=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 1 Jun 1996 00:10:54 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Annie Finch <FINCHAR@MIAVX1.ACS.MUOHIO.EDU>
Subject: Re: nonset form
In-Reply-To: "Your message dated Fri, 31 May 1996 13:18:45 -0700"
<v01530500add5042ad24f@[142.58.125.3]>
Dear George Bowering,
Yes, this is an interesting difference, isn't it? I think one of the reasons I
enjoy "predictable" forms or whatever on earth we are calling them now,
wherever on earth we are callingthem now, is just because they do seem to be
alive o n the page to me. And to you poems are most alive off the page. Are
these open form poems / do you notice a difference depending on the level of
predictabiliy of the poem in your sense that it's alive off teh page? I guess
to mea predictable form seems a transcription of a performance always, since
the repetition and the dialectic of expectation I have with it act like a
physical voice to me, even when it's just in a book.
--Annie
and t okind of s athey are alive e to t eh ci
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 1 Jun 1996 00:31:23 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Annie Finch <FINCHAR@MIAVX1.ACS.MUOHIO.EDU>
Subject: Re: SONNETS/FORMS
In-Reply-To: "Your message dated Fri, 31 May 1996 11:44:23 -0700"
<2.2.16.19960531114639.2437dd86@pop.slip.net>
A thought:
Steve Carll wrote:
"overterminologization does violence to the phenomenon [i.e. the poetic form
/deform-AF ] being engaged with."
EXACTLY. I don't know about the over, but terminologization does do violence to
the phenomenon. And isn't that voilence a good thing for writing? It stops
smug following in tracks by clarifying the truth that they ARE tracks, and
forces you to be aware, to change your tarcks, to do violence back. That's waht
keeps it alive. So terminology can be the frog you have to leap over.
--Annie F.
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 1 Jun 1996 00:42:22 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Annie Finch <FINCHAR@MIAVX1.ACS.MUOHIO.EDU>
Subject: Re: Nonset form
In-Reply-To: "Your message dated Fri, 31 May 1996 17:27:43 -0700"
<v01530501add536b9c167@[142.58.126.11]>
Re Charles Alexander's question on the origin of the sonnet,
According to Paul Oppenheimer's fascinating book The Sonnet, it was invewnted
by a lawyer early in the 13th century, Giacomo da Lentino, who took an existing
Sicilian folk song stanza and added the 6 lines, and the "turn," to it--thus,
in Oppenheimer's view, inventing modern poetry by taking poems out ofthe public
realm wher e you need an audience and into the arena of self-contained self-ref
lection (since the two-part form (actually three-part, since Oppenheimer claims
that even int he Italian sonnet the couplet usually has a separate presence)
allows the poet to resolve a problem alone, to talk to her/himself.
The term sonnet ws first used by Dante, who ws the one to really popularize the
form, fifty years later. Oppenheimer says that it really does NOT mean "little
song" and makes much of the fact that the sonnet may have been the first kind
of poem NOT meant to be set to music. He claims that sonnet means simply
"noise." he also says the strucutre exactly reflects the harmonia mundi, the
pythagorean/platonic theory of numbers.o
iaionor, la ehrt sea .ri
I like this typosoup so much I'm keeping it in the main text.
Annie
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 1 Jun 1996 11:07:12 +0000
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: cris cheek <cris@SLANG.DEMON.CO.UK>
Subject: Re: Music City sonnet
Comments: cc: clements@fas.harvard.edu, lsr3h@virginia.edu, jdavis@panix.com,
guitart@acsu.buffalo.edu, MDamon9999@aol.com, cschei1@grfn.org,
AERIALEDGE@aol.com
>> > bantering martians hope for glory
>> > we committed literary piracy on the high seas
>> > Al left Billie Joe Cat found the path to
>> > hunger large as scaredy free-throw
>> > underground stone guitar blue uniformed blow
>> > mouth on double-cross diploma clue
>> > a world without nouns is healthy?
>> > sequined sequels quells
>> > primacy recency a magnificat its own
>> > catorziemme and quattrocento etc
>> > and minnie pearl and conway twitty
>> > a dirge enough for Solent murk
>> > too much robing and screeing
>> > the voice of an angel and the soul of
>> > blue few, grow a garage band
>> > glue bag a branding fag wagered row
>> > Sue the crew could count, although
>> > soccer Tolemy semper vivens
ection
>> >
>> >
>>
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 1 Jun 1996 10:04:33 -0400
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@CHASS.UTORONTO.CA>
Subject: Re: just thought you'd want to see this
In-Reply-To: <01I5BIFKFWB691VSQU@cnsvax.albany.edu> from "Chris Stroffolino"
at May 30, 96 02:07:21 pm
Chris, did you post this piece of "academicism" to rile us up? It
certainly demonstrates a serious lack of understanding of what's at
stake in this writing. Part of the impact and importance of _Pieces_
was the way it undermined the entire notion of the "trivial" poem and
it's new critical counterpart, the monumental poem. The metrical
ramifications of "A Piece" alone are worthy of extended consideration.
In place--that is within the unfolding thinking of the book--the moves
this poem makes are crucial. Only a neo-scholastic could miss it.
As for opacity--good grief, do we still have to put up with that
ridiculous concept? And biting gem? Gimmee a break.
Mike
mboughn@chass.utoronto.ca
> I find RC's work highly uneven. Many poems are little biting gems (such as
> the renowned "I Know A Man"), while others strike me as mere finger
> exercises, opaque or trivial notations. An instance of opacity, which opens
> the poem "To And":
>
> To and
> back and forth
> direction
> is a third
>
> or simple fourth
> of the intention
> like it
> goes and goes.
>
> And here's a poem I would call trivial, "A Piece" in its entirety:
>
> One and
> one, two,
> three.
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 1 Jun 1996 09:40:26 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Joe Amato <amato@CHARLIE.CNS.IIT.EDU>
Subject: Re: PROTO-ANTHOLOGY of HYPERMEDIA POETRY now AVAILABLE
kudos! to chris funkhouser for his provocative, linked essay on the web
about hypermedia poetry...
again, at
http://cnsvax.albany.edu/~poetry/hyperpo.html
check it out!...
joe
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 1 Jun 1996 12:08:00 EST
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Burt Kimmelman -@NJIT" <kimmelman@ADMIN.NJIT.EDU>
Subject: Re: just thought you'd want to see this
Chris,
Creeley's poem to WCW I would think provides the rationale / defense
for C's "finger exercises.
Burt
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 1 Jun 1996 12:53:37 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@PANIX.COM>
Subject: --
When nighttime falls, I crawl the walls,
Miss all that I hold dear;
I drop a tear, my crying stalls,
Because I walk the sphere.
I walk the left, I walk the right;
I walk both far and near.
I am bereft, an ugly sight,
Because I walk the sphere.
The sphere is big, it has no eyes,
It has no ears to hear my cries;
It is a nightmare in disguise -
I walk it in great fear.
I never know where I have been
In spite of mourning and of sin,
Because I walk the sphere.
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 1 Jun 1996 09:26:56 -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: Music City sonnet
In-Reply-To: <833623319.2661.0@slang.demon.co.uk>
> >> > bantering martians hope for glory
> >> > we committed literary piracy on the high seas
> >> > Al left Billie Joe Cat found the path to
> >> > hunger large as scaredy free-throw
> >> > underground stone guitar blue uniformed blow
> >> > mouth on double-cross diploma clue
> >> > a world without nouns is healthy?
> >> > sequined sequels quells
> >> > primacy recency a magnificat its own
> >> > catorziemme and quattrocento etc
> >> > and minnie pearl and conway twitty
> >> > a dirge enough for Solent murk
> >> > too much robing and screeing
> >> > the voice of an angel and the soul of
> >> > blue few, grow a garage band
> >> > glue bag a branding fag wagered row
> >> > Sue the crew could count, although
> >> > soccer Tolemy semper vivens
> ection
> >> > noften nifty Nat Nat! shrinking
> >> >
> >>
>
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 1 Jun 1996 13:34:04 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Steve Carll <sjcarll@SLIP.NET>
Subject: Re: SONNETS/FORMS
At 03:42 PM 5/31/96 -0500, Annie Finch wrote:
>Dear Steve,
>So you cede the point taht one can predict what an open-form poem or chant will
>be about, or a projective verse poem, as much as one can predict what a sonnet
>will be about.
>Then how can you read at all, if you find such that such predictability
>precludes reading?
>Do you honestly think that every "experimental" poem is in a completely new
>form? You seem to be painting yourself into a corner.
>
>-Annie
Well, appearances can be deceiving, can't they? :-) In general, this
predictability precludes my interest in reading it to exactly the extent
that the poem is (unreflectively) "about" staying within the "traditional"
confines of the form. Again, it goes back to, is the form being simply used
as a template into which one is plugging words in order to manufacture a
poem in that form, or is the form itself being honestly engaged with in such
a way that it, too, transcends some of the limitations history has imposed
on it?
My answer to the last question here depends on how we define "completely new
form." You recently posted something to the effect that it's fine for
people to experiment in such a way that they change the forms, but they
shouldn't drag the terminology with them into the (now-changed) form. If,
for the sake of dialogue, I accepted those terms, then I'd have to say that
any poem which created such an epiphany of its form would indeed create a
"completely" new form. However, I don't believe the terminology needs to be
so rigid. No, I don't think every experimental poem is in a completely new
form, I think our notion of form itself needs to be more fluid.
Which kind of puzzles me about where you're coming from. You seem to be
arguing that we should be more precise in our definitions of various forms,
but when Jordan asked what your definition of a sonnet is, you replied you
couldn't articulate one, but you knew a sonnet when you saw one. But a lot
of people could make a similar claim (heck, I know a sonnet when I see one,
too) and yet be seeing a huge range of different things as sonnets that
others would never consider sonnets. So we have, it seems to me, two
choices at this crossroads:
1) We can stop worrying about the precise boundaries of definition,
allowing everybody to exercise (and, not coincidentally, share) their own
intuition with regard to the form, or
2) We can try to find some authority for our own definition and exclude
everybody else's.
(Of course, now that I say that, a dozen people will post a dozen "third
choices" I didn't think of!)
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
``````````````````````````````````````````````
Steve Carll sjcarll@slip.net
I listen.
I hear nothing. Only
the cow, the cow
of nothingness, mooing
down the bones.
~~Galway Kinnell
``````````````````````````````````````````````
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=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 2 Jun 1996 00:15:37 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Annie Finch <FINCHAR@MIAVX1.ACS.MUOHIO.EDU>
Subject: Re: SONNETS/FORMS
In-Reply-To: "Your message dated Sat, 01 Jun 1996 13:34:04 -0700"
<2.2.16.19960601133614.27478678@pop.slip.net>
Dear Steve,
It seems to me that your idea of where forms' boundaries go is rather sputtery.
On the one hand, you ahve an idea that a poem in a (shall we say predetermined
rather than traditional, for the sake of variety) predetermined form is poured
into something "rigid," a word that sets my teeth on edge in this context
because ANY good poem in a predetermined form naturally changes that form! Form
is only rigid in a bad poem, in other words.
But, though you don't accept the possibility for fluidity and dynamic
engagement within a predetermined form, you do allow for some quasi-mystical
point where suddenly the form is being "changed" in a daring and valuable way,
by exactly the kinds of technical changes that were futile mechanical exercises
while one was "inside" the form.
I don't see such a magic point where what had been robotic submission
is suddenly transformed into charismatic rebellion. To me there is sa continuum
between what happens "inside" the form and what happens outside it.
Maybe, paradoxically, that is why I am more interested in trying to speak
exactly, in terminology that accords with common sense, about the differences
it IS possible to spot along the contiuum.
--Annie
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 2 Jun 1996 00:39:00 EDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: henry <AP201070@BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU>
Subject: Re: Nonset form
In-Reply-To: Message of Fri, 31 May 1996 17:27:43 -0700 from <bowering@SFU.CA>
On Fri, 31 May 1996 17:27:43 -0700 George Bowering said:
>
>Couple decades ago I was listening to Kenner, cant remember whether it was
>in the Japanese restaurant or at the lecture, when he posited that the
>sonnet was accidentally created when some Italian poet, writing eight-line
>stanzas, quit after doing 6 in his second stanza. Someone else found this
>and mistook it for a new form, and did another, etc.
>
>Kenner compared this with the post-renaissance European sculptors who found
>Greek or Roman busts that were just torsi, the heads and limbs broken off,
>so that they started doing it too, not breaking off liombs, but making
>sculptures of torsi, and so we got that form.
Critics are full of clever "it". More likely the form of the sonnet
corresponds to the basic mathematical ratio of the fibonacci series found
both in nature and in a great deal of ancient & modern art. - Henry Gould
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 2 Jun 1996 17:40:34 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Steve Carll <sjcarll@SLIP.NET>
Subject: Re: SONNETS/FORMS
At 12:15 AM 6/2/96 -0500, you wrote:
>Dear Steve,
>It seems to me that your idea of where forms' boundaries go is rather sputtery.
>On the one hand, you ahve an idea that a poem in a (shall we say predetermined
>rather than traditional, for the sake of variety) predetermined form is poured
>into something "rigid," a word that sets my teeth on edge in this context
>because ANY good poem in a predetermined form naturally changes that form! Form
>is only rigid in a bad poem, in other words.
> But, though you don't accept the possibility for fluidity and dynamic
>engagement within a predetermined form, you do allow for some quasi-mystical
>point where suddenly the form is being "changed" in a daring and valuable way,
>by exactly the kinds of technical changes that were futile mechanical exercises
>while one was "inside" the form.
> I don't see such a magic point where what had been robotic submission
>is suddenly transformed into charismatic rebellion. To me there is sa continuum
>between what happens "inside" the form and what happens outside it.
>Maybe, paradoxically, that is why I am more interested in trying to speak
>exactly, in terminology that accords with common sense, about the differences
>it IS possible to spot along the contiuum.
>
>--Annie
Well, again, Annie, what seems "sputtery" to you is simply paradoxical to
me, and what you describe as paradoxical in your own interest is probably
what seems contradictory to me in your position.
I don't agree at all with your summarization of my perspective. It's not
true (and to my memory, I've never said) that I don't accept the possibility
for fluidity and dynamic engagement within a traditional form. The word
you're using as quasi-synonymous, though, "predetermined", that worries me.
If the thing is TOO predetermined, the form is really doing the job that the
poet should be doing, don't you think so? I haven't argued in terms of any
"point", mystical or not, separating "submission" from "rebellion" (which
latter term I haven't used; this isn't about rebellion at all but
mindfulness, at least from the point of view of the writer.) What I meant
was that, as a reader, if I get the sense that the poet has just been
facilely plugging in words to fill out a rhyme scheme or a meter, it turns
me off. Of course a good poem in a form won't give me this impression; of
course a poem in a form invented by the poet shifts me into different
questions: how much of this form is content? Is this form itself interesting?
And while I'm on the subject, the "violence" I was referring to by
overterminologization (what's the rhetorical term for a word that's an
example of what it describes?) is the violence done to the poem when we try
to tear it apart analytically and stop listening to what it's saying. Now,
I realize that the form it's in is part of what it's saying, but it's only part.
I caught myself wondering yesterday why I'm even involved in this question,
since I generally don't give it much bother either, and I realized it was
because Alan Sondheim posted a beautiful poem last week, and I felt that
your response to it was dismissive; that you were ignoring its content on
the basis of what you felt was its specious claim to sonnethood. I saw that
as an act of violence against that poem, and no, I don't feel that's a good
thing. Later on I saw that you had indeed appreciated it on another level,
but of course by that time more ire had been raised. (BTW, Alan, if you're
still reading, the one you posted yesterday was--how can I say
it?--exceptional.)
All poems take some form; form is nothing other than the structure by which
the poem appears in the world. The two extremes of the evolution-of-form
question as I see it are these:
On the one hand you could argue to the extremest minutiae of form--every
word, punctuation mark and space are part of the form of that poem (an
extremely rigid definition of form)--and thus that to change one word, one
comma, is to introduce a new form necessitating a new name. True in a
certain way, but kind of a time-waster I'm sure everyone would agree.
On the other hand you could argue that there's really only one form a poem
can take: poetic form (aka "the form of a poem.") Also true in a certain
way, but then we can't talk about interesting patterns that pop up in
certain poems and not others.
Somewhere in between these two hands is the question of "traditional" forms
and "experimental" forms, and it's a gigantic power struggle, and I think it
would be best now to take a really broad view of this situation and not
trample on any poems that may have fallen underfoot.
Steve
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 2 Jun 1996 22:56:57 +0100
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: Bernadette Mayer comes to SF--ANNOUNCEMENT
This is Dodie Bellamy.
Small Press Traffic is hosting an impromptu reception for Bernadette Mayer
Saturday, June 8 at 8 p.m. Any poets (or other interested parties) in the
San Francisco Bay Area who'd like to come, backchannel me for details.
Onward!
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 2 Jun 1996 23:15:39 +0100
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: "Stone Marmalade"
Thank you, Rod Smith, for placing "Stone Marmalade" so high up (#2!) in
your list of good current books. Now I, Kevin Killian, will bring you all
backstage into the mysterious world of "Stone Marmalade," the play I wrote
with Leslie Scalapino.
Here's what you do first: if you're not nearby Bridge Street Books, or any
other bookstore that carries this item, order directly from publisher:
Singing Horse Press
P O Box 40034
Philadelphia, PA 19106 USA
(215) 844-7678
It's only $9.50 (US), plus add $2.00 for shipping & handling.
Okay, now that THAT's out of the way, and you have your copies in hand, we
(Leslie and I) you to play a part in this play when she and I give it this
big staging at the San Francisco Art Institute in December. We are in
desperate need of poets willing to don cow costumes and travel, submerged
under swamp water except for your heads, for the two hours the play lasts.
Stone Marmalade, set in Hell, is our version of the old Orpheus and
Eurydice story, as seen through the filter of the thought of the Italian
philosophy of Giorgio ("Language and Death") Agamben.
A year and a half ago, when this play was a work in progress, we put a
little of it on at the Kootenay School in Vancouver. David Ayre was a
handsome Orpheus, Charles Watts a quirky, puzzled Agamben, Catriona Strang
was very striking as Julia Roberts, and Scott Watson and Susan Clark
essayed the malicious, hungry neighbors of Hell. Lisa Robertson strode the
stage in full Eurydice grandeur. Excellent work by all! Then this past
spring I (Kevin) tried acting another scene from this play, at New College
in San Francisco-playing Kathy, the assistant of Eurydice (did I mention
that Eurydice is not only queen of hell, but also runs its airport
duty-free shop--following Agamben's apercu that the modern day airport
duty-free shop is a space outside of juridice?) . . . I was backed by two
mighty Greek choruses, one of the Bacchantes (played by Renee Gladman,
Carla Harryman, Hoa Nguyen, Alicia Wing) and one of a bunch of puzzled male
neighbors (Anselm Berrigan, Edmund Berrigan and Dale Smith). I was like
Maria Callas come back to life, only . . . younger I suppose, and I did not
have to sing. A month later I brought the same act to New York, at the
Segue Foundation space, where Erin Courtney, Elizabeth Fodaski, Deirdre
Kovac and Heather Ramsdell played the mad, vicious Bacchantes, and Bruce
Andrews, Kevin Davies and Bill Luoma were testosterone personified as the
neighbors. I have nothing but praise for all the above "performers."
However in December we need plenty of poets and painters capable of playing
the sick, Georgia O'Keeffe-like, soaking wet cattle of hell who fill the
inferno with low sick moos. And so report to the casting couch of me
(Kevin Killian) or her (Leslie Scalapino) before December 1st, script in
hand, available now from Singing Horse Press as above.
Thank you all!
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 3 Jun 1996 20:33:54 +1200
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Daniel Salmon <dpsalmon@IHUG.CO.NZ>
Subject: Re: SONNETS/FORMS
At 05:40 PM 2/06/96 -0700, you wrote:
>>--Annie
>
>Somewhere in between these two hands is the question of "traditional" forms
>and "experimental" forms, and it's a gigantic power struggle, and I think it
>would be best now to take a really broad view of this situation and not
>trample on any poems that may have fallen underfoot.
>
>Steve
>
Steve,
As many readers can only glimpse the carpet between books - trampling on
poetry is sometimes unavoidable.
Dan
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 3 Jun 1996 10:03:46 EDT
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: query: Russian residencies
I would be grateful for any leads regarding possibilities for teaching
or writers residencies in St. Petersburg Russia this fall. Please
backchannel only to Henry_Gould@brown.edu. Spasiba, HG
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 3 Jun 1996 10:55:17 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Annie Finch <FINCHAR@MIAVX1.ACS.MUOHIO.EDU>
Subject: broad view
Dear Steve,
Actually, the more this discussion progresses the more it seems there is just a
hair's breadth between the two attitudes in question (wasn't that what someone
recently mentioned on this list separated the nominalists and the idealists?)
So I too look forward to a broad view. The Exaltation of Forms anthology is
gathering poets from this list at a good clip to edit sections on experimental
forms, (still room for more, too), and maybe whenit comes out it will help
provide such a view. As Lynn Emmanuel pointed out in an essay on "Language
Poetrey and New formalism"'," which was I believe critical of both equally,
both are very interestd in form and technique as opposed to the extreme
prioritization of content that dominates the belated romanticism of mainstreamd
poetry. I think that many "post-new-formalists," or whatever one could call
the younger generation, would readily admit that their interest in form
arises from a desire to make their poems "anti-absorptive," to use Charles Bern
stein's term for it.
ntms of a tenhl, it.
I am still trying to place you exactly from New College days. can you refresh
my memory?
--Annie
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 3 Jun 1996 10:04:50 -0700
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: broad view
In-Reply-To: <01I5GXERM8T08WXQLY@miavx1.acs.muohio.edu>
I am growing a bit weary of this discussion of poetic form, since it
remains on what for me is a frustrating level of generality. Questions
such as whether "open form" poems are just as predictable as formal ones,
or whether analyzing a poem's form does "violence" to it are simply too
vague to engage with, which is why I think many people on the list are
turned off by this whole issue. It would be much more interesting, I
think, to look at specific poems, whether traditional sonnets,
"experimental" sonnets, or non-sonnets, in an attempt to understand how
they manipulate form and how they either conform to or defy expectation.
It is easy to make generalized claims about the possibilities of the
sonnet or of any other form, but it is more difficult, and I think more
useful, to discuss them in the hands of a particular writer. I also
don't believe these comparisons between "new formalism" and "language
poetry" hold much water. They are two entirely different phenomena and
have very different critical and institutional histories. To be
"critical of both equally" only implies a lack of attention to what
either is doing. It may be that some post-new-formalists believe they
are trying to use the form to create an "anti-absorptive" poem, but how
does this work in practice? Once again, I would like to see the actual
poems.
I don;t mean to be dismissive of the issue of form, which I believe is
crucial--I just think we need to start nuancing our comments a bit more
if it is going to lead to anything but a kind of intellectual
mud-slinging or vague philosophizing.
Christopher Beach
On Mon, 3 Jun 1996, Annie Finch wrote:
> Dear Steve,
>
> Actually, the more this discussion progresses the more it seems there is just a
> hair's breadth between the two attitudes in question (wasn't that what someone
> recently mentioned on this list separated the nominalists and the idealists?)
> So I too look forward to a broad view. The Exaltation of Forms anthology is
> gathering poets from this list at a good clip to edit sections on experimental
> forms, (still room for more, too), and maybe whenit comes out it will help
> provide such a view. As Lynn Emmanuel pointed out in an essay on "Language
> Poetrey and New formalism"'," which was I believe critical of both equally,
> both are very interestd in form and technique as opposed to the extreme
> prioritization of content that dominates the belated romanticism of mainstreamd
> poetry. I think that many "post-new-formalists," or whatever one could call
> the younger generation, would readily admit that their interest in form
> arises from a desire to make their poems "anti-absorptive," to use Charles Bern
> stein's term for it.
> ntms of a tenhl, it.
> I am still trying to place you exactly from New College days. can you refresh
> my memory?
> --Annie
>
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 3 Jun 1996 13:55:45 -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: sonnet preservation society
I believe the following, by Gary Lenhart, is a sonnet.
THE GREAT AWAKENING II
Knowing what we couldn't know before,
Although we were told by almost all,
Today we stand among the many
Happy to be pigeon-holed, less than
Evangelical about the changed
"Reasons for Being" we bandy
In our abode, but tickled pink to be
Near our daughter's sweet nature, even when
Exhausted in the pre-dawn. If we
Kowtow to earn a smile now and again,
Again and again, must that sour
This dotage with adverse repercussions?
Idiot grins sum us up fine. Though our
Eyes are open, we are out of our minds.
(from _Light Heart_, Hanging Loose Press, 1991)
I also believe that this poem, by Edwin Denby, is a sonnet:
THE SHOULDER
The shoulder of a man is shaped like a baby pig.
It terrifies and it bores the observer, the shoulder.
The Greeks, who had slaves, were able to hitch back and rig
The shoulder, so the eye is flattered and feels bolder.
But that's not the case in New York, where a roomer
Stands around day and night stupefied with his clothes on
The shoulder, hung from his neck (half orchid, half tumor)
Hangs publicly with a metabolism of its own.
After it has been observed a million times or more
A man hunches it against a pole, a jamb, a bench,
Parasite he takes no responsibility for.
He becomes used to it, like to the exhaust stench.
It takes the corrupt, ectoplasmic shape of a prayer
Or money, that connects with a government somewhere.
(from _Complete Poems_, Random House, 1986)
Denby's poem puts the 'tourne' a little sooner than one expects, and
Lenhart smudges it, the 'tourne', but these both have that standard
fourteen line length, the last two lines reserved for closing remarks. How
not to sound unreasonably like one writing a poem. Lenhart, I think, builds
up a stilted but pleasant lyricism, which he then pushes over. Denby (who
seems a lot like William Burroughs in this poem) allocates a classical
grace for some potential shoulder, which grace he slouches away in the
second stanza. The poem riffs on some 'enstranged' views of the shoulder,
closing with a pretty spectacular connection between the meatiness of the
body and one's generally dismal location in the so-called scheme of things.
Maybe it does. I dunno. Somebody (Christopher Beach?) said this kind of
thing would make the discussion livelier. The opposition to the discussion
is probably not unlike in kind the opposition to the form--irritation at an
archaism, already readily dismissed by our (we hope) ancestor, W.C.W. At
any rate, these are two recent readable postmodern sonnets.
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 3 Jun 1996 14:10:17 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Annie Finch <FINCHAR@MIAVX1.ACS.MUOHIO.EDU>
Subject: Re: broad view
In-Reply-To: "Your message dated Mon, 03 Jun 1996 10:04:50 -0700"
<Pine.SOL.3.91.960603095550.21024A-100000@benfranklin.hnet.uci.edu>
Dear Christopher J. Beach,
Hear, hear!
A Finch
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 3 Jun 1996 14:17:27 EDT
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: so not again sonnet
WHERE THE SONNET WENT
Ten thousand feet above the ear plateau
and smaller than a sixth of an infinitesimal
the whiskers of a cat were barely visible.
Nevertheless, the physicists (who know
about these things) were able to show
this feline had a phantom quantum double.
Such heavenly things are figures here below.
The theologians thought the cat was treble.
"Roughen your act," grumbled the singing clown
in a cat's voice - "smooth numbers cause trouble.
There were three ravens sitting in a tree,
With a hey, nonny nonny down down down.
They were as black as black could be..."
And he banged on his eardrum in the dry rubble.
- Henry Gould
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 3 Jun 1996 11:42:44 CST
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: David Baratier <dave.baratier@MOSBY.COM>
Subject: nonsuch sonnet includes allentois wrench torque
Form is only rigid in a bad poem. There is a mystical point where
rigid and rigere split, then the piece (whether sonnet or otherwise)
ceases to be an exercise composed of "robotic submission" to the form.
These are the ways in which ommon sense is not all that common.
Terminology bores me, a named object does not become owned through the
naming process in the same way that god is not further revealed to a
person who cannot call jwy as such without syllables. There is no
continuum except in terms of the overarching or the archetypal, values
of written sets of words fluctuate continually. Annie, perhaps this is
the difference you believe possible to spot, as if capitalizing IS
will give that set of characters more weight in the discussion, or
yelling "eidolons" with a megaphone on top of the largest building in
a city means that more people are educated about poetry then when
grounded handing out flyer's in front of a subway entrance.
David Baratier
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 3 Jun 1996 15:07:37 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jonathan Brannen <jbrannen@INFOLINK.MORRIS.MN.US>
Subject: Re: chax books
I haven't read either of these, but I'll support any endorsement of either
Mac Cormack's or Steve McCaffery's poetry.
Jonathan Brannen
>On the subject of Karen Mac Cormack's books, the one book of hers
>not so far mentioned, and unfortunately not to my knowledge
>available other than secondhand, is her first: Nothing By Mouth,
>published, I think, in 1984, and not by Chax.
>
>And not to not plug Steve McCaffery's latest book of poetry,
>it's just out from ECW Press in Toronto: The Cheat of
>Words. Includes poems some may have seen over the years in excerpted
>form in West Coast Line, hole, and other mags, and unpublished
>early pieces.
>
>Louis
>
>
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 3 Jun 1996 21:00:38 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: SONNETS/FORMS
overterminologization (what's the rhetorical term for a word that's an
example of what it describes?)
Autonym (I think), like "noun", "pentasyllabic", "shibboleth", "misspellt",
"obfuscatory", "autonym" and "word".
Tom Beard.
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 3 Jun 1996 18:25:29 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Annie Finch <FINCHAR@MIAVX1.ACS.MUOHIO.EDU>
Subject: Re: nonsuch sonnet includes allentois wrench torque
In-Reply-To: "Your message dated Mon, 03 Jun 1996 11:42:44 -0600 (CST)"
<9605038338.AA833825936@smtp-gw.mosby.com>
"god is not further revealed to a person who cannot call joy without
syllables." True.
and yet naming is one way things can be approached, the repetitions of the tea
ceremony do yield moments, some people like to sit in a certain way when they
meditate.
Isn't this just a matter of temperament or even phase of life?
To say that "there is no continuum except in terms of the overarching and
archetypal; values of written sets of words fluctuate continually" is itself a
nonfluctuating value claim, perhaps more dangerous because it is may be tempted
to forget its own solidity?
--A. R. Crane Finch
"eidolon?"
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 4 Jun 1996 10:58:09 GMT+1200
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Tony Green <t.green@AUCKLAND.AC.NZ>
Organization: The University of Auckland
Subject: Re: Nonset form
Dear Annie,
Your postings are interesting and persuasive. I am searching for, way back,
why I abandoned metre-and-rhyme defined forms. Long pause.
However,
having developed practices other than those of writing in
metre-and-rhyme, I don't think I now want to return to what I perhaps
foolishly perhaps not foolishly abandoned. As you and others note
this is a hot topic.
Best
Tony Green,
e-mail: t.green@auckland.ac.nz
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 3 Jun 1996 20:55:48 MDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Louis Cabri <ldmcabri@ACS.UCALGARY.CA>
Subject: ode to a colostomy bag
In-Reply-To: <01I5GXERM8T08WXQLY@miavx1.acs.muohio.edu>; from "Annie Finch" at
Jun 3, 1996 10:55 am
I'm going to write a series of sonnets about the various women
whom I have been in brief memorable love with, throughout the
1980s, when I've been drunk. Ok? Actually, I've been, structurally
speaking, drunk for a long time - ever since our New World slaves
first cut down cane, and rum was available to London sonneteers.
I admit that to write these boxes these days is somewhat like
willful suspension over an ideological overhang, with a hangover.
I have to chip away even at the _adjectival_ use of "universal."
