========================================================================= Date: Wed, 31 Jan 1996 19:17:13 -1000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gabrielle Welford Subject: Re: Reply of Our Lady Teresa In-Reply-To: _Goddesses We Ain't_ was originally a small anthology of writing by the Tenderloin Women Writers Workshop to which my old and dear friend Mary TallMountain belonged. The Workshop was a miraculous thing in itself, composed of any and all women who wanted to belong, including drug addicts, prostitutes and older women who were in the Tenderloin because they couldn't afford to live anywhere else. A woman called Carol Heller at UCB did a great dissertation on it as a grassroots educational community. It's great to hear they're putting out volumes! I'm wondering if Goddesses We Ain't Press is the one being funded by a legacy that Mary TM left to help the homeless and creative. I'll have to get a copy! Good to hear! Gabrielle ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 31 Jan 1996 21:50:35 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Thomas Bell Subject: Re: neuromantic poetry In-Reply-To: Did I hear right? Neurocromantic? On Wed, 31 Jan 1996, Kevin Killian wrote: > At 1:17 PM 1/31/96, Maria Damon wrote: > >What would a neuromantic poetry look/feel like? > >love it: > >cd look like whimpers of addicted newborns, or life-stories of addicts in > >recovery, halting breakdowns in articulation and all --cd be movement, body > >snaking in unforeseeable ways, cd be utterly transformative, what i like to > >call a "post-literary poetry"--md > > Maria, > > KK's subscribed to the Beat Generation List--I think you should repost your > message there: "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" > > It sounds right up their alley. > > Dodie > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 1 Feb 1996 00:21:39 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Herb Levy Subject: Re: H. Chopin Comments: cc: lolpoet@mailhub.acsu.buffalo.edu Loss et alia - Here's what I found out about the Henri Chopin CD: It's called Les 9 Saintes-Phonies & it's released by Staalplaat in conjunction with Korm Plastics. I have the following addresses for Staalplaat: postbus 11453 1001 GL Amsterdam The Netherlands & P O Box 83296 Oregon 97283 USA Yes I realize that that doesn't include a city in Oregon, that's all I have. The disc includes seven pieces from 1956 through the mid 1980s, with two collaborations - one with Sten hanson & one with Larry Wendt. I haven't heard the CD, but it should be available through any store that carries "ambient/industrial" music, which is what Staalplaat mostly deals in. I can provide the address, phone, or e-mail for Wall of Sound in Seattle, where I saw the disc, if anyone wants it. Bests Herb Levy herb@eskimo.com ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 1 Feb 1996 09:02:24 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: R I Caddel Subject: Simon Pettet In-Reply-To: <199602010503.FAA10151@hermes.dur.ac.uk> Good to hear about Simon Pettet's Selected Poems, and forthcoming reading. I read with him in Biblio's nearly a year ago - he does indeed often read each poem twice, since most of them are very short. It's useful for slow learners like myself, like the action replays in sports coverage. "Too much of a good thing can be wonderful"... I guess he'd change that habit, if he ever moved into long-distance work. Richard Caddel ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 1 Feb 1996 10:30:07 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: R I Caddel Subject: poets in space In-Reply-To: <199602010503.FAA10151@hermes.dur.ac.uk> As the space poetry thread picks up, the new Collected Poems of Edwin Morgan thumps (608pp) onto my desk: lots of space poems of one kind or another, including THE FIRST MEN ON MERCURY, from over twenty years ago: - We come in peace from the third planet. Would you take us to your leader? - Bawr stretter! Bawr. Bawr. Stretterhawl? - This is a little plasic model of the solar system, with working parts. You are here and we are there and we are now here with you, is this clear? - Gawl horrop. Bawr. Abawrhannahanna! - Where we come from is blue and white with brown, you see we call the brown here 'land', the blue is 'sea', and the white is 'clouds' over land and sea, we live on the surface of the brown land, all round is sea and clouds. We are 'men'. Men come - - Glawp men! Gawrbenner menko. Menhawl? - Men come in peace from the third planet which we call 'earth'. We are earthmen. Take us earthmen to your leader. - Thmen? Thmen? Bawr. Bawrhossop. Yuleeda tan hanna. Harrabost yuleeda. - I am the yuleeda. You see my hands, we carry no benner, we come in peace. The spaceways are all stretterhawn. - Glawn peacemen all horrobhanna tantko! Tan come at'mstrossop. Glawp yuleeda! - Atoms are peacegawl in our harraban. Menhat worrabost from tan hannahanna. - You men we know bawrhossoptant. Bawr. We know yuleeda. Go strawg backspetter quick. - We cantantabawr, tantingko backspetter now! - Banghapper now! Yes, third planet back. Yuleeda will go back blue, white, brown nowhanna! There is no more talk. - Gawl han fasthapper? - No. You must go back to your planet. Go back in peace, take what you have gained but quickly. - Stretterworra gawl, gawl... - Of course, but nothing is ever the same, now is it? You'll remember Mercury. [Edwin Morgan, Collected Poems, Carcanet Press, ISBN 1 85754 188 X, UKL14.95] 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 "Ready to be any thing, in the extasie of being ever" x x - Thomas Browne x x x xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 1 Feb 1996 06:22:30 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Re: Poetry City (Feb.29-Mar.14) Maria--I was responding to your late 50's "alternative male" space-geek post (one could also mention the movie QUIZ SHOW in this connection). Hence Bill Bixby. But I did not mean POST-LITERACY as a put-down. And, no, I wouldn't talk to "you know who" that way--- but it duz take two to tango.......cs ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 1 Feb 1996 07:53:00 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Libbie Rifkin Subject: code of the west Hi, This is Libbie Rifkin. I posted an inquiry about Ted Berrigan a while back. Now I'm trying to get my hands on Ed Foster's <> and having great difficulty. For some reason, Buffalo will not interlibrary loan me a copy. Is the book in print? Does anyone have the publisher's phone number/address? Is Ed Foster on this list? Thanks for any leads. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 1 Feb 1996 09:50:10 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joe Amato Subject: Re: biographies... kevin and ed, thanx for yr notes on reynolds' tome, very helpful in helping to situate my own reading of same... as tenney n. knows (tenney, what do *you* think?) i'm trying to figure out how to rework an essay begun long ago in a class i took with don byrd, about how whitman's poetry operates along the same conceptual coordinates as physicists who were at that time busy articulating the 'conservation of energy'... never been successful in drawing correspondences out to the satisfaction of the cultural studies folks, the lit. crit. folks, OR the more science-bound folks... perhaps b/c i haven't done enough with specifically economic factors (which related discussion a number of weeks ago was for me enlightening)... but fact is i'm really plying correspondences per se, and not all that focused on the discursive machinery of the times... which is why i was hoping to use reynolds' new work, if only by counterexample... anyway, thanx again... best, joe ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 1 Feb 1996 12:26:37 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jorge Guitart Subject: Re: The Reefer of Reefers in Connecticut (fwd) ---------- Forwarded message ---------- by cris cheek tom bell jordan davis maria damon gabrielle wellford lisa samuels chris scheil jorge guitart > >in the asteroidal calm of obsidian pupils > > & the Raven dominated by elocution, winking desperately, > >about itself, about names in amber > >hard and yellow > >as an angry bee in velvet handcuffs > > a bluebottle, knowing sex chemically, > >launches the torpedo > > retrieval vessel > >from its dock or is it typewriting for angels laredo sweetheard > > the beaten flat dominated by arching > > wild, troped, busted over razor karma > > with sugar shoelaces unjointured out of > > regularity. You whispered "curios > > sanctify fractal" However procedure spun > > out of stains, broadbeaming -- > > on the timorous earth, she lay answering > > blue absolutes > > glacier ice is oh so nice > >but white paintings > >white sonnets white white thoughts > bringing ears to my eyes, a robeing > and that's how we grow being and unseeing eye dogs our last days ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 1 Feb 1996 12:45:59 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Edward Foster Subject: Re: code of the west hi, ya, i'm on the list. i think the best place to get _code of the west_ is SPD. i had lots of copies but gave them away and only have a couple left, but i think SPD has a good supply. also i could make a photocopy. (also the publisher--rodent press--must have copies.) let me know. -ed ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 1 Feb 1996 12:56:00 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Edward Foster Subject: Re: dunno but this morning spent an hour or so at a local grammar school because they wanted a specimen poet. lovely children who had written lovely (truly lovely) poems, tho without much music. very saddening. the intentions were there, must enthusiasm, but it was poetic "thought" : "i look out the window and i see . . ." the problem so early! ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 1 Feb 1996 13:53:27 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: Re: dunno but Oh well Ed teach them something else! that's easy. Don't be sad that people try to guess what is wanted! Be sad if you must that no one says "What else," Or, what do you want to write about. I'd say the same sadness is there for the grownups! With love (and what school was it?) Jordan ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 1 Feb 1996 10:53:32 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steve Carll Subject: Re: dunno but At 12:56 PM 2/1/96 -0500, you wrote: >this morning spent an hour or so at a local grammar school because they >wanted a specimen poet. lovely children who had written lovely (truly >lovely) poems, tho without much music. very saddening. the intentions >were there, must enthusiasm, but it was poetic "thought" > >: "i look out >the window and i see . . ." the problem so early! It's just a phase, Ed, not necessarily a problem. The ones who pursue language because they're called to it will grow out of this "problem." ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 1 Feb 1996 14:05:16 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: book/record ordering on the net Can onnyone offer a a consumer g-g-guide to book and record buying over th' net? That is, are there urls that people have used and found thorough and reliable? I've bought some books from BookFinders (british outfit).. Jordan.. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 1 Feb 1996 14:03:15 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Bouchard Subject: Re: dunno but At 12:56 PM 2/1/96 -0500, you wrote: >>this morning spent an hour or so at a local grammar school because they >>wanted a specimen poet. lovely children who had written lovely (truly >>lovely) poems, tho without much music. very saddening. the intentions >>were there, must enthusiasm, but it was poetic "thought" >> >>: "i look out >>the window and i see . . ." the problem so early! >It's just a phase, Ed, not necessarily a problem. The ones who pursue >language because they're called to it will grow out of this "problem." Yes, and the others still have a chance to lead relatively happy lives. daniel_bouchard@hmco.com ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 1 Feb 1996 11:22:46 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kevin Killian Subject: Re: dunno but At 12:56 PM 2/1/96, Edward Foster wrote: >this morning spent an hour or so at a local grammar school because they >wanted a specimen poet. lovely children who had written lovely (truly >lovely) poems, tho without much music. very saddening. the intentions >were there, must enthusiasm, but it was poetic "thought" > >: "i look out >the window and i see . . ." the problem so early! Ed, These students are lucky to get the chance to work with you. I have never taught children myself, but I did work for a year in the office of California Poets in the Schools (CPITS) where I spent lots of time xeroxing children's poetry, plus I word-processed one year's children's poetry anthology. The work by these Californian children, on the whole, I found to be horrid--geared mostly, as far as I could tell, toward eliciting from adults an "isn't that cute response." Occasionally an "isn't that moving response." There was one memorable exception, this 9 year old girl who sounded incredibly like late John Wieners. However, when publications from New York's Teacher's and Writers (or whatever it's called) came through the office, I was surprised at how much more innovative the New York children's poems were. To me this must be related to differences in teaching philosophies of the two organizations. I remember working the registration desk at a CPITS conference while a teachers' writing workshop was going on around me. The point of this workshop was to examine ways the teachers could open up their own poetry. The exercise I remember them doing was to write a poem that didn't have the word "I" in it. This clearly was a new idea to some of them. (But look who's talking here--I use the word "I" obsessively in my own writing, but I think it's a different sort of "I".) It seemed to me that 5th graders wrote the best poems. Earlier than that the teachers seemed to be doing much of the writing. Later than that the students seemed to have learned what the teachers were trying to teach them about writing. The 5th graders seemed to reside in that glorious window of creativity where they could do it on their own but didn't quite grasp what they were "supposed" to be doing. Once I had to xerox a batch of children's poems from Oakland. Glancing vacantly at the poems, I came across a list poem by a gradeschool girl in which the assignment must have been to list all the things she didn't like. It was a bana,l totally predictable list =8A I don't like it when the kids yell at me, I don't like spinach, I don't like rain and on and on--then in the middle of this she wrote "I don't like it when he raped me"-- and then on with more vapidity, I don't like gym class, I don't like mustard, I don't like it when people frown. I just stood there and went, "Whoa!" I guess everything is equal in sentimental poetry. Dodie Bellamy ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 1 Feb 1996 11:45:32 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kevin Killian Subject: SPT writing workshop Small Press Traffic presents "Writing in the Age of HIV" a writing workshop taught by Stephen Beachy Eight Wednesday evenings from 7:00 to 9:00 March 6 - April 24 at A Different Light Bookstore 489 Castro Street, San Francisco $40 for the full 8 weeks For information and reservations call 415/281-9338 Stephen Beachy is the author of the novel The Whistling Song (W.W. Norton, 1991). He has taught writing workshops at the University of Iowa, the Harvey Milk Institute, and with youth throughout San Francisco through Writerscorps. His short fiction and essays have appeared in High Risk 2, Men's Style, and NEXT: Young American Writers on the New Generation. He is currently at work on his second novel, Distortion. This workshop is made possible by the generous support of the James Irvine Foundation. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 1 Feb 1996 15:40:53 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry Gould Subject: bk review wanted I will send a review copy of a book I co-edited and published in late 1994 to anyone on this list who can meet certain criteria. The book is called A GLASS OF GREEN TEA - WITH HONIG (Prov.: AlephoeBooks, 1994) distributed by Fordham Univ Press. It's a 415pp festschrift in honor of poet/translator Edwin Honig, with essays, memoirs, interviews, poems, letters, artwork, & a fairly complete bibliography of Honig's work. Contributors include ML Rosenthal, Richard Wilbur, Michael Harper, Rosmarie & Keith Waldrop, Yehuda Amichai, Ben Belitt, Edw. Hoagland, Robert Bly, David Ignatow, Albert Cook, & about 65 others. Here's the criteria: - Some knowledge & interest in Honig's work; &/or in F. Pessoa & Hispanic & Portuguese lit (Honig has translated Pessoa, Calderon, Lorca, & others). - Ability to write a review & land publication. I can afford to send out 5-10 such copies. The book kind of fell through the cracks - maybe because it's a festschrift, unknown press, Honig is fairly unknown quantity, maybe reasons I don't know. But in my humble biased opinion it deserves a review - only one it's had so far is in college newspaper in Toronto (not to knock them, but it didn't reach very far). I know this is endemic to publishing & probably everybody on this list could ask the same about a book - I hope no one will be offended by this request. If you can fill these criteria, please write & describe to: Henry_Gould@brown.edu Thanks - HG p.s. I welcome other comments. Am new to this list & if this is bad list ethics or etiquette let me know (please email direct to my address.) ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 1 Feb 1996 17:30:19 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Bernstein Subject: New Poetics Subscribers The Poetics List is now at about 350. Because of the number of people who have subscribed in the last two weeks, I am sending this one welcome message to all, standard "Welcome to Poetics" message at the end, so I don't have to e-mail each person separately, as I have been doing, but also as a chance to list give the name of the new subsribers: Bill Smith has just subscribed Donna Ocoboc has just subscribed to the POETICS list Robert Mittenthal has just subscribed to the POETICS Jackson Mac Low has just subscribed to the POETICS list Philip Hammond has just subscribed to the Tim Cloward has just subscribed to the POETICS William Williams has just subscribed to the Chris Semansky has just subscribed Barry Cox has just subscribed Phil James has just subscribed to the POETICS list Peter Gray has just subscribed to the POETICS Nico Vassilakis has just subscribed to the David Benedetti has just subscribed to the POETICS Mary Wang has just subscribed to Henry Gould has just subscribed to the "Walter K. Lew" has just subscribed to the POETICS Dan Raphael has just subscribed to the POETICS list Janet Hoelle <97jhoell@ULTRIX.UOR.EDU> has just subscribed to the POETICS Deanna Ferguson has just subscribed to the POETICS list Carol Close has just subscribed to the POETICS Rob Reuss has just subscribed to the POETICS list (UB John Byrne has just subscribed Marc Scroggins had just subscribed Rev.1-17-96 ____________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Poetics List & The Electronic Poetry Center at the State University of New York - Buffalo ____________________________________________________________________ http://writing.upenn.edu/epc ____________________________________________________________________ _______Contents___________ 1. About the Poetics List 2. Subscriptions 3. Who's Subscribed 4. Digest Option 5. When you'll be away 6. Archives of the Poetics List 7. To Subscribe to RIF/T 8. Interfaces, HTML, URL 9. The Electronic Poetry Center (EPC) 10. How to Reach the EPC 11. Poetics Archives at EPC 12. Publishers & Editors Read This! _______________________________ Appendix I: Some Links via EPC Appendix II: Archives (Alternate) [This document was prepared by Charles Bernstein (bernstei@ubvms.cc.buffalo. edu) and Loss Pequen~o Glazier (lolpoet@acsu.buffalo.edu).] ____________________________________________________________________ 1. About the Poetics List Please note that this is a private list and information about the list should not be posted to other lists or directories of lists. The idea is to keep the list to those with specific rather than general interests, and also to keep the scale of the list small and the volume managable. Word-of-mouth (and its electronic equivalents) seems to be working fine: please feel free to invite people you know to sign-up. It is easier for me if they sign-up by themselves AND send me (bernstei@ubvms) a note telling me how they heard about the list. I will send them *this* document in reply. Please contact Charles Bernstein (the listowner) if you have any questions about this policy. ____________________________________________________________________ 2. Subscriptions The list has open subscriptions. You can subscribe (sub) or unsubscribe (unsub) by sending a one-line message, with no subject line, to: listserv@ubvm.cc.buffalo.edu the one-line message should say: unsub poetics {or} sub poetics Jill Jillway (replacing Jill Jillway with your own name; but note: do not use your name to unsub) I will be sent a notice of all subscription activity. ____________________________________________________________________ 3. Who's Subscribed/Getting Addresses To see who is subscribed to Poetics, send an e-mail message to listserv@ubvm.cc.buffalo.edu; leave the "Subject" line of the e-mail message blank. In the body of your e-mail message type: review poetics This will give you current and accurate e-mail addresses for all subscribers. As a result, it is never necessary to post an address inquiry for a subscriber to the whole Poetics list. ____________________________________________________________________ 4. Digest Option The Poetics List can send a large number of individual messages to your account each day! If you would prefer to receive ONE message each day, which would include all messages posted to the list for that day, you can use the digest option: Send this one-line message (no subject line) to listserv@ubvm.cc.buffalo.edu set poetics digest NOTE:!! Send this message to "listserv" not to Poetics or as a reply to this message!! You can switch back to individual messages by sending this messagage: set poetics mail ____________________________________________________________________ 5. When you'll be away You can temporarily turn off your mail by sending a message: set poetics nomail & turn it on again with: set poetics mail ____________________________________________________________________ 6. Archives of the Poetics List There are two ways to get archives. The easiest way is to use the archives of the list at the Electronic Poetry Center (EPC), for which see section 11 below. The other is described in Appendix II. ____________________________________________________________________ 7. To Subscribe to RIF/T To subscribe to RIF/T, the e-poetry magazine at UB's Poetics Program: Send an e-mail message to listserv@ubvm.cc.buffalo.edu. Leave the "Subject" line of the e-mail message blank. In the body of your e-mail message type: subscribe e-poetry John Milton replacing your real name for "John Milton" You will receive a confirmation of your subscription soon thereafter. Note: RIF/T is also available via the Electronic Poetry Center. Increasingly it is a richer experience to read RIF/T online because, at the EPC, it features hypertextual links, weaving related and disparate texts, hypertextual chapbooks, and graphical (and sound) files that cannot be mailed in ascii form. Mailing of ascii versions is continued through subscription; it is a good way to stay in touch since subscribers receive Tables of Contents and other RIF/T information, as well as some texts. Suscribers to RIF/T also receive the occasionally-issued _EPC.News_, the Electronic Poetry Center newsletter. ____________________________________________________________________ 8. Interfaces, HTML, URL (EPC Preface) Before describing the resources of the EPC and how to gain access to it, it is useful to understand a few Internet concepts. 8.1 Interface The Web can be access through an ascii or a graphical interface. An ascii interface provides access through _screens_ of information with links to other areas appearing as highlighted text; Mosaic is a graphical interface basically superimposed on the Web structure that offers images, sound, video, and allows you to use your mouse as a navigational tool. The EPC is accessible through any of these interfaces. It is presently evolving strongly towards exclusive Web/Mosaic access. Even as activities converge, it is also the time of divergent interfaces. I am often surprised by the number of our contributors and participants who do not even have gopher access. Most people, we figure, have some sort of Web access. 8.2 HTML The standard for Web/Mosaic documents is the markup protocol called html. These are imbedded codes that you will see once in a while when you download an html document. These codes give instructions to the software about highlighting, fonts, and screen layout, as well as providing for the _hot links_ that make possible Web/Mosaic navigation. 8.3 URL A URL, a "uniform resource locator," is to the Internet what a social security number is to a person. In a web/mosaic interace, the "go to URL" option will specify a specific and unique Internet address for you to go to. ____________________________________________________________________ 9. What is the Electronic Poetry Center? The mission of this World-Wide Web based electronic poetry center is to serve as a hypertextual gateway to the extraordinary range of activity in formally innovative writing in the United States and the world. The Center provides access to numerous electronic resources in the new poetries including RIF/T and other electronic poetry journals, the POETICS List archives, an AUTHOR library of electronic poetic texts, and direct connections to numerous related electronic RESOURCES. For texts housed at the Electronic Poetry Center, texts are "definitive" texts inasmuch as, prior to posting, they have been approved by their producers. JOURNALS distributed by the EPC include: DIU / Albany EPC.News / Buffalo Experioddi(cyber)cist / Florence, AL Inter\face / Albany, NY Passages: A Technopoetics Journal / Albany, NY Poemata - Canadian Poetry Assoc. / London, Ontario (Info)/ RIF/T: Electronic Space for New Poetry, Prose, & Poetics / Buffalo Segue Foundation/Roof Book News / New York TREE: TapRoot Electronic Edition / Lakewood, Ohio We Magazine / Santa Cruz Witz / Studio City, CA The Center also provides information about contemporary print little magazines and SMALL PRESSES engaged in poetry and poetics. The Poetry & Poetics DOCUMENT Archive provides access to a number of documents of use to poets, teachers, and researchers. Here you will find essay material and recent obituaries. The EPC also presently offers GALLERY, SOUND, EXHIBITS, and an ANNOUNCEMENTS area. The Electronic Poetry Center is administered by Loss Glazier and Kenneth Sherwood in collaboration with Charles Bernstein. If you have comments or suggestions about sites to be added to the Center, do not hesitate to contact Loss Pequen~o Glazier, lolpoet@ acsu.buffalo.edu or Kenneth Sherwood, e-poetry@ubvm.cc.buffalo.edu ____________________________________________________________________ 10. How to reach the EPC Via the World-Wide Web, the Center can be reached at http://writing.upenn.edu/epc (no spaces in the address) Check with your system administrator if you have problems with access. Also ask about setting a "bookmark" through your system for quick and easy access to the Center when you invoke your interface. ____________________________________________________________________ 11. Poetics Archives via EPC Go to the EPC and select Poetics from the opening screen. Follow the links to Poetics Archives. You may browse the archives by month and year or search them for specific information. Your interface will allow you to print or download any of these files. ____________________________________________________________________ 12. Publishers & Editors Read This! PUBLISHERS & EDITORS: Our listings of poetry and poetics information is open and available to you. We are trying to make access to printed publications as easy as possible to our users and ENCOURAGE you to participate! Send a list of your press/publications to lolpoet@acsu.buffalo.edu with the words EPC Press Listing in the subject line. You may also send materials on disk. Though files marked up with html are our goal, ascii files are perfectly acceptable. Send us extended information on new publications (including any back cover copy and sample poems) as well as complete catalogs/backlists (including excerpts from reviews, sample poems, etc.). Be sure to include full information for ordering--including prices and addresses and phone numbers both of the press and any distributors. Initially, you might want to send short anouncements of new publications **directly to the Poetics list** as subscribers do not always (or ever) check the EPC; in your message please include full information for ordering. If you have a fuller listing at EPC, you might also mention that in any Poetics posts. ____________________________________________________________________ Appendix I: Some Links Provided by the EPC Alternative-X Basil Bunting Poetry Centre (Durham, England) [Informational] Best-Quality Audio Web Poems (Rhode Island) Carma Bums 'Tour of Words' CICNET Electronic Journal Archive Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities (Virginia) Internet Poetry Archive (North Carolina) Michigan Electronic Text Archive Nous Refuse Discussion List (Illinois) Postmodern Culture (North Carolina) Whole Earth 'Lectronic Magazine ____________________________________________________________________ Appendix II: Alternate Method for Receiving Poetics Archives You may also receive Poetics archives by e-mail, though the language is somewhat arcane. To receive postings for a particular month, for example, send an e-mail message to listserv@ubvm.cc.buffalo.edu leave the subject line of the message blank and in the body of the message type: get poetics.log9505 f=mail Replace 95 (two digits) with the year and 05 (two digits) for the month you seek. For a complete list of available back files, send the message index poetics f=mail ____________________________________________________________________ END OF POETICS LIST WELCOME ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 1 Feb 1996 17:33:18 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Bernstein Subject: Ear Inn Readings Feb. & March EAR INN READINGS February and March Saturdays at 2:30pm 326 Spring Street (New York City) (212-226-9060) Feb. 3: Harryette Mullen and Chet Wiener Feb. 10: Kevin Davies & Joe Ross Feb. 17: Alan Davies & Tina Darragh Feb. 24: Kim Rosenfield and Judith Goldman March 2: Torque Benefit Reading with Robert Fitterman, Abigail Child, Joe Elliot, Lisa Jarnot, and more March 9: Andrew Levy and Lori Lubeski March 16: Norma Cole and Malanie Neilson March 23: Stacy Doris and Jeff Hull March 30: New York City Poetry Talks Curated by Liz Fodaski To get on the Ear Inn mailing list write Segue Foundation, 303 East 8th Street, New York, NY 10009 ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 1 Feb 1996 17:52:11 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Edward Foster Subject: Re: dunno but jordan: i'd better not name the school, or i might get hung. i showed them a bob holman tape and asked them to try writing music with words. but you can't get away from subjects. said one totally beautiful child, do you always write about boys? hmmmm. no, i said, there are just as many about girls. yes, and he even writes about boys and girls together, said the teacher brightly. hmmmm. oh, well, sometimes it's best just to say nothing at all. anyway, i suggested they all see see bob's tv-channel 13 show tonight, then learned it's WAY past bedtime. oh, lord, flubbed again. -ed ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 1 Feb 1996 15:08:51 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steve Carll Subject: Re: dunno but >>>Ed Foster: "i look out >>>the window and i see . . ." the problem so early! > >>Steve Carll: It's just a phase, Ed, not necessarily a problem. The ones who pursue >>language because they're called to it will grow out of this "problem." > >Daniel Bouchard: Yes, and the others still have a chance to lead relatively happy lives. Steve Carll again: Exactly; hopefully, if the educational system or other circumstances of their lives don't shut them down, they'll hear something *else* calling them into becoming/being. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 2 Feb 1996 10:47:16 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Roberts Subject: Re: book/record ordering on the net >Can onnyone offer a a consumer g-g-guide >to book and record buying over th' net? > >That is, are there urls that people have used >and found thorough and reliable? > >I've bought some books from BookFinders (british outfit).. > >Jordan.. Jordan & others Australian Writing On Line will start making Australian small presses and journals available by mail and 'net' order shortly and I will send details to POETICS. We will be new to this form of commerce (at the moment we are distributing small presses to bookshops and selling directly at readings and conferences) so I would be interested to hear of what short of experience people have had buying books over the net. We will have a WWW page with a catalogue and a order form ( we will also email catalogues out). People could print out the form add their credit card details and fax or mail (snail) back to us. We want to avoid collecting cc details over the net. By the way AWOL will have a new email address within the next few days but people can still contact me at the Sydney Uni address. Mark ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 1 Feb 1996 16:20:27 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Stephen Galen Cope Subject: Re: book/record ordering on the net Jordon: For music there's the Compact Disc Connection -- pretty good selection and very good prices. I access them via telnet (199.35.15.2). There's another place that specializes in European imports, but the prices are generally out of my range. I beleive they're at 199.35.15.100... I'd also love to find a good bookstore out here... anyone? -Stephen Cope ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 1 Feb 1996 20:26:07 +0000 Reply-To: jzitt@humansystems.com Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: Authenticated sender is From: Joseph Zitt Organization: HumanSystems Subject: Re: neuromantic poetry Comments: To: Thomas Bell On 31 Jan 96 at 21:50, Thomas Bell wrote: > Did I hear right? Neurocromantic? Neocromagnon? ---------1---------1---------1---------1---------1---------1---------- |||/ Joseph Zitt ==== jzitt@humansystems.com ===== Human Systems \||| ||/ Organizer, SILENCE: The John Cage Mailing List \|| |/Joe Zitt's Home Page\| ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 1 Feb 1996 20:26:07 +0000 Reply-To: jzitt@humansystems.com Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: Authenticated sender is From: Joseph Zitt Organization: HumanSystems Subject: Re: book/record ordering on the net Comments: To: Jordan Davis On 1 Feb 96 at 14:05, Jordan Davis wrote: > Can onnyone offer a a consumer g-g-guide > to book and record buying over th' net? I've ordered CDs from Tower, but they've been very slow -- I'm still waiting on stuff I'd ordered six weeks ago. I've been ordering books via email-order through Rod Smith at Bridge Books (aerialedge@aol.com), who, I believe, is on this list; It's been the only wayfor me to get ahold of, for example, "In the American Tree" and "Musicage" in the blighted wilds of Dallas. ---------1---------1---------1---------1---------1---------1---------- |||/ Joseph Zitt ==== jzitt@humansystems.com ===== Human Systems \||| ||/ Organizer, SILENCE: The John Cage Mailing List \|| |/Joe Zitt's Home Page\| ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 1 Feb 1996 20:56:44 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Carl Subject: poetics of the quotidian Sandra Gilbert has "challenged" me to demonstrate the extent to which "language poetry" (still perceived as a fairly homogenous group among most academic poets) participates in a poetics of the quotidian. Any suggestions? David Carl dgcarl@ucdavis.edu ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 1 Feb 1996 20:47:42 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Thomas Bell Subject: Re: neuromantic poetry Comments: To: Joseph Zitt In-Reply-To: <199602020227.UAA23851@zoom.bga.com> necromantic? On Thu, 1 Feb 1996, Joseph Zitt wrote: > On 31 Jan 96 at 21:50, Thomas Bell wrote: > > > Did I hear right? Neurocromantic? > > Neocromagnon? > ---------1---------1---------1---------1---------1---------1---------- > |||/ Joseph Zitt ==== jzitt@humansystems.com ===== Human Systems \||| > ||/ Organizer, SILENCE: The John Cage Mailing List \|| > |/Joe Zitt's Home Page\| > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 2 Feb 1996 02:54:07 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ron Silliman Subject: Re: book/record ordering on the net Best all around bookstore on the net is Moe's Online. Unlike the original in Berkeley, it doesn't smell like Moe's old cigars. But they've put up all of their catalogs and it's a broad selection. (This is the place where Andrew Schelling worked as the poetry buyer for many years before heading off to Naropa.) I don't know the URL, but you could find it through Yahoo or Lycos or Alta Vista (Digital's new 64-bit web searcher) without too much difficulty. I have ordered and received product from Moe's this way and it works just fine. All best, Ron Silliman ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 2 Feb 1996 08:05:07 -0500 Reply-To: Robert Drake Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Robert Drake Subject: Re: dunno but >this morning spent an hour or so at a local grammar school because they >wanted a specimen poet. lovely children who had written lovely (truly >lovely) poems, tho without much music. very saddening. the intentions >were there, must enthusiasm, but it was poetic "thought" my partner kris does a lot of these things, has _much_ better luck beginning with the aural rather than th written... starting out w/ performing work (including sound poetry), then to having them chant along with... a favorite fr the laer is the bp nichol: "what is the sound of a poem inside your Body Body Body Body...", quite impressive w/ a chorus of 30 kids, improvising new bodyparts fr the poem to be in. final product is usually a tape on th little 4-track, dub in mulitple voices or sound effects... come to think of it, this might be a good strategy fr other age-groups... lbd ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 2 Feb 1996 08:09:35 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Re: poetics of the quotidian Dear David Carl-- As for the "hardcore" lang. po's, it seems Silliman's recent work (like TONER, etc) actually has a kind of WCW feel for the quotidian. Of course, you should ask Gilbert in what sense she means quotidian. Form? Diction? Scenes? Portraits? I think Rae Armantrout and Fanny Howe manage it too. I'm sure there's more, but these are the first ones that come to mind (AND THIS IS NOT A VALUE JUDGMENT OVER WHICH L POETS ARE BETTER BY THE WAY)---best, cs ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 2 Feb 1996 08:26:36 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Re: poetics of the quotidian I could've SWORN there was a sentence in my post about Kit Robinson and Alan Davies....but it got lost in the mail. I'd include SOME of their work in the "quotidian" category as well.... ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 2 Feb 1996 08:19:25 CST6CDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Hank Lazer Organization: The University of Alabama Subject: Re: poetics of the quotidian David Carl, Challenge Sandra Gilbert to read. I'd suggest almost anything by Ron Silliman, Lyn Hejinian, Kit Robinson for starters. If she's still looking for the quotidian, keep reading: Norman Fischer, my own work, Larry Eigner, Charles Bernstein, etc. Of course, she may be asking for a particular version of the quotidian, perhaps a reverential stare at an accepted sanctioned piece of the quotidian? The issue may be one not so much of the quotidian itself, but the contexts and rhetorics of its presentation in poems..... Hank Lazer ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 2 Feb 1996 09:36:54 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gwyn McVay Subject: Re: neuromantic poetry Comments: To: Joseph Zitt In-Reply-To: <199602020227.UAA23851@zoom.bga.com> My overromantic sensibility prefers "neurochromatic," like a rainbow spray of nerve endings. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 2 Feb 1996 09:40:03 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gwyn McVay Subject: Re: poetics of the quotidian In-Reply-To: <199602020440.UAA15502@ucdavis.ucdavis.edu> If you consider Hejinian a "language poet," which is utterly debatable but which an academician like Gilbert might well do, you could point to her poem 2 from the Redo sequence: Nostalgia is the elixir drained from guilt--I've been writing --with fingers of my non-writing hand I patted the dashboard. "Hi car." It responds, "Hello, Mommy." The city is uncarlike. She who had lived all her life in the city and absorbed all its laws in her blood--madness, really --she waited for the light to change and stepped into the traffic on red.... and so on. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 2 Feb 1996 10:09:02 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: Re: dunno but Ed-- how'd you like the holman show (Hi Bob!).. saw sparrow the other day and he seemed in pain tho happy to be on the verge of fame.. "If it ain't a pleasure it ain't a poem" indeed.. and what's wrong with _subjects_ and _letters_ anyway? this ties in I think with something Larry Price was saying about the link between the alphabetic and the napoleonic, maybe, but I'm suspicious.. fear of subject = post-nixon trauma for me.. I like subjects and letters and I don't mind if they smother me someday.. is that it? Ron-- www.moesbooks.com? got it. And thanks all frontchannel and back for urls and tips.. Chris, David, Hank-- are you sure she was looking at the poetics of the quotidian with an eye toward validation? valorization? usually that quot-quot-quotidian gets blunted down to the pers-pers-personal.. which is anybody's whipping baby.. Jordan-- ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 2 Feb 1996 10:00:34 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Keith Tuma Subject: Re: poetics of the quotidian In-Reply-To: Message of Fri, 2 Feb 1996 08:19:25 CST6CDT from Re Gilbert and the quotidian: Hank's right that it depends on what questions/frames Gilbert wants to ponder for the quotidian. So why don't you (David Carl) encourage her to sign on and ask for herself? Charles B. has posted his syllabus for a seminar on the ordinary at the EPC, and that might be relevant. Rumor has it too that Marjorie Perloff has a book-manuscript perhaps relevant too. Is that right Marjorie? I'd vote for Bernadette Mayer's Midwinter Day, Bernstein's "Emotions of Normal People" (moving the q to discourse etc.), Scalapino's Way, and (with Chris) Ron Silliman's Toner, with its hilarious first line ("Meet my personality") playing on the title. RS's Jones too. All those people probably count as langpo for Gilbert. Eigner is probably closer to what she's looking for in "quotidian." But it's hard to guess, so as i say why not ask her to sign on and ask? And then maybe someday they'll be a new Norton which does a little more than gesture at recent "experimental" writing by adding Michael Palmer and Kamau Brathwaite (as does the new edition of the Norton Anthology of Poetry edited by Ferguson, Salter, and Stallworthy). Keith Tuma ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 2 Feb 1996 07:27:25 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kevin Killian Subject: The Hellfire Club This is Kevin Killian speaking. I've been reading Peter Straub's new thriller, "The Hellfire Club." In it, for reasons too complicated to explain here, a serial killer on the run is forced to pose as a language poet and gets put on the spot, asked where he's "been published." In Avec, Conjunctions and Lingo. "Are you part of a community of poets?" "We Language poets like to get together at a nice little saloon called Gilhoolie's." "How would you define Language poetry?" "Exactly what it sounds like," Dart said, "Language, as much of it as possible." If any of you knows Peter Straub's address please send it to me back-channel. Thanks! ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 2 Feb 1996 23:32:39 +0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Schuchat Subject: Re: book/record ordering on the net Comments: To: Joseph Zitt In-Reply-To: <199602020227.UAA23855@zoom.bga.com> I too have ordered books thru Rod Smith at Bridge Street (if you think its hard to find certain items in Dallas try Taipei!) and recommend him highly. Simon Schuchat ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 2 Feb 1996 10:22:54 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jorge Guitart Subject: Re: Marchand Du Sel & Rose Selavy Comments: cc: Thomas Bell , MDamon9999@aol.com, cris@slang.demon.co.uk, lsr3h@darwin.clas.virginia.edu, jdavis@panix.com, welford@hawaii.edu In-Reply-To: <823205405.961.0@slang.demon.co.uk> (by cris cheek,tom bell, maria damon, jordan davis, jorge guitart, lisa samuels, & gabrielle wellford) > >> to trim xray architecture shirts slowly over the wellspring dovetailed > >> > >> for angels from aching or is it mapped > >> > >> participle laredo allows hoodlum rainbow and flip salubrious > >> > >> whimpering foraged aura container dangling over a set slowly better > >> > >> delfin forging better yet 'e' over hailwater architecture > >> > > > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 2 Feb 1996 10:47:09 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jim Pangborn Organization: University at Buffalo Subject: Re: poetics of the quotidian The Armantrout suggestion seems really promising, zeroing in on the way she torques the little set phrases people use to talk to themselves. Two other possibilities: 1) Leslie Scalapino not only shows a language-y way of working with the quotidian but also demonstrates something of the breadth of what can be called langpo. 2) I would mention Robert Creeley's enthusiastic endorsement of langpo. I'm sure he'll testify to its quotidian pedigree--he's said many times that what is called language poetry is right in line with his own work's trajectory. It's also true that, faced with such a demand, one should always wonder out loud what the heck "quotidian" is supposed to mean in our media-soaked culture. Is a "poetics of the quotidian" supposed to limit itself to everyday phrases or to do something with them? --or to them? Are we dealing with an "isn't it politically oppressive to use hard vocabulary words" objection here? --JimP > > Sandra Gilbert has "challenged" me to demonstrate the extent to >which "language poetry" (still perceived as a fairly homogenous group among >most academic poets) participates in a poetics of the quotidian. > >Any suggestions? > >David Carl >dgcarl@ucdavis.edu > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 2 Feb 1996 11:12:22 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ange Mlinko/PWS/International Thomson Publishing Subject: Re: dunno but The big round writing of the atavist recidivist Is just what we're after, we say we Dare to write by our window & look out it Even if the mention is the same every day --Bernadette Mayer, lift #15/16 ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 2 Feb 1996 10:46:21 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Edward Foster Subject: Re: dunno but just to take your point, dodie, about children writing poetry to satisfy/ impress (or whatever) adults--i do agree very much with that. there is a cultivated cuteness in much of it that i've seen. and it's quite personal, if only in that the writer is fishing for compliments (and, of course, has been encouraged to do that). and once that problem is set, it's almost impossible to root it out. i mainly deal with college and university students, and generally they will argue that poetry is personal statement. so what to do but (1) give them a poem by bruce andrews to think about or (2) have them read foucault or some other theorist who deals with the historical invention of the self. but none of that really works, tho students may then write quite intricate papers about bruce andrews and foucault or some such matter in order to satisfy/impress (or whatever) the self who gives them their grades. i don't know what the answer is, tho i suspect it begins with any argument about teaching poetry. the only way to do it may be allen ginsberg's: everybody reading shelley in unison, very loudly. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 2 Feb 1996 11:16:58 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Bouchard Subject: Re: dunno but Ange Mlinko wrote: >>The big round writing of the atavist recidivist >>Is just what we're after, we say we >>Dare to write by our window & look out it >>Even if the mention is the same every day >>--Bernadette Mayer, lift #15/16 & ALSO: The knowledge not sorrow, you were saying, but of boredom Is- aside from reading speaking smoking- Of what, Maude Blessingbourne it was, Wished to know when, having risen, "approached the window as if to see what really was going on;" And saw rain falling, in the distance More slowly, The road clear from her past the window- glass -- Of the world, weather-swept, with which one shares the century. from Oppen's DISCRETE SERIES daniel_bouchard@hmco.com ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 2 Feb 1996 11:09:36 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry Gould Subject: challenges Sandra Gilbert's "challenge" sounds pretty mild & really "within the fold". If you want to read a real heavy challenge, see Mutlu Konuk Blasing's new book, Politics of Form in Postmodern Poetry (Cambridge). It's brilliant in the tendentious blunt-instrument way of criticism (in which taxonomies often end up being unfair to individual poets). Blasing argues that Language poetry is "late modernism"; that it repeats the assumption that radical politics = political realism = avant-garde technique, based on the Pound/Olson schema that rhetoric (Pound's Victorianism, Olson's "magazine poetry") can be opposed by anti-rhetorical technique which unveils Nature/ the Real/the True (name your ideal). This "progressive", heroic anti-rhetorical technique IS the rhetoric of the avant-garde, but the fact of rhetorical motivation is suppressed. Blasing claims that "true" postmodernism (as opposed to say "magazine" postmodernism as defined by the Norton anthology), as represented by her examples Ashbery, E. Bishop, Frank O'Hara, Merrill, shows a clean break with these Poundian modernist assumptions. Her postmodernists foreground their own rhetorical moves, and claim no political or metaphysical efficacy for their art (here she critiques the New Formalists on the same grounds); these poets also reject a "progressive" reading of literary history, in which "old" forms or techniques are inherently anachronistic and reactionary. Her description of the aesthetics of poetry - as a kind of surplus of meaning, reads however like a good description of language poetry. Also I think she reads Olson kind of tendentiously (sticking to his manifestos rather than his poetry as a whole). Nevertheless, this is a very powerful and perspicacious marshalling of arguments - I predict it will lead to some re-thinking about 21st century poetry. --Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 2 Feb 1996 11:33:03 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Golumbia Subject: Re: book/record ordering on the net In-Reply-To: from "Schuchat" at Feb 2, 96 11:32:39 pm I have heard good things (as I said re: some records, a few days ago), about the CD web site at http://www.cdnow.com -- which seems to have about every CD in print, import and domestic, at reasonable prices. For books, a similar service exists at http://www.amazon.com, which also seems to have about every book in print (not too many from exquisitely small presses however), as well as a pretty good list of volumes forthcoming, and some pretty neat profiling/emailing service features. Haven't tried that one either. -- dgolumbi@sas.upenn.edu David Golumbia ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 2 Feb 1996 10:41:37 CST6CDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Hank Lazer Organization: The University of Alabama Subject: Re: quotin' the quotidian Or: And today is Monday. Today's lunch is: Spanish omelet, lettuce and tomato salad, Jello, milk and cookies. Tomorrow's sloppy joe on bun, Scalloped corn, stewed tomatoes, rice pudding and milk. The names we stole don't remove us: We have moved on a little ahead them And now it is time to wait again. Only waiting, the waiting: what fills up the time between? It is another kind of wait, waiting for th wait to be ended. Nothing takes up its fair share of time, The wait is built into the things just coming into their own. Nothing is partially incomplete, but the wait Invests everything like a climate. What time of day is it? Does anything matter? Yes, for you must wait to see what it is really like, This event rounding the corner Which will be unlike anything else and really Cause no surprise: it's too ample. Water Drops from an air conditioner On those who pass underneath. It's one of the sights of our town. Puaagh. Vomit. Puaaaaagh. More vomit. from Ashbery's "Grand Galop" which words are "the quotidian"? I like the last line; surely vomit is rather quotidian, or vomit sounds.... And the lunch menu? Very quotidian? Are the questions and the discourse on waiting not quotidian? Whose quotidian? Hank Lazer ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 2 Feb 1996 09:12:36 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ray Davis Subject: Re: poetics of the quotidian It was a great and unanticipated relief for me to find Silliman's poetry written on a bus about riding a bus. Hannah Weiner is the only "mystical" poet I know of whose spirit voices tell her to sit up straight, stop being such a loser, etc. In fact, if we define "language poetry" as the poets I found starting with _In the American Tree_, I'd say that the first big rush for me was precisely that all the writers, no matter what their differences, had found ways to avoid that horrible "I am a sensitive artist looking for sensitive situations" tone we're all so familiar with from mainstream poetries, thus allowing a little real life to creep back in. Or rather a wide range of real lives. Ray ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 2 Feb 1996 12:22:32 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Blair Seagram Subject: Mus/Po Aaron Copland Also for the music and poetry collection: Aaron Copland's A Lincoln Portrait which I believe (is this correct?) uses the words of Carl Sandberg and the one I have heard is with Eugene Ormandy conducting The Philadelphia Orchestra. The words are spoken by Adlai Stevenson. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 2 Feb 1996 12:32:47 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Edward Foster Subject: simon pettet adding to recent notes re: simon pettet, i mention the review in the brandnew poetry project newsletter, total praise as it must be: he's one of the best. a great precisionist who continued to write lyrical poems during the recent dark ages when those who should have known better were saying lyricism was done for. how wrong they were. anyway, here's one of the poems: ECHO Drink no more From that pool wherein your Fat face stares back. What is this pompous self-regard. It is nothing. Tho' it has been continuing Lo these many years and will continue without you as others will stare at the glasses on the table at the emptiness of your poor pot sit back breathe deep (and) Consider the fountain. so, for this and much much more, see his _selected poems_ (isbn 1-883689-39-9, $9.95) at the good stores we like or (perhaps fastest) 1-800-243-0138 with Visa/Mastercard. amazing book. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 2 Feb 1996 12:51:46 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Martin Spinelli Subject: Announcing LINEbreak -- writers' radio Folks, A genuinely interesting and engaging radio program is coming to the otherwise mediocre world of American public broadcasting. The program "LINEbreak" begins national distribution in April and features in-depth conversation and extended performance by some of the most interesting writers at work today. LINEbreak guests include: Barbara Guest Fiona Templeton Cecilia Vicuna Peter Straub Jackson Mac Low Robert Creeley Madeline Gins Ted Pearson Hannah Weiner Karen MacCormack Steve McCaffery Carla Harryman Ben Yarmolinsky Bruce Andrews Paul Auster Ben Friedlander Jena Osman Dennis Tedlock Ray Federman Ken Sherwood Loss Glazier (and others) LINEbreak is a weekly half-hour typically featuring one artist per program in conversation and performance with interviewer and co-producer Charles Bernstein. LINEbreak is unlike *anything* else on the radio. It offers a broad space for artists to perform and a forum for detailed discussion in an otherwise under-utilized medium. It is good radio. Please call or write the Program Director at your public radio station and tell her or him: * You want to hear more arts programming like LINEbreak when it airs in April. * LINEbreak would be a valuable service to their arts/university/college audience (their most faithful constituency). * It's completely free! * To look for our ad in _Current_ and can contact me for more information: Martin Spinelli, LINEbreak Producer/Director linebrk@acsu.buffalo.edu (716)881-1682 fax: (716)645-5980 This is a great program and deserves to be heard where you are. If you don't know the name/address/phone of your local public station, email me and I'll get it to you. We are also making LINEbreak available to other public broadcasters around the world. Ask your public broadcaster to contact me. Poetic excerpts from LINEbreak are already available at the Electronic Poetry Center: http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/linebreak All LINEbreak programs will end up as full soundfiles in the EPC. Cassette copies will be available this summer. For more information email me: linebrk@acsu.buffalo.edu Thanks, Martin Spinelli ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 2 Feb 1996 13:03:48 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Re: poetics of the quotidian Keith, but I definitatly wouldn't call Bernadette a language poet-- and I don't at all mean that derogatorily to Bernadette--- didn't the L poets exclude her though they championed MacLow, etc-- I think this distinction needs to be maintained.... Though definitely tell Gilbert to read MIDWINTER, etc.....chris ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 2 Feb 1996 09:01:24 -1000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gabrielle Welford Subject: Re: book/record ordering on the net In-Reply-To: <199602021054.CAA00765@ix11.ix.netcom.com> You can also write to Moes at "moe@moesbooks.com" and just ask them to find books, etc. for you. They're very quick and pretty cheap in the sending too. Gab. On Fri, 2 Feb 1996, Ron Silliman wrote: > Best all around bookstore on the net is Moe's Online. Unlike the > original in Berkeley, it doesn't smell like Moe's old cigars. But > they've put up all of their catalogs and it's a broad selection. (This > is the place where Andrew Schelling worked as the poetry buyer for many > years before heading off to Naropa.) I don't know the URL, but you > could find it through Yahoo or Lycos or Alta Vista (Digital's new > 64-bit web searcher) without too much difficulty. > > I have ordered and received product from Moe's this way and it works > just fine. > > All best, > Ron Silliman > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 2 Feb 1996 14:35:01 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: poetics of the quotidian david carl writes: Sandra Gilbert has "challenged" me to demonstrate the extent to which "language poetry" (still perceived as a fairly homogenous group among most academic poets) participates in a poetics of the quotidian. Any suggestions? to which i reply: tell her to look at hejinian's "my life." it has just the right degree of accessibility to sway putative anti-langpo's and also has feminist possibilities that should appeal to gilbert's interpretive lens as i know it. from there, it's only a short step to mayer, dahlen, fraser, waldrop, etc. at least, this is how i myself started warming up to langpo. best, maria d ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 2 Feb 1996 14:34:30 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: neuromantic poetry gwyn the girl sez: My overromantic sensibility prefers "neurochromatic," like a rainbow spray of nerve endings. i the girl say: gorgioso! i think we've spawned a good twenty years of new poetic categories around this fortunate misprision. maria d ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 2 Feb 1996 14:35:17 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: New Poetics Subscribers welcome all! --bests, maria damon ps walter glad to have your real e-address, the kaya office gave me a diff. one. have you gotten my msgs? m d ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 2 Feb 1996 14:28:09 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ange Mlinko/PWS/International Thomson Publishing Subject: Re: poetics of the quotidian Keith, but I definitatly wouldn't call Bernadette a language poet-- and I don't at all mean that derogatorily to Bernadette--- didn't the L poets exclude her though they championed MacLow, etc-- Can anyone elaborate as to why Bernadette was excluded? I hope it was a damn good reason--but I can't imagine it was. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 2 Feb 1996 13:18:43 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Thomas Bell Subject: Re: poetics of the quotidian In-Reply-To: <01I0QG8RYRVG8X7HAD@ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu> Quotidian = quotable in a final? Quotidian = common sense inverted? ? On Fri, 2 Feb 1996, Jim Pangborn wrote: > The Armantrout suggestion seems really promising, zeroing in on the > way she torques the little set phrases people use to talk to themselves. > > Two other possibilities: 1) Leslie Scalapino not only shows a > language-y way of working with the quotidian but also demonstrates something > of the breadth of what can be called langpo. 2) I would mention Robert > Creeley's enthusiastic endorsement of langpo. I'm sure he'll testify to its > quotidian pedigree--he's said many times that what is called language poetry > is right in line with his own work's trajectory. > > It's also true that, faced with such a demand, one should always > wonder out loud what the heck "quotidian" is supposed to mean in our > media-soaked culture. Is a "poetics of the quotidian" supposed to limit > itself to everyday phrases or to do something with them? --or to them? > Are we dealing with an "isn't it politically oppressive to use hard > vocabulary words" objection here? > > --JimP > > > > > Sandra Gilbert has "challenged" me to demonstrate the extent to > >which "language poetry" (still perceived as a fairly homogenous group among > >most academic poets) participates in a poetics of the quotidian. > > > >Any suggestions? > > > >David Carl > >dgcarl@ucdavis.edu > > > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 2 Feb 1996 13:32:09 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Janet Hoelle <97jhoell@ULTRIX.UOR.EDU> Subject: Re: poetics of the quotidian Comments: To: Keith Tuma In-Reply-To: What about James Schuyler's works, particularly FREELY ESPOUSING, and specifically the poem, FEBRUARY. This, I think, epitomizes poetics of the quotidian. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 2 Feb 1996 16:57:30 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steven Howard Shoemaker Subject: music and poetry In-Reply-To: <199602020502.AAA27889@listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu> from "Automatic digest processor" at Feb 2, 96 00:00:29 am Thanks to the list for all the great musicpo posts of late. I just got hold of the Langston Hughes Weary Blues cd, and it's tremendous--esp. the stuff from Montage of a Dream Deferred w/ setting and backing by Mingus--just perfect. I played that, along with some Patchen, on the jazz show i do for the college station here, and will try to keep working in more as i get hold of it... steve ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 2 Feb 1996 16:58:24 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rae Armantrout Subject: Re: poetics of the quotidian I'm not sure why people have the idea LangPo doesn't deal with the "quotidian." It seems to me that it admits a wider range of daily experience than the "normal" (whatever that is) lyric poem. Remember Silliman's anthology, In The American Tree, was subtitled Language/ Realism/Poetry. That word "realism" can mean (among other things) something similar to this "quotidian." Rae A ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 2 Feb 1996 13:57:34 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Janet Hoelle <97jhoell@ULTRIX.UOR.EDU> Subject: Re: BORGES In-Reply-To: Have been reading a lot of Borges lately, namely, THE BOOK OF SAND. Now, I've been trying to figure out what his work means to me and what it might mean to others? That is, should I classify it as philosophically introspective, or just sci-fi? Or perhaps just purely representative of Poe-esque, or O. Henry-esque tales, or all of the above? I imagine that one of his main influences was Poe, was it not? I don't really know what to do with his work. It seems like so many things at once, I don't know how to entangle it all to find out what it's trying to do. Is it just trying to imitate the gruesome and the fantastic, or does it want to make some Orwellian type statement, or perhaps some existential statement. Borges, himself said he wrote to pass the time, but of course modern criticism does not rely on, or trust the writer's motives as trustworthy devices for interpreting. Any help would be apprecitated. NICOLE HOELLE ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 2 Feb 1996 17:29:00 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Bernstein Subject: Bernadette Mayer Fan Club (charter member) Just to jump in quickly on this as it is the sort of thing that I find particulary disheartening: Bernadette Mayer was included in such 70s and early 80s assemblings of poetry and poetics as L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E, In The American Tree, This, etc.; her work has always been very important to me (I've written about it and often teach it) and I know that is true for many others who also published in these places. At the same time, Bernadette has publically expressed reservations about the approach to poetry and poetics often associated with these contexts. If this makes it difficult to "label" her, that's all for the good. But I do take exception to this (gossip assumed as fact no sooner than it's uttered): >>but I definitatly wouldn't call Bernadette a language poet-- >>and I don't at all mean that derogatorily to Bernadette--- >>didn't the L poets exclude her though they championed MacLow, etc-- >Can anyone elaborate as to why Bernadette was excluded? I hope >it was a damn good reason--but I can't imagine it was. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 2 Feb 1996 17:52:52 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Keith Tuma Subject: Re: poetics of the quotidian In-Reply-To: Message of Fri, 2 Feb 1996 14:28:09 EDT from Chris-- I wouldn't call Mayer a language poet either--the point was that Gilbert (probably) would, which (if I'm right) says something. Haven't heard any stories of "exclusion"--she's in Ron S's anthology. BM does say a thing or two about language poetry/poets in that _lingo_ interview. I'll dig it out and quote if i must but would rather not. best, keith ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 2 Feb 1996 15:40:41 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: ryan johnson Subject: Re: neuromantic poetry In-Reply-To: On Fri, 2 Feb 1996, Gwyn McVay wrote: > My overromantic sensibility prefers "neurochromatic," like a rainbow > spray of nerve endings. > And for that matter why not "neurochromantic," since (a) it's in the ballbark neologically and (b) it sounds quite possibly even more cool and, more than that, offers up a slew of what I guess we should call "interpretations" or perhaps glosses and finally (c) a few people will simply have no fuckin idea what it could be referring to and a dash of elitism, while hardly useful and by no means productive, is still bound to make language use more interesting--or make the debate about it so. With neurochromantic fondness, then, Ryan ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 2 Feb 1996 15:52:36 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: ryan johnson Subject: Re: poetics of the quotidian In-Reply-To: On Fri, 2 Feb 1996, Keith Tuma wrote: > Re Gilbert and the quotidian: > > Hank's right that it depends on what questions/frames Gilbert wants to ponder > for the quotidian. So why don't you (David Carl) encourage her to sign on and > ask for herself? > > Charles B. has posted his syllabus for a seminar on the ordinary at the EPC, > and that might be relevant. Rumor has it too that Marjorie Perloff has a > book-manuscript perhaps relevant too. Is that right Marjorie? I went to a little talk the other day at which Marjorie chatted about some of this stuff, with reference to what I think must be the intro. of the MS in question, which makes the book look worth reading--it's about Wittgenstein and stuff, subTI "...the Strangeness of the Ordinary", but of course she'll tell more and better. Anyway I'm wondering (and she probably goes into this, or could) whether perhaps the term "poetics of the quotidian" could be narrowed to _language_ of the quotidian, and whether that might generate some better discussion; when we ask ?'s w/such enormous terms as "poetics" we know we're heade to murky territory in the first place, and in the second place we're really not saying much anyway. Enough about themes, etc.! What's distinct, not about some Mode of L poetry, but about its uses and abuses of its own materiality? Hoipe this has been suitably time-consuming for all, Ryan > I'd vote for Bernadette Mayer's Midwinter Day, Bernstein's "Emotions of Normal > People" (moving the q to discourse etc.), Scalapino's Way, and (with Chris) > Ron Silliman's Toner, with its hilarious first line ("Meet my personality") > playing on the title. RS's Jones too. All those people probably count as > langpo for Gilbert. Eigner is probably closer to what she's looking for in > "quotidian." But it's hard to guess, so as i say why not ask her to sign on > and ask? And then maybe someday they'll be a new Norton which does a little > more than gesture at recent "experimental" writing by adding Michael Palmer > and Kamau Brathwaite (as does the new edition of the Norton Anthology of Poetry > edited by Ferguson, Salter, and Stallworthy). > > Keith Tuma > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 2 Feb 1996 16:26:16 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kevin Killian Subject: Re: poetics of the quotidian At 9:40 AM 2/2/96, Gwyn McVay wrote: >If you consider Hejinian a "language poet," which is utterly debatable >but which an academician like Gilbert might well do, you could point to >her poem 2 from the Redo sequence: Call me naive, but I don't see how this is debatable. Isn't Lyn like one of LP's founding mothers/sisters/whatevers? Dodie Bellamy ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 2 Feb 1996 19:54:22 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rod Smith Subject: Re: book/record ordering on the net Thanks to J Zitt & Simon Schuchat for plugs for Bridge Street Books. We like to think of ourselves as your one-stop Poetics shop. LOTS of poetry, small & large press, journals, criticism (plenty, all kinds). E-mail me aerialedge@aol.com if we can be of use. Best, Rod Smith ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 2 Feb 1996 17:10:07 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steve Carll Subject: Re: poetics of the quotidian At 04:58 PM 2/2/96 -0500, Rae Armantrout wrote: > I'm not sure why people have the idea LangPo doesn't deal with the >"quotidian." Well, it seems like a lot of people who get ideas like this have been reading too much theory and not enough of the poetry. I'd even go out on a limb and say that if one were to approach the poetry without reading anything specifically identifiable as "criticism" (though of course these categories come increasingly to collapse), and then ask oneself this question about the quotidian, one might just come to the conclusion that a goodly portion of LangPo is dedicated to taking elements of experience not traditionally thought of as "quotidian" and making them PART of the everyday by relentlessly calling our attention to them. Which is not to conjecture whether this endeavor succeeds or fails--that's up to the individual reader and hir experience coming onto the field. And that's my gross generalization for the day. Submitted for responses from the fiberoptic floor. :-) Steve ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 2 Feb 1996 22:09:43 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Re: Bernadette Mayer Fan Club (charter member) Dear Charles-- Thanks for the clarification. I should not have made so hasty generalization (though it WAS in the form of a question; and there ARE different levels of exclusion--but I guess there's no point getting into that).... But the main point I was trying to make in this discussion was a trend *I* consider disheartening---that is the co-optation of PRE-LANGUAGE poets under that banner, and I am NOT blaming any single person Charles for this--but am trying to cut a bandwagon off at the pass before people like Gilbert start seeing O'Hara, Spicer, Ashbery, Schuyler, etc. AS LANGUAGE poets....as if any of this MATTERS. love and love, chris stroffolino ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 2 Feb 1996 21:55:28 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Keith Tuma Subject: Re: challenges In-Reply-To: Message of Fri, 2 Feb 1996 11:09:36 EST from A question for Henry Gould about Mutlu Blasing's book. I think an early version of one of these chapters appeared some years ago in _American Literary History_, an essay on Merrill which used Michael Palmer as a strawman. What I found interesting about that essay was the degree to which its arguments depended not upon a reading of Palmer's poetry but rather on a parsing of some remarks made in an interview (which I happen to have conducted). So my question: to what extent does Blasing actually attempt to READ the poetry she is calling "late modernism" and to what extent do her claims depend upon prose written by language poets? (Some of this prose announces itself as "misleading"). The question emerges(in part) after your account of her reading of Olson. Just curious. Since books are expensive, I want to know if I should hurry out and spend the money to see what the 21st century will look like. I'm also wondering if she's tried to name the inheritors of the "real" after-modernism (avoiding that p-word), those carrying on for Bishop and Merrill? Lots of questions, but those are the first two. I was also fascinated by the argument as it appeared in ALH (had a title like James Merrill , Postmod- ernist, or some such) and remember thinking that, well, if the term's that important to her, she can have it). But I AM interested in hearing more of the book. Why this need to name THE postmodern, to wrestle it away from so-called imposters? Why this need to name THE future? How does she avoid becoming tangled in the very tactics she attributes to so-called "late-modern" Olson/lp/etc.? Keith Tuma ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 3 Feb 1996 16:06:55 +1030 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jeremy or Carol Close Subject: Moving Lips:The internalisation of print media Certain classes have internalised the printed word. Written language no longer has to echo the spoken. The spelling of the English language shows this. Does anyone know examples of poetry which is fine to the eyes but is not for the ears? This must be possible without resorting to any visual effects beyond the ordinary typeface, with ordinary spacing. Surely? Carol ............................................................... ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: ............................................................... "how are you today, Alexander?" "I'm a happy flower, mummy" (very seriously) Alexander 26 months. Lachlan is six weeks old and is totally adorable {Dote} cclose@academy.net.au alt.silly needs you! (Carol's sig.) Don't care was made to care Don't care was hung Don't care was put in a pot and boiled 'til he was done. (Jeremy's .sig) Jeremy is member 0 of the inner circle of net-wraiths ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 3 Feb 1996 01:40:21 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rod Smith Subject: Re: challenges Blasing's book is a challenge but believe she tips her hand in her choice of subjects. O'Hara, Bishop, Ashbery, & Merrill. Par for the quotidian, ey? Hank Lazer's recent reading of Charles B. relative to Ashbery in APR seems strong response to Blasing's frame. Also Rasula's _American Poetry Wax Museum_ seems truly useful historicizing relative to Blasing. In this context open as opposed to closed form takes on wider connotation, i.e. institutional connotation. There's no questioning the rhetorical complexity of the poets Blasing is pushing but the same complexity is to be found in Brathwaite, or Berrigan, or Hejinian, Spicer!, or, or, or, when it is read for. At the (big) risk of oversimplifying, it reminds me of a criticism leveled at Derrida-- deconstruction of the Western Canon, yes, but that's still placing attention on the Western Canon. Or, more concisely, deconstruction as nostalgia for the canon. So, in many ways Blasing is right (pun intended), but in the ways that matter to me as a writer, reader, & publisher, way wrong. Another note, on Rasula's book, which I second many in *highly* recommending. I was struck by the absence of the New York School as a force. Black Mountain gets 8 citings, l.p. 12 (or more), S.F. Renaissance gets 2, "New York School" as a phrase appears only once. Ashbery & O'Hara get discussed here & there, though in the counting citations game Clayton Eshleman receives as many as O'Hara (seven). Mayer gets two cites, Notley one, Berrigan one. Duncan, cujillion. All of which to say a chapter's missing from the book which would read the Padgett/Shapiro anthology, maybe the World anthology, possibly talk about the Hoover's genesis in _Oink_, etc. And address the question whether there is was will be an "Age of Ashbery." Though his poem in _Can You Hear, Bird_, "Today's Academicians" answers that better'n inybotty. --Rod PS-- I've learned Raworth's teaching in Cal., wld appreciate anybody with his # or add sending it. Thanks. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 3 Feb 1996 14:49:39 +0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Schuchat Subject: Re: Bernadette Mayer Fan Club (charter member) In-Reply-To: <01I0R4P65ETE935UH4@cnsvax.albany.edu> The relationship between Langpo and Bernadette Mayer's work is, as Charles B and Chris S both note, very much there. As I dredge into my memory of what happened, at least as perceived in NYC when L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E first appeared, langpo appeared as a reaction or response to the vulgar zen/"no-nothing bohemianism" of second/third/4th gen ny school then predominant downtown. Bernadette was/had been a visible exception to an apparent anti-intellectualism. But her writing was also very much a part of and accessible within that other tradition, which could be part of why she might want to draw distinctions between her work and langpo. Alice Notley might be another example. But why should Sandra Gilbert distinguish between Bruce Andrews and John Ashbery (esp. THE TENNIS COURT OATH). Isn't the writing equally programmatic (or not)? Or, between Bob Grenier and Larry Fagin? I don't think of langpo as a movement like surrealism where individuals are constantly being thrown out and readmitted after self-criticism. Its more a way of categorizing or approaching a range of writing that loosely shares some general principles/points of view. Tho I admit my standing for adjudicating these questions might be less than authoritative. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 2 Feb 1996 13:13:35 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Thomas Bell Subject: Re: Marchand Du Sel & Rose Selavy Comments: To: Jorge Guitart Comments: cc: MDamon9999@aol.com, cris@slang.demon.co.uk, lsr3h@darwin.clas.virginia.edu, jdavis@panix.com, welford@hawaii.edu In-Reply-To: > > (by cris cheek,tom bell, maria damon, jordan davis, jorge > guitart, lisa samuels, & gabrielle wellford) > > > >> to trim xray architecture shirts slowly over the wellspring dovetailed > > >> > > >> for angels from aching or is it mapped > > >> > > >> participle laredo allows hoodlum rainbow and flip salubrious > > >> > > >> whimpering foraged aura container dangling over a set slowly better > > >> > > >> delfin forging better yet 'e' over hailwater architecture > > >> of that stature dwarfs pink elephants and alphabet soup ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 3 Feb 1996 00:52:49 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry Gould Subject: Re: challenges: Keith Tuma Keith: thanks to your response to my Blasing blitz. It's very late at night but I'll mumble a few things, save your post, & maybe say something more sensible another time. First off: Politics of Postmodernism, by M.K.Blasing, Cambridge UP, is $56. The only reason I have access to it is that I work in a college library. So if you're thinking of buying it, well, that's the price. Maybe check the library first (or ask them to order). Does the author actually read Olson, Language poets? The "close readings" are only of the 4 authors I mentioned (Ashbery, O'Hara, Bishop, Merrill). As a critic, she's taking the long historical view; but part of her argument is that American poetry, from at least Whitman, has ALWAYS conflated technique with politics. And when "Poundian" modernists combine this with the rhetorical equation "anti-rhetoric = truth/nature/reality" they are assuming certain things about poetry which "her" postmodernists cannot assume without question. She quotes Merrill from an interview saying that the poets he admires "write like angels; Pound tries to write like a god." I.e., Pound believes his writing purifies rhetoric out and transcribes the real; the postmodernists, on the other hand, are skeptics writing with an awareness of the inherent persuasion - that every speech act is both indeterminate and politically implicated - in poetry. Rhetoric is both unavoidable, and is a link with the communal means of making poetry which have always been available. I'm sorry to just rehash what I wrote before; haven't quite addressed what you raised. My "book review" was a precis, not an endorsement; I think this whole hashing out of historico-critical judgement is integral & necessary - it's how succeeding generations encounter what's been done - but it's the poets, not the critics, who provide the real synthesis/appreciation of what's been done. Critical generalizations are always subject to refinement & debunking. For example, Blasing has no room to address the mediating role of "painterliness" - ut pictura, and all that - insinuating between so-called New York poets and language poets. Abstract expressionism is extremely CONCRETE - it's just the paint on paper, the way Zukofsky is just the words - and this has affected the artistic goals of "experimental poets" in ways which have little to do with Blasing's characterization of "heroic modernism". In spite of this, I think Blasing has clarified a lot of the political issues in US poetry, raised some good questions, maybe enabled the junking of a lot of attitudes that have been around too long. I think the ponts people have raised about the refreshing "unpoetic" feel of language poetry, its new tone, are very true. I also think a lot of it is just as self-indulgent and arbitrary as the most "subjective free verse" of the 70s was. I shouldn't even say anything cause I've read so little of it. I find most of it too vague, undirected, hard to read. It's all mannerism, all surface, no meaning, no pith. Sorry. Go read a poem. Ultimately - now that I'm really blathering - I think Blasing and LP represent 2 poles of postmodernism, and I don't really buy into either. It's all based on deconstruction, which I don't accept either, though its refinements are fascinating. Why don't I accept it? Basically, because i think that synthesis, unity, and identity are just as integral to reality - and just as remote from human comprehension - as are deconstruction's difference, division and undecideability. - Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 3 Feb 1996 00:09:36 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Re: Billy Higgins In-Reply-To: <199602020502.AAA27889@listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu> Just learned that Billy Higgins, who I had seen performing brilliantly as recently as last year, is extremely ill. -- The following from a local paper: "Higgins, 59, revealed last week that his health has deteriorated to the point where he can do nothing but sit and wait for an available liver. The operation would be performed at UCLA Medical Center. Higgins and his wife, Gina, are planning to raise the money needed for the procedure and post-op care." In addition to Higgins's remarkable work as a musician, he launched the World Stage performance space and record label based in Leimert Park. Last year his wife opened the California Coffee House in Culver City. Neither of these will produce enough income for the operation. According to the paper, you can arrange to donate funds, or get further info., by calling one of the following numbers: (310) 837-2913 (213) 292-5465 ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 3 Feb 1996 04:33:48 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ron Silliman Subject: Re: poetics of the quotidian > Sandra Gilbert has "challenged" me to demonstrate the extent to >which "language poetry" (still perceived as a fairly homogenous group among >most academic poets) participates in a poetics of the quotidian. > >Any suggestions? > >David Carl >dgcarl@ucdavis.edu > Tell her to read the work. More seriously, though -- and even though I think you could quote almost any passage from the work of a dozen or so folks and demonstrate that point (Watten's Progress, any of my writing, My Life by Hejinian, anything by Bruce Andrews, anything by Hannah Weiner, anything by Charles Bernstein, etc.) -- I'm not sure that a "poetics of the quotidian" is a value as such. Rather, the question might be better posed of what do people do with daily life in their poetry? What does their work expose, treat, extend? ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 3 Feb 1996 04:38:06 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ron Silliman Subject: Re: neuromantic poetry Rae Armantrout has a book entitled Necromance. Is this an accident? We think not. Ron Silliman ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 3 Feb 1996 04:45:17 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ron Silliman Subject: Re: quotin' the quotidian Geez, Hank, I try hard NOT to make vomit quotidian and would recommend that strategy generally, even to Ashes. Ron Silliman ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 3 Feb 1996 04:58:36 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ron Silliman Subject: Re: poetics of the quotidian Chris, You are hallucinating. Never in my life have I ever heard anybody who has been described as a language poet "exclude" Bernadette. Please look on page 410 of In the American Tree (and for the next 14 pages) and her theoretical writing in the "Second Front" section of the anthology (p. 557), which comes immediately before my own. And I think that the experience of _Tree_ is typical. While Bernadette has always been closely personally and aesthetically to the NY School, so have Greenwald and Coolidge. And similarly, Grenier and Bromige come straight out of the Black Mountain aesthetic. But so what? What is this distinction that needs to be maintained? By whom? Ron Silliman > Keith, but I definitatly wouldn't call Bernadette a language poet-- > and I don't at all mean that derogatorily to Bernadette--- > didn't the L poets exclude her though they championed MacLow, etc-- > I think this distinction needs to be maintained.... > Though definitely tell Gilbert to read MIDWINTER, etc.....chris > ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 3 Feb 1996 05:49:12 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ron Silliman Subject: Re: challenges I haven't read the book but I'm not sure that I don't agree with Blasing that langpo carries forward many of the fundamental impulses that underly modernism. In the same general sense that Habermas talks of "modernity" as an incomplete project (tho "completeness," Habermas' term, seems peculiarly teleological a category). Much of what makes the postmodern discourse so incoherent is that it presumes (as apparently does Blasing's book, at least from Henry's posted synopsis) a stable definition of modernism that one might be "post"...and no such definition exists or (I would argue) is even possible. In literature, the dominant discourse around that term extends out of the new critics' appropriation of Clement Greenberg and is full of misreadings, a justification of an aesthetic that would take us from Joyce to Robert Lowell. That list of pomo writers (Blasing's category) is equally silly. I've seen several attempts by people to invoke premodernists and/or antimodernists as a form of pomo (I've heard some of gnu formalists use it thusly). What argle-bargle this all is. Ron Silliman ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 3 Feb 1996 04:05:46 -1000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gabrielle Welford Subject: Re: Marchand Du Sel & Rose Selavy In-Reply-To: > > (by cris cheek,tom bell, maria damon, jordan davis, jorge > > guitart, lisa samuels, & gabrielle wellford) > > > > > >> to trim xray architecture shirts slowly over the wellspring dovetailed > > > >> > > > >> for angels from aching or is it mapped > > > >> > > > >> participle laredo allows hoodlum rainbow and flip salubrious > > > >> > > > >> whimpering foraged aura container dangling over a set slowly better > > > >> > > > >> delfin forging better yet 'e' over hailwater architecture > > > >> > of that stature dwarfs pink elephants and alphabet soup > sloppy fingers meet fade boast apart from sally ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 3 Feb 1996 10:51:42 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Re: challenges Dear Ron---could you please elaborate on your sense of the New Critics' appropriation of CLEMENT GREENBERG? It makes sense, but WHEN did it happen? (late 40's?) Any specific essays by N.C.'s you might suggest on this... I want something more than speculation... It would really put O'Hara's quasi-polemical writings against Greenberg in a different light..... thanks, chris. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 3 Feb 1996 10:53:29 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Landers Subject: Re: Bernadette Mayer Fan Club (charter member) Mayer and many other cool poets called themselves "United Artists", i think. pete ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 3 Feb 1996 11:00:38 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: warning: i break for hallucinations But that's okay I don't have a car.... Anyway, I wanted to announce a poetry reading I'm giving with Lisa Jarnot and Heather Ramsdell this coming friday at the ICHOR GALLERY Friday, February 9th 8:30PM 127 West 26th St. And for those of you not familiar with my poetry (and I myself I am not extremely familiar with it right now---and even less of Heather Ramsdell's aside from a piece in SULFUR 35) maybe it would "help" to know that when a friend handed a card to a certain unamed prominent NYC LANG PO (and no, NOT RON or CHARLES), he said that he probably wouldn't go because we're CONSERVATIVE! Yours in "the politics of poetic form"-----chris stroffolino ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 3 Feb 1996 11:26:18 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Blair Seagram Subject: Bridge Street Books Coming in after the fact, I would also like to put in a plug for Bridge Street Books. Rod is helpful and exacting. The books arrive promptly and without a hassle. Thank you Rod Smith. best wishes, blair ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 3 Feb 1996 11:59:18 +0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kenneth Goldsmith Subject: Henri Chopin Loss and Herb: Henri Chopin's Les 9 Saintes-Phonies is released on Staalplaat and I ordered it over the net thru Soleilmoon: http://weber.u.washington.edu/~isomorph/Sol.html It is a retrospective of Chopin's work 50's-80's and includes a 70 page cd-sized booklet! I also picked up Gregory Whitehead's "Dead Letters" in the same virtual shot; a wonderful net resource. =========================================================================== Kenneth Goldsmith http://wfmu.org/~kennyg kgolds@panix.com kennyg@wfmu.org kgoldsmith@hardpress.com v. 212-260-4081 ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 3 Feb 1996 12:28:24 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steve Evans Subject: Re: challenges Dear Chris, Greenberg's contribution to a PARTISAN REVIEW symposium on the State of American Writing, 1948, might interest you, not only for the distance CG takes from the "new" criticism, which "has illuminated much but...also darkened much, shutting out both light and air" and in which stirs "the breath of provincial- ism, not to say academicism" (256), but also for his interesting characterization of the avant-garde project. His contribution begins: "It seems to me that the most pervasive event in American letters over the last ten years is the stablization of the avant-garde, accompanied by its growing acceptance by offical and commercial culture. It has modified that culture to a limited extent and has in return been granted a recognition and place that do not dissatisfy it. The avant-garde has been professionalized, so to speak, organized into a field for careers; it is no longer the adventure beyond ratified norms, the refusal in the name of truth and excellence to abide by the categories of worldly success and failure. The avant-garde writer _gets ahead_ now, and inside established channels: he obtains university or publishing or magazine jobs, finds it relatively easy to be published himself, is asked to lecture, participate in round tables, etc., writes introductions to the classics, and can even win the status of a public figure. There is nothing inherently wrong with this (after all, who is best fitted to write introductions to the classics? and why shouldn't serious writers be rewarded with material security?), but so far this accomodation has produced liabilities that outweight the assets." "The State of American Writing, 1948: A Symposium." ARROGANT PURPOSE, 1945-1949. Ed. John O'Brian. Vol. 2 of THE COLLECTED ESSAYS AND CRITICISM. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1986. 254-59. > Dear Ron---could you please elaborate on your sense of the > New Critics' appropriation of CLEMENT GREENBERG? > It makes sense, but WHEN did it happen? (late 40's?) > Any specific essays by N.C.'s you might suggest on this... > I want something more than speculation... > It would really put O'Hara's quasi-polemical writings against > Greenberg in a different light..... > thanks, chris. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 3 Feb 1996 10:12:57 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Marjorie Perloff Subject: Re: the Quotidian In-Reply-To: <199602030507.AAA27796@listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu> Ryan Johnson and Keith Tuma referred to my work on the quotidian--in my new book (out in a few months) called WITTGENSTEIN'S LADDER: POETIC LANGUAGE AND THE STRANGENESS OF THE ORDINARY--I take up precisely this question. I would argue, contra Gilbert etc. that "language poetry" is one of the sites where the ordinary (I don't like the word quotidian much because it's not quotidian enough and makes me think of Wallace Stevens's "The Malady of the Quotidian"), is most sharply foregrounded. Robert Creeley, as I argue in the book, does extraordinary things with the most ordinary and everyday of words and phrases and so do Rosmarie Waldrop, Ron Silliman, Rae Armantrout, Charles Bernstein, etc etc. One of the most important distinctions, I think, is between those poets who really try to understand ordinary language as it's actually used by all of us, and neo-confessionals like Gilbert is that if you look at, say, a Philip Levine poem closely--one of those poems that purports to be "real honest," "man-to-man," "no punches pulled," you'll see that the language in fact is not the least bit "ordinary"--that is, people don't say the things he has them saying--but is a kind of simulated candor that I find terribly irritating. I'm at this moment teaching for the first time in years Frank O'Hara and what makes him so delightful and amazing (and so unlike a Levine) is that he's willing really to say in a poem what he might say in actual conversation even as he steps back and laughs at himself. His work is much closer to language poetry than had been thought: witness Ben Friedlander's recent PhD dissertation for Buffalo, "jetting I commit the immortal spark," 69 parts of an essay on Frank O'Hara (a set of poetic meditations). I think a key question in this debate is to look at actual lines of poetry and ask yourself the Wittgensteinian question, "Under what circumstances and in what context, would someone actually say this?" Try it out on the typical Norton anthol. poem and you'll see how fakey it really is, how much self-censorship goes on. And speaking of Norton, I just got the ad for the new 4th edition of the Norton Anthology of Poetry and was dismayed. It is even worse than the 3d. Now that Norton has done its "bit" but publishing Hoover's PoMo anthology, they evidently think they can go back to business as usual. This new Norton is enough to make anyone want to forget all about poetry, at least postWorld War II American poetry. Lots of Anthony Hecht and Amy Clampitt..... Marjorie Perloff ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 3 Feb 1996 14:17:45 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Loss Glazier Subject: EPC: Literary Archives Just to let you know a new set of links has been added to the Electronic Poetry Center. It's called: EPC Connects: Literary Archives This links to some pretty incredible lists of manuscript and other material by poets that many here would find interesting. These are finding aids but they read better than most books in your average bookstore! Right now I've linked to: --SUNY Buffalo Poetry Collection --UCSD Literary Archives --University of Connecticut--Storrs So do have a look! Also, if you know of other similar collections with similarly extensive online guides, let me know via a personal e-mail message. My congratulations to the folks at these institutions who have made these collection descriptions available! Brought to you by the EPC, visit us at http://writing.upenn.edu/epc ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 3 Feb 1996 13:37:33 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Nowak Subject: Pomo In the last few days I've received several messages that abbreviated Postmodern "pomo" or "PoMo." In respect to the California Native Americans whose heritage is Pomo, I'm wondering if we could find a substitute abbreviation. For some fine work by writers of Pomo heritage, see any of Greg Sarris's recent books and Kathleen Rose Smith's work in _The Sound of Rattles and Clappers: A Collection of New California Indian Writing_ (Arizona, 1994). Mark Nowak, Minneapolis ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 3 Feb 1996 12:14:47 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Thomas Bell Subject: Re: neuromantic poetry In-Reply-To: <199602031238.EAA22885@ix7.ix.netcom.com> psychoneuroimmunologiclassical? autopoietic neuroimmune Tom Bell ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 3 Feb 1996 15:15:59 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: Marchand Du Sel & Rose Selavy now guyzies, weren't we going to spare the POETICS crowd our actual composing process, and only subject them to several highly selective finished products? maria d ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 3 Feb 1996 14:17:40 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joe Amato Subject: Re: challenges well i s'pose this is ancillary to henry's initial post re blasing's book, which just in terms of the poets she's lumping together seems to me driven by the same old same old sorts of literary theoretical issues... anyway, as to the postmodern, and at the risk of appearing pedantic as hell, check out the 'definition' offered in the johns hopkins guide to literary theory... really, no bullshit here---it's really a nice summary of how the term has been used, what it currently signifies... anyway, it seems clear to me from henry's summary that, whatever its value (and to risk responding hastily given that i haven't read it), blasing's book is operating along tried & (un)true institutional coordinates... that is, we take such & such poets, we 'read' them against various claims to political efficacy (some made by the poets themselves, some not), and we determine which poets have played the fool to historical realities (modernist, pomo, etc.), which rhetorics, not to say poetics, are the more successful in surfacing aesthetic-political tensions and 'deploying' rhetorical antidotes of one sort or another, as identified by the poetry critic as most pressing (pressing wrt their day? to today?)... which amounts to a way of measuring and judging aesthetic practice in terms of a presumed political imperative to which we have unmediated access thanks to one of various critical methodologies... this is just too easy, finally... i hate to play the gadfly, but i'm forced to ask whether in fact blasing is willing to apply such rhetorical-aesthetic-political analysis to her own effort, her own text?... where is the corresponding critique of critical practice that has 'given us' such poets in such terms in the first place, that has so placed poets at the hands of critical practice, critical judgment?... it could be argued that what we need are different ways of reading various poetries---historically, politically, aesthetically, etc... that at least some of these ways of reading would entail different ways of writing and rewriting critical practice, of situating critical practice... and that no way of reading is immune from its own institutional moorings/maneuverings---which, irony of ironies, i take (at this point, anyway) to be blasing's point wrt any but her OWN practice... mebbe i should go out and read the damned thing, but even thinking about it makes me cranky... or is it the minus 6 deg. high here in the windy city?... joe ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 3 Feb 1996 15:18:17 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: Marchand Du Sel & Rose Selavy Comments: To: tbjn@well.com, mlljorge@ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu Comments: cc: cris@slang.demon.co.uk, lsr3h@darwin.clas.virginia.edu, jdavis@panix.com, welford@hawaii.edu to trim xray architecture shirts slowly over the wellspring dovetailed > > >> > > >> for angels from aching or is it mapped > > >> > > >> participle laredo allows hoodlum rainbow and flip salubrious > > >> > > >> whimpering foraged aura container dangling over a set slowly better > > >> > > >> delfin forging better yet 'e' over hailwater architecture > > >> of that stature dwarfs pink elephants and alphabet soup crackers and coconuts, horsefeather moustachio ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 3 Feb 1996 15:33:42 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Re: challenges Thanks Steve Evans---it's definitely helpful, and thanks Joshua Schuster for pointing out Silliman's essay in POETICS BRIEF 7 (which I don't have yet) which allegedly also treats on Greenberg-New Criticism connection..... chris s. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 3 Feb 1996 15:45:57 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ward Tietz <100723.3166@COMPUSERVE.COM> Subject: Re: Moving Lips... On Saturday, February 3, Carol Close wrote. "Certain classes have internalized the printed word. Written language no longer has to echo the spoken. The spelling of the English language shows this. Does anyone know examples of poetry which is fine to the eyes but is not for the ears? This must be possible without resorting to any visual effects beyond the ordinary typeface, with ordinary spacing." These criteria restrict and cancel in a very curious way, but I think some concrete poetry does what is described. Here are a few examples. Eugen Gomringer's silencio silencio silencio silencio silencio silencio silencio silencio silencio silencio silencio silencio silencio silencio Aram Saroyan's lighght or eyeye (those are the pieces) Gerhard Ruehm's uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu uuuuuuuuduuuuuuuu uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu ("du" is the informal "you" in German) I suppose it's debatable whether these are "not for the ears" but they do have the peculiar ability to block sound, at least initially. They are "fine to the eyes" but the visual specificity or "fineness" they provoke, because of their insistence on formula, can also collapse into the opposite impression. Ward Tietz rte. de St. Cergue, 48a CH-1260 Nyon Switzerland ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 3 Feb 1996 15:53:58 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joshua N Schuster Subject: Re: Challenges, Chris Chris, Not POETIC BRIEFS but POETICS JOURNAL 7 (Watten, Hejinian), all the way back from 1987. (I found it used, along w/ Perloff's first on Yeats?--which I again saw later, just a fragment, anthologized (mid-80's _Lit. Theory in Praxis_) under a rubric of New Criticism (??)) -joshua ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 3 Feb 1996 14:58:00 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joe Amato Subject: Re: Pomo and i wasn't aware (as of my last post) of the "pomo" designation mark nowak indicates... the term has been used shorthand in discussions of postmodernism for some time now... i'm willing to revise my use of same, sure, let's try to find a better term... how bout postmo?... joe ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 3 Feb 1996 13:49:36 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Dan Raphael Dlugonski Subject: neuromantic poet i'm pumping up sensations so what bulges from my arms arent veins but molten receptors comingling through epidermal censorship body's webwork hungry to inhale thye thickening light of information fending off my isolation and lack of heat ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 3 Feb 1996 14:10:39 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steve Carll Subject: Re: Moving Lips:The internalisation of print media At 04:06 PM 2/3/96 +1030, Carol Close wrote: >Certain classes have internalised the printed word. Written language no >longer has to echo the spoken. The spelling of the English language shows this. > >Does anyone know examples of poetry which is fine to the eyes but is not for >the ears? Do you mean "not fine for the ears" or "not for the ears at all"? If the latter, I don't go along with your premise. The ear is always just as involved in language as the eye is. Only the proportions shift--i.e., some poems appeal more to the "outer" eye and the "inner" ear, some to the "mind's" eye and the "real" ear. But a glance through Kostelanetz' anthology _Text-Sound Texts_ will show that a sound poem (one that ostensibly exists only as sound) can indeed be effectively presented as--a visual or concrete poem (one that ostensibly only exists as visual sign). These are just two poles of the same magnet. Without *both* poles, you'd have no magnet and *no* poles. E.E. Cummings' grasshopper poem has been cited as being a poem that cannot be spoken, but in my experience reading it, the ear does struggle to pronounce the words with their jumbled-up letters. Written language may no longer have to echo the spoken, but that doesn't mean there's no connection at all between them. Of course, some poems seem to present themselves more engagingly in media in which sound is foregrounded, while others seem to do so in media which foreground sight. But I wonder if this phenomenon isn't terribly subjective and individual. Can anyone think onf any other examples we could talk about? Steve ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 3 Feb 1996 17:55:02 -0500 Reply-To: Peter Jaeger Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Peter Jaeger Subject: Re: Moving Lips:The internalisation of print media In-Reply-To: <199602032210.OAA14180@slip-1.slip.net> How would one read bpNichol's one word poem: st*r for the ears? -Peter Jaeger On Sat, 3 Feb 1996, Steve Carll wrote: > At 04:06 PM 2/3/96 +1030, Carol Close wrote: > >Certain classes have internalised the printed word. Written language no > >longer has to echo the spoken. The spelling of the English language shows > this. > > > >Does anyone know examples of poetry which is fine to the eyes but is not for > >the ears? > > Do you mean "not fine for the ears" or "not for the ears at all"? If the > latter, I don't go along with your premise. The ear is always just as > involved in language as the eye is. Only the proportions shift--i.e., some > poems appeal more to the "outer" eye and the "inner" ear, some to the > "mind's" eye and the "real" ear. But a glance through Kostelanetz' > anthology _Text-Sound Texts_ will show that a sound poem (one that > ostensibly exists only as sound) can indeed be effectively presented as--a > visual or concrete poem (one that ostensibly only exists as visual sign). > These are just two poles of the same magnet. Without *both* poles, you'd > have no magnet and *no* poles. > > E.E. Cummings' grasshopper poem has been cited as being a poem that cannot > be spoken, but in my experience reading it, the ear does struggle to > pronounce the words with their jumbled-up letters. > > Written language may no longer have to echo the spoken, but that doesn't > mean there's no connection at all between them. > > Of course, some poems seem to present themselves more engagingly in media in > which sound is foregrounded, while others seem to do so in media which > foreground sight. But I wonder if this phenomenon isn't terribly subjective > and individual. > > Can anyone think onf any other examples we could talk about? > > Steve > ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 3 Feb 1996 20:08:19 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Smith Subject: Re: Pomo Jaime de Angula & his wife did some work with Pomo texst for UC that are worth looking at. As are the exquisite baskets the Pomo produce. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 3 Feb 1996 18:41:20 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ron Silliman Subject: Re: Pomo I'm curious about the assumption behind Mark Nowak's no-doubt well-intended comments about pomo and Pomo. Where precisely is it written that homophones shall only have one denotation? Can you can the can-can on such grounds? The term pomo has been used for so long (popularized first I do believe by Greg Tate in VLS in the late 80s) that there's been a comedy team in San Francisco for several years that calls itself Pomo Afro Homo. Ron Silliman ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 3 Feb 1996 20:48:09 +0000 Reply-To: jzitt@humansystems.com Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: Authenticated sender is From: Joseph Zitt Organization: HumanSystems Subject: Re: Pomo Comments: To: Ron Silliman On 3 Feb 96 at 18:41, Ron Silliman wrote: > I'm curious about the assumption behind Mark Nowak's no-doubt > well-intended comments about pomo and Pomo. Where precisely is it > written that homophones shall only have one denotation? Can you can the > can-can on such grounds? Well, we could use "posmo" -- but who would we put on the cover of Posmocolitan? ---------1---------1---------1---------1---------1---------1---------- |||/ Joseph Zitt ==== jzitt@humansystems.com ===== Human Systems \||| ||/ Organizer, SILENCE: The John Cage Mailing List \|| |/Joe Zitt's Home Page\| ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 3 Feb 1996 18:55:20 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Stephen Galen Cope Subject: Re: poetics of the quotidian Robert Grenier would certainly seem quotidian... ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 3 Feb 1996 22:09:09 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: William R Howe Subject: pomo-ra-ma hear hear to ron to limit our vocabs in order to re-strict meaning to only certain pre-scribed notions about what or how words mean is silly and an long term effort to systematically erradicate the use of a word because it might be offensive or derogatory or oppressive would in the end leave us with very few words i admit that a word may be damaging culturally but there is no way to get around that language is opressive the way in which we use language is opressive the way in which language means is opressive so singling out pet peeves tolambast seems to me a mis-guided attempt at a linguistic re-education that is doomed to failure wrh ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 3 Feb 1996 22:28:07 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Re: Challenges, Chris Hey Joshua, what bookstore in Phila. would you find POETICS JOURNAL used in? Chris P.S. What do you think about this POMO thread? I'm waiting for John Shoptaw to come on and coin the term POMOTEXTUAL...... (backwards it's OM Op and so if we want to DEPOMO ourselves we have to put OM on the OP ED page.... ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 3 Feb 1996 22:47:25 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gwyn McVay Subject: Re: pomo-ra-ma In-Reply-To: <199602040309.WAA12619@lictor.acsu.buffalo.edu> It would seem that, if you just said "poetry by people of the Pomo Nation" or "Pomo Indian poetry" or whatever when that was what you meant, nobody would assume that you were talking about some engagingly engage' tribe on the West Coast with hip dark shades and Brion Gysin cut-up scissors. Meanwhile, I'm for letting Pomo Afro Homo keep their name. Gwyn McVay ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 3 Feb 1996 20:30:58 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ron Silliman Subject: Greenberg (long) Dear Chris, > > Dear Ron---could you please elaborate on your sense of the > New Critics' appropriation of CLEMENT GREENBERG? > It makes sense, but WHEN did it happen? (late 40's?) > Any specific essays by N.C.'s you might suggest on this... > I want something more than speculation... > It would really put O'Hara's quasi-polemical writings against > Greenberg in a different light..... > thanks, chris. > Greenberg is a writer whose work needs always to be contextualized, since its stance shifted steadily throughout his career. When he wrote "Art and Kitsch" in 1939, the essay that did more than any other to popularize a conception of aesthetic modernism (tho it never uses that term), it was part of a consciously Trotskyist intervention: in recognizing the Nazi's sentimentalization of aesthetics, he saw its spread throughout western culture--which today we might recognize really as the spread of a popular culture driven by capital--as a sign of protofascism everywhere. (This theme is repeated, this time as farce, regularly by the critics of the New Criterion, who instead see pop culture as evidence of the mongrelization of west civ by all of us unwashed types who got through college on foodstamps.) Part of what made Greenberg's coining of that term so successful was its adoption by the New Critical professors. Although he never became the full-bore neocon that many 1930s trots did by the 1950s and 60s, Greenberg did move steadily to the right. His essays typically appeared in Partisan Review, although they also appeared in other publications that made the same rightward shift over time, such as Commentary. Partisan is a particularly interesting case in that it was not an academic journal in the same sense as Kenyon, Southern or Sewanee reviews. Remember that the New Critics grew out of the agrarian movement of the Fugitives, and had already settled into a politically conservative mode. Alan Golding details (as have many other commentators) the long march to the right of PR as well as noting its impact culturally: it had 6,000 readers in 1946, 10,000 in 1950. Even in its earliest days, PR championed the high art of Eliot (which is to say, a particular high art) and, to quote Golding verbatim, "Beyond Berryman..., poets who can fairly be associated with _Partisan_ in the years 1946-55 Shapiro, Wilbur, Bishop, Roethke, Snodgrass, and Hoffman--none of whom would be out of place in the more overly New Critical Journals." These are precisely the "professional" avant-gardists that Greenberg seems to be referring to in the 1948 quote Steve Evans posted earlier. [I can't praise Golding's book too highly on this subject, by the way--the chapter on the NC is by far the best short history of the institutional politics of New Criticism we have ever had.] Consider Greenberg's essays in _Art and Culture_. His key selection of pieces, it begins with "Art and Kitsch" and ends with four essays on writing, two of them concerning the poets Eliot and Brecht. The piece on Eliot was originally written in 1950, relatively late (and at a point when the NC seizure of English Departments was nearly at its height). In the piece on Eliot, ostensibly a review of the Selected Essays, Greenberg contrasts Eliot and Pound as critics in these terms: but if Eliot alone fulfilled himself as a critic, it was because his sense of relevance was infinitely more constant, more "scientific." Similarly, a page later, Helen Gardner's book on Eliot is described thusly: Miss Gardner reads closely and well, and with one notable exception, extracts no more from what she reads than she can vouch for in her _experience_ of what she reads. Such passages are little anthologies of NC buzzwords. That Greenberg (who here is attacking the slackness of the Four Quartests, one point on which he and I do agree) is not simply couching a provocative argument in a honey-coated language for a particular audience (sort of a Charles Bernstein avant la lettre) can be deduced from this passage on the very next page. Perhaps the deepest source of Eliot's recent failures was already to be detected in his earlier, and earliest, successes. His montage sequences, with their abrupt shifts of focus, are important gains for the art of verse [Greenberg here obviously does not know, as we now do, that these were Pound's contribution], but they also compensate for an inability to advance an action or a feeling through what I would call incremental transitions. This is not an inability peculiar to Eliot among the leaders of modernism in his generation. Yeats does not suffer from it, but writers like Pound, Wyndham Lewis and William Carlos Williams do-- and do so almost pathologically. Whether in verse or prose, Pound proceeds--if he proceeds at all--by fits and starts; the increasing reliance of his verse on present-participular constructions betrays what is really a kind of inertia of imagination; his best original poetry, like his best criticism, has never been sustained enough to amount to more than passages. Nor can Williams, who seems equally incapable of traveling with consecutiveness in a fixed direction, claim more than a few completely fulfilled poems. It goes on like this for a few more pages. This is shrill stuff. Right up there with anything that was ever done to the langpo writers. Greenberg's essay closes with a classically New Critical flourish: The so-called obscurity of modernist literature has, of course, a lot to do with the new stress on exegisis.... (S)uccessful art can be depended upon to explain itself.... He ends by wishing that Eliot the poet listened more to Eliot the critic. In all, a totally political piece of writing: attempting first to separate out Eliot from imprisoned fascist Pound and the marginalized Williams, then to separate out Eliot the critic from Eliot the poet (while still trying to maintain credibility by admitting that the Four Quartets are basically snoozers.) (The Brecht piece, published in 1944, is also worth reading, since Brecht after all totally violates the terms set forward in "Art and Kitsch" and Greenberg likes Brecht, or at least the pre-Communist Party Brecht. He explains this by identifying BB as a parodist, which means that his use of low culture is a means of turning fascism against itself. You gotta love the circularity.) In his essays "'American-Type' Painting," the 1955 classic that declares abstract expressionism triumphant over all other forms of painting, and painting triumphant over all other forms of modernist art, Greenberg follows yet another standard New Critical move in his discussion of Whitman, used here to put Clyfford Still in his place: Still's uncompromising art has its own kind of affinity with popular or bad taste. It is the first body of painting I know that asks to be called Whitmanesque in the worst as well as the best sense, indulging as it does in loose and sweeping gestures, and defying certain conventions (like light and dark) in the same _gauche_ way that Whitman defied meter. And just as Whitman's verse assimilated to itself quantities of stale journalistic and oratorical prose, Still's painting.... Elsewhere in the book, Greenberg uses terms like "monotonous" and "antiaesthetic" to describe the work of Pound, Stein and Joyce. In short, Greenberg used the NCs just as they used him and if the political gap between them in the late 1930s was great, by 1950 it was hardly noticeable. That Williams bashing above, by the way, does not even warrant a mention of WCW in the book's index. Today, almost half a century later, Greenberg seems to be an instance of the same sort of schizophrenia we see in a mag like The Nation (another of his main venues), the closest thing we have to an official paper of record for the American left with openly reactionary literary aesthetics. Rather than responding as some of the marxian critics have by reading Greenberg as a mechanism in "how NYC stole modern art," it would be far more interesting to ask ourselves what abstract expressionism would be if it had not had his contextualizing framework from day one. I suspect that it would look very different. By the way, Chris, I do hope that your spelling of the verb in "I break for hallucinations" was intentional. All best, Ron Silliman ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 3 Feb 1996 21:00:05 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Thomas Bell Subject: Re: Marchand Du Sel & Rose Selavy Comments: To: MDamon9999@aol.com Comments: cc: mlljorge@ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu, cris@slang.demon.co.uk, lsr3h@darwin.clas.virginia.edu, jdavis@panix.com, welford@hawaii.edu In-Reply-To: <960203151816_311504762@emout05.mail.aol.com> I made a Donner pass but we lost our momentum > to trim xray architecture shirts slowly over the wellspring dovetailed > > > >> > > > >> for angels from aching or is it mapped > > > >> > > > >> participle laredo allows hoodlum rainbow and flip salubrious > > > >> > > > >> whimpering foraged aura container dangling over a set slowly better > > > >> > > > >> delfin forging better yet 'e' over hailwater architecture > > > >> > of that stature dwarfs pink elephants and alphabet soup > crackers and coconuts, horsefeather moustachio > ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 4 Feb 1996 01:18:51 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joshua N Schuster Subject: Re: Challenges, Chris Chris Stroffolino wrote: > > Hey Joshua, what bookstore in Phila. would you find POETICS JOURNAL > used in? > Chris Was a surprise find lodged in the used bank of blanks, "Book Trader". Actually they've got an extensive stock of 30th gen. Nortonites, a few of whom I've seen on the CAP-L list. My patronizing's at "House of Our Own", only new/used place left for the left. > P.S. What do you think about this POMO thread? > I'm waiting for John Shoptaw to come on and coin the term > POMOTEXTUAL...... > (backwards it's OM Op and so if we want to DEPOMO ourselves > we have to put OM on the OP ED page.... > Seems like another promo in slomo. Anything hyphenated with "textual" seems ripe for theoretical/theatrical status. Slomo-textual? Chromo-textual, Nomo-textual.... writing in weather degree zero (well, almost), temperature-textual, joshua ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 4 Feb 1996 01:31:30 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rod Smith Subject: Re: challenges Steve or, Who do you suppose Greenberg was referring to as an avant-garde writer circa '48 receiving all that institutional support? Hemingway? Eliot? Bowles? --Rod ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 3 Feb 1996 22:59:04 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: ryan johnson Subject: Re: Marchand Du Sel & Rose Selavy In-Reply-To: On Sat, 3 Feb 1996, Gabrielle Welford wrote: > > > (by cris cheek,tom bell, maria damon, jordan davis, jorge > > > guitart, lisa samuels, & gabrielle wellford) > > > > > > > >> to trim xray architecture shirts slowly over the wellspring dovetailed > > > > >> > > > > >> for angels from aching or is it mapped > > > > >> > > > > >> participle laredo allows hoodlum rainbow and flip salubrious > > > > >> > > > > >> whimpering foraged aura container dangling over a set slowly better > > > > >> > > > > >> delfin forging better yet 'e' over hailwater architecture > > > > >> > > of that stature dwarfs pink elephants and alphabet soup > > > sloppy fingers meet fade boast apart from sally forth or forward in key is it two keys cleft if you all are anything like the syntagm inverted then ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 4 Feb 1996 01:45:38 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry Gould Subject: challenges People shouldn't be dissuaded from reading the Blasing bk on the basis of the 4 poets she covers. Some people seem to have some kind of ESP: simply list some names and they will get the gist of the book right away and come up with a much longer list of writers who should have been included. I've probably misread & misrepresented the thing anyway. Her 4 poets are not a "canon"; her bk is not a "magisterial" historical survey; she has a very specific argument to make, and it's not a simple anti-langpo diatribe, she critiques "New Formalism" on the same lines. Suffer with me while I try to restate what I see as this argument very briefly: Pound, and Olson after him in particular, have had a very strong influence on post-WWII American poetry; it's an approach to making poetry which carries certain assumptions about art which havebecome rote - blinders - for succeeding generations of poets. Some poets, on the other hand, resist, qualify, or ironize these assumptions, and these poets (using 4 as examples, not exemplars or icons) can properly be called postmoderns. What are these assumptions? That technical innovation is inherently politically progressive/correct (i.e. free verse is liberating - an early example); that there are techniques which blow away the conventional mists of rhetoric & reveal truth (i.e. the Chinese ideogram, or Olson's "process"). Blasing's postmodernists resist the simple identification of style & politics, technique and artistic progress; and she cites specific statements made by each of them, in essays or interviews, which support the idea that there was some conscious differentiation going on (citing them along with interpreting specific poems). Ron Silliman, if I understood his response to this correctly, acknowledged that the Language poets, among others, do carry on the Pound/Olson "modernizing project" to some degree; and then he made a specifically political analysis of this, linking Blasing's kind of argument (divide and conquer?) with reactionary attacks in the 50s (C. Greenberg). This I suppose implies Blasing is one of the "bad guys"; but she's writing literary history: in which context, it's ultimately irrelevant whether Poundian modernism's aesthetic choices are good are bad. The question is, were there some poets who went in a different direction, and questioned these assumptions? If so, shouldn't THEY be called the POSTmoderns, and not those "avant-garders" who carry on MODernism? It's easy to make fun of these kinds of "academic" issues; it's easy also for poets to rail against the power of critics, and raise the banners of the poor uncanonized multitudes out there. But maybe more talented poets might get read and heard if they themselves didn't rehash and repeat the hackneyed & half-baked critical jargons that pass for "movements", "techniques", etc. - Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 3 Feb 1996 23:59:01 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Re: beatless In-Reply-To: <199512150505.AAA09896@listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu> could whoever posted the address of the BEAT list post it again, please -- I need to post my pleas for a Ray Bremser address there-- ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 4 Feb 1996 00:45:49 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steve Carll Subject: Re: Moving Lips:The internalisation of print media Peter will get two of these, since my first reply accidentally went to him and not the list: At 05:55 PM 2/3/96 -0500, you wrote: >How would one read bpNichol's one word poem: > > > > st*r > > > >for the ears? > > >-Peter Jaeger Don't you hear *anything* in your head when you look at it on the page, Peter? The consonant cluster "st" evokes a sound, doesn't it? Likewise with the "r". The fact that there's an asterisk rather than the expected vowel doesn't change the fact that it's pronounceable (ancient Hebrew has no vowels either), although it does problematize it. There may not be an exact equivalent in sound to what Nichol's trying to get at on the page, but I can think of at least 6 ways of reading this aloud off the top of my head, and were I to perform this poem I might do all 6 of them in sequence to try to compensate for the lack of a single sonic equivalent. Whether I'd succeed in that gets back to the matters of taste I was talking about, but it doesn't change my mind re: locking language up into any single sense-organ. I don't think it happens that way. Steve ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 4 Feb 1996 00:45:52 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steve Carll Subject: Re: challenges At 01:45 AM 2/4/96 EST, Henry Gould wrote (I've abridged): >...Pound, and Olson after him in >particular, have had a very strong influence on post-WWII American poetry; >it's an approach to making poetry which carries certain assumptions about >art which have become rote - blinders - for succeeding generations of poets... >What are these assumptions? That technical >innovation is inherently politically progressive/correct (i.e. free verse >is liberating - an early example); that there are techniques which >blow away the conventional mists of rhetoric & reveal truth (i.e. >the Chinese ideogram, or Olson's "process")... >Blasing's postmodernists resist the simple identification of style & >politics, technique and artistic progress... > The question is, >were there some poets who went in a different direction, and questioned >these assumptions? If so, shouldn't THEY be called the POSTmoderns, >and not those "avant-garders" who carry on MODernism? If one wanted to reduce all of modernism to these two assumptions, and claim that the "properly postmodern" would only need to question them, sure. However, I find this reduction highly suspect. I think there's more to modernism than this, and I think there's more to postmodernism than simply resisting the assumptions of modernism described here. Sorry, but I'm not buying. Steve ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 4 Feb 1996 08:37:45 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Loss Glazier Subject: Re: Moving Lips: str=Staffordshire bull terrier At 12:45 AM 2/4/96 -0800, you wrote: >>How would one read bpNichol's one word poem: >> st*r >>for the ears? >>Peter Jaeger > >Don't you hear *anything* in your head when you look at it on the page, >Peter? The consonant cluster "st" evokes a sound, doesn't it? Likewise >with the "r". The fact that there's an asterisk rather than the expected >vowel doesn't change the fact that it's pronounceable (ancient Hebrew has >Steve Interestingly I hear many more than six possibilities. I can help but "see" sometimes with computer glasses (I am after all reading this on a screen) which means that st?r would be that "query" word which had six possibilities - single character internal truncation, as they say (and is prob. closer to the original thought) - BUT st*r (the * allowing for any number of intervening characters) has multitudes, including: ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------- St. Clair St. Francis Medical Center St. John Fisher St. Johns River St. Xavier stabber stabilizer stabilizer bar stabler stacker stadholder stadtholder staffer Staffordshire bull terrier Staffordshire terrier stage manager stage whisper stager stagger staggerer stagier stainer stair stakeholder staler stalker stammer stammerer stampeder stamper stancher stand for stand over stand up for standard error standard-bearer stander standing order standoff insulator standpatter Stanley E. Kramer stapler star Star Chamber star-chamber Star-Spangled Banner starchier starer starfish flower starflower stargazer starker Starr starrier start a fire under starter State Fair statehooder statelier stater states' righter stationer stationmaster stator Staudinger stauncher Stavanger staying power steadier steal (someone's) thunder stealer stealthier steam beer steam boiler steamer steamfitter steamier steamroller steel drummer steel guitar steelier steelworker steeper steeplechaser steer steerer steering gear stegosaur Steinberger Steiner stelar stellar Steller's eider stellular stem-winder stenciler stenographer stentor stepbrother stepdaughter stepfather Stephanus Johannes Paulus Kruger Stephen Collins Foster Stephen Decatur Stephen Gardiner Stephen Harold Spender Stephen Van Rensselaer stepladder stepmother stepper stepsister stereoisomer stereotyper sterilizer sterling silver stern chaser stern-wheeler sterner sternoclavicular sternutator stertor Stettheimer Stevens-Henager Stewart River stick up for stickballer sticker stickhandler stickier sticking plaster stickler stiffener stiffer stifler Stigler stigmatizer still water still-hunter still-water stiller stillier Stillwater stimulater stimulator stinger stingier stinging hair stinker stinter stippler stipular stipulator stir stirrer stirrup leather stitcher stiver stock car stockbreeder stockbroker stocker stockholder stockier stockjobber stockowner stockpiler stodgier Stoker stoker stolider stomacher stomper stonecutter stoner stoneroller stonewaller stoneworker stonier stooper stop order stoper stopover stopper storekeeper storeowner storer storm cellar storm center storm door storm trooper stormier storyteller storywriter Stour stouter stover STR straddler strafer straggler stragglier straight from the shoulder straight poker straight razor straight shooter straight-from-the-shoulder straightener straighter strainer strainometer Strait of Dover stranger strangler straphanger strapper stratificational grammar strawflower Strayer strayer streaker streakier streamer street fighter street theater streetcar streetwalker strengthener stressor stretch receptor stretch runner stretcher stretcher-bearer stretchier stricter strider stridor strikebreaker strikeover striker stringer stringier strip miner strip poker striped gopher striper stripier stripper stripteaser striver strobilar stroker stroller stronger stroppier struggler strummer strutter stubbier stubborner stud poker Studebaker student teacher stuffer stuffier stultifier stumbler stumper stunner stupefier stupider stupor sturdier stutter stutterer stylar styler stylizer Styr ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------- Whew ... Loss ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 4 Feb 1996 09:29:01 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joe Amato Subject: Re: challenges henry, i'm all for reading blasing's book as a contribution to intellectual history, academic or otherwise... but what i want to know is whether and how she contextualizes her own reading practices?... it's not fair for you to have to be put on the defensive about this, i know... but is it possible that you could say a few words about blasing's critical-methodological approach to the work of (what is by any account, or should be) a somewhat different if overlapping discourse community?... i'm looking for her sense of her own intellectual-institutional (again) moorings... thanx for your response(s), in any case... best, joe ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 4 Feb 1996 09:29:07 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joe Amato Subject: Re: Pomo well yes, language is oppressive... but this is no reason not to try to make it less so... i didn't take mark's request as a way of attempting to legislate language, anyway... words hurt, misrepresent, etc... when you find that a term you're using derogates a particular group, why not try to alter your usage?... *voluntarily*, i mean... e.g.: i have a problem these days with my student-writers writing "man did this" and "mankind did that"... why not try to use human, humankind, etc?... what's the harm in contributing to a linguistic-social environment in which more feel welcome, comfortable?... why *not* be attuned to the fact that a certain group may find "pomo" disturbing?... as wordsmiths we're s'posed to be good at understanding precisely the extent to which denotations and connotations can cause harm... now if one wishes to go on using "pomo" with the knowledge that doing so might exact a cultural price for some, i s'pose this comes down to how serious one views that cultural price... mebbe it would help if we heard more from a pomo native?... mebbe if a member of that nation/people were a subscriber here and posted in saying she felt a bit hurt by this usage, mebbe then some of us would consider altering same?... if what i'm saying strikes any of you as controversial, perhaps we need less sheer resistance here and more along the lines of that steady plying of (t)issue that we're collectively pretty good at... joe ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 4 Feb 1996 11:17:26 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: Re: Pomo ambiguities revealed In-Reply-To: <199602041529.JAA12282@charlie.acc.iit.edu> meaning prefer Auden to Pound meaning to use a word with two meanings one must be embarrassed ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 4 Feb 1996 16:18:26 GMT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom Beard Subject: st*r-struck Loss: >Interestingly I hear many more than six possibilities. I can help but "see" >sometimes with computer glasses (I am after all reading this on a screen) >which means that st?r would be that "query" word which had six possibilities >- single character internal truncation, as they say (and is prob. closer to >the original thought) - BUT st*r (the * allowing for any number of >intervening characters) has multitudes, including: >St. Clair . . . >Styr Does this mean that "*" would stand for the entire language (& beyond), thus comprising the most economically compressed poem possible? Wow. This also brings to mind Bill Manhire's "Asterisk Machine", and the fact that many poems use an asterisk to denote breaks between stanzas/sections. Of course, its use for footnotes makes it an all-purpose signifier, a hypertext link, click here*. Not to mention the way in which it can bowdlerize words like "f*ck". I once wrote a found poem that consisted of lines about rain, including Eliot's "a damp gust bringing rain" & Larkin's "an arror-shower somewhere becoming rain" (I was interested in the way that the use of words like "rain" as signifiers for emotional states could be constructed, not just socially, but by very personal experiences). I used an asterisk between the two sections of the poem, and soon after writing it I remembered a line from Wellington poet Geoff Cochrane: "asterisks of rain are falling on the many old tin roofs" (approximate quote). To me this seemed to complete the poem, but of course no-one got the allusion. This is also an example of the computer output modifying a poem. On my terminal, the asterisk is five-pointed: in other fonts, it has six points. Would bpNichol's "st*r" be read differently in each case? With a five-pointer perhaps echoing a pentacle, and the six-pointer the Star of David? Of course, a seven-pointer would have to be Australian. T*m Be*rd ______________________________________________________________________________ I/am a background/process, shrunk to an icon. | Tom Beard I am/a dark place. | beard@met.co.nz I am less/than the sum of my parts... | Auckland, New Zealand I am necessary/but not sufficient, | http://www.met.co.nz/ and I shall teach the stars to fall | nwfc/beard/www/hallway.html ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 4 Feb 1996 12:04:07 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jorge Guitart Subject: Re: Marchand Du Sel & Rose Selavy Comments: To: Thomas Bell Comments: cc: MDamon9999@aol.com, cris@slang.demon.co.uk, lsr3h@darwin.clas.virginia.edu, jdavis@panix.com, welford@hawaii.edu In-Reply-To: > > To introduce a sense of internal shelling > I made a Donner pass but we lost our momentum > > to trim xray architecture shirts slowly over the wellspring dovetailed > > > > >> > > > > >> for angels from aching or is it mapped > > > > >> > > > > >> participle laredo allows hoodlum rainbow and flip salubrious > > > > >> > > > > >> whimpering foraged aura container dangling over a set slowly better > > > > >> > > > > >> delfin forging better yet 'e' over hailwater architecture > > > > >> > > of that stature dwarfs pink elephants and alphabet soup > > crackers and coconuts, horsefeather moustachio > > > ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 4 Feb 1996 12:26:11 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Robert Kelly Subject: Re: Moving Lips: str=Staffordshire bull terrier In-Reply-To: <199602041338.IAA16085@mailhub.acsu.buffalo.edu> Isn't it agreeable that we don't have to _hear_ everything? "...the eyes' delight" might sometimes be a thrill in silence. But thanks, Loss, for all those pronuciations of the word star. All the rays of it. Robert ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 4 Feb 1996 12:02:43 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry Gould Subject: challenges: re: Joe's post(long) Joe, I'm not sure I can answer your question - are you looking for where Blasing fits in on the poetry map (like in the chart that was in the NY Times magazine section a few months ago)? She's not so easily placeable up/down right/left. The book cites a full array of poets, critics & culture theorists. You're trying to get at her intellectual genealogy? This is her second book, her first was a medieval-like typology of 19th-20th cent. american poetry via an analysis of each poet's dominant rhetorical strategy ("American Poetry: the Rhetoric of its Forms", Yale UP, 1987). I found it fascinating & incredibly, boldly reductive. But here's a long quote from pp. 18-19 of the new book, which I think shows the essence of her critical approach: "I would like to reapproach the political issue via De Man's idea of the "aporia" between the materiality of language and its meaning. De Man traces an irreducible divide between grammar and meaning, betyween tropes as su ch and their meanings, between words or sentences and the statements they make, between letter and the words they spell, down to the distinction between a let ter as material, blank mark and the letter as sign, a mark recognizable as a fu nction in a sign system. This gap in language - this permanent "errancy of lan guage which never reaches the mark" - what Walter Benjamin calls history," De M an writes. History in this sense may be understood as the political linkage be tween structure and meaning, between an "inhuman"materiality of events and the "human" history of "meaningful" events. Thus, in de Man's words, "the nonmessi anic, nonsacred, that is the POLITICAL aspect of history is the result of the P OETICAL structure of language." [caps for italics] "If we appropriate this scheme for poetry, the divide between form and cont ent becomes the condition for the functioning of poetic language. The prevaili ng dogma that the specialness of poetic language lies in the inseparability of its form and content then appears to be a historically specific ideology, a particular convention of getting from the conventionality of the signifier to intentional meanings. This is the generic convention of Romantic and modern o rganicist models of peotic language, and it has shaped readings of all kinds of poetry, at the expense of repressing historical differences. "Only by insisting on the separateness of form and content can we make hist orical distinctions between varieties of poetry. That is, if we locate the gap between form and meaning inside poetic structure, we can address the rhetorica l - that is political and historical - bridgings of this aporia. Rhetoric, the motivated troping of the literal material into the figurative superstructure, leaves this negotiation between form and meaning open to viewe - to FURTHER neg otiation. Any scheme that would repress this intentional negotiation and argue the inseparability of a poem,'s material base and its meaningful superstructur e would be a species of aestheitc ideology. "Rhetoric as a political, persuasive figuration of the material code into m eaning bears witness that meanings are not inherent int he material. If poetry has a generic and general political function, it may be to show us HOW it cons tructs itsel;f as a discourse that in turn constructs a meaningful world, natur e, and self. Thus poetry always has a sociopolitical valence, because it foreg rounds the distance between its structure - the generic, linguistic, and repres entational codes that govern its substitutions - and its meaning. Poetry is no more reducible to any given set of formal practices than to meanings; it names the distance between the two. It is the text of the historically and metaphys ically unstable rhetoric that persuades the trope, letter, or form to mean. An y naturalization of the code as inherently meaningful fits the material fact in to an already meaningful whole of some purposive, progressive history. "From this perspective, any claims for the inherent value of any given form must be veiwed with suspicion. ...If both open and closed forms are netural co nventions, poetry's underlining its constructedness - the implicit, generic persuasions of its forms and conventions, including the criteria that distingui sh poetiuc discourse from others at a given instance and mark it AS a separate discourse - may well constitute its usefulness. That is, the more nonutilitari an and special poetic language sounds, the more it represents itself as convent ion-bound and emphasizes its own figuration, the more it fulfills its unique an d generic, inherently critical function." End of quote. One can see clearly how distanced this is from Pound's ideogram claims, Olsons form = content manifestos, the New Formalists organic claims for the pentameter, etc. To me it reads very Dantesque & medieval: the convention ality of letters is the source of rhetorical freedom & the visionary, political formulations of poetic allegory. Ironically considering Blasing's diatribe aga inst language poetry, it reads almost as a language poetry manifesto, shorn of its "historically specific" political provocations (& muddles). This is why I in part I find this rather exciting & "21st century" - it offers a critical gro und for a kind of fusion or rapprochment between some very archaic & ancient co ncepts of form, genre, & motivation in poetry, with some very current, and on t he surface very different-sounding, poets. - Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 4 Feb 1996 13:02:13 CST6CDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Hank Lazer Organization: The University of Alabama Subject: Re: Larry Eigner Poet Larry Eigner died last night of pneumonia and other complications. I will post additional obit/bio information in the next couple of days. Here, a few basics: born 1927, got cerebral palsy at birth, non-ambulatory, lived in Massachusetts until 1978, then Berkeley. First book published by Robert Creeley in 1953, over the past 35 years, Larry authored more than 40 books--some recent ones: _Areas/Lights/Heights: Writings 1954-1989_ (Roof, 1989); _Windows Walls Yards Ways_ (Black Sparrow, 1994). Work appeared in _Origin_, _The Black Mountain Review_, _L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E_, and in Donald Allen's _The New American Poetry_. Important to many poets, among them Denise Levertov and Robert Duncan, and a good many on this Poetics List.... from _Selected Poems_ (1971): the knowledge of death, and now knowledge of the stars there is one end and the endless Room at the center passage / in no time a rail thickets hills grass from _Windows Walls Yard Ways_ (1994), last poem in the book: September 16 92 so years been passing the road quiet still often enough night and then day light up in the sky behind a towering tree shadowed dense ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 4 Feb 1996 13:07:39 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joe Amato Subject: Re: challenges: re: Joe's post(long) thanx much henry, very helpful in understanding blasing's orientation... i can't say (again, from the excerpt) that blasing's approach at all appeals to me... in fact it seems to me to seriously distort things by suggesting that poetic discourse finds its value in the isolation of form from content, in relying on a structural gap between meaning-as-convention/trope and meaning-as-material given... when in fact i'd argue that poetry is valuable precisely b/c it resists/explores this sort of separation---both form and content of form *matter*, however much one may collapse into the other in context... true, the assumption that materiality is ipso facto a way of transcending 'mere' rhetoric might be a problem... but clearly for olson, for example, and whatever misgivings i may have regarding his larger poetic project, this 'fact' is not assumed---he is continually invested in showing how and why materiality is a human issue... which for him opens to the question of language practices that do not posit a passive, disengaged mind... anyway, that form and signification are intimately bound up with each other (and in clearly ideological ways) seems *not*, in fact, to have caught on in, say, most late 20th. century scientific-technical discourse (not explicitly, anyway)... which would imply that privileging a poetry that operates on such a (presumed) gap may in fact unwittingly lend political legitimacy to more restrictive and orthodox military-industrial-corporate rhetorics (!---i'm not joking)... that is, to argue that language practices are more properly/constructively political the more they revel in their own rhetorical-content limitations or biases (and the more they play down their material manifestations) may result, oddly enough, in a poetic platform that plays to the dominant discourses, b/c in these latter attention is generally paid only to surface rhetoric, convention, language as a functional-representational medium, "applied" ex post facto to knowledge production---language practice, that is, as inherently disengaged from political practice not b/c of its rhetorical reflexiveness but b/c of its ideological neutrality... i mean, reflexiveness to the nth. degree can result in a perceived absence of political value, however much one regards this as a useful "politics"... the best way i know to highlight the inadequacy of such reductive 'logic' (and btw, i do so every semester i teach 'tech. writing') is to stress the material forms of signification, to ask repeatedly why and how form itself has been rendered neutral in this culture through the continued proliferation of forms upon forms upon forms... to see such container metaphors as metaphors, to make their transparency apparent, is pretty easy once one takes a look at various 20th. century poetries... from another pov, to believe that political liberation is attainable through sheer alteration of form is equally wrong-headed ... in either case i'd want to ask whose interests are being served?... it's not a far cry from a politics predicated on rhetorical innovation alone to a politics predicated on a neutral rhetoric to a politics predicated on a formal-material given... i mean to say that, for me, a desirable politics in fact requires something more than any of these orientations... but it seems to me that what's missing are some material links, and i don't just mean language... i mean thinking through the materiality of bodies, etc... anyway, i'll chew this over some more... i'd love to hear what others think about all this... joe ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 4 Feb 1996 16:04:31 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rod Smith Subject: Re: challenges Henry Gould, Apologies if my comments were overly abrasive however my comments on the Blasing book were not based on ESP-- I have read a fair amount of the book. I am not contesting her thesis regarding form, though that might be done, I think for the large part she is correct that form is not inherently political, or inherently anything else. Mark Wallace in _Witz_ articulates a similar position in his call for "a free multiplicity of form." & the Rasula book is excellent re the recent history of this debate. My concern is most strongly signified by the 4 poets the book examines, & echoes Joe A. -- "whose interests are being served?..." The inclusion of a less pedigreed poet or two would mean something, instead we're given the rhetorical construction of a center. I don't think it's unreasonable to point to questions of canonicity & institutional power here. This also seems to me to relate to Charles B.'s distinction between "radical modernism" (most of Stein, Williams of _Imagiations_, Khlebnikov, etc.) and conservative modernism (Williams of "Red Wheelbarrow," Stevens, etc.). I.e. I'm not sure the rhetorical complexity Blasing argues for, and calls "postmodern," is to be found only in the post-WWII Ivy League. --Rod PS-- not sure CB used the term "conservative modernism," can't find the cite. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 4 Feb 1996 12:11:58 -1000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gabrielle Welford Subject: Re: Marchand Du Sel & Rose Selavy In-Reply-To: <960203151559_311502899@emout05.mail.aol.com> On Sat, 3 Feb 1996, Maria Damon wrote: > now guyzies, weren't we going to spare the POETICS crowd our actual composing > process, and only subject them to several highly selective finished products? > maria d > Ay Maria, ay tis true. A mistake of eyeing and fingering, tis all. Gab. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 4 Feb 1996 12:41:41 -1000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Susan Schultz Subject: Re: st*r-struck (fwd) ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Sun, 4 Feb 1996 11:35:52 -1000 From: William Craighowes To: Susan Schultz Subject: Re: st*r-struck (fwd) * c*n't b*l**v* th*t p**pl* w**ld sp*nd s* m*ch t*m* *n s*m*th*ng *s *npr*bl*m*t*c *s th*s. Y** c*n *lm*st *lw*ys t**s* **t th* m**n*ng *f * m*sk*d v*w*l s*nt*nc*--*nl*ss *f c**rs* s*m**n* *s d*l*b*r*t*ly try*ng t* m*ss y** *p. * * * * G*V* M* * V*W*L, V*NN*! * * * * B*t c*ns*n*nts--th*t w**ld b* f*r m*r* tr*cky. O* *a*'* *i*** *i*o*e*ia**e, a** **e **ui* O* **a* *o**i**e* **ee, **o*e *o**a* *a**e **ou*** *ea** i**o **e *o***, a** ou* *oe . . . *ny g*ss*s? ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 4 Feb 1996 15:32:17 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kevin Killian Subject: beatlist "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 4 Feb 1996 15:35:17 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ron Silliman Subject: Re: st*r-struck (fwd) Anyone read Harryette Mullen's S*perm**k*t ?? ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 4 Feb 1996 18:47:34 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Emily Lloyd Subject: Re: st*r-struck (fwd) ...reading all this st*r stuff & wondering what letters/words the *s on the US flag might be standing in for. Off to attempt a translation-- emily ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 4 Feb 1996 18:56:43 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steve Evans Subject: Greenberg/Cage/Eigner Dear Rod and, The names Greenberg tacks to the end of the paragraph I cited on the avant-garde are Henry Miller and John Crowe Ransom. CG writes: "[I]t is a fact that there has been a certain regiment- ation of the avant-garde, a standardization of its attitudes, which-- whether the attitude be Henry Miller's or John Crowe Ransom's-- threatens to impose a new academicism on us" (255). Giving that choice of examples some point might have been the fact that Ransom was also a contributor to the PARTISAN REVIEW forum (as were John Berryman, R.P. Blackmur, Robert Gorham Davis, Leslie Fiedler, Wallace Stevens, Lionel Trilling, and H. L. Mencken). Incidentally, James E. B. Breslin points out that when Wallace Stevens "characterized the age as one no longer conducive to poetic experimentation" in the same PR forum, Ransom "happily concurred" (FROM MODERN TO CONTEMPORARY [1984] 11)--just as, to blur threads a moment, I feel quite sure Mutlu Blasing would concur today. That Greenberg's piece as a whole is light on proper names, with their inevitable and cumbersome specificities, is probably a strategic decision. It is also the case that by the mid-40s, CG had shifted out of his earlier practice of writing almost as often about literature as about the visual arts. The first volume of the COLLECTED ESSAYS AND CRITICISM opens with a piece on Brecht; has a piece called "Renaissance of the Little Mag" (discussing ACCENT, DIOGENES, EXPERIMENTAL REVIEW, VICE VERSA, and VIEW); includes reviews of books by John Wheelwright, Marianne Moore, Jarrell, Blackmur, Spender, and others; shows CG panning Laughlin's 1941 NEW DIRECTIONS IN PROSE AND POETRY; has a "discussion" of "Mr. Eliot and Notions of Culture"; und so weiter. By contrast, the second volume swerves out of the museums and galleries only seldomly--he castigates the Bollingen Committee for the award to Pound, he calls Valery incapable of thinking, he writes appreciatively of recent books by Ernst Cassirer and Bernard Berenson, but the emphasis has definitely shifted paintward. Another paragraph from the "State of American Writing, 1948" piece grabbed my attention by seeming in such open contrast to Spicer's premise in 1949 OCCIDENT forum, with those plaintive questions "Why is nobody here? Who is listening to us" (rpt. in ONE NIGHT STAND 90-92). CG, obviously responding to a leading question about the status of poetry's audience, writes: "It would appear true that the poetry of the past has a diminish- ing audience; Spenser, Milton, Wordsworth do not see to be read by anywhere near as large a proportion of the cultivated public as they used to be. But the popularity of contemporary poetry increases steadily and increases phenomenally, and the successful poet still dominates the literary and academic scene, even if he is not read by as many people as the novelist is. It strikes me as risky to say that poetry has had 'an ever diminishing audience' in recent years" (256). I post all this despite Ron's more ranging and eloquent summary of Greenberg both in his recent posts and in the POETICS JOURNAL article on "Postmodernism"--from which I learned a lot about the aftermath of Greenberg's legacy in the 70s, as manifested in the struggles to define the editorial project of ARTFORUM at mid-decade-- only because I have been dipping into the COLLECTED ESSAYS AND CRITICISM for the first time and welcome some chance to discuss them. What I've liked best is reading Greenberg more or less simultaneously with the wonderful M U S I C A G E, which I just finished last night. There is a wonderful interference that comes of addressing oneself to Greenberg by way of Cage, and Cage by way of Greenberg, rather like what seeing the ROLYWHOLYOVER circus sweep into the museums must have been like (I missed it). A last note, in another mood. Just a few days ago, I finished Ernst Pawel's last work, a biography of Heine's last years in Paris (the years of the "mattress-grave") called THE POET DYING. Last night, I was devastated upon reading Joan Retallack's quiet note about Cage's death just days after her final interview with him. And now Hank Lazer tells us of Larry Eigner's being gone. When I open Eigner's SELECTED, it is to a broadside he published the year I was born (1965): the music, the rooms silence silence silence silence sound ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 5 Feb 1996 12:39:22 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Roberts Subject: Australian Writing On Line - new address Australian Writing On Line finally has its own address - awol@ozemail.com.au and its web site should be up and running shortly. I messages to the Poetics list will still be posted from my Sydney Uni address as I will continue to be subbed to the list at this address. regards Mark Roberts ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 4 Feb 1996 17:53:25 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steve Carll Subject: Re: Moving Lips: str=Staffordshire bull terrier GO LOSS GO!!! --steve, in wonder ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 4 Feb 1996 21:21:41 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Eryque Gleason Subject: Re: pomo-rama-lamma-ding-dong William Howe wrote: hear hear to ron to limit our vocabs in order to re-strict meaning to only certain pre-scribed notions about what or how words mean is silly and an long term effort to systematically erradicate the use of a word because it might be offensive or derogatory or oppressive would in the end leave us with very few words i admit that a word may be damaging culturally but there is no way to get around that language is opressive the way in which we use language is opressive the way in which language means is opressive so singling out pet peeves tolambast seems to me a mis-guided attempt at a linguistic re-education that is doomed to failure ---------- in general, i might agree with that statement. sometimes the push to use new, so-called "politically correct" terminology only leaves behind a bad taste. but in this specific case, how many friggin' people use the term "pomo" or even "postmodern" on a frequent basis? there's a difference between trying to change the thoughts of millions of people spread out over generations (i.e. telling people that they shouldn't use any of the various derogitory racial terms, which are not merely apolitical symbols, but representations of prejudiced thought), and it's quite another to tell (mostly) academics that an abrieviation they've chosen (which indicates little more than they really think olson coined a 'really long word') was already taken. I vote for pomdern eryque p.s. ten below here tonight, who can beat that? :) ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 4 Feb 1996 19:37:07 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Dan Raphael Dlugonski Subject: Re: Pomo a couple points -- as Xerox Co. found out in their alleged lawsuit (or is this just another lingual/urban myth?) words can't be owned once they are seeded in the populace. -- as silliman sez, words are multiple, and iw ould add plastic, as well as mutagenic. the PC movement, copyright laws, censorship et al work toward limiting the power of words. throughout history, shamans (& from them the various religiosi) have found power in naming. this power needs to remain at hand to all. -- i wish we could adopt a gender-neutral pronoun. maybe a 'movement' to foster this (i know,ther'd be massive proprietary arguments over what these pronoun should be. that doesnt matter much.). ive been unwilling to do it in my own work for lack of clarity (something im frequently over the border of anyway), further confusing a potential audience. this is one place those working in the educational institutions could help. in spreading this need for the gender neutral prnoun, coz so often a writer is making a statement that applies to many people but because the context makes it third person singular is stuck with gender choices ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 4 Feb 1996 19:59:05 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kevin Killian Subject: beatlist--more "BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" A couple of you have used the above in an attempt to join the beatlist. The above is the address to send a message to the list, and I posted it because Al Nielsen asked for it. To JOIN the list write to: listserv@cunyvm.cuny.edu Your message should read: sub BEAT-L your name Sorry for my telegraphic confusion. A stitch in time comes to mind. Dodie Bellamy ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 4 Feb 1996 21:41:35 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tenney Nathanson Subject: quote id eon >Date: Fri, 2 Feb 1996 09:12:36 -0800 >From: Ray Davis >Subject: Re: poetics of the quotidian > >It was a great and unanticipated relief for me to find Silliman's poetry >written on a bus about riding a bus. Hannah Weiner is the only "mystical" >poet I know of whose spirit voices tell her to sit up straight, stop being >such a loser, etc. there's a passage in Whitman's notebooks, somewhere, to the effect that: the second time the angels appeared in a vision to Swedenborg, they gave him the whole mystical sheebang the first time, though, he was at a dinner party, and all they said was: "don't eat so much. you'll get fat." ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 4 Feb 1996 21:41:54 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tenney Nathanson Subject: or >Date: Sat, 3 Feb 1996 14:58:00 -0600 >From: Joe Amato >Subject: Re: Pomo > >and i wasn't aware (as of my last post) of the "pomo" designation mark >nowak indicates... the term has been used shorthand in discussions of >postmodernism for some time now... i'm willing to revise my use of same, >sure, let's try to find a better term... how bout postmo?... > >joe or primo ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 5 Feb 1996 01:06:16 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Blair Seagram Subject: Post/Greenberg Re: Greenberg Leo Steinberg (Other Criteria) once said that Greenberg was provincial. If that is true, what we got was International Provincialism. Too much power with a too limited focus. Re: modernism For what its worth Cezanne, who has been called the founder of modernism is also labelled a post-impressionist. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 5 Feb 1996 00:29:01 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tenney Nathanson >If one wanted to reduce all of modernism to these two assumptions, and claim >that the "properly postmodern" would only need to question them, sure. >However, I find this reduction highly suspect. I think there's more to >modernism than this, and I think there's more to postmodernism than simply >resisting the assumptions of modernism described here. Sorry, but I'm not >buying. > >Steve "workers bravo" ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 5 Feb 1996 00:29:08 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tenney Nathanson Subject: trail Blasing >Date: Sun, 4 Feb 1996 12:02:43 EST >From: Henry Gould >Subject: challenges: re: Joe's post(long) > >Joe, I'm not sure I can answer your question - are you looking for where >Blasing fits in on the poetry map (like in the chart that was in the NY >Times magazine section a few months ago)? She's not so easily placeable >up/down right/left. The book cites a full array of poets, critics & >culture theorists. You're trying to get at her intellectual genealogy? >This is her second book, her first was a medieval-like typology of >19th-20th cent. american poetry via an analysis of each poet's >dominant rhetorical strategy ("American Poetry: the Rhetoric of its >Forms", Yale UP, 1987). I found it fascinating & incredibly, boldly >reductive. But here's a long quote from pp. 18-19 of the new book, which >I think shows the essence of her critical approach: > > "I would like to reapproach the political issue via De Man's idea of >the "aporia" between the materiality of language and its meaning. De Man >traces an irreducible divide between grammar and meaning, betyween tropes as su >ch and their meanings, between words or sentences and the statements they make, > between letter and the words they spell, down to the distinction between a let >ter as material, blank mark and the letter as sign, a mark recognizable as a fu >nction in a sign system. This gap in language - this permanent "errancy of lan >guage which never reaches the mark" - what Walter Benjamin calls history," De M >an writes. History in this sense may be understood as the political linkage be >tween structure and meaning, between an "inhuman"materiality of events and the >"human" history of "meaningful" events. Thus, in de Man's words, "the nonmessi >anic, nonsacred, that is the POLITICAL aspect of history is the result of the P >OETICAL structure of language." [caps for italics] > "If we appropriate this scheme for poetry, the divide between form and cont >ent becomes the condition for the functioning of poetic language. The prevaili >ng dogma that the specialness of poetic language lies in the inseparability of >its form and content then appears to be a historically specific ideology, >a particular convention of getting from the conventionality of the signifier to > intentional meanings. This is the generic convention of Romantic and modern o >rganicist models of peotic language, and it has shaped readings of all kinds of > poetry, at the expense of repressing historical differences. > "Only by insisting on the separateness of form and content can we make hist >orical distinctions between varieties of poetry. That is, if we locate the gap > between form and meaning inside poetic structure, we can address the rhetorica >l - that is political and historical - bridgings of this aporia. Rhetoric, the > motivated troping of the literal material into the figurative superstructure, >leaves this negotiation between form and meaning open to viewe - to FURTHER neg >otiation. Any scheme that would repress this intentional negotiation and argue > the inseparability of a poem,'s material base and its meaningful superstructur >e would be a species of aestheitc ideology. > "Rhetoric as a political, persuasive figuration of the material code into m >eaning bears witness that meanings are not inherent int he material. If poetry > has a generic and general political function, it may be to show us HOW it cons >tructs itsel;f as a discourse that in turn constructs a meaningful world, natur >e, and self. Thus poetry always has a sociopolitical valence, because it foreg >rounds the distance between its structure - the generic, linguistic, and repres >entational codes that govern its substitutions - and its meaning. Poetry is no > more reducible to any given set of formal practices than to meanings; it names > the distance between the two. It is the text of the historically and metaphys >ically unstable rhetoric that persuades the trope, letter, or form to mean. An >y naturalization of the code as inherently meaningful fits the material fact in >to an already meaningful whole of some purposive, progressive history. > "From this perspective, any claims for the inherent value of any given form >must be veiwed with suspicion. ...If both open and closed forms are netural co >nventions, poetry's underlining its constructedness - the implicit, generic >persuasions of its forms and conventions, including the criteria that distingui >sh poetiuc discourse from others at a given instance and mark it AS a separate >discourse - may well constitute its usefulness. That is, the more nonutilitari >an and special poetic language sounds, the more it represents itself as convent >ion-bound and emphasizes its own figuration, the more it fulfills its unique an >d generic, inherently critical function." > >End of quote. One can see clearly how distanced this is from Pound's ideogram >claims, Olsons form = content manifestos, the New Formalists organic claims for > the pentameter, etc. To me it reads very Dantesque & medieval: the convention >ality of letters is the source of rhetorical freedom & the visionary, political >formulations of poetic allegory. Ironically considering Blasing's diatribe aga >inst language poetry, it reads almost as a language poetry manifesto, shorn of >its "historically specific" political provocations (& muddles). This is why I >in part I find this rather exciting & "21st century" - it offers a critical gro >und for a kind of fusion or rapprochment between some very archaic & ancient co >ncepts of form, genre, & motivation in poetry, with some very current, and on t >he surface very different-sounding, poets. >- Henry Gould > >------------------------------ > sorry to quote at such length but (and) it's pretty late at night even in Tucson so I'll be less circumspect than I prolly should be BUT: this is pretty bizarre. De Man all over the place insists on sticking a giganto wedge between (say)(cf. that Dial-a-Critic special issue edited by Warminski) what Wordsworth said he was doing and what the errancy & etc of the language shows him to have done. And versus Derrida, say, he sure as hell isn't all that interested in the former, and hardly (unlike Derrida) even in the tension between the former and the latter: Wordsworth gets read in terms of what the rhetoric (un)DOES and not at all in terms of the hand in the britches pocket that so bugged Keats. So that (I haven't read the book either & I'm a academic AND it's my field sorry sorry but) at least as summarized, it's way bizarre for Blasing to claim to be coming out of de Man when she asserts that Pound's "belief" (?) in the Chinese written character exhibits a faith and fixity unlike what de Man teaches us to value. If de Man and his ephebes can so successfully recycle the same cento of Wordsworth passages (pieties) to exhibit the necessary instabilty of x y and z (and they DO do it powerfully) it wouldn't be hard at all to play at being a de Manian showing such instability (in spades squared) for the Cantos (cf. some of Marjorie's "middle period" [?] work). which is basically to second Steve Carl's recent post: at least as paraphrased, the argument re the "moderns" is both molto predictable and a gigantesque straw-person construction (cf. thirdbaseperson) that hides virtually all of what's exciting about reading, say, Ole Ez (folding his blankets). I'd assume that (forgetting Whitman for the moment) Ez is MISTER logo-poeia in a way that enabled big chunks of not only Charles and Ron but gasp "even" Ashbery (though Eliot plays perhaps a bigger role in JA's fugitive sense of idiom). (btw "materiality" and "meaning" seems like an odd flattening out of the more familiar de Manian performative/constative song and dance) e poi basta. (oh boy pasta) (poi s'ascose etc) Tenney ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 5 Feb 1996 04:00:12 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ken Edwards <100344.2546@COMPUSERVE.COM> Subject: Out of Everywhere A number of readings will take place during February and March 1996 to celebrate the publication of _Out of Everywhere: linguistically innovative poetry by women in North America & the UK_, edited by Maggie O'Sullivan. Monday 12 February Launch reading with: Denise Riley, Caroline Bergvall, Grace Lake, Maggie O'Sullivan, Carlyle Reedy, Geraldine Monk, Wendy Mulford, Kathleen Fraser, Fiona Templeton, Paula Claire. At Poets & Writers, East West Gallery, 8 Blenheim Crescent (off Portobello Road), London W11. Ladbroke Grove/Notting Hill Gate tube. Starts 8pm. Admission: L4/L2.50 concs. (includes glass of wine). Tuesday 13 February Maggie O'Sullivan and Geraldine Monk will read at SubVoicive. Upstairs at The Three Cups, Sandland Street, London WC1. Holborn tube. Starts 8pm. Admission: L4/L2.50 concs. Friday 1 March Basil Bunting birthday readings. Nicole Brossard will be reading with Daphne Marlatt (Northern Arts sponsored reading). Followed by a celebration of the anthology with Maggie O'Sullivan, Geraldine Monk. At the Music School, Palace Green, Durham, under the auspices of the Basil Bunting Centre. Starts 6pm. Admission: L5 (includes refreshment). In addition... On Wednesday 28 February Nicole Brossard will be reading at The Voice Box, Royal Festival Hall, South Bank Centre, London SE1. A celebration reading at Waterstone's, Islington, will take place some time in March. For further information about these readings phone Ken Edwards at Reality Street Editions on 0171 639 7297. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 5 Feb 1996 03:36:26 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ron Silliman Subject: Larry Eigner When the University Art Museum celebrated Larry Eigner's work by posting "Again Dawn" in humongous letters on the outside of the museum and held the big reading with and for Larry, Kit Robinson and I did a session with an earnest interviewer on the university radio station. The interviewer wanted to make of the occasion an uplifting "my left foot" kind of tale, amazed that someone so afflicted with cerebral palsey could write poetry at all. But that of course was NOT the story. The story might have been this: that one of the great poets of the 20th century -- no further qualification needed -- happened to have had cerebral palsey. One value of that exhibition at UCB was that those of us who were there had the opportunity to tell Larry just how much he meant to us all. Like so many other readers, I had fallen entirely in love with Larry's poetry long before I had any understanding of how challenged he was by his own body. Even though David Gitin and others had tried to convey this to me years before and I had all the evidence of his letters beginning around 1969, back when I first wrote for some work for Tottel's, when Larry first moved to Berkeley in 1978 my immediate instinct was to call him on the phone! Over the years, as Larry's speech improved markedly by his exposure to so many different people in Berkeley (very different I gather from the isolation within his parents house in Swampscott for 51 years), and as I also learned to listen, I could and did have real conversations over the phone with him. And of course in person. It was great good luck that Larry's brother had settled in Berkeley. Sun & Moon has a new book of Larry's forthcoming and there no doubt must be hundreds, perhaps thousands, of poems yet to be collected. Hopefully somebody (UC Press comes to mind as the logical place) will put together a collected, edited by Grenier. In addition to Eigner's own 40+ small press books, I would call people's attention to "Missing 'X'" by Barrett Watten (in _Total Syntax_) as a superb discussion of the dynamics of Larry's work. Ron ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 5 Feb 1996 07:53:51 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry Gould Subject: challenges re: Amato, Smith, Nathanson Tenney - I wrote in my first post on the Blasing book that this kind of heavy duty critical summation of periods & styles is a blunt instrument generically unfair about individual poets. But how can you say, without looking at the book, that it leaves out everything interesting about poetry, Pound & others'? I mean, on one level that's criticism's eternal problem, & on that level I agree with you. But on what I see as Blasing's pivotal point - that a powerful stream of 20th century avant-garde American poetry privileges ONE approach to rhetoric (organicism: form = content), and that a lot of criticism has followed their lead & missed something fundamental - on this point I find her pretty persuasive. Joe - what you write about form & content implicating each other is exactly what Blasing gets into (& didn't come through in that long quote). Particularly in her chapter on Ashbery she writes about the "containment" or commodification or mystification of politics and "extra-textual" reality. & I agree with both you & Rod Smith about the political dangers of a kind of Olympian rhetorical nest for poetry. What Blasing emphasizes is that poetry has a political role, a central role in culture, because in it rhetoric "shows its hand", unveils its roots & mystifications. Poetry that denies its link to larger cultural discourses, that denies being tainted with rhetoric and political persuasion, is just one more path to the ivory tower. Rod, I agree with you that it would be more convincing if these critics covered "uncanonical" renegade poets. It's a cliche to say that such critics are rare. You have to be pickled before dissection. - Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 5 Feb 1996 08:27:44 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Emily Lloyd Subject: Re: neut gender Dan wrote: > -- i wish we could adopt a gender-neutral pronoun. maybe a >'movement' to foster this (i know,ther'd be massive proprietary arguments >over what these pronoun should be. that doesnt matter much.). ive been >unwilling to do it in my own work for lack of clarity (something im >frequently over the border of anyway), further confusing a potential audience. > this is one place those working in the educational institutions >could help. in spreading this need for the gender neutral prnoun, coz so >often a writer is making a statement that applies to many people but because >the context makes it third person singular is stuck with gender choices > There *is* a movement to foster gender-neutral pronouns, for the reasons you cite as well as others. Transgender activists and artists are using "ze" in place of she, he, or s/he and "hir" instead of his or hers. Forthcoming from High Risk is a novel by lesbian transsexual performance artist Kate Bornstein that makes use of these terms, and they've also appeared in a number of queer zines/newspapers. The new words appeal to me not only in that one might use them when referring to "many people in the third person singular," but when referring to one person whose gender is ambiguous/flexible/intentionally indeterminate/etc. The problem? "Ze" looks weird. On the other hand, so did/does "Ms." emily ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 5 Feb 1996 08:35:16 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Boughn Subject: Re: trail Blasing In-Reply-To: <2.2.16.19960205002920.4487200e@mail.azstarnet.com> from "Tenney Nathanson" at Feb 5, 96 00:29:08 am > which is basically to second Steve Carl's recent post: at least as > paraphrased, the argument re the "moderns" is both molto predictable and a > gigantesque straw-person construction (cf. thirdbaseperson) that hides > virtually all of what's exciting about reading, say, Ole Ez (folding his > blankets). I'd assume that (forgetting Whitman for the moment) Ez is MISTER > logo-poeia in a way that enabled big chunks of not only Charles and Ron but > gasp "even" Ashbery (though Eliot plays perhaps a bigger role in JA's > fugitive sense of idiom). > > (btw "materiality" and "meaning" seems like an odd flattening out of the > more familiar de Manian performative/constative song and dance) > e poi basta. > (oh boy pasta) > > (poi s'ascose etc) > > Tenney Perhaps I'm being naive, but isn't EP's famous translation of the Chinese character for "sincerity" (which also seems to found his poetics) based on an acknowledgement of precisely that "gap" involved in standing beside something, and so having to acknowledge your (yikes!) freedom (quaint word, I know, but I can't do better) in relation to it? Mike ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 5 Feb 1996 09:06:39 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: Pomo i agree w/ joe. mark's suggestion was not censorship but a reminder that there are hidden histories in words and that we might want to be mindful of histories erased (unwittingly) through homonyms one doesn't even realize are homonyms, because of history's ravages, from which many of us have benefitted, but the Pomo Indians have decidedly not. maria d ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 5 Feb 1996 10:14:32 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: gender stars what about the spivak pronouns ei em eir? a third person singular of non-determined gender? My source for this is Steve Shaviro's Doom Patrols, a solid novel/exegesis of My Bloody Valentine, located somwhere on the web. And as for stars, anybody read "Y**r D**k" by Ron Padgett, in _Great Balls of Fire_? ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 5 Feb 1996 10:34:20 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Wallace Subject: form and politics As regards the recent comments about the relation between form and politics and Blasing's book, I think the problem there might usefully be thought of in two ways: the difference between what's inherent in form per se, and the way that poetic form has been politicized in this century. To deny that there's a political element to form, as Blasing does, and then to try to reinscribe the major traditional formalists of this century is a pretty nasty trick, and shows how thoroughly she's NOT interested in opening up formal possibilities--if she really believed in attempting to undermine some poetic dichotomies that do need examining--"radical" vs. "conservative," "experimental" vs. "traditional"--she would not end up by speaking mainly about the writers most vaunted by a conservative literary establishment. Her literary politics are conservative, plain and simple, and in that context, her argument that "form is not political" is simply part of what that conservative literary establishment has been saying for awhile--"we're not conservative or political, simply better." And that's utter bullshit. I appreciate Rod's mention of my essay coming out in Witz (it hasn't actually appeared yet, but Rod's already seen it), and I think he's right also to point people in the direction of Rasula's book, which really manages to contextualize the issue of poetic form and politics much more accurately than is usually the case even among "avant garde" writers. But my sense that a multiplicity of formal possibilities might also (and probably do by definition) include reconfigurations of possibilities sometimes disavowed by avant garde writers (lyric, narrativity) is by no means an attempt to say that poetic form does not have political implications. Nor is it an attempt to "return" to a more conservative poetics, as some people have tried to tell me. Form has all sorts of political implications in an environment in which formal choices now come to seem almost by definition to put one in a political camp--you write rhymed verse and you're a "conservative," you use parataxis and you're a "radical." Far from attempting to deny that distinction, I think it needs to be pushed further so that it can collapse. Can formal "experimentation" also include distortions of sonnet, of rhyme--I think a number of writers are proving that it can. Can parataxis become a codified way of indicating to others that you are practicing the proper avant garde traditions? I think that's also true. IN such a situation, "radical" and "conservative" stances begin to get more mixed up.But of course those questions themselves could also be turned around in countless directions. The question of opening up possibilities of form implies, I think, that 'avant garde' writers need to resist too settled distinctions about form, because such settling could have the result in turning avant garde writers merely into defenders of their own set of poetic forms, rather than leading them to seek new possibilities for formal "mutation." Blasing wants to say 'form is not political' so that everybody will go back again to reading Robert Lowell (or whoever) at the expense of all sorts of other writers. Now Lowell may be more interesting than avant garde writers sometimes give him credit for, but he's by no means so interesting that he should be read at the expense of many far more interesting poets of this century (and everybody out there knows who they are...). To say that "radical" vs. "conservative" are rather weak metaphors for some of the complexity of poetic forms (which they are) is not the same as denying that there is a politically and aesthetically conservative literary establishment that wants to deny people access to inventive modes of writing. Blasing's book is a disinformation campaign masquerading as a real engagment with questions of poetic form. mark wallace ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 5 Feb 1996 11:12:12 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Re: trail Blasing Dear tenney-- I like your pointing out of a methodological contradiction in Blasing's rather selective appropriation of De Man (Pound vs. Wordsworth). What always bugged me about De Man though was that he REDUCES even what Wordsworth SAYS he's doing so he can claim all this "unintentional excess"--and yes of course it's unintentional. But more like Kant's purposeful purposelessness. (i.e. as Shelley says "poets are...the words they understand not"). Also, I'm glad you qualified POUND as MISTER LOGOPEIA--- For Marisa Januzzi (and others?) suggest that LOY was MS. (sorry emily) LOGOPEIA---and pound may have even stole it. chris s. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 5 Feb 1996 11:23:25 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: monday morning origin myths Simon S weren't you in New York (or were you in DC or were you in China) when langpo became the de facto fourth gen NY School? if so, would you really subscribe to the myth that the NYS scene at that point was a gang of no-nothing zen hooligans? I don't really think (even at their earliest, most Padgett/Berrigan-doped) Steve Levine and Gary Lenhart count as anti-intellectuals (no matter what Gary may have written to you in a rejection slip, Chris). I would guess that the influence of Ted was the touchstone for inclusion in the "gang", though, and that that influence was restrictive to the point of intolerance (probably.. I was about six at the time). This may or may not account for the "reverse discrimination" you (and everybody else in the world) get from a CERTAIN UNNAMED LANGUAGE POET IN NEW YORK, Chris. Or maybe he's just like that. But I find the idea of "sensibility" as developed by Levine, Lenhart, Greg Masters, Eileen Myles, Rochelle Kraut and Elinor Nauen, Maggie Dubris, Barb Barg, Bob Rosenthal not exactly "anti-intellectual" (if not influenced by Derrida, De Man, Deleuze, Zizek etc. either). More like an earnest (over-earnest?) extension of Ted/Alice's project of poet as 24 hr, well, poet. Curious (yellow), Jordan ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 5 Feb 1996 11:26:40 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom Mandel Subject: Re: Larry Eigner Goodbye Larry tm ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 5 Feb 1996 08:32:43 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Douglas Messerli Subject: Re: Larry Eigner At 03:36 AM 2/5/96 -0800, you wrote: >When the University Art Museum celebrated Larry Eigner's work by >posting "Again Dawn" in humongous letters on the outside of the museum >and held the big reading with and for Larry, Kit Robinson and I did a >session with an earnest interviewer on the university radio station. >The interviewer wanted to make of the occasion an uplifting "my left >foot" kind of tale, amazed that someone so afflicted with cerebral >palsey could write poetry at all. But that of course was NOT the story. >The story might have been this: that one of the great poets of the 20th >century -- no further qualification needed -- happened to have had >cerebral palsey. > >One value of that exhibition at UCB was that those of us who were there >had the opportunity to tell Larry just how much he meant to us all. > >Like so many other readers, I had fallen entirely in love with Larry's >poetry long before I had any understanding of how challenged he was by >his own body. Even though David Gitin and others had tried to convey >this to me years before and I had all the evidence of his letters >beginning around 1969, back when I first wrote for some work for >Tottel's, when Larry first moved to Berkeley in 1978 my immediate >instinct was to call him on the phone! Over the years, as Larry's >speech improved markedly by his exposure to so many different people in >Berkeley (very different I gather from the isolation within his parents >house in Swampscott for 51 years), and as I also learned to listen, I >could and did have real conversations over the phone with him. And of >course in person. It was great good luck that Larry's brother had >settled in Berkeley. > >Sun & Moon has a new book of Larry's forthcoming and there no doubt >must be hundreds, perhaps thousands, of poems yet to be collected. >Hopefully somebody (UC Press comes to mind as the logical place) will >put together a collected, edited by Grenier. In addition to Eigner's >own 40+ small press books, I would call people's attention to "Missing >'X'" by Barrett Watten (in _Total Syntax_) as a superb discussion of >the dynamics of Larry's work. > >Ron >=========================================================== Dear Ron: Thanks for the mention of our forthcoming Eigner book, readiness / enough / depends / on. Edited by Bob Grenier, this is one of Eigner's major works. It will be available in the August - December season. Also, you should be on the lookout for our wonderful new web-site, which will be up tomorrow. I'll be posting an address today or tomorrow. It will be a wonderful in-depth site, with all Sun & Moon listings (eventually), information on the authors, ordering form, and dozens of links. Douglas ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 5 Feb 1996 11:19:30 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry Gould Subject: trail blasing re: Mark Wallace Mark : one question: have you read the Blasing book? She never, ever, says "form is not political". She never mentions Robert Lowell. Her argument is that all writing is rhetorically based; that all rhetoric is persuasion and thus political. She writes about the 4 poets mentioned because they work in both open & traditional forms. To claim that Blasing makes value judgements based on cultural snobbery would have to be backed up by some specifics. To make these assumptions based only on the knowledge that she wrote about a certain 4 poets is jumping the cwitical gun. Lemme try to clarify. She wrote that form has been politicized in the US for a long time. One way form has been politicized is by reifying certain rhetorical choices as being "natural", "organic", thus closer to the truth - and claiming that they are thus non-rhetorical; this kind of poetry doesn't NEED to persuade because it mirrors nature. Her counter-current, her postmodernists, move in a different direction - emphasizing the un-natural, political nature of forms; showing their rhetorical hand & the political choices that this involves. - Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 5 Feb 1996 08:42:31 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Douglas Messerli Subject: Re: Larry Eigner At 01:02 PM 2/4/96 CST6CDT, you wrote: >Poet Larry Eigner died last night of pneumonia and other >complications. I will post additional obit/bio information >in the next couple of days. Here, a few basics: born 1927, got >cerebral palsy at birth, non-ambulatory, lived in Massachusetts until >1978, then Berkeley. First book published by Robert Creeley in 1953, >over the past 35 years, Larry authored more than 40 books--some >recent ones: _Areas/Lights/Heights: Writings 1954-1989_ (Roof, >1989); _Windows Walls Yards Ways_ (Black Sparrow, 1994). Work >appeared in _Origin_, _The Black Mountain Review_, _L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E_, >and in Donald Allen's _The New American Poetry_. Important to many >poets, among them Denise Levertov and Robert Duncan, and a good many >on this Poetics List.... > >from _Selected Poems_ (1971): > >the knowledge of death, and now > knowledge of the stars > > there is one end > and the endless > > Room at the center > > passage / in no time > > a rail thickets hills grass > > >from _Windows Walls Yard Ways_ (1994), last poem in the book: > > September 16 92 > >so years been passing > > the road quiet > > still often enough > > night and then day > > light up in the sky > > behind a towering tree > > shadowed dense >Hank: Shocked to hear the news. Eigner was one of the GREAT American poets. Douglas =========================================================================== ================================== ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 5 Feb 1996 10:33:11 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: stars gender Or, and isn't that the best way to begin a post, isn't the problem of _readability_ with st*r that we know right away what we're reading? that there's no delay of assembly, no language acquisition involved? I don't mean that everything should be written in another language but don't these puzzleworks get more (games? mazes?) through when there's some question of readability? "Y**r D**k" by Padgett or "Prom in Toledo Night" by Ann Lauterbach are two examples of nearly readable works that develop and sustain.. what.. something that continually is clear and eludes.. while conveying puzzlingly strong affects Jordan ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 5 Feb 1996 11:50:40 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Eryque Gleason Subject: Re: neut gender > The problem? "Ze" >looks weird. On the other hand, so did/does "Ms." i think ze looks less weird than "eir" or "em" (forget the words exactly, did i get close, anyone?) which were the words that i last heard of someone trying to substitute. and i'm all for more words around with z's and q's -eryQue gleaZon ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 5 Feb 1996 13:59:56 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Edward Foster Subject: Re: dunno but sorry if the current fixation with lovely children is boring to those who would discuss clement greenberg (whom i did not like), BUT there are rewards as in twenty or so letters received today from the class mentioned earlier. but should say first that bob holman, in the video the class saw, looks as if he just left the st. mark's babershop: "Deer ed, I liked Bob He Was Cool . . . . Pow!" "I liket the videows and yore poam. . . . and ples come in agan." "I liked the Bob Holman one because i like to mase up my hair i liked the poems because they were like songs . . . go ed go / your a hero / not a zero." enough of this professor stuff; future readings for second and third grades, only! ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 5 Feb 1996 14:02:54 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Edward Foster Subject: Re: dunno but jordan: what's wrong with _subjects_? hmmmm. i think we need to get together for coffee. but see _heat_ first. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 5 Feb 1996 13:15:39 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joe Amato Subject: doom partrols... jordan and others: last i looked, steven shaviro's _doom patrols_ at http://dhalgren.english.washington.edu/~steve/doom.html joe ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 5 Feb 1996 11:16:26 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: ryan johnson Subject: Re: Pomo In-Reply-To: <199602032058.OAA05386@charlie.acc.iit.edu> On Sat, 3 Feb 1996, Joe Amato wrote: > and i wasn't aware (as of my last post) of the "pomo" designation mark > nowak indicates... the term has been used shorthand in discussions of > postmodernism for some time now... i'm willing to revise my use of same, > sure, let's try to find a better term... how bout postmo?... > > joe or, just 'cause it falls of the tongue more easily, how 'bout pomod?-Ryan ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 5 Feb 1996 11:19:01 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: ryan johnson Subject: Re: pomo-ra-ma In-Reply-To: <199602040309.WAA12619@lictor.acsu.buffalo.edu> On Sat, 3 Feb 1996, William R Howe wrote: > hear hear to ron to limit our vocabs in order to re-strict meaning to only > certain pre-scribed notions about what or how words mean is silly and an long > term effort to systematically erradicate the use of a word because it might > be offensive or derogatory or oppressive would in the end leave us with very > few words i admit that a word may be damaging culturally but there is no way > to get around that language is opressive the way in which we use language is > opressive the way in which language means is opressive so singling out pet > peeves tolambast seems to me a mis-guided attempt at a linguistic re-education > that is doomed to failure > > wrh > INDEED AND HEARE HEAR HERE ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 5 Feb 1996 14:20:54 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Emily Lloyd Subject: Re: neut gender >i think ze looks less weird than "eir" or "em" (forget the words exactly, >did i get close, anyone?) which were the words that i last heard of >someone trying to substitute. > >and i'm all for more words around with z's and q's > >-eryQue gleaZon :::grinning at eryque::: yeah, I agree. Plus, someone might mistake "eir" for "eire," & then we'd have to go through for Ireland what we already have for the Pomos. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 5 Feb 1996 11:30:12 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: ryan johnson Subject: Re: Pomo In-Reply-To: <199602041529.JAA12282@charlie.acc.iit.edu> On Sun, 4 Feb 1996, Joe Amato wrote: > well yes, language is oppressive... but this is no reason not to try to > make it less so... i didn't take mark's request as a way of attempting to > legislate language, anyway... words hurt, misrepresent, etc... when you > find that a term you're using derogates a particular group, why not try to > alter your usage?... *voluntarily*, i mean... > > e.g.: i have a problem these days with my student-writers writing "man did > this" and "mankind did that"... why not try to use human, humankind, > etc?... what's the harm in contributing to a linguistic-social environment > in which more feel welcome, comfortable?... why *not* be attuned to the > fact that a certain group may find "pomo" disturbing?... as wordsmiths > we're s'posed to be good at understanding precisely the extent to which > denotations and connotations can cause harm... now if one wishes to go on > using "pomo" with the knowledge that doing so might exact a cultural price > for some, i s'pose this comes down to how serious one views that cultural > price... mebbe it would help if we heard more from a pomo native?... mebbe > if a member of that nation/people were a subscriber here and posted in > saying she felt a bit hurt by this usage, mebbe then some of us would > consider altering same?... BUT: (1)this depends on the epistemological stability of the authenticity of the subject brought forward as representative of the group and (2) seems to assume that representative would in fact feel *hurt* by a usage that pretty obviously has no referential relationship, injurious or otherwise, to an ethnological moniker s/he may in fact wish to interrogate in the first place. I'm not declaring NO or YES here, merely chiming in, as you'd seem to invite.-------Ryan > if what i'm saying strikes any of you as controversial, perhaps we need > less sheer resistance here and more along the lines of that steady plying > of (t)issue that we're collectively pretty good at... > > joe > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 5 Feb 1996 14:26:18 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Bernstein Subject: Larry Eiger (1927-1996) [long post] I can't collect my thoughts any further, dwelling on the meanings of Larry Eigner's life, except to remember the time spent with him in conversation, or say the time Bob Grenier, Brian McInerney and I took him to the Museum of Natural History on his one trip to New York. As we came into the room with some of the largest dinosaurs, Larry pointed straight ahead and said "that's interesting". He wasn't pointing to a dinosaur skeleton, though, but to an old sign posted on the back wall; it _was_ interesting, in a style long banished (in exhibition halls now replaced). I think of that remark of Larry's as displaying how much he lived out his version of a democracy of particulars, as against the craving for highlights, for the heightened, that is as much a literacy aesthetic as a consumer imperative. For Eigner, this didn't mean a flattening of affect; on the contrary it meant a luminosity of every detail: the perceptual vividness that his work so uncannily concatenates. This acknowledgement of the daily, a series of remarks on the otherwise unremarkable, a sort of poetic alchemy that is not dissimilar to one strain of Jewish mysticism (a strain in which the mysticism dissolves into an active apprehension of the real), is an abiding model of and for a poetry where things as they are let to stand for themselves. This poet of the ordinary lived an extraordinary life, as if the physical challenges he faced since birth were spun by poetic license into mental acrobatics. Larry Eigner is hero of our times. His will to think was unsuppressible. It was no ordinary privilege to have known him. I can't think of anyone I admired more. ******************* I wrote this for an Eigner celebration at UC-Berkeley's University Art Museum in June 1993: AGAIN EIGNER There is no writing I know as vivid as Larry Eigner's. He's invented, for poetry, something equivalent to three-dimensional photography: his works present a series of perceptions etched deep into the mind, where the mind is charted on a page and the page becomes a model of the thinking field. Perception and thought (words and things) are completely intertwined in Eigner's work, which brings to a visionary crescendo the exploration of the ordinary -- the transient flickerings of the everyday that otherwise pass more unnoticed than regarded, more dismissed than revered. In Eigner's poems, one "fragment" is rivetted to the next, so that one becomes, in reading this work, likewise riveted by the uncanny democracy of details, where attention is focussed unhesitatingly on each particular with equal weight, equal exhilaration. This is a poetics of "noticing things," where, as Eigner writes, "nothing is too dull" with "material (things, words) more and more dense around you." But equally, Eigner's is a poetics of coincidence, where "serendipity" (contingency) takes its rightful place as animating spirit, displacing the anthropocentric sentimentality of much of the verse of our time. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ In 1988, Leslie Scalapino's O Books republished Eigner's "Anything on Its Side" in O One/An Anthology, for which I wrote this verse commentary: "THE ONLY WORLD WE'VE GOT" _Anything on Its Side_ is placed, like a volume in a tank of water, with utter gravity against the next moment that occurs in what is called time but for Eigner is always spaced, for example on a page. What would it be to be grounded, to know the ground under you by the weight it pushes back with? "Every atom of me . . . across distances." No awful trembling unto undecidability, everything founded in its site, cleaves to what there is, to what is there. "_To be_ is involved such words that hold / times in the mind": a way, still, that a poem can enact its own presence, with full measure of the necessary determination to move from anything to that which juts against it, a conviction that life is made of (of) just such leaps, the contingency of an eye (aye, I) 'gainst a field of "r/oars" ("_suddenly_ a day"). Something like deep focus, as if the poems had become an organ, the sky bellows. Step by step, slowly turning. Yet there is no opening onto image here, no mime of a rehearsal of a scene. Eigner's depth-of- field _charges_ each page to _hold_ its own, "to have things whole". "to see / dark the / invisible". Perception all right, but not sun-drenched barns: "fishmongers", "pigment", "air". If there's narrative, it's narrative unhinged of causal nexus, logical spools. Each line rivets its moment & moves on, like angels on the head of a quill pin, nor looks ahead nor back, but "bangs" indissoluble at precise splice ("each fief") that bodies the moment from one to next. "to negotiate the ocean drop by drop if there were time". In adjacency is act-uality: "you thought it was as it is". Nuggets of sound carving space. "Motion" "motor" "process" "winds" "bells" "floating" "echoing" "coursing" "falling" "roaming" "wading" "spilling" "flying" "dazzling" "burning" "unflagging" "blows" "stirs" "curves" "spirals" "stagger" "dives" "slips" "slicks" "shakes" "hums" "simmers" "twist" "float" "flap" "dangle" "glitter" "subside": "_imagine_ the extent" (a geometry of ties that blind in music, "the great sea orchestrated with men"-- "what's unseen" "what sound for our ears"). What is "_displaced_" at each juncture is the plenitude of eyes seeing beyond sight, the replenishment of occlusion's hold, storehouse of an interior horizon s(t)olid as emplacement. "What you / see you / settle / on"-- settlement, homestead in the moment's whole, "such words that hold" nor need an other embrace. "your eyes open" "we _see_ something to _say_ or / listen to". Imagine the extent. [--ch. bernstein] ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 5 Feb 1996 11:46:57 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: ryan johnson Subject: Re: neut gender In-Reply-To: <199602051737.MAA04717@shell.acmenet.net> On Mon, 5 Feb 1996, Eryque Gleason wrote: > > The problem? "Ze" > >looks weird. On the other hand, so did/does "Ms." > > > i think ze looks less weird than "eir" or "em" (forget the words exactly, > did i get close, anyone?) which were the words that i last heard of > someone trying to substitute. > > and i'm all for more words around with z's and q's > > -eryQue gleaZon > I personally have found the 'x' is most maligned, and think 'xe' (complete w/indeterminate pronouncabilty) would do well--Ryan ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 5 Feb 1996 13:58:36 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Peter Jaeger Subject: Re: Moving Lips: str=Staffordshire bull terrier In-Reply-To: <199602050153.RAA01316@slip-1.slip.net> On Sun, 4 Feb 1996, Steve Carll wrote: > GO LOSS GO!!! > > --steve, in wonder > yes yes but don't forget bp's martyred st. ranglehold Peter ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 5 Feb 1996 15:13:19 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Re: Larry Eiger (1927-1996) [long post] I only knew Larry through his work, but knew that he had CP and since I have a part time job at a local CP center, I have loaned my copy of his early selected on ocassion to some of the "clients" (the recent PC word for CP people here)--as an example of what CAN BE DONE....At least one young woman was very inspired by him. I always was hoping to someohow relay this to Larry, not knowing whether he'd appreciate it or not, but I say it now.... cs. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 5 Feb 1996 16:11:54 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Bernstein Subject: Larry Eigner (1927-1996) One of the rituals of Jewish funerals is to rip a piece of clothing as an expression of grief. (This is more often done symbolically, by pinning a ripped piece of cloth to your jacket so as to avoid actual damage to your actual expensive tie.) Anyway, I have too much experience turning around my errors, or having them turned on me. Eigne Igner Eignr Egner Einer Eiger EIGNER ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 5 Feb 1996 16:11:48 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Re: warning: i break for hallucinations Dear Ron-- it is very kind of you to hope that I "brake" rather than "break" against the force of the "bad-cop", so thanks.... thanks also for the greenberg piece (interesting to see the differences between what Steve Evans quotes and what you do---Steve seems to make him a more sympathetic radical than you). As for your overall assessment of CG's influence, I pretty much agree. In fact, a more than a little HOMOPHOBIA may be detected in his writings On Still---(link with "whitman" "indulging" in "loose" "gestures" etc). Are THE FOUR QUARTERTS really SNOOZERS? and SLACK though???????? Is Bishop really a NEw Criterian type? At one point you suggest "a political gap between [CG and the NC's] in the 1930s" that closed by the 1950s, because CG moved to the right. Yet (in Rasula's book---I have not read Golding, but this is only because I was given Rasula's---"college on foodstamps," etc---not a judgment!) Rasula shows that the NC's themselves appealed to MARXIST rhetoric quite a bit in the 30's (in fact, it's QUITE interesting to see this) so i don't know quite what you mean about this GAP. If it's a gap, it may be the gap between RHETORIC and PRACTICE, all along. And yes, I too wonder "WHAT ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM WOULD BE IF IT HAD NOT HAD ITS CONTEXTU- ALIZING FRAMEWORK (from CG) FROM DAY ONE"--- And this is why I brought it up. I think we can turn CG's statements about Eliot around pretty easily, and fault greenberg's writing for not living up to the art of DeKooning, Still, etc. Actually, O'Hara did do this in his art crit methinks..... chris s ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 5 Feb 1996 16:44:41 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: Re: dunno but Ed, I _love_ coffee-- but in Heat, didn't you think DeNiro looked _bored_? Jordan ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 5 Feb 1996 14:17:02 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kevin Killian Subject: Re: doom partrols... >jordan and others: last i looked, steven shaviro's _doom patrols_ at > >http://dhalgren.english.washington.edu/~steve/doom.html > >joe I didn't see the original reference to _Doom Patrols_, but thought I'd add that High Risk is going to be publishing this book, to Shaviro's delight. He's been wanting to break out of academic publishing. Dodie Bellamy ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 5 Feb 1996 17:36:51 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jim Pangborn Organization: University at Buffalo Subject: Re: st*r-struck (fwd) The deconsonanted passage is the beginning of _P*r*d*s* L*st_. And by the way, all due respect to Loss, when I see "st*r," my "inner ear" (or an "inner" voice) does make it "star" only more so: starrier, with even more vowel to it. > >---------- Forwarded message ---------- >Date: Sun, 4 Feb 1996 11:35:52 -1000 >From: William Craighowes >To: Susan Schultz >Subject: Re: st*r-struck (fwd) > >* c*n't b*l**v* th*t p**pl* w**ld sp*nd s* m*ch t*m* *n s*m*th*ng *s >*npr*bl*m*t*c *s th*s. Y** c*n *lm*st *lw*ys t**s* **t th* m**n*ng *f * >m*sk*d v*w*l s*nt*nc*--*nl*ss *f c**rs* s*m**n* *s d*l*b*r*t*ly try*ng t* >m*ss y** *p. > > * * * * > > G*V* M* * V*W*L, V*NN*! > > * * * * > > B*t c*ns*n*nts--th*t w**ld b* f*r m*r* tr*cky. > > > O* *a*'* *i*** *i*o*e*ia**e, a** **e **ui* > O* **a* *o**i**e* **ee, **o*e *o**a* *a**e > **ou*** *ea** i**o **e *o***, a** ou* *oe . . . > >*ny g*ss*s? > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 5 Feb 1996 18:19:08 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Edward Foster Subject: Re: dunno but my hero deniro BORED! Never except in those ridiculous scenes overlooking what i guess was supposed to be l.a. but looked like an electric quilt. no, i thought he looked like fire. PLEASE, Joron, i always see a deniro film twice. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 5 Feb 1996 18:31:51 -0500 Reply-To: Robert Drake Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Robert Drake Subject: Re: stars gender >isn't the problem of _readability_ with st*r >that we know right away what we're reading?... well, maybe that we _think_ we know right away what we're reading... r me, it also re-calls the St.s of the Martyrology, those celestial beings who r, are, stir, and stare... those all echo in my minds ear, so i suppose it's not as purely visual fr me as it might be fr others... luigi ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 5 Feb 1996 15:39:13 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kevin Killian Subject: Re: dunno but >Ed, >I _love_ coffee-- but in Heat, didn't you think DeNiro looked _bored_? >Jordan Jordan, He probably just gave up before the pyrotechnical Paccino. I think the only interesting thing about _Heat_ was how horrible all the stars looked, but how gorgeously photographed their backdrops were. Ugly human beings in a designer world. Dodie Bellamy ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 5 Feb 1996 19:19:07 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Dan Raphael Dlugonski Subject: Re: neut gender i could live with ze. but reading your and other comments sparked in memory banks a simpler idea--'e' (which could or could not be capitalized). this puts 3rd person on equal footing with 1st (and 2nd person just being a more complex spelling of another vowel, we have some consistency among the pronouns)) with 'es' as the possessive form. >Dan wrote: >> -- i wish we could adopt a gender-neutral pronoun. maybe a >>'movement' to foster this (i know,ther'd be massive proprietary arguments >>over what these pronoun should be. that doesnt matter much.). ive been >>unwilling to do it in my own work for lack of clarity (something im >>frequently over the border of anyway), further confusing a potential audience. >> this is one place those working in the educational institutions >>could help. in spreading this need for the gender neutral prnoun, coz so >>often a writer is making a statement that applies to many people but because >>the context makes it third person singular is stuck with gender choices >> > > >There *is* a movement to foster gender-neutral pronouns, for the reasons you >cite as well as others. Transgender activists and artists are using "ze" in >place of she, he, or s/he and "hir" instead of his or hers. Forthcoming >from High Risk is a novel by lesbian transsexual performance artist Kate >Bornstein that makes use of these terms, and they've also appeared in a >number of queer zines/newspapers. The new words appeal to me not only in >that one might use them when referring to "many people in the third person >singular," but when referring to one person whose gender is >ambiguous/flexible/intentionally indeterminate/etc. The problem? "Ze" >looks weird. On the other hand, so did/does "Ms." > >emily > > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 5 Feb 1996 22:59:37 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Loss Glazier Subject: Re: st*r-struck >Does this mean that "*" would stand for the entire language (& beyond), thus >comprising the most economically compressed poem possible? Wow. ----- Tom, Often, interestingly, "" (or its variant '') stands for language that does not act.* All words outside the "'s are action words. File "this", search "that", compress "this", say "this". (Or as computer folks like to say: type "foo".) However the recipients of those actions are the inert words. For computers it would search "dog" or say "hello". To this code, the shagginess of the former or the warmth of the latter are of no concern. So that you have the curious situation that yes, "*" would stand for the entire language, but it is a language that is simply irrelevant to the "task" at hand. Loss ----- *The one case you picked out, "*," is the only case where it is simply * (where we can enjoy its number of points)... ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 5 Feb 1996 23:13:27 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Bob Holman Subject: Re: USOP Just back from uh amazing er historic reading at UCLA's Wadsworth Theater,1400 seat house. Wanda Coleman, Luis Alfaro, Everton Sylvester (US's greatest dub poet? lead warbler w/ Bklyn Funk Essentials), Dael Orlandersmith, and Maggie Estep. Screened Show #3 of United States of Poetry, which includes Wanda and Luis, then live perfs, Luis entered from back of house etc. Everton and Mags entered "through" screen after their USOP segments were screened. Met Aram Saroyan -- much fun. Or was the historic gig in St Cloud, MN on Thurs? Temp at 50 below..... USOP video available through KQED, 2601 Mariposa, San Francisco, CA, 94110 or 800-647-3600. They also will sell you the soundtrack CD or casstte, which is out from Mouth Almighty Records. MA was just spun into orbit by Mercury (Records) -- Sekou Sundiata and I are working for this new poetry label. Duh, I mean spoken word. Abrams is publishing the anthology I mean book in March. Wildest thing about the show is that TV Guide sees fit to print three pages (Feb. 3 issue) but PBS has disowned the series, wouldn't put it up in a hard feed, and only today said that they might put something up on their Website. I believe you can find some info at http://www.wordslam.hugo.com/gallery.html Enjoyed Schuchat's post on the Birth of L=A. I don't remember it as a reaction at all, but a going for, and even remember parties where our coats got mixed onda same bed. Bob H ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 6 Feb 1996 00:25:54 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Eryque Gleason Subject: Re: neut gender Emily Lloyd wrote: >:::grinning at eryque::: yeah, I agree. Plus, someone might mistake "eir" >for "eire," & then we'd have to go through for Ireland what we already have >for the Pomos. the first time i heard "eir" i confused it with the german "herr"...just gimme bad vibes to start with. what's an irish "eire"? eryque ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 6 Feb 1996 00:45:47 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Loss Glazier Subject: Re: Larry Eigner I am creating a brief announcement for Larry out of some of the recent postings to this list. If anyone has work they might like to add to the EPC Larry Eigner home page (essays or writings or photos) please contact me directly. Thanks... ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 6 Feb 1996 01:40:13 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Erica Hunt Subject: Re: ask your mama Hi Bob: Just noticed your posting on this late February night. I just recommended the Hughes to a friend who is looking to perform voice works with Don Byron touring group of improvisers. There is a new collected Hughes, edited by Rampersad available now in paperback, and in fact, remainedered already at the Strand for five dollars. A deal. A Vintage book. Greetings to Fran and family. Hope to see you all this year! ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 5 Feb 1996 23:43:13 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tenney Nathanson Subject: pardon my lineation (no book) Date: Mon, 5 Feb 1996 16:44:41 -0500 From: Jordan Davis Subject: Re: dunno but >Date: Mon, 5 Feb 1996 16:44:41 -0500 >From: Jordan Davis >Subject: Re: dunno but > >Ed, >I _love_ coffee-- but in Heat, didn't you think DeNiro looked _bored_? >Jordan "I love water I /love/ water but I also love air and fire" **** [Strange Syncopation of E-Lists Dept: "dunno but" was my header (once); it enjoyed a brief but happy life in, like, October; now here it is (un)like the coin in Ithaca....] ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 5 Feb 1996 20:51:57 -1000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gabrielle Welford Subject: Re: internet abortion info and the new US obscenity bill (fwd) ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Mon, 5 Feb 1996 08:51:10 -1000 From: Vicki Rosenzweig To: Multiple recipients of Subject: Re: internet abortion info and the new US obscenity bill Guys, it's too late to talk to your representative about this one: it went through the House and Senate in about half an hour on Friday. I think our only president has already signed it. Collect information now, hide it somewhere safe, send it to everyone you know--and maybe I'll be sending an extra donation to the ACLU, which is preparing a court challenge. Vicki Rosenzweig vr%acmcr.uucp@murphy.com | rosenzweig@acm.org New York, NY ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 6 Feb 1996 02:48:24 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ron Silliman Subject: We all break for hallucinations Re homophobia among the New Critics: Golding cites an incident in his footnotes in which John Crow Ransom pulled Robert Duncan's African Elegy from the galleys of the Kenyon Review after learning of the publication of The Homosexual in Society. Alan does a good job of noting how various folks (Creeley, etc.) felt about those journals and that scene. (And if I recall rightly, Tom Clark also comments on Olson's attempts to appear in such magazines as well. "Projective Verse" appeared in Poetry NY, a curious venue to say the least.) All best, Ron ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 6 Feb 1996 07:37:38 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Emily Lloyd Subject: Re: neut gender At 12:25 AM 2/6/96 -0500, Eryque Gleason wrote: >Emily Lloyd wrote: >>:::grinning at eryque::: yeah, I agree. Plus, someone might mistake "eir" >>for "eire," & then we'd have to go through for Ireland what we already have >>for the Pomos. > >the first time i heard "eir" i confused it with the german "herr"...just >gimme bad vibes to start with. > >what's an irish "eire"? > >eryque > Eire is Irish? Gaelic? anyway, what the native folks in "Ireland" call their country. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 6 Feb 1996 09:14:34 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Re: We all break for hallucinations Dear Bob Holman--- Did you ever accidentally walk off wearing a L poet's coat? Would that be kinda like fulfilling Ferlinghetti's wish/prophecy for "Billy Graham and Elvis Presley to exchange roles seriously" or the MIRAGE of HEAVEN AND HELL when eveybody is a st*r (fried r*ca) ---falettin me be mice elf agin......cs ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 6 Feb 1996 22:32:25 +0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Schuchat Subject: Re: monday morning origin myths In-Reply-To: Jordan, yes I was in New York when I was talking about. I think there's a little muddle about generations, I probably overcounted (isn't Edwin Denby the first generation all by himself of the NY school?). the names you note are certainly not know-nothing vulgar zennists. I was referring more to a generalized concept of Bernadette's own cohort. as far as I can tell, Bob Rosenthal and Charles Bernstein are contemporaries, ditto for the other names you list and other language poets. they are a different reaction at the same general moment to a situation in downtown lit. actually you might have titled your post "monday night origin" since it was the monday night reading series (then curated or whatever the verb is) by Ed Friedman which was catalytic. but also important were two writing workshops at the poetry project, one led by bernadette (before I got there) and another led by alice notley, which was I think fall 1976. also, I wouldn't say that Ted B or Alice represented any sort of vulgar zen anti-intellectualism. but their return to new york is already after langpo seemed to get going. (disclaimer: west coast language writers are a literary history I don't know at all). one thing which did distinguish the language poets from Steve Levine, Gary Lenhart, etc etc, it seems to me, was the language side's interest in and willingness to theorize and explicate what they were doing. one reason that I can't think of a label to link together the writers "of sensibility" that you listed is that none of them write a lot of criticism. of course, another is that they are unfortunately less widely known. (I guess there are some exceptions.) if these posts stirs up some interest in their works then my premature foray into writing my memoirs here has not been pointless. finally, as maestro holman notes, everybody was just there, coats on the same beds at the same parties. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 6 Feb 1996 09:55:42 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: 12th st rag Simon, Bob, Thanks. "The double beds piled with coats" as Steve Malmude wrote. Anyway, I do point people towards Gary Lenhart's prose, which seems to me the best critical writing from the standpoint of _sensibility_ out there right now. His essays on Kenneth Koch, Anne Porter, Ted Berrigan and most recently Anselm Hollo are worth looking at for their "ornery piety". But I also liked Murat Nemet-Nejat's fine rabblerousing essay on Jabes in Exquisite Corpse a couple years ago. Cheering on the bowling team, Jordan ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 6 Feb 1996 10:03:18 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: Re: We all break for laokoon anybody know of any ties between poetry and sculpture lately? or poetry and painting, for that matter? poetry and rodeo? poetry and dance, poetry and music, poetry and tv, these seem kind of available now in a way that poetry and film, poetry and dogsledding, poetry and critique may be less available than they used to be.. Jordan ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 6 Feb 1996 10:20:53 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Willa Jarnagin Subject: Re: neut gender In-Reply-To: <199602060319.TAA25290@trapdoor.aracnet.com> On Mon, 5 Feb 1996, Dan Raphael Dlugonski wrote: > i could live with ze. but reading your and other comments sparked in memory > banks a simpler idea--'e' (which could or could not be capitalized). this > puts 3rd person on equal footing with 1st (and 2nd person just being a more > complex spelling of another vowel, we have some consistency among the > pronouns)) with > 'es' as the possessive form. > > >There *is* a movement to foster gender-neutral pronouns, for the reasons you > >cite as well as others. Transgender activists and artists are using "ze" in > >place of she, he, or s/he and "hir" instead of his or hers. Forthcoming > >from High Risk is a novel by lesbian transsexual performance artist Kate > >Bornstein that makes use of these terms, and they've also appeared in a > >number of queer zines/newspapers. The new words appeal to me not only in > >that one might use them when referring to "many people in the third person > >singular," but when referring to one person whose gender is > >ambiguous/flexible/intentionally indeterminate/etc. The problem? "Ze" > >looks weird. On the other hand, so did/does "Ms." > > > >emily I like this mixing up of pronouns; in fact I think we should mix them up more. Eventually a few will be sifted out and used more commonly, and in the meantime, figuring out the words will make people think. I vote for "ze" myself. "e" sounds too much like he, especially as h's are dropped in many dialects. Hearing "e" I think of my friend from Fall River who pronounced "human" "yooman". Willa ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 6 Feb 1996 10:10:09 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry Gould Subject: Re: we all break for laokoon Now as Blasing was saying... aw, just kidding. I'm still waiting for them to put up a statue of Akhmatova, as she predicted at the end of the poem "Requiem". (Well, not exactly predicted. I think she said "if".) Those lines at the end used to make the old spine tingle. Something about the prison doves coo in the distance, and ships sail slowly down the Neva. This news in: Joseph Brodsky is going to be buried in Venice. (you remember him - he was at those parties - huh??) Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 6 Feb 1996 08:07:24 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Douglas Messerli Subject: Larry Eigner: in memoriam Two Eigner poems in memoriam of Larry: This one was published in THE GERTRUDE STEIN AWARDS volume. Norma Cole reminded me its appropriateness: n o m o r e p o e t r y ! but the window I suddenly shifted positon and really have to go N o w a g a i n Mountain ice on the rocky path with the knockout view ---I watch my step in time * G o o d I've had the bagel and I've eaten it too FROM Eigner's forthcoming volume: readiness / enough / depends / on If life, things, weren't so intersting, it, they, would kill me ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 6 Feb 1996 11:55:37 -0500 Reply-To: Robert Drake Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Robert Drake Subject: Re: We all break for laokoon >anybody know of any ties between poetry and sculpture lately?... i'm working on a review of an installation by john bryum, visual poetry on the walls of a bathroom (& including etched/frosted words on the window)... not at all graffiti-like... lbd ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 6 Feb 1996 08:57:13 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Re: ST*R Crazy In-Reply-To: <199602060513.AAA23845@listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu> I think we've set a record now for most argument about a book only one of us has read (and others have dipped into) -- I'm going to get a copy of Blasing's book and actually read it -- and it damn well better be worth my time after all this! AND,,, remember Poe's short story "Xing a Paragraph [paragrab!*+}? not the redacted version of many years ago in Jerry's anthology (which reproduces only the Xed paragraph itself, if I remember) but the entire and entirely hilarious narrative contained in the Complete Poe -- ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 6 Feb 1996 09:02:34 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Re: Eigner In-Reply-To: <199602060513.AAA23845@listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu> One of the great surprises to me upon moving to the Bay area in '87 was hearing the conversations between Eigner and poet friends around town. I was never able to undersatnd Larry Eigner's speech, but poets who had gotten to know him carried on deeply interesting conversations with him, which I followed as best I could as if listening to one side of a phone conversation. Which is by way of lead up to mention that at the conclusion of that tremendous tribute reading fro Eigner at Berkeley, Eigner gave an extended reading himself. Hearing his reading of the work gave me a new sense of his use of line break and space -- not sure I can explain it, but I think I had been reading over the line breaks too quickly before -- By the way -- anyone seen Andrea Wyat, who edited the old selected Eigner, in recent years -- Last saw her in D.C. in about '83 -- haven't heard of her since -- ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 6 Feb 1996 12:08:17 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Eryque Gleason Subject: "Good Times" once again. I hope this isn't redundant, it seems i've gotten my lists a bit mixed up lately. There's been more rumors of that non-virus good times circulating again, and it's bound to show up here soon. Any messages you may recieve warning you of a virus called "Good Times" being sent via email are just a hoax! This rumor seems to circulate about every three and a half months, coinciding with the beggining of the new semester, when there's a lot of people using email for the first time. I think it's a good idea for us all to spread the word of the hoax before word of the virus get spread. in particular, mebbe we should tell those we know that are new to the 'net about this. Two months after i got my email account, i propagated the hoax to everyone i knew, i was just being a good samaritan! Here's hopin' that no one's computer gets sick for real! (and Apple a day keeps the disk doctor away? i like oranges better anyhow) eryque ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 6 Feb 1996 11:30:24 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joe Amato Subject: Re: Pomo ryan, what would it take to establish "the epistemological stability of the authenticity of the subject brought forward as representative of the group"?... in this case, in pragmatic terms, this *could* result in deciding not to alter one's vocabulary unless the 'entire' pomo nation/people comes forward requesting same... and surely 'entire' is problematic here too... ergo, i defer to the many past controversies over such issues rather than seek out such "authenticity"... we can all think of a number of monikers and the like that have come under scrutiny and have been rejected/discontinued b/c they (may have) furthered damaging stereotypes... why isn't such past knowledge sufficient to altering present behavior?... or am i to assume that this sort of public strategy wrt language practice merely contributes to oppression?... this latter, btw, resonates well with the retro\backlash territory settled in the past six-seven years by conservatives who decry us 'liberal pedagogues' for advocating 'political correctness' (which latter term, for this reason, you'll rarely hear me even use)... for me the issue here is pretty straightforward: i've been using a term, as have some others, for some time now that may, may contribute inadvertently to a cultural oversight... as to whether a "representative would in fact feel *hurt* by a usage that pretty obviously has no referential relationship, injurious or otherwise, to an ethnological moniker s/he may in fact wish to interrogate in the first place": i'm not certain that this is a fair assertion, given that it's highly unlikely a "representative" CAN "in fact feel *hurt*" in the absence of any injurious "referential relationship"!... the question is whether in fact there might BE such a relationship... now: are you seeking some phenomenological *proof* that folks can be "hurt" through mindless acts of linguistic appropriation?... i for one take this latter on faith these days, hence i have no desire to 'prove' same... at the same time, as you suggest, using pomo for postmodern is clearly not quite the same as using a racial moniker with ill intent, to designate inferiority etc... yet i'd have to say, again, that i see no harm at all in trying to find another word, given that there's a clear overlap here in usage that may, may result in some residual *hurt*, given what we (imnsho, should already) know... the cultural-linguistic reality many of us would seem to be inhabiting -- and critical spheres are no exception -- permits for all sorts of neologisms and buzz words, not least b/c of that corporate cutting & pasting of the public sphere that seems fully intent on splintering and recombining parts of speech and offering the result back to us as a subsidiary linguistic enterprise... for that matter, i'm all for poets, scholars, etc., working with the stuff of language as they see fit, but i would hope to find here a somewhat different sensibility and orientation, one more conditioned by sensitivities toward history, social context, and affect... it's obvious that we're likely to wrench apart (and wrench together) cultural heritages in some strange and unintended ways whatever we do, simply b/c words carry that sort of historical baggage... but i ask again: if we are confronted with reasonable evidence that a term of recent origin has in fact inadvertently, and homophonically, stumbled across the living heritage of a marginalized group, what is the harm in trying to attend to this by altering our usage?... joe ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 6 Feb 1996 09:41:17 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Thomas Bell Subject: Re: neut gender In-Reply-To: Watching Gulliver last night it occured to me that appropriate pronouns might be horse and/or yahoo? On Tue, 6 Feb 1996, Willa Jarnagin wrote: > On Mon, 5 Feb 1996, Dan Raphael Dlugonski wrote: > > > i could live with ze. but reading your and other comments sparked in memory > > banks a simpler idea--'e' (which could or could not be capitalized). this > > puts 3rd person on equal footing with 1st (and 2nd person just being a more > > complex spelling of another vowel, we have some consistency among the > > pronouns)) with > > 'es' as the possessive form. > > > > >There *is* a movement to foster gender-neutral pronouns, for the reasons you > > >cite as well as others. Transgender activists and artists are using "ze" in > > >place of she, he, or s/he and "hir" instead of his or hers. Forthcoming > > >from High Risk is a novel by lesbian transsexual performance artist Kate > > >Bornstein that makes use of these terms, and they've also appeared in a > > >number of queer zines/newspapers. The new words appeal to me not only in > > >that one might use them when referring to "many people in the third person > > >singular," but when referring to one person whose gender is > > >ambiguous/flexible/intentionally indeterminate/etc. The problem? "Ze" > > >looks weird. On the other hand, so did/does "Ms." > > > > > >emily > > I like this mixing up of pronouns; in fact I think we should mix them up > more. Eventually a few will be sifted out and used more commonly, and > in the meantime, figuring out the words will make people think. > I vote for "ze" myself. "e" sounds too much like he, especially as h's are > dropped in many dialects. Hearing "e" I think of my friend from Fall > River who pronounced "human" "yooman". > > Willa > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 6 Feb 1996 13:05:09 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Sondheim Subject: Re: Pomo In-Reply-To: <199602061730.LAA21989@charlie.acc.iit.edu> How is "pomo" linguistic appropriation? Who feels the need to protect a defenseless people? Should we not use "roam" because of Rome, "grease" because of Greece, "turkey" because of Turkey, etc.? Should we finally purify our language - the nazis would have liked that, no? We can cleanse it of any homonyms. "Pomo" has been used for postmodernism. It is also the name of a nation of Native Americans. So what? It's clear that the meanings are entirely different and certainly there is no intended or unintended slur one way or the other. What I resent is this notion of purity that underlies the discussion. Alan ( http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/~spoons/internet_txt.html Images at http://www.cs.unca.edu/~davidson/pix/ ) ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 6 Feb 1996 13:12:07 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Sondheim Subject: Re: Pomo In-Reply-To: On Tue, 6 Feb 1996, Alan Sondheim wrote: > > > How is "pomo" linguistic appropriation? Who feels the need to protect a > defenseless people? Should we not use "roam" because of Rome, "grease" > because of Greece, "turkey" because of Turkey, etc.? Should we finally > purify our language - the nazis would have liked that, no? We can cleanse > it of any homonyms. (I want to make it clear that "defenseless people" is sarcastic here. Be- cause I think there is a level of paternalism in the whole discussion. If there were Pomo involved in this who felt it was a slur, it would be entirely different. And even then, it would be necessary to ascertain exactly where the slur lies.) > > "Pomo" has been used for postmodernism. It is also the name of a nation > of Native Americans. So what? It's clear that the meanings are entirely > different and certainly there is no intended or unintended slur one way > or the other. > > What I resent is this notion of purity that underlies the discussion. > > Alan > > ( http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/~spoons/internet_txt.html > Images at http://www.cs.unca.edu/~davidson/pix/ ) > > ( http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/~spoons/internet_txt.html Images at http://www.cs.unca.edu/~davidson/pix/ ) ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 6 Feb 1996 13:02:15 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry Gould Subject: neut gender these pronouns might engender some dialogue: wha? and huh? (choose your affiliation) as in the famous hymnher: YAHWEH WHO? Wha? took off whe? pith helmet, huh? took off heh? suspenders, said wha? to huh? Cocoa, nut? Said huh? wha you say? Oh nuttin, hih? say wha? (pronounced, of course, with a downward inflection) - HG ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 6 Feb 1996 14:07:09 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: FUNKHOUSER CHRISTOPH Subject: Re: eigner Comments: cc: bg1640@cnsvax.albany.edu * * * ANNOUNCEMENT * * * The editors of the on-line poetics journal PASSAGES are preparing an issue dedicated to Larry Eigner. We are collecting remembrances, reflections, and corres- pondences, personal or philosophical, by persons ac- quainted with Larry's accomplishments and spirit. We are soliciting tributes from non-email members of the poetics community, and ask that you spread word of our project to anyone who might be interested. Contributions may be sent to PASSAGES c/o cf2785@cnsvax.albany.edu or Ben Friedlander, Dept. of English, 306 Clemens Hall, University at Buffalo Amherst, NY 14260 We hope to hear from you, Don Byrd Ben Friedlander Chris Funkhouser Belle Gironda editors ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 6 Feb 1996 14:06:37 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joe Amato Subject: Re: Pomo alan, purity?... who's talking purity?... you're quite correct in pointing out that there are other similar homonyms, such as grease/greece... i mean, yeah, language works this way... i thought i indicated that i understood this much... who doesn't?... and who doesn't hope for a more hybrid reality?... but this opens to a sort of critique of what it is constitutes hybridity in more political terms... my point was that we *might consider* that the word *might* have a derogatory effect on an indigenous group, period. i'm assuming, of course, that we all, all of us understand the degree to which native americans have suffered... that i seem to have ended up speaking *for* same doesn't make me feel all that comfortable... there's surely a presumption here on my part... but it's a presumption born of privilege---so my aim is to throw some doubt in the direction of those like mself who operate from this place of privilege often w/o a whole lot of critical intervention... joe ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 6 Feb 1996 15:20:11 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Alexander Subject: Re: We all break for laokoon There's a sculpture garden in St. Paul with poetry engraved on walkways and on sculpture, poems by poets from various local cultures. There's a bridge by Siah Armijani a few years old (I'm not exactly sure just how old) in Minneapolis from the Walker Art Center Sculpture Garden to Loring Park which includes a text by John Ashbery. There's language all over art a la Jenny Holzer, Barbara Kruger, and many more, some of these works being sculpture, some prints, more rarely (but sometimes) paintings. The book arts has an entire area of activity that is properly perceived as language sculpture or sculpture with language. >anybody know of any ties between poetry and sculpture lately? >or poetry and painting, for that matter? >poetry and rodeo? >poetry and dance, poetry and music, poetry and tv, these seem kind of >available now in a way that poetry and film, poetry and dogsledding, poetry >and critique may be less available than they used to be.. > >Jordan > > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 6 Feb 1996 13:24:49 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Stephen Galen Cope Subject: poetry & sculpture... Rachel Blau DuPlessis' 'Draft 22' in the latest Hambone (#12) takes impulse from the Philadelphia Wireman's sculptures, "found abandoned on a side street in Philadelphia on a trash night in 1982." The cover bears a photo of one such sculpture, and photos of three follow DuPlessis' draft... -Stephen Cope ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 6 Feb 1996 16:38:22 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Edward Foster Subject: Re: eigner chris: i don't think jack foley out in oakland participates in this chatroom, but if not you should call him. he was very close to larry eigner in recent years, and eigner was very enthusiastic about jack's work. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 7 Feb 1996 06:09:29 +0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Schuchat Subject: Re: Pomo In-Reply-To: not that I see any reason to abandon the term Pomo despite its semantic overlap, but Alan Sondheim's counterexample of the word "turkey" reminds me that, in Japanese, "Turkish" (Turuko) used to be the word for massage parlor (in the 42nd St sense) but, after complaints from the Turkish government, there was a universal name change and now such establishments are known in Japanese as "Soapland" (sopurando). ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 6 Feb 1996 18:04:09 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Loss Glazier Subject: EPC Press Listings EPC Press listings have recently been condensed. We're still working on improvements. Please contact me by direct mail with any corrections (or to remind me about a correction). It's taken some time to consolidate listings but we're making progress! Thanks for your patience ... ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 6 Feb 1996 15:12:06 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steve Carll Subject: Re: We all break for laokoon At 10:03 AM 2/6/96 -0500, you wrote: >anybody know of any ties between poetry and sculpture lately? >or poetry and painting, for that matter? >poetry and rodeo? >poetry and dance, poetry and music, poetry and tv, these seem kind of >available now in a way that poetry and film, poetry and dogsledding, poetry >and critique may be less available than they used to be.. > >Jordan This reminded me of a commercial they were running a couple of years ago for some stupid piece of shit or other which featured two things that ostensibly "didn't go well together": poetry and power tools. There was a guy shouting his "poim" while drills, electric saws, etc. wailed away behind him. I thought they worked rather nicely together, actually. It obviously made a more effective impression in my mind than did the product; I can't even remember what it was anymore. Steve ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 6 Feb 1996 18:23:22 +0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kenneth Goldsmith Subject: Sun & Moon Website Is Now Open Comments: cc: jongams@crocker.com, dhiggins@mhv.net, lefthandb@mhv.net, jsherry@panix.com, dmandl@panix.com, aks@interport.net, sclay@interport.net, doovie@panix.com, aerialedge@aol.com, kenny@www.caroline.com, harborrat@aol.com, cab@cuphy3.phys.columbia.edu, DAntigone@aol.com, blairsea@panix.com, ken@wfmu.org, greg@crocker.com, GuyB225673@aol.com, jdrucker@minerva.cis.yale.edu, ToddLerner@aol.com, lolpoet@acsu.buffalo.edu ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Sun & Moon Press 1976-1996 20th Year ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Sun & Moon Press is proud to announce the grand opening of our website: http://www.sunmoon.com At this inital stage of our site, we're featuring these new titles for 1996= : * Jeffery M. Jones "J.P. Morgan Saves The Nation" * Mac Wellman "Annie Salem" * Robert Steiner "The Catastrophe" * Djuna Barnes "The Collected Stories" * Djuna Barnes "Poe's Mother: Selected Drawings of Djuna Barnes" * Dennis Barone "The Returns" * Jos=E9 Donoso "Hell Has No Limits" * Barbara Guest "Seeking Air" * Tom La Farge "Terror of Earth" * Knut Hamsun "The Women at the Pump" * G=E9rard De Nerval "Aur=E9lia" * Mark Mirsky "Puddingstone" * Heimito von Doderer "The Merovingians" * Jackson Mac Low Barnesbook: "Four Poems Derived from Sentences by Djuna Barnes" * Tan Lin Lotion "Bullwhip Giraffe" * Dominique Fourcade "Click-Rose" * Olivier Cadiot Art "Po=E9tique" * Charles North "New and Selected Poems" * Ted Greenwald "Licorice Chronicles" * Paul Van Ostaijen "The First Book of Schmoll" * Dennis Phillips "Credence" * Lyn Hejinian "Writing Is an Aid To Memory" * Harv=E9 Guibert "Ghost Image" * Louis-Ferdinand C=E9line "Dances without Music, without Dancers, without Anything" * Violet Kazue Matsuda de Cristoforo "May Skies: There's Always Tomorrow: A History and Anthology of Haiku in the World War II Internment Camps for Japanese-American Citizens " * John Wieners "The Journal of John Wieners: is / to be / called" * Jafal Toufic "Over-Sensitivity" * Douglas Messerli and Mac Wellman, ed. "From the Other Side of the Century II: A New American Drama 1960-1995 " * Matthew Maguire "Phaedra" * Val=E8re Novarina "The Theater of Ears" In additon to the above books, we are offering a complete list of our titles in print, awards announcements, links, and an internet searchable ordering form. We will be constantly updating so please visit often. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Sun & Moon Press Douglas J. Messerli djmess@sunmoon.com ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 6 Feb 1996 16:31:17 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Marisa Januzzi Subject: Re: Whee (no brake) In-Reply-To: Thanks Chris St*rffolino: Wld love to lay claim to the logopoeia/Loy claim; in fact it was Carolyn Burke who made the argument and she's RIGHT ("Getting Spliced," AMERICAN QUARTERLY, that's all I can supply... is the person who was looking for CB still looking? pls backchannel). It doesn't take such an extra-ordinary critic to restore names to lit history. I say matches to all the strawmen of modernism. Lit history... Look forward to the, um, use of Greenberg in David Lehman's forthcoming opus on the NY School. bye for now-- Marisa ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 6 Feb 1996 22:59:33 GMT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom Beard Subject: Re: neut gender >a simpler idea--'e' (which could or could not be capitalized). this >puts 3rd person on equal footing with 1st (and 2nd person just being a more >complex spelling of another vowel, we have some consistency among the >pronouns)) i.e.: I, you, e, I O U E I E I O Tom Beard ______________________________________________________________________________ I/am a background/process, shrunk to an icon. | Tom Beard I am/a dark place. | beard@met.co.nz I am less/than the sum of my parts... | Auckland, New Zealand I am necessary/but not sufficient, | http://www.met.co.nz/ and I shall teach the stars to fall | nwfc/beard/www/hallway.html ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 6 Feb 1996 18:10:00 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Eryque Gleason Subject: Re: Pomo > Should we not use "roam" because of Rome, "grease" >because of Greece, "turkey" because of Turkey, etc.? how do the italians, grecians, and turks (respectively) spell and pronounce the above? eryque ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 7 Feb 1996 11:33:19 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Roberts Subject: Sun & Moon Website Is Now Open Comments: To: keybird@creighton.edu, sondheim@panix.com, Cannon@bprn5.bloomberg.com, lolpoet@acsu.buffalo.edu, AUSTLIT@banks.ntu.edu.au, LITERARY@BITNIC.CREN.NET, Adrian.Hall@unsw.EDU.AU, Ron_Pretty@uow.edu.au, markw@cs.jcu.edu.au, rhoge@premier.apana.org.au, danny@staff.cs.su.oz.au, Don.Anderson@English.su.edu.au, ac206@rgfn.epcc.edu, BASTE2@MFS06.cc.monash.edu.au, pcliff@metz.une.edu.au, henschke@melbourne.DIALix.oz.au, qldwriters@peg.apc.org, allum@mpx.com.au, SCassio@vtecism1.telecom.com.au, bunzl@budapest.ozonline.com.au, drg@melbpc.org.au, chapter@connexus.apana.org.au, australia!melb5!mellinvg@bpaust2.attmail.com, sschultz@hawaii.edu, S.Muecke@hum.uts.edu.au, M.Phillips@nla.gov.au, Blkwattl@geko.com.au, faw@ozemail.com.au, pounder@ozemail.com.au, lindaa@phm.GOV.AU, moya.costello@uniSA.Edu.Au, jillj@ozemail.com.au, TPEACH@ilanet.slnsw.gov.au, rosemary.huisman@English.su.edu.au, simon-clews@avery.apana.org.au, suephil@peg.apc.org, lgilbert@medeserv.com.au, PCHAKRAV@nla.gov.au, artslaw@ozemail.com.au, facp@anythink.iinet.net.au, asauthors@peg.pegasus.oz.au, freonet@mail.iinet.net.au, jcole@arts.adelaide.edu.au, andrew_burke@italic.DIALix.oz.au, lsd@mail.bio.usyd.edu.au, rlwmgt@mpx.com.au, Michael_G._Thornton@intouch.mpx.com.au, whitw@ibm.net, afb2@peg.apc.org, pwoolley@mpx.com.au, verrun@eworld.com, rogerzub@tafe.sa.edu.au, en164876@student.uq.edu.au, semurphy@indirect.com, c.lennings@qut.edu.au, drist@cusd.chico.k12.ca.us, adaniels@nla.gov.au, m.kindler@nepean.uws.edu.au, mrothe@library.usyd.edu.au, skelen@sunflowr.usd.edu, cycad@peg.apc.org, writers@vicnet.gov.au, geolink@ozemail.com.au, gill@pi.se, turnerj@axe.humboldt.edu, 100241.2316@compuserve.com, jpt2@axe.humboldt.edu, rfinlay@iinet.net.au, verrun@eworld.com, reed@boneyard.psy.uwa.edu.au, adam@enternet.com.au, writers@gateway.eastend.com.au, GPHILLIPS@stingray.ac.cowan.edu.au >Mime-Version: 1.0 >Date: Tue, 6 Feb 1996 18:23:22 +0400 >Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group >Sender: UB Poetics discussion group >From: Kenneth Goldsmith >Subject: Sun & Moon Website Is Now Open >Comments: cc: jongams@crocker.com, dhiggins@mhv.net, lefthandb@mhv.net, > jsherry@panix.com, dmandl@panix.com, aks@interport.net, > sclay@interport.net, doovie@panix.com, aerialedge@aol.com, > kenny@www.caroline.com, harborrat@aol.com, > cab@cuphy3.phys.columbia.edu, DAntigone@aol.com, blairsea@panix.c= om, > ken@wfmu.org, greg@crocker.com, GuyB225673@aol.com, > jdrucker@minerva.cis.yale.edu, ToddLerner@aol.com, > lolpoet@acsu.buffalo.edu >To: Multiple recipients of list POETICS > > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ > > Sun & Moon Press > 1976-1996 20th Year > > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ > > Sun & Moon Press is proud to announce the grand opening of our website: > > > http://www.sunmoon.com > > > At this inital stage of our site, we're featuring these new titles for 199= 6: > > > * Jeffery M. Jones "J.P. Morgan Saves The Nation" > * Mac Wellman "Annie Salem" > * Robert Steiner "The Catastrophe" > * Djuna Barnes "The Collected Stories" > * Djuna Barnes "Poe's Mother: Selected Drawings of Djuna Barnes" > * Dennis Barone "The Returns" > * Jos=E9 Donoso "Hell Has No Limits" > * Barbara Guest "Seeking Air" > * Tom La Farge "Terror of Earth" > * Knut Hamsun "The Women at the Pump" > * G=E9rard De Nerval "Aur=E9lia" > * Mark Mirsky "Puddingstone" > * Heimito von Doderer "The Merovingians" > * Jackson Mac Low Barnesbook: "Four Poems Derived from Sentences by >Djuna Barnes" > * Tan Lin Lotion "Bullwhip Giraffe" > * Dominique Fourcade "Click-Rose" > * Olivier Cadiot Art "Po=E9tique" > * Charles North "New and Selected Poems" > * Ted Greenwald "Licorice Chronicles" > * Paul Van Ostaijen "The First Book of Schmoll" > * Dennis Phillips "Credence" > * Lyn Hejinian "Writing Is an Aid To Memory" > * Harv=E9 Guibert "Ghost Image" > * Louis-Ferdinand C=E9line "Dances without Music, without Dancers, >without Anything" > * Violet Kazue Matsuda de Cristoforo "May Skies: There's Always >Tomorrow: A History and Anthology of Haiku in the World War II Internment >Camps for Japanese-American Citizens " > * John Wieners "The Journal of John Wieners: is / to be / called" > * Jafal Toufic "Over-Sensitivity" > * Douglas Messerli and Mac Wellman, ed. "From the Other Side of the >Century II: A New American Drama 1960-1995 " > * Matthew Maguire "Phaedra" > * Val=E8re Novarina "The Theater of Ears" > > >In additon to the above books, we are offering a complete list of our >titles in print, awards announcements, links, and an internet searchable >ordering form. > >We will be constantly updating so please visit often. > >~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ > >Sun & Moon Press >Douglas J. Messerli >djmess@sunmoon.com > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 7 Feb 1996 12:09:26 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Roberts Subject: re Sun & Moon Website It looks like I stuffed up bad. I did not intend to post this message to AWOL subscribers at all at this stage or from this old address. I'm sorry if I have caused distress. Mark ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 6 Feb 1996 20:24:44 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: Pomo why not ask a Pomo Indian how e feels about the word being used to abbreviate postmodern? there's a lot of defensive wheelspinning and theoretical bristling at the suggestion that we be mindful of multiple meanings, some of which are the only fragments of tragic history remaining to us. If there were a similar word "Juden" being used in Germany to designate some theoretical humanistic position or aesthetic, you better believe i'd be beside myself with rage, and no fancy self-protective intellectualizing by the sons and daughters of the victors would convince me not to be. why is it so hard to see mark's and joe's point? maria d ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 6 Feb 1996 20:08:17 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Sheila E. Murphy" Subject: Poetry & Sculpture, etc. >>anybody know of any ties between poetry and sculpture lately? Jordan, At the Scottsdale Center for the Arts Poetry Series, now in its ninth season, we regularly schedule (usually 3x/season) programs in which we commission poets and writers to create original texts in response to sculptural or other visual work. Central Park (in Issue 15, I believe) printed a piece called "6 X 6" that was a collaborative performance poem Beverly Carver and I wrote for one of those performances. Sheila Murphy ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 6 Feb 1996 22:23:28 +0000 Reply-To: jzitt@humansystems.com Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: Authenticated sender is From: Joseph Zitt Organization: HumanSystems Subject: Re: Pomo Comments: To: Maria Damon On 6 Feb 96 at 20:24, Maria Damon wrote: > If there > were a similar word "Juden" being used in Germany to designate some > theoretical humanistic position or aesthetic, you better believe i'd be > beside myself with rage, and no fancy self-protective intellectualizing by > the sons and daughters of the victors would convince me not to be. why is it > so hard to see mark's and joe's point? Well, I was surprised and dismayed upon moving down here to Texas, that there *are* still people who use "jew" as a verb. But I'm not sure that the "Pomo" situation is a parallel -- do any of the list members in English feel that way about the term "english" wrt tennis ball spin? ---------1---------1---------1---------1---------1---------1---------- |||/ Joseph Zitt ==== jzitt@humansystems.com ===== Human Systems \||| ||/ Organizer, SILENCE: The John Cage Mailing List \|| |/Joe Zitt's Home Page\| ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 6 Feb 1996 23:54:37 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kit Robinson Subject: Ilya Kutik Alef Books announces the premier publication of Ode on Visiting the Belosaraisk Spit on the Sea of Azov by Ilya Kutik translated by Kit Robinson "Ilya Kutik's Ode is a tour de force. . ." -- Joseph Brodsky ". . . truly magnificent in both Russian and English." -- Charles Simic This bilingual edition of Kutik's 600-line Ode with translator's preface and author's notes is available from: Small Press Distribution 1814 San Pablo Avenue Berkeley, CA 94702 510/549-3336 ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 6 Feb 1996 22:38:56 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Janet Hoelle <97jhoell@ULTRIX.UOR.EDU> Subject: Re: Sun & Moon Website Is Now Open In-Reply-To: I browsed around your website just now, and am EXTREMELY interested in purchasing Lyn Hejinian's book, "Writing is an Aid to Memory." HOwever, the ordering service at your website was inacessible, at least from my terminal. Could you please let me know what I need to do to purchase it. Could I have it mailed to me, and pay for it by check or credit card? I wish I could order it from a bookstore, but I attend school in a small California town, and the one bookstore in town is ostensibly unable to order from Sun & Moon. (I checked on ordering Sun & Moon book once before) Please get back to me when you can, and thank you for releasing info. on your website. NICOLE HOELLE ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 7 Feb 1996 02:14:19 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rod Smith Subject: Re: We all break for laokoon Creeley wrote some very short pieces which were part of a series of sculptures in a public space in L.A. Sure someone out there knows the details, saw them in his Lannen video, quite beautiful. Rod ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 7 Feb 1996 02:52:21 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ron Silliman Subject: Re: Eigner Re your: "Hearing his reading of the work gave me a new sense of his use of line break and space -- not sure I can explain it, but I think I had been reading over the line breaks too quickly before" It takes some remembering, but I think it's probably easy to see those clusters of words about the page in such a way as to interpret them as airy, even wispy, and I think that's an error a lot of people do make in reading Eigner. The minute one realizes how fully he utilized his limited physical vocabularly in order simply to put word to page, the whole weight of movement shifts, and those poems never have that "light" feeling again. I cannot fathom exactly how strangers will read that work a century from now, but I assume it will be rather different. Ron ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 7 Feb 1996 05:22:02 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Alexander Subject: chax website It is very nice to hear about Sun & Moon's website, and I want to announce that a Chax Press website has been open for a few weeks now, although I consider it still very much in progress. It includes information on both the trade literary books and handmade editions from Chax, and has at present just a few links to other sites for poetry and book arts. It has an announcement of new books, a list of all books, a review essay reprinted from TapRoot Reviews, and a bit more. Within a few days it will have images of a few of the handmade, limited edition books from Chax, and an essay on the book arts. And of course it will be continually developing. More informational than sales-oriented, and there is at this time no on-line ordering service. The URL for the site is http://www.bookarts.org/chax/ Also, books announced a couple of months ago here as forthcoming are now available: Mary Margaret Sloan, The Said Lands, Islands, and Premises $11 Myung Mi Kim, The Bounty $12 charles alexander chax press box 19178 minneapolis, minnesota 55419 phone & fax 612-721-6063 email chax@mtn.org ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 7 Feb 1996 03:25:08 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ron Silliman Subject: Vision Project #1 Forwarded at Tom's request.... THE VISION PROJECT #1 Jan 96 Thomas Lowe Taylor, editor inquiries & submissions encouraged ****************************** ****************************** HEATHER THOMAS hthomas@kutztown.edu Once it was possible to resist you who are blissful in the shedding the pull of street, river, wind joys that give fragrance a transparent crossing moisture that flows from where we are bits, motes, mud, the inner plan the inner plan hair dry as sticks you who well up in your wounds of beginning ******************* HOSTAGE Instead of seduction, a metaphor of hospitality, profusely "ribbed leaves, funnel-shaped flowers." I arrange the imaginary room of the other for a visit: table, chair, air and light. Sublime, you become an alpine lake (when I open my eyes I fall) The ground between traveling and home not a walk across fields but oscillation between hope and fear, a woven folded motion to a bridge we struggle to reconcile such traffic. ************************** PRELUDE Light cuts the chair, lace slip (if you love metaphor, you love the stand-in cup with flared mouth (toward the discernible, pursuing no steady cake, a violent luck (not looks, but states of feeling face of crumpled paper (on the fringe of wings, gun shooting blanks (responding to chance encounter she, he (belonging to you, subject to love and death, mushroom, milk (the ideal more beautiful than the empty page this is (the sentence that killed me pear, inverted pyramid (all metaphors fail out of the body and besides (writing the subject, aware of its lack you cannot fall out of this). ********************************** ********************************** JOHN M. BENNETT 137 Leland Av., Columbus OH 432l4 CHAOS The wax chest sticking through clown emergence crown floor heel's summit (through your wrist (conclusion seems, lax unless the chicken glue (your burning ribs))) filthy lucre "feints" (encapsulation) "I'm that monkey"'s fist infusion "someday writing" fat licking cougher grill "John" plates of money, yeast shat, "flailing at the keys"' CORE **************************** COULD Played socks and spoons abomination clove of mildewed closets full of coin your loins pull oscillation few snowed grins you knew, splayed across the rocks like moons of ammunition kicking through, bricks float your (new throat resembles reassembles, chanchres deep in thought like pulling ou the arms or (anchors caught sleep in wood, arms without I **************************** INDEX Bow to, absence, mons of speech the, lingers boil (spore) starts up (heavy motors something) moving out of the bowels like (noon abstraction, shouted) reefs of fingered oil the, shore sharks every shortened glove with (rings booming gouts (reification clouds, growling WRISTS *************************** MOUNTAIN Mounted stinks, streaky clay screen of avalanching spurs cheek translation spit or seeing back- ward desk of highways "of" what (pressures in the lower towel meaty sinks the day means. Advancing fur for leak transaction lists of pees the rest regret your (thighing ways love requestors in the tower's bowl. (Indication, roof of skin THEORY ********************************** ********************************** BUCK DOWNS POB 50376/WDC 20091 (from) abortifacient a popper and so the spirit expires then next when we breathe in it's stuff like blankets and the soul in the back ground heavy indwelling it's not so profound to take you inside via the lips then expel myself it's not even an exception experience demonstrates everything will be swept clean from the body and its retainer then pause and begin another section of the container ********************** the heart gives good head to a stranger squamous and this box turn that to good use in quotes as if we're leaving earth don't it feel like that's what hands of men were made for honey turning hypocritical under the skin **************************** a taste of that contumely will do you up fine and calumny and some slander for me suits we take up to mention and herbs for us to take undoing the birth of all our next thinking ************************** next we took a train ride didn't like it then we did made up some ten- minute chemicals to leaven the ride separate each into limbs and piles of thought cross-down-when this medicine taste like cardboard parts tht go numb when we sleep on them the wrong way then let's cook our little honey and wash it down with tea steep a little bush and we drink that too to forget we ever made nothing grow up inside you and look what it's done. ******************************** ******************************** JIM LEFTWICH Sleftwich@aol.com SIGN sign resin. words rotund the echoes torment into doors archaic grace. palm moist anchors flight. the single touch her song, flesh recalls depths silence tuned to lips. caught younger the tongue. bridge of stars writhing at the mouth. ~~~~~~~~~~~ light rising codes moist smoke. boundaries cut in half. internal episodes of bees. relapse of eludes. rain patterns against the scorn, a gesture of formal lingering. caves recede the tithes of dust. ****************************** as horse is hearth so harm skates the ether eyelash taken in a thermal cup of breath from the breathing fountain to the pier of wallets king of the stick ball rock and backed by burial to the yankee crayon the carnal allure of fiction we underline the lanterns the horrors gel in a land of bagels I will ride on iridescent will, witnessed by the wagon lack maintains the drain the street king masks the orifice hell is dressed to the moons! between the bearded sky and the girdle of the carts the flowers of the dead bring saws and turds to the curtain of delicious baths trusting his ecstacy to the harvest falls from the maws of blessed ******************************* (piece in progress) screen holds whole mouths still light world becoming touch night enclosed where words stones build complete rocks moist command mingles smell drawn told wombs inwreathed mysterious bed gods glory designs other works road goats brighten decides fountains cracked mouth confines sea closed silent terrors weight where wave awaits blood silence grooms room bleeeds word fire decides thoughts forever spoken rise ******************************* ******************************* Gregory Vincent ST THOMASINO USHIO SHO homage to Ushio Amagatsu distance image dance / dance image painting / ( think / of a pre-historic / comes to mind ) drawn other / than language ( as if / hid... ) ( other than / language ) cave ( I see it ) cave ( flat / splits / pro-jections / rock ) pass my eye the painter in the cave ( with the painter) the painting drawn ( memories / copy of the world) ) images ( directly ) standing in the cave face to face with ( a ) wild animal ( s ) Me ( chases / watches / me chasing ) passing Me ( distance ) Me ( sees / listens / seeing / to look ) ( I ) recognize ( I ) react ( I ) stop seeing / to look the cave ****************************** ****************************** CRAIG CZURY Redpagoda@aol.com VANISHING POINT between two hard consonants resonance dissonance I close my eyes jack building a roof to his house the length of this window ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I close my eyes i'll carry these words between us until ) ( even the gender of words at their vanishing point vaso en arena I hear your name in a story of the sea crematorium smoke against an incoming cold front sky with no hair net no trampoline ************************** AT THE MUSEO he noticed there were birds so cocked the flick of a match set them off (at this hour) as if the trees the grass the stones the river the sleep down or across at this hour an oven door as if slammed everything collapsed houseuponhouseuponhouseup scavenged out of dirt hills corrugated tin cinderblock rivera kahlo trotsky there is still one sultry woman in the air singing blu es at this hour in filadelfia sequieros death round voluptuous orozco dancing with whores in the street brawling with drunks in the saloon single-handed somewhere I am at the center only the dead cast no shadow (children of B movies and crazy people) yam yam flute ocarina turd on calle garcia lorca in this dim light between prayer and waking clear ******************************** ******************************** JAKE BERRY NinthLab@aol.com (from) Phasestrophes He went down to himself length of rope and lake of sin listening bone ironies close enough to shoulder the animal he'd carve from absolution "Nothing's changed. Did you think a few lightbulbs and combustion engines could dispel the hunt?" carrion suitcase ritual condoms seal mainline righteous scraping his wounds - mumbling mumbling down to himself nothing eyelash ruse coughing genitalia (the gesture's mnemonic) lone and clean strung sardonically breathes **************************** PHASEOSTROPHE 68 beneath twin gears and rope the lights of soul viscera damn eloquence windex colored gatorade - what flavor is that?! Sperm. Pox ruling. - funk! toe jam! Leeched darkness. - Thomas - bread in nested in the vines Ethiopia. mouthful of blue clusters prayed the fueling rock swung off Scorpio ************************************ PHASEOSTROPHE 69 Maybe the isotopes grey liege is pleading but, as table realized, impose a rabid jackyl burnt through orbit my eyes leave dyslocal [note: repeat backwards by phrases] or brown gnat writhing a relinquishing dance grants the wings its nerve motion a catalyst juice ****************************** PHASEOSTROPHE 70 Solomon rose from the flames I suspected her, but didn't want a confrontation for fear she knew the gold I'd hidden in the bull's hooves questioning the origin of such constructs we mate the Lord in transwarped fields locating the levee in an edit of grain meggido bread cycles and its flute summoned key diffuse the cardinal angles to grovel palpable void ***************************** PHASEOSTROPHE 71 Dawn propulsion shadows charred red Spent to miraculous Beelzebub lines his face with flies courses stript from heat's body surging heavy as meat webbed through oxygen gamma vessel **************************** **************************** GUY BEINING 62-95 Saunders St 7B, Rego Park NY 11374 (from) Y fire-croppers abound in the zodiac, so prepare the way from bar of sand, or gold? enormous end of column falling into revelations revelations s-p-l-a-t-t-e-r VOLUTION of quark corked. get out of this bed of the had ready-made; stick cloven hoof thru shoulders; bleed an open s u n r I s e . EAR triggered to this GLOBAL SPECK tho the word is not carved right, & is changed by an L line of things to come, able on the tongue of some- thing plainly put without the paste to make a good flight. PITON ORION SCION CANON ************************** as far as the eYe could see the sun would fall thru folds of sea flow. marking headlights on dew, puzzles of a white boat. agless questions clog the stream, from armpit to pulpit. an arrow if disease has entered scar tissue; bubbles from tip of lip disarms and rewarms stages of the PULLEY that is tossed from a LOOM. maggots grease each step, from pole to wing. set eYe into EAR, exploding dOt of sound peephOle blOwhOle bunghOle hellhOle ******************************* 2 stones betwiX nite & his X-ray. go cast on light rafter in passion of MUD where sieve of creation STILL IS, & in seeing pike as some long pickle, pickerel, WALLEYed monster of another lOOk, gaze there & see grizzledstump, or strep of this new world in a heap. phoenix stilled greenness un- twines in lOOps. doggerel minstrel cockerel pickerel grieve from sleeve in thievery of eve. ***************************** Stage 1 of what is life on titled STAGE, aged so in rust & to constantly stare at; no eYe to pull lens apart: it is this vacuum of the dark lid covered that makes mime of omnipresence bare shrugging at here, & with cane to tap at hollowness, seeing the loss of landscape that is made up of tinny knolls one must adjust each line to limbic system as split cage holds head from wobbling, & wherein a minor bird reaches temple to tap a line or 2 LIFE IS UNSURE, IT ARRANGES ITSELF THAT WAY. ****************************** STAGE II .warrant, in error of make-up sentences like S T R I N G S pulled so far out....the reach is gone, & then they SNAP. from cortex to sea of mind, plasm of ink on brink of will, this illness scrapes head, as nite hangs over a cliff of itself & the mind like a wind pushes outward, breaking all branches of language. painted wings skit back & forth; a force begins to stain the brain. in this exercise of color a rounded sphere locks up with the head & for a moment fits, pulling one into a fitfall of otherness ..unutterable, IN PLURAL TEXT ciphered herein as otiose, DEADPAN, NUGATORY, a gyp. ****************************** STAGE III head gored with this view of vision that bubbles thru medulla oblongata & surfaces into a dream that blinks with chime-works of a counter clocl. vision etymon gnomon pinion standing by a coat rack. & hat rack, a pencilled piece the poet called a FRAMED STAND where he hung his lines: put a poll tax on the tail of this poet: let him lift past fringe of an opening- 1. sliced desk & he waves, reaching a. portable pictures b. stained words for desk as if 2. torn papers a. picture puzzle it were a tilting b. framed torso c. facial glow POEMSCAPE 3. jarred decay a. beige leak what is to hatch b. curved lump c. earth racks in this breathless cup, d. burial heap that for 1 gasp fits over the mOuth? ****************************** ****************************** SCOTT THURSTON D.S. "Zaczek", Al. 3 Maja 5/239, 30-063 Krakow, Poland determined branches gripped in a posture of strength attracted strategy for light-catching where breaks open along that drive pursued beyond belief lingering heat striving build up again you in circles (Warsaw-Krakow 20/5/95) ***************************** sleight of foot where you hung up traces coax her to rest solid glimpses cultivation labour to wait as a pearl grows what rocks your skin enlarged again gleaming over soil-spits quarry-canteen hooking over to this venture one sided figures gleam (Warsaw 28/5/95) ******************************* ******************************* JESSICA FREEMAN PO Box 8095, Clinton LA 70722 Vanity unfair jig off humble station Mortal see Antonio Mora for reel details Aspen village piper'll pay? ski ute tabula selenographica powdery Blue snowfall ouvenir-light ardoise VE Day north O Euston Station's bunnylope killer graph REESKI benchd bankd reel * Finland: Plucky Neighbor of Soviet Russia darling Boris! have you my getwell card..have Jean-Paul Gaultier 5th element.. are you quite well? ******************** A Stevedore Choir Mama St. Pierre Prepares St. Joseph Altar Lent Past cowpea fields cowherd Old Populist burden barriers To sidestep thunderous impacted sky finely Balanced Enthusiasms surge Ahead four moppets provide bushels O Theater give out lucky fava beans to guests de bonne volonte de bonne volonte Humid air! Festoon homeport South Louisiana ****************************** Fifth Republc danses rondes 1996 Insane brute cult noise & Trash reflects hideous oak & Tulip trees' bittercold snap Salute corrugations equidistant Frame Ecole Militaire Bastille Just like Himbara Dylan uses too damnmany the I reread THE FORCE THAT THROUGH Green fuse drips drops gathers not blank verse animistic'll translate Honore de Balzac Jon is a bastard. A treed frieze. ******************************* in Asia Minor his hacking jacket dissuedes aide d camp out back Mourning dove among ragpickers rapists whoresluts beat visionaries, rebels, and hipsters,1 maenads, centaurs, Heracles' Labour, Stymphalian bird, Moon visitation's kiss Endymion the shepherd, As his flock he guarded, She, the Moon, Selene, Saw him, loved him, sought him,2 seventeen degree chill due downs'll repeat pay we all play we All Chi Rho an onion tart Temperance a digestif Perserverance a kiss. 1. Steven Watson, The Birth of the Beat Generation 2. Theocritus ************************ January One Bosnian pontoons reprise Glen's Burning Bridges Only d Lone creamy brie trashd tand pire reread mt notes outta A Chekhov: The Sinner from Toledo & Other Stories re freedom absolute. yellin maze. Haricot'll awe TU LE TON SON TON washboard @ Dorval Airport's Gallic rabbinate (rabbinate @ time's sq aluminum bylaw ball dropkickball Resolutshun genderfree-dry-cleand igitur gaudeamus checke it ninety-six literally ******************************* Tone bodhisattva Having employed natural Emulsion egg yolk Gesso panels' low viscosity follows As planned Follows strong oils Sensuous Veil'd model sits Post nocaturnal Her flesh to Ply to draw out delicious unber ultra- marine ocher indigo non- photo blue Gown vintage Mars black, gown 1951 down in back alizarin crimson white violet primary colours farewell blues cadmium tall spike shoes mastic turpentine linseed Years late I'll prepare Damar varnish hairline fissure To reveal underlying ground spike shoes Manganese lead crack'd paint: appear, display Humanness Naples yellow zinc yellow Mars black, gown zips down to waist ********************************* Adohr goat milk 1/2 Gal party punch All- purpos cream The Scarlet Letter Dooms crypt/apse & onyx Algerian & Jesse Stuart's 1938 letter to Oscar Sammons * from Edinburgh A flowering quince hobbleskirt'd A Patroness install dung Tesserae nearby Maryland hand left South Dakots hang a right 11th street bridge Bern train fascile apsidal est-ce que vous avez des chambres?1 1. do you have any vacancies? ************************** School O tomorrows' hungruse bus electric blue doublepark'd longside Platonic Aesthetic this 22nd winter Solstice I send TT carnation evaporzoo milk net 5fl oz (147 mL nestle down mung Pacific tyme Idis awaits flug poste open letter quotes turpentine's linseed runnin blade cross glass palette buses roll gild Venetian toilet mirrors catch swine palace A Child's Christmas in Wales neath hip roof **************************** Three In The Morn Winter Christmas Eve Eve Christmas Eve Eve Winter Winter solstice cuts the rug Frost looms geometric Frost is dancing dancing prancing Look! look! our breath white rosettes! our breath white rosettes! Crystal morning Rococo Three fairy figures stampede Three bareback riders Sled Look! Look! Facile dawn red red red red red ****************************** (A Room For The Little Ones) parc aux petits sleep go to sleep mon petit sleep go to sleep Minette kitten while you do I will dance Gavotte with your father who gathered Moss and trapped all week to buy Accordion that soothes when you cry sleep go to sleep mon petit babe sleep go to sleep Minette kitten precious soul here Room for angels till musicians Fire a shot into the dawn crying Le bal est fini! fawn I will Gather you in my arms heading En haut Up the bayou triangle and violin Over its bank river marches disparaitre disparaitre to melt away ******************************** ******************************** BRETT EVANS sg947r5n@dunx1.ocs.drexel.edu Blue Vinyl Green perhaps I'm in this a little deeper than thought babyCry ripostes tussin bus honk crutches cops My child is A My child is gravy bones new haircut close shave belies fuzz on brain crick in cup follow the floor around the room "when I meet my public" you eat with a fork hay now a favorite shirt no more more ******************************* ******************************* ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 7 Feb 1996 07:21:16 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rachel Loden <74277.1477@COMPUSERVE.COM> Subject: the art and poetry worlds Jordan Davis wrote: >anybody know of any ties between poetry and sculpture lately? >or poetry and painting, for that matter? Tying this into an ancient thread, I recently came across the following, which seems to say it all about the difference between the art and poetry worlds: The Washington Post November 2, 1994, Wednesday, Final Edition HEADLINE: AT THE AUCTIONS Artist/Title ............... Price ....................... Estimate TOP FIVE PRICES ......................... Jasper Johns, "Screenpiece #3 (The Sonnets)." One of the handful of works offered by publishing magnate S.I. Newhouse, this esoteric canvas is inspired by the New York poetry of Ted Berrigan. ......................... $ 662,500 .............. $ 600,000-$ 800,000 ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 7 Feb 1996 09:43:27 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jonathan A Levin Subject: Re: We all break for laokoon In-Reply-To: Jordan et al-- Glad you asked--a friend of mine, Joan Levinson, has a show running now (through Feb 10, alas--Sat.) at the Nicholas Davies & Co. gallery, 23 Commerce St (b/t 7th Ave S and Bedford). She makes sculpture with found objects, w/ accompanying text. Texts are gnomic and delightful-- a poetic prose coming, in some ways, from Stein. I hope you get a chance to stop in--let me know if you do. Jonathan Levin ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 7 Feb 1996 10:09:02 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Kellogg Subject: Re: Eigner In-Reply-To: <199602071052.CAA29262@ix7.ix.netcom.com> On Wed, 7 Feb 1996, Ron Silliman wrote: > Re your: "Hearing his reading of the work gave me a new sense of his > use of line break and space -- not sure I can explain it, but I think > I had been reading over the line breaks too quickly before" > > It takes some remembering, but I think it's probably easy to see those > clusters of words about the page in such a way as to interpret them as > airy, even wispy, and I think that's an error a lot of people do make > in reading Eigner. The minute one realizes how fully he utilized his > limited physical vocabularly in order simply to put word to page, the > whole weight of movement shifts, and those poems never have that > "light" feeling again. I cannot fathom exactly how strangers will read > that work a century from now, but I assume it will be rather different. Dear Ron and others, I never had the privilege of meeting Eigner or hearing him read. I want to thank you all for posting your remembrances. This is a moment when the POETICS list becomes a real community. I'm wondering: Could we generate a bibliography of video and audio recordings of Eigner, and where they're available, that might be housed at the EPC? If it's true that Eigner will be features on USOP, great; but there must be other recordings at SFSU and elsewhere, no? Speaking for myself, as one who came "from" MFA-establishment poetics and who is slowly learning the fullness of what's available, I would find such a list of enormous personal value. Cheers, David ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ David Kellogg Duke University kellogg@acpub.duke.edu University Writing Program (919) 660-4357 Durham, NC 27708 FAX (919) 684-6277 There is some excitement in one corner, but most of the ghosts are merely shaking their heads. -- Thomas Kinsella ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 7 Feb 1996 07:36:56 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Douglas Messerli Subject: Re: Sun & Moon Website Is Now Open Nicole: The book will be in by next month. I'll put your request out as an order and send it, billing you, when it's available. About the website: the order form does come up, but it's a bit confusing; I've suggested that the entire order form appear at the front of the "call-up" by name or some such method. We're still ironing out the site. ==================================================== At 10:38 PM 2/6/96 -0800, you wrote: >I browsed around your website just now, and am EXTREMELY interested in >purchasing Lyn Hejinian's book, "Writing is an Aid to Memory." HOwever, >the ordering service at your website was inacessible, at least from my >terminal. Could you please let me know what I need to do to purchase it. >Could I have it mailed to me, and pay for it by check or credit card? I >wish I could order it from a bookstore, but I attend school in a small >California town, and the one bookstore in town is ostensibly unable to >order from Sun & Moon. (I checked on ordering Sun & Moon book once >before) Please get back to me when you can, and thank you for releasing >info. on your website. > >NICOLE HOELLE > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 7 Feb 1996 11:32:54 -0500 Reply-To: Peter Jaeger Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Peter Jaeger Subject: Re: snakes and laokooners In-Reply-To: <199602062312.PAA13588@slip-1.slip.net> On Tue, 6 Feb 1996, Steve Carll wrote: > At 10:03 AM 2/6/96 -0500, you wrote: > >anybody know of any ties between poetry and sculpture lately? > >or poetry and painting, for that matter? > >poetry and rodeo? > >poetry and dance, poetry and music, poetry and tv, these seem kind of > >available now in a way that poetry and film, poetry and dogsledding, poetry > >and critique may be less available than they used to be.. > > > >Jordan > A couple of things come to mind--Ian Hamilton Finlay's Stonypath garden in Scotland (Finlay fought the scottish gov. for a tax exemption for one of the poem-sculptures on his land, which he argued was a religious edifice and hence exempt from taxes--he lost. Michael Archer writes about it in _Artforum_ 30, Nov 91). The city of Toronto dedicated the back alley behind Coach House Press to bpNichol after his death. There is a Nichol poem literally embedded in the concrete floor of bpNichol Lane---"a line / alone / a lane . . . " Last year Artspeak gallery in Vancouver presented a show on the book as object. I showed a hardcover book that was bolted closed with a found poem laminated on to the cover: "to write a book and revoke it is something else than not writing it at all . . . to write a book that does not claim importance for anybody is something else than leaving it unwritten." --Peter Jaeger ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 7 Feb 1996 09:36:33 PST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jerry Rothenberg Subject: Re: Poetry & Sculpture, etc. Ian Finlay is probably the master figure who turned CONCRETE poetry into concrete sculptural form -- the garden & the public works as testimony. Jerome Rothenberg ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 7 Feb 1996 10:02:18 PST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jerry Rothenberg Subject: Re: Eigner The first Eigner recording that I can recall was published (as both cassette & reel-to-reel by S-Press (Germany) in 1975. Title: AROUND NEW / SOUND DAILY / MEANS: A SELECTION OF POEMS (or: SELECTED POEMS. 27 poems are included, and the recording data (circumstances) read as follows: Recorded by Michael Koehler at Swampscott, Mass., on July 1st and 11th, 1974. I assume that this is now out of print, but who knows. Jerome Rothenberg ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 7 Feb 1996 16:06:05 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Sondheim Subject: Re: Poetry & Sculpture, etc. In-Reply-To: <9602071736.AA02612@carla.UCSD.EDU> There are several figures in the artworld who come to mind here as well - Lawrence Weiner and Jenny Holzer - her Lustmord two years ago in Soho was nothing short of amazing, as was her use of Times Square movie marquees. Both took my breath away. I think she has the most astute approach to virtual language and its material productions of anyone I can think of. (One might also add the works of people like On Kawara and Arakawa here, as well as some of the object-like qualities of Dieter Rot's books and other productions.) Alan (private note - Dick Higgins - I need your email address! Thanks.) On Wed, 7 Feb 1996, Jerry Rothenberg wrote: > Ian Finlay is probably the master figure who turned CONCRETE poetry into > concrete sculptural form -- the garden & the public works as testimony. > > Jerome Rothenberg > ( http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/~spoons/internet_txt.html Images at http://www.cs.unca.edu/~davidson/pix/ ) ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 7 Feb 1996 14:20:38 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Laura Moriarty Subject: Re: Eigner >On Wed, 7 Feb 1996, Ron Silliman wrote: > >> Re your: "Hearing his reading of the work gave me a new sense of his >> use of line break and space -- not sure I can explain it, but I think >> I had been reading over the line breaks too quickly before" >> >> It takes some remembering, but I think it's probably easy to see those >> clusters of words about the page in such a way as to interpret them as >> airy, even wispy, and I think that's an error a lot of people do make >> in reading Eigner. The minute one realizes how fully he utilized his >> limited physical vocabularly in order simply to put word to page, the >> whole weight of movement shifts, and those poems never have that >> "light" feeling again. I cannot fathom exactly how strangers will read >> that work a century from now, but I assume it will be rather different. > >Dear Ron and others, > >I never had the privilege of meeting Eigner or hearing him read. I want to >thank you all for posting your remembrances. This is a moment when the >POETICS list becomes a real community. > >I'm wondering: Could we generate a bibliography of video and audio >recordings of Eigner, and where they're available, that might be housed at >the EPC? If it's true that Eigner will be features on USOP, great; but >there must be other recordings at SFSU and elsewhere, no? > >Speaking for myself, as one who came "from" MFA-establishment poetics >and who is slowly learning the fullness of what's available, I would find >such a list of enormous personal value. > >Cheers, >David >~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ >David Kellogg Duke University >kellogg@acpub.duke.edu University Writing Program >(919) 660-4357 Durham, NC 27708 >FAX (919) 684-6277 > > There is some excitement in one corner, > but most of the ghosts are merely shaking their heads. > > -- Thomas Kinsella David - Yes there is a tape of Larry Eigner reading at the Poetry Center at SFSU - It is from November 29, 1984 and is the reading Larry did for co-winning the Poetry Center Book Award in 1983 for Water/Places/A Time. He read with Tina Darragh. I also want to mention that the initial version of the web site for the Poetry Center and American Poetry Archives is up at www.sfsu.edu/~newlit/welcome.htm.It has our current reading schedule plus some basic information about the Archives. Laura Moriarty ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 7 Feb 1996 17:58:53 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jonathan Brannen Subject: Re: Bernadette Mayer Fan Club (charter member) Interestingly, _The Tennis Court Oath_ is the one book of his that Ashbery has disavowed. Mayer's work is wondrous. _Mid-Winter Day_ is a personal favorite, though others are as good. Jonathan >The relationship between Langpo and Bernadette Mayer's work is, as >Charles B and Chris S both note, very much there. As I dredge into my >memory of what happened, at least as perceived in NYC when >L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E first appeared, langpo appeared as a reaction or response >to the vulgar zen/"no-nothing bohemianism" of second/third/4th gen ny >school then predominant downtown. Bernadette was/had been a visible >exception to an apparent anti-intellectualism. But her writing was also >very much a part of and accessible within that other tradition, which >could be part of why she might want to draw distinctions between her work >and langpo. Alice Notley might be another example. > >But why should Sandra Gilbert distinguish between Bruce Andrews and John >Ashbery (esp. THE TENNIS COURT OATH). Isn't the writing equally >programmatic (or not)? Or, between Bob Grenier and Larry Fagin? I don't >think of langpo as a movement like surrealism where individuals are >constantly being thrown out and readmitted after self-criticism. Its >more a way of categorizing or approaching a range of writing that loosely >shares some general principles/points of view. > >Tho I admit my standing for adjudicating these questions might be less >than authoritative. > > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 7 Feb 1996 17:58:57 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jonathan Brannen Subject: Larry Eigner I open the door not the window so the air beyond glass and somehow the stars invisible now Larry Eigner (from _now there's/a morning/hulk of sky_) I am saddened to learn that Larry Eigner died. His work was important to us all. Jonathan Brannen ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 7 Feb 1996 20:56:33 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jack Mahan Subject: fearful symmetry "The Pomo Nation declared a state of emergency on January 25, 1996..." had to pull over turn off the engine (Pomos: 175 Poetics: 310+) 'its getting critical now, we can't get any services, could really use powdered milk, you see, we have like, a lot of children under two, and pampers too you know....' _ _ _ Traditionalists v. Non-Traditionalists gambling sovereign alcohol land vandalism arson murder 'no it's been totally mis-represented, that non-natives will be shot...' 'no, we've got the casino operational again." Sher|iff stopping fire and ambulance service too dangerous Twenty eight squad cars for one man 'they arrested our whole tribe' * * 'if it was like a white community we'd all be hero's or something' _ _ _ 'anything, food, clothing, heavy trucks, tools, wood, nails... 'no, you never know where the money is going to end up 'but mostly prayers you know... we've always been a very spiritual people... always kept performing the traditions... lots of visitors you know... and if you keep us in your mind, in your spirit, that's especially going to help... or you can even call or write, anything.' _ _ _ Interview with Jim Brown of the Pomo Nation aired 2/7/96 12:00-1:00 PM PST on KAOS radio, The Evergreen State College, Olympia WA (360) 866-5267 c/o Jim Brown Elim Colony PO Box 610 Clearlake Oaks CA 95423 Jim Brown home phone (707) 998-3536 _ _ _ Fuck, kids... sorry... but i do gotta take some gd courage from Jim's understressing the value of keeping his people in mind, in spirit, in prayer: I can't not, can you? no, not feel-good bs... Courage. (i wish this didn't have to be my first post.) Courage, jack ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 8 Feb 1996 00:30:23 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Colleen Lookingbill Subject: Canessa March readings Two readings in March: Sunday March 10 at 3:00 - Leslie Scalapino and Avery Burns Saturday March 23 at 3:00 - Albert Mobilio and Cole Swenson Please come and bring all your friends... ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 8 Feb 1996 03:45:53 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ron Silliman Subject: Larry Eigner This appeared in the SF Chronicle on February 5th. In spite of the byline, it would appear to be essentially an abbreviated version of a draft originally done by Jack Foley. -------------------------------------------------------- OBITUARY -- Lawrence Joel Eigner Stephen Schwartz A funeral will be held tomorrow for Lawrence Joel (Larry) Eigner, a leading American modernist poet, who died of pneumonia Saturday at Alta Bates Hospital in Berkeley. He was 68. Mr. Eigner was born in Swampscott, Mass., and suffered a birth injury that left him non-ambulatory with cerebral palsy throughout his life. He was educated at home and took correspondence courses with the University of Chicago. In 1949, Mr. Eigner first heard the poet and editor Cid Corman reading William Butler Yeats on the radio and began a correspondence with him that brought Mr. Eigner's work to the attention of the poetry scene of the time. ``The ice broke considerably,'' Mr. Eigner noted modestly. Mr. Eigner became associated with the ``Black Mountain poets,'' a group that included the late Robert Duncan, Charles Olson, Robert Creeley, and Denise Levertov. These writers published in Black Mountain Review, printed at Black Mountain College, a small experimental institution in North Carolina, and in Corman's magazine, Origin. ``From the Sustaining Air,'' Mr. Eigner's first mature book of poems, was issued by Creeley's Divers Press in 1953. The author was praised by the poet William Carlos Williams for his ``perfect ear,'' and as a ``new and outstanding writer.'' Williams commented of that book, ``It's strange how old fashioned he makes much of the work of the past appear.'' Mr. Eigner's work was included in the landmark anthology, ``The New American Poetry,'' published in 1960 by Donald M. Allen. Mr. Eigner went on to publish numerous other books, including ``Selected Poems,'' in 1972, edited by Samuel Charters and Andrea Wyatt, and ``Areas Lights Heights, Selected Writings 1954-1989,'' edited by Benjamin Friedlander and printed in 1989. In 1983 the San Francisco State University Poetry Prize was awarded to Mr. Eigner for ``Waters/Places/A Time,'' edited by Robert Grenier. A 1986 anthology of language poetry, ``In the American Tree,'' edited by Ronald Silliman, was dedicated to Mr. Eigner. He was the subject of a 1973 film with Allen Ginsberg, ``Getting It Together.'' Mr. Eigner is survived by his brothers Richard, of Berkeley, and Joseph, of St. Louis. A funeral will be held at 2 p.m. tomorrow at Rolling Hills Memorial Park (Tel Shalom section) near the Interstate 80 intersection with Hilltop Drive in Richmond. Memorial contributions are requested for KPFA-FM, 1929 Martin Luther King Jr. Way, Berkeley 94704. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 8 Feb 1996 03:42:25 -1000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gabrielle Welford Subject: Re: fearful symmetry In-Reply-To: I want to thank Jack Mangan for his first post. Thankyouthankyouthankyou Jack Mangan. Gabrielle ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 8 Feb 1996 09:21:48 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Re: Eigner recordings In-Reply-To: <199602080517.AAA05571@listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu> I seem to remember the Berkeley organizers videotaping the Eigner tribute readings (but maybe I just remember seeing Kush there) -- perhaps someone from among the readers will recall, since they all were busied with the signing of varied forms prior to the affair. I made a good audio tape of the readings for the radio program I operated in those days, but of course the tape is in San Jose and I am in L.A. -- Once I retireve the tape (perhaps late Spring), I'd be hap[py to put a copy on deposit at the Buffalo collection. Since I had permission for the radio taping, I think it's O.K. to deposit the tape as a record of that event, though circulation beyond that would require further permissions from the U.C. Berkeley organizers. Point is, that marathon session of tribute readings followed by Eigner himself was preserved. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 8 Feb 1996 14:10:08 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: fearful symmetry/Pomo revisited thank you so much, jack, for pointing out in a very immediate and timely way that Pomos are not to be facilely compared to the Greeks, Romans, Turks or English, who were imperialists and colonizers. With all due respect to language-supremacists, let's get real for a minute, and not indulge our philosophies glibly at the expense of impoverished "children under two," whether or not they have, in our grandiose opinions, "subject positions." ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 8 Feb 1996 17:56:11 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Bernstein Subject: Jack Foley on Larry Eigner Jack Foley has given me permission to forward this letter to the Poetics list. I had sent him the comments on Larry Eigner I posted to the list a few days ago. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Tue, 06 Feb 1996 03:19:16 -0500 From: JASFOLEY@aol.com Subject: larry eigner Dear Charles, Thank you for your touching, eloquent remarks about Larry. As you suggested, I'll email my press release and also fax it to you. I've been so busy, partly with trying to spread the news about Larry and partly with other things (had to record radio interviews with Adrienne Rich and Jerry Rothenberg), that I've been barely able to put my thoughts together. Larry had been in the hospital for a week before his death, comatose. This morning, quite early, both Michael McClure and my son Sean phoned me to tell me they'd heard of Larry's death and funeral arrangements on NPR. That was exactly the kind of thing Larry would do--phone me at an hour when no one else would phone me to tell about something he'd heard on the radio. He's been my friend for ten years--I'd see him once a week and hear from him on the phone quite often. Our birthdays were two days apart--we had a joint party once. He wrote a preface to my first book, LETTERS/LIGHTS--WORDS FOR ADELLE, the only preface he wrote to anyone's book. (Except for the few remarks he made at the beginning of Ron Silliman's CROW. I had asked Larry for a blurb. He responded with a preface.) My current book, EXILES, was at his bedside during the last conscious week of his life. His voice on a message machine was something to hear. He once left a message on Michael McClure's machine. Michael couldn't make heads nor tails of it, but I was able to catch what Larry was saying. Larry was not easy to be friends with. The pattern tended to be for people to visit him for a while, make some effort to understand his speech, and then to drift away. I was able to stay friends partly because I didn't live with him and partly because I understood his speech as well as anyone. This was more something I willed than something I learned. I was running a poetry series in Berkeley and I admired Larry's work and wanted him to read in the series. Barry Watten gave me Larry's phone number, not his address, only his phone number. I've never known whether this was some sort of joke on Barry's part, since he certainly had his address as well as his phone number. I phoned and Larry answered, saying something like "UNGHHHHH." I had known that Larry was disabled but hadn't realized until that moment that the disability extended to his speech. I simply decided I would understand Larry. There is no other way to put it. By the time the conversation was over, Larry had given me his address and directions to his house, and we had agreed on a date when he was to read. Kathleen Frumkin told me later that she had been listening on an extension phone and had been ready to help me out if I needed it. She never said anything because I seemed to be managing. You write, "His will to think was unsuppressible." Yes, but so was his will to speak--to speak in any manner he could. You've been with Larry and know how he would talk all the time. "To break out with a man's cry," if I'm quoting correctly. His writing, with all its silences, necessarily partook of that urge towards talk. People complained of it--Bob and others accused him of "monologuing." Yet there it was, at his very center, controlled in certain ways but in others not. Hard to think of him silent. Here is the piece I wrote at the request of the Eigner family: LARRY EIGNER: 1927-1996 Distinguished American poet and writer Lawrence Joel (Larry) Eigner died Saturday February 3rd of pneumonia at Alta Bates Hospital in Berkeley. Eigner was 68 and is survived by two brothers, Richard, who lives in Berkeley, and Joseph, who lives in Saint Louis, Missouri. Born August 7, 1927, in Swampscott, Massachusetts, on the North Shore of Boston, Eigner got cerebral palsy as a result of a birth injury. Though he remained "non-ambulatory" throughout his life, he recalled that his mother, Bessie Eigner, encouraged him to develop a "work ethic," and his schooling was conducted at home through Swampscott High School. Later, seven correspondence courses from the University of Chicago gave him "a toe-hold of application and hope." Curiosity, he claimed, was always an important factor, "my eyes still big for my head, most things...always tantalizing beyond or almost beyond sight and hearing, out of reach." In 1949 Eigner "bumped into [poet] Cid Corman reading Yeats, on the radio" and wrote a letter disagreeing with Corman's non-declamatory way of reciting. "This began a correspondence in which I got introduced to things, and the ice broke considerably." Donald Allen's landmark 1960 anthology, THE NEW AMERICAN POETRY, includes Eigner's exquisite, often enigmatic verse in the section devoted to "The Black Mountain Poets," a group of writers publishing in THE BLACK MOUNTAIN REVIEW, an experimental magazine printed by Black Mountain College in North Carolina. Many of these poets had also appeared in Corman's magazine, ORIGIN. Among the poets associated with this group were Charles Olson, Robert Duncan, Denise Levertov, and Robert Creeley, whose Divers Press published Eigner's first mature book, FROM THE SUSTAINING AIR, in 1953. After reading that book, William Carlos Williams remarked on Eigner's "perfect ear" and added, "It's strange how oldfashioned he makes much of the work of the past appear. But it is always so with every new and outstanding writer." Eigner's many books, all of them published through small presses, include: ON MY EYES (1960, edited by Denise Levertov); ANOTHER TIME IN FRAGMENTS (1967); SELECTED POEMS (1972, edited by Samuel Charters and Andrea Wyatt); THINGS STIRRING TOGETHER OR FAR AWAY (1974); COUNTRY / HARBOR / QUIET / ACT / AROUND (1978, selected prose edited by Barrett Watten), and WATERS / PLACES / A TIME (edited by Robert Grenier, the book was co-winner of the San Francisco State Poetry Award in 1983). AREAS LIGHTS HEIGHTS, SELECTED WRITINGS 1954-1989, edited by Benjamin Friedlander, appeared from Roof Books in 1989. Eigner's current book of poetry, again edited by Grenier, WINDOWS WALLS YARD WAYS, appeared in 1994 from Black Sparrow Press, publisher of many of his titles. Another volume of poetry edited by Grenier, READINESS / ENOUGH / DEPENDS / ON, is forthcoming from Sun & Moon Press. In 1967 Toad Press published a second, expanded edition of FROM THE SUSTAINING AIR, and in 1988 The Coincidence Press reprinted the original edition. Ron Silliman's 1986 anthology of L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry, IN THE AMERICAN TREE, was dedicated to Larry Eigner. A short "Autobiography" is forthcoming from Gale Research, Inc. in Detroit. In Eigner's poems, themes of ecology and explorations of his Jewish heritage exist side by side with the most advanced experimental techniques and deep, deceptively simple, sensuous evocations of the world around him. "Parodying Socrates a little," he wrote, "you might say I know enough to feel naive." In August, 1978, a few months after his father's death, Eigner relocated to Berkeley, CA, where his brother Richard was residing and where he lived till his death. Many young poets visited him there, and he carried on an active correspondence with poets throughout the world. The door to his home was frequently unlocked. As a regular at Jack Foley's Larry Blake's reading series in Berkeley, Eigner became a familiar figure to the Bay Area poetry scene. Despite the difficulty many people had in understanding his speech, he gave many readings of his poetry, often in the company of Foley. Eigner was also something of a media figure. In 1973, Leonard Henny and Jan Boon made GETTING IT TOGETHER, a documentary film about Eigner with poetry readings by Allen Ginsberg. In August, 1994, Foley broadcast an hour-long interview with Eigner on KPFA radio. THE UNITED STATES OF POETRY, a forthcoming series made for public television by Bob Holman, has a segment featuring Eigner. In the summer of 1993, at the suggestion of Berkeley poet Lyn Hejinian, the UC Berkeley University Art Museum paid tribute to Eigner with a special MATRIX exhibition. His poem, "again dawn," from ANOTHER TIME IN FRAGMENTS, was inscribed on the building's facade. A special poetry reading at which Eigner appeared was held to commemorate the event. Eigner's last public appearance was at a tribute to Gertrude Stein which Hejinian presented at New College of California in November, 1995. Eigner's innovative poetry was widely admired by poets of very different persuasions. The poets to whom he returned again and again were Hart Crane, William Carlos Williams, and Charles Olson. Denise Levertov wrote, "More than almost any poet I can think of, he demands a suppleness, an imaginative agility, a willingness and ability to leap with him from image to image...." Robert Duncan asserted that Eigner had produced "a new development of Williams's line: his phrasings are not broken off in an abrupt juncture but hover, having a margin of their own--stanzaic phrasings--suspended in their own time within the time of the poem." Funeral services will take place on Tuesday, at 2 p.m., at The Rolling Hills Memorial Park (Tel Shalom section), Richmond, Interstate 80 at Hilltop Drive. Eigner's family requests that the public and freinds not send flowers. A contribution can be made in Larry Eigner's name to KPFA-FM, 1929 Martin Luther King, Jr. Way, Berkeley, CA 94704. Jack ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 8 Feb 1996 18:49:34 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Eryque Gleason Subject: Re: fearful symmetry/Pomo revisited Maria Damon wrote a while ago: >thank you so much, jack, for pointing out in a very immediate and timely way >that Pomos are not to be facilely compared to the Greeks, Romans, Turks or >English, who were imperialists and colonizers. With all due respect to >language-supremacists, let's get real for a minute, and not indulge our >philosophies glibly at the expense of impoverished "children under two," >whether or not they have, in our grandiose opinions, "subject positions." yay maria! my sentients exactly! eryque ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 8 Feb 1996 18:55:58 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Eryque Gleason Subject: a star is born seems like we've spent the last several months anouncing the deaths of poets. wouldn't it be groovy if we could start announing more BIRTHS of poets? happy holidays, eryque ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 8 Feb 1996 19:15:40 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joe Amato Subject: Re: fearful symmetry/Pomo revisited sometimes it's difficult to know whether to post or no, given the sorts of intricacies and tensions that can develop in these spaces... anyway, this is simply to second, or third, or fourth jack mahan's motion to consider the pomo/Pomo issue in light of current realities experienced by those folks... thanx jack, and as far as i'm concerned, that was a goddamn good "first post"... joe ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 8 Feb 1996 19:14:47 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Janet Hoelle <97jhoell@ULTRIX.UOR.EDU> Subject: Re: POET'S BIRTHDAYS Comments: To: Erica Hunt In-Reply-To: <960206014012_137040722@mail02.mail.aol.com> Today is John Ruskin's birthday and tomorrow is the day that Rilke gave birth to the last ten elegies, in the Duino series, after a 10 year spell of (Duino) muselessness. NICOLE HOELLE ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 8 Feb 1996 23:38:10 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Colleen Lookingbill Subject: Re: Canessa March readings Comments: cc: patschul@prairie.nodak.edu Pat and the list - sorry for the lack of info - presumptuous to think that everyone knows - Canessa Park Reading and Talk Series is a reading series in San Francisco mostly devoted to "experimental" poetry. The location is 708 Montgomery St. in an art gallery/architectural firm. The usual pattern is Sunday afternoon at 3:00, but the second reading of March is on a Saturday, because of a conflict with another reading. My husband (Jordon Zorker) and I have curated the series for a couple of years, sometimes with the help of other poets/writers. We serve tea and cookies and the admission price just went up to $5.OO. Usually two readers perform for about half an hour each. I have heard some of the best poetry and writing in the country in the years that the series has been around (more than 10, but not sure how long really.) Laura Moriarity and Spencer Selby did the series before me and Jordon. Now you have more information than you probably ever wanted! ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 8 Feb 1996 20:50:45 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: ryan johnson Subject: Re: Pomo ergo sum Comments: cc: perloff@leland.stanford.edu In-Reply-To: <199602061730.LAA21989@charlie.acc.iit.edu> (especially to Joe Amato, but all else, too) Pretty sure I'll sound like a real dickwad for saying some of the stuff I want to on this continually intriguing subject, especially after Jack's very pertinent 'real world' update and its enormous popularity. But anyway. It occurs to me that Wittgenstein may be pertinent to this whole discussion of the 'pomo/Pomo' issue ( and I credit Marjorie for indirectly illuminating my ideas here). Witt. has the basic idea that the operations of language can be seen as relatively concrete--or perhaps I should say discrete--when examined in the particular contexts or, shall we say, communities in which the occur. While some thinking floating around now seems typically to relate this idea to literary language and poetics (or in any case that seems to be Marjorie's interest), it occurred to me while all this was being dicussed that Witt's. ideas may have some relevance to 'the social' or 'material culture' or what have you. In *this* particular language community, the term pomo was evidently at some point instantiated as a useful and shall we say fully referential term among its users (though the stability of the referent itself is obviously in dispute and should be). In a newspaper article or more explicitly social/public community of language, the term Pomo clearly does mean something else, enjoys some pretty solid referentiality, etc.--it 'means.' So what I'm thinking is that if a member of the P{omo social group happened upon this language community s/he (or ze, or e, etc.) would probably catch on pretty quick, to the extent that s/he would understand that a different 'language game,' to use Witt's own term, was operating--though I wouldn't necessarily argue that s/he still wouldn't be affected by this alternative usage, I do think it likely s/he would understand it as a *different* one. And all this may point to a way that in some way marxism and critical perspectives like it (institution-study, structure-study) may not be the only avenues of discussion. And of course I'm only refering to academic or more likely pseudo- academic modes of thinking, but they're the ones I'm stuck in at the moment. I should emphasize that the things I'm saying aren't really meant to comment on the very real and pressing problems of the Pomo group, only that there are a lot of different ways for discussion to continue. And with all those disclaimers, I probably still sound like an insensitive jerk, but I'll let that risk stand for now. Thanks, Ryan ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 8 Feb 1996 23:54:26 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Eryque Gleason Subject: Re: fearful symmetry/Pomo revisited >sometimes it's difficult to know whether to post or no, given the sorts of >intricacies and tensions that can develop in these spaces... anyway, this >is simply to second, or third, or fourth jack mahan's motion to consider >the pomo/Pomo issue in light of current realities experienced by those >folks... > >thanx jack, and as far as i'm concerned, that was a goddamn good "first >post"... > >joe yay joe too! ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 8 Feb 1996 23:54:30 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Eryque Gleason Subject: Re: POET'S BIRTHDAYS >Today is John Ruskin's birthday and tomorrow is the day that Rilke gave >birth to the last ten elegies, in the Duino series, after a 10 year spell >of (Duino) muselessness. > >NICOLE HOELLE mmm, not quite what i was getting at, but it'll do before we manage to look into the future and figure out what's gonna be who. mebbe we should all go down to the local infant ward, pick a likely one from all the gurling faces and say "hey, kid, you're a poet" eryque ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 Feb 1996 01:30:30 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: James Perez Subject: Re: fearful symmetry/Pomo revisited md says (sorry no good reader, this is from memory)... English, Turks, Greeks, etc were imperialists and colonizers after all... this kind of comment tends to get me to thinking: it's very reductive and very incorrect. To state the obvious, the majority of English, Greeks and Turks were not imperialists or colonizers, they were normal people, and quite a few of them oppressed, below the poverty line, disenfranchised, etc. and yet still English, Greek or Turkish. Do you see what I'm saying? All too quickly we blame an entire people or race or gender for something done by a minority within the group. This seems so obvious to me that I have an eerie feeling I'm missing the entire point, you know? James Perez ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 8 Feb 1996 22:38:43 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Janet Hoelle <97jhoell@ULTRIX.UOR.EDU> Subject: Re: POET'S BIRTHDAYS Comments: To: Eryque Gleason In-Reply-To: <199602090543.AAA20133@shell.acmenet.net> Dear Eryque, I guess I was just looking for any excuse to spread that info. accross the e-waves, or any place for that matter, particularly Rilke bit, as I have been re-reading Rilke's elegies lately, and also I have this Book of Days for the Literary Year and turning to it this week I discovered that tomorrow's the day was the day, is the day, will be the day for the final break-out of the Duino flood. AH! On Thu, 8 Feb 1996, Eryque Gleason wrote: > >Today is John Ruskin's birthday and tomorrow is the day that Rilke gave > >birth to the last ten elegies, in the Duino series, after a 10 year spell > >of (Duino) muselessness. > > > >NICOLE HOELLE > > mmm, not quite what i was getting at, but it'll do before we manage to look > into the future and figure out what's gonna be who. > > mebbe we should all go down to the local infant ward, pick a likely one > from all the gurling faces and say "hey, kid, you're a poet" > > eryque > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 Feb 1996 02:07:50 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kevin Killian Subject: Re: POET'S BIRTHDAYS At 11:54 PM 2/8/96, Eryque Gleason wrote: >mmm, not quite what i was getting at, but it'll do before we manage to look >into the future and figure out what's gonna be who. > >mebbe we should all go down to the local infant ward, pick a likely one >from all the gurling faces and say "hey, kid, you're a poet" Eryque, Perhaps you should rent _Little Buddha_ to get some pointers. x, Dodie ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 Feb 1996 08:05:13 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Loss Glazier Subject: Re: Eigner > Title: AROUND NEW / SOUND >DAILY / MEANS: A SELECTION OF POEMS (or: SELECTED POEMS Any chance anyone on the list has a copy of this they might be willing to dub? Or know where I might acquire this? ---- Please contact me by direct mail. Thanks! ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 Feb 1996 08:54:57 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Emily Lloyd Subject: not a dickwad While I see Maria's (and others) point, I also see Ryan's. But what really frustrates me about this discussion is that it's couched entirely in impractical space. Bringing out, it seems, the pompous intellectual in all of us. Who among ye has contacted Jim Brown (thanks to Jack for the address) and offered tangible support (powdered milk, pampers, what-have-you) to the Pomos? A people in lack of these is is probably not in the luxurious frame of mind necessary to sitting around arguing/caring that their phonemes refer to something else in a different context. While examining (and perhaps even changing) our use of language is important, it doesn't absolve us of deeper obligations. Put your money where there mouths are. emily ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 Feb 1996 09:08:24 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joe Amato Subject: pomo/Pomo etc... ryan, i think i understand your use of wittgenstein, and find value in considering his remarks re language games... though i have to say that wittgenstein's stance in _phil invest_ is pretty fuzzy in many ways (i see the latter text primarily as a heuristic)... still it's possible that a pomo native would enter this list and not know what in hell we're talking about... sometimes *i* don't know what in hell we're talking about... and of the 375 subscribers here, it's a fair wager that a number never heard pomo used with *either* denotation... and may i remind folks that there may be something like 1000 pomo natives (from what i've been able to ascertain), and that there may be something like a few thousand, if that many, folks on this planet who regularly use pomo as an abbrev. postmodern... so that the various poets and scholars and publishers on this list *could* make a very real difference, usage-wise... (if i may) the problem is not philosophical... or, i'm choosing not to theorize it according to the dictates/nuances of that discipline, or of wittgenstein for that matter... there are times i long for a spiritual response to matters material, and vice versa... here it seems to me that what some of us have been asking for is some recognition of the possible material as well as spiritual damage in coining new terms, uhm, helter-skelter... that is, that we try to be as generous as possible in working out our semantic/pragmatic fields, the field of possibilities that we refer to as "discourse"... i mean, for me, generosity is a privilege, presumes certain responsibilities (recall that elite/elitist thread)... means we have to listen, closely... so, and not to sound in the least oracular about it, how to listen?... also, and i s'pose this is in response to james perez's post, it's one thing to observe that there are "normal" greek, american, or turkish folks and quite another to suggest that the greek, american, or turkish governments have acted or continue to act in imperialist ways... one of the more obvious abuses of national 'sovereignity' of which i'm aware is the current greek-turkish dispute, underwrit as i see it by turkey's continued genocide of the kurds... it seems to me that turkey has been consistently in the wrong here, both wrt to the greeks, the kurds, and the cypriots... and consistently backed by *US* here in the u.s. (formally now) b/c of turkey's proximity to the middle east (incl. of course iraq)... and i see no harm in calling everybody's attention to turkish/u.s. hegemonies in this regard... though of course this ain't what i normally do here on poetics, so apologies for this wee bit of politicking... best, joe ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 Feb 1996 10:36:11 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: James Sherry Subject: Eigner Roof published Eigner's essays, edited by Ben Friedlander, in 1989. I would like to make interested readers of the list aware of the book and sell it for $10 including postage from: Segue Foundation 303 E. 8th St. NYC 10009 I was always amazed at how a person with such vitality of mind could tolerate such a physical situation. Larry must have had unimaginable control of himself to withstand the intensity of his thoughts. Eigner's writing invokes an inner life without trivializing it, a life of the mind without relying on it, and continuing optimism in the face of human fragility. He ended "Responsibility is to keep the ability to respond" with a poem about his uncle: the typewriter of a man recently dead what spirits in our heads all we depend on ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 Feb 1996 10:49:22 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Re: Eigner To tie a couple of threads together (Erique's----let's focus on births) (Emily's---put your money where your mouth is) (James'---Buy Eigner's book) Maybe James could donate the proceeds from the book sold to A United C.P. center--or set up some fund specifically in Eigner's name for poets with C.P.? cs ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 Feb 1996 13:32:38 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: Converted from PROFS to RFC822 format by PUMP V2.2X From: Alan Golding Subject: Stein Associate Professor of English, U. of Louisville Phone: (502)-852-5918; e-mail: acgold01@ulkyvm.louisville.edu Does anyone know any good stuff on Stein's composing process for *Tender Buttons*--sequence of writing, how long it took, amount of revision, that sort of thing? Thanks. Back-channel is fine, or front- if you think this might be of general interest to the list. Alan ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 Feb 1996 12:40:08 CST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jeff Hansen Organization: The Blake School Subject: poetics of quotidian The discussion on LANGUAGE poets and the quotidian began when someone on the list reported having been challenged to show that LANGUAGE writers have addressed the quotidian. While I am not hostile to LANGUAGE poetry, and count some poets associated with it among my personal favorites, I do have a similar question. I wonder about erotics. Assuming Leslie Scalapino is not considered a LANGUAGE poet -- and I don't see her as so in any narrow sense -- have any so-called LANGUAGE poets worked with the erotic? Do the suppositions of most LANGUAGE poetry, summarized by Douglas Messerli in his introduction to LANGUAGE POETRIES (New Directions), make eroticism a difficult area of life to address? Does the seeming lack of eroticism point to a limitation in the LANGUAGE project? I'm asking these questions in a friendly spirit simply because I am curious. Best, Jeff ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 Feb 1996 14:41:03 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: e=r=o=e=t=c Does Alan Davies count? I think the book is called _RAVE_ and I think it has some poems like "Combat Zone" that although not sadistic take maybe a structural or combinatorial look at eroticism that may remind one of oh and George Tysh's book _ECHOLALIA_ again I'm not sure he's a card-carrying langpote C Coolidge has quite a bit of something in _MESH_ and _THE BOOK OF DURING_ bibliographically yrs, Jordan ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 Feb 1996 13:44:09 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joe Amato Subject: Re: not a dickwad emily, i appreciate your sense of activism, of doing more than simply talking, however activist talk can be... what i'm wondering about is this: whether there are in fact folks who would reach into their pockets *before* changing their language practices, even *rather than* changing their language practices?... if there are such folks, and i have a hunch there are, what might be made of this?... joe ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 Feb 1996 14:22:33 CST6CDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Hank Lazer Organization: The University of Alabama Subject: Re: e=r=o=t=i=c And: Ron Silliman's work, almost everything, especially _Ketjak_ and _Tjanting_. Lyn Hejinian's many books.... Hank Lazer ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 Feb 1996 15:41:21 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Emily Lloyd Subject: Re: not a dickwad At 01:44 PM 2/9/96 -0600, Joe Amato wrote: >emily, i appreciate your sense of activism, of doing more than simply >talking, however activist talk can be... what i'm wondering about is this: >whether there are in fact folks who would reach into their pockets *before* >changing their language practices, even *rather than* changing their >language practices?... if there are such folks, and i have a hunch there >are, what might be made of this?... > >joe > > Of course there are such folks. & I can't say I agree with their idea of "help" or activism, but I'm not sure that what they're doing isn't more useful---in the short term---than merely examining the language. The fact that "pomo" also denotes postmodernism won't mean much if Pomos aren't around to know it. Having long been involved in both academics & activism, I've become increasingly bothered by my observation that they rarely seem to meet at a point conducive to practical action...so the Pomo discussion, esp. considering how heated it was getting, triggered an ancient angst. Just a little wary of impotent paternalism...clean hands at the keyboard & elsewhere. The folks you envision would seem to be the lesser of 2 evils. To me. Where priorities & immediacies are concerned. whitely, middleclassily, guiltily yers, emily ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 Feb 1996 15:36:57 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Bernstein Subject: Poetics of the Extraordinary (fwd) The following syllabus was forwarded to Poetics from a nonsubscriber. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Sat, 03 Feb 1996 22:12:55 -0500 (EST) From: Drenka Balich Subject: Poetics of the Extraordinary [forward message] > Poetics Syllabus > Intersession 1999 > A Ten-Week Intensive > > _THE EXTRAORDINARY_ > > English 747 > Wednesdays @ 4:00 A.M. Plus > Java Temple > Drenka Balich, instructor > > "I woke in your room > I looked into your eyes > I have been silent these many years awaiting this > moment to speak > Of the bitter frustration I shed upon hearing of > the loss of the use > Of both of your legs in the accident which also > claimed the lives > Of both of your parents and your older sister > Who I have been given to understand > was a great lay" > > --Jim Brodey > > ** > > Week One: Critique of the Ordinary (Part I: Practice) > > DeBord, Society of the Bystander > Vaneigem, The Revolution of Everyday Life > Situationist Anthology > Kathy Acker, Blood and Guts in Graduate School > Greil Marcus, Lipstick Traces > Hakim Bey, T.A.Z. > > > Week Two: Critique of the Ordinary (Part II: Theory) > > Charles Olson, The Calyx of the Flower > Amiri Baraka, The Autobiography of LeRoi Jones > Diane Di Prima, Memoirs of a Beatnik > Nicole Brossard, The Sea Our Mothers > Joanne Kyger, The Dharma Committee and Japan-India Journals > Jim Brodey, Blues for the Egyptian Kings and Judyism > Stephen Rodefer, Letters from Prison > > > Weeks Three/Four: The Exoteric > > Jacques Derrida, Circumfession and Algerian Meditations > Nathaniel Mackey, Bedouin Hornbook, Djbot Baghoustis's Run > and School of Udrah > Nathalie Sarraute, Tropisms > Robert Duncan, Collected Prose (Fascicle Edition, vols. 1-4) > and Ground Work III: Beyond Europe > Rene Girard, The Martyrology > Julie Dash, Daughters of the Dust > 'AQL magazine (issues 1-4) > Eileen Corder, Braids > Halliday Dresser, Bird's Nest (For John Clare) > Jeff Gburek Packet > Pasolini, Collected Poems in Friulan Dialect > Pat Reed, Kismet and We Want to See Your Tears Falling Down > > > Weeks Five/Six: Dictation (James Merrill visit--by Ouija board) > > Merrill, The Changing Light at Sandovar > Patience Worth Packet > Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus and Duino Elegies > Yeats, A Vision > H.D., Tribute to Freud and Trilogy > Spicer, Collected Books and Vancouver Lecture > Hannah Weiner, Clairvoyent Journal > John Wieners, Margins of Poetry > D'Annunzio, Notturno > Emerson, "Demonology" > Foucault, Dream Imagination Existence > Avital Ronnell, Dictations (On Haunted Writing) > > > Week Seven: Historical Crisis (After Tet) > > Michael Herr, Dispatches > Gloria Emerson, Winners and Losers > W.D. Ehrhart, Passing Time > Horace Coleman, In the Grass > Saigon Ice Tea: An Anthology > Alice Notley, Homer's Art > George Evans, Selected Poems > Bruce Andrews, I Don't Have a Computer So Shut the F*ck > Up (or, Social Chromaticism) > William Shawcross, Sideshow > Kali Tal, Worlds of Hurt > Baudrillard, The Original Pop Politics > > > Week Eight/Nine: Fuck Me and Die > > Sade, Justine and Philosophy in the Bedroom > Francesca Cicchetto, Rognoni Sadiani > Samuel Delany, The Mad Man > Camille Paglia, The Electric Spanking of War Babies > Abby C., 666 Ways We Are All Like St. Therese > Carla Harryman, Animal Instincts > Swinburne, The Little Death > Malamud, God's Grace > Deleuze and Guattari, Anti-Oedipus > The Packwood Report > Carolee Schneeman, More Than Meat Joy and movies > > > Week Ten: Gnostic Invasion > > Philip K. Dick, Valis Trilogy > -----, Selected Literary and Philosophical Writings > John Clarke, In the Analogy (Books 1-7) > Juliana Spahr, Testimony > Joanna Russ, The Female Man > The Nag Hammadi Library > G.R.S. Mead, Thrice Greatest Hermes > Octavia Butler, Xenogenesis Trilogy > Robert Anton Wilson, Illuminatus Trilogy > Pierre Joris, Winnetou Old > Conversations with Ogotemmeli > Peter Kolosimo, Terra Senza Tempo ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 Feb 1996 16:13:52 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rae Armantrout Subject: Re: poetics of quotidian To respond to Jeff's question briefly, it seems to me that Carla Harryman and Ron Silliman's work (just for starters) is very much engaged with the erotic. Rae A ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 Feb 1996 15:34:36 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joe Amato Subject: Re: poetics of quotidian wrt this question of, uhm, ordinary poetics, i'd like also to mention andy levy's extraordinary "from indiana," in _values chauffeur you_ (o books, 1990)... joe ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 Feb 1996 16:37:18 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Eryque Gleason Subject: Re: Stein >Does anyone know any good stuff on Stein's composing process for *Tender >Buttons*--sequence of writing, how long it took, amount of revision, that sort >of thing? > >Thanks. Back-channel is fine, or front- if you think this might be of general >interest to the list. even if it ain't of general interest to the list, i'm interested too. eryque ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 Feb 1996 13:36:42 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Douglas Messerli Subject: Re: poetics of quotidian I might add that my own poetry (Douglas Messerli's) is very much about the erotic, particularly the trilogy, THE STRUCTURE OF DESTRUCTION. Douglas Messerli At 04:13 PM 2/9/96 -0500, you wrote: >To respond to Jeff's question briefly, it seems to me that Carla Harryman and >Ron Silliman's work (just for starters) is very much engaged with the erotic. > > Rae A > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 Feb 1996 13:49:47 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ray Davis Subject: Re: e=r=o=t=i=c Well, "Language Poets" sometimes seem easiest to define as those sprigs who shot from Getrude Stein rather than T. S. Eliot or Ezra Pound. Now who's the most erotic of those three grannies? Carla Harryman & Lyn Hejinian's ongoing collaboration is the stuff of laughing orgasms. Ron Silliman's "Sunset Debris" is better than any of the Super-8 Triple-X I've seen. Gracious heavens, I even find Susan Howe's work erotic in a way (fingertips carefully positioning the physical to achieve maximal emotional weight) -- but my libido is probably not yours. Ray ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 Feb 1996 15:32:05 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Marisa Januzzi Subject: Williams flowerboy In-Reply-To: <199602092134.PAA25989@charlie.acc.iit.edu> Hello everyone and sorry to go on a fishing expedition in the middle of such engrossing threads does anyone happen to know any background information/good stories about that insanely great picture of William Carlos Williams on the cover of the New Directions _Selected_? you know the one-- where he appears to be grinning from the heart of a flowering tree, unselfconsciously. i just got a very smart essay by an MA student on Williams and pastoral, and it got me wondering if there's anything on record anywhere about it. Thanks! With Enryque I vote "front channel" on any stein stuff, too. carry on---- x Marisa ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 Feb 1996 18:17:14 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Emily Lloyd Subject: Re: Stein At 01:32 PM 2/9/96 EST, Alan Golding wrote: >Associate Professor of English, U. of Louisville >Phone: (502)-852-5918; e-mail: acgold01@ulkyvm.louisville.edu > >Does anyone know any good stuff on Stein's composing process for *Tender >Buttons*--sequence of writing, how long it took, amount of revision, that sort >of thing? > >Thanks. Back-channel is fine, or front- if you think this might be of general >interest to the list. > >Alan There's a book called *A Primer for the Gradual Understanding of Gertrude Stein*, by, I'm pretty sure, Gertrude Stein, in which she talks some about revision in *Tender Buttons*. ("PEELED PENCIL, CHOKE" was originally a much longer piece, etc.) I skimmed it a couple of years ago & am not sure if it addresses your other questions, but it might be worth taking a look at. "How long it took" can probably be found somewhere in *Autobio of Alice B T*. emily ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 Feb 1996 18:15:10 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joe Amato Subject: Re: not a dickwad emily, i really do see your point... i just don't want the question of language use to be relegated to a mereness of some sort... part of what went on generally while native americans were being slaughtered etc is that english was used to facilitate the invisibility of same... not simply of course terminology, but whole "structures of feeling" through language, to use raymond williams' term... ultimately i *am* less interested in the words pomo/Pomo than in what happens to the people, but what happens to the people is in many ways a function of linguistic obliteration... best, joe ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 Feb 1996 14:14:28 -1000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gabrielle Welford Subject: Re: POET'S BIRTHDAYS In-Reply-To: <199602090543.AAA20133@shell.acmenet.net> 11-24-86, born Annie Elfing, now reads at local open mike readings. She writes the poems on the way there in the car, reads the poems with great flair, playing to the audience. Gab. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 Feb 1996 20:20:37 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Emily Lloyd Subject: Re: Ppoommoo At 06:15 PM 2/9/96 -0600, Joe Amato wrote: >emily, i really do see your point... i just don't want the question of >language use to be relegated to a mereness of some sort... part of what >went on generally while native americans were being slaughtered etc is that >english was used to facilitate the invisibility of same... not simply of >course terminology, but whole "structures of feeling" through language, to >use raymond williams' term... ultimately i *am* less interested in the >words pomo/Pomo than in what happens to the people, but what happens to the >people is in many ways a function of linguistic obliteration... > >best, > >joe Ah, I meant mere in the sense of "merely doing this & nothing else," not "doing this mere thing." Not only do I see your point, I share it--while at the same time thinking it compatible w/my earlier posts. peace, emily ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 Feb 1996 20:31:25 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joshua N Schuster Subject: Re: e=r=o=t=i=c I'm trying to apply for a minature undergrad. grant to research the subject of eroticism. Applying a small piece of a Bernarnd Tschumi manifesto, claiming "Border crossing is erotic" (he's an architect who has prosed that perhaps all architecture, rather than being about functional standards, is about love and death), I was hoping to trace an erotic "border crossing" thru a modernist-postmod lineage. I'm tempted to tease out a kind of progression from heroic-erotic to semiotic-erotic (ugh, probably too "sexy" terms), which fundamentally avoids commidification as pornography. As well, describe how eroticism became an exemplary mode of individualistic radicalism (transgression) distraught and disillusioned w/ party-line collective radicalism which tends to shun the body. I'm probably over-speculating and hedging gender-specific implications, as well as some "sex-specific" opportunities once suggested by Lyn Hejinian. Somewhere (anyone know where?) I've heard Barrett Watten suggested language writing is an example of "new eroticism" which I'd like to debrief. I also think there is a somewhat painful eroticism in Bruce Andrews' work. Ultimately, I want to claim that eroticism (or "new eroticism"--one not literal but still predicated on border crossing) is a valid form of scholarship--alas, another methodology! If any one knows of good sources/theories/practices for this topic, please post or let me know. I'm approaching the prospects of obtaining the grant rather grimly; the review board wants "original research" which often means use test-tubes or public polls. Any suggestions? anways, carry on. -Joshua ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 Feb 1996 21:14:15 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Eryque Gleason Subject: jeopardy crit theory since 1960 for $200: he said something very much like: "those that claim not to use theory are merely ignorant of their own theories..." i read it recently, and can't figure out where it was! eryque (no n's served here) gleason ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 Feb 1996 19:00:08 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: megan blair simpson Subject: Re: poetics of quotidian/erotics In-Reply-To: <484182.ensmtp@blake.pvt.k12.mn.us> Just a quick response to Jeff Hansen's question about language writing and erotics: I've just been reading Lyn Hejinian's and Carla Harryman's collaborative work *The Wide Road* which would be a great place to start. It's published in excerpts in 0/4, Avec, and a few other journals. An introductory comment in the excerpt in 0/4 begins with this statement: "Five years ago, in the course of a casual conversation, we found ourselves agreeing that, because language is active, anything in language could be erotically charged" And then also, "In recent years, the generative possibilities of the erotic imagination have been less often documented than the limitations of the alterity involved." *Wide Road* is quite playful and often hilarious, as well as, in my opinion, incredibly interesting. It's written from the first person plural point of view--the work explores subjectivity and shared imagination and the erotic implications and freedoms that come with, in language, as language. Megan Simpson ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 Feb 1996 18:36:24 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: ryan johnson Subject: Re: not a dickwad In-Reply-To: <199602091354.IAA08523@mail.erols.com> On Fri, 9 Feb 1996, Emily Lloyd wrote: > While I see Maria's (and others) point, I also see Ryan's. But what really > frustrates me about this discussion is that it's couched entirely in > impractical space. Bringing out, it seems, the pompous intellectual in all > of us. Who among ye has contacted Jim Brown (thanks to Jack for the > address) and offered tangible support (powdered milk, pampers, > what-have-you) to the Pomos? A people in lack of these is is probably not > in the luxurious frame of mind necessary to sitting around arguing/caring > that their phonemes refer to something else in a different context. While > examining (and perhaps even changing) our use of language is important, it > doesn't absolve us of deeper obligations. Put your money where there mouths > are. > > emily > I agree with this point and have already jotted the address/info. about helping out, as soon as I scrape cash together; my point would simply be--and this is to some extent implied by emily's--that both this ostensibly encapsulated space of discourse and the real world of action and compassion both matter very much to the issue. Ryan ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 Feb 1996 21:53:22 -0500 Reply-To: Robert Drake Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Robert Drake Subject: poetiks & drama just got in the mail Leslie Scalapino's _The Weatherman Turns Himself In_ frm zasterle press, a lovely looking book that i'll try to dig into over the weekend. meanwhile it joins several other's in a stack: Carla Harryman: MEMORY PLAY (O Books) Camille Roy: COLD HEAVEN (O Books) Stacy Doris KILDARE (Roof) & somewhat less closely connected: Doug Messerli ALONG WITHOUT (Littoral) THE WALLS COME TRUE (Littoral) Dennis Moritz SOMETHING TO HOLD ONTO (United Artists) these being variously scripts, poems in play form, film treatments... or something. th ill-formed thot occurs that there might be some reasons fr th appearance of the dramatic format at _this_ time... can anyone suggest other relevent examples, or ideas as to if or why such might be useful now? nb--this is not to claim that all these share more commonality than they do... the work _is_ various, & those differences praps as illuminating as the similars... also not to suggest that this is completely news, tho dramatic forms aren't often discussed in th same breath as poetic, as work such as Richard Foreman's might... appreciated luigi taproot reviews/burning press/etc... au462@cleveland.freenet.edu ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 Feb 1996 22:35:12 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Nick Lawrence Organization: University at Buffalo Subject: Re: jeopardy > crit theory since 1960 for $200: > > he said something very much like: "those that claim not to use theory are > merely ignorant of their own theories..." > > i read it recently, and can't figure out where it was! > > eryque (no n's served here) gleason eryque, who is Terry Eagleton? theorizing the beginning of his _Literary Theory_ ... (contestant no. 2, unable to slam the buzzer: Who is Charles Bernstein? versifying the beginning of one of his essays/seminars/conversations ...) (contestant no. 3, way behind in points: Who is Carla Harryman? sputtering thought's orgasm in "There is Nothing Like a Theory" ...) I'll take poetics of the extraordinary for $400 (fingers crossed for the daily double ...) Nick Lawrence (who, n-less, alas, becomes ick lawrence) ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 10 Feb 1996 00:10:29 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: ryan johnson Subject: Re: pomo/Pomo cont'd. In-Reply-To: <199602091508.JAA26273@charlie.acc.iit.edu> On Fri, 9 Feb 1996, Joe Amato wrote: > ryan, i think i understand your use of wittgenstein, and find value in > considering his remarks re language games... though i have to say that > wittgenstein's stance in _phil invest_ is pretty fuzzy in many ways (i see > the latter text primarily as a heuristic)... still it's possible that a > pomo native would enter this list and not know what in hell we're talking > about... sometimes *i* don't know what in hell we're talking about... and > of the 375 subscribers here, it's a fair wager that a number never heard > pomo used with *either* denotation... This, I also suspect to be the case, and it is precisely part of the point I was trying to make. I'd gathered that this whole issue began as a tangent on the problems that derive from language games or spaces of discourse getting blurred, and it seems to have become one in which issues of language and issues of social responsibility are getting blurred--not that they're ever all that distinct, just that two different things have been talked about, to me, as more similar than they are. On the other hand, they're not mutually exclusive subjects by any means, as others have noted; likewise, discussing this/these topics in the manner we have hardly precludes other modes of social activity, and can by no means by reduced to inflated academic jargonizing, as others have not noted. > and may i remind folks that there may be something like 1000 pomo natives > (from what i've been able to ascertain), and that there may be something > like a few thousand, if that many, folks on this planet who regularly use > pomo as an abbrev. postmodern... so that the various poets and scholars and > publishers on this list *could* make a very real difference, usage-wise... Okay, I'm *really* obviously just an insenstitive ass, I guess: the difference you mention is one that doen't need to be made, because a discrete difference in usage is already instantiated and understood. Though I have to say the concept of a few thousand poets and poeticists become some body of activists via email is without question intriguing. > (if i may) the problem is not philosophical... or, i'm choosing not to > theorize it according to the dictates/nuances of that discipline, or of > wittgenstein for that matter... And why are you making that choice? Aren't *all* problems philosophical? Is what you're calling "philosophical" discussion necessarily theoretical? I was actually convinced I'd stumbled upon something kind of practical. there are times i long for a spiritual > response to matters material, and vice versa... here it seems to me that > what some of us have been asking for is some recognition of the possible > material as well as spiritual damage in coining new terms, uhm, > helter-skelter... that is, that we try to be as generous as possible in > working out our semantic/pragmatic fields, the field of possibilities that > we refer to as "discourse"... I wholeheartedly agree, but I do not think that generosity is one of the foremst qualities of language, it's a human thing and making choices doesn't necessarily mean controlling consequences, on either side of the ball, don't you think. Makes me think of some tale I heard a few uears agoabout computers being described (in terms of compatibility) in sexual terms, the most common being androgenous> (Pardon the odd tangent.) > i mean, for me, generosity is a privilege, presumes certain > responsibilities (recall that elite/elitist thread)... means we have to > listen, closely... so, and not to sound in the least oracular about it, how > to listen?... And how to speak; both activities seem to me to be largely determined by systems or habits of both liberty (generosity?) and constraint (selfishness?). Sorry if some of this sounds kind of crabby, just that I'm tired and just saw _Dead Man Walking_ tonight which is a pretty much okay movie, nothing astounding really except Penn but worth seeing for his work and more, but anyway the point at this point is that it's a helluva good movie for making you morose, depressed, or however else the nausea of morailty, personal and collective, may affect you. Stomach on gut a la Sartre to all, and to all a good night, RYAN > also, and i s'pose this is in response to james perez's post, it's one > thing to observe that there are "normal" greek, american, or turkish folks > and quite another to suggest that the greek, american, or turkish > governments have acted or continue to act in imperialist ways... one of the > more obvious abuses of national 'sovereignity' of which i'm aware is the > current greek-turkish dispute, underwrit as i see it by turkey's continued > genocide of the kurds... it seems to me that turkey has been consistently > in the wrong here, both wrt to the greeks, the kurds, and the cypriots... > and consistently backed by *US* here in the u.s. (formally now) b/c of > turkey's proximity to the middle east (incl. of course iraq)... and i see > no harm in calling everybody's attention to turkish/u.s. hegemonies in this > regard... though of course this ain't what i normally do here on poetics, > so apologies for this wee bit of politicking... > > best, > > joe > ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 10 Feb 1996 04:05:36 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rod Smith Subject: Re: poetics of quotidian Re: sexy poetry Stacy Doris' _Kildare_ from Roof is pretty hot. Andy Levy's _Curve_, especially the middle section, _The Myth of the Not Her Blood_, and I'll second on Coolidge's _Mesh_. Mr Stroffolino & Lee Ann Brown. Bernadette! Also, re Carla Hejinian & Lyn Harryman (they become interchangeable in this piece) -- "The Wide Road" -- 20 pages are to be found in _Aerial 5_, there's also some in _Resurgent: New Writing by Women_ ed. Robinson & Norton (U. Illonois Press), & some in George & Chris Tysh's magazine _Everyday Life_. Of course we're considering sexuality as explicit subject matter, rather than as a given, which seems to me most accurate. --Rod ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 10 Feb 1996 03:54:16 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ron Silliman Subject: Re: poetics of quotidian Geez, Jeff, I think there's lots of eroticism in most all of my langpo friends. Carla Harryman and Lyn Hejinian's collaboration The Wide Road would be an obvious place to start, but Bob Perelman's early 11 Romantic Positions wouldn't be bad either (tho it's a more fugitive work). I've been criticized for having _too much_ in my own writing. So your question puzzles me. As to Leslie being a langpo or no, this is precisely where labels prove to be so foolish. At the time I was editing In the American Tree the fact that she was not (then) publishing in the same venues and that her work, to the degree that it shared similar concerns, struck me as an intense, if friendly, critique (much the same way I read Ted Pearson or Bev Dahlen or Jerry Estrin at the time, and really how I read many of the New Coast writers today). But over time critique becomes a form of involvement and boundaries blur considerably. That's why it makes more sense to call it a moment rather than a movement. Leslie's a brilliant writer, which is what matters. Ron Silliman ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 10 Feb 1996 10:27:59 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: e=r=o=t=i=c joshua: bataille, blanchot, leiris, genet, acker, duras, de sade, elizabeth smart, adrienne rich, etc., have all explored the erotic as a means of intellection. you might especially look at some ("sex-positive") feminist scholarship, which has been very taken with this issue. maria d (ps i'm talking at upenn on feb 16, wd be glad to meet you)--good luck w/ yr grant. maria d ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 10 Feb 1996 08:57:09 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Douglas Messerli Subject: The America Awards The 1995 America Awards (the "Ferns") have just been announced. Established in 1994, the awards are given each year to the most outstanding book of fiction, poetry, and belles-lettres and the most outstanding new play produced during the year. There is also an annual International award for a body of literary writing. The Awards are primarily, but not exclusively, given for innovative American writing. This past year's winners and the judges were: FICTION: Swanny's Ways, by Steve Katz [Sun & Moon Press] Judges: Will Alexander, David Bromige, Raymond Federman POETRY: At Passages, by Michael Palmer [New Directions] Judges: Clark Coolidge, Tina Darragh, Leslie Scalapino DRAMA: "I've Got the Shakes," by Richard Foreman [The Ontological Theater at St. Mark's Church, New York] Judges: Shelley Berc, David Greenspan, Suzan-Lori Parks BELLES-LETTRES AND COLLECTIONS: Selected Poems, by Barbara Guest [Sun & Moon Press] Judges: Lydia Davis, Jackson Mac Low, Rosmarie Waldrop INTERNATIONAL AWARD: Harold Pinter In case you missed them, the 1994 award winners were: FICTION: The Jounalist, by Harry Mathews [David Godine] POETRY: Echoes, by Robert Creeley [New Directions] 42 Merzgedichte in Memoriam Kurt Schwitters, by Jackson Mac Low [Station Hill] DRAMA: The Hyacinth Macaw, by Mac Wellman [Primary Stages, New York] BELLES-LETTRES AND COLLECTIONS: The Green Lake Is Awake: Selected Poems, by Joseph Ceravolo [Coffee House Press] INTERNATIONAL AWARD: Aime Cesaire The panels for 1996 are now beginnng to consider new work. Any publisher, large or small, may nominate books. Ask your publisher to send four (4) copies to The America Awards, c/o The Contemporary Arts Educational Project, Inc. 6026 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90036 These Awards are also listed at the Sun & Moon Press Website: www.sunmoon.com ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 10 Feb 1996 11:26:54 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kevin Killian Subject: Re: e=r=o=t=i=c At 10:27 AM 2/10/96, Maria Damon wrote: >bataille, blanchot, leiris, genet, acker, duras, de sade, elizabeth smart, Maria, What an amazing coincidence that you mention Elizabeth Smart, as she is the covergirl for this month's issue of Mirage #4/Period[ical], the zine that Kevin and I edit here in San Francisco. A few years ago I was star-struck by Smart's legend, having read the passage in the Kenneth Rexroth biography by Linda Hamalian where Rexroth discovers Smart picnicing lavishly in San Francisco's Union Square, only to realize that she was homeless and pulling off a "Holly Golightly." Also, I was captivated by her romantic extravagance as delineated in the Smart biography by Rosemary Sullivan, how she read one of George Barker's poems in a bookstore and instantly fell head over heels in love with him--and subsequently arranged for him and his wife to come to Canada so she could begin her long-term, on and off, tormented affair with him. (Djuna Barnes was also in love with Barker--he must have been a really hot number--see the Philip Herring life of Djuna Barnes). Although little known in the US, she is a guilty pleasure in Canada. When I was still flushed with reading all about Smart, but still hadn't located any of her writing, I happened to take a trip to Vancouver, where I was yacking about her non-stop. To my surprise, the women poets there did not share my enthusiasm, saw Smart as a bit of an embarassment--someone their mothers read. One of them gave me a battered paperback copy of _By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept_ (1945). (And I feel like the most ungrateful person in the world, not being able to remember who gave me the book--Lisa, Catriona, Deanna, I love you all.) So, when I go home, I immediately crawled into bed with _Grand Central Station_, expecting the read of my life. But what a shock was in store for me! Excess and self-indulgence are things I've never turned up my nose at, but in Smart's poetic novel, the mythologizing self is so large, not only is there hardly any room for the reader to enter it, but there certainly isn't any room for the plot. It's like trying to fight your way through a room crammed to capacity with helium balloons. Smart's book is certainly fascinating, but anybody who can get all the way through it should be given a medal. But I definitely am glad she's there for us. I think it's totally appropriate to include her in a list with Bataille. We North American folks need our own Laure. Dodie Bellamy ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 10 Feb 1996 13:42:15 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kevin Killian Subject: SPT newsletter call for reviews This is Dodie Bellamy speaking (director of Small Press Traffic). Now that most of the reviews for the March issue of the Small Press Traffic newsletter are in, and we are about to go into full-speed production, it seems time to begin gathering reviews for our May/June newsletter. This second newsletter will feature Hard Press, Kelsey St. Press, and O Books. We are seeking brief (200-300 word) reviews of books published by these presses. Due to space limitations, we will only be able to review 6 to 8 books per press. A list of books available to review follows. Please contact me if you are interested in reviewing any of these books (indicate if you need a review copy and give me your mailing address). Even if you don't need a review copy, please give me your mailing address so that I can send you copies of the newsletter. Small Press Traffic, by the way, will be moving into New College of California in March. We will be located in their newest building at 741 Valencia Street, in San Francisco. We'll have an office there--and space for our new literary resource center. We'll also have use of New College facilities to hold events. Soon, I'll post more details about this new chapter in our history. Right now the only text I have on our latest reincarnation is written in grant-eze, and I'll spare you that. Thanks for all the support the people on this list have given Small Press Traffic. Dodie HARD PRESS Sam Messer, One Man By Himself: Portraits of Jon Serls Jim Brodey, Heart of the Breath Bernadette Mayer, The Desires Of Mothers To Please Others In Letters. Lynn Crawford, Solow. Albert Mobilio, The Geographics. Coolidge, Gizzi, Yau, Barrette, and Coolidge, Lowell Connector: Lines and Shots from Kerouac's Town. KELSEY ST. PRESS The Woman Without Experiences, Patricia Dienstfrey Stripped Tales, Barbara Guest The Rosy Medallions:Selected Work, Camille Roy Distance Without Distance, Barbara Einzig The View They Arrange, Dale Going Just Whistle, C.D. Wright Sphericity, Mei-mei Berssenbrugge Isle, Rena Rosenwasser Under Flag, Myung Mi Kim Bed of lists, Elizabeth Robinson Peculiar Motions, Rosmarie Waldrop like roads, Laura Moriarty Musicality, collaboration between poet, Barbara Guest and painter, June Felter Small Salvations, Patricia Dienstfrey Elephants & Angels, Rena Rosenwasser Biting Sun, Thalia Kitrilakis she talks to herself in the language of an educated woman, Frances Jaffer Grammars for Jess & Twenty-Two Cropped Sets, Marina La Palma Excavation, Alice Ryerson Poem From a Single Pallet, Fanny Howe The Celebrated Running Horse Messenger, Frances Phillips Desert Flats, Rena Rosenwasser Dreams in Harrison Railroad Park, Nellie Wong O BOOKS Return of the World, Todd Baron Ground Air, Scott Bentley A Certain Slant of Sunlight, Ted Berrigan Talking in Tranquility: Interviews with Ted Berrigan, Ted Berrigan Mob, Abigail Child It Then, Danielle Collobert Candor, Alan Davies Rome, Jerry Estrin Turn Left in Order to Go Right, Norman Fischer Precisely the Point Being Made, Norman Fischer Time Rations, Benjamin Friedlander byt, William Fuller The Sugar Borders, William Fuller Phantom Anthems, Robert Grenier What I Believe Transpiration/Transpiring Minnesota, Robert Grenier The Inveterate Life, Jessica Grim A Memory Play, Carla Harryman The Quietist, Fanny Howe Values Chauffeur You, Andrew Levy Dreaming Close By, Rick London Abjections, Rick London Dissuasion Crowds the Slow Worker, Lori Lubeski Close to Me and Closer ... (The Language of Heaven) and Desamere, Alice Notley Catenary Odes, Ted Pearson Collision Center, Randall Pott (where late the sweet) BIRDS SANG, Stephen Ratcliffe Visible Shivers, Tom Raworth Kismet, Pat Reed Cold Heaven, Camille Roy Crowd and not evening or light, Leslie Scalapino The India Book: Essays and Translations, Andrew Schelling A's Dream, Aaron Shurin In Memory of My Theories, Rod Smith The Disparities, Rodrigo Toscano Picture of The Picture of The Image in The Glass, Craig Watson ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 10 Feb 1996 17:41:31 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: smart hi dodie, i came to eliizabeth smart just the other way around; at eighteen (1973), i pulled it off a bookshelf in Shakespeare & CO, in Paris, intrigued by the title. when i read it i couldn't believe anybody had my number so intimately. i was blown away (don't forget i wuz 18). tho i wouldn;t use the terms then, i'd say she came closest to "writing the body" of anyone i hve read before or since, except maybe genet. i knew nothing of her life story, or of her. for years, no one could tell me anything about her. then when she was rediscovered by Canadian fem lit crit folks and subseuqntly Grand Central was reprinted, i learned of this autobiographical element. i still love her use of language. i teach it every year or two, and students either love or hate it, but nowadays they get all caught up in the biographical aspect of it. i had one smart u-grad write a paper entitled "narrative grandiosity in Grand Central Station..." --the paper wasn't as great as the title/ best, maria d ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 10 Feb 1996 15:19:26 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Janet Hoelle <97jhoell@ULTRIX.UOR.EDU> Subject: Re: e=r=o=t=i=c Comments: To: Maria Damon In-Reply-To: <960210102758_419218980@emout07.mail.aol.com> I took a class last year, entitled "The Erotics of Reading;" a very ecclectic and unusual mix of works; Balzac's "Sarrasine", Pauline Reage's "The Story of O," Oscar Wilde's "Salome," "The Ego and The Id" by Freud, Jeannette Winterson's "Written on the body," Foucault's "History of Sexuality," Gabriel Garcia Marquez's "Love in the Time of Cholera," and "The Pleasure of the Text," by Roland Barthes. Hence, we studied eroticism from a theoretical, historical perspective, examining the ways in which sexuality has been repressed, or in Foucault's proposal, actually inverted and re-arranged in order to be incorporated into discourse and also the ways erotica has been represented in literature. We also examined the ways in which language acts as a catalyst for erotic expression. The erotic, though a nebulous term, was, I thought, epitomized in Wilde's work, as both form and content expressed the erotic; the lusciousness of the language and the erotica of the content. Other erotic literature that comes to mind: Whitman's "Song of Myself," Kate Chopin's "The Awakening," which were, by the way compared in an essay by Harold Bloom, and to go way back: many of SAPPHO'S poems, and one of my favorites THE SONG OF SONGS in the Old Testament, or The Greatest of Songs, as the actual translation goes. NICOLE HOELLE ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 10 Feb 1996 17:06:34 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ryan Knighton Subject: Announcing TADs In-Reply-To: from "Kevin Killian" at Feb 10, 96 11:26:54 am This is to announce the completion and availability of the first issue of _TADs_. This issue features new poetry and prose by: George Stanley Thea Bowering Jamie Reid Mark Nakada Jennifer Conroy George Bowering Jim Quilty Ryan Knighton Dolibor Krnetic Reg Johanson Chris Turnbull Copies are $4 each. Requests and queries can be forwarded to: Reg Johanson Dept of English Simon Fraser University Burnaby, B.C. Canada V5A 1S6 or queries can be emailed to me at knighton@sfu.ca ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 10 Feb 1996 17:07:47 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ryan Knighton Subject: listserv question In-Reply-To: from "Kevin Killian" at Feb 10, 96 11:26:54 am Can somebody tell me again how to request the list of Poetics backchannel addresses. Thanks kindly. