte) cartridges which saved us from the
impossibility of having to manage several hundred floppy diskettes.
A few pieces, more or less prepared for digital multimedia,
eventually began to find their way to us. By this time, each editor
had taken on several pieces to translate, one way or another, to
computerized performance. This phase of production lasted for about
five months, during which few other pieces already prepared for
computer presentation came in. These months basically consisted of
intensive collaborations between Belle Gironda, Ben Henry, myself,
and the authors whose texts we were working with. Some authors
were much more involved with the process than others. Most
contributors were completely unfamiliar with the mechanisms of
multimedia publishing, and left it up to us to devise and develop
their work for them. Taking things one step at a time, learning the
concepts and intracacies of the IBM based hardware and software,
we were able to compose more than fifty pieces for the magazine.
There were a few pieces which we attempted to develop which did
not work out, unfortunately, for one reason or another. At this very
early stage in what could be an epoch of digital multimedia
production, we faced difficulties with the inherent differences
between Macintosh and IBM systems. Only a few of our problems
were solved by the acquisition of a piece of software which helps to
bring digital data across platforms. Our work mostly involved getting
images, sounds and alphabetic texts onto the computer, deciding how
we wanted them to engage with each other on the screen, then
writing programs (sometimes simple, sometimes not) so that they
would function properly. We were fortunate to have the assistance of
Roberto Bocci, a video and graphic artist, who created the video
segments of the magazine, rendered the graphic layout of our
packaging, and collaborated with Gully Foyle on what turned out to
be the most complicated single exhibition on the cd-rom.
It was necessary for us to conceive and implement an interface
which would tie all of the disparate pieces in the magazine together.
As editor, I took this task as part of my work, and proceeded to
diagram a simple, friendly design. Realizing that a site-specific
"reading" of this sort would likely be unfamiliar, and perhaps
disconcerting, to most who would be interested in viewing the
atomic-age open-writing our magazine presents, my goal was to
make it homespun without being utterly facile. Fortunately, the
Asymetrix Multimedia Toolbook software, with which we made the
journal, lent itself, metaphorically, to the structure of a literary
publication. Each image, or text, is set up on, or attached to a "page,"
so it became a matter of organizing the pages, and setting up
transitions in an clear, non-confusing way which could be easily
operated by the reader. Though there are critiques to be made of our
efforts, we are quite pleased with the efficacy of our journal's
organization. We were able to bring together a wide variety of
materials, which can be explored without much difficulty, and
provide unobstructed documentation of how each piece was built, as
well as biographical information about each "author." As an added
feature to the cd-rom, we built a section of "Contextualizing
Materials." This branch of the magazine, attached to the main menu,
details extensive credits, contains a speculative editorial statement
which considers some of the potential arguments against the
computerization of poetry. This section also documents most of the
equipment we used to create the magazine, and features a "Sound
Gallery," an assemblage of poetry recitations matched with visual
images by Phillip Djwa.
Especially as the end of the project drew near, the troubles we
encountered caused much frustration. The precise meta-language of
computer programming tested the limits of our abilities and
(in)experience. The process of taking the materials out of the
computer lab we were using in Albany, and into another, whether to
create digital video segments, or to "burn" demo/test cds, turned out
to be much more troublesome than we'd envisioned. Every piece of
digital information -- and our magazine is made up of millions of
bytes of data -- must be perfectly placed in order for it all to work
properly. Additionally, the hardware which produces these materials
must be configured seamlessly. Since we had no formula to follow,
and such a project had never been attempted by anyone at our
institution, we struggled at nearly every moment to get to the next
step. In retrospect, between the ominous bureaucracy, fickle
machinery, and our own naivete, it is near surprising that the
publication of _The Little Magazine Volume 21_ occurs at all.
Nevertheless, as of October 1, 1995, our cd-rom is available for those
interested in what is happening in the realm of digital multimedia
poetry. (For a copy, send $15 to The Little Magazine c/o Dept. of
English, University at Albany, 1400 Washington Avenue, Albany, NY
12222).
When asked about my motives in working with this (and other)
aspects of "electronic publishing," I resist providing any pat answer
-- though the question of the need for journals of this sort is
examined in the editorial statement written for our magazine.
Certainly, this project represents a type of discontinuity of any poetic
tradition of the past century -- which, from our perspective,
shouldn't be seen as a negative phenomenon. It has to be
acknowledged that textscapes have radically changed in recent
decades. In fact, our efforts seem logical if, as Jerome Rothenberg and
Pierre Joris claim in their introduction to the anthology _Poems For
The Millennium_ "a new look has been long overdue" for twentieth
century poetry. _The Little Magazine Volume 21_ is a concerted
effort to provide links between past, present and future modes of
poetic presentation. Much of what we have before us has changed
over the past century. The editors of the magazine are not convinced
that writing is in its most effective space on-the-page anymore. We
are aware of, and understand, various resistances to electronic
media, and never argue for the cessation of print publishing. We hear
many types of criticism against a computerized condition of poetry,
especially those assailing its reliance on corporate machinery.
However, instead of dwelling on a cd-rom's uselessness as a piece of
plastic without a computer to make it function, we ask what is wrong
with being attracted to its plasticity as a form, its ability to mold and
compound, into one unit, visual, sonic and alphabetic dimensions of
writing? Why shouldn't we urge each other to find ways to make
technology work advantageously and effectively for creative
purposes? While we remain unconvinced, at this point, that the end
justifies the means of publishing in this media, if a group has
facilities, and begins with either a fair amount of computer expertise,
or developed relationships between writers and programmer(s) and
is prepared to withstand any number of complications -- we
encourage them to do the best they can.
-Christopher Funkhouser, Albany, NY
cf2785@cnsunix.albany.edu
*
INGREDIENT STATEMENT:
multimeDia poetry ImagerY sound
Will Alexander Lori Anderson
Don Archer Meg Arthurs
Gully Foyle Susan Bee
Charles Bernstein Hakim Bey
Roberto Bocci David Bookbinder
Charles Borkhuis Susan Brenner
Sean Bronzell Harvey Brown
Lee Ann Brown Mark Cheney
Jim Cohn Stephen Cope
Eric Curkendall Jacques Debrot
Ray DiPalma Nancy Dunlop
Gully Foyle Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Benjamin Friedlander Chris Funkhouser
James Garrison Belle Gironda
Loss Pequeno Glazier Robert Grenier
Ben Henry Joyce Hinnefeld
Robert Hiles Jim Hauser
Geof Huth Julie Ivey
Lisa Jarnot Judith Johnson
Pierre Joris Lisa Kaplan
Bill Keith Robert Kendall
Richard Kostelanetz Tuli Kupferberg
Steve Laufer Bill Luoma
Jackson Mac Low Nathaniel Mackey
Laura Marello Murphy McCullough
Marty McCutcheon Michael Melcher
H.D. Moe Trudy Morse
Murat Nemet-Nejat Nicole Peyrafitte
Geoffrey Polk Purkinge
Jed Rasula Piero Resta
Stefano Resta Douglas Rothschild
Situ@tion Critic@l! Stephan Said
Linda Smukler Chuck Stein
Chris Stroffolino Anne Tardos
Nathaniel Tarn Eugene Thacker
thelemonade Rodrigo Toscano
Chris Vitiello Ben Yarmolinsky
Katie Yates
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 10 Oct 1995 17:24:27 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Maria Damon <MDamon9999@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: poetry and politics
how 'bout the relationship between politics and friendship, and what happens
when you throw the third term, poetry, in there? what are the "political"
dimensions (however broadly that can be construed) of poetic friendships and
the "schools," collaborations, and mutual influences that result?--md
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 10 Oct 1995 17:28:34 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Maria Damon <MDamon9999@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: poetry and politics
jeff hansen writes:
How often is a poet praised because of being
"wholly original"? What the hell does it mean to be "wholly original" when
the
language predates every user, including the poet?
to which I must respond with a quote from that preeminent political poet
lenny bruce: "i've never had an original thought in my life: i speak the
english language."
by the way jeff and betsy, i've been wanting to welcome you to the twin
cities and meet you etc, but i'm on the east coast on sabbatical! we'll hang
when i get back --mid to late june... maria d
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 10 Oct 1995 18:10:24 -0400
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jordan Davis <jdavis@PANIX.COM>
Subject: something else lies do
In-Reply-To: <199510101845.OAA14005@tribeca.ios.com>
I'm a little troubled by the heavy discourse surrounding lying by the
state that's lingering on the list. Lying--saying something the truth
value of which does not correspond to the facts--is the beginning of
imagining, eh? Which is our _responsibility_ (and correspondingly, my
fellow third-graders of the soul, our _right_). Unless of course there's
no connection between lying and poetry (and we have to have our lines
polygraphed and pentatholed).
Jordan
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 10 Oct 1995 16:29:39 MDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Louis Cabri <ldmcabri@ACS.UCALGARY.CA>
Subject: 4 horse men
Try:
Underwhich Editions
PO Box 262
Adelaide Street Station
Toronto, ON
Canada M5C 2J4
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 10 Oct 1995 15:40:22 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Shaunanne Tangney <st@SCS.UNR.EDU>
Subject: Re: Gift
In-Reply-To: <199510101803.LAA18025@ferrari.sfu.ca>
On Tue, 10 Oct 1995, Angus Cleghorn wrote:
> On Mon. Oct. 9, Shaunanne Tangney wrote:
>
> >i love the idea of the gift. . . i think that a poem is the reality of
> >gift. . .
> >cixous speaks of both the gift and of pure spending. she alludes to the
> >pot latch in which we are made richer by what we give away.
>
> Shaunanne, where does Cixous write of the gift? Derrida's _Given Time:
> Counterfeit Money_, analyses the economy of the gift in Baudelaire's poem
> "Counterfeit Money". JD also writes about the gift in context of the
> potlatch, and narrows down the gift as the space of time in any exchange.
> (forgive me if this ground has been covered, I'm new to the list)
in many of the essays collected in _coming to writing_ (susan sellars,
ed., Harvard UP, 1991) she speaks of the gift. she speaks of giving
often, and perhaps similarly to derrida in the mention above (which i
have not read, but will search out now--thanks! i am less impressed w/
her claims of a male/female "economy" and of male giving -vs- female
giving--seems reductive and binary, but there are spots where she really
hits my mark!
good luck,
shaunanne
>
> another gift speaking of gift:
>
> A flick which added to what was real and its vocabulary,
> The way some first thing coming into Northern trees
> Adds to them the whole vocabulary of the South,
> The way the earliest single light in the evening sky, in spring,
> Creates a fresh universe out of nothingness by adding itself,
> The way a look or a touch reveals its unexpected magnitudes.
>
> - Wallace Stevens, "Prologues to What is Possible"
>
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 10 Oct 1995 20:30:34 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Steve Evans <Steven_Evans@BROWN.EDU>
Subject: Re: poetry and politics
Apropos the friendship/politics/poetry question, I have been thinking about
the way "friendship" is inflected within the context of the broader
attempts at racial resegregation such as we have been experiencing since
c.1980 and which now threatens to pass the critical mark (pace the decision
of my alma mater, the UC system, while the students were away this
summer!).
That's what was on my mind when I wrote the following in a paper on Frank
O'Hara and the way O'Hara criticism (my examples: Perloff and Bredbeck) has
worked to reproduce the racial segregation his work put into serious
question. Please forgive, if you can, the ungainly prose:
"Independent, as opposed to commercial and institutional, publishing tends
to be directly embedded in the immediate social relations of the people who
undertake it, and this the more so the closer one approaches the basal unit
of such independent production: the restricted-circulation poetry magazine.
The social conditions of production of this form typically involve an
editor (or editors), relying on monies not generated within the poetic
field (i.e. earnings from a "real job," inheritance, or patronage), and
possessed of sufficient amounts of time to absorb the whole spectrum of
activities (selecting, editing and proofing, reproducing, binding,
circulating, and publicizing) that in institutional and commercial contexts
are divided among different specialists. This situation of embeddedness,
in which literary project and personal life converge to the point of mutual
subsumption, is an objectively ambivalent one: though often perceived from
the inside as the positive confluence of poetry and the sphere of elective
affinity and friendship, viewed from the "outside" it can appear as
clique-ish arbitrariness. The same ambivalence can be registered in racial
terms, for if independent publishing is at least potentially a site in
which the "spontaneous" desegregation of cultural production can
occur--since no formal mechanisms restrict the editorial decision-making
process on racial, or indeed any other, grounds--it is by the same token,
however, that the very appearance of "spontaneity" can work to veil the de
facto segregations of everyday life and to elide the way that even (one
might say "especially") friendship patterns are overdetermined within a
society "in which systems of dominance and subordination are structured
through processes of racialization that continuously interact with all
other forces of socialization" (Carby 193). The objective ambivalence
resulting from the pre- and de-formation of spheres of "elective affinity"
by selective processes operating at the level of the social totality is of
especial importance in the context of the New American Poetry, which
consistently foregrounded its own passionate informality and 'openness' in
contrast to the bureaucratization of culture epitomized by academic poetry
and the institutionally-affiliated journals that sustained it. I would
argue that both the independent publications and the poetic formations that
crystallized around them did represent gains in the democratization of
culture relative to the corporate and university publishing structures, but
these gains were not without their own contradictions."
[The Hazel Carby piece referred to is "The Multicultural Wars" in Gina Dent
& Michele Wallace's BLACK POPULAR CULTURE (Seattle: Bay P, 1992)]
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 10 Oct 1995 19:26:46 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Steve Carll <sjcarll@SLIP.NET>
Subject: Re: verbatim gift from my TV set
>"When people are asked
> what kind of lawn tractor they'd
> like for a gift,
> most say the same thing:
"What in Hell is a 'lawn tractor'?"
>
>
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 11 Oct 1995 00:53:19 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Rod Smith <AERIALEDGE@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: poetry and politics
Jeff,
Seems to me there might be something new about avant-gardists claiming
there's nothing new, at least in American context (dada hit those notes
perhaps).
& of course in many ways you're right but the other side
of it is that one can't help but be "new" because you're
in a new context, Stein says that or equivalent somewhere.
--Rod
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 10 Oct 1995 23:52:24 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Tenney Nathanson <tenney@AZSTARNET.COM>
Subject: gifts
>Date: Tue, 10 Oct 1995 10:41:51 -0400
>From: Ann Lauterbach <Annotate@AOL.COM>
>Subject: Re: POETICS Digest - 7 Oct 19...
>
>Re: the gift: on a wider canvas, you might look at Lewis Hyde's The Gift:
>Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property (Vintage) which explores the art
>of the gift of art giving in other cultures as well as our own. "There's no
>irony in cyberspace" ....isn't that a line from O'Hara, you know the one that
>ends "Lana Turner we love you get up"?
Ann--
but isn't Hyde a little cheesy? The stuff on Whitman, at any rate, gets at
something important but at the cost of a kind of euphoric sentimentalizing
of the "pomes" (I think). It's the "as well as our own" part that's the
problem, I think: so that Baudrillard, w his sense of how simulation
overtakes the gesture, may be preferable (though his evocation of "true"
gift exchange is doubtless sentimentalized too).
hailing hits you on the head, hard, so it hurts....
(but I've never actually collapsed)
(and isn't there an "o"?)
(apostrophes will not be permitted on the funicular)
best,
Tenney Nathanson
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 10 Oct 1995 23:52:31 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Tenney Nathanson <tenney@AZSTARNET.COM>
>Why ask of poetry more than it can deliver? We don't ask the same of cooking.
>
>Jeff Hansen
o but we do!