And I'm on the wagon now, so I've got to be indirect about
history - the rum (ie spirit) business, etc. In fact, why not
just use a muted symbol, which might get passed off as completely
without a referent - e.g. "ebony log"? It's as if the "making up" of
poesis has become the make-up required for a pose, true. Please
bear with me as I try, as best I can, to manage the
contradictions that come with the recursive properties of
literary effects.
Make-Up
Sling me the run-again please
to not answer in poem poems.
If I could word it through the prism
so the text of ourselves is the text
of an eye beyond, if I could hold
the ebony log straight as it's
squashed into two dimensions,
if I could ease the half-shell
into seas on the lee of engagement,
I would put off the accretion
of legend and love, for these
are sounds forced into a box
to elude the prevailing code
of thinned-out universe terms.
Gavin Selerie, from _Elizabethan Overhang_ (Cambridge, UK:
Spectacular Diseases, 1989)
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 3 Jun 1996 23:09:43 -0400
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: ode to a colostomy bag
For a brief moment, I was confused as to whether this post was from the
Poetics List or from the Irritable Bowel Disease Support List.
Anything is possible on the internet.
-Kim
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 4 Jun 1996 02:21:31 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Carnography <scrypt@INTERPORT.NET>
Subject: The rin-tin-tintinnabulations that so musically swell--
As per my vast and prestigious experience playing French Latin
lounge versions of Sixties protest songs: a popular request.
A nameless (and you *shall* remain nameless, ___) listserv subscriber
requested that I post a few private comments.
Here they are:
=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=
=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=
=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7
> _____ isn't attacking Poe, s/he's attacking someone else's reading
> of Poe (the ghost in ___'s head, perhaps).
> People are free to attack Poe all they like. There are many good
> reasons to denounce Poe (though my hard-on for Poe's sound-world
> prevents me from joining in). But mere irony, mere disapproval,
> is no better than sentimentality--no better than
> the pretensions it tries to seek out and mock.
> What exactly does ____ find less sing-songy, less mannered, than Poe--
> the jingles of Maggie Estep!?
Side-note:
When I dropped by Chez Rollo to deliver my piece (posted here) that
made fun of Hal Sirowitz (my pal), Edwin Torres (total stranger),
David Huberman (improved my quality of life dramatically) and Bob Holman
(yoo-hoo, sailor), among others, who do you think was there but Mr. Torres
himself? What an odd coincidence, I thought. Will he enjoy my parody,
or take humorless offense, as Allan Ginsberg (unbelievably) has been
doing? I never found out; the guy took off before I could decipher his
airy expression and airier body language. It just goes to show you:
"You set out to shock others, but in the end, you only succeed in shocking
yourself."--Lynne Tillman
(though the point of "parodying" another writer is really to try to
figure out what in the hell said writer is doing).
=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=
=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=
=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7
By the way:
I've been reading Raymond Roussel's _How I Wrote Certain of My Books_,
and find myself agreeing with his thoroughly *arbitrary* approach
to technique. I thought of Houdini, Stravinsky ("I limit myself in
order to free myself) and Austin Clarke ("I load myself down with chains
and then try to get out of them"). In the work I love most, there is
usually the sense that the music of the words is deliciously self-
sufficient: it pulls you along, sometimes in spite of the so-called subject.
And in the iconography of the writers I love (early Auden, Bob Perelman,
Dennis Cooper, Campion, Laura Riding Jackson, Robert Desnos, Max Jacob,
John Wieners, Bernhard, Michelet, Crashaw, Huysmans, Ballard, etc etc)
there is often the sense of a de Chirico landscape, of sound providing
the treadmill for a procession of charged but cryptic material. They feel
like chamber music written by Joseph Cornell.
Scriabin called his Ninth Sonata "a sonata of insects," and defined insects
as "kisses of the sun come to life." There is just such a paradox, it seems
to me, in the "Cadmus of the golden prow" section of Pound's Cantos: hard
little bits of granite imagery, and yet there is sound, there are still
"pale ankles moving." Few know what he is talking about (though I was once
fool enough to annotate the entire thing in pencil), but everyone can hear
what he sees.
Jumbled, inarticulate notes, perhaps.
But here's another thought: Roussel was gay at a time when
popular wisdom equated homosexuality with perversity and madness.
My theory is that Roussel was forced to create a cryptic mechanism,
a code, to delineate his passions and desires. In formulating said
code, he created a technique that was invaluable to everyone from the
surrealists to Robbes-Grillet.
My question: Though some poets reinvent techniques in order to
destroy artifice and return to the language of ordinary speech
(Wordsworth, Whitman, Kerouac), don't other poets (Ashbery,
Mallarme, Unica Zurn, *de Quincey*) invent new techniques in order
to *protect* artifice, destroy so-called ordinary speech, and
avoid the obvious?
Or are both points of view mere excuses for revelling
in the texture of language itself?
Your reveller at reveille,
Rob Hardin
http://www.interport.net/~scrypt
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 4 Jun 1996 02:40:09 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Carnography <scrypt@INTERPORT.NET>
Subject: Rin-tin-tintinnabulations: erratum
>Will he enjoy my parody,
>or take humorless offense, as Allan Ginsberg (unbelievably) has been
>doing?
Yes, yes, I know--that's *Allen* Ginsberg (1926-?).
> Bob Perelman
Not to mention *S.J. Perelman*.
>to me, in the "Cadmus of the golden prow" section of Pound's Cantos
Canto IV, to be exact: "Hear me. Cadmus of Golden Prows!"
(First lines: "Palace in smoky light,/Troy but a heap of smoulderinmg
boundary stones...")
>Robbes-Grillet
I could easily verify this man's name, but really, why bother?
>Unica Zurn
I can't find her xeroxed poetry, so I leave you with this, from
Bataille's poetic journal, _The Little One_:
Pure eroticism:
the crater,
the impossible, rising to the throat with the smell of blood....
To write is to go in search of chance....
By giving chance so wretched an anguish, I felt I was bringing it
the thing it lacked.
(Bataille)
See ya
(Hardin, quoting anon and ibid)
http://www.interport.net/~scrypt
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 4 Jun 1996 08:49:07 +0000
Reply-To: William.Northcutt@uni-bayreuth.de
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Comments: Authenticated sender is <bts403@btr0x1.hrz.uni-bayreuth.de>
From: William Northcutt <William.Northcutt@UNI-BAYREUTH.DE>
Organization: btr0x1.hrz.uni-bayreuth.de
Subject: a sonnet
Sonnet to one of the following:
--headcounting the senate
--viewing the genitalia of a mutant
--noticing the similarities between headcounting the senate and doing
the same to the genitalia of a mutant
right
right
right
right
right
right
right
right
right
right
right
right
left
left
-----------------------------------------------
Chicken House Willie
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 4 Jun 1996 10:40:21 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Joe Amato <amato@CHARLIE.CNS.IIT.EDU>
Subject: cultural colostomy, pardon moi, s'il vous plait...
(rant, by default)
I. PRERAMBLE
the pure product placements of the americas
go crazy
to wit
poets, moi included
both ends moved to synchronous motion
by the mediocrity of mediocrity
& hopelessly awash w/portables
of one sort & another
sit on their virtual potties
peeing words into the endless stream of consumable
goods (later to be recycled & sold back (to them
(as consumable waste
wondering what is left to say of any moment
of any singularity
of any unrecognizable import
or export value
when all would seem so marketable
so tributary
so rumored...
let's take a long step back
off the screen
& the page
to examine this fucking conditional nightmare:
men & women alike
but clearly not entirely alike or this item you're reading (perusing
would not be identifiable as such
men & women alike
well middleclass men & women alike
probably white in fact
& perhaps mostly heterosexual
so white heterosexual middleclass men & women alike
but again, clearly not entirely alike or etc.
this somehow differentiable group of people i have in mind
but i'm a white heterosexual middleclass man
middleaged, to boot
ok, let's not take a long step back
let's dig right in & try to understand
what, if anything
i can say/write (please permit me this coupling for a few moments
(as well as this apostrophic address, dear reader
about anybody else
around here:
or perhaps i should simply speak/write to my own needs?
& how to articulate the needs
of a white heterosexual middleclass middleaged man?
& do i have needs, strictly speaking
or mere desires?
in what context?
& what is the basis of my
self-identification?
or is this self-indulgence?
self-avowal?
self-aggrandizement?
fear?
& who gives a shit, finally?
or should i address myself instead to the plight of others
however defined?
& if not, if this be presumptuous
should i just shut-up?
should i just shut-the-fuck-up?
take my hands off the keyboard?
put the pen down?
listen?
for how long?
and then what?
& who gives a shit, finally?
who gives a good shit?
& is all of this
all that i've said/writ here
ancient history?
no writ of habeus corpus
is necessary
to incriminate me:
mea culpa.
II. THAT SAID
& due allowance made
for critical complicities corresponding
to sheer subject positionality
let it also be understood
to all parties to these presents
acting however in good faith
that compromise a discourse is
& will obligate specific responses
which may not but succeed on occasion
in coming up empty- or red-handed
within the field of hopeful possibilities
constituting poetic license
the affairs of such a state or states
requiring internal & external investigation
yet demanding also for their proper execution
& elucidation
a pang of consciousness
a yen for spicy food &
depending on the poet
a gentle & specifiable smack either
on the lips or
upside the head
all remonstrance notwithstanding.
III. TO BE CONTINUED
the time has come
& gone to theorize capital
& nobody has a mind too
& nobody has the money too
& everything is available everyplace
you look except where
you refuse too.
IV. CLIFFHANGERS-ON
history enters here
locale along with
& an overabundance of non-descript details
& for good & bad measure
a few arbiters of taste
just to keep things overdetermined
& interested:
use your imagination, i dare you...
& what insidious form is this i spy
permuting my information
seeping in & out of
to corrupt the relative spontaneity
of this heavily revised, carefully packaged
item?
a closer look reveals the presence
of minute particles of motive
ah yes i can see rather clearly now
under the microelectroscatoscope
it's the screen resolution
& perhaps the hardcopy quality too, ultimately
either way what you've got here
& there
is a terminal relationship
between writers & readers &
authors & critics &
speakers & listeners &
voters &
non-voters &
it's spreading
"like a cancer"
as we used to say
& will soon overcome
most of the cultural immuno-prophylacto-electro-
resistance, or whatever
apologies for the somatic metaphor
installed & checked
during the last major u.s. trauma
(oil embargo/presidential resignation, c. 1974)
& what you may end up with is
pardon the expression
a fucking pile of horseshit
(the likes of which you've never seen.
V. DEGENERATING FURTHER
& in the midst of a global deregulation make-over
we end this item
with a foray into didactics
directed esp. at those of you interested
in practicing
what you preach:
fix it, please.
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 4 Jun 1996 11:45:53 -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: why don't we tell them
Poetry Parties--New York--
Birthday party for R Creeley at St Mark's Poetry Project--Wednesday
night--he's 70--
End of the year party at Poetry City--Brenda Williams and Rosa Alcala Diaz
will be reading--afterwards party--during party--beforehand party--6:30 at
5 Union Sq W, 7th Fl--celebrate
--Jd
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 4 Jun 1996 13:37:10 EDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ken Edwards <100344.2546@COMPUSERVE.COM>
Subject: Bernadette Mayer
Excellent news about Bernadette Mayer's visit to SF -- does this mean she's made
good progress in her recovery from her stroke?
And regarding "Stone Marmalade" -- Kevin, are those sickly cattle in hell
suffering from BSE? If so, you could recruit some of us Brits to play the parts.
Wish I could be there. Moo to all.
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 4 Jun 1996 06:08:49 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Pierre Joris <joris@CSC.ALBANY.EDU>
Subject: from IFEX COOMUNIQUE
In-Reply-To: <v01520d01add7bf05fe07@[205.134.228.12]>
This just in from IFEX COMMUNIQUE # 5-22 & shld be of interest to some
on the list -- Pierre
NTERNATIONAL PEN CENTRES HOLD DAY OF ACTION ON TURKEY
WRITER YASAR KEMAL AWARDED HELLMAN\HAMMETT GRANT
Writers around the world held a day of solidarity with their
imprisoned and censored colleagues in Turkey on 30 May, reports
the Writers in Prison Committee (WiPC) of International PEN. It
was "the day before an important challenge to the laws which
severely limit Turkish writers' right to freedom of expression."
Members of International PEN centres around the world lobbied
Turkish authorities, their own governments and Turkish
representatives in their countries, "calling for the Turkish laws
to be brought into line with international norms protecting
freedom of expression."
Last week, Human Rights Watch (HRW) awarded a Hellman/Hammett grant to
world-renowned Turkish writer Yasar Kemal, who was tried and convicted
in March 1996 on charges of "inciting racial hatred by way of regional
and racial discrimination." Kemal, who was given a 20-month suspended
sentence, "was warned that if he repeated his
crime in the next five years, the sentence would
become active." In recognising Kemal, HRW "noted the courage he
has shown in defending freedom of expression for himself and the
others currently on trial. It is ironic that Turkey, which prides
itself on Kemal's place on the short list of candidates for the
Nobel Prize, is at the same time harassing him and his colleagues
for expressing thoughtful concern." [See IFEX "Communique" #5-11,
#4-48, #4-30, #4-19 for background.]
For its day of action, the WiPC notes, many writers and
intellectuals in Turkey are being tried in connection with the
publication of the book "Freedom of Expression in Turkey", which
includes the article by Kemal for which he was charged.
"Ninety-nine intellectuals who signed up as responsible editors of
the book to challenge the government over freedom of
expression restrictions were investigated and charged," says the WiPC,
adding, "One, the well-known author Aziz Nesin, has since
died and a second trial has been launched against 86 others who
were identified after investigations." The 98 intellectuals went
to court on 31 May, reports the WiPC. At a recent International
PEN meeting in Denmark, writers from 19 countries signed up as
responsible editors of "Freedom of Expression in Turkey" as a
gesture of solidarity. The writers are from Denmark, Sweden, the
United States of America, England, Switzerland, Australia,
Canada, Austria, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Kenya, Germany, Norway,
Nepal, the Czech Republic, Malawi, Finland and Croatia.
The WiPC reports that, in 1995, "human rights groups concentrated
on pressuring the government to amend Article 8 of the
Anti-Terror Law," and, in October, this law was slightly amended and
several writers released as a result. However, some of these writers
have now been sentenced again, says the WiPC, citing Dr. Haluk Gerger,
another 1996 Hellman/Hammett grant recipient who was imprisoned from
June 1994 until late 1995 under Article 8. He was
sentenced for "inciting racism" on 15 May to 20 months in
prison for an article on the state of emergency in southeast
Turkey. "Turkish human rights groups have identified around 500
laws which can be used to restrict freedom of expression in
Turkey," says the WiPC.
The PEN American Center released a "Message of Solidarity to 98
Turkish Writers and Intellectuals Standing Trial in Turkey on 31
May, 1996 from 98 Writers around the Globe", in both English and
Turkish.
=======================================================================
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, 4 Jun 1996 14:27:45 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Mark Wallace <mdw@GWIS2.CIRC.GWU.EDU>
Subject: Situation #12
Situation #12 is now available, featuring the work of Henry Taylor, Hung
Q. Tu, Ross Taylor, Maryrose Larkin, M. Magoolaghan, Corinne Robins,
Blair Ewing, and Charles Borkhuis.
Subscriptions are $10 for four issues, or $3 for back or single issues.
Make checks payable to Mark Wallace.
Situation
10402 Ewell Ave.
Kensington, MD 20895
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 4 Jun 1996 14:00:17 CST
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: David Baratier <dave.baratier@MOSBY.COM>
Subject: A science project: if anyone is interested
>
>Why not help the kids out?
>---------------------
>Forwarded message:
>Subj: Re: Stevie and Amanda's grade school science project >Date:
96-05-28 22:53:31 EDT
>From: MNRedwood
>To: smc@tiac.net
>
>
>>---begin fwd---
>>Hi, our names are Stevie and Amanda. We are in the 5th grade at the
>>Phillipston Memorial school, Phillipston, Massachusetts, USA. We are
>>doing a science project on the Internet. We want to see how many
>>responses we can get back in two weeks. (We are only sending out 2
letters). >>
>>Please respond and then send this letter to anyone you communicate
with >>on the Internet. Respond to smc@tiac.net.
>>
>> 1. Where do you live (state and country)? >> 2. From whom
did you get this letter?
>>
>> Thank you,
>> Stevie and Amanda >>
>
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 4 Jun 1996 14:40:37 -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: New Books fer Poetics
send these please?
>4. _Symmetry_, Laura Moriarty, Avec, $9.95.
>"The one clear night which encompasses the subject forgets everything."
>6. _Natural Facts_, Melanie Neilson, Potes & Poets, $11.00. Cover is a
>daguerreotype, 1840s, "Still Life with Pumpkin, Shakespeare, and Sweet
>Potato." Lauterbach mentions Ives in her blurb, seems right to me. "Will
>Congress / Canary the canon?"
>
>7. _Clean and Well Lit: Sel Poems 1987-1995_, Tom Raworth, Roof, $10.95.
>Tom's tops.
>
>Poetics folks receive free shipping on orders of more than $20. Free shipping
>+ 10% discount on orders of more than $30. There are two ways to order.
>1. E-mail your order to aerialedge@aol.com with your address & we will bill
>you with the books. or 2. via credit card-- you may call us at 202 965 5200
>or e-mail aerialedge@aol.com w/ yr add, order, & card # & we will send a
>receipt with the books.
>
>Bridge Street Books, 2814 Pennsylvania Ave NW, Wahsington, DC 20007.
yes? to Jordan Davis
c/o Teachers & Writers (where you're welcome to teach btw)
5 Union Sq W 7th Fl
NYC 10003-3306
Grazie--
Jd
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 4 Jun 1996 11:42:45 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" <anielsen@ISC.SJSU.EDU>
Subject: Re: client servile
In-Reply-To: <199606040407.AAA00751@listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu>
You are not authorized to send messages to E-Poetics List from this
address. We advise that you attempt to be somebody else and post
messages from an address that we are willing to recognize. We are,
however, willing to foreward the end-rhymes from your message. We are
also deleting the materials you have attempted to froward from Dr. Sokal
regarding his recent discovery of the Piltdown Man.
you
though
grown.
true,
blue
woe
known.
to
the
boys
we;
toys.
bait,
wait.
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 4 Jun 1996 12:19:29 +0100
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: Bernadette Mayer
At 1:37 PM 6/4/96, Ken Edwards wrote:
>Excellent news about Bernadette Mayer's visit to SF -- does this mean
>she's made
>good progress in her recovery from her stroke?
Bernadette hasn't arrived in town yet, but the last I heard she was hiking
at Big Bear--a place I'd never heard of before, but everyone else around
here goes, "Oh, yes, Big Bear."
Dodie Bellamy
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 4 Jun 1996 15:23:31 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Mark Wallace <mdw@GWIS2.CIRC.GWU.EDU>
Subject: mainstream art critic nonsense
Well, here's a bit of the latest garbage from the Washington Post. In
this case it's reviewer Tim Page, writing on John Cage's "Europera Five."
I'll just give you the choice bits. The rest is just as stupid, only
less funny:
"If Cage ever wrote another important piece after 1952, the year of
"4'33," I have not heard it. His musical universe grew obsessively
inclusive and he spoke often and eloquently, in his gentle manner, about
the danger of making any qualitative evaluations whatsoever."
"What did it all mean? Nothing at all, of course. Was that the point? No.
There was no point: never underestimate the simple-mindedness of Cage's
later aesthetic."
"For this spectator, the only remotely stimulating question of the
evening was whether the authors of "Rescue Me" and the old Troggs hit
"Love Is All Around"--both played in their entirety during the
show---might have the right to sue the Cage estage for their completele
incorporation into a work that was supposedly "by" John Cage."
Now, here's where it gets TRULY amazing:
"A ...spirited review of Cage's "Europera 5"... might read something like
this. Fourscore and. Wednesday night Spoleto. This. When in the course
of. Presented. Stately, plump. Europera. Whrrr. Across the sky. John
Cage. Corn syrup, lecithin. Call 1-800. Bzzzzzzzz. One hour. Tweet."
YES, THAT'S RIGHT, there is an absolutely amazing passage of poetry in
the one section of this reviewer's foolishness that is actually an
attempt to
mock John Cage. Who knew he could be so brilliant? Especially when the
most interesting question for him is the possibility of suing people he
can't understand...
mark wallace
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 4 Jun 1996 15:33:01 -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: mainstream art critic nonsense
Who wrote "Rescue Me"---Fontella Bass, the singer, was married to
Lester Bowie it is written.
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 4 Jun 1996 15:37:46 CST
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: David Baratier <dave.baratier@MOSBY.COM>
Subject: mainstream art critic
Mark,
It fits in with something that Nam June Paik (the video artist) said
last summer (paraphrase)
"Television is exciting therefore we have to make art that is very
boring. "
David Baratier
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 4 Jun 1996 17:32:58 -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: mainstream art critic/apology for commerce
I think the most amusing thing to say to the Post, Mark, might be something
like 'Thank you for printing that beautiful poetry in the middle of your
review of _Europera Five_. It's rare that such interesting writing is
hidden where everyone can see it.'
As. I missed. My folks. Also happens. Like a lamb. Possibly foppish. Name
in Paper. A very sensitive maybe. Review the reviewers. Indubitably.
Decontextualizing the left. Why. Mark. Maybe a letter. Page's text and
sufficiently brief. The bastards. Lie by! Schtick circa 'Central Park. A
given? South in the winter. Colorblind art critic.
By the way, oops re my Rod order back then.
JORD
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 4 Jun 1996 14:42:07 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: George Bowering <bowering@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: sonnet
Actually, I think the sonnet was created in the 13trh century when it was
common to take two weeks to write a poem, one line a day. At the start,
sonnets had two stanzas of 7 lines each, but then Alfredo Rizzoli, the
poet-monk found that he could not stop after line seven one day, so wrote
eight lines in the first week, and then took a day off before starting the
next stanza. Soon his acolytes copied him, and so there we are.
..........................
"In town we have arguments."
--Stan Persky
George Bowering.
2499 West 37th Ave.,
Vancouver, B.C.,
Canada V6M 1P4
fax: 1-604-266-9000
e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 4 Jun 1996 22:44:56 MDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Louis Cabri <ldmcabri@ACS.UCALGARY.CA>
Subject: Re: client servile
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SOL.3.91.960604111234.23571B-100000@athens>; from "Aldon L.
Nielsen" at Jun 4, 1996 11:42 am
"Fabrication will produce the banausic mentality"
dented
sands
"banausiacs."
relented,
Brians.
yackety-yack
homologue:
twister,
grog?"
ifster
smooth,
basement--
moos
_grincement_.
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 5 Jun 1996 01:39:26 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "k.a. hehir" <angelo@MUSTANG.UWO.CA>
Subject: Re: A science project: if anyone is interested
In-Reply-To: <9605048339.AA833920579@smtp-gw.mosby.com>
from what i know this is as the dutch say a -roos. i received the same
message a few weeks ago only to be followed by an appy olly ogy from its
sender.
for those with interests in irish lit i receive a post from the irish
book review every month. it is sent out by the same people who put
together the Irish Emigrant. if you are interested, let me know
backchannel and i'll forward you the info to set you up.
cheers,
Caoimhin Oh-Eithir
On Tue, 4 Jun 1996,
David Baratier wrote:
> >
> >Why not help the kids out?
> >---------------------
> >Forwarded message:
> >Subj: Re: Stevie and Amanda's grade school science project >Date:
> 96-05-28 22:53:31 EDT
> >From: MNRedwood
> >To: smc@tiac.net
> >
> >
> >>---begin fwd---
> >>Hi, our names are Stevie and Amanda. We are in the 5th grade at the
> >>Phillipston Memorial school, Phillipston, Massachusetts, USA. We are
> >>doing a science project on the Internet. We want to see how many
> >>responses we can get back in two weeks. (We are only sending out 2
> letters). >>
> >>Please respond and then send this letter to anyone you communicate
> with >>on the Internet. Respond to smc@tiac.net.
> >>
> >> 1. Where do you live (state and country)? >> 2. From whom
> did you get this letter?
> >>
> >> Thank you,
> >> Stevie and Amanda >>
> >
>
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 5 Jun 1996 07:55:54 EDT
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: client servile
In-Reply-To: Message of Tue, 4 Jun 1996 22:44:56 MDT from
<ldmcabri@ACS.UCALGARY.CA>
On Tue, 4 Jun 1996 22:44:56 MDT Louis Cabri said:
>"Fabrication will produce the banausic mentality"
>
> dented
> sands
> "banausiacs."
> relented,
> Brians.
> yackety-yack
> homologue:
> twister,
> grog?"
> ifster
> smooth,
> basement--
> moos
> _grincement_.
Looks like hysterical dialectics has produced a new Language phenomenon:
the "sonnot". c.f. Princeton Cyclonopedia: "The sonnot, a pre-millenial
postprandial development within the larger phenomenon of Language Poetry,
was by and large an attempt by a number of pre-colonial post-coastal
American poets to delimit the essence of rhyme; the most common means
involved a vaporization of between 6-8 syllables per line excluding
ultimate & penultimate glossalalia, leaving the right-hand marginal
superstructure to stand like the circular ruins, for example, of the
Colosseum in Rome, Idaho - a tourist attraction since the late 19th
century, famous for the "pigeon perch", a 60-ft lateral embankment
jutting out of the Rocky Mountain feldspar producing conditions for
dangerous rain on the surging crowd of visitors below."
[pp. 1374; by Elwood F. Pederson, Prof. Em. Boise Univ.] - H. Gould
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 5 Jun 1996 09:21:52 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Annie Finch <FINCHAR@MIAVX1.ACS.MUOHIO.EDU>
Subject: Re: client servile
In-Reply-To: "Your message dated Wed, 05 Jun 1996 07:55:54 -0400 (EDT)"
<POETICS%96060508122395@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Dear Henry:
"hysterical dialectic?"
I thought we might manage to avoid the gender angle this time, though it's hard
to avoid when the sonnet or even the sonnot is in question. As Gwyn McVay has
observed, "the sonnet described as a short fat know-it-all? Funny, when I was
in high school that's how everyone described me."
-A. Crane Finch
aligning thy choiring strings
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 5 Jun 1996 09:37:59 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Gwyn McVay <gmcvay1@OSF1.GMU.EDU>
Subject: Re: client servile
In-Reply-To: <01I5JMEYYGTW8WYHT4@miavx1.acs.muohio.edu>
Annie,
elementary school! elementary school!
Gwyn, still short
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 5 Jun 1996 10:00:39 -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: b b d o
Beavis, stop trying to be funny!
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 5 Jun 1996 11:33:16 CST
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: David Baratier <dave.baratier@MOSBY.COM>
Subject: Re: nonsuch sonnet includes alletois wrench torque
Anne,
I thought a reference to eidolon, a known refrain of a poem by Whitman
might be lost on you. Especially considering his work was written
under the auspice of an organic form, one which secludes him from this
discussion.
I like how you manipulated my original quote to fit your purposes, for
a sense of "rightness" perhaps? Here's your version.
"god is not further revealed to a person who cannot call joy
without syllables."
There is a crucial change you made here, the replacement of my word
which is the english translation of original hebrew characters for a
sexless, faceless, spiritual manifestation with your word"joy" so you
could agree: True.
I could call this manipulation. As you said "naming is one way things
can be approached" but there are also unnameable vacuities inherent in
rhetorical functions when applied rather than etherized about. It's
part of the field of language resistance, the natural difference
between what is written and what is meant.
At this point you start writing about repetition which, in context of
this discussion, has nothing to do with the the laconian
identification process. Repetition can be the grinding of a idea into
a graspable concept. Jack Spicer said: poems only occur in series
which Poe iterated in his writings on Milton's Paradise Lost where he
found that a person would have to be a fool if they read the piece as
one poem, in one sitting. So when you ask "Isn't this [repetition]
just a matter of temperament or even phase of life?" I have to
entirely disagree. Unless if you meant in the Yeatsian sense of
placing yourself in the 28th phase of the cycle.
When I said "there is no continuum except in terms of the overarching
and archetypal; values of written sets of words fluctuate continually"
you replied: "[this statement] itself [is] a nonfluctuating value
claim, perhaps more dangerous because it is may be tempted to forget
its own solidity?"
In case you have forgotten the power of the word is always dangerous.
The connotational and denotational associative values of my statement
are in a state of flux also, as you so rightly point out. Considering
the duration this message will survive in e-space, I comfortably
assumed a current statement which includes a free lifetime updating.
Be Well.
David Baratier
Here is the sound of a hero
outgrowing his confetti.
--Jeffrey McDaniel
dave.baratier@mosby.com
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 5 Jun 1996 11:39:26 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Oren Izenberg <OREN.IZENBERG@JHU.EDU>
Subject: Re: mainstream art critic nonsense
In-Reply-To: <Pine.3.89.9606041549.A28474-0100000@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu>
Mark,
Why "amazing"? It strikes me that the strong defense of a disjunctive or
unconventionally conjunctive or appropriative poetic must entail more
than the reflex "now THAT'S poetry" when a skeptical critic
tries to make a joke of the enterprise, more than the understandable
desire to mock and deride what seems sometimes like a principled refusal to
take the experimental seriously. (Although I must say, despite not
having seen the review beyond your citation, the critic's distinction
between early and later Cage does not seem "know-nothing" or even
terribly conservative, nor, to this reader, entirely absurd.)
One hopes (this one, at any rate) not to surrender the ability to ask
questions of an "inclusive" poetics. The work, by virtue of its
eventual end, remains (despite our fondest wishes) subject to
criteria, however they are to be described-- and in the face of
criticism, or mere curiosity, or urgent personal need, perhaps the best
response would be to *describe* them, rather than to wink and nudge and
congratulate ourselves on their existence and validity.
The alternative, of course, is to write off those who are not *immediately*
interested as those who will never understand, and to make of the
"community" of writers and readers a cabal (and surely it is already
sufficiently demonized in precisely these terms).
Best wishes,
O.
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 5 Jun 1996 13:04:44 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Rod Smith <AERIALEDGE@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: criticism's face
re the post review of Cage Oren Izenberg wrote:
>having seen the review beyond your citation, the critic's distinction
>between early and later Cage does not seem "know-nothing" or even
>terribly conservative, nor, to this reader, entirely absurd.
There was no attempt by the Post writer to contextualize Cage's later work
whatsoever. He merely implies that John went crazy after abt 1952. Not very
useful.
O. also wrote:
> The work, by virtue of its
eventual end, remains (despite our fondest wishes) >subject to
criteria, however they are to be described-- and in the >face of
criticism or mere curiosity, or urgent personal need, >perhaps the best
response would be to *describe* them, rather than to >wink and nudge
This is exactly what Cage spent a great deal of time doing. It's not whether
the Post reporter likes Cage or not, who cares-- It is the perennial problem
of getting the press to acknowledge any context other than their own, which
is almost always vapid (This is relevant to the Sokal "debate"). The few
times in the article when something like information about Cage is hinted at,
it's wrong.
Another point which interests me is implied by the phrase "in the face of
criticism"-- I've mentioned this before on the list I believe-- there's a
logic of justification there which I suppose one could deconstruct. What I
mean to say is, too rarely the attitude is one of respect & discussion-- more
often it is "explain yourself sufficiently in _my_ terms"-- which seems to me
to work against what art can do, is for. & at times I tend to admire those
that refuse explanation
as explanation, tho this was certainly never Cage's way.
Rod
"Attitude can be interesting"
"Tell me what this is about"
--Tom Raworth
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 5 Jun 1996 17:31:07 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Carnography <scrypt@INTERPORT.NET>
Subject: Re: nonsuch sonnet includes alletois wrench torque
David Baratier typed:
> I thought a reference to eidolon, a known refrain of a poem by Whitman
> might be lost on you. Especially considering his work was written
> under the auspice of an organic form, one which secludes him from this
> discussion.