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 10 Feb 1996 18:35:30 MST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Louis Cabri Subject: new hole chapbook In-Reply-To: <199602110106.BAA19311@fraser.sfu.ca>; from "Ryan Knighton" at Feb 10, 96 5:06 pm _Pandemonia_ by Clint Burnham. Published by hole books. Saddle-stitched; unpaginated. $3 To order: Rob Manery 22-191 McLeod St. Ottawa, Ontario K2P 0Z8 ak176@freenet.carleton.ca ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 10 Feb 1996 22:16:28 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Eryque Gleason Subject: Re: listserv question ryan, send to listserv@ubvm.cc.buffalo.edu the message "review poetics" with no subject, etc. techknowledgably yours, eryque ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 10 Feb 1996 22:26:35 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kevin Killian Subject: Re: smart At 5:41 PM 2/10/96, Maria Damon wrote: >tho i wouldn;t use >the terms then, i'd say she came closest to "writing the body" of anyone i >hve read before or since, except maybe genet. Maria, I've been thinking a lot about this concept "writing the body." What do you mean when you use it in terms of Elizabeth Smart? Also, do you know the origins of the concept "writing the body"--like who originally coined the phrase? Thanks. Dodie ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 10 Feb 1996 22:48:30 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kevin Killian Subject: Re: e=r=o=t=i=c At 1:49 PM 2/9/96, Ray Davis wrote: >Well, "Language Poets" sometimes seem easiest to define as those sprigs who >shot from Getrude Stein rather than T. S. Eliot or Ezra Pound. Now who's >the most erotic of those three grannies? Dear Ray, to me it's a toss-up, if "toss-up" can be applied to three choices. But T S Eliot is the Douglas Sirk of poetry. See you! Kevin Killian ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 11 Feb 1996 03:52:43 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ron Silliman Subject: Re: SPT Dodie, It is we who should be thanking you for keeping this valuable resource alive in these most difficult of times for grassroots arts organizations. THANKS indeed! Ron Silliman ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 11 Feb 1996 09:13:48 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Douglas Messerli Subject: Larry Eigner This obituary appeared in THE NEW YORK TIMES this morning, Sunday, February 11, 1996 LARRY EIGNER, 68, POET WHO SAW THE WORLD FROM HIS WEELCHAIR By William Grimes Larry Eigner, whose spare, dense and impassioned poetry carried on the tradition of William Carlos Williams, died on Feb. 3, at Alta Bates Hospital in Berkeley, Calif. He was 68. The cause was complications from pneumonia, said Charles Bernstein, a poet and professor of English at the State University of New York at Buffalo. Mr. Eigner, who published under his nickname rather than under his given name, Laurence, was born in Swampscott, Mass., near Boston. As a result of a birth injury, he developed cerebral palsy, a condition that confined him to a wheelchair. His disability had a profound influence on his poetry, which often captured, in emotional bursts of language, fleeting impressions received through the window of a house, an air- plane or a car window. "It seems I feel the world as a neighborhood, or two dozen miles of it, anyway," he once told an interviewer. "My eyes are still big for my head; most things were always beyond sight and hearing, out of reach." Mr. Eigner was educated at home and took correspondence courses from the University of Chicago. In 1949, after hearing the poet Cid Corman read Yeats on the radio, he started writing to him. A correspondence developed, and Corman brought Mr. Eigner's work to the attention of such poets as Robert Duncan, Charles Olson, Denise Levertov and Robert Creeley, whose work was published in Black Mountain Review and in Corman's mag- azine, Origin. Mr. Eigner's first mature book of poetry, "From the Sustain- ing Air," won the praise of Williams, but it was his inclusion in the anthology "The New American Poetry" (1960) that carried his name to a wider audience. His many works included "Another Time in Fragments" (1967), "Things Stirring Together or Far Away" (1974), "Waters/Places/A Time" (1981) and "Windows / Walls Yard / Ways" (1964). His poetry and prose were collected in "Selected Poems" (1972) and "Areas Lights Heights: Selected Writings, 1954-1989" (1989). At the time of his death he had completed "readiness / enough / depends / on," which Sun & Moon Press is to publish this summer. He is survived by two brothers, Richard, of Berkeley, and Joseph, of St. Louis. --------------------------------------------------- Finally, I'd thought I'd share one more poem. From a correspondence with Larry in 1976, I found this poem in manuscript form: how much a squirrel is in the road knocked dead the same generations they going around the wires up the pole down the tree not leaves call the patrol wagon after how little blood from far away slow an action of your mind is to take your time when does the sun come out or it's dark back in the woods Larry wrote of his process accompanying this and other poems: "A reader of course can revise at will or imagine alternate versions, how things might (or for all he now might have been) differently done. It's a way into the piece on the page if he cant think of anything that seems better or anyway as good and if he can the original writer might agree, that it's better or as good. (Not the same of course - when I have had two ways I've often solved the dilemma, avoided the necessity of choice by coming up with a third (or 4th...?) thing which seems preferable.) A couple of alterations editors (consciously or unconsciously) or printers have made have seemed at least as good, everything being al freco or ad-libbed, though many more not so. "Ok I've thought for an audience during a reading to break in with some questions say in the course of a piece, turning the poet's monologue into a dialogue or conversation, it's saving things, the poem returning to its communal source, intercourse (not to say language), sory of like DNA after cell replication disbanded again from chromosomes and the genes spread out in the nucleaus to modulate though maybe not regulate the cell." "It's saving things, the poem returning to its communal source, intercourse...." That's the heart of Larry Eigner's writing. --Douglas Messerli ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 11 Feb 1996 09:50:06 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ray Davis Subject: Re: e=r=o=t=i=c >But T S Eliot is the Douglas Sirk of poetry. T. S. Eliot only _wishes_ that he'd gotten to work with Barbara Stanwyck.... Ray ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 11 Feb 1996 09:06:38 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Pierre Joris Subject: The Nightable Ten In-Reply-To: Looks like about ten books have accumulated on the nighttable -- so here's the current reading list: Robert Kelly, RED ACTIONS (Selected Poems 1960-1993) For anyone not familiar with RK's work, this is one way in, though there is no way out -- you'll have to go the other 50 books... George Bataille, Michel Leiris, Marcel griaule, Carl Einstein, Robert Desnos, etc. ENCYCLOPAEDIA ACEPHALICA (Atlas Archive Three: Documents of the Avant-Garde) Another superb job by Alasteir Brotchie's Atlas press in London. & now we need a reprint of ACEPHALE magazine itself. Leonard Schwartz, etc., PRIMARY TROUBLE (Talisman House) Odd, if engaging, assemblage. It doesn't as yet make a shape in my mind -- cld be three hunter-gatherers bring back too eclectic an assortment of pray to make for a coherent menu ( & for our special today we have buffalo knuckle with toffu in an oyster-&-tamarind sauce) But I withhold judgement until I have spent more time with the book. Daniel Tiffany, RADIO CORPSE; Imagism and the cryptaesthetic of Ezra Pound. (Harvard, 1995) The book's dedicated to norman O. Brown. Heavy going, though if I get through the setup chapters (theorizing the notion that images are not necessary visual) I'll most likely find sustenance in the later parts, especially the RADIOACTIVITY chapter. Salman Rushie, THE MOOR'S LAST SIGH -- yes, he can write & the book is a treat! Peter Osborne, THE POLITICS OF TIME: MODERNITY AND AVANT-GARDE (Verso 1995). That vexing old problem of calling a period in history "modern" -- what about time, history, etc. Lucid & well-written -- one of the more pleasurable theory-reads of recent times. ms. of first Cantos of Dante's INFERNO, translated by Armand Schwerner -- what an improvement! Pinsky, go home -- cld be that this will do to Dante what Blackburn did to the Troubadours, i.e. make the poems readable again as poems in american english. Philippe Sollers, IMPROVISATIONS: an irritating intelligence gone to seed, to waste. Interesting in post-hoc explanations of Tel Quel's coitus interruptus with maoism. Michael Joyce: OF TWO MINDS (Michigan UP) Excellent collection of essays on hypertext, pedagogy & poetics -- the brightest thinking in an area that has sofar not kept its promise. Simon Pettet, SELECTED POEMS (Talisman House 1995) Wonderful. sweet, sharp, witty, lyrical, a walk on the mild side... TEACH YOURSELF WEB PUBLISHING IN A WEEK. Oh, well, it's been sitting there for sedveral now, shld probably put it under the pillow & hope for osmosis. Lemay is the clearest no-nonsense writer onm thes ematters, & if I cld find the time & wld move the book to the desk & get that web-page going. Heiner Muller, ABC, (edizioni porce con le ali, 1996) translated by Benjamin Friedlander. Thanks Ben, it's a beauty! & then some mags (Private Arts 8/9; Park; Sulfur; West Coast Line; the Po&sie issue on Keats who turned 200 Oct 31, 1995; und so weiter und so fort... Pierre ======================================================================= Pierre Joris | "Form fascinates when one no longer has the force Dept. of English | to understand force from within itself. That SUNY Albany | is, to create." -- Jacques Derrida Albany NY 12222 | tel&fax:(518) 426 0433 | "Poetry is the promise of a language." email: | -- Friedrich Holderlin joris@cnsunix.albany.edu| ======================================================================= ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 11 Feb 1996 11:27:52 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Re: e=r=o=t=i=c hmmmmmmm--no one has mentioned perelman yet here-- what about his great "do I have to FUCK you?' said the painting to the frame"----or something like that (i'm paraphrasing)..... cs ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 11 Feb 1996 09:43:12 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry Gould Subject: announce: Nedge on web (sort of) Thanks to Loss Glazier & the Electronic Poetry Ctr, Nedge now has a listing in the Poetry Alcove on the Web (http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mag). Thanks again, Loss! Nedge #3 is out. Contributors include Edwin Honig, Rosmarie Waldrop, Alfred Schwaid. Available for $5. at Nedge, POB 2321, Prov. RI 02906. Nedge, as you all know, is the journal where: The well-wrought urn is comin' round the mountain, and the "aporia between sign and referent" is just a crack in the sidewalk. - Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 11 Feb 1996 13:27:03 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: smart hiya dodie, interesting, one of the last times i taught smart, in a course called women and the literature of trauma (the course was itself a complete trauma and i'll never do it again!), one woman loathed the book because she thought it totally cerebral, disconnected...after class she burst into tears and said it reminded her of her sister. i asked if her sister was mentally ill, and she said no, just disconnected. funny, cuz for me, the book captured perfectly my raging virginal hormones (at 18) that could only find expression in intense fantasy, but that was more real to me than anything going on with my actual friends, social life, etc. I guess in the sense that the body is an imagined landscape, smart fills it with myth and feeling. i think "writing the body" comes from one of those early-ish french feminists, cixous, kristeva, wittig or irigaray, but maybe not. now please don't everyone jump down my throat for a) referring to the body as an imagined landscape or b)listing all those french ladies in the same list or c) referring to kristeva as a feminist. it's too early in the morning. thanks dodie, i love shooting the breeze w/ you about these matters.--xo, maria d ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 11 Feb 1996 13:28:09 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: e=r=o=t=i=c i guess everything's erotic... md ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 11 Feb 1996 13:35:13 -0500 Reply-To: Peter Jaeger Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Peter Jaeger Subject: Re: e=r=o=t=i=c In-Reply-To: Much of Steve McCaffery's poetry could be considered erotic (depending on your definition of the word). eg. "Desire is not / a transitive verb." in "Lyric's Larynx," or his writing through libidinal and general economies eg. "dasein not design, shhh as in soft through sound such as suck . . . " in _The Black Debt_. Elizabeth Smart in Grand Central Station: "There is nowhere and never a time for such a word" Peter Jaeger ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 11 Feb 1996 16:34:53 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "CHRISTOPHER H. JACKSON" Subject: Re: Stein In-Reply-To: don't know about "Tender Buttons" specifically, but "Composition as Explanation" (in the Selected Writings) and "How to Write" might be helpful. two books that have essays on Stein by other writers are "Critical Essays on Gertrude Stein" edited by Michael J. Hoffman and "Gertrude Stein Advanced: An Anthology of Criticism" edited by Richard Kostelanetz. "The Structure of Obscurity: Gertrude Stein, Language, and Cubism" by Randa Dubnick makes connections between Stein and painting. I haven't looked into any of these myself yet but will be doing some work on Stein this summer and would be interested in talking with others about her work. hoping everything is swell, Chris Jackson ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 11 Feb 1996 14:45:00 PST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Ayre Subject: KSW events Feb/Mar 96 *********************************** * The Kootenay School of Writing * * Vancouver B.C., Canada * * EVENTS FOR FEB, MARCH 1996 * * * * email: ksw@wimsey.com * * www: http://www.wimsey.com/~ksw * * 112 West Hastings * * Vancouver B.C. V6B 2G8 * * (604) 688 6001 * *********************************** SUMMARY ~~~~~~~> Harryette Mullen Saturday February 17th, 8:00 pm Clint Burnham & Mark Laba Saturday February 24th, 8:00 pm Ian Iqbal Rashid Friday, March 1st, 8:00 pm Brian Dedora & Stuart Ross Friday, March 22nd, 8:00 pm Deanna Ferguson & Michael Turner Saturday, March 30th, 8:00 pm (REAL AUDIO(TM) internet broadcast) Admission is $4/$5 at the door. KSW is located at 112 West Hastings, Vancouver B.C. For more information phone (604) 688-6001 or ksw@wimsey.com or http://www.wimsey.com/~ksw ******************************* Harryette Mullen KSW is honoured to host a reading by African-American poet and critic Harryette Mullen, author of S*PeRM**K*T (Singing Horse Press), and Trimmings (Tender Buttons) on Saturday, February 17th at 8:00 pm. "A form of address, as we are not just what we adorn, locates Harryette Mullen's ever more modulating etudes - a poetics of cultural markers, the rhythms that make us us, new beats in a promenade of innovating charms." - Charles Bernstein Harryette Mullen's most recent work concerns the relationships between poetry and identity, attempting to seek innovative language strategies to help deal with what she calls 'competing literacies': the various relationships of race to writing and its reception(s). Harryette Mullen has taught at Cornell University and currently resides in Los Angeles, California where she teaches African-American Literature and Creative Writing at UCLA. RESOURCES: S*PeRM**K*T (Singing Horse Press) Trimmings (Tender Buttons) Both available from: Seague, 303 E. 8th St. New York, NY 10009 SPD, 1814 San Pablo Ave, Berkely, CA, 94702 Sun & Moon, Gertrude Stein Plaza, 6148 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles, CA, 90048 (http://www.sunmoon.com) ******************************* Clint Burnham & Mark Laba KSW is proud to host readings by Vancouver authors CLINT BURNHAM, author of The Jamesonian Unconscious (Duke University Press), Pandemonia (Hole Books) and MARK LABA author of The Pig Sleeps (Contra Mundo Press) on Saturday, February 24th at 8:00 pm. RESOURCES: Pandemonia (Hole Books) Saddle-stitched; unpaginated. $3 To order: Rob Manery 22-191 McLeod St. Ottawa, Ontario K2P 0Z8 ak176@freenet.carleton.ca ******************************* Ian Iqbal Rahisd KSW is proud to host a reading by the highly acclaimed poet and scriptwriter IAN IQBAL RASHID -- author of The Heat Yesterday (Coach House Press, 1995), Black Markets, White Boyfriends (TSAR, 1991) and Song of Sabu (disOrientation chapbooks, 1993) on Friday, March 1st at 8:00 pm. Ian Iqbal Rashid was born in Dar-Es-Salaam in 1965, raised in Toronto, and has been dividing his time between Canada and London, England since 1991. Ian came to England to study as an intern in the BBC drama department as a scriptwriter. Since that time, a feature length film, Good Enough for Cary, a gay comedy-drama which has just been short-listed for the Dennis Potter Prize, has been completed, and an adaptation for a limited T.V. series, Babyfather, has been commissioned by BBC Limited Series. He is also developing a series of short experimental film/poems, The Colour of Words, for Canadian television. Rashid has been published in many magazines and journals in the UK and in North America including Fuse, Border/Lines, Canadian Literature, Rungh, West Coast Line, Toronto South Asian Review and ARC. He also reviews literature and film for BBC Radio 4's Kaleidoscope. The Heat Yesterday (Coach House Press, 1995) Coach House Distributor: Stewart House/McClelland & Stewart 380 Esna Park Drive Markham, ON L3R 1H5 phone (905) 940-8855 fax:(905) 940-8864 Toll free: (800) 268-5707 Song of Sabu (disOrientation chapbooks, 1993) disOrientation Web Site (http://www.ucalgary.ca/~amathur/disOrientation.html) ******************************** Stuart Ross and Brian Dedora KSW is very proud to host readings by Toronto writer STUART ROSS, author of The Inspiration Cha-Cha (ECW Press, 1996 forthcoming), Runts (Proper Tales Press, 1992) and Vancouver writer BRIAN DEDORA, author of White Light (Aya Press, 1987) and What a city was (Underwhich Editions 1983) on Friday, March 22nd at 8:00 pm. Stuart Ross has been an extremely active member of Toronto's literary scene for over twenty years, as a writer, editor, publisher and event organizor. He is a founding member of the Toronto Small Press Group and has published over 25 books of poetry and prose as well as numerous recordings of sound poetry. His work has been featured in numerous literary magazines such as West Coast Line, Paragraph, and Rampike. Brian Dedora is a writer and performance artist whose work has been anthologized and widely published in special and limited editions. Resources: ECW Press Poetry Titles and ordering information WWW site: http://www.wimsey.com/~ksw/presses/ecw/ecw.htm Underwhich Editions P.O. Box 262 Adelaide Street Station Toronto, Ontario Canada M5C 2J4 AYA PRESS Box 1153, Station F Toronto, Ontario Canada M4Y 2T8 Proper Tales Press Stuart Ross ********************************* Deanna Ferguson and Michael Turner (This event will be broadcast on the internet, date for broadcast is still to be determined.) KSW is extremely pleased to host a reading by Vancouver writers Deanna Ferguson and Michael Turner on Saturday, March 30th, 8:00pm. This is event is in conjunction with Music West and will be broadcast on the internet using REAL AUDIO(TM) audio compression technology. Deanna Ferguson lives in Vancouver, B.C. where she is a publisher of Tsunami Editions and a co-editor of BOO Magazine. Books include The Relative Minor, (Tsunami Editions, 1993), Link Fantasy, with Stan Douglas, 1988 and Will Tear Us, 1987. Recent work appears in The Gertrude Stein Awards in Innovative Amercian Poetry, (Sun & Moon Press) and Raddle Moon 14. Michael Turner is the author of Kingsway (Arsenal Pulp Press), Company Town (Arsenal) and Hard Core Logo(Arsenal). Company Town was shortlisted for the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. His second book, Hard Core Logo, has been adapted to radio and stage, and will be a feature film directed by Bruce McDonald (Highway 61, Dance Me Outside). He is also the founder of the Reading Railroad, a popular Vancouver reading series. Resources: Tsunami Editions publication/order information WWW site: http://www.wimsey.com/~ksw/pnet/presses/tsunami/tsunami.htm OR TSUNAMI EDITIONS (Distributed by New Star Books : newstar@pinc.com) P.O. Box 3723, MPO Vancouver B.C. V6B 3Z1 Voice / Fax (604) 885-9117 Sun and Moon Gertrude Stein Plaza, 6148 Wilshire Blvd. Los Angeles, CA, 90048 (http://www.sunmoon.com) Arsenal Pulp Press Poetry Publication/ordering Information Web Site: http://www.wimsey.com/~ksw/pnet/presses/arsenal/arsenal.htm *************************** Coming in May . . . a talk by Alec Finlay on the works of the English visual artist and poet IAN HAMILTON FINLAY (In conjunction with The Morris Belkin Gallery) _____________________________________________ The Kootenay School of Writing is a non-profit artist run center operated collectively by working writers. For 11 years KSW has offered the varied literary communities of B.C. readings, workshops, and talks that challenge and motivate critical enquiry into the ways, means and dreams of language. Visit Our Web site ! ------> http://www.wimsey.com/~ksw Join our Email mailing list ! --> http://www.wimsey.com/~ksw/maillist.htm The Kootenay School of Writing ksw@wimsey.com (604) 688 6001 112 WEST HASTINGS v6b 2g8 Canada ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 11 Feb 1996 14:58:58 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Douglas Messerli Subject: Amelia Rosselli The poetry community has lost another major poet. Amelia Rosselli, an Italian poet championed by Pier Paolo Pasolini and many others, jumped to her death from her apartment window in Rome on Saturday. Daughter of a wartime hero and sister to the figure portrayed in the movie, THE CONFORMIST, Amelia had had mental health problems throughout her life, of which she wrote intimately in her poetry. Some of you will remember meeting her in New York during THE DISAPPEARING PHEASANT festival at NYU organized by Luigi Ballerini. Below are a couple of her poems: The angels exit white and blue and I sit at the balcony black and white Crisis of bovarysm crisis of impoverishment! crisis of flowers crisis of workers Dialogue is done in four like a diagonal line I describe buses I start up again more prayers why are the trees blue? (Things themselves now my heart with light) * The spirit of the earth moves me for a while; lying down or sitting I look not at the watch; I touch it and put it at the side of my head, that neither dozing nor thinking addressed its god as if I were he in the clouds. Enfeebled the walled-in infancy of these lines are nothing but pictorial imagination if in the wheatfield I remain lying down long to think it over -translated by Lucia Re and Paul Vangelisti Sun & Moon Press will bepublishing Amelia's book, WAR VARIATIONS, next month. -Douglas Messerli ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 11 Feb 1996 18:01:52 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gwyn McVay Subject: More on poets to music In-Reply-To: Has anyone already mentioned this? On Uta Lemper's disc _City of Strangers_ she does a medley of settings of Prevert, mixed in with Sondheim, of all people, and a shred of Celan's _Todesfuge._ Gwyn ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 11 Feb 1996 17:37:04 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Alexander Subject: Re: e=r=o=t=i=c seems hard not to think of nearly everything one writes as erotic and the act of writing as erotic and reading ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 11 Feb 1996 17:32:10 PST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jerry Rothenberg Dear Doug -- Saddenned to hear of Amelia Rosselli s death, whom I remember fondly from the Italian poetry fest in NYC. The enclosed, if it fills in something, is from the commentary on her work in second volume of Millennium. To which we ll now (alas) be adding a death date & perhaps a sentence or a line of termination. I look forward to the book. As ever, JERRY -------------------------------------------------------------------- Amelia Rosselli Science-fiction folly / valiant sicknesses / impediments to writing / totality to be described // will to write / will to survive / will to impede / tyranny (A.R., Pheasant, p. 171) Child of her time, she was seven years old when her anti-fascist father, Carlo Rosselli, was assassinated by French gunmen outside Paris; grew up with her English (Irish-Catholic) mother, first in England, then New York; studied literature & music (a continuing concern) in Rome & London; settled later in the Rosselli home in Florence. Onset of mental illness came with her mother s death during her student days: an openness to voices & destructive fears; later a struggle with the institutions that confined her. If this gives an edge to her work as to that of Hvlderlin, or Artaud, or Campana before her her work itself, like theirs, is testimony to the power of a profoundly experimental poetics, here in its postmodern, Italian incarnation. (Below, page 000.) To see such work as merely madness is, of course, to miss its genius; for what is most at stake here (so writes Lucia Re) is the conjunction of linguistic experimentation with a kind of staging of the self, a staging which in turn involves the dimensions of the personal and the private (a personal which, however, is no longer personal and a private which is no longer private, once they have become part of the mise-en-schne of the poetic text). ... The obscurity of her language, the character of radical artifice that her poems often assume, and the mystical dimension that emerges in them, may [in fact] be seen as a political gesture of protest. And Rosselli on her own behalf: Lo scritto che in me h folle risponde / a tutto questo dolore con parole sempre / spero sempre vere [The writing that in me is madness answers / all this pain with words I always / yearn for always true]. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 11 Feb 1996 20:34:11 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Emily Lloyd Subject: E=R=O=& other things Maria, Dodie: Cixous="writing the body" origin, I'm pretty sure. But then, on the other side of the Atlantic, Audre Lorde (in very different language) suggests something like this... Stein, Creeley *always* win my erotic votes... How about "least erotic?" Marianne Moore, anyone? (Except "The Fish"). emily ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 11 Feb 1996 21:01:27 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Thomas Bell Subject: Re: e=r=o=t=i=c and quotidian In-Reply-To: <199602112337.RAA05247@freedom.mtn.org> Is the following the source of questions on erotic and quotidian? "Human experiences, of the most ordinary kinds, are now finding a place in the text [recent french prose and poetry]." back cover of Gavronsky, Serge, _Toward a new poetics_ When did these experiences leave? Where did they go? Tom Bell tbjn@well.com ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 12 Feb 1996 01:15:43 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rod Smith Subject: Re: The Nightable Ten Pierre-- Quite ahead of time, but just to mention possible DC reading. We're doing something for Charles B. that Thurs. which I suppose cld be combined but better wld be to do you each on different nights. Play up the anthology etc, allow you both to read longer. . . all of which to say, do you have any idea yet how long you'll be down here? Millenium's been selling quite well. Enjoyed your post, few things on there I'd missed, particularly Radio Corpse, which I'll have to get at the store. Agree with you on The Politics of Time, quite useful book. Best, Rod ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 12 Feb 1996 01:16:45 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rod Smith Subject: Re: The Nightable Ten Sorry Gang-- meant to sent to Pierre went to list. & only one beer. sheesh ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 12 Feb 1996 01:50:20 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rod Smith Subject: DC Readings Feb. 18th Two readings in DC Sunday, FEB. 18th @ 3 PM @ DCAC (District of Columbia Arts Center) 2438 18th St NW (near 18th & Columbia) Graham Foust editor of _Phoebe_ & Doug Lang author of _Magic Fire Chevrolet_ & _Horror Vacui_ & then, @ 7:30 PM @ Bridge Street Books, 2814 Pennsylvania Ave NW (in Georgetown, ph 20 965 5200) Tim Davis co-editor of _Arras_ Rob Fitterman editor of _Object_ & author of _Ameresques_ Judith Goldman from _The Impercipient_ & environs Kim Rosenfield author of _Some of Us_ & _Two Poems_ as per usual BYOE (Bring Your Own Ears) ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 12 Feb 1996 09:34:52 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jennifer Ashton Subject: Re: Stein In-Reply-To: I can't remember who originally posted the question about Stein's _Tender Buttons_, but I hope the following will be helpful to whoever was interested. There have been several posts on this with useful reading suggestions, so I won't reiterate those titles. If you haven't already looked at "Poetry and Grammar," in _Lectures In America_, that's the essay where Stein talks at length about _TB_ and about the difference between poetry and prose in general. However, I took the original question to be more of a textual studies question than a question about Stein's theory of composition. I have read a bunch of Stein stuff (I'm writing my dissertation on her), but I can't recall seeing any but the most cursory accounts of the composition process for _TB_. In other words, biographers and others have noted rough dates for when she would have begun the poems, but I haven't seen anything about which sections came first or how she determined order, grouping, etc. I also have never had the opportunity to look at the MS's at Yale, so I don't know what exists of the poems in MS form, but certainly that might be a place to start. Jennifer Ashton ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 12 Feb 1996 08:45:57 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: megan blair simpson Subject: writing the body In-Reply-To: <960212015018_319530203@emout05.mail.aol.com> Dodie, Maria, et al: In "The Laugh of the Medusa" Helene Cixous writes, "woman must write woman. And man, man. . . . By writing her self, woman will return to the body . . . Women must write through their bodies, they must invent the impregnable language that will wreck partitions, classes, and rhetorics, regulations and codes, they must submerge, cut through, get beyond the ultimate reserve-discourse, including the one that laughs at the very idea of pronouncing the word `silence,' the one that, aiming for the impossible, stops short before the word `impossible' and writes it as `the end.'" Megan ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 12 Feb 1996 07:53:17 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kevin Killian Subject: obtaining the SPT newsletter This is Dodie again. A couple of you have written asking how you could receive the SPT newsletter. The newsletter will be posted at the Electronic Poetry Center. For those of you who would like a hard copy, the newsletter is a newsletter for members. The March issue will be mailed to to everyone in our database, along with a membership drive letter. Future issues will be mailed to members only (but all issues will be posted at the EPC). If you'd like to receive the March newsletter, send me your mailing address. Thanks for asking. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 12 Feb 1996 10:44:33 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: KUSZAI Subject: The Rusty Word #2 -- Call For Work In-Reply-To: CALL FOR WORK The Rusty Word #2 is now entering final production stage and there is still time to contribute writing. THE RUSTY WORD #2 OH! CANADA ISSUE Featuring Scott Pound on Blaser and the Vancouver Conference; Kramer and Pound on Karen Mac Cormack; Kuszai on Canadian New Music; Friedlander on Robertson; statements by Louis Cabri from Calgary & Christian Bok from Toronto; & more! There is still time to contribute to this issue & we are looking for a diversity of commentary/news/reviews about Canadian poetry & culture. Rusty's Most Wanted: Statements, "scene reports", reviews, and advertisements-propaganda from Canadian poets, publishers and critics. Please contact the editors for more information: Joel Kuszai v369t4kj@ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu Scott Pound spound@acsu.buffalo.edu ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 12 Feb 1996 11:54:53 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Edward Foster Subject: Re: The Nightable Ten a very odd, i would think academic, response from pierre joris re: primary trouble. i would expect a "coherent menu" from critics, pound, and norton. but that can imply an agenda, a politics. as if that came first, which an anthologist, certain of his/her priority, might mistakenly assume. the anthology, if it is good, does not provide "coherence" but differences, no? ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 12 Feb 1996 10:06:00 PST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Ayre Subject: KSW: cyberratum Just an erratum to our Feb-Mar 96 mailout information. We listed that Harryette Mullen's books were available from Segue and Sun and Moon. This info is very much outdated... Her books though are very much available through SPD @... SPD, 1814 San Pablo Ave, Berkely, CA, 94702 Sorry for any inconveniences. 8) The Kootenay School of Writing 112 W. Hastins St. Vancouver B.C. V6B 2G8 (604) 688 6001 ksw@wimsey.com http://www.wimsey.com/~ksw ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 12 Feb 1996 13:35:54 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Kellogg Subject: Stein In *"Favored Strangers": Gertrude Stein and Her Family* (Rutgers UP, 1995), Linda Wagner-Martin writes, Judging from the manuscript versions of the originals, the assembly of the parts into one long prose poem was itself whimsical. In a letter to "my dear Miss Claire," Gertrude wrote in what sounded like the imperative case: "Tender Buttons, will be the title . . . and after it the three short titles, Food, Rooms, Objects." Perhaps the arrangement did not matter: when *Tender Buttons* appeared, with no context, it was often treated like a joke. Cheers, David ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ David Kellogg Duke University kellogg@acpub.duke.edu University Writing Program (919) 660-4357 Durham, NC 27708 FAX (919) 684-6277 There is some excitement in one corner, but most of the ghosts are merely shaking their heads. -- Thomas Kinsella ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 12 Feb 1996 11:57:23 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: ryan johnson Subject: a query In-Reply-To: <01I13321FYEA8Y6YWU@cnsvax.albany.edu> Just curious, b/c I tried something like this teaching a section recently and was wondering: Has anyone out there done any work with, or does anyone out there know of someone else having done any work with, Charles Bernstein's ideas in "Artifice of Absorption" concerning *prose*? And here I'm interested specifically in what will now be arbitrarily defined as "conventional" prose, as opposed to experimental stuff. (The connection I made was in a 19th century context.) Or for that matter, does anyone have any input on this off the top of his or her particular head? Well? Feel free to back-channel your response, if you wish, and I offer this liberty with absolutely no idea what "back-channeling" is. (Tho I suppose I could guess.) Quizically,& Thanx, Ryan Johnson (last name included b/c I noticed another Ryan in our midst of late)(Hi!) ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 12 Feb 1996 18:34:48 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jonathan A Levin Subject: Re: a query In-Reply-To: Ryan, and all-- When I first read Bernstein's essay/poem, I though of Richard Lanham's work--The Motives of Eloquence especially, but also a wonderful essay in Literacy and the Survival of Humanism called "At and Through: The Opaque Style and Its Uses." I'm sure many will appreciate the irony of this particular confluence, given Lanham's interest in something he'd be willing to call the "suvival of humanism," but it is, at least, a humanism with what I like to think a decidedly smiling face. (Lanham's "Aristotle and the Illusion of Purpose," in the same book, might also help open up this somewhat surprising overlap--or maybe I'm mistaken to assume it will appear so universally surprising? I tried Lanham out on one member of this list some time back and received only mixed results. Anyway, he's one of the best readers of renaissance prose I know, so I recommend him sans hesitation.) Hoping this proves useful, and that its usefulness only serves to improve (or something aptly Sidneyesque along those lines), Jonathan Levin ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 12 Feb 1996 19:02:51 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: Poetry Sightings There were a couple of readings in New York this past weekend. On Friday night, Heather Ramsdell, Chris Stroffolino and Lisa Jarnot read poems at the Ichor Gallery on W 26th St. The event was hosted by Sam Truitt. The man (forgive me, I misplaced my notes) who introduced Heather Ramsdell asked us to consider the event as a "poetry listening", and then Heather read parts of her poem "Bridge Section" and closed with a work in a similar style that incorporated lines from the book "Go Dog, Go". Rod Smith, speaking through Joe Ross (as part of Joe's collaboratively-written introduction to Chris Stroffolino), advised the listeners to sit back and enjoy what would undoubtedly be the greatest poetry reading of all time. Chris read a number of recent poems in a personal, personably animated manner. A highlight of his performance was a gathering of sententia modelled in parallel to Frank O'Hara's "Lines for the Fortune Cookies"--I have to agree with Chris, his lines are better. After a significant intermission, Lisa Jarnot read what Judith Goldman described in her introduction as "something about California". It _was_ something. Lisa's poetry which has long incorporated what Judith called "up-to-date techniques" rather excitingly evoked a scene of piers and on-ramps, and a first-person narrator (who may or may not be a frozen squid) "in love with the parking lot". The reading left everyone feeling at once drained and refreshed, eager to play pool or ramble along Seventh Avenue. I myself went to the 55 Bar on Waverly, discussing the geography of Atlanta with Bill Luoma. Christmas lights hang from the sprinkler pipes and the window in the front of the room remains partially open during the readings at Ichor. Beer and soda are available for $1. The gallery asks people who attend the readings to contribute $3. Many people who subscribe or who used to subscribe to the POETICS list attended last Friday's reading. The next reading at Ichor will feature Ed Foster, Erica Hunt, and Sean Killian. Saturday afternoon at the Ear Inn, down at the end of Spring Street, Kevin Davies and Joe Ross read. There were some slight problems with the sound equipment but audience members sitting at the bar seemed to have no trouble hearing the work. Kevin read a piece compiled from imitations of his work by several of his friends (including Rob Fitterman, Judith Goldman, Douglas Rothschild, and others; again, I've misplaced my notes), self-parody, and other sources. My favorite point was when he looked up and said "O Canada!" At the end of his reading, Kevin was presented with a "League Champions 1978" trophy by Bruce Andrews. Joe Ross followed Kevin, reading work from a variety of projects, including several pages from a new book published by Potes & Poets. I particularly enjoyed the poems from his "Fuzzy Logic" series, and a set of poems written using the words broadcast to him by his television during a Washington Redskins game, _in the order in which they were broadcast_. Readings at the Ear Inn are on Saturdays at 2:30. Listeners are requested to donate $3, I think. On another matter: At 1:35 PM 2/12/96, David Kellogg wrote: Perhaps the arrangement did not matter: when *Tender Buttons* appeared, with no context, it was often treated like a joke. Eh? How's that? Which part doesn't matter, and why? Or is that jokes don't matter, Or work which is delivered Off-handedly and which doesn't Take itself seriously (Or which takes itself way too seriously) Doesn't bear close-reading? ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 12 Feb 1996 17:15:03 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Marisa Januzzi Subject: Re: Amelia Rosselli In-Reply-To: <199602112258.OAA21214@hollywood.cinenet.net> a * for the absent Amelia Rosselli watch (out) for her work --Marisa ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 12 Feb 1996 17:53:53 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kevin Killian Subject: Re: writing the body At 8:45 AM 2/12/96, megan blair simpson wrote: >Dodie, Maria, et al: > >In "The Laugh of the Medusa" Helene Cixous writes, "woman must write >woman. And man, man. . . . By writing her self, woman will return to the >body . . . Women must write through their bodies, they must invent the >impregnable language that will wreck partitions, classes, and rhetorics, >regulations and codes, they must submerge, cut through, get beyond the >ultimate reserve-discourse, including the one that laughs at the very >idea of pronouncing the word `silence,' the one that, aiming for the >impossible, stops short before the word `impossible' and writes it as >`the end.'" Dear Megan (long time no see), That Cixous is certainly watery, isn't she? But what she's saying here has a slightly different twist that what Maria wrote, "writing the body." Cixous here is talking about writing through the body, an idea which been around for ages--even Susan Griffin was into that in the 70s, though without the intellectual cache of Cixous. I'm reminded of seeing Jane Gallop years ago give a hilarious talk at San Francisco State where she noted how popular mauve was for the covers of feminist anthologies. Gallop said that mauve was Frenchified pink. Cixous, too, I feel is Frenchified pink. But, what I'm caught up in is Maria's far more radical phrasing--writing the body. I actually have a lot to say about this, but I had three grants due this week and my brains are fried. I'm thinking of writing an essay. My-lips-they-are-not-one, Dodie ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 12 Feb 1996 18:34:30 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ryan Knighton Subject: Re: writing the body In-Reply-To: from "Kevin Killian" at Feb 12, 96 05:53:53 pm I'm not sure, as I haven't been around much as of late, if this strain is strictly reserved for a feminist angle or application. However, I would like to point out that I too find Maria's phrasing radically different from Cix's, and, in some respects more interesting (maybe because I have access to it then). "Selected Organs", Nichol's "autoBIOgraphy", is a fine example of the difference: writing the body as writing, the body as narrative (life)line. Re-membering (not intending a phallic twist). I think it opens the forum of discussion to other politics than those Cix circumnavigates--I should say, other politics that JUST those. So if I might pose a question, any thoughts on the relationship between body and memory and the writing of? (I keep seeing a tattoo I know of for some reason) Back and tattooing the monitor, Ryan ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 13 Feb 1996 00:15:27 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Eryque Gleason Subject: erotical quoteedids [insert favorite redundancy disclaimer here] i just recalled some of the work of w.d. earhart (whose name i'm not at all sure that i've spelled correctly, and my copies are in a box somewhere between hither and thither). in particular, one poem about doing the laundry and his fetish of women's underwear. last i checked, his stuff was on vietnam generation press. and of course, a lot of his work is about war, which you may or may not consider ordinary eryque ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 13 Feb 1996 01:06:14 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rod Smith Subject: Re: a query Ryan, a book dealing broadly w/ the issues you're raising-- from the point of view of teaching composition-- is _Resisting Writings (and the Boundaries of Composition_ by Derek Owens (SMU Press, '94). Deals with Charles B. a bit, tho not "Artifice" particularly, but also Cage, Howe, DuPlessis, Olson, Smitherman, Tedlock, Silliman, many others. The book begins with an epigraph from Charles "Inflexible standardization is the arteriosclerosis of language." While being "about" teaching it ain't no manual, very interesting book. --Rod ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 13 Feb 1996 02:42:10 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Re: writing the body It seems alot of american poet women really can't stand Cixous (warning: generalization--be glad to be proved wrong).... I too am curious about Maria's reformulation of "writing THE body" but I also think that Cixous is not just the watery bodily fluid writer of the EARLIER MEDUSA. I don't think it's there much in THREE STEPS ON THE LADDER OF WRITING and that she's being pigeonholed by her early work. I guess Rachel Blau Du Plessis (whose book by the way has that dreaded pink cover, perhaps, Dodie was referring to) and Susan Howe using Cixous as a straw woman doesn't help matters much amongst "poetics" people, and I DO find Clarice Lispector at least as poetic as H.D. by the way.....cs ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 13 Feb 1996 00:13:22 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kevin Killian Subject: Re: writing the body At 2:42 AM 2/13/96, Chris Stroffolino wrote: I guess Rachel Blau Du Plessis (whose book by the way has that > dreaded pink cover, perhaps, Dodie was referring to) and Susan Howe > using Cixous as a straw woman doesn't help matters much amongst "poetics" > people I didn't know this about Rachel and Susan . . . but, Chris, Kevin tells me there's a movie starring Gina Lollobrigida and Sean Connery and Ralph Richardson called _Woman of Straw_! I wonder if either Rachel or Susan saw it and it affected their stance on Cixous. The film supposedly shows the depravity of the "modern" "European" woman. Dodie ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 13 Feb 1996 02:58:22 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ron Silliman Subject: Re: writing the body I'm surprised that nobody thus far has suggested that most unfeminist and unfrenchified of texts on this subject, PROPRIOCEPTION. Ron Silliman rsillima@ix.netcom.com ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 13 Feb 1996 08:30:50 -0500 Reply-To: Robert Drake Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Robert Drake Subject: Re: Poetry Sightings jorday, thanks for the reading notes. such & similar might be appropriate for a new publication frm buck down books? frm th press release i just got: "*The Desk* is a new publication from Buck Downs Books. Each issue will feature reviews and commentary covering poetry in perfromance, the spoken word, poets' audio, and and other non-printed aspects of contemporary poetic practice..." guidelines from & querys to: buck downs books, po box 50376, washington dc 20091 asever luigi TRR/burning press/etc... ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 13 Feb 1996 08:43:44 CST6CDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Hank Lazer Organization: The University of Alabama Subject: Re: Eigner If you are in or near Tuscaloosa: Lyn Hejinian & I will be having an informal memorial service for Larry Eigner today at 4:30-6:00. We'll provide wine, snacks, poems, audiotapes (of Larry's KPFA radio show), and information about Larry's life and poetry. The event will take place at Lyn Hejinian's house. (e-mail me for directions....) Hank Lazer ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 13 Feb 1996 09:27:50 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joe Amato Subject: Re: a query just to second rod's ref. to _resisting writings (and the boundaries of composition)_ by derek owens (smu Press, '94)... well worth the read... it was derek who a decade back intro'd me to language poetry-writing... he teaches now at st. john's (nyc) for anybody who happens thataway... joe ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 13 Feb 1996 10:35:33 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Nancy D." Subject: P*A*S*S*I*O*N, anyone? Emily-- How do you do? Re: Marianne Moore: William Carlos Williams told Moore that she was both in and out of place in the bohemianism of Greenwich Village, and called her "a red berry hanging to a jaded rosebush." To this Miss Moore replied, "I cannot feel sorry for the red berry when the bush is so full of sap." --Nancy Dunlop (SUNY Albany) P.S.--"The Fish" is one of my Under-Pillow 10. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 13 Feb 1996 11:01:55 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Emily Lloyd Subject: Re: P*A*S*S*I*O*N, anyone? At 10:35 AM 2/13/96 -0500, Nancy D. wrote: > >William Carlos Williams told Moore that she was both in and out of place in the >bohemianism of Greenwich Village, and called her "a red berry hanging to a >jaded rosebush." > >To this Miss Moore replied, "I cannot feel sorry for the red berry when the >bush is so full of sap." > She should have written that down instead of "The Pangolin." : ) Point deliciously taken. e ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 13 Feb 1996 11:24:23 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Brian McHale Subject: Re: a query In-Reply-To: Message of 02/12/96 at 11:57:23 from ryanx@LELAND.STANFORD.EDU Ryan -- It strikes me that there's something like a family resemblance between Bernstein on poetry in "Artifice of Absorption" & Barthes on 19th-cent. prose in "S/Z" & "Pleasure of the Text" especially. And I think I do mean family re- semblance, in the sense that Bernstein is building on/reacting to Veronica For- rest-Thomson, who is coming straight out of Tel Quel (she published an essay on Tel Quel poetics), i.e., straight out of Barthes' intellectual milieu -- possi- bly staight out of Barthes' own seminar, though I'm not sure of that. Brian McHale ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 13 Feb 1996 10:49:07 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Bouchard Subject: Re: a query Rod, This sounds like a book worth looking at (any insights into Cage are usually helpful, any insights into Du Plessis are usually interesting, and any insights into Howe are usually amusing). Is it available in paperback, and at what price? What's your mailing charge? daniel_bouchard@hmco.com _____________________ Ryan, a book dealing broadly w/ the issues you're raising-- from the point of view of teaching composition-- is _Resisting Writings (and the Boundaries of Composition_ by Derek Owens (SMU Press, '94). Deals with Charles B. a bit, tho not "Artifice" particularly, but also Cage, Howe, DuPlessis, Olson, Smitherman, Tedlock, Silliman, many others. The book begins with an epigraph from Charles "Inflexible standardization is the arteriosclerosis of language." While being "about" teaching it ain't no manual, very interesting book. --Rod ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 13 Feb 1996 12:14:38 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: writing the body ron writes: PROPRIOCEPTION. can u say more?--maria d ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 13 Feb 1996 14:23:43 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: Re: biting your buddy maria, this (proprioception) is the name of a special view of history taken by a C. Olson of Rockford Mass. In it he says that we write one perception after another with our toes. Apparently he was a dancer! Love, Hector ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 13 Feb 1996 14:41:12 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Pierre Joris Subject: Furrin news that stays news In-Reply-To: Thought this might interest a number of you -- Pierre WEST AFRICA NIGERIA: PEN RAPID ACTION FOR DETAINED WRITERS AND JOURNALISTS The Writers in Prison Committee (WiPC) of International PEN has issued an appeal for writers and journalists detained in Nigeria in the month that marks the first anniversary of the beginning of Ken Saro-Wiwa's trial and the first anniversary of the detention of writer Mohammed Sule. At least six writers and journalists are currently held in Nigeria, including four journalists -- Christine Anyanwu, Ben Charles Obi, Kunle Ajibade and George Mbah -- whose life sentences were reduced to 15 years in October. Also in jail are: Mohammed Sule, who was detained on 9 February 1995 and is still being held without charge or trial, apparently in connection with a film he was planning to make; and Nosa Igiebor, editor-in- chief of "Tell", who was detained on 23 December 1995. ======================================================================= Pierre Joris | "Form fascinates when one no longer has the force Dept. of English | to understand force from within itself. That SUNY Albany | is, to create." -- Jacques Derrida Albany NY 12222 | tel&fax:(518) 426 0433 | "Poetry is the promise of a language." email: | -- Friedrich Holderlin joris@cnsunix.albany.edu| ======================================================================= ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 13 Feb 1996 11:45:31 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Janet Hoelle <97jhoell@ULTRIX.UOR.EDU> Subject: Re: E=R=O=& other things Comments: To: Emily Lloyd In-Reply-To: <199602120134.UAA21452@mail.erols.com> What about Luce Irigaray's "The Sex Which Is Not One" which is often read in conjunction with Cixous. NICOLE HOELLE On Sun, 11 Feb 1996, Emily Lloyd wrote: > Maria, Dodie: Cixous="writing the body" origin, I'm pretty sure. But then, > on the other side of the Atlantic, Audre Lorde (in very different language) > suggests something like this... > > Stein, Creeley *always* win my erotic votes... > > How about "least erotic?" Marianne Moore, anyone? (Except "The Fish"). > > emily > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 13 Feb 1996 11:48:41 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Douglas Messerli Subject: Sun & Moon Press Today is the 20th anniversary of Sun & Moon Press. The first issue of the magazine was published and arrived at our offices on February 13th in 1976. I thought I'd celebrate by listing some of our brand new titles, all out just since the beginning of the year. PAINTED TURTLE, by Clarence Major Paperback, $11.95 (1-55713-085-X) This simply told work, in which Clarence Major explores the life of an unwed mother and her background on the Zuni reservation, was published in a cloth edition by Sun & Moon Press in 1988. Long out of print, the book, which THE NEW YORK TIMES characterzied as being "a fresh tale of the spiritually transforming power of love told without sanctimony or sentimentality," is now republished into our Classics Series in paperback. ELEMENOPY, by Michael Coffey Paperback, $10.95 (1-55713-240-2) New American Poetry Series: 22 Poet Michael Coffey created ELEMENOPY as a book, rather than as a collection of poems, in order to respresent a procession of struggles and outcomes in his and the poems' relationship to language. The first section, "Loving," contains playful poems that delight in the promise of poetic form and lyric utterance. "Lichen," the second section, is made up of two longer prose poems, each a kind of ill-fated narrative event. In the third section, "Otherwards," Coffey appropriates the words and techniques of other authors-- namely Gertrude Stein and Jackson Mac Low--to break through to fresher possibilities for narrative. "Javajazyk," the concluding section, invents a language in which to tell the love story of Vasteny and Ombaly. ANNIE SALEM, by Mac Wellman Paperback, $12.95 (1-55713-207-0) New American Fiction Series: 34 In this, his second novel, Mac Wellman continues his ex- ploration-begun in his award-winning plays A MURDER OF CROWS and THE HYACINTH MACAW--of a low-rent rural America, festering in the backwater pollution from the urban en- viornment. Wellman's astonishing Ohio-like world has been tagged by some theatergoers and critics as "Macland," a world peopled by cantankerous, wistful, confused, and frightened people who have lost parts of their body, their minds, and their souls to the perpetual machine of the American dream. FAIR REALISM, by Barbara Guest Paperback, $10.95 (1-55713-245-5) A reprinting, into the Sun & Moon Classics and into paper- back, of Barbara Guest's award-winning collection of poems. WRITING IS AN AID TO MEMORY, by Lyn Hejinian Paperback, $9.95 (1-55713-271-2) Long out of print, WRITING IS AN AID TO MEMORY is one of Hejinian's major early works. The book was first published in 1987, and has since gained wide readership; but over the last few years the book has gone out of print. This edition reprints the book into the Sun & Moon Classics. You may order books simply by E-mailing me with your name, address, and the title of the book OR by ordering from our Web-site www.sunmoon.com -Douglas Messerli ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 13 Feb 1996 11:53:26 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Janet Hoelle <97jhoell@ULTRIX.UOR.EDU> Subject: Re: writing the body Comments: To: megan blair simpson In-Reply-To: Have read much Cixous and don't submit to her theory as I find it rather limiting, and think that it actually subscribes to the thing it is opposing, oppression etc., as women's writing should after all be free of confines and restrictions, right? It should transcend sexuality shouldn't it? It should be free to do what it wants, even if that means jumping into the noise and cacophony of male language and making something of that. I know whDat she's getting at, and LUCE IRIGARAY and ADRIENNE RICH are both getting at a similar thing, but I nonetheless think it's a more confining, rather than liberating position to adopt when discussing women's creative process as it exists beneath the oppressive forces of a patriarchal structure. NICOLE HOELLE On Mon, 12 Feb 1996, megan blair simpson wrote: > Dodie, Maria, et al: > > In "The Laugh of the Medusa" Helene Cixous writes, "woman must write > woman. And man, man. . . . By writing her self, woman will return to the > body . . . Women must write through their bodies, they must invent the > impregnable language that will wreck partitions, classes, and rhetorics, > regulations and codes, they must submerge, cut through, get beyond the > ultimate reserve-discourse, including the one that laughs at the very > idea of pronouncing the word `silence,' the one that, aiming for the > impossible, stops short before the word `impossible' and writes it as > `the end.'" > > > Megan > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 13 Feb 1996 14:55:52 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Pierre Joris Subject: Re: The Nightable Ten In-Reply-To: <01I14I1NKZO099HW6G@VAXC.STEVENS-TECH.EDU> On Mon, 12 Feb 1996, Edward Foster wrote: > a very odd, i would think academic, response from pierre joris re: primary > trouble. i would expect a "coherent menu" from critics, pound, and norton. > but that can imply an agenda, a politics. as if that came first, which > an anthologist, certain of his/her priority, might mistakenly assume. the > anthology, if it is good, does not provide "coherence" but differences, > no? > Edward -- No I don't want a "coherent menu" -- what I suggested was that I hadn't as yet found an overall design or focus in the book. Which may indeed be due to the fact that I have only read around in it. I would be the first one to order the odd menu proposed, especially when the chefs are people I trust. As someone involved with making anthologies in collaboration, a kind of "deformation professionelle" had me immediately fascinated with the conceptof a book put together by a troika. & the focus if theoretically stated in the intro isn't necessarily immediately visible in the construction of the book using, as it does, alphabetical order as ordering principle of the authors. Nothing wrong with that either -- the alphabet is an honorable tradition. But I'll be able to give a better account of the book once I've lived with it for awhile, for the book is obviously big & rich enough to permit that. -- Pierre ======================================================================= Pierre Joris | "Form fascinates when one no longer has the force Dept. of English | to understand force from within itself. That SUNY Albany | is, to create." -- Jacques Derrida Albany NY 12222 | tel&fax:(518) 426 0433 | "Poetry is the promise of a language." email: | -- Friedrich Holderlin joris@cnsunix.albany.edu| ======================================================================= ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 13 Feb 1996 15:00:45 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Bouchard Subject: Re: Sun & Moon Press >>without sanctimony or sentimentality," is now republished into our Classics Series in paperback. into the Sun & Moon Classics and into paper- back, of Barbara Guest's award-winning collection of poems. out of print. This edition reprints the book into the Sun & Moon Classics. ____________ Mr. Messerli, How does Sun & Moon distinguish Classics from not-Classics, or just plain books? daniel_bouchard@hmco.com ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 13 Feb 1996 12:13:49 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: mikl-em Subject: tics of eros since the discussion has broadened beyond the LP's to fave eroticers in general, I thought I'd put in my vote for Kenneth Rexroth, esp. _The Love Poems of Marichiko_; also, the plays in _Beyond the Mountains_, interesting for the focus on incestuous couplings. and as to _Mountains_, a Q: is anyone aware of whether these were ever actually staged, in Rexroth's time or after? the stage direcs. are Very specific and I wonder whether anyone tried to tackle them, made alterations, or whether they were only done as readings. also 'hi.' [first post] michael -------------------------------------------------------------------------- you have been reached by mike@taylor.org [michaelmcelligott*citizen] ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 13 Feb 1996 15:15:35 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Sondheim Subject: Re: writing the body In-Reply-To: Can a male write feminin ecriture? Where are the boundaries of essential vis-a-vis woman's writing? Can Sandy Stone? Can I? Andre Roy for example? Artaud? Alan On Tue, 13 Feb 1996, Janet Hoelle wrote: > Have read much Cixous and don't submit to her theory as I find it rather > limiting, and think that it actually subscribes to the thing it is > opposing, oppression etc., as women's writing should after all be free of > confines and restrictions, right? It should transcend sexuality shouldn't > it? It should be free to do what it wants, even if that means jumping > into the noise and cacophony of male language and making something of that. > I know whDat she's getting at, and LUCE IRIGARAY and ADRIENNE RICH > are both getting at a similar thing, but I nonetheless think it's a more > confining, rather than liberating position to adopt when discussing > women's creative process as it exists beneath the oppressive forces of a > patriarchal structure. > > NICOLE HOELLE > > On Mon, 12 Feb 1996, megan blair simpson wrote: > > > Dodie, Maria, et al: > > > > In "The Laugh of the Medusa" Helene Cixous writes, "woman must write > > woman. And man, man. . . . By writing her self, woman will return to the > > body . . . Women must write through their bodies, they must invent the > > impregnable language that will wreck partitions, classes, and rhetorics, > > regulations and codes, they must submerge, cut through, get beyond the > > ultimate reserve-discourse, including the one that laughs at the very > > idea of pronouncing the word `silence,' the one that, aiming for the > > impossible, stops short before the word `impossible' and writes it as > > `the end.'" > > > > > > Megan > > > ( http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/~spoons/internet_txt.html Images at http://www.cs.unca.edu/~davidson/pix/ ) ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 13 Feb 1996 12:18:00 PST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steve Carll Subject: Re: writing the body At 02:42 AM 2/13/96 -0500, you wrote: > It seems alot of american poet women really can't stand Cixous > (warning: generalization--be glad to be proved wrong).... > I too am curious about Maria's reformulation of "writing THE body" > but I also think that Cixous is not just the watery bodily fluid writer > of the EARLIER MEDUSA. I don't think it's there much in THREE STEPS > ON THE LADDER OF WRITING and that she's being pigeonholed by her early > work. I guess Rachel Blau Du Plessis (whose book by the way has that > dreaded pink cover, perhaps, Dodie was referring to) and Susan Howe > using Cixous as a straw woman doesn't help matters much amongst "poetics" > people, and I DO find Clarice Lispector at least as poetic as H.D. > by the way.....cs I second that last observation--I love Lispector's writing. I saw Cixous speak at UC Irvine about 6 years ago and found her very engaging, playful with language in a very conscious and opening way. I haven't read the Du Plessis or Howe books that make Cixous a "straw woman"--could someone pass on a little more info on what the general objection seems to be? Thanks, Steve ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 13 Feb 1996 15:24:43 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Bouchard Subject: Re: tics of eros Michael wrote: and as to _Mountains_, a Q: is anyone aware of whether these were ever actually staged, in Rexroth's time or after? the stage direcs. are Very specific and I wonder whether anyone tried to tackle them, made alterations, or whether they were only done as readings. _______ Staged in Rexroth's lifetime in New York. He was involved to some extent. Details are in Hamalian's biography. I can't remember the specifics. daniel_bouchard@hmco.com ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 13 Feb 1996 13:33:30 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Re: P*A*S*S*I*O*N, anyone? so much depends upon a red berry hanging to a jaded rosebush so delicious and more full of sap than the white chickens.... ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 13 Feb 1996 15:27:35 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry Gould Subject: writing the bod One area to consider if you're going to talk about "writing the body" in the context of poetry is the blurring distinction between poetry and talk. What is the physiology of talk - especially high-tech written talk (i.e. what we're engaged in on this list) - or does such a physiology even exist? Whereas poetry in the past has had a distinct physiology (rhythm, breath, singing, chanting, sound, lyricism). And has talk, discourse, poetics, textuality, etc. replaced poetry? And within this arena is the "concept" of "writing the body" a kind of parody (as Mark Rothko defined parody : "the ghost of an idea")? In such an environment perhaps the fine-art fine press poetry book - a concrete visual experience supporting the spare lingo contained therein - maybe represents a kind of fetishism of the ghost of poetry (as opposed to talk). Remember the time before printing presses & typewriters & computers, when writing was different from talking (& granted elitist & mandarin)? Back then written poetry tried to capture the physicality of oral poetry to some extent. Those distinctions are blurred now by talk, just as "mass reproduction" has changed visual art. & I wonder what the meaning of "eros" really is in the universe of techno-talk-babble. An image of an image of an image. - Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 13 Feb 1996 15:05:13 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Nowak Subject: "Pomo" "The postindian antecedes the postmodern condition; the resistance of the tribes to colonial inventions and representations envisioned the ironies of histories, narrative discourse, and cultural diversities. The postindian mien is survivance over dominance...That some postindians renounce the inventions and final vocabularies of manifest manners is the advance of survivance hermeneutics." Gerald Vizenor _Manifest Manners: Postindian Warriors of Survivance_ ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 13 Feb 1996 16:14:29 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: Poetry City (events at Teachers & Writers) Poetry City Readings at Teachers & Writers Collaborative 5 Union Square West, 7th Floor New York, NY 10003 (in case you plan to mail yourself here) Thursday nights, 6:30-8 p.m. February 29--Bill Luoma & Simon Pettet March 7--Lisa Jarnot & John Godfrey March 14--Maria Damon & Walter Lew March 21--Himilce Novas & Tonya Foster March 28--Rod Smith & Loss Glazier April 4--Marcella Durand & Kim Lyons April 11--Ron Silliman & Lewis Warsh April 18--Chris Edgar & Julie Patton April 25--Stephen Malmude & Gillian McCain May 2--Cathy Bowman & Juliana Spahr May 16--Gary Lenhart & Carol Conroy May 23--Robert Hale & Shannon Ketch June 6--Brenda Williams & Rosa Alcala Diaz ___ a version of this list appears at http://www.twc.org/events.htm The Poetry-in-the-Morning program listed at that address is hosted by Irwin Gonshak. Writers interested in reading on WNYE with Mr. Gonshak should phone (212) 691-6590 to arrange taping. ___ ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 13 Feb 1996 14:16:19 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Douglas Messerli Subject: Re: Sun & Moon Press Since Sun & Moon Classics represent major texts of the 20th century and before, we generally include in our Classics any book reprinted (since the pre- sumes a certain wider audience) or a writer generally recognized as an important figure in the American and/or international literary scenes. Our Classics writers have also generally established international reputations.Finally, there is an aspeact of age connected with this; the writers of the Classics are generally (there are few exceptions) 50 or older. Finally, all translations (sincewe have claimed they are internationally important enough to be translated) are included in the Classics series. Major, Guest, and Hejinian all fit these patterns. Once a writers has been published in the Classics, all his or her works are included in that series. The other series are about new and developing talent. No series is preferable; some writers would rather been seen as developing than as "recognized" (i.e. somewhat established). ============================================== At 03:00 PM 2/13/96 EST, you wrote: >>>without sanctimony or >sentimentality," is now republished into our Classics Series >in paperback. > >into the Sun & Moon Classics and into paper- >back, of Barbara Guest's award-winning collection >of poems. > >out of print. This edition >reprints the book into the Sun & Moon Classics. > >____________ > >Mr. Messerli, > >How does Sun & Moon distinguish Classics from not-Classics, or just plain books? > > >daniel_bouchard@hmco.com > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 13 Feb 1996 18:02:21 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Re: Sun & Moon Press Dug---and tomorrow is the year anniversary of your reading with RAE in albany.......cs ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 13 Feb 1996 15:53:00 PST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steve Carll Subject: Re: writing the body At 03:15 PM 2/13/96 -0500, Alan wrote: >Can a male write feminin ecriture? Where are the boundaries of essential >vis-a-vis woman's writing? Can Sandy Stone? Can I? Andre Roy for example? >Artaud? Cixous said at the Irvine lecture in '89 (or was it '88?) that Genet could do it. And Shakespeare, in the character of Cleopatra (she didn't mention any of Shakey's other women). I would tend to see gender in writing (who knows, probably in life too, if we had the courage to live that way) as not two opposed camps, but as a spectrum on/through/across which the writing can move freely. Which is to second Nicole's problem with Cixous, although of course in certain ways Cixous does (or did--haven't read her more recently) say the aim is a sort of bisexuality which doesn't sit in between the two camps but embraces them both, and in so doing, does transcend sexuality. Steve >On Tue, 13 Feb 1996, Janet Hoelle wrote: > >> Have read much Cixous and don't submit to her theory as I find it rather >> limiting, and think that it actually subscribes to the thing it is >> opposing, oppression etc., as women's writing should after all be free of >> confines and restrictions, right? It should transcend sexuality shouldn't >> it? It should be free to do what it wants, even if that means jumping >> into the noise and cacophony of male language and making something of that. >> I know whDat she's getting at, and LUCE IRIGARAY and ADRIENNE RICH >> are both getting at a similar thing, but I nonetheless think it's a more >> confining, rather than liberating position to adopt when discussing >> women's creative process as it exists beneath the oppressive forces of a >> patriarchal structure. >> >> NICOLE HOELLE >> >> On Mon, 12 Feb 1996, megan blair simpson wrote: >> >> > Dodie, Maria, et al: >> > >> > In "The Laugh of the Medusa" Helene Cixous writes, "woman must write >> > woman. And man, man. . . . By writing her self, woman will return to the >> > body . . . Women must write through their bodies, they must invent the >> > impregnable language that will wreck partitions, classes, and rhetorics, >> > regulations and codes, they must submerge, cut through, get beyond the >> > ultimate reserve-discourse, including the one that laughs at the very >> > idea of pronouncing the word `silence,' the one that, aiming for the >> > impossible, stops short before the word `impossible' and writes it as >> > `the end.'" ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 13 Feb 1996 19:37:34 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Edward Foster Subject: Re: The Nightable Ten again, tho, i'd insist that "design" or "focus" is precisely what the poetry, not the editor, must provide. the value of a troika (particularly when they themselves have such radically different poetics) is that it can undermine assumptions about "design." i think that if an anthology has a "coherent menu," the editor may think the poems are "objects," arranged. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 13 Feb 1996 17:12:54 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Shaunanne Tangney Subject: Re: writing the body In-Reply-To: On Tue, 13 Feb 1996, Alan Sondheim wrote: > Can a male write feminin ecriture? Where are the boundaries of essential > vis-a-vis woman's writing? Can Sandy Stone? Can I? Andre Roy for example? > Artaud? cixous says that ecruitur feminine is "writing of a decipherable libidinal feminity which can be read in writing produced by a male or a female" (cixous in Moi, _sexual / textual politics_) but ecriture feminine is not writing the body. the body is for cixous the locale of the soul; indeed the body is the soul. so in order to present states of the soul (a long time (ancient!) goal of poetics) cixous wants writing to perform the behaviors of the body. she writes: "Soul! What a beautiful word! Like: god! What a word! We say: soul, as if we knew what it is and where it is, in the vicinity of this unknown one, I proceed exploring with the help of my myopia: I scrutinize 'the movements of the soul,' from close up, I observe the passions at the moment they manifest themselves, such as they express themselves, translate themselves, first of all in out bodies. Where does the tragedy first of all take place? In the body, in the stomach, in the legs, as we know since the Greek tragedies. Aeschylus's characters tell, first and foremost, a body state. Myself--I realized this afterwards--I began by carrying out a rehabilitation of these body states since they are so eloquent, since they concretely speak the troubles of our souls. In this area, I work under the microscope, as a spiritual atomist." --preface to the H. Cixous Reader, Susan Sellars, ed. as to american women poets not taking to cixous, this american woman poet would have to absolutely disagree: cixous, and especially writing the body, informs my poetry more than almost anything else. one of my PhD comp exams was about writing the body, cixous and my own works, even! if any one out there would like to see what i do w/ writing the body, i'd be glad to post a poem. best, shaunanne ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 13 Feb 1996 18:15:15 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: jeffrey timmons Subject: Re: writing the body In-Reply-To: > > Can a male write feminin ecriture? Where are the boundaries of essential > > vis-a-vis woman's writing? Can Sandy Stone? Can I? Andre Roy for example? > > Artaud? Faulkner's a great feminine writer. Jeffrey Timmons ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 13 Feb 1996 21:01:29 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Matthew Gary Kirschenbaum Subject: johanna drucker's work Can anyone tell me anything about the availability of Johanna Drucker's so-called "visual books" including (but not limited to) _The Word Made Flesh_ (1989), _Simulant Portrait_ (?) and _Otherspace_ (1992). I know these works were produced by a private press with very limited print runs, so I assume they will be expensive and hard to find . . . Also, any recommendations for critical discussions or other material relating to Drucker's work would be appreciated (I've seen Marjorie Perloff's pages in _Radical Artifice_). Thanks, --Matt ================================================================= Matthew G. Kirschenbaum University of Virginia mgk3k@virginia.edu Department of English http://faraday.clas.virginia.edu/~mgk3k Electronic Text Center ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 13 Feb 1996 22:08:52 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Emily Lloyd Subject: write that body >> > Can a male write feminin ecriture? Where are the boundaries of essential >> > vis-a-vis woman's writing? Can Sandy Stone? Can I? Andre Roy for example? >> > Artaud? Shaunanne--please do post a poem. Jouissance envy!? Rimbaud & Sandy Stone can write feminine ecriture; Camille Paglia cannot. After we get "ze" into general usage, perhaps we can strip "masculine" & "feminine" of their oft-assumed male & female "counterparts." I, too, find the essentialism (Nicole sees in Cix & Rich & Irigaray) of some strains of fem-intellectual thought annoying/oppressive. Also the phrase "American women poets"---whether we do or don't discard Cixous. Oftentimes my more "masculine" work has been misinterpreted by others to be far-out persona stuff--whereas if I write about rape or some other "female" issue it's automatically taken as confessional. Usually just the opposite, of course. I do, though, acknowledge the importance (continuing, I know, to many) of the above-mentioned fem folks' work. machismo-in-cheek, emily ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 13 Feb 1996 19:31:04 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Shaunanne Tangney Subject: Re: write that body In-Reply-To: <199602140308.WAA11587@mail.erols.com> On Tue, 13 Feb 1996, Emily Lloyd wrote: > >> > Can a male write feminin ecriture? Where are the boundaries of essential > >> > vis-a-vis woman's writing? Can Sandy Stone? Can I? Andre Roy for example? > >> > Artaud? > > > Shaunanne--please do post a poem. > > Jouissance envy!? > > Rimbaud & Sandy Stone can write feminine ecriture; Camille Paglia cannot. > After we get "ze" into general usage, perhaps we can strip "masculine" & > "feminine" of their oft-assumed male & female "counterparts." I, too, find > the essentialism (Nicole sees in Cix & Rich & Irigaray) of some strains of > fem-intellectual thought annoying/oppressive. yes, i agree: i find ecriture feminine essentialist (and therefore dangerous) as well: a libidinal economy is no less dualistic that a phallogocentric one. but i do find writing the body a truly remarkable project,in that i like the idea of the soul being the body. i can work with that--there is a curious presence of absence if we make the body the soul--and i like that! to that end, this poem: VOCAL-EASE your tongue at the back of my neck whispers daisy no rosebud no i mean yes yes where your fingers improvise petal after petal a spellbound orchid my mouth describes the gladioli bent arc of your back where my hands find the velvet fur of stamen on my tongue lilac lupin sticky stammering crocus hallelujahs echo in our eyes as our bodies recite the power and the glory until amen and sweat fuchsias clinging to the white adobe of this moment we falter apart for three days you die inside me kneeling palm denominating mine own palm my tongue deliberates my once honeysuckled lips cannot mouth your name and so i pray best, shaunanne >Also the phrase "American > women poets"---whether we do or don't discard Cixous. Oftentimes my more > "masculine" work has been misinterpreted by others to be far-out persona > stuff--whereas if I write about rape or some other "female" issue it's > automatically taken as confessional. Usually just the opposite, of course. > > I do, though, acknowledge the importance (continuing, I know, to many) of > the above-mentioned fem folks' work. > > machismo-in-cheek, > > emily > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 13 Feb 1996 18:56:18 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: James Perez Subject: Re: Poetry Sightings on this note, I'm going to be in NYC from Sunday the 18? until wednesday the 21st? could those who are or know of readings shout out. Jamie Perez ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 13 Feb 1996 23:44:14 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: FUNKHOUSER CHRISTOPH Subject: IU WWW Poet of the Week amid greetings: Sappho has been chosen as the Imaginary Universe poet of the week 13 feb 96 new URL http://cnsvax.albany.edu/~cf2785/iu.html ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 13 Feb 1996 21:30:56 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Thomas Bell Subject: Re: writing the body In-Reply-To: <960213121433_143085385@mail06.mail.aol.com> On Tue, 13 Feb 1996, Maria Damon wrote: > ron writes: > PROPRIOCEPTION. > > can u say more?--maria d > proppirception meaning "second hand"?, "at a distance, at one remove"? tom bell or TOM BELL ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 14 Feb 1996 02:48:24 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Re: write that body I was thinking about the term "essentialist feminism" and wondering if it's REALLY essentialist.... I mean the second you get into "strategic essentialism" it becomes more "existentialist feminism", no? And I don't mean "existentialist" pejoratively.... am glad to see much talk of "radical existentialism" going on lately and though I don't mean to elide the difference between DeBeauvoir and Cixous.... ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 14 Feb 1996 01:49:33 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Alexander Subject: Re: writing the bod >One area to consider if you're going to talk about "writing the body" >in the context of poetry is the blurring distinction between poetry >and talk. What is the physiology of talk - especially high-tech >written talk (i.e. what we're engaged in on this list) - or does >such a physiology even exist? Whereas poetry in the past has had >a distinct physiology (rhythm, breath, singing, chanting, sound, >lyricism). And has talk, discourse, poetics, textuality, etc. >replaced poetry? And within this arena is the "concept" of >"writing the body" a kind of parody (as Mark Rothko defined >parody : "the ghost of an idea")? In such an environment perhaps >the fine-art fine press poetry book - a concrete visual experience >supporting the spare lingo contained therein - maybe represents >a kind of fetishism of the ghost of poetry (as opposed to talk). >Remember the time before printing presses & typewriters & computers, >when writing was different from talking (& granted elitist & mandarin)? >Back then written poetry tried to capture the physicality of >oral poetry to some extent. Those distinctions are blurred now >by talk, just as "mass reproduction" has changed visual art. >& I wonder what the meaning of "eros" really is in the universe >of techno-talk-babble. An image of an image of an image. - Henry Gould I don't actually remember the days before printing presses, as I have not reached the young age of 550 or so. But I think writing and talking have always had a generative relationship with one another, and certainly not all writing was trying to capture the physicality of oral poetry. I think of speech and writing as having a different kind of physicality in pre-modern (and in some ways modern begins about the time of the development of the printing press) Europe. I'm not certain how these distinctions apply to many parts of the world. The meaning of eros is up for dispute at any time, but I do think it still exists in the universe of "techno-talk-babble," probably even has to move to include the techno, the talk, and the babble. But whoever said the lingo in a poetry book (fine-art press or otherwise) is necessarily spare. Do not spare the lingo . . . charles ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 14 Feb 1996 02:54:48 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom Goodell Subject: coded swirling mix THis is the first time I've posted here. So here goes: a semidada foundtext poem composed of clippings from the Village Voice and New York Tmes Book Review. The double letters represent drop-caps; extraneous text is cut away with scissors. So that this (from the newsstand edition of Harper's) WWe should be extemely cautious about opening our mouths to others. Kissing can be dangerous, for all love is doomed. What fortune does not rip away from our arms, death steals away. It is only a matter of time. could become this or something else WWe should be extreme about opening our kissing, for all love does not rip away form away. I could explain it at length but I don't want to right now. Happy lovething! LLet's pretend that supreme figure who has houses, galvanized audiences, major national stars, arrives at where she can write, picking and choosing, commanding the renowned, suppose that she finds a co-conspirator, man of knowledge. Then let us imagine the consequences. OOver the shadows around the fountain. But if they thought of it at all, it was as a throwback. VValentine's Day of those two when everyone and everything, heighten our absolutely unrealistic levels, assuring us an experience. If were dare paper, or leave house, Valentine's Day or Thanksgiving or Mother's images of impossible materiel and/or images that force us to comparisons EEarly on the officially styled last man, on an old-fashioned high enough to let him rest, he was looking out the miniature amusement campaign to entertain children. IIn spite of all the forces that tended to woman, at least one protagonist, resourceful social command of her considerable SShed half a tear, and stanza for a little musical was too confused for very long AAs a rule, to call sentimentality well-guarded is mighty pretty Mid-day through a pent-up intellectual who finds unexpected release, to her by the photographer, down a flight of steps in the Victory. A vision is clearly the equal of the ancient stance, her extended arms imitate, unprepared for this sudden glamour, orders her to stop. "I can't stop!" she says. "Take the picture!" music swells, the scene ends abruptly on the whole wonderful sight--as goddess. AAnd now that he is at the end of his performing, one into view: it is the women, carrying out his art. NNow that the holiday long resisted this tradition, which usually strikes me as schematic or confining. But this year I was surprised YYou've probably worn the same glazed look, someone describing his/her procedure in excrutiatingly compelled narration of his/her meeting. Lately, I've been feeling the same face SSince you asked, though, I'll tell gladly tell you. "PPlease accept me as an unreliable narrator, says the shadowy shadowy tale LLike most a double, like about it dismays or attacks with your turn around crazy, but aesthetical-psychologically; his lack of a point where you think there must be some truth to it. EExcepting only a private nothing in the temple NNobody ever thinking, explorable byways of his contain the cosmos. This universe, in coded messages decipher, in between bouts of a woman whose beauty makes him himself--which gives the coded whirling mix of ideas, images, so be careful while you're decoding DDie the pompous feeding off an artistic faded long ago. OOnce upon a time morality in America. Scandalous propagating without stealing was not merely sinful. Somewhere along the line what once was sin became country, went to hell. So critics. They may precisely on why and whether, the cure lies in the individual breakdown RReading "Trying to Save prose duplicated sensation of moving over a long stretch, suddenly, thankfully, achieving liftoff. EEven if it's anecdote. All turn-of-the-century, section of The Blue, simple, as I think I is, you write about what to get, how your sensibility is your craft, what you come out with is anecdote." DDo answering, tending, training, the time to oversee the times TThere is a place I, you can go to think thoughts. What could I recommend HHer animal, who comes out of the forest at dusk, becomes everyone's need. It's a lot the clothes, which are time, when her mother gets into bed once, that she knows of. But get over, because he tries out progress, about the hole of feeling that in falling in love, it is the first time, because past. Thursday through February. IIf you want to dance, even when you see a mirror dancing beside and realize okay. Everybody knows, he's the teacher and you're returning to the again and again, you think it's possible to steal beauty of the out working hard. NNo study of the image and reality, the disparity between them, could hardly have been better timed. It appeared just as attention was conflict; first with the agreement portrayed as resolution; GGrowing up ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 14 Feb 1996 03:04:38 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Re: write that body my last note didn't end.... it should have continued-- "and though I don't mean to elide the difference between DeBeauvoir and Cixous, they both do seem to share a belief in the maxim: "existence precedes essence".... ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 14 Feb 1996 02:50:17 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ron Silliman Subject: Re: a query Where does one find that Veronica Forrest-Thomson essay?? > >...in the sense that Bernstein is building on/reacting to Veronica Forrest-Thomson, who is coming straight out of Tel Quel (she published an essay on Tel Quel poetics), i.e., straight out of Barthes' intellectual milieu -- possibly staight out of Barthes' own seminar, though I'm not sure of that." > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 14 Feb 1996 08:03:41 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Roger Field Subject: Re: writing the body At 12:14 PM 2/13/96 -0500, you wrote: >ron writes: >PROPRIOCEPTION. > >can u say more?--maria d > About 30 years ago in a bar in Vancouver we were talking of this very thing and one guy, a grad student in physics, said "visceral". We all agreed. Check Writing 6, Four Seasons Foundation, SF, 1965 for Olson's comprehensive take on it. Roger F.> ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 14 Feb 1996 04:04:33 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ron Silliman Subject: Sun & Moon brand equity Douglas, I appreciated your articulation of Classics. I've often wondered about that as a series and of the whole question of brand equity in poetry generally (the "classic" example being City Lights Pocket Poets Series as distinct from regular City Lights books). It works when somebody (me, say) likes a given series and is open to thumbing through and maybe buying with less foreknowledge a new book in a given series just because I've learned to trust the series. Nathaniel Tarn's great run at Grossman/Cape would be an example: because I trusted Olson's Mayan Letters, I was willing to buy books by Henri Lefebvre (still one of my all time faves), Victor Segalen (French anticipation of Spicer?), and Nazim Hikmet (a great poet, the Williams of the Middle East). Is there any evidence that an S&M book sells better when it's a "classic" than when it's not?? All best, Ron Silliman ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 14 Feb 1996 07:49:06 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry Gould Subject: Re: writing the bod Re: "spare lingo", Charles, I referring to poetry tending toward "concrete", emphasizing the visual effect on the page, beautifully designed & printed, disrupting "normal" syntax - a kind of poetry in which the "visceral", the "proprioceptive", has been transmogrified into pure visual & tactile effect, and the pome is a kind of unreadable letter in a bottle, no clue to performance etc. It seems like one path that poetry in its discontent has taken away from mass publishing & mainstream po-biz, and in contact with the visual arts. This is pretty obvious & is not meant as a negative comment. I would imagine that where there is a convergence between art publishing & poetry in performance you would find the most dynamic poetry scene. And this would be the [theoretical] place where a genuine civic/creative atmosphere (as opposed to an in-group typical American hobby subculture) would be sparked. To those sophisticates who are thinking "where's he been all these years?" - I've been living in a burg where many of the elements of such a convergence/spark have been present/dormant for a long time but in my opinion have not coalesced - not Beantown, not big apple, not mini-apple, not SoCal NoCal or OreWash, not ChiTown, but...lil Rhody... speaking of rhodi happy V day to all those who hate Valentine's day...HG ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 14 Feb 1996 21:33:23 +0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Schuchat Subject: Re: writing the bod In-Reply-To: where is the mini-apple? ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 14 Feb 1996 09:00:58 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry Gould Subject: re; writing the bod in the mini-apple The mini-apple is Minneapolis, one of the legendary "Twin Cities" which hang from the branches of the Mrs. Sipp-Hesperides, the other being, of course, St. Petersburg (NOT florida). - Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 14 Feb 1996 09:44:33 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Kellogg Subject: Re: Poetry Sightings In-Reply-To: On Mon, 12 Feb 1996, Jordan Davis wrote: > At 1:35 PM 2/12/96, David Kellogg wrote: > > Perhaps the arrangement did not matter: when *Tender Buttons* appeared, > with no context, it was often treated like a joke. > > > Eh? How's that? > Which part doesn't matter, and why? > Or is that jokes don't matter, > Or work which is delivered > Off-handedly and which doesn't > Take itself seriously > (Or which takes itself way too seriously) > Doesn't bear close-reading? Hey, I was quoting Linda Wagner-Martin. That weren't me. Cheers, David ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ David Kellogg Duke University kellogg@acpub.duke.edu University Writing Program (919) 660-4357 Durham, NC 27708 FAX (919) 684-6277 There is some excitement in one corner, but most of the ghosts are merely shaking their heads. -- Thomas Kinsella ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 14 Feb 1996 09:50:20 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: kathryne Subject: Re: Poetry Sightings In-Reply-To: Message of Wed, 14 Feb 1996 09:44:33 -0500 from Joke.Witz.Wit. Of course, Tender Buttons is a Joke, the very sort of joke that the free Martiniquan tells the silly guy who, enslaved to his notion of cosmopolitanism, has arrived home to bring messages and proofs of attainment.In Fanon's tale, the returned exile, doesn't laugh. Tender Buttons is one big guffaw at straight domesticity and sophisticated femininity and perhaps lipstick lesbians. Part of the wit--or the viciousness--is that all you "guys" not in the know, think it is just yr common variety put on. A yokel jokel. Please note quotes, no stab at male or other parts intended. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 14 Feb 1996 07:10:41 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Herb Levy Subject: Re: proprioception As has been noted "Proprioception" is an essay by Olson. But long before Olson's take on it, the concept existed, not only in the dance world, but in anatomy, psychology, occupational therapy and other related fields. Proprioception describes your sense of the physicality of your body. Both generally, as in knowing that you have feet at the ends of your legs when you aren't looking at them, but also more specifically a sense of your internal organs, their relative placement, workings, and interactions. Bests Herb >ron writes: >PROPRIOCEPTION. > >can u say more?--maria d Herb Levy herb@eskimo.com ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 14 Feb 1996 09:23:47 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Alexander Subject: Re: johanna drucker's work >Can anyone tell me anything about the availability of Johanna >Drucker's so-called "visual books" including (but not limited >to) _The Word Made Flesh_ (1989), _Simulant Portrait_ (?) and >_Otherspace_ (1992). I know these works were produced by a >private press with very limited print runs, so I assume they >will be expensive and hard to find . . . > >Also, any recommendations for critical discussions or other >material relating to Drucker's work would be appreciated (I've >seen Marjorie Perloff's pages in _Radical Artifice_). I believe that Simulant Portrait, Otherspace, and any other offset printed books by Johanna are still available. You might try Printed Matter in New York (sorry, I don't have the address at hand). Minnesota Center for Book Arts (24 N. Third St., Minneapolis, MN 55419, 612-338-3634) has had them, but I know they are re-defining their studio shop, so I'm not certain if they still have them or not. I believe The Word Made Flesh and History of The/My World, in the original editions, are entirely unavailable. I recently showed my copy of the former to a class I'm teaching on 20th Century typography. There's really nothing else quite like it. The latter has just been reprinted in an offset-printed edition by Granary Books in New York, which I believe is also on this book arts discussion list. Johanna Drucker also has a recent novel out from Detour Press in St. Paul, Minnesota, which is available from Small Press Distribution, 1814 San Pablo Ave., Berkeley, Ca 94702. Come to think of it, her other offset-printed books may be available from Small Press Distribution as well. I have not seen critical discussion of her work, which is unfortunate. But to inform her creative work I think it is important to read some of her own critical work, including The Century of Artist's Books (Granary, 1995) and The Visual Word. charles alexander ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 14 Feb 1996 10:48:37 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: Button Sightings Wait. Tender Buttons is a put on? I'm sure I don't understand. I thought it was complex funny language That short-cut ordinary meaning. Does Tender Buttons have to do with writing a body? I mean I get some puns. But. Isn't "have to do" reductive? Don't "guys" Like to talk about "reductive"? Love, Jordan ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 14 Feb 1996 09:50:26 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Alexander Subject: Re: writing the body >>PROPRIOCEPTION. >> >>can u say more?--maria d >> >About 30 years ago in a bar in Vancouver we were talking of this very thing >and one guy, a grad student in physics, said "visceral". >We all agreed. >Check Writing 6, Four Seasons Foundation, SF, 1965 for Olson's comprehensive >take on it. >Roger F.> But I think that for his "comprehensive" (and can anything be comprehensive in Olson, maybe, with proprioception in mind, com-prehensile would be better) take on it one should read the essay in conjunction with many of the Maximus Poems, particularly from Maximus Poems IV, V, VI, and from The Maximus Poems Volume Three. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ from volume 3: I believe in God as fully physical thus the Outer Predmost of the World on which we 'hang' as though it were wood and our own bodies are hanging on it ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Olson's "proprio" is always turning eternal, historical, mythic ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ also from volume 3: as against what we know went on, the dream: the dream being self-action with Whitehead's important corollary: that no event is not penetrated, in intersection or collision with, an eternal event The poetics of such a situation are yet to be found out ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 14 Feb 1996 09:52:07 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Alexander Subject: Re: writing the bod >where is the mini-apple? in mini-apple-less which is in mini-soda ?? ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 14 Feb 1996 10:10:23 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Alexander Subject: miniapples, berssenbrugge, kim >The mini-apple is Minneapolis, one of the legendary "Twin Cities" >which hang from the branches of the Mrs. Sipp-Hesperides, the other >being, of course, St. Petersburg (NOT florida). - Henry Gould St. Petersburg, St. Paul, what's the difference? (I can ask this in semi-innocence, not having been to Florida in my lifetime.) St. Paul is home to the winter carnival, where winter queens are crowned, the devil is beaten away by the icy forces of good; this year, with thirty-four-below-zero temperatures and sixty-below wind chills that week, even parts of that carnival were canceled. St. Paul is also home, of course, to Detour Press, Exile, Minnesota Project for Contemporary Language Arts, and more. Speaking of twin cities, if anyone's in the vicinity, there will be a 3-day residency of visiting writers MEI-MEI BERSSENBRUGGE and MYUNG MI KIM, co-sponsored by Univ. of Minnesota Creative Writing Program, Minnesota Center for Book Arts (I was director when this ball got rolling and am glad it was carried through), and Asian American Renaissance. I don't have all the details in front of me, but I know there is -- a reading on March 8, Friday, at 7 pm Minnesota Center for Book Arts in Minneapolis 24 North Third Street a "fireside chat" with the poets on March 6, Wednesday, at 6:30 - 8:00 pm Asian American Renaissance in St. Paul The poets are also leading a workshop of creative writing students at U-Minnesota, but I don't believe that's open to the public. Chip Schilling, resident artist in bookmaking at Minnesota Center for Book Arts, is making a chapbook containing works by both poets, a limited edition handmade book which will be available for sale. Call Minnesota Center for Book Arts for details. If anyone is around and wants addresses/directions, or other specific information, please call Ann Somers or Sarah Manwaring at Minnesota Center for Book Arts, 612-338-3634. charles alexander ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 14 Feb 1996 08:10:45 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Douglas Messerli Subject: Sun & Moon brand equity Ron, That's a good question. No, I don't see true evidence that a book selles better if it's a "classic." Of course, most of the "classics" are aimed, in the long-run, at the classroom, and, accordingly, over a period of time they sell better. However, we keep almost all of our books in print, so there's been many a time when a New American Fiction or New American Poetry title sold better than a Classics original. For example, Wendy Walker's THE SECRET SERVICE was first published in the Classics Series (we had reprinted her THE SEA-RABBIT into that series earlier). But her books sold far fewer copies that a gay novel like PLACE OF SHELTER by new-comer Nolan Dennett. But, of course, sales also have to do with when books are pubilshed, how they look, and the inexplicable aspect of the audience. Thanks for your observations. Douglas ============================ Douglas, I appreciated your articulation of Classics. I've often wondered about that as a series and of the whole question of brand equity in poetry generally (the "classic" example being City Lights Pocket Poets Series as distinct from regular City Lights books). It works when somebody (me, say) likes a given series and is open to thumbing through and maybe buying with less foreknowledge a new book in a given series just because I've learned to trust the series. Nathaniel Tarn's great run at Grossman/Cape would be an example: because I trusted Olson's Mayan Letters, I was willing to buy books by Henri Lefebvre (still one of my all time faves), Victor Segalen (French anticipation of Spicer?), and Nazim Hikmet (a great poet, the Williams of the Middle East). Is there any evidence that an S&M book sells better when it's a "classic" than when it's not?? All best, Ron Silliman ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 14 Feb 1996 10:20:31 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Robert A Harrison Subject: Re> johanna drucker's work Matt, Quite a lot of Drucker's work is available at Woodland Pattern, where she currently has a show. Their phone number is (414) 263-5001. I'm pretty sure they have copies of "Simulant Portrait", "The Word Made Flesh", "Just As", and "Dark Decade" (her Detour novel), though I'm not sure they have "Otherspace." Her email address is or was recently johanna.drucker@yale.edu Also, this past summer she contributed to a show of Visual Poetry that I co-curated. The catalog, which is still available, has a general overview essay on Visual Poetry and some pieces from "The Word Made Flesh." If you want a copy let me know backchannel. Bob Harrison Robert.A.Harrison@JCI.com ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 14 Feb 1996 11:41:18 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Emily Lloyd Subject: Buttons kathryne wrote: >Tender Buttons is one big guffaw at straight domesticity and >sophisticated femininity and perhaps lipstick lesbians. Seems to me that Stein was very PRO-"domesticity"/domiciles as long as she wasn't the one having to make the mutton (or type the manuscript, etc.). In some sense I read Buttons as a *celebration* (as opposed to a mockery, though one can certainly celebrate & mock simultaneously) of daily, domestic life. Or an exploration of/meditation on it. I agree that Stein's work is often infused with wit----but not that the entire "point" was wit or "one big guffaw." Also--AliceBT was pretty lipsticky herself (I'm talking looks here; she *was* quite the intellectual---don't know if by "lipstick lesbian" you're connoting "incapable bimbo" or merely "femme"). Kathryne---could you write more about what led you to your above-quoted assertion? Back or front. emily ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 14 Feb 1996 09:54:07 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Sheila E. Murphy" Subject: Re: writing the body Shaunanne writes: one of my PhD >comp exams was about writing the body, cixous and my own works, even! if >any one out there would like to see what i do w/ writing the body, i'd be >glad to post a poem. Shaunanne, I would be interested, yes. Please do post! Sheila Murphy ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 14 Feb 1996 17:00:52 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: R I Caddel Subject: Northern Readings Two forthcoming poetry readings in the NE of England: Friday February 23rd at 8.00pm MORDEN TOWER, Back Stowell Street, Newcastle upon Tyne PETER RUSSELL A rare visit to the UK from this elder-statesman-in-exile, who's lived in Italy since the 50's. Russell edited NINE in the 50's, publishing Bunting (when no-one else in Britain did) Pound and others. He now produces MARGINALIA, a newsletter largely devoted to his own work, which has been described as "a kind of high, literary underground". Friday March 1st at 6.30pm BASIL BUNTING POETRY CENTRE Music School, Palace Green, Durham City NICOLE BROSSARD / DAPHNE MARLATT // GERALDINE MONK / MAGGIE O'SULLIVAN A packed quadruple bill for Bunting's birthday. Brossard and Marlatt are touring courtesy of the Canadian High Commission; Monk, O'Sullivan and Brossard are all in the forthcoming anthology "Out Of Everywhere" from Reality Street Editions. Telephone booking advised: 0191 384 3720. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 14 Feb 1996 12:36:13 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rod Smith Subject: Re: Sun & Moon brand equity As a bookseller I can second Doug's observation that the classics series doesn't sell better than the NAP or NAF. Given the uniform size & "look" of Sun & Moon the entire press has acheived "buyer recognition" -- I'd say I really began to notice this around 2 years ago. It's as though a threshold was reached in terms of number of titles (kind of a hundredth monkey theory). Though I'd bet the Classics series sells better to libraries. --Rod ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 14 Feb 1996 10:35:20 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ken Edwards <100344.2546@COMPUSERVE.COM> Subject: Out of Everywhere A spectacularly successful launch was held on Monday night (12 Feb) at the East West Gallery, London, for OUT OF EVERYWHERE: linguistically innovative poetry by women in North America & the UK. The gallery space was packed and people were spilling out onto the pavement outside. All eight UK based contributors to the anthology were there to read their work: Caroline Bergvall, Paula Claire, Grace Lake, Wendy Mulford, Maggie O'Sullivan, Carlyle Reedy, Denise Riley and Geraldine Monk. They were joined by two transatlantic visitors, Fiona Templeton and Kathleen Fraser. Kathleen prefaced her reading with a poem by Barbara Guest. Geraldine was almost inaudible through laryngitis, but managed a raucous partial delivery. Paula handed out ginkgo tree leaves. Everyone was in fine fettle. The following evening Maggie and Geraldine gave a more extended reading in the SubVoicive series at the Three Cups pub in Holborn. On March 1, they will also be reading in Durham, together with Nicole Brossard and Daphne Marlatt, to celebrate both the book and Basil Bunting's birthday. This is courtesy of Ric Caddel and Diana Collecott. Just for the record, the other US and Canadian contributors to OUT OF EVERYWHERE are: Rae Armantrout, Nicole Brossard, Tina Darragh, Deanna Ferguson, Barbara Guest, Carla Harryman, Lyn Hejinian, Fanny Howe, Susan Howe, Karen MacCormack, Bernadette Mayer, Melanie Neilson, Joan Retallack, Lisa Robertson, Leslie Scalapino, Catriona Strang, Rosmarie Waldrop, Diane Ward, Hannah Weiner, Marjorie Welish. The book is 256pp and retails for 9 pounds (around $15). I am now submerged in jiffy bags as I try to fulfil orders. Contributors who lurk here: your copy is on its way, but by surface mail to save cost, so it may be a few weeks yet. Likewise, SPD and Marginal Distribution should be receiving copies in the next few weeks. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 14 Feb 1996 10:03:46 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Douglas Messerli Subject: Readings at Sun & Moon Press Just a note to anyone visiting the Los Angeles region this weekend--or to Angelenos who somehow didn't get the word. Sun & Moon Press, Littoral Books and RIBOT are co- sponsoring a new reading series. The first of those readings will be this Sunday, the 18th at Sun & Moon Press Bookstore (6026 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA) at 4:00 p.m. All are welcome. Reading will be RAY DI PALMA and MAC WELLMAN Tonight at Bookstar bookstore (in the Beverly Connection across from the Beverly Center) PAUL VANGELISTI and MARTHA RONK will be reading from their new books at 7:00 p.m. --Douglas Messelri ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 14 Feb 1996 14:06:26 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: writing the body alan s rites: Can a male write feminin ecriture? Where are the boundaries of essential vis-a-vis woman's writing? Can Sandy Stone? Can I? Andre Roy for example? Artaud? yes, of course. genet is most often used as an example. personally i don't believe (i don't think) in "ecriture feminine," though it's a useful concept to have around in the mix, if only to refute, refine, revise, oppose, etc, and it gives young girls (as i've found in dealing w/ undergrads) a way to feel okay about their writing, which continues to be an important factor for me.--maria d ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 14 Feb 1996 14:06:33 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: Poetry Sightings on April 18, the St Mark's Poetry Project will have a Bob Kaufman celebration. The occasions are: Bob's birthday, the 10th anniversary of his death, and the appearance of the Coffee House Press Selected (from which my essay was unprofessionally axed w/ no word from the publisher). David Henderson will be presiding, Cecil Taylor, possibly Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis (who recorded some dramatic readings of Kaufman poems in the 70s), i'll be there, maybe Mona Lisa Saloy (a poet working on a critical biography of Kaufman), maybe Ginsberg, maybe Baraka, Eileen Kaufman (bob's widow), don't know who else.--md ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 14 Feb 1996 14:45:13 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: writing the body thanks roger field. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 Feb 1996 12:17:30 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Candace Leigh Pirnak Subject: Re: writing the body , >I second that last observation--I love Lispector's writing. I saw Cixous >speak at UC Irvine about 6 years ago and found her very engaging, playful >with language in a very conscious and opening way. I haven't read the Du >Plessis or Howe books that make Cixous a "straw woman"--could someone pass >on a little more info on what the general objection seems to be? > >Thanks, >Steve Yes, please, more information on Howe and Du Plessis' ideas on Cixous. I've only read "Three Steps On the Ladder of Writing" and found it helpful and beautiful. thanks Candace Pirnak ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 14 Feb 1996 15:31:35 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jonathan A Levin Subject: Call fr papers, mla 96 In-Reply-To: <960214144512_322055598@emout10.mail.aol.com> Poetics List-- Just thought I'd draw yr eye to my call for papers in the present mla newsletter--It's titled Poetry in the Curriculum (under special sessions, which is alphabetized, and which also means, of course, it has to be approved after I've formed the panel). It comes from frustration, some my own, some my friends and students, about the "place" of poetry in the present English dept. curriculum--in the shadows, so much, of the "sexier" (and more marketable?) genres & theories. I'm hoping, of course, to get some kind of discussion going, one that will appeal not just to poetry nuts but to others more generally concerned with pedagogical and curricular issues in departments of English, comp lit, and lit studies-- a discussion that can affirm, in I hope of variety of ways, the importance of poetry in the curriculum, and help define what that importance might actually be. The call goes (something) like this (I don't have my copy here): Poetry in the curriculum: graduate programs, undergraduate programs, poetry and theory, poetry and cultural studies, anthologies, new poetries, traditions of poetry, introductory courses, innovative courses. I hope this is broad enough: I'm interested in all aspects of the place of poetry in the curriculum. 1 page abstracts by March 15 to: Jonathan Levin 602 Philosophy Hall Dept of English and Comp Lit. Columbia U NY, NY 10027 (I'd prefer snail mail, since I haven't yet managed to print anything out from e-mail.) Best-- Jonathan ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 14 Feb 1996 16:47:42 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Re: writing the body Dear Candace Pirnak and Steve Carl-- Even though I brought the topic up, I'd rather not get into DP's and H's problems with Cixous.It's in MY EMILY DICKINSON and the PINK GUITAR (and both quite brief). Partially because I don't agree with them (which is not to say I don't agree or enjoy other aspects of their books--I still think MED Howe's best book; and partially because I think others on the list have fairly accurately raised the SAME KIND of objections (and redcutions) of Cixous that the two writers in question have. Happy V-D day, cs..... ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 14 Feb 1996 14:50:50 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: jeffrey timmons Subject: Re: write that body Comments: To: Chris Stroffolino In-Reply-To: <01I16RP1JFME8Y7VIZ@cnsvax.albany.edu> and how about contingent essentialism? Jeffrey Timmons ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 14 Feb 1996 17:23:37 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: Re: Poetry Sightings James, If that's Feb. 18-21 then may I suggest "On any Third Sunday" at the Knitting Factory, Feb 18 9 pm $6.. Todd Colby and others doing spoken word/music.. our old friend Alfred Corn will be reading up in the bronx Tuesday Feb 20 8:30 p.m. at Exoterica/An Beal Bocht (445 w 238th).. and at the Poetry Project POETICS' own lurker Albert Mobilio reads with he of the hut in France, Gustaf Sobin, Wed Feb 21 @ 8 ($6). If it's some other 18 through 21 let us know. Signed, New York ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 14 Feb 1996 17:24:45 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: Re: Poetry Sightings Oops! almost forgot Carolyn Forche will be reading Tuesday Feb 20 at 7 pm at Art in General, 79 Walker St.. come on down.. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 14 Feb 1996 18:51:40 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: write that boy jt rites and how about contingent essentialism? i like it, have nothing to say tho', use it in a sentence. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 14 Feb 1996 18:28:11 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Watts Subject: Cap Review (fwd) Folks, Jenny Penberthy, one of the editors of the special Blaser conference issue of _The Capilano Review_, has asked me to send you all this publication announcement: The Capilano Review announces the publication of a special double issue celebrating the work of Vancouver poet Robin Blaser. TCR #17/18 is a festschrift of exciting work by over 40 poets who read at last year's "The Recovery ofthe Public World" conference held to honour Robin Blaser. Order copies at the special rate of (Can)$15 ($3 off the newsstand price). Subscriptions to The Capilano Review are (Can)$25 a year or $45 for two years, including GST. Add $5 for postage orders outside of Canada. To order, please send a cheque or money order along with your name and address to : The Capilano Review, 2055 Purcell Way, North Vancouver, B.C., Canada V7J 3H5. (American and overseas readers may as well send international money orders made out to Canadian funds or, if that proves difficult, to yr own currency at current exchange rates.) The Capilano Review is launching this new issue at the Vancouver Press Club on Sunday, February 18th, 8 p.m. Some of the Vancouver contributors to the issue will be reading/performing, including George Bowering, Deanna Ferguson, Francois Houle & Catriona Strang, George Stanley, Sharon Thesen, and Robin Blaser. And let me not let this opportunity pass by to remind you again that the current issue of _West Coast Line_, No. 17 Fall 1995 contains both a ripping collection of new British and Irish writing edited by Peter Quartermain and a selection of writing by participants at the "Recovery of the Public World" Conference, including four papers presented at the conference: Charles Bernstein's "Robin on His Own," Kevin Killian's modestly/cunningly/unassumingly titled "Blaser Talk," Daphne Marlatt's "Eratic/Erotic Narrative: Syntax and Mortality in Robin Blaser's 'Image-Nations'," and Robert Hullot-Kentor's "Past Tense: Ethics, Aesthetics and the Recovery of the Public World," as well as new writing by Rachel Blau DuPlessis, Michele Leggott, Leslie Scalapino, Michael McClure, David Levi Strauss, and Jed Rasula. The British & Irish writers are Tony Baker, Richard Caddel, Miles Champion, Chris Cheek, Ken Edwards, Allen Fisher, Harry Gilonis, Alan Halsey, Randolph Healy, Paul Holman, Peter Middleton, Billy Mills, Geraldine Monk, Bob Cobbing, Maggie O'Sullivan, Bridget Penney, Peter Riley, Maurice Scully, Robert Sheppard, Colin Simms, Simon Smith, Geoffrey Squires, Ian Stephen, and Catherine Walsh. There are also reviews by Meredith Quartermain on Norma Cole and Rosmarie Waldrop, by Shan He on Sau-Ling Cynthia Wong and King-Kok Cheung, and by Ralph Maud on Clayton Eshleman. Single issues are $10, $20/year for individuals, $30/year for institutions; overseas, $30/year for individuals, $45/year for institutions. West Coast Line, 2027 East Academic Annex, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, B.C. Canada V5A 1S6; also should be available from Small Press Distribution. And of course there's _Sulfur_ 37, with essays originally presented at the "Recovery of the Public World" conference by Robin Blaser, Jed Rasula, and Peter Quartermain and a new poem by Robin Blaser, $9 from Sulfur, c/o English Department, Eastern Michigan University, Ypsilanti, MI 48197. AND Ted Byrne and I are continuing to edit a collection of the papers presented at the conference -- more than thirty received so far. More on this project as plans coalesce. Thanks for bearing with all of this, some of which has already been posted (more than onece); the main thing at the moment is the new issue of Capilano Review. Charles Watts cwatts@sfu.ca ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 14 Feb 1996 22:47:42 +0000 Reply-To: jzitt@humansystems.com Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: Authenticated sender is From: Joseph Zitt Organization: HumanSystems Subject: Re: "Pomo" Comments: To: Mark Nowak On 13 Feb 96 at 15:05, Mark Nowak wrote: > Gerald Vizenor > _Manifest Manners: Postindian Warriors of Survivance_ "Survivance"? ---------1---------1---------1---------1---------1---------1---------- |||/ Joseph Zitt ==== jzitt@humansystems.com ===== Human Systems \||| ||/ Organizer, SILENCE: The John Cage Mailing List \|| |/Joe Zitt's Home Page\| ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 Feb 1996 03:25:19 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ron Silliman Subject: (C) up for grabs Good news for teachers, not so good for writers.... Less good still for anthologists and publishers. Copied in toto from another listserve. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Tue, 13 Feb 96 21:55:16 CST From: Lisa A Auanger To: classics@u.washington.edu Subject: Good News About Copyright & Course Packets (fwd) Date: Tue, 13 Feb 1996 17:12:40 -0600 Reply-To: H-NET List for Women's History Sender: H-NET List for Women's History From: Kriste Lindenmeyer Subject: Good News About Copyright & Course Packets Comments: To: H-SHGAPE@msu.edu To: Multiple recipients of list H-WOMEN Date: Tue, 13 Feb 1996 12:18:54 -0400 (EDT) From: Jacquelyn Kent http://chronicle.com/che-data/news.dir/newstday.htm#art-10 Court Says Printing of "Course Packs" Does Not Violate Copyright Law A federal appeals court Monday ruled that a copy-shop owner did not violate copyright laws when he copied materials for college courses without getting permission from the publishers or paying sufficient royalties. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit ruled that James M. Smith, owner of Michigan Document Services, was protected by the "fair use" provisions of copyright law and had not infringed on the copyrights of the three publishers that sued him in 1992. The court overruled a district judge's decision rendered in 1994. Mr. Smith's five small copy shops serve the University of Michigan, Eastern Michigan University, and other institutions in the Ann Arbor, Mich., area. The case involved the preparation of "course packs," materials copied from books and journals and packaged for particular courses. He and others in the photocopy business have said that the current process for obtaining permission to reproduce copyrighted materials is time-consuming, cumbersome, and expensive. They say that course packs, which are ubiquitous in higher education, allow professors to assign important reading in books and journals that would be too costly for students to purchase individually. Under the fair-use provisions of copyright law, reproducing copyrighted material is acceptable for "teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use)." The law outlines four factors to be considered in determining whether fair use has been observed: the character of the use, including whether it is for a commercial or non-profit purpose; the nature of the copyrighted work; the length and importance of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and the effect of its use on the copyrighted work's potential market and value. The appeals court said that even though Mr. Smith had profited from making the copies, he qualified for fair-use protection because the copies were for educational purposes. The court said Mr. Smith had not exploited copyrighted material because his fee was not based on the content of the books he copied. He charged by the page, regardless of whether the content was copyrighted. "The business of producing and selling coursepacks is more properly viewed as the exploitation of professional copying technologies and the inability of academic parties to reproduce printed materials efficiently, not the exploitation of copyrighted, creative materials," the appeals court said. "We hold that the Copyright Act does not prohibit professors and students who may make copies themselves from using the photoreproduction services of a third party in order to obtain those same copies at less cost." The court also said that the copyrighted materials Mr. Smith had reproduced for the course packs were not "excerpted so substantially that the coursepacks superseded the original works." In determining the effect the copies had on the copyrighted works' market and value, the court said that the publishers had not proved that the course packs affected the current or potential market for the original works. The plaintiffs in the case were the Free Press, Princeton University Press, and St. Martin's Press. In a dissenting opinion, Judge David A. Nelson said the publishers had demonstrated the adverse effect that unauthorized copies such as Mr. Smith's had on the value of copyrighted works. He said that if other copy-shop owners were to follow Mr. Smith's lead and stop paying permission fees, "the potential value of the copyrighted works of scholarship published by the plaintiffs would be diminished." --Mary Geraghty ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 Feb 1996 11:13:36 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Bouchard Subject: Re: (C) up for grabs From Ron's post: Good news for teachers, not so good for writers.... Less good still for anthologists and publishers. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit ruled that James M. Smith, owner of Michigan Document Services, was protected by the "fair use" provisions of copyright law and had not infringed on the copyrights of the three publishers that sued him in 1992. ____________ A friend in Houghton Mifflin's legal department tells me that Mr. Smith had mailed a couple of checks for an amount that he estimated to be fair when his case wasn't going so well. I wonder if he'll want them back. daniel_bouchard@hmco.com ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 Feb 1996 11:24:56 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Brian McHale Subject: Re: a query In-Reply-To: Message of 02/14/96 at 02:50:17 from rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM RE: Silliman's inquiry about where the admirable & lamented Veronica Forrest- Thomson's piece on Tel Quel is to be found: it's called "Necessary Artifice: Form & Theory in the Poetry of Tel Quel," & appeared in "Language & Style," 6, 1, way back in 1973. I wonder if you're aware that she also translated Denis Roche & Pleynet? Her translations are in her "Colected Poems" from (& suddenly I draw a blank on the publisher; the same who did Prynne's Collected, anyway.) Brian ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 Feb 1996 11:44:29 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: James Sherry Subject: ROOF BOOKS -- Special Offer In-Reply-To: <199602150514.AAA10247@listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu> ROOF BOOKS is making a SPECIAL OFFER to POETICS SUBSCRIBERS <> Poetics Subscribers may buy from the following list of ROOF BOOKS for $5 (Five Dollars) each. Minimum Order must be 3 (Three) Books. Postage is free. You must order by the end of February, 1996, to receive this offer. To order simply reply to this message with your name, shipping address, and the list of books you want. Roof Books will ship you the books, postage free with a stamped envelope and a bill. You send Roof a check. LIST OF SPEIAL OFFER ROOF BOOKS (you must order 3 books) Charles Bernstein, Islets/Irritations, 112p Ray DiPalma, Raik, 100p Erica Hunt, Local History, 80p Peter Inman, Criss Cross, 64p Jackson Mac Low, Representative Works, 360p Kit Robinson, Balance Sheet, 112p Leslie Scalapino, Objects in the Terrifying Tense..., 88p Fiona Templeton, You--The City, 150p Diane Ward, Human Ceiling, 76p There has been a lot of talk about the Internet. Let's see if it works. ORDER TODAY. OK?! Just hit "R" on your mail program to reply to this message. I hope we can send a lot of you these great books. James Sherry ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 Feb 1996 09:08:17 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Douglas Messerli Subject: Re: ROOF BOOKS -- Special Offer James, I'll take another copy each (for personal) of ISLETS IRRITATIONS YOU: THE CITY RAIK Bill me DOUGLAS 6026 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90036 ============================ At 11:44 AM 2/15/96 -0500, you wrote: >ROOF BOOKS is making a SPECIAL OFFER > >to POETICS SUBSCRIBERS <> > >Poetics Subscribers may buy from the following list of ROOF BOOKS for >$5 (Five Dollars) each. Minimum Order must be 3 (Three) Books. Postage is >free. You must order by the end of February, 1996, to receive this offer. > >To order simply reply to this message with your name, shipping address, >and the list of books you want. > >Roof Books will ship you the books, postage free with a stamped envelope >and a bill. You send Roof a check. > >LIST OF SPEIAL OFFER ROOF BOOKS (you must order 3 books) > >Charles Bernstein, Islets/Irritations, 112p >Ray DiPalma, Raik, 100p >Erica Hunt, Local History, 80p >Peter Inman, Criss Cross, 64p >Jackson Mac Low, Representative Works, 360p >Kit Robinson, Balance Sheet, 112p >Leslie Scalapino, Objects in the Terrifying Tense..., 88p >Fiona Templeton, You--The City, 150p >Diane Ward, Human Ceiling, 76p > >There has been a lot of talk about the Internet. Let's see if it works. > >ORDER TODAY. OK?! Just hit "R" on your mail program to reply to this >message. I hope we can send a lot of you these great books. > >James Sherry > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 Feb 1996 11:45:14 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joe Amato Subject: Re: ROOF BOOKS -- Special Offer james, i'll bite... here's my picks: >Erica Hunt, Local History, 80p >Jackson Mac Low, Representative Works, 360p >Fiona Templeton, You--The City, 150p to joe amato 5040 s. woodlawn ave. #3N chicago, il 60615 thanx!... looking forward//best, joe ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 Feb 1996 10:00:31 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Douglas Messerli Subject: Re: ROOF BOOKS -- Special Offer James, You might want to redirect your replies so that they come to you, not to the whole Poetics list. Douglas =================== At 11:45 AM 2/15/96 -0600, you wrote: >james, i'll bite... here's my picks: > >>Erica Hunt, Local History, 80p >>Jackson Mac Low, Representative Works, 360p >>Fiona Templeton, You--The City, 150p > >to > >joe amato >5040 s. woodlawn ave. #3N >chicago, il 60615 > >thanx!... > >looking forward//best, > >joe > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 Feb 1996 13:22:14 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Re: (C) up for grabs Well--I think it's as good news for writers as for teachers, unless they also happen to be anthologists or publishers--- I mean, WHO really gets money from writing poetry? (aside from SPARROW I mean)---It helps get the work out there, in ways anthologists and anthologies don't...... let's hear it for little privately owned photocopy places! cs. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 Feb 1996 10:38:24 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Carl Lynden Peters Subject: Re: ROOF BOOKS -- Special Offer In-Reply-To: from "James Sherry" at Feb 15, 96 11:44:29 am james, i'll take: islets/irritations local history objects in the terrifying tense much thanks for this -- carl peters dept. of english simon fraser university burnaby, bc V5A 1S6 ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 Feb 1996 08:27:21 -1000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gabrielle Welford Subject: Re: Poetry Sightings In-Reply-To: <960214140631_222047845@mail06.mail.aol.com> Aaaaaaah! I can't stand it that I'm missing all these wonderful readings! Gabrielle Hi Shaunanne. Where have we been? I'm sending ya. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 Feb 1996 13:40:45 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Bouchard Subject: Re: (C) up for grabs >> I mean, WHO really gets money from writing poetry? Evidently: Kinko's, Copy Cat, Copies 'R Us, Smith of Michigan, et al -- not their own poetry, of course. . . daniel_bouchard@hmco.com ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 Feb 1996 11:52:49 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: jeffrey timmons Subject: Re: write that boy In-Reply-To: <960214185138_322339299@emout06.mail.aol.com> On Wed, 14 Feb 1996, Maria Damon wrote: > jt rites > and how about contingent essentialism? > i like it, have nothing to say tho', use it in a > sentence. its like you know something analogous to Adrienne Rich's "wild patience." Lets see a sentence [oh ive been thinking too about this word sentence-- in itself it seems to contain this essentialist/constructivist dichotomy in its very resonances: the word suggests the confines and liberation of language] . . . . In the space described by Foucault-- of the subject engendered by language discursive formations [the face drawn in the sand]-- there is a need to reflect both the need/desire/efficacy of having recourse to the materiality of the body but a complementary-- and no less imperative need/desire/efficacy-- to recognize the limitations/determinations [ideological/political/physiological] of materiality to reserve the possibility of the body's contingency its dependence on the materiality of language for its constitution. The sauve writing-subject aware of the blind spots of essentialism and constructivism (everyone say Judith Butler) manifests a strategic essentialism (as chris noted: spivak)-- or as us do-i-contradict-myself-very-well sorts: contingent essentialism. was that a sentence. darn it. i had the best intentions, too! ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 Feb 1996 10:55:33 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ryan Knighton Subject: Re: writing the body In-Reply-To: <960214140626_222047705@emout10.mail.aol.com> from "Maria Damon" at Feb 14, 96 02:06:26 pm Oh yeah, Nancy Mairs' _Remembering the Bonehouse_. The erotics of space and place: the same feel you find in O'Hara, I think. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 Feb 1996 11:02:38 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Watts Subject: Capilano Review festschrift for Blaser A correction to that announcement I made yesterday: the launch begins at 7 p.m. It's at the Vancouver Press Club, 2215 Granville Street, Vancouver. Readers at the launch include George Bowering, Colin Browne, Deanna Ferguson, George Stanley, Catriona Strang and Francois Houle, Sharon Thesen, and Robin Blaser. Best, Charles Watts ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 Feb 1996 13:37:47 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Winston Jones Subject: Re: ROOF BOOKS -- Special Offer In-Reply-To: from "James Sherry" at Feb 15, 96 11:44:29 am i'd like copies of: inman dipalma scalapino templeton dan jones 2006 stadium rd #4 charlottesville va 22903 one of each will suffice. thanks d.jones ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 Feb 1996 14:34:46 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jackson Mac Low Subject: lost download of poetics digest for Feb 10-11, 1996 I lost the download of the poetics digest for Feb. 10-11 1996. Can this be transmitted to me again. I sent this message also to listserv but it may be an automatic golem, so please some PERSON try to get this digest sent to me. Jackson Mac Low [maclow@aol.com] ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 Feb 1996 11:14:00 PST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steve Carll Subject: Re: writing the bod At 03:27 PM 2/13/96 EST, Henry Gould wrote (among too many other things for me to go into here!): > What is the physiology of talk - especially high-tech >written talk (i.e. what we're engaged in on this list) - or does >such a physiology even exist? The physiology exists--but, as Brian Eno notes in the April '95 issue of _Wired_, at present it's really limiting. The way the human body interacts with the computer is limited to eyes and fingers for the most part, and there's a huge, mostly untapped potential to make using a computer more physically liberating via integrating gestural communication, voice-interaction, and so on. > And has talk, discourse, poetics, textuality, etc. >replaced poetry? I would say such things have *always* been replacing poetry, but to the extent that they can't substitute for the essence of it, poetry continues to break through what covers it. One of my favorite parts of Deleuze and Guattari's _What is Philosophy_ is the following: "In a violently poetic text, Lawrence describes what produces poetry: people are constantly putting up an umbrella that shelters them and on the underside of which they draw a firmament and write their conventions and opinions. But poets, artists, make a slit in the umbrella, they tear open the firmament itself, to let in a bit of free and windy chaos and to frame in a sudden light a vision that appears throughthe rent--Wordsworth's spring or Cezanne's apple, the silhouettes of Macbeth or Ahab. Then come the crowd of imitators who repair the umbrella with something vaguely resembling the vision, and the crowd of commentators who patch over the rent with opinions: communication. Other artists are always needed to make other slits, to carry out necessary and perhaps ever-greater destructions, thereby restoring to their predecessors the incommunicable novelty that we could no longer see. This is to say that artists struggle less against chaos (that, in a certain manner, all their wishes summon forth) than against the "cliches of opinion." >& I wonder what the meaning of "eros" really is in the universe >of techno-talk-babble. An image of an image of an image. Well, we've got a double-edged (s)word here, meaning-wise: eros may everywhere be subject to the reductive tendencies of local representations (adult BBS's and so forth), but there's as it were another eros that can't be pinned down by this process of representation that can at any moment slip in and create the "shattering realization", so to speak, the sublime. Steve ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 Feb 1996 14:52:36 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Emily Lloyd Subject: Re: (C) up for grabs I agree with you, Chris. & add that I was first introduced to Michael Palmer & Hejinian in a "free" course packet o' xeroxes...and then immediately went out and bought whatever I could find of them. One can think of these things as the best advertisements for seducing those of us who don't have the money to walk into a bookstore & buy stuff sight unread (you don't want reviewers & critics to be all we have to go on, do you?). On the other hand, it's funny....all this talk in the past 20 years about the writer disappearing from the text...maybe the writer's *compensation* is the first to go... if you can't be w/the one you write, write the one you're w/ & other free love analogies-- (can one "write the body" of another?) emily At 01:22 PM 2/15/96 -0500, Chris Stroffolino wrote: > Well--I think it's as good news for writers as for teachers, unless > they also happen to be anthologists or publishers--- > I mean, WHO really gets money from writing poetry? (aside from > SPARROW I mean)---It helps get the work out there, in ways > anthologists and anthologies don't...... > let's >hear it for little privately owned photocopy places! > cs. > > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 Feb 1996 12:50:07 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Sheila E. Murphy" Subject: Re: ROOF BOOKS -- Special Offer James: I'd like to take advantage of your special offer, ordering the following books: >Peter Inman, Criss Cross, 64p >Jackson Mac Low, Representative Works, 360p >Fiona Templeton, You--The City, 150p Hope this note finds you thriving! All best, Sheila Murphy 3701 E. Monterosa #3 Phoenix, AZ 85018-4848 semurphy@indirect.com (602) 954-7132 ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 Feb 1996 15:09:36 GMT-5 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Peters, Mark" Organization: Indiana State University Subject: Re: ROOF BOOKS -- Special Offer james, thanks for the wonderful offer. i'll take: islets/irritations representative works objects in the terrifying sense . . . thanks-- mark peters indiana state university root hall, english dept. terre haute, in 47809 ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 Feb 1996 12:14:49 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: ryan johnson Subject: Fwd: Important & RIDICULOUS (fwd) -Forwarded -Forwarded (fwd) I HOPE MANY OF YOU WILL TAKE A MINUTE TO READ THIS FORWARDED MESSAGE AND EMAIL A MESSAGE, OF WHATEVER OPINION, TO THE PRESIDENT(president@whitehouse.gov). IF NOT (AND YES THIS IS SUPPOSED TO MAKE YOU FEEL GUILTY, AT LEAST A LITTLE)--IF NOT, I HOPE Y'ALL RECOGNIZE WHAT YOUR SILENCE WILL IMPLICITLY SUPPORT. --RYAN ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Wed, 14 Feb 1996 11:37:05 -0800 (PST) From: Deborah Anne Greenberg To: pepperchlo@aol.com, ticien@leland.Stanford.EDU, ryanx@leland.Stanford.EDU, mlevenberg@aol.com, cmendelson@aol.com, dgreenbe@students.uiuc.edu Subject: Fwd: Important & RIDICULOUS (fwd) -Forwarded -Forwarded (fwd) Forwarded message: >From GREENBAL@LANMAIL.SHU.EDU Wed Feb 14 09:17:34 1996 X-UIDL: 9ed0af17833b2a55e47ad7d5923e126e Message-Id: X-Mailer: Novell GroupWise 4.1 Date: Wed, 14 Feb 1996 11:22:57 -0500 From: "Alison G. Greenberg" To: dgreenbe@leland.stanford.edu Subject: Fwd: Important & RIDICULOUS (fwd) -Forwarded -Forwarded Forwarded Mail received from: Alison G. Greenberg Date: 02/12/1996 02:23 pm (Monday) From: EDWARD MITREUTER To: president, president1, president2, president4, president3, president5, president6, president8, president9 Subject: Fwd: Important & RIDICULOUS (fwd) -Forwarded Received: (nicole75@localhost) by rs5.tcs.tulane.edu (8.6.12/8.5) id WAA76457; Sun, 11 Feb 1996 22:36:13 -0600 Date: Sun, 11 Feb 1996 22:36:13 -0600 (CST) From: Nicole Terranova X-Sender: nicole75@rs5.tcs.tulane.edu To: More Addresses <51149@brahms.udel.edu>, elmo@mailhost.tcs.tulane.edu, estitt@mailhost.tcs.tulane.edu, jlk178@psu.edu, jproven@mailhost.tcs.tulane.edu, jsi104@email.psu.edu, lamper@bart.db.erau.edu, meroa@bart.db.erau.edu, mitreued@lanmail.shu.edu, primaver@mailhost.tcs.tulane.edu, pst4@cornell.edu, vgn2@cornell.edu, wengert@bart.db.erau.edu, yedlinsr@bart.db.erau.edu Subject: Fwd: Important & RIDICULOUS (fwd) Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII >>>>Yesterday, Feb. 1, 1996, Both houses of our congress passed a >>>>telecommunications bill which had a provision in it making it illegalk to >>>>Discuss ABORTION of all things on the Internet. That means that no web >>>>sites, FTP sites, Gopher sites, OR E-MAIL MESSAGES (!!!) Can contaijn any >>>>reference to abortion. Not even in a clinical manner. A doctor is not >>>>allowed to Email a patient with a recommendation on wether or not to have >>>>an >>>>abortion. Wether or not you are for or against abortion does not matter, >>>>abortion in itself is not the issue. The issue is the curtailing of EVERY >>>>AMERICANS FIRST AMENDMENT RIGHTS. Clinton has said that he will sign this >>>>bill into law, possibly even today. The bill calls for jail time and >>>>heavy >>>>fines of ANYONE caught discussing abortion in any way on the net, even in >>>>the >>>>international news groups. >>>> >>>>This is a horrible abuse of legislative power against the American people, >>>>and we can do something about it. Please, Write the president at >>>>President@whitehouse.gov , and let him know that you are outraged about >>>>this >>>>bill passing (if indeed you are outraged, which I sincerly hope you are.) >>>> Also, mass forward this message to as many people as possible, anyone you >>>>know who uses the net. With this bill, and the development of the >>>>Compuserve >>>>Newsgroup blackout, our freedom on the net is being seriously curtailed. >>>>Please help, and spread this message. Thank you >>>>>From Alexander Russell Warner Vassar, Class of '99 >>>> ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 Feb 1996 14:18:36 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Alexander Subject: Re: (C) up for grabs > Well--I think it's as good news for writers as for teachers, unless > they also happen to be anthologists or publishers--- > I mean, WHO really gets money from writing poetry? (aside from > SPARROW I mean)---It helps get the work out there, in ways > anthologists and anthologies don't...... > let's >hear it for little privately owned photocopy places! > cs. > > Also, while it might be bad for some publishers, I think that it is difficult to get information about books out to people who aren't already tuned into small press/poetics channels. So if someone wanted to copy a few to several pages out of a Chax book, I would see that as potentially a good marketing tool to interest students in the entire book. If someone on the other hand was copying a third of a book or so, then I wouldn't like it, but it seems like that would probably be more protected. charles ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 Feb 1996 15:13:23 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry Gould Subject: writing the bod (re: S. Carll response) Regarding "voicing" the computer, someone backchanneled a note to me pointing out that contemporary composers have some interesting things to say on all this under the subject "compositional linguistics" (he mentioned Cage among others). Enjoyed the Deleuze/Guattari quote, but I thought their emphasis on the artist as inspired destructor of conventions sounds a little old hat or over-emphasized in last 100 yrs. I would like to hear more about artist as absorber/responder/synthesizer; artist as gifted slowpoke rather than swift avantgardian nemesis avatar blah blah... - Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 Feb 1996 12:41:50 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Douglas Messerli Subject: Re: (C) up for grabs Well Chris, several poets actually do get money from their poetry, in fact anthology rights the ONLY significant money they will get, and it will increase as their careers develop and they are included in more anthologies and textbooks. Several Sun & Moon authors did receive payment for the Norton anthology and have received money for inclusion in others. Moreover, I find that many academics use the xerox to give a small little "sample" of work, without any context of the poets' larger body of writing, which I strong question pedagogically. I should also add that using an anthology or book in your course helps to support the existence of presses like Sun & Moon. So I don't at all agree with your glib statements. Dougas Messerli ==================== At 01:22 PM 2/15/96 -0500, you wrote: > Well--I think it's as good news for writers as for teachers, unless > they also happen to be anthologists or publishers--- > I mean, WHO really gets money from writing poetry? (aside from > SPARROW I mean)---It helps get the work out there, in ways > anthologists and anthologies don't...... > let's >hear it for little privately owned photocopy places! > cs. > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 Feb 1996 16:15:43 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Bouchard Subject: In court today From the today's BOSTON GLOBE, J.W. Carney, the defense attorney for John Salvi: "We represent the man who shot and killed Lee Ann Nichols and who shot and killed Shannon Lowney. The question you have to focus on in this trial is not what happened and not by whom did it happen, but why did it happen?" While defending a sane man who killed two women in cold blood and wounded five other people, Carney has the disadvantage of 1) not being able to speak in clear sentences, and 2) not being able to discuss or read about the context of the case on the internet because it contains the "A" word. * The former sentence is mine, not the GLOBE'S. daniel_bouchard@hmco.com ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 Feb 1996 16:20:55 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Bernstein Organization: University at Buffalo Subject: !!How to!!Reply to::Re: ROOF BOOKS -- Special Offer Replies to the Roof Books Special Offer should be directed to JSHERRY@PANIX.COM. Most mail systems should give you the option to send to the list ("reply to") or to the individual who posted the message ("from"), e.g., "backchannel". If you are not sure how to do this, send a new e-mail rather than using the "reply" option. Questions about the list should be sent to bernstei@ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu rather than to the whole list or to "listserv" or other UBVM addresses, which only respond to formula commands. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 Feb 1996 15:53:28 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Timothy Liu Subject: Re: ROOF BOOKS -- Special Offer What a deal! Sign me up for Bernstein, Mac Low and Scalapino. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 Feb 1996 15:55:08 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Timothy Liu Subject: Re: ROOF BOOKS -- Special Offer Dear James Sherry: What a deal! Sign me up for Bernstein, Mac Low and Scalapino. Timothy Liu Box 8112 Cornell College 600 First St. W Mt. Vernon, IA 52314 ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 Feb 1996 16:55:26 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Kellogg Subject: Re: ROOF BOOKS -- Special Offer In-Reply-To: <199602151708.JAA21544@hollywood.cinenet.net> James, Sorry to have to send this message to the whole list. I lost yr original address. > >Charles Bernstein, Islets/Irritations, 112p > >Ray DiPalma, Raik, 100p > >Leslie Scalapino, Objects in the Terrifying Tense..., 88p > >Diane Ward, Human Ceiling, 76p Please send these to the address below. Thnx. Cheers, David ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ David Kellogg Duke University kellogg@acpub.duke.edu University Writing Program (919) 660-4357 Durham, NC 27708 FAX (919) 684-6277 There is some excitement in one corner, but most of the ghosts are merely shaking their heads. -- Thomas Kinsella ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 Feb 1996 11:05:56 -1000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gabrielle Welford Subject: Re: (C) up for grabs In-Reply-To: <01I18S6R1J5E8WYE6J@cnsvax.albany.edu> On Thu, 15 Feb 1996, Chris Stroffolino wrote: > Well--I think it's as good news for writers as for teachers, unless > they also happen to be anthologists or publishers--- > I mean, WHO really gets money from writing poetry? (aside from > SPARROW I mean)---It helps get the work out there, in ways > anthologists and anthologies don't...... > let's > hear it for little privately owned photocopy places! > cs. > I think this is a really good point. What do we want, our huge royalties (who me, royalties?) or more people reading the work? Gab. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 Feb 1996 15:11:05 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Sheila E. Murphy" Subject: Re: Copyright Regarding the copyright issue, several posts have highlighted the silver lining of the matter. However, there seem to be inconsistencies in the sequence of judicial decisions relating to rights connected with written work. I wonder whether citizens would be willing to have the same practices (as those described by the quoted news story) applied to patents. The cash of the matter is factual, but the principles and practices being encouraged do seem to take advantage of a group already disadvantaged economically (writers). Fortunately or unfortunately, I brush up against this issue from at least two different sides: as writer and as disseminator of information. But as Ferris Bueller would say, "That doesn't change the fact that I still don't have a car." (The principle of the thing) S. Murphy ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 Feb 1996 17:15:02 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Loss Glazier Subject: EPC/Announcements/Conferences/Duncan Find details about this and other conferences at EPC Announcements! ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------- THE OPENING OF THE FIELD (Duncan Conference) April 18-20th, 1996 Buffalo, New York Poetics Program SUNY at Buffalo Thursday, April 18 Lecture: 2:30 pm - 3:30 pm Robert J. Bertholf Dramatic reading: 4:00 pm - 5:00 pm "Adam's Way" Reading: 7:30 pm - 10:00 pm Susan Howe and Nathaniel Mackey Friday, April 19 Panel: 10:00 am - 12:30 pm Marjorie Perloff, Nathaniel Mackey and Joseph Conte Panel: 2:30 pm - 5:00 pm Robin Blaser, Susan Howe and Jerome McGann Reading: 7:30 pm - 10:00 pm Michele Leggott and Robin Blaser Saturday, April 20 Panel: 10:30 am - 1:00 pm Peter Quartermain, Michele Leggott and David Levi Strauss Reception: 5:00 pm - 8:00 pm 64 Amherst Street (716) 875-2108 Persons wishing further information can call (716) 645-3810. Those wanting help with hotel reservations should call or write before March 1, 1996: Duncan Conference Poetics Program 438 Clemens Hall SUNY at Buffalo Buffalo, NY 14260 ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 Feb 1996 16:18:24 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Nowak Subject: Re: miniapples Charles, Thanks for up-to-date-info on Berssenbrugge & Kim readings. Also, intertwined that weekend for interested folks in the region... _Cross-Cultural Poetics_ presents: George Kalamaras & Mary Ann Cain reading: Thursday, March 7th, 12:00 noon talks: Saturday, March 9th, 1:00-3:00pm [George will be speaking on "'An Intimate Immensity': Poetry, Meditation, and the Rhetoric of Paradox," Mary Ann on "Heroes, Rites, and Rituals: A Feminist Rereading of the Mythos of the Writer."] also... Anselm Hollo reading: Saturday, March 30th, 1:00pm [All events are FREE of charge & take place at the College of St. Catherine Minneapolis, 601 25th Avenue South at Riverside Ave. Interested can e-mail for more info: manowak@alex.stkate.edu] ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 Feb 1996 14:37:43 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: mikl-em Subject: Re: Important + Ridiculous [abortion] dear all, here is some information that I had been forwarded about the abortion-com restrictions. While certainly any move in the direction that the bill intends toward is frightening, this info shows that precedents, hopefully, will prevent the new legislation from actually being enforced, [though e-mailling the whitehouse is probably still a very good idea] but I'll let you read for yourself... --Todd Lappin-->..... >From owner-pork@wired.com Fri Feb 2 16:41:32 1996 Date: Fri, 2 Feb 1996 16:41:30 -0800 (PST) Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" To: pork@hotwired.com From: telstar@wired.com (--Todd Lappin-->) Subject: Abortion Restriction Research Sender: owner-pork@hotwired.com Precedence: bulk Here's what I've found out about the limitations on the dissemination of abortion materials contained within the telecom reform bill: (The amended text of the Telecom Bill follows below, along with U.S.C. 18, Section 1462.) Basically we're talking about a provision that extends a section of the US Code (The Comstock Act) prohibiting certain kinds of "obscene" speech to include "interactive computer services." Schroeder's office (202-225-4431) faxed me their position... they say that the changes "will criminalize a wide array of public health information relating to abortion, including discussion of RU-486 on the Internet." Perhaps, but... Sam Stratman from Rep. Hyde's office (202-225-4561) insists subsection (c) of Section 1462 has already been invalidated by the courts (although it remains on the books), so the extension of 1462 to include "interactive computer services" would have no bearing on abortion-related materials. According to the Center for Reproductive Law & Policy (212-514-5534), the last time ANY court has ruled on subsection (c) was in 1919... long before Roe v. Wade. They say the statute remains on the books, although it has long gone unenforced. Steven Lieberman from the NY State Bar clarified things even further. Lieberman says that the prohibitions in subsection (c) against the dissemination of information about abortion were invalidated by the Supreme Court in Bigelow v. Virginia in 1975. (This was a case concerning the availablity of out-of-state abortion materials in the state of Virginia.) As for the prohibitions against any "drug, medicine, article, or thing designed, adapted, or intended for producing abortion"... these were invalidated by Roe v. Wade. So, as Lieberman summarized the situation, "A prosecution under subsection (c) of Section 1462 would be doomed from the outset." Nevertheless, from a strictly formal standpoint, it appears that the prohibitions on abortion information are indeed in place... even if they are toothless. --Todd Lappin--> WIRED Magazine ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Sec. 507 of the Telecom Bill Ammends Section 1462 of title 18 of the U.S. Code (Chapter 71), in ways which may make sending the following over the Internet illegal: o any text, graphic, or sound that is lewd, lascivious, or filthy o any information telling about how to obtain or make abortions and drugs, or obtaining or making anything that is for indecent or immoral use Here is Section 1462 as Ammended: (Telecom bill chnages in "<" and ">"): Section 1462. Importation or transportation of obscene matters Whoever brings into the United States, or any place subject to the jurisdiction thereof, or knowingly uses any express company or other common carrier , for carriage in interstate or foreign commerce - (a) any obscene, lewd, lascivious, or filthy book, pamphlet, picture, motion-picture film, paper, letter, writing, print, or other matter of indecent character; or (b) any obscene, lewd, lascivious, or filthy phonograph recording, electrical transcription, or other article or thing capable of producing sound; or (c) any drug, medicine, article, or thing designed, adapted, or intended for producing abortion, or for any indecent or immoral use; or any written or printed card, letter, circular, book, pamphlet, advertisement, or notice of any kind giving information, directly or indirectly, where, how, or of whom, or by what means any of such mentioned articles, matters, or things may be obtained or made; or Whoever knowingly takes , from such express company or other common carrier any matter or thing the carriage of which is herein made unlawful - Shall be fined not more than $5,000 or imprisoned not more than five years, or both, for the first such offense and shall be fined not more than $10,000 or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both, for each such offense thereafter. ----------- Here is the text which addes the interactive computer service part in the Telecom Bill: SEC. 507. CLARIFICATION OF CURRENT LAWS REGARDING COMMUNICATION OF OBSCENE MATERIALS THROUGH THE USE OF COMPUTERS. (a) Importation or Transportation.--Section 1462 of title 18, United States Code, is amended-- (1) in the first undesignated paragraph, by inserting ``or interactive computer service (as defined in section 230(e)(2) of the Communications Act of 1934)'' after ``carrier''; and (2) in the second undesignated paragraph-- (A) by inserting ``or receives,'' after ``takes''; (B) by inserting ``or interactive computer service (as defined in section 230(e)(2) of the Communications Act of 1934)'' after ``common carrier''; and (C) by inserting ``or importation'' after ``carriage''. ----------- Media Notes: USAToday 02/01/96 - 07:37 PM ET http://www.usatoday.com/news/washdc/ncs16.htm Telecommunications deregulation breaks down electronic walls "At one point, the debate veered off on abortion. Seeing a ''high-tech gag rule,'' Rep. Nita Lowey, D-N.Y., joined by Pat Schroeder, D-Colo., and several other women lawmakers, asserted the anti-pornography provisions would outlaw discussions about abortion over the Internet, the global computer network. Rep Henry Hyde, R-Ill., a leading abortion foe, assured members that nothing in the bill suggested any restrictions on discussions about abortion." Well, Henry Hyde was right - nothing in the bill suggests restrictions on abortion discussion - the restrictions are in Title 18 of the U.S. Code, which now includes computer networks. ----------- Thanks to the Cornell Law School Legal Information Institute (http://www.law.cornell.edu/) and the Alliance for Competitive Communications (http://www.bell.com/) for source text. -Thomas Edwards -------------------------------------------------------------------------- you have been reached by mike@taylor.org [michael mcelligott*citizen*] ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 Feb 1996 17:48:47 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Bernstein Subject: Johanna Drucker & M/E/A/N/I/N/G A full-scale essay on Johanna Drucker by Nick Piombino appears in M/E/A/N/I/N/G #18. Nick reviews five of Johanna's books (of all types). This issue of M/E/A/N/I/N/G also features: "Monstrous Domesticity" by Faith Wilding (on feminist art & its relationship to crafts) "Brave New Art World": A Symposium on the NEA and Censorship with Lenore Malen, Irving Sandler, Michael Brenson, Debra Bricker Balken, Michi Itami "Painting as Manual" by Mira Schor and a wonderful article by Misko Suvokovic on Susan Bee's painting called "Painting after Painting" & more! M/E/A/N/I/N/G is edited by Susan Bee and Mira Schor all for $6 or $12 for a subscription MAIL to: Mira Schor 60 Lispenard St New York NY 10013 *************************************************** JOHANNA DRUCKER'S BOOKS are available from Granary Books, 568 Broadway #403, New York, NY 10012, 212-226-6143. These include: Offset version of HISTORY OF THE WORLD $50 Simulant Portrait $25 The Visible Word: Experimental Typography and Modern Art (U. of Chicago Press) $35 (cloth only) The Alphabetic Labyrinth: The Letters in History and Imagination (Thames & Hudson) $45 (cloth only) & Granary own and Johanna's newest -- The Century of Artists Books ($35 cloth only) Granary also has all other Drucker works avaialbe [shipping $6 for first book $1.50 after; NY tax if app.] ****************************************************** I review The Visible Word in the new issue of Modernism/modernity (just out); the issue is available on-line to subscribing institutions and you can find my review at my home page at the epc (http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/authors) but access will probably be blocked if your internet account is not with a subscriber (eg a university). ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 Feb 1996 18:07:10 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rae Armantrout Subject: Re: ROOF BOOKS -- Special Offer Dear James, I'd like the books by DiPalma, Hunt and Ward. This sure makes things easy. Rae ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 Feb 1996 15:16:29 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kevin Killian Subject: Re: ROOF BOOKS -- Special Offer I don't understand why people aren't backchannelling these Roof Book personal messages. Sending them to the whole list is rather rude. Dodie ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 Feb 1996 10:28:27 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Roberts Subject: Re: ROOF BOOKS -- Special Offer James What about ordering from outside the USA? I may be interested. >ROOF BOOKS is making a SPECIAL OFFER > >to POETICS SUBSCRIBERS <> > >Poetics Subscribers may buy from the following list of ROOF BOOKS for >$5 (Five Dollars) each. Minimum Order must be 3 (Three) Books. Postage is >free. You must order by the end of February, 1996, to receive this offer. > >To order simply reply to this message with your name, shipping address, >and the list of books you want. > >Roof Books will ship you the books, postage free with a stamped envelope >and a bill. You send Roof a check. > >LIST OF SPEIAL OFFER ROOF BOOKS (you must order 3 books) > >Charles Bernstein, Islets/Irritations, 112p >Ray DiPalma, Raik, 100p >Erica Hunt, Local History, 80p >Peter Inman, Criss Cross, 64p >Jackson Mac Low, Representative Works, 360p >Kit Robinson, Balance Sheet, 112p >Leslie Scalapino, Objects in the Terrifying Tense..., 88p >Fiona Templeton, You--The City, 150p >Diane Ward, Human Ceiling, 76p > >There has been a lot of talk about the Internet. Let's see if it works. > >ORDER TODAY. OK?! Just hit "R" on your mail program to reply to this >message. I hope we can send a lot of you these great books. > >James Sherry __________________________________ Mark Roberts Student Systems Project Officer Information Systems University of Sydney NSW 2006 Australia M.Roberts@isu.usyd.edu.au PH:(02)351 5066 FAX:(02)351 5081 ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 Feb 1996 19:02:52 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Emily Lloyd Subject: Re: (C) up for grabs At 12:41 PM 2/15/96 -0800, Douglas Messerli wrote: I find that many academics use the xerox to >give a small little "sample" of work, without any >context of the poets' larger body of writing, which I strong >question pedagogically. Yet you don't question anthologies? I think the Norton Postmodern anthology is *extremely* guilty of such sampling (and pretty crappy, as anths. go. Why's it so much skinnier than all the other Nortons?). It is the *nature* of anthologies to do this. One of the (few) problems I had with _Poems for the Millenium_ was the reprint of only a few scant sections of Mina Loy's "Love Songs"---which lose a lot yanked out of the piece as a whole. It seems to me that the reason professors Xerox is so they can give students a LARGER sample than anthologies do. Otherwise, they'd just make us buy an anthology (certainly they don't go to the trouble of assembling packets to save us money). Emily ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 Feb 1996 19:42:49 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: Flaming Roof Contrary to what James Sherry said, you shouldn't just hit "r" to get the great deal on Roof Books. You should send mail to jsherry@panix.com, capische? Btw, James, in direct marketing, a 3% response is considered pretty great.. so I guess we can say the internet works? Jordan ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 Feb 1996 20:09:50 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jackson Mac Low to bind books, esp. small ones in wch ,amu poems & small graphics are published these days. The most frequently used methods are "saddle-stitching" or more properly "saddle-wiring" [staples down the center of the book's middle gutter crease] & "perfect" binding [that most IMperfect of bindings]. Stapels are unsightly, liable to rust, & apt to seize up & cut unwary readers. They also come loose at times, leaving the leaves to their own devices. Also when put in by "unprofessionals"--even gifted ones-- they made end up on one side or the toehr of the gutter crease. [Books in an otherwise excellent current series of chapbooks, beautifully designed & with a fine group of texts, occasionally have this as their only defect.] Also stapled books have no spines. So theyre no good to put on shelves unless you have a very exact memory for such things. Perfect" bindings *do* have spines & no ugly & dangerous staples, but they fall apart sooner or later--usually sooner. I've been recently reading some paperbacks in my library, most of which were produced less than 2 decades ago--some longer ago, but not much. Some have their leaves patherically lying together within their heavier-paper covers, which are now mere folders. Others have all or most leaves still fastened to the spine, but as I read them, mnay or all loosen & separate, no matter how carefully I handle the books. Some "quality paperbacks"--but by no means all--have signatures that are side-sewn or side-wired before being glued to the backs. [I doubt that many are "Smyth-sewn"--sewn down the middle of each signature--a method that aloows the pages to lie flat.] Such bindings are more nearly permanent than stapled or perfect bindings. However I know that such types of binding are costly & raise books' prices unduly. Aren't there *any* better ways to bind books? A publisher of one of my smaller books, of which the other copies are stapled, had a red thread or string sewn in the center gutter rather than placing staples there. This *seems* better. However, I'm told that even this is expensive abd that, unless the string or thread is acid-free or otherwise made to last, the books fall apart more quickly tahn stapled ones do. As for larger books, are there any inexpensive ways to make their bindings more nearly permanent--I mean ways other than side-sewn or side-wired or simple "perfect" [ugh!] bindings? I'd appreciate any information listees may have on these matters. Jackson Mac Low [for the time being, still "maclow@aol.com" but I'll be sending a new e-address soon]. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 Feb 1996 12:40:53 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Roberts I've produced stapled books with wrap around covers which gives them a spine by default. __________________________________ Mark Roberts Student Systems Project Officer Information Systems University of Sydney NSW 2006 Australia M.Roberts@isu.usyd.edu.au PH:(02)351 5066 FAX:(02)351 5081 ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 Feb 1996 17:45:47 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Douglas Messerli Subject: Re: (C) up for grabs Dear Emily Lloyd. It may be that some professors have that desire--but then why not let students read an entire book? or collection of writers. Any smaller selection seems to me to help lead students away from the idea of the book, and the book is what I am passionately commited to. Moreover, what you suggest has not been my experience, particulary when professors have asked for permissions to xerox. It's usually been one or two poems from Stein, or one or two poems from Hejinian, etc that they've requested. That also wasn't my experience when I was a professor. Most others were teaching bits and pieces when they created their own xerox textbooks. I am, quite obviously, not speaking of texts that are unavailable in book form. I will make no commnets on any anthology. One can only say that there are no perfect anthologies either, and that, yes, some do not give students a large enough selection of poetry to understand any given writer within the context of their own work or others. That's something I attempted to avoid in my own anthology. Douglas ========================================= At 07:02 PM 2/15/96 -0500, you wrote: >At 12:41 PM 2/15/96 -0800, Douglas Messerli wrote: > I find that many academics use the xerox to >>give a small little "sample" of work, without any >>context of the poets' larger body of writing, which I strong >>question pedagogically. > > >Yet you don't question anthologies? I think the Norton Postmodern anthology >is *extremely* guilty of such sampling (and pretty crappy, as anths. go. >Why's it so much skinnier than all the other Nortons?). It is the *nature* >of anthologies to do this. One of the (few) problems I had with _Poems for >the Millenium_ was the reprint of only a few scant sections of Mina Loy's >"Love Songs"---which lose a lot yanked out of the piece as a whole. It >seems to me that the reason professors Xerox is so they can give students a >LARGER sample than anthologies do. Otherwise, they'd just make us buy an >anthology (certainly they don't go to the trouble of assembling packets to >save us money). > >Emily > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 Feb 1996 22:39:36 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Eryque Gleason Subject: Re: (C) up for grabs Douglas Messerli wrote some things, then Emily Lloyd wrote some things, then the former wrote later. Now I'm writing. When looking upon anthologies as a representative work of a collection of authors, they're pathetically inadequate. However, as a student, anthologies are incredibly useful as representations of different genre, and i use them as nodes with connections to specific things that may interest me. I wouldn't buy any "period" anthology because i've heard of, say, Stein and that book happens to have three of her poems in there. I would , and have gotten books because they put three of stein's poems (that i may or may not know) in relation to/contrast with other authors. And the next step, wait for summer break when I've got some real free time to read and buy *gasp* whole books by those authors. from deep in credit debt, eryque ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 Feb 1996 21:39:25 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Alexander Jackson, thanks for the questions on book binding. I certainly don't have all the answers, but I can make a few points. For single signature pamphlets or chapbooks, I would always recommend sewing with linen thread rather than staples. The linen thread is usually a natural color much like the paper, and the process (most commonly three-hole sewing) is easily learned and actually relatively quickly done. I know that I can sew a couple of books a minute in this fashion, either pre-punching holes, or, if there aren't too many sheets in the signature, just punching them with the needle as I sew. In this way it's not too many hours before an edition of 300, or even 500, is sewn. I would recommend it to all publishers of such chapbooks, over stapling. And just do it yourself rather than pay to have it done. I generally recommend the final knot of the sewing being on the outside rather than the inside of the book. If anyone wants more detailed instructions I can give them, or you can pick up various books on bookbinding. One of the best is Keith Smith's Non-Adhesive Bindings. As for perfect bindings, I agree they're not the best, but you say the books you have which are coming apart (and I assume that you mean some of the pages are coming out) are two decades old or less. I am told (but I haven't tested this) that the techniques for perfect binding have improved even in the last three years or so, so that the bindings now are much more long-lasting and secure than they once were. However, there are probably some printers still using the same equipment and procedures they were using 20 years ago, so, as in so many things, "know your printer and ask them questions" is good advice. A modified kind of perfect binding, in which notches are cut in the signatures and glue is shot in, generally called "notch binding," has also come into vogue. This is an improvement over perfect binding in terms of strength of the binding and the way the book lays open (but not as flat as smyth sewing). Some printers now offer "notch binding" and not perfect binding at all. Thomson-Shore is one of the best of these for short run book publishers, plus they are perhaps the best printer to work with. They also offer a great newsletter with lots of info on such binding techniques, developments in printing, electronic pre-press, etc. They also use only soy-based inks, which doesn't necessarily mean anything for the reader or publisher, but makes for a vastly improved working environment for the workers at the press. Thomson-Shore tends to be a little more expensive than McNaughton & Gunn or Cushing-Malloy, but some of you might find the service and the results worth the difference. And sometimes they aren't more expensive, so it's always good to send them specifications and get estimates. They are in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and they have a world wide web site, too, so if you have web access you can find them there. I had a Chax book perfect bound for the first time last year and I was disappointed in the results, as opposed to all other Chax trade paperbacks which have been smyth-sewn (but not in terms of anything falling apart). In this regard I find the expense of smyth sewing worth it. Different presses charge more or less for this. In my most recent experience, an edition of 500 books produced by Cushing-Malloy in Ann Arbor cost only $75 more to have smyth sewn than to have perfect bound. I think that is well worth the difference. Smyth sewing does add a week or so to the production timeline, as it's something many printers don't do in house. I hope this information helps, and I hope others offer other ideas, as I'm also always interested to learn about different possibilities from printers and binders. I'm also acting as an independent broker for one printer here in Minneapolis, although not one which specializes in book work. But if anyone has any 2-color to 4-color work and wants one of the best printers in the midwest to do it, please get in touch with me. I've worked with them on some very intricate projects, and some very simple projects, and have always been extremely pleased with the results. Prices are competitive. Sorry for the shameful commercialism here, although really not ashamed. charles alexander ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 Feb 1996 21:48:51 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Alexander >I've produced stapled books with wrap around covers which gives them a >spine by default. >__________________________________ >Mark Roberts Mark -- I'm not certain I understand this. If the wrap around cover has a single crease (not two creases with a flat "spine" in between) I would still consider it without spine, by fault or default. So could you describe what you have done more specifically, either on this list or directly to me at chax@mtn.org thanks, charles ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 Feb 1996 20:16:04 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ron Silliman Subject: Internet Censorship Ryan, Daniel, & everyone You think the censorship provisions in the Telecommunications bill are bad enough? Here's what the far right says about it (they're taking the proto out of protofascist...) (By the way, the AFA does give its phone number at the end of this press release.) TITLE Computer pornography law not working, says afa DOCNO INW 960461769 DATE 960215 MESSAGE THIS IS THE FULL TEXT. CITATION PR Newswire, February 14, 1996, Wednesday SECTION Washington Dateline LENGTH 351 words ABSTRACT American Family Association issued the following: "Less than one week after the Communications Decency Act was signed into law by President Clinton, it is obvious that the law, designed to curb computer pornography, is not working and never will work," said Patrick Trueman, director of American Family Association governmental affairs. This fact was made clear by the action this week of CompuServe, a major access provider to the Internet, to restore access to pornographic Internet sites it had recently blocked under pressure from German prosecutors. Access providers to the Internet have a financial incentive to provide access to pornography and they will not block such sites until they are under a legal obligation to do so, Trueman said. The Communications Decency Act included specific provisions protecting access providers from criminal liability and until those provisions are repealed, CDA will be nearly useless, he added. WASHINGTON, Feb. 14 Trueman wrote to leaders of pro-family groups today urging them to unite behind a tough anti-pornography measure like that sponsored by Congressman Henry Hyde. The Hyde measure, which would have made anyone liable who knowingly and intentionally provides pornography to children or obscene pornography to anyone, was defeated in committee by supporters of CDA. "The reality is CDA does not work and it will never work. For its enforcement it relies on a massive number of prosecutions by the Justice Department of individuals who put illegal pornography on the Internet while the major distributors and money makers from the distribution of pornography -- the access providers -- are given a free ride," Trueman said in his letter to pro-family leaders. Trueman urged pro-family leaders to act now to change the law. "There is no point in waiting months or years. CompuServe has made that clear in its recent actions which demonstrate that the law has little, if any, deterrent effect," Trueman said in his letter. CONTACT Patrick A. Trueman of the American Family Association, 202-544-0061 INDEX bc DC AFA porn law Federal State Legislation SUBJHEAD Computer; Electronics LOCATION District of Columbia COMPANY American Family Association AMERICAN FAMILY ASSOCIATION; ======================================================================= ====== ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 Feb 1996 22:59:43 +0000 Reply-To: jzitt@humansystems.com Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: Authenticated sender is From: Joseph Zitt Organization: HumanSystems Comments: To: Charles Alexander On 15 Feb 96 at 21:39, Charles Alexander wrote: > have it done. I generally recommend the final knot of the sewing being on > the outside rather than the inside of the book. If anyone wants more > detailed instructions I can give them, or you can pick up various books on > bookbinding. One of the best is Keith Smith's Non-Adhesive Bindings. What kind of knot do you find works best? ---------1---------1---------1---------1---------1---------1---------- |||/ Joseph Zitt ==== jzitt@humansystems.com ===== Human Systems \||| ||/ Organizer, SILENCE: The John Cage Mailing List \|| |/Joe Zitt's Home Page\| ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 Feb 1996 22:09:41 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Re: Vizenor In-Reply-To: <199602150514.AAA10247@listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu> "of"? but seriously folks, _Manifest Manners_ is one hell of a book -- also check out _Selected_ Vizenore available from Wesleyan as a good intro. if you don't already know his works -- _Heirs of Columbus_ too, a novel! ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 Feb 1996 00:31:36 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jonathan Brannen Subject: FYI - CDA has been signed into law >Date: 15 Feb 1996 16:16:57 +0000 (GMT) >From: jennifer_brannen@ucc.ie >Subject: FYI - this scared me to pieces re:1st amendment, pass along >Sender: Jennifer Brannen >To: jbrannen@infolink.morris.mn.us >X-Envelope-To: jbrannen@infolink.morris.mn.us >X-Vms-To: IN%"jbrannen@infolink.morris.mn.us" > >From: IN%"pflynn@curia.ucc.ie" "Peter Flynn" 15-FEB-1996 14:38:03.14 >To: IN%"jbrannen@bureau.ucc.ie" >CC: >Subj: [noring@netcom.com: --> Press Release from OmniMedia Regarding the CDA and Electronic Books] > >Date: 14 Feb 1996 11:42:00 -0600 (CST) >From: Jon Noring >Subject: --> Press Release from OmniMedia Regarding the CDA and Electronic Books >Sender: "TEI (Text Encoding Initiative) public discussion list" > >To: Multiple recipients of list TEI-L >Reply-to: Jon Noring >X-Envelope-to: cournane@curia.ucc.ie, pflynn@curia.ucc.ie >Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT >Approved-By: tei-l >Content-Length: 13947 >X-Lines: 252 > >FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Date: February 9, 1996 > Contact: Jon E. Noring > Phone: (801) 253-4037 > E-Mail: omnimedia@netcom.com > >South Jordan, Utah > > >"Statement by OmniMedia Regarding the Telecommunications Reform Bill" > > "Its Effect on Electronic Book Publishing" > > >Yesterday, President Clinton signed into law the Telecommunications >Reform Act. Included in this legislation is a very controversial and >dangerous provision, the so-called "Communications Decency Act or >Amendment" (CDA). > >The ACLU, along with several other civil rights and net advocacy groups, >such as EFF and EPIC, and joined by several businesses, are all >plaintiffs in a lawsuit just filed in Federal court to rule the CDA >unconstitutional. The CDA is clearly an egregious assault on our >Constitutional rights and deserves to be overturned. > >The ramifications of the CDA to civil liberties and rights are complex >and wide-ranging. It is not the intent of this statement to outline all >of these complexities and ramifications as they are many, and is being >done by others. Rather, we will primarily focus on the effect of the >CDA to electronic book publishing here in the U.S., particularly with >regard to direct marketing of titles over the Internet. However, before >doing so, it is necessary to give a short summary background about the >CDA itself so its probable impact on electronic book publishing will be >easier to see. > >In essence, the CDA makes it a felony, punishable by up to two years in >prison and a hefty fine, to either access or to disseminate, on any >public electronic network, material which is determined to be >"indecent", and that "indecent" is defined by "contemporary community >standards." > >Not only is "indecent" still legally vague, the few court rulings define >it as being much broader than "obscene" and includes speech which the >courts have determined to be wholly protected in many other venues. > >In addition, recent court rulings strongly imply that "contemporary >community standards" are defined at the local level. For example, a >literary work which is acceptable in California may be considered >indecent by some local community elsewhere in the U.S. This means, >theoretically at least, a person in California, or even outside the >U.S., who violates the "decency" of some small community in the U.S., by >simply distributing some material on the global Internet, which in his >or her hometown would be considered acceptable, could be extradited by >that small community to face felony charges, and to be judged by a jury >from that community and not their own! > >This small community could hold the rest of the United States and even >the world hostage to their over-broad view of what is "indecent." Not >only is it grossly unfair to any rational thinker, it is dangerous to >all of our civil liberties as it gives too much power to any small >organized fringe group, including religious groups, to trample on the >rights, practices, and desires of the silent majority in mainstream >America. > >And, to make matters worse, the obsolete Comstock Act of 1873 was >extended by the CDA to include all electronic networks, making it a >criminal act, punishable by a 5 year prison term, to disseminate *any* >information about abortion on the Internet, even in private e-mail. >This, combined with the vagueness of "indecency", would stifle any >discussion on legitimate contemporary topics such as abortion, birth >control, AIDS prevention, GLB issues, scholarly and health-related >aspects of human sexuality, etc. > >Under CDA, even some court rulings cannot be distributed over the >Internet since they contain one or more of the "seven words" which the >"Pacifica" court ruling determined were "indecent". Thus, the >"Pacifica" ruling itself is banned from distribution on the Internet >since it lists these "seven words"! And let's not forget the "Roe vs. >Wade" decision on abortion -- it, too, cannot be legally distributed on >the Internet, at least by the strictest interpretation of the CDA. > >Clearly the CDA is a gross violation to our First Amendment right of >Free Speech as well as our socially-accepted right for all citizens to >be able to access and obtain information, including court rulings, in >the most convenient way existing at the time. Free exchange of >information is one of the cornerstones of democracy. > >The effect of the CDA, should it prevail in the courts (which is >fortunately doubtful), would also be a major setback to the new and >rapidly growing electronic book industry here in the U.S. It might also >lead to the eventual domination of publishing by Europe and Japan, >though this is admittedly more debatable. Right now the U.S. enjoys a >commanding dominance in publishing. > >Clearly, in the absence of CDA or similar restrictions, the future of >electronic book publishing is very promising. Already we are seeing >significant growth of the electronic book publishing industry; >OmniMedia is one of several pioneering electronic book publishers, and >new ones are coming "online" every month. Some of the major print >publishers are beginning to venture into this area as well. As >technology advances, particularly in high resolution and inexpensive >flat screen displays, it is only a matter of time, some say in as little >as 15 to 20 years, when more electronic books will be sold worldwide >than their bound paper counterparts. > >In addition, the continual upgrading of our "Information Superhighway" >to higher and higher speed and capacity makes it not only possible, but >also very attractive (to both publisher and consumer alike) for >electronic books to be directly marketed to the consumer via the >Internet. This is already being considered by the multi-billion dollar >entertainment industry for the sale and distribution of audio recordings >and movies (note that the CDA puts a damper on this.) Any rational >thinking person would see the immense value in this means of >distributing information and entertainment of all types. > >OmniMedia and a few other publishers now distribute and sell e-books >directly over the Internet via the World Wide Web (WWW) and are finding >it profitable because it is very convenient for the consumer and >significantly reduces the overhead costs of production, marketing and >distribution, which, with free- market competition, the savings will >pass on to the consumer. > >It does not take a rocket scientist to realize that the CDA would ban >the electronic distribution of a large fraction of the books that are >published today (it would not be surprising if over half of all books >would be deemed "indecent" by the "seven words" criteria alone, not to >mention the more intangible and uncertain aspects of what else >constitutes "indecency", and by whom.) Therefore, the CDA has a >profound chilling effect on the use of the Internet to distribute such >material and, in practice, will not allow this method of distribution to >mature in the U.S., to the loss of both the consumer and the publishing >industry. > >Instead, publishers will still have to rely on the traditional way to >market both paper and electronic books which is much more inefficient >and expensive. Ultimately, it is a major blow to consumers who, in a >CDA-free world, would be able to purchase e-books at lower cost than at >present and who would have the convenience of rapid delivery of any >titles available on the market right to their home. It would also >greatly benefit publishers in ways that would take too long to discuss >here. The CDA is a damaging blow to electronic book publishing here in >the U.S. > >(As an aside, in a similar manner, many mainstream magazines would also >be banned from Internet distribution. The rapidly escalating cost of >high- quality "glossy" paper is making Internet distribution extremely >attractive. But of course the passage of the CDA puts a stop to this as >it does electronic book distribution over the Internet.) > >One could argue that the U.S. publishers could suitably encrypt or >password protect their e-books allowing them to be distributed on the >Internet and bypass CDA restrictions. But the current CDA is not so >forgiving -- the CDA makes no distinction in what form the information >is distributed. If the content of any e-book is deemed to be "indecent" >by some small community as mentioned above, it makes no difference if it >is encrypted or written in Swahili, or even if it is distributed on an >electronic network where only adults are allowed access since the CDA >covers *all* public electronic networks, no matter how subscribership to >the networks is configured (the CDA does this, of course, to "protect >our children", who must be so cunning as to be able to break into any >closed network and to decrypt messages even the NSA could not decrypt.) > >And all the while the U.S. publishing industry is restricted to >marketing books the "old-fashioned way", our European and Japanese >friends will not be so restricted. They will enjoy the ability and >advantages of marketing directly over the Internet in their own >countries and so will clearly dominate there as well as developing the >infrastructure to do so, getting a large technological jump over U.S. >publishers. How this will effect the current supremacy the U.S. has in >publishing is debatable, since it can be argued that it is still a level >playing field -- the U.S. publishers can market their e-books over the >Internet outside the U.S., and the rest of the world has to market their >e-books the "old-fashioned way" within U.S. borders. > >But it is hard to imagine that the greater freedom and flexibility >enjoyed by the Europeans and Japanese, as well as getting a >technological jump, will not eventually translate into gaining market >dominance and hurting the U.S. publishing industry. And they are >formidable competitors: the Japanese domination in the U.S. market for >consumer electronics and automobiles should serve as a warning of what >could happen in the publishing field if the CDA is not overturned or >significantly amended as soon as possible. > >Our competitors are looking for any crack in U.S. resolve to fully >compete against us in the international marketplace, and the CDA is an >obvious major crack. Billions of dollars and thousands of jobs are at >stake here, and this was not even considered when the ill-written CDA >was silently slipped into the Telecommunications Reform Act without any >public input before Congress. > >And let's not forget the U.S. consumer, who will also be hurt by the CDA >restrictions as pointed out above. > >Thus, OmniMedia urges Congress to trash the CDA and pass sane and >publicly debated legislation, and not only because it would be good for >U.S. business and consumers, but because it is morally the right thing >to do. > >We support the right of parents to protect their children by providing >parents with the necessary software to block any Internet information >that they don't want their children to view. This is easily done. We >do NOT support taking away the parental right to determine what their >children should and should not view, nor do we support taking away the >parent's own rights to Free Speech on the Internet. > >The current CDA does what the silent majority in America does not want: >allowing some faceless person in some far removed community to determine >what parents in mainstream America should and should not allow their >children to view -- it is government intrusion into the family at its >worst. It also takes away the parents' own rights to Free Speech, >holding them and the entire U.S. public hostage to an insane piece of >legislation, and to a small minority, whose stated purposes for pushing >the CDA was to "protect our children" and to "stop child pornography" >(what American doesn't support these laudable goals?) But the profound >and chilling ramifications of the CDA go light-years beyond these stated >purposes and suggest that the *real* motives of this small but dedicated >minority were something that mainstream Americans do not share, nor >want. > >One day "our children" will grow up and find themselves without Free >Speech protection as well as fewer jobs, all because of the "wisdom" of >the CDA. Without guaranteed Free Speech in all mediums, it will only be >a matter of time before we won't be able to protect our children, >either. Free Speech is a cornerstone of democracy, and without it, our >other rights, including the Freedom of Religion, are in serious peril. >And when these rights are gone, and the U.S. is a dictatorship, it will >be *our children* who will be sent to the Gulags. I don't know about >you, but I'd rather have my children see the "seven words" over the >Internet (which they hear all the time at school anyway) than to see >them live in a totalitarian or theocratical state. > >The CDA is a bad piece of legislation that does not serve the public >interest. It does not add anything useful in the legitimate fight >against child pornography and online harassment using the Internet >(another claimed reason for its existence) -- the proven and >Constitutionally tested laws we now have on the books have been shown to >be adequate to deal with the problem when law enforcement is motivated >to enforce them. And as it should have been made clear by now, the CDA >is bad for business and very bad for U.S. economic competitiveness in >the world. > > > Jon E. Noring > President and Owner > OmniMedia, publisher of electronic books > > >------------------------------------------------------------------------------ >OmniMedia Electronic Books | URL: http://www.awa.com/library/omnimedia >9671 S. 1600 West St. | Anonymous FTP: >South Jordan, UT 84095 | ftp.awa.com /pub/softlock/pc/products/OmniMedia >801-253-4037 | E-mail: omnimedia@netcom.com >------------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 Feb 1996 08:59:51 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: R I Caddel Subject: Re: Veronica Forrest-Thomson In-Reply-To: <199602160508.FAA28756@hermes.dur.ac.uk> "Poetic Artifice" is also worth noting again: this is V F-T's "Theory of Twentieth-Century Poetry", published by Manchester Univ. Press, 1978. Her "Collected Poems and Translations" (Allardyce Barnett 1990) also includes, as has been noted, "Poetry Such As: An Introduction to the Poetry of Tel Quel" with translations of Pleynet & Roche. All good things. RC ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 Feb 1996 04:00:19 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ron Silliman Subject: ROOF voyeurism I've been fascinated at James' little distribution project and the responses that it has received, although I've been unable to participate since I already own all those books. But it's a rare moment really when we get to see different folks' street addresses (there are some email domains that seem fascinatingly obscure on where in the world they might be -- it took me forever to realize that Simon was in Taiwan). It's also fun, frankly, to see who gets what. Does it mean that they have all the other books on that list? (And, also, why did James pick those books and not some others?) Remembering what happened to those poor clueless lawyers in Arizona who advertised their wares on several usenet groups and got flamed forever until their provider had to shut down their email in self-defense, it's nice to see how civilized people on this list really are. But of course we all know how difficult it is to get small press materials and so are probably predisposed to feel kindly toward any act of distribution. I know I am. And having done it a little awkwardly has also made us all conscious that this is one method that might work well for other publishers, especially with backlist materials. Are Sun&Moon, Talisman, Chax et al taking notes? Having said that, let me note that if you don't own Kit Robinson's _Balance Sheet_ already, you are missing one of the great treats of the millenium. It's a terrific book (as is true, frankly, for all his books). He has my vote for most underrated poet of my generation. All best, Ron Silliman ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 Feb 1996 07:56:41 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry gould Subject: anthologies Anthologies seem to have a couple of uses. One is to give a wide stereoscopic view of a place or time. The good ones would provide detailed instructions on access to what's left out. Technology seems to open up the possibility of "live anthologies" with endless branches and channels to obscure connections, changing the "canon" question some. Another use is how they participate in what Montale called the"second life of art". Old anthologies sort of seep into the ground & become part of the landscape & then affect people in unexpected, "secondary" ways (this is not exactly what Montale had in mind, but close). I'm thinking of Pound finding or using an old anthology of English poetry while in the prison camp in Italy (one of the few bks available to him). Or how one of those Untermeyer anthologies of British poetry changed Brodsky's career. The school use of anthologies is - oh, well, school... - Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 Feb 1996 09:04:00 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Emily Lloyd Subject: Douglas: (C) up for grabs douglas--okay. We've had different experiences, that's all. Maybe my profs are particularly conscientious (George Mason U. & Oberlin--you heard it here first). Maybe the profs who've requested xeroxes from Sun & Moon texts weren't writers themselves. Clearly (I think), writers are going to be concerned with preserving the idea of the book--I believe mine have been. I certainly do think that xeroxing can become an abused privilege---like preying on texts (and writers, and anthologizers). On the other hand, the power of the anthologizer is something I don't mind calling into question. Who goes in, and what of theirs goes in. When only a few anthologies dealing with a certain school or genre are available, the anthologizer has immense responsibility & power. Who decides what "postmodern poetry," "poetry of witness," "queer poetry" looks like?---especially since anthologies are often used in undergrad situations where the folks reading them aren't necessarily interested in poetry & will look no further than the anthology. At best, xeroxing & distributing your own packets is a stance against canonization & systematic exclusion. Hoping for the best, emily >Dear Emily Lloyd. > >...Any smaller selection seems to me to help lead >students away from the idea of the book, and the book is >what I am passionately commited to. > >Moreover, what you suggest has not been my experience, particulary >when professors have asked for permissions to xerox. It's usually >been one or two poems from Stein, or one or two poems from >Hejinian, etc that they've requested. > >That also wasn't my experience when I was a professor. Most >others were teaching bits and pieces when they created their >own xerox textbooks. > > >Douglas ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 Feb 1996 10:21:45 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: James Sherry Subject: Currency and Postage In-Reply-To: <199602160609.BAA06737@listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu> The Poetics response in just one day has been fantastic. Many of you have already ordered and as I sit typing here, poets are sending messages to request books. I will give you a report in a couple of weeks so you can all know what has been ordered. And of course new special offers will be showing up from time to time. Several questions have arisen which I did not deal with in the original offer. Here are the answers: 1. Yes, please send all orders to: jsherry@panix.com 2. Overseas orders will be charged $6 / book. 3. Overseas orders may use INternational Money Order or check, BUT 4. All orders must be paid in US dollars ($US). Obviously there may still be more issues outstanding; just let me know. And keep those backchannel messages coming. James Sherry ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 Feb 1996 09:31:08 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joe Amato Subject: roof books, copies, internet etc... as to the book offer: i replied, as james seemed to ask, to the list---albeit with some hesitancy... but after i thought about it some, and noted james' remark about whether the internet works or don't, it seemed and still seems to me that (just this once) it'd be interesting to actually see the level of response around here to a book sale... so i'm with ron's "voyeurism" on this one, i find it fascinating to see this sorta thing actually work (albeit i can understand why dodie finds this "rude")... anyway, douglas m.: when you write "why not let students read an entire book?" (a sentiment with which i wholeheartedly concur) there is yet to be asked the overarching question of student economies (as eryque indicates, "in debt")... i mean, to pick at your rhetoric a bit, "let" is not quite the appropriate operator... i simply can't ask my students to go out and buy everything i think they should read... further, i'm hampered by a terrible library situation (no english journals, just for starters)... and the avg. family income of the students on my campus is around $40k... so when i make copies for my students, i feel i'm doing them a favor... for me the copy machine represents a breakthrough technology in productively breaking the law... i most def. DON'T feel i'm decontextualizing the work, in part b/c i try to account for this through discussion, selected historical materials, etc... and my own books even... and yeah, anthologies (such as yours, or paul hoover's norton---which latter i'm currently trying) can help, albeit they're all to be regarded imnsho as partial *selections*... in fact i've asked my students this semester to each go out and buy one small press book of poetry (this in addition to the norton and two other books)... i like what---who was it? sheila?---said about this---that in effect there's still the matter of how to make poetry pay... for the time being i would argue that electronic technologies in general---copy machines, www, etc.---may be used to build up a market demand for poetry... and that mebbe, over time, poets might be able to expect some real income from their pursuit... i'm suggesting that there's a market potential here, and the question then would seem to turn to how to exploit same without Exploiting same?... but if poetry publishers like yourself are gonna rush to argue against such "illegal" distribution activities (i'm being provocative, douglas) as copying for educational purposes (and don't we all do this for *ourselves* anyway?), why then methinks this will keep poetry in its current market-place, with correspondingly little "value" in the public domain... it may be too much to ask that poetry become some sort of national pastime, but at the same time it could surely stand all the help it can get in terms of public relations (i'm reminded, btw, of just how successful the new critics were in such terms---which can *always* result in Bad Politics)... we're just not going to avoid an economic discussion of poetry anymore than we're going to avoid an economic discussion of the internet... so perhaps what we need are new economies of scale, predicated on a merging of gift/barter/sales economies... i mean, something like james sherry's book offer, active trading of books on the parts of poets themselves, an occasional giveaway, regular ole buy & sell, used stuff, etc... i mean, how to do this and create---dare i say it?---a livelihood of sorts for those who love to write, to live off of what they love... yeah, ok, parasitically, if need be... joe ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 Feb 1996 10:33:21 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: on condition of anonymity Are there examples of anonymous avant-garde poetry publications more recent than the anonymous issue of _Adventures in Poetry_ (the one with the dirty comics on the covers)? I bring it up because the queasy feeling I got seeing who bought which books brought home for me once again the issue of _regard_ and readership here. Last year's anti-hegemony project and the substitutive efforts of edgar allen (sic!) poe though mild as satires go at least problematized the social context of the list, you know, livened things up. If an anonymous remailer were part of the list, how would the power relations on the list change? Are there people who are excluded from the list? Are there people who have quit the list in disgust with certain threads? There's my name again, Jordan ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 Feb 1996 10:34:38 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: KUSZAI Subject: Bloody Staples In-Reply-To: <199602160109.UAA11644@emout05.mail.aol.com> disappointed at comments made by Jackson Mac Low recently and with an eye for the shameless promotion of Meow Press (now that it's in vogue here on the list)--let me respond to the comments about book binding and production. First of all, I am a publisher, book artist, whathaveyou, who uses unsightly staples for a variety of reasons and I take JML's words as a critique of works I sent him (which is saything nothing of what he thought of the writing by Charles Bernsetin, James Sherry, and other authors some of whom subscribe to this list): > "saddle-stitching" or more properly "saddle-wiring" [staples down the center > of the book's middle gutter crease] & "perfect" binding [that most IMperfect > of bindings]. Stapels are unsightly, liable to rust, & apt to seize up & cut > unwary readers. They also come loose at times, leaving the leaves to their > own devices. Also when put in by "unprofessionals"--even gifted ones-- they > made end up on one side or the toehr of the gutter crease. [Books in an > otherwise excellent current series of chapbooks, beautifully designed & with > a fine group of texts, occasionally have this as their only defect.] Also > stapled books have no spines. So theyre no good to put on shelves unless you > have a very exact memory for such things. My saddle stapler barely works! I have to give it a backrub just to keep working smoothly! I've not yethad one rust, but it is a drag to buy a book like that in a usedbook store. As far as letting the leaves "to their own devices"--I'm reminded of Juliana Spahr's Leave Books--a model for my own program--and the idea that the leaves might flutter away on their own, well, what a beautiful image! I think of the scholars who'll be confused by a book that was falling apart or made to dissolve in time... The problem of teh "gutter crease" is one that I take quite seriously and can only say that I know the difference but that a recent assistant to the assembly of these books doesn't yet. My training of him has covered "stapling" (and its icky uncle Folding) but this helper to the process is an unprofessional in that it is important to him to get the books out and he is coming at it from a perspective of an urgent necessity to make these things available, not the fine craft of the book arts. I will bring it up later when we have a meeting to discuss the direction of Meow Press. On the other hand, what are we doing here? We are making books to hand over to people in the community. Only recently have we contacted libraries to see if they are interested (apparently they are not) and obviously bookstores dont work. Not simply because of the spine-problem, but because very few bookstores know how to develop a section such as it requires to bring people in and get them interested. I worked for a while at Borders store and am committed to community booksellers like Talking Leaves in Buffalo. They display our books nicely there and seem to want to have whatever we make. In August it will have been three years and almost thirty books. If I wasn't in school or had lots of money or rich friends (apparently none of my friends are rich!) then _time_ and _labor_ wouldn't be a factor. I agree that sewing chapbooks is better. But this is an industrial society! I have partipated in capitalism by trying to hurry up and staple books quickly so I can get back to my studies! C'mon. I guess I have been hanging out with too many poets here in Buffalo. I used to hang out with punk rockers and from them I learned a kind of nihilism that's postive in that I'm not making books to last for the archive, but for now and literally for tomorrow--not next year. Peter Gizzi once complained that the carbon-transfer process common among lazer printers, and photocopiers,etc., was too impermanent. The idea of the words eventually falling off the pages was exciting to me when I started Meow Press and only now do I have fantasies of making "real books" like Roof and Chax,Sun&Moon etc. But it wouldn't be happening at all if I couldn't staple them at home on a "stolen" saddle stapler. I receive some support from Poetics Program at SUNY Buffalo--about enough to do one good size book in paperback with single-color cover in an edition of 750 or 1000 (depending, yes, on where it is printed!). I wouldn'tknow which book to pick! There are many projects I would like to support and doing chapbooks in runs of 300 is one way that I can. So instead, this project was designed to be close to the ground, publishing about 10 chapbooks a year and adding now to that a new "ephemera series" of super-limited edition chapbooks--of short length (10-20 pages)--which will enable us to do another ten or so books a year. The ephemera books will not be listed in the catalog and will be made available to friends of the press and as free giveaways (in the original spirit of Meow Pres). As far as Jackson's complaint that staples are dangerous and might cut you--I can only hope that no one has ever been seriously injured reading one of my books. Some current titles include: Andrews, Bernstein, Sherry, 20 Brief Proposals for Tech/Art Rachel Back, Litany Charles Bernstein, The Subject (A Libretto) Jonathan Brannen, The Glass Man Left Waltzing Dubravka Djuric, Cosmopolitan Alphabet Robert Fitterman, Metropolis Ben Friedlander, A Knot is Not a Tangle Peter Gizzi, New Picnic Time Loss Glazier, The Parts Mark Johnson, Three Bad Wishes Leslie Scalapino, The Line James Sherry, 4 Four Juliana Spahr, Testimony Misko Suvakovic, Pas Tout Forthcoming: Dodie Bellamy & Robert Harrison, Broken English Wendy Kramer, Patinas Aaron Shurin, Codex Ron Silliman, Xing Meredith Quartermain, Terms of Sale New Forthcoming List to be announced soon! For more info: kuszai@acsu.buffalo.edu Disclaimer: The opinions expressed here are the opinions of one man, a mere boy, and are not the opinions of Meow Press or any of its authors. --Bishop Morda ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 Feb 1996 10:22:25 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Alexander Subject: Re: Bloody Staples Three cheers for Joel Kuszai, Kuszai Press, and the book as impermanent object. Actually, the works Joel produces will survive as texts one way or another, and I think Meow books have a beauty and charm all their own. While I practice and teach certain bookmaking methods, I applaud what all small press publishers are doing. I often regret that Chax books are not as immediate as Meow, Leave and others, in part because of the means of production and in part because of the cost of production. And some of the greatest treasures in my own library are stapled pamphlets, whether the staples used are rust-proof, stainless ones or not. That they may not last my lifetime is something I know going into it. That they are worthy and exciting to boot is my great pleasure. thanks, joel charles ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 Feb 1996 08:49:28 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Douglas Messerli Subject: Re: Douglas: (C) up for grabs Emily, Thanks for your intelligent response. Of course, as I mentioned yesterday, I am not at all against xeroxing (I did the same as a university professor) materials that are not readily available. That "extends" the literary experience. And, believe me, I know all the difficulties of anthologies-- my introduction to FROM THE OTHER SIDE outlines some of those very issues. But in all my 20 years of publishing Sun & Moon, not one professor (and many have been authors themselves) has requested permission to reprint MORE of, say, Djuna Barnes for instance. The requests have always been for little sections and parts of things, which does lead me to believe that the students are learning bits and pieces of literary texts as opposed to experiencing complete works. That's what I meant by the pedagogical problems I perceive. It's very much the kind of problem that has faced Gertrude Stein all these years: parts of works or "collections" of her work have appeared, but there has been no sense, until recently, of Stein authoring books (THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS and THREE LIVES being the obvious exceptions), and I think that is one of the major reasons why Stein was not recognized as one of the central literary figures of the century. It was certainly true for Barnes, who, until my bibliography appeared, was perceived as a one-novel writer. Finally I have no argument against professors or creative writing teachers creating their own versions of literary experience and attempting to establish their own canons. That can be healthy. What does disturb me is that they don't pay the authors for doing that. Sun & Moon pays royalties to its own authors for sale of their books and pays for the rights to reprint other poets. So the authors are receiving something for their writing. By xeroxing the author is completely left out of the process -- and, in my experience, the books are often ignored in the classroom (which is one the major sources of potential revenue for the author and a press like Sun & Moon). It's certainly true that an enlightened student or two may eventually go out and purchase the book, but the other 10 or 20 students in that classroom, not so enlightened, will have no idea of what the experience of the book is about. I might add one final note: the books I bought for my courses (and in my undergraduate days we were expected to read about 15-30 books in each literature course) began a home library that has served me as a resource ever since. Had my teachers xeroxed all my reading material, I believe I'd not have the same relationship with literature itself. And certainly I would not been encouraged to spend my last dime each month on books. Well, I think I've had my say on this. I just thought it is important than a publisher speak on this subject as well. While it's certainly true that poets don't receive much money from their writing, anthology appearances and book royalties do result in some payment. And even if this is symbolic--and it's often more than that--it's crucial if we are to recognize writng as a true occupation in our society. Douglas Messerli =========================================== At 09:04 AM 2/16/96 -0500, you wrote: >douglas--okay. We've had different experiences, that's all. Maybe my profs >are particularly conscientious (George Mason U. & Oberlin--you heard it here >first). Maybe the profs who've requested xeroxes from Sun & Moon texts >weren't writers themselves. Clearly (I think), writers are going to be >concerned with preserving the idea of the book--I believe mine have been. > >I certainly do think that xeroxing can become an abused privilege---like >preying on texts (and writers, and anthologizers). On the other hand, the >power of the anthologizer is something I don't mind calling into question. >Who goes in, and what of theirs goes in. When only a few anthologies >dealing with a certain school or genre are available, the anthologizer has >immense responsibility & power. Who decides what "postmodern poetry," >"poetry of witness," "queer poetry" looks like?---especially since >anthologies are often used in undergrad situations where the folks reading >them aren't necessarily interested in poetry & will look no further than the >anthology. At best, xeroxing & distributing your own packets is a stance >against canonization & systematic exclusion. > >Hoping for the best, >emily > > > > > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 Feb 1996 08:51:31 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Douglas Messerli Subject: Re: Currency and Postage Congratulations James, That was a great offer and a good promotional tactic. Douglas ========================= At 10:21 AM 2/16/96 -0500, you wrote: >The Poetics response in just one day has been fantastic. Many of you have >already ordered and as I sit typing here, poets are sending messages to >request books. I will give you a report in a couple of weeks so you can >all know what has been ordered. > >And of course new special offers will be showing up from time to time. > >Several questions have arisen which I did not deal with in the original >offer. Here are the answers: > >1. Yes, please send all orders to: jsherry@panix.com >2. Overseas orders will be charged $6 / book. >3. Overseas orders may use INternational Money Order or check, BUT >4. All orders must be paid in US dollars ($US). > >Obviously there may still be more issues outstanding; just let me know. > >And keep those backchannel messages coming. > >James Sherry > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 Feb 1996 12:51:13 -0500 Reply-To: Robert Drake Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Robert Drake Subject: Re: roof books, copies, internet etc... >... in fact i've asked my students this semester to each go out >and buy one small press book of poetry (this in addition to the norton and >two other books)... tha's a tremendous idea joe, hope others might also. do you give a list to choose frm? do they report back to you (or better, to the class) on their individual selctions? wd be interested fr a report on what they choose... & next time, you might consider adding one small press magazine aswellas a book... fr what it's worth, yr welcome to photocopy any single issue of TRR in its entire for yr class; easier still, i'd donate copies fr the price of postage (abt $5/20 copies) fr free distribute to students... which would go fr anyone else on th list, as long as resources hold up (backchannel requests, please)... get the words out! allbest luigi ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 Feb 1996 10:04:00 PST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steve Carll Subject: Rewrite that bod At 03:13 PM 2/15/96 EST, Henry Gould wrote: >Enjoyed the Deleuze/Guattari quote, but I thought their emphasis on the >artist as inspired destructor of conventions sounds a little old hat >or over-emphasized in last 100 yrs. I would like to hear more about >artist as absorber/responder/synthesizer; artist as gifted slowpoke >rather than swift avantgardian nemesis avatar blah blah... I'm not sure how one can escape from an old hat if one is a slowpoke, but I see your point. This may be my own extrapolation, because D & G leave it unspoken, but I don't see a necessary contradiction between these two views of the artist. It's just that absorbing/responding to/synthesizing conventions and their contents becomes after a certain point a) boring and b)useless, and one wants something else to work with. The only place to go for this is the chaos at the edges of thought, hence artist as destroyer (or, perhaps more accurately, traveller out) of convention. They're two very different modes, but not mutually exclusive by any means, and in fact I wonder how long the artist can *sustain* eir fruitful working relation to the world if one or the other mode is neglected. Steve ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 Feb 1996 13:09:24 -0500 Reply-To: Robert Drake Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Robert Drake Subject: Re: Bloody Staples jackson m for relatively small editions, various forms of japanese bindings might be a good alternative. takes a bit longer than handstitching a pamphlet bound book, but still feasable fr runs a couple hundred. traditional japanese bindings don't have a spine like conventional western books, but you can add an outside cover w/ titled spine if you want. kojiro ikegami's _Japanese Book-binding_ (weatherhill 1986) is one of the best introductions. asever luigi-bob drake taproot reviews/burning press/etc... ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 Feb 1996 13:15:35 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry Gould Subject: Re: re re rewriting that bod Point well taken, Steve. Blasing (yes, that darn BLASING again!) in her first bk "American Poetry" has an interesting section tying together Poe/Eliot/Plath under the sign of metonymy : she finds in all three an overwhelming alienation from lost past lived experience; a sense of tradition as imposing, foreign burden; and a sense of language as a suicidal or proto-suicidal dead end - the word as emblem, reductive metonymy of experience. Thus their ironic, sing-song formalism, self-defeating. I bring this up as example of approach in which the two poles of art endeavor (synthesis/iconoclasm) which you mentioned are both combined and incredibly conflicted. About slowpokes: they have their role to play, ladies & gentlemen. Look at Cezanne. The slow-absorbers, the retarded ones, end up as the overturners. - Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 Feb 1996 10:39:44 PST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jerry Rothenberg Subject: Re: Bloody Staples I want to add a fourth & a fifth cheer for Joel Kuszai and a warning that if we forget the value of impermanence and "poor art" etc. we will be sacrificing one of the great weapons given us to thwart a marketplace mentality that would finally deny us free means to what we have to say. The tradition represented here goes back to magnificent poor works of Russian Futurists and others using cheap paper and rubber stamps and hand scrawls and carries on thru American mimeo revolutions and Soviet typewritten samizdat work. These works are beautiful for themselves and for the hope that they hold out to all of us, that there are ways still to escape the money bind. It is embedded also, deeply embedded in the work & prophecy of Schwitters, say, whom all of us love dearly. I have thrilled to rich & lavish printings also, but I'd swear too that the real work is elsewhere. "Properly, wqe should read for power. Man reading shd. be man intensely alive. The book shd. be a ball of light in one's hands." (E.P., Guide to Kulchur) Jerome Rothenberg ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 Feb 1996 13:43:36 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Emily Lloyd Subject: anths, etc. The End. Douglas, I agree w/your points & I agree w/my points & I agree w/Chris Stroffolino's points & I agree w/Sheila's & w/ Eryque's. Which is the most frustrating & fun thing about this list. Finis. e PS--I've seen so many different excerpts from "Lifting Belly" in various anths. and prof-packets that I might, but I'm not sure, have the whole piece if I knew what order to put it in. But never the thing in its entirety in one place. Good point about Stein. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 Feb 1996 12:49:49 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joe Amato Subject: Re: roof books, copies, internet etc... luigi, great, let's do the $5 deal!... you want i should send you the $ first? (we can handle this backchannel, please let me know)... yes, i'll be looking to see which books the student-writers buy... i've told them to hold off for a bit, till after we've had a chance to explore some of the various poets in the norton, and others that i bring in on the fly... i'm trying to get them each to flesh out their own aesthetics/poetics predilections... i don't have any english majors at iit, most of these folks are engineering/science majors who're bored with the humdrum, passive/receiver sorts of instruction they're regularly exposed to... i like the poetry mag. idea too... i do bring in journals i have subscriptions to and have 'em browse through... and i copy class participants on poetics posts as i can, esp. those that are descriptive in nature or point to new web sites, such as the new sun & moon site (i've set up a temporary elist for the class, and i require electronic journals once a month based on net surfing/browsing---i provide an initial list of sites, which includes epc)... in all, i'm trying to get the class into the flow through sheer immersion, and i try to provide some guidance as things get productively messy... and b/c there's no cost entailed in net surfing (at least, if folks use the iit computers, which are finally getting up to speed wrt netscape etc.) it's easiest to get the class interested in contemporary poetry/poetics through the web, through the present-ness of online writings... i also try to indicate which bookstores in the area (incl. woodland pattern in milwaukee) have substantial poetry selections... and i'll be bringing in the spd catalog next class to discuss the current marketing/distribution system for small press work... and the possibilities of web publishing (if the class develops the critical mass, it may well collaborate on a web site, to be linked with the humanities web site i'm currently overseeing for my dept.)... in all, the economics of publishing is very much a part of this "workshop," if indeed it IS a workshop in any traditional sense... i'm really stressing reading and responding to reading every bit as much as 'creative writing'... b/c to nurture doing one in the absence of the other (which is what most of these folks HAVE been doing) seems to me to yield little other than aesthetic posing... albeit i like to leave room for sheer inspiration, whateverthehell that is... anyway, hey, let's set up the trr drop!... best, joe ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 Feb 1996 13:44:14 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Bouchard Subject: Re: on condition of anonymity Jordan wrote: Are there people who are excluded from the list? Are there people who have quit the list in disgust with certain threads? __________________ I know people who have signed off the list because the concerns of many vocal (or prolific) people were not their concerns. That was their choice. I argued with them to stay with it and simply delete the posts that do not interest them, or join in the chat and try to steer topics toward things they found worthwhile. My friend Tony Door and I have dubbed all chat-lists, not too inappropriately we think, Meat-Flap lists; the choice to tenderize, marinate, char-broil or freeze remains with each sentient individual. Exclusion? If you have the proper technological access then you're in, right? Or did you mean some more complicated form of exclusion? Exclude me? I said 'bless you.' looking at a Boston white-out, daniel_bouchard@hmco.com ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 Feb 1996 13:52:19 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ken Edwards <100344.2546@COMPUSERVE.COM> Subject: Out of Everywhere In response to several backchannel requests: I can't take orders directly for this anthology from outside the UK, unless you're able to pay in sterling. Dollar cheques, for instance, cost me an arm & a leg to convert, and international money orders would cost you an arm & a leg. So the answer, folks in the USA and Canada, is to order from SPD or Marginal Distribution. Also: didn't I say? the book is published by Reality Street Editions, the press I run in conjunction with Wendy Mulford. This foreign exchange irritation means I can't take advantage of James' Roof Books offer, either. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 Feb 1996 11:36:35 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Roland Greene Subject: Drucker An essay on Drucker's _History of the/my Wor(l)d_, by Marjorie Perloff, appears in the _Harvard Library Bulletin_, new series 3, no. 2 (1992), along with several other essays related to an exhibition called "Material Poetry of the Renaissance / The Renaissance of Material Poetry." ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 Feb 1996 11:57:31 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kevin Killian Subject: Re: on condition of anonymity At 10:33 AM 2/16/96, Jordan Davis wrote: >Are there people who have quit the list in disgust with certain >threads? This is Dodie Bellamy, who reads the list but is not signed up for it (KK is), and from that borderline position I now speak. I've talked to at least a half a dozen people who have quit the list (all of whom are more "established" writers) not in disgust exactly but because they found the level of discussion uninteresting and inane--I think the Renga saga started frustrating many people. The people I know who have quit the list have lives which allow all the intellectualy stimulation they could want. Not everyone is in that situation, and a public forum like this is vital to them--they're probably more willing to put up with any flaws they might perceive in the proceedings. I think any time you have a public forum, things do tend to slip to the lowest common denominator. (That's why I hate group process. Whenever I've been asked to serve on the board of an organization, for instance, I've said, "No, I hate group process.") Eryque Gleason recently sent me a portion of the online discussion from his undergraduate workshop with Pierre Jorris at Albany, and I found these undergraduates discussing what it means to write a manifesto much more engaging than what I read on the poetics list. But I think that's because the Albany discussion is coming out of a defined community with more of a shared project. I don't think that intellectual stringency in and of itself is a particularly positive experience. Here in the Bay Area, in the 80s at least, the intellectual standards became so high that many people felt the humanity had dropped out of the scene. Once readings became known as "literary events," these "events" often had an aura of stress and alienation rather than communication. Things have soften greatly in San Francisco, and maybe we've lower our standards, but it feels good to go to "events" and feel some warmth. om shanti ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 Feb 1996 15:04:16 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Re: (C) up for grabs Well, I've just read Doug Messerli's note--- and though i haven't counted the votes yet (so far Bouchard--against; Lloyd and Alexander kinda for) let me say that dear DOUG I DID once use YOUR anthology for a class and found it limiting as any other anthology. When you say "many academics use the xeroix to give a "sample"---- well, we could equally say WE DISAGREE WITH THE POEMS YOU CHOSE TO CALL REPRESENTATIVE...... not to mention the poets..... not that i want to stress division, I'm just trying to open things up---- and I do think as a teacher one should teach poems one is MOVED to teach and perhaps then CHARLES ALEXANDER is right-- that more books will be bought because of it.... (actually, It may have been soeone else, not charles, who said that---sorry wading through 76 messages).... chris stroffolino "who put these fingerprints on my imagination"--elvis costello ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 Feb 1996 15:22:38 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Re: (C) up for grabs Dear Douglass (again): At the risk of still coming off GLIB (I resemble that!) let me just say that though it WAS a useful and valuable experience teaching from your anthology, I also realize that in the course of a semester undergraduate introduction to poetry course that ultimately less than 10% of the PAGE COUNT of the book was utilized in the class (and granted students may do "further reading" outside of the class; but many students simply sold the books used back to the bookstore)-- The point I'm trying to make (and maybe this relates to JONATHON LEVIN's "poetry and the cirriculum" panel) is that when I teach the dense and complex work in avant-garde (and even in some mainstream) anthologies, I tend to want to focus on DEPTH rather than BREADTH.... In other words, we spent two hours on ONE WIENERS poem in the anthology-- at least 4 hours on ONE ASHBERY poem in the anthology.... a whole week on Harryman; another whole week on spicer.... etc. etc.----this may seem like piecemail reading according to your philosophy--and I certainly respect that philosophy, but I also respectfully dissent from it........love, chris s ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 Feb 1996 15:32:23 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kit Robinson Subject: Re: ROOF voyeurism Ron, As Peter Weller as Wm. S. Burroughs in Cronenberg's Naked Lunch said to Ginsberg & Kerouac, "You boys are patronizing me but I don't mind because you're so sweet to me. . ." Kit ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 Feb 1996 15:33:11 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rod Smith Subject: Re: re re rewriting that Blasing A book to read re Blasing is _The Grounding of American Poetry_ by Stephen Fredman, deals with Black Mountain re the Transcendentalists & shows ways in which "tradition" can be individually invented and generative. I.e. "take what you need and leave the rest." Some excellent readings of Olson & Duncan there. As to why I'm always dis-recommending Blasing _Cultural Capital_ by John Guillory (as well as the Rasula) is where to start I think. Geeze, I know too much about this stuff for somebody not in ackademe. (not that I know all that much ;) --Rod PS-- The Fredman is Cambridge hc only '93 or '94 around $45 (ouch). Cultural Capital tho is U. Chicago pb. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 Feb 1996 15:45:57 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Re: re re rewriting that Blasing Dear Rod (Smith)---- but they never should have taken the very best......cs ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 Feb 1996 15:50:34 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Bouchard Subject: Re: (C) up for grabs and though i haven't counted the votes yet (so far Bouchard--against; Lloyd and Alexander kinda for) _________ "Against" what? Photocopy places? The only poems of mine ever printed were printed at Kinko's. I'm all for 'em. However, if I signed a contract with a publisher and my income was dependent on royalties that were largely derived from custom publishing and photocopy reproductions of my work (I'm not thinking exclusively of poets here) then I would be quite upset that someone sought to make money from my work without sharing the profits with me. If you photocopy poems for the classroom that were printed with a small press, then maybe everyone could benefit. Students read poems, press & poet(s) get exposure, etc. If you photocopy large portions of say, a chemistry text written for classroom use and reduce a significant amount of sales from a publisher, then you are taking bread from a writer's mouth, or more likely, an extra condo on the beach from a professor's assets. Either way, as someone pointed out earlier, "that doesn't change the fact that I still don't have a car." (Bueller.) If I don't log in again by Wednesday, please send a Saint Bernard rescue dog to Boston, daniel_bouchard@hmco.com ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 Feb 1996 17:09:12 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: as one person who talks a lot Thinking about Jeff Hansen's request for a bibliography of Ron Silliman's work.. I mean for a discussion of eroticism and L poetry, it occurs to me that the discussion of L poetry among L-influenced writers (and L-poets themselves) usually centers (yes, centers) around perceived deficiencies in the L-program. L-poets don't do the quotidian, L-poets aren't erotic, L-poets don't have subject matter... You know the tone. And it's a fine tone to take, I might add, except that it's rhapsodizing on the theme of critique instead of analyzing what's there. That is, it's the strategy that the L-poets are best prepared to repel. Or, as Ron Silliman once said, "What is a positive definition." I'd like to see an assessment for 1996 of what the proficiencies of L-poetry are, and what we can expect in the next four years from L-poets and their happy progeny, the M-poets. This is not a challenge, or a sneaky attempt to flush the L-poets out where we can see them, just one person who types maybe too much trying to make it up to people who listen. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 Feb 1996 14:10:00 PST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steve Carll Subject: Re: re re rewriting that bod At 01:15 PM 2/16/96 EST, Henry Gould wrote: > About slowpokes: they have their role to play, ladies & gentlemen. >Look at Cezanne. The slow-absorbers, the retarded ones, end up >as the overturners. I wasn't trying to dismiss the slowpokes. I was responding to your use of the phrase "old hat", which I take to mean "out of fashion" just as "avant-garde" carries a meaning (sometimes the only meaning intended) "soon to be in fashion." My point was, if we look at it from the standpoint of fashion, the slowpokes are just as susceptible to becoming old hat. Which isn't really interesting. Which is why I was glad you rephrased and said "over-emphasized"--much more interesting. Good examples of the conflict the position I was referring to can put one in--Poe, Eliot, Plath. I tend to agree. Steve ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 Feb 1996 17:14:37 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Robert Kelly Subject: Re: Out of Everywhere In-Reply-To: <960216185219_100344.2546_EHQ36-5@CompuServe.COM> Maybe it is time for poets to start some intelligent transvaluations, and protect the already exiguous (or scantly existent) readership we have from the profiteering of the foreign exchanges. Internet itself may soon be the answer, the currencyless transaction of texts from land to land. But in the meantime, we should steal a march on those Maastricht lads and their ECUs and so forth, and establish, herewith, a Universal Poetry Unit, good for any small press book published in the world. Or such books to be priced in units of such a 'currency' How about calling it a SAPPHO, for Sane Anarchic Planetary Poetry Habilitating Opportunity? Live forever! Robert ----------------------- On Fri, 16 Feb 1996, Ken Edwards wrote: > In response to several backchannel requests: I can't take orders directly for > this anthology from outside the UK, unless you're able to pay in sterling. > Dollar cheques, for instance, cost me an arm & a leg to convert, and > international money orders would cost you an arm & a leg. > > So the answer, folks in the USA and Canada, is to order from SPD or Marginal > Distribution. > > Also: didn't I say? the book is published by Reality Street Editions, the press > I run in conjunction with Wendy Mulford. > > This foreign exchange irritation means I can't take advantage of James' Roof > Books offer, either. > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 Feb 1996 14:37:17 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: ryan johnson Subject: Re: In court today In-Reply-To: <199602152126.QAA20959@krypton.hmco.com> On Thu, 15 Feb 1996, Daniel Bouchard wrote: Dearest All, Regarding the "a" word, in my email to our ever-more-disappointing president, I chose to use and discuss the word abortion at leangth, and though I get the humor of you refernece here, maybe our best form of protest is to actively counteract such ludicrous policies, no? Say it a lot, write it a lot, discuss it a lot. Go to bat.--Ryan > >From the today's BOSTON GLOBE, J.W. Carney, the defense attorney for John Salvi: > > "We represent the man who shot and killed Lee Ann Nichols and who shot and > killed Shannon Lowney. The question you have to focus on in this trial is not > what happened and not by whom did it happen, but why did it happen?" > > While defending a sane man who killed two women in cold blood and wounded five > other people, Carney has the disadvantage of 1) not being able to speak in > clear sentences, and 2) not being able to discuss or read about the context of > the case on the internet because it contains the "A" word. > > * The former sentence is mine, not the GLOBE'S. > > > daniel_bouchard@hmco.com > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 Feb 1996 17:22:48 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry Gould Subject: Re: the sappho I think Wallace Stevens' wife was the model on the old U.S. dime. Maybe we can just use those for the "Sappho"? Maybe Ez's dad can help get them back in circulation?