=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 31 Jan 1996 19:17:13 -1000
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Gabrielle Welford <welford@HAWAII.EDU>
Subject: Re: Reply of Our Lady Teresa
In-Reply-To: <v01520d00ad3532dcf0af@[205.134.228.73]>
_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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Thomas Bell <tbjn@WELL.COM>
Subject: Re: neuromantic poetry
In-Reply-To: <v01520d00ad3501bd3c67@[205.134.228.22]>
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" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.BITNET>
>
> It sounds right up their alley.
>
> Dodie
>
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 1 Feb 1996 00:21:39 -0800
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
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From: Herb Levy <herb@ESKIMO.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: R I Caddel <R.I.Caddel@DURHAM.AC.UK>
Subject: 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
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Date: Thu, 1 Feb 1996 10:30:07 +0000
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: R I Caddel <R.I.Caddel@DURHAM.AC.UK>
Subject: poets 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
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From: Chris Stroffolino <LS0796@CNSVAX.ALBANY.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Libbie Rifkin <lr22@CORNELL.EDU>
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 <<Code of the West>>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Joe Amato <amato@CHARLIE.ACC.IIT.EDU>
Subject: Re: 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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jorge Guitart <mlljorge@UBVMS.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Edward Foster <EFOSTER@VAXC.STEVENS-TECH.EDU>
Subject: Re: 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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Edward Foster <EFOSTER@VAXC.STEVENS-TECH.EDU>
Subject: Re: 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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jordan Davis <jdavis@PANIX.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Steve Carll <sjcarll@SLIP.NET>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jordan Davis <jdavis@PANIX.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Daniel Bouchard <Daniel_Bouchard@HMCO.COM>
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
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Date: Thu, 1 Feb 1996 11:22:46 -0800
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Kevin Killian <dbkk@SIRIUS.COM>
Subject: Re: 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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Kevin Killian <dbkk@SIRIUS.COM>
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
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Henry Gould <AP201070@BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU>
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
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From: Charles Bernstein <bernstei@UBVMS.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
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 <bsmith@norfolk.infi.net> has just subscribed
Donna Ocoboc <techwrtr@EPIX.NET> has just subscribed to the POETICS list
Robert Mittenthal <RMUTTS@AOL.COM> has just subscribed to the POETICS
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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
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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:
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questions about this policy.
____________________________________________________________________
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To see who is subscribed to Poetics, send an e-mail message to
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____________________________________________________________________
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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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Charles Bernstein <bernstei@UBVMS.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Edward Foster <EFOSTER@VAXC.STEVENS-TECH.EDU>
Subject: Re: 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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Steve Carll <sjcarll@SLIP.NET>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Mark Roberts <M.Roberts@ISU.USYD.EDU.AU>
Subject: Re: 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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Stephen Galen Cope <scope@UCSCB.UCSC.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Comments: Authenticated sender is <jzitt@bga.com>
From: Joseph Zitt <jzitt@HUMANSYSTEMS.COM>
Organization: HumanSystems
Subject: Re: neuromantic poetry
Comments: To: Thomas Bell <tbjn@WELL.COM>
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 \||
|/<A HREF="http://www.realtime.net/~jzitt/">Joe Zitt's Home Page</A>\|
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 1 Feb 1996 20:26:07 +0000
Reply-To: jzitt@humansystems.com
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Comments: Authenticated sender is <jzitt@bga.com>
From: Joseph Zitt <jzitt@HUMANSYSTEMS.COM>
Organization: HumanSystems
Subject: Re: book/record ordering on the net
Comments: To: Jordan Davis <jdavis@PANIX.COM>
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 \||
|/<A HREF="http://www.realtime.net/~jzitt/">Joe Zitt's Home Page</A>\|
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 1 Feb 1996 20:56:44 -0800
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: David Carl <dgcarl@UCDAVIS.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Thomas Bell <tbjn@WELL.COM>
Subject: Re: neuromantic poetry
Comments: To: Joseph Zitt <jzitt@humansystems.com>
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 \||
> |/<A HREF="http://www.realtime.net/~jzitt/">Joe Zitt's Home Page</A>\|
>
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 2 Feb 1996 02:54:07 -0800
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ron Silliman <rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM>
Subject: Re: 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 <au462@cleveland.Freenet.Edu>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Robert Drake <au462@CLEVELAND.FREENET.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Chris Stroffolino <LS0796@CNSVAX.ALBANY.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Chris Stroffolino <LS0796@CNSVAX.ALBANY.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Hank Lazer <hlazer@AS.UA.EDU>
Organization: The University of Alabama
Subject: Re: 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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Gwyn McVay <gmcvay1@OSF1.GMU.EDU>
Subject: Re: neuromantic poetry
Comments: To: Joseph Zitt <jzitt@humansystems.com>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Gwyn McVay <gmcvay1@OSF1.GMU.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jordan Davis <jdavis@PANIX.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Keith Tuma <KWTUMA@MIAMIU.MUOHIO.EDU>
Subject: Re: poetics of the quotidian
In-Reply-To: Message of Fri, 2 Feb 1996 08:19:25 CST6CDT from
<hlazer@AS.UA.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Kevin Killian <dbkk@SIRIUS.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Schuchat <schuchat@ARC.ARC.ORG.TW>
Subject: Re: book/record ordering on the net
Comments: To: Joseph Zitt <jzitt@humansystems.com>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jorge Guitart <mlljorge@UBVMS.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Subject: Re: Marchand Du Sel & Rose Selavy
Comments: cc: Thomas Bell <tbjn@well.com>,
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jim Pangborn <V072GDXG@UBVMS.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Organization: University at Buffalo
Subject: Re: 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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ange Mlinko/PWS/International Thomson Publishing
<Ange_Mlinko@DELMAR.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Edward Foster <EFOSTER@VAXC.STEVENS-TECH.EDU>
Subject: Re: 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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Daniel Bouchard <Daniel_Bouchard@HMCO.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Henry Gould <AP201070@BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: David Golumbia <dgolumbi@SAS.UPENN.EDU>
Subject: Re: book/record ordering on the net
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SUN.3.91.960202233053.1485B-100000@arc> 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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Hank Lazer <hlazer@AS.UA.EDU>
Organization: The University of Alabama
Subject: Re: 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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ray Davis <raydavis@BEST.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Blair Seagram <blairsea@PANIX.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Edward Foster <EFOSTER@VAXC.STEVENS-TECH.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Martin Spinelli <V139HLA3@UBVMS.BITNET>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Chris Stroffolino <LS0796@CNSVAX.ALBANY.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Gabrielle Welford <welford@HAWAII.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Maria Damon <MDamon9999@AOL.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Maria Damon <MDamon9999@AOL.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Maria Damon <MDamon9999@AOL.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ange Mlinko/PWS/International Thomson Publishing
<Ange_Mlinko@DELMAR.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Thomas Bell <tbjn@WELL.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Janet Hoelle <97jhoell@ULTRIX.UOR.EDU>
Subject: Re: poetics of the quotidian
Comments: To: Keith Tuma <KWTUMA@miamiu.acs.muohio.edu>
In-Reply-To: <POETICS%96020210280257@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Steven Howard Shoemaker <ss6r@FERMI.CLAS.VIRGINIA.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Rae Armantrout <RaeA100900@AOL.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Janet Hoelle <97jhoell@ULTRIX.UOR.EDU>
Subject: Re: BORGES
In-Reply-To: <Pine.ULT.3.91.960202133017.5900A-100000@ultrix.uor.edu>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Charles Bernstein <bernstei@UBVMS.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Keith Tuma <KWTUMA@MIAMIU.MUOHIO.EDU>
Subject: Re: poetics of the quotidian
In-Reply-To: Message of Fri, 2 Feb 1996 14:28:09 EDT from
<Ange_Mlinko@DELMAR.COM>
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
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From: ryan johnson <ryanx@LELAND.STANFORD.EDU>
Subject: Re: neuromantic poetry
In-Reply-To: <Pine.OSF.3.91.960202093627.10062C-100000@osf1.gmu.edu>
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
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From: ryan johnson <ryanx@LELAND.STANFORD.EDU>
Subject: Re: poetics of the quotidian
In-Reply-To: <POETICS%96020210280257@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
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
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From: Kevin Killian <dbkk@SIRIUS.COM>
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
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From: Rod Smith <AERIALEDGE@AOL.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
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From: Steve Carll <sjcarll@SLIP.NET>
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
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From: Chris Stroffolino <LS0796@CNSVAX.ALBANY.EDU>
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
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From: Keith Tuma <KWTUMA@MIAMIU.MUOHIO.EDU>
Subject: Re: challenges
In-Reply-To: Message of Fri, 2 Feb 1996 11:09:36 EST from
<AP201070@BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jeremy or Carol Close <cclose@ACADEMY.NET.AU>
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
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Rod Smith <AERIALEDGE@AOL.COM>
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
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From: Schuchat <schuchat@ARC.ARC.ORG.TW>
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
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From: Thomas Bell <tbjn@WELL.COM>
Subject: Re: Marchand Du Sel & Rose Selavy
Comments: To: Jorge Guitart <mlljorge@UBVMS.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Comments: cc: MDamon9999@aol.com, cris@slang.demon.co.uk,
lsr3h@darwin.clas.virginia.edu, jdavis@panix.com, welford@hawaii.edu
In-Reply-To: <Pine.PMDF.3.91.960202101935.539457062F-100000
@ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu>
>
> (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
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Henry Gould <AP201070@BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU>
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
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Date: Sat, 3 Feb 1996 00:09:36 -0800
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From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" <anielsen@ISC.SJSU.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ron Silliman <rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ron Silliman <rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ron Silliman <rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ron Silliman <rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ron Silliman <rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Gabrielle Welford <welford@HAWAII.EDU>
Subject: Re: Marchand Du Sel & Rose Selavy
In-Reply-To: <Pine.3.89.9602021340.A24449-0100000@well>
> > (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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Chris Stroffolino <LS0796@CNSVAX.ALBANY.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Landers <landers@VIVANET.COM>
Subject: Re: Bernadette Mayer Fan Club (charter member)
Mayer and many other cool poets called themselves "United Artists", i think.