Though I don't wish to be dragged, citing and signing, back into the
sonnet tussle, I do have to say this:
The word *eidolon* is more than a mere feature of one Whitman refrain.
It has been used regularly by several other writers, I'll have you
know, including your lonesome. (Indeed, when people speak of *cultural
icons*, I've always felt it would be more accurate for them to speak
of *cultural eidolons*. If Barney is an important cultural icon, then
my wetnurse was the Fountain of Youth.)
My first kidly exposure to the word *eidolon* was in Hart Crane's
poem, "Legend" ("Again, the smoking souvenir,/Bleeding Eidolon!").
Galvanized by Crane's energy and metaphysical compression, I
immediately wrote a series of wretched imitations with titles
like "Eidolon of Love" [sic (ick)]. It never even occurred to me to
trace the Bloomlike map of misreading to Whitman and to stop short
there. Whitman might be a great poet, but his diction, however
characteristic, is not a claim of referent ownership.
You may argue that Crane was making a deliberate ref. to
Whitman (especially in light of _The Bridge_ and other
Whitman-meets-the-Symbolists-in-a-play-by-Marlowe-esque
works). But you're still suggesting that, without an intimate
knowledge of Whitman's diction, A.F. is insufficiently
literate to be part of this discussion. To which I say:
should we write out an idiosyncratic reading test, complete
with trick questions, give it to you by means of embedded
references, grade you on the test, and bring it up
whenever we disagree with one of your points? Knowledge
ought to be shared, not hoarded.
Also: Why suggest that a person who speaks passionately of
formal verse is ignorant of all other kinds? I, too, am less
familiar with Whitman than I ought to be. But that comes from
having him quoted to me by an aunt ("I saw a noiseless patient
spider, blah blah blah") until I developed a blind spot,
not because I disapprove of Whitman's prosody.
> I like how you manipulated my original quote to fit your purposes, for
> a sense of "rightness" perhaps?
(Suspiciously) I like how you imbedded this ad hominem interpretation
of Finch in your letter. A subliminal message meant to activate some
Manchurian Candidate, perhaps?
(It's hard enough to understand an opposing point of view without
attributing nasty motives to the speaker.)
> I could call this manipulation.
And I could call this ad hominem (see above).
> In case you have forgotten the power of the word is always dangerous.
Or impotent, depending on the reader and the context.
Finally, this is to Annie Finch, who said,
> "hysterical dialectic?"
> I thought we might manage to avoid the gender angle this time, though it's
> hard to avoid when the sonnet or even the sonnot is in question.
The word *hysterical* is not sexist unless it is used etymologically.
Context, I would think, plays a part in any use of the English language--
which, if you think about it, is embedded with sexist implications.
Any writer ought to be free to use any word without taking a
political litmus test--even when the word has an ugly etymological
past.
All the best,
Rob Hardin
http://www.interport.net/~scrypt
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 5 Jun 1996 18:06:26 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: George Bowering <bowering@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: client servile
>Annie,
>
>elementary school! elementary school!
>
>Gwyn, still short
Or as USAmericans pronounce it, "elemenary" school.
..........................
"I've enjoyed just about as much of this as I can stand."
--Bobbie Louise hawkins
George Bowering.
2499 West 37th Ave.,
Vancouver, B.C.,
Canada V6M 1P4
fax: 1-604-266-9000
e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 6 Jun 1996 09:19:06 -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: M/E/A/N/I/N/G
I received in the mail last week the The latest edition of M/E/A/N/I/N/G -
19/20 "Special All-Visual Double Issue".
A visual feast full of variety. Congratulations to editors Susan Bee and
Mira Schor. If my subscription included only this issue it would have been
worth it.
Blair
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 6 Jun 1996 08:22:35 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Tim wood <twood@CONNECT.NET>
Subject: Re: A science project: if anyone is interested
As I found out when I happily went off and not only responded, but
forwarded the message, this event is history. Apparently it happened
sometime ago and was even picked up by the NY Times. It was discontinued
after their service provider overloaded on 10-100 posts a second. Ouch.
Tim Wood
>Subject: Re: A science project: if anyone is interested
>Sent: 06/05 12:39 AM
>Received: 06/05 9:44 PM
>From: k.a. hehir, angelo@MUSTANG.UWO.CA
>Reply-To: UB POETICS List, POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU
>To: UB POETICS List, POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU
>
>from what i know this is as the dutch say a -roos. i received the same
>message a few weeks ago only to be followed by an appy olly ogy from its
>sender.
>
>for those with interests in irish lit i receive a post from the irish
>book review every month. it is sent out by the same people who put
>together the Irish Emigrant. if you are interested, let me know
>backchannel and i'll forward you the info to set you up.
>
>cheers,
>Caoimhin Oh-Eithir
>
>On Tue, 4 Jun 1996,
>David Baratier wrote:
>
>> >
>> >Why not help the kids out?
>> >---------------------
>> >Forwarded message:
>> >Subj: Re: Stevie and Amanda's grade school science project >Date:
>> 96-05-28 22:53:31 EDT
>> >From: MNRedwood
>> >To: smc@tiac.net
>> >
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 6 Jun 1996 10:41:52 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Mark Wallace <mdw@GWIS2.CIRC.GWU.EDU>
Subject: Cage, and information
Re Oren Izenberg's post:
Yikes! I actually thought this poetics list was at least primarily for
people who had some awareness about the history of experimental artistic
practice, and so I could perhaps pass along what seems to me a pretty
obvious joke and others would get it. It seems probably that mostly they
have, but for some I guess I'll have to explain myself more fully. Please
see Rod
Smith's post yesterday for another elucidation of why it is ridiculous
to dismiss all of Cage's work after 1952 (and is there anybody on this
list other than Mr. Izenberg who thinks such a thing is even a
conceivably respectable position? I hope not.)
To take only several points, the idea that Cage's work is about
"making no distinctions" is utterly preposterous, and based on no
awareness of the absolutely intense distinctions Cage is making about the
problem of defining what makes something "music." Whatever his "quiet
gentleness" (this Tim Page guy is really a scream) Cage's work, among many
others things, is a direct assault on the totally limited context of what
constitues "music" in western culture--Cage wants us to hear the sound
all around us that is inevitably repressed by the idea that only a
certain range of sounds are available for music. Mr. Page, of course
(Cage/Page, too much huh?) wants precisely all the trappings of "high"
classical music that Cage has no use for and so can't hear him at all.
Secondly, the idea that Cage's later work "has no point" must, I
suppose, be based on the idea that the twenty or so books (many more?
please help here, Rod) Cage wrote elucidating the incredible complexity
of his practice (and which is not just theoretical--it's there in the
recordings) must be irrelevant. Or perhaps Page hasn't read them? Now
THERE'S a thought! What Page means by "has no point" I guess should
really be "calls into question on almost every level each one of my
bourgeious presuppositions and eliminates them from further serious
intellectual consideration." I'm not actually going to go into great
detail on what Cage says about the limited structures of western music
and how he intends to go about expanding their limits by incorporating
non-melodic, supposedly non-musical sounds into a sound landscape that
shows how the sound of a musical performance is inevitably related to the
sound that exists beyond the bounds of the performance itself, and how
doing such a thing reveals the way in which western artistic culture has
often intended to eliminate whole ranges of experience from artistic
possibility. Do I really need to go into things on this basic a level on
this list?
Of course, I was kidding somewhat in calling Page's short little
disjunctive blurb "wonderful poetry." But I did find it somewhat
interesting that he actually managed to present a good approximation of
disjunctive new sentence prose poem in what is otherwise a massive peon
to ignorance. Of course, I'm getting the feeling now that maybe I'm being
presumptive in assuming that everybody on this list knows what the New
Sentence is (with my apologies to those who do).
I suppose my friend Marc Scroggins is going to tell me I'm being
pugnacious again. But geez, Marc, look at what I have to put up with.
There would be value in being polite, I suppose, to people who were
engaging with experimental work seriously and who, even if uniformed,
were asking questions seriously. But the flippant, uninformed
sneering dismissal that Page offers in the Post as serious criticism
deserves no politeness because it does not intend to be polite, or to
engage on any real level with one of the most significant musical and
literary artists of this century. And the idea that Mr. Izenberg thinks
that such a position is reasonable (and would seem reasonable to people
on this list) is pretty much flabbergasting.
Mark Wallace
(and a brief plug for Joan Retallack's new book on Cage, which I hope Rod
will talk about in more detail)
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 6 Jun 1996 07:51:39 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" <anielsen@ISC.SJSU.EDU>
Subject: Re: alas, eidolon
In-Reply-To: <199606060406.AAA27821@listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu>
my wetnurse achieved cold fusion in the kitchen sink
there was no joy in mudville
the world was all
that mighty casey struck out
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 6 Jun 1996 10:38:33 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Annie Finch <FINCHAR@MIAVX1.ACS.MUOHIO.EDU>
Subject: Re: nonsuch sonnet includes alletois wrench torque
In-Reply-To: "Your message dated Wed, 05 Jun 1996 17:31:07 -0400"
<v01540b00addba213adbd@[204.74.3.74]>
Dear Rob,
True, the word hysterical is not always sexist, and perhaps my consciousness of
being greatly outnumbered genderwise in recent discussions coupled with my
recent thinking about connections between gender and formalism (see intro to A
Formal Feeling Comes) led me to jump the pearl-handled pistol on Henry's
phrase. It never hurts to remind writers of the etymological unconscious of
their language, though, does it? (The day I responded, I had also read a review
of a new book on Hysteria pointing out that though the most common hysterical
patient in Freud's day was male, Freud omitted any discussion of male
hysterics in his work on the subject).
David, I'm very sorry about transmuting your word into "joy." It was actually
technical wrongness that led me to it, since the program I use at home can't
quote text so I was working from memory in quoting you--and also, you may
remember I have been prone to typos myself and probably thought I was doing you
a favor in changing jwy to joy, though I should have noticed how odd the one
apparent typo seemed in an otherwise flawless text. My fawwlt! I've been
wanting to tell you how much I liked your "sonnet" from a ways back, by the
way.
As for eidolon, like Rob I thought of Crane first, and hence responded by
dragging out my middle name (no relation). The question mark questioned your
characterization of me as shouting eidolon from rooftops. Annie--eidolon
shouter? was the purport of my signature.
I've spent some time on Whitman and have a chapter on him in The Ghost of
Meter, though that prefatory poem is not one of my favorites.
I agree with Rob about litmus tests.
--A.R.C. Finch
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 6 Jun 1996 11:11:49 -0400
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: Cage, and Page informixion
In-Reply-To: <Pine.3.89.9606061001.A11947-0100000@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu> from
"Mark Wallace" at Jun 6, 96 10:41:52 am
I resent bitterly the accusations being thrown about on POETICS regarding
the relative value of works by Messrs. PAGE and CAGE. While I understand
various persons' opinion regarding said Cage's infamous short silent
"Four Sticks (and Thirty Three Twigs)" I must invariably rate it of
intenser value than Page's neoclassical attempts to invigorate Baroquial
musiks through use of violin bow apres e-bow electrified bass. Until the
death of John Bonham, I appreciated Cage's "quiet gentleness" in the many
stadium shows fronting with Joyce mesostics "Sick Again," "Boogie with
Stu," "The Lemon Song." The fact that Page has such difficulty with
guitar recently was no justification for him to attack his prior ally.
Only death of Cage prevented the anticipated "No Quartertone" reunion
tour, though rumored that Cage & Page forgot David Tudor's phone #. Why
such hostility in arts comunity? I have bootleg of A. Baraka doing
"Trampled Under Foot" with Cage on triple-neck that will blow all minds,
will trade for good quality tapes of Ben Bradlee w/Allman Bros or plain Bros.
--
dgolumbi@sas.upenn.edu
David Golumbia
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 6 Jun 1996 09:00:32 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Herb Levy <herb@ESKIMO.COM>
Subject: Re: mainstream art critic
One thing that needs to be made very clear in regard to the Tim Page review
of Cage's Europera 5, is that Page is NOT simply a yahoo with no experience
with music later than Debussy & Ravel.
As the primary music critic for the Soho Weekly News 15-20 years ago he
heard, and reviewed intelligently, LOTS of new music. More recently, he
produced a series of CDs for BMGs Catalyst label which, again, while not
always to my taste, showed an awareness of a fairly wide range of recent
music, some of which I respect & some of which I don't (composers in this
se4ries include off the top of my head, Alvin Curran, Philip Glass, Arvo
Part, James McMillan, Toby Twining, as well as a selection of Cage's piano
music, including at least one piece composed well after 4'33").
In other words, while I haven't always agreed with Page's opinions (&
certainly like later Cage more than he appears to), he has a pretty strong
background in the field.
There are a couple of things to consider here. First, newspaper articles
are not solely written by the signator, copy editors can & do, change
things quite a bit. They won't (usually) change the stated opinion of a
reviewer (& I assume that Page honestly didn't like Europera 5), but they
can & frequently do, change the emphasis & drop supporting arguments in
reviews on the theory that people reading newspapers do not want to read
criticism in any sense that we might agree on a definition of the term, but
rather that newspaper readers simply want to know if they should spend
money on going to the show. That's the point of all of those four-five
star, thumbs up or downor other rating systems. This is consumer news,
not considered, balanced criticism.
The other point to consider here, though, is whether it makes sense to use
the work of Cage, or of any artist, as a kind of litmus test.
I can see this both ways, but I'm not the first to note that there is very
little, if any, agreement on the relative value of specific poetry among
those of us who subscribe to this list. I'm not sure that I can imagine
what writers would be ranked most important, most influential, most
popular, most likely to succeed, best dressed, most congenial, etc. if all
400 members of poetics were to vote on it. It would be interesting, but
useful?
Herb Levy
herb@eskimo.com
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 6 Jun 1996 17:29:21 BST
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ira Lightman <I.Lightman@UEA.AC.UK>
Subject: Is John Cage conceptual art, music, what?
Hallo everyone. I've said a few things about John Cage
before on POETICS but, since I've just re-joined, and
very little of the viewpoint I tried to argue for once
before is represented in this new outbreak of Cage
discussion...
I wonder what we're defending when we're defending
Cage? How many are defending him out of a love of 20th
century (or all) music, out of a pleasure in 20th century
music, and out of an ongoing wish to stand up for an
important human activity, and consciousness?
I myself would be no friend of Mr Page, the, as
Mark said, mainstream critic; I'm not presenting a
reactionary position, as I'm very keen on many of Cage's
contemporaries, who, it seems to me, rarely or never get
namechecked, written about, festschrifts to, by the writers
on this list, the writers who publish books away from this
list, and indeed many poets or writers who think of
themselves as, or proclaim themselves as, experimental
artists. If we are experimental artists, it seems a fair
assumption, that many I read and know make, that we be
interested in all experimentation in all arts, and criticism
and essays by experimental writers on, for example, music,
seem to exude this assumption (eg the Joan Retallack book
on Cage, mentioned, and the work on Cage in Marjorie
Perloff's excellent - ie for me, great case for the
generative power of Cage's aesthetics and example - book,
Radical Artifice).
My worry is that these two books start and stop
consideration of music with Cage.
That the fact he was, for me, a great writer, an
even greater interviewee, as illustrated by memoirs of his
conversation in Rod Smith's Aerial on him, in Radical
Artifice, in Cage's biography. I love his pre-chance
prepared piano sonatas, I love many experimental musicians'
use of chance, I don't like Cage's, the many I've heard on
disc, just one I heard on radio that (and I do not say this
to be trivial, as I am an insomniac) put me into the most
blissful sleep as I concentrated on it, waking exactly as
the radio programme ended. I hope Cage would be pleased,
not trivialised, by this reaction.
My closest composer-friend, Mike Higgins, once
said to me, when I told him how sad I was when I heard
that John Cage had died, that for him he was sad but
sadder still that, the same summer, Olivier Messiaen
died. Messiaen was older and, given the upheavals of
1950's new music and, for example, Pierre Boulez'
punk-like glee in titling an essay "Schoenberg is dead!"
(Boulez' exclamation mark). Boulez' implication was that
things had to move faster, that one major upheaval,
serialism, was not enough, but it must reach "its"
(ie Boulez's assumption) "evolution" in total serialism.
This excites me, as I love the 50s composers most of
all.
Then, it seems to me, Cage proposes a further
furthering, and proposes that this too evolves the form
and makes the earlier work dull or even redundant ie
his own work.
My difficulty with this is that Schoenberg
made people listen harder, for shape and configuration,
and not wallow in a general feeling awaiting beauty,
resolution of harmony, the manipulation of a fixed
set of possible sequences of notes; this meant having
to know an instrument, having to know keys, and thus
opening up, afresh, a way of hearing the world away
from the concert hall ie having the awful knowledge
of key meant that you could then hear that sounds, like
cars and birds, were not just noise or sound, but
transcribable music (see Messaien's pieces using
transcription of bird song played by violin).
Going earlier to go later, one might say that
one of the last powers that Debussy rang from the old
harmony was to compose long modulating phrases slowly
becoming other phrases - something akin to Henry James'
prose style - so that the listener went away into
the world hearing all the aftermath of each sound,
the sine wave of a car revving, approaching, and
departing; to make the listener think of sound as,
to think of Derrida, not beads with borders on a
necklace, but that we think of them that way,
hearing only a part or peak of the wave of the
whole sound, its geography and history, and classifying
it only as a sign for the short peak in which we hear
it (or bother to listen for it).
The total serialists, to me, took this up,
by focussing on slow sounds building and falling, texture,
all the sound of sound.
If that is nasty horrid Western classical
music, then it is also the nasty horrid thing that
has helped me enrich my senses.
My worry is that a lot of writers like Cage
because one doesn't have to do this hard work, this
ground work, in listening, and learning an instrument,
like the piano, rather than learning how to riff in
the small range of keys available to R&B. Thus, goodbye
to nasty horrid (impotent, ignored, widely hated)
Western classical music, goodbye hard work, hallo
an easily graspable principle mastered and you can
call yourself musical and a musician. Okay, not all
bad as self-empowerment, but not if the self-empowerer
then disempowers, marginalises, and even stigmatises,
alternative classical music of the same era, by, in
Stockhausen and others' cases, exact contemporaries
to Cage.
Ira Lightman
P.S. I'm partly inspired to write after hearing Steve
Reich's Drumming, source for Ron Silliman's Ketjak,
which I found similarly dull, easy to get into,
compared to Indian classical music or, most wonderful
of all for abstract expressionist rhythm, Xenaxis'
Plaides.
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 6 Jun 1996 12:43:17 -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: litmus party
If school had been more about litmus tests, which were almost as exciting
to watch as developing polaroids, I would not have dropped out, hitchhiked
to alaska, and died eating the wrong kind of berry.
That said, I'd like to invite all of you ex-senators and -lion tamers to a
freeforall poetry party at POETRY CITY (5 Union Sq W, NYC) tonight, 6:30,
which party will be punctuated by two readings--one by fiction writer
Brenda Williams, and the other by poet and recent Brown MFA graduate Rosa
Alcala Diaz.
Jordan Davis
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 6 Jun 1996 13:32:13 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Oren Izenberg <OREN.IZENBERG@JHU.EDU>
Subject: Re: mainstream art critic
In-Reply-To: <v02130503addca5f9d857@[192.0.2.1]>
I can assure Mr. Wallace that he need not conduct an introductory tutorial
in experimental music or in the New Sentence for my benefit. I give
thanks for your expressed (if exasperated) willingness to "put up" with
me; no doubt I will limp along without such kindnesses.
Mark Wallace seems to have concluded that the point of my post
was primarily to express (or endorse) a preference for early John Cage
over late-- apparently this is an outrageous preference and no doubt I
should have kept it to myself to avoid offending local orthodoxies. I did
not, I acknowledge, offer reasons-- that the opinion was parenthetical
may be an insufficient excuse, but it is mine own-- which apparently
leads to the conclusion that I can have none because there are none. I
certainly did not imply that Mark Wallace or any other member of the
poetics list shared such opinions; but I had hoped (and this *was* the
point of my post), was that the expression of an opinion, in the
recalcitrant press or on this list, might provoke discussion rather than
invective. I did fail to catch the humor of a post that called Mr. Page
stupid and uneducated (as I failed-- and no doubt I am somewhat humorless
on this score-- to be amused by the one that imputed to me massive
ignorance of matters poetical); he is neither, and I doggedly refuse to
acknowledge that engaging with "such" people, reiterating and expanding our
own understanding in the process, is a pointless exercise. Herb Levy and
Ira Lightman, most recently, have eloquently demonstrated otherwise.
In response to Rod Smith-- I (sometimes) share your qualms about
explanation qua explanation; since the offending article was a piece of
criticism, it was primarily that genre and that forum for discussion I
had in mind (although "mere curiosity and urgent need" were meant to
suggest other provocations to inquiry, not quite as provoking or "in your
face). Not all artists will, or need, explain themselves as well
or thoroughly as Cage. Explanation may become a burden to the artist who
feels obligated to terms and discourses other than, or parallel to, those of
the art; but I do see critical explication as one among
the many imperfect forms of acknowledgement; and incidentally, the one most
likely to reach the traditionalist or the skeptic. Your Watten issue of
Aerial (the most recent I have seen, and on which congratulations)
suggests a similar belief; it pursues "explanation" on many fronts, in
many forms: critical essay, conversation, "composition"-- to powerful effect.
Best wishes.
O.
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 6 Jun 1996 14:52:55 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Rod Smith <AERIALEDGE@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: Is John Cage conceptual art, music, what?
> My worry is that a lot of writers like Cage
because one doesn't have to do this hard work, this
>ground work, in listening, and learning an instrument,
>like the piano, rather than learning how to riff in
the small range of keys available to R&B. Thus, goodbye
>to nasty horrid (impotent, ignored, widely hated)
Western classical music, goodbye hard work, hallo
>an easily graspable principle mastered and you can
call yourself musical and a musician. Okay, not all
>bad as self-empowerment, but not if the self-empowerer
then disempowers, marginalises, and even stigmatises,
>alternative classical music of the same era, by, in
Stockhausen and others' cases, exact contemporaries
>to Cage.
Ira, thanks for your considerations-- however this last bit makes me wonder
how much of the late Cage you've heard. There are a number of pieces for
virtuoso which were composed by working closely with musicians to find out
what was considered "impossible" on their instrument
& then to include that in the score-- John did this, he sd, to demonstrate
"the practicality of the impossible."
The pieces are _Etudes Australes_ (for piano), _The Freeman Etudes_ (for
violin), and _Etudes Boreles_ (for cello). All are long suites which involved
a substantial amount of time to compose, & even greater amount of time for
performers to master. Seems what you've heard might be some of the quiet
number pieces or Ryoanji (not the orchestral version). You might enjoy a late
.piece called Quartets I-VIII, which makes astonishing use of, yes, harmony.
I listen to & read Cage precisely because of the genuinely useful complexity
of the work-- if his work at times seems "easy" it's for the same reason that
Picasso made painting look "easy." I'd also like to note that through Cage I
was introduced to a number of composers
such as Stockhausen, Wolff, Boulez, Harrison, Feldman, Takemitsu-- so I have
no sense of their being marginalized by Cage or anyone else.
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 6 Jun 1996 15:12:29 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Rod Smith <AERIALEDGE@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: Is John Cage conceptual art, music, what?
continuing my last post after chance sent it off prematurely.
I agree with you Ira, that there are some missing feschrifts for composers
other than Cage. I'd most like to see a good Feldman book, & have toyed with
the thought myself. Also, is their anything out there in terms of a good new
music publication like _Ear_ used to be. Something that would cover say
Frissell, Le Baron, & unkowns? Also, to note, there's a new book on Nancarrow
from Cambridge (overpriced hc, but looks very good).
Oren--
yes, explanation. I seem to have a split in my personality that way. I
suppose it comes down to, as I said, justification. It seems to me so often
that an artist is called upon to explain their right to do something, sorry,
I ain't wid that-- whereas explanation is just that, an offering of context
to allow further entrance to the work-- Duchamp & Johns come to mind.
Cld go on but have to go to work, erk.
Rod
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 6 Jun 1996 17:46:19 -0400
Reply-To: Robert Drake <au462@cleveland.Freenet.Edu>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Robert Drake <au462@CLEVELAND.FREENET.EDU>
Subject: Re: Is John Cage conceptual art, music, what?
>Also, is their anything out there in terms of a good new
>music publication like _Ear_ used to be....
_Musicworks_, out ov toronto. interesting running commentary fr
the past few issues on Cage, but much more on emerging composers,
as well as a broad spectrum of audio arts... a personal fave.
luigi
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 6 Jun 1996 09:38:26 CST
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: David Baratier <dave.baratier@MOSBY.COM>
Subject: nonsuch sonnet impotent lifetime guarantee
Rob Hardin,
I sincerely apologize for having irked your ire by not mentioning your
own work in the eidolon discussion. Eidolon is more than a mere
feature of one Whitman refrain. It has been used regularly by several
other writers. While I could bring Hart Crane, yourself, or HP
Lovecraft "the putrid, dripping eidolon of unwholesome revelation"
into the discussion, I still am unaware of an earlier poetic reference
than Whitman and was instructed at an early age to always return to
the source.
I will argue that Crane was making a deliberate ref. to Whitman. I am
suggesting that without using your arms to open an OED to refute my
point (anyone's for that matter), or to find out what any unknown word
means, one arrives to the discussion sufficiently lazy enough to
speculate on what is being said and offer their opinion, instead of
their knowledgable experience.
In answer to your question "Why suggest that a person who speaks
passionately of formal verse is ignorant of all other kinds?"
It's hard enough to understand an opposing point of view without
attributing nasty motives to the speaker.
As I said previously:
In case you have forgotten the power of the word is always dangerous.
To which you responded:
Or impotent, depending on the reader and the context.
Thank you, this has broadened our discussion this much.
I suggest that if we continue this thread in a manner worth replying
to, that we talk about how to determine which strings of words fit
into a particular form, what aspects of words (phonemem, morpheme,
arragement, connotational value, associative change of these values,
etcetera) solidify in our minds which forms are to be used, as charles
(chax) mentioned a while back.
I'd rather be in Espana
Be well, pegging pernod through a pajita
or yagrelling a luk
David Baratier jedamput en Jugoslavie,
jowels wide & yowels not
permitted to emerge--
--Paul Blackburn
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 7 Jun 1996 03:18:11 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Eryque Gleason <eryque@ACMENET.NET>
Subject: proto proto yahoo
scene 1: i've just taken another look at chris funkhouser's essay on
hypertext/media. i think it's well worth the visit, it seems to be a good
middle ground between high-end thinking about hypertext (that's
inaccessible to most folks) and the absurdly reductive stuff i've seen on
t.v. i think chris has found a good level for introductory material as
well as a good collection of links that won't bore those that have read
much hypertext, or much about hypertext.
scene 2: i'm sure many of you eat chinese food, i need fortunes and lots
of 'em. they don't even have to be very good ones. i'd prefer them to be
mailed to me in the original post-cookie form, taped to a postcard or
somesuch, but i'll gladly accept them by email as well.
scene 3: and horoscopes. i need horoscopes too, but preferably only pretty
durn good ones.
contributors will recieve a personalized thank you presented on handsome
email, suitable for framing.
happy summering, everyone! and remember: chinese food good. u.s. postal
service mediocre, but all we've got for now.
thanks,
eryque
______________________________________
Eryque "Just call me Eric" Gleason
817 Myrtle Ave, 2nd floor
Albany, NY 12208-2607
eryque@acmenet.net
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 7 Jun 1996 12:45:33 BST
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ira Lightman <I.Lightman@UEA.AC.UK>
Subject: more rattling Cage
Rod, thanks for those recommendations of late work, they
intrigue. Oh, to be in America and follow them up
immediately - purchasing disks, anyway. I like the
Feldman idea - I'm really intrigued by his ideas and
his emphases on slow build and slow fall and quiet -
and want to hear more of the music. There was a
Feldman concert in London last year which, of course,
I only heard about a day after it took place!
I would like to hear these pieces exploring
the not yet done on those instruments, but I still
maintain my criticism, which I stress was not really
about Cage but about the books by experimental writers
and critics that start and stop with Cage - and which,
I suspect, would not be much interested in the late
pieces you suggest musically; but only theoretically,
as "destabilising" nasty western classical music etc.
Is that just completely mistaken of me? Do you not
sense this habit in experimental writer Cagers from time
to time? Not that *Cage* marginalises the others, esp.
not Feldman, given the Radio City interviews etc, but
that these books do?
I'm referring to the Radio City interviews that
appeared in the Exact Change annual last year. I didn't
think, myself, that Cage suitably engaged with Feldman's
upset at, for example, pop music on transistor radios
spoiling the quiet, in this case of the beach. As the
world gets more crassly noisy, and my ears hurt, and
I can't find a quiet house to live in, aren't these
issues? I sometimes think of Cage's persona as like
Paul McCartney's - chipper and happy, but slightly
suppressing angered and anguished jeremiads against
the down side of the changes (eg in freedom) that
they were rightly optimistic about.
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 7 Jun 1996 08:34:51 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Thomas M. Orange" <tmorange@BOSSHOG.ARTS.UWO.CA>
Subject: dodecaphony as generative grammar
In-Reply-To: <199606070413.AAA24395@listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu>
Listfolks,
Has anyone heard of a book by Frederick Udahl (sp?) called something like
"The Twelve-tone System as Generative Grammar" or "Towards a Generative
Grammar from Twelve-Tone Music"?
Thanks,
Tom Orange
tmorange@bosshog.arts.uwo.ca
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 7 Jun 1996 13:11:46 +0000
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: cris cheek <cris@SLANG.DEMON.CO.UK>
Subject: Post in Performance Writing / Dartington, UK
Hi all, I'm cross posting this job ad to the list.
Particularly appropriate for anyone working with language / text from a
Live Art perspective.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dartington College of Arts is an institution of higher education
specialising in contemporary performance arts practices and their relation
to changing social and cultural contexts. The College combines
undergraduate teaching with research. Taught Masters work is planned.
Subject areas are both i) distinct and clearly articulated, leading to
designated degree awards and ii) participants in an integrated programme
designed to promote inter- and cross-disciplinary practice and enquiry.
September 1994 saw the introduction of a new degree. Planned as an
extension to the College's work in the performance arts, the degree in
Performance Writing is an approach to writing for performance which is open
to a range of possibilities for the way that performance and writing can
relate to each other. This approach explores underlying principles,
techniques and understandings so that writers and text-practitioners can
learn to apply their skills and creativity to a constantly expanding
repertoire of performance media. Broad categories of practice include:
body-related text performance, word-image work, concrete and performed
poetry, radio and audiotape media, site-related writing.
lecturer in performance writing
three-year fixed-term appointment.
A new post is required to continue the development of this new and exciting
subject area. We are particularly interested in those who develop writing
for and through live performance and whose work explores, through theory
and practice, the impact and implications of live presence on the practice
of writing.
Successful applicants will be expected to contribute to teaching, research,
subject development and programme support.
closing date 19 June 1996
Further information from: Kathy Taylor dartington College of Arts. Totnes,
Devon TQ9 6EJ
Tel. +44 (0)1803 862 224
Fax +44 (0)1803 863 569
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 7 Jun 1996 08:39:29 EDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: henry <AP201070@BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU>
Subject: Re: hysterical dialiects
Is the word "hysterical" a sexist term? That's news to me, though I'm
aware of its sexist usage in such phrases as "hysterical female".
I used it in what I assumed was a "gender-neutral" way.
It's also slang for "hilarious". I understand Annie was only saying
I was inserting "gender" into the sonnet/sonnot discussion.
I guess it depends on how you hear that word - and maybe I should
be hearing more in it.
"hysterica passio...