[another backward glance from yo truly] and speaking of "I talk too much", Jordan Davis, excuse me, but... what's an M-poet? Humbly agreeing with you [as one of the l-poetry critical carper newcomers coming on mouth gun-blasing] & your last posting. and speaking of xerox copies, as TS Eliot wrote, "mediocre artists imitate; great artists photocopy". Stein then retorted in her iniminiminiminiminimitable way: "staple staple staple staple staple." and speaking of books, as one salesman to another: "Ya gotta gladhand, or you ain't gonna make ya quota." - Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 Feb 1996 14:41:39 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: ryan johnson Subject: Re: Important + Ridiculous [abortion] In-Reply-To: <199602152237.OAA03673@kid-linear.taylor.org> On Thu, 15 Feb 1996, mikl-em wrote: Thanx, Todd, for the update--it is marginally encouraging. Everyone can now ignore my preceding "radical" encouragement (in another email). Or not. Ryan > dear all, > > here is some information that I had been forwarded about the > abortion-com restrictions. While certainly any move in the direction > that the bill intends toward is frightening, this info shows that > precedents, hopefully, will prevent the new legislation from actually > being enforced, [though e-mailling the whitehouse is probably still a > very good idea] but I'll let you read for yourself... > > --Todd Lappin-->..... > >From owner-pork@wired.com Fri Feb 2 16:41:32 1996 > Date: Fri, 2 Feb 1996 16:41:30 -0800 (PST) > Message-Id: > Mime-Version: 1.0 > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" > To: pork@hotwired.com > From: telstar@wired.com (--Todd Lappin-->) > Subject: Abortion Restriction Research > Sender: owner-pork@hotwired.com > Precedence: bulk > > > Here's what I've found out about the limitations on the dissemination of > abortion materials contained within the telecom reform bill: > > (The amended text of the Telecom Bill follows below, along with U.S.C. 18, > Section 1462.) > > Basically we're talking about a provision that extends a section of the US > Code (The Comstock Act) prohibiting certain kinds of "obscene" speech to > include "interactive computer services." > > Schroeder's office (202-225-4431) faxed me their position... they say that > the changes "will criminalize a wide array of public health information > relating to abortion, including discussion of RU-486 on the Internet." > Perhaps, but... > > Sam Stratman from Rep. Hyde's office (202-225-4561) insists subsection (c) > of Section 1462 has already been invalidated by the courts (although it > remains on the books), so the extension of 1462 to include "interactive > computer services" would have no bearing on abortion-related materials. > > According to the Center for Reproductive Law & Policy (212-514-5534), the > last time ANY court has ruled on subsection (c) was in 1919... long before > Roe v. Wade. They say the statute remains on the books, although it has > long gone unenforced. > > Steven Lieberman from the NY State Bar clarified things even further. > Lieberman says that the prohibitions in subsection (c) against the > dissemination of information about abortion were invalidated by the Supreme > Court in Bigelow v. Virginia in 1975. (This was a case concerning the > availablity of out-of-state abortion materials in the state of Virginia.) > As for the prohibitions against any "drug, medicine, article, or thing > designed, adapted, or intended for producing abortion"... these were > invalidated by Roe v. Wade. > > So, as Lieberman summarized the situation, "A prosecution under subsection > (c) of Section 1462 would be doomed from the outset." Nevertheless, from a > strictly formal standpoint, it appears that the prohibitions on abortion > information are indeed in place... even if they are toothless. > > --Todd Lappin--> > WIRED Magazine > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > Sec. 507 of the Telecom Bill Ammends Section 1462 of title 18 of the U.S. > Code (Chapter 71), in ways which may make sending the following over the > Internet illegal: > > o any text, graphic, or sound that is lewd, lascivious, or filthy > > o any information telling about how to obtain or make abortions and > drugs, or obtaining or making anything that is for indecent or immoral > use > > Here is Section 1462 as Ammended: > > (Telecom bill chnages in "<" and ">"): > > Section 1462. Importation or transportation of obscene matters > > Whoever brings into the United States, or any place subject to the > jurisdiction thereof, or knowingly uses any express company or other common > carrier the Communications Act of 1934)>, for carriage in interstate or foreign > commerce - > > (a) any obscene, lewd, lascivious, or filthy book, pamphlet, picture, > motion-picture film, paper, letter, writing, print, or other matter of > indecent character; or > (b) any obscene, lewd, lascivious, or filthy phonograph recording, > electrical transcription, or other article or thing capable of producing > sound; or > (c) any drug, medicine, article, or thing designed, adapted, or > intended for producing abortion, or for any indecent or immoral use; or any > written or printed card, letter, circular, book, pamphlet, advertisement, or > notice of any kind giving information, directly or indirectly, where, how, or > of whom, or by what means any of such mentioned articles, matters, or things > may be obtained or made; or Whoever knowingly takes , from such > express company or other common carrier defined in section 230(e)(2) of the Communications Act of 1934)> any matter > or thing the carriage of which is herein made unlawful - > > Shall be fined not more than $5,000 or imprisoned not more than five > years, or both, for the first such offense and shall be fined not more than > $10,000 or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both, for each such offense > thereafter. > > ----------- > > Here is the text which addes the interactive computer service part > in the Telecom Bill: > > SEC. 507. CLARIFICATION OF CURRENT LAWS REGARDING COMMUNICATION > OF OBSCENE MATERIALS THROUGH THE USE OF COMPUTERS. > (a) Importation or Transportation.--Section 1462 of title 18, United > States Code, is amended-- > > (1) in the first undesignated paragraph, by inserting ``or > interactive computer service (as defined in section 230(e)(2) of the > Communications Act of 1934)'' after ``carrier''; and > > (2) in the second undesignated paragraph-- > (A) by inserting ``or receives,'' after ``takes''; > (B) by inserting ``or interactive computer service (as defined > in section 230(e)(2) of the Communications Act of 1934)'' after ``common > carrier''; and > (C) by inserting ``or importation'' after ``carriage''. > > ----------- > > Media Notes: > > USAToday 02/01/96 - 07:37 PM ET http://www.usatoday.com/news/washdc/ncs16.htm > > Telecommunications deregulation breaks down electronic walls > > "At one point, the debate veered off on abortion. > > Seeing a ''high-tech gag rule,'' Rep. Nita Lowey, D-N.Y., joined by Pat > Schroeder, D-Colo., and several other women lawmakers, asserted the > anti-pornography provisions would outlaw discussions about abortion over > the Internet, the global computer network. > > Rep Henry Hyde, R-Ill., a leading abortion foe, assured members that > nothing in the bill suggested any restrictions on discussions about > abortion." > > Well, Henry Hyde was right - nothing in the bill suggests restrictions on > abortion discussion - the restrictions are in Title 18 of the U.S. Code, > which now includes computer networks. > > ----------- > > Thanks to the Cornell Law School Legal Information Institute > (http://www.law.cornell.edu/) and the Alliance for Competitive Communications > (http://www.bell.com/) for source text. > > -Thomas Edwards > > -------------------------------------------------------------------------- > you have been reached by mike@taylor.org [michael mcelligott*citizen*] > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 Feb 1996 14:53:12 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: ryan johnson Subject: Re: Internet Censorship In-Reply-To: <199602160416.UAA16362@ix9.ix.netcom.com> Dear Ron and all else: Yeah, the thing is snow balling in the way wrong/right direction, though I just read today that, not only is the censorship idea flying well w/ Compuserve, but a court in Philly has already dumped the anti-pornography stuff as unconstitutional (or something to that effect; our papers out here mostly suck and I was in a hurry, too). Anyway, what I did was email the pres. and my senators and all the fairly local house rep's. and let them know they should back end the whole idea of access-limitation if they're gonna do anything at all: it wouldn't be hard, I imagine, for any server company to develop some simple technology to allow INDIVICUAL USERS the ability to screen out certain sites, etc. This would still allow people to choose for themselves, though of course that's exactly what the AFA et al would like to avoid, or, really, prevent. Ryan On Thu, 15 Feb 1996, Ron Silliman wrote: > Ryan, Daniel, & everyone > > You think the censorship provisions in the Telecommunications bill are > bad enough? Here's what the far right says about it (they're taking the > proto out of protofascist...) > > (By the way, the AFA does give its phone number at the end of this > press release.) > > TITLE Computer pornography law not working, says afa > DOCNO INW 960461769 > DATE 960215 > MESSAGE THIS IS THE FULL TEXT. > CITATION PR Newswire, February 14, 1996, Wednesday > SECTION Washington Dateline > LENGTH 351 words > ABSTRACT American Family Association issued the following: > "Less than one week after the Communications Decency Act > was signed into law by President Clinton, it is obvious that the law, > designed to curb computer pornography, is not working and never will > work," said Patrick Trueman, director of American Family Association > governmental affairs. This fact was made clear by the action this > week of CompuServe, a major access provider to the Internet, to > restore access to pornographic Internet sites it had recently > blocked under pressure from German prosecutors. > Access providers to the Internet have a financial incentive > to provide access to pornography and they will not block such sites > until they are under a legal obligation to do so, Trueman said. The > Communications Decency Act included specific provisions protecting > access providers from criminal liability and until those provisions > are repealed, CDA will be nearly useless, he added. > WASHINGTON, Feb. 14 > Trueman wrote to leaders of pro-family groups today > urging them to unite behind a tough anti-pornography measure like that > sponsored by Congressman Henry Hyde. The Hyde measure, which would > have made anyone liable who knowingly and intentionally provides > pornography to children or obscene pornography to anyone, was defeated > in committee by supporters of CDA. "The reality is CDA does not work > and it will never work. For its enforcement it relies on a massive > number of prosecutions by the Justice Department of individuals who put > illegal pornography on the Internet while the major distributors and > money makers from the distribution of pornography -- the access > providers -- are given a free ride," Trueman said in his letter to > pro-family leaders. > Trueman urged pro-family leaders to act now to change the > law. > "There is no point in waiting months or years. CompuServe > has made that clear in its recent actions which demonstrate that the > law has little, if any, deterrent effect," Trueman said in his letter. > > CONTACT Patrick A. Trueman of the American Family Association, > 202-544-0061 > INDEX bc DC AFA porn law Federal State Legislation > SUBJHEAD Computer; Electronics > LOCATION District of Columbia > COMPANY American Family Association AMERICAN FAMILY > ASSOCIATION; > ======================================================================== > ====== > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 Feb 1996 17:56:01 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: Rather sappho Henry, and this will be my last post today, an M poet (known before Maastricht as a G2, or Star Trek The Next Generation poet) is a poet whose concerns are loosely affiliated with the critique of meaning as a possibility for lyric poetry and is called an M poet to publicize the roughly square magazine Apex of the M as L poets were called L poets to publicize the magazine called L+A+N+G+U+A+G=E Half a wallace stevens' wife, please, Lucy Van Pelt ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 Feb 1996 17:57:52 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Eryque Gleason Subject: Re: ROOF voyeurism yay ron! I just got to Albany, and hear that one of the few bookstores for small press stuff (who at least know how to find it if they don't carry it) is succumbing to the Borders. So I'm particularly grateful for the ease of ordering from ROOF, especially at this incredible price! If anyone else wishes to support my small pocket book, i'll be sure to give what support my pocket book (and bookshelf, which gets smaller everytime i move) can handle. eryque ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 Feb 1996 17:58:54 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Eryque Gleason Subject: Re: (C) up for grabs chris s. done writ: > when I teach the > dense and complex work in avant-garde (and even in some mainstream) > anthologies, I tend to want to focus on DEPTH rather than BREADTH.... > In other words, we spent two hours on ONE WIENERS poem in the anthology-- > at least 4 hours on ONE ASHBERY poem in the anthology.... > a whole week on Harryman; another whole week on spicer.... > etc. etc.----this may seem like piecemail reading according to your > philosophy--and I certainly respect that philosophy, but I also > respectfully dissent from it........love, chris s I usually appreciate this approach to a poetry course (or any other for that matter). It seems the result of digging DEEP(ish) into a few poets (or poems) in a semester is much greater retention, both of the work studied but whatever associative works are brought up. The engineering students that I mentioned in my earlier post about a class w/ andy levy (some of the very same people joe amato is teaching now) certainly remember more about stein and w.c. williams (tender buttons and spring and all were taught together back-to-back) and various others that were brought up than they would've if the syllabus had called for a broad overview of the period, picking one or two pieces by each. since it's come up obliquely: a while back someone (Loss?) mentioned that some people left the list because of the deluge of renga posts. Dodie mentioned the online discussions we have in Pierre Joris' workshop. As kind of an ice breaker, i started a renga thread, but I've started calling it "rupert" rather than renga since it's a free-form collaborative piece with no other rules. i didn't want to contribute to western bastardization of original forms any more than i had to. anyone seen the new indoor soccer league? They've got a three point arc for chrissake! It's too dark in Albany right now to actually be whited (whitten?) out. eryque ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 Feb 1996 14:59:45 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: mikl-em Subject: Re: M-poe's In-Reply-To: from "Henry Gould" at Feb 16, 96 05:22:48 pm I think an Mpoet is somewhere between an Lpoet and an Npoet, unless I miss my mark, which is dandy and fine, but the question is after the Zpoets have their heyday will we finally recognize the importance of the AApoets who have been so important all along? but, not seriously, I had the idea a while ago what with all the problems of naming our movements [what with "new critics" and "postmodern" susceptible to time factors] that literary movements should be named like the National Weather service names Hurricanes, alphabetically, one year Male, one year female--or maybe we could make all the names androgynollogous, or maybe not. michael. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 Feb 1996 17:09:58 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Re: not an order for ROOF books In-Reply-To: <199602160609.BAA06737@listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu> A while ago somebody said that video cassettes of _Pull My Daisy_ were being sold at the Whitney -- I've been calling around LA trying to find a copy, but nobody seems to know what I'm talking about -- Does anybody know if that tape is available through the mail??? address for same?? ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 Feb 1996 17:13:18 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Re: BEAT BLEET In-Reply-To: <199602160609.BAA06737@listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu> Well,,, I've unsubbed from BEAT-L after a few weeks of unproductive lurking -- meanwhile, I'm still trying to find Ray Bremser -- Does anyone know how to reach Charles Plymell, who pub'd Bremser in the past?? Mr. Higgins, if you're still out there, I seem to remember you're having been pub'd by a Plymell press once, any idea where he is now? "your" for "you're" above ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 Feb 1996 20:40:16 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry Gould Subject: m-poets apex of the M? Magazine out of Llama, NY, right? Where dey get all de snow? Crost de river from St. Petersburg? Jordan, thanks for correcting me about Lucy van Pelt. I'm sure Uncle Wally kept her in furs, even though she had to change her name. Here's a short poem, for all you eye-blitzed people fed up with me. The key to this poem is the letter ... S. * Time now for the trees to shroud the earth, time when the wind dies down, and over the still mirror a faded voice is whispering. Time again to climb into the old music-box in the forest, and wind the iron spring-- it is letter by letter, line by line. * --HG ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 Feb 1996 16:05:51 -1000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gabrielle Welford Subject: Sapphos In-Reply-To: The Wobblies here may be getting involved in something called LETsystem, which a sort of bartering system where you barter for points rather than things or services, so that someone could owe a bunch of points and pay them back, not to the person ze directly owed but maybe to some completely different persons. I will certainly suggest sapphos as the currency. Sounds great to me. :-) Gab. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 Feb 1996 16:15:31 -1000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gabrielle Welford Subject: mrning (fwd) Just gotta add this into the conversation. Apparently Linda Thompson is an anchorwoman (huh? do I got that right?) for the patriot/militant crowd. Gab. Delete now if you are squeamish about bad language... >AEN News >by LINDA THOMPSON <------ Please spell this correctly on the indictment, >dickheads, thanks. > >TOURETTES OF THE INTERNET > > The Asswipes we have in CONGRESS just passed the Communications Decency >Act that makes it illegal to use nasty words on the Internet. Oh, yes, it >also makes harassment by sending messages illegal, too, and you can't >discuss naughty things like abortion, either. >(Billy-buttwipe says this part won't be enforced, honest, we have his >chicken-shit, lying ass word on it.) > > What's that you say? The First Amendment says Congress shall pass no >law . . . abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press?? > > Assert YOUR right of free speech. Post the message below on every >newsgroup, every bulletin board, every internet provider, and send THOUSANDS >of copies to the Congressional E-mail servers -- FLOOD THOSE MOTHERFUCKERS >OUT!!!! > > Add your personal favorites to the list. > >================================================== > > To the SHITHEADS in CONGRESS and Dickhead BILL CLINTON >and the goose-stepping, dicklickers that plan to enforce this nazi piece of shit >legislation: > > FUCK YOU AND DOUBLE-FUCK THE COMMUNICATIONS DECENCY ACT. > >Abortion, Anus Ass, Assface, Assfucker, Asshole, Assmunch, Asswipe, >Bill-Clinton-(see >DICKHEAD), Balls, Ballbuster, Bastard, Batfuck, Batshit, Birdshit, >Bird's-ass, Bitch, Bitchface, >Blowjob, Boob, Boobs, Boobies, Breast, Booger, Booger-eater, Bulldyke, >Bullshit, Bunghole, Butch, Butt, Buttface, Buttfucker, Butthead, Butthole, >Buttmunch, Buttwipe, Chicken-choker, Chicken-licker, Clit, Cheesedick, >Clusterfuck, Cock, Cocklicker, Cocksucker, Condom, Crap, Crappy, Cum, >Cum-bubble, Cum-catcher, Cunnilingus, Cunt, Cuntface, Cunthead, Damn, Dick, >Dickface, Dickhead, Dicknose, Dickwipe, Dildo, Dipshit, Dipwad, Doo-doo, >Dogdick, Dogdung, Dogfucker, Dogshit, Dong, Donkeydick, Dump, Dung, Eat-me, >Eat-shit, Fag, Faggot, Fart, French-tickler, Fuck, Fuckhead, Fuckface, >Fuck-off, Fucked-up, Fudge-packer, Garbonzos, Goatfucker, Goatshit, >Goddammit, Goddamn, Gook, Hell, Holyshit, Honkers, Hooters, Honkey, >Horseshit, Hotshit, Jackoff, Janet-Reno-(see CUNT), Jewbastard-(see SHUMER), >Kike, Melons, Monkeydicks, Monkeyshit, Motherfucker, Nigger, Nipple, >Pederasty, Pedophile, Pee pee, Picklelicker, Picklesucker, Piss, Pissant, >Pissed, Pissed-off, Pisshead, Pissoff, Pisswillie, Potty, Prick, Pud, >Pudface, Pudknocker, Pud-pounder, Pud-puller, Pud-sucker, Pussy, >Pussy-whipped, Putz, Queen, Queer, Queerbait, Ratfucker, Ratshit, >Rectum-nose, Rubber, Schlong, Semen, Shit, >Shitball, Shitburger, Shiteater, Shit-eating-grin, Shitface, SHIT-HAPPENS, >Shithead, hitnose, Shitty, Shlong, Slit, Snot, Son-of-a-bitch, Sperm, Suck, >Teats, Testicles, Titties, Tits, >Tallywhacker, Tough-shit, Turd, Turdface, Twat, Twatlick, Vagina, Vibrator, >Wad, Wank, Wee-wee, Whore, Wiener, Wonk, Wop. > >Kind regards, > >*********************** V ************************* > DEATH TO THE NEW WORLD ORDER >**************************************************** > >Linda Thompson >American Justice Federation >Home of AEN News >& news videos, "Waco, the Big Lie," "America Under Siege" >3850 S. Emerson Ave. >Indianapolis, IN 46203 >Telephone: (317) 780-5200 >Fax: (317) 780-5209 >Internet: lindat@iquest.net > >************************************************** > Remember Waco. The Murderers are still free. >*************************************************** >Re: Telecommunications Bill Passage >(It passed. Butthead signed it 2/8/96.) > >Congress shall make no law . . . . > >If you can't say "Fuck," you can't say, "Fuck the government." > Lenny Bruce > >*************************************************** > >AEN subscribers and off-list recipients please NOTE: > >After Feb. 28, we will not send to/receive from/cross-post >or accept cross-posts from AOL. > >Boycott America Online - - the fed snoop service. > > > ><---- End Forwarded Message ----> > > > ******************************* Antonella Fabri Dept. of Anthropology Bryn Mawr College Phone:(610)526-5027 email: afabri@cc.brynmawr.edu --- from list postcolonial@lists.village.virginia.edu --- ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 Feb 1996 23:23:01 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark W Scroggins Subject: Re: mrning (fwd) In-Reply-To: o my--is that the Linda Thompson used to be married to Richard, the guitar god? naughty words aplenty! ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 17 Feb 1996 04:34:46 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ron Silliman Subject: Re: Bloody Staples The idea of books as permanent has something to do with our human sense of time. I do have some volumes from the early 19th century that are in reasonably decent shape, but overall books do age. I find that I respond to each very differently according to how I feel about the book. The paper in my copy of _The Hotel Wently Poems_ is so acidic that I'm surprised it doesn't combust spontaneously, though the staples that bind it (pure rust after 38 years) seem to have done very little damage. Gradually as those pages darken, the poems will disappear into the darkening grain. Yet I find that Wieners' most satisfying book and have long looked on that process as a living part of those poems. On the other hand, I find it very depressing to realize that the glue in my copy of _Roots and Branches_ is dissolving. I think I must have had a sense of that book as permanent -- it is still probably my favorite single book of all time -- and find its aging process more alarming. As for staples, I'd worry more about tetanus than bleeding to death. Ron Silliman ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 17 Feb 1996 05:13:30 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: RFC822 error: CC field duplicated. Last occurrence was retained. Comments: RFC822 error: CC field duplicated. Last occurrence was retained. Comments: RFC822 error: CC field duplicated. Last occurrence was retained. Comments: RFC822 error: CC field duplicated. Last occurrence was retained. Comments: RFC822 error: CC field duplicated. Last occurrence was retained. Comments: RFC822 error: CC field duplicated. Last occurrence was retained. Comments: RFC822 error: CC field duplicated. Last occurrence was retained. Comments: RFC822 error: CC field duplicated. Last occurrence was retained. Comments: RFC822 error: CC field duplicated. Last occurrence was retained. Comments: RFC822 error: CC field duplicated. Last occurrence was retained. Comments: RFC822 error: CC field duplicated. 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From: Ron Silliman Subject: New address Comments: cc: woodland@tmn.com Well, presuming we can dig out of our 14th snowstorm in time, we're moving this week. The new address: 262 Orchard Road Paoli, PA 19301-1116 Please adjust your mailing lists accordingly. Ron Silliman ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 17 Feb 1996 11:37:24 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Re: (C) up for grabs Eryque---thanks for your reply, and i don't disagree with you perse (and if i get to teach again some day I may even teach full books by single poets---and yes even SUN AND MOON poets perhaps dug not to be GLIB!) but the point I was trying to make is different, and I still think maligned. It's the point that one poem---even a short 12 line one-- can be as useful of a "site" (sorry, too much academic theory in me head) for a classroom discussion, and may tell us more about both "poetry" and "language" and "the poet" and "the real world" than a huge voluminous book---sometimes less is more, macrocosm in the microcosm, etc- and sometimes more is less---- and as Barthes wrote somewhere "rereading is something that goes against the ideological and commercial habits of our society" or something to that effect (i think in S/z; and maybe certain people would call Barthes glib too)..........best, cs. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 17 Feb 1996 12:27:31 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Pierre Joris Subject: Re: BEAT BLEET In-Reply-To: Aldon, Charlie Plymell lives in Cherry Valley, NY. (Don't have exact address with me here in California, but can provide in a week or so when back in whittened-out Albany). In fact Cherry Valley is so small a letter to him there wld in all likelihood reach him. -- Pierre On Fri, 16 Feb 1996, Aldon L. Nielsen wrote: > Well,,, I've unsubbed from BEAT-L after a few weeks of unproductive > lurking -- meanwhile, I'm still trying to find Ray Bremser -- Does anyone > know how to reach Charles Plymell, who pub'd Bremser in the past?? Mr. > Higgins, if you're still out there, I seem to remember you're having been > pub'd by a Plymell press once, any idea where he is now? > > "your" for "you're" above > ======================================================================= Pierre Joris | "Form fascinates when one no longer has the force Dept. of English | to understand force from within itself. That SUNY Albany | is, to create." -- Jacques Derrida Albany NY 12222 | tel&fax:(518) 426 0433 | "Poetry is the promise of a language." email: | -- Friedrich Holderlin joris@cnsunix.albany.edu| ======================================================================= ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 19 Feb 1996 11:53:42 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Roberts >>I've produced stapled books with wrap around covers which gives them a >>spine by default. > >>__________________________________ >>Mark Roberts > > >Mark -- I'm not certain I understand this. If the wrap around cover has a >single crease (not two creases with a flat "spine" in between) I would still >consider it without spine, by fault or default. So could you describe what >you have done more specifically, either on this list or directly to me at >chax@mtn.org > >thanks, > >charles Charles Sorry to take so long to get back on this - lots to read! The wrap around covers did have 2 creases and publication details were printed on them. I produced a magazine called P76 (which is still sort of going but not in the same format) which consisted of a hundred or so (gestnered then later photocopied) A4 pages with plain board covers side stapled. A silk screened wrap around cover complete with spine made the mag stand out on bookshelf shelves. I must admit I got this idea from another oz magazine called MAGIC SAM which came out in the late 70s and early 80s. Other oz publishers also used wrap around covers more conventionally - Rigmarole & Sea Crusie come to mind. __________________________________ Mark Roberts Student Systems Project Officer Information Systems University of Sydney NSW 2006 Australia M.Roberts@isu.usyd.edu.au PH:(02)351 5066 FAX:(02)351 5081 ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 18 Feb 1996 20:00:22 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kenneth Sherwood Subject: To copy or not to copy One certainly doesn't want the small presses to go out of bizness, tho except in cases where the poets also run the presses, it's hard to see them loosing out. But there is a loss to all of us if the texts aren't available in stores(or even in libraries / to photocopy), as increasingly they aren't. Setting aside the harm to presses, the custom made xerox pack, complete with rusty staples seems to give the poems more context than the anthology. At least there is the implication of a larger world. But who wrote of 'allowing' students to buy whole books, encouraging one to spend the last dime each month at the bookstore. Reminds me of the psychoanalytic custom of requiring the patient to pay 'something' as part of the therapy. KS ____________________________________________________________________________ Kenneth Sherwood | Dept English v001pxfu@ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu | 618 Clemens Hall sherwood@acsu.buffalo.edu | SUNY @ Buffalo |_______Buffalo, NY 14214___________ RIF/T mail: e-poetry@ubvm.cc.buffalo.edu Electronic Poetry Center (Web address): http://writing.upenn.edu/epc _____________________________________________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 18 Feb 1996 20:12:53 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Loss Glazier Subject: Some Thoughts on Eigner [long post] Loss Pequen~o Glazier WHAT SOUND A WALL For Larry Eigner _________________________________________________________ walls, soundless, are stable, allow the application of pressure as swallows reflect sound where you think of what a wall is. How it reflects. How its position swounds an acoustic however auditory acrostic of stunned steps from the straits of its audiational vista bay is a bowl the geographic sun room's horticulture not hormuz how zounds leads is the wall that stands outside which sends windows sounds "The Music, The Rooms" in "silence silence silence silence sound" where sound only capable amid the profusion of wounds. Silence marks the beat, its time, makes sounds possible within the noise of whitespace caterwauling when insisted marking to side is what words spark remark "on the walls" sustain. On both sides, whether the push outside punctuates birds its conscious present of paper cosmos whether "times advance" ie tides, ties, pools or manmade poles, pinpoints, power ... "with desperate ease" sees color's infrared light also from a punctuation of circling, "the food, the power" inside its simple strait plunge which is the food and the powder, torpid "tropic" for fleck, as light is a speck or inspect how birds themselves circle before blunting, plunging, plageant "pinpoint" "how distance is to some birds" simply said how IS distance to some? Is any distance possible when circling--no distance--leads to food? The answer that such distance is the "pinpoint"--the sun point, the pole from perspective of bird's sky view, "back up" its cries "the meaning of change" is in a change of rooms. This is information itself, which room and which side is outside (or "so the words go up/ into thin air" how "the parlor" pauses "the speaking" only existing against the parlor and MADE POSSIBLE by a physical pause as this pause leads to "room". Room for pause and the pause which makes room place once inside. There windowed against the spoken pause musical parlor under skies skies hold mutable pause midwing "birds pass the window" pause "the curves together") sound only plays against its instrument (forgotten) "on the screen" "the clock shakes out" as is player piano--a scroll of white of "silence silence silence silence sound" where sound only capable amid the profusion of wounds--the punctuations as punctures the scroll makes room for. The player piano is an instrument forgotten of silence which produces sound song written as if through a wall which pauses sense of sound. Elsewise a vase for precarious things "a live broadcast" indeed when marks behind screen which mars sounds themselves how ... circling ... how silence is to some birds. >It takes some remembering, but I think it's probably easy to see those >clusters of words about the page in such a way as to interpret them as >airy, even wispy, and I think that's an error a lot of people do make (rs) "wampum gulls broke shells" determine rhythm insist sound defines--beyond walls "directed" how to eyes, Africa, dogs, hair bleach, and scurvy roll off five such beats between pivots that pinpoint bikes sea sights voyage the studio that spins dark strife how did those gulls break shells? as "they might" dive "headlong into" spells? how is wampum also shells and broke also without wampum but moreso there are not things here: the currency of the letter in stuttering conjunction of zounds ("wonder and astonishment") and swounds (wound + swoons)--falling from the sky, mating-- in the hand but distant "how distance is to some birds" is "the dim expanding miles" see sea saw as white white white white light holds steady "they might drive headlong" as headlights hound the wall of sight: a steady white light they might drive headlong into the mist like a magnet blows lost bearings ----------------------------------------- belows of hearings >... as if the poems had become > an organ, the sky bellows. (cb) The magnet is a pivot and the pivot is the space on the wall its attractive drawn magnetism as physical as the pull between 'they might drive like a magnet' and 'the mist blows like a magnet'. The pull creates the space which is the magnet that "blows lost bearings" next, of course rest. Sounds come from rests which next "nest in fisherman's pocket"--nets contains the same letters as nest--as nets which sent tens the magnet of a pocket. An afterword note describes Pokagan the note itself as much SHAPE as lexical value. As words, trace of magnet drawn across glass, scores flight of pigeons across "nuggets of sound carving space" (cb) storm craving place how the birds sound there--in is in all cases sound there "commingling", mix of > "geometry of ties that blind in music" (cb) "What sound for our ears" sleigh of ear bells and thundering of encroaching charm. The birds as charm of sound's astonished sense fluttering "all about me; gently" an onset as extinct however never more vivid than in Pokagan's description--brought even more to vivacity against a wall, with the screen and its "live performance" which is less pivot spun sERK Life irises* ---------------------------------------------- *headlights, sights, "a steady white light" how you would "carefully concealed them under my blanket" why and what is the blanket? Simply the silence that makes sound possible only as an outline in its furls. Words are present passing as they did "like a cloud through the branches of the high trees"--the driving "headlong into / the mist"--that is this blanketing action where a plane lengthens through fog / or cloud bends away / the curves together--the largest or smallest action may have immense MASS though it's not a mass dependent on size or bulk but a mass which takes its form from its immediate position in a spectrum of activity where pages ARE on the page, where places are, or objects are inside a plane or outside. Whether circling, plunging--but always dependent on its relation. Indeed, where is the bird when it is raining? Just as what is a sound without a wall, window, or objects for its reflection? Its sounding without mass but there..."a bird / depending on the weather" _________________________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 19 Feb 1996 10:28:34 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Wallace Subject: legacies Hey Jordan Davis--I'd watch out, if I were you, of making the claim (even ironically) that the Apex of the M poets are the main next generation inheritors of language writing--someone who's not paying attention might actually think such a comment should be taken as true. I think it's pretty clear that while language writing has certainly had a broad influence on "avant garde" writers emerging in the aftermath of their success, the Apex of the M crowd is only one of a multitude of directions in which that influence has been taken. And, frankly, it seems that the Apex context has been more influenced by a religious (and even sometime directly transcendentalist) strain in innovative American poetry that comes more from Duncan, the Waldrops, John Taggert, etc., than from the rather completely non-transcendentalist implications of language writing. Remember--the Apex manifestos pretty much reject the value of language writing except as a series of theoretical insights that (Apex claims) has not really produced much poetry of value. mark wallace ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 19 Feb 1996 09:21:14 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Douglas Messerli Subject: Re: To copy or not to copy Dear Kenneth Sherwood, Don't know who you are, and feel I really needn't repond, but your comments really do confuse me: 1. What does a poet running a press have to do with "losing"--or winning, for that matter? And what does that have to do with the issue of xeroxing books? 2. Our books (that is, Sun & Moon books--which you seem be referring to) are available to most US and English bookstores. They are readily available for use in classrooms and we have excellent distribution. But are you suggesting that smaller presses, who havent' been able to obtain such good distribution, ought to be punished by having their books xeroxed? 3. I said nothing about "allowing" a student anything. I spoke from my own experience of wanting/desiring to purchase books--even when I had little money. I saw that as positive (for myself). Perhaps you don't. But I hardly understand your analogy to a "psychoanalytic custom." I don't see the connection. And you suggesting that pscychologists shouldn't be paid? Well I truly have had my say on this. I do feel poets ought to receive money for their books, and I feel literary presses should be supported by a community supposedly interested in poetry. Indee, I feel we ARE supported by that community. And I appreciate it. Obviously, not everyone will agree. Douglas Messerli At 08:00 PM 2/18/96 -0500, you wrote: >One certainly doesn't want the small presses to go out of bizness, >tho except in cases where the poets also run the presses, it's hard >to see them loosing out. But there is a loss to all of us if the >texts aren't available in stores(or even in libraries / to photocopy), >as increasingly they aren't. > >Setting aside the harm to presses, the custom made xerox pack, complete >with rusty staples seems to give the poems more context than the >anthology. At least there is the implication of a larger world. > >But who wrote of 'allowing' students to buy whole books, encouraging >one to spend the last dime each month at the bookstore. Reminds me >of the psychoanalytic custom of requiring the patient to pay 'something' >as part of the therapy. > >KS > >____________________________________________________________________________ > > Kenneth Sherwood | Dept English > v001pxfu@ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu | 618 Clemens Hall > sherwood@acsu.buffalo.edu | SUNY @ Buffalo > |_______Buffalo, NY 14214___________ > > RIF/T mail: e-poetry@ubvm.cc.buffalo.edu > Electronic Poetry Center (Web address): http://writing.upenn.edu/epc >_____________________________________________________________________________ > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 19 Feb 1996 09:20:13 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Re: Brownie McGhee In-Reply-To: <199602190520.AAA00646@listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu> And now, Brownie McGhee has died -- another good friend to poets everywhere -- appeared memorably in Langston Hughes's _Simply Heaven_ years ago -- KLON just ran a one hour tribute, and Taj Mahal, who happened to be in for an interview, played some of the most moving guitar I've ever heard from him, remembering McGhee. Look up some of the old photos of Brownie and Sonny playing around the Village during the Weavers & Woody era -- ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 19 Feb 1996 09:25:03 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Douglas Messerli Subject: Eigner post by Loss Glazier Loss: Thanks for the beautiful Eigner piece. Douglas Messerli ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 19 Feb 1996 18:47:53 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Re: Brownie McGhee Mcgee's great..... Hey, this is off the subject, but I've been meaning to ask this, since Mario Damon asked her question about Mitch Ryder.... I've just recently discovered the music of Charles Wright (not the kinda lamo poet of the same name) and the Watts 103rd St. Rhythm Band------does anybody know what ever happened to him?????? happy black history month, (un)glibly yours,cs. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 19 Feb 1996 21:55:31 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kenneth Sherwood Subject: Followed the thread/caught in the web... Dear Douglass: Poets AND psychoanalysts should both get paid. Poets don't, generally speaking. They don't benefit substantially from royalties. What they gain from a press is the distribution of their work, and access to the work of others important to them. Has *any* poet worth her or his salt *ever* made enough money from it to live? What if we discount court patronage and university tenure? I suspect even the Sun&Moon stars make more for one poetry reading than a year of royalties. My post, you will note was not meant as personal attack, nor was it an attack on the activites of Sun & Moon. It was neither meant to intimate that 'poets running presses' get rich skimming off the top, nor that they don't pay their poets all due royalites. I'm sure you or Charles Alexander or James Sherry can verify this. But it was meant to suggest that poetry represents a special case, economically and otherwise, in relation to the general question of copyright. Poets as a rule don't live off royalties, simply put. What poets do is spend money on books. (Please James, I'm good for the 30 buck, send me _Islets/Irritations_.) And since I'm revealing private details, well . . . I was forced to build a new bookshelf this past summer. So I too am concerned with the support of the literary. So for the poets at least, the whole thing seems a losing proposition, economically, which is perhaps why I'm interested in electronic publishing-- one way of avoiding 'some' of the problems associated with the poetry market. Rif/t and the EPC don't pay royalties, but we don't have to charge readers either. I do see it as a loss when poetry texts aren't available. (Anyone have a copy of Mina Loy's _Last Lunar_ they'd give up? Anyone know how to secure the rights of some long-dead poet, say Else Von Freytag Lorignhoven, to republish? Gee, I thought copyright was supposed to help us.) Given the value of small press activites, I still don't want to FETISHIZE the PURCHASING of books. That, perhaps, is what I should have said initially--I'm feeling more cogent today. And that is perhaps why I thought of the psychoanalytic principle that a patient must pay something, no matter how poor they are or how little they can afford, in exchange for their therapy. This 'payment' is part of the treatment, even when the sum might be insignificant to the psychoanalyst. My relationship to poetry feels secure, even without such a ritual binding. Douglass, I have the advantage in this exchange of having met you, having heard you read, and owning some 15 or 20 books published/edited by you here on the shelf. I'm sure not paying your light bill, but I do what I can. Best, Ken Sherwood ____________________________________________________________________________ Kenneth Sherwood | Dept English v001pxfu@ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu | 618 Clemens Hall sherwood@acsu.buffalo.edu | SUNY @ Buffalo |_______Buffalo, NY 14214___________ RIF/T mail: e-poetry@ubvm.cc.buffalo.edu Electronic Poetry Center (Web address): http://writing.upenn.edu/epc _____________________________________________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 19 Feb 1996 22:25:54 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Patrick Phillips Subject: Re: Brownie McGhee Thanks Aldon, I was just listening to the Okeh Mcgee collection today. Wow... I wish I could send everyone a take of Back Home Blues...now he's "east of the sun, west of the moon and everywhere..." ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 19 Feb 1996 23:40:48 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Eryque Gleason Subject: Re: Brownie McGhee I saw McGhee in chicago at the blues festival last june. Once i got past all the drunk 26 year old guys from the suburbs, he was absolutely great. It's been a cloudy day here in albany. eryque ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 19 Feb 1996 21:46:54 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Christopher L. Filkins" Subject: 24 Hours of Democracy Please visit http://www.hotwired.com/userland/24 and help if anyone has the time. The project is to generate and put on line in one 24 hour period (this thursday) essays from all over the spectrum discussing free speech, censorship, the CDA indecency clauses, etc in order to show the outside world that the people who participate in the online environment are not all pornographers & would be bombers. Any essays the members of this list could generate would be welcome indeed. I daresay poems would be pretty cool as well. Complete instructions can be found on the site. There are servers willing to host your essays if you have no server space and I would be willing to host as many as necessary as well. Please contact me offlist if anything is not clear. Thank you for your time. Christopher L. Filkins ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 19 Feb 1996 23:35:13 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Re: 103d Street In-Reply-To: <199602200510.AAA18513@listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu> Don't know what Mr. Wright is up to these days, but will ask around L.A. -- For some time after their "Express Yourself" prime, the band was heard accompanying Bill Withers -- I seem to remember a live Withers collection with the band that was pretty good -- ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 20 Feb 1996 03:45:18 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ron Silliman Subject: Re: Followed the thread/caught in the web... Both sides of the Douglas/Kenneth discussion are well worth pondering, but this quote of Kenneth's is what provokes me today: >I do see it as a loss when poetry texts aren't available. (Anyone >have a copy of Mina Loy's _Last Lunar_ they'd give up? Anyone know >how to secure the rights of some long-dead poet, say Else Von Freytag >Lorignhoven, to republish? Gee, I thought copyright was supposed to >help us.) The idiocy that made Faber (I think it was Faber) demand a ridiculous some of money for the work of David Jones effectively kept his work out of Poems for the Millenium. It seems to me that there are dozens of poets who have been similarly badly served, not by copyright, but rather by copyright holders who had some particular agenda of their own they wanted to see made manifest. Think of Kerouac, say. Charles Bernstein has, in an exemplary fashion, discussed the royalty system at Sun&Moon and its impact economically (a given book will earn the author in the high three figures). Others, like Roof, use the 10% of copies methodology--which has always seemed to me perfectly good and maybe even preferable to a royalty payment. So, royalties will not make you rich unless you are Allen Ginsberg (who has certainly made over $1 million on that alone) or Robert Bly. But the real money in poetry is almost always indirect -- honoraria for readings, grants, teaching jobs for which you could not otherwise have competed, the sale of archives, etc. I've done well enough to have _averaged_ over $3,000 a year in poetry income over 30+ years. Yet in 1995, my total royalty income was $6.47 (thank you American Poetry Archives). Like a few other poets (Michael Palmer and Kathleen Fraser come to mind), I've actually bought a house with "poetry money." But I certainly wouldn't try to live on it. So I find my interests on both sides of this discussion. As a writer, I have an interest in getting paid for my work. As a writer, I have an interest in my work being disseminated as broadly as possible. By any means necessary, as the Black Panthers would have put it. During my years at Socialist Review, I got to watch a lot of requests from professors for permission to reprint various works in photocopied course packs. It seems to be pretty much a routine practice in certain fields, like sociology, poli sci or history. Yet as the holder of my own copyright on every one of my books, I'm very rarely asked this same question for poetry. Personally, I don't believe that people only use entire books of mine when they want to teach my work in a class. What I do think is that lit courses (and, more exactly, the people who teach them) tend to have an idea about is an appropriate level of spending to require of a student that is much lower than would apply in a course in, say, economics. Partly it's because as students we all got used to the idea that books of literature are inexpensive mass market or trade paperbacks, rather than expensive textbooks. On a per-class basis, a degree in English tends to be pretty inexpensive from the perspective of texts. In many other fields the average would be on the high side of $50. And for a graduate course, considerably higher. I think the solution to this is balance. As a writer, as a publisher, as a teacher, to seek a fair balance between getting the work out and paying for the right to copy a text. As Jones and Kerouac have taught us (the hard way), writers should be explicit in their instructions to literary executors that they want the work to be available, and to strive to see that that happens. Teachers ought to feel free to use course packs -- there are lots of good reasons to do so -- but they ought to clear permission in advance and to pay a nominal per copy fee to do so. That's never too much to ask. Ron Silliman ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 20 Feb 1996 06:42:48 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Alexander Subject: Re: Followed the thread/caught in the web... Thanks, Ron, for a clear and intelligent comment on the copyright/permission/royalty issue. I'd also say that for some (one here) who have benefited from poetry money via archive sales, such money mostly goes into publishing more poetry, therefore, in the economy of such activities, rather tends to dwindle away. Of course it's somewhat easier to buy a house in places I've lived (southern Arizona, Minneapolis) than in Berkeley. But when you say that Allen Ginsberg is one who's earned more than $1 million in royalties, I think that $1 million over Allen's 40 years comes out to $25,000/year -- not bad at all in the late 1950's, but not so great in the 1990's. I know, it hasn't been that much every year with consistency, but just wanted to say that however it's come, I hope Ginsberg's earned a lot more than $1 million. And I hope you earn more than $6.47 in 1996. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 20 Feb 1996 08:08:39 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry Gould Subject: Re: Brownie McGhee Gonna leave you now, Goin' anyhow, Know where I'm bound, I'm just packin up gettin ready to go. I'm packin one shoebox for all my clothes (just packin' up gettin ready to go) Got so little to carry and so far to go (just packin up gettin ready to go) Well you can read my lips, you can't read my mind (just packin up) I'm leavin now, gotta leave you behind (packin up) Now there's only one thing worryin my mind (just packin up) Somebody's gonna enjoy what I'm leavin behind (Just packin up...gettin ready... to go) bye bye Brownie ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 20 Feb 1996 09:51:37 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: ironic consecutivity Mark, I was teaching sound and poetry to some sixth graders and at one point they all began singing A B C D E F G H I J K L M and I stopped them there (I didn't have much time). I realized later that they were just getting to the good part. Alpha beta gamma delta epsilon eta theta iota kappa lambda mu nu ksi... in the bereshith in the zohar aren't aleph and beth given precedence for their modesty? Jordan ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 20 Feb 1996 13:01:05 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: russian (former USSR) poets query Does anybody know of poets from Russia or any other territory of the former Soviet Union living in the US, specifically the eastern US? Thanks in advance, Jordan ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 20 Feb 1996 13:16:51 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rod Smith Subject: Question: Berrigan/Cage, Cage/Williams Does anybody have a copy of the fake interview with Cage that Berrigan did as it appeared in _Mother_ magazine or _The National Literary Anthology_? It also appears in _Bean Spasms_ but want to determine how revised. Also, does anybody know anything about the Williams paragraph re Cage's _First Construction_ that appears in the David Revill biography of Cage? The source is not given, it is simply refered to as a response to the premeire. thanks. --Rod ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 20 Feb 1996 12:54:32 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: ryan johnson Subject: Re: Followed the thread/caught in the web... In-Reply-To: On Mon, 19 Feb 1996, Kenneth Sherwood wrote: > Dear Douglass: > > Poets AND psychoanalysts should both get paid. Poets don't, generally > speaking. They don't benefit substantially from royalties. > What they gain from a press is the distribution of their work, and > access to the work of others important to them. Has *any* > poet worth her or his salt *ever* made enough money from it to live? Speaking as one who is (currently) enjoying the same generosity of an institution that he did well by, might I mention Ginsburg?? (The papers are just o so fab, though the locks of hair et all do get in the way sometimes...)--Ryan > What if we discount court patronage and university tenure? I suspect > even the Sun&Moon stars make more for one poetry reading than a year > of royalties. > > My post, you will note was not meant as personal attack, > nor was it an attack on the activites of Sun & Moon. It was neither > meant to intimate that 'poets running presses' get rich skimming > off the top, nor that they don't pay their poets all due royalites. > I'm sure you or Charles Alexander or James Sherry can verify this. > > But it was meant to suggest that poetry represents a special case, > economically and otherwise, in relation to the general question of > copyright. Poets as a rule don't live off royalties, simply put. > > What poets do is spend money on books. (Please James, I'm good > for the 30 buck, send me _Islets/Irritations_.) And since I'm > revealing private details, well . . . I was forced to build a > new bookshelf this past summer. So I too am concerned with the > support of the literary. > > So for the poets at least, the whole thing seems a losing proposition, > economically, which is perhaps why I'm interested in electronic publishing-- > one way of avoiding 'some' of the problems associated with the poetry > market. Rif/t and the EPC don't pay royalties, but we don't (ETC.)> ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 20 Feb 1996 16:01:37 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Marisa Januzzi Subject: Re: Followed the thread/caught in the web... In-Reply-To: <199602201145.DAA19015@ix6.ix.netcom.com> Doug, Ken, Ron, assembled guests-- > >have a copy of Mina Loy's _Last Lunar_ they'd give up? Anyone know > >how to secure the rights of some long-dead poet, say Else Von Freytag > >Lorignhoven, to republish? Gee, I thought copyright was supposed to > >help us.) sorry..... but... Farrar Straus (unbelievably!) is coming out with the new Loy Selected (produced by the executor) and the Loy bio by Carolyn Burke this June. Has that been said here? Advance orders will help a situation which to put it politely has Mr. Jonathan Galassi sweating in his shirtsleeves. Baroness Elsa's autobiography-- the one which opens with her trying to strangle her father-- NEEDS to be made available in the states. There's a Canadian edition floating around, I think the editor was Spettigue or something like that, but I don't know the copyright status. Has anyone here tried to pitch a reprint? I mean, some one should go for it; publishers seem kind of receptive to the female modern thing at this moment, and there's a lot of cultural work to be done. Regardless of the executors. (someone should propose an MLA panel on the legal and economic constructions of literary reputation)(and then only really angry academics will show and no one will speak candidly) > basis, a degree in English tends to be pretty inexpensive from the > perspective of texts. In many other fields the average would be on the > high side of $50. And for a graduate course, considerably higher. Well, it's true that the *students* often don't think they should be paying much for texts in a lit class... but I just did half my book orders and it's almost impossible NOT to ask them to spend $50, if you assign say ten whole books and want responsible editions for students to read (¬ wear). Cheap editions tend to be unselfconscious about their contents. Plus the IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST (from signet) rubs off on any reader tired enough to fall asleep on it. The Sun&Moon reprint of TENDER BUTTONS, on the other hand, is 100& sleepsafe and really useful for its preservation of the typographical design of the original. (Thanks!) Reprinting is a form of translation and I still haven't gotten used to the Penguin Ted Berrigan.... what would be the copyright status on DiPrima's REVOLUTIONARY LETTERS, first edition of which is dedicated to Bob Dylan, and says "this is a free book... power to the people's mimeo machine"? Did city lights then buy or acquire the rights? And will no one reprint it with the original cover design?? --Marisa (shameless, incurable book fetishist) ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 20 Feb 1996 15:03:21 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Christopher J. Beach" Subject: Re: legacies In-Reply-To: Questions for Mark or other interested parties: If M poets are not "the main next generation inheritors of language writing," then who is? And if the language poets have not produced much poetic writing of value, who has (aside from Taggart, Waldrop and Duncan)? And can we really describe poets like Lyn Hejinian as "completely non-transcendental"? Who are we including under the rubric of "language" poetry anyway? Where do poets like Leslie Scalapino, Kathleen Fraser, and John Yau fit in? How about Michael Palmer? Is he an L-poet or a proto-M poet? Christopher Beach On Mon, 19 Feb 1996, Mark Wallace wrote: > Hey Jordan Davis--I'd watch out, if I were you, of making the claim > (even ironically) that the > Apex of the M poets are the main next generation inheritors of language > writing--someone who's not paying attention might actually think such a > comment should be taken as true. > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 20 Feb 1996 19:28:12 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Eryque Gleason Subject: Re: Followed the thread/caught in the web... Marisa sd: >orders and it's almost impossible NOT to ask them to spend $50, if you >assign say ten whole books and want responsible editions for students to >read (¬ wear). Marisa, you managed to get TEN WHOLE books for $50 for yr students? You do mean real books, right? Not pamplets from the tobacco industry or instructions for the 1040? I just had to spend $60 for five books, plus $25 or so for a sizable compilation of essays for one class. The five were thin paperback novels, all less than 150 pages, relatively good quality for small(ish) press stuff. But the least expensive was still seven bucks. The last time i saw a price on _Zen & the Art..._, it was $9.95 for a paperback on cheap paper, which i left on the bus one day. I managed to find a copy in a used book store for $3. It turns out that it was printed two months after i was born, with an original cover price of $2.25!! >Plus the IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST (from signet) rubs off on >any reader tired enough to fall asleep on it. > >The Sun&Moon reprint of TENDER BUTTONS, on the other hand, is 100& >sleepsafe and really useful for its preservation of the typographical >design of the original. (Thanks!) And it lasted through numerous chicago el trips in my back pocket without much damage, and i ain't easy on books! Eryque (budding book fetishist) ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 20 Feb 1996 22:11:32 CST6CDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Hank Lazer Organization: The University of Alabama Subject: Lazer electronic chap information for all To all on the list: Announcing an electronic chapbook by Hank Lazer: POEMS AND NOTES FROM DAYS includes an introduction to the work as well as selections with commentary. available upon request from: NinthLab@aol.com Thank you, Jake Berry ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 Feb 1996 00:17:05 -0500 Reply-To: Robert Drake Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Robert Drake Subject: Re: legacies Christopher J. Beach wrote: >If M poets are not "the main next generation inheritors of language >writing," then who is? this seems to assume a linear progression, like a torch being passed frm olympian to olympian? which i think is not very accurate, useful, nor desirable way to view th recent history ov poetic practice... (mark may have been cautioning about that construction on other grounds, ov course). the variousness of th poets you mention (& others) argues, fr me, towards a more multivariant analysis... lbd ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 20 Feb 1996 21:52:23 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Christopher L. Filkins" Subject: Charles Alexander, John Milton, & 24 Hours of Democracy Following my post earlier concerning the 24 Hours of Democracy project Charles Alexander suggested I look up a work by John Milton concerning censorship of the press. While I was not able to find the exact text he referred to I did remember the 'AREOPAGITICA' and pulled out my copy. After rereading it I searched the net, found it through a university, and webbified the whole thing. On Thursday it will be posted to the project You can now find it at http://www.chronotope.com/24/milton.html (a brownie to anyone who can tell me what chronotope means and where it comes from) Charles has begun work on a short introductory preface to Milton's work putting it in the context of this whole CDA situation. I want to thank him publicly for his generosity and interest. I would like to stress once again that anyone on this list who can contribute would be most welcome to participate. I can host anyone's essay who does not have a permanent location where they can post it. I would especially like to invite the propriator's of the various small presses on this list to contribute as this CDA has the potential to dampen or extinguish any hopes of moving texts through this medium. Unless of course they fit the definition of 'clean' as hoisted upon us by the Congress. I know that this medium is a good place where small presses can compete equally with the big houses and I hope that members of this list see this as an opportunity to be heard in a forum where they are usually not present. I also would like to extend an invitation to any small presses out there looking for a web space in which to present their books: I offered Douglas Messerli space on the very day he opened Sun & Moon on the web and will extend the same offer to anyone else who is interested. Douglas called my offer generous and kind and I think you'll also find it so if you are interested. (Sorry Douglas, I have been way to busy to return to your site - I am trying to wire an elementary school in my neighborhood for NetDay96 and I have been working 12 hour days for over a week now on this 24 Hours project - I'll be back though.) If anyone is interested in either of these offers please contact me at filkins@chronotope.com for additional information. Thanks for your time. Christopher Filkins ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 Feb 1996 02:24:11 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Erica Hunt Subject: Venice: Poetry and Performance Art Workshop I wrote a note a few weeks ago regarding an international poetry and performance art workshop/institute sponsored by Zenobio Institute of Venice, Italy and Segue Foundation in New York. The following announcement offers more particulars. Those of you who have indicated your interest in the event by responding by e-mail (Ericalin @ aol.com) will be getting apps by snail. For those reading about this for the first time please drop me a line. SITE SPECIFIC May 4 1996 through June 1, 1996 Literature and Performance Art In a Waterbound City at Zenobio Institute -- Laboratory for the New Urban Landscape in Venice, Italy Site Specific: "meditations and investigations between artist and physical space" Site Specific is a month-long workshop in literature and theater using the environs of Venice, Italy as the basis for literary investigation and artistic production. The goal of the workshop is to stretch the boundaries of the written and spoken text by incorporating the "sites/cites/sights" of the city's many architectural settings as dynamic elements in literary and performance art. Workshop participants will become intimate with a Venice seen through the lens of architecture, urban history, philsophy and aesthetics. Exploration of the city's poetic possibilities will go beyond its monumentality to an investigation of its symbolic, morphological amd utopian gestures with the assistance of an international faculty and Venetian based critics and writers. Faculty includes: Fiona Templeton, artist in residence; Charles Bernstein, Lee Ann Brown, Erica Hunt, Julie Patton, Tom Raworth, Schuldt and Lucio Pozzi. Site Specific will take place as part of the 1996 Zenobio Institute Spring program, based in the baroque palace of Ca' Zenobio. Located in a quiet sestriere of Venice, the palace and its gardens are a registered national monument. The complex includes studio space and grand public rooms that can accommodate lectures, seminars and exhibitions. Zenobio Institute is an interdisciplinary center for inquiry, dialog and experiment into urban contexts. The cost of the four week workshop is $2,300, includes tuition for workshops, the performance art intensive (with Templeton) and supervision of independent projects. The fee also covers residential acocommodations in two and three bedroom apartment (two persons to a room) containing kitchens, baths and living rooms. Single rooms can be arranged for an extra charge. Please indicate your preference with your application. The fees do not cover air travel, meals or field trips. Advanced students and practitioners are invited to apply by e-mail or letter or fax to the address appearing below. Please include a sample of your work, no longer than 20 pages, or in the case of video, 30 minutes long. Submissions should be accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed return envelope. Applications will be processed as we receive them. The earlier you send your application the sooner we can reserve a space for you in the workshop. Applications should be accompanied by a deposit of $100 payable to the Segue Foundation/Zenobio, refundable only if the entire program is cancelled. The final deadline for full payment is March 30, 1996. Please direct applications to Erica Hunt/Julie Patton c/o Segue Foundation 303 East 8th Street New York, N.Y. 10009 212/674-0199 FAX 212/353-2089 e-mail: ericalin @ aol.com NB: This is a fledgling enterprise, which once launched will create some precedent for entropic entrepreneurism abroad...ahem... I mean future writing institutes at Zenobio, a kind of think tank for urban centered art. Though this particular workshop is an experiment in a time of grant famine, we'll try to make subsidies/scholarships available as soon as we have a sense of the enrollment. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 20 Feb 1996 23:43:09 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Re: do not copy this under penalty of loy In-Reply-To: <199602210505.AAA26051@listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu> much apparent mystification from some profs and many copy shops about this course packet stuff -- while the "fair use" doctrine remains a legal quagmire, it has always been clear previously that hte production of anthologies for course use without permission to reprint insides was illegal -- on the other hand, fair use permitted all along that if I saw, say, one of Ron's poems in the morning news that perfectly made a point I wanted to discuss in class that day I was free, once only, to copy such for class use -- grey area was always just how much of a poem can I copy for repeated use before permission is required -- as someone who once actually received a check for $7.00 as a result of an honest prof at USC using my stuff in a reader, I can attest to the fact that such arrangements can, as my boy said, be very easily done -- and there's plenty of room in the law for that spontaneous bop educational prosody use in class -- meanwhile, I have promised myself to order at least one small press title for each class I teach, no matter how much grief I get about it from the university book store ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 Feb 1996 03:24:27 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Re: legacies Dear Christopher Beach--- interesting points about where these lines blur and/or mesh, or simply cease to exist.... When you ask about poets like Heijinian and the accuracy of calling them "non-transcendental", I am reminded of the way Jerome McGann tries to dance the question--referring to Heijinian and other L poets (even perhaps Kathy Acker!) as examples of what he calls "a nonmystical and nonromantic theory of poetry-as-inspiration." in BLACK RIDERS. I wonder what the writers in question would say about that......chris s. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 Feb 1996 03:50:03 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Re: 103d Street Thanks Aldon for the Bill Withers/103rd tip.... "express yourself" is the song I taped off the radio the other day. He had two other white top 20 hits (according to my book)-- (I mean hits on the WHITE MAINSTREAM charts)-- and it's weird (but makes sense too) that you don't hear them on oldies stations--even though you'll hear songs that weren't as popular... Segregation in radio seems to be certainly bigger now than it was 25 years ago. Grunge stations might as well be heavy-metal stations in their unwillingness to play "black music". Waiting for someone to update Gil Scott Heron's 1980 with its beautiful (and frightening) (and prophetic) 6-5-4-movement.......cs ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 Feb 1996 07:05:38 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ken Edwards <100344.2546@COMPUSERVE.COM> Subject: Followed the thread/caught in the web... Yes, Ron, it was Faber who reputedly asked for a ludicrous sum to reproduce David Jones' work in Poems for the Millennium, and thereby effectively kept him out of the anthology. It didn't surprise me to hear that, as Faber is notorious for its greed in such matters. It's one thing to demand that poets be fairly recompensed for their work, but this has to be a balanced against other factors: being included in an anthology enhances a poet's reputation, leads readers to seek out the original books, etc. I have known poets themselves cut off their noses to spite their faces. When the late Eric Mottram and I were involved in editing The New British Poetry a few years ago, one (living) poet who shall be nameless demanded a sum far in excess of what was on offer from Paladin/HarperCollins, and refused to allow his work to appear unless we conceded. There was no way we could squeeze any extra money out of the publisher, so he had to be dropped. At the eleventh hour he relented and asked to be included anyway, but by that time we had replaced him. Publishing anthologies is an incredibly expensive business, as I now know to my cost. The 30 contributors to Out of Everywhere will hardly be able to do the week's shopping on what they got from us (Reality Street Editions), and the amount of space allocated to each is less than I would wish, yet the book's production has broken the bank for us. Hopefully, sales income should now start materialising, but of course it will all be ploughed back into producing new books. As for the poets themselves, I hope the selection will serve as a shop window for their own books -- this is not the least function of anthologies. Ken (poetry-related income for 1995: about 330 pounds ($500)) ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 Feb 1996 04:55:55 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ron Silliman Subject: Re: Question: Berrigan/Cage, Cage/Williams Rod, Try posting this to the Cage discussion list (our own Joe Zitt is the moderator). You wrote: > >Does anybody have a copy of the fake interview with Cage that Berrigan did as >it appeared in _Mother_ magazine or >_The National Literary Anthology_? It also appears in _Bean Spasms_ but want >to determine how revised. > >Also, does anybody know anything about the Williams paragraph re Cage's >_First Construction_ that appears in the David Revill biography of Cage? The >source is not given, it is simply refered to as a response to the premeire. >thanks. >--Rod > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 Feb 1996 08:41:15 CST6CDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Hank Lazer Organization: The University of Alabama Subject: Re: roof books, copies, internet etc... Thanks to one and all for the recent comments on book orders for classes. Special thanks to Joe Amato, whose descriptions of using the internet and e-sites for his class have re-directed my thinking about a contemporary (post-1945...) American poetry course I'll be teaching in the fall. Last time I taught the course, we used two "opposed" anthologies--Poulin and Messerli. Very little overlap. (Cf. "teach the conflicts...") And we used several individual books (yes, including small press work). The students (graduate students, some in an MFA program, some in MA/PhD programs) had to construct their own anthology as a final project--also, address issues such as for whom the anthology was being constructed, its imagined uses, costs of publishing the anthology, etc. This next go around, I'm leaning toward using nothing but individual books of poetry with a heavy emphasis on small presses. Joe's remarks show me how exciting an electronic component can and will be. For example, students here tend to be utterly unaware of electronic magazines, including the work of Jake Berry (who is nearby). The Electronic Poetry Center will be a crucial browsing site for the class. Thanks again to Joe and others for you unwitting assistance. Hank Lazer ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 Feb 1996 09:49:16 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Pierre Joris Subject: PEN News In-Reply-To: <960216153310_424336016@emout10.mail.aol.com> Here two items from Pen's IPEX news letter, of interest to this list: MIDDLE EAST IRAN: PROTESTS MARK SEVENTH ANNIVERSARY OF FATWA AGAINST RUSHDIE PEN American Center marked the seventh anniversary of the issuing of a fatwa, or death edict, against "Satanic Verses" author Salman Rushdie "and all those (including U.S. citizens) associated with the publication of his book, `The Satanic Verses'" by sending a letter to United States President Bill Clinton. The 14 February letter asked Clinton to renew efforts to bring pressure to bear on Iran to retract this threat, and read in part, "As you know, the EU [European Union] Troika has been working on the issue through a Critical Dialogue with Iran. However, this initiative has yet to yield concrete results. Despite some conciliatory words from lower-ranking Iranian officials last year, the Iranian government has persisted in its refusal to gainsay the fatwa. When asked to provide a written undertaking to refrain from all acts of international terrorism, it demurred. Indeed, Javad Kajouyen Fini, the new Iranian Charge d'Affaires to Norway (a country where Rushdie's publisher narrowly avoided a 1993 assassination attempt) has recently stated that the fatwa remains in effect." "While we deeply appreciate your past support for Mr. Rushdie," the letter continues, "we now ask that fresh mechanisms for exerting influence over Iran on this issue be explored. We note that Iran is in a period of political transition, with both parliamentary and presidential elections due to take place this year. Opportunities for reiterating the U.S. position on this issue will no doubt present themselves and we trust the U.S. will use every occasion, whether in private or in public, to endeavour to persuade Iran that it must publicly renounce its policy of pursuing its ends through threats and terrorist actions before it can be seen as a responsible member of the community of nations." According to ARTICLE 19 (A19), the Iranian government, in issuing the fatwa, "sought to suppress a book and to silence its author. These intentions have been thwarted by the collective efforts of many thousands of individuals and organizations which include writers, booksellers, the International Rushdie Defence Committee and its network of national committees, and not least by the author himself. `The Satanic Verses' has not been suppressed and, as the publication of a new novel clearly demonstrates, the author has not been silenced." "This is not a story of fear and failure", claims Salman Rushdie, "but of successful resistance." NORTH AMERICA UNITED STATES: HRW JOINS LAWSUIT AFTER TELCOM BILL SIGNED Shortly after President Clinton signed into law a new telecommunications bill on 8 February, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), acting on behalf of 20 individuals and organizations, including Human Rights Watch (HRW), filed papers in federal District Court in Philadelphia. On 9 February, HRW released a statement explaining that they joined the lawsuit because they have "opposed this legislation since its inception -- not only as a violation of the First Amendment, which is asserted in our lawsuit, but as a violation of international legal safeguards, such as the guarantee in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights of the right "to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers ... through any media." The statement adds that "(HRW) joined this litigation not only because we oppose the Communications Decency Act in principle, but because, like the other plaintiffs, we are concerned that it could have a direct and damaging impact on our work to expose the most serious violations of human rights, such as sexual abuse and sexual torture." Adding that, "If, each time we publish our reports or refer students to them, we must now assess the potential risk of criminal prosecution, the only people who will benefit are those who commit the terrible human rights abuses we expose. The people who will suffer are the victims of human rights abuse, who rely on our capacity to mobilize public outrage for their prevention and remedy." An affidavit filed in support of ACLU by Dinah PoKempner, Acting General Counsel for HRW, says in part: "I am concerned that the words `patently offensive' or `indecent' as used in the statute lack a definite scope and are inherently subjective. I believe that graphic descriptions of sexual and violent abuse in HRW reports, as well as explicit online discussions of sex and violence among investigators, office staff, volunteers, and witnesses through e-mail or on listservs or newsgroups may be considered `patently offensive' or `indecent'. Were HRW to eliminate such references in our on-line communications, it would severely compromise our ability to expose human rights abuses around the world. If our staff and volunteers had to self-censor their on-line communications, I am concerned that the reliability, quality, and impact of discussions, reports, and eyewitness accounts would be greatly reduced." The ACLU suit argues that provisions of the Communications Decency Act of the Telecommunications Reform Act of 1996 are unconstitutional because they will criminalize expression that is protected by the First Amendment. "Nothing less than the future of free expression is at stake here," said Ira Glasser, ACLU Executive Director. "By passing this legislation, Congress has misunderstood a promising new medium and has, once again, turned its back on the First Amendment." ** ** ** ======================================================================= Pierre Joris | "Form fascinates when one no longer has the force Dept. of English | to understand force from within itself. That SUNY Albany | is, to create." -- Jacques Derrida Albany NY 12222 | tel&fax:(518) 426 0433 | "Poetry is the promise of a language." email: | -- Friedrich Holderlin joris@cnsunix.albany.edu| ======================================================================= ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 Feb 1996 10:07:13 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Wallace Subject: legacies Dear Christopher Beach: Thanks for your useful comments--my first response would be that the notion that there must be one "main inheritor" group of a poetic tradition or set of practices simply won't really hold water--the influence of language writing, say, has permeated a number of contexts in a number of ways. I think the Apex of the M magazine has perhaps revealed the most directly Oedipal relation to language writing--personally they know each other well, the Apex poets are younger, and I think they've tried too hard to "reject the parents" in a way that doesn't really work--a return to the notion of poetry as unproblematically (although complexly) accessing the "spiritual" doesn't really wash for me. (Apex's position is more complex than this, but they've written their own manifestos and I dont need to rewrite them). I respect Apex for putting their finger on a key problem, and being brave enough to speak up, but I think their answers miss the boat. I, personally, don't share their argument that language writing has been of theoretical significance but has not produced any poetry of value. I think such a position is rather painfully mistaken, and has been one of the reasons that they've received as much flak as they have. But assuming that language poetry has had not only a significant influence, but a hugely overwhelming one for poets of my own context (a context I'll leave loosely defined, because it is), the question becomes how to respond to that influence without taking any of the two more typical 20th century paths--i.e., complete acceptance or complete rejection. One answer for me has been to extend some of the theoretical implications of language writing into poetic arenas where it had not been extended before--I'm interested in rewritings of lyric poetry, say, or various postlanguage New York School conjunctions. And there are a huge variety of others being worked out by other people like Juliana Spahr, Steve Evans, Charles Borkhuis and many many more. Response for my own project has been complex--one language writer who I greatly respect has called this project "conservative," but when I ask him who constitutes "non-conservative," it turns out to be only those poets whose writing he believes looks most like his own, i.e. the only non-conservative writers are language writers and those who he believes imitate them, narrowly defined. Some writers of my own generation think I cow-tow too much to language writing--that is, that I don't reject them enough. Such responses are not really a problem for me--for me, they simply show how complex (and emotional) the issue of influence is, although I have to admit that sometimes I wish that a lot of people didn't feel so defensive about being influenced, or for that matter about being an influence. As to who's a language writer or not, that argument seems a little done-to-death to me at this point--clearly there's no cut-and-dried litmus test, but various degrees of interaction. I've not yet thought of Lyn Heijinian as transcendental (make a case, I'll listen) but I certainly know that Lew Daly, for instance, has made a case for Susan Howe as such. I don't think he's right about that, really, although there is more evidence of it in her work than is sometimes recognized. mark wallace ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 Feb 1996 10:18:47 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jim Pangborn Organization: University at Buffalo Subject: Re: Charles Alexander, John Milton, & 24 Hours of Democracy "Christopher L. Filkins" promises > (a brownie to anyone who can tell me what chronotope means and where it > comes from) The term was coined by M. M. Bakhtin, also spelt Baxtin, to refer to the way matters of time and space interrelate in novelistic representations-- their "intrinsic connectedness." The concept functions to produce "formally constitutive categor[ies] of literature," meaning that he uses it to generate categories of novels in a manner that points up formal structures but doesn't get too airily abstract or ahistorical about it. It can be a way, for example, of summing up and explaining formal differences between _Joseph Andrews_, a "road novel," and _The Castle of Otranto_, etc. See Bakhtin's _The Dialogic Imagination_, U Texas P 1981. --JimP ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 Feb 1996 10:08:43 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry Gould Subject: M & Ms On the place & influence of language poetry there's an interesting if maybe tangential essay by Mikhail Epstein in "Third Wave", the anthology of contemporary russian poetry (I think edited in part by Lyn Hejinian?). Epstein compares what he sees as 3 main trends in late 20th cent russian poetry with three streams from the early part of the century - Futurism, Symbolism & Acmeism & finds some parallels. & there do seem to be some similarities between the "word as such" in Russian futurism (esp. Khlebnikov) & language poetry. Also, he gets into this issue of the "transcendental" since one contemporary Russian strain seems to emphasize a kind of multilayered, symbolist & in some cases "spiritual" perception. He locates a middle stream, between the two others [i.e. a kind of dada satirical futurism on the one hand and a transcendentalism on the other] - which he relates to Acmeism - which foregrounds the rhetorical/logical choices of the poet. [I've probably muddled this some - don't have the book in front of me.] - Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 Feb 1996 10:34:28 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Bernstein Subject: Premonitions anthology (fwd) ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Fri, 16 Feb 1996 17:23:08 -0500 (EST) From: Kaya ---------------------------------------------------------------------- PREMONITIONS: The Kaya Anthology of New Asian North American Poetry edited by Walter K. Lew The most comprehensive anthology of Asian North American poetry to date, Premonitions gathers work ranging from cyberpunk meditations and Buddhist odes to L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E-influenced and neo-Orientalist writingQand juxtaposes them in ways that both echo and subvert categories of theme, poetics, and identity. Video and multimedia texts, pidgin poetry, queer writing, and Canadian open-field compositions further broaden the scope of this ground-breaking collection. The 73 contributors include veteran authors like Jessica Hagedorn, Lawson Fusao Inada, Trinh T. Minh-ha, Fred Wah, Kimiko Hahn, Arthur Sze, and John Yau, as well as such "premonitory" new poets as R. Zamora Linmark, Barry Masuda, Evelyn Lau, Amitava Kumar, and an emerging generation of Vietnamese and Korean American poets. Also featured are previously unpublished poems by the late Frances Chung, Roy Kiyooka, and Theresa Hak Kyung Cha. SOME PRAISE FOR PREMONITIONS: "An exquisite artifact of activist experimentalism, theoretically smart and so beautiful it hurts, Premonitions promises to be a landmark in American letters for many years to come." --Maria Damon, University of Minnesota "When you turn this smokin' tome aloose, you may not be able to get the poetic license plate number, but you will definitely know it was felony hit-and-run." --Wanda Coleman, Author of Hand Dance "An impressive collection distinguished by its variety and sweep. By turns entertaining, exciting, troubling, it is always provocative. A major contribution." --David Palumbo-liu, Stanford University "Up to recently, Asian American literary anthologies have served to canonize authors, works, tastes, and ideas. Premonitions is different. From conception to layout, it explodes impulses to map centers and margins of Asian American poetry. Premonitions gives us a brilliant variety of poetry and poets who together show, we are all this and more." --Stephen Sumida, University of Michigan, Author of And the View from the Shore: Literary Traditions of Hawaii "Demonstrating the infinite range of possibilities overlooked by the too easily applied label of 'multicultural'...this collection steeps the reader in alternative histories and approaches to language and tells stories seldom--if ever--heard. Recommended for most poetry collections." --Library Journal KAYA PRODUCTION Paperback ISBN 1-885030-14-2 $22.95 US Clothbound ISBN 1-885030-13-4 $44.95 US Paperback and Clothbound editions, 6 x 9 in, 595 pgs, 36 b& w. World Rights. Poetry. CONTRIBUTORS TO PREMONITIONS: Maria Luisa B. Aguilar-Carino Meena Alexander Agha Shahid Ali Shirley Ancheta Theresa Hak Kyung Cha Juliette Chen Justin Chin Marilyn Chin Eric Chock Ann Choi Janet M. Choi Jean Hyung Yul Chu Frances Chung Josephine Foo Sesshu Foster Vince Gotera Jessica Hagedorn Kimiko Hahn Patricia Y. Ikeda Lawson Fusao Inada Michael Ishii Jaime Jacinto Myung Mi Kim Willyce Kim Roy Kiyooka Joy Kogawa Ann M. Kong Juliet Kono Amitava Kumar Mina Kumar Robert S. Kuwada Christian Langworthy Evelyn Lau Carolyn Lei-lanilau Russell Leong Ho Hon Leung Walter K. Lew Shirley Geok-lin Lim Tan Lin R. Zamora Linmark Stephen Shu-ning Liu Timothy Liu Martin F. Manalansan, IV Barry Masuda Roy Miki David Mura Dwight Okita Richard Oyama Gloria Toyun Park Celine Salazar-Parrenas Sung Rno Al Robles Thelma Seto Gerry Shikatani Luis Syquia Arthur Sze Ronald Phillip Tanaka Andrew Tang Barbara Tran Trinh T. Minh-ha Fred Wah Wang Ping Yun Wang Koon Woon Traise Yamamoto Lois-Ann Yamanaka Karen Tei Yamashita John Yau Jean Yoon Wahn Yoon cyn. zarco Ali Zarrin ------------------------------------------ Kaya Production 8 Harrison Street, Suite 3 New York, NY 10013 (212) 966-4798 / 966-3987 fax Reach Julie Koo directly at jskoo@panix.com Reach Sunyoung Lee directly at slee@nyo.com ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 Feb 1996 11:53:20 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Eryque Gleason Subject: Re: PEN News About a month ago I happened to be in the car while NPR played an interview with Rushdie. In answering a question, he said "I don't think that a novel should be *too* polemical." ?! Eryque ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 Feb 1996 09:43:03 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Christopher J. Beach" Subject: Re: legacies In-Reply-To: <01I1GL01AST48YA49U@cnsvax.albany.edu> Chris S.--I like McGann's formulation, as a starting point anyway. I'd be interested in knowing what Hejinian and other "Language-oriented" poets think about the role of "inspiration" in their work (this might be a way of finding common ground between practices of L-poets and M-poets). I think there are still ways of thinking about inspiration in various ways that are non-romantic (at least in the strictest sense), ie. Spicer's lowghost or Antin's improvisational "talks." I think Olson and Duncan are of great importance to L-poetry, and both are very much poets of "inspiration" (and, certainly in Duncan's case, mystical). I find that strain in the interstices of a lot of Language writing as well. C Beach On Wed, 21 Feb 1996, Chris Stroffolino wrote: > Dear Christopher Beach--- > interesting points about where these lines blur and/or mesh, or simply > cease to exist.... > When you ask about poets like Heijinian and the accuracy of calling > them "non-transcendental", I am reminded of the way Jerome McGann > tries to dance the question--referring to Heijinian and other L poets > (even perhaps Kathy Acker!) as examples of what he calls > "a nonmystical and nonromantic theory of poetry-as-inspiration." > in BLACK RIDERS. I wonder what the writers in question would say about > that......chris s. > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 Feb 1996 09:54:54 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Christopher J. Beach" Subject: Re: legacies In-Reply-To: Dear Mark: Thanks for the very interesting reply to my query. As one who has thought quite long and hard about questions of poetic influence (altho not a poet myself), I appreciate your own thinking about these issues. As to the question of defining who's a language poet and who's not, I ask it only in the context of getting straight the M-poets' (to me) overly systematic rejection of Language, without a clear definition of exactly what that means. (Or, even more vaguely, the rejection of the "contemporary avant-garde," a term that covers a lot of ground). I'm not sure if I can mount a good defense of Hejinian as a "transcendental" poet, but I am about to teach her in my seminar, so I should have a better idea after that. I think Daly is right about Howe as well. "Transcendental" does not have to mean unrigorous or ideologically naive. I mean transcendental in the sense of making space for the irrational, for the "poetic," whatever that is. I'm not sure if it is exactly "religious," but "meditational," perhaps? C Beach On Wed, 21 Feb 1996, Mark Wallace wrote: > Dear Christopher Beach: > > Thanks for your useful comments--my first response would be that > the notion that there must be one "main inheritor" group of a poetic > tradition or set of practices simply won't really hold water--the > influence of language writing, say, has permeated a number of contexts in > a number of ways. I think the Apex of the M magazine has perhaps revealed > the most directly Oedipal relation to language writing--personally they > know each other well, the Apex poets are younger, and I think they've > tried too hard to "reject the parents" in a way that doesn't really > work--a return to the notion of poetry as unproblematically > (although complexly) accessing the > "spiritual" doesn't really wash for me. (Apex's position is more complex > than this, but they've written their own manifestos and I dont need to > rewrite them). I respect Apex for putting their finger on a key problem, > and being brave enough to speak up, but I think their answers miss the boat. > > I, personally, don't share their argument that language writing has been > of theoretical significance but has not produced any poetry of value. I > think such a position is rather painfully mistaken, and has been one of > the reasons that they've received as much flak as they have. But assuming > that language poetry has had not only a significant influence, but a > hugely overwhelming one for poets of my own context (a context I'll leave > loosely defined, because it is), the question becomes how to respond to > that influence without taking any of the two more typical 20th century > paths--i.e., complete acceptance or complete rejection. One answer for me > has been to extend some of the theoretical implications of language > writing into poetic arenas where it had not been extended before--I'm > interested in rewritings of lyric poetry, say, or various postlanguage > New York School conjunctions. And there are a huge variety of others > being worked out by other people like Juliana Spahr, Steve Evans, Charles > Borkhuis and many many more. Response for my own project has > been complex--one language writer who I greatly respect has called this > project "conservative," but when I ask him who constitutes > "non-conservative," it turns out to be only those poets whose writing he > believes looks most like his own, i.e. the only non-conservative writers > are language writers and those who he believes imitate them, narrowly > defined. Some writers of my own generation > think I cow-tow too much to language writing--that is, that I don't > reject them enough. Such responses are not really a problem for me--for > me, they simply show how complex (and emotional) the issue of influence is, > although I have to admit that sometimes I wish that a lot of people > didn't feel so defensive about being influenced, or for that matter about > being an influence. > > As to who's a language writer or not, that argument seems a > little done-to-death to me at this point--clearly there's no > cut-and-dried litmus test, but various degrees of interaction. I've not > yet thought of Lyn Heijinian as transcendental (make a case, I'll listen) > but I certainly know that Lew Daly, for instance, has made a case for Susan > Howe as such. I don't think he's right about that, really, although > there is more evidence of it in her work than is sometimes recognized. > > mark wallace > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 Feb 1996 13:00:01 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Re: legacies Dear Chris Beach-- So I'm looking around at language--I mean the "social landscape" of language. It's kinda soggy today (late feb. "thaw"). But there's all this detritus jutting its head out from melting piles of snow. There's the word "inspiration" and there's the word "romantic." Funny how people who like the word "ideology" are willing to at least be seen hanging around the word "inspiration" why the word "romantic" sits there as if it is "Hitler" or "A" or "The" back in the days before zukofsky and stein.... Actually, I won't say "Hitler". I could say "Buchanan"--- Another thing is---why is the word transcendence and romantic worse than the word OEDIPAL? Talk about mystification. Two Apex editors are women. Oedipal women. Freud as allegedly "secular scientist." Yeah, right. Romantic bias all along, underneath "it all" but embarrassed by it. It isn't that ROMANTIC is "better", but it is interesting to see what words we scapegoat. pomophobically yours, chris s ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 Feb 1996 13:12:13 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Re: legacies Speaking of OEDIPAL--- I notice that "our own" (as ron would say) Shaunanne tanguy has (sorry if i screwed the spelling) a panel on "WHERE HAVE ALL THE FATHERS GONE?"--that she's trying to put together for the MLA... (hope you don't mind me outing you on this ST) and when I read the description all I could think about was THE ABSENT FATHER IN DUMBO THE ABSENT FATHER IN DUMBO I really don't know much contemporary fiction without fathers... Is this REALLY a trend?-----cs ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 Feb 1996 10:54:23 PST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jerry Rothenberg Subject: Millennium Celebration A note to anybody in the L.A. area, that on Friday the 23rd of February, we (Jerome Rothenberg & Pierre Joris) will be doing a reading at Beyond Baroque in celebration of POEMS FOR THE MILLENNIUM. The time isn't in front of us at the moment but must surely be 7:30 or 8:00 p.m. Also for friends & neighbors in San Diego, Pierre reads this afternoon at CRCA (Matthews 408) @ UCSD, 4:30 P.m. to be followed by a party at JR's place. And on Sunday 3:00 p.m. at the Dr. Seuss Room (named for the favorite San Diego poet) of the Giesel Library (named for the same favorite poet), there will be a celebration & performance for MILLENNIUM, with the editors and Rae Armantrout, Michael Davidson, George Lewis (on trombone), Tom Raworth, and Quincy Troupe. (Refreshments follow.) Anyway ... P & J ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 Feb 1996 14:06:00 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kenneth Sherwood Subject: transcending L or M Chris: The Bloomian pall hangs heavily on us all. It's difficult to separate claims of influence motivated by historical/political context from formal influences supported or betrayed in the work. >"Transcendental" does not have to mean unrigorous or ideologically >naive. I mean transcendental in the sense of making space >for the irrational, for the "poetic," whatever that is. I'm not sure if >it is exactly "religious," but "meditational," perhaps? While its easy enough to see M-transcendence or Emersonian transcendence as ideologies in themselves, both seem to want to claim some kind of escape from the ideological condition of writing. So "M" manifests "One of our primary concerns is to find a way in which langauge must ultimately yield tothe dangerous life-force in memory and hope", posing a space for the irrational/ecstatic that is "beyond." Does the work of Howe, to get particular, orient itself towards this "beyond" or does it aim to make a space within itself for the irrational/ecstatic voice? And if we take LANG Po as any sort of historical moment--1970s experimental american--then it makes little sense to exclude poets like Howe or Hejinian (or as earlier Bernadette Mayer). I think it's only when one's using L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E as a bumper to push off/away from that the narrow caricature becomes useful. KS ____________________________________________________________________________ Kenneth Sherwood | Dept English v001pxfu@ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu | 618 Clemens Hall sherwood@acsu.buffalo.edu | SUNY @ Buffalo |_______Buffalo, NY 14214___________ RIF/T mail: e-poetry@ubvm.cc.buffalo.edu Electronic Poetry Center (Web address): http://writing.upenn.edu/epc _____________________________________________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 Feb 1996 14:28:56 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rod Smith Subject: Re: legacies (Lyn & M) As Mr Stroffolino has used the term "pompophobically" I'd like to assert that I find the conflation of the term 'M poets' with the or a 'generation' schizotypical, & assert that as these labels go, since I'll be having an O Book soon I'd much prefer to skip down the alph a bit & beknownst as an O poet thankyou. Also, Christopher Beach wrote re Lyn H.: "I mean transcendental in the sense of making space for the irrational, for the "poetic," whatever that is. I'm not sure ifit is exactly "religious," but "meditational," perhaps?" Can certainly see the meditational in Lyn, & lines of hers like "This irritation changes life into a sequence of time lapses" or "Solicitude had for several days now developed a theory, a / polemic / I have not isolated the active element of my medium -- my / medium is mediation / Aesthetic impression swimming clockwise / the eyes and cheeks of hate / An angel's violent ways" (from _Oxata pg 51) -- Now, there's an angel in there, but it's violent in a situation where "mediation" is the "medium" -- I would say, off-the-cuffily (beat that one c.s.) -- that there seems to be an interest, at times, in a _language of transcendence_ in Lyn's work but no real belief (or at least a very strong distrust) in it as an experience outside of language. Kind of like Heidegger's "throwness" but the language-ball getting caught by Wittgenstein. Hank, is L.H. still down there, maybe she'd like to chime in on this. . . --Rod ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 Feb 1996 14:26:46 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry Gould Subject: re : beyond L or M On ideology & "the beyond" in writing, shucks, can I recommend another book, gang? Don't shoot me. It's "Dividing Muse", by Sanford Budick. It's about Milton. Milt, remember, was attacked by Eliot & others before him in a characterization that made him sound almost like a Language poet: his imagery was nonvisual, self-negating, returning into itself in pure rhetorical verbiage. Budick describes a theological tradition dating back to Philo, carried on through Bonaventure in the Middle Ages, and brought to the fore during 1600s Puritanism & Ramistic logic, a tradition he finds in Milton. Philo opposed Heraclitus' pure binary cosmos - yin/yang in constant opposition, with a Biblical cosmology. Philo is so close to Heraclitus because he also characterizes the created world as consisting of defined binary opposites; but the universal opposites are both created and RECONCILED by a third element - the dividing Logos, the sharp sword which maintains all things in opposition and unites them. ("Divide" can mean both split & share). The logos, of course proceeds from the transcendent ground which precedes the created cosmos. What Philo objected to in Heraclitus was not simply the unending violence of his cosmos but its totalizing power (there is no "beyond" the lock of nature). In Philo, to repeat, language descends from a "divine" Word which maintains the binary opposites in their integrity while holding them together - a different architectonics. What does this have to do with what we're discussing? Ideology might be characterized as the conscious historical expression of dialectical opposites. Budick suggests a Milton & a literary tradition which does not deny dialectics yet maintains a transcendent ground for a poetic "word". The influence of Heraclitus seems pretty visible in modern & postmodern philosophy. But if deconstruction, for example, posits an unbridgeable gap between sign and referent, Philo counters with a cosmology acknowledging the same binary divide. Ergo, writing DOES reflect reality, i.e. deconstruction contradicts itself. IF the philosophical ground of language poetry rests in the acceptance of the deconstructive "gap" (and I'm not saying it does - I don't know!) - then Budick has sketched out a tradition of poetics which might relate to M & beyond. - Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 Feb 1996 13:28:00 PST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steve Carll Subject: Re: re : beyond L or M "The geranium in the urn became startlingly visible and, displayed among its leaves, he could see, without wishing it, that old, that obvious distinction between the two classes of men; on the one hand the steady goers of superhuman strength who, plodding and persevering, repeat the whole alphabet in order, twenty-six letters in all, from start to finish; on the other the gifted, the inspired who, miraculously, lump all the letters together in one flash--the way of genius. He had not genius; he laid no claim to that: but he had, or might have had, the power to repeat every letter of the alphabet from A to Z accurately in order. Meanwhile, he stuck at Q. On, then, to R." --Virginia Woolf, _To The Lighthouse_ ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 Feb 1996 16:47:50 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: Rrrr: beyond L or M Drat! I wadded it into the recycle bin, the photocopy of the article from the Times on the correlation between clear prose and the onset of Alzheimer's. Jordan ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 Feb 1996 17:30:39 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: Regaled with ecstasies Jackson Mac Low (hello Jackson) once told me that it was really stretching things to call him a Language Poet since his publishing and performing activities preceded L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E magazine by a few decades. I think what Messrs Wallace Stroffolino and Beach are talking about--torch-passing--has more to do with that great subject of literature, hubris, than with how writing has changed in the last five years. And Mark, I know you know I was kidding. The subject of the study of the recent present should not be the mediation of power from one group to another but how to remain alert, how to recognize what's going on in time. Later, Jd ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 Feb 1996 17:45:46 -0500 Reply-To: Robert Drake Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Robert Drake Subject: Re: Rrrr: beyond L or M >Drat! I wadded it into the recycle bin, the photocopy of the article from >the Times on the correlation between clear prose and the onset of >Alzheimer's. "Diaries Used to Predict Disease... In a study based on the diaries of young women about to join an order of nuns, researchers reported that the women's writing styles when they were in their twenties predicted with uncanny accuracy which of them would be severely demented with Alzheimer's disease six decades later. The nuns whose sentences were gramatically complex and packed with ideas when they were in their twenties remained sharp of mind when they were in their eighties. In contrast, almost all those whose sentences were simple and comparatively devoid of complex grammatical constructions were demented six decades later." read aloud at our breakfast table this morning... lbd ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 22 Feb 1996 12:59:03 +1300 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Wystan Curnow Organization: English Dept. - Univ. of Auckland Subject: Re: challenges: re: Joe's post(long) Comments: To: AP201070@BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU Dear Henry, When I read Joe's post--which I've since deleted apparently--I thought he was asking a somewhat different question. Or, rather, assuming that Blasing's position/critical practice implied a poetics. Doesn't it? Like the rest I ain't read the book either, so your quotation opened a small window. I have to say it looks a pretty ugly out there. Writers like that neither know what they are saying nor care much. They write as if poets were stupid--certainly not as bright as they are. They are so sure of the intelligence they imagine belongs to the institutional discourse they use, of that is its 'naturalness', that they are perhaps unlikely to write otherwise. 'The prevailing DOGMA that the specialness of poetic language lies in the inseparability of its form and content then appears to be an historically specific IDEOLOGY, a particular CONVENTION of getting from the CONVENTIONALITY of the signifier to intentional meanings.' Wha..? DOGMA=IDEOLOGY=CONVENTION????? I should read this book? Wystan ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 Feb 1996 16:09:37 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: William Howard Subject: Re: Milton (on freedom of the press) & Bakhtin's "chronotope" In-Reply-To: Yes, *Areopagitica* is a good place to begin reading Milton for his views on censorship; but--perhaps you're already aware of this--DON'T FORGET to read his later prose tracts as well: (see especially *Eikonoklastes* and *The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates*). During the Commonwealth's brief moment in British history, Milton held the official position of Secretary of Foreign Tongues (i.e. the State Censor) and also defended Charles's execution. So, what's the moral of (t)his story? A: Freedom (of expression) within limits? B: Conditions of the publishable and of the sayable? C: The return of the repressed? As Susan Howe suggests in her marvelous book, *a bibliography of the king's book; or, eikon basilike*, (and as I will here assert), a consideration of such an ethical question might first begin with the given-ness of the texts themselves: "to the reader the work" In other words, one ought to begin by looking at the sheer differences, the discontinuities between texts, and, in turn, at the specific social and personal predicaments which such differences bespeak. On Bakhtin's "chronotope", see also *The Culture of Literacy* by Wlad Godzich. Godzich has some very useful and provocative thoughts (in the last two chapters) about reading Bakhtin's formulation of the "chronotope" in relation to his own notion of "discursive creativity." Best wishes, W. Scott Howard whow@u.washington.edu ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 22 Feb 1996 13:56:28 +1300 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Wystan Curnow Organization: English Dept. - Univ. of Auckland Subject: Re: We all break for laokoon Comments: To: jdavis@PANIX.COM Jordan, I'm working on poetry and wall climbing in New Zealand. This is not a thing you have in the us of A, i beleive, but in this sports mad country of mine wall climbing has developed a considerable following. Since it began to be televised there's been talk of professionalising it like rigby and league. Poet wall climbers (and their'drivers'--they're the people who assist the climbers in their endeavours) are a standard feature of readings in Auckland now. Maybe there's a place for them on the bill of some of your 'slams' that I hear about. Incidentally, do your slams include bungy jumpers? Wystan ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 22 Feb 1996 14:08:45 +1300 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Wystan Curnow Organization: English Dept. - Univ. of Auckland Subject: Re: We all break for laokoon Comments: To: chax@MTN.ORG Dear Charles, Yep, yep, Siah Armijani. I see his stuff around. I'm not too impressed with his taste in poetry though he makes quite a play with it in an art world which usually doesn't know the difference. Am I being unfair, are there any fans of his out there? What interested me was the sculptural side or installation side, 'the reading room'. So, that's my topic for you, Jordan, and the list: 'poetry and the reading room' What about it? Wystan ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 22 Feb 1996 14:29:46 +1300 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Wystan Curnow Organization: English Dept. - Univ. of Auckland Subject: Re: Poetry & Sculpture, etc. Comments: To: sondheim@PANIX.COM Dear Alan, I never saw Lust-Mord so maybe I'm wrong, but I thought she began to lose it with Laments, i.e. when she starting writing poetry, least that is my shorthand for the change in her texts that brought on a change in the weather of my response o. Wystan ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 Feb 1996 18:03:18 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Andrew Robert Maxwell Subject: Re: 103d Street In-Reply-To: <01I1GLT6G4HE8YA49U@cnsvax.albany.edu> From a funiculus faraway... The a-1 original Charles Wright lives in Cerritos with his wife and child, still makes and produces some purdy bahdarse stellar fungk, and has even helped arch-rivy Bill Withers make a record (pretty generous after the fella goes and steals the rhythm section). Warner released a "Best-of" about a year or so ago. Word is Mr. Wright may release a single this year with "some of the bigger rap names around." Until then, he is working on his autobiography, _The Uphill Climb of Water_, as well as a study of racism in the news media. Who needs Nike when you can express yourself? augusta ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 Feb 1996 18:21:13 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Dan Raphael Dlugonski Subject: Species of Abandoned Light Comments: cc: NinthLab@aol.com, TOMT@ch1.ch.pdx.edu, JASFOLEY@aol.com, iarguell@library.berkeley.edu Just finished an excellent and energizing book of poetry, Species of Abandoned Light, by Jake Berry (Pantagraph Press). Berry combines several streams of language/consciousness, to tap into the archetypal time-flow of language-energy. I think perhaps Berry and some other poets like Ivan Arguelles and Sheila Murphy are an interweaving of LANGUAGE and Black Mountain poetry (particularly that of Duncan). Don't know if there's a term for what these folks et al are doing. Appreciate any reactions, suggestions of other related writers. Some of the people involved with Cyanosis (a magazine that's only had two issues a couple years apart, but is quite powerful in various ways.), for example, or with Talisman magazine. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 Feb 1996 20:40:13 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: MAXINE CHERNOFF Subject: Re: Rrrr: beyond L or M In-Reply-To: "Alzheimer's is a thinking disease," said David Snowden, associate professor of preventative medicine at the University of Kentucky. "It seems plausible that if you can develop your thinking ability, you might be protected against the thinking diseases later on." "The way you use words reflects a fundamental way you do your thinking," he said. "Language may be a marker of general mental ability." In what is being called "the nun study," 93 nuns now in their 80s had their current mental abilities judged against a biographical essay they wrote as initiates (around age 22). Ninety percent of those now suffering from Alzheimer's wrote their essays in a comparatively simple style. Those whose writing style showed complexity, on the other hand, tended not to contract the disease. The New York Times article of yesterday suggested that the degeneration we call Alzheimer's may begin early in life; it may also be diagnosed with a writing sample. Complexity of style is therefore a sign of mental health. By this logic, language poets are more mentally healthy than some other poets. Paul Hoover On Wed, 21 Feb 1996, Jordan Davis wrote: > Drat! I wadded it into the recycle bin, the photocopy of the article from > the Times on the correlation between clear prose and the onset of > Alzheimer's. > Jordan > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 Feb 1996 23:26:06 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Alexander Subject: Re: We all break for laokoon >Dear Charles, > Yep, yep, Siah Armijani. I see his stuff around. I'm not too >impressed with his taste in poetry though he makes quite a play with it >in an art world which usually doesn't know the difference. Am I being >unfair, are there any fans of his out there? What interested me was the >sculptural side or installation side, 'the reading room'. So, that's my >topic for you, Jordan, and the list: 'poetry and the reading room' What >about it? > Wystan No, Wystan -- can't say I'm an Armijani fan. He does seem to be something of a local hero around here, what with the walker art center in his corner. I understand they are mounting some kind of major exhibition of his work (can't show the bridges, but other works & sketches, I suppose, and prints) in a year or so. And now he's doing a bridge for the Olympics in Atlanta. And for a lot of sculptural book arts works, language is a gesture, or a rather simple one-line insight, more than a "reading room." On the other hand, I am still committed to the space of the book, taken conventionally or experimentally (inventing possible forms for books), as "reading room." But in the case of the latter kinds of books, the room must be read as much as the text. charles ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 22 Feb 1996 01:54:19 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Re: 103d Street Thank you Andrew Robert Maxwell for the information on Charles Wright. Let us know when the book comes out......chris s. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 22 Feb 1996 01:15:36 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Patrick J Schultz Subject: FW: FEB 29 (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. ------ =_NextPart_000_01BB00BC.6DC50260 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=us-ascii Content-ID: just thought i'd let you guys know that this is going on. Thanks. Pat To whoever may read this, By passing it on to as many people as you can, you are taking part in what may yet become the world's biggest practical joke. The U.S. Government has recently passed an act which enforces censorship on the internet. A group of internet users has now come together to kick back at this oppression, and have a bit of fun at the same time. The aim of this exercise is to re-establish the United States as "The land of the Free", not a fascist state where freedom of speech and thought are curtailed. Communist Russia fell as a result of s uch limits being placed upon the minds of the general populus. On receiving this letter, please pass it on to as many friends or E-mail lists as you can. We predict that if everybody copies the lette r to 5 other addresses, by February 29th 1996, this letter should have reached in excess of 2 million people. That's when the fun begins........ On February 29th, please send the message: Dear Mr. President, Do you remember this: And afterwards enclose the pre-typed copy of the Bill of rights. By sending the letter on the date above, you will contribute to either one huge petition for freedom, or else lead to a crash of the whitehouse server.Send all letters to: President@Whitehouse.gov Remember that solidarity is the key to success !!!!! THE BILL OF RIGHTS Amendment I Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. Amendment II A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed. Amendment III No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law. Amendment IV The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. Amendment V No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation. Amendment VI In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense. Amendment VII In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise reexamined in any court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law. Amendment VIII Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted. Amendment IX The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people. Amendment X The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people. ------------------------------------- ______________________________________________________________ For list info, send a message containing only the word HELP to: fugazi-request@anthrax.ecst.csuchico.edu ------ =_NextPart_000_01BB00BC.6DC50260-- ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 22 Feb 1996 02:56:22 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Sondheim Subject: Re: FW: FEB 29 (fwd) Comments: To: Patrick J Schultz In-Reply-To: I am very much against chain letters on the Net; they create havoc at various sites, and in fact can get users kicked off ISPs. Please do not send them out for any reason. They're trash. Alan ( http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/~spoons/internet_txt.html Images at http://www.cs.unca.edu/~davidson/pix/ ) ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 22 Feb 1996 03:23:52 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ron Silliman Subject: Re: legacies > "Transcendental" does not have to mean unrigorous or >ideologically naive. I mean transcendental in the sense of making space for the irrational, for the "poetic," whatever that is. I'm not sure if it is exactly "religious," but "meditational," perhaps? > >C Beach > How would you describe a poet like Spicer, who certainly has room for the irrational, but who comes fairly close to a space I would describe as Calvinistic athieism. Not exactly transcendental, not exactly meditative. Ron Silliman ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 22 Feb 1996 03:33:25 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ron Silliman Subject: Re: Rrrr: beyond L or M Jordan, > >Drat! I wadded it into the recycle bin, the photocopy of the article from >the Times on the correlation between clear prose and the onset of >Alzheimer's. >Jordan > My wife read it aloud over breakfast. Basically, if you're a nun, there's a predictable correlation between the richness of your linguistic usage and your ability to stave off Alzheimer's. Richness is defined as "ideas per sentence," with a bias toward maximum density of ideas. But as I pointed out to her, this does not explain Oppen in the slightest. All best, Ron (a Z poet) ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 22 Feb 1996 06:45:13 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Sheila E. Murphy" Subject: Re: Rrrr: beyond L or M In what is being called "the nun study," 93 nuns now in their 80s had their current mental abilities judged against a biographical essay they wrote as initiates (around age 22). Ninety percent of those now suffering from Alzheimer's wrote their essays in a comparatively simple style. Those whose writing style showed complexity, on the other hand, tended not to contract the disease. The New York Times article of yesterday suggested that the degeneration we call Alzheimer's may begin early in life; it may also be diagnosed with a writing sample. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Just as an aside, the study referenced doesn't ring true intuitively as so many such studies seem to do. That feeling of "ahh...I suspected as much" just didn't happen here. Those having Alz. I've known most closely were gifted with language, demonstrated complexity in their writing (to the best of what I've known). Therefore, the study perplexes me. A personal note, based upon a situation that has brought incredible pain to me, in the loss we've suffered as a result of the disease. Sheila Murphy ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 22 Feb 1996 09:21:12 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Boughn Subject: Re: legacies In-Reply-To: <199602221123.DAA05340@ix7.ix.netcom.com> from "Ron Silliman" at Feb 22, 96 03:23:52 am > How would you describe a poet like Spicer, who certainly has room for > the irrational, but who comes fairly close to a space I would describe > as Calvinistic athieism. Not exactly transcendental, not exactly > meditative. > > Ron Silliman > In some ways, Spicer seems the reluctant inheritor of Keats' "negative capability" with an attitude. Where the "penetralium of the mystery" is simply what Robin Blaser, in that beautiful essay on Olson's violets, calls "the depth of the world". But with Spicer always grotesquely and painfully funny. God as a big white baseball. Mike mboughn@epas.utoronto.ca ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 22 Feb 1996 10:20:04 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: FUNKHOUSER CHRISTOPH Subject: ESAD by Gerald Burns, p. 8, paragraph 6, EXQUISITE CORPSE, no. 55 , brand new: article titled PEASANT LITERATURE, about translation & influence "This includes a new crop of thinkers, the college folks who think of themselves as Theorists. In this connection the anonymous pamphlets coming out of somewhere (Buffalo?) purporting to be by Edgar Poe -- so far I've seen contemporized versions of the "Letter to B--" and a review of Lew Daly's _Swal- lowing the Scroll_" -- are tremendous good fun, simply from the abutting of that lovely snarling prose against Our Moderns, as if it really were Poe's brand-new fresh response. Even if they weren't well-done it would be funny. But they are well done, and as such are the liveliest possible reminders of what recent US writing lacks, an astringently stylish style. My heart warmed to the two I've seen, I am _refreshed_ by them, because only our best writing survives being embedded as quotes in a Poe-ish matrix, and from the joy at seeing that Poe's approach, his manner of proceeding, is utterly modern -- if anything gains from being applied to current material. The effect is less pastiche than vindication." If you haven't seen any of this Poe yet, go to the DIU archives, at the EPC http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/ezines/diu Poe's critiques & pronouncements begin around issue 20 A recent DIU contains an article on A POETICS OF CRITICISM, which would probably be of interest to those following recent threads 'round here ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 22 Feb 1996 11:47:49 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry Gould Subject: saddled with Blasing Wystan, You said you looked through the Blasing window briefly & it looked cold outside. Well, where I come from when it gets cold we put on our coats & go ice fishing. I don't defend Blasing's particular brand of academic turgidity, but in her case I think there's some substance to it. I don't think poets are required to master or even read such huffaguff; but if they're going to see critical superiority complexes everywhere & separate poets from critics, they might as well hang up their skates. Isn't that something the Langposse has taught us? - Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 22 Feb 1996 09:04:33 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Re: the none study In-Reply-To: <199602220505.AAA20238@listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu> UCLA Library does not yet have the Blasing book, nor is it in any store here -- but I'm gonna get that sucker & read it somehow!!! this makes Blasing's book, at the moment, a transcendent problem for me. curious about the uses of that word "transcendent" here -- it should not really be synonymous with "poetic" or with "inspiration" -- & I suspect folk want to make it so out of a generally positive feeling about those htree words in tandem -- or three words, for that matter maybe in the sense that the poetic often exceeds the "usual limits," but so do most drivers on the freeway, and I don't think that's what's meant by the usage here of late -- what us inspired, poetical materialist types object to is claims to transcendence from other poets who tell us that they are in contact with something "beyond material existence or apart from the universe" or "something beyond the limits of experience and knowledge" -- that is, few poets on the list mean by "transcendence" the logical sense of being an a priori condition; and I get myself in an uproar when confronted with claims that the "poetic" or "inspiration" are something unknowable or apart from experience, especially since this can usually be translated as "I have access to this inaccessible realm and you don't" -- ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 22 Feb 1996 12:00:24 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Eryque Gleason Subject: Re: FW: FEB 29 (fwd) >I am very much against chain letters on the Net; they create havoc at >various sites, and in fact can get users kicked off ISPs. Please do not >send them out for any reason. They're trash. > >Alan Alan, good point, chain letters can get users punished, but this wasn't exactly a chain letter, more of a mass mailing--which i've never known to get anyone in trouble, as long as they choose a fairly responsible distribution, and the content was pretty clean. A distribution like the one in question is no different than anything else we post to the list. I appreciate people passing this information along. This is the most, um...juvenile movement against the CDA I've seen so far, but i think that ultimately it'll be helpful. Eryque ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 22 Feb 1996 12:45:03 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry Gould Subject: Re: the none study Aldon, maybe you can get the Blasing book through interlibrary loan. The only other thing I can suggest is headin up to City Lights & stealing it from Ferlinghetti's loft. He's been consulting it for years. Believe me, the transcendent criminality of such a course of action would be well worth the bus fare. Your comments on the symboliste aspirations behind "transcendence" remind me of Acmeist poet Gumilev's retort to his fellow Russian symbolists: "The Divine Unknown is by definition unknowable." - Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 22 Feb 1996 14:02:21 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Peter Baker Subject: Re: POETICS Digest - 19 Feb 1996 to 20 Feb 1996 In-Reply-To: <199602210505.AAA26051@listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu> In response to the posting about never having seen the entire text of Stein's _Lifting Belly_. I have an edition edited by Rebecca Mark, The Naiad Press PO Box 10543 Tallahassee, FL 32302 ISBN 0-941483-51-7 $8.95 Well worth owning, even for non-book-fetishists. Peter Baker ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 22 Feb 1996 12:05:20 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Christopher J. Beach" Subject: Re: legacies In-Reply-To: <199602221123.DAA05340@ix7.ix.netcom.com> Ron--I'm not sure exactly what "Calvinistic atheism" would be, but I do think that Spicer was working both within and against a transcendental tradition, both back thru poets like Lorca and Rilke, and in dialogue with Duncan and Blaser. The meditative in Spicer would have to do with the poetic process itself, the process of "dictation"--having the furniture in the room and waiting for the signal from outside (from Mars or wherever) to come in and write the poem. C Beach On Thu, 22 Feb 1996, Ron Silliman wrote: > > > How would you describe a poet like Spicer, who certainly has room for > the irrational, but who comes fairly close to a space I would describe > as Calvinistic athieism. Not exactly transcendental, not exactly > meditative. > > Ron Silliman > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 22 Feb 1996 15:48:47 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Larry Price Subject: & Hobbes Ron Silliman asked: "How would you describe a poet like Spicer, who certainly has room for the irrational, but who comes fairly close to a space I would describe as Calvinistic athieism. Not exactly transcendental, not exactly meditative." I think the issue in Spicer has two parts, both having to do with the "afflatus": The first is the relation of the afflator and afflatum to what was a perceived social miasm. That is, the reduction of social scale to that of The Place was one reaction to the perception of The King of May as an aspect of the Big Lie. If the Fix was on, then "running up the back of the old flash" involved not just the age or physical condition of the old flash but possibly and more pointedly his relation to the bosses. That is, the afflatus itself becomes devalued in the comparison. The second is, of course, the SOURCE, hence the stated parallel with the meditative, in that, the answers (ie, God =) come from all over (a big white baseball; the ocean does not mean to be listened to; no big lightless automobile for him--if he is hit, let them show it; sea birds shit on it; etc.). That is, the devaluation of afflatus leads to a social insecurity of space propagating itself in an order of vehicular love objects, a dysfunctionalized intensity organizing context as what NEEDS disjunction in order to be available, the sometimes bad irregular precipice eros can trace outside us. What's puzzling to me is that Calvinist remainder, the by-product. If the investigation of source pushes him to a singleness of purpose if not of response, it's still curious that, as Blaser said of him, he never could forgive the occasion of his own birth. So that version of Orpheus as against the Sophie Tucker version Duncan said he was after. Which is a curious dualism for such an antidualist to get stuck with. Eventually sending up that CHEAP SLEEP OVER THERE flare. lp ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 22 Feb 1996 17:04:25 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "John E. Matthias" Subject: David Jones & Faber Regarding David Jones, Faber and Faber, Poems for the Millennium There are ways to deal with Faber's permissions demands, but one must be tenacious. Back about twenty-five years ago when I edited 23 Modern British Poets I simply paid what they asked. This meant that two Faber poets got about half the permissions budget between them. However, when I was working on David Jones: Man and Poet and Selected Works of David Jones (National Poetry Foundation & University of Wales Press) I found that I could negotiate reductions through people like John Bodley, Rosemary Goad, and even Mavis Pindard, the permissions manager. One must keep at it. In 1992, for example, Bodley wrote that he would "recommend the rights dept to charge reduced rates, since this is in a good cause." I wonder how hard the permissions people at California worked on the problem. David Jones is such a wonderful poet that it's sad to find him missing from yet another context--Poems for the Millennium--that would find him new readers and put his work in the hands of possibly sympathetic readers. His work desperately needs a nudge at the moment. He appears in very few anthologies and, when he does appear, selections are usually inadequate. He is, of course, difficult to antholigize (but then so are about half of the poets in Poems for the Millennium). At any rate, I have found in the past that it is possible to negotiate with Faber. It's not pleasant, but it's possible. It takes a lot of time. The time is well spent, however, if in the end it produces the poems. John Matthias ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 22 Feb 1996 17:53:38 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Re: the none study Aldon raises a good critique of "transcendental" But I'm not so sure that this question of a discourse of the transcendental need in every case mean "I have access to this inaccessible realm and you don't" in a kind of snooty way. Perhaps it is a much of a "nominalist" issue as much as a "realist" one. In the sense that this "you" that the "I" of certain poems may claim its "superior" can be read as something "inside" that speaker as much as outside. To me, poems that may appeal to the "transcendental" are in some ways not so different from a more "radical skepticism" and both modes can be aligned in critiquing the unreflective language of "nature" as a given. Chris S. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 23 Feb 1996 00:54:43 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Wendy Battin Subject: query: book distribution Comments: To: Capl-L I'll be part of a panel on electronic publishing at the AWP Convention in Atlanta this April; I'll be doing a presentation on using the internet to keep books in print, to distribute them despite the economic pressures that are driving small & university presses out of bookstores, etc. (Given all the scares about internet as the death of the book, it seems important to turn attention to the alternate economy the net can sustain.) I've run across a few instances of small presses and bookstores marketing their stock on mailing lists and on the web; I'd like to know more and to make these resources more widely available, and this convention seems like a good start. If you know of major distributors on-line--especially those dealing with small press books--or poetry bookstores, presses, samisdat networks with websites or email addresses, please send them to me, and I'll see that they're distributed as widely as I can manage. I'll get them out at AWP, and I'll post them on the CAPA site as well. Many thanks, Wendy ---------------------------------------------------------------- Wendy Battin wjbat@conncoll.edu wbattin@mit.edu Contemporary American Poetry Archive http://camel.conncoll.edu/library/CAPA/capa.html ---------------------------------------------------------------- ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 22 Feb 1996 21:27:44 -1000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Susan Schultz Subject: TINFISH is coming! In-Reply-To: TINFISH #2 is imminent. Contibutors include: Joe Balaz, Charles Bernstein, Jonathan Brannen, Eric Chock, Alison Georgeson, Richard Hamasaki, Hank Lazer, Carolyn Lei-lanilau, Sheila E. Murphy, redflea, Joan Retallack, Chris Stroffolino, Terese Svoboda, Mark Wallace, Zhou Yaping, Murray Edmond, and many others from Hawai'i, California, New Zealand, Australia, China, and the mainland USA. To get a copy, send $3 to Susan M. Schultz, 1422A Dominis Street, Honolulu, HI 96822. Or, wait a while and look for TINFISH at the Electronic Poetry Center. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 23 Feb 1996 01:11:26 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Stephen Galen Cope Subject: PBS, NPR In light of recent attention given to poetry in public media (the Holman series and LINEbreak come to mind) as well as for obvious other reasons, the following seems well worth our signatures... PBS, NPR (National Public Radio), and the arts are facing major cutbacks in funding. In spite of the efforts of each station to reduce spending costs and streamline their services, the government officials believe that the funding currently going to these programs is too large a portion of funding for something which is seen as "unworthwhile". Currently, taxes from the general public for PBS equal $1.12 per person per year, and the National Endowment for the Arts equals $.64 a year in total. A January 1995 CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll indicated that 76% of Americans wish to keep funding for PBS, third only to national defense and law enforcement as the most valuable programs for federal funding. Each year, the Senate and House Appropriations committees each have 13 subcommittees with jurisdiction over many programs and agencies. Each subcommittee passes its own appropriation bill. The goal each year is to have each bill signed by the beginning of the fiscal year, which is October 1. In the instance of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the bill determines the funding for the next three years. When this issue comes up in 1996, the funding will be determined for fiscal years 1996-1998. The only way that our representatives can be aware of the base of support for PBS and funding for these types of programs is by making our voices heard. Please add your name to this list if you believe in what we stand for, and then forward the list to anyone else you think might want to sign it. This list will be forwarded to the President of the United States, the Vice President of the United States, and Representative Newt Gingrich, who is the instigator of the action to cut funding to these worthwhile programs. If you happen to be the 50th, 100th, 150th, etc. signer of this petition, please forward a copy to wein2688@blue.univnorthco.edu. If that address is inoperative, please use kubi7975@blue.univnorthco.edu. This way we can keep track of the lists and organize them. Forward this to everyone you know, and help us to keep these programs alive. Thank you. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > 1.) Elizabeth Weinert, Greeley, Colorado. > 2.) Robert M. Penn; San Francisco, CA > 3.) Gregory S. Williamson, San Francisco, CA > 4.) John T. Gifford, Boston, MA > 5.) Michael S. McGovern, Sudbury, MA > 6.) Thomas E. Kelleher, Montclair, NJ > 7.) Steven J. Mulroy, Alexandria, VA > 8.) Mark Curtis Raby, Washington, DC > 9.) H. Kimberlie Young, Charlottesville, VA > 10.) Gary L. Sirota, Solana Beach, California, Registered Voter! > 11.) Helge Weissig, Solana Beach, CA > 12.) Rae Ann Bories, La Jolla, CA > 13.) Cecily M. Peterson, Northampton, MA > 14.) Chris Rohmann, Northampton, MA > 15.) Dina Friedman, Northampton, > 16.) Shel Horowitz, Northampton, MA > 17.) Chuck Larkin, Atlanta, Georgia > 18.) Gus Makreas, Millbrae, CA > 19.) Richard Ahrens, San Jose, CA > 20.) Patrick Marion, Cupertino, CA > 21.) Sally Bonsack, Spokane, WA > 22.) Walter Bonsack, Spokane, WA > 23.) Andrea Vine, Mtn. View, CA > 24.) GIna Blus, San Francisco, CA > 25.) Juliet Lamont, Berkeley, CA > 26.) Carter Brooks, San Francisco, CA > 27.) Michael Shantzis, San Francisco, CA > 28.) Heidi Stettner, Berkeley, CA > 29.) Deborah Scherrer, Castro Valley, CA > 30.) Margaret Stehle, Palo Alto, CA > 31.) Kristiana Kincaid, Santa Cruz, CA > 32.) Neal Johnson, Williamsville, IL > 33.) Doris Gitzy, Cedar Rapids, IA > 34.) Andrew Gitzy, New York, NY > 35.) Heather Devitt, New York, NY > 36.) Lloyd P. Pratt, Providence, RI > 37.) Eric Reyes, Providence, RI > 38.) Steven Shum, Riverside, CA > 39.) Eric C. Wat, Los Angeles, CA > 40.) David H. Maruyama, Los Angeles, CA > 41.) Linda Mabalot, Los Angeles, CA > 42.) Tran T. Kim-Trang, Los Angeles, CA > 43.) Daniel Mirer, Brooklyn, NY > 44.) Monica Chau, Los Angeles, CA > 45.) Stacy H. Hoshino, New York, NY > 46.) Clay Debevoise, New York, NY > 47.) Roz Dimon, Ne York, NY > 48.) Heather J. Kelley, Austin, TX > 49.) Doug McNamara, St. Paul, MN 50.) Tim King, Minneapolis, MN 51.) Paul Filiatrault, Minneapolis, MN 52.) Denman Maroney, Monsey NY 53.) Stephen Cope, Santa Cruz, CA ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 23 Feb 1996 08:00:48 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Boughn Subject: transcendence In-Reply-To: from "Aldon L. Nielsen" at Feb 22, 96 09:04:33 am Regarding transcendence, WCW has it straightforwardly as "something they believed was above their heads." Which I think translates in Cavell into "the human restlessness in the ordinary which leads to a beyond or before." Still, having got here, who's going to claim to know where here is? Mike mboughn@epas.utoronto.ca ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 23 Feb 1996 08:52:39 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jonathan A Levin Subject: Re: the none study In-Reply-To: <01I1ITJNJ25K8YAI49@cnsvax.albany.edu> I can't let the transcendentalism dialogue slip away--this being something I think about, well, almost all the time. Here's Emerson, in his great essay on Shakespeare: "A poet is no rattlebrain, saying what comes uppermost, and, because he says every thing, saying, at last, something good. There is nothing whimsical and fantastic in his production, but sweet and sad earnest, freighted with the weightiest convictions, and pointed with the most determined aim which any man or class knows of in his times." The essay does everything it possibly can to demystify Shakespeare's genius, to make it a matter of his sheer unoriginality: "Great genial power, one would almost say, consists in not being original at all; in being altogether receptive; in letting the world do all, and suffering the spirit of the hour to pass unobstructed through the mind." Or, elsewhere in the essay: "Thus, all originality is relative. Every thinker is retrospective." The essay is full of such gems--and it's not at all an "exceptional" essay in the canon. Emerson's Transcendentalism--and its the transcendentalism that haunts many an American writer, including those like Melville and James and Pound who thought they knew better--is always aware of, say, the worldedness of what Emerson called (after a "Mrs. B") "the little beyond." I go on at infinite length about this elswhere--suffice to say (in brief) that I think of pragmatism as a project of making explicit this worlded (Rorty likes to say contingent) transcendentalism. From just a very little beyond-- Jonathan Levin ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 23 Feb 1996 15:07:49 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: R I Caddel Subject: poetry 'n' sculpture Ah - this was a thread a while back and I kept meaning to report on the Bunting Centre's two current commissions: 1. We've commissioned a proposal from Ian Hamilton Finlay for the University's Botanic Gardens: we have the proposal, hope to have the completed piece (a stake of green oak with an inscription cut in it, surrounded by foxgloves) installed later this year. The text is: 6745231 6472513 4675231 ------- 6457321 6543712 5647321 6574312 5673421 6537412 5634721 5367412 3576142 5371624 - Hope I got the spelling right. One of the Cathedral bellringers looked at it and murmured "aaahh! lovely". 2. Predictably, we're commissioning an inscription for Bunting (again, for the Gardens). To be cut in Cumbrian green slate by the David Kindersley workshop, it'll say, you guessed it, "Words! Pens are too light. Take a chisel to write". It's a text which DK had on his wall before we asked him. The various authorities were concerned that it might be seen as an incitement to vandals. This is a very small town... 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 "67452! 6472 513 467 52316. 4573 2 16543 71 25647." x x - Bunting / Finlay x x x xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 23 Feb 1996 07:54:49 PST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jerry Rothenberg Subject: Re: David Jones & Faber What to say further about David Jones, Faber & Faber, and all of that? Or how much time would be needed to break them down -- this in the context of an 800-page book & a permissions budget small enough to make a grown man cry? Be that as it may, a tremendous amount of time was spent -- with letters, faxes, phone calls -- from ourselves & our publishers -- budged them hardly at all. On the other hand, notoriously hard presses (Gallimard, Suhrkamp as examples) came into reasonalbe territory after a couple of exchanges. So what to do -- except, as we did, to keep him present through our commentary and wait for possibly another day. Jerome Rothenberg Pierre Joris ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 23 Feb 1996 10:55:58 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Edward Foster Subject: Re: Special Delivery big time reading, hey, WOW! this sunday, May 25th, at Biblios (317 Church Street, Manhattan), 4:00P.M., honoring _Primary Trouble_, incredibly terrific reading with (alphabetically) borkhuis, foster, hooper, lauterbach, mobilio, myles, needell, o'brien, pettet, roberson, sartarelli, schwartz, seiler, shapiro, warsh, yau, and maybe even more amazing people, all words, words, words . . . oh, wow! ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 23 Feb 1996 08:06:49 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jack Mahan Subject: Re: the none In-Reply-To: On Friday, 2/23/96 Jonathan Levin said, > I go on at infinite length about this elswhere--suffice to say > (in brief) that I think of pragmatism as a project of making explicit > this worlded Johnathan, To briefly draw from the astro-physicist's 'world-view' that I remain smitten with; *ELSEWHERE* constitutes ONE-HALF of _each and every_ Universe (the future being one quarter, the past being the other quarter, and the present being the linguistically undefinable origin of each space-time)! But, bringing Emerson's 'Transcendence' and his (accurate?) one-big-eye caricature, into this thread, makes my knee jerk back to Poetics Journal #9 where the good Mr. Silliman 'made it so clear' in a letter to Leslie Scalapino: "...the linked concepts of objectivity, truth, and transcendence (all moments in the same discourse), far from being an option or feasible goal for any or all people, has been rather a strategy for (and by) a specific cluster, one subset of the grouping WMH [white male het.]. The point was never objectivity, but rather identity - what subjective state could imagine a condition through which all other peoples disappear?" Don't know if these gel together or are in line with the thread... but: in addressing what exactly we speak of when invoking / defining 'transcendence', I cannot abide overlooking privilege / pass-ability. Happy Friday, Jack ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 23 Feb 1996 11:48:39 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Larry Price Subject: Wastin tiiime away.... Aldon L Nielson wrote: "maybe in the sense that the poetic often exceeds the "usual limits," but so do most drivers on the freeway, and I don't think that's what's meant by the usage here of late -- what us inspired, poetical materialist types object to is claims to transcendence from other poets who tell us that they are in contact with something "beyond material existence or apart from the universe" or "something beyond the limits of experience and knowledge" -- that is, few poets on the list mean by "transcendence" the logical sense of being an a priori condition; and I get myself in an uproar when confronted with claims that the "poetic" or "inspiration" are something unknowable or apart from experience, especially since this can usually be translated as "I have access to this inaccessible realm and you don't" --" Although Messieurs Stroffolino and Levin may already have sufficiently demurred.... An example, and again to return to Spicer. When the dock extends into the bay, the larger ocean beyond it, the seabirds on it, together with THEIR possibilities for extension, there are two alternatives. There is Diebenkorn's, and although I have always enjoyed his work, I have likewise always been frustrated by it, its studio-bound quality, the constant frame of the studio in the foreground. The dock is there "as if"; the ocean is there "as if"; only the studio finally IS. And all within the "guise" of materiality. The other alternative is, of course, Spicer, but also, according to very different language models, say, Alan Davies, Lyn Hejinian, Ron Silliman. I am continually being startled by the writing hand as it enters and exits the writing frame in THE CELL. Something like the opposite of being uncomfortable with the material in writing. The suggestion always seems to be (for me: I'm sure there are countless others) that it's there (here, in the reading) that that particular material fact ends and some other one(s) begin(s). I get this same sense, for example, in the abutments Ron whirls into action in DEMO, not wildly catastrophic, but frequently, much like Spicer's understatement, requiring real lexical shifts to account for the overload. Within the model of language being operated, then, we are going somewhere else (not here). Granted that that isn't a strict sense of "transcendental," but then I think you'd agree that Emerson's not particularly Kantian. (Though her continual "bracketing" might qualify Lyn as Husserlian?) The fact is, all of the above has always made the term "realism" problematic for me, Jonathan's qualification of pragmatism as worlded/contingent transcendentalism notwithstanding. Ron? lp ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 23 Feb 1996 12:22:47 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: studying anon Anent, the fr. anim. film Fantastic Planet oms discover the secret of the large beings' headphones--knowledge-- and of the meditation-- souls meeting on another planet to tango-- and the byproduct of this transcendence is master/slave-- brat/toys-- back to the reading room for me-- ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 23 Feb 1996 12:58:06 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: write that boy nice work jt! ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 23 Feb 1996 12:56:33 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Edward Foster Subject: Re: the none as for transcendance as white male, etc., i find that very assertion (_i_ find that assertion) abhorent, divisive, inexcusable. the sweeping gesture that asserts "identity" as the first principle, is far worse than merely reductive. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 23 Feb 1996 13:32:05 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Paul Beidler Subject: CFP: L E G A C I E S Call for Papers: L E G A C I E S A cross-disciplinary graduate student conference hosted by the Nineteenth-Century Group at the University of Toronto September 27-29, 1996 The theme of this year's conference is the cultural manifestations of inheritance in the period 1780-1901. Possible topics might include, but are not limited to: * Narrative, Genre and Tradition * Heredity and Genetics * Initiation and Baptism * History, Memory and Identity * Patronage and the Arts * Wills and Bequests * Reform and the Law * Convention and Invention * Original Sin and Adamism We encourage papers and panels which investigate literature, history, drama, fashion, economics, music and the performative arts, theology, philosophy, the law, technology and industrial design, politics and science in the period. Please send 300-500 word abstracts (3 copies) postmarked no later than June 1, 1996 to: Legacies Conference Committee Graduate Department of English University of Toronto 7 King's College Circle Toronto, Ontario M5S 1A1 Abstracts and queries can also be e-mailed to Ann-Barbara Graff at ann.graff@utoronto.ca or faxed to 416-978-5184. -- Paul G. Beidler http://www.epas.utoronto.ca/~pbeidler/ "To hate, to love, to think, to feel, to see; all this is nothing but to perceive." David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 23 Feb 1996 13:09:17 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Edward Foster Subject: AMAZING EVENT PROSPECT: The Second Sensational Festival of Russian and American Poetry and Poetics Arkadii Dragomoshchenko, Vadim Mesyats, Maya Nikulina, Lev Rubenshtein, Elena Shvarts, Ivan Zhdanov -- Bruce Andrews, Eileen Myles, Ron Padgett, Leslie Scalapino, Aaron Shurin, John Yau -- plus a most stellar assembly of other great poets, critics, academics, surprise guests, and more totally terrific people. Call for papers: poets and critics/scholars are invited to participate in academic sessions and panel discussions. Please sumit proposals as soon as possible but no later than May 1st. Poets who wish to read their work at the festival, please let us know as soon as possible. May 23-26, 1996 Stevens Institute of Technology Hoboken, NJ (directly across thge river from Manhattan) resistration fee: a mere $35 (tho is that's too much, say so! all we really want to to SEE YOU HERE!) Amazing (reasonably priced) dinners! Limited (inexpensive!) on-campus housing, available on first-come, first- serve basis. for information: Vadim Mesyats or E. Foster, Dept. of Humanities, Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken, NJ 07030; tel (201) 216-5397; fax (201) 216-8245; e-mail efoster@VAXC.STEVENS-TECH.EDU. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 23 Feb 1996 13:14:16 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Edward Foster Subject: Re: the none any recognition of transcendence linked to ritual or repitition misses. the emersonian argument rests in the recognition that one never really "has" anything. which is why a poetics drawn from political considerations is always minor. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 23 Feb 1996 14:02:52 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: Some Thoughts on Eigner [long post] hey loss: coolness. exponential groove factor.--maria ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 23 Feb 1996 14:02:19 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: Brownie McGhee no, say it aint so...rest in poetics --brownie, i saw him a coupla times at passim, in harvard square..., and sanders theatre...is it true he and sonny terry never really got along?--md ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 23 Feb 1996 14:22:14 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Bouchard Subject: wobblin' chains A friend who works at a Borders (not in Philadelphia) as an Assistant Manager tells me that booksellers in the Philadelphia store have approached the Industrial Workers of the World to organize the booksellers. If you've ever worked in retail you don't need to ask why. Borders management in Ann Arbor is dispatching lawyers to 17th and Walnut quicker than you can special order the Martha Stewart Anarchist hors d'oeuvre book. That's all I know right now. Anybody else? daniel_bouchard@hmco.com ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 23 Feb 1996 14:46:08 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Larry Price Subject: Re: the none Ed: What about a poetics that attempts to ground its political desire in precisely those macro-senses? I think we can safely say it won't be the New Deal. Nonetheless, to "write a republic in gloom," however much cast in desire, doesn't seem like a minor undertaking. lp ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 23 Feb 1996 17:19:59 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: roof Subject: Re: ROOF BOOKS -- Special Offer please send scalapino, bernstein and maclow to maria damon 128 racing beach ave. falmouth MA 02540 thanks ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 23 Feb 1996 17:26:47 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Madeline Gins Subject: Poetic Jumps For a CD-Rom of our work, The Mechanism of Meaning, the deadline for which has just about arrived, we are urgently or semi-urgently seeking as many quintessential and beyond quintessential poetic jumps (not all poetic jumps need be poetic) as possible even as we keep these to a minimum--the question for today then is, what in all justice ought not to be missing from this list: Mind: evaporated birds -Iluard What is Mind? A pine tree, a breeze, a voice In a forgotten painting - Ikkyu Every act is a virgin, even repeated. -Char This virgin, this vivid, this fine today Will it strike us with a blow of its drunken wing -Mallarmi We have two eyes but not yet the ten thousands eyes we require -Nietzche (citation not exact yet) [For those who are unfamiliar with our project (The Mechanism of Meaning, Abbeville Press, 1988 third edition, out-of-print; to be re-issued soon??), here are patches of exegesis in regard to two of the sixteen subdivisions under which the related texts (poetic jumps that fit the concise into the mould of the succinct may, for present purposes, run up to a couple of paragraphs in length) will fall.] Degrees of meaning: To surround the mechanism or (condensed?) process of meaning through a series of poetic jumps; the grand, old incessant sidling up to what s what Energy of Meaning: that which holds the face of consciousness and names it other that which holds the facelessness of consciousness that which mediates the face and the about face along with the facelessness the line up--the row of oblique-to-each-other bodies of consciousness what mediates (by means of cilia near and far, neuropeptides low and wide, chi ubiquitously, orgone energymatter on hold, neurons on the go, all extreme fields, etc,) in meaning as meaning-- [meaning: the nod of recognition by any neck or neckness whatsoever; the by a neck. ] The implicature of the poetic jump: replace distinctions with micro-distinctions until.... Arakawa Madeline Gins ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 23 Feb 1996 17:30:17 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Madeline Gins Subject: Re: POETICS Digest - 15 Feb 1996 to 16 Feb 1996 For a CD-Rom of our work, The Mechanism of Meaning, the deadline for which has just about arrived, we are urgently or semi-urgently seeking as many quintessential and beyond quintessential poetic jumps (not all poetic jumps need be poetic) as possible even as we keep these to a minimum--the question for today then is, what in all justice ought not to be missing from this list: Mind: evaporated birds -Iluard What is Mind? A pine tree, a breeze, a voice In a forgotten painting - Ikkyu Every act is a virgin, even repeated. -Char This virgin, this vivid, this fine today Will it strike us with a blow of its drunken wing -Mallarmi We have two eyes but not yet the ten thousands eyes we require -Nietzsche (citation not exact yet) [For those who are unfamiliar with our project (The Mechanism of Meaning, Abbeville Press, 1988 third edition, out-of-print; to be re-issued soon??), here are patches of exegesis in regard to two of the sixteen subdivisions under which the related texts (poetic jumps that fit the concise into the mould of the succinct may, for present purposes, run up to a couple of paragraphs in length) will fall.] Degrees of meaning: To surround the mechanism or (condensed?) process of meaning through a series of poetic jumps; the grand, old incessant sidling up to what s what Energy of Meaning: that which holds the face of consciousness and names it other that which holds the facelessness of consciousness that which mediates the face and the about face along with the facelessness the line up--the row of oblique-to-each-other bodies of consciousness what mediates (by means of cilia near and far, neuropeptides low and wide, chi ubiquitously, orgone energymatter on hold, neurons on the go, all extreme fields, etc,) in meaning as meaning-- [meaning: the nod of recognition by any neck or neckness whatsoever; the by a neck. ] The implicature of the poetic jump: replace distinctions with micro-distinctions until.... Arakawa Madeline Gins ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 23 Feb 1996 17:32:29 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Madeline Gins Subject: Poetic Jumps For a CD-Rom of our work, The Mechanism of Meaning, the deadline for which has just about arrived, we are urgently or semi-urgently seeking as many quintessential and beyond quintessential poetic jumps (not all poetic jumps need be poetic) as possible even as we keep these to a minimum--the question for today then is, what in all justice ought not to be missing from this list: Mind: evaporated birds -Iluard What is Mind? A pine tree, a breeze, a voice In a forgotten painting - Ikkyu Every act is a virgin, even repeated. -Char This virgin, this vivid, this fine today Will it strike us with a blow of its drunken wing -Mallarmi We have two eyes but not yet the ten thousands eyes we require -Nietzsche (citation not exact yet) [For those who are unfamiliar with our project (The Mechanism of Meaning, Abbeville Press, 1988 third edition, out-of-print; to be re-issued soon??), here are patches of exegesis in regard to two of the sixteen subdivisions under which the related texts (poetic jumps that fit the concise into the mould of the succinct may, for present purposes, run up to a couple of paragraphs in length) will fall.] Degrees of meaning: To surround the mechanism or (condensed?) process of meaning through a series of poetic jumps; the grand, old incessant sidling up to what s what Energy of Meaning: that which holds the face of consciousness and names it other that which holds the facelessness of consciousness that which mediates the face and the about face along with the facelessness the line up--the row of oblique-to-each-other bodies of consciousness what mediates (by means of cilia near and far, neuropeptides low and wide, chi ubiquitously, orgone energymatter on hold, neurons on the go, all extreme fields, etc,) in meaning as meaning-- [meaning: the nod of recognition by any neck or neckness whatsoever; the by a neck. ] The implicature of the poetic jump: replace distinctions with micro-distinctions until.... Arakawa Madeline Gins ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 23 Feb 1996 17:36:44 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Kellogg Subject: Premonitions Just got *Premonitions: The Kaya Anthology of New Asian North American Poetry* in the mail today, and have been reading voraciously since. This is a mind-blowing, assumption-confounding, astonishing book. Thanks to Walter Lew if you're out there and everybody involved in the project. Cheers, David ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ David Kellogg Duke University kellogg@acpub.duke.edu University Writing Program (919) 660-4357 Durham, NC 27708 FAX (919) 684-6277 There is some excitement in one corner, but most of the ghosts are merely shaking their heads. -- Thomas Kinsella ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 23 Feb 1996 17:46:29 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Kellogg Subject: Article on Lacan & Contemporary Poetry Per the POETICS guidelines for announcing new work, I want to mention my article "'Desire Pronounced and / Punctuated': Lacan and the Fate of the Poetic Subject," which has just come out in AMERICAN IMAGO 52.4 (1995): 405-437. The quote in the title comes from Bob Perelman's "Pastoral," but the paper itself isn't really LP-centered. It's about the word "desire" in contemporary poetry, with attention to Lacan, Robert Hass, & Jorie Graham. The theoretical issues engaged -- which include the idea of authorship, the relation of critical theory to contemporary poetry, and the role of the critic in the reproduction of poetic value -- should be of interest to many on this list. I'm already sending offprints to some -- CB, Marjorie, Ron, Alan Golding, Hank Lazer, Maria Damon -- but I'm happy to send additional copies to anybody. So backchannel with snail-mail if you think you'd be interested. Cheers, David ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ David Kellogg Duke University kellogg@acpub.duke.edu University Writing Program (919) 660-4357 Durham, NC 27708 FAX (919) 684-6277 There is some excitement in one corner, but most of the ghosts are merely shaking their heads. -- Thomas Kinsella ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 24 Feb 1996 00:06:18 +0000 Reply-To: jzitt@humansystems.com Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: Authenticated sender is From: Joseph Zitt Organization: HumanSystems Subject: New Work Swallowing my nerves and breathing deeply: I've put what should be my next chapbook (assuming I ever get to putting it on paper) "tsiuf (the act of floating above)" up on the Web as an Adobe Acrobat file: http://www.realtime.net/~tsiuf/pdf1-24.pdf It's the first 24 sections (one page each) of what will grow to be a very long work (I hope). I'd appreciate any feedback, of course... A description from the preface: tsiuf (the act of floating above) is . a mechanized inverse kabbalistic jabberwocky . an attempt to wrest meaning from the jaws of chance . a hubristic ad-hoc American Jewish I Ching. My goal in writing it: to create a large work in small sections, each part of which surprises me with unexpected demands. The core of the work is a text, apparently in Hebrew, generated by random processes in a computer program. The program created a list of ten thousand Hebrew letters, spaces, and line endings, organized into lines of one to five "words", each of which is from two to five letters long. The result was 668 lines of text. I examine the words in each line of text as if it were the statement of an oracle. A few real Hebrew words appear; for the others, I assume that the creator of the words created them by combining existing Hebrew words and search the dictionaries for what those words might have been. Once I have translated the Hebrew line, I then use the translation as the source for a column-long text in English. (Some Hebrew words appear in the English text, positioned so that the reader who does not read Hebrew is not missing important information.) ---------1---------1---------1---------1---------1---------1---------- |||/ Joseph Zitt ==== jzitt@humansystems.com ===== Human Systems \||| ||/ Organizer, SILENCE: The John Cage Mailing List \|| |/Joe Zitt's Home Page\| ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 24 Feb 1996 05:55:57 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Peter Jaeger Subject: Re: L poets, M poets, Lacan, etc. In-Reply-To: <01I1JXJYNQSY99K8EK@VAXC.STEVENS-TECH.EDU> "By 'letter' I designate that material support that concrete discourse borrows from language" --Jacques Lacan I'm haunted by the writing of barred S poets (/ superimposed over S), Poetry of the fading barred S who doesn't die in the sense of Barthes author-death but who is subject to the Daddy's constitution as what s/he is not: I am another "Fading is not disappearance, but something more haunting: a presence that cannot be located and yet cannot be definitely renamed as absence so that we will cease searching for it" --Tilottama Rajan, _The Supplement of Reading_. -Peter Jaeger ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 24 Feb 1996 10:23:13 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Boughn Subject: Re: the none In-Reply-To: <960223114838_330825031@mail04.mail.aol.com> from "Larry Price" at Feb 23, 96 11:48:39 am Emerson's "transcendence" has to do with the mechanics of a self that is always already other or further. Sometimes called the figure of outward. As if what you see as containing you comes from somewhere other than you think. Mike mboughn@epas.utoronto.ca ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 24 Feb 1996 10:26:03 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: Premonitions hey guyzies, walter lew and i will be reading at Poetry City, NYC, March 14th. I think walter's gonna read from the anthology, n'est-ce pas, wall? do check out premonitions, it's a total gas.--md ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 24 Feb 1996 10:47:14 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: - Kim Tedrow Subject: Re: Premonitions Maria, Hi, don't know if you remember me, my name is Kim Tedrow. I was a student in your "Language Poets" class several years ago (actually never did finish that damn paper). Nice to see you via this medium. I'm on the East Coast now, DC area. Drop me a line if you're reading around here - I'll come!! I'm living with my daughter in Maryland, still writing, finally seeing some publication success (had a poem appear recently in *Cyphers*, Dublin Ireland, and am appearing in a couple of Web publications). I moderated the AOL poetry workshop for a year, but burned out on horrible poetry and people begging me to critique it for them. :) Nice to "see you" on the net - are you still at the University of Minnesota? Regards, Kim ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 24 Feb 1996 18:35:00 PST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steve Carll Subject: barred S bards At 05:55 AM 2/24/96 -0500, Peter Jaeger wrote: >I'm haunted by the writing of barred S poets (/ superimposed over S), > >Poetry of the fading barred S who doesn't die in the sense of Barthes >author-death >but who is subject to the Daddy's constitution as what s/he is not: I am >another > >"Fading is not disappearance, but something more haunting: a presence >that cannot be located and yet cannot be definitely renamed as absence so >that we will cease searching for it" --Tilottama Rajan, _The Supplement >of Reading_. Peter, I'm curious: who do you think of as a barred-S poet? The first one who came to my mind was Celan, then (in a slight shift of medium) the English folksinger Nick Drake. Anyone else? The Rajan quote is really beautiful, btw. Steve ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 24 Feb 1996 20:23:03 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ron Silliman Subject: Trans Sending Quoth the Price club: what us inspired, poetical materialist types object to is claims to transcendence from other poets who tell us that they are in contact with something "beyond material existence or apart from the universe" or "something beyond the limits of experience and knowledge" -- that is, few poets on the list mean by "transcendence" the logical sense of being an a priori condition; and I get myself in an uproar when confronted with claims that the "poetic" or "inspiration" are something unknowable or apart from experience, especially since this can usually be translated as "I have access to this inaccessible realm and you don't" --" --------------------------------------------------------- In the 1950s, what you find by way of transcendentalism is the claim that in the poem the daily, the local, the particular is connected to universal (but otherwise not especially visible) stuff. Both Olson and Duncan make this claim, for example. Ditto Snyder and McClure in somewhat different fashion(s). Which is why Spicer's god (the baseball is, after all, not truly BIG but very small and very fast when you're standing in the box, baby) comes over as such a relief. Or simply Creeley's manifest common sense. What I read that 50s transcendentalism as is a form of anxiety over the professional status of poetic knowledge in a world where folks were rapidly staking claims. Consider, for example, Zukofsky's writing about a "scientific" definition of poetry. The New Critics were, after all, poets and very conservative ones, both racist and homophobic in fairly specific demonstrable ways. Their claim to knowledge was to how to read, closely, mimicing scientific methodology in their "objective" examination of a text. Olson, who certainly saw the implications of such intellectual franchising in his political work in the 1940s, seems to have wavered at times over his claim, between the historicism of his fishing archives on the one hand and the "curriculum of the soul" on the other. For all of it, his best poems are "about" nothing in particular, they just are. The interesting case, it seems to me, would be Whalen, who seems genuinely and profoundly spiritual without using it to make claims for authority in his work. It's simply a fact of the writing, take it or leave it. (I find it most evident in his use of the noun.) This is a strategy that has been taken as well by many later writers, Norman Fischer, Fanny Howe, Steve Benson, Alan Davies, Kit Robinson all being fine examples. I find it interesting (appalling) that the Apexers have tended to focus not on a poetic tradition that is imbued with the spiritual, but rather on one that uses it as a claim (Authorization in the most literal sense) for the value of the work as such. I think it's that claim to special knowledge that they're really interested in (worried about). My sense is that Pound was the one really who proposed (at least for the 'Murkans) that a poet's legitimacy in the modern world depended upon some status of knowledge. It's the basis for so much hoohah in his poems, not to mention the crank economics (which seems to have returned of late in the happy face of Steve Forbes). But what if the value of a poem has nothing to do with its function as a source for information ("the news") beyond itself? What about all this writing? Ron Silliman rsillima@ix.netcom.com ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 24 Feb 1996 21:16:06 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Thomas Bell Subject: Re: Trans Sending In-Reply-To: <199602250423.UAA03458@ix16.ix.netcom.com> Ron, As I re-read your comment it appears more far-reaching, especially here in Nashville where there is a different and vocal version of _truth_ on every streetcorner. tom bell ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 24 Feb 1996 22:49:20 -1000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gabrielle Welford Subject: Re: wobblin' chains In-Reply-To: <199602231932.OAA19890@krypton.hmco.com> Yes, Wobblies will be the union of the Borders staff in Philly if the negotations go thorugh. And it looks as though they will. Gab. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 25 Feb 1996 02:51:42 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ron Silliman Subject: Trans Sending, TN You wrote: > > Ron, > As I re-read your comment it appears more far-reaching, >especially here in Nashville where there is a different and vocal >version of _truth_ on every streetcorner. >tom bell > Truth in Nashville would seem to be whoever is playing the breakfast shift at Tootsie's, if I have that name right (the only low-end bar w/ 24 hour live music I've ever seen), or whatever bargains are hiding in the back of that great guitar shop down the street. What the truth is NOT is that big Caddy that belonged to Elvis at the Country Music Hall of Fame. (For pure ostenation, I prefer the airplane, the Lisa Marie, set down there in the parking lot across the street from Graceland, just waiting for your tour--but that's Memphis, a very different town.) Hatch Show Print, the poster maker for the Grand Ol' Opry and before that for minstrel shows throughout the south, is also pretty terrific, tho I believe they've moved around the corner to facilitate more faceless development, no? Ron Silliman rsillima@ix.netcom.com ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 25 Feb 1996 11:22:04 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: The Icebox in Summer In-Reply-To: <199602250423.UAA03458@ix16.ix.netcom.com> Ron, you wrote, what about all this writing? I'm not sure I understand the question. Is this in re Pound's claim to be the best condensation maker Or Olson's Alfred North Whitehead impression or is it the throbbing yellow light that woke me up at a quarter to four last night a power line down and arcing? Jordan ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 25 Feb 1996 12:11:48 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Patrick Phillips Subject: Re: Trans Sending I've had this bone to pick for a while now. I think particularly since Schwartz's transcendent lyric essay in Talisman which coupled logical transcendence with transcendentalism.... This need among transcendentalists to "climb over" history seems a sign of the exasperated Mind. Mind exasperated that body won't move - I'm trying to think of that Lowell George (Little Feat) phrase, but for some reason I draw a blank... With the exasperated mind, the _public_ gives way to -privatization-, to a publicity of ekstatic spaces. What a hell it must be to be stranded there, in an elsewhere without recourse, without the constant shock of labor that forces one back into the real _world_" What I liked about the later Poetics Journals is that they explored this place without giving in to a monopolar view - particularly "Elsewhere" (I would give the number of the issue, but my books are packed away as I am living in a temporary space here in Providence) performed as a bridge to a condition of reading and writing that is social, political, historical and "The Person" insisted that the personal co-exist with its context - that in fact is the person, the site of the private and public. As a matter of poetics, there is a connection between the ekstatic and the lyric that is almost insufferable. That the lyric claims a space of recuperation, of loss which in turn idealizes its object, thereby posessing it, is foolery. It seems to be this same kind of foolery with which transcendentalists "recuperate," i.e., lose history. What's interesting though is that when you place this critique upon a very lyric and very private poet like Niedecker the work comes out of hiding. Not to say that this critique can _transform_ all lyric poetry. Niedecker just has a particular "there is work to do" ethic about her work. The material of her poetry, its construct, along with its work-ethic allows for its critical transformation. The work goes to work... To this, again, Mr. Silliman: >What about all this writing? Patrick_Phillips@brown.edu ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 25 Feb 1996 09:59:18 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Thomas Bell Subject: Re: Trans Sending, TN In-Reply-To: <199602251051.CAA28732@ix7.ix.netcom.com> Ron, yes, Grand Old Opry continues to expand and its parking lot will soon take over the city. The truth I was referring to was religious Truth, however. I am one of the authors of _How to Mutate and Take over the World_ and the response here should be interesting. tom On Sun, 25 Feb 1996, Ron Silliman wrote: > You wrote: > > > > Ron, > > As I re-read your comment it appears more far-reaching, > >especially here in Nashville where there is a different and vocal > >version of _truth_ on every streetcorner. > >tom bell > > > Truth in Nashville would seem to be whoever is playing the breakfast > shift at Tootsie's, if I have that name right (the only low-end bar w/ > 24 hour live music I've ever seen), or whatever bargains are hiding in > the back of that great guitar shop down the street. What the truth is > NOT is that big Caddy that belonged to Elvis at the Country Music Hall > of Fame. (For pure ostenation, I prefer the airplane, the Lisa Marie, > set down there in the parking lot across the street from Graceland, > just waiting for your tour--but that's Memphis, a very different town.) > > Hatch Show Print, the poster maker for the Grand Ol' Opry and before > that for minstrel shows throughout the south, is also pretty terrific, > tho I believe they've moved around the corner to facilitate more > faceless development, no? > > Ron Silliman > rsillima@ix.netcom.com > ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 25 Feb 1996 17:54:12 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Re: Trans Sending Hey Patrick-- I think the line is "You know that you're over the hill When your mind makes a promise that your body can't fill"-- But I don't know if everything called transcendentalism (though you may be right about Schwartz--who seems a vulgar transcendent- alist to me) need be seen as an attempt to "climb over" history. Emerson's notion of history still is quite attractive to me (moreso than Pound's "special view"). Like Stein's continuous present. A radical questioning of what's CALLED history---about how linear notions of history tend to reduce times into period and are often a projection of "the present" which of course can not be defined as such. The appeal to history and the appeal to "god" or what O'Hara called "elaborately sounded structures" may be all of a similar piece. Chris S. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 25 Feb 1996 18:47:40 -0500 Reply-To: Peter Jaeger Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Peter Jaeger Subject: Re: barred S bards In-Reply-To: On Sat, 24 Feb 1996, Steve Carll wrote: > Peter, I'm curious: who do you think of as a barred-S poet? The first one > who came to my mind was Celan, then (in a slight shift of medium) the > English folksinger Nick Drake. Anyone else? > > Steve I suppose one could define a barred S(ubject) poet in numerous ways. I was thinking about writers who blur speech/writing boundaries through pun, homophonic translation, paragram etc. In the case of homophonic translation, for example, the aural phonemes suggest the presence of a body--a speaking subject with ears and mouth--but the graphic notation is detached from the speaking subject. So in a trans such as Zukofsky's "A" 15 (the opening passage of the book of Job) what we read is what we hear, but what we hear is also not necessarily what we read. The resulting negotiation of speech/writing calls into question the notion that the "I" (unbarred subject) is the originater of its own meaning; meaning is similtaneously somatic and textual, hence the self as unified I/body/author fades but does not disappear, does not die (a la Barthes)...it becomes the barred S. This is not to say that the body is not already textual, but to problematize the relationship between body as text and writing--a kind of intersemiotic translation between somatic and textual sign systems. If anyone is interested, the next issue of _West Coast Line_ (29/3, to be distributed within the next month) is publishing an article that I wrote on bpNichol's translation poetics in relation to the barred S. -Peter Jaeger ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 26 Feb 1996 11:52:22 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Roberts Subject: Re: query: book distribution Comments: cc: awol@ozwemail.com.au >I'll be part of a panel on electronic publishing at the AWP Convention >in Atlanta this April; I'll be doing a presentation on using the internet >to keep books in print, to distribute them despite the economic pressures >that are driving small & university presses out of bookstores, etc. >(Given all the scares about internet as the death of the book, it seems >important to turn attention to the alternate economy the net can sustain.) >I've run across a few instances of small presses and bookstores marketing >their stock on mailing lists and on the web; I'd like to know more and to >make these resources more widely available, and this convention seems >like a good start. If you know of major distributors on-line--especially >those dealing with small press books--or poetry bookstores, presses, samisdat >networks with websites or email addresses, please send them to me, and I'll >see that they're distributed as widely as I can manage. I'll get them >out at AWP, and I'll post them on the CAPA site as well. > >Many thanks, >Wendy > >---------------------------------------------------------------- >Wendy Battin >wjbat@conncoll.edu >wbattin@mit.edu > > Contemporary American Poetry Archive > http://camel.conncoll.edu/library/CAPA/capa.html >---------------------------------------------------------------- Australian Writing On Line is setting up a 'Virtual Bookshop' of Australian small presses and lit mags. We are also involved in conventional distrubution but are using the net for promoting the works we distribute. We have just set up a web site at http://ozemail.com.au/`awol - its pretty rough at the moment and the Virtual Bookshop details haven't been uploaded but please feel free to have a look. AWOL's email address is awol@ozemail.com.au - I'm posting on this account because this is where I'm subbed to the poetics list. regards Mark __________________________________ Mark Roberts Student Systems Project Officer Information Systems University of Sydney NSW 2006 Australia M.Roberts@isu.usyd.edu.au PH:(02)351 5066 FAX:(02)351 5081 ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 26 Feb 1996 15:38:01 GMT+1300 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tony Green Organization: The University of Auckland Subject: on again Dear Poetics Listers, Having been off air since early December, due to circumstances beyond my control (aka University of Auckland), I thought I shd say I'm back on the list again, lurking for a while, reading a larbge number of stored messages that go back to December 7, 1995. Best wishes to all, Tony Green, e-mail: t.green@auckland.ac.nz ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 26 Feb 1996 09:53:04 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: In Praise of Erasmus >As a matter of poetics, there is a connection between the ekstatic and the >lyric that is almost insufferable. ------>That the lyric claims a space of >recuperation, of loss which in turn idealizes its object, thereby posessing >it, is foolery.<------- It seems to be this same kind of foolery with which >transcendentalists "recuperate," i.e., lose history. What's interesting >though is that when you place this critique upon a very lyric and very >private poet like Niedecker the work comes out of hiding. Not to say that >this critique can _transform_ all lyric poetry. Niedecker just has a >particular "there is work to do" ethic about her work. The material of her >poetry, its construct, along with its work-ethic allows for its critical >transformation. The work goes to work... Just to take your remark out of context, Patrick, but isn't that an idea about one kind of lyric? A kind of ex post facto, nostalgic lyric that has its place in the hillsides of one's early twenties, mid-forties, late sixties, etc? And Sappho, doesn't she write loss at the moment of loss (Hi Loss!), to preserve that most ambivalent moment accurately? Wouldn't she say that love is the cite of that meeting between having and lacking? No? Nostalgic for nostalgia, Jordan ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 26 Feb 1996 10:10:37 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry Gould Subject: trans sending etc. Patrick writes : "that the lyric claims a space of recuperation, of loss which in turn idealizes its object, thereby possessing it, is foolery. It seems to be this same kind of foolery with which transcendentalists "recuperate..." This impulse to make an icon or idol of the "love-object" seems as you say pervasive. But what would you say about epic, say Dante & Homer, in which the theme of individual love is not rejected (Beatrice & Helen/Penelope respectively) - but is reconceived, redefined, "contextualized". Yet the theme itself remains at the core of the poetic effort. The creative struggle between the genres becomes a site for new poetry. With reference to Ron's comments about 50s transcendence, I would say the Olson type impulse toward the cosmic is less due to anxiety over the definition of poetic knowledge than a "push" toward fulfilling epic demands. As I see it, the (dubious) argument that the New Critics were all arch-reactionaries is not really relevant. Ron's statement that the best Olson poems are not "about" anything beyond their own making is classic New Critical theory. The dilemma for poets in the 50s was not New Critical pseudo-scientific objectivity but New Critical academic a-historicism. The beautiful discoveries of inner architecture people like Cleanth Brooks discover in Keats & Donne are necessary but not sufficient means to writing poetry either in the 50s or now. If L poets claim that "instrumental" language supports the power structure and that therefore "deconstructive" non-referential language is the essence of liberating poetics, then the M poet claim that knowledge about the world is necessary & has consequences seems an inevitable & healthy reaction. I will leave it to the s-slash poets to trace the ephemeral ghoul in the hgould, i.e. the gold gleam in the glum gloom-gum. - H.Gould ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 26 Feb 1996 11:17:40 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Wallace Subject: dead horses Chris B., Chris S., Jordan, Al, Ron and others: At the risk of beating a dead horse, I do want to say that Chris S' mention of Emerson is definitely key to the sort-of-discussion of emerging poetics we've been having in the last week or so. My use of "transcendentalist" in referring to the Apex poets was definitely meant as such, and not as "transcendent' more broadly. The status of the contact between human and transcendent spirit in Emerson's work is definitely complex--I'm thinking of Duncan's comment about "taking Emerson dark"--Emerson seems to have that contact sometimes, and at others fail to have it (Emerson knew all about moodiness, certainly). The question of the "religion" in Emerson is very complex--he left the church, of course, and all that stuff about a "transparent eyeball" would have driven post-Puritan New England wacky. I'm not an expert here, but if I recall correctly it was definitely NOT New England mainstream protestant doctrine at the time to suggest that human beings had any sort of ecstatic oneness with a "spiritual" universe broadly defined--I would welcome more precise information on this subject. So, in taking a stance of a sort of rebel spiritualism that rejects the overwhelming influence of mediation (of language, or a church, etc), the Apex folks are really calling (if indirectly, perhaps) on the same kind of Emersonian revolution. But I still don't think they're doing it as sophisticatedly as they need to. And despite Chris S. desire to disagree here, I'm going to reassert that my Oedipal metaphor is of significance in describing the situation. One can't understand Apex without understanding the hot bed environment of the UBuffalo Poetics Program--the intensity of a Charles Bernstein or Susan Howe or Robert Creeley or Dennis Tedlock or Ray Federman seminar, the amazing poets showing up from all over the world at all times, the incredible presence of the poetry Rare Books Library with (through its director Bob Bertholf) its complex interest in the spiritual strains of American innovative verse perhaps as exemplified by Duncan (although for me, Ron S. is right--I like Spicer better). The POWER of language poetry is perhaps more concentrated there at UB than anywhere in the country, and one can't help but feel it, and perhaps even feel overwhelmed by it. So what are you going to do if you're a young poet there? BE a language poet? Be a "second-generation" language poet? Be something else entirely? I've tended to read Apex's comments on language writing as "methinks they doth protest too much"--the desire to deny the influence of language writing in the Apex manifestos tends to reveal it at every turn. Still, I think they deserve credit for taking on some significant issues. Who knows if they even still believe some of the things they said in the first manifesto? But I have to put my two-cents in (and Jordan Davis: yes you knew I knew you were kidding!) because I feel like there have been a whole other range of responses to the particular dilemma of language poetry's influence, but they don't get any attention. I've been attempting to deconstruct the image of "torch-passing" that was recently suggested--that stuff burns, and my high school experience of pyromaniacs is that sooner or later they always light THEMSELVES on fire. But I've been on this list about 18 months, and I've not seen one mention of Charles Borkhuis' excellent article in ONTHEBUS which discusses possible relations between surrealism and language writing. I've not seen anyone engage with the incredible criticism Steve Evans has written on post-language writing in the Oblek anthology, and Taproot and elsewhere--for me, Evans work has been the ground from which I began thinking about these issues. I remember one small discussion of Juliana Spahr's and Jena Osman's innovative editorial stance in Chain. Granted, there's no particular reason that people should discuss those writers anymore than any other interesting writers. But how many times has Apex been the subject of discussion on this poetics list? How many times have they even suddenly provided a name by which a whole generation of poets might be known? What's that about? Do they really offer the most significant post-language theories? Does their sensationalism simply make for more enjoyable e-talk? Do they provide a convenient way to avoid thinking about the complexities of influence? Rod Smith has warned me not to turn into a "one-issue candidate" on this problem, and I'm meaning to take his advice any day now. Really I am. But Rod's In Memory of My Theories marks him as an excellent O-poet, and I'm hoping that the title of his book does not eventually seem too prophetic. mark wallace ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 26 Feb 1996 08:39:17 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Douglas Messerli Subject: Re: query: book distribution Dear Wendy, I presume you know Sun & Moon Press's website address, since I've annouced it several times on the Poetics List. But just in case, it's www.sunmoon.com Douglas Messerli At 11:52 AM 2/26/96 -0400, you wrote: >>I'll be part of a panel on electronic publishing at the AWP Convention >>in Atlanta this April; I'll be doing a presentation on using the internet >>to keep books in print, to distribute them despite the economic pressures >>that are driving small & university presses out of bookstores, etc. >>(Given all the scares about internet as the death of the book, it seems >>important to turn attention to the alternate economy the net can sustain.) >>I've run across a few instances of small presses and bookstores marketing >>their stock on mailing lists and on the web; I'd like to know more and to >>make these resources more widely available, and this convention seems >>like a good start. If you know of major distributors on-line--especially >>those dealing with small press books--or poetry bookstores, presses, samisdat >>networks with websites or email addresses, please send them to me, and I'll >>see that they're distributed as widely as I can manage. I'll get them >>out at AWP, and I'll post them on the CAPA site as well. >> >>Many thanks, >>Wendy >> >>---------------------------------------------------------------- >>Wendy Battin >>wjbat@conncoll.edu >>wbattin@mit.edu >> >> Contemporary American Poetry Archive >> http://camel.conncoll.edu/library/CAPA/capa.html >>---------------------------------------------------------------- >Australian Writing On Line is setting up a 'Virtual Bookshop' of Australian >small presses and lit mags. We are also involved in conventional >distrubution but are using the net for promoting the works we distribute. >We have just set up a web site at http://ozemail.com.au/`awol - its pretty >rough at the moment and the Virtual Bookshop details haven't been uploaded >but please feel free to have a look. AWOL's email address is >awol@ozemail.com.au - I'm posting on this account because this is where I'm >subbed to the poetics list. > >regards > > >Mark > > >__________________________________ >Mark Roberts >Student Systems Project Officer >Information Systems >University of Sydney NSW 2006 Australia >M.Roberts@isu.usyd.edu.au >PH:(02)351 5066 >FAX:(02)351 5081 > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 26 Feb 1996 11:54:25 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Edward Foster Subject: Re: the none larry: but O did not ground the work in a republic. that's where the words found themselves, in spite of themselves, o polis. there's all the difference. the gloom wasn't in the eyes either, for that matter. -ed ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 26 Feb 1996 12:07:59 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Edward Foster Subject: Re: the none study jonathan levin's comments lead in many good directions. in fact, emerson was/is deeply misread, largely because of smiley poets/philosophers/ theologians who made him genteel and a gentleman. he is neither. he is absolutely the core in a range from nietzsche to stein; either would be "unthinkable" without him. read "experience" careful and you'll know why duncan thought of himself as absolutely emersonian. transcendence in emerson is not the mystery behind the veil or the smile in mrs eddy, but, strictly, recognition of how the mind works when freed of logical constraint. one great dilemma is olson's anti-emerson stance (excepting that curious beloit admission), for fenollosa did not see the east truly but rather a confirmation of emerson's east. one of the odder points in literary history is that fact that whitman and pound actually travelled the same road. -ed ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 26 Feb 1996 08:26:00 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Don Cheney Subject: Re[2]: roof maria couldn't help reading FOULMOUTH for FALMOUTH. a foulmouth, don Subject: Re: ROOF BOOKS -- Special Offer please send scalapino, bernstein and maclow to maria damon 128 racing beach ave. falmouth MA 02540 thanks ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 26 Feb 1996 09:41:22 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: ryan johnson Subject: Re: Trans Sending In-Reply-To: <01I1N0HVVYO28Y5H0I@cnsvax.albany.edu> On Sun, 25 Feb 1996, Chris Stroffolino wrote: > Hey Patrick-- > I think the line is > "You know that you're over the hill > When your mind makes a promise that your body can't fill"-- I guess I'm tipping my pop-culture hand here, but just wanted to suppose this might be some source-like thing for those lines in the film *Top Gun*, which I never saw but heard an ad for on TV the other day-- "Son, your ego's writing checks you're body can't cash." Heehee--Ryan ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 26 Feb 1996 11:59:58 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joe Amato Subject: old thread... just picked up the sunday chicago trib. yesterday to read the following on the front page: ASSIMILATION PUTS TRIBAL CULTURES AT LOSS FOR WORDS Native languages continue to drift toward extinction By Paul Salopek Tribune Staff Writer A language vanished on Jan. 15 in Massachusetts when a 76-year old singer and storyteller named Red Thunder Cloud died. He was the last known fluent speaker of Catawba, a Sioux-related language. A year ago, it was Northern Pomo that linguists pronounced dead along with its last native speaker, an octogenarian woman from California. Eyak, locked inside the head of only one elderly Alaska native, could be next. So could Cahto. Or Coast Miwok. Or, for that matter, any of the Amazonian tongues that are thought to be disappearing at the rate of one a year. The world's small, tribal languages---each one representing millenniums worth of accumulated knowledge and culture---are drifting into extinction at an unprecedented rate, experts say. In the United States---where linguistic experts estimate that 155 of the surviving 175 Native American languages are falling permanently silent---language death is already well-advanced. the article continues on to detail what is being done about the situation---govt. monies, etc... anyway, yet another recent twist on the pomo... controversy... joe ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 26 Feb 1996 13:39:24 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rod Smith Subject: Re: trans sending etc. H. Gould wrote: "If L poets claim that "instrumental" language supports the power structure and that therefore "deconstructive" non-referential language is the essence of liberating poetics, then the M poet claim that knowledge about the world is necessary & has consequences seems an inevitable & healthy reaction." This statement is so full of charicature that to respond to it is extremely difficult without being seen to have bought into its terms. The range of positions that have been represented in L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E, Poetics Journal, Temblor, etc. can in no way be so simply characterized. & the idea that these poets disavow the consequence of knowledge is absurd. Also, of the many ideologies they engage, deconstruction is not one you will find heavily recurrent. _Apex of the M_ has published three issues, the first one included a preface which consisted of a "radically transparent" (to use their term) oedipal attack followed by a bunch of poems, some of which were good. The second & third issues seem pretty much to have followed the template of the first with the preferatory attacks becoming less agressive. The "if/then" construction of the above statement does not follow from even a quick reading of the texts refered to. --Rod ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 26 Feb 1996 13:49:05 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Smith Subject: Re: Trans Sending Ron Silliman writes: The interesting case, it seems to me, would be Whalen, who seems genuinely and profoundly spiritual without using it to make claims for authority in his work. It's simply a fact of the writing, take it or leave it. (I find it most evident in his use of the noun.) This is a strategy that has been taken as well by many later writers, Norman Fischer, Fanny Howe, Steve Benson, Alan Davies, Kit Robinson all being fine examples. ................................................. Ron, could you talk more about how you see Whalen using the noun? I think Snyder may sometimes approach this when he's not caught up in making a "point," something he'd characterize as "spiritual materialism." What about the noun in Oppen? Another poet I'd look at here is Sobin who so often brings across a sense of the numinous through his nouns, despite his assertions that his work has been a sruggle to get away from their static quality. I'd also be inclined to add Larry Eigner to your list above... all best, Charles Smith ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 26 Feb 1996 14:25:03 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry Gould Subject: Re: trans sending etc. Rod Smith wrote: "The range of positions that have been represented in L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E, Poetics Journal, Temblor, etc. can in no way be so simply characterized." My statement was reductive, granted. But I don't think it can be denied that among the wide range of poetries & theoretical positions proposed by the langposse, among them has been a specifically political argument that by emphasizing the materiality, the graininess, of language itself, Language Poetry resists unthinking conventional processing of the socio-political status quo (as represented by the New Formerlists demand for reader-friendly transparency). And I think it's ironic that these M poets counter the L position now, almost a generation later, on political grounds. In both cases an appeal is made to a certain approach to style, rhetoric and content as representing political progress and a healthy poetics thereby. I would argue that all poetry is rhetorically based, that emphasizing materiality is only another kind of rhetorical maneuver - and that, paradoxically, rhetoric and technique are only the BEGINNING of poetry. A good example of how political lenses have been misapplied from generation unto generation was the article on Willa Cather which appeared in NYker about six weeks ago (unfortunately I fergit the author). - Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 26 Feb 1996 18:24:29 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Edward Foster Subject: Re: Trans Sending ron: but in yr attack on claims for transcendence you sound as authoritarian as the most olympian of the transcenders. there may be unexamined claims in yr own position. the mix of pound, steve forbes, and new critics won't do. or vto suggest that all the new critics were homophobic, say. i've had to deal with quite a few "materialists" on that score. -- isn't the problem with the materialist in questions of transcendence a matter of refusing to admit even the possibility of something that one hasn't seen? ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 26 Feb 1996 18:53:17 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ward Tietz <100723.3166@COMPUSERVE.COM> Subject: Presentation/Performance I'll be in Providence in a few days, presenting/performing recent work at Brown on Monday, March 4th at Blistein House, 57 Waterman Ave., at 2 pm. Mark McMorris and Gale Nelson will join me in performing a few of the pieces. I look forward to seeing anyone from the list who might be able to attend. Ward Tietz ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 26 Feb 1996 17:20:06 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Re: message in a bottle In-Reply-To: <199602260506.AAA20914@listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu> There's a fat man in the bathtub with the blues. --Lowell George ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 26 Feb 1996 21:01:10 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: Presentation/Performance ward, wish i cd make it, shoot. have fun and prosper.--maria d ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 26 Feb 1996 22:08:34 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Re: message in a bottle aldon-- stayed on the backroads so i wouldn't get weighed.... ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 26 Feb 1996 22:58:48 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: snoozers Dear MW, if you're going to use oedipal, why not use Althusserian "hailing" as well--at least that way there's no Lew Gouging out his eyes after couplating with susan b. (sorry charlie--I mean copulating). Creeley, for instance, is not an L poet. I don't even know why I'm saying this (I must be bored or lazy) but it seems one can view them as a REACTION to L as you do, or an extention of Creeley and Howe.....I guess.... as for me, since I have NO book coming out, I guess I'm a NO poet (or a NOH play)....cs ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 26 Feb 1996 23:31:31 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rod Smith Subject: Re: query: book distribution Comments: To: wbattin@mit.edu Was going to backchannel this but given the recent slew of new sign-ups to the list thought I'd make it "public" Wendy Battin-- Please add the store I manage, Bridge Street Books, 2814 Pennsylvania Ave NW, Washington, DC 20007, ph 202 965 5200, to your list of small press oriented bookstores. We're not on the web yet but that's a possibility. Bridge Street is a humanities bookstore unusually well stocked in poetry, cultural theory, philosophy, etc. Mail order has become an increasingly large percentage of our business, which is a great help as we're facing the challenge of a new Barnes & Noble superstore 2 blocks away. The store also hosts readings-- Joan Retallack, Rosmarie Waldrop, Charles Bernstein, Barrett Watten, Tom Raworth, Stacy Doris, & many others have or will be reading. I edit & publish _Aerial_ & Edge Books which are supported, in part, by the store. e-mail add for orders/inquiries is aerialedge@aol.com. Best, Rod Smith -------------------------------------------------------- I'll be part of a panel on electronic publishing at the AWP Convention in Atlanta this April; I'll be doing a presentation on using the internet to keep books in print, to distribute them despite the economic pressures that are driving small & university presses out of bookstores, etc. (Given all the scares about internet as the death of the book, it seems important to turn attention to the alternate economy the net can sustain.) I've run across a few instances of small presses and bookstores marketing their stock on mailing lists and on the web; I'd like to know more and to make these resources more widely available, and this convention seems like a good start. If you know of major distributors on-line--especially those dealing with small press books--or poetry bookstores, presses, samisdat networks with websites or email addresses, please send them to me, and I'll see that they're distributed as widely as I can manage. I'll get them out at AWP, and I'll post them on the CAPA site as well. Many thanks, Wendy ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 27 Feb 1996 00:28:32 +0000 Reply-To: jzitt@humansystems.com Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: Authenticated sender is From: Joseph Zitt Organization: HumanSystems Subject: New Work (Correction) And here it is again with the correct URL *sigh* - - - - - - - - - - Swallowing my nerves and breathing deeply: I've put what should be my next chapbook (assuming I ever get to putting it on paper) "tsiuf (the act of floating above)" up on the Web as an Adobe Acrobat file: http://www.realtime.net/~jzitt/tsiuf/pdf1-24.pdf It's the first 24 sections (one page each) of what will grow to be a very long work (I hope). I'd appreciate any feedback, of course... A description from the preface: tsiuf (the act of floating above) is . a mechanized inverse kabbalistic jabberwocky . an attempt to wrest meaning from the jaws of chance . a hubristic ad-hoc American Jewish I Ching. My goal in writing it: to create a large work in small sections, each part of which surprises me with unexpected demands. The core of the work is a text, apparently in Hebrew, generated by random processes in a computer program. The program created a list of ten thousand Hebrew letters, spaces, and line endings, organized into lines of one to five "words", each of which is from two to five letters long. The result was 668 lines of text. I examine the words in each line of text as if it were the statement of an oracle. A few real Hebrew words appear; for the others, I assume that the creator of the words created them by combining existing Hebrew words and search the dictionaries for what those words might have been. Once I have translated the Hebrew line, I then use the translation as the source for a column-long text in English. (Some Hebrew words appear in the English text, positioned so that the reader who does not read Hebrew is not missing important information.) ---------1---------1---------1---------1---------1---------1---------- |||/ Joseph Zitt ==== jzitt@humansystems.com ===== Human Systems \||| ||/ Organizer, SILENCE: The John Cage Mailing List \|| |/Joe Zitt's Home Page\| ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 27 Feb 1996 02:57:49 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ron Silliman Subject: dead horses, live theories Mark, Would that every post to this list had the passion and white-hot intensity of thought of yours so often have. However, this aside, "But I've been on this list about 18 months, and I've not seen one mention of Charles Borkhuis' excellent article in ONTHEBUS which discusses possible relations between surrealism and language writing. I've not seen anyone engage with the incredible criticism Steve Evans has written on post-language writing in the Oblek anthology... But how many times has Apex been the subject of discussion on this poetics list? How many times have they even suddenly provided a name by which a whole generation of poets might be known? What's that about? Do they really offer the most significant post-language theories? Does their sensationalism simply make for more enjoyable e-talk? Do they provide a convenient way to avoid thinking about the complexities of influence?" brings up a couple of thoughts. The first being that I recall specifically discussing Steve Evans wonderful work from The New Coast (I agree with you about its importance) here and elsewhere. The second being that I don't think people (me, anyway) generalize from the Apexers to "a whole generation" (not in your dreams, Lew), but that what they have done/are doing is nonetheless important simply for having a coherent shape to it, whatever the internal contradictions and problematics (I'll return to this below). Third, I've never even seen ONTHEBUS (nor, for that matter, do I recall seeing it even mentioned previously here or elsewhere -- is it a magazine, a book or what?), so I suspect that the lack of discussion re Borkhuis' article may follow not from lack of interest but distribution. Leading, instanter, to further thoughts: Certainly there's a powerful and problematic betwixt Lpoetry and surrealism (most carefully sketched out by B Watten in Total Syntax), both in terms of the work and as a model of social formation. Poets who took surrealism as a direct influence: Watten certainly, Davies certainly, Estrin certainly -- tho I think Jerry at first saw surrealism as a method of critiquing the program of the lpoets avant la lettre -- many others (Grenier might not acknowledge it, but it's clearest in the "scribble" texts how much of the back brain work is exactly what he's after) Our friends the M poets, even by virtue of being wrong, have done more (and better) at providing a consistent shape to their argument than anyone else in what Steve Evans (I think it was he) christened "G2" [which, by the by, is where his work was discussed, if you're checking the EPC archives] and there's an enormous power to that. One of the interesting strains I've picked up from several "G2" or "later in the alphabet" poets has been a sense, especially re lpoetry and the Apexers, that to have a shape (it does not have to be so extensive as to qualify as a program) is to make a case for power as such and that power per se is not attractive and that they'd rather not. From my perspective, this echoes a lot of what I heard in nonprofit and other voluntary association groups in the early 1970s, in particular (remember affinity groups), all those folks still scarred then by the bad taste of internicine warfare within SDS and the atrocious sexual politics of the 60s antiwar movement. But as Foucault et al could have told them (could tell us now), power doesn't go away, it just reconstitutes itself Elsewhere (very much in the sense of that word as used as a theme for an issue of Poetics Journal). The Apexers are the only group who have, as a group, addressed power directly in their critical writings. More power to them. Ron Silliman rsillima@ix.netcom.com ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 27 Feb 1996 03:32:33 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ron Silliman Subject: Re: Trans Sending Charles Smith, "Ron, could you talk more about how you see Whalen using the noun? I think Snyder may sometimes approach this when he's not caught up in making a "point," something he'd characterize as "spiritual materialism." What about the noun in Oppen? Another poet I'd look at here is Sobin who so often brings across a sense of the numinous through his nouns, despite his assertions that his work has been a sruggle to get away from their static quality. I'd also be inclined to add Larry Eigner to your list above..." (your ellipsis) --- I'd thought of Larry as I wrote my original comments, actually. And Oppen I can see, though I'd never characterize him as a spiritual poet. However, I do seem to be allergic to Sobin, who strikes me as precious and pompous and tries for musicality with a very tin ear. Turning to Whalen (a chance to see if, having moved this past week, my books are in enough order yet to find something), I get lost, as always I do, in On Bear's Head. A lot of his work doesn't translate easily to email (or even HTML), but here's an example of what I was getting at: MYSTERIES OF 1961 Lazy tongs Jacobs ladder magnetized flywheel gyroscope folding mesh ring basket * Mr KNIBX, a sinister * "_A_ is for jelly, _B_ is for Jell-O" * "You are the how they call panic" ------------------------------- This is a text just crying for New Critical exposition, no? Tho, as somebody noted awhile back, it's got that "not about anything, it just is" quality all over. Actually, I read it as a list, moving outward from tiny phrases to the last two sections which I think function as equivalents to those early short lines with greater weight. There is, in Whalen's work, an absolute opacity to the nominal that is both insisted on (KNIBX) and permitted, rather than imposed (contrast here with the heroic backlighting of a Sobin or, in some places, Snyder) The poem shifts between emotional states (as do so many of Whalen's, and so often in just this direction) from "lazy" to "panic." The next to last section is an index of the slightest shifts (from jelly to Jell-O in antialphabetical order) as ontologically absolute. What exactly IS that object that appears to be described in the first stanza and why is Mr KNIBX sinister? What I note, thinking of Whalen as a spiritual poet, is how integral the word "lazy" is to "tongs" and how "how" as a noun has the same character (no going after the precious, but picking up an accent that is noted but not named). Ron Silliman ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 27 Feb 1996 20:57:05 +0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Schuchat Subject: Re: Trans Sending In-Reply-To: <199602271132.DAA10694@ix16.ix.netcom.com> re Ron's remarks on Whalen's work being both spiritual and nominal, perhaps the relationship comes from the nature of zen spirituality, which proceeds from attention to surroundings, which for anyone includes language as part of surroundings. tracking surroundings. quiet sitting and other zen exercises. this is in all of whalen's poetry, I think, though my own experiences argue to me that his time in japan, where language was a dominant part of his environment, would have heightened it. but zen would be spiritual, not transcendent, to make an odious distinction. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 27 Feb 1996 08:09:26 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry Gould Subject: trans sending "Mysteries of 1961" - a New Critical Roach Mr. Whalen's short lyric, "Mysteries of 1961", creates dramatic tension by means of a delicate balancing of preschool perceptions (ironically "in quotation marks") with a melange of adult concerns specific to the early 60s (i.e. lazy tongs, a combination machine shop kitchenware utensil; Jacobs Ladder, a reference of course to Sunday school games prevalent at that time; and m. flywheel, gyroscope and folding mesh ring basket, all three of these last uniting high technology with low comedy (kitchenware, pet store, toy). The poem pivots on an ironic coincidentia oppositorum, that is, Mr KNIBX, an unknown sinister mad scientist who sounds about as sinister as a cartoon character on a cereal box. The final couplet, "You are the how/they call panic" unites a child's ungrammatical mis-statement with an allusion to Pan, panic, and (inevitable for that time) the ATOMIC BOMB. These unmysterious "mysteries" of passing childhood & passing history become unaccountably and truly MYSTERIOUS when set within the urn-like frame of the poetic conundrum. Huh. Yeah well. HGhouldihan ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 27 Feb 1996 12:00:32 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Patrick Foley Subject: Re: Trans Sending Comments: cc: RoseRead@aol.com I'm gonna jump in here with a comment on the Philip Whalen poem Ron Silliman posted, "Mysteries of 1961". How does a poem like this work or fail to work? I have to assume these fragments carry associations for Whalen that they do not carry for us, and that they all have something to do with 1961. If that's not true, then the poem is a trick, and it's easy enough to make a fool of even the best reader. So you set out to write a poem composed of references the reader will not get --- why? It can work, if the reader can get some sense of the tone, and maybe some sense not of the individual bits but how they come together for the poet. It is poetry by example. This all adds up to something for Philip Whalen, or fails to in a way he finds just as interesting. If he can convey _that_ then the reader can get something without knowing what it's really all about; you get an example, what it's like to have things like this in your head, trying to make sense of them, trying not to, trying to remember 1961 or trying to forget it. Whatever. So there _is_ a sort of failure of reference in a poem like this and it's deliberate. The reasons for not evoking a similar state of mind with references the reader can understand? Who knows --- maybe Whalen just felt compelled to deal with material that is absolutely personal and didn't like explaining it all --- or maybe he didn't want to explain it because he wants to have a little privacy. And yet he wrote it, so he must hope his state of mind comes through anyway, and must hope that's enough to make a poem. Ron Silliman sez there is an "absolute opacity of the nominal" here. "Absolute" Ron? You seem to speak English, seem to be able to figure out which are the nouns and which the adjectives (are we less avante garde when it comes to the parts of speech) --- even find some of the latter essential to the former, as you say "lazy" is to "tongs". Oh but you don't mean essential semantically, no, because then "tongs" wouldn't be absolutely opaque, I guess, and maybe the poem would be about something. Maybe the adjectives, verbs, etc. are doing all the work, and only the nouns fail to refer. That _would_ be interesting. Btw, can't wait to tell my niece that sometimes the difference between jelly and Jell-O is "ontologically absolute". Anyone making a sandwich would have to agree. Alright, not taking any more time on this, just wanted some kind of dissent on the record. Full-dress mock battles to come. Patrick Foley ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 27 Feb 1996 13:04:00 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rod Smith Subject: Re: dead horses, live theories ONTHEBUS is a perfectbound lit mag, the issues I've seen were the beat/bukowski kinda thang but well done & not exclusively that. But onto. Ron wrote: "One of the interesting strains I've picked up from several "G2" or "later in the alphabet" poets has been a sense, especially re lpoetry and the Apexers, that to have a shape (it does not have to be so extensive as to qualify as a program) is to make a case for power as such and that power per se is not attractive and that they'd rather not. From my perspective, this echoes a lot of what I heard in nonprofit and other voluntary association groups in the early 1970s, in particular (remember affinity groups), all those folks still scarred then by the bad taste of internicine warfare within SDS and the atrocious sexual politics of the 60s antiwar movement. But as Foucault et al could have told them (could tell us now), power doesn't go away, it just reconstitutes itself Elsewhere" It's true that power is reconstitutive, or constitutive, or constructive, as well as oppressive but I think what power there is to be gotten vis a vis poetry these days is in question. The unironic grab for power re _Apex_ has gotten them some attention but has it gotten them respect? Not in the fairly large circle I travel in, which include a lot of folks who don't particularly consider themselves friends of the American Tree, as well as many who do. If we're talking abt audience here, we've done fairly well in DC. We now have three reading series in different locations with an average attendance of 25 to 50 people, not tons, but 5 years ago Tom Raworth read for 7 people (tremendous reading too), & from what I can see NYC isn't much different these days, maybe slightly larger numbers. There's also a certain amount of truck with the other poetry communities in town, i.e. a number of us have read in places 5 years ago we wouldn't have, the communities were much more seperate. If we're talking about grants, that seems to be disappearing. I received a $5,000 grant from DC last year which was reduced to $1,000 due to the budget crisis. They've now cut the grants program back & are going to be giving out fewer grants in the amount of $2,000. 15 years ago four DC American Tree gen writers received NEA's in the same year for, I believe $10,000, might have been more, which wld of course be equivalent to receiveing $20,000 now. & we know what's happening with the NEA. The universities ain't doin' the support thing either. I know of one Buffalo graduate which has a full-time job in poetry. Everybody else is scrambling for adjunct jobs at $2,000 a class (or less) which helps but. Many are simply opting out of the university. So, we do the poetry because we enjoy it & the people involved in it-- the work is supported at that level, but the idea that anything "material" is to be gotten from it is even farther off than it was just 10 or 15 years ago. I'm not claiming that there's no money in poetry, or that things were so great in the seventies or eighties, but there was a much greater possibility of having your work supported by some type of institution-- Jerome Sala once sd to me "The idea that there's no money in poetry is just as wrong as the idea that there's a lot of money in poetry." There also seems to me a class question here. A number of G1 folks went to Harvard or Yale. I know of one promising younger writer there now, she'll probably get a job. Not necessarily a good job. Things can't be reduced to that, but neither can one pretend it doesn't matter. There's also a parallel here between first & second gen NY school-- Ashbery & O'Hara went to Harvard, Berrigan, Mayer, Padgett, etc didn't. What this means is folks in our gen ARE exceedingly cynical abt power. & most of them see where it is-- it's in those "Dazzling Corporate Profits" of NYTimes & Wall Street Journal headlines, not in the personnages of the poets 10 to 30 years older than us-- everyone I know is having a hard time getting by because decisions were made at the top levels of govt & business 20 years ago that the population was costing too much. So to see someone expending energy attacking a poet because they got a job, well, save it for the gym, kid (if you can afford one, that is). The recent Andrew Ross book _The Chicago Gangster Theory of Life_ outlines the ideology of this lunacy better than any one piece I've seen (though Chomsky is best for the details)-- we seem to have decided, or corporate propoganda decided for us, somewhere along the line, that there's not enough to go around. This doesn't seem an accurate assumption to make. The resources are there for people to live quite well, & not just Americans, if the assumption was that people mattered more than money. --Rod ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 27 Feb 1996 13:16:07 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry Gould Subject: Re: dead horses, live theories Since Rod Smith has connected writing life with general US economic situation, I'd like to ask a general question along these lines. Tonight I'm supposed to meet with a group of writers who want to do something, be more politically active. It's our first meeting. My question: what would be the most useful & effective way for writers/artists AS ARTISTS to speak up about the situation as Rod outlined it (which outline I'm in agreement with, except in my view "institutional support" for poets has caused at least as much harm as good). I say what would be most effective for people AS ARTISTS because I think I already know the answer as far as people AS CITIZENS - there's a world of mutual aid disaster relief community service out there to be done. AS ARTISTS my recurrent thought over the past too many years has been to come up with some kind of extended manifesto/paper, along the lines of the Catholic Bishops statement on the economy which was done about 10 years ago & which is still relevant. The good Bishops centered on 3 basic concepts as I understand it : the rights of poor people; the common good as a criterion of social justice; and the rights of people as workers. The Bishops document would be as good an antidote to phony Buchananisms and divisive hate-mongering as any I know of. But my 2nd recurrent thought whenever this feeble urge comes over me is a sense of futility. All politics is local, organizational, and founded in PR; we could spend 6 months coming up with a document nobody would read anyway. Any thoughts on this? What about using an internetwork like this to develop a collective document? [I hear the shivers & shakes out there.] I'm sure this particular list is the wrong venue. I know about the writers network that focused on defeating the NEA attacks in Congress, that's probably more relevant to such a project. I realize this is not poetics; please respond directly to me unless you feel it really must be said to poetics list. I'm at Henry_Gould@ brown.edu. And any objections to discussing this on poetics will meet with my full assent. In my view artists have no special cachet when it comes to political & social values; nor are they required in their art to deal with politics at all. But they COULD speak about the relationship between art; the good life; and social justice. And as we all know these three interrelated issues took Marx a long way... What should I bring to this meeting tonight? - Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 28 Feb 1996 08:15:27 GMT+1300 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tony Green Organization: The University of Auckland Subject: Re: Trans Sending Re Patrick Foley on Whalen. Figuring out the poet's feelings associations is a strategy that the poem resists. Something to be learned from that is that the poem doesn't fail, but the strategy does. Put it another way, it was never meant to sit 'that' exam. Tony Green, e-mail: t.green@auckland.ac.nz ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 27 Feb 1996 14:34:16 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Martin Spinelli Subject: Poetry Soundfiles on line Folks, The Electronic Poetry Center now has dozens of audio-art and poetry soundfiles up for public use. Everything from Indigenous American song to digital sound collage. http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/sound http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/linebreak We have written an extensive information page which describes various soundfile formats and their use, contains links to free digital audio player/editor software, and instructions on how to play soundfiles on a computer *without* a soundcard. EPC soundfile formats include: .WAV .AU .AIFF .MP2(MPEG) Have a listen. If you heed help email linebrk@acsu.buffalo.edu. Best, Martin Spinelli LINEbreak Producer/Director ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 27 Feb 1996 14:53:43 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rod Smith Subject: Re: dead horses, live theories HG-- Definitely bring Steve Evans &/or Jennifer Moxley to that meeting, if they're not already involved. I suspect they are. A few interesting resources: Alternative Radio David Barsamian 2129 Mapleton Boulder, CO 80304 tapes & transcripts by activists-- Chomsky, Bagdikian, hooks, Marable, Nader, Sklar, etc etc The New Party 227 West 40th St, #1303 NYC, NY 10018 ph 212 302 5053 e-mail newparty@igc.apc.org genuine attempt to get a labor party going. Have DC address for anybody that wants it. The Cultural Environment Movement POBox 31847 Philadelphia, PA 19104 new movement started by George Gerbner, Dean of the Annenberg School of Communications. Focused on corporate control of media, has some excellent things to say abt how that all works, at natl & intl levels. Communities Concerned About Corporations c/o Organizing Media Project #5104 42nd Ave Hyattsville, MD 20781 just what it says. Also there's Z magazine & Covert Action Quaterly which folks probably know of. Rpd ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 27 Feb 1996 12:02:37 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Christopher J. Beach" Subject: Re: dead horses, live theories In-Reply-To: <960227130359_334614884@emout04.mail.aol.com> A very interesting exchance between Ron and Rod. I'm not sure about the "class" difference between G1 and G2, though. Did all that many G1 folks really go to Harvard and Yale? In any case, I'm not sure it makes that much difference any more (at least in terms of getting a job in poetry) whether one went to Harvard and Yale or, say, Buffalo. (It clearly made a much bigger difference in the 1950s or 60s). Anyway, the relationship of class and education is tricky--what was Olson's "class"? (Although he was a Wesleyan and Harvard student). For that matter, what was Berryman's class (certainly not the same as Lowell's, but they ended up in much the same place, institutionally). C Beach > > There also seems to me a class question here. A number of G1 folks went to > Harvard or Yale. I know of one promising younger writer there now, she'll > probably get a job. Not necessarily a good job. Things can't be reduced to > that, but neither can one pretend it doesn't matter. There's also a parallel > here between first & second gen NY school-- Ashbery & O'Hara went to Harvard, > Berrigan, Mayer, Padgett, etc didn't. > > What this means is folks in our gen ARE exceedingly cynical abt power. & most > of them see where it is-- it's in those "Dazzling Corporate Profits" of > NYTimes & Wall Street Journal headlines, not in the personnages of the poets > 10 to 30 years older than us-- everyone I know is having a hard time getting > by because decisions were made at the top levels of govt & business 20 years > ago that the population was costing too much. So to see someone expending > energy attacking a poet because they got a job, well, save it for the gym, > kid (if you can afford one, that is). > > The recent Andrew Ross book _The Chicago Gangster Theory of Life_ outlines > the ideology of this lunacy better than any one piece I've seen (though > Chomsky is best for the details)-- we seem to have decided, or corporate > propoganda decided for us, somewhere along the line, that there's not enough > to go around. This doesn't seem an accurate assumption to make. The resources > are there for people to live quite well, & not just Americans, if the > assumption was that people mattered more than money. > > --Rod > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 27 Feb 1996 14:11:48 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Thomas Bell Subject: bodies In-Reply-To: <199602271057.CAA25098@ix6.ix.netcom.com> Do previous posts here on writing the body go beyond this quote? "the body is a permanent contestation of the prerogative attributed to consciousness of `giving meaning' to each thing; it lives as this contestation." Emmanuel Levinas, _Totality & Infinity_, trans. A. Lingis, (Pittsburgh: Duquesne UP, 1969) 129. tom bell ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 27 Feb 1996 17:35:58 +0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kenneth Goldsmith Subject: Announcing the release of LINGO 5 Comments: cc: jongams@hardpress.com *************************************************************************** ANNOUNCING THE RELEASE OF LINGO 5 FROM HARD PRESS *************************************************************************** Web Version now up: http://hardpress.com TABLE OF CONTENTS LINGO CD #1 INCLUDED WITH NEW AUDIO WORKS BY: Mark Swed Ken Amis' Quintet No.2 for Brass (1990) David Shapiro & Connie Beckley Falling Upwards/To the Earth (Poetry/Music) Mark Swed George S. Clintons' Osmosis (String Quartet) Michael Gizzi 2 Poems Gillian McCain 2 Poems Elaine Equi 3 Poems Frank Lima 4 Poems Jon Gams & David Seidel Fascists Call Beauty a Joke (Guitar Duet) Chris Stroffolino After Long Conversation Eileen Myles Maxfield Parrish Trevor Winkfield Nature Study (Story) MUSIC Peter Occhiogrosso The Second Set: More Jazz on Video FICTION Christopher Middleton Cliff's Dwarf 32 PAGE COLOR PORTFOLIO John Yau Epiphany and Surrender: The Recent Paintings of Bill Jensen Bill Jensen Five Paintings Raphael Rubinstein & John Yau Report from the Ruins of Emerald City: Arturo Cunca, Roland Flexner, Jan Frank, Diane Green, Stanley Whitney, Randy Wray, Joe Coleman, Robert Birmelin, Jenny Scobel, Robert Witz. Christopher Miles City of Now: Adam Sherman, Tim Hawkinson, Carter Potter, Larry Hammerness, Amy Adler, Joseph S. Santarromana, Deborah Brown, Laura Whipple, Patty Wickman, Joyce Lightbody. 48 PAGES OF NEW POETRY Amy Gerstler Three Poems Estrellita Mendez Three Poems Garrett Caples On a Case: A Noir Paul Murphy Aubade Paul Hoover Impossible Object Gillian McCain Two Poems John Yau / Peter Lorre Wonders Which Artist Should Paint His Portrait Michael Gizzi In The Vicinity of a Grocer Anne Rearick Two Photographs Leslie Scalapino from The Front Matter, Dead Souls Wanda Coleman Three Poems Susan Levin Four Poems Chris Stroffolino Two Poems David Shapiro Three Poems Carol Hayden & Abigail Gumbiner Three Photographs from Vacant Eden Kit Robinson Four Poems Knute Skinner Two Poems Linda Smukler Three Poems Jack Collom Kit Joel Lewis Two Poems Elizabeth Robinson The Record Deanna Ferguson The Dawning of Donny Juliana Spahr Two Poems Ben Watkins Three Photographs ESSAYS Charles North On & For Jim Brodey Jim Brodey Five Poems Garrett Caples Ed Roberson'sVoices Cast Out to Talk to Us In Ray Ragosta Cydney Chadwick's Enemy Clothing Charles Boone Goya's L.A. A play by Leslie Scalapino Available in hard copy from: Hard Press P.O. BOX 184 West Stockbridge, MA 01266 phone 413-232-4690 fax 413-232-4675 Or on the Web at: http://hardpress.com ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 27 Feb 1996 18:14:18 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Re: dead horses, live theories Rod Smith raises some extremely provocative questions about class. The analogy between the 50's (Ashes, O'H) and the 60's (Mayer, Berrigan) and the g1 vs. g2. is perhaps a good starting place, but it's severely complex. On of the complicating factors, for me, has been that while the first generation NYSCHOOL did not claim to be as POLITICALLY RADICAL (at least not programmatically, but more incidentally, or as Ashes said "we merely refuse the government it's right to exist), the first wave L poets did claim to be so---despite (or perhaps BECAUSE?) the class similarities (I know this is a generalization, but I'm trying to extend on Rod's point--and there is at least SOME truth to it that might be usefully explored). This is where it seems history becomes a question (around $$$$$$$ rather than around Foucaultian power which EVERYBODY HAS NO MATTER WHAT, yippee!) And why I don't think the analogy holds. For, unlike today, the generation of Mayer, etc. (mid to late 60's) saw a general loosening up of culture. Many really thought the system (which now goes under the more benign name of "the world market") was gonna fail. More affordable colleges opened up to classes, races and genders that had previously been excluded. The Allen anthology was being reprinted over and over. Being from the lower classes, and flaunting bohemian lifestyles, was NOT considered a handicap. With the oil crisis, the bicentenial clampdown, the erection of RAYGON, things clamped down severely. And things have been in general TRYING to return to the pre 60's elitism and pieties and increasing "incentives" for being uptight, and a growing underclass that includes many college educated people. An example re college: My late mother (b. 1942) wanted to go to college severely, and was not able to (due to class, but also to some extent gender). Because she worked her ass off, I was able in the early 80's to do so. In the five years I was in college, the tuition (i.e. price) MORE THAN DOUBLED. Had I been 10 years younger, it's probable that I would not have been able to go to college. I base this on the FACT that many of the current generation of college kids are having to drop out (and not like GINSBERG AND KEROAUC to go "on the road" out of CHOICE)--because of cut backs to publically funded schools. So, how does this SAME OLD STORY relate to the "battle over power in the poetic superstructure"?????n On one level, it may account for the tone of desperation, of divisiness, the directionlessness even of younger poets. Sure, poets have been desperate, self-pitying and divisive way before. John Berryman almost tried to commit suicide in his mid 20's (during World War II) because Harvard wouldn't rehire him. Today, one could cynically let out a communal cry: "OH, POOR JOHN!" Yet, at least in the 60's---despite many of the poetry wars going on, there seemed to be at least some shared feeling towards a common EXTRA-LITERARY enemy; and also a sense that we hurt ourselves more to be sequestered in out little boxes, in the suburbs, what have you.... What I would like to see more from my generation (given the systemic limitations) is at least an attempt to reach out more rather than mimic the tone of divisiness. For instance, re the whole M question. Yes, their polemics have been divisive in a way. But what is the point in meeting this divisiness with STILL MORE DIVISIVENESS?????????????? This is a sinking to the level that is hard to avoid, but I would like to try, and would like to be CHECKED by others, or CALLED by others when I lapse into it. I'LL CHECK YOU IF YOU CHECK ME. I mean, aesthetic differences NEED NOT always be POLITICAL differences. The problem with the POLITICAL PROGRAM that seems to follow from an assumption that DISJUNCTIVE POETIC FORMS is in itself POLITICAL is perhaps partly to blame for the "reaction" of the M poets. I DO NOT see a NECESSARY connection between the aesthetics propounded by the M (or by the Ed Foster group for that matter) and a political conservatisim or yeegahds "the christian right". If the question really is politics, isn't it possible that (andit seems even MORE OF A NECESSITY TODAY than it was when the first gen. L poets were publishing their first books; the economic/cultural bankruptcy provides a climate even more threatening to poetry and to POETS now than then----the divisiveness of the L POETS in the 70's and 80's is a luxury we CAN NO LONGER AFFORD as, to their credit, I think Charles and others have recognized recently). I do not consider myself an M POET, but at the same time I DO respect them, ROD, and not just because they published me. In the 50's the coalition that Donald Allen managed to put together did manage to in some ways, at least temporarily, break the hegemony of the mainstream pieties. Why isn't that possible today???????????? Chris Stroffolino ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 27 Feb 1996 19:06:11 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: PR, book distribution, political organization briefly then: would it not be a pleasure to gather the public relations/book distribution/political (and otherwise) organizational talent latent on this list toward the ends of affecting discussion _outside_ our own ellipse? that is, Rod's list of political sources is great, but charged with pathos.. why is this [our discussion] a subset of political activity, and not vice versa? Jd "that the theory of poetry was the theory of life.." ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 27 Feb 1996 19:46:10 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Wendy Battin Subject: Re: query: book distribution Just a quick thanks to all who've responded on list & backchannel. I'll try all the URL's when I'm finished travelling for the week & will get back to you then. Much appreciated. Wendy ---------------------------------------------------------------- Wendy Battin wjbat@conncoll.edu wbattin@mit.edu Contemporary American Poetry Archive http://camel.conncoll.edu/library/CAPA/capa.html ---------------------------------------------------------------- ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 27 Feb 1996 19:50:25 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Carla Billitteri Organization: University at Buffalo Subject: Rob't Dunc. on "breakdown of the body politic" Found this sentence in John Tytell, _Ezra Pound: The Solitary Volcano_ (New York: Doubleday, 1987), p. 299, and wonder if anyone knows more about it or has a comment: Another young poet, Robert Duncan, wrote sustaining certain of Pound's more rabid views, commenting that `minorities of any kind are symptoms like boils, cancers,' signs of the breakdown of the body politic." No citation is given but presumably the quoted line comes from a letter of Duncan's to Pound. Carla Billitteri ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 27 Feb 1996 19:56:46 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Bill Luoma Subject: New Pub good folks, I have a new booklet of sound poems from the Figures called swoon rocket. 