(money is also a kind of poetry)
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 10 Oct 1995 23:52:36 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Tenney Nathanson <tenney@AZSTARNET.COM>
>Date: Tue, 10 Oct 1995 15:39:17 -0500
>From: Charles Alexander <chax@MTN.ORG>
>Subject: Re: Gift
>
>I think it's great that Derrida and Cixous and others have written of gift
>and potlatch, but I also think it's a great benefit of being in this nation
>(oh my that sounds awfully patriotic, which isn't the intent) that you can
>witness potlatch. I certainly don't know the customs of all the peoples in
>various communities, pueblos, and reservations in this country, but I know
>that a lot of ceremonies in various places are open. The first potlatch I
>witnessed was during the Chief Lookingglass Festival on Nez Perce lands in
>Idaho. The acts of giving thanks and honoring by giving in a very public way
>was extremely moving, but also quite practical as a way of sharing goods in
>a community. And how can you not love the concept that one is wealthy by
>virtue of what one gives away. I can only hope this has a great deal to do
>with our poetry, with our poetics.
Charles--
It's worth keeping in mind the aggression & violence of potlatch--see Mauss,
Bataille in /The Accursed Share/ and elsewhere, Baudrillard, the redaction
by Julian Pefanis in /Heterology/, etc.
"but it rarely goes to the point of holocaust," says Bataille. A reassuring
assertion, KIND of.
besos.
T.
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 11 Oct 1995 02:43:25 -0700
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ron Silliman <rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM>
Subject: Re: verbatim gift from my TV set
You wrote:
>
>>"When people are asked
>> what kind of lawn tractor they'd
>> like for a gift,
>> most say the same thing:
>
>"What in Hell is a 'lawn tractor'?"
>>
>>
>
If you lived in the suburbs of the half-acre and up lot size, you'd
never have to ask. It is exactly what it says it is--essentially a lawn
mower on steroids (you ride it instead of push it).
And it will drown out the sound of any didgeridoo.
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 11 Oct 1995 03:18:29 -0700
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ron Silliman <rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM>
Subject: Quality is job one
I'm not so certain that Mark and Gale really do disagree, so much as
that they're articulate different facets of the same phenomenon.
I think that there is an inherent value in and for poetry (and all of
the other arts) as exemplary discipline, of value in and for itself,
without the usual break between means and ends that muddies up so much
of daily life. An instance of "unalienated" labor at its best.
Yet the poem (and poet) must also exist in and of the world itself and
to the degree that the "tactics" of the world are the same mechanisms
by which the poem (and poet) must survive, it is far better to use them
cogently than to put on blindfolds and pretend they're not there.
And I think both facets of this phenomenon are at play with one another
all the time.
One of the reasons that I think it is so hard for poets who go directly
from some student status into teaching (at least if that is at the
college level) is that there is an (inherent) conflict between the poem
and the job that sets it up as very difficult to conceive of as
unalienated labor. I think one can read this "ambivalence" in great
detail in almost all of Michael Davidson's work, someone who has taken
his role as a teacher with great seriousness his entire career and
never flinched from acknowledging its impact on his poetry, although he
is often conflicted about how he "feels" about that.
In some sense, it is far easier to be a PR guy or gal, to work in a
bookstore, do political organizing, be a shop manager, a prison guard
or whatever and to write poetry. All these other people also tend to
look at their poetry in terms of whatever job they might have, but the
allegorical functions are less occluded. I'd be curious about the
parallels that a "carceral" poet might find.
I actually spent one afternoon last week explaining to a PR firm in NYC
that the reason Ford's tagline "Quality is job one" works is because of
the three short syllables in the first word balanced by the three one
syllable words on the far side of the caesura, and that every good tag
line demonstrates a distinct formal element recognizable to anyone.
Here's to Lew Welch's Raid campaign: "Raid Kills Bugs Dead"
Ron Silliman
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 11 Oct 1995 03:27:43 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ron Silliman <rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM>
Subject: Re: Yonder
Herb Levy "says"
>
>I think that one of the possible problems with "sound poetry" is that
people try to read or hear it more as "poetry" than as "sound."
>
>So I have another question for you, Ron:
>
>Does all instrumental music "say the same thing"?
>
At one level, yes. And since my three-year-old boys were born, I have
found myself listening to very little music whatsoever, preferring
silence equally over Pavarotti, Public Enemy or Partch. At another
level, that word "say" is precisely what I look for in the poem that I
don't in music (even though, listening to the Don Was bio of Brian
Wilson recently, one can parse even the most banal beach lyrics and
discover a wealth underneath if one is trained in the history of the
simplest chord changes).
There is a level of articulation in the work of Bruce Ackley that I
will never find in the horns of the brothers Marsallis.
But I am intrigued in your argument (implicit) that sound poetry is
better understood not as poetry. Why, then, call it such?
Ron
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 11 Oct 1995 09:21:31 -0400
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Maria Damon <MDamon9999@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: No Subject
someone wrote "(money is also a kind of poetry)"--
yes, which is why in the TAROT, coins symbolize ideas and intellectual labor,
because it is circulation that makes ideas be in the world, like money
--doesn't derrida write about this in some long-forgotten-by-me essay?--md
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 11 Oct 1995 09:56:28 -0400
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Mark Wallace <mdw@GWIS2.CIRC.GWU.EDU>
Subject: poetry and power
On the subject of poetry and power:
Actually, I was a bit surprised that Charles Alexander directed his
comments at what Gale Nelson said--if anything, it was me and not Gale who
was
saying that poetry is influenced by commodity relationships. I think I'm
going to keep saying it, though. I wouldn't say, however, either that all
poets are motivated by desires for power, or that all poets are not
motivated by desires for power. I have no doubt that individuals are
vastly individual. But I would say that poetry is
not FREE from the struggles of ideology and power--and production. This
is I think where Gale and I differ, although not, I think, absolutely.
I do agree with Gale that I'd rather be devoting my time to the world of
poetry than to the world of
advertising/business, whatever--after all, I DO devote myself to
poetry. But I think that the difference is one of kind and degree, not of
absolute opposition. I think it's true that poets--and perhaps especially
experimental poets, whose opportunities are so damnably limited--have to
play incredibly close attention to the social dynamics of the world of
book production, and that they have to do a fair amount of social
manuevering if
they want to have any chance at all of surviving as publishing writers.
"Tactics" is of course far
too military a word for all the various social interactions of poets, but
not, I think, for SOME of those interactions, and even for some of the
most valuable ones--I'm thinking now of the highly political manuevering
of poets on this list like Carolyn Forche, Marjorie Perloff, Joe Ross,
Charles Bernstein,
and Ron Silliman, among many others, people who have sat on high profile
political committees on literature or who have been blatantly public figures
who in various circumstances have
PLAYED POLITICS in the cause of promoting and protecting poetry. People
who are willing to stand up in that way have done worlds of good, and I
think even those poets who are not inclined personally towards directly
politicized action on the part of poetry (some are not, and that seems
fine to me) owe people who do do such things at least a certain level of
respect.
These problems, for me, broaden out to include many others. Is
politics, for instance, by definition a bad thing? I always thought that
the right to engage in political activity was one of the incredible
virtues of a free country. IN that sense, one of the huge problems with
the United States is NOT that people play politics, but that in so many
ways they are PROHIBITED from playing politics.
Is poetry entirely about the politics of commodity production? Of
course not. Is the world of poetry hugely influenced by the politics of
commodity production? Of course.
Mark Wallace
P.S: Steve Evans' recent comments about the situation of small magazines
really deserve close attention--nice work, Steve.
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 11 Oct 1995 10:21:41 EDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Comments: Converted from PROFS to RFC822 format by PUMP V2.2X
From: Alan Golding <ACGOLD01@ULKYVM.LOUISVILLE.EDU>
Subject: Rolf Harris
Associate Professor of English, U. of Louisville
Phone: (502)-852-5918; e-mail: acgold01@ulkyvm.louisville.edu
Ah yes--Ann Vickery provides a blast from my colonial past in England when she
mentions Rolf Harris' "Tie me kangaroo down, sport." In the earliest
exampleofaural slippage I can remember experiencing, I thought, round about
age 8 or 9, that the line/title was "Tiny Kangaroo Downsport." I remember
thinking that Downsport seemed like rather an odd name for a tiny kangaroo,
but, being an open-minded child, I was willing to go along with the program.
When I discovered the "right" version, the song suddenly seemed a lot less
interesting.
Later, it took me years to realize that Hendrix was not singing, "'Scuse me
while I kiss this guy."
Alan
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 11 Oct 1995 10:47:57 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Steve Evans <Steven_Evans@BROWN.EDU>
Subject: Tsunami/Object
For Jordan and others who have asked:
Kevin Davies's PAUSE BUTTON can be obtained from:
Tsunami Editions
Box 3723 MPO
Vancouver, BC
V6B 3Z1
This address is taken from the back of the excellent new RADDLE MOON. I
don't know the current asking price. Information in the book itself
indicates that SPD should be distributing it, but I don't see a listing in
the most recent (which is not very recent) catalogue.
=====
You can order OBJECT magazine ($5 individual copy/$8 per year) from Robert
Fitterman at
7-13 Washington Square North #47B
New York, NY 10003.
#4 is the Kocik issue, #5 has the Rod Smith Feature plus work by Joan
Retallack, Milo DeAngelis, Bill Howe, Joe Elliot, Vallerie Fox, Jennifer
Moxley, Bill Luoma, Michael Basinski, Dirk Rowntree, Judith Goldman, Steven
Farmer, Tim Davis.
=====
a t s u o o o s
r i a t n m u
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 11 Oct 1995 10:53:48 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Loss Glazier <lolpoet@ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU>
Subject: Texts about poetics "sound"
Can anyone recommend to me great texts on poetic sound? Sound as
"material," etc. as a contemporary poetic. Any thoughts would be
appreciated.
Thanks,
Loss
lolpoet@acsu.buffalo.edu
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 11 Oct 1995 12:04:44 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Charles Smith <CharSSmith@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: Tsunami/Object
SPD does have this, for $10.00. --CS
Kevin Davies's PAUSE BUTTON can be obtained from:
Tsunami Editions
Box 3723 MPO
Vancouver, BC
V6B 3Z1
This address is taken from the back of the excellent new RADDLE MOON. I
don't know the current asking price. Information in the book itself
indicates that SPD should be distributing it, but I don't see a listing in
the most recent (which is not very recent) catalogue.
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 11 Oct 1995 11:47:18 EDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Gale Nelson <EL500005@BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU>
Subject: Re: I want to help it, but I can't
In-Reply-To: Message of Tue, 10 Oct 1995 15:50:53 -0500 from <chax@MTN.ORG>
Charles,
I likely over-romantacize poets as being better than we are -- I'm always
disappointed (perhaps read afraid?) to think of us as maneuvering for the
right to be "the famous" new writer taught in half a dozen workshops and
classrooms. I like to think that poets respect the writers they read/teach
for the work, period. I like to think that poets get invited to give
readings, have work taken by journals, etc., because those who are managing
reading series, journals, etc. care about the work, not because the poet in
quetion could do them some good. I share Mark's belief that advocacy for
poetry is an important thing to undertake -- I have to admit to thinking of
the advocacy in idealistic rather than tactical terms (I assume that the
advocate cares about what/who s/he brings to the arena in enthusiastic
terms, and does so because of that enthusiasm, not because it will provide
appreciation/opportunity for the advocate). I bristle over self-promotion
because I tend to think that the work gets suffocated. I do not bristle
over a press or journal or reading series trying to build an audience for
the writers/texts being featured via that venue because it then becomes a
form of advocacy. It may be the kind of fine line that crumbles under close
examination -- and it may not be fair for me to hold the poetry world up
to a set of standards that no one has accepted as appropriate. I do believe
that what we gain by writing poetry rather than other more commodity-
oriented texts is the freedom to pursue, to take risks, to nurture, to
respect, to be passionate, all outside of the dominant structure of
corporate hype. We have the opportunity to create worlds anew -- oh
idealistic statement -- and I sense that we are best able to do this
when our new worlds do not mimic the one we (read more accurately "I")
am wholly wary of.
Sincerely (perhaps too?),
Gale Nelson
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 11 Oct 1995 12:35:52 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Edward Foster <EFOSTER@VAXC.STEVENS-TECH.EDU>
Subject: Re: politics (cultural contexts) & derivation
not sure, tod; "theology" is ok as in anything that platonizes gnosticism;
as for "offensive" poetics, that's a contradiction in terms. poetics always
comes after, as explanation or just as something to talk about, since
poetry does not lend itself to that. and what is a center of/for philosophy?
after heidegger, where's the center. "mediation" makes sense, but
philosophy doesn't mediate, rather points to that horizon where
mediation occurs. no? -ed
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 11 Oct 1995 12:40:27 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Edward Foster <EFOSTER@VAXC.STEVENS-TECH.EDU>
Subject: Re: No Subject
yes, it was stevens who said that money is a kind of poetry, and if anyone
should'a it, it was he.
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 11 Oct 1995 10:43:58 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" <anielsen@ISC.SJSU.EDU>
Subject: Re: the gift of a tractor
In-Reply-To: <199510110604.XAA25504@sparta.SJSU.EDU>
and don't overlook Derrida's _The Gift of Death_ WHILE WE'RE AT IT
Steve: I would like to think that your reponse is the "same thing" that
most people say in response to that question -- but then, I drink miracle
grow for breakfast --
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 11 Oct 1995 15:37:44 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Loss Glazier <lolpoet@ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU>
Subject: Re: "Naropa P-Wars"
In-Reply-To: <POETICS%95100213141773@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU> from "Alan Golding"
at Oct 2, 95 01:19:17 pm
I've been straining here to think: isn't there one more very famous
account of this incident somewhere? Does anyone recall this?
------------------------------------------------------------------
> If you're going to check out Tom Clark's The Great Naropa Poetry
> Wars, you'll also want to look at the project on that
> now-mythological Merwin-Trungpa confrontation produced by Ed
> Sanders' 1977 Investigative Poetry class at Naropa. It's called The
> Party: A Chronological Perspective on a Confrontation at a Buddhist
> Seminary (Poetry, Crime and Culture Press: Woodstock, NY,
> 1977). This does, I think, have implications for poetics beyond the
> talk-show level, esp. if read along with Sanders' 1976 chapbook
> Investigative Poetry (City Lights).
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 11 Oct 1995 18:09:24 -0400
Reply-To: John_Lavagnino@Brown.edu
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: John Lavagnino <John_Lavagnino@BROWN.EDU>
Subject: Call for papers: Poetry and computers (1996 MLA)
I'm organizing two sessions for next year's MLA convention (in
Washington, DC, from December 27 through 30, 1996) on behalf of the
Assocation for Computers and the Humanities.
And the subject is:
Poetry and Computers. The role of computers in any aspect of the
composition, cultivation, dissemination, or study of poetry.
Detailed proposals or 8-page papers by 1 March 1996 to
John Lavagnino, 117 Pratt Street, Providence, RI 02906-1412 USA;
John_Lavagnino@Brown.edu.
The Association for Computers and the Humanities is a professional
society for scholars working in computer-related research in
literature and language studies, history, philosophy, and other
disciplines of the humanities. For information on joining the ACH,
contact Charles Bush, ACH Treasurer (chuck_bush@byu.edu).
John Lavagnino
John_Lavagnino@Brown.edu
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 11 Oct 1995 17:25:51 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "A. Morris" <amorris@BLUE.WEEG.UIOWA.EDU>
Subject: Re: gifts
In-Reply-To: <199510110652.XAA19354@web.azstarnet.com>
Though I would agree with Tenney Nathanson about the second part of
Hyde's The Gift, the first part--"A Theory of Gifts"--strikes me as
right in ways I've never seen discussed before. "Works of art exist
simultaneously in two 'economies,'" he says, "a market economy and a gift
economy." I like his discriminations between "labour" and "work" as well
as his exploration of the obligations of entering into the gift economy:
the necessity to give, to receive, and after a mysterious time during
which one assimilates a gift, to reciprocate. In the second part, he
does better with Pound than with Whitman. What he does is not "theory"
so much as mulling an idea--but, at least to me, that idea explains a lot.