...our tongues are quibbled
On a wheel of fire, and tis the upshot of our deeds
Will ring yon neck of our embittered
Rhetorick, dear cuz..." [King Lear, Act VII, scene 43]
Hysterical dialectics is a mode of reasoning based on the principle
"utque ante de nomina post factotum" first performed in a diagnostic
setting by Averroes in his manual de logica diplodocus et diplomatica
(hereafter referred to as Dip & dippy) in 1143 (after a big lunch).
The systematics was appropriated by pre-psychologists in the late
18th century to explain the discovery of "galvanized globular
life-entities" first discovered by Starbird Leewenhoek using a
primitive microscope made of thin slices of Dutch ice-skates under
straw matting and windmill batting and attributed to "saliences"
on the cranium mapped by the phrenologist Pietter Pepper in 1643
(before breakfast!). The rest is history... - Hank Lear
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 7 Jun 1996 09:21:36 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Gwyn McVay <gmcvay1@OSF1.GMU.EDU>
Subject: Re: hysterical dialiects
In-Reply-To: <POETICS%96060709054521@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
I think the "sexist etymology" referred to is the word's origin in Gk.
"hustera," womb, and the prevailing theories, at the time, that
overemotion in women was caused by having their womb unhitch itself and
float around loose inside their body. Seems like that would make one
awfully itchy indeed. But per your subject line above, are we talking
about "hysterical dialectics" or "hysterical dialects," like the strange
languages spoken by wimmin poets and cartoon characters? And where do I
get the female slave who is supposed to sit between my thighs and burn
fragrant incense to entice my womb back into its usual arrangement? Isn't
"meretricious" derived from Lat. "meretrix," harlot? Do you sometimes get
that not-so-fresh feeling?
Wondering in Washington
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 7 Jun 1996 15:00:56 +0000
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: cris cheek <cris@SLANG.DEMON.CO.UK>
Subject: Re: more rattling Cage
Hi all,
so leading questions for the asking:
is the world (i worry about 'the' here) getting more 'noisy' ?
are our worlds becoming more 'musical' ?
is each listener a composer ?
what are 'new' roles for 'composers' ?
then -
given proliferation of language constructs in our worlds, what are roles
for 'writers' / 'readers' ?
love and love
cris
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 7 Jun 1996 10:08:45 EDT
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: hysterical dialiects
In-Reply-To: Message of Fri, 7 Jun 1996 09:21:36 -0400 from
<gmcvay1@OSF1.GMU.EDU>
On Fri, 7 Jun 1996 09:21:36 -0400 Gwyn McVay said:
>languages spoken by wimmin poets and cartoon characters? And where do I
>get the female slave who is supposed to sit between my thighs and burn
>fragrant incense to entice my womb back into its usual arrangement? Isn't
>"meretricious" derived from Lat. "meretrix," harlot? Do you sometimes get
>that not-so-fresh feeling?
Pregnant thoughts. If I wasn't getting it before I'm getting it now.
As Cynthia wrote in her unwritten poems (c.f. Elena Shvarts - fake
reference here) -
Rome as I was burning fiddled my thoughts of you
and where sweetness was came sour tastelessness
but lemon is a cure for scurvy knavery
so take these lemons, squire, for your saucy filet
before she rots and before my anger cools
and I think of a new word to carve in your trunk
- HNVY GILLED
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 7 Jun 1996 10:28:28 -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 iliad of hypnotism
Uh, hey...
Anybody read any good poems lately?
Jordan
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 7 Jun 1996 08:32:37 -0700
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: morty
>I agree with you Ira, that there are some missing feschrifts for
composers
>other than Cage. I'd most like to see a good Feldman book, & have toyed with
>the thought myself.
There is a book on/by Feldman I'm aware of, but can't remember the title
now. Mostly anecdotes and lectures of his (german/english edition, i seem
to remember a complicated story behind the reason for this). Available
through Larry Polanski's press (turtle island?)
(for more information: http://onyx.dartmouth.edu/~larry/polansky.html)
dgcarl@ucdavis.edu
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 7 Jun 1996 11:37:06 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jeffrey Stadelman <stadelm@ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU>
Subject: Re: dodecaphony as generative grammar
In-Reply-To: <Pine.3.88.9606070845.A7517-0100000@bosshog.arts.uwo.ca>
Dear Tom,
I think you must be referring to Fred Lerdahl and Ray Jackendoff, _A
Generative Theory of Tonal Music_ (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1983).
368 pp. (2nd Edition, 1996)
Actually, Lerdahl's writings have recently been used as a club to attack
musics with experimental ambitions, for instance those of 'constructivist'
cast (Carter, Babbitt say). And, by implication surely (though I've not
yet seen published critiques), they indict experimental work in the Cagean
sense.
A good introduction to how Lerdahl views the aesthetically delimiting
effects of "the way our minds operate" can be found in an article whose
title says it all: "Cognitive Constraints on Compositional Systems,"
_Contemporary Music Review_, Vol. 6, edited by Paul Moravec and Robert
Beaser, Harwood Academic Publishers (1992).
Jeff Stadelman
SUNY at Buffalo
On Fri, 7 Jun 1996, Thomas M. Orange wrote:
> Listfolks,
>
> Has anyone heard of a book by Frederick Udahl (sp?) called something like
> "The Twelve-tone System as Generative Grammar" or "Towards a Generative
> Grammar from Twelve-Tone Music"?
>
> Thanks,
> Tom Orange
> tmorange@bosshog.arts.uwo.ca
>
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 7 Jun 1996 08:37:03 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" <anielsen@ISC.SJSU.EDU>
Subject: Re: Them That's Got Shall Get
In-Reply-To: <199603110702.CAA10237@listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu>
Did anybody else fall for the phony ad Yale placed in the _Chronicle_
last Spring announcing a search for a senior position in
twentieth-century poetry? I didn't expect anything to come of it, having
been told over the years that Yale's attitude is that they shouldn't hire
anyone so lowly as to have to apply for a position, but what did surprise
me was how many of my colleagues around the country predicted accurately
who would be hired.
And here comes official notice, dated May 31, that having searched
assiduously across the length and breadth of the land, Yale has hired
Langon Hammer. Professor Hammer was no doubt the most highly qualified
candidate for this senior position, having published A book (_Hart Crane
and Allen Tate_, 1993; now there's a new topic for you).
It must have been quite a search. The MLA directory for this year listed
Professor Hammer as an Associate Professor at, hmmmm, Yale. Before that,
he was listed as an Assistant Professor at, you guessed it, Yale. Thank
god that Yale has resisted the erosion of merit brought upon us by such
foolishly egalitarian notions as affirmative action and has insisted upon
rigorously seeking out the most obviously qualified candidate for such an
elite position.
and yes, that is the aroma of sour grapes you sense rising from this post --
if it weren't for _resentiment_ I wouldn't have no sentiment at all!
(apologies to Albert King)
-------------------------------
on a more uplifting note,,, Just back from the American Literature
Association meeting in San Diego, where the panels on H.D., Marianne
Moore, Williams, Pound and Kaufman all went very well indeed -- several
folk will reappear at the Orono conference shortly,,,
There is, by the way, now a Marianne Moore Society, for those of you who
are interested in such things, along with the H.D. Williams, and Pound
societies, which will sponsor panels at each year's conference. The
African-American Literature and Culture Society continues to sponsor
poetry panels at every year's conference, and is planning a symposium in
New Orleans for '98. This year's Asian-American Lit. panel was really
good, but we need to see more poetry discussion in that forum --
(especially with Walter's anthology just out) --
better than usual poetry reading by Quincy Troupe at this year's
conference --
VERY strange first session on "Criticism against the Grain" by some of
our more engrained colleagues -- (did you know that Lacan was a commie
fellow traveler, for example??? that's what I'm told by this expert --
haven't heard that kind of overt McCarthyism for many a year -- according
to this guy, all theory from France from roughly 48 on is either commie
or what J. Edgar Hoover used to call comsymp agitprop -- I know this will
come as cold comfort to those on the left who reject poststructuralism as
a reactionary movement)
a good time was had by all, and I, for one, learned quite a bit --
here's one connection for you Kaufman readers -- I had been looking at
all the mentions of Crispus Attucks in Kaufman's poetry, and now learn,
from Mona Lisa Saloy, that Charlie Parker, another in Kaufman's pantheon,
attended Crispus Attucks School -- remember the line in "Ancient Rain"
about the immigrants who refuse to attend school with Crispus Attucks --
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 7 Jun 1996 09:01:38 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Herb Levy <herb@ESKIMO.COM>
Subject: Re: dodecaphony as generative grammar
Tom Orange asks:
>
>Has anyone heard of a book by Frederick Udahl (sp?) called something like
>"The Twelve-tone System as Generative Grammar" or "Towards a Generative
>Grammar from Twelve-Tone Music"?
>
I know of a book by Fred Lerdahl & Ray Jackendoff called A Generative
Theory of Tonal Music.
I've never read so I don't know if it gets into twelve tone stuff at all.
I'm on my way to a dream date with the lovely & talented Lake Quinault, if
the discussion is still cagey when I get back, I guess I'll have plenty to
read.
&, to answer Jordan's question: yes.
Bests,
H
Herb Levy
herb@eskimo.com
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 7 Jun 1996 09:11:50 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Herb Levy <herb@ESKIMO.COM>
Subject: Re: more rattling Cage
Ira writes:
I didn't
>think, myself, that Cage suitably engaged with Feldman's
>upset at, for example, pop music on transistor radios
>spoiling the quiet, in this case of the beach. As the
>world gets more crassly noisy, and my ears hurt, and
>I can't find a quiet house to live in, aren't these
>issues?
You should look into the work of R. Murray Shaffer, a Canadian who began a
project called the World Soundscape. I don't know what kind of materials
are easily available in England. I remember a graph in one of his books
labeled "the instruments of the orchestra are changing", that plotted the
relative decline of sales of pianos against the growth of sales of lawn
mowers, but this is serious work none the less.
You could also check the Web site for World Forum for Acoustic Ecology:
<http://interact.uoregon.edu/MediaLit/WFAEHomePage>
where ther are lots of links to relevant sites.
Really gotta run now. See everyone at the lake.
Herb
Herb Levy
herb@eskimo.com
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 7 Jun 1996 10:56:16 CST
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: David Baratier <dave.baratier@MOSBY.COM>
Subject: reading Monday 6/10
David Baratier
reads
from
compartments
in
it's entirety
in Philadelphia,
7:00pm
at Cafe Santa Maria,
517 S. 5th Street
(between South
and Lombard)
for the last time before
moving to Ohio
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 7 Jun 1996 12:20:04 -0400
Reply-To: "c.g. guertin" <cguertin@julian.uwo.ca>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "c.g. guertin" <cguertin@JULIAN.UWO.CA>
Subject: Re: more rattling Cage
In-Reply-To: <834155731.13209.0@slang.demon.co.uk>
In Sontag's article "The Aesthetics of Silence," she quotes Cage twice.
Once as saying, "There is no such thing as silence. Something is always
happening that makes a sound."
And:
"Every now and then it is possible to have absolutely nothing;
the possibility of nothing"
Infuriatingly, Sontag gives no footnotes. Does anyone know what the
source of these quotes might be? Could anyone tell me where I might find
the best discussion of Cage's aesthetics of silence and/or of
4'33'' (either by him or by others)?
Thanks for your help.
Carolyn
Carolyn Guertin
University of Western Ontario
cguertin@julian.uwo.ca
"My empire is of the imagination."
-- H. Rider Haggard, She
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 7 Jun 1996 12:23:34 -0400
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@CHASS.UTORONTO.CA>
Subject: Re: the iliad of hypnotism
In-Reply-To: <v01520d05adddfabb9c4d@[166.84.199.56]> from "Jordan Davis" at
Jun 7, 96 10:28:28 am
>
> Uh, hey...
>
> Anybody read any good poems lately?
>
> Jordan
>
Yeah, Lise Downe's _A Velvet Increase of Curiosity_ (ECW Press,
Toronto, 1993, $12.00 CAN). A stunning book.
Mike
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 7 Jun 1996 12:11:00 CST
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: David Baratier <dave.baratier@MOSBY.COM>
Subject: Re: the illiad of hypnoism
Jordan,
I don't read poems, I write them, quite often on napkins, and I
have found that editors love crayon. One editor in particular
sent me back praises on my choice of periwinkle for a poem and
regrettably announced they were unable to reproduce that hue for
their issue. As an editor myself, I open the small envelopes
first, ones which could not possibly contain poems, and then ones
addressed in crayon, followed by letters from prisions, ones with
academic seals, ones with cartoon stamps, in this order and also
opened in order of smallest to largest envelope size. As an added
insider tip for getting into our journal, including blank
university stationary directly affects the decision making
process, as we love to send back rejection notices on these kinds
of paper to the unsuspecting rejectee, so far we have letterhead
from 13 universities. It's just wacky the responses we get when
we reject somebody from Ypsilani with stationary from the same
university.
David Baratier
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Date: Fri, 7 Jun 1996 14:35:12 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Gwyn McVay <gmcvay1@OSF1.GMU.EDU>
Subject: Coolidge and Mark?
In-Reply-To: <9605078341.AA834171049@smtp-gw.mosby.com>
Is this a typo? The Zen Mountain Monastery in Mt. Tremper, NY, lists
among its previous faculty Ginsberg, Waldman, Creeley, Natalie Goldberg,
and one "Clark Strand"--is that a real guy or a case of lang-po meets
trad-po in the same body?
Gwyn
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Date: Fri, 7 Jun 1996 14:59:04 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
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From: Rod Smith <AERIALEDGE@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: morty
David Carl--
I've not been able to find the Feldman book you refer to, & was told it was
out of print. The complicated story was that the original Feldman material in
English, there was only one copy, was lost or ediotically disgarded, after it
had been translated into German. So, the English is a translation from the
German! Cage had a similar thing happen with _For the Birds_, which was
interviews, the tapes were "lost" & the English edition is translated from
French even though the original interviews were conducted in English.
Rod
-------------------------------
D. Carl wrote:
There is a book on/by Feldman I'm aware of, but can't remember the title
now. Mostly anecdotes and lectures of his (german/english edition, i seem
to remember a complicated story behind the reason for this). Available
through Larry Polanski's press (turtle island?)
(for more information: http://onyx.dartmouth.edu/~larry/polansky.html)
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 7 Jun 1996 15:05:53 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jeffrey Stadelman <stadelm@ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU>
Subject: Re: morty
On Fri, 7 Jun 1996, David Carl wrote:
> There is a book on/by Feldman I'm aware of, but can't remember the title
> now. Mostly anecdotes and lectures of his (german/english edition, i seem
> to remember a complicated story behind the reason for this). Available
> through Larry Polanski's press (turtle island?)
> (for more information: http://onyx.dartmouth.edu/~larry/polansky.html)
Morton Feldman, _Essays_, edited by Walter Zimmermann (Kerpen, Germany:
Beginner Press, 1985). This book is, for the most part, bilingual
(German/English) though there are a few items which appear only in
German. Part of the complicated story mentioned by David Carl may involve
the fact that some of the essays had to be translated into German from
languages other than English (Italian at least, I seem to recall), with
the English originals lost or destroyed. The editorial work on the
English-language material is generally poor (misspellings galore), but the
book is refreshingly blunt, entertaining and instructive--highly
recommended.
For German readers there's _Morton Feldman_, _musik-konzepte_ Vols. 48/49,
edited by Heinz-Klaus Metzger and Rainer Riehn (Munich: edition text +
kritik, 1984?).
And Thomas DeLio has a book on Feldman out, or coming out, published by
Excelsior Press I believe.
Jeff Stadelman
SUNY at Buffalo
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Date: Fri, 7 Jun 1996 09:29:52 -1000
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
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From: Robert J Wilson <rwilson@HAWAII.EDU>
Subject: Yale Sublimity Strikes Again
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SOL.3.91.960607081315.2446A-100000@athens>
'Professor Langon Hammer has been appointed to replace Harold Bloom as
Yale Professor of Sublimity,' or was it just the absent presence of Mark
Strand as a Merwinesque canon-maker in the vacant 'landscape'-- now you
see that trope and now you don't see the natives or nine tenths of social
reality school of US poetics? Just wondering about that Yale School of
Criticism as a disappearing act of the agrarian poetics into, now, nothing
even to contest or offer to the suburbs and provinces of this grand old
polity. What else has the fellow written to earn such banishment? Rob
Wilson
On Fri, 7 Jun 1996, Aldon L. Nielsen wrote:
> Did anybody else fall for the phony ad Yale placed in the _Chronicle_
> last Spring announcing a search for a senior position in
> twentieth-century poetry? I didn't expect anything to come of it, having
> been told over the years that Yale's attitude is that they shouldn't hire
> anyone so lowly as to have to apply for a position, but what did surprise
> me was how many of my colleagues around the country predicted accurately
> who would be hired.
>
> And here comes official notice, dated May 31, that having searched
> assiduously across the length and breadth of the land, Yale has hired
> Langon Hammer. Professor Hammer was no doubt the most highly qualified
> candidate for this senior position, having published A book (_Hart Crane
> and Allen Tate_, 1993; now there's a new topic for you).
>
> It must have been quite a search. The MLA directory for this year listed
> Professor Hammer as an Associate Professor at, hmmmm, Yale. Before that,
> he was listed as an Assistant Professor at, you guessed it, Yale. Thank
> god that Yale has resisted the erosion of merit brought upon us by such
> foolishly egalitarian notions as affirmative action and has insisted upon
> rigorously seeking out the most obviously qualified candidate for such an
> elite position.
>
> and yes, that is the aroma of sour grapes you sense rising from this post --
>
> if it weren't for _resentiment_ I wouldn't have no sentiment at all!
> (apologies to Albert King)
> -------------------------------
>
> on a more uplifting note,,, Just back from the American Literature
> Association meeting in San Diego, where the panels on H.D., Marianne
> Moore, Williams, Pound and Kaufman all went very well indeed -- several
> folk will reappear at the Orono conference shortly,,,
>
> There is, by the way, now a Marianne Moore Society, for those of you who
> are interested in such things, along with the H.D. Williams, and Pound
> societies, which will sponsor panels at each year's conference. The
> African-American Literature and Culture Society continues to sponsor
> poetry panels at every year's conference, and is planning a symposium in
> New Orleans for '98. This year's Asian-American Lit. panel was really
> good, but we need to see more poetry discussion in that forum --
> (especially with Walter's anthology just out) --
>
> better than usual poetry reading by Quincy Troupe at this year's
> conference --
>
> VERY strange first session on "Criticism against the Grain" by some of
> our more engrained colleagues -- (did you know that Lacan was a commie
> fellow traveler, for example??? that's what I'm told by this expert --
> haven't heard that kind of overt McCarthyism for many a year -- according
> to this guy, all theory from France from roughly 48 on is either commie
> or what J. Edgar Hoover used to call comsymp agitprop -- I know this will
> come as cold comfort to those on the left who reject poststructuralism as
> a reactionary movement)
>
> a good time was had by all, and I, for one, learned quite a bit --
>
> here's one connection for you Kaufman readers -- I had been looking at
> all the mentions of Crispus Attucks in Kaufman's poetry, and now learn,
> from Mona Lisa Saloy, that Charlie Parker, another in Kaufman's pantheon,
> attended Crispus Attucks School -- remember the line in "Ancient Rain"
> about the immigrants who refuse to attend school with Crispus Attucks --
>
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 7 Jun 1996 15:00:51 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Joe Amato <amato@CHARLIE.CNS.IIT.EDU>
Subject: Re: Them That's Got Shall Get
& to follow yr albert king sweet & sour grapes one grape further, aldon:
if it weren't for insider-games like the one you describe at yale, there
wouldn't be no game at all... the "job market" is largely a stacked deck,
even with the best of hiring intentions, even when the person hired is from
another campus... everybody is qualified on paper, and there are simply too
many everybodies... most hiring (by which i mean to include the winnowing
process) ends up being accomplished out of regard for a potentially
dubious, in some ways arbitrary paper-trail---which latter is measured
against criteria developed by---you guessed it!---places like yale...
i've been there, and i can attest to the difficulties in trying to get
'around' the superficialities of vitae information...
not that i'm against, say, a solid publishing record (though as to the
threat of perishing over same---)... but i doubt, for example, that a book
of poetry would "count" in yale's deliberations over who gets to go to ole
new haven to profess the wonders of 20th. century poetry...
i mean, just b/c one writes poetry doesn't mean one knows a damn thing
about the history of same, right?...
i'm not joking...
on the other hand, a poet *could* very well know her history... moreover,
when it comes to the poets i know, there's no question that they know their
history...
ergo---
then we have the little matter of what constitutes the "right" sort of
scholarship... whether yale'd know it when they saw it... etc...
the academic situation has really gone zonkers in so many ways... it's had
its past moments of turbulence, but i'm not sure it's ever been quite so
vexed...
(((btw, i like it that you posted yr gripe-grapes here...
best,
joe
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Date: Fri, 7 Jun 1996 10:09:04 -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: Them That's Got Shall Get
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SOL.3.91.960607081315.2446A-100000@athens>
Langdon Hammer's book on modernism (by way of Crane and Tate) is
excellent; in fact, it covers a lot of the same ground as Jed Rasula's
brilliant _American Poetry Wax Museum_, if in a different manner. I'm
sorry other worthies got overlooked, but I'd say he was a very strong
candidate for that Yale position. He was a friend of mine in college, so
I hate to see him used purely for his symbolic value.
Susan S.
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Date: Fri, 7 Jun 1996 13:25:07 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: George Bowering <bowering@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: the iliad of hypnotism
>Uh, hey...
>
>Anybody read any good poems lately?
>
>Jordan
I have been reading the poems of the new Zealander Sam Hunt, and they are
really bad.
..........................
"I've enjoyed just about as much of this as I can stand."
--Bobbie Louise hawkins
George Bowering.
2499 West 37th Ave.,
Vancouver, B.C.,
Canada V6M 1P4
fax: 1-604-266-9000
e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca
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Date: Fri, 7 Jun 1996 17:56:55 -0400
Reply-To: Robert Drake <au462@cleveland.Freenet.Edu>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Robert Drake <au462@CLEVELAND.FREENET.EDU>
Subject: new poetry bookstore looking for wares (fwd)
hope this may be of interest to some...
[begin forwarded message]:
Message #490 (492 is last):
Date: Fri Jun 7 17:30:49 1996
From: IMPETUS@aol.com
Subject: New Bookstore Seeking Stock
Hello Poets & Publishers,
This is an invitation to send me your catalogues/lists/ what have you's
w/Bookstore rates so that I can start setting up. I want to specialize in
small & micro press publications and true alternative. You can either
e-mail, or snail mail..
cat's Impetuous Books & Stuff
233 1/2 S. Water St.
Kent, Ohio 44240
Thanks,
cat
[end forward]
please direct questions or replies to cheryl (aka cat), not me...
lbd
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Date: Fri, 7 Jun 1996 18:59:06 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Matthew Gary Kirschenbaum <mgk3k@FARADAY.CLAS.VIRGINIA.EDU>
Subject: Re: new poetry bookstore looking for wares (fwd)
Comments: To: au462@cleveland.freenet.edu
In-Reply-To: <199606072156.RAA10746@owl.INS.CWRU.Edu> from "Robert Drake" at
Jun 7, 96 05:56:55 pm
Imagine how relieved I was to read the note below after finding
the following in my mail queue:
43 Jun 7 Robert Drake (54) new poetry bookstore looking for war
> Hello Poets & Publishers,
>
> This is an invitation to send me your catalogues/lists/ what have you's
> w/Bookstore rates so that I can start setting up. I want to specialize in
> small & micro press publications and true alternative. You can either
> e-mail, or snail mail..
=================================================================
Matthew G. Kirschenbaum University of Virginia
mgk3k@virginia.edu Department of English
http://faraday.clas.virginia.edu/~mgk3k Electronic Text Center
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 7 Jun 1996 17:11:57 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Tristan D. Saldana" <hbeng175@DEWEY.CSUN.EDU>
Subject: Sontag on Cage
Comments: To: "c.g. guertin" <cguertin@JULIAN.UWO.CA>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.3.88.9606071251.C6361-0100000@panther.uwo.ca>
I am not aware of Sontag's "article" on Cage. Do you, Carolyn, or anyone
else, know where I can find it? You're referring to the 'Susan' Sontag of
_Against Interpretation_, right?
I would like to see what she has to say, and what she doesn't.
Tristan
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Date: Fri, 7 Jun 1996 21:58:02 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Rod Smith <AERIALEDGE@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: Sontag on Cage
She wrote the intro for something called _Dancers on a Plane_ which collected
works by Cage, Johns, & Cunningham.
Rod
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Date: Sat, 8 Jun 1996 10:11:23 +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: Them That's Got Shall Get
In-Reply-To: <199606072000.PAA04029@charlie.cns.iit.edu>
About this Yale professorship thing, I'm confused.
Do any of you think that you would be comfortable as members of that
Department? I'm just recalling things Maria Damon posted about the
difficulties she experiences in terms of her own Department's receptivity
to her areas of interest. I'm pretty sure that Yale's English Department
is more conservative than Minnesota. After all, Yale created a separate
Literature program to contain (or rechannel) theory, and despite various
anomolies such as an interest in Pound ahead of other parts of academe,
it is a conservative, traditionalist department. Despite (or maybe it is
exemplary) the Yale Younger poets, it has not been much of a place for
"writers" as faculty: now it's Hollander, before it was Penn Warren and
John Hersey. Bloom was considered to be an oddball, eccentric genius
type.
New Haven is okay to live in, but its just another suburb of New York. I
suppose the full professorship pays well, and obviously is prestigious,
and I guess it would implicitly carry academic power, but even so.
As a non-academic, I hope I am not being too obnoxious by pointing this out.
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 7 Jun 1996 22:29:52 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Rod Smith <AERIALEDGE@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: more rattling Cage
Re Carolyn Guertin's post:
The first quote you mention: "There is no such thing as silence. Something
is always happening that makes a sound." John said this on any number of
occasions relative to his aesthetic, & specifically to his visit to the
anechoic chamber at Harvard. It's oft repeated but anyway-- he entered this
silent chamber & heard two noises, one high one low. He asked the engineer
what they were, & the engineer said one is your heart beating & the other is
your nervous system in operation-- thus the understanding that there is no
silence or that silence "includes" sound. I have no idea where the second
quote: "Every now and then it is possible to have absolutely
nothing; the possibility of nothing"
is from. Actually sounds more like Jasper Johns to me, though John was happy
to contradict himself on occasion.
Single best intro to Cage I think is _Conversing with Cage_ ed. Kostelanetz
(Limelight $16.95), simply because it includes Cage's views from a number of
different times, sources. & of course I recommend Retallack's _MUSICAGE_ --
which incidentally goes into quite some depth on _Europera 5_, the piece Tim
Page "reviewed." Re specific discussions of 4'33" -- there's an interesting
Q&A on the tape that comes with _I-VI_, though I think it's impossible to
seperate his "aesthetics of silence" from other concerns-- indeterminacy,
chance operations, zen, etc. I don't recommend the biography titled _The
Roaring Silence_. & of course there's Cage's _Silence_, particularly the
"Lecture on Nothing." Daniel Charles has written very well on Cage, & Jackson
MacLow's article on his writing is excellent.
Geeze, I'm like "Cage Guy" around here lately.
Rod
------------------------------------
Carolyn G. wrote:
In Sontag's article "The Aesthetics of Silence," she quotes Cage twice.
Once as saying, "There is no such thing as silence. Something is always
happening that makes a sound."
And:
"Every now and then it is possible to have absolutely nothing;
the possibility of nothing"
Infuriatingly, Sontag gives no footnotes. Does anyone know what the
source of these quotes might be? Could anyone tell me where I might find
the best discussion of Cage's aesthetics of silence and/or of
4'33'' (either by him or by others)?
Thanks for your help.
Carolyn
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Date: Fri, 7 Jun 1996 22:35:53 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Rod Smith <AERIALEDGE@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: the iliad of hypnotism
wld somebody please post the address for this ECW outfit?
thanks,
Rod
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 8 Jun 1996 14:32:20 +1200
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Daniel Salmon <dpsalmon@IHUG.CO.NZ>
Subject: Re: the iliad of hypnotism
At 01:25 PM 7/06/96 -0700, you wrote:
>I have been reading the poems of the new Zealander Sam Hunt, and they are
>really bad.
In defence of poetry.
I am jubilant raconteur Sam Hunt has moved to new Zealand, perhaps that will
leave more space for 'poets' in New Zealand anthologies.
Dan
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 7 Jun 1996 23:45:23 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "c.g. guertin" <cguertin@JULIAN.UWO.CA>
Subject: Re: Sontag on Cage
Comments: To: "Tristan D. Saldana" <hbeng175@dewey.csun.edu>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.HPP.3.91.960607170115.17106A-100000@huey.csun.edu>
On Fri, 7 Jun 1996, Tristan D. Saldana wrote:
> I am not aware of Sontag's "article" on Cage. Do you, Carolyn, or anyone
> else, know where I can find it? You're referring to the 'Susan' Sontag of
> _Against Interpretation_, right?
>
> I would like to see what she has to say, and what she doesn't.
>
> Tristan
>
Sorry. Yes, Susan Sontag. I am referring to her article "The Aesthetics
of Silence" in her early volume of essays _Styles of Radical Will_. She
also refers to Cage in another essay in that volume, "'Thinking Against
Oneself': Reflections on Cioran." She doesn't really comment on Cage so
much as use his words to backup her argument that there can be no silence
without sound...at the risk of oversimplifying.
Cheers.
Carolyn
Carolyn Guertin
University of Western Ontario
cguertin@julian.uwo.ca
"My empire is of the imagination."
- H. Rider Haggard, She
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 7 Jun 1996 22:21:12 MDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Louis Cabri <ldmcabri@ACS.UCALGARY.CA>
Subject: Re: the iliad of hypnotism
In-Reply-To: <960607223552_321757109@emout10.mail.aol.com>; from "Rod Smith"
at Jun 7, 1996 10:35 pm
ecw press
2120 queen street east
toronto, ontario
canada m4e 1e2
sorry i don't have the fax phone or email
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 7 Jun 1996 22:54:21 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: George Bowering <bowering@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: the iliad of hypnotism
>wld somebody please post the address for this ECW outfit?
>
>thanks,
>
>Rod
This ECW outfit?
The latest no. of the journal is 56.
The number of books is enormous.
The poetry in recent times is terrif. Unfortunately its poetry editor is
moving to some place called California.
..........................
"I've enjoyed just about as much of this as I can stand."
--Bobbie Louise hawkins
George Bowering.
2499 West 37th Ave.,
Vancouver, B.C.,
Canada V6M 1P4
fax: 1-604-266-9000
e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 7 Jun 1996 23:10:51 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" <anielsen@ISC.SJSU.EDU>
Subject: Re: dis n dat
In-Reply-To: <199606080406.AAA17181@listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu>
dissin --
it's not about symbolism (this time) -- nor is it a question of the
quality of Professor Hammer's book (though I can think of three on the
same topic that top it) -- not is it really a question even of Professor
Hammer's qualifications (though again, I can think of several assistant
profs. that Yale has refused to tenure over the years who have had
considerably more impressive records, as paper as such records might be) --
No, the question is -- why is Yale calling this thing a "search"? why
are they pretending that they want to receive applications? and the
answer is that they have to create a paper trail of their own -- At my
campus (and even San Jose State gets the legendary three hundred
applications for a position these days) we would very likely have a lot
of explaining to do to a board of judicial inquiry if we pulled such a
stunt (even in the California of Pete Wilson!) --
____________
dats --
Gwyn and others -- here's the info. on the Marianne Moore Society --
memberships are $3.00 ("three" -- this is not a typo) -- and the address is
The International Marianne Moore Society
c/o Dr. Elizabeth Joyce
Dept. of English
Edinboro University of Pennsylvania
Edinboro, PA 16444
EJoyce@Edinboro.edu
There is a home page in the works -- and a listserv run out of Yale (yes,
they are very good for some things, like the LIBRARY!!!)