28p, $6 available from Small Press Distribution (510-549-3336) or the publisher Geoff Young at 5 Castle Hill, Great Barrington, MA 01230 or at Poetry City @ Teachers & Writers on Feb 29th at the Bill Luoma/Simon Pettet reading, 5 Union Square West, 7th Floor, NYC. 6:30 pm. Bill Luoma ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 27 Feb 1996 20:26:48 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Patrick Foley Subject: Re: Trans Sending Tony, I agree, Whalen's poem resists --- well what exactly does it resist? The term "reticence" used to be used commonly --- the word everyone reached for when faced with Elizabeth Bishop's poetry. (Linda Gregg says something similar about Dickinson.) You want to say Whalen's resistance is not a sort of reticence, I guess. I'll go along with that. Let's say it _is_ different. Neither would I want to insist that this poem is about Whalen's state-of-mind; that was a sort of place-holder in my note. I will even try to go along with the poem not being about anything at all --- which I suspect is the secret handshake on this list. It is an opportunity for the reader to have a linguistic --- is that too narrow? --- experience. I can go along with that too, I guess. But I'm going to have trouble if the poem's language is not, in those circumstances, expected to do everything language does, and that includes reference, boys. What Wittgenstein called how language & the world _fit_. Short of that, we're talking about sound, we're talking about music made with words as sounds, and that is just not how we hear a language we speak. (There is a difference every poet understands between writing about himself and writing about the thing. When no candidates come to the reader's mind for the poem's object --- Silliman can't think of what the first strophe could be describing, and the few ideas I've had today I'd have to ponder a while --- it is natural to assume the poet is in his own head, or at least that he is caressing and not grasping the things of the world (Kafka's distinction, and Rilke's too, I think). Hence, I talked as if Whalen was evoking a state-of-mind.) Alright, no conclusion. I'm not saying I like or dislike or even understand what Philip Whalen has given us. I just don't want to hear a lot of talk about "ontological" this and that, when we could be talking about the poem. Let me ask you, Tony, what's it all for? Are you that interested in poem's that give you no clue what the poet's feelings, experiences, ideas are? I assume when you say a poem resists, you mean more, you mean resists completely --- or do you subscribe to some aesthetic of difficulty we think of now as modernist? Is a poem a game with words? A philosophical experiment with language? These things are possible, certainly, and they are probably present in all poems to a degree --- sitting down to a blank piece of paper I often get a sort of metaphysical vertigo. But they are not the whole ballgame. I can't say the most interesting thing I ever found in a poem was a couple words in reverse alphabetical order. Pat Foley email:pfofk@aol.com ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 28 Feb 1996 15:33:01 GMT+1300 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tony Green Organization: The University of Auckland Subject: Re: Trans Sending Dear Pat Foley, on Whalen again asking the impossible of me now: a + - kind of thing ALL? it's "all" for? is anything "meant" to be 'for'? I hear symptoms of distress at something deemed or felt to be missing what's not there to be had. Remember Lichtenstein or Warhol? Rauschenberg's white canvases? Cage? The arts, as arts of expression, underwent something I suppose was interesting to most people in and around 1960. So, I'm not surprised (rather pleased) to have a Whalen 1961 poem quoted here that has a similar ring. And hear it ring the same alarm bells abt --- where's the art gone (HELLLLLLPPPPP)! The strategies needed for listening to this piece of Whalen that yield pleasure are those of listening to a list, first, of an array that didn't much get into poems, because not symbolic, not in the Romantic canon of highly charged roses, volcanoes, hurdy-gurdy players, brooks ... so working against a genre of lyric poem and that that still works is amazing, but apparently true, or so it appears from this wee conversation. I suppose I should go on and say more about the non-list parts, but I'm still bewildered myself coming back into this Poetics List's conversation and seemingly going back to difficulties of thirty-five years ago. I really must have misssed something since being off-line for two months, a time-warp occurred? Of course I'm interested in that there poem, being of an age to have wanted to write anything as good as that. I love sound-values overwhelming the word-meanings. I cherish any device of that kind that will produce as much disturbance in listeners that believe that what words do is precise sense. But not always in every poem. I remember arguing with my father who used to say how cd anyone like my poems, because they were meaningless? Anyone who liked them and told me so must be a flatterer and a charlatan, because there was nothing to like. There are some curious assumptions thereto based on expectations built on poems written before 1961. Sad thing is new poems require new readings, either that or pshaws of cranky dismissal. Right here and now, off the cuff, a defence of everything from Pop onwards seems too large a task to undertake. But that is what is at issue. Best wishes Tony Green, e-mail: t.green@auckland.ac.nz ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 27 Feb 1996 21:42:25 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Keith Tuma Subject: Re: Rob't Dunc. on "breakdown of the body politic" In-Reply-To: Message of Tue, 27 Feb 1996 19:50:25 -0500 from My guess is that Tytell means Ronald Duncan. Friend of Eliot and EP--wrote some plays and some prose I think. As I dimly recall also a political thug. Incredible that Tytell would not offer a source for such a quote. Keith Tuma ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 27 Feb 1996 23:23:56 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Patrick Phillips Subject: trans mitting dead ringers, live recordings Is outsider art really? How does John Coltrane Fit...thing is, he doesn't. In what class did Whalen pass that test? I mean institution, er, museum... [ ] A pack of L&M's and a shear chaser. How do you get to Jimmy's house? Where's Lucy??!! If Dalton had email he'd know what to do... ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 27 Feb 1996 20:43:58 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Thomas Bell Subject: PR, book dist.....and change In-Reply-To: The nun study has received some recent attention here and elsewhere. Another study was published last month that has potentialy greater impact. Cognitive-behavioral therapy physically alters the brain.(this is a replication of earler studies and documented through physical - PET Scan - evidence) Does this mean that poetry can change the way a reader or writer's brain works? Possibly. tom bell On Tue, 27 Feb 1996, Jordan Davis wrote: > briefly then: > would it not be a pleasure to gather the public relations/book > distribution/political (and otherwise) organizational talent latent on this > list toward the ends of affecting discussion _outside_ our own ellipse? > that is, Rod's list of political sources is great, but charged with pathos.. > why is this [our discussion] a subset of political activity, and not vice versa? > Jd > "that the theory of poetry was the theory of life.." > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 27 Feb 1996 20:47:47 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ron Silliman Subject: Arise ye prisoners of starvation... Chris Beach writes: I'm not sure about the "class" difference between G1 and G2, though. Did all that many G1 folks really go to Harvard and Yale? In any case, I'm not sure it makes that much difference any more (at least in terms of getting a job in poetry) whether one went to Harvard and Yale or, say, Buffalo. (It clearly made a much bigger difference in the 1950s or 60s). Anyway, the relationship of class and education is tricky--what was Olson's "class"? (Although he was a Wesleyan and Harvard student). For that matter, what was Berryman's class (certainly not the same as Lowell's, but they ended up in much the same place, institutionally). ------------------ Actually, while G/zero or whatever you might call it went heavily to Harvard, G1 (following the Evans carbon dating system here) aka langpo etc was much more apt to have gone to Berkeley: Watten, Armantrout, Melnick, Bromige, Ratcliffe, Scalapino, Shurin, your humble correspondent here, Perelman (much much later), etc. Which, unlike Harvard and Yale, is a public institution, which meant that poor white trash like myself could get in if we could swing it. While some of those folks come from fairly successful parents, others like Rae and myself come from pretty close to the edge of the lumpen proletariat, families looking upward to see the blue collar folks who in the 1950s looked like they might be doin' okay. But there's an enormous number of elements that go into a category like class, even if one still adopts a static conception of that and ignores the fact that only 11 percent of the US workforce is involved in manufacturing these days. There's class background, class stance, class orientation and lots of struggle around all these all the time. In many senses, a lot of folks whose parents were doctors, teachers, ministers, etc. (which includes LOTS of writers, whatever the aesthetic tendency) -- folks who fall not into the capitalist class but into that in-between professional category -- struggle with their own sense of "privilege." It strikes me that people deal with growing up in a class society much like they do growing up in a racist and sexist one -- either they struggle with it consciously (and constantly) all their lives or they don't. I'm for the folks who struggle, regardless of where they came from. All best, Ron ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 27 Feb 1996 20:55:03 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: RFC822 error: TO field duplicated. Last occurrence was retained. Comments: RFC822 error: TO field duplicated. Last occurrence was retained. Comments: RFC822 error: TO field duplicated. Last occurrence was retained. Comments: RFC822 error: TO field duplicated. Last occurrence was retained. From: Ron Silliman Subject: Objectionable Comments: To: cftoakland@igc.apc.org This came to me from Tom Christensen, the executive editor at Mercury House: On the subject of internet censorship, did you happen to see the item about the new software that blocks out "objectionable" sites? Seems it blocks out the White House's web page because it includes the word "couples." All best, Ron ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 27 Feb 1996 23:58:11 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Patrick Phillips Subject: seventh inning stretch/new mail address Even Dandy Don threw beach balls... I'm outta the park for a while....tie game 50th inning. Before I go I should mention that Thad Ziolkowski's _Our Son the Arson_ will be out from what books by the end of March. Looks great! Selected blurbs: Thad Ziolkowski's poetry stands firmly on a ledge, at the slippery end of an artifice all but consumed by arson. Or maybe his poetry is that edge. Or the night that beckons. A still falling powder, artfully arranged into lines with ice underneath. But don't look back, or down. The building's all but gone. And the next step's the steep one. Ben Friedlander Like Kurt Schwitters before him, Thad Ziolkowski has designed a house out of found objects and fragments, echoes of the language of the law, of patriotism, the news such as we receive it, idioms floating in the air. Through this tableau, this mirror-house, we pass, only to discover that going left takes us right, inside means outside, and in the attic we find what was hidden in the basement. Nothing is to be taken for granted. Nothing is what it so publicly seems or proclaims. Our attention is thereby tested and renewed, our sense of direction challenged. Did I mention that it is a burning house? He set the fire himself. Michael Palmer Ziolkowski's poems, propelled by Dickinsonian hymnody, build out of such particulars, as a preposition newly read, a lyric we can almost sing along to without ever before having heard it. Like listening to "rare / live tapes // of, as well as by, all that happens," one reads here of "the people / who though," and comes to see, as if it had never before been so enacted, the sheer fact of relation that syntax which is the problem in which we float in these poems, that "something / within which something else originates." A.L Nielsen If you want a copy/copies send me a message (no choice but backchannel now), or you can order them direct from SPD. Discounts to friends!! Soon a Jennifer Moxley and a Kevin Davies. When the time comes, I'll allow some backchannel mishap or I'll piggy back a subscriber's post. If anyone would like to, you can reach me at Patrick_Phillips@brown.edu or pphillip@risd.edu my new address is Patrick Phillips PO Box 603430 Providence, RI 02906 Same phone 401 272 1181 hasta ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 28 Feb 1996 00:14:37 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Patrick Phillips Subject: New Book From Thad Ziolkowski I should be a better/responsible editor and really plug the book for Thad's sake...see my previous post for blurbs, or send me a note and I'll give you more information. Thad Ziolkowski's _Our Son the Arson_ will be out from what books by the end of March. Looks great! If you want a copy/copies send me a message (no choice but backchannel now), or you can order them direct from SPD. Discounts to friends!! Soon a Jennifer Moxley and a Kevin Davies. When the time comes, I'll allow some backchannel mishap or I'll piggy back a subscriber's post. If anyone would like to, you can reach me at Patrick_Phillips@brown.edu or pphillip@risd.edu my new address is Patrick Phillips PO Box 603430 Providence, RI 02906 Same phone 401 272 1181 My best to everyone Patrick ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 28 Feb 1996 00:14:25 -0500 Reply-To: Robert Drake Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Robert Drake Subject: Re: Trans Sending You'll notice how easily I withhold what you need, What you require of me. I can't imagine what it is, and it doesn't do me any good * A terrible mistake: "Dots and squiggles justify The air and space I occupy" [frm _on bear's head_, immediate preceeding "mysteries of 1961"] ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 27 Feb 1996 22:47:11 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Thomas Bell Subject: Arise, found whalen and some other things In-Reply-To: <199602280447.UAA18940@ix2.ix.netcom.com> found whalen found antin found 7 : X : 63 For John Lee Hooker ________________ Reading a book 30 yrs later is day Ja Vous is picking Up poetry [reading: activism] 33 yrs later you better not open that door STAR BROAD ARROW IMPERIAL SEAL but maybe thats the problem with the notion of the avant-garde that it turns itself from a discourse into a tradition whose members worry about its decline in and as i continued leafing through the newspaper looking for the present i tom bell ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 27 Feb 1996 21:01:44 -1000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gabrielle Welford Subject: (Fwd) How many Republicans...? > How many Republicans does it take to screw in a lightbulb? > > Four hundred and sixty-two: > > Twelve to investigate Clinton's involvement in the failure of the old > bulb, twenty-three to deregulate the light bulb industry, sixteen to cut > funding for alternative lighting R&D, thirty-four to cut the tax rate on > light bulbs, fifty-three to design a block grant so the states can change > the bulb, forty-one to talk with defense contractors about night-vision > gear instead, and two hundred and eighty-three to pass a law making it > illegal to discuss naked bulbs (or screwing anything) on the Internet. > > Ann Chambers Theis atheis@leo.vsla.edu ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 28 Feb 1996 03:24:26 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rod Smith Subject: Re: dead horses, live theories NEW Ziolkowski, Moxley, & Davies YES! Ron-- Liked yr post on class very much. Two of my heroes, Cage & Oppen, were college drop outs. Chris B-- As I said, the Harvard thing isn't something I wld overemphasize, however, you asked who among G1 went there -- Bernstein, Hejinian, & Palmer all went there. Possibly the three biggest name language poets (I know I know Michael's not a language poet). Andrews was there as a grad student. & Susan Howe's father taught there, was head of the Eng Dept. for a number of years I believe. Aside from Olson, Ashbery, O'Hara, Creeley was also there during WWII. & Burroghs I think dropped out? Pretty good school I'd say. Any "major poets" go to Princeton? Actually, the question falls somewhere between "privilege" & some kind of odd synchronicity-- Providence & the Bay area being two other places that seem to have harbored more than any reasonably expected share of poetic talent. Actually, a populace flows through the yard. . . Chris S-- I think the question of why L-poets were more politically radical, at least overtly, than NYS (other than just "sensibility") had to do with what was going on in the universities generally in the seventies/early eighties-- "theory" was taking over, so it was something they engaged & did it quite well I believe. But as I think has been sd here before, it, theory, means something quite different now. I'm sorry if I seemed too dismissive of the M, Chris. But I think my statement of the general reaction to their first few manifestoes was accurate. I also said I thought a number of the poems they published were good. & I've said I like Pam R's work, 'specially the Burning Deck book. & I also think Lew D's poem in oblek 12 is interesting. I understand concerns abt divisiveness but it shouldn't stop one from stating opinions, should it? OK, maybe some opinions some of the time. . . Maybe we can't do what the Allen did because they already did it for us, but you can be sure that if we stop for even a short while it wld have to be done all over again. & good point you made abt the beats, someone sd somewhere "they weren't high school drop outs, they were grad school drop outs!" --Rod PS-- the term "biggest name" above being based on my perception of who's known, & even occasionally read, outside of their respective communities. Armantrout, Silliman, Scalapino being examples of "big names" that didn't go to Harvard. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 28 Feb 1996 08:07:11 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Boughn Subject: New Olson bio I just heard from Ralph Maud that his new Olson biography is finally out: _Charles Olson's Reading: A Biography_ ISBN 0-8093-1995-0, Southern Illinois Univ. Press, 448 pp., 6x9, $44.95. Mike ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 28 Feb 1996 08:08:16 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Bouchard Subject: today the mid-atlantic. . .tomorrow the world! This article is from the web page of Philadelphia's CITY PAPER. Despite knowing many, many booksellers and managers at locations across the country, I have not one juicy rumor to spread about what's going on in the Philadelphia store. I will keep posting what I find out because I think it's interesting and pertinent to book production and distribution, and ultimately to the interests of this list. Any other information is welcome. daniel_bouchard@hmco.com _________________________________ Copyright © 1996, City Communications, Inc. All rights reserved Unhappy booksellers call on a radical union to get their fair share By Larissa Comis Employees at Borders are unhappy with their wages and benefits. Managers have hired a union-busting law firm. Where do the workers turn? To the Wobblies. Founded in 1905 by Big Bill Haywood, the Industrial Workers of the World (aka the IWW, or the Wobblies) is an organization best-known for its industrial sabotage and direct action campaigns. The IWW is gaining in strength in Philadelphia. It recently purchased a new union hall, the Fletcher Center, in North Philadelphia and has offices in University City. Management's response? Managers at Borders are opposed to the unionization and have hired a well-known union-busting law firm out of Pittsburgh to represent the company in negotiations. Bob Helms, a representative of the Philadelphia branch of the national IWW, believes that the involvement of Jackson, Lewis, Schnitzler and Krupman is not a good sign for the labor side of negotiations. "This doesn't bode well... I'm too experienced to be anything but cynical at this time. I've seen union-busters at work and they are sleazebags" says Helms. On the other hand, James Withrow, a union organizer and Borders bookseller, is not so discouraged by the work of the law firm. "Their job so far has been to tell Borders what their legal obligations are, and I think that is fine," says Withrow. Regina Hertzig, a lawyer in the labor department of Freedman and Lorry, is representing the IWW in labor negotiations. She says that she will not draw conclusions about the plans of management according to whom they choose as counsel. Withrow says that employee relations with management are on good terms. "I don't want people to feel that this is an anti-Borders campaign... There's nothing wrong with our management at this store. Borders Book Shops are run by a fairly enlightened group of individuals," says Withrow. However, Withrow is dissatisfied with the conditions for Borders workers in the Center City store and throughout the country. "The real problem is with the wages and benefits within the bookstore industry... Unless other bookstore chains are affected by an effort like this, we're not going to make much more than we do now," says Withrow. He was unwilling to comment about what contact, if any, the Center City employees have had with workers from other stores. Helms says that he is delighted with the decision of the Borders workers to go to Wobbly and offers his full support. "The branch is here in solidarity with the booksellers, but the decisions they make as the booksellers will be made by the people working at the bookstore," says Helms. It is this flexibility that appeals to the Borders workers."The IWW, instead of filling us with what our union's objectives should be, has instead been there only for advice and support. Their respect for anarchy translates into a decentralized approach," says Withrow. Withrow and his co-workers chose to join the IWW instead of forming their own union. "There's not a booksellers union. We wanted to form one, but we didn't want to be left completely without an affiliation," says Withrow. The experience of the IWW, and the help it can offer the Borders workers in navigating national labor laws, also appealed to the Borders employees. "We picked the IWW to affiliate with because the IWW members have spent so much time thinking about how a union should be run," says Withrow. The majority of the 43 Borders employees who are eligible to join the union signed the IWW membership cards, says Withrow. Despite this broad support, the workers at Borders must still petition the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and conduct a silent vote to elect a union to represent them, says Withrow. The management at Borders has the ability to stall the vote by taking issue with the petition, explains Hertzig. For instance, she says that they may claim that there is not commonality among workers. At this point, Hertzig says that they have not found out from management what they think of the petition. If they do take issue, there will be a hearing with the NLRB to decide if and when there will be a silent ballot by the workers. Borders managers were unavailable for comment. Withrow is optimistic that the parties can avoid the Feb. 27 hearing. "There may not even be a hearing because Borders and the union may just agree on the conditions of the election. They are being very fair about this. It could be far worse," says Withrow. If the majority of the Borders workers vote to be represented by the IWW, then, Helms says, "the IWW will have exclusive rights to represent the 43 workers in talks." Although the history of the IWW is steeped in obstructing methods of production to hurt the bosses, Withrow says that right now, such measures are not in the workers' agenda. "In our meetings, the greater portion of the time has been spent talking seriously about keeping and raising Borders' high standards for meeting customers' needs," says Withrow. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 28 Feb 1996 21:25:27 +0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Schuchat Subject: Princeton Poets In-Reply-To: <960228032425_433549859@emout08.mail.aol.com> Rod Smith asks what poets (he says major but what does that mean) went to Princeton: Lewis MacAdams Jr, John Godfrey, John Koethe (all at the same time) does that represent a school? One should note, also, that Harvard is a very large school. So is Berkeley (and Columbia, for that matter). Density matters. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 28 Feb 1996 07:57:23 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry Gould Subject: how many Republicans Plus a few extra to run for President with lightbulbs over their heads to stand for ideas. I went to my "political get active" meeting last night. Somebody said they were driving in a car & thinking how distant & controlled nature has become in industrial culture; they talked about how Americans are put in a mental box by treating themselves as special. I thought: these are not new or especially great ideas, but maybe they're a faint example of what artists or writers have to contribute to social debate : the idea that we can't live together without imagination - which imagines another future, a sympathetic or compassionate imagination, which creates even the possibility of alternatives. The same person said he felt culture seemed inert, unable to respond to what's happening, and that once the human spirit left religion and entered art - now it's leaving art - where's it going? We talked a lot about Buchanan & the situation of a demagogue appropriating real issues, somebody said he's making the same mistake, showing the same limits, as populists before him, being divisive, attacking non-white- males & the labor movement & immigrants. How he talks big but is unbelievable even if his ideas were acceptable. Somebody said what if the same things were said by a Jerry Brown none of Buchanan's supporters would listen because the code words would be left out. I thought if the issue is the impoverishment of working people in this society in terms of education, employment, housing & job security - if this is the issue that crosses ethnic & racial lines, and if politicians are talking about complicity of gov't & big business in making that happen - then where is the manifesto that would declare the artist's right to speak as artist to the direction of political decisions - that would lay down the moral spiritual basis for compassionate kind common good society - that would provide some nuts & bolts ideas for legislation that would push for more economic equity? How bout we come up with a collective set of statements all aimed in that direction - not a hammered-together set piece but a collection of statements? If people want to write such things & put them under a SPECIFIC subject heading I will at least print them off & collect them together. What we do with them after that - any ideas? If someone more versed in computers has a way to store & transmit such things & wants to help, please speak up. How about a big book with a page or two for each contributor, a photo & bio, & an imagined future? Perhaps with writings under specific issue headings. Brief, well-put together statements. I also worry that this may be a total waste of all our time & energy.Comments? Do we need a website & a cheapo book called HOW MANY REPUBLICANS? p.s. I went to school with Al Franken. I wrote plays he acted in (including a very prophetic one about a film guy who goes to a small town to film "the real America" & throws everybody in a tizzy. He & Tom Davis actually went to a small MN town & tried to DO that in a perverse way - got tossed out for obscenity & defaming the town's reputation). Maybe we could enlist Al in this campaign!! I'm only half kidding. - Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 28 Feb 1996 09:48:48 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Wallace Subject: dead classes, living classes, theory? Ron S., Chris S., Rod and others, etc: I think there's a lot of meeting ground between the various positions about class, poetics theories, etc. that have been on the list since Monday. Ron's right to call me out about a bit of rhetorical overkill (nobody's noticed that's my weakness, I supppose?) on the subject of who gets discussed and why, although to some extent I must have missed the discussion about Steve Evans ideas (I actually only signed on the list about that time), although I remember him posting. I think, as Rod would probably grant, that the relation of the various "class" changes in terms of who's doing what kinds of poetry, etc, result very directly from the social changes that he also mentions. I mean, I don't think it's accidental that people who might end up being interested in experimental poetry aren't going to go to Harvard anymore--the people who did, like Charles Bernstein etc., ran and got chased out of there (both) so fast that it's a a phenomena unlikely to take place again, since probably even those very few young poetics students who MIGHT have a chance to go to Harvard know that if they do, they won't be able to study anything they love. But Chris is right: "rejecting" academia isn't the relevant question for people who are on the verge of being denied access to it anyway. Still, Chris, while I understand the need for the kind of group bonding you're suggesting, I'm not sure we need to sacrifice critique (even the white hot variety) for that kind of bonding--I respect the Apex editors (o god please NO ONE EVER SAY M POETS AGAIN) without agreeing with them, but I'm even friendly with several of them and you can be damn sure that when it comes to most political, academic, and poetic issues that I'm right beside them--the very fact that we both read "experimental poetries" means that in most social environments in which I move, we'd be social allies. But I do reserve the right to disagree with them--as they have reserved the right to disagree with me--although it's clear that such disagreement is not the issue in, say, an environment like Washington, D.C.--around here we'd all of us--apex, language poets, you and me, etc--be considered pinkos. But although I also greatly respect Henry Gould's moving forward towards trying to take some political activity with the group of artists he's working with, his position vis a vis the political implications of form frustrate me. On the abstract level he's perhaps right--there's no transcendent, inherent, or "natural" implications of any artistic form, and I COULD be writing villanelles AND be both a poetic and political revolutionary. But Henry's comments simply seem to ignore the ACTUAL political situation of writing, which is quite simply that both academic and poetic production networks operate according to an almost unviolable politics of form, which is to say that people in various literary programs are completely denied access to even the questions Henry himself wants to raise. Try going to most MFA programs in this country and presenting something with ANY level of syntactic oddity and see how far you get. Try GETTING HIRED at a university for teaching formally innovative poetry--there have been about 50-100 full-time poetry creative writing positions advertised in the MLA the last two years, and poets who work with innovative form on any level have been given EXACTLY TWO of those jobs. Not political? And Henry's idea that maybe experimental poetries have been sullied by any contact with funding or academic life seems the worst kind of misplaced romanticism--as if our integrity as poets depends on being despised, impoverished, ignored, or having trust funds so we don't have to be. No way. mark wallace ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 28 Feb 1996 23:05:44 +0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Schuchat Subject: Re: dead classes, living classes, theory? In-Reply-To: You want political poetry, how about Neruda's CANTO GENERAL? There is a populist/historicist voice, plenty of tradition behind it in America and elsewhere. Rexroth somehow managed to use it for more meditative and philosophical ends, but however you slice it, it is a very different sense of language from that undertaken by poets designated by any letter of the alphabet. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 28 Feb 1996 10:19:53 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Bernstein Subject: New Subscribers New subscribers to POETICS: Bill Smith Ryan Johnson Marc Murdock Emily Lloyd Philip Hammond Ethan Fugate Michael McElligott Chris Jackson "Tracy S. Ruggles" Patrick Schultz "Christopher Filkins " Roger Field William Vidaver "Amittai F. Aviram" Lyn Gallacher (03)9626 1636" Dan Horne Mark Goble Carolyn Blythe Doris Rita Alfonso Jill McCartney John.E.Matthias.1@ND.EDU Susan Vanderborg Kim Tedrow Jondi Keane Patrick Foley Mustafa Ziyalan Dennis Finnell Paul Lord ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 28 Feb 1996 09:29:05 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joe Amato Subject: Re: dead classes, living classes, theory? just to say i'm really enjoying the exchange between mark wallace (nice post, mark!), chris stroffolino (ditto chris!), ron silliman (ditto ron!), rod smith (ditto rod!) and anybody i may have missed... i mean, there's disagreement among all of you, but without rancor, far as i can detect... and i'm finding mself learning much from your various insights... class discussions are rarely given this sort of air-play... i wish there were a way to address what strikes me as a certain (white?) male-ness in this conversation... i don't mean to be at all provocative here---women poets have been mentioned, certainly... but my-this post included, it's become a matter of men discussing various poetic histories... it's just that i wonder to what extent this question of bonding/privilege/class is intermingled with gender issues... and methinks it would be apropos to hear from women on this list, whether they're finding themselves resisting the discussion as it's currently taking shape... sorry for the interruption in any case... please continue to post away, i'm all ears and eyes... best to all// joe ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 28 Feb 1996 09:35:02 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joe Amato Subject: Re: dead classes, living classes, theory? oh yeah---i obviously missed henry gould, sorry henry!... i've really appreciated yr posts re art and politics... and i'm chewing over yr proposal, wondering what all can be done in these parts to address same... best, joe ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 28 Feb 1996 10:23:32 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry Gould Subject: Re: dead peg theory You want political poetry, how about Mandelstam's ODE TO STALIN? Ultimate irony & double-talk. Re: Mark Wallace's remarks, i.e.: "Henry's comments seem to ignore the ACTUAL political situation of writing, which is quite simply that both academic and poetic production networks operate accordin g to an almost inviolable politics of form" etc. I say poets will find an audience when they have something worthwhile to say (and even when they don't, as witness some of my endless yapping on this poor network). I live in Providence, which is a special case. Ed Honig is here, poet who started a lot of the Creative Writing Movement back in 60s. Before that time there was no such thing as a "poetic production network" (except the old old boy network). Now it's an industry. The Brown cottage version is BONAFIDE 3rd GENERATION CARD-CARRYING AVANT-GARDE LINGO-LANGO PONGO-PANGO EXPERIMENTALIST, and you better skew your syntax if you want an audience here. All with little cute MFA's glowing over their resumes. Mark writes: "Henry's idea that maybe experimental poetries have been sullied by any contact with funding or academic life seems the worst kind of misplaced romanticism..." --better believe it, Mark. You gotta get your hands dirty & litter up that library carrel. Remember, that's where Keats wrote his ODE TO SLUMBER (or was it ODE TO TORTURE?) before the grade/$$ came in. -- Henry Groteskew ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 28 Feb 1996 11:46:40 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Bouchard Subject: Re: dead peg theory -Reply Somtimes I forward interesting posts from the meat-flap to my correspondent in Calabria, Tony Door. After sending Henry's along, he asked me to post this response to the list. Tony's post follows. daniel_bouchard@hmco.com >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> whew, henry, henry, henry . . . . been to brown--they really ain't into pingo-pango, language poetry, nor even Experimentalism, per se. been to language poetry--it isn't really "Experimental" {that is to say--it does not use scientific principles of Experiment--& therefore differs from the work of Concrete Poets, or John Cage, Italian Futurists, Jackson Mac Low, & etc. which do..} been to language poetry--it really isn't in any "Avant Guarde" tradition that I know of--certainly there are some A-V G-D writers whom the CFAP wants to canonize {& ironically be thus ordained by these canonized "ordinals"} but the "programme" is not technically A-V G-D, precisely BECAUSE of its focus on "the canonization." As i understand it, the A-V G-D focuses on the caNNon!! finally, Henry--you want political poetry, (and ironically?) disjointed syntax, & institutional immobility, may i recomend to you a writer named Wm. Shakespeare, his ripostes attacking the physically handi-capped (Richard 3), blacks (Othello), Native Americans (Tempest), women, (everything), Hebrews, (do i have to name these?) use the "Ultimate irony & double-talk." to show that the powerful white men in charge are there because they aught to be. Uncle Joe WAS a monster, we all know that, but so were John D. Rockefeller & Henry Ford. Pick on someone bigger than you. That's the real challenge. Tony Door, Calabria/ITALIA >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 28 Feb 1996 12:44:02 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry Gould Subject: Re: dead peg theory T-Door reply Dear T-Door, well, touche, Tony for putting Stalin in his place - far as I know Mandelstam didn't get much flak from either Rockefeller or Ford but I'm sure he would have answered them in stikii if they tried. And clearly the Brown program has helped you zoom beyond any map I have of the cutting edge of experimental principles! I've read this guy Shakespeare, though - my theory is the plays were actually written by a horse - see the cryptic ironic double-talk remark at close of Richard III - and that's how I feel, too! - "Smokin Joe" Henry ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 28 Feb 1996 12:31:29 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Alexander Subject: Re: Rob't Dunc. on "breakdown of the body politic" >Found this sentence in John Tytell, _Ezra Pound: The Solitary Volcano_ >(New York: Doubleday, 1987), p. 299, and wonder if anyone knows more about >it or has a comment: > > Another young poet, Robert Duncan, wrote sustaining certain > of Pound's more rabid views, commenting that `minorities of > any kind are symptoms like boils, cancers,' signs of the > breakdown of the body politic." > >No citation is given but presumably the quoted line comes from a letter >of Duncan's to Pound. > >Carla Billitteri Not sure where it came from, and it may indeed actually be Ronald Duncan, but I know in later poems Duncan in a sense embraces cancer and boils and all the other breakdowns of the body (and body politic) as necessary, that what he perhaps earlier calls "multiversity" (as opposed to "university") in all its messiness is precisely what is needed, valued. So I wouldn't necessarily think a quote like this from Duncan is something in total agreement with "certain of Pound's more rabid views." The late poem by Duncan perhaps most central to this discussion is "In Blood's Domaine," from the Passages sequence. The poem appears in Ground Work II: In The Dark, and also in Selected Poems. But it touches on cancers, bacteria, scarlet eruptions and disease in general, and it refers directly to Pound ("But what ate at Pound's immortal Mind?"). I will not quote this poem here because of the disaster that various email margins and protocol would do to Duncan's spacing and long lines. I also recommend that if possible one read the poem in Ground Work, which allows for the lines to stretch out considerably, whereas the "standard" book size of Selected Poems makes the continuity of the poem suffer considerable difficulties. charles alexander ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 28 Feb 1996 08:33:40 -1000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gabrielle Welford Subject: Fwd: [Ravnish Gupta : Save a Life (fwd)] (fwd) ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Tue, 27 Feb 1996 15:49:15 -1000 From: ranadive@usa.pipeline.com To: postcolonial@jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU Subject: Fwd: [Ravnish Gupta : Save a Life (fwd)] >Dear Friends, >My name is Vrushali Ranadive and I am a 23 year old woman of Indian >background. I am asking for your help in saving my life. Last June >1994, just three weeks after graduating from college, I was diagnosed >with chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML). Many leukemia patients are >cured with a bone marrow transplant which involves receiving marrow >>From a matched donor. I wasunable to find a match within my family so >I have turned my hopes to the National Marrow Donor Program's (NMDP) >volunteer donor registry. > >In April 1995 a perfect match was located for me through NMDP and I >thought I would have a chance at being cured. Instead my worst fears >came true -the person decided not to proceed with the donation which could >save my life. Withouth a donor I don't have a chance to be cured; but you >could help give me another chance! > >There are two things you can do to help me in my quest to live a long >and healthy life. First, we are trying to locate this "lost" donor and >the best way to do that is to widely publicize my situation in the >hope that the person will hear my story and reconsider. Because NMDP >follows certain confidentiality rules, we are unable to know the name >of this donor and establish direct contact. However, we may have a >chance at reaching the donor or someone who knows him/her through this >appeal. Please forward this information and/or home page address to >your relatives and Indian friends across the country. > >Second, you can help me and all other Indians looking for marrow >donors by getting more Indians (or for that matter all South Asians) >to join the NMDP registry of volunteers. This includes getting >yourself typed and joining the registry, as well as holding drives >through your community, religious/cultural organization, or college >to get more Indians in the NMDP registry. The best chances for >finding a match are within the same ethnic community and presently >there are so few Indians in the registry that we are having a >difficult time finding matches. Currently there are more than 10 >Indians in the US looking for matches, none of whom are having any >luck. Adding more people to the registry will improve our chances of >finding a donor, and may give us the life-saving miracle match we need. > >I encourage you to become involved in this cause which is not only >important to me, but to the South Asian community at large. It is up >to everyone to come together and help one another. Remember, through >your efforts you may be able to accomplish the most extraordinary >thing -- help save someone's life! > >Please do not hesitate to call me at home in the evenings at >(212)697-2928 or send me email at ranadive@usa.pipeline.com for more >information regarding what you can do to help, or for information about the >NMDP registry. More information regarding the procedure, donor centers or >upcoming drives can be found on the World-Wide Web at >http://greenmfg.me.berkeley.edu/marrow/ > >THE GIFT YOU MAY BE ABLE TO GIVE IS THE GREATEST GIFT OF ALL -- THE GIFT OF >LIFE! > >Thank you, >Vrushali. > >EMAIL: ranadive@usa.pipeline.com >WWW : http://greenmfg.me.berkeley.edu/marrow/ >Ph : (212)697-2928 >****************** > _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ FRANKLIN M. RICARTE QUEER UNION at NYU New York University URL: http://pages.nyu.edu/clubs/QU fmr3438@is.nyu.edu email: queer.union@nyu.edu (212) 443-9834 email list: queer-union@lists.nyu.edu voicemail: (212) 998-4938 "Good ideas are not adopted automatically. They must be driven into practice with courageous patience." -Admiral Hyman Rickover _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ --- from list postcolonial@lists.village.virginia.edu --- ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 28 Feb 1996 13:29:55 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Bouchard Subject: Borders Philadelphia Election Date (fwd) This is an update on Borders and the IWW forwarded to me from Gab in Hawaii. daniel_bouchard@hmco.com ________________________________ Good news from the booksellers' front! The NLRB hearing went well this morning, and was well attended by nine Borders workers in wobbly regalia, and other Wobblies in wobbly regalia, too. The bargaining unit has been enlarged to include a few workers more than were originally asked for, so that the unit is up to 45 workers. The stipulated election agreement was reached without going into a formal hearing, and we were happy about that. Fellow Worker & GST Fred Chase was a welcome supporter and advisor at the hearing, and was well received by all. Another striking feature of this morning's events was the excellent legal representation of our wonderful union-souled attorney, Regina Hertzig. If there is a Borders Books & Music near you, have a cup of coffee there some time and mention these facts to the workers, if you get the chance. Don't be shy in any other kind of bookstore, either. The Philly IWW phone # is: (215) 724-1424, Mailbox#1. Watch for upcoming posts that will be coming directly from the booksellers' organizing committee... Thanks again to all of you who have been sending in messages of support! In Solidarity, Bob Helms X341465 Philadelphia GMB ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 28 Feb 1996 15:33:53 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Smith & Duncan McNaughton both spent time at Princeton. (Whose major are you looking for Rod?) ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 28 Feb 1996 15:52:07 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Kellogg Subject: Re: PR, book dist.....and change In-Reply-To: On Tue, 27 Feb 1996, Thomas Bell wrote: > Another study was published last month that > has potentialy greater impact. Cognitive-behavioral therapy > physically alters the brain. Ummm... is this a surprise? When you say "physically alters," what do you mean? All memory & behavior physically alters the brain, strengthening & weakening synaptic connections. Cheers, David ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ David Kellogg Duke University kellogg@acpub.duke.edu University Writing Program (919) 660-4357 Durham, NC 27708 FAX (919) 684-6277 There is some excitement in one corner, but most of the ghosts are merely shaking their heads. -- Thomas Kinsella ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 28 Feb 1996 15:58:08 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Fred Muratori Subject: G. Sobin Review Since Gustaf Sobin's work was a recent topic of discussion in this forum, I just thought some of you might like to know that I have a review of his selected poems (talisman house) in the latest issue of _American Book Review_. *********************** Fred Muratori "From dreams and memories," (fmm1@cornell.edu) words vanish first." Reference Services Division - Rae Armantrout Olin * Kroch * Uris Libraries Cornell University Ithaca, NY 14853 WWW: http://fmref.library.cornell.edu/spectra.html *********************** ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 28 Feb 1996 16:00:55 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: dead peg theory -Reply what's CFAP? ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 28 Feb 1996 16:00:31 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: New Subscribers welcome all; while i know i can't really assume anything, there seems to be an inordinate number of male-type guyzies on the list, compared to the female-type guyzies. i'm curious about this. maria d ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 28 Feb 1996 16:00:43 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: dead classes, living classes, theory? joe a writes i wish there were a way to address what strikes me as a certain (white?) male-ness in this conversation... i don't mean to be at all provocative here---women poets have been mentioned, certainly... but my-this post included, it's become a matter of men discussing various poetic histories... it's just that i wonder to what extent this question of bonding/privilege/class is intermingled with gender issues... and methinks it would be apropos to hear from women on this list, whether they're finding themselves resisting the discussion as it's currently taking shape... *** (this is me now, maria): funny i read this after i posted my query about disproportionate # of males on POETRIX list; to tell you the truth, i'd been deleting msgs wth this and related subject headings because questions of literary genealogy are only of peripheral interest to me. i hadn't associated it with gender. fine-tuning who's in what "camp" isn't as compelling to me as Pomo/po-mo issues or fun banter... maria d ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 28 Feb 1996 16:00:21 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: dead horses, live theories though my interest in POETIX discussions has flagged (flogged) lately due to pressing deadlines (send good vibes and prayers please), dead horses couldn't drag me away. good post on class, ron s. it's more complex than one might assume. maria d ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 28 Feb 1996 16:15:28 -0500 Reply-To: Robert Drake Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Robert Drake Subject: renga on th web rengists who might want to share their collective & hydraheaded creations might check out the following URL as an example: http://www.faximum.com/aha.d/wwwdiag.htm luigi ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 28 Feb 1996 17:03:22 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Bouchard Subject: Re: dead peg theory Again, a note from Tony Door, meant particularly for Henry. daniel_bouchard@hmco.com >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> hey, ! Hey, ! HAY ! [is for . . .] Henry, that was funny! Actually I never went to brown (though i've been there) & it did not help me "zaum"--Kleb. anywhere. [the problem with experimental principles is that they are not generally DONE in ack-ademia, because they tend to be anti-ACK-adenemic. & yes, Osip would have DIS-approved of Ford & Rocky had he ex-Patrioted here--he disapproved of Uncool Joe not because of Commie but Tyrantie. I like this Wm.S. as horse, I find it more satisfying than he as pig. funny how Swift & Orwell have come into the discussion no? Tony Door, Calabria/ITALIA >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 28 Feb 1996 17:42:50 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Loss Glazier Subject: Re: New Olson bio Yes, and SIUP's number is (800) 346-2680 ---------------------------------------------------- At 08:07 AM 2/28/96 -0500, you wrote: >I just heard from Ralph Maud that his new Olson biography is finally >out: _Charles Olson's Reading: A Biography_ ISBN 0-8093-1995-0, >Southern Illinois Univ. Press, 448 pp., 6x9, $44.95. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 28 Feb 1996 14:59:11 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Thomas Bell Subject: Re: PR, book dist.....and change In-Reply-To: physically as in produces the same structural changes in the same area that prozac does. On Wed, 28 Feb 1996, David Kellogg wrote: > On Tue, 27 Feb 1996, Thomas Bell wrote: > > > Another study was published last month that > > has potentialy greater impact. Cognitive-behavioral therapy > > physically alters the brain. > > Ummm... is this a surprise? When you say "physically alters," what do > you mean? All memory & behavior physically alters the brain, > strengthening & weakening synaptic connections. > > Cheers, > David > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ > David Kellogg Duke University > kellogg@acpub.duke.edu University Writing Program > (919) 660-4357 Durham, NC 27708 > FAX (919) 684-6277 > > There is some excitement in one corner, > but most of the ghosts are merely shaking their heads. > > -- Thomas Kinsella > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 28 Feb 1996 19:59:44 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Smith Subject: Re: Princeton Poets I believe Nate Mackey & Duncan McNaughton both spent time at Princeton. (Whose major are you looking for Rod?) ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 28 Feb 1996 19:59:58 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Smith Subject: _Bear's Head_ Arrests opening lines of "All About Art & LIfe": a compulsion to make marks on paper whatever good or bad "& as for meaning let them alone to mean themselves" ............................... The Art of Literature, 2nd Part Gull flies ahead of his reflection in the wave. ................................ fr "Technicalities for Jack Spicer": Angels, someone tells us, have no dongs But where should you get your poems Except angelic peckers thrust never so subtly slender into each ear Skull neon whipcream illumination ? ................................ Social Graces How the hell are you? * Cuckoo. I wouldn't have it any other way. * I imagine, That everyone takes me seriously at the wrong moments. It is their privilege. * "Go on and dance with the guy what brung ya!" --Phillip Whalen ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 28 Feb 1996 20:00:06 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Smith ies of 1961" as exemplary of Whalen's use of nouns & then claim "an absolute opacity to the nominal" in his poetry seems a tad perverse. You can find opacity in his work, but only in a small part of his practice, even in his extensive use of lists. One of the lovely things about that work is the way he often foregrounds the strangeness of language & speech, and plays with the tension between opacity & transparency. With Oppen's poetics of interrogation, examining the interplay of world/word/self/community, I DO read him as a spiritual poet, though perhaps that is my own perversity. I'm not sure he would have appreciated the characterization. His work struggles for an unattainable clarity, acknowledges the failure, & insists on continuing to speak (cf. the end of "Neighbors" in _Primitive_). It's the search, opposed to the posturing found in some others, that is meaningful to me here. Not a big surprise, I guess, to hear that you don't respect Sobin's work. There are many ways to work musicality into a poem, & Sobin's careful attention to sound structures hardly evinces a "tin ear." Rather a successful voiced entanglement of world & word. Emerson, in the essay Ed Foster mentioned the other day ("Experience") writes: "But the definition of _Spiritual_ should be, _that which is its own evidence_." Doesn't Ken Irby's work belong in this discuusion? _________________________________________________ Charles Smith, "Ron, could you talk more about how you see Whalen using the noun? I think Snyder may sometimes approach this when he's not caught up in making a "point," something he'd characterize as "spiritual materialism." What about the noun in Oppen? Another poet I'd look at here is Sobin who so often brings across a sense of the numinous through his nouns, despite his assertions that his work has been a sruggle to get away from their static quality. I'd also be inclined to add Larry Eigner to your list above..." (your ellipsis) --- I'd thought of Larry as I wrote my original comments, actually. And Oppen I can see, though I'd never characterize him as a spiritual poet. However, I do seem to be allergic to Sobin, who strikes me as precious and pompous and tries for musicality with a very tin ear. Turning to Whalen (a chance to see if, having moved this past week, my books are in enough order yet to find something), I get lost, as always I do, in On Bear's Head. A lot of his work doesn't translate easily to email (or even HTML), but here's an example of what I was getting at: MYSTERIES OF 1961 Lazy tongs Jacobs ladder magnetized flywheel gyroscope folding mesh ring basket * Mr KNIBX, a sinister * "_A_ is for jelly, _B_ is for Jell-O" * "You are the how they call panic" ------------------------------- This is a text just crying for New Critical exposition, no? Tho, as somebody noted awhile back, it's got that "not about anything, it just is" quality all over. Actually, I read it as a list, moving outward from tiny phrases to the last two sections which I think function as equivalents to those early short lines with greater weight. There is, in Whalen's work, an absolute opacity to the nominal that is both insisted on (KNIBX) and permitted, rather than imposed (contrast here with the heroic backlighting of a Sobin or, in some places, Snyder) The poem shifts between emotional states (as do so many of Whalen's, and so often in just this direction) from "lazy" to "panic." The next to last section is an index of the slightest shifts (from jelly to Jell-O in antialphabetical order) as ontologically absolute. What exactly IS that object that appears to be described in the first stanza and why is Mr KNIBX sinister? What I note, thinking of Whalen as a spiritual poet, is how integral the word "lazy" is to "tongs" and how "how" as a noun has the same character (no going after the precious, but picking up an accent that is noted but not named). Ron Silliman ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 28 Feb 1996 20:59:07 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Ted Joans alert Yo Kathryne, Aldon, others: does anyone have an address and/or more desirably a phone number for Ted Joans here or abroad (whereever he happens to be right now)? the mpls walker art ctre is thinking of "putting something together." thanks thrice blessed, maria d ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 28 Feb 1996 20:59:25 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: _Bear's Head_ Arrests phil wailin'-rites: Angels, someone tells us, have no dongs But where should you get your poems Except angelic peckers thrust never so subtly slender into each ear Skull neon whipcream illumination ? Does this remind anyone else of Richard Pryor's routine abt. his pet monkey humping him in the ear? ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 29 Feb 1996 00:45:15 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rod Smith Subject: Cage/Williams/Revill To follow up on a question I asked the list last week: I've recently discovered that the Williams quote on pg 65 of the David Revill biography of Cage was actually written about George Antheil in 1927. Not about Cage in 1939 as the book indicates. The actual Williams quote appears on pg 61 of the _Selected Essays_. Antheil's name, which appears twice in the Williams paragraph, was somewhere along the lines excised from the paragraph as it appears in the Cage bio. --Rod ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 29 Feb 1996 00:17:53 +0000 Reply-To: jzitt@humansystems.com Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: Authenticated sender is From: Joseph Zitt Organization: HumanSystems Subject: Re: Cage/Williams/Revill Comments: To: Rod Smith On 29 Feb 96 at 0:45, Rod Smith wrote: > I've recently discovered that the Williams quote on pg 65 of the David Revill > biography of Cage was actually written about George Antheil in 1927. Not > about Cage in 1939 as the book indicates. The actual Williams quote appears > on pg 61 of the _Selected Essays_. Antheil's name, which appears twice in the > Williams paragraph, was somewhere along the lines excised from the paragraph > as it appears in the Cage bio. Not surprising -- from what's been said about Revill's book on the Cage list, I'd take any supposed fact from it with a grain of salt about the size of Lot's wife. ---------1---------1---------1---------1---------1---------1---------- |||/ Joseph Zitt ==== jzitt@humansystems.com ===== Human Systems \||| ||/ Organizer, SILENCE: The John Cage Mailing List \|| |/Joe Zitt's Home Page\| ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 28 Feb 1996 22:54:02 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: a hurricane triggered by butterfly's wings Subject: Re: New Subscribers In-Reply-To: <960228160030_155772468@emout04.mail.aol.com> from "Maria Damon" at Feb 28, 96 04:00:31 pm Maria Damon writes: > >welcome all; while i know i can't really assume anything, there seems to be >an inordinate number of male-type guyzies on the list, compared to the >female-type guyzies. i'm curious about this. I'm curious too! Hang on a day or so, I'm going to scan the memberships of the listservs I'm on by eye-hand-pen (since computers are ill-equipped for determining gender based on the subtleties of naming), in a purely unscientific manner (hell, I don't even have a theory), and see if I can figure out some crude percentages. paul -- "If today were a metaphor, it would be a bad one." --alx ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 29 Feb 1996 01:58:45 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Re: dead classes, living classes, theory? Okay, some will bored by this (and I am curious whether Emily Lloyd, ShuanAnne T. and others may see this as male chestbeating) but re MW's latest post... No, I am not suggesting that we give up critique (even of the redhot variety) either, but that includes SELF-critique, no? Also, I'd rather see critique or engagement with poems than with "positions" which may have little to do with the poems.... As for "rejecting" the academy, I've been listening to THE CLASH alot lately, and despite their maleism there is an attitude there that seems to be almost universally dismissed in avant-garde "radical" poetry (or theory academic) discussions as of late.... the idea of a POPULAR BASE for their work which they play against CBS/COLUMBIA (now SONY). Perhaps the closest to this was Bukowski in recent poetry years.... I am not suggesting poets should expect large audiences, but only pointing out that perhaps biting the academic hand that "feeds" (and other institutions---the "heirarchies" and althusserian hailing that still informs the various poetry subcultures despite the rebellions of previous generations) or would try to convince that it "feeds" seems a terrible taboo..... Perhaps we demand more sophistication than to find in a new ROOF book (or PENQUIN for that matter) an attack on the specific press similar to "they said we'd be artistically free/ when we signed that bit of paper/ they meant (make a little royalty) and worry about it later" and besides we're not in it for the money (as it were) (or a UNIVERSITY PRESS book).... but the equivalent of that is perhaps avant-guard language or theory legitimation and feeling hemmed in by habits when something you thought you did for intrinsic reasons is revealed to be, yet again, done for extrinsic reasons--- perhaps I am too restless, in a "self-defeating way" here, but it does seem that much of the sophisticated talk about how we can't do this, or do that, about "false consciousness" and the censors that can so easily be internalized onto any moment of true feeling that may seem like vulgar marxism or transcendence or love or desire or lust or "hate and war" even are really "repression...repression...repression"..... Now I love repression too, and take "too much monkey business" as a personal afront....sometimes, but not all the times but sometimes the dylan of "you gotta serve somebody"is right and as joni said "life is for learning" even though "I chide no breather but myself" is a well-rehearsed line, the things we hate the most in others may be in ourselves first and foremost. Yet, certainly the clash didn't always believe that, but there are moments when they did (in FOUR HORSEMAN for instance and DEATH OR GLORY where they turn their ire against themselves as well as their audience)..... Okay, enough said.....chris ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 29 Feb 1996 04:23:53 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Sondheim Subject: Various In-Reply-To: <01I1RNIMIYC28Y6J2B@cnsvax.albany.edu> i have a few questions and comments, mostly naive. so it goes. first, what constitutes an academic poet? most of the discussions on this list seem to have centered around generations, acronyms for movements, etc., all of which i would characterize as a concern for the academic. what is the relationship between poetry and professionalism in this re- gard? i can understand griot poetics well enough on one hand, chatterton on the other; it's the in-between that leaves me confused. second, why is the poetics group concerned only with current writing, as if the defining were an occurrence back through say pound, when where is lucan, chatterton, skelton, sturluson, etc. in these discussions? as if there were none, or useless yes yes but for shelley? i fear professionals, organizations, groups, acronyms, movements, totali- ties, manifestos, definitions, defining anthologies, constructs, names, academics, and not leaving me breathing space. third, two questions - can anyone write me about bernadette mayer's health since her stroke? and does anyone have dick higgins' email address? finally, my own writing, which goes out to the lists i co-moderate (among other places) is easy to obtain at the url below, having little idea of its place would be among the posts here as poetics has currently developed - alan http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/~spoons/internet_txt.html ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 29 Feb 1996 02:42:23 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ron Silliman Subject: Re: dead horses, live theories Rod, >Two of my heroes, Cage & Oppen, were >college drop outs. > Yes, but George is a great example. He came from significant money, as they say, and after his decade in Mexico (to which he fled after the Rosenberg arrests) what eased the way back for him was that his sister June Oppen Degnan had by then become one of the major fundraisers for the Democratic Party. > >Maybe we can't do what the Allen did because they already did it for us, but you can be sure that if we stop for even a short while it wld have to be done all over again. & good point you made abt the beats, someone sd somewhere "they weren't high school drop outs, they were grad school drop outs!" > When the Allen anthology came out there really was only one cohesive tradition recognized in print in the US. The objectivists had been erased almost entirely from the map. Pound and WCW were treated as odd cases (and Lowell was claiming Pound for his tradition, tho throwing most of the Cantos out with the wash). Stein was a media joke. So the visible presence of a new thing had a major decentralizing effect. Tho it wasn't just (or even so much) the Allen anthology that first did it as it was the bust of Howl and the court trial that followed, the best seller status of On the Road and the media interest in beatniks that made it possible for much of that material to get out. Duncan and Spicer had very ambivalent feelings (or worse) about the attention that went to these east coast kids being associated with North Beach. (Somewhere there's a comment, I don't recall from whom, that if Duncan had not been in Majorca in 1956, the beats never would have happened. Which obviously's not true, but suggests the depth of feeling.) The radicalism of the L poets had relatively little to do with what was going on in the classrooms on the late 1960s, early 70s, but very much what was going on in the streets during those years, and in the villages and paddies of southeast Asia. As somebody who got his draft notice in 1965 and spent the next 7 years explaining why I was (1) not going and (2) not exactly willing to go to federal prison, the idea that French theory was a driver of such activity seems mind boggling. If you were young and male in the 1960s, your government wanted you to kill people and was willing to kill you in the process. Nothing very intellectual about that. Ron ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 29 Feb 1996 03:10:45 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ron Silliman Subject: Multiversity "I know in later poems Duncan in a sense embraces cancer and boils and all the other breakdowns of the body (and body politic) as necessary, that what he perhaps earlier calls "multiversity" (as opposed to "university") in all its messiness is precisely what is needed, valued." Multiversity was Clark Kerr's term for the "new" university of the 1950s, which he saw (positively) as directed by the needs of international capital. What it really stood for was the arrival of the business school as a major function for the first time. Kerr was the president of the University of California at the time of the Free Speech Movement, tho not the head of the Berkeley campus. Duncan is connecting the FSM arrests (described in detail in the poem) with first increases in the killing in Vietnam (the FSM preceded the first Vietnam Day rally by almost a year). RD, who always took his alumni status at Berkeley pretty seriously, was utterly opposed to the idea of the multiversity (refers to Kerr as "the worm's mouthpiece"), which is radically different than his concept, say, of multistability, the decentralized location of meaning in a painting by, say, Dali, which is something he sought in his own poetry and found in Jess' collage work. Ron ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 29 Feb 1996 08:04:05 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry Gould Subject: Re: dead peg theory Tony - you'll find some references to Swift in Chapt. 17 of my new book, "Shakespeare - Who Him?" (Dadpole Univ. Press, no ISBN), where I work through the posthistorical teleological trace mechanism evident in a number of Anglo-American Shakespeare critics toward the view that the echo-trace of "Shakespeare - Who Him?" in the Bard of Avon vs. Bard in Bacon debate is actually a doubled echo or mirror-effect based on a genetic link between Shakespearatolophilia and the original Houyhnhmm [i.e. - to be explicit - "WHO - HIM?"] peoples of pre-Celtic Ireland. By the way I'd like to offer a discount of 50% on this book to any interested members of this list - simply send cash (preferably gold plate in whatever amount you can afford) to : General Delivery, Major Deadwood Dadpole Univ. Press, Corn Kernel Circle, Burnside, RI. Thanks! - Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 29 Feb 1996 08:17:38 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry Gould Subject: dead theories, live action figures Seems like the poetry that would be important or alive would take the academy into account as just one more phenomenon in a social matrix, and would drive toward the center of that matrix using language to break through static or stylized or hypocritical responses, or simplistic responses, to human experience; but it also seems true that poetry is a reality-in-itself, take for example Hart Crane who I would say used ironic and parodic modes of writing not simply to reflect reality but to enact some kind of new ecstatic existence (his "new Word never actually able to be enunciated"). Here we get into the issue of the "transcendent" as an "immanence" in "normal" reality. The "new". This also relates to the question of aesthetics - & I think many poets from Bishop to Williams to Crane (just to stick to this century) would say that the successful poem - whatever the current socio-political situation - stands on its own, gets up and walks around as a semi-independent entity. So the relevant or exciting poem somehow spans this distance between independent entity and very immediate political praxis. And there we have the unaccountable, the unpredictable, the X factor, the fatal gift. Which is fundamentallly responsiveness to language in action, manifesting itself. - Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 28 Feb 1996 08:43:16 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Emily Lloyd Subject: Re: dead classes, living classes, theory? Grab bag. ...Which came first, the poet or the alma mater? I've been missing something in this harvard etc. discussion. If we're talking about (economic) class, what's the difference between harvard & princeton (what's the difference between them anyway? I thought the only reason to go to either was to make your parents proud)? While I do think it can (OCCASIONALLY) be an interesting exercise to compare/group poets born of same class, gender, race, orientation, mother, etc., it seems kind of---materialistic? fetishistic? dopey?---to do this by college. And the colleges that keep popping up seem to me...telling, in some way. No mention of the Bowling Green State poets. Or any other un-"canonized" college. (Berkeley having its own kind of sainted symbolism). ...C. Stroffolino: seems to me I've not--yet--made any "yer beating yer ole' boy chest" comments to *anyone* on POETIX (unless the above counts). So when you write: "I wonder if Emily Lloyd, Shaunanne T, etc. will find this male chest beating?"--is it by virtue (or vice) of my being an XX (but not an M or L) that I'm mentioned? Couldn't Henry or Douglas or _Your-Fave-XY-Here_ find it tarzan just as easily? For the record, that was the sentence I objected to. Much as I like seeing my name in print. ...Robert Hass, in a reading last night, mentioned the Pomos a number of times. But not the postmos. E, a guyzie-type guyzie ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 28 Feb 1996 08:58:57 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Emily Lloyd Subject: Re: academic poet/ry I wonder (really--not being facetious) why the poetry & poets that are least accepted (promoted, hired, what-have-you) by the academe are the ones whose work can rarely be discussed w/o using "academic" language or fully appreciated w/o having a theory background? It seems off to call L=Apo "outsider" poetry, kind of, don't it? Isn't it, relative to the masses (some cartoon vision of an audience-at-large), more insider than insider? More academe than academe? conscious of my feminine question marks, Emily ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 29 Feb 1996 09:03:26 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Bouchard Subject: Re: academic poet/ry I wonder (really--not being facetious) why the poetry & poets that are least accepted (promoted, hired, what-have-you) by the academe are the ones whose work can rarely be discussed w/o using "academic" language or fully appreciated w/o having a theory background? It seems off to call L=Apo "outsider" poetry, kind of, don't it? Isn't it, relative to the masses (some cartoon vision of an audience-at-large), more insider than insider? More academe than academe? conscious of my feminine question marks, Emily _______________ Emily, Can you give some examples? I think I know what you're getting at but differently. Name a name or two in the not-so-facetious question you pose please. daniel_bouchard@hmco.com ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 29 Feb 1996 22:22:53 +0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Schuchat Subject: Re: dead classes, living classes, theory? In-Reply-To: <199602281343.IAA00872@mail.erols.com> sure, it probably is dopey to compare poets on the basis of what college they went to. it is sort of like saying, well, that one's from alabama and this one from mississippi, what's the difference. the distinctions fuzz up the further away you are. nonetheless, it seems interesting to me that at the same time harvard students included poets ashbery, o'hara, creeley, donald hall, robert bly, the yale university english department was producing a steady stream of future cia types. james angleton, one-time editor of furioso and crazed mole-hunter, being only the most famous. the institutions' sensibilities have to affected these outcomes. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 29 Feb 1996 09:27:08 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: dead classes, living classes, theory? chris s sez: ...that seems to be almost universally dismissed in avant-garde "radical" poetry (or theory academic) discussions as of late.... the idea of a POPULAR BASE for their work which they play against... well some of us "in the academy" are concerned with exactly that. don't forget we're here.--maria d ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 29 Feb 1996 09:41:11 -0500 Reply-To: Robert Drake Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Robert Drake Subject: Re: New Subscribers Maria Damon: > >welcome all; while i know i can't really assume anything, there seems to be >an inordinate number of male-type guyzies on the list, compared to the >female-type guyzies. i'm curious about this. since this list is nominally private--new members can only find out about it by word ov mouth--praps we should each make a point of inviting sm of our good ol' girl friends to join? lbd ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 29 Feb 1996 09:02:09 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joe Amato Subject: Re: academic poet/ry i'd add to emily's observation that what's at stake in NOT being hired as a poet in academe (or as a creative writer in general) generally has to do with one's ability to theorize one's work---and by work i mean both writing and teaching... that is, the relationship is inversely proportional: the more one theorizes, the more "radical" one is perceived, the less likely the offer... and by "theory" i don't mean just academic theory, continental theory, etc... i mean self-reflection, awareness of what one is about as a writer and teacher, etc... as i see it, and based on this (and other years') mla job lists (an academic litmus, yes) the prevailing currents underwriting "creative writing" positions in academe have to do with an anti-theory constituency... it may *seem* to have shifted when one spends daily hours on this list... but when it comes down to hiring committees and the like, i've found creative writers in general---the ones who have a say in most of the lit. programs around the nation---to be as exclusively anti-theory as i've found the lit. and lit. theory types to be anti-poetic, or anti-literary (read "unwilling to consider a different set of writing imperatives")... and it's been this stance on the part of creative writers that has kept out of academe many of us who find theoretical insight indispensable to our writing and, again, teaching... joe ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 29 Feb 1996 10:04:34 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Donald J. Byrd" Subject: Re: dead horses, live theories Comments: To: Ron Silliman In-Reply-To: <199602291042.CAA08964@ix2.ix.netcom.com> I would like to thank Ron Silliman for the sense of the history that he consistently brings to the discussions on this list. Given the massive cultural amnesia, the 60's and 70's have grown very dim and the 50's have been reduced to a kind of cartoon. (I am conscious that in the 50's this forty year span of the recent past would have been considered not history at all but current). Last night, in my seminar on Poetics, the _Ketjak_ period of Ron's work came up, and I found myself trying to put it in perspective in much the same way I would have had it been written in the 19th century. There was some massive trauma in the 70's that has not been adequately accounted for. In one sense, it cuts us off the poetry of the Allen anthology, not totally but in ways that make reading it impossible without an insistent awareness of the historical distance. The dramatic use of monetary policy accounts for part of it. I hate to sound like Pound and the credit cranks, but there seems no doubt that the Federal Reserve managed in the 70's to take control of the economy in ways that Pound's contemporaries had theorized but didn't have the data management systems to implement. At any rate, it's hard to trace directly from something as vague as that to what happened in the mid-70's. The continental theoretical sources to which the Language poets turned were not at that time academic currency. I taught a course about 1975 which I organized around Foucault's _The Order of Things_, and such readings in an English department were unheard of. (Of course, by the end of 70's it was commonplace). To pick up on Emily Lloyd's question: the odd situation in the 50's and 60's as far as poetry was concerned was that the "academic" poets were typically anti-intellectual. The poets of the Allen anthology were the theorists and intellectuals, and there is really nothing very surprising about this. Traditionally, literary studies had to do with matters of taste; the ideas--to the extent they were of concern--were given. And literary study is still deeply confused about ideas. The reason so much academic theorizing is emtpy is that academics developed a _taste_ for theory. To say nothing of the fact that for many of them it is a time saving device: if you develop a taste for, say, Foucault, you do not have to read all of those god-awful dusty books that he read. The great danger of the academification of poetry is that literary study still conceives of itself as purveying a certain set of tastes. That is specifically ("there is no accounting for taste"), it is devoted to putting its texts out of account. I suspect that many of the teachers out there feel they have had some kind of success when their student's leave their classes "liking" Foucault or the poetry of Ron Silliman or whatever. This is what it means to have an academic tradition. It is not a question of whether some one gets their bread by working in a university or driving a taxi. An academic tradition of art is very like an academic tradition of athletics, it has fans, cheerleaders, and so forth. Some times on this list, I hear people cheering for this or that poet or group of poets. It's a harmless pass time, I suppose, but it is just, when it comes to that, a pass time. Don Byrd ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 29 Feb 1996 10:35:26 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: Re: academic poet/ry I would add that after achieving a certain level of self-consciousness one becomes less disturbed by the increase in speed of people leaving the room. "I very much doubt the expertise of newspaper boys who discuss sports." --Adorno ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 29 Feb 1996 10:39:00 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: Re: academic poet/ry and as for who's an academic poet, pace John Koethe, have you all seen the list of panelists and recipients for this year's NEA creative writing fellowships? one disgruntled applicant, Jd ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 28 Feb 1996 10:49:10 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Emily Lloyd Subject: Re: academic poet/ry Daniel Bouchard wrote: >Emily, > >Can you give some examples? I think I know what you're getting at but >differently. Name a name or two in the not-so-facetious question you pose >please. > Busted. I don't really have any names for you. There's just been a lot of (I think justified) list talk about a general lack of appreciation for experimental (of any letter) poets & poetry in the academe (and the library of congress, and the money magazines, and). And I freely admit that, aside from a positive gut reaction to Stein, before I was "taught" experimental poetry (concepts/theories/poems themselves), I tended to be like whoever's father that was from an earlier post: Why dontcha write pomes ah can understand? (As one teacher put it, "You just haven't been invited to the party yet"). I still have to read Ron's posts (like the one on Whalen's '61) & others' slowly in order to see the relation between what's being said & the thing it's being said about--and I'm not, technically, stupid. So I'm asking: what's wrong with this picture? A=need academic background (me, and I suspect most others) TO B=understand exp.-lang poetry. (Whereas I don't think you need it to understand Rita Dove. Or Allen Ginsberg). But the A-folks apparently don't appreciate the B-folks. And the B-folks are angry at the A-folks, w/o whom even less folks would "be able to see the value" in their work. It is less, I suppose, a question than an observation. But it does seem like a weird (anti)relationship. Symbiosis with a grudge. Emily ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 28 Feb 1996 11:12:19 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Emily Lloyd Subject: Re: Adorno "I do not doubt the egos of sports stars who discourage newspaper boys from asking questions about the sport." --E(xtra!Extra!) Maybe the potential for being bashed, silenced, or "publicly humiliated" keeps some women from joining the list. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 29 Feb 1996 11:39:10 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Patrick Foley Subject: Re: Adorno Re: Emily re: Adorno Let 'em have it, Emily! Let 'em have it with both barrels! I'll reload for you! Pat ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 29 Feb 1996 11:42:22 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Fred Muratori Subject: Re: academic poet/ry Though I'm not in the creative writing job market myself, I can empathize with the position that a poet's ability to offer some theoretical or at least self-conscious commentary on his or her own work can have a detrimental effect. I think it's natural to grapple with one's creative demons/angels, to wonder about these strange words we've just aligned on a page and to speculate on how they got there in the forms they've assumed. When I've articulated this, however -- even if it's just a preferatory remark at a reading -- I've occasionally been met with a thinly-disguised disdain, as if my thinking about what I've done has compromised the spontaneity or "purity" of the work itself, that by revealing a sense of form or strategy -- though that sense is often derived in reflection _after_ the fact of the poem -- I've revealed myself to be a kind of tradesman, a ghostwriter, a hack. It's as if poets are supposed to be idiot-savants, intuitively spewing profundities without the annoying complications of thought or motive or plain old curiosity. What I've occasionally encountered is an archaic view, to be sure, but it's one some poets themselves depend on for protection, and one that critics -- in a co-dependent relationship -- continue to foster since it confers a kind of hermeneutic authority the poet is all too ready to relinquish. >i'd add to emily's observation that what's at stake in NOT being hired as a >poet in academe (or as a creative writer in general) generally has to do >with one's ability to theorize one's work---and by work i mean both writing >and teaching... that is, the relationship is inversely proportional: the >more one theorizes, the more "radical" one is perceived, the less likely >the offer... > >and by "theory" i don't mean just academic theory, continental theory, >etc... i mean self-reflection, awareness of what one is about as a writer >and teacher, etc... > >as i see it, and based on this (and other years') mla job lists (an >academic litmus, yes) the prevailing currents underwriting "creative >writing" positions in academe have to do with an anti-theory >constituency... it may *seem* to have shifted when one spends daily hours >on this list... but when it comes down to hiring committees and the like, >i've found creative writers in general---the ones who have a say in most of >the lit. programs around the nation---to be as exclusively anti-theory as >i've found the lit. and lit. theory types to be anti-poetic, or >anti-literary (read "unwilling to consider a different set of writing >imperatives")... and it's been this stance on the part of creative writers >that has kept out of academe many of us who find theoretical insight >indispensable to our writing and, again, teaching... > >joe *********************** Fred Muratori "From dreams and memories," (fmm1@cornell.edu) words vanish first." Reference Services Division - Rae Armantrout Olin * Kroch * Uris Libraries Cornell University Ithaca, NY 14853 WWW: http://fmref.library.cornell.edu/spectra.html *********************** ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 29 Feb 1996 11:47:02 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: Re: Adorno was that bashing? is contiguity comment? I think I was referring obliquely and ironically to the chest-beating scene. Which I find almost as boring as the rejection of the chest-beating torch-passing scene. Not at all like the recognition scene, which I like a lot. Whoops! I used to be a horkheimer-head, now I just adorno, Jordan ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 29 Feb 1996 11:45:55 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Bouchard Subject: Re: academic poet/ry Emily, I like the party metaphor. I got to the party once and thought no one wanted to talk to me, which I found frustrating. But let's stop: I loath metaphors. I wasn't "taught" experimental poetry as much as I was exposed to it. If there was teaching going on it went right by me as I struggled to find a narrative or similar, familiar device in poetry that was completely new to me. I was completely baffled when I first read Oppen. Dozens of readings later, few other oeuvres speak to me with such clarity as his (which is all he ever sought from poetry: a limited, limiting clarity). Which is a rarity when there is so much experimental poetry to confront (or, read- whatever). I say experimental because I can't find a comfortable definition of "language poetry" and suspect that it's as applicable a term to writers who are stuck under it, as the "objectivists" were stuck in their day with a label convenient to some, but ultimately misused and misunderstood. So before I get totally sidetracked: I don't think anyone needs a hefty academic background to understand experimental poetry (although I want to pose this question: can experimental poetry fail?). I find it better not to want a poem that's easily understood- a paragraph with line breaks in many cases. It took me many readings to appreciate Howe, DuPlessis, MacLow, and a long list of others, but once that connection is made, I have trouble believing they were "difficult" in the first place. And the richness and worthwhile-ness of the work is more apparent with subsequent readings. daniel_bouchard@hmco.com ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 29 Feb 1996 11:49:14 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Bouchard Subject: fellow ships Jordan wrote (with disgruntlement): >and as for who's an academic poet, pace John Koethe, have you all seen the list of panelists and recipients for this year's NEA creative writing fellowships? ______ No, Jordan, I haven't seen them. (I don't follow the Grammys or Oscars either.) So tell us: who's getting what, how much and who picked 'em and why? daniel_bouchard@hmco.com ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 29 Feb 1996 12:16:19 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Donald J. Byrd" Subject: Re: Rob't Dunc. on "breakdown of the body politic" Comments: To: Carla Billitteri In-Reply-To: <01I1PX4A5PHU8XCTP3@ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu> On Tue, 27 Feb 1996, Carla Billitteri wrote: > Found this sentence in John Tytell, _Ezra Pound: The Solitary Volcano_ > (New York: Doubleday, 1987), p. 299, and wonder if anyone knows more about > it or has a comment: > > Another young poet, Robert Duncan, wrote sustaining certain > of Pound's more rabid views, commenting that `minorities of > any kind are symptoms like boils, cancers,' signs of the > breakdown of the body politic." > > No citation is given but presumably the quoted line comes from a letter > of Duncan's to Pound. > > Carla Billitteri > I have never checked the archives, but it seems to be almost certain, as Charles Alexander, notes that Tytell mistook Robert Duncan for Ronald Duncan. To say, the least there is nothing in Duncan's work during the period that he was corresponding with Pound that would be consistent with such a comment. In the 40's and 50's, Duncan was an anarchist, and was connected with people around the anarchist magazine, Win, during the years he was in the East. I know of no reason to believe that his assessment of the political situation would have been different when he was corresponding with Pound than it was when he wrote "Passages 13": Satan looks forth from men's faces: Eisenhower's idiot grin, Nixon's black jaw, the sly glare of Goldwater's eye, or the lok of Stevenson lying in the U.N. that our Nation save face . His face multiplies from the time Roosevelt, Stalin, Churchill, Hitler, Mussolini; from the dream of Oppenheimer, Fermi, Teller, Vannevar Bush... In the essay on Whitman he writes: "Our field in which we see the form of the poem happening belongs ultimately to, is an immediate apprehension of our sense of locality in 'the infinite variety, the past, the surroundings of to-day, or what may happen in the furture,' the grand ensemble Whitman evokes." "In the late nine-thirties, as I came into some kind of social consciousness, ideads of Whitman's had come also to be the ideas of established and increasingly coercive governments. Totalism--ensemblism-- is haunted when we return to it today in the dark monstrosities of socialistic and democratic totalitarianism." The non-coercive ensemble is an anarchist ideal--or problematic form--that Duncan attempts to achieve throughout his work. It is necessary to beware of academic specialists who devote themselves to this or that figure in ignorance of field their work properly and responsbility belongs to. Don Byrd ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 29 Feb 1996 12:44:02 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: academic poet/ry emily: i don't necessarily agree that one needs an academic background to read L poets and not Dove or ginsberg, or at least, that this has to do perhaps more with the social saturation of certain norms of what "poetry" is that makes folks think it's easier to understand one form of poetry than another. a contemp. young person would probably need an academic exposure to "understand" shakespeare's sonnets, but not to understand that it is meant to be taken as "serious poetry." it's amazing to me how fast students with a traditionalist poetry background (i.e. a "semi-educated" one) get excited about experimental stuff once it's demystified for them, which doesn't take long, and usually can be done in group play-type activities,like guess-the-puns-in-this-stein-piece or read this funny hannah weiner play (from codes) aloud going aaround the room. lots of laughs and a sense of mastery. maria d ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 29 Feb 1996 12:44:09 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Donald J. Byrd" Subject: Re: Rob't Dunc. Pt. II of DB's Post Comments: To: Carla Billitteri In-Reply-To: <01I1PX4A5PHU8XCTP3@ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu> I should have identified Ronald Duncan, a poet and playwright who edited _The Townsmen_. He was a part of the Pound network in way that Robert Duncan never was, and he seems to have been committed more or less to EP's agenda. There are a number of letters from EP to him in the _Selected Letters_. Don Byrd ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 29 Feb 1996 09:48:04 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ray Davis Subject: Re: academic poet/ry >A=need academic background (me, and I suspect most others) TO B=understand >exp.-lang poetry. First, I don't think that's necessarily true. I didn't find good Stein+Zukofsky-sprung poetry through school, and don't know anyone who did. If anything, I think _autodidacts_ are more likely to be attracted towards that goofily difficult bunch of "traditions" (where "tradition" means that if you read one writer and you like her, you're likely to end up bumping into this other writer while researching). (One of the reasons Bob Perelman's book _The Trouble with Genius_ shook me up so badly was that it seemed to point out some serious flaws in this notion of a cross-temporal utopia of autodidacts.) Second, things do change. My experience matches Donald Byrd's: in the mid-to-late '70s, "French poststructuralism" wasn't supported by USA academia. In my college, I could find no philosophy or English professors who'd ever read Derrida, though some had heard of his name. Maybe what the disagreement boils down to is whether all "intellectuals" are kept safely in the cages of academia, lining their floors with the _New York Review of Books_. Academia likes to give that impression; non-academics tend to bristle at it (unless they're instead the types to bristle at being accused of intellectualism). Ray ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 29 Feb 1996 13:55:21 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rod Smith Subject: Re: dead horses, live theories Didn't mean to downplay what is more aptly called the American Invasion of Indonesia-- which is very much emphasized in my attempt to contextualize these things in my introduction to the Watten issue of _Aerial_. & Don I think is exactly right about what got called by the Trilateral Commission "The Crisis of Democracy." Of course what they meant by this "crisis" is "there's a threat that the population might actually get involved in running things." In '71 Nixon & co. radically reorganized the intl monetary system essentially disavowing the U.S. role as intl banker & setting up institutions even farther from any possibility of public control (than the US govt). All of this accelerated the disproportionate distribution of resources (it's now 60 to 1 between industrial countries & the third world, & actually much greater within individual countries). My source for much of this information is Chomsky, his sources are things like The Finacial Times & the NYTimes. Beside all this the question of when French theory hit seems small, but I do recall Carla H. saying to me "we were reading Derrida & Barthes in '73" -- & I think the vocabulary of l.p. was effected by that. But, & this is why it was so interesting, l.p. did it on their own terms. I don't really understand the idea that it doesn't matter where someone went to school-- of course it does, it's a major formative experience. It's not "necessary" to know it, but it is of interest in understanding the contexts from which someone is writing. Thinking more about this question of class-- as a generality "class" is all too accurate-- one, however, does not experience oneself as a generality-- that is precisely the violence of class. In that sense it's not so complex-- it's that, through an easily discernible disproportinate & unjust allocation of resources one is _defined_. Of course, the individual's struggle with it _is_ complex, particularly in a society in which there is a certain amount of class mobility (getting to be less & less mobile), but the fact of it seems awfully clear. Part of what poetry _is_ is resisting such definition, such overdetermination. & I think all of the people I mentioned that went to Harvard also saw that overdetermination & turned to a form of expression in which they also cld resist it (I know I know, another problematic generalization). But I think the fact that they went to Harvard, the job of which is to establish & maintain elite power, & chose _poetry_ is immensely to their credit. Finally, re the question Chris raised abt a popular base-- we do have the example of the slam thing, the Nuyoricans etc. & my experience of that scene is that their are a number of quite interesting writers there. Heard a radio interview with Pete Seeger, he was asked to compare his political activities of the 30s/40s with the 80s/90s-- he said "They used to have to beat us back, now they just drown us out." Off the global politics of wittle poets topic-- re Oppen-- there seems to me a fairly large shift in his work after _Of Being Numerous_ -- I love all his work, but the late books particularly -- he seems, perhaps, to have let go of a certain kind of sense in favor of another. Reminiscent perhaps of the first book, but possibly effected by Duncan's ear? An even further opening of the open text? That kind of fluidity. Rod ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 29 Feb 1996 14:00:11 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Re: academic poet/ry dear maria--okay i won't forget.... dear joe---yeah, despite my antitheory tirade, i too find the taboo against theory in creative writing depts. appalling..... "and after all that won't you give me a smile...." ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 29 Feb 1996 14:16:32 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Re: academic poet/ry maria--you raise an interesting point (and one my experience corroborates) that "it's amazing...how fast students with a traditionalist poetry background...get excited about experimental stuff"--- I'm curious what, if any, experience you've had with the converse-- do poets who have an "experimental" background get excited about say Dove or Ginsberg or Shakespeare or Hardy, etc? chris s ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 28 Feb 1996 14:34:03 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Emily Lloyd Subject: Re: academic poet/ry At 12:44 PM 2/29/96 -0500, Maria Damon wrote: a contemp. young person would probably need an academic exposure to >"understand" shakespeare's sonnets, but not to understand that it is meant to >be taken as "serious poetry." it's amazing to me how fast students with a >traditionalist poetry background (i.e. a "semi-educated" one) get excited >about experimental stuff once it's demystified for them, which doesn't take >long, and usually can be done in group play-type activities (etc.) Good point about "serious poetry," uh-huh. Yup, I've been one of those excited semi-educateds. But who demystified for me? It wasn't my mailman or my mom (but she does love Dove [I should mention: I don't mean to nail RD. I do like her stuff, sometimes a lot]). "Play-type activities" is a way (I like) of talking about grad school. But it's still grad school. What would be great is guerilla explication. Imagine that. Grafitti about the puns in Stein on the street. Some dude in the park yelling about Bernstein louder than the one yelling about salvation. Because the excellent, radical stuff in interrogations of language *should* be something the *masses* are *aware* of. As they are, to an extent, of Beat stuff. Which sort of brings me around to Henry's political questions. & there's no excuse for the way derrida writes when his central ideas could be articulated in a pamphlet. Em ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 29 Feb 1996 14:47:39 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Re: academic poet/ry yeah, emily, and Wittgenstein fortune cookies.... (the image of bernstein as park preacher is great)--- inflitrate the movies.... you know how much duncan donuts paid to be eaten during JUNGLE FEVER... now only if we could stick a few CHAX books strategically besides boxes of CHEX in a supermarket, and you'd pull a string and it would TALK (and drown out the muzak version of "straight: no chaser") .......ju(s)t think.... I did see a warhol graffiti in DC in 1983 "art is anything you can get away with" Marisa Januzzi told me that she plastered mina-loy broadsides around NYC (hopefully blocking out those RWV AND COST FUCKED MAD- ONNA things)..... ONNA things).....chris ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 29 Feb 1996 12:07:43 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ray Davis Subject: Re: academic poet/ry >& there's no >excuse for the way derrida writes when his central ideas could be >articulated in a pamphlet. Change that "when" to "if" & I'd agree with you. For me, Derrida's "central ideas" _depend on_ his ridiculously complex styles, and my pleasure in his writing depends to some extent on his ridiculousness. My fellow (& far superior) non-poet genre-writer Samuel R. Delany has written about this in his _Silent Interviews_. One sample paragraph: "Thousands of lies, reams of nonsense, and barrels of bullshit are put out each day in unadorned, straightforward language. And they're swallowed right down -- because no one is initially uncomfortable with the 'simple' rhetoric. People assume sentences such as 'Thousands of lies, reams of nonsense, and barrels of bullshit are put out each day in unadorned, straightforward language,' are somehow _less_ rhetorical, and more transparent to truth, than, say, this sentence which both criticizes the assumptions about it and quotes it -- when indeed both sentences are equally rhetorical, only coming from different rhetorical traditions, the inner one only more familiar than the outer (or marginal) one." Ray ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 29 Feb 1996 15:08:27 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Sondheim Subject: Re: academic poet/ry In-Reply-To: <199602281934.OAA02549@mail.erols.com> On Wed, 28 Feb 1996, Emily Lloyd wrote: (excuse the cutting) > Which sort of brings me around to Henry's political questions. & there's no > excuse for the way derrida writes when his central ideas could be > articulated in a pamphlet. > > Em > 1. But there is an "excuse" for the way Silliman or Bernstein write? Do writers need excuses? 2. What exactly are Derrida's "central ideas"? Alan ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 29 Feb 1996 12:56:26 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Douglas Messerli Subject: Re: dead horses, live theories Don, I'll second that. Thanks to you also. And Ron for the serious commentary. Douglas =================== At 10:04 AM 2/29/96 -0500, you wrote: > I would like to thank Ron Silliman for the sense of >the history that he consistently brings to the discussions on >this list. Given the massive cultural amnesia, the 60's and >70's have grown very dim and the 50's have been reduced to a >kind of cartoon. (I am conscious that in the 50's this forty >year span of the recent past would have been considered not >history at all but current). Last night, in my seminar on >Poetics, the _Ketjak_ period of Ron's work came up, and I >found myself trying to put it in perspective in much the same >way I would have had it been written in the 19th century. > > There was some massive trauma in the 70's that has >not been adequately accounted for. In one sense, it cuts >us off the poetry of the Allen anthology, not totally but in >ways that make reading it impossible without an insistent >awareness of the historical distance. > > The dramatic use of monetary policy accounts for >part of it. I hate to sound like Pound and the credit >cranks, but there seems no doubt that the Federal Reserve >managed in the 70's to take control of the economy in ways >that Pound's contemporaries had theorized but didn't have >the data management systems to implement. > > At any rate, it's hard to trace directly from >something as vague as that to what happened in the mid-70's. > > The continental theoretical sources to which the >Language poets turned were not at that time academic >currency. I taught a course about 1975 which I organized >around Foucault's _The Order of Things_, and >such readings in an English department were unheard of. >(Of course, by the end of 70's it was commonplace). > > To pick up on Emily Lloyd's question: the odd >situation in the 50's and 60's as far as poetry was concerned >was that the "academic" poets were typically anti-intellectual. >The poets of the Allen anthology were the theorists and >intellectuals, and there is really nothing very surprising >about this. Traditionally, literary studies had to do >with matters of taste; the ideas--to the extent they were >of concern--were given. And literary study is still >deeply confused about ideas. The reason so much >academic theorizing is emtpy is that academics >developed a _taste_ for theory. To say nothing of the fact >that for many of them it is a time saving device: if you >develop a taste for, say, Foucault, you do not have to >read all of those god-awful dusty books that he read. > >The great danger of the academification of poetry is that >literary study still conceives of itself as purveying a >certain set of tastes. That is specifically ("there >is no accounting for taste"), it is devoted to putting >its texts out of account. I suspect that many of the >teachers out there feel they have had some kind of >success when their student's leave their classes "liking" >Foucault or the poetry of Ron Silliman or whatever. >This is what it means to have an academic tradition. It >is not a question of whether some one gets their >bread by working in a university or driving a taxi. >An academic tradition of art is very like an academic >tradition of athletics, it has fans, cheerleaders, and >so forth. Some times on this list, I hear people cheering >for this or that poet or group of poets. It's a harmless >pass time, I suppose, but it is just, when it comes to that, >a pass time. > > Don Byrd > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 29 Feb 1996 11:01:38 -1000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Susan Schultz Subject: Re: fellow ships In-Reply-To: <199602291700.MAA06038@krypton.hmco.com> What makes Koethe an academic poet? That he teaches in a philosophy department? Seems to me that definitions of academic poetry are made of convenience: both John Hollander and Charles Bernstein have been called academic poets, surely. Susan On Thu, 29 Feb 1996, Daniel Bouchard wrote: > Jordan wrote (with disgruntlement): > > >and as for who's an academic poet, pace John Koethe, have you all seen the > list of panelists and recipients for this year's NEA creative writing > fellowships? > > ______ > > No, Jordan, I haven't seen them. (I don't follow the Grammys or Oscars > either.) So tell us: who's getting what, how much and who picked 'em and why? > > > daniel_bouchard@hmco.com > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 29 Feb 1996 17:08:16 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Blair Seagram Subject: Emerson & Trans parency I found this in my notes on Emerson. Transparency is manifested by the medium lying between two discontinuous realms. Transparency is impossible in the absence of either or both (transparent?) opaque realms. Something always lies beyond the medium. The essence of a transparent medium is to be between two things. The eye sees "by means of " and despite. The two realms enclosing the blank space of transparency are characterized by color and figure which define opacity. That idea gets connected to this: "Through solidest eternal things (man) woman find their road, as if they did not subsist, and does not once suspect their being .As soon as she needs a new object, suddenly she beholds it and no longer attempts to pass through it, but takes another way. When she has exhausted for the time the nourishment to be drawn from any one person or thing, the object is withdrawn from her observation and though still in her immediate neighborhood, she does not suspect its presence." Does death come from refocusing or vice versa. Does the friend withdraw into death or does our perception or recognition of the use of the friend push the friend toward death. It is the secret of the world that all things subsist and do not die, but only retire a little from sight, and afterwards return again. The solid globe of Parmenidean nature is an opaque version of the transparent eyeball in (Emerson's) "Nature". Blair ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 29 Feb 1996 17:13:54 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Golumbia Subject: Re: academic poet/ry In-Reply-To: from "Ray Davis" at Feb 29, 96 12:07:43 pm Ray Davis wrote: > > >& there's no > >excuse for the way derrida writes when his central ideas could be > >articulated in a pamphlet. > > Change that "when" to "if" & I'd agree with you. I couldn't agree more (nor more with the SRD quote you appended). Back to politics, and whatever you think/make of Derrida's politics in particular, I almost always have the feeling that attacks on D. for his "obscurity" have a politically unpleasant edge. If I wanted to be catty, I'd throw it back to Emily: what exactly *are* Derrida's "central ideas" -- and note that the best attempt I know to articulate these, Geoff Bennington's JACQUES DERRIDA, takes a whole book and includes a (partially) convincing "refutation" by J.D. himself along the bottom margin. Or cf. Simon Critchley's ETHICS OF DECONSTRUCTION, which takes on only a small set of issues and yet serves only to convince the reader of how much more there is to be said (by J.D., by Levinas, etc.). But I've somehow lost the thread here -- couldn't the same point be made about Hejinian, Ron S., Oppen, Cage, Stein, Brooks, and on and on -- isn't it a kind of joint commitment of "L" writers and "M" writers and some (good) ("normal") writers and Derrida that, whatever language *is*, plainly transparent it isn't? And that some politics, at least, is implicated in the recognition of that fact? And by the way, isn't this one of the things that really turns off the academy to L. poets in terms of hiring? Not the questioning of one's methods, so much as the questioning of the "literal" base of the transaparent-communication enterprise? -- dgolumbi@sas.upenn.edu David Golumbia ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 29 Feb 1996 17:25:38 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Golumbia Subject: Re: dead classes, living classes, theory? In-Reply-To: <01I1RNIMIYC28Y6J2B@cnsvax.albany.edu> from "Chris Stroffolino" at Feb 29, 96 01:58:45 am Chris Stroffolino wrote: > > "they said we'd be artistically free/ when we signed that bit of paper/ > they meant (make a little royalty) and worry about it later" Try: They meant, they'd make a lot of money (actually he may say "lots" for colloquial effect -- like the stress on the final syllable too) And worry about it later Other than that, yrs in agreement... -- dgolumbi@sas.upenn.edu David Golumbia ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 29 Feb 1996 17:29:14 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: prefatory remarks Fred, Interesting. But I don't think the pejorative assigned to people who explicate themselves is "hack", and I don't think you have to invent a jargon of purity for the people who do things differently. I don't doubt that there are people who would say those things; I prefer to think of them as thinking about something else. My problem with explication-as-introduction, footnoting, and other apparatuses (and I have to say, this is my problem with David Jones) is that they have been used clumsily as cites for sleight of hand, and other very base illusions (cf. Waste Land). I don't want poetry to confuse me, I don't want it to depress me or make me overexcited. I am afraid that so far I have belonged to an imaginary group of chthulhu writhers who dream only of a poem that enacts its own writing, and is still somehow amazing--something intelligent and beautiful--and if it arrive in either the lab coat of experiment or the buggy of pleasure, will I fail to welcome it? Huh? No. I will fail, though, if I fall asleep. And I don't think this stance toward explication is unique to the poetic right wing; Ted Greenwald told me after a reading at St Marks (he read three of his books in twenty-five minutes or so) that when you read, "no bullshit" is the rule. All best, Jordan PS Don't forget to come to Poetry City, your experimental theme park. Tonight's main attractions, Bill Luoma and Simon Pettet. Bill will be available to sign his new gorgeous Khlebnikoved-out book _Swoon Rocket_ (The Figures) not to mention the last seven copies of _My Trip to New York City_, and Simon's _Selected Poems_ and _Talking Pictures_ (with Rudy Burckhardt) will be on the table too. Poetry City is located at 5 Union Square West (between 14th & 15th), 7th Floor, NYC. The reading begins at 6:30, and it's free. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 29 Feb 1996 17:43:24 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry Gould Subject: Mr. Gould on derrida transpee blah blah Walking home from work I was thinking about what moves me logos? ethos? pathos Aristotle's analysis of tragic poetry pathos is "when you empathize emotionally via the sympathetic imagination with represented suffering & its outcome" and I was thinking about thee, philosophe with thine own trails of logos-passio burying Philosophy (same tomb with God) embracing Poetry (lookout honey he's a Pwoffessah) and about the po bereft Polis artificial a collective construct built by Private Unknown Solderer no bull cut the bull she said, not maybe a-mused art hides itself in Act Five (Hamlet over easy) and we will talk the sweet nonsense A*MORE LOCO SENSUS COMUNIS ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 29 Feb 1996 18:12:40 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Kellogg Subject: Re: dead horses, live theories In-Reply-To: As an academic "in" contemporary poetry studies but not in creative writing programs, apparently doomed for the forseeable future to adjunct positions outside the tenure track, I thought I'd just throw in a cheer for Ron's and Joe's and Don Byrd's posts. And add my own perspective. 1) Cheerleading. You don't have to be slated as a "poet" to be enlisted in this business; it's enough to be in CONTEMPORARY poetry. My own work explores the circulation of cultural value in contemporary poetry from a perspective owing a lot to Foucault, Bourdieu, and B. H. Smith, in other words a perspective that looks at cultural fields and their mechanisms of exclusion/inclusion/definition without a "promotional" end in mind. Yet I don't know how many times I've been asked, "So, who does your work support? If we buy your account, should we read Ashbery or Amy Clampitt?" People really get pissed off when I respond, "My theoretical work is about why and how questions like that keep getting asked; it doesn't answer them. Still, stay the hell away from Clampitt." 2) Tastemaking. If as an academic in the poetry biz you don't tell which contemporary poets to read, you're expected to tell why we should read poetry at all. Refusing to do this causes no end of trouble. I know why I read poetry, but I know plenty of people who don't read any, and they don't seem to be deprived. It's damned presumptuous to write as though they are, or to suggest that the reasons why poetry is important to ME will be important to anybody else. 3) Theorization as self-interrogation. Joe Amato has hit the nail precisely. Since the academic poetry biz is invested in perpetuating its own cultural value, to question or even explicitly state why you do what you do (in writing no less) seems like academic suicide. For the same reasons, theory as cultural fashion becomes -- astonishingly -- a mode of reestablishing the poetic as the ultimate source of value. So, to pick up on another recent thread, though Mutlu Blasing's book POLITICS AND FORM IN POSTMODERN POETRY opens by ridiculing the open form debate as a "heroic drama of a central agon between the forces of reaction and progress," she can't help framing her readings (and the poets she reads) as an advance, a repudiation of the hopelessly naive Pound. That's the current state of my cynicism. Cheers, David ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ David Kellogg Duke University kellogg@acpub.duke.edu University Writing Program (919) 660-4357 Durham, NC 27708 FAX (919) 684-6277 There is some excitement in one corner, but most of the ghosts are merely shaking their heads. -- Thomas Kinsella ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 29 Feb 1996 18:35:42 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Re: prefatory remarks Jordan writes: "I don't want poetry to confuse me, I don't want it to depress me or make me overexcited." Well, what DO you want it to do then? What's left after you've winnowed that "chaf"? And how do you avoid it? Or maybe it's a question of how you define OVERexcited?... cs ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 29 Feb 1996 15:51:28 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steven Howard Shoemaker Subject: scanning brains/ scanning poems In-Reply-To: <199602280515.AAA02478@listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu> from "Automatic digest processor" at Feb 28, 96 00:03:13 am Tom Bell writes: "The nun study has received some recent attention here and elsewhere. Another study was published last month that has potentialy greater impact. Cognitive-behavioral therapy physically alters the brain.(this is a replication of earler studies and documented through physical - PET Scan - evidence) Does this mean that poetry can change the way a reader or writer's brain works?" Sure it can, and i'm a bit surprised by the question, by the tentativeness of that groping for "scientific" confirmation of what we know to be true. No question that reading all that poetry makes us different people, changes the kinds of organisms we are. But to stick with "science" or "biology," the question arises from a persistent reification, common to popular discourse, of the "biological" as a kind of lumpy given. In fact, we evolve in dialectical relation to "environment" from the get-go--that environment is always interacting with and modifying the genetic script. If you don't get all the nutrients you need (like the 25% of children in this country living below the "poverty line") your growth will be stunted (and, among other things, your brain won't develop the way it cld/shld). If you don't get a chance to read at a young age, certain synaptic pathways just will not be formed. And as for poetry, they may not be able to point out the relevant topographies on the brainscan yet, but there's no doubt in my mind, so to speak, that there must be biological formations/matrices corresponding to "poetical activity" if one knew where to look. I mean, i can feel them pinging away in there when i sit down to read a little Kit Robinson, can't you? The american tree is, well, dendritical... steve shoemaker ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 1 Mar 1996 13:16:27 +1300 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Wystan Curnow Organization: English Dept. - Univ. of Auckland Subject: Re: academic poet/ry Comments: To: MDamon9999@AOL.COM Maria, demystifying experimental stuff: as a toiler in the same pedagogical fields as yourself, perhaps I'd say much the same to emily. But 'desmystifying' suggests there's no value to not understanding a text whereas... well, maybe one difference between the experienced reader of contemporary poetry (or art, music, etc) and the less experienced, is that far from resenting or being disconcerted by the failure to understand they have a positive and growing appetite for it, for that which mystifies. What the fuck?! wystan ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 29 Feb 1996 19:28:48 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: academic poet/ry chris s: i have no experience teaching traditional"ist" texts to students who have been trained or exposed to experimental"ist" texts. i have never encountered such students.--md ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 29 Feb 1996 19:28:58 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: academic poet/ry hey em, you sound like my kind of guyzie-type guyzie. guerrilla anything is cool.--maria d