pete
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Date: Sat, 3 Feb 1996 11:00:38 -0500
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Chris Stroffolino <LS0796@CNSVAX.ALBANY.EDU>
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
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Date: Sat, 3 Feb 1996 11:26:18 -0800
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From: Blair Seagram <blairsea@PANIX.COM>
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
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Date: Sat, 3 Feb 1996 11:59:18 +0400
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Kenneth Goldsmith <kgolds@PANIX.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Steve Evans <Steven_Evans@BROWN.EDU>
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
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Marjorie Perloff <perloff@LELAND.STANFORD.EDU>
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
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Date: Sat, 3 Feb 1996 14:17:45 -0500
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Loss Glazier <lolpoet@ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU>
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
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From: Mark Nowak <MANOWAK@ALEX.STKATE.EDU>
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
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Date: Sat, 3 Feb 1996 12:14:47 -0800
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From: Thomas Bell <tbjn@WELL.COM>
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
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Maria Damon <MDamon9999@AOL.COM>
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
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From: Joe Amato <amato@CHARLIE.ACC.IIT.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Maria Damon <MDamon9999@AOL.COM>
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
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Chris Stroffolino <LS0796@CNSVAX.ALBANY.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Joshua N Schuster <jnschust@SAS.UPENN.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Joe Amato <amato@CHARLIE.ACC.IIT.EDU>
Subject: Re: 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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Dan Raphael Dlugonski <raphael@ARACNET.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Steve Carll <sjcarll@SLIP.NET>
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 <pjaeger@bosshog.arts.uwo.ca>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Peter Jaeger <pjaeger@BOSSHOG.ARTS.UWO.CA>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Charles Smith <ChrlsSmith@AOL.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ron Silliman <rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Comments: Authenticated sender is <jzitt@bga.com>
From: Joseph Zitt <jzitt@HUMANSYSTEMS.COM>
Organization: HumanSystems
Subject: Re: Pomo
Comments: To: Ron Silliman <rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM>
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 \||
|/<A HREF="http://www.realtime.net/~jzitt/">Joe Zitt's Home Page</A>\|
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 3 Feb 1996 18:55:20 -0800
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Stephen Galen Cope <scope@UCSCB.UCSC.EDU>
Subject: 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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: William R Howe <howe@ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Chris Stroffolino <LS0796@CNSVAX.ALBANY.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Gwyn McVay <gmcvay1@OSF1.GMU.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ron Silliman <rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Thomas Bell <tbjn@WELL.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Joshua N Schuster <jnschust@SAS.UPENN.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Rod Smith <AERIALEDGE@AOL.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: ryan johnson <ryanx@LELAND.STANFORD.EDU>
Subject: Re: Marchand Du Sel & Rose Selavy
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SV4.3.91.960203040427.4362C-100000@uhunix5>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Henry Gould <AP201070@BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" <anielsen@ISC.SJSU.EDU>
Subject: Re: 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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Steve Carll <sjcarll@SLIP.NET>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Steve Carll <sjcarll@SLIP.NET>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Loss Glazier <lolpoet@ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Joe Amato <amato@CHARLIE.ACC.IIT.EDU>
Subject: Re: 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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Joe Amato <amato@CHARLIE.ACC.IIT.EDU>
Subject: Re: 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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jordan Davis <jdavis@PANIX.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Tom Beard <beard@MET.CO.NZ>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jorge Guitart <mlljorge@UBVMS.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Subject: Re: Marchand Du Sel & Rose Selavy
Comments: To: Thomas Bell <tbjn@well.com>
Comments: cc: MDamon9999@aol.com, cris@slang.demon.co.uk,
lsr3h@darwin.clas.virginia.edu, jdavis@panix.com, welford@hawaii.edu
In-Reply-To: <Pine.3.89.9602032010.A18372-0100000@well>
>
> 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
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Robert Kelly <kelly@BARD.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Henry Gould <AP201070@BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Hank Lazer <HLAZER@AS.UA.EDU>
Organization: The University of Alabama
Subject: Re: 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
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Joe Amato <amato@CHARLIE.ACC.IIT.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Rod Smith <AERIALEDGE@AOL.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Gabrielle Welford <welford@HAWAII.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Susan Schultz <sschultz@HAWAII.EDU>
Subject: Re: st*r-struck (fwd)
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sun, 4 Feb 1996 11:35:52 -1000
From: William Craighowes <craighow@hawaii.edu>
To: Susan Schultz <sschultz@hawaii.edu>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Kevin Killian <dbkk@SIRIUS.COM>
Subject: beatlist
"BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 4 Feb 1996 15:35:17 -0800
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ron Silliman <rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM>
Subject: Re: 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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Emily Lloyd <emilyl@EROLS.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Steve Evans <Steven_Evans@BROWN.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Mark Roberts <M.Roberts@ISU.USYD.EDU.AU>
Subject: 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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Steve Carll <sjcarll@SLIP.NET>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Eryque Gleason <eryque@ACMENET.NET>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Dan Raphael Dlugonski <raphael@ARACNET.COM>
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
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Kevin Killian <dbkk@SIRIUS.COM>
Subject: beatlist--more
"BEAT-L: Beat Generation List" <BEAT-L@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>
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
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Tenney Nathanson <tenney@AZSTARNET.COM>
Subject: quote id eon
>Date: Fri, 2 Feb 1996 09:12:36 -0800
>From: Ray Davis <raydavis@BEST.COM>
>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
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Tenney Nathanson <tenney@AZSTARNET.COM>
Subject: or
>Date: Sat, 3 Feb 1996 14:58:00 -0600
>From: Joe Amato <amato@CHARLIE.ACC.IIT.EDU>
>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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Blair Seagram <blairsea@PANIX.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Tenney Nathanson <tenney@AZSTARNET.COM>
>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
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From: Tenney Nathanson <tenney@AZSTARNET.COM>
Subject: trail Blasing
>Date: Sun, 4 Feb 1996 12:02:43 EST
>From: Henry Gould <AP201070@BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU>
>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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
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
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ron Silliman <rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Henry Gould <AP201070@BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Emily Lloyd <emilyl@EROLS.COM>
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
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Michael Boughn <mboughn@EPAS.UTORONTO.CA>
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
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Maria Damon <MDamon9999@AOL.COM>
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
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jordan Davis <jdavis@PANIX.COM>
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
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Mark Wallace <mdw@GWIS2.CIRC.GWU.EDU>
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
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Chris Stroffolino <LS0796@CNSVAX.ALBANY.EDU>
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
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jordan Davis <jdavis@PANIX.COM>
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
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From: Tom Mandel <tmandel@UMD5.UMD.EDU>
Subject: Re: Larry Eigner
Goodbye Larry
tm
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 5 Feb 1996 08:32:43 -0800
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From: Douglas Messerli <djmess@SUNMOON.COM>
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
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From: Henry Gould <AP201070@BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU>
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
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Douglas Messerli <djmess@SUNMOON.COM>
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
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jordan Davis <jdavis@PANIX.COM>
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
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From: Eryque Gleason <eryque@ACMENET.NET>
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
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From: Edward Foster <EFOSTER@VAXC.STEVENS-TECH.EDU>
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
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From: Edward Foster <EFOSTER@VAXC.STEVENS-TECH.EDU>
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
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From: Joe Amato <amato@CHARLIE.ACC.IIT.EDU>
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
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From: ryan johnson <ryanx@LELAND.STANFORD.EDU>
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
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From: ryan johnson <ryanx@LELAND.STANFORD.EDU>
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
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From: Emily Lloyd <emilyl@EROLS.COM>
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
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From: ryan johnson <ryanx@LELAND.STANFORD.EDU>
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
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From: Charles Bernstein <bernstei@UBVMS.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: ryan johnson <ryanx@LELAND.STANFORD.EDU>
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
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Peter Jaeger <pjaeger@BOSSHOG.ARTS.UWO.CA>
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
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Chris Stroffolino <LS0796@CNSVAX.ALBANY.EDU>
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
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Charles Bernstein <bernstei@UBVMS.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
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
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Chris Stroffolino <LS0796@CNSVAX.ALBANY.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jordan Davis <jdavis@PANIX.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Kevin Killian <dbkk@SIRIUS.COM>
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
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jim Pangborn <V072GDXG@UBVMS.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Organization: University at Buffalo
Subject: Re: 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 <craighow@hawaii.edu>
>To: Susan Schultz <sschultz@hawaii.edu>
>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
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Edward Foster <EFOSTER@VAXC.STEVENS-TECH.EDU>
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 <au462@cleveland.Freenet.Edu>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Robert Drake <au462@CLEVELAND.FREENET.EDU>
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
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Kevin Killian <dbkk@SIRIUS.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Dan Raphael Dlugonski <raphael@ARACNET.COM>
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
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Loss Glazier <lolpoet@ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Bob Holman <Nuyopoman@AOL.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Eryque Gleason <eryque@ACMENET.NET>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Loss Glazier <lolpoet@ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU>