Subscribors to _Sulfur_, including the San Jose State Library, which I at
long last persuaded to get the thing, have recently received word that
_Sulfur_ was rejected for an NEA grant and is in big money trouble -- may
have to shrink the mag -- etc. -- I know, and we all know, there are
many even more deserving mags -- but if you care about Sulfur, think
about sending a buck or subscribing, or something --
still raisin grapes in California,
aldon
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 8 Jun 1996 08:02:36 +0100
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "J.V. Kinsella" <jvk20@HERMES.CAM.AC.UK>
Subject: Re: the iliad of hypnotism
In-Reply-To: <v01520d05adddfabb9c4d@[166.84.199.56]>
On Fri, 7 Jun 1996, Jordan Davis wrote:
> Uh, hey...
>
> Anybody read any good poems lately?
>
> Jordan
>
Try Rod Mengham's Unsung: New and Selected Poems [Folio(Salt), 1996,
Applecross, Western Australia. $15]
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 8 Jun 1996 07:55:25 -0400
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 iliad of hypnotism
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SOL.3.91.960608075844.29171D-100000@blue.csi.cam.ac.uk>
> >
> Try Rod Mengham's Unsung: New and Selected Poems [Folio(Salt), 1996,
> Applecross, Western Australia. $15]
>
Anyone know if the Mengham book is available here in the States? I've
always liked the work & wld love to get ahold of the new one -- Pierre
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 8 Jun 1996 09:50:52 -0400
Reply-To: Robert Drake <au462@cleveland.Freenet.Edu>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Robert Drake <au462@CLEVELAND.FREENET.EDU>
Subject: Re: the iliad of hypnotism
ECW Press
2120 Queen St. East
Toronto Ontario M4E 1E2
Canada
lbd
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 8 Jun 1996 09:56:43 -0400
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@CHASS.UTORONTO.CA>
Subject: Re: the iliad of hypnotism
In-Reply-To: <960607223552_321757109@emout10.mail.aol.com> from "Rod Smith" at
Jun 7, 96 10:35:53 pm
>
> wld somebody please post the address for this ECW outfit?
>
> thanks,
>
> Rod
>
Rod:
Their books are distrubuted in the States thru InBook, 140 Commerce
St. PO Box 120261, East Haven CT 06512, 800.243.0138, FAX
800.334.3892. I have the info on the Canadian distributor, too, if you
want it.
ECW's phone number in Toronto is 416.694.3348, FAX 416.698.9906.
Mike
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 8 Jun 1996 10:03:18 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" <anielsen@ISC.SJSU.EDU>
Subject: Re: signafump
In-Reply-To: <199603110702.CAA10237@listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu>
for those who have not yet spotted it --
on pg. 139 of Paul Muldoon's recent _The Annals of Chile_, George Oppen
figures among the red lights around Yale! enjoy it --
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 8 Jun 1996 13:37:14 -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: signafump
when you, aldon, say open as red light at yale, do you mean "STOP SIGN"
and thus "COP"--did OPPEN REPRESS MULDOON (at least in MULDOON'S version)?
or do you mean red light as in district as in "Roxanne" as in "Red Dress
Tonight"? For red is the color that will make me blue.....
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 8 Jun 1996 13:39:31 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Rod Smith <AERIALEDGE@AOL.COM>
Subject: Address change for Andrew Levy
Andrew Levy
75 Poplar St #2M
Brooklyn, NY 11201
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 8 Jun 1996 12:47:23 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Tim wood <twood@CONNECT.NET>
Subject: Re: A science project: if anyone is interested
from what i know this is as the dutch say a -roos. i received the same
message a few weeks ago only to be followed by an appy olly ogy from its
sender.
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 8 Jun 1996 16:27:54 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Annie Finch <FINCHAR@MIAVX1.ACS.MUOHIO.EDU>
Subject: Re: M/E/A/N/I/N/G
In-Reply-To: "Your message dated Thu, 06 Jun 1996 09:19:06 -0800"
<v01510102addcc085b4dd@[166.84.196.62]>
Der Mike,
Are you aware of a poet called Jay McPherson? I just heard she lives in
Toronto.Published a selected in 1981. She writes (or did int he 60's--i
ahven't seen more recent work yet) a lot of mythological stuff, which
interests me quite a bit.
Just wonderred if you knew her.
The tough job market is really having its effect on the list, isn't it. It
's really too bad.
More later,
Annie
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 8 Jun 1996 14:12:27 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: George Bowering <bowering@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: Jay
>Are you aware of a poet called Jay McPherson? I just heard she lives in
>Toronto.Published a selected in 1981. She writes (or did int he 60's--i
>ahven't seen more recent work yet) a lot of mythological stuff, which
>interests me quite a bit.
Jay Macpherson was a celebrated student of Northrop Frye, and several
decades ago was hurriedly grouped up here in a kind of threesome with Eli
Mandel and James Reaney as Frijian mytho-poets. Mandel decided later in
life that he wanted to head more in the direction of poets like Kroetsch
and Nichol. But Macpherson, who had early done some nice derivations of
Blake songs of Inn. etc.,has not published a great deal over her long life
as a poet. She is often cited by Atwood as an early influence on her work.
Born 1931, so she might be retiring, prof. of English at Victoria College,
U. of Toronto.
First commercially published book, _The Boatman_ 1957.
..........................
"I've enjoyed just about as much of this as I can stand."
--Bobbie Louise hawkins
George Bowering.
2499 West 37th Ave.,
Vancouver, B.C.,
Canada V6M 1P4
fax: 1-604-266-9000
e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 8 Jun 1996 18:47:07 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Charles Alexander <chax@MTN.ORG>
Subject: commerce?
>
>First commercially published book, _The Boatman_ 1957.
>
George -- I'm curious about what you mean when you say this, i.e. "first
commercially published book." Is a commercially published book any book
which is for sale? Or is it any book from a press which actually lives via
profits from book sales (which would actually discount more than just the
so-called non-profit presses). Or is it a book published with the intent of
making money, as opposed to the intent of simply distributing works of
literature? Or what? No axe to grind here, just wondering what this phrase
means to you, and others.
charles
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 9 Jun 1996 00:39:16 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Thomas M. Orange" <tmorange@BOSSHOG.ARTS.UWO.CA>
Subject: dissin dat higher-in thang
In-Reply-To: <199606090403.AAA12242@listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu>
but aldon,
supposin a judiciary body of some sort was to call yale on thr higherin
disscision (or san jose state for that matter, altho here is a different
matter cuz wr talkin public vs private monies)--what would they say?
"well yr honor, givin the fact that our `job search' (my quotes of
course--the defendant from the search committee would be using the phrase
in all sincerity) resulted in our conclusion that, altho it may look
highly nepotistic, the candidate chosen to receive our highering offer
was clearly the most qualified applicant from a pool of highly qualified
candidates, and we stand by our decision as a difficult but entirely fair
*and objective* one..."
how can you question that logic or assail that argument? can't really,
because it all rests on the appearance of objectivity: whatever
admittedly subjective factors a search committee would willingly admit go
into a `job search,' ultimately those subjective factors can never be
held to any kind of objective accountability. sorry to slip so facilely
into the subj-obj paradigm, but when has the university search-and-hire
process ever been forced into external, let alone self scrutiny?
the commodity under consideration here of course being particularly
slippery: would that knowledge were a craft, that the town carpenter
could find an eager and skilled apprentice to take on...
tom orange
tmorange@bosshog.arts.uwo.ca
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 9 Jun 1996 01:24:40 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Carnography <scrypt@INTERPORT.NET>
Subject: Re: nonsuch sonnet impotent lifetime guarantee
David:
> Rob Hardin,
>
> I sincerely apologize for having irked your ire by not mentioning your
> own work in the eidolon discussion.
I've been off-line for three days and this is the best you could do?
To accuse me of anger and narcissism when neither were present? Did you
really miss the lightness of my response? The response itself had to
do with your ad hominem attacks of Annie Finch, with your dismissal
of her argument on the basis of a reference to a single word in a
Whitman poem, and with your supposition that Whitman's poem remains
the most important use of the word *eidolon* (its meaning an indictment
of the triviality of this exchange). I mentioned my own feeble
attempts to imitate Crane in a rather self-incriminating tone. For
you to have read embarrassed confession as triumphant citation
looks breathtakingly unperceptive.
The problem with your ad hominem attacks is that they
reflect badly on the attacker and not on the object of the attack.
Your indictments say far more about you than they do about my
remarks on the word *eidolon*.
> Eidolon is more than a mere
> feature of one Whitman refrain. It has been used regularly by several
> other writers.
If you're going to quote me, honey, at least give me my props.
> While I could bring Hart Crane, yourself, or HP
> Lovecraft "the putrid, dripping eidolon of unwholesome revelation"
> into the discussion, I still am unaware of an earlier poetic reference
> than Whitman and was instructed at an early age to always return to
> the source.
Eidolon has been used by many earlier writers and contemporaries of Whitman,
such as Scott ("Calling up his eidolon in the hall of his former greatness"),
Carlyle ("...living with mere Eidolons"), Poe ("An Eidolon named Night/On a
black throne reigns upright"). Your instruction to "look to the source"
was obviously not itself a chronological source.
Furthermore, your poinyt about precedents is moot, since I myself answered
it in the post you've tried to answer:
>> You may argue that Crane was making a deliberate ref. to
>> Whitman (especially in light of _The Bridge_ and other
>> Whitman-meets-the-Symbolists-in-a-play-by-Marlowe-esque
>> works). But you're still suggesting that, without an intimate
>> knowledge of Whitman's diction, A.F. is insufficiently
>> literate to be part of this discussion. To which I say:
>> should we write out an idiosyncratic reading test, complete
>> with trick questions, give it to you by means of embedded
>> references, grade you on the test, and bring it up
>> whenever we disagree with one of your points? Knowledge
>> ought to be shared, not hoarded.
> I will argue that Crane was making a deliberate ref. to Whitman. I am
> suggesting that without using your arms to open an OED to refute my
> point (anyone's for that matter),
Are you actually affecting disdain for etymological reference works?
What are we to replace them with--your shoddy and unproven suppositions?
I haven't had to open an OED in any previous post. But what if I had?
Would that have made my knowledge less genuine--because I acknowledged
a legitimate source of information? Or would you rather we renounce all
attempts to check our facts?
> or to find out what any unknown word
Eidolon is not an unknown word. If it were, we wouldn't be having this
discussion.
> means, one arrives to the discussion sufficiently lazy enough to
> speculate on what is being said and offer their opinion, instead of
> their knowledgable experience.
You offered far more than your opinion: You attacked another member of
this list for missing your vague ref to a single word in a Whitman poem.
You then inferred that missing your reference was a sign of illiteracy.
I find it odd that such an exacting critic would now express contempt
for etymology and research.
> In answer to your question "Why suggest that a person who speaks
> passionately of formal verse is ignorant of all other kinds?" [not]
> It's hard enough to understand an opposing point of view without
> attributing nasty motives to the speaker.["]
Nice citation, but the closing quote mark ought to have come fourteen
words later.
> I suggest that if we continue this thread in a manner worth replying
> to, that we talk about how to determine which strings of words fit
> into a particular form, what aspects of words (phonemem, morpheme,
> arragement, connotational value, associative change of these values,
> etcetera) solidify in our minds which forms are to be used, as charles
> (chax) mentioned a while back.
I suggest that, if you truly want to return to a more civil mode of
discourse, you thrill us with your self-restraint, and neither accuse
Annie Finch of deception and illiteracy, nor me of narcissism and
ire. My post to you and to Annie bore the suggestion that we reman civil.
I've also seen brutal remarks about some of the sonnets posted here;
I might not like some of them myself, it's true. But I can see no
useful purpose in slagging the authors. Besides: as Lynne Emmanuel
has pointed out (_After Modernism_), language poets and neo-formalists
have more in common than is readily apparent. Aren't both "camps"
fairly obsessed with questions of technique? Didn't Barret Watten
once write that technique is the most exciting aspect of poetry?
Also: linguistic terms are precise ones for discussing
certain aspects of poetry; but in others, only conventional
prosodic terms will do. I see no reason to restrict discussions
of technique to linguistic terminology. Even Jakobsen did not
confine his analyses to grammar and phonology. Even Saintsbury
said a few useful things to Jakobsen.
All the best,
Rob Hardin
http://www.interport.net/~scrypt
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 9 Jun 1996 01:38:10 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Carnography <scrypt@INTERPORT.NET>
Subject: Re: hysterical dialect, hysterical eidolon
Gwyn typed:
> I think the "sexist etymology" referred to is the word's origin in Gk.
> "hustera," womb, and the prevailing theories, at the time, that
> overemotion in women was caused by having their womb unhitch itself and
> float around loose inside their body.
Yes, but should we really be held accountable for the etymological
origins of the words we use? What I objected to in Annie's original
comment was the suggestion that the *term* hysterical had lowered
the tone of the debate to the level of gender prejudice.
What would happen if we all posted in French, and were forced to
reduce all classes of nouns to masculine and feminine? Would we all be
guilty of etymological sexism?
If we're going to discuss the sexist etymology of the English
language, that's one thing. But to invest the user with the
sexism of a word's history is uncalled for. At best, the
message conjured is confused.
At best, /the mes/sage con/jured is /confused
and us/er, et-y-mo-/logi-/cally used
Funny, isn't it? That mere words--like *hysterical* and *eidolon*--
have such power to provoke, such histories to invoke?
All the best,
Rob Hardin
http://www.interport.net/~scrypt
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 8 Jun 1996 22:41:54 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: George Bowering <bowering@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: commerce?
>>
>>First commercially published book, _The Boatman_ 1957.
>>
>
>
>George -- I'm curious about what you mean when you say this, i.e. "first
>commercially published book." Is a commercially published book any book
>which is for sale? Or is it any book from a press which actually lives via
>profits from book sales (which would actually discount more than just the
>so-called non-profit presses). Or is it a book published with the intent of
>making money, as opposed to the intent of simply distributing works of
>literature? Or what? No axe to grind here, just wondering what this phrase
>means to you, and others.
>
>charles
Oh, I just meant by a commercially-bent publisher. She had published her
earlier books under her own imprint and a chapbook by a friend. She
published other books under her own imprimateur, too, nice woodblock and
handset things by people like Al Purdy, Alden Nowlan.
..........................
"Silence, sole luxury after rimes . . ."
--Mallarme
George Bowering.
2499 West 37th Ave.,
Vancouver, B.C.,
Canada V6M 1P4
fax: 1-604-266-9000
e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 9 Jun 1996 01:48:44 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Carnography <scrypt@INTERPORT.NET>
Subject: Re: the iliad of hypnotism
Jordan Davis typed:
> Uh, hey...
>
> Anybody read any good poems lately?
Do old ones count?
Interestingly, I just read a poem by Charles Baxter ("The Last
String Quartet of Arnold Schoenberg") that seems to exemplify
everything we tend to renounce: an artless affect, prosaic free
verse technique, and lucid narrative.
Similarly, a recent collection of Dennis Cooper's new and unknown
poems has just appeared. So far, I love it.
Even though I don't entirely agree with it, Charles Watson's
essay-poem on the failure of spontaneous prose is pretty
damned interesting.
Everything else I've been reading is ancient--except the diaries
of Dennis Nilsen, and Peter Sotos's _Total Abuse_.
All the best,
Rob Hardin
http://www.interport.net/~scrypt
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 9 Jun 1996 02:54:53 +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: Is John Cage conceptual art, music, what?
Comments: To: Rod Smith <AERIALEDGE@AOL.COM>
On 6 Jun 96 at 15:12, Rod Smith wrote:
> Also, is their anything out there in terms of a good new
> music publication like _Ear_ used to be. Something that would cover say
> Frissell, Le Baron, & unkowns? Also, to note, there's a new book on Nancarrow
> from Cambridge (overpriced hc, but looks very good).
Musicworks seems to fit that bill for me, having good articles on a
wide variety of musics. Check out http://www.web.net/~sound/
for more info.
---------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: Sun, 9 Jun 1996 08:00:58 -0400
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: EMF CALENDAR ALERT (fwd)
ouf! now that the wierd sonnett thread seems to have run its course &=20
Cage & music is popping up, lemme forward this summer schedule of music=20
events.(Just a note re early/late Cage: there are years when I prefer=20
early Cage, there are years when I prefer the late Cage, there are other=20
months when I don't listen to Cage at all -- & that goes for all=20
composers, poets & painters; it seems somwhat silly to make sweeping=20
indictments re this or that musician, this or that moment in an artist's=
=20
career -- or at least worth remembering that as listener/reader/critic=20
one always speaks out of a very relative moment & place oneself from=20
which any generalization is likely to be reductive. But right now what=20
I'm listening to is Messiaen "+concert a quatre" which will be followed=20
by Sulochana Brahaspaqti's "Raga Bilaskhani Todi" & Wilhelm Killmayer's=20
setting of Holderling songs.
Pierre
=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=
=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=
=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D
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 =
=20
Albany NY 12222 |=20
tel&fax:(518) 426 0433 | "Poetry is the promise of a language."=20
email: | -- Friedrich Holderlin
joris@cnsunix.albany.edu| =20
=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=
=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=
=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 6 Jun 1996 11:56:43 -0500
From: Electronic Music Foundation <EMF@emf.org>
To: emfnet@emf.org
Subject: EMF CALENDAR ALERT
EMF CALENDAR ALERT
=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=
=3D June 6, 1996
EMF CALENDAR is published on the web by Electronic Music Foundation as a
selective guide to important events worldwide. Our web site is
http://www.emf.org
This email version of EMF CALENDAR is being sent to you either because
you've already asked to be on our list or because we believe you'll be
interested in what we have to say.
If you would rather not receive future email messages from us, simply let
us know.
If this has been forwarded to you by someone else and you would like to
receive these notices directly, just send an email message to list@emf.org
and say something like "Put me on your list" and we'll put you on our list.
Note: Each monthly email calendar update contains only new material. For a
complete picture of the future, save all calendars or check our web site.
CONTENTS:
1. Summer education
2. Summer festivals and conferences
3. Concerts
4. Fall previews
5. To submit listings
=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=
=3D SUMMER EDUCATION
PHYSICAL MODEL SYNTHESIS WORKSHOP
Friday, June 21
at the Accademia Bartolomeo Cristofori, Florence, Italy
The Centro Tempo Reale of Florence will host a one day workshop which will
include lectures and presentations relating to various aspects of physical
model synthesis. Participation is free.
frenci@temporeale.softeam.it
***
1996 LES ATELIERS UPIC
June 25 to July 19
Les Ateliers UPIC, Alfortville (near Paris), France
Please note that the dates have changed since last month's emailing. This
course in computer music and composition will include lectures, supervised
group practice in UPIC studios, individual studio time, visits to new
music centers and student presentations at the conclusion of the course.
Both English and French will be spoken throughout the course. Housing is
available.
For more information:
100422.1771@compuserve.com
(33)(1) 4378 80 80 Voice
(33)(1) 4368 25 52 Fax
Les Ateliers UPIC
16-18 Rue Marcelin-Berthelot
94141 Alfortville
FRANCE
***
IRCAM SUMMER ACADEMY
June 24 to June 29
at IRCAM and the Centre Georges-Pompidou, Paris
Workshops in various aspects of computer music such as composition,
gestural interfaces for computer control and musical computing. Also,
personal demonstrations of software and individual practice work.
Instructors inlcude George Benjamin, Marco Stroppa, Michel Waisvisz,
Laetitia Sonami and others. Application deadline is May 31.
http://www.ircam.fr/saison/Academie-e.html
=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=
=3D SUMMER FESTIVALS & CONFERENCES
1996 CROYDON COLOURSCAPE FESTIVAL
June 6, 7, 13 and 14
Central Croydon, London
Concerts include Llorenc Barber's 'City Symphony', the premiere of Lawrence
Casserely's 'The Garden of Forking Paths' for guitar and ISPW (played by
Richard Durrant, guitar), Simone Rebello's work for Colourscape C, Melvyn
Poore's 'Happily Ever After', and several other works.
Contact: leo@chiltern.demon.co.uk
***
SON-MU '96
Monday, June 17
at Maison de Radio France, Paris
Two concerts: the music of Benjamin Hertz, Lionel Marchetti and Francis
Larvor will be performed at 7 pm; the music of Patrick Ascione, Ilhan
Mmaroglu and Michel Chion at 9 pm. Part of the 'Cycle Acousmatique'
concert series.
Maison de Radio France
SALLE OLIVIER MESSIAEN
116 ave du Pr=E9sident Kennedy
75016 Paris
FRANCE
=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=
=3D CONCERTS
DOGS OF DESIRE: MISCELLANEOUS HOWLS
Friday, June 7, 8:00 PM
at The Kitchen, 512 West 19th Street, New York
David Allen Miller conducts an amplified, 20 piece orchestra of the future
presenting new works by Michael Daugherty, Kamran Ince, Stewart Copeland
and the New York premiere of David Lang's 'Are You Experienced?'. Tickets:
$15.
For reservations and information: (212) 255-5793
Email: kitchen@panix.com
***
DOGS OF DESIRE
Saturday, June 8, 8:00 PM
at The Kitchen, 512 West 19th Street, New York
Todd Levin's 'Parallel Universe', a song cycle for voice, video and chamber
orchestra based on the life of a vagrant, will be performed. A conversation
with the artist will follow. Tickets: $15.
For reservations and information: (212) 255-5793
Email: kitchen@panix.com
***
BANG ON A CAN-SPIT ORCHESTRA
Friday, June 9, 7 & 9 PM
at The Kitchen, 512 West 19th Street, New York
35 classically trained musicians updates the chamber tradition performing
new works which stretch the boundaries of classical music.
For reservations and information: (212) 255-5793
Email: kitchen@panix.com
***
PAMELA Z
Friday, June 9, 8:00 PM
at Footworks, San Francisco
Pamela Z will perform a solo set in an evening with Hip Circle, Jon Weaver
and Sten Rudstrom as part of San Francisco's Festvial of Improvisers.
For more information call festival organizers: (415) 664-8877
Or Footworks: (415) 824-5044
To contact Pamela Z: pamelaz@sirius.com
http://www.sirius.com/~pamelaz
***
CHRISTOPHER PREISSING: FRAGMENTS
June 13 to 15
at the Indianapolis Repertory Theatre Upperstage, Indiana
Multi-Arts performance featuring electronic music, dance, theatre, video
and slides. Tickets: $10.
Contact: 71726.2217@Compuserve.com
***
DAVID BEHRMAN
Friday, June 14, 8:00 PM
at Lotus Music & Dance Studios, 109 West 27th Street, 8th Floor, New York
David Behrman (electronics) will perfom 'Congress of Elders' with Jon
Gibson (sax / flute) and "Blue" Jean Tyranny (keyboards). Admission: $8.
Reservations are strongly recommended.
Information & Reservations: (212) 627-1076
***
BUN CHING LAM / BERTRAM TURETZKY / MARK DRESSER
Saturday, June 22, 9:00 PM
at The Kitchen, 512 West 19th Street, New York
Lam and Dresser perform in The Kitchen, while Turetzky is audio-visually
connected from Santa
Monica. They perform an evening of solos, duets and trios on Qin (Chinese
7-string sitar), piano and bass, uniting Eastern and Western traditions.
Tickets: $15.
For reservations and information: (212) 255-5793
Email: kitchen@panix.com
***
GORDON MONAHAN: MACHINE MODULATION MATRIX
June 27 to 29, 8:00 PM
at The Kitchen, 512 West 19th Street, New York
Monahan returns to The Kitchen as the final stop on his world tour to
present the completed work of this installation that he presented as a
work-in-progress last summer. Monhan's materials include metal, magnets and
steam. Tickets: $15.
For reservations and information: (212) 255-5793
Email: kitchen@panix.com
***
PAMELA Z
Friday, June 28
Salt Lake City, Utah
Pamela Z will perform a solo concert as part of the Utah Arts Festival,
which includes such diverse acts as Laurie Anderson and the Mormon
Tabernacle Choir.
For more information about the festival, call: (800) 322-2428
To contact Pamela Z: pamelaz@sirius.com
http://www.sirius.com/~pamelaz
***
ELECTRONIC MUSIC, NEW FILM AND CHAMBER MUSIC
Saturday, June 29, 8:00 PM
at the Black Box Cinema of Film Museum, Dusseldorf, Germany
Electronic music by Klarenz Barlow, Masahiro Miwa, Frank Schweizer and
Christian Banasik, new chamber works by Hanna Kulenty and Jacek Rogala, and
silent films by Han Richter, Oskar Fischinger and Wilfried Basse will be
presented.
Contact: c.banasik@t-online.de
***
BENOIT MAUBREY / DIE AUDIO GRUPPE
July 10 to 13, 8:00 PM
at The Kitchen, 512 West 19th Street, New York
This performance, entitled 'Audio Ballerinas and Electronic Guys', features
elecro-acoustic clothing such as audio tutus and smoking jackets, rendering
each performer a walking studio, able to record, mix and loop found and
prerecorded sound.
For reservations and information: (212) 255-5793
Email: kitchen@panix.com
=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=
=3D FALL PREVIEWS
SONIC CIRCUITS IV ELECTRONIC MUSIC FESTIVAL
Begins in September
Several cities in the US and Canada
This international experimental music festival, produced by American
Composers' Forum, will take place in Boston, New York, St. Cloud,
Minneapolis, Toronto, Winnipeg and others. To find out how to host a leg in
your city, and for more information, contact:
compfrm@maroon.tc.umn.edu
http://www.umn.edu/nlhome/m111/compfrm
=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=
=3D TO SUBMIT LISTINGS
If you'd like to list an event, simply send us the information. The
information should contain the date(s), place (venue, city), name of event,
type of event (i.e. conference, concert, festival...), description (what's
happening, ticket prices... anything relevant), and where to go (contact
numbers, email, URL and street address) for further info.
Send your information to us at calendar@emf.org
There is no charge for brief listings. For ads in conjunction with
listings, please contact us for rates.
=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=
=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=
=3D=3D=3D
EMF Calendar is a publication of Electronic Music Foundation, Inc.
Electronic Music Foundation
116 North Lake Avenue
Albany NY 12206
USA
(518) 434-4110 Voice
(518) 434-0308 Fax
Calendar@emf.org
http://www.emf.org
##
=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D
Electronic Music Foundation
116 N. Lake Ave.
Albany, NY 12206
USA
http://www.emf.org
518.434.4110 - voice
518.434.0308 - fax
EMF@emf.org - email
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 9 Jun 1996 08:42:53 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Carnography <scrypt@INTERPORT.NET>
Subject: Re: EMF CALENDAR ALERT (fwd)
Pierre Joris:
Your latest post was unusually wise, restrained, tolerant and perceptive.
One question:
> But right now what
> I'm listening to is Messiaen "+concert a quatre" which will be followed
> by Sulochana Brahaspaqti's "Raga Bilaskhani Todi" & Wilhelm Killmayer's
> setting of Holderling songs.
I'm certain we all know Messaien. (Are you speaking of his Quartet for the
End of Time?) But I've never heard of the last two composers you mentioned.
Can you tell us more about Killmayer's settings of H=F6lderlin (who happens
to be one of my favorites)?
All the best,
Rob Hardin
http://www.interport.net/~scrypt
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 9 Jun 1996 09:17:08 -0400
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: EMF CALENDAR ALERT (fwd)
In-Reply-To: <v01540b00ade075518445@[204.74.3.74]>
On Sun, 9 Jun 1996, Carnography wrote:
> I'm certain we all know Messaien. (Are you speaking of his Quartet for th=
e
> End of Time?) But I've never heard of the last two composers you mentione=
d.
> Can you tell us more about Killmayer's settings of H=F6lderlin (who happe=
ns
> to be one of my favorites)?
>=20
> All the best,
>=20
> Rob Hardin
Rob -- the Messiaen is not the "End of time Q" but a late piece=20
(1990-1991) (score completed by his wife Yvonne Loriod after M's death) for=
=20
flute,oboe, piano & cello. Its world premiere recording by the orchestra=20
of the Bastille opera, Myung-Whun Chung conductor, can be found on=20
Deutsche Grammophon 445 947-2.
Killmayer is a German composer (b. 1927) & his "Holderlin -Lieder" is a=20
large (2 cd) double song cycle using late Holderlin poems set for=20
orchestra & tenor & compsoed between 1982 & 1987. It's a strange,=20
powerful work, ranging from the ethereal-metaphysical to the heavy=20
neo-classical germanic -- but fascinating. The CD is Wergo: WER 6245-2.
Sulochana Brahaspati is one of the great traditional ndian vocalists,=20
the raga I mentioned is in the _khyal_ genre & she is accompanied by=20
Sultan Khan (Sarangi) & Anindo Chatterjee (Tabla). [Nimbus CD # NI 5305]
Pierre
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 9 Jun 1996 09:58:21 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Joe Amato <amato@CHARLIE.CNS.IIT.EDU>
Subject: Re: dissin dat higher-in thang
i like what---is it simon?---sd about yale... i know it isn't aldon's
point, but i rather like the idea of pointing to yale's less attractive
aspects... new haven has a shitload of problems, yale has never had a
friendly relationship with the town, yale itself has alla the worst, if
some of the best, ivy trappings... witness the grad. student unionization
effort, and the esteemed faculty's response to same...
let me put it this way: a novelist friend of mine was once offered a job
there, and turned it down... and it tickled me to hear this...
would that i might turn down yale, i know...
anyway, one of the reasons that yale *must* conduct a job search has to do
with meeting eeoc/aap hiring guidelines, no?... now before anybody jumps
out of their computer monitors at me: i'm in favor of such guidelines in
general... but fact is that such guidelines, as well as general policies of
academic hiring, require an ostensibly open search (if i'm hinting at
something i shouldn't be, somebody please correct me here)... ultimately
this ends up costing a lot of us a lot of wasted money... i'm not sure what
to do about this... in any case there's a lot of false leads, and this is
esp. aggravating in academe, where the job market is tighter than newt
gingrich's asshole...
excuse me... i meant bob dole's...
anyway, inside hiring goes on all the time... we've just conducted an
ostensibly open search for a dean here on my campus, and ended up hiring
the inside man (which is not to say that there wasn't some chance he
wouldn't get the job, or that he wasn't the best qualified for the job,
but---)... in three job searches in which i've been directly involved, i
was absolutely astonished at the capriciousness of the process... at the
same time, it's clear to me that who-knows-whom is still a major factor in
hiring decisions (and i've cut some folks some favors in this regard
mself)... and this, again, is aggravated by the job market... it's simply
astonishing to me (i guess i'm easily astonished, no?) that i have some
inside dope on just about every hire i hear about in my presumed
area(s)---either somebody i know left, or somebody i know was also applying
for said job and was under the impression they were going to get it, or i
thought i had a good crack at it, or whatever... again, small world...
i like what aldon sd to me a while back: that given the current vagaries,
we might all swap positions to determine where we might all feel most
comfortable... but as aldon also noted, the "all" here is existing faculty,
this doesn't answer a whit to new blood... ergo my wife leaves her visiting
so's we don't have to live 1500 miles apart, and here we're limping along
on my so-called (tenure-track) salary while she and i consider the ethics
of adjuncting (once again---we've both seen that scene)... but a visiting
position opens up, natch, at her former institution...
i understand and appreciate that not all of you on this list may be
interested in such laments... but just by way of fleshing out the academic
backdrop, esp. when you hear that the "avg." professorial salary across all
disciplines and all postsecondary institutions has finally cracked $50k (as
aaup's mag. _academe_ cover-glossed "our" current salaries, "not so
bad")... to give you some idea of just how misleading this number is, how
disparate the academic experience can be: at my (tech.) institution, the
AVG. assistant prof. makes something like $43k... now our institution ranks
14th. out of 16 tech. institutions in terms of wages (last i
checked)---near the bottom, that is (and with *no* allowance made for the
relatively high cost of living here in chicago)... yet nobody in my
dept.---a humanities dept. that comprises anguish, falafelsy and mystory,
incl. full-tenured profs. with 25 years---nobody is making more than
$40k...
both my wife and i had 'careers' in other professions before becoming
academics... this wasn't for us a decision that was made w/o first having
come to terms with corporate america (in our early and mid-twenties)... we
know from first-hand experience that it's tough all over... but at the same
time, neither of us anticipated the shell-game we're in the midst of now...
which i suppose is why aldon is pissed about the yale situation... i'm
pissed too, not at the guy they hired, but at the system we've (ok?)
constructed... and as with most systemic pissing and moaning, it's
difficult to point a finger in any but an institutional direction...
all best,
joe
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 9 Jun 1996 10:59:33 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Eliza McGrand- CVA Guest <elliza@AI.MIT.EDU>
Subject: the eternal summer reading thing
re: read anything good yet...
bruce weigl's _Sweet Lorraine_ just came out and WORTH waiting for;
carolyn forche's _The Angel of History_ which is getting added, but
slightly wierd resonance from being read at the same time as dave
smith's _Dream Flights_ (they both even have similar covers...) --
keep getting flicked out of time and into a sense of history as
something as palpable as present, i.e. went by a statue of a woman's
head, sort of fierce and french liberty-looking, at decordova museum
and found myself thinking it could have come from a southern church,
or from vienna, or russia, and time went awry for a moment.
and got coaxed into reading peice by meridel lesueur, "Annunciation,"
short story. WOW! WOW! WOW! WOW! WOW! WOW! WOW! WOW! WOW! WOW! WOW!
imagine everything glorious about tillie olson (if possible; there is
so much) mixed with insinuating sound of judy grahn, then add a
particular poignant sweetness and clarity and that is just the
beginning of meridel lesueur. piece i found was in Norton Anth. of
Lit by Women, and i am having stinker of a time finding anything
else. any ideas?
e
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 9 Jun 1996 10:46:52 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Joe Amato <amato@CHARLIE.CNS.IIT.EDU>
Subject: Re: the eternal "summer" reading thing
ok, let's see, my recent "reading," w/capsule commentary:
-- finally got around to part ii of art spiegelman's _maus_... just can't
say enough good about this book...