Dee
On Tue, 10 Oct 1995, Tenney Nathanson wrote:
> >Date: Tue, 10 Oct 1995 10:41:51 -0400
> >From: Ann Lauterbach <Annotate@AOL.COM>
> >Subject: Re: POETICS Digest - 7 Oct 19...
> >
> >Re: the gift: on a wider canvas, you might look at Lewis Hyde's The Gift:
> >Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property (Vintage) which explores the art
> >of the gift of art giving in other cultures as well as our own. "There's no
> >irony in cyberspace" ....isn't that a line from O'Hara, you know the one that
> >ends "Lana Turner we love you get up"?
>
> Ann--
>
> but isn't Hyde a little cheesy? The stuff on Whitman, at any rate, gets at
> something important but at the cost of a kind of euphoric sentimentalizing
> of the "pomes" (I think). It's the "as well as our own" part that's the
> problem, I think: so that Baudrillard, w his sense of how simulation
> overtakes the gesture, may be preferable (though his evocation of "true"
> gift exchange is doubtless sentimentalized too).
>
> hailing hits you on the head, hard, so it hurts....
>
> (but I've never actually collapsed)
>
> (and isn't there an "o"?)
> (apostrophes will not be permitted on the funicular)
>
> best,
>
> Tenney Nathanson
>
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 11 Oct 1995 17:17:17 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Steve Carll <sjcarll@SLIP.NET>
Subject: Re: poetry and politics
Jeff Hanson wrote:
>And we are still stuck with it. How often is a poet praised because of being
>"wholly original"? What the hell does it mean to be "wholly original" when the
>language predates every user, including the poet?
"Original" means "of the origin." The origin is the source or wellspring,
so something original reaches back deep into this source, makes contact with
what is originary. The reduction to a denotation of "newness" may stem from
the fact that what has had the accretion of familiarity stripped from it so
that its originariness shines through seems to be new, seems to be a new
origin. But I don't take it that way anymore, personally. One origin is
enough for me to spend my life exploring. I don't need a new one for every
season like the fashion designers want us to want.
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 11 Oct 1995 17:17:20 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Steve Carll <sjcarll@SLIP.NET>
Subject: Re: something else lies do
>I'm a little troubled by the heavy discourse surrounding lying by the
>state that's lingering on the list. Lying--saying something the truth
>value of which does not correspond to the facts--is the beginning of
>imagining, eh? Which is our _responsibility_ (and correspondingly, my
>fellow third-graders of the soul, our _right_). Unless of course there's
>no connection between lying and poetry (and we have to have our lines
>polygraphed and pentatholed).
>
>Jordan
I think I read recently a Niels Bohr quote epigraphing a Spencer Selby poem
to the effect of: "The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement.
The opposite of a profound truth, however, may well be another profound
truth." So I guess it depends on whether you see poetry as making a series
of statements that can be compared with other statements previously admitted
as "correct", or as an expression of a profound truth to oppose the profound
truth of the world it stands out in and against.
Steve
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 12 Oct 1995 00:38:51 +0000
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: cris cheek <cris@SLANG.DEMON.CO.UK>
Subject: Re: Yonder / friendship / gifts and sound
I'm quoting part of something written by Peter Middleton about my own work
- but with the intention that it is a useful contribution to these
discussions at this time. (It's from Pages - Alan Golding mentioned this
series recently). I should add that I welcome this approach and that the
criticism that Peter spots within my attempt to problematicise almost
everything in poetry, with the above subject headings' conundrums in mind,
is a dialogue that I discontinually have with my continual self - and
others. I hope the issues come clear of this. It's, as they say, longish -
but i felt it better to quote fully rather than in edited form.
'Social Gifts'
... describes small press books as 'social gifts': in some cases they are
used as texts for live events but their interest as books involving social
production, as gifts meaning sharing' is what constitutes their value. His
largest book to date is entitled 'A Present', and its pun on gift and
present-time accurately marks out the ambitions of the work.
How can a poem or a book of poetry be a gift, a social gift?
Ethnographers contrast commodity systems of exchange used in western
cultures with the gift systems found in cultures such as those in Papua New
Guinea and more widely in the Pacific region. They don't any longer do this
in order to contrast some primtive utopia of altruistic social integration
with the individualist greed of a monetary economy. Competition, strategy,
manipulation, and greed are elements in such exchanges too. The finiest
gifts are rarely if ever given, and become "inalienable possessions" in
Annette Weiner's words ('Inalienable Possessions), whose function is to
provide historical continuity. Cloth and cloaks made by women can help
provide cosmological authentification for the power of their owners, as
well as a mnemonic stimulus to cultural memory. A society in which gift
exchange dominates, conceives of objetcs, persons and relationships
differently to Western culture, because gift exchange is comprehended as
the creation of realtionships. Across the islands of this region a form of
gift exchange known as the kula trade-ring operates. Men in these islands
(the gift produces gender difference too) constantly transfer elaborate
armshells and necklaces made of shells as gifts from island to island.
Their possession brings fame but they need to be passed on to maintain that
prestige, and as the shells travel, especially the more famous kula items
which are themselves named and the subject of histories, they create what
Nancy Munn calls "an emergent spacetime" ('The Fame of Gawa'). In our
culture certain forms of art function very similarly. Paintings are the
most obvious but they have become a kind of gift whose commodification has
almost completely halted their circulation. Poems behave quite similarly to
the kula gifts of these pacific islands because they circulate in acts of
giving rather than purchase, acts that run counter to the commodity
exchange in which the actual material publications move. As they circulate,
poems accrue significance just as kula shells do, so that a poem at its
inception and ten years later, may be quite different AS the result of the
readings, publications, performances, responses, further poems, which have
resulted. The social circulation of art is perhaps deliberately unstudied,
its processes, like those of the gift economies, productive of social
structures whose maintenance and discovery requires the concentration of
unreflexive, unmetacritical working thought.
cris cheek's suggestion is unusual for its explicitness. Most poets
don't say here is a gift as they present the poem to readers and listeners.
In making its mode explicit cheek names the act and therefore makes the act
itself part of his theme. There is a risk in this. The poem may then be
either effracted by the glare of the claimed generosity itself or its
recipients may bring expectations of gift giving that impose unattainable
measures on the poem. For Western cultures the consequencves of gift
circulation can be easily lost in the slow dazzle of alleged altruism,
holiness and the desirable conformities of seasonal spending and
transformation of anonymous goods into gifts. Gift/wrap.
'Taking Onself by Surprise'
"The Melanesian World" writes Marilyn Strathern ('Transactions of the
Finnish Anthropological Society vol 27, p.25-44), "is one where people
constantly take themselves by surprise. And what takes them by surprise are
the performances and artefacts they create". For the New Guinea highlanders
the European explorers who 'discovered' them, were performers, or better
still, simply part of a performance which the highlanders had made
possible. What for Westerners appears to be a historical event, was
probably experienced as an improvisation - ' the very act of presentation
constituted the only context that was relevant'. This sense of performance
can be imagined from within our own culture by ethnographic contrast and
through the investigations of performance artists like cris cheek. He
performs in order to transform what he and the audience know, and what is
known is what manifests itself through voice and movement becoming
effectively and cognitively significant. Look at what we have just created
as it disappears into consequence and wonder what the succession wil bring.
For cheek, performance is radically primary, the moent when the poem is
made, whatever its written antecedents. A voice can be drawn up from every
thronging cell to burst its vocables across large spaces. A control of
voice that allows words emotional vividness and almost orchestral phonetic
harmonies. Poetry readings commonly turn writing into speech, a strange
enough pastime if interpretation is the goal of reading. cheek's
performances are strong reminders that sound does signify despite
Saussurean linguistics, and is not merely the mute medium in which the
system of differences which supposedly alone makes meaning possible. can be
generated. As J.H. Prynne writes - "If language is a social code of
interactions, in which performance is an expressive procedure within the
context of sense-bearing acts, then anything that can count towards meaning
may do so: intonation, style-level, choice of words and of their sounds and
echoes" ('Stars, Tigers, and the Shape of Words')
more later
love and love
cris
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 11 Oct 1995 22:02:31 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Charles Alexander <chax@MTN.ORG>
Subject: new books/an offer
This is a pre-publication announcement for two books from Chax Press, and
includes, at the end, a list of other books from the press. As a part of
funding these and other books we are seeking to sell as many books as
possible in advance of publication. So, if you order and enclose a check
with your order for these books by November 15, 1995, we will not charge any
shipping/handling charges, and you may deduct $1 per book ordered. Please
send orders to Chax Press, P.O. Box 19178, Minneapolis, Minnesota
55419-0178. A snail mail version of this announcement will be mailed within
the next week. If you want to receive that (but they are limited; please
request only if you intend to order one or more of the books), please email
directly to chax@mtn.org with your postal address.
Orders for the new books will be filled as soon as the books are back from
the printer, which will be mid-November 1995 for The Said Lands, Islands,
and Premises, by Margy Sloan; and mid-January 1996 or sooner for The Bounty,
by Myung Mi Kim.
Chax Press Announces
The Said Lands, Islands, and Premises
by Mary Margaret Sloan
&
The Bounty
by Myung Mi Kim
from The Said Lands, Islands, and Premises
up early waiting for
the trees to explode
what had been dreamed
ahead of time was found
coming back as procession
where cloud moves or is
the rock echoing with false water
small false rock making
crazed lines careful
maps traverse the sun
arrows and rays inside
facing south the rock faces us
entering in reverse order
each blank tree with north facing ghost
an echo of the hoard of people foreseen
pace and expanse of speech
utter absence of traffic
"Sloan=92s passion for words =97 their lipstick traces and lingering=
inflections
(as grammar would have it) =97 makes for a poetry of extraordinary pleasure
and difficulty. The mind and ear are redirected from inherited sequence to
intentional mutation. As consummate artificer, Sloan=92s skill and gift=
demand
an equally rigorous reading. Her first book assumes the presence of a mature
collection and takes American poetry into its next argument."
=97 Kathleen Fraser
The Said Lands, Islands, and Premises. By Mary Margaret Sloan
ISBN 0-925904-13-9 96 pages $11
available November 1995
=09
from The Bounty
Lilac wander
Soak spine
Unite all three
Father look/mother =97 task
Mother I
Mast
Horizon
Burn
Salt
From blank to blank / A threadless way
"The tesserae Myung Mi Kim so remarkably fashions here come gradually to
form an articulate and coherent pattern, but a pattern in constant process
of renewal and reorganization. The fragment becomes entire as it re-searches
memory, recovers texts, episodes, sounds and landscapes. The Bounty
interrogates the radical and violent instability of our moment, asking where
is the location of culture, where the site of self, selves, among others.
Its gaps or silences speak as determinedly, and urgently, as its singular
music."
=97 Michael Palmer
=20
The Bounty. By Myung Mi Kim
ISBN 0-925904-21-X 104 pages $12
available January 1996
Please note: If ordering and enclosing check before Nov. 15, 1995, you may
deduct $1 per book ordered.=20
Other Chax Books
Kathleen Fraser, When New Time Folds Up $11
Norman Fischer, Precisely the Point Being Made $10
Nathaniel Tarn, Caja del Rio* $8
Rosmarie Waldrop, Fan Poem for Deshika* $18
Lisa Cooper, The Ballad in Memory* OP
Nathaniel Mackey, Outlantish* $110
Ron Silliman, Demo to Ink $11
Beverly Dahlen, A Reading 8 =96 10 $12
Gil Ott, Wheel* $35
Karen Mac Cormack, Quirks & Quillets $8
Susan Bee & Charles Bernstein, Fool=92s Gold* OP
Sheila Murphy, Teth $9
bp Nichol, Art Facts: A Book of Contexts $15
Charles Bernstein, Four Poems* OP
Larry Evers & Felipe S. Molina, Coyote Songs $8
Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, Mizu* $90
Charles Alexander, Hopeful Buildings $9.95
Lyn Hejinian & Kit Robinson, Individuals $90
Eli Goldblatt, Sessions $9
John Randolph Hall, Zootaxy* $35
Paul Metcalf, Firebird* OP
Karl Young, Five Kwaidan in Sleeve Pages* OP
Charles Alexander, Two Songs* OP
Paul Metcalf, Golden Delicious* OP
Jackson Mac Low, French Sonnets* $75
Forthcoming in 1996
Hank Lazer, Three of Ten
Karen Mac Cormack, The Tongue Moves Talk
Lisa Cooper, & Calling It Snow
* notes deluxe, handmade book arts editions
Enquiries about these books are always welcome.
Chax Press is a nonprofit (501c3) literary organization which publishes
books in limited book arts editions and in trade literary editions. Our
books present contemporary exploratory writing in forms noted for their
excellent design. Our book arts editions are hand printed and hand bound
according to exacting standards; however, they do not follow traditional
fine print formats, rather offer contemporary excursions into the
relationship of visual, verbal, and structural elements in the book. The
trade literary editions are standard trade paperbacks published in small
editions (500 to 1000). We depend on supporters like you not only to buy and
read our books, but to further support Chax Press with contributions which
are tax deductible to the extent allowed by law. Sales of the books alone
will not pay for the costs of maintaining a productive literary press. Your
pre-publication purchase of these books directly from us, together with your
contribution to Chax Press, allows the continued publication of exciting
works of innovative new writing.=20
thank you,
charles=20
Charles Alexander
Chax Press
P.O. Box 19178
Minneapolis, MN 55419-0178
612-721-6063 (phone & fax)
chax@mtn.org
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 12 Oct 1995 11:49:06 +0800
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Schuchat <schuchat@ARC.ARC.ORG.TW>
Subject: Re: "Naropa P-Wars"
In-Reply-To: <199510111937.PAA14511@conciliator.acsu.buffalo.edu>
I believe that Robert Bly either wrote something about it or was
interviewed on the subject.
On Wed, 11 Oct 1995, Loss Glazier wrote:
> I've been straining here to think: isn't there one more very famous
> account of this incident somewhere? Does anyone recall this?
> ------------------------------------------------------------------
> > If you're going to check out Tom Clark's The Great Naropa Poetry
> > Wars, you'll also want to look at the project on that
> > now-mythological Merwin-Trungpa confrontation produced by Ed
> > Sanders' 1977 Investigative Poetry class at Naropa. It's called The
> > Party: A Chronological Perspective on a Confrontation at a Buddhist
> > Seminary (Poetry, Crime and Culture Press: Woodstock, NY,
> > 1977). This does, I think, have implications for poetics beyond the
> > talk-show level, esp. if read along with Sanders' 1976 chapbook
> > Investigative Poetry (City Lights).
>
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 12 Oct 1995 01:03:57 -0400
Reply-To: Robert Drake <au462@cleveland.Freenet.Edu>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Robert Drake <au462@CLEVELAND.FREENET.EDU>
Subject: Re: 4 horsemen, and soundpoetry yonder...
some four horsemen Lps:
_Live in the West_ Starborne Productions, Toronto 1977
_Canadada_ Griffin House, Toronto 1974
_Two Nights_ ?? --i only have a k7 dub...
as mentioned, Underwich Audiographics (PO 262 Adelaide St. Stn.,
Toronto ONT M5R 2J4) probably has some stuff; they definately
have some solo k7s by bp nichol & i think paul dutton...
jw curry of curvd H&z books (1357 lansdowne Ave., toronto ONT
M6H 3Z9) may also be able to track down copies & additional
listings; besides dealing in some of this material, i believe
he's done some pretty complete biblio/discographies.