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
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Erica Hunt <EricaLin@AOL.COM>
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
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Tenney Nathanson <tenney@AZSTARNET.COM>
Subject: pardon my lineation (no book)
Date: Mon, 5 Feb 1996 16:44:41 -0500
From: Jordan Davis <jdavis@PANIX.COM>
Subject: Re: dunno but
>Date: Mon, 5 Feb 1996 16:44:41 -0500
>From: Jordan Davis <jdavis@PANIX.COM>
>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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Gabrielle Welford <welford@HAWAII.EDU>
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 <murphy!acmcr!vr@ENGLISH-SERVER.HSS.CMU.EDU>
To: Multiple recipients of <bad@ENGLISH-SERVER.HSS.CMU.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ron Silliman <rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Emily Lloyd <emilyl@EROLS.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Chris Stroffolino <LS0796@CNSVAX.ALBANY.EDU>
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
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Schuchat <schuchat@ARC.ARC.ORG.TW>
Subject: Re: monday morning origin myths
In-Reply-To: <v01520d07ad3bdb3f4400@[166.84.199.56]>
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
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jordan Davis <jdavis@PANIX.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jordan Davis <jdavis@PANIX.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Willa Jarnagin <jarnagin@HULAW1.HARVARD.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Henry Gould <AP201070@BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Douglas Messerli <djmess@SUNMOON.COM>
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 <au462@cleveland.Freenet.Edu>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Robert Drake <au462@CLEVELAND.FREENET.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" <anielsen@ISC.SJSU.EDU>
Subject: Re: 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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" <anielsen@ISC.SJSU.EDU>
Subject: Re: 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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Eryque Gleason <eryque@ACMENET.NET>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Joe Amato <amato@CHARLIE.ACC.IIT.EDU>
Subject: Re: 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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Thomas Bell <tbjn@WELL.COM>
Subject: Re: neut gender
In-Reply-To: <Pine.PMDF.3.91.960206101410.551616977D-100000@HULAW1.HARVARD.EDU>
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
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@PANIX.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@PANIX.COM>
Subject: Re: Pomo
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SUN.3.91.960206130210.16761B-100000@panix3.panix.com>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Henry Gould <AP201070@BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: FUNKHOUSER CHRISTOPH <cf2785@CSC.ALBANY.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Joe Amato <amato@CHARLIE.ACC.IIT.EDU>
Subject: Re: 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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Charles Alexander <chax@MTN.ORG>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Stephen Galen Cope <scope@UCSCB.UCSC.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Edward Foster <EFOSTER@VAXC.STEVENS-TECH.EDU>
Subject: Re: 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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Schuchat <schuchat@ARC.ARC.ORG.TW>
Subject: Re: Pomo
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SUN.3.91.960206130210.16761B-100000@panix3.panix.com>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Loss Glazier <lolpoet@ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Steve Carll <sjcarll@SLIP.NET>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Kenneth Goldsmith <kgolds@PANIX.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Marisa Januzzi <Marisa.Januzzi@M.CC.UTAH.EDU>
Subject: Re: Whee (no brake)
In-Reply-To: <v01520d04ad3d1db57ed7@[166.84.199.56]>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Tom Beard <beard@MET.CO.NZ>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Eryque Gleason <eryque@ACMENET.NET>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Mark Roberts <M.Roberts@ISU.USYD.EDU.AU>
Subject: 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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
>Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
>From: Kenneth Goldsmith <kgolds@PANIX.COM>
>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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.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 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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Mark Roberts <M.Roberts@ISU.USYD.EDU.AU>
Subject: re 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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Maria Damon <MDamon9999@AOL.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Sheila E. Murphy" <semurphy@INDIRECT.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Comments: Authenticated sender is <jzitt@bga.com>
From: Joseph Zitt <jzitt@HUMANSYSTEMS.COM>
Organization: HumanSystems
Subject: Re: Pomo
Comments: To: Maria Damon <MDamon9999@AOL.COM>
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 \||
|/<A HREF="http://www.realtime.net/~jzitt/">Joe Zitt's Home Page</A>\|
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 6 Feb 1996 23:54:37 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Kit Robinson <Kit_Robinson@PEOPLESOFT.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Janet Hoelle <97jhoell@ULTRIX.UOR.EDU>
Subject: Re: Sun & Moon Website Is Now Open
In-Reply-To: <v01540700ad3cecfe7a9c@[166.84.247.22]>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Rod Smith <AERIALEDGE@AOL.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ron Silliman <rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Charles Alexander <chax@MTN.ORG>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ron Silliman <rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM>
Subject: Vision Project #1
Forwarded at Tom's request....
THE VISION PROJECT #1 Jan 96
Thomas Lowe Taylor, editor
inquiries & submissions encouraged
<taylort@pdx.edu>
******************************
******************************
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
*******************************
*******************************
<end #1>
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 7 Feb 1996 07:21:16 EST
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jonathan A Levin <jal17@COLUMBIA.EDU>
Subject: Re: We all break for laokoon
In-Reply-To: <v01520d04ad3d1db57ed7@[166.84.199.56]>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: David Kellogg <kellogg@ACPUB.DUKE.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Douglas Messerli <djmess@SUNMOON.COM>
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 <pjaeger@bosshog.arts.uwo.ca>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Peter Jaeger <pjaeger@BOSSHOG.ARTS.UWO.CA>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jerry Rothenberg <jrothenb@CARLA.UCSD.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jerry Rothenberg <jrothenb@CARLA.UCSD.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@PANIX.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Laura Moriarty <moriarty@SFSU.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jonathan Brannen <jbrannen@INFOLINK.MORRIS.MN.US>
Subject: Re: 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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jonathan Brannen <jbrannen@INFOLINK.MORRIS.MN.US>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jack Mahan <jack@HALCYON.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Colleen Lookingbill <Zorlook@AOL.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ron Silliman <rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Gabrielle Welford <welford@HAWAII.EDU>
Subject: Re: fearful symmetry
In-Reply-To: <Pine.ULT.3.91.960207191422.10449A-100000@chinook.halcyon.com>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" <anielsen@ISC.SJSU.EDU>
Subject: Re: 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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Maria Damon <MDamon9999@AOL.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Charles Bernstein <bernstei@UBVMS.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Eryque Gleason <eryque@ACMENET.NET>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Eryque Gleason <eryque@ACMENET.NET>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Joe Amato <amato@CHARLIE.ACC.IIT.EDU>
Subject: Re: 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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Janet Hoelle <97jhoell@ULTRIX.UOR.EDU>
Subject: Re: POET'S BIRTHDAYS
Comments: To: Erica Hunt <EricaLin@aol.com>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Colleen Lookingbill <Zorlook@AOL.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: ryan johnson <ryanx@LELAND.STANFORD.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Eryque Gleason <eryque@ACMENET.NET>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Eryque Gleason <eryque@ACMENET.NET>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: James Perez <jmp2p@UVA.PCMAIL.VIRGINIA.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Janet Hoelle <97jhoell@ULTRIX.UOR.EDU>
Subject: Re: POET'S BIRTHDAYS
Comments: To: Eryque Gleason <eryque@ACMENET.NET>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Kevin Killian <dbkk@SIRIUS.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Loss Glazier <lolpoet@ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Emily Lloyd <emilyl@EROLS.COM>
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
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Date: Fri, 9 Feb 1996 09:08:24 -0600
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From: Joe Amato <amato@CHARLIE.ACC.IIT.EDU>
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
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Date: Fri, 9 Feb 1996 10:36:11 -0500
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From: James Sherry <jsherry@PANIX.COM>
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
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Date: Fri, 9 Feb 1996 10:49:22 -0500
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From: Chris Stroffolino <LS0796@CNSVAX.ALBANY.EDU>
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
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Comments: Converted from PROFS to RFC822 format by PUMP V2.2X
From: Alan Golding <ACGOLD01@ULKYVM.LOUISVILLE.EDU>
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
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From: Jeff Hansen <Jeff_Hansen@BLAKE.PVT.K12.MN.US>
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
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Date: Fri, 9 Feb 1996 14:41:03 -0500
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From: Jordan Davis <jdavis@PANIX.COM>
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
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Date: Fri, 9 Feb 1996 13:44:09 -0600
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From: Joe Amato <amato@CHARLIE.ACC.IIT.EDU>
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
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Date: Fri, 9 Feb 1996 14:22:33 CST6CDT
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From: Hank Lazer <hlazer@AS.UA.EDU>
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
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Date: Fri, 9 Feb 1996 15:41:21 -0500
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From: Emily Lloyd <emilyl@EROLS.COM>
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
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Date: Fri, 9 Feb 1996 15:36:57 -0500
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From: Charles Bernstein <poetics@UBVMS.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
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
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Date: Fri, 9 Feb 1996 16:13:52 -0500
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From: Rae Armantrout <RaeA100900@AOL.COM>
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
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Date: Fri, 9 Feb 1996 15:34:36 -0600
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Joe Amato <amato@CHARLIE.ACC.IIT.EDU>
Subject: Re: 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
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Date: Fri, 9 Feb 1996 16:37:18 -0500
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From: Eryque Gleason <eryque@ACMENET.NET>
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
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Date: Fri, 9 Feb 1996 13:36:42 -0800
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
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From: Douglas Messerli <djmess@SUNMOON.COM>
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
>
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Date: Fri, 9 Feb 1996 13:49:47 -0800
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ray Davis <raydavis@BEST.COM>
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
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Date: Fri, 9 Feb 1996 15:32:05 -0700
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From: Marisa Januzzi <Marisa.Januzzi@M.CC.UTAH.EDU>
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
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Date: Fri, 9 Feb 1996 18:17:14 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Emily Lloyd <emilyl@EROLS.COM>
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
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Date: Fri, 9 Feb 1996 18:15:10 -0600
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Joe Amato <amato@CHARLIE.ACC.IIT.EDU>
Subject: Re: 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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Gabrielle Welford <welford@HAWAII.EDU>
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.