-- primo levi's _the periodic table_... some beautiful insights here, esp.
if you're into science/chemistry...
-- erica hunt's _local history_... intriguing, demanding writing... this
and c. s. giscombe's _here_ have helped me in my own work on place...
-- (a plug) my wife kass fleisher's novel in manuscript, "blue blazes to
dead woman hollow"... a somewhat conventional novelistic plot about life in
central pennsylvania (present & past) that gradually reveals itself through
assemblage & poetry...
-- _critical inquiry_ winter 96---miriam bratu hansen's piece "schindler's
list is not shoah: the second commandment, popular modernism, and public
memory"... cogent, useful analysis, esp. if you have any interest at all in
theorizing publics...
-- poetic briefs 20... very engaging discussion going on here...
-- chris funk's essay on hypermedia poetry... again, at
http://cnsvax.albany.edu/~poetry/hyperpo.html
-- maria damon's _the dark end of the street_... i've read the intro., and
the chapters on spicer/duncan and stein... and i'm learning something new
on every page...
-- alan golding's _from outlaw to classic_... like ron s. sd a while back,
one of the best shorter summaries of the new critics & co... i like too
alan's approach to canonicity...
-- (another plug) the electronic book review issue on "the politics of
selling out" (incl. a piece by moi, and a newly added "riPOSTe" by michael
berube)... at
http://www.altx.com/ebr
-- the weather... i'm convinced there's a consipiracy here in chicago to
keep me inside, reading...
joe
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 9 Jun 1996 12:17:07 -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: the eternal "summer" reading thing
Hey---is Jeff Hansen on this list still? If so, I need your back
channel address? The one I have (K-12 something) doesn't work.....
Chris Stroffolino....
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 9 Jun 1996 13:31:03 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Anton Vishio <avishio@FREENET.COLUMBUS.OH.US>
Subject: Re: EMF CALENDAR ALERT (fwd)
In-Reply-To: <v01540b00ade075518445@[204.74.3.74]>
On Sun, 9 Jun 1996, Carnography wrote:
> Pierre Joris:
>=20
> Your latest post was unusually wise, restrained, tolerant and perceptive.
> One question:
>=20
> > But right now what
> > I'm listening to is Messiaen "+concert a quatre" which will be followed
> > by Sulochana Brahaspaqti's "Raga Bilaskhani Todi" & Wilhelm Killmayer's
> > setting of Holderling songs.
>=20
> I'm certain we all know Messaien. (Are you speaking of his Quartet for th=
e
> End of Time?) But I've never heard of the last two composers you mentione=
d.
> Can you tell us more about Killmayer's settings of H=F6lderlin (who happe=
ns
> to be one of my favorites)?
>=20
> All the best,
>=20
> Rob Hardin
>=20
>=20
> http://www.interport.net/~scrypt
Thanks also to Pierre Joris for his informative and level-headed posting.
If you're interested in getting to know European music from the last
thirty years or so, Holderlin provides an excellent way in. I've been
listening recently to the cycle of works composed by Bruno Maderna
(1920-1973) around Holderlin's Hyperion poems, in a breathtaking
performance by the ASKO ensemble conducted by Peter Eotvos on Disques
Montaigne (the number on the the back of the CD set is MO 782014). The
music ranges from avant-garde orchestral writing (at which Maderna was
particularly skilled) to almost Renaissance-sounding choral writing to
vintage late 1950's tape composition - pretty hard to sum up, at least
in part because its not clear precisely how Maderna intended all these
works - written over ten years - to go together. But I highly
recommend it. (There are also readings of Holderlin's poetry by Bruno Ganz=
.)
Another place to listen would be to Luigi Nono's Fragmente-Stille, An
Diotima (Deutsche Gramophon 437 720-2), a work for string quartet written
in the late 1970's; the score contains some 40-odd quotations from
Holderlin, not to be recited in performance, but to be used as guides to
expression for the performers, who "may 'sing' them silently as they
experience them - as sounds striving for that 'delicate harmony of the
inner life'", which quote from the composer is a pretty good idea of the
very rarefied (almost Feldman-esque) soundworld of the piece, and of a lot
of Nono's late music.=20
Also to be recommended is the Scardanelli-cycle by Heinz Holliger, who is
not just an oboist who plays all that baroque stuff but a fine composer;
I've not been able to get my hands on a copy of the recording (on ECM) as
yet, but have heard many glowing comments about it.
In addition to the settings by Killmayer, there are also Holderlin
settings by composers of the stature (in Europe, at least) of Gyorgy
Kurtag, Gyorgy Ligeti, Hans Werner Henze, and Wolfgang Rihm, not to
mention by composers of previous generations such as Paul Hindemith and
Benjamin Britten - quite a diverse lot!=20
Anton J. Vishio
avishio@freenet.columbus.oh.us
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 9 Jun 1996 11:19:05 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" <anielsen@ISC.SJSU.EDU>
Subject: Re: singnafump
In-Reply-To: <199606090403.AAA12242@listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu>
chris -- Oppen appears in an unlikely remark made by someone who has been
stopped by a red light in the district around yale --
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 9 Jun 1996 14:42:40 -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: singnafump
When one is stopped by a cop or a deconstructionist around YALE,
all one needs do is yell "OPPEN YOU" or "OPPEN SESAME" and this
can be quite seedy if novel...
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 9 Jun 1996 17:00:54 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Fred E. Maus" <fem2x@FARADAY.CLAS.VIRGINIA.EDU>
Subject: Re: the iliad of hypnotism
In-Reply-To: <v01540b04ade01414d394@[204.74.3.74]> from "Carnography" at Jun
9, 96 01:48:44 am
> Interestingly, I just read a poem by Charles Baxter ("The Last
> String Quartet of Arnold Schoenberg") that seems to exemplify
> everything we tend to renounce: an artless affect, prosaic free
> verse technique, and lucid narrative.
Where does one find this? And what does it have to do with AS's
4th Quartet?
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 9 Jun 1996 17:15:18 -0400
Reply-To: Robert Drake <au462@cleveland.Freenet.Edu>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Robert Drake <au462@CLEVELAND.FREENET.EDU>
Subject: Re: the eternal summer reading thing
re: Meridel Le Sueur--
i've got 2 slim volumes on the shelf (signed, i was lucky enuf to
meet her 'bout 17 years ago):
_Women On the Breadlines_; 4 shortshort stories which originally
appeared in New Masses and The Anvil magazines; West End Press,
(Box 697, Cambridge MA 02139). there's a blurb on the inside
cover for 4 additional titles.
_Rites of Ancient Ripening_; more recent poems, plus a bibliography
in the back (12 books, frm _Annunciation_ in 1935, thru 1974);
Vanilla Press, Minneapolis (no address) 1975.
i prefer the stories, mself, but she was an awe-inspiring individual,
and under-appreciated...
luigi
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 9 Jun 1996 18:06:15 EDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ken Edwards <100344.2546@COMPUSERVE.COM>
Subject: Re: the iliad of hypnotism
> Uh, hey...
>
> Anybody read any good poems lately?
>
> Jordan
>
Try some of these (books), currently on my active shelf ...
- Michael Haslam: A Whole Bauble (Carcanet). In effect, a collected poems
(1977-94), but rewritten somewhat, by a neglected, brilliant poet of the
Cambridge Diaspora (in his own words, "I think I'm a sort of wayward Prynneite,
I suppose, and... etcetera")
- Miles Champion: Compositional Bonbons Placate (Carcanet). Excellent first
collection. Carcanet is getting quite adventurous for a change.
- Paul Celan, tr Pierre Joris: Breathturn (Sun & Moon).
- Catriona Strang: Low Fancy (ECW Press)(again). Wild "translations" of the
Carmina Burana.
- Ralph Hawkins: Flecks (Oasis Books) -- will be hard to obtain for non-UK
readers so I quote:
Off Course, A Little
Looking you'll never see what you miss.
You answer my question asking.
The bridge is there and you look hurt.
But that's all it is.
It's gone now.
It's the turn off.
What is this heart shaped town I long for.
We're off the map.
The next roundabout will change the vantage.
Will take us back, together, all.
- Rob MacKenzie: The Tune Kilmarnock (Form Books). Likewise, rather fugitive.
Harry Gilonis is the publisher. Post-Language poetry in English, Scots and
Gaelic, eg: "suilean uaine over sand / sallow 'hint an fheusag bheag / bumfluff
ejaculate 'tis a // quarter bottle balls all / inevitable poetries though /
pulling God by's beard an /..."
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 9 Jun 1996 18:00:43 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Tim wood <twood@CONNECT.NET>
Subject: Re: *Querzblatz*: Specimens and usage
Not to revive a passed thread, but... to confuse a discussion on an
empty signifier in a non-existant space... Quertzblatz is a wonderful
invention for current (at least thaz my as-sumption) experimental work
with the front end hinting of Queer (yes, as in both theory & pracitce)
and kitchy (hate that one... never can spell it) advertising (Blatz! the
new Beer from Budweiser for you all your BLITZED BLATHERING BUDDIES!!
<enter cheerleaders> ). We now return you to your regular mailing list...
Tim
>From: Carnography, scrypt@INTERPORT.NET
>
>Rrrr-whaaar, you dear and pungent l'construction workers:
>
>Since neologisms tend to congeal--to become stained by the
>context in which they are used--I thought I'd blend in my very
>own (all ideas copyright 1996 by Robert Hardin, professional
>prosodist: DO NOT PARAPHRASE) examples before the cement hardens
>and the color scheme goes to the printer.
>
>Microwave your mixed metaphors for faster flavor,
>
>Rob Hardin
>
>(who requires no insurance or medical coverage, since a certain pelagic
>sonnet by a Pultzer Prize-winning Belgian will allow him to "live forever")
>
> *Querzblatz*: Specimens and usage
>
>IIII. An exact copy of Kandinsky's *Staccato Abstract* was tattooed all
>over the suspect's pulsating, querzblatz hands.
>
>XV. I can't read the letterhead on account of those roosters and their
>querzblatz neo-Italian madrigals.
>
>VV. It is no longer querzblatz to read the ingredients aloud while pouring
>the [table of] contents on yourself.
>
>MCCCXXXCIV. Ron Silliman's new manual, *Teach Yourself Querzblatz
>in Fourteen Days*, is a must for students and professional prosodists alike.
>
>LXDQD. Aphid hail, aphid hail, querzblatz *homopterae* in the local mail!
>
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 9 Jun 1996 18:18:25 -0500
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Tim wood <twood@CONNECT.NET>
Subject: Re: what poetry knows about scientists
>I had the same feeling. Mathematics, in particular, I found a highly creative
>activity, requiring intuitive leaps as well as rigorous logic. Some of group
>theory and what mathematicians call 'foundations' (the intersection of logic,
>set theory and number theory) is especially beautiful.
>
>People often talk about the connections between mathematics & music, but the
>only connection that I found useful at the time was in understanding
>acoustics
My undergrad was in physics. What I found most useful was not the
"connections" or the creative activty per se, but the (and yes what
follows will be considered treasonious in certain P-modern corridors)
almost transcendant ideas behind the physics. It's very rare that
anything I learned in physics will end up in my work (either creative or
scholarly) and often when it does it's nearly subtextual: existing in the
structuring and hints of meaning.
>cultural theorists to even _consider_ the possibility of biological
>influences upon human behaviour.
Seem remarkably close-minded for someone in the humanities. It's not
like any of us have found a "conclusive" scientific way to prove our
points...
>I've rarely tried to involve science in my poetry, and tend to cringe at most
>attempts to write poems about chaos theory.
Is it just me or does it seem that too many people using chaos theory do
not seem to understand the concept?
> _The mathematician defines her space_
>
>
> With time, everything tends
> to zero.
> => leave her.
> * * * *
>
>It amuses me now to recall how many of my colleagues really talked like this,
>using mathematical jargon to describe their personal lives.
Have you shared this with any of your colleagues? I would love to know
the reaction.
Tim
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 9 Jun 1996 20:28:17 -0400
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: the eternal summer reading thing
<sorry Robert that you are seeing this again, I meant to post it to the list
the first time -KT>
Eliza writes:
>>>>imagine everything glorious about tillie olson (if possible; there is
so much) mixed with insinuating sound of judy grahn, then add a
particular poignant sweetness and clarity and that is just the
beginning of meridel lesueur. piece i found was in Norton Anth. of
Lit by Women, and i am having stinker of a time finding anything
else. any ideas?<<<<
Annunciation is a stunning story -- LeSueur is somewhat of a cult figure in
Minnesota (at least she was still alive in her nineties when I left there),
so I'd start with this URL (Hungry Mind Bookstore in St. Paul MN):
http://www.winternet.com/~hungrymi/"
If they don't list any of her works, call the Hungry Mind and ask for the
numbers of the political/small press bookstores in the Twin Cities, I'm
thinking Amazon Books, St. Martin's Table, MayDay books. I've been gone for
almost five years, so I don't know that these bookstores are still in
business.
The book of stories I have is called "Corn Village", (I don't know if it's
still in print, I bought it at a used bookstore), but she has published a
fair amount, mostly with small press.
Hope this helps somewhat, sorry I don't have URLs or ph. #s for those other
stores, but someone at Hungry Mind would help with them. They're *excellent*
about phone orders, too.
Warmest,
Kim
roseread@aol.com
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 10 Jun 1996 03:27:41 -0400
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "k.a. hehir" <angelo@MUSTANG.UWO.CA>
Subject: Re: dissin dat higher-in thang
In-Reply-To: <Pine.3.88.9606090059.A5892-0100000@bosshog.arts.uwo.ca>
in reply to tom's post.
as an undergrad with hopes of some kind of post grad
i'm now questioning the decision to pursue poetry
maybe bovine psychiatry is the place for me
of course many will add moving
to the proper london
will cost me less than
my shrink bills here in londonOnt.
how will I convince them to lay on leathery couches?
KEVIN
just a posit
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 10 Jun 1996 03:45:52 -0400
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "k.a. hehir" <angelo@MUSTANG.UWO.CA>
Subject: Re: the eternal "summer" reading thing
In-Reply-To: <199606091546.KAA25498@charlie.cns.iit.edu>
mr.Amato,
what's a shoah (and i, with the the only house with christmas lights on
my block,-- i did play "Chutzpah" as a kid-- but then if if it is not a
yiddish term i've offended many people- a round of shibboleths anyone?).
thanks,
kevin
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 10 Jun 1996 03:49:14 -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: Visual Poetry Page Gone Mad
Folks--
Kenny G's Visual Poetry Page has gone wild. Submissions are being received
daily. Please let anyone you know who does Visual/Concrete Poetry that we
exist and that we encourage submissions. Currently on view at:
http://wfmu.org/~kennyg/visualpoetry/visualpoetry.html
ViSuAL pOeTry
Susan Bee
from "Talespin" (Granary Books 1995)
Example 1
Example 2
Example 3
Charles Bernstein
from "Veil" (Xeroxial Editions 1987/1976)
Example 1
Example 2
Example 3
from "Language of Boquets" (Hot Bird Mfg, 1991)
Example 1
John Cayley
Various works selected from the Shadoof Home Page
Example 1
Example 2
Example 3
Example 4
Example 5
Example 6
Henrik Drescher
from "Too Much Bliss" (Granary Books 1992)
Example 1
Example 2
Example 3
Johanna Drucker
from "The HISTORY of the/my WOR L D" (Granary Books 1995)
Example 1
Example 2
Example 3
Kenneth Goldsmith & Joan La Barbara
73 Poems
Dick Higgins
i.e., or vice versa
AN ARK
In The Realms of the REAL:
Found Poetry & Writings of the Insane
The Jack Free Ads Series
Bill Luoma
200Hex
Bindfix
Frank
Pipes
Volvox
Janan Platt
Internal Nature
True Speech Poems
Blair Seagram
Short Wave
Ante Prima
Alpha B&W
Cry Me A River
Nerve Tree
Ward Tietz
Introduction
buckle
bingo
calc
glug
swarm
Jody Zellen
Example 1
Example 2
Example 3
Example 4
Example 5
=======================================================================
Kenneth Goldsmith
kgolds@panix.com
kennyg@bway.net
kennyg @wfmu.org
v.212.260.4081
611 Broadway, #702
NY NY 10012
work: http://wfmu.org/~kennyg/Ubu/index.html
play: http://wfmu.org/~kennyg
Beans Dear?
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 10 Jun 1996 04:10:35 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "k.a. hehir" <angelo@MUSTANG.UWO.CA>
Subject: stays fresh longer
In-Reply-To: <Pine.3.88.9606100310.A10399-0100000@mustang-a.uwo.ca>
This is a sentence.
This is a sentence.
This is a sentence.
Is this a new sentence?
No, just the next sentence.
kev
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 10 Jun 1996 06:31:39 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Charles Alexander <chax@MTN.ORG>
Subject: Re: the eternal summer reading thing
>Annunciation is a stunning story -- LeSueur is somewhat of a cult figure in
>Minnesota (at least she was still alive in her nineties when I left there),
>so I'd start with this URL (Hungry Mind Bookstore in St. Paul MN):
>
>http://www.winternet.com/~hungrymi/"
>
>If they don't list any of her works, call the Hungry Mind and ask for the
>numbers of the political/small press bookstores in the Twin Cities, I'm
>thinking Amazon Books, St. Martin's Table, MayDay books. I've been gone for
>almost five years, so I don't know that these bookstores are still in
>business.
A cult figure in Minnesota indeed &, I think, among leftist (working left
more than those who come out of political theory, although there's certainly
lots of mix & overlap here) literary folk far beyond Minnesota. I would
definitely think Hungry Mind would be a help. I would also imagine that some
used bookstores in Minneapolis might be, and I would suggest The Book House,
whose phone number is 612-331-1430. I would also imagine Amazon Books
(oldest feminist bookstore in the country) in Minneapolis would be helpful.
Their phone number is 612-338-6560.
Here are the numbers for the other bookstores Kim Tedrow mentions:
St. Martin's Table: 612-339-3920
Mayday Bookstore: 612-333-4719
Several years ago, in its Winter Book series, Minnesota Center for Book Arts
published LeSueur's Winter Prairie Woman in a beautiful limited edition,
with illustrations from linoleum blocks cut by Sandy Spieler. Sandy is the
artistic director of Heart of the Beast Theater, a performance/puppet
theater company something in the mold of Bread & Puppet Theater, but with
very much its own identity, one of the real treasures of the Twin Cities,
particularly with its annual May Day parade & festival.
LeSueur was still alive when I moved here to work at Minn. Center for Book
Arts three years ago, and I haven't heard anything about her passing on, but
I have wondered if she's still alive. Anyoe know for sure?
charles
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 10 Jun 1996 13:07:32 BST
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ira Lightman <I.Lightman@UEA.AC.UK>
Subject: post language poetry, post modernist poetry, fakes
On Sun, 9 Jun 1996 18:06:15 EDT Ken Edwards wrote:
> - Rob MacKenzie: The Tune Kilmarnock (Form Books).
Likewise, rather fugitive.
> Harry Gilonis is the publisher. Post-Language poetry in
English, Scots and
> Gaelic, eg: "suilean uaine over sand / sallow 'hint an
fheusag bheag / bumfluff
> ejaculate 'tis a // quarter bottle balls all / inevitable
poetries though /
> pulling God by's beard an /..."
Although I am a fan and friend of Rob's work, the term
post-language poetry does not apply to him in anything but
the sloppy current sense ie: "poetry that recognizes that
there was a movement called language poetry famous
(and, as the small number of people who read it before
talking about it - usually dismissively - know, best)
in the eighties, and that we do not wish to be expected
to be language poets ourselves". There is very little
engagement with Coolidge, Hejinian, Silliman, Andrews,
Bernstein, Howe, Weiner, Harryman, Watten, Robinson, Day,
Dreyer, Greenwald, any of the poets of In The American
Tree in Rob's work. He doesn't read it, it's not on his
bookshelves, he rarely talks to me about any example of
it, it's not there in the attitude to language or presence
in any number games, paragraph organisation, or relation
of page to page, or dual columns, in the way that it is
in any of the poets mentioned. Rob's poetic, and I esteem
it, seems much more related to creating a painterly effect,
of the page as canvas which, at the most, related to Susan
Howe. But his poems are very much narrative, spoken by a
coherent I, even if (very powerfully) it is a bi-cultural,
sometimes bi-lingual, I. This use is much more like the
balladeers and mainstream poets which he (and I) like, who
don't get much of a look-in in British avant-garde circles.
Thus he is more accurately a post-Cambridge, or
post-Subvoicive or post-Writers Forum poet (these last 2
are both London reading circles), in that he by and large
ignores most avant-garde British poetry and works with
other British "non pc" sources.
At most, his idiom, and often Miles Champion's,
another young poet mentioned by Ken, could be called
"surreal" - and Harry Gilonis, Rob's publisher, is much
more interested in surrealism than in LangPo, he says
to me that he only really likes Susan Howe, and again
it is for the resonance, the presence, of her placement
of words visually. Not, a key LangPo position for many,
the arbitrariness, the contigency, the non-I, of the
form (isn't this why Silliman, for example, has expressed
low interest in Howe on this list in the past?). Rob is
more interested in the unconscious babble of automatic
"unconscious", which is also presence. The resurgence
of such "non-referential" language idiom in late 80s and
90s British poetry is as far as many Brit poets have gone
in making a nod to LangPo, but it is, not being contingent
but "the unconscious", in my view, inimical to LangPO-
one of the things LangPoets argue against - see Watten's
Total Syntax essays. Rob's greatest contact with LangPo
was being in a creative writing class run by Stephen
Rodefer, who is, at best, a hanger-on of LangPo, anyway,
and only uses his links with LangPo to cloud himself in
hipper-than-thou avant-gardism with no politics or theory,
and to act up the stereotype of LangPoet=Paul De Man=
amoralist, which has of course endeared him to Brit avant
gardists who hate and fear LangPo and want ammo against it.
I use the "post" prefix here, I believe, in the
way Ken does (and I want to stress here that I am Ken
himself is a major friend of LangPo, as one of the few
British editors at the time, in the 80s, to publish it
and review it, and see it reviewed, warmly, this is not
an attack on Ken's being informed about LangPo). In other
words, Rob is post-Britishavantgarde in the way that Ken
says he is post-Langpoetry; ie Rob shows a fleeting
courteous interest in the avantgardism of the immediately
previous generation but basically rejects it, does not
allude with it, does not wrestle with it.
This is, in my opinion, the way a lot of self-
designated post-modernism works. It is actually pre-
modernist, and makes very little engagement with Pound
or the sides of Williams and Zukofsky and Creeley and
so on that are difficult (see Ron Silliman's essay
Z-Sited Path, in _The New Sentence_). It is often
anti-modernist, reactionary, attacking a forebear
by using mainstream terms of abuse "mad", "not poetry",
"easy", "a clique", and thus trying to win friends
among the ignorant - not support the quest to be
radical in all groups, just their own, ie not the
principle of freedom, but their own freedom.
Whereas the LangPoets use of, for example,
Stein, is not anti-modernist (in the way I'm saying
that a lot of British avant-garde poetry is, in fact,
anti-language poetry) but genuinely post-modernist -
not least because in Silliman's case, he is very much,
in my view, a Poundian, absorbing and wrestling with
a lot of Pound. But his, and many of the other
writers' in The Tree, is the best post-modernism: ie,
I refuse to take on the paideuma, the canons and
exclusions, of the previous groundbreakers; I shall
take on *equally* difficult poetics. That is actually
what Pound meant by make it new; *renew*. There are
very few British who have taken on LangPo and bettered
it. Not least in the political example of Stein, that
sexuality may be both exploratory, queer, and not
attached to angry young man's "anti-bourgeois" thuggery,
or self-mocking "I'm a camp hairdresser me" harmless
kitsch.
Very best,
Ira Lightman
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 10 Jun 1996 08:37:32 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Eliza McGrand- CVA Guest <elliza@AI.MIT.EDU>
Subject: update on meridel lesueur -- good news
since the matter appears to be in question, and i would guess that we
all enjoy good news, here it is: meridel lesueur is not only alive,
but still writing! physical limitations, however, have made it
difficult for her to write as much as she has in the past. she
continues to read a fair amount.
i don't know if it is realistic, but be damned to realism: i hope
there will be new writing by her published soon.
i arrive at my news of her via the friend who coaxed me into reading her
work, jo grant (jgrant@bookzen.com). jo lives near her and visits with
her frequently and would be as happy to pass on good wishes and praise
for her work as meridel lesueur would be to receive them.
this is not an entirely disinterested message -- "poetics" is clearly
a mailing list of numerous effective and successful academicians and
scholars. anyone writing about meridel lesueur, or using her work as
part of theoretical speculation, will be helping get and keep her
writing in print, n'est ce pas? maybe even getting and keeping her in
the Canon (if bloom and co. can be got to look the other way while
non-DWEM's pass the through the holey-city).
e
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 10 Jun 1996 08:51:49 -0400
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Gwyn McVay <gmcvay1@OSF1.GMU.EDU>
Subject: John Felstiner
In-Reply-To: <199606101237.IAA23141@toast.ai.mit.edu>
Does anybody in poetics land have a snail address/other best means of
getting in touch with John Felstiner? Backchannel is perfectly groovy.
w
typo soup is thick today
the line-noise-afflicted
Gwyn
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 10 Jun 1996 10:16:28 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Charles Alexander <chax@MTN.ORG>
Subject: Re: the eternal summer reading thing
>re: read anything good yet...
the reading list is piling up, as always.
just completed:
Leslie Scalapino, Defoe (Sun & Moon, 1984). For me, the most exhilarating
work by Leslie Scalapino to date. Like learning a new language. A must.
Leslie Scalapino, The Front Matter, Dead Souls (Wesleyan, 1996). Also a
treat, although its momentum seems to me more pushed than in Defoe, which is
more various in how it moves, from phrase to phrase, part to part. I have a
review of this one coming out in the summer issue of Rain Taxi, a Twin
Cities review journal which is fairly new.
yet to read:
Issues 5, 6, & 7 of Big Allis. Very fine journal I kept up with on the early
issues, but missed some and am now catching up. I note Jessica Grim's
departure as an editor, and I am certain she will be missed. I'd love to see
more of her work.
Chain 3. Leafing through, some striking visual work included.
Catherine Walsh, Pitch (Pig Press, 1994)
wet roof clear brown beyond
buffeted flowers till light changed
shade tone more than grey effectively
impeding adumbration moving
lines space (racing point to point)
how many in or out does it take
each an anchorage in view of the
wind (the sea) marathon
railway line sea side of a lonely
night walking dark rocks shift water
breaks
Maurice Scully, The Basic Colours (Pig Press, 1994). From this one I'll
quote a poem relating to another recent thread on this poetics list -- this
is one of several poems in the book beginning "sonnet/" --
sonnet/ reach for the spray paint! the images
were the last layer. the layers cracked
& dried. let me see. the box was made of
glass, mainly. watching the graph-paper
slowly emerge from where the two worlds
hit as such, let me show you, a hybrid, a
raw image, emerging from an instrument,
fascinated by this fragile film, awe-struck,
rooted to the spot etc. they murder you
in the mountains, they beat you in the
foothills, in the lowlands, beware: quite
an endearing little country. I have precisely
what you need. each roll of thunder spreads
& fissures, each a different, similar drama-
carpet in the dark. syn. copating flashes.
dauntingly stolid I thought I'd . . . I see.
look at that & tell me what you see. inside
there ar some beautiful verbs; outside there
is the outside. peering over the fence at
the outside one evening a gigantic mosquito
swerved past my head & crashed into a tree.
the tree shuddered & a large branch cracked
off. just missed the dog. the cat froze. the
mosquito stood elegant & terrible on her high
legs. the proboscis could kill a man. what is
the name of the noise of the rain?
Paul Celan, Breathturn, trans. by Pierre Joris (Sun & Moon, 1995)
Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Dictee (Third Woman Press, Berkeley, 1995, originally
pub. 1982 by Tanam Press). I know, not new, but it's part of my reading
list, and is one of the books on my desk here, still.
Jeff Derksen, Dwell (Talonbooks, 1993)
Jeff Dersen, Down Time (Talonbooks, 1990)
Will Alexander, Asia & Haiti (Sun & Moon, 1995)
Reading other books as well, for work & pleasure. But this is most of the
current pile of poetry reading, at least for now.
charles
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 10 Jun 1996 11:32:35 -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: no weirdos please (apologies to kevin davies)
Dear poetics List People--
I will be moving on or about July 1st and resigning from the list and
am curious if anyone wants to BUY A MODEM. It's a $180 value. A FAX
MODEM, they say--though I'm too much of a clutz to figure out the fax
part of it. Anyway, if not buy---will trade (or *@!k) for books or
something. Please contact me via email if interested. Thanks, Chris
Stroffolino
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 10 Jun 1996 12:19:51 -0500
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Joe Amato <amato@CHARLIE.CNS.IIT.EDU>
Subject: Re: the eternal "summer" reading thing
yo, i don't know exactly what "shoah" means mself (and i checked when i
read bransen's piece to see if i had any reference to it here at home, but
no luck)... it's the title of a 1985 film (by claude lanzmann) dealing with
the holocaust (which i haven't mself seen), and it's clear from the way
bransen uses the term in her piece that it's interchangeable with "the
holocaust"... but if anybody knows the derivation of "shoah," i'd love to
know mself...
joe
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 10 Jun 1996 07:44:47 -1000
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From: Robert J Wilson <rwilson@HAWAII.EDU>
Subject: Re: the eternal summer reading thing
In-Reply-To: <199606101516.KAA01378@freedom.mtn.org>
Re "Dictee" as 'summer reading,' it is hard to get a hold of but see
Walter Lew's very intriguing as well as challenging response text to the
dessicated Korean/American sublimity of Cha herself (available at that
small press distributor on San Pablo Avenue, Berkeley) and a (rather too
caustic) critique of ally/enemey Walter Lew's agon for priority with Cha
(and the Cha critical industry as centered in Elaine Kim et al in
"Northern California" hegemony over Asian-American professionalization of
literature underway) by Rob Wilson in boundary 2 two issues back. And, as
many of you know, Walter's "Premonitions" and "Muae" projects have
virtually reinvented and reimagined the whole field of Asian American
diasporic poetics and politics in one fell swoop, revealing how cyborgian,
mixed, and engaged in semiotic/social transformation they had been all
along despite the "yellow light" being administered by the not-so-open
"Open Boat" poetics of Garrett Hongo et al. Anyway, it is a new day in
that field, and Walter has done us all a blessing in the "machinic
assemblages" of language work he has put together. So, yes, (re) read the
sublime Cha by all means, but do check out Walter Lew's remappings in
"Muae" and "Premonitions" and (if you have that boring and empty
professional journal around) read "boundary 2" on the side of the sins and
crimes of professionalization/careerism/stupidity that mar our days in the
republic.