---
a _few_ readings on sound poetry:
_Sound Poetry: A Catalog_, ed. Steve McCaffery & bp nichol;
Underwich editions 1978. excellent survey, particularly
of the canadian scene.
Capilano Review #31, special sound poetry issue, guest editors
Richard Truhlar & Steven Smith; 1984. includes 7" record
w/ Owen Sound, Mara Zibins, 4 Hoursemen, bill bissett &
David UU.
in Leonardo vol. 3:, "Vocal Neighborhoods: a Walk Through the
Post-Sound Poetry Landscape" by Larry Wendt; MIT Press
1993. considerably more current, tho straying more toward
poetry-as-music, depending on your rigor... accompanying CD
includes Brenda Hutchinson, Paul Dutton, Valeri
Scherstjanoi, Amanda Stewart, Trevor Wishart, Henri Chopin &
David Moss...
as fr ron's challenge to the term "sound poetry": altho its a term
i'm comfortable with, i agree that it may lead to misunderstanding.
i generally prefer dick higgin's term "intermedia" for various
boundry-crossing genres. particularly apt, seems to me, in view ov
many scores for soundpoetry, which often draw heavily on various
concrete/verbo-visual/graphic poetry techniques...
but as fr "saying the same thing"... hard for me to understand. sit
& listen to Ur Sonata side-by-side w/ anything by the horsemen, since
those have both come up recently. it's trivial to note that they don't
"say the same thing"--different phonemes, etc... (& i assume you don't
mean to say that they all _mean_ the same thing...) but beyond that,
they certainly have differing intentions, occur in & address different
contexts/audiences, and trigger (for me at least) different emotional
and intellectual responses. the difficulty of "translating" or glossing
a sound poem doesn't, fr me, mean that it is "meaningless", or that
it's only meaning is in it's formal rejection of recognizable morphemes...
i dunno, maybe i could respond more clearly if you explained how you
hear specific examples of sound poetry "saying the same thing...",
what you hear them saying or how you hear the saying said... puzzled,
i am
luigi
au462@cleveland.freenet.edu
"'Cleveland' spelled backwards is... DNA Level C.
Well, that explains a lot!"
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 11 Oct 1995 22:44:44 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: George Bowering <bowering@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: poetry and politics
In-Reply-To: <199510120017.RAA00728@slip-1.slip.net> from "Steve Carll" at Oct
11, 95 05:17:17 pm
I have to go away to Europe or some such place for 2 months, and I
dont want 5000 messages when I get back, and I forget how to get off
the BuffNet for a while. Can someone remind me how it's done?
Thanks.
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 12 Oct 1995 09:43:35 +0100
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: R I Caddel <R.I.Caddel@DURHAM.AC.UK>
Subject: new book
In-Reply-To: <199510120608.HAA27010@tucana.dur.ac.uk>
To my surprise and delight a wonderful new book from Carcanet: Michael
Haslam's "A Whole Bauble" (14.95 pounds, isbn 1-85754-187-1). I've been
aware of Haslam's work for a long time in magazines, small collections
etc., but hadn't really done more than nod to it. I was wrong. Haslam
describes himself (in the note at the back): "I think I'm a sort of
wayward Prynneite, I suppose, and..." - the kind of cautious inclusion I
associate with John Hall and John Riley - both of whom have walk-on parts
in "Immediate must be a miracle" which carries the preface "This poem is
for / the Empty Classes / of the Cambridge School of Poetry".
But when I came to look for a nice little bit to quote, I couldn't: one
bit leads to another, links back to bits earlier, with echo-sequences
often very reminicent of old welsh, which he's often using in one way or
another, and bits of speech-sampling from his Yorkshire background, and my
favorite Ives quote ("Some of these songs... cannot be sung") and the
thing forms such a whole surface that I go on exploring it and forget to
look for snappy quotes. Try it.
OK, my second favorite Ives quote: my first (overlooking the gender
specific language) is "Stand up - and use your ears like a man!"
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, 12 Oct 1995 09:35:55 EDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Daniel Bouchard/College/hmco <Daniel_Bouchard@HMCO.COM>
Subject: Re: "Naropa P-Wars"
I've been straining here to think: isn't there one more very famous
account of this incident somewhere? Does anyone recall this?
------------------------------------------------------------------
> If you're going to check out Tom Clark's The Great Naropa Poetry
> Wars, you'll also want to look at the project on that
> now-mythological Merwin-Trungpa confrontation produced by Ed
> Sanders' 1977 Investigative Poetry class at Naropa. It's called The
> Party: A Chronological Perspective on a Confrontation at a Buddhist
> Seminary (Poetry, Crime and Culture Press: Woodstock, NY,
> 1977). This does, I think, have implications for poetics beyond the
> talk-show level, esp. if read along with Sanders' 1976 chapbook
> Investigative Poetry (City Lights).
I first read of this incident by way of Eliot Weinberger in an essay collected
in, I think, Works on Paper (New Directions). Don't know if it's the one
you're thinking of, Loss.
daniel_bouchard@hmco.com
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 12 Oct 1995 10:45:32 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Loss Glazier <lolpoet@ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU>
Subject: Re: turning off mail for a while
In-Reply-To: <199510120544.FAA03339@fraser.sfu.ca> from "George Bowering" at
Oct 11, 95 10:44:44 pm
>
> I have to go away to Europe or some such place for 2 months, and I
> dont want 5000 messages when I get back, and I forget how to get off
> the BuffNet for a while. Can someone remind me how it's done?
> Thanks.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
George, I'm posting this reply to the list in case others who may have
forgotten how to do this might want to make a note of it...
-> To stop mail for an indefinite amount of time, send an e-mail
message to:
listserv@ubvm.cc.buffalo.edu
Leave the "Subject" line of the message blank. In the body of the
message, type:
set poetics nomail
And send the message. You will receive confirmation that you have been
set to "nomail." That's all there is to it!
-> When you return and are ready to resume, follow the instructions
above but in the body of the message type:
set poetics mail
Bon Voyage, George!
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 12 Oct 1995 10:07:51 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Judy Roitman <roitman@OBERON.MATH.UKANS.EDU>
Subject: Re: "Naropa P-Wars"
>I've been straining here to think: isn't there one more very famous
>account of this incident somewhere? Does anyone recall this?
>------------------------------------------------------------------
>> If you're going to check out Tom Clark's The Great Naropa Poetry
>> Wars, you'll also want to look at the project on that
>> now-mythological Merwin-Trungpa confrontation produced by Ed
>> Sanders' 1977 Investigative Poetry class at Naropa. It's called The
>> Party: A Chronological Perspective on a Confrontation at a Buddhist
>> Seminary (Poetry, Crime and Culture Press: Woodstock, NY,
>> 1977). This does, I think, have implications for poetics beyond the
>> talk-show level, esp. if read along with Sanders' 1976 chapbook
>> Investigative Poetry (City Lights).
Being out of the loop, I read it in a semi-mass circulation magazine many
years ago. Atlantic Monthly? New Yorker?
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 12 Oct 1995 10:01:40 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Tenney Nathanson <tenney@AZSTARNET.COM>
Subject: Michael as exemplum (?)
>One of the reasons that I think it is so hard for poets who go directly
>from some student status into teaching (at least if that is at the
>college level) is that there is an (inherent) conflict between the poem
>and the job that sets it up as very difficult to conceive of as
>unalienated labor. I think one can read this "ambivalence" in great
>detail in almost all of Michael Davidson's work, someone who has taken
>his role as a teacher with great seriousness his entire career and
>never flinched from acknowledging its impact on his poetry, although he
>is often conflicted about how he "feels" about that.
Ron--
I'd love to hear you say some more about this, unless you think it would be
an embarrassment to Michael, who is on the list too, no? But: in the poems
let's say, how does the conflict show up (its appearance in the criticism
would be less surprising: "I'd rather be fishing" gestures etc., of the sort
so riotously displayed by Pound in his early essays and magazine pieces)?
best,
Tenney
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 12 Oct 1995 10:01:46 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Tenney Nathanson <tenney@AZSTARNET.COM>
Subject: and furthermore
>Date: Wed, 11 Oct 1995 10:21:41 EDT
>From: Alan Golding <ACGOLD01@ULKYVM.LOUISVILLE.EDU>
>Subject: Rolf Harris
>
>Associate Professor of English, U. of Louisville
>Phone: (502)-852-5918; e-mail: acgold01@ulkyvm.louisville.edu
>
>Ah yes--Ann Vickery provides a blast from my colonial past in England when she
>mentions Rolf Harris' "Tie me kangaroo down, sport." In the earliest
>exampleofaural slippage I can remember experiencing, I thought, round about
>age 8 or 9, that the line/title was "Tiny Kangaroo Downsport." I remember
>thinking that Downsport seemed like rather an odd name for a tiny kangaroo,
>but, being an open-minded child, I was willing to go along with the program.
>When I discovered the "right" version, the song suddenly seemed a lot less
>interesting.
"O we like sheep!"
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 12 Oct 1995 10:01:51 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Tenney Nathanson <tenney@AZSTARNET.COM>
Subject: sigh
>Date: Wed, 11 Oct 1995 12:40:27 -0500
>From: Edward Foster <EFOSTER@VAXC.STEVENS-TECH.EDU>
>Subject: Re: No Subject
>
>yes, it was stevens who said that money is a kind of poetry, and if anyone
>should'a it, it was he.
>
I was happily quoting this to someone as "poetry is also a kind of money"
when I realized I had it backwards....
mansards R us....
there's also a nice Harold Bloom lobster bombay and mango chutney story out
there
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 12 Oct 1995 10:01:56 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Tenney Nathanson <tenney@AZSTARNET.COM>
Subject: yep
>Date: Wed, 11 Oct 1995 17:25:51 -0500
>From: "A. Morris" <amorris@BLUE.WEEG.UIOWA.EDU>
>Subject: Re: gifts
>
>Though I would agree with Tenney Nathanson about the second part of
>Hyde's The Gift, the first part--"A Theory of Gifts"--strikes me as
>right in ways I've never seen discussed before. "Works of art exist
>simultaneously in two 'economies,'" he says, "a market economy and a gift
>economy." I like his discriminations between "labour" and "work" as well
>as his exploration of the obligations of entering into the gift economy:
>the necessity to give, to receive, and after a mysterious time during
>which one assimilates a gift, to reciprocate. In the second part, he
>does better with Pound than with Whitman. What he does is not "theory"
>so much as mulling an idea--but, at least to me, that idea explains a lot.
agreed. But that makes me want to suggest some counter-models. Like:
1. the old Arnold Hauser book on Mannerist (2 vols), which relates stylistic
changes in poetry and painting to the decline of patronage and the anxieties
of a new market economy that engulfs art production
2. the Buck-Morss book on Benjamin's Arcades project, as well as the 3
versions of Ben's Baudelaire essay (pub as CB: The Lyric Poet in the Era of
High Capitalism)--Bucik-Morss quotes long stretches of Benjamin on
Baudelaire, re the dark relation of poetic allegory and commodity reification.
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 12 Oct 1995 13:07:44 EDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: kat <KLINDBE@CMS.CC.WAYNE.EDU>
Subject: Re: Derrida on the episteme of lies
In-Reply-To: Message of Tue, 10 Oct 1995 14:45:38 -0400 from
<tunguska@TRIBECA.IOS.COM>
Thank you for the longer notes on Derrida's talk on lies, which I see
as particularly germain to the production or reconstruction of NATIONALISM
in Eastern Europe. It is useful, also, to think something more about
Arendt than that she was too much a friend, a disciple of Heidegger as
all the New York Times reviews, etc. would say dismissively. Lots of
trouble with Arendt but not particularly concerned with her bedmates if
the implication is that pillow talk, as the story with much Heideggerian
male political conceptions, went one way. Enough, it seems that I
am wasting time in the same identity politics soup.
Thanks for the precis on lies and action. yrs, Kathryne Lindberg
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 12 Oct 1995 10:45:27 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" <anielsen@ISC.SJSU.EDU>
Subject: Re: oceans blue
In-Reply-To: <199510120603.XAA19638@sparta.SJSU.EDU>
On this fine day let me remind all of an excellent novel --
_The Heirs of Columbus_ by Gerald Vizenor
& here's a curious fact I recently found -- Back when several states
still had antimiscegenation laws (no hope of "don't ask don't tell" on
that score!) Virginia felt compelled to legislate what came to be known
as the "Pocahontas Exception" -- So many "white" Virginians claimed to be
descendants of Pocahontas, by way of Tom Rolfe returned to the colonies,
that the Commonwealth's law banning intermarriage would have the
unintended effect of immediately subjecting thousands of white Virginians
to possible incarceration -- No such exception was offered to white
people who wished to claim descent from any famous African, however --
America is a New World that stays new, dammit!
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 12 Oct 1995 11:18:49 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Carl Lynden Peters <clpeters@SFU.CA>
Subject: Emily Dickinson-
i plan to teach a tutorial on a few emily dickinson poems, and i'm
interested in your comments abt her extensive use of dashes -- can anyone
help me out --
thanks for this,
c
"303: The Soul selects her own Society"
The Soul selects her own Society--
Then--shuts the Door--
To her divine Majority--
Present no more--
Unmoved--she notes the Chariots--pausing--
At her low Gate--
Unmoved--an Emperor be kneeling
Upon he Mat--
I've known her--from an ample nation--
Choose One--
Then--close the Valves of her attention--
Like Stone--
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 12 Oct 1995 14:38:50 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Romana Christina Huk <rch@HOPPER.UNH.EDU>
Subject: poetry on CD-ROM
Can anyone give me information on CD-ROM recordings of readings that I
might get my library to purchase for my "alternative poetries" graduate
seminar? I've got a notice about something called Poetry in Motion I and
II -- is there anything else out there I should think of instead?
Romana Huk <rch@hopper.unh.edu
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 12 Oct 1995 14:57:39 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: tunguska <tunguska@TRIBECA.IOS.COM>
Subject: context & derivation
ed, you're right. my misunderstanding stems from the discussion involving
fragmentation. movement, and rest, seemed to clash in what you said, and I
thought it would be useful to point out (what you already understand) in
terms of Duncan's righting in the light of theology. I meant to show that
horizons pointed to by philosophy call for poetry movement from in to
outward, and not so simply a metaphoric reduction of "impertinence" imposed
from "outside" poetry.
what we have, now, is a wholeness, aesthetic, or whatever, from the very
nature of poetry, no longer out of sync with any so-called imperitive.or
what we should have. the problem is not to lose sight of that. so let me
close this whole chain of contexts, fragmentation and fang-doodle, with the
following:
There's this bee-keepers convention in Italy. Bee-keepers from all over the
world are there, comparing and animatedly discussing their livelihood. The
american says: we got 10 million bees and kept in a highly modern and
monitored situation, very impressive, 3 million gallons of honey a year! The
Italian says: Oh! we've got 25 million, and they're on a hillside, the old
way, and we get 5 million gallons a year! And the German says: we do all our
bees in an atmospherically controlled environment, a hot-house, producing
twice that. The Frenchman says: we've got 2 different sites of 30 million
bees, and we can continually produce honey year round and it's growing
exponentially every year! They notice that the Irish bee-keeper hasn't said
anything yet, so they ask him about his bee-keeping operation. The Irishman
says: me? I've got 65 million bees..and I keep them all in a cardboard box!
And the Italian says: isn't that a bit cruel? Fuck 'em! says the Irishman.
thilleman
tod thilleman
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 12 Oct 1995 14:25:33 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jonathan Brannen <jbrannen@INFOLINK.MORRIS.MN.US>
>>Why ask of poetry more than it can deliver? We don't ask the same of cooking.