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Date: Fri, 9 Feb 1996 20:20:37 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Emily Lloyd <emilyl@EROLS.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Joshua N Schuster <jnschust@SAS.UPENN.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Eryque Gleason <eryque@ACMENET.NET>
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
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: megan blair simpson <bird@UNM.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: ryan johnson <ryanx@LELAND.STANFORD.EDU>
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 <au462@cleveland.Freenet.Edu>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Robert Drake <au462@CLEVELAND.FREENET.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Nick Lawrence <V121NQND@UBVMS.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: ryan johnson <ryanx@LELAND.STANFORD.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Rod Smith <AERIALEDGE@AOL.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ron Silliman <rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Maria Damon <MDamon9999@AOL.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Douglas Messerli <djmess@SUNMOON.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Kevin Killian <dbkk@SIRIUS.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Kevin Killian <dbkk@SIRIUS.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Maria Damon <MDamon9999@AOL.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Janet Hoelle <97jhoell@ULTRIX.UOR.EDU>
Subject: Re: e=r=o=t=i=c
Comments: To: Maria Damon <MDamon9999@aol.com>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ryan Knighton <knighton@SFU.CA>
Subject: Announcing TADs
In-Reply-To: <v01520d00ad422d39eef9@[205.134.228.18]> 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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ryan Knighton <knighton@SFU.CA>
Subject: listserv question
In-Reply-To: <v01520d00ad422d39eef9@[205.134.228.18]> 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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Louis Cabri <ldmcabri@ACS.UCALGARY.CA>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Eryque Gleason <eryque@ACMENET.NET>
Subject: Re: listserv question
ryan, send to listserv@ubvm.cc.buffalo.edu the message "review poetics"
with no subject, etc.
techknowledgably yours,
eryque
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Date: Sat, 10 Feb 1996 22:26:35 -0800
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Kevin Killian <dbkk@SIRIUS.COM>
Subject: Re: 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
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Date: Sat, 10 Feb 1996 22:48:30 -0800
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Kevin Killian <dbkk@SIRIUS.COM>
Subject: Re: 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
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Date: Sun, 11 Feb 1996 03:52:43 -0800
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ron Silliman <rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM>
Subject: Re: 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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Douglas Messerli <djmess@SUNMOON.COM>
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
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Date: Sun, 11 Feb 1996 09:50:06 -0800
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ray Davis <raydavis@BEST.COM>
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
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Date: Sun, 11 Feb 1996 09:06:38 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Pierre Joris <joris@CSC.ALBANY.EDU>
Subject: The Nightable Ten
In-Reply-To: <Pine.PMDF.3.91.960209153118.539070507A-100000
@ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu>
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|
=======================================================================
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Date: Sun, 11 Feb 1996 11:27:52 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Chris Stroffolino <LS0796@CNSVAX.ALBANY.EDU>
Subject: Re: 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
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Date: Sun, 11 Feb 1996 09:43:12 EST
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Henry Gould <AP201070@BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU>
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
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Date: Sun, 11 Feb 1996 13:27:03 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Maria Damon <MDamon9999@AOL.COM>
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
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Date: Sun, 11 Feb 1996 13:28:09 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Maria Damon <MDamon9999@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: e=r=o=t=i=c
i guess everything's erotic...
md
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Date: Sun, 11 Feb 1996 13:35:13 -0500
Reply-To: Peter Jaeger <pjaeger@bosshog.arts.uwo.ca>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Peter Jaeger <pjaeger@BOSSHOG.ARTS.UWO.CA>
Subject: Re: e=r=o=t=i=c
In-Reply-To: <v01520d05ad42d21b8571@[205.134.228.11]>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "CHRISTOPHER H. JACKSON" <cjackso7@OSF1.GMU.EDU>
Subject: Re: Stein
In-Reply-To: <POETICS%96020913320876@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: David Ayre <david_ayre@MINDLINK.BC.CA>
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 <Stuart_Ross@tvo.org>
*********************************
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Douglas Messerli <djmess@SUNMOON.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Gwyn McVay <gmcvay1@OSF1.GMU.EDU>
Subject: More on poets to music
In-Reply-To: <m0tlkWX-0004irC@dewey.mindlink.net>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Charles Alexander <chax@MTN.ORG>
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
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jerry Rothenberg <jrothenb@CARLA.UCSD.EDU>
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
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Emily Lloyd <emilyl@EROLS.COM>
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
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Thomas Bell <tbjn@WELL.COM>
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
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From: Rod Smith <AERIALEDGE@AOL.COM>
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
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From: Rod Smith <AERIALEDGE@AOL.COM>
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
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Rod Smith <AERIALEDGE@AOL.COM>
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
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From: Jennifer Ashton <ashto_j@JHUNIX.HCF.JHU.EDU>
Subject: Re: Stein
In-Reply-To: <Pine.OSF.3.91.960211162320.28494A-100000@osf1.gmu.edu>
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
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: megan blair simpson <bird@UNM.EDU>
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
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Kevin Killian <dbkk@SIRIUS.COM>
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
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From: KUSZAI <v369t4kj@UBVMS.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Subject: The Rusty Word #2 -- Call For Work
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SOL.3.91.960211151751.18279A-100000@lictor.acsu.buffalo.edu>
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
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From: Edward Foster <EFOSTER@VAXC.STEVENS-TECH.EDU>
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
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: David Ayre <david_ayre@MINDLINK.BC.CA>
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
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From: David Kellogg <kellogg@ACPUB.DUKE.EDU>
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
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: ryan johnson <ryanx@LELAND.STANFORD.EDU>
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
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jonathan A Levin <jal17@COLUMBIA.EDU>
Subject: Re: a query
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SUN.3.91.960212115017.19648B-100000@elaine48.Stanford.EDU>
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
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jordan Davis <jdavis@PANIX.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Marisa Januzzi <Marisa.Januzzi@M.CC.UTAH.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Kevin Killian <dbkk@SIRIUS.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ryan Knighton <knighton@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: writing the body
In-Reply-To: <v01520d01ad452e56633f@[205.134.228.61]> 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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Eryque Gleason <eryque@ACMENET.NET>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Rod Smith <AERIALEDGE@AOL.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Chris Stroffolino <LS0796@CNSVAX.ALBANY.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Kevin Killian <dbkk@SIRIUS.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ron Silliman <rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM>
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 <au462@cleveland.Freenet.Edu>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Robert Drake <au462@CLEVELAND.FREENET.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Hank Lazer <hlazer@AS.UA.EDU>
Organization: The University of Alabama
Subject: Re: 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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Joe Amato <amato@CHARLIE.ACC.IIT.EDU>
Subject: Re: 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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Nancy D." <ND5754@CNSVAX.ALBANY.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Emily Lloyd <emilyl@EROLS.COM>
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
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Brian McHale <BMCH@WVNVM.WVNET.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Daniel Bouchard <Daniel_Bouchard@HMCO.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Maria Damon <MDamon9999@AOL.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jordan Davis <jdavis@PANIX.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Pierre Joris <joris@CSC.ALBANY.EDU>
Subject: Furrin news that stays news
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SUN.3.91.960212182543.19249C-100000@bonjour.cc.columbia.edu>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Janet Hoelle <97jhoell@ULTRIX.UOR.EDU>
Subject: Re: E=R=O=& other things
Comments: To: Emily Lloyd <emilyl@EROLS.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Douglas Messerli <djmess@SUNMOON.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Janet Hoelle <97jhoell@ULTRIX.UOR.EDU>
Subject: Re: writing the body
Comments: To: megan blair simpson <bird@UNM.EDU>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.A32.3.91.960212083643.220954A-100000@pegasus.unm.edu>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Pierre Joris <joris@CSC.ALBANY.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Daniel Bouchard <Daniel_Bouchard@HMCO.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: mikl-em <mike@KID-LINEAR.TAYLOR.ORG>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@PANIX.COM>
Subject: Re: writing the body
In-Reply-To: <Pine.ULT.3.91.960213114705.22507C-100000@ultrix.uor.edu>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Steve Carll <sjcarll@SLIP.NET>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Daniel Bouchard <Daniel_Bouchard@HMCO.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Chris Stroffolino <LS0796@CNSVAX.ALBANY.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Henry Gould <AP201070@BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Mark Nowak <MANOWAK@ALEX.STKATE.EDU>
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
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From: Jordan Davis <jdavis@PANIX.COM>
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.
___
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Date: Tue, 13 Feb 1996 14:16:19 -0800
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From: Douglas Messerli <djmess@SUNMOON.COM>
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
>
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Date: Tue, 13 Feb 1996 18:02:21 -0500
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From: Chris Stroffolino <LS0796@CNSVAX.ALBANY.EDU>
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
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From: Steve Carll <sjcarll@SLIP.NET>
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.'"
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Date: Tue, 13 Feb 1996 19:37:34 -0500
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From: Edward Foster <EFOSTER@VAXC.STEVENS-TECH.EDU>
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.