With regards from the Pacific/Asia death of Captain Cook school of poetics
(okay, on this language monstrosity, see Susan Schultz's 'postlocal'
"Tinfish" journal and chapbook series where else but on the Buffalo
electronic center while you are musing around this summer), Rob Wilson
On Mon, 10 Jun 1996, Charles Alexander wrote:
> >re: read anything good yet...
>
> the reading list is piling up, as always.
>
> just completed:
>
> Leslie Scalapino, Defoe (Sun & Moon, 1984). For me, the most exhilarating
> work by Leslie Scalapino to date. Like learning a new language. A must.
>
> Leslie Scalapino, The Front Matter, Dead Souls (Wesleyan, 1996). Also a
> treat, although its momentum seems to me more pushed than in Defoe, which is
> more various in how it moves, from phrase to phrase, part to part. I have a
> review of this one coming out in the summer issue of Rain Taxi, a Twin
> Cities review journal which is fairly new.
>
>
>
> yet to read:
>
> Issues 5, 6, & 7 of Big Allis. Very fine journal I kept up with on the early
> issues, but missed some and am now catching up. I note Jessica Grim's
> departure as an editor, and I am certain she will be missed. I'd love to see
> more of her work.
>
> Chain 3. Leafing through, some striking visual work included.
>
> Catherine Walsh, Pitch (Pig Press, 1994)
>
> wet roof clear brown beyond
> buffeted flowers till light changed
> shade tone more than grey effectively
> impeding adumbration moving
> lines space (racing point to point)
> how many in or out does it take
> each an anchorage in view of the
> wind (the sea) marathon
> railway line sea side of a lonely
> night walking dark rocks shift water
> breaks
>
> Maurice Scully, The Basic Colours (Pig Press, 1994). From this one I'll
> quote a poem relating to another recent thread on this poetics list -- this
> is one of several poems in the book beginning "sonnet/" --
>
> sonnet/ reach for the spray paint! the images
> were the last layer. the layers cracked
> & dried. let me see. the box was made of
> glass, mainly. watching the graph-paper
> slowly emerge from where the two worlds
> hit as such, let me show you, a hybrid, a
> raw image, emerging from an instrument,
> fascinated by this fragile film, awe-struck,
> rooted to the spot etc. they murder you
> in the mountains, they beat you in the
> foothills, in the lowlands, beware: quite
> an endearing little country. I have precisely
> what you need. each roll of thunder spreads
> & fissures, each a different, similar drama-
> carpet in the dark. syn. copating flashes.
> dauntingly stolid I thought I'd . . . I see.
> look at that & tell me what you see. inside
> there ar some beautiful verbs; outside there
> is the outside. peering over the fence at
> the outside one evening a gigantic mosquito
> swerved past my head & crashed into a tree.
> the tree shuddered & a large branch cracked
> off. just missed the dog. the cat froze. the
> mosquito stood elegant & terrible on her high
> legs. the proboscis could kill a man. what is
> the name of the noise of the rain?
>
> Paul Celan, Breathturn, trans. by Pierre Joris (Sun & Moon, 1995)
>
> Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Dictee (Third Woman Press, Berkeley, 1995, originally
> pub. 1982 by Tanam Press). I know, not new, but it's part of my reading
> list, and is one of the books on my desk here, still.
>
> Jeff Derksen, Dwell (Talonbooks, 1993)
>
> Jeff Dersen, Down Time (Talonbooks, 1990)
>
> Will Alexander, Asia & Haiti (Sun & Moon, 1995)
>
> Reading other books as well, for work & pleasure. But this is most of the
> current pile of poetry reading, at least for now.
>
> charles
>
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 10 Jun 1996 10:45:39 -0700
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From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" <anielsen@ISC.SJSU.EDU>
Subject: Re: hire the higher?
In-Reply-To: <199606100404.AAA07638@listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu>
tom -- yes, such things certainly are a bit subjective -- BUT, at least
in this here public institution where I work, we DO have to be able to
point to certain demonstrable accomplishments when we are asked to
justify having hire prof. X over prof. Y, and we are indeed asked to
provide such justification regularly -- That is, for example, if we were
to hire someone for a senior position who had considerably fewer
publications than a large number of the other candidates, or considerably
less experience, we would indeed be asked to commit to paper the
subjective grounds of our decision that prof. xs one book, for instance,
was SO remarkable as to counter prof. Y's many books (which IS, I hasten
to add, possible) -- this is not a perfect mechanism, of course -- it may
be that the inquiry is conducted by a venal committee set upon
rubber-stamping our decision (though this has yet to occur) --
Again, I would never argue that this is the best, or even a good system,
but I think it generally a good idea that SOMEBODY looks into these
things to see that I don't simply hire all my best buddies from grad.
school, or, far more likely to happen in my own case, my wife.
But the real objection I make is to the phoniness of the original search
-- A well-known case of this recently took place at a public institution
on this coast -- (NOT in English -- this wasn't a job I applied for) --
several people told me independently before the application deadline had
arrived who was going to be hired for the position, and they were right
-- this meant that several hundred hard-pressed job-seekers, at least a
few of whom appeared to be demonstrably more qualified than the
successful candidate, went to considerable time and expense delivering
materials to the department in question -- and it does take a lot of time
and money to do all this --
yes, we can simply remark that such shit happens, but I am foolish enough
to believe that we had begun to make some small progress towards more
equitable hiring procedures prior to the recent spate of cuts,
lacerations, edicts from Governors, etc -- In the system I am tenured
in, the chancellor wants to put greater power in the hands of deans when
it comes to deciding pay raises -- this is presented under the guise of
decentralization, putting power closer to the people affected, etc. --
but it's a pretty transparent move away from the more democratic review
procedures we had been developing --
undsoweiter
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 10 Jun 1996 10:54:49 -0700
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From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" <anielsen@ISC.SJSU.EDU>
Subject: Re: eeoc/p/etc.
In-Reply-To: <199606100404.AAA07638@listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu>
Joe -- Not even Yale is "required" to hold a national search in order to
promote somebody from Associate to Full professor -=- this IS NOT an eeoc
question in this instance -- Yale, an institution that routinely refuses
to tenure highly qualified faculty, is up to something quite different
here --
and yes, Yale sucks, but just maybe this is one reason that the sucking
continues? This "private" institution is heavily subsidized by people
like you and me --
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 10 Jun 1996 11:01:49 -0700
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From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" <anielsen@ISC.SJSU.EDU>
Subject: Re: Oppen Sesame
In-Reply-To: <199606100404.AAA07638@listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu>
I love that -- a world where the name "Oppen" opens doors -- "Out the
window with the window," Corso said in one of his better moments --
ADD TO SUMMER READING
new Kelsey Street book by Erica Hunt -- It's a beauty --
(as Oppen warned us, though, one day the knob comes off in your hand)
Some time has passed and now everyone should know where they're sleeping
in Maine -- So how about everybody who's going to Maine for the 50s
conference letting everybody else know -- I know there have been schedule
changes -- It was a lot of fun at the MLA putting faces and their
attendant persons together with names known from this list (((
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 10 Jun 1996 14:26:52 EST
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From: "Burt Kimmelman -@NJIT" <kimmelman@ADMIN.NJIT.EDU>
Subject: Re: Oppen Sesame
Okay Aldonet al.,
I'll be arriving in Orono on Friday afternoon and leaving on Sunday early
afternoon, and am staying at the motel near the campus. I'll be chairing
the William Bronk session of papers on Saturday and giving my own paper
on Bronk and G Oppen on Sunday early morning.
Et tu?
Burt
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 10 Jun 1996 15:07:19 EST
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From: Keith Tuma <KWTUMA@MIAMIU.MUOHIO.EDU>
Subject: Re: post language poetry, post modernist poetry, fakes
In-Reply-To: Message of Mon, 10 Jun 1996 13:07:32 BST from
<I.Lightman@UEA.AC.UK>
Thanks to Ira for the post on British readings (or absence of same) in language
poetry. A question--for Ira or anybody else--along these lines. There's a
longish letter from Jeremy Prynne to Steve McCaffery taking up the matter of
language poetry, and I'm wondering if this letter has been published somewhere.
Somebody showed me a copy of it once, but I've not been able to learn whether
it's been published anywhere yet, or if there's a response from McCaffery etc.
Grateful for any information on this.
Keith Tuma
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 10 Jun 1996 16:27:20 -0400
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From: Carnography <scrypt@INTERPORT.NET>
Subject: Re: the iliad of hypnotism
Fred E. Maus typed:
> > Interestingly, I just read a poem by Charles Baxter ("The Last
> > String Quartet of Arnold Schoenberg")...
> Where does one find this? And what does it have to do with AS's
> 4th Quartet?
1. One finds the poem in Baxter's collection,
_Imaginary Paintings and Other Poems_ (Paris Review Editions).
2. The poem has to do with letters about the quartet written by
Schoenberg while in hospital. It seems to be a companion piece
to Baxter's poem on Erik Satie, which I've only seen in the early
Eighties anthology, Coming Attractions.
Have I mentioned that I quite liked the Schoenberg poem?
For some reason, Baxter's free verse seems to have a formal
finish, an attention to line breaks, an irrational openness,
that is reminiscent of the Romantics, and possibly of
certain poems by James Schyler. I haven't much use for
William Stafford's common-sense tone and next-to-absent
prosody, yet I've been a fan of Baxter's best work for almost
a decade. Yet both appear superficially similar. Why is that?
Also, Baxter embraces history--even European history--
while Stafford seems to affect Hemingway's disdain for
literature's so-called preciosity. Stafford maintains
a neither-nor approach to surface tension, a Writing
Degree Theroux faux lucidity. But Baxter seems attentuated
to semantic fields, and modulates diction along with (or
against) the rhythm.
***********
One's entire literary enterprise is "artificial" in
the literal sense, isn't it? So what's the good in denying
the artificiality of one's own project? Stafford seems
"insufficiently synthetic," as Charles Bernstein once
said of the Surrealists. That is, insufficiently
idiomatic, insufficiently opaque; unable to a create
a resonant sound or rhythm beyond that of the narrative
and the procession of pictures it conjures. Stafford reads
like Marguerite Duras gone wrong.
All the best,
Rob Hardin
PS: Has anyone noticed that email forces the user to make line-break
decisions? Could this be one more reason for the current
explosion of online poetry? Even emoticons seem
a peculiar notation designed for inter
-disciplinary use.
http://www.interport.net/~scrypt
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 10 Jun 1996 15:37:31 -0500
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From: Joe Amato <amato@CHARLIE.CNS.IIT.EDU>
Subject: Re: eeoc/p/etc.
aldon, yes, i see your point... i failed to grasp that they just up and
promoted the guy (perhaps b/c i was passed over for a tenure-track once
mself while on a visiting)... it bothers me to make an issue of eeoc in any
case.. the yale situation just plain sucks...
the Big 1... or
YES
WE HAVE NO
BA
NA
NAS///
best,
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 10 Jun 1996 17:07:25 -0500
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From: Chris Stroffolino <LS0796@CNSVAX.ALBANY.EDU>
Subject: Re: Oppen Sesame
I am arriving Wednesday afternoon (hopefully in time for) my panel
and staying to at least saturday AM---and POSSIBLY later. Will be rooming
with a Vancourite named Andrew who I've never met. I don't know the
people who are going to feed me (F O'H). Look forward to meeting y'all. cs
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 11 Jun 1996 10:21:49 GMT+1200
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
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From: wystan <w.curnow@AUCKLAND.AC.NZ>
Organization: English Dept. - Univ. of Auckland
Subject: Re: stays fresh longer
Comments: To: angelo@MUSTANG.UWO.CA
>Date: Mon, 10 Jun 1996 04:10:35 -0400
>Reply-to: UB Poetics discussion group
><POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
>From: "k.a. hehir" <angelo@MUSTANG.UWO.CA>
>Subject: stays fresh longer
>To: Multiple recipients of list POETICS
><POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
>
>This is a sentence.
>This is a sentence.
>This is a sentence.
>Is this a new sentence?
>No, just the next sentence.
>
>kev
>
Come on
man
i got parole
w.
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 10 Jun 1996 18:51:39 -0400
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From: Carnography <scrypt@INTERPORT.NET>
Subject: Re: the iliad of hypnotism
I typed:
> 2. The poem has to do with letters about the quartet written by
> Schoenberg while in hospital.
To clarify:
The poem cites letters written by Schoenberg while in hospital.
The subject is (often ostensibly but always obliquely) his last
string quartet. Supposedly, the quartet is all "about" American
nurses, an idea which, like a good part-time modernist, I
don't particularly like. However, my (and Schoenberg's)
postromantic side seems slightly more at home with the idea.
Also: Thanks, Tim Wood, for being kind enough to re-cite
my querzblatz list. And thanks,too, to the person who invented
the term--who *was* that exactly? I'd like to remember and
acknowledge her (I think she was a her), since the defining
act of mediocrity is to refuse to acknowledge good work.
All the best,
Rob Hardin
http://www.interport.net/~scrypt
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 10 Jun 1996 20:16:32 PDT
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From: Jerry Rothenberg <jrothenb@CARLA.UCSD.EDU>
Word came today that Bert Schierbeck, who was one of the truly classy
postwar poets, died yesterday at his home in Amsterdam. Anyone who
spent any time among the Dutch poets would have known him: a
wonderfully present & wonderfully life-affirming man, who broke much
new ground in poetry & prose & in the necessary links between them. It
was always a great pleasure to drink & talk with him -- talk (really) more
than drink -- and though he was ailing & under sentence for the last few
years, I hope he kept it going to the end.
What follows is in no sense an obituary but the commentary that
Pierre Joris and I wrote for inclusion with several of his poems in the
second volume of _Poems for the Millennium .
Signed off, with love.
jr
BERT SCHIERBECK
there comes over us / that awful silence / which we saw in picture
books / of animals in that vast sort of space / where they almost didn t
exist at all / drifting in the mist of a still / bigger animal that devours us
all. (B.S.)
The work emerges from the vortex of the European & Dutch avant-
garde (post-World War II), with affiliations to the mixed-means poetics
of Cobra (page 000) &, at a greater distance, American poets like
Williams, Olson, Burroughs. The defining breakthrough is his creation,
circa 1950, of the _compositional novel_, in which the stated aim is the
removal of the borderlines of the _I_ and their redistribution -- for him,
as others, an act of defiance against imposed, inherited notions of the
predetermined Self. Regarding the early means employed he writes
(1952): [quote] At that time I wrote down on scraps of paper every
conversation I heard, all the words I came across; I saved clippings
from newspapers, I traveled through Spain and took notes on what I
saw along the road, at the outdoor cafis, all kinds of conversations and
forms of life. That can all be recovered in the book. Arranged upon a
rhythmic base that was determined by _the breath of the people,_ which
we have in common. Everything carefully, typographically divided up to
make the whole surveyable.[unquote] Moving from prose to verse -- or holding
some rich ground in between -- the resultant form works toward the
creation of cross sections of reality where everything rhymes.
His long novel-poems available in English include _Shape of the
Voice_, _Cross Roads_, and _Keeping It Up_, along with short works
like _The Sun: Day_ presented here.
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 10 Jun 1996 20:27:16 -0700
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From: Herb Levy <herb@ESKIMO.COM>
Subject: Re: morty
>There is a book on/by Feldman I'm aware of, but can't remember the title
>now. Mostly anecdotes and lectures of his (german/english edition, i seem
>to remember a complicated story behind the reason for this). Available
>through Larry Polanski's press (turtle island?)
One or two more things on the Feldman book, which has already been well
identified. It's great & very funny. The long final transcription of his
Darmstadt talk is hilarious: If only they'd make the tapes available. Oh
well. It was available from Frog Peak, Larry Polansky's distribution
collective, but I didn't see it on their Web site when I gave it a cursory
look just now:
<http://www.sover.net/~frogpeak/>
so it may be out of print as Rod suggests.
However, there are plenty of very good & hard to come by recordings,
scores, texts, & tributes at this Web site. Including the wonderful mag
Soundings, put out by composer Peter Garland which includes several
festschrift-type items: a special issue on Ives, Ruggles & Varese; an ish
on James Tenney; most of the early serious writing on Nancarrow.
As an aside here, let me put in a good word for the new book by Kyle Gann
on Nancarrow which Rod mentioned - it's expensive, but many academic
libraries probably purchased it, so some of us here can probably get a hold
of it - it's very, very good. For that matter, if you end up looking for
Garland's Soundings in a library, note that it's the journal with the Santa
fe address, there are several others with the same name.
In other Feldman news, there was a good piece by Clark Coolidge on Feldman
a few years back in Sulfur (I think).
& those of you near New York City may want to consider checking out one or
more of the four Feldman concerts at Lincoln Center in early August,
including a concert with Kronos playing the six-hour single movement (with
no interruptions) String Quartet #2. If I can finish enough work on the
forthcoming CDs to need to talk with distributors by then, I'm going to try
to hear as many of these as I can.
Herb Levy
herb@eskimo.com
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 11 Jun 1996 16:01:08 GMT+1200
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From: Tony Green <t.green@AUCKLAND.AC.NZ>
Organization: The University of Auckland
Subject: Re: proto proto yahoo
Eryque, say more abt the horoscopes that you want, most of the NZ ones are
syndicated from London someone told me. Do you want really stupid
short ones that cd apply to anyone. Or long ones, ditto. There was
one kind that always used to end with advice: Be kind. Be wary.
Be...etc. I made a collection of these one time. Why not make them
up yrself? best
Tony Green,
e-mail: t.green@auckland.ac.nz
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 10 Jun 1996 22:11:40 +0100
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: Oppen Sesame
Hi, this is Kevin Killian. Yes, I am going to Orono Conference. Get there
on Wednesday late and leave on Sunday, so I am hoping to meet a lot of
list-servers who I have never laid eyes on, I'll be wearing a big name tag.
I'm talking about Jack Spicer on the quote unquote "gay" panel, really
bringing up the rear as it is in the very last possible slot. So,
everybody please attend!!
Dodie Bellamy is coming too, and we are both curious about what all of you
look like. Dodie will be doing the fashion reports just like she did at
last year's Blaser Conference, so try to look your best. More later.
Thanks.
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 11 Jun 1996 02:24:02 -0500
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Eryque Gleason <eryque@ACMENET.NET>
Subject: Re: proto proto yahoo
tony, i'm not really looking for anything specific in a horoscope, if you
find it amusing or interesting or scarey, anything but boring and
uninteresting i'd like a look see. what ultimately comes of this will be
made up by me (mostly), but i want something that's not me to start with.
one that ends with "be wary" may be perfect, i've been more and more
cynical lately. otherwise, all bets are off. maybe the sillier the
better, but i won't be too picky at all. all contributions will be much
appreciated!
best,
eryque
>Eryque, say more abt the horoscopes that you want, most of the NZ ones are
>syndicated from London someone told me.
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 11 Jun 1996 03:55:58 -0400
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From: "k.a. hehir" <angelo@MUSTANG.UWO.CA>
Subject: a cage rattled
In-Reply-To: <199606110655.CAA05100@shell.acmenet.net>
i'm sorry if my la\st few posts seemed somewhat fun, but i will add this
to the Caged thing. this from an address given before the National
Inter-Collegiate Arts Conference, Vassar College, Ploughkeepsie,New York,
February 28 -1948.
The whole article or address is quite amazing..
for new desires..."I have fir instance, several new desires (two may seem
absurd but I am serious about them ):first,to compose a piece of
uninterrupteds silence silence and sell it to Muzak Co. It will be 3 or
4 1/2 minutes long - those being standard lengths of "canned music- and
its title will be "Silent Prayer". It will open with a single idea which
I will attempt to make as seductive as the color and and shape as a
flower. The ending will approach imperceptibility."
This is fromMusicworks 49.
ala\ways a great read and even a more wonderful listen as they also send
a cd.
most seriously yours,
kevin hehir
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 11 Jun 1996 03:16:08 -0700
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From: Ron Silliman <rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM>
Subject: Passings
An obit yesterday in the Times for A. Poulin, Jr. and last week in the
SF Chronicle for Lawrence Hart.
Ron
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 11 Jun 1996 07:03:06 EDT
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ken Edwards <100344.2546@COMPUSERVE.COM>
Subject: post language poetry, post modernist poetry, fakes
Apologies to Ira Lightman for my sloppy use of the term "post-language poetry"
in connection with the Scottish poet Rob MacKenzie. I only meant something like
(bearing in mind the nature of the readership of this list) "if you've engaged
with language poetry and its various kinships you may find this work of
interest". I don't know Rob personally, have never spoken to him, and know of
his work only from hearing him read at SubVoicive in London and reading his
extraordinary little pamphlet.
In so far as I understand Ira's argument, though, "post-language" in this
instance could be taken to be as accurate as "post-modernist" -- ie it doesn't
necessarily imply an allegiance to or even an acquaintance with, what has gone
before.
I agree that there is a thread of antagonism in some British avant-gardist
circles to langpo, often based on ignorance of the work, or at most on a reading
of the theoretical writings (but not the poetry) of Silliman and Watten. This is
frequently allied to a posturing, male-ego-centric romanticism, or alternatively
to a patrician fastidiousness, both of which eerily echo attitudes otherwise
identified with that chimera "the mainstream". On the other hand, there are many
here who do engage intelligently with langpo.
Myself, I believe the flight from engagement with what's being done elsewhere
leads one -- at best -- to reinvent whole sets of redundant wheels.
Please, please, don't anybody dare start another thread on "what exactly is
langpo anyway"...
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 11 Jun 1996 09:26:38 -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: adventures in paradise
"Adventures in Paradise" by Laurie Duggan seems like a pretty good poem to
me. Here is a sample stanza:
The doctor lived on the main street until
he moved around the corner. He thought I was smart.
My grandmother didn't like Picasso - for her
the sole representative of "Modern Art". I wanted
to be a veterinary surgeon and fix up animals
and live on a farm like my uncle and aunt.
The poem may be a little 'smart' on the whole, but Duggan has a great light
touch.
Just typing,
Jordan
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 11 Jun 1996 09:50:36 -0400
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@ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU>
Subject: Creely@70: A Celebration
ROBERT CREELEY: A 70th Birthday Celebration
BUFFALO
October 10th to 12th, 1996
Thursday, October 10
8pm: Hallwalls, Buffalo
Just Buffalo Tribute
Eileen Myles Reading, introduced by Robert Creeley
Friday, 10/11
3-5 Katherine Cornell Theater, SUNY-Buffalo, North Campus
Welcome: UB President William Greiner
Reading: Gil Sorrentino and Amiri Baraka
5-6:30 420 Capen Hall, North Campus
Opening, "Here: Fifty Years of Poetry in Buffalo", Poetry/Rare Books
Collection, 420 Capen
8:30-10 Katherine Cornell Theater
Talk by Artist Jim Dine / Conversation with Robert Creeley
Reading by Robert Creeley
Saturday, 10/12
4-5 Katherine Cornell Theater
Poetry reading: John Ashbery
Reception follows, Jane Keeler Room
8:30 Hallwalls
Jazz concert Steve Kuhn and Carol Fredette
Reception and party with Mercury Rev
all events free and open to the public
*program subject to change*
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 11 Jun 1996 14:42:03 BST
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ira Lightman <I.Lightman@UEA.AC.UK>
Subject: Re: post language poetry, post modernist poetry, fakes
Thanks to Ken for his engaged response here. I reiterate
that he is one of the pioneers of openness to LangPo
among the Brits.
Ken, could you detail a few of the poets
here, as you say, who engage intelligently with
langpo, which books or poems?
Ira
On Tue, 11 Jun 1996 07:03:06 EDT Ken Edwards wrote:
> I agree that there is a thread of antagonism in some
British avant-gardist
> circles to langpo, often based on ignorance of the work,
or at most on a reading
> of the theoretical writings (but not the poetry) of
Silliman and Watten. This is
> frequently allied to a posturing, male-ego-centric
romanticism, or alternatively
> to a patrician fastidiousness, both of which eerily echo
attitudes otherwise
> identified with that chimera "the mainstream". On the
other hand, there are many
> here who do engage intelligently with langpo.
>
> Myself, I believe the flight from engagement with what's
being done elsewhere
> leads one -- at best -- to reinvent whole sets of
redundant wheels.
>
> Please, please, don't anybody dare start another thread on
"what exactly is
> langpo anyway"...
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 11 Jun 1996 10:25:37 -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: Passings
Ron--DId you know POULIN?
I remember his intor. to poetry anthology was what my first
"hip" teacher used (and the WCW selected) to turn us on to
poetry. I think the 3rd edition (it was green). Then each subsequent
edition got WORSE. Like take out Baraka and put in Gerald Stern;
take out Kenneth Koch and put in Michael Harper. Etc.
Didn't he also do BOA?
Pardon my ignorance, but who's larry hart?cs
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 11 Jun 1996 10:28:38 -0500
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Chris Stroffolino <LS0796@CNSVAX.ALBANY.EDU>
Subject: Re: adventures in paradise
jordan is that laurie duggan poem a sestina--
UNTIL WANTED, HER ANIMALS SMART AUNT-----cs
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 11 Jun 1996 10:53:31 -0500
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jordan Davis <jdavis@PANIX.COM>
Subject: Re: adventures in paradise
Chris, no, Duggan's poem has the pleasant slightly damaged quality of the
sestina without the unfortunate insistence on those dopey end words.
Whoops! my politics are showing. Here are another six lines of the poem:
I burst a blood vessel below the brain
and spent two months in the Alfred Hospital
reading the complete works of Ian Fleming
which I liked because he could make golf
interesting. Then I read Emile Zola
and started writing D.H. Lawrence imitations
in which young men full of spirit flung
themselves down upon the earth and felt it breathe
and everything seemed complete. I wanted
to be a rock star, then a painter,
then a novelist, but I ended up writing poems
late in 1966, misunderstanding T.S. Eliot.
What the hell - have twelve lines! You'll note, Chris, a decided Kenneth
Koch-influence on that last line. Duggan was I believe a big Scripsi
conspirator, and an Otis Rusher as well. Any recent Duggan sightings?
Enthusiastically,
Jordan
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 11 Jun 1996 10:40:19 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" <anielsen@ISC.SJSU.EDU>
Subject: Re: Sumerian Reading
In-Reply-To: <199606110404.AAA28107@listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu>
Ecco press, which seems in the past few years to have recognized the
existence of black writers on the planet, has reissued William Melvin
Kelly's beezaar jazz novel, _A Drop of Patience_ -- rec. with caution for
all -- fascinating writer who has not been heard from in some time --
ORONO --
arrive Wed. evening STOP stopping at that same off-campus hotel STOP
will be there entire conference STOP will nearly fall asleep from
quandariness, then attend conference STOP do they still throw lobsters
into the ring at poetry slams there?
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 11 Jun 1996 13:24:02 CST6CDT
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Hank Lazer <hlazer@AS.UA.EDU>
Organization: The University of Alabama
Subject: Re: mainestays
Aldon et al--
I'll be at Maine too, arriving Tuesday night, staying until mid-day
Sunday. I'll give a talk on Wednesday, Panel 2E. I'm talking about
the development in the early 1950s of a short-line resource in
poetry, via Zukofsky, Eigner, Creeley, Niedecker, Olson .... part of
an ongoing thinking about what Oppen called "the lyric valuables."
Also I'll be taking part in group reading, which I think is scheduled
for Friday evening.
Looking forward to placing names with faces or vice versa....
Hank Lazer
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 11 Jun 1996 11:31:10 -0700
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Laura Moriarty <moriarty@SFSU.EDU>
Subject: Re: Passings
11 June 96
Chris -
I have not known Lawrence Hart's work myself, but thought the name sounded
familiar.I found him in the files here at the Poetry Center. He organized a
reading here for the Activists - (Rosalie More, Jeanne McGahey, Marie
Graybeal, Fred Ostrander, John Hart and Leonard Horwitz.) The mimeograph
from the reading (probably put together by Robert Duncan who was Assistant
Director of the Center at the time) gives a short bio of Hart. It is from
March 5, 1963.
"Lawrence Hart founded the Activists more than twenty years ago in San
Francisco - their objective to work out disciplines for use in so-called
experimental techniques. Work of this group has appeared widley in national
magazines. The May 1951 issue of Poetry was entirely made up Activist work
with Hart as guest editor - followed by a sequel in 1958. His criticism has
been published in Poetry, Quarterly Review, Accent and has been reprinted
in the British anthology Modern Reading. He is the recent publisher of the
Activist anthology, Accent on Barlow, and has just completed a textbook
presenting contemporary poetry for 7th and 8th grade and high schools. With
the cooperation of Bay District and Marin County schools he has worked with
talented children for several years."
There is correspondence with Duncan indicating that the Activists group was
underrepresented at the Poetry Center and eagerness from Hart that they be
more involved. I believe we have an audiotape of the reading in 1963.
Anyway, to fill you in -
Laura
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 11 Jun 1996 14:44:59 -0400
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Mark Wallace <mdw@GWIS2.CIRC.GWU.EDU>
Subject: various cages
Chris Stroffolino and anyone else:
Jeff Hansen's e-mail address (for Poetic Briefs also) remains the same,
but he does not respond to the list in the summer when he's not at work,
so he will not be available via e-mail until the fall.
Re Cage: Certainly there is value in comparing the later with the earlier
Cage, and if someone has an interesting set of reasons for preferring the
earlier Cage, than that seems reasonable. But as for Tim Page's review
(and I appreciate Herb Levy's post on his credentials--it's a shame that
they proved so worthless here), no such comparison takes place there. It
is, and I've already said this, a hostile, slanderous attack in which he
finally suggests that the only intersting thing about Cage's Europera 5
(and indeed ALL of Cage's work since 1952)
is whether he can be sued for it. Educated, credentialed, or not, that's
a fool's position, just as the idea that Cage's later work "has no point but
isn't even about having no point" is simply not a respectable position,
but a hostile assault. I may have misunderstood Oren Izenburg's response,
if his argument simply is that he finds Cage's earlier work
"preferrable." That's fine. But the problem (and it still seems a real
one to me) is not
that Page PREFERS Cage's earlier work on reasonable grounds, but that he
dismisses the later Cage with a bunch of imperious and deeply incorrect
statements about what Cage is doing in that later work (i.e. "nothing").