>>
>>Jeff Hansen
Because we don't know what poetry may be able to deliver! The point of
devising and utilizing innovative forms is precisely to explore the genre's
potential.
>(money is also a kind of poetry)
>
>
Tenney,
Since when? To whom? I can relate to neither this concept of money nor
this concept of poetry.
Best of all possible worlds,
Jonathan Brannen
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 12 Oct 1995 16:01:19 EST
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Burt Kimmelman -@NJIT" <kimmelman@ADMIN.NJIT.EDU>
Subject: Re: Derrida on the episteme of lies
Kathryne,
This is really nothing but gossip, but what the hey:
a colleague of mine who studied under both Hans Jonas and Arendt, at the
New School, suggested to me that her relationship with Heidegger was,
let us say, for want of a better word at this moment, dynamic.
Burt
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 12 Oct 1995 19:00:06 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Loss Glazier <lolpoet@ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU>
Subject: Re: poetry on CD-ROM
In-Reply-To: <Pine.OSF.3.91a.951012143039.26211A-100000@hopper.unh.edu> from
"Romana Christina Huk" at Oct 12, 95 02:38:50 pm
Romana,
You *must* check out _The Little Magazine Vol. 21_ as an extraordinary
cd-rom release (IBM/Windows). Write to litmag@cnsunix.albany.edu for
details.
Loss
---------------------------------------------------------------------
> Can anyone give me information on CD-ROM recordings of readings that I
> might get my library to purchase for my "alternative poetries" graduate
> seminar? I've got a notice about something called Poetry in Motion I and
> II -- is there anything else out there I should think of instead?
>
> Romana Huk <rch@hopper.unh.edu
>
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 12 Oct 1995 23:55:14 +0000
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: cris cheek <cris@SLANG.DEMON.CO.UK>
Subject: 4 Horsemen recordings
the following are still available:
bpNichol, *Ear Rational: Sound Poems 1970 - 1980* $10.00
Paul Dutton, *Fugitive Forms* $10.00
Rafael Baretto-Rivera, *Scrable Babble* $10.00
from: - Grist On-Line (http://phantom.com/~grist).
Grist has a toll free phone number for orders: 1-800-863-4762. After you
dial the number, enter 9757 when requested. You can use Visa or Mastercard.
Wouldn't hurt to check out Grist's bookstore: has over 4,000 titles, all
contemporary poetry and related -- as far as I know, it's the largest
source of contemporary poetry books on the net. You won't find a better
selection of visual poetry books on the net. For sound poetry and related,
check out Pauline Oliveros's Deep Listening Catalogue. If you can get to
kenny g's web site, there's a link to it from there.
love and love
cris
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 12 Oct 1995 22:33:18 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Lisa Samuels <lsr3h@DARWIN.CLAS.VIRGINIA.EDU>
Subject: Re: Texts about poetics "sound"
In-Reply-To: <199510111453.KAA22823@destrier.acsu.buffalo.edu> from "Loss
Glazier" at Oct 11, 95 10:53:48 am
dear Loss,
perhaps it's 'critical' commentary you're looking for,
only, but there's a book you might adore, if you don't
already:
Text-Sound Texts, ed. Richard Kostelanetz
William Morrow, 1980
it's a blissful survey play, Bleim Kern to Nina
Yankowitz to Jean-Jacques Cory's word lists, &c, with some
commentary thrown in (eg, Jonathan Albert's 'Notes on Sound
and Language'). & check out Toby Lurie's 'Chart of Musical
Values' (!).
best,
Lisa S.
>
> Can anyone recommend to me great texts on poetic sound? Sound as
> "material," etc. as a contemporary poetic. Any thoughts would be
> appreciated.
>
> Thanks,
> Loss
> lolpoet@acsu.buffalo.edu
>
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 12 Oct 1995 20:39:55 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jeffrey Timmons <mnamna@IMAP1.ASU.EDU>
Subject: Re: No Subject
Comments: To: Edward Foster <EFOSTER@vaxa.stevens-tech.edu>
In-Reply-To: <01HWBBR5HA8891YG3M@VAXC.STEVENS-TECH.EDU>
Just a thought:
Stevens also said that writing poetry made him feel positively "lady-like."
Jeffrey Timmons
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 12 Oct 1995 20:40:58 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Steve Carll <sjcarll@SLIP.NET>
Subject: Re: sigh
Tenney you wrote:
>there's also a nice Harold Bloom lobster bombay and mango chutney story out
>there
Um, I'm dying to hear it. Does it take place in Heidegger's bed after his
falling-out with Chogyam Trungpa? :-o
Steve
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 12 Oct 1995 22:56:53 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Charles Alexander <chax@MTN.ORG>
Subject: Re: Emily Dickinson-
>i plan to teach a tutorial on a few emily dickinson poems, and i'm
>interested in your comments abt her extensive use of dashes -- can anyone
>help me out --
Carl,
I don't really think there's a definitive answer about the dashes
(hesitation, leaping jolts of meaning, gaps, the Abyss, less and more),
although some on this list may disagree. I do think they should be taken as
significant, and subsequent attempts to remove them and regularize the
punctuation in Dickinson should not be given credence. One of the best
places to go is Susan Howe's work on Dickinson, including her book My Emily
Dickinson (North Atlantic Books, Berkeley, 1985). But I haven't kept up with
all the scholarship on this, and I look forward to hearing of other places
to look. I will quote one paragraph from early on in Howe's book, which
comes between her quotation of Dickinson poems "In many and reportless
places" (1382) and "I saw no Way =96 The Heavens were stitched =96"
"On this heath wrecked from Genesis, nerve endings quicken. Naked
sensibility at the extremest periphery. Narrative expanding contracting
dissolving. Nearer to know less before afterward schism in sum. No
hierarchy, no notion of polarity. Perception of an object means loosing and
losing it. Quests end in failure, no victory and sham questor. One answer
undoes another and fiction is real. Trust absence, allegory, mystery =96 the
setting not the rising sun is Beauty. No titles or numbers for the poems.
That would force order. No titles for the packets she sewed the poems into.
No manufactured print. No outside editor/"robber." Conventional punctuation
was abolished not to add "soign=E9 stitchery" but to subtract arbitrary
authority. Dashes drew liberty of interruption inside the structure of each
poem. Hush of hesitation for breath and for breathing. Empirical domain of
revolution and revaluation where words are in danger, dissolving . . . only
Mutability certain."
Good luck with your tutorial on Dickinson. One of the few regrets I have
about taking, finally, a non-academic path, is remembering, when I was an
English grad student, teaching Dickinson to undergraduates, having them hear
her as something explosive and altogether rare in our poetry.
charles
Charles Alexander
Chax Press
P.O. Box 19178
Minneapolis, MN 55419-0178
612-721-6063 (phone & fax)
chax@mtn.org
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 13 Oct 1995 01:53:33 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Chris Stroffolino <LS0796@CNSVAX.ALBANY.EDU>
Subject: Re: Emily Dickinson-
the potential range of meanings and tones that the dashes make possible
in dicksinson's poetry has not yet received much more than perfunctory
treatment---even Howe (and her "followers") have turned away from the
dashes per say to focus on the handwriting etc. I think much more can be
done, the "authorities" have for the most part very SELECTIVELY plumbed
some of the complexities and not the others that may be inherent in the
dashes. These dashes are hazardous, of course, but no more than ignoring
them would be. Susan Howe's Book probably would be better if called
"SEVERAL OF MY EMILY DICKINSON'S" since it doesn't resolve in the idea
of singular author, and such work is useful in reminding one that the "I"
in any given poem is not the same "I" as in another poem---In fact, the
"I" in one poem may be like the "master" (or "owner") in another poem yet--
though Howe doesn't quite say THAT! ---chris stroffolino
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 12 Oct 1995 23:06:02 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: George Bowering <bowering@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: turning off mail for a while
In-Reply-To: <199510121445.KAA04724@orichalc.acsu.buffalo.edu> from "Loss
Glazier" at Oct 12, 95 10:45:32 am
Thanks, Loss. When I am in Denmark/Italy I may just get on again if I
can access this local outfit. Cheers. I will be thinking of you
whilem, I mean you all, while I am doing a reading at U. of Rome on
my birthday, Dec 1, wishing I were somewhere like Buffalo instead!
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 13 Oct 1995 08:18:54 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Maria Damon <MDamon9999@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: Emily Dickinson-
about those dashes-- i don't really "believe in" kristeva's scientistic
accounts of poetic language and the "thetic moment," but i do find useful the
possibility that those dashes are moments where the verbal articulability of
bodily/poetic pulsations/sensations breaks down and some other register of
apprehension takes over (apprehension not, of course, as anxiety but as a
"grasping toward") ...a "surplus" of meaningless meaning, that is not
semantic meaning but a kind of metaphysical urgency, or a living, dynamic
space that's created for listening to whatever sounds might be encountered
beyond a cognitive level ... how would one "act out" a set of dashes if one
were to choreograph an ED poem? may be one way to approach it w/
undergrads...md
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 13 Oct 1995 08:34:40 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jonathan A Levin <jal17@COLUMBIA.EDU>
Subject: Re: Emily Dickinson-
In-Reply-To: <951013081854_73661521@emout05.mail.aol.com>
One more thought--the manuscript texts are vital in thinking about the
dashes. One of the first things you realize studying these texts (alas,
in The Manuscript Books) is that there are all sorts of dashes out
there. Martha Nell Smith writes about these visual variations very well in
her recent book Rowing to Eden (recent, what, say 1992?).
Jonathan Levin
NYC
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 13 Oct 1995 09:45:45 -0400
Reply-To: "Charles O. Hartman" <cohar@conncoll.edu>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Charles O. Hartman" <cohar@CONNCOLL.EDU>
Subject: Re: POETICS Digest - 11 Oct 1995 to 12 Oct 1995
On Dickinson--
There's a long-standing (but now possibly defunct) debate about these
dashes, begun once they were restored to the poems (after wholesale
replacement in all early-20th-century editions. As I recall it, some
scholars claimed that the dashes have a relatively exact _musical_
function, indicating not only duration of "rest" (we have no notation for
"rests," as such, in language) but also possibly the intonation contour
of the preceding phrase. Evidence was adduced from the folk-notation used
by some religious community in the general area of Massachusetts. (It
sounds like that early chapter in _Doctor Faustus_.) I forget the
details. In any case the hypothesis was as I understand it generally
agreed to be far-fetched. Problem of non-conventional notation, always.
Charles Hartman
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 13 Oct 1995 09:29:43 CST6CDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Hank Lazer <HLAZER@AS.UA.EDU>
Organization: The University of Alabama
Subject: Re: Emily Dickinson-
On Dickinson: see also Sharon Cameron's fairly recent _Choosing Not
Choosing_, a study of the fascicles, but also some good readings of
particular poems....
Hank Lazer
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 13 Oct 1995 10:59:22 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Edward Foster <EFOSTER@VAXC.STEVENS-TECH.EDU>
Subject: Re: Emily Dickinson-
carl peters, on all dickinson matters, see susan howe's book, etc.
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 13 Oct 1995 11:22:09 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Edward Foster <EFOSTER@VAXC.STEVENS-TECH.EDU>
Subject: Re: Emily Dickinson-
thinking more about dickinson and dashes: i remember many years ago
cataloguing and transcribing 19th cent. letters and journals (not
extirely beside the point: this was for an historical society in a
town not far from amherst) and there were confusions because of a
lack of "true" punctuation and the use of dashes instead. look, too,
at melville's journals for use of dashes instead of the expected. and
in thoreau as well. i was working the other day with a passage from
melville's account of his visit to constantinople and wondered if
the dashes reflect the speed with which he's thinking; he's terrifically
wrought up. we use dashes now almost exclusively as a kind of parenthesis;
we've reduced them to logic. but they had visual power once.
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 13 Oct 1995 09:19:33 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Herb Levy <herb@ESKIMO.COM>
Subject: Re: Yonder
Ron writes, in his response to the age-old musical question <Does all
instrumental music "say the same thing"?>:
>But I am intrigued in your argument (implicit) that sound poetry is
>better understood not as poetry. Why, then, call it such?
It's called "sound poetry" to distinguish it from what we call "poetry",
just as the term "electric guitar" was first used to distinguish that
instrument from what has subsequently become known as the "acoustic
guitar." I can't imagine what would have to take place for a similar
linguistic change in how we refer to, uh, "text poetry."
Perhaps a clearer example is the term "electronic music." Much of the most
idiomatically interesting electronic music bears little resemblance to more
traditional musical forms; they don't "do anything" in terms of a more
traditional musical discourse. Conversely, much so-called electronic music
that is close to traditional musical structures (synthesizers mimicing
acoustic ensembles, "symphonies" for synthesizer, etc.) is pretty dull
compared to the thing being imitated.
S0und is the material and often the subject matter of sound poetry & the
most interesting work in the field doesn't reduce to syntactically
analyzable terms, that is, it doesn't "say anything" discursively.
In all these cases the modifier that distinguishes the term from the older,
non-modified word, indicates the general focus of the newly modified term.
& because of this it's the modifier that's emphasized.
I, too, get far more out of Bruce Ackley's playing that I do out of playing
by either of the Marsalis brothers, though I'd probably want to make
aesthetic distinctions between the music of Wynton & Branford.
Herb Levy
herb@eskimo.com
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 13 Oct 1995 09:19:44 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Herb Levy <herb@ESKIMO.COM>
Subject: Deep Listening Catalog
While I don't want to deter anyone from checking out Kenny G's homepage,
here's the URL for the Pauline Oliveros Foundation with the Deep Listening
catalog that Cris Cheek mentioned:
http://www.tmn.com/Artswire/www/pof/pof.html
But you really should check out Kenny's page. He hasn't mentioned it here,
probably because the book was published a couple of years ago, but his home
page now includes several pages from his book <73 Poems> including not only
visuals, but sound recordings of the compositions by composer/performer
Joan La Barbara for each of the poems shown.
Kenny's URL is:
http://wfmu.org:80/~kennyg/
Herb Levy
herb@eskimo.com
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 13 Oct 1995 12:47:02 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: ULMER SPRING <ulmer@COOPER.EDU>
Subject: Re: Texts about poetics "sound"
you might want to look at Douglas Oliver's book (the title of which
escapes me at this moment), but he uses sound spretrographs to map
both song and poetry. in the summer of 1991, he gave a lecture at
naropa - it's on tape (at naropa).
ahhh the title something like: Poetry Narrative in Performance
spring
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 13 Oct 1995 09:57:45 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Tenney Nathanson <tenney@AZSTARNET.COM>
Subject: Wallace
>Date: Thu, 12 Oct 1995 14:25:33 -0500
>From: Jonathan Brannen <jbrannen@INFOLINK.MORRIS.MN.US>
>Subject: <No subject given>
>
>>>Why ask of poetry more than it can deliver? We don't ask the same of cooking.
>>>
>>>Jeff Hansen
>
>Because we don't know what poetry may be able to deliver! The point of
>devising and utilizing innovative forms is precisely to explore the genre's
>potential.
>
>
>>(money is also a kind of poetry)
>>
>>
>Tenney,
>
>Since when? To whom? I can relate to neither this concept of money nor
>this concept of poetry.
>
>
>Best of all possible worlds,
>Jonathan Brannen
>
says Wallace Stevens, and as I think Ed Foster remarked sardonically
(through a typo though?) if anyone's should know, it wd be Wallace (of the
far-flung surprise Christmas box). Thinking, say, of all those lush fruits
in "St Agnes Eve" etc. Imagination etc. There are also a couple of funny
moments in Emerson where he says he hates the drudgery of the worker (and
cf. American Scholar the truncated hand etc) but loves the bold imagination
of the inventive capitalist & so on: pretty much equates capital w
Imagination or Reason, drudge work w Understanding. I can't remember why it
seemed apposite to quote Stevens, w some bemusement as I vaguely recall, but
it did.