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Date: Tue, 13 Feb 1996 17:12:54 -0800
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From: Shaunanne Tangney <st@SCS.UNR.EDU>
Subject: Re: writing the body
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SUN.3.91.960213151420.19101C-100000@panix3.panix.com>
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
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Date: Tue, 13 Feb 1996 18:15:15 -0700
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From: jeffrey timmons <mnamna@IMAP1.ASU.EDU>
Subject: Re: writing the body
In-Reply-To: <Pine.OSF.3.91.960213170021.20813C-100000@pogo.scs.unr.edu>
> > 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
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Date: Tue, 13 Feb 1996 21:01:29 -0500
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From: Matthew Gary Kirschenbaum <mgk3k@FARADAY.CLAS.VIRGINIA.EDU>
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
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From: Emily Lloyd <emilyl@EROLS.COM>
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
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Date: Tue, 13 Feb 1996 19:31:04 -0800
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From: Shaunanne Tangney <st@SCS.UNR.EDU>
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
>
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Date: Tue, 13 Feb 1996 18:56:18 EST
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From: James Perez <jmp2p@UVA.PCMAIL.VIRGINIA.EDU>
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
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Date: Tue, 13 Feb 1996 23:44:14 -0500
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From: FUNKHOUSER CHRISTOPH <cf2785@CSC.ALBANY.EDU>
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
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Date: Tue, 13 Feb 1996 21:30:56 -0800
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From: Thomas Bell <tbjn@WELL.COM>
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
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Date: Wed, 14 Feb 1996 02:48:24 -0500
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From: Chris Stroffolino <LS0796@CNSVAX.ALBANY.EDU>
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....
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Date: Wed, 14 Feb 1996 01:49:33 -0600
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From: Charles Alexander <chax@MTN.ORG>
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
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Tom Goodell <Tomgoo@AOL.COM>
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
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From: Chris Stroffolino <LS0796@CNSVAX.ALBANY.EDU>
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
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From: Ron Silliman <rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM>
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
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Roger Field <rfield@ATCON.COM>
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
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ron Silliman <rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Henry Gould <AP201070@BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Schuchat <schuchat@ARC.ARC.ORG.TW>
Subject: Re: writing the bod
In-Reply-To: <POETICS%96021408215191@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
where is the mini-apple?
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 14 Feb 1996 09:00:58 EST
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Henry Gould <AP201070@BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: David Kellogg <kellogg@ACPUB.DUKE.EDU>
Subject: Re: Poetry Sightings
In-Reply-To: <v01520d01ad453f579db1@[166.84.199.56]>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: kathryne <KLINDBE@CMS.CC.WAYNE.EDU>
Subject: Re: Poetry Sightings
In-Reply-To: Message of Wed, 14 Feb 1996 09:44:33 -0500 from
<kellogg@ACPUB.DUKE.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Herb Levy <herb@ESKIMO.COM>
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
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Charles Alexander <chax@MTN.ORG>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jordan Davis <jdavis@PANIX.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Charles Alexander <chax@MTN.ORG>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Charles Alexander <chax@MTN.ORG>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Charles Alexander <chax@MTN.ORG>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Douglas Messerli <djmess@SUNMOON.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Robert A Harrison <Robert.A.Harrison@JCI.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Emily Lloyd <emilyl@EROLS.COM>
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
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Sheila E. Murphy" <semurphy@INDIRECT.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: R I Caddel <R.I.Caddel@DURHAM.AC.UK>
Subject: 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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Rod Smith <AERIALEDGE@AOL.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Douglas Messerli <djmess@SUNMOON.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Maria Damon <MDamon9999@AOL.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Maria Damon <MDamon9999@AOL.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Maria Damon <MDamon9999@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: writing the body
thanks roger field.
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 15 Feb 1996 12:17:30 -0800
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Candace Leigh Pirnak <idaho@CATS.UCSC.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jonathan A Levin <jal17@COLUMBIA.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Chris Stroffolino <LS0796@CNSVAX.ALBANY.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: jeffrey timmons <mnamna@IMAP1.ASU.EDU>
Subject: Re: write that body
Comments: To: Chris Stroffolino <LS0796@CNSVAX.ALBANY.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jordan Davis <jdavis@PANIX.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jordan Davis <jdavis@PANIX.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Maria Damon <MDamon9999@AOL.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Charles Watts <cwatts@SFU.CA>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Comments: Authenticated sender is <jzitt@bga.com>
From: Joseph Zitt <jzitt@HUMANSYSTEMS.COM>
Organization: HumanSystems
Subject: Re: "Pomo"
Comments: To: Mark Nowak <MANOWAK@ALEX.STKATE.EDU>
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 \||
|/<A HREF="http://www.realtime.net/~jzitt/">Joe Zitt's Home Page</A>\|
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 15 Feb 1996 03:25:19 -0800
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ron Silliman <rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM>
Subject: (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 <C513024@MIZZOU1.missouri.edu>
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 <H-WOMEN@msu.edu>
Sender: H-NET List for Women's History <H-WOMEN@msu.edu>
From: Kriste Lindenmeyer <KAL6444@tntech.edu>
Subject: Good News About Copyright & Course Packets
Comments: To: H-SHGAPE@msu.edu
To: Multiple recipients of list H-WOMEN <H-WOMEN@msu.edu>
Date: Tue, 13 Feb 1996 12:18:54 -0400 (EDT)
From: Jacquelyn Kent <HLATAM@SNYCORVA.CORTLAND.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Daniel Bouchard <Daniel_Bouchard@HMCO.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Brian McHale <BMCH@WVNVM.WVNET.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: James Sherry <jsherry@PANIX.COM>
Subject: ROOF BOOKS -- Special Offer
In-Reply-To: <199602150514.AAA10247@listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu>
ROOF BOOKS is making a SPECIAL OFFER
to POETICS SUBSCRIBERS <<ONLY>>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Douglas Messerli <djmess@SUNMOON.COM>
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 <<ONLY>>
>
>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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Joe Amato <amato@CHARLIE.ACC.IIT.EDU>
Subject: Re: 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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Douglas Messerli <djmess@SUNMOON.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Chris Stroffolino <LS0796@CNSVAX.ALBANY.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Carl Lynden Peters <clpeters@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: ROOF BOOKS -- Special Offer
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SUN.3.91.960215111940.26468A-100000@panix.com> 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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Gabrielle Welford <welford@HAWAII.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Daniel Bouchard <Daniel_Bouchard@HMCO.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: jeffrey timmons <mnamna@IMAP1.ASU.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ryan Knighton <knighton@SFU.CA>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Charles Watts <cwatts@SFU.CA>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Daniel Winston Jones <dwj4b@FERMI.CLAS.VIRGINIA.EDU>
Subject: Re: ROOF BOOKS -- Special Offer
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SUN.3.91.960215111940.26468A-100000@panix.com> 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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jackson Mac Low <Maclow@AOL.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Steve Carll <sjcarll@POP.SLIP.NET>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Emily Lloyd <emilyl@EROLS.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Sheila E. Murphy" <semurphy@INDIRECT.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Peters, Mark" <PETERSM@CORAL.INDSTATE.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: ryan johnson <ryanx@LELAND.STANFORD.EDU>
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 <dgreenbe@leland.Stanford.EDU>
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: <s121c6e1.086@LANMAIL.SHU.EDU>
X-Mailer: Novell GroupWise 4.1
Date: Wed, 14 Feb 1996 11:22:57 -0500
From: "Alison G. Greenberg" <GREENBAL@LANMAIL.SHU.EDU>
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 <nicole75@mailhost.tcs.tulane.edu>
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: <Pine.A32.3.91.960211223533.98841D-100000@rs5.tcs.tulane.edu>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Charles Alexander <chax@MTN.ORG>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Henry Gould <AP201070@BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Douglas Messerli <djmess@SUNMOON.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Daniel Bouchard <Daniel_Bouchard@HMCO.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Charles Bernstein <POETICS@UBVMS.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Timothy Liu <TLIU@CORNELL-IOWA.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Timothy Liu <TLIU@CORNELL-IOWA.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: David Kellogg <kellogg@ACPUB.DUKE.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Gabrielle Welford <welford@HAWAII.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Sheila E. Murphy" <semurphy@INDIRECT.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Loss Glazier <lolpoet@ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Mark Nowak <MANOWAK@ALEX.STKATE.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: mikl-em <mike@KID-LINEAR.TAYLOR.ORG>
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: <v0213051cad37ef5a1a0c@[204.62.133.199]>
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 <or interactive computer service (as defined in section 230(e)(2) of
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 <or receives>, from such
express company or other common carrier <or interactive computer service (as
defined in section 230(e)(2) of the Communications Act of 1934)> any matter
or thing the carriage <or importation> 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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Charles Bernstein <bernstei@UBVMS.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Rae Armantrout <RaeA100900@AOL.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Kevin Killian <dbkk@SIRIUS.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Mark Roberts <M.Roberts@ISU.USYD.EDU.AU>
Subject: Re: 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 <<ONLY>>
>
>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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Emily Lloyd <emilyl@EROLS.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jordan Davis <jdavis@PANIX.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jackson Mac Low <Maclow@AOL.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Mark Roberts <M.Roberts@ISU.USYD.EDU.AU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Douglas Messerli <djmess@SUNMOON.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Eryque Gleason <eryque@ACMENET.NET>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Charles Alexander <chax@MTN.ORG>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Charles Alexander <chax@MTN.ORG>
>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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ron Silliman <rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Comments: Authenticated sender is <jzitt@bga.com>
From: Joseph Zitt <jzitt@HUMANSYSTEMS.COM>
Organization: HumanSystems
Comments: To: Charles Alexander <chax@MTN.ORG>
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 \||
|/<A HREF="http://www.realtime.net/~jzitt/">Joe Zitt's Home Page</A>\|
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 15 Feb 1996 22:09:41 -0800
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" <anielsen@ISC.SJSU.EDU>
Subject: Re: 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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jonathan Brannen <jbrannen@INFOLINK.MORRIS.MN.US>