That's the offensive position that it seemed to me that Oren Izenburg was
saying was "reasonable," but if it's Mr. Izenburg's position simply that
he "prefers" earlier Cage, so be it. And I think my original post, in
which I quoted Page saying that Cage's later work has no point, and that
it's only interesting to think about whether he can be sued, made what
was blatantly stupid about the article clear, and I still don't think that
whether the article was a hostile, stupid attack is debatable. It WAS a
hostile, stupid attack. It
is in fact the STANDARDIZED hostile argument that the American media almost
always
presents about avant garde work on those rare occasions when it's mentioned.
As to the issue of what can be made a litmus test that Herb Levy
raises, that's an interesting question, but I'm not really that
interested in
making Cage a litmus test here. I think more importantly that the litmus
test,
in terms of this experimental context, is whether a writer responds to
avant garde art and writing
in an honest, however questioning, manner, or whether a writer takes
blatant advantage of media hostility to artists (and experimental artists
in particular) to LIE about such artists in order to be able to sell
their articles to media monstrosities like the Washington Post. That's
what Tim Page has done (and the fact that he knows Cage makes this only
more clear)--nothing he says about Cage has the slightest ring of truth,
nor does he intend to have it. I don't know how well known his
obvious dislike of Cage is, but I'm also certain that it's quite
possible that the Post knew Tim Page hated Cage's experimental work
when they asked him to write the review, or agreed to let him submit
it. Whether one loves John Cage or has
problems with his work or both IS NOT THE POINT. The point, in this case,
is the way in which Tim Page has used media hostility to
intellectually slander somebody that he apparently once worked with. For
me, intellectual slander IS a significant litmus test of whether one
deserves respect. I guess what I'm not clear on in Oren Izenburg's post
is whether he thinks that slander didn't happen, or whether he simply
misread me to be saying that my problem with Tim Page was about artistic
differences, when the problem is really about ethics and power.
mark wallace
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 11 Jun 1996 16:13:13 -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: mainestays
I'll be "competing" RED LIGHT With Hank Lazer and RED LIGHT doing what
RED LIGHT I think is a kind of RED LiGhT "close reading" of RED LIGHT
two 1952 RED LIGHT O'Hara POEMS to and or about RED GRACE LIGHT HARTIGAN
the lyric invaluables.....cs
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 11 Jun 1996 18:52:54 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: David Kellogg <kellogg@ACPUB.DUKE.EDU>
Subject: Re: mainestays
In-Reply-To: <01I5SE9QQC4O8Y5K69@cnsvax.albany.edu>
I'll be there, too, arriving Wednesday.
Mine's the last panel in the whole damn conference, but my paper's on
Stanley Kunitz of all people, so who can blame 'em? The upshot is a
reading of the 1959 *Selected Poems* as a historical document creating an
ancestry for Lowell et al., as against the prevailing "neglected genius"
reading of that book's sudden laurels. Of course, I've still gotta
finish it, and who knows what I'll say when it's over?
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, 12 Jun 1996 09:38:25 -0400
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Mark Roberts <M.Roberts@ISU.USYD.EDU.AU>
Subject: Re: adventures in paradise
>"Adventures in Paradise" by Laurie Duggan seems like a pretty good poem to
>me. Here is a sample stanza:
>
>The doctor lived on the main street until
>he moved around the corner. He thought I was smart.
>My grandmother didn't like Picasso - for her
>the sole representative of "Modern Art". I wanted
>to be a veterinary surgeon and fix up animals
>and live on a farm like my uncle and aunt.
>
>
>The poem may be a little 'smart' on the whole, but Duggan has a great light
>touch.
>
>Just typing,
>Jordan
Jordan
I'm just wondering where you came across Laurie? Have you ever read (or
better heard Laurie perform) 'do the modernism'?
just hittin' the keys.......
__________________________________
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: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 09:46:40 -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: adventures in paradise
>Chris, no, Duggan's poem has the pleasant slightly damaged quality of the
>sestina without the unfortunate insistence on those dopey end words.
>Whoops! my politics are showing. Here are another six lines of the poem:
>
>
>I burst a blood vessel below the brain
>and spent two months in the Alfred Hospital
>reading the complete works of Ian Fleming
>which I liked because he could make golf
>interesting. Then I read Emile Zola
>and started writing D.H. Lawrence imitations
>
>in which young men full of spirit flung
>themselves down upon the earth and felt it breathe
>and everything seemed complete. I wanted
>to be a rock star, then a painter,
>then a novelist, but I ended up writing poems
>late in 1966, misunderstanding T.S. Eliot.
>
>
>What the hell - have twelve lines! You'll note, Chris, a decided Kenneth
>Koch-influence on that last line. Duggan was I believe a big Scripsi
>conspirator, and an Otis Rusher as well. Any recent Duggan sightings?
>
>Enthusiastically,
>Jordan
I first read Laurie in MAGIC SAM a wonderful magazine put out by Ken
Bolton, Anna Couani and others in the late 70s early 80s. (Ken is now
editing Otis Rush). Laurie contributed a couple of poems to the first issue
of my magazine (P76) - including 'do the modernism'. He remains one of my
favourite poets. For a comkplete change of pace try and find a copy of THE
ASH RANGE which is a verse history of the east Gippsland area of Victoria
__________________________________
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: Tue, 11 Jun 1996 18:40:14 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "J. Beer" <jbeer@BLUE.WEEG.UIOWA.EDU>
Subject: what matter who's speaking
Regarding what people are reading, I've been going through Beckett's trilogy
(Molloy, Malone Dies (I'm on this), and The Unnameable), and I was
curious to see what sort of a legacy people think that Beckett's had upon
contemporary writing. Particularly, I was struck by the way that "silence" and
"nothing" are such central terms at about the same time for Cage and
Beckett, but Cage seems to have mattered a lot more for querzblatian
types--am I wrong? If not, is the reason something like, they both
intuited the impossibility of big-S Selfhood, but what was an opportunity
for Cage was an intolerable threat for Beckett, and so he seems
rear-guard? Or were they talking about totally different things under the
same names?
It's fascinating to me how liminal Beckett seems--both totally
constructed and always seemingly on the verge of disintegration. But
does the construction belie the desperation? Or vice versa?
Thanks,
John
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 11 Jun 1996 20:47:32 -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: LANSING TALISMAN!!!
Ed -- subscribed earlier this year, received #15, but haven't ever received
the "Lansing TALISMAN" -- have I missed it?
--
dgolumbi@sas.upenn.edu
David Golumbia
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 11 Jun 1996 20:58:38 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Carnography <scrypt@INTERPORT.NET>
Subject: Re: what matter who's speaking
J. Beer:
> I was
> curious to see what sort of a legacy people think that Beckett's had upon
> contemporary writing.
This is too large a question to be answered off-handedly. It is like
asking a Cabalist to explain the significance of the number seven
over cocktails. More later. But for now:
Suffice to say that Beckett--especially late Beckett--has had
an *indelible* influence on contemporary poetry. Would Coolidge's
_Mine_ read as it does without _How It Is_ and _Company_? Would
Ashbery, for that matter? Would any so-called solipsistic text
written in the last thirty or forty years? Would Alan Davies's
essays read as they do? Would any voice that deconstructs itself
reductio ad absurdum do so with a cantabile lilt without _Ill
Seen, Ill Said_?
It is difficult to think of a living writer who *hasn't*
been influenced by Beckett.
> Cage seems to have mattered a lot more for querzblatian
> types--am I wrong?
Not for me--not, I think, for Perelman's AKA (though P's here, from
what I hear, and can speak for himself).
On the other hand, I believe you might be drawing a false parallel between
two distinct philosophical choices. Beckett chose to focus on the
individuated voice by stripping it clean; Cage often seemed to regard
the voice as an egoic distraction, and performed chance operations, it
would seem, to delete it completely.
Re silence: When asked to explain the difference between himself and Joyce,
Beckett said: Joyce wants to put everything in, I want to take everything
out. In this context, silence is arrived at differently than in Cage's work.
I regard both Cage and Beckett to be hugely important--but in
hugely different ways.
Diminuitively,
Rob Hardin
PS:
=46or those who are interested: Here is one of the four Beckett parodies
I wrote and read at The Unbearables' Irish Writers Reading Reading
(Shanden Star, last year). It's about a crack whore, of course.
=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=
=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=
=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=
=A7=A7
Pizzles
In afternoon's caul, at close of day, will she lean into sleep, suck smoke
from pipe, exhale black bile of burning cellophane, then, spuming, feel
light fail, exsanguine in southwest corner of grime-streaked window? In
gradual glow of embers' end, will she lean and dream, or merely drum
fingers on sill, each pulse-beat ticking its term of sleep, in paradiddles
that trope the see-saw thrusts of clients, of her noonwhite whorelife,
abandoned at brothel door, or so she imagines, recalling serrated day on
plank of pricks, her sheep-count obliterating apes that crowd old holes,
the ghosts of belly-slap and sweat-smear staining this sunset, staining her
last inclination to end?
Past slide of horizon, outside that fecal frame, will she lean, slow arc of
sun sinking in window's rim, crease upon creak? Will she dream of first
love, that doddering werewolf, no charm for her but immunity worn like
mascara, eyes memorizing aimless dotard combing last strands and muttering
of some insignificant summer? Will she lean even then?
In gradual glow at close of day, will she imagine staring face down in
river, wind smoked out of lungs at last, the water below impaled by piers,
the surface scarred by water-boatmen and bits of floating wood, multiple
exposures of reflection and flesh drifting across the mirrored lens of the
water, as twists of bedsheet lasso her limbs like sleep? Will she picture
moss tendrils seducing her into wreckage, as twinges of pain awaken her
body, flashpoint beams of tiny, parasitical flashlights? Will her attention
flicker, and dreams drone softer, as the sky grows deliciously dim?
Never attend her, no succor but staring, no dream but drone, it is always
she who dreams, I cannot dream, in a last still stream a stiff hand stands,
white-edged in rinse of foam her sodden limbs, I wist she whitens, in
river's isinglass poured toward shore, it is she who drifts, I cannot
drift, if her head grew heavy with sleep and drooped face-down, would she
laugh as she leaned and bubbles rose, or would she sink as now, in
afternoon's caul, past slide of horizon, it is not mine to question,
whether she feels light fail, it is my fault she fails, my fault the slow
suffocation, I cannot lean, it is because of me she leans, into rivers'
swirl, into surcease from tears, into ravenous water, afar she imagines the
carrion's call, I cannot call, it is because of me she calls, one raven
sated, nothing said, no word for breath, stretched vocable a rill derailed,
afar she shrieks, afoul I follow, in afternoon's caul, to lean at last, in
panic, shriek, in panic, to speak as Peter K=FCrten killed, each knife-slash
ticking its term of sleep, in reddening light, in ruby sunset rime, I say
to the tricks, to their drooling pizzles, I say to the toss-ups and
crawlers, I say, she bleeds, I say, it is because of me she bleeds
http://www.interport.net/~scrypt
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 11 Jun 1996 21:44:35 -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: LANSING TALISMAN!!!
the last mailing went out yesterday. if you don't have a copy within a
week, there's trouble with the post office yet again. best wishes, ed
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 14:18:45 GMT+1200
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From: wystan <w.curnow@AUCKLAND.AC.NZ>
Organization: English Dept. - Univ. of Auckland
Subject: Re: what matter who's speaking
Comments: To: jbeer@BLUE.WEEG.UIOWA.EDU
Dear John,
I have always assumed Beckett was one of those writers of
fiction who was important to poets and poetry; fiction's hardly the word
for what he wrote which's part of the reason. For myself he was the
writer that got me writing.
Wystan
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Date: Tue, 11 Jun 1996 22:26:32 -0500
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From: Tim wood <twood@CONNECT.NET>
Subject: Re: what matter who's speaking
> I have always assumed Beckett was one of those writers of
>fiction who was important to poets and poetry; fiction's hardly the word
>for what he wrote which's part of the reason. For myself he was the
>writer that got me writing.
> Wystan
Wystan,
My agreement on this point. Beckett may have used the framework of
"fiction" to cloth his work, but the heart of the work falls into poetry.
Any number of passages in the trilogy work with some very intricate
cyclings and subtle references and word play are rampant in his work,
etc., etc. In one interesting performance I had the joy to experience
(if only I could claim the idea!) they took the one passage (test: name
work) in which the character goes back and forth between different
elements in a bedroom, including the dresser over and over and over and
over again. Instead of just "staging" (how would one do that...) or
reading the passage, the reading was grabbed by a sampler and echoed back
live again and again and again. The extend
reverberation/echoing/whatever of the words seemed to pull the audience
and the performers into a space seperate from the auditorium. Wonderful.
Tim
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Date: Tue, 11 Jun 1996 23:32:57 -0500
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From: Chris Stroffolino <LS0796@CNSVAX.ALBANY.EDU>
Subject: Re: what matter who's speaking
Very Good post Rob on Beckett---
I'd like to add that the earlier Beckett (of the trilogy, WATT,
even PROUST, etc.) seems to have a bigger influence on, say,
Ashbery than the ILL SEEN ILL SAID stuff. more later....
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Date: Tue, 11 Jun 1996 22:50:14 -0500
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From: Tim wood <twood@CONNECT.NET>
Subject: Re: what matter who's speaking
>"silence" and
>"nothing" are such central terms at about the same time for Cage and
>Beckett, but Cage seems to have mattered a lot more for querzblatian
>types--am I wrong? If not, is the reason something like, they both
>intuited the impossibility of big-S Selfhood, but what was an opportunity
>for Cage was an intolerable threat for Beckett, and so he seems
>rear-guard? Or were they talking about totally different things under the
>same names?
Cage's work is much more detached: there was little/no content to worry
about. With Beckett, there was always some amount of content, and pretty
damn depressing (& exciting...) content at that. At the same time, I
wonder if the lack of content isn't ultimately more depressing.
I seem to remember reading that Beckett's shift to plays was because the
novels were too personal. Interesting, perhaps the impossibility of
Selfhood was too personal <Don't throw that one at a addict of black and
white logic>. But, I don't know if that justifies reducing Beckett to
the phrase "rear-guard". That term (and please I'm not flaming) seems
meaningless for the same reason phrases like "cutting edge" and
"innovative" and "original" are so utterly meaningless. What is
"rear-guard" at this point? Perhaps its better to look at Beckett/Cage
as a contrast of one dealing with/exploring/describing the struggle with
that threat vs. one playing in the lack of selfhood. Some of the more
romantic on the group might value the heroic antiheroism of the former as
more important...
>It's fascinating to me how liminal Beckett seems
agreed... see my other post on this thread...
>--both totally
>constructed and always seemingly on the verge of disintegration. But
>does the construction belie the desperation? Or vice versa?
Perhaps it's both... both and neither belieing (word or not that) the
other.
Tim Wood
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Date: Tue, 11 Jun 1996 23:49:32 -0400
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From: Rod Smith <AERIALEDGE@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: what matter who's speaking
This Beckett/Cage question is interesting. I've often thought of it as
Appolonian/Dionysian. Cage found Beckett's work too dark -- on the other hand
he got on famously w/ Jasper Johns! Optimism was such an important part of
Cage's character (not that he also didn't have a dark side/ dark times), but
what he perceived as the complete lack of affirmation in Beckett made him
question. I told him he should read _Watt_, the humor, as he loved Joyce so,
but I don't think he ever did.
I don't think it's true that Cage is more important to experimental writers
than Beckett, he has certainly been of great use to many. P. Inman in
particular points to Beckett, as does Retallack.
There's a book by Nicholas Zurbrugg called _The Parameters of Postmodernism_
which works off a dialectic of what he calls "C-effect" vs. "B-effect" --
which opposes Cage, Beuys, Anderson, & others to Beckett, Baudrillard,
Bourdieu, etc. (etc?) -- actually he locates "the dawn of the B-effect"
in Benjamin's "Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" to which he
opposes Cage's radical experimentation, questioning of value judgements, &
enthusiam for technology. I'm not doing the book justice here though at times
it seems a bit to either/or, as does the Apollonian/Dionysian above, & needs
more of an actual dialectic goin' on.
One other thing on Cage & Beckett-- Cage contributed to the Review of
Contemporary Fiction issue on Beckett, a beautiful, very spare mesostic on a
5-line Beckett poem.
Cage is missing from the contents page, it's pg. 85.
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Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 00:00:32 -0400
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From: Rod Smith <AERIALEDGE@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: what matter who's speaking
Tim wrote--
>Cage's work is much more detached: there was little/no content to worry
>about. With Beckett, there was always some amount of content, and pretty
>damn depressing (& exciting...) content at that. At the same time, I
>wonder if the lack of content isn't ultimately more depressing.
Don't know what you mean by lacking content. How cld it be? Do you mean
narrative? Also don't understand "playing in lack of selfhood." How cld it
be? or not be?
Rod
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Date: Tue, 11 Jun 1996 23:45:51 +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: what matter who's speaking
Comments: To: Tim wood <twood@CONNECT.NET>
On 11 Jun 96 at 22:50, Tim wood wrote:
> Cage's work is much more detached: there was little/no content to worry
> about. With Beckett, there was always some amount of content, and pretty
> damn depressing (& exciting...) content at that. At the same time, I
> wonder if the lack of content isn't ultimately more depressing.
Well, not for me. I love Beckett (have several settings of Beckett
texts for voice and whatever sitting in drawers somewhere), but I
don't find the "detached" Cage depressing at all. But then, I've
never been much of a content fan (I get this image of the content
hitting the...), and I find a lot of Beckett quite funny.
(I get this goofy image of someone a hundred years down the line
doing a paper viewing the Thoreau-based pieces that you and I are
writing for Question Authority, The in the light of our respective
views of Beckett and Cage... Maybe we gotta work Satie in somehow.)
---------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, 12 Jun 1996 17:16:52 GMT+1200
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From: wystan <w.curnow@AUCKLAND.AC.NZ>
Organization: English Dept. - Univ. of Auckland
Subject: Re: what matter who's speaking
Comments: To: AERIALEDGE@AOL.COM
Dear Rod,
Good posts. Your mention of Johns reminds me of the
Beckett/Johns collaboration: FOIRADES/FIZZLES. Johns who is clearly
creatively comfortable with both Cage and Beckett, can serves as a
useful bridge figure here. Since for all three what content is is a
question, it is not useful to compare them on the basis of how much any
one of them has of it. Although, it is useful to see how putting the
question is different depending on the art form in which it is put.
And pessimism/optimism aside, the main thing is that putting content in
question is a means of restoring the authority of the creative.
... leastways it did that for me.
Wystan
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Date: Tue, 11 Jun 1996 23:38:25 -0700
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From: Herb Levy <herb@ESKIMO.COM>
Subject: Re: what matter who's speaking
I don't know of any direct connection between Cage's use of silence/nothing
& Beckett's, but there is a direct connection between Beckett & Morton
Feldman, who has earlier come up in connection with Cage.
One of Beckett's last texts was "Neither" written specifically for
Feldman's opera of the same name & in gratitutde for this text, one of
Feldman's later pieces, for chamber orchestra, was dedicated, and titled,
"For Samuel Beckett."
>Regarding what people are reading, I've been going through Beckett's trilogy
>(Molloy, Malone Dies (I'm on this), and The Unnameable), and I was
>curious to see what sort of a legacy people think that Beckett's had upon
>contemporary writing. Particularly, I was struck by the way that "silence" and
>"nothing" are such central terms at about the same time for Cage and
>Beckett, but Cage seems to have mattered a lot more for querzblatian
>types--am I wrong? If not, is the reason something like, they both
>intuited the impossibility of big-S Selfhood, but what was an opportunity
>for Cage was an intolerable threat for Beckett, and so he seems
>rear-guard? Or were they talking about totally different things under the
>same names?
>It's fascinating to me how liminal Beckett seems--both totally
>constructed and always seemingly on the verge of disintegration. But
>does the construction belie the desperation? Or vice versa?
>
>Thanks,
>John
Herb Levy
herb@eskimo.com
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Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 02:39:04 -0400
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From: Charles Smith <CharSSmith@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: what matter who's speaking
as to: "I was
curious to see what sort of a legacy people think that Beckett's had upon
contemporary writing. "
For one, it's hard for me to imagine the writing of Clark Coolidge without
the example & explorations of Beckett.
Charles Smith
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Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 00:24:50 -0700
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From: Herb Levy <herb@ESKIMO.COM>
Subject: Re: various cages - newspaper reviews
I have a lot of different things to say in response to the ongoing
discussion of Cage here. I've split my comments on the Cage discussion
into several parts, cause this one got to be pretty long. It's about the
value of newspaper reviews.
The following is based not only on my own twelve years producing and
presenting concerts of post-Cageian (wait, I think there were two concerts
which included works by Cage, so they weren't all literally post-Cageian)
new music, but also on my serving as board member of the now defunct New
Music America festival for six or seven years & on my reading of the press
kits of countless composers and performers of new music, dance, etc. as
well.
Also this applies most particularly to the situation in the United States,
but in my limited experience it doesn;t seem to be too different in much of
the developed world.
Clearly the content, tone, etc. of Page's review were abominable, but it
was a review in a daily paper. It isn't an academic or artistic critique
of Cage, it's a newspaper review & the rules are very, very different.
Newspaper reviews don't really mean anything, it's simply not worth the
trouble to take them seriously.
I don't think that experimental writers are used to dealing with newspaper
reviews very often, so I guess I can understand wanting to treat it as
serious criticism, but it's simply absurd to do so. Newspapers don't carry
arts criticism, they have entertainment reviews. If the fact that
sometimes these reviews of entertainment are about events that you consider
art confuses you, this is your problem & not the problem of the newspaper.
No one (except the uncle who lives in the town in which you are unlikely
enough to be reviewed & he just wants to know why you aren't calling your
parents more often anyway) remembers newspaper reviews, they are strictly
filler that is only useful to the artist if the information about any
future events, recordings or publiations is accurate.
Particularly (but not exclusively) when they are about "avant garde" work,
EVEN when the review is positive, a newspaper review is almost always just
as full of errors of fact as when the review is negative. In virtually all
instances where a review is not incorrect, it has been cribbed from the
press release & does not reflect the thinking of the reviewer.
People who write reviews of the performing arts for newspapers, many of
whom are great people and good writers, are almost never specialists in
"experimental" work. Even in the rare cases in which they are familiar
with this kind of art, they were hired to write about mainstream movies or
classical music or best sellers. So you frequently read reviews of jazz
concerts by someone who knows about painting, reviews of paintings by
former sports writers, reviews of theater by someone who knows about
classical music, etc.
That's the way it is in the newspaper world. The idea is that anyone who
is a journalist can write about anything, because they are trained to cover
the five W's before the deadline.
Also, in this climate, writers who are supportive of unusual kinds of
events are often seen as partisan, and in the wonderful world of
journalistic ethics, that often means that they are not objective enough to
review something.
Anyway, editors will rarely assign reviews of "experimental" work unless
the performance is running for more than one night (as a kind of consumer
report for those who might want to go after the opening night) & the editor
usually assumes (usually correctly) that most of the "regular" people who
read his paper would think that this event was a pile of crap, anyway.
&, even if an experimental event is running for more than one night, an
editor will usually only assign a review of work like this if 1) it is
being presented by an organization he cannot otherwise ignore, 2) if there
are no other arts events that week for a salaried reporter to cover or, 3)
there was a preview of the event in a competing paper that he can't ignore.
Is this depressing enough yet?
I don't know of an equivalent resource for Cage, so let me suggest that
someone go to the Merce Cunningham Dance Company Web site
(<http://www.merce.org/> it's worth looking at anyway) & look up the tour
history of the company. Then go to a good research library and look up the
reviews in the daily papers for each performance/residency by the company.
Count the ones that are factually accurate (don't expect them to be
informed as to the aesthtic issues involved in what Cunningham et al are
about) & let me know the percentage. I'll be very very surprised if it's
higher than 10-15%.
The fact that there's some coverage of the "experimental" performing arts
in daily newspapers IS different than the usual case for "experimental"
literary arts. But, because there's so little context for the work in the
daily lives of most of the people who read these reviews, they are
meaningless attempts at filling the space around the department store
advertisements, and they are treated as such by most editors and writers.
If you want to bang your head against this wall, you'd better believe that
it has almost nothing to do with a despicable review by Tim Page, and
everything to do with the general state of culture. The situation is so
globally fucked up, that to get a wild hair up your butt about a literally
stupid review seems like a misplacement of effort.
The problem isn't that newspapers don't treat the avant garde with respect,
it's that newspapers like the rest of the society we live in, don't treat
any kind of art with respect, even the popular arts like television.
& that's a whole other letter to the editor.
Herb Levy
herb@eskimo.com
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Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 00:25:33 -0700
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From: Herb Levy <herb@ESKIMO.COM>
Subject: Re: various cages - Europera 5
Mark, have you heard Europera 5, on CD or in performance?
I've heard a LOT of John Cage's music, I've heard the Europera 5 CD by the
musicians for whom the work was created, as well as a local performance of
the work, & I'd be quite hesitant to spend a lot of time defending the
composition. There's plenty to be said about the work, especially in light
of it's structural relation to the previous works in the Europera series.
Plenty to be said, but, for many people, I doubt this would include "I
really want to hear that piece again." I can think of hundreds of things
(including hearing/seeing a performance of Europera 1& 2) that I'd rather
do than to hear another performance of Europera 5.
The work was made as a sort of small-scale performable version of the
earlier incarnations of Europera: 1& 2, a major composition for extremely
large forces (full orchestra, 19 singers, complex staging, lighting, etc.)
in a very fully equipped theater (many opera houses aren't suited for the
work, let alone more general theaters) & 3 & 4, already created for smaller
performing ensembles. There's a discussion of the process of creating this
piece in Musicage, the book of conversations between Joan Retallack & John
Cage, that Rod has often refered to here.
In many ways, Europera 5 is a minor work, & I don't think it's all that
successful. Few of Cage's compositions that use other music as source
material depend so much on the recognizability of the original for their
effect. Even the other Europeras as denser, allowing for the awareness of
other textures & structures out of the found material. In making Europera
5 as sparse as it is, Cage was faced with the same problem that many
composers who use digital samples of other music face, how to create
something that is unrecognizably new, while using source material that is
recognizably old. The excerpts in Europera 5 rarely overlap & are so much
a part of the works from which they come that comparatively little synergy
arises out of the mix. It seems like nothing so much as a poorly received
radio station playing excerpts from various operas in sequence.
Does Europera 5 deserve to be brutally & ignorantly savaged in a review,
probably not? Does such a review of this work deserve an all-out shrill
call to arms in defense against an embattled "avant garde"? Again,
probably not.
I really don't think that any stance which must defend all works under the
rubric of the "avant garde" against all attacks is a useful one.
In the case of Europera 5, there are simply other fights that are more
important and other fights more likely to be won.
Herb Levy
herb@eskimo.com
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Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 04:10:33 -0400
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From: Carnography <scrypt@INTERPORT.NET>
Subject: Re: various cages
mark wallace typed:
>intellectual slander IS a significant litmus test of whether one
>deserves respect.
Or rather:
Intellectual slander is the misdemeanor of critics.
Its penalty is the loss of the reader's respect.
The quickest way to regain respect: to acknowledge
one's wrong and re-evaluate the object of slander.
(Provisional Ethics 1-1)
http://www.interport.net/~scrypt
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Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 03:22:07 -0700
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From: Ron Silliman <rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM>
Subject: Miscellaneous stuff
Chris,
No, I did not know Poulin, but yes, he did do BOA. The obit in the
Times was so cloying, it was hard to fathom (odd for a publication that
prides itself in its usual critical distance). Hart published a
newsletter out of his home in Marin in the mid-80s that attempted to
scold all of us barbarians for failing to understand the true meaning
of modernism. By comparison to the fugitives, he was a progressive, but
that was always the context the work seemed to seek out. I think I've
noted here before that Robert Barlow, the poet-anthropologist who was a
fellow traveler with the Activist Poets, was somebody whom Olson
mentions trying to seek out while in Mexico, somewhere in the Mayan
Letters.
Orono folks,
For those of us (and I suspect we are many on this list) who have, as
yet, to see a single word explaining what this conference there might
be or be about, we hope you will provide the in-depth coverage we are
growing used to here. Details, detail, details!
Summer Reading List...
Just finished Carole Maso's Ava, which makes Beckett safe for PBS (that
is, to be less snide, she uses the same pallet of devices, but does so
to construct a decidedly unified, even romanticized, subjective whole).
It brought up for me the whole question of recycled modernism, thinking
of Alice Walker's uses of Faulkner in The Color Purple or Ondaatje's
Hemingway in The English Patient. In each instance, the techniques are
used to much more conservative ends than those for which they had
originally been elaborated.
The whole question of a poet's prose or a poet's fiction makes enormous
sense to me, Wystan, from Joyce forward. I think that Primary Trouble
is right on target to include Dodie Bellamy in its anthology of poetry.
(Great selection too, by the way.)
Next book is Langston Hughes' The Big Sea, which I picked up in SF last
month.
All best,
Ron Silliman
rsillima@ix.netcom.com
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Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 09:02:18 EDT
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From: Daniel Bouchard <Daniel_Bouchard@HMCO.COM>
Subject: poetry reading
JOHN ASHBERY EATS FIDDLEHEADS
You are invited
to a poetry reading
where five Boston cats* are blowing their poetry
REAL HARD
Ange Mlinko
Damon Krukowski
Sianne Ngai
Daniel Bouchard
Chris Stroffolino
10 Oxford Street- REAR, Somerville, MASS.
Monday, June 17
8:30 PM
Nothing has been so good
since Wieners retired
_____________________
* OK, so Stroffolino is an Albany cat not a Boston cat (and soon to be a Jersey
City or Brooklyn cat anyway) but such an opportunity for palimpsest rarely
occurs.
On your way to Orono (or just hanging around New England?) and want to start
the week off right?
Here's your opportunity to see/hear some real Boston.
Call for details: 617-351-5792.
daniel_bouchard@hmco.com
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 09:29:42 +0100
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Kevin Killian <dbkk@SIRIUS.COM>
Subject: Re: Miscellaneous stuff
At 3:22 AM 6/12/96, Ron Silliman wrote:
>Just finished Carole Maso's Ava, which makes Beckett safe for PBS (that
>is, to be less snide, she uses the same pallet of devices, but does so
>to construct a decidedly unified, even romanticized, subjective whole).
>It brought up for me the whole question of recycled modernism, thinking
>of Alice Walker's uses of Faulkner in The Color Purple or Ondaatje's
>Hemingway in The English Patient. In each instance, the techniques are
>used to much more conservative ends than those for which they had
>originally been elaborated.
Thanks Ron. Now I feel less guilty that I'm reading _House of Mirth_ right
now rather than "keeping up."
x,
Dodie Bellamy
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Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 12:31:12 -0500
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From: Chris Stroffolino <LS0796@CNSVAX.ALBANY.EDU>
Subject: Re: what matter who's speaking
Hey Rod---
Is BRECHT part of the B-effect? It would seem that Bernstein in this
schema would be more a CHARLES (more C than B) in terms of darkness,
while Perelman would be more a BOB (B)--I've been thinking about the
BECKETT connection with AKA (who brought that up?). It seems that
AKA is less, er, "stream of consciousness" though than more Bruce
Andrews-like in the way it reads. By Andrews like I mean, the emphasis
is on the sentence (not emotional) rather than paragraph. Beckett's
emphasis seems more on the accumulative rush effect.
(again, i'm speaking primarily of the trilogy era Beckett...
and I haven't read AKA in years....so I think I know what I'm going
to read today......cs
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 09:32:08 -0700
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From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" <anielsen@ISC.SJSU.EDU>
Subject: Re: summary reading
In-Reply-To: <199606120402.AAA23641@listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu>
OOOPS! I'm actually getting to Maine Tues. night, as my panel is the next
day -- will also be in gang reading Friday night -- maybe we should all
wear colors!
and today's reading:
Juan Felipe Herrera -- _The Roots of a Thousand Embraces_ Manic D Press
available from SPD -- it's great --
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 16:19:56 -0500
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From: Jordan Davis