Tenney
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 13 Oct 1995 09:57:52 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Tenney Nathanson <tenney@AZSTARNET.COM>
Subject: and
>Date: Thu, 12 Oct 1995 20:39:55 -0700
>From: Jeffrey Timmons <mnamna@IMAP1.ASU.EDU>
>Subject: Re: No Subject
>
>Just a thought:
>
>Stevens also said that writing poetry made him feel positively "lady-like."
>
>Jeffrey Timmons
>
and while we're at it there's also the racist Stevens who remarked about his
poetry that "one always wants to sound like an Italian and ends up sounding
like a Guatemalan"; and more grimly, "let Mussolini take Etheopia from the
Africans; after all, the Africans took it from the boa constrictors."
those were the days, huh?
but then too:
"the poet is a god--or, the young poet is a god. The old poet is a tramp"
(cf. old Walt on the beach....)
Tenney
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 13 Oct 1995 13:27:22 EDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ken Edwards <100344.2546@COMPUSERVE.COM>
Subject: Top ten poems
According to a poll organised by the BBC, the results of which were announced
yesterday, Kipling's "If" is Britain's favourite poem.
The top ten emerged as follows"
1. Kipling: If
2. Tennyson: The Lady of Shalott
3. Walter de la Mare: The Listeners
4. Stevie Smith: Not Waving But Drowning
5. Wordsworth: Daffodils
6. Keats: To Autumn
7. Yeats: The Lake of Innisfree
8. Wilfred Owen: Dulce et Decorum Est
9. Keats: Ode to a Nightingale
10. Yeats: He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven
In a separate vote, the top ten poets were: Kipling, Yeats, Wordsworth,
Tennyson, Walter de la Mare, Keats, Wilfred Owen, W H Auden, Stevie Smith.
I wonder what this says, if anything, about (a) the nation's attitude to poetry;
(b) the state of the nation's psyche. The No 1 choice suggests that Victorian
stiff-upper-lip moralism still rules; or perhaps it doesn't, but a sentimental
nostalgia for it does. Or perhaps the list merely reveals the class/age profile
of people who respond to BBC radio polls (imagine a similar list of "classical
music favourites" - the selection above being perhaps poetry's equivalent of "a
good tune").
What would a similar poll come up with in the USA, Canada, Australia, New
Zealand, Ireland, I wonder?
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 13 Oct 1995 13:55:44 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Loss Glazier <lolpoet@ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU>
Subject: Poetry in Motion (Review)
Given the interest recently expressed on poetry on cd-rom, I thought
I'd send along the following...
--------------------------------------------------------------------
POETRY IN MOTION
Ron Mann, editor
(New York: Voyager Company, 1994)
[CD-ROM: Windows/Macintosh].
Reviewed by Loss Pequen~o Glazier
THE "DIGITAL REVOLUTION" HAS SOME INTELLIGENT OFFSPRING.
Though the most interesting developments in electronic poetry will
occur, in my opinion, through a network sensibility (visit the
Electronic Poetry Center via the Internet at the http,
"http://writing.upenn.edu/epc" for a view into the possibilities of
"connectivity") this CD-ROM suggests some immediate and interesting
possibilities.
That this is a commercial product makes the poets chosen quite
surprising. The voyager CD-ROM series, displayed in a number of stores
nationally in flashy carousels, contains titles such as "Baseball's
Greatest Hits" and "People: Twenty Years of Pop Culture" as well as
interesting items such as "Maus" and "Ephemeral Films." The series by
no means pretends any specialization in poetry. However this company's
one contemporary poetry product, at this writing, contains a range of
interesting poets including Ted Berrigan, Robert Creeley, Alan
Ginsberg, Jim Carroll, Anne Waldman, and Jim Cage.
In all, Poetry in Motion offers the work of some two dozen
poets. Using the disk involves choosing from the author list. When you
select an entry for viewing, you are presented with an opening screen
split into three sections: a text of the poet, a screen with the poet
reading, and, in most cases, an interview screen. Clicking on the
"reading" screen starts a video clip in motion and the poem in the
text panel scrolls as the poem is read. (This text screen actually
offers the choice of two versions of the text: "As Performed" and "As
Published." The poem will scroll with the reading if the "As
Performed" box is checked.) If you click on the interview screen, a
brief clip of the poet discussing poetics will play.
The disk is tremendous as a sampler, especially for those who
teach or for those who don't have ready access to readings. Who could
ever read the printed text of Waldman and witness the physical energy
there? Or the careful pacing of Creeley? (Ginsberg and Burroughs are
exceptions somewhat, since both turn up more regularly in the mass
media.) Berrigan is a particular treat, for the pacing of the poem
read, of course, but also for Berrigan's movements, gestures, his
physical approach to the literary "event."
The disk is also a rare exception in that a great deal of
effort seems to have been put into layout and the graphical
presentation of screens; it is quite a pleasure to move through its
menus.
Notwithstanding the quality of the poets presented, of
greatest interest is Poetry in Motion's approach to presenting the
"word." The mix between performance and interview clips and the
presentation of the dual nature of a poem as published and as it takes
place in public is engaging. Quite a pleasurable experience bounded,
interestingly, only by the medium itself: since video takes up so much
disk space and emphasis is given to performances, interview clips tend
to be quite short. In fact, there is NOT a lot of material here, each
poet basically reading one poem. The CD actually does not compare to
say, a good-sized anthology in breadth or variety.
The lack of depth in such a well-edited project makes one
wonder if a multi-media CD-ROM product, though presenting
well-selected material portably and in an engaging manner, must
ultimately suffer from the insularity and limitations its own format
imposes. All told however, it's a treat to see technology meet poetry
in such a satisfactory fashion.
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 13 Oct 1995 16:01:02 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Bill Luoma <Maz881@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: The Art and Poetry Worlds
Re : Black Flag Kills Poets Dead
Has anyone's FBI file been used for such purposes? Has anyone on the list
seen their FBI file?
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 13 Oct 1995 16:19:45 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Larry Price <Lppl@AOL.COM>
Subject: So we tanned his hide when he died, Clyde
I want to reinvert your inversion. It seems to me a very different sense to
say "movement is the key perception." Which brings out the sense of
self-schism I've read in Duncan. But the narrative tree movement/rest is
useful. Because my sense at least of Mallarmean "purity" does accommodate
within it "the human theme of the impossibility of being...the attempts to
reconstruct...sensibility, but only to purify it of anything accidental so
that it is free to reenact endlessly the sacred drama of failure and
death...the poem is...the suicide of...Poetry." As Blaser once remarked,
Spicer never forgave his mother, never forgave the occasion of his own birth.
Thus
Like a diamond
Has at the center of it a diamond
Or a rock
Rock.
Which seems a cranky
Do not move
Let the wind speak
sort of purity. Not the alternations of being, but "what does one do with all
this crap?"
Whereas certainly for Duncan, what could be called the heuristic use of
utopia could just as easily become the heuristic force of existence (as for
example what is for me the demonic self-reading in the NET outtakes). As
though the only context one has for the writing act is that of language
doubling, the proposition that the one who writes is the one who reads, not
with the same abilities certainly, but expanded to the formal availability
that that doubling brings.
Larry Price
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 13 Oct 1995 15:47:18 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Charles Alexander <chax@MTN.ORG>
Subject: Re: Top ten poems
>According to a poll organised by the BBC, the results of which were announced
>yesterday, Kipling's "If" is Britain's favourite poem.
>
>The top ten emerged as follows"
>
>1. Kipling: If
>2. Tennyson: The Lady of Shalott
>3. Walter de la Mare: The Listeners
>4. Stevie Smith: Not Waving But Drowning
>5. Wordsworth: Daffodils
>6. Keats: To Autumn
>7. Yeats: The Lake of Innisfree
>8. Wilfred Owen: Dulce et Decorum Est
>9. Keats: Ode to a Nightingale
>10. Yeats: He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven
>
>In a separate vote, the top ten poets were: Kipling, Yeats, Wordsworth,
>Tennyson, Walter de la Mare, Keats, Wilfred Owen, W H Auden, Stevie Smith.
This is just astounding to me, for many reasons, but particularly in that it
seems to imply that only two centuries of poetry exist. Do Brits not read
Shakespeare (or regard him only as playwright), Chaucer, Milton, Spenser,
Donne, Johnson, Smart, Gray, Wyatt, Sidney, Marvel, and many more? Or read
them only in school and think them a drudge?
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 13 Oct 1995 14:14:49 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ryan Knighton <knighton@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: Michael as exemplum (?)
In-Reply-To: <199510121701.KAA19817@web.azstarnet.com> from "Tenney Nathanson"
at Oct 12, 95 10:01:40 am
I'm kinda backa all in a lurking sense I suppose. Thought I would
jump in with some canadian content on this subject of teaching poetry
and how it informs the writing of it. I don't know much about Michael
D. as an exemplum but I would encourage anyone interested to take a long
hard gander at Tom Wayman, the gently dangerous BC "industrial" poet.
He wrote some wonderful things about his experiences as a college instructor
and res-writer here at rainy SFU. I think he is usually published by
Harbour Press ironically rooted on the Sunshine Coast. One of my faves is
in his treatment of the question "what did I miss in class yesterday".
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 13 Oct 1995 18:51:36 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Mark Scroggins <scroggin@GWIS2.CIRC.GWU.EDU>
Subject: Re: Top ten poems
In-Reply-To: <951013172722_100344.2546_EHQ81-3@CompuServe.COM>
If my students and acquaintances are any indication, it's doubtful that
most Americans could name ten POETS, much less ten specific poems.
So has anybody been able to come up with a reference for me on that
interview in which Ashbery claims Helen Vendler told him one had to be a
fascist to like the Cantos?
Mark Scroggins
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 13 Oct 1995 22:59:21 +0100
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Patrick Phillips <Patrick_Phillips@BROWN.EDU>
Subject: Re: poet kills black flag dead
>Re : Poet Kills Black Flag Dead
>
>Has anyone's FBI file been used for such purposes? Has anyone on the list
>seen their FBI file?
Not I. Went so far as to get the FIA (freedom of information act) forms in
1984, but did not submit...... black flag killed dead.
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 13 Oct 1995 20:20:46 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Steve Carll <sjcarll@SLIP.NET>
Subject: Re: Emily Dickinson-
Chris S. wrote:
> Susan Howe's Book probably would be better if called
> "SEVERAL OF MY EMILY DICKINSON'S" since it doesn't resolve in the idea
> of singular author, and such work is useful in reminding one that the "I"
> in any given poem is not the same "I" as in another poem---In fact, the
> "I" in one poem may be like the "master" (or "owner") in another poem yet--
> though Howe doesn't quite say THAT! ---chris stroffolino
This is one of the most interesting paradoxes--Dickinson's poetry does have
a distinctive Voice (capital V)--you can almost always tell if you're
somewhat familiar with it that you're hearing or reading another example of
it--yet the voice (lower-case v) of any individual poem may be wildly
different from that of any other given ED poem. She was "masterful" at
strategizing that Voice, at cloaking it in accents, a proto-Pessoa, one
might almost say.
Steve
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 13 Oct 1995 21:48:17 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Michael Davidson <rdavidson@UCSD.EDU>
Subject: Re: Michael as exemplum (?)
>>One of the reasons that I think it is so hard for poets who go directly
>>from some student status into teaching (at least if that is at the
>>college level) is that there is an (inherent) conflict between the poem
>>and the job that sets it up as very difficult to conceive of as
>>unalienated labor. I think one can read this "ambivalence" in great
>>detail in almost all of Michael Davidson's work, someone who has taken
>>his role as a teacher with great seriousness his entire career and
>>never flinched from acknowledging its impact on his poetry, although he
>>is often conflicted about how he "feels" about that.
>
>Ron--
>
>I'd love to hear you say some more about this, unless you think it would be
>an embarrassment to Michael, who is on the list too, no? But: in the poems
>let's say, how does the conflict show up (its appearance in the criticism
>would be less surprising: "I'd rather be fishing" gestures etc., of the sort
>so riotously displayed by Pound in his early essays and magazine pieces)?
>
>best,
>
>Tenney
>
>Well, I certainly "feel" conflicted about the split, as many on this list
must feel as well. As to whether or not this appears in the poetry, that's
hard for me to gauge, but there is plenty of institutional rhetoric that
finds its way into texts (in quotations, of course). I think that for many
of us who are poet/teachers there is a desire to be accountable in the
university at large and not to get pigeonholed as a "writer" which, in most
universities, means someone useful on the masthead but not in official
departmental meetings. The problem is that, like Ellison's Invisible Man,
the more you pretend you're really someone else the more you become that
person and begin to act accordingly. As to Ron's reference to "ambivalence"
that needn't be only the result of institutional conflicts.
Michael Davidson
Michael Davidson
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 13 Oct 1995 22:59:20 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" <anielsen@ISC.SJSU.EDU>
Subject: Re: poetry in notions
In-Reply-To: <199510140405.VAA11225@sparta.SJSU.EDU>
some of the limitations of the Poetry in Motion CD ROM may stem from its
origins as a video tape ??? Has anybody written anything comparing this
project in its two formats?
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 14 Oct 1995 09:49:25 +0100
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: R I Caddel <R.I.Caddel@DURHAM.AC.UK>
Subject: Top Ten Poets
In-Reply-To: <199510140411.FAA06490@hermes.dur.ac.uk>
I tried to ignore the sickening "National Poetry Day" phenomenon, but
folks will keep reminding me of it ("Here - you'll like this - Neil
Astley's Bloodaxe Books have put Northeast Poetry on the map" etc etc).
Actually I lined up with the "National Poetry Day Protect and Survive"
group - urged my colleagues in my workplace NOT to read poems in my
lunchbreak, NOT to stick poems on trees etc. In Newcastle, Connie Pickard
held a silent and lone vigil in the deserted Morden Tower...
Difficult to read too much into a radio phone-in poll, since phoners-in
cannot (I hope!) be considered representative of even their own collective
psyche - just another instance of the UK media's trivialisation of
everything, as I read it. But the "banding" of those poems does, perhaps,
reflect the narrowing-down of teaching: my children missed out on Chaucer
at school - even in "translation" - because he's deemed "too difficult"
for most.
Pleasing to see Kit Smart in there in the list of poets who might've been
considered: I doubt if many Durham schoolkids could even name him, tho'
Smart was Durham raised and taught. A movement to put up a plaque for him
in the town was squashed - "too obscure".
However, coming shortly on some radio is the poll of "Ten Worst Poems" -
now there's a game we might play on this list...
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 "Name and date / split in soft slate / a few months obliterate." x
x - Basil Bunting x
x x
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 14 Oct 1995 04:45:35 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ron Silliman <rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM>
Subject: Re: The Art and Poetry Worlds
You wrote:
>
>Re : Black Flag Kills Poets Dead
>
>Has anyone's FBI file been used for such purposes? Has anyone on the
list
>seen their FBI file?
>
I got mine through the Freedom of Information Act in the late 70s. 130
pages of garbage that made me realize how much of even the FBI was
simply a "make work" program. Mostly investigations of my relations
with "subversive groups" like the Socialist Workers Party, interviews
with building janitors where I'd lived, teachers (!) of classes that I
had dropped (tho not of ones I'd actually attended).
Names deleted throughout but it was apparent from the texts that there
was a CIA "stringer" among the grad students in English at UC Berkeley,
a fellow who actually lived in the same apartment building as I and my
first wife.