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 <ARIH6021@bureau.ucc.ie>
>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 <noring@netcom.com>
>Subject: --> Press Release from OmniMedia Regarding the CDA and Electronic
Books
>Sender: "TEI (Text Encoding Initiative) public discussion list"
> <TEI-L@UICVM.CC.UIC.EDU>
>To: Multiple recipients of list TEI-L <TEI-L@UICVM.CC.UIC.EDU>
>Reply-to: Jon Noring <noring@netcom.com>
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>
>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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: R I Caddel <R.I.Caddel@DURHAM.AC.UK>
Subject: 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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ron Silliman <rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: henry gould <AP201070@BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Emily Lloyd <emilyl@EROLS.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: James Sherry <jsherry@PANIX.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Joe Amato <amato@CHARLIE.ACC.IIT.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jordan Davis <jdavis@PANIX.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: KUSZAI <v369t4kj@UBVMS.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Charles Alexander <chax@MTN.ORG>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Douglas Messerli <djmess@SUNMOON.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Douglas Messerli <djmess@SUNMOON.COM>
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 <au462@cleveland.Freenet.Edu>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Robert Drake <au462@CLEVELAND.FREENET.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Steve Carll <sjcarll@POP.SLIP.NET>
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 <au462@cleveland.Freenet.Edu>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Robert Drake <au462@CLEVELAND.FREENET.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Henry Gould <AP201070@BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jerry Rothenberg <jrothenb@CARLA.UCSD.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Emily Lloyd <emilyl@EROLS.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Joe Amato <amato@CHARLIE.ACC.IIT.EDU>
Subject: Re: 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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Daniel Bouchard <Daniel_Bouchard@HMCO.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Roland Greene <rgreene@OREGON.UOREGON.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Kevin Killian <dbkk@SIRIUS.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Chris Stroffolino <LS0796@CNSVAX.ALBANY.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Chris Stroffolino <LS0796@CNSVAX.ALBANY.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Kit Robinson <Kit_Robinson@PEOPLESOFT.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Rod Smith <AERIALEDGE@AOL.COM>
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
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Chris Stroffolino <LS0796@CNSVAX.ALBANY.EDU>
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
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Daniel Bouchard <Daniel_Bouchard@HMCO.COM>
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
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jordan Davis <jdavis@PANIX.COM>
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
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From: Steve Carll <sjcarll@POP.SLIP.NET>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Robert Kelly <kelly@BARD.EDU>
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
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From: ryan johnson <ryanx@LELAND.STANFORD.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Henry Gould <AP201070@BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU>
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
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: ryan johnson <ryanx@LELAND.STANFORD.EDU>
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: <v0213051cad37ef5a1a0c@[204.62.133.199]>
> 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 <or interactive computer service (as defined in section 230(e)(2) of
> 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 <or receives>, from such
> express company or other common carrier <or interactive computer service (as
> defined in section 230(e)(2) of the Communications Act of 1934)> any matter
> or thing the carriage <or importation> 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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: ryan johnson <ryanx@LELAND.STANFORD.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jordan Davis <jdavis@PANIX.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Eryque Gleason <eryque@ACMENET.NET>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Eryque Gleason <eryque@ACMENET.NET>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: mikl-em <mike@KID-LINEAR.TAYLOR.ORG>
Subject: Re: M-poe's
In-Reply-To: <POETICS%96021617390769@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU> 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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" <anielsen@ISC.SJSU.EDU>
Subject: Re: 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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" <anielsen@ISC.SJSU.EDU>
Subject: Re: 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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Henry Gould <AP201070@BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Gabrielle Welford <welford@HAWAII.EDU>
Subject: Sapphos
In-Reply-To: <Pine.A32.3.91.960216170948.30926B-100000@core.bard.edu>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Gabrielle Welford <welford@HAWAII.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Mark W Scroggins <mscroggi@ACC.FAU.EDU>
Subject: Re: mrning (fwd)
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SV4.3.91.960216161221.15183J-100000@uhunix5>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ron Silliman <rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Comments: RFC822 error: <W> CC field duplicated. Last occurrence was
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retained.
From: Ron Silliman <rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Chris Stroffolino <LS0796@CNSVAX.ALBANY.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Pierre Joris <joris@CSC.ALBANY.EDU>
Subject: Re: BEAT BLEET
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SOL.3.91.960216171011.9359B-100000@athens>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Mark Roberts <M.Roberts@ISU.USYD.EDU.AU>
>>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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Kenneth Sherwood <v001pxfu@UBVMS.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Loss Glazier <lolpoet@ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Mark Wallace <mdw@GWIS2.CIRC.GWU.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Douglas Messerli <djmess@SUNMOON.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" <anielsen@ISC.SJSU.EDU>
Subject: Re: 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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Douglas Messerli <djmess@SUNMOON.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Chris Stroffolino <LS0796@CNSVAX.ALBANY.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Kenneth Sherwood <v001pxfu@UBVMS.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Patrick Phillips <Patrick_Phillips@BROWN.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Eryque Gleason <eryque@ACMENET.NET>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Christopher L. Filkins" <filch@POBOX.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" <anielsen@ISC.SJSU.EDU>
Subject: Re: 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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ron Silliman <rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Charles Alexander <chax@MTN.ORG>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Henry Gould <AP201070@BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jordan Davis <jdavis@PANIX.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jordan Davis <jdavis@PANIX.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Rod Smith <AERIALEDGE@AOL.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: ryan johnson <ryanx@LELAND.STANFORD.EDU>
Subject: Re: Followed the thread/caught in the web...
In-Reply-To: <Pine.PMDF.3.91.960219214803.539267096A-100000
@ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Marisa Januzzi <Marisa.Januzzi@M.CC.UTAH.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Christopher J. Beach" <cjbeach@BENFRANKLIN.HNET.UCI.EDU>
Subject: Re: legacies
In-Reply-To: <Pine.3.89.9602191022.A3031-0100000@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Eryque Gleason <eryque@ACMENET.NET>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Hank Lazer <HLAZER@AS.UA.EDU>
Organization: The University of Alabama
Subject: 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 <au462@cleveland.Freenet.Edu>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Robert Drake <au462@CLEVELAND.FREENET.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Christopher L. Filkins" <filch@POBOX.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Erica Hunt <EricaLin@AOL.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" <anielsen@ISC.SJSU.EDU>
Subject: Re: 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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Chris Stroffolino <LS0796@CNSVAX.ALBANY.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Chris Stroffolino <LS0796@CNSVAX.ALBANY.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ron Silliman <rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Hank Lazer <hlazer@AS.UA.EDU>
Organization: The University of Alabama
Subject: Re: 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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Pierre Joris <joris@CSC.ALBANY.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Mark Wallace <mdw@GWIS2.CIRC.GWU.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jim Pangborn <V072GDXG@UBVMS.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Organization: University at Buffalo
Subject: Re: Charles Alexander, John Milton, & 24 Hours of Democracy
"Christopher L. Filkins" <filch@POBOX.COM> 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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Henry Gould <AP201070@BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Charles Bernstein <bernstei@UBVMS.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Subject: Premonitions anthology (fwd)
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 16 Feb 1996 17:23:08 -0500 (EST)
From: Kaya <kaya@panix.com>
----------------------------------------------------------------------
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
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=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 21 Feb 1996 11:53:20 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Eryque Gleason <eryque@ACMENET.NET>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Christopher J. Beach" <cjbeach@BENFRANKLIN.HNET.UCI.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Christopher J. Beach" <cjbeach@BENFRANKLIN.HNET.UCI.EDU>
Subject: Re: legacies
In-Reply-To: <Pine.3.89.9602210943.A26804-0100000@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Chris Stroffolino <LS0796@CNSVAX.ALBANY.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Chris Stroffolino <LS0796@CNSVAX.ALBANY.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jerry Rothenberg <jrothenb@CARLA.UCSD.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Kenneth Sherwood <v001pxfu@UBVMS.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Rod Smith <AERIALEDGE@AOL.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Henry Gould <AP201070@BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Steve Carll <sjcarll@POP.SLIP.NET>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jordan Davis <jdavis@PANIX.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jordan Davis <jdavis@PANIX.COM>
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 <au462@cleveland.Freenet.Edu>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Robert Drake <au462@CLEVELAND.FREENET.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Wystan Curnow <w.curnow@AUCKLAND.AC.NZ>
Organization: English Dept. - Univ. of Auckland
Subject: Re: 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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: William Howard <whow@U.WASHINGTON.EDU>
Subject: Re: Milton (on freedom of the press) & Bakhtin's "chronotope"
In-Reply-To: <v02130503ad505b6a6774@[128.97.154.217]>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Wystan Curnow <w.curnow@AUCKLAND.AC.NZ>
Organization: English Dept. - Univ. of Auckland
Subject: Re: 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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Wystan Curnow <w.curnow@AUCKLAND.AC.NZ>
Organization: English Dept. - Univ. of Auckland
Subject: Re: 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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Wystan Curnow <w.curnow@AUCKLAND.AC.NZ>
Organization: English Dept. - Univ. of Auckland
Subject: Re: Poetry & 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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Andrew Robert Maxwell <augusta@CATS.UCSC.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Dan Raphael Dlugonski <raphael@ARACNET.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: MAXINE CHERNOFF <maxpaul@SFSU.EDU>
Subject: Re: Rrrr: beyond L or M
In-Reply-To: <v01520d01ad5143333fd3@[166.84.199.56]>
"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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Charles Alexander <chax@MTN.ORG>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Chris Stroffolino <LS0796@CNSVAX.ALBANY.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Patrick J Schultz <patschul@PRAIRIE.NODAK.EDU>
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.
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Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=us-ascii
Content-ID: <Pine.OSF.3.91.960222011308.18413K@prairie.NoDak.edu>
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
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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
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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
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=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 22 Feb 1996 02:56:22 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@PANIX.COM>
Subject: Re: FW: FEB 29 (fwd)
Comments: To: Patrick J Schultz <patschul@PRAIRIE.NODAK.EDU>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.OSF.3.91.960222011308.18413I@prairie.NoDak.edu>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ron Silliman <rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ron Silliman <rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Sheila E. Murphy" <semurphy@INDIRECT.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Michael Boughn <mboughn@EPAS.UTORONTO.CA>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: FUNKHOUSER CHRISTOPH <cf2785@CSC.ALBANY.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Henry Gould <AP201070@BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" <anielsen@ISC.SJSU.EDU>
Subject: Re: the 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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Eryque Gleason <eryque@ACMENET.NET>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Henry Gould <AP201070@BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Peter Baker <baker@MIDGET.TOWSON.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Christopher J. Beach" <cjbeach@BENFRANKLIN.HNET.UCI.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Larry Price <Lppl@AOL.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "John E. Matthias" <John.E.Matthias.1@ND.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Chris Stroffolino <LS0796@CNSVAX.ALBANY.EDU>
Subject: Re: the 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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Wendy Battin <wjbat@CONNCOLL.EDU>
Subject: query: book distribution
Comments: To: Capl-L <CAP-L@vm1.spcs.umn.edu>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Susan Schultz <sschultz@HAWAII.EDU>
Subject: TINFISH is coming!
In-Reply-To: <Pine.3.89.9602230008.F4236-0100000@dsys.cc.conncoll.edu>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Stephen Galen Cope <scope@UCSCB.UCSC.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Michael Boughn <mboughn@EPAS.UTORONTO.CA>
Subject: transcendence
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SOL.3.91.960222085549.27099B-100000@athens> 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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jonathan A Levin <jal17@COLUMBIA.EDU>
Subject: Re: the 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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: R I Caddel <R.I.Caddel@DURHAM.AC.UK>
Subject: 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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jerry Rothenberg <jrothenb@CARLA.UCSD.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Edward Foster <EFOSTER@VAXC.STEVENS-TECH.EDU>
Subject: Re: 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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jack Mahan <jack@HALCYON.COM>
Subject: Re: the none
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SUN.3.91.960223084116.28596B-100000@bonjour.cc.columbia.edu>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Larry Price <Lppl@AOL.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jordan Davis <jdavis@PANIX.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Maria Damon <MDamon9999@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: write that boy
nice work jt!
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 23 Feb 1996 12:56:33 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Edward Foster <EFOSTER@VAXC.STEVENS-TECH.EDU>
Subject: Re: 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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Paul Beidler <pbeidler@EPAS.UTORONTO.CA>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Edward Foster <EFOSTER@VAXC.STEVENS-TECH.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Edward Foster <EFOSTER@VAXC.STEVENS-TECH.EDU>
Subject: Re: the 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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Maria Damon <MDamon9999@AOL.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Maria Damon <MDamon9999@AOL.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Daniel Bouchard <Daniel_Bouchard@HMCO.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Larry Price <Lppl@AOL.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Maria Damon <MDamon9999@AOL.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Madeline Gins <RevDest@AOL.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Madeline Gins <RevDest@AOL.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Madeline Gins <RevDest@AOL.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: David Kellogg <kellogg@ACPUB.DUKE.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: David Kellogg <kellogg@ACPUB.DUKE.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Comments: Authenticated sender is <jzitt@bga.com>
From: Joseph Zitt <jzitt@HUMANSYSTEMS.COM>
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 \||
|/<A HREF="http://www.realtime.net/~jzitt/">Joe Zitt's Home Page</A>\|
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 24 Feb 1996 05:55:57 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Peter Jaeger <pjaeger@BOSSHOG.ARTS.UWO.CA>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Michael Boughn <mboughn@EPAS.UTORONTO.CA>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Maria Damon <MDamon9999@AOL.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: - Kim Tedrow <RoseRead@AOL.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Steve Carll <sjcarll@POP.SLIP.NET>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ron Silliman <rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Thomas Bell <tbjn@WELL.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Gabrielle Welford <welford@HAWAII.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ron Silliman <rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jordan Davis <jdavis@PANIX.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Patrick Phillips <Patrick_Phillips@BROWN.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Thomas Bell <tbjn@WELL.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Chris Stroffolino <LS0796@CNSVAX.ALBANY.EDU>
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 <pjaeger@bosshog.arts.uwo.ca>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Peter Jaeger <pjaeger@BOSSHOG.ARTS.UWO.CA>
Subject: Re: barred S bards
In-Reply-To: <m0tqWJ5-000JeyC@slip.net>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Mark Roberts <M.Roberts@ISU.USYD.EDU.AU>
Subject: Re: 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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Tony Green <t.green@AUCKLAND.AC.NZ>
Organization: The University of Auckland
Subject: 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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jordan Davis <jdavis@PANIX.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Henry Gould <AP201070@BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Mark Wallace <mdw@GWIS2.CIRC.GWU.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Douglas Messerli <djmess@SUNMOON.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Edward Foster <EFOSTER@VAXC.STEVENS-TECH.EDU>
Subject: Re: the 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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Edward Foster <EFOSTER@VAXC.STEVENS-TECH.EDU>
Subject: Re: the 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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Don Cheney <Don_Cheney@UCSDLIBRARY.UCSD.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: ryan johnson <ryanx@LELAND.STANFORD.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Joe Amato <amato@CHARLIE.ACC.IIT.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Rod Smith <AERIALEDGE@AOL.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Charles Smith <CharSSmith@AOL.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Henry Gould <AP201070@BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Edward Foster <EFOSTER@VAXC.STEVENS-TECH.EDU>
Subject: Re: 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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" <anielsen@ISC.SJSU.EDU>
Subject: Re: 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
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Date: Mon, 26 Feb 1996 21:01:10 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
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From: Maria Damon <MDamon9999@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: Presentation/Performance
ward, wish i cd make it, shoot. have fun and prosper.--maria d
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Date: Mon, 26 Feb 1996 22:08:34 -0500
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From: Chris Stroffolino <LS0796@CNSVAX.ALBANY.EDU>
Subject: Re: message in a bottle
aldon--
stayed on the backroads so i wouldn't get weighed....
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Date: Mon, 26 Feb 1996 22:58:48 -0500
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From: Chris Stroffolino <LS0796@CNSVAX.ALBANY.EDU>
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
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Date: Mon, 26 Feb 1996 23:31:31 -0500
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From: Rod Smith <AERIALEDGE@AOL.COM>
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
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Date: Tue, 27 Feb 1996 00:28:32 +0000
Reply-To: jzitt@humansystems.com
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Comments: Authenticated sender is <jzitt@bga.com>
From: Joseph Zitt <jzitt@HUMANSYSTEMS.COM>
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 \||
|/<A HREF="http://www.realtime.net/~jzitt/">Joe Zitt's Home Page</A>\|
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Date: Tue, 27 Feb 1996 02:57:49 -0800
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From: Ron Silliman <rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM>
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
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Date: Tue, 27 Feb 1996 03:32:33 -0800
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ron Silliman <rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM>
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
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Date: Tue, 27 Feb 1996 20:57:05 +0800
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From: Schuchat <schuchat@ARC.ARC.ORG.TW>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Henry Gould <AP201070@BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU>
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
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Date: Tue, 27 Feb 1996 12:00:32 -0500
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From: Patrick Foley <Pfofk@AOL.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Rod Smith <AERIALEDGE@AOL.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Henry Gould <AP201070@BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Tony Green <t.green@AUCKLAND.AC.NZ>
Organization: The University of Auckland
Subject: Re: 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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Martin Spinelli <V139HLA3@UBVMS.BITNET>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Rod Smith <AERIALEDGE@AOL.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Christopher J. Beach" <cjbeach@BENFRANKLIN.HNET.UCI.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Thomas Bell <tbjn@WELL.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Kenneth Goldsmith <kgolds@PANIX.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Chris Stroffolino <LS0796@CNSVAX.ALBANY.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jordan Davis <jdavis@PANIX.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Wendy Battin <wjbat@CONNCOLL.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Carla Billitteri <V079SJWU@UBVMS.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Bill Luoma <Maz881@AOL.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Patrick Foley <Pfofk@AOL.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Tony Green <t.green@AUCKLAND.AC.NZ>
Organization: The University of Auckland
Subject: Re: 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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Keith Tuma <KWTUMA@MIAMIU.MUOHIO.EDU>
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
<V079SJWU@UBVMS.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Patrick Phillips <Patrick_Phillips@BROWN.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Thomas Bell <tbjn@WELL.COM>
Subject: PR, book dist.....and change
In-Reply-To: <v01520d00ad594b529649@[166.84.199.56]>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ron Silliman <rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Comments: RFC822 error: <W> TO field duplicated. Last occurrence was
retained.
Comments: RFC822 error: <W> TO field duplicated. Last occurrence was
retained.
Comments: RFC822 error: <W> TO field duplicated. Last occurrence was
retained.
Comments: RFC822 error: <W> TO field duplicated. Last occurrence was
retained.
From: Ron Silliman <rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Patrick Phillips <Patrick_Phillips@BROWN.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Patrick Phillips <Patrick_Phillips@BROWN.EDU>
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 <au462@cleveland.Freenet.Edu>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Robert Drake <au462@CLEVELAND.FREENET.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Thomas Bell <tbjn@WELL.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Gabrielle Welford <welford@HAWAII.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Rod Smith <AERIALEDGE@AOL.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Michael Boughn <mboughn@EPAS.UTORONTO.CA>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Daniel Bouchard <Daniel_Bouchard@HMCO.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Schuchat <schuchat@ARC.ARC.ORG.TW>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Henry Gould <AP201070@BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Mark Wallace <mdw@GWIS2.CIRC.GWU.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Schuchat <schuchat@ARC.ARC.ORG.TW>
Subject: Re: dead classes, living classes, theory?