Notable absences too, such as the time when my phone was tapped (very
obviously-- you could pick it up and hear week-old conversations you
had had) while I was baby-sitting Stephen Weed and the Hearst ransom
money in '74 during that wild period (the two weeks immediately
preceding her coming out as Tanya and robbing a bank), or when the FBI
questioned me after finding my phone # in the address book of Sara Jane
Moore, one of their own "informants" who attempted to shoot Gerry Ford.
Ron
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 14 Oct 1995 10:28:03 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: CTHEORY/fwrd <POETICS@UBVMS.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Organization: University at Buffalo
Subject: Lorenz on Cicchetto (review)
_____________________________________________________________________
CTHEORY THEORY, TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE VOL 18, NO 3
Review 39 95/10/04 Editors: Arthur and Marilouise Kroker
_____________________________________________________________________
Cut It Out
==========
Francesca Cicchetto, _Sadiani Rognoni_. Edited by Shinaz Giusti, with
accompanying text by Nils Ya. Buffalo, NY: Tailspin Press, 1995.
~Klaus Lorenz~
Reviewer's Note: An obscure press in Buffalo, New York has recently
published one of the more interesting documents in aesthetic theory
to emerge in the past few years. Ostensibly a reissue of Italian
writer Francesca Cicchetto's _Sadiani Rognoni_, an avant-garde work
originally published in Bologna in 1952, the book includes, in
addition to the Sadian cut-ups (or more accurately, cut-outs) that
occupy its recto pages, a philosophical commentary by guerrilla
theorist Nils Ya. Printed thus, both texts run parallel to each
other, informing each other yet remain distinct as befits their
generic allegiances. Both address the curious status of the
*fragment* as aesthetic topos in our post- and
unprepossessing-of-anything historical moment. And both work the
ragged seam marking that marriage of poetic and philosophical
discourses that increasingly informs contemporary theory.
_____________________________________________________________________
Ecstatic time can only find itself in the vision of things that
puerile chance causes brusquely to appear: cadavers, nudity,
explosions, spilled blood, abysses, sunbursts, and thunder.
-Bataille
A poet recently remarked, apropos of the American serial poem:
"Little potato prints of consciousness." The child's absorbed
attentiveness in art-making summoned by that phrase could hardly be
further removed from the cool, antiabsorptive conceptualism of
Francesca Cicchetto's work. A neon impassiveness lends its steady
charm to the cookie-cutter, heartshaped shape of readerly awareness
in these poems. No aura - no bliss either. The Italian impulse to
laugh off artefactual mystery. Yet the imprint of method, be it
figured as crudely as acorn head or ace of spades on the raw cut
half of a potato dipped in paint, has nonetheless an exploratory
deliberation about it that poses certain questions to the (re)viewer
through these portholes of the future.
What can we discern there? A short history of the uses of "method"
in twentieth-century poetry of the West might take us from
modernism's odd uncle, Raymond Roussel, to the surrealists, the
lettrists, Language poetry, and back again to the Romantics, without
still ever addressing the crucial determinations that underwrite a
writer's use of one "method" over another; and the question becomes
acute when, as here, the method involves a framing of found
material. Method as window - opening on to different scenes,
certainly, but homogenizing them (as Cicchetto's Sadian source-text
endlessly reiterates its subject matter) within the unchanging fact
of a single reiterated frame. And that frame, as Nils Ya
demonstrates so clearly in his exhaustive commentary on the logic of
the fragment accompanying Cicchetto's texts, is an *art* frame, a
frame encrusted with a flaking history of perception whose very
scabrousness causes us, paradoxically, to overlook it as historical
(rather than aesthetic) object.
What is the point of Cicchetto's method? Baldly stated, shorn of
literary-historical braidings, what does her work propose - about
Sade, about sexuality, about postwar (or post-Wall) Europe, about
language? After the passage of forty years, years whose same-as-new
rhythm has appeared to be ineradicable from the texture of Italian
political life, does her point need sharpening?
Like the slipped wig that provides the movie _Naked Kiss_ with its
single real frisson, Cicchetto's work reveals the sloppiness of
modernism's hold on mid-century European culture, at a time when it
was supposed to reign triumphant. The perfect symmetry of her
cut-outs only serves to point up what's askew in the culture that
provides their primary frame of reference - askew not morally or
aesthetically or politically, but "out of joint" in the sense of
Hamlet's despairing description of his time. And this temporal
dislocation of the century's high noon is in no way a reflection of
retrogression or anachronism in the realm of the arts - it could be
argued, in fact, that the stylistic "imperatives" pressed by
international modernism were among those things that Adorno's
Auschwitz made definitively obsolete. To take two roughly
contemporary examples from the realm of the (Italian) visual arts:
when Lucio Fontana slashed his canvases with a razor, or when Piero
Manzoni produced, for sale, sealed cans labeled "Artist's Shit,"
they were hardly interested in pressing some quasi-Hegelian logic of
modernism to its next identifiable synthesis. Art is health, Yves
Klein asserted in 1960, and Joseph Beuys would later respond: it is
healing. Scabs, knitting tissue, crusting over a live wound whose
lips speak a great deal more than the usual dilemmas of sexuality -
is this the health promised us by a thoroughly appropriative art?
~Ut pictura poiesis~ indeed! Yet in this space of disarticulation,
the hip bone unconnected to the thigh bone, a space for
articulation: Cicchetto holds fast to her method as Rosselini does
his camera while filming _Open City_ amid the fresh ruins of a
recently abandoned Rome.
Georges Bataille, parsing the language of flowers, has remarked on
the image of the Marquis de Sade among the mad in his asylum cell,
stripping off the petals of a rose and throwing them into a latrine.
The time is long past due, suggests Sade's redactor here, to abandon
the postcivilized world. Derelict structures of half-smashed
thought, held in abeyance, so many matchflames shielded by cupped
hands, they burn out of sight the next step we might take. Yet we
don't need extra light to read the graffiti on walls and screens: No
more hedging around the demands of the last decent extremism. Human
chance reappears at this juncture not in her medieval dress,
randomly blindfolded in a double personification of Fortuna-Justice
(is that a torture-wheel or scales she holds behind her back?), but
as the frolicsome boys, familiar from _Lear_, tearing wings off
flies to see what will happen next. Flinging art's petals to the
breeze may indeed give pleasure to those suffering from a newly
authorized boredom, that form of blank restlessness that has long
been the ground of modern creativity. But to expose, to strip off
the patterned wallpaper of aesthetic assumptions buried under layers
of peeling paint: it could take a lifetime, and the basic questions
of redesign - "what next?" - still go unbroached.
What Francesca Cicchetto suggests, I think, is that a total
negativity as asymptotic aesthetic limit might well fit our fortunes
now - "we" having no horizon on which to construct images of perfect
cities, neither hill nor ditch; better the tears and holes of a
negative architecture, Matta-Clark's exuberant ruin of dead policies
of renewal. Leaves shattered before the mellowing rot of eroticized
spatial relations: is that what we, turning the corner of a page,
find in the familiar neighborhood that Cicchetto outlines for us in
her book? Elegiac smoke, without a hint of self-pity, gets in the
reader's eyes. We should be careful, of course, not to draw too
close an analogy between the time in which she writes and our own -
between the languid fifties and the scraped-thin nineties. But
neither should we overlook the parallels.
_____________________________________________________________________
Klaus Lorenz is a graduate student in urban planning at the
State University of New York at Buffalo. Interested readers should
contact Tailspin Press at howe@acsu.buffalo.edu (or 1110 Main Street,
Buffalo NY 14209) for further information on the reissue of
_Sadiani Rognoni_.
_____________________________________________________________________
* CTHEORY is an international review of theory, technology
* and culture. Sponsored by the Canadian Journal of
* Political and Social Theory, articles and key book reviews
* in contemporary discourse are published weekly as well as
* theorisations of major "event-scenes" in the mediascape.
* CTHEORY includes interactive discussions among its subscribers.
*
* CTHEORY is published with the assistance of the Dean of Arts
* and Science and the Department of Political Science, Concordia
* University, Montreal, Canada.
*
* Editors: Arthur and Marilouise Kroker
*
* Editorial Board: Kathy Acker, Jean Baudrillard, Bruce Sterling,
* David Cook, Berkeley Kaite, William Leiss, Geert Lovink, Eileen
* Manion, Hans Mohr, Alberto Perez-Gomez, Stephen Pfohl, Patrice
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* Weinstein, Andrew Wernick & Gail Valaskakis.
*
* Editorial Correspondents: Ken Hollings (UK), J. Peter Burgess
* (Norway), Maurice Charland (Canada)
*
* Editorial Assistant: Michael Boyle
* Artists in Residence: STELARC (Australia), Art in Ruins (UK),
* Mark Lewis (Canada), subReal (Romania),
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* World Wide Web Editor: Carl Steadman
* Multi-Media Editor: Steve Gibson
*
* CTHEORY includes:
*
* 1. Electronic reviews of key books in contemporary theory,
* posted weekly (REVIEWS:)
*
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* posted monthly (ARTICLES:)
*
* 3. Event-scenes in politics, culture and the mediascape (EVENTS:)
*
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* unmoderated (CTALK)
*
* World Wide Web address:
* http://www.freedonia.com/ctheory/
*
* The disk (DOS/Mac) version of CTHEORY may be ordered directly
* from: CJPST, Concordia University, 1455 de Maisonneuve, O.,
* Montreal, Canada, H3G 1M8. Institutional orders may be placed
* through UMI, Ann Arbor, Michigan.
*
* Indexed in: International Political Science Abstracts/
* Documentation politique international; Sociological
* Abstract Inc.; Advance Bibliography of Contents: Political
* Science and Government; Canadian Periodical Index;
* Film and Literature Index.
_____________________________________________________________________
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 14 Oct 1995 13:47:04 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Chris Stroffolino <LS0796@CNSVAX.ALBANY.EDU>
Subject: Re: The Art and Poetry Worlds
so Ron (Silliman), when are you going to publish your memoirs and/or
autobiography---it sounds "juicy," "a page turner" etc--a la Baraka's
auto. It would certainly be a change from much of your poetry....
Or, maybe, THE COLLECTED EMAIL NOTES OF RON SILLIMAN.....
forward by stephen weed, etc----chris s.
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 14 Oct 1995 13:41:20 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: tunguska <tunguska@TRIBECA.IOS.COM>
Subject: Top Ten Poetries
\
What's to be made of it's the same as ol' Ez himself made of it, bitterly:
"An absolute ignorance, of Coin, Credit, and Circulation"
tod thilleman
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 14 Oct 1995 14:26:34 -0400
Reply-To: Robert Drake <au462@cleveland.Freenet.Edu>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Robert Drake <au462@CLEVELAND.FREENET.EDU>
Subject: Re: poetry in notions
>some of the limitations of the Poetry in Motion CD ROM may stem from its
>origins as a video tape ??? Has anybody written anything comparing this
>project in its two formats?
actually, origins as a *film*... i was very disappointed w/ the CD
version (as much as i am a fan of the film), exactly because it
seemed only a hackedup version of another medium, rather than a
creative use of the new medium. the same holds true for much of
what passes for "hypertext", especially on the WWW--just cutting
up passages of linear writing and pasting 'em together w/ links
ignores the possabilities, or the _demands_, of hypertextual
grammer. plus, the digitized vido looks *bad*... if anyone's
planning on using this fr teaching, i'd suggest showing the
original...
i'm looking forward to checking out the new _little magazine #21_
which just came in the mail (i'll have to wait til lunch break on
monday to use the ibm--mac only here at home), sounds like they've
tried to stretch it further...
luigi
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 14 Oct 1995 15:12:55 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Judy Roitman <roitman@OBERON.MATH.UKANS.EDU>
Subject: Re: Michael as exemplum (?)
>I think that for many
>of us who are poet/teachers there is a desire to be accountable in the
>university at large and not to get pigeonholed as a "writer"...
>Michael Davidson
>Michael Davidson
As someone not in an English department, I am always shocked by how badly
treated the writers are. It is as if the physics department were run by
historians and philosophers of physics, and the people creating physics
shunted off to the side.
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 14 Oct 1995 17:21:09 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Maria Damon <MDamon9999@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: Top ten poems
my sense is that americans would name robert frost, maya angelou, and
longfellow --poets with some kind of "national"(ist) profile.--md
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 14 Oct 1995 17:21:16 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Maria Damon <MDamon9999@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: Michael as exemplum (?)
the other MD wrote:
As to Ron's reference to "ambivalence"
that needn't be only the result of institutional conflicts.
Michael Davidson
michael--cd u say more abt. this? abt the usefulness, perhaps, of
institutional conflicts and conflicting expectations one has of oneself and
that the inst. has of one?--md
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 14 Oct 1995 17:33:35 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Diane Marie Ward <dward@ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU>
Subject: Emily & top ten poems
I share other list members' frustration at the lack of variety in the
narrow results of the survey of the top ten poems and poets. While I
believe that all poets represented are fine examples of literary mastery,
all poets on the list are no longer living. If poets are truly as Shelley
said "legislators of the world" why doesn't anyone listen to the
modern poets who are appreciative of the circumstances surrounding life
in the 20th century? Did they poll only Eastenders' fans?
I prefer to fall asleep with a book of "classical poetry" but
these words cannot truly speak to me of my struggles- or solve the
disease of complacency and selfishness that our culture is guilty of. My
daily work revolves around cataloging books of poetry - modern poetry -
and my heart is sickened because I know that most of these books will go
on to the library shelf and collect nice piles of dust because students
are not exposed to contemporary authors.
Look at your own lives:
How many times is American Poetry Review sold out at your local bookstore -
how many people actually go to poetry readings, how many people actually
understand what you are trying to express when you do read, do you ever
find the poetry section in a bookstore crowded? Of course poetry is an
aesthetic pursuit - it will not feed you or tell you you look slimmer etc.
(and all the other gimmicks which sell everything today) - Poetry is an
expression and I feel frustrated that not one contemporary poet is
represented. Poets reflect the fractured reflections of our society - but
of course the world wants to hear the "sweet poems of youth" that they were
forced to memorize. Don't mind my pessimism -It is just frustrating to
know that a poll (another great invention of our sheep mentality world)
supports my notion that the vast majority of people are oblivious to
modern poetry and the psuedo salvation it offers.
A note on Emily Dickinson: I have always felt that her dashes
represented moments of animation: perhaps as she wrote them - a smile
came across her face - or a wince. For example in Have you got a little
brook - there are four instance of dashes: 3 at the end of 3 four-lined
sections. She then chooses to end the 1st line of the final group of 4
lines with a dash. If the dashes are read as hesitating pauses - one can
imagine she had specific instances in mind she was alluding to (and you
are saying but of course she was). Her poetry is a poetry of reflection
and brevity. Perhaps the dashes are instances where she could have
written more - or perhaps she wanted to keep secret the details which
forced the line from her mind onto her paper. This sounds all very simple
but considering her family life and the culture of Amherst at the time I
believe she found a seductiveness in her private memories - the ones which
have escaped critics - perhaps these memories are forever hidden in those
dashes. I am anxious to read My Emily Dickinson by Howe now, perhaps she
has a different perspective on this.