In-Reply-To: <Pine.3.89.9602280918.A4591-0100000@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Charles Bernstein <bernstei@UBVMS.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Subject: New Subscribers
New subscribers to POETICS:
Bill Smith <bsmith@NORFOLK.INFI.NET>
Ryan Johnson <ryanx@LELAND.STANFORD.EDU>
Marc Murdock <cfrankli@HAWAII.EDU>
Emily Lloyd <emilyl@EROLS.COM>
Philip Hammond <phammond@CCWF.CC.UTEXAS.EDU>
Ethan Fugate <efugate@OSF1.GMU.EDU>
Michael McElligott <mike@KID-LINEAR.TAYLOR.ORG>
Chris Jackson <cjackso7@OSF1.GMU.EDU>
"Tracy S. Ruggles" <tracer@CREATIVEMM.COM>
Patrick Schultz <patschul@PRAIRIE.NODAK.EDU>
"Christopher Filkins <filch>" <filch@POBOX.COM>
Roger Field <rfield@ATCON.COM>
William Vidaver <wvidaver@DIRECT.CA>
"Amittai F. Aviram" <AVIRAMA@UNIVSCVM.CSD.SCAROLINA.EDU>
Lyn Gallacher (03)9626 1636" <GALLACHER.LYN@A2.ABC.NET.AU>
Dan Horne <DHORNE@NZ.ORACLE.COM>
Mark Goble <evdebs@LELAND.STANFORD.EDU>
Carolyn Blythe <cblythe@SUFFOLK.LIB.NY.US>
Doris Rita Alfonso <DRALFONSO@MSUVX2.MEMPHIS.EDU>
Jill McCartney <jmccartn@U.ARIZONA.EDU>
John.E.Matthias.1@ND.EDU
Susan Vanderborg <calli@LELAND.STANFORD.EDU>
Kim Tedrow <RoseRead@AOL.COM>
Jondi Keane <jondi@iprolink.ch>
Patrick Foley <PFoleyGA@aol.com>
Mustafa Ziyalan <ziyalan@IS2.NYU.EDU>
Dennis Finnell <dfinnell@MAILSRV-VMS.OIT.UMASS.EDU>
Paul Lord <plord@THERE.ORG>
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 28 Feb 1996 09:29:05 -0600
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Joe Amato <amato@CHARLIE.ACC.IIT.EDU>
Subject: Re: 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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Joe Amato <amato@CHARLIE.ACC.IIT.EDU>
Subject: Re: 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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Henry Gould <AP201070@BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Daniel Bouchard <Daniel_Bouchard@HMCO.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Henry Gould <AP201070@BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Charles Alexander <chax@MTN.ORG>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Gabrielle Welford <welford@HAWAII.EDU>
Subject: Fwd: [Ravnish Gupta <rqg4036@is2.NYU.EDU>: 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 <rqg4036@is2.NYU.EDU>: 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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Daniel Bouchard <Daniel_Bouchard@HMCO.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Charles Smith <CharSSmith@AOL.COM>
& 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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: David Kellogg <kellogg@ACPUB.DUKE.EDU>
Subject: Re: PR, book dist.....and change
In-Reply-To: <Pine.3.89.9602272029.A24397-0100000@well>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Fred Muratori <fmm1@CORNELL.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Maria Damon <MDamon9999@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: dead peg theory -Reply
what's CFAP?
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 28 Feb 1996 16:00:31 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Maria Damon <MDamon9999@AOL.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Maria Damon <MDamon9999@AOL.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Maria Damon <MDamon9999@AOL.COM>
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 <au462@cleveland.Freenet.Edu>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Robert Drake <au462@CLEVELAND.FREENET.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Daniel Bouchard <Daniel_Bouchard@HMCO.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Loss Glazier <lolpoet@ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Thomas Bell <tbjn@WELL.COM>
Subject: Re: PR, book dist.....and change
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SOL.3.91.960228155035.8436B-100000@godzilla6.acpub.duke.edu>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Charles Smith <CharSSmith@AOL.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Charles Smith <CharSSmith@AOL.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Charles Smith <CharSSmith@AOL.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Maria Damon <MDamon9999@AOL.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Maria Damon <MDamon9999@AOL.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Rod Smith <AERIALEDGE@AOL.COM>
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
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Date: Thu, 29 Feb 1996 00:17:53 +0000
Reply-To: jzitt@humansystems.com
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Comments: Authenticated sender is <jzitt@bga.com>
From: Joseph Zitt <jzitt@HUMANSYSTEMS.COM>
Organization: HumanSystems
Subject: Re: Cage/Williams/Revill
Comments: To: Rod Smith <AERIALEDGE@AOL.COM>
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 \||
|/<A HREF="http://www.realtime.net/~jzitt/">Joe Zitt's Home Page</A>\|
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 28 Feb 1996 22:54:02 -0800
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
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From: a hurricane triggered by butterfly's wings <plord@THERE.ORG>
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
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Date: Thu, 29 Feb 1996 01:58:45 -0500
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From: Chris Stroffolino <LS0796@CNSVAX.ALBANY.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
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From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@PANIX.COM>
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
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Date: Thu, 29 Feb 1996 02:42:23 -0800
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ron Silliman <rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM>
Subject: Re: 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
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Date: Thu, 29 Feb 1996 03:10:45 -0800
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ron Silliman <rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM>
Subject: 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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Henry Gould <AP201070@BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Henry Gould <AP201070@BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Emily Lloyd <emilyl@EROLS.COM>
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
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Date: Wed, 28 Feb 1996 08:58:57 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Emily Lloyd <emilyl@EROLS.COM>
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
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Date: Thu, 29 Feb 1996 09:03:26 EST
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Daniel Bouchard <Daniel_Bouchard@HMCO.COM>
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
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Date: Thu, 29 Feb 1996 22:22:53 +0800
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Schuchat <schuchat@ARC.ARC.ORG.TW>
Subject: Re: 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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Maria Damon <MDamon9999@AOL.COM>
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
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Date: Thu, 29 Feb 1996 09:41:11 -0500
Reply-To: Robert Drake <au462@cleveland.Freenet.Edu>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Robert Drake <au462@CLEVELAND.FREENET.EDU>
Subject: Re: 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
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Date: Thu, 29 Feb 1996 09:02:09 -0600
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Joe Amato <amato@CHARLIE.ACC.IIT.EDU>
Subject: Re: 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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Donald J. Byrd" <djb85@CSC.ALBANY.EDU>
Subject: Re: dead horses, live theories
Comments: To: Ron Silliman <rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jordan Davis <jdavis@PANIX.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jordan Davis <jdavis@PANIX.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Emily Lloyd <emilyl@EROLS.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Emily Lloyd <emilyl@EROLS.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Patrick Foley <Pfofk@AOL.COM>
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
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Fred Muratori <fmm1@CORNELL.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jordan Davis <jdavis@PANIX.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Daniel Bouchard <Daniel_Bouchard@HMCO.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Daniel Bouchard <Daniel_Bouchard@HMCO.COM>
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
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Donald J. Byrd" <djb85@CSC.ALBANY.EDU>
Subject: Re: Rob't Dunc. on "breakdown of the body politic"
Comments: To: Carla Billitteri <V079SJWU@UBVMS.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Maria Damon <MDamon9999@AOL.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Donald J. Byrd" <djb85@CSC.ALBANY.EDU>
Subject: Re: Rob't Dunc. Pt. II of DB's Post
Comments: To: Carla Billitteri <V079SJWU@UBVMS.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ray Davis <raydavis@BEST.COM>
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
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Rod Smith <AERIALEDGE@AOL.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Chris Stroffolino <LS0796@CNSVAX.ALBANY.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Chris Stroffolino <LS0796@CNSVAX.ALBANY.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Emily Lloyd <emilyl@EROLS.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Chris Stroffolino <LS0796@CNSVAX.ALBANY.EDU>
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
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ray Davis <raydavis@BEST.COM>
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
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@PANIX.COM>
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
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From: Douglas Messerli <djmess@SUNMOON.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Susan Schultz <sschultz@HAWAII.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Blair Seagram <blairsea@PANIX.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: David Golumbia <dgolumbi@SAS.UPENN.EDU>
Subject: Re: academic poet/ry
In-Reply-To: <v02140b00ad5b44c21872@[204.156.134.79]> 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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: David Golumbia <dgolumbi@SAS.UPENN.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jordan Davis <jdavis@PANIX.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Henry Gould <AP201070@BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: David Kellogg <kellogg@ACPUB.DUKE.EDU>
Subject: Re: dead horses, live theories
In-Reply-To: <Pine.ULT.3.91.960229090432.10390B-100000@loki.hum.albany.edu>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Chris Stroffolino <LS0796@CNSVAX.ALBANY.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Steven Howard Shoemaker <ss6r@FERMI.CLAS.VIRGINIA.EDU>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Wystan Curnow <w.curnow@AUCKLAND.AC.NZ>
Organization: English Dept. - Univ. of Auckland
Subject: Re: 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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Maria Damon <MDamon9999@AOL.COM>
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 <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Maria Damon <MDamon9999@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: academic poet/ry
hey em, you sound like my kind of guyzie-type guyzie. guerrilla anything is
cool.--maria d