:-)
Diane Ward
State University of New York at Buffalo
dward@acsu.buffalo.edu
dward@ubvm.cc.buffalo.edu
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 14 Oct 1995 21:31:06 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Charles Alexander <chax@MTN.ORG>
Subject: Re: Emily & top ten poems
Responding to Diane Ward, while I too am sorry top ten lists don't contain
contemporary poets, I have to say I was more astounded that the lists
contained only 18th Century and later poets. And when Diane says, " I
prefer to fall asleep with a book of "classical poetry" but these words
cannot truly speak to me of my struggles- or solve the disease of
complacency and selfishness that our culture is guilty of," I have to
disagree entirely. I do think that not only are complacency and selfishness
not particularly contemporary issues, but that they, and a lot of other
rather universal concerns, may be found in poetries of many times and many
places. Such poetries may not solve our contemporary diseases, but I'm not
sure contemporary poetry can solve them, either. Emily's dashes help perhaps
as much as Howe's visual leaps and gaps. I like to have both. screw the top ten.
charles
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 14 Oct 1995 21:24:44 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Charles Alexander <chax@MTN.ORG>
Subject: Re: Top ten poems
>my sense is that americans would name robert frost, maya angelou, and
>longfellow --poets with some kind of "national"(ist) profile.--md
Maria, you only say Longfellow because you live here in Minnehahasota where
everything is either named after him, or he named everything after.
I think Americans read e.e.cummings more than robert frost. probably e.e.,
maya, and rod mckuen (or was that two generations ago?
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 15 Oct 1995 10:58:21 +0800
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: James Banton Rolins <foljbr@CCUNIX.CCU.EDU.TW>
Subject: The art and poetry worlds
Some time ago Gwyn made a statement I've just read (been away) and
find intriguing, even amazing:_were it not for the madly proliferating
MFA programs, people would still be writing the same thing..._ Your
suggestion, Gwyn, that art of any sort needs the academy in order to
change, if that's what you meant, stops me short. Please elaborate.
I've been thinking about the place, influence, etc. of _academic_ poetry
and would like to hear from anyone on that topic.
Bart
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 14 Oct 1995 23:09:44 +0100
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Patrick Phillips <Patrick_Phillips@BROWN.EDU>
Subject: Re: Emily & top ten poems
I composed some of the remarks on E.D.'s - and, though synoptic, thought it
interesting:
dashes:
Ward:
moments of animation
Alexander:
leaps
Carll:
the strategized Voice
Foster:
Lack of "true" punctuation
Levin:
visual variations
Damon:
a "grasping toward"
I always feel a moment of both erasure and contemplation, as though E.D.
clears the terrain, the tension while at the same time flooding the poem
with tension and a resonance of the preceding and following. Though from
line to line this purpose of this "grasping" is eluded, the - is not
comprised of the same "object," "intent." The dash at the end of a line
like "Between the instant of a Wreck -" is so different from "That knows -
it cannot see -" In this poem the dash is both a stitching of wreckage and
a breaking of the poem. To write into that place a "visual," willing
caesura is a kind of umbilical to her, a "punctuation" of the intimate and
the severance of that intimacy. We are made in-extricable.
Before my grandmother died, she folded over her eleventh edition Little
Brown _Collected_ on page 350 to # 712 "Because I could not stop for Death
-" a poem she turned to often and so left her hand in the book. She would
most likely put Emily Dickinson at the top of her list.
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 14 Oct 1995 23:24:27 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Diane Marie Ward <dward@ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU>
Subject: Re: Emily & top ten poems
In-Reply-To: <199510150231.VAA28421@freedom.mtn.org>
I just wanted to clarify one thing: My name is Diane Ward. But I am not
the Diane Ward who authored Imaginary Movie, Never Without One etc. I
thought I should mail to the list because I have received numerous
messages from people thinking me to be her and I wanted to avoid any
further
confusion. This is the main reason why I am forced to acquire a pseudonym
in order to avoid confusion (which is Ursula). This makes it quite rough
on me since two of my favorite poems to perform are based on the
genealogy of my name Ward and how special it is to me. When I discovered
the poet Diane Ward, I felt like a warm bubble that escapes and bursts on a
cold ceiling. Somehow these poems will lose their meaning as I assume a
new name for writing purposes. But such is life, one must shed things
one has grown too close too.
As a side note, I agree with Charles Alexander who disagreed with me:
classical poems can offer us contemporary comfort and modern poems cannot
always provide us with justification or solace. After I sent the message,
I felt I had betrayed all the classical poets which I try to shove down
others throats- trying to impress upon others that Byron is wonderful and
that there are so many other lesser known poets worthy of light reading
(Letitia E. Landon, Anne Bronte, Coventry Patmore, Hannah More etc.) But
the point I was interested in making was that these poets listed in the
Top ten cannot speak to us of the concerns of 1995 (ie. nuclear arms,
recent wars and their outcomes, the rise of technology, modern art etc.,
pesticides on our foods, rainforest depletion, economic problems). At
least they cannot speak to us in a direct way -- one can infer knowledge
from them and then apply it to modern situations.
:-)
Diane Ward
poet and artist
who works at the University of Buffalo cataloging poetry books (for an
international database and also for the local BISON database that
services the University of Buffalo Poetry and Rare Books Room)
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 14 Oct 1995 23:40:20 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@PANIX.COM>
Subject: Re: Emily & top ten poems
In-Reply-To: <199510150311.XAA10550@Brown.EDU>
the dashes as words flooding, the gesture of a hand turning upward arm
downward simultaneously, those weirs gathering in the waters, literally
the speaking of the words falling out, dasein, thrown words as in but not
quite the ending of a breath
the dashes in collusion with the shape/effect of the notes, written
everywhere _broken_ into discrete units unumerated
but the dashes then across the scraps of paper
creasing or folding of paper
words dashed through the breath into daily life
- it's other punctuation that needs explanation not this -
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 15 Oct 1995 00:37:45 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Chris Stroffolino <LS0796@CNSVAX.ALBANY.EDU>
Subject: Re: Emily & top ten poems
I guess "meaning" has gone out of fashion when it comes to Dickinson
and dashes--or perhaps never was in....For many of the critics who
were obsessed with meaning ignored the complexity of meaning the dashes
afforded--Judging by recent comments by Pat Phillips and Diane Ward
(are you THE diane ward, I mean the one who ROOF published, etc)--
which DO bring up important points (don't get me wrong--as chrissy wd
sing)--it seems the gestural concerns (TAKEN ALONE) can eclipse the
possibilities of meaning---and to some extent can deny the difficulty
of the work..... chris s.
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 15 Oct 1995 00:40:01 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Chris Stroffolino <LS0796@CNSVAX.ALBANY.EDU>
Subject: Re: Emily & top ten poems
OOPS---sorry diane---just read your note about your "identity"--
please accept my apologies--chris
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 15 Oct 1995 00:43:19 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Rod Smith <AERIALEDGE@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: Top ten poems
>I think Americans read e.e.cummings more than robert frost. probably e.e.,
>maya, and rod mckuen (or was that two generations ago?
Seems to me as a bookseller the current college generation goes for Bukowski
& to some extent the beats-- particularly Kerouac, but also Ginsberg,
tho Angelou certainly does well. May be a DC phenomena, but I don't think so.
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 15 Oct 1995 03:07:08 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ron Silliman <rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM>
Subject: Re: Michael as exemplum (?)
You wrote:
>
>the other MD wrote:
>As to Ron's reference to "ambivalence"
>that needn't be only the result of institutional conflicts.
>
>Michael Davidson
>
>michael--cd u say more abt. this? abt the usefulness, perhaps, of
>institutional conflicts and conflicting expectations one has of
oneself and
>that the inst. has of one?--md
>
I want to note, since I have noticed here and elsewhere of late, that
the term "ambivalence," at least whenever I use it, should not be taken
as a negative. Literally, "seeing both sides"...though I am painfully
aware that there really are more than two such sides.
Polvalent, tho, doesn't quite capture it.
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 15 Oct 1995 03:08:11 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ron Silliman <rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM>
Subject: Re: The Art and Poetry Worlds
You wrote:
>
> so Ron (Silliman), when are you going to publish your memoirs
and/or
> autobiography-
The autobiography is in the words....
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 15 Oct 1995 08:19:06 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Michael Davidson <rdavidson@UCSD.EDU>
Subject: Re: Michael as exemplum (?)
>the other MD wrote:
>As to Ron's reference to "ambivalence"
>that needn't be only the result of institutional conflicts.
>
>Michael Davidson
>
>michael--cd u say more abt. this? abt the usefulness, perhaps, of
>institutional conflicts and conflicting expectations one has of oneself and
>that the inst. has of one?--md
>
Maria--One is not born an institution; one becomes one. You could try and
ignore its boundaries, limits and rhetorics by believing in the
private-self-as monad, or you can appropriate it as a technology--something
whose limits you work within and against. I think the reason writers in the
university often find themselves marginalized is that they willingly accept
the partition "Arts and Sciences" as describing exactly what they are. This
way the writer doesn't have to be responsible for what "they" do (to your
funding, your gallery, your hiring policies, your tenure decisions) and can
continue to write within a pervasive RESSENTIMENT. Which is good if you want
to write novels about academic infighting but bad if you want to consider
yourself a public intellectual. I notice that Russell Jacoby does not refer
to poets such as Adrienne Rich, Amiri Baraka, Allen Ginsberg--or Robert
Lowell, for that matter--in his classification of "public intellectuals.
It's that sense of partition that is the real legacy of aesthetic modernism.
md
Michael Davidson
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 15 Oct 1995 08:40:18 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Michael Davidson <rdavidson@UCSD.EDU>
Subject: Re: Michael as exemplum (?)
>You wrote:
>>
>>the other MD wrote:
>>As to Ron's reference to "ambivalence"
>>that needn't be only the result of institutional conflicts.
>>
>>Michael Davidson
>>
>>michael--cd u say more abt. this? abt the usefulness, perhaps, of
>>institutional conflicts and conflicting expectations one has of
>oneself and
>>that the inst. has of one?--md
>>
>I want to note, since I have noticed here and elsewhere of late, that
>the term "ambivalence," at least whenever I use it, should not be taken
>as a negative. Literally, "seeing both sides"...though I am painfully
>aware that there really are more than two such sides.
>
>Polvalent, tho, doesn't quite capture it.
>
Ron...I agree with you about ambivalence. I was only suggesting that there
is more than one source for ambivalence and that the institution needn't be
the single source. I'd probably be ambivalent working anywhere. Ambivalence
is a historical construct, based I suspect on the existentialist vogue of
the 1940's and 1950's, and it's hard not to regard it as a property of the
self rather than the postwar malaise out of which it emerged. That's not
very clear. I mean that as a product of existentialism ambivalence has been
swallowed by a subjectivist position that refuses to think outside of its
self/other models. Harold Rosenberg, in his intro. to "The Anxious Object,"
observed the same thing about the historical meaning of "anxiety"--to wit:
that objects only become anxious after they have 1) become objects, separate
from the social and 2) after Sartre.
MD>
Michael Davidson
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 15 Oct 1995 12:31:47 -0400
Reply-To: Robert Drake <au462@cleveland.Freenet.Edu>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Robert Drake <au462@CLEVELAND.FREENET.EDU>
Subject: Re: Emily & top ten poems
following up diane ward's 10/14 post
tho always disappointed when reminded that my chosen sphere
of activity is not shared by more people (so valuable to me,
if only they would see the value their lives would be so
much richer...), i'm bemused at best that, having made our
choices, we would waste much time bemoaning our fringe
status ... top ten lists might be good for a hoot on
letterman (nice name, that), but hardly basis for handwringing.
face it, the kinds of poetry most often discussed here are just
not gonna make it as a mass commodity, here & now...
on the flip side, plenty of poetries not ususally considered
on poetics (& probably not considered for the list that started
this thread) are alive & well & finding their audiences. rod
mentioned bukowski, & he's the top seller at my local book-
store, along with ginsberg & co., maya, and various anthologies
targeted to specific community audiences (black, women, gay).
buk is now dead, but i have probably 250 pounds of chapbooks
& magazines directly inspired by him, sitting here for review.
poetry readings seem to have doubled around here, tied among
other things to poetry slams... && i've heard the rumor more
than once (can anyone confirm?) that rod mckuen had more gold
records than the beatles. && kalil gibran? && rap lyrics??
&&&... not saying anything about the aesthetics of any of these
(tho i'd probably hold a minority opinion about some of them,
here on the list), but if popular is the criterion...
lbd
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 15 Oct 1995 13:05:09 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Maria Damon <MDamon9999@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: Top ten poems
charles: abt longfellow --he never set foot in minnesota. i grew up in
newton and cambridge ma, where his house was a star tourist attraction. we
all learned about "grave alice and laughing allegra, and someone (edith?)
with golden hair," and let's not forget the midnight ride of paul revere, or
was that by someone else? and "THIS is the FORest priMEVAL, the MURmuring
PINES and the HEMlocks," which is about acadia. the guy got around, in his
verse anyway. i think the minneapolitan fixation on longfellow has as much
to do with a wannabe east coast anglo thing as with the fact that "hiawatha"
purportedly took place in MN. it's kinda of appalling --the way actual
Native Americans are treated in MN vs the New England aristocratic turn of
the century mythology that's been adopted as part of the city's identity and
self-representation. You may be right about ee cummings. i thot abt him,
but left him off.--md
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 15 Oct 1995 15:08:49 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Gwyn McVay <gmcvay1@OSF1.GMU.EDU>
Subject: Re: The art and poetry worlds
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SUN.3.91.951015102911.19489E-100000@odin>
Bart, what you are responding to was my flip and poorly elaborated notion
that the academies, with all their glorious faults, at least serve some
function in heightening the general level of awareness with regard to any
of the arts. In other words, the MFA mentality (and you can debate the
existence and nature of same endlessly) at least provides the groundwork,
the slate, the field, whatever, for a person's state of awareness to be
raised even further.
Gwyn
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 15 Oct 1995 13:24:20 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Herb Levy <herb@ESKIMO.COM>
Subject: Re: Texts about poetics "sound"
A couple of sources that may be of use (though they're not entirely about
"sound poetry" as such) are:
Kahn & Whitehead - Wireless Imagination, MIT Press; includes some great
original texts by Antonin Artaud, FT Marinetti & Pino Masnata, Arseni
Avraamov, Alberto Savinio, & Villiers de l'Isle-Adam and some very good
critical pieces on Raymond Roussel, Marcel Duchamp, early surrealism,
Russian Futurism, horspiel, & John Cage.
Lander & somebody - Sound by Artists, Metropole Press; my copy of this is
loaned out right now, but it has several interesting pieces on the
aesthetics of sound that may be relevant.
The radio issue of Semiotext(e) (volume 6, #1), Radiotext(e) edited by Neil
Strauss has some articles that may be useful, too.
>Can anyone recommend to me great texts on poetic sound? Sound as
>"material," etc. as a contemporary poetic. Any thoughts would be
>appreciated.
>
>Thanks,
>Loss
>lolpoet@acsu.buffalo.edu
Herb Levy
herb@eskimo.com
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Date: Sun, 15 Oct 1995 13:24:35 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Herb Levy <herb@ESKIMO.COM>
Subject: Re: Top ten poems
Ken Edwards notes:
>Or perhaps the list merely reveals the class/age profile
>of people who respond to BBC radio polls (imagine a similar list of "classical
>music favourites" - the selection above being perhaps poetry's equivalent of "a
>good tune").
FWIW, classical music polls ARE always just the hits: The Four Seasons, the
Brandenburg Concertos, various Mozart & Beethoven works.
It's a small blessing, but at least the BBC poetry poll included poems &
poets of the 20th century.
In every classical music poll I've seen, the 20th century might as well
never have happened. (except of course that the modern proliferation of
recordings and broadcasts makes it possible for more people to be aware of
older music in the classical tradition.)
Oh, well.
Herb Levy
herb@eskimo.com
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 15 Oct 1995 16:49:42 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Chris Stroffolino <LS0796@CNSVAX.ALBANY.EDU>
Subject: Re: Emily & top ten poems
Also, the trend that seems to be championing the gestural zaniness of
Dickinson's dash, as a perloffian radical artifice or something, has
to contend with the idea that for every "pomo" dash there exists a
folk art "rhyme scheme"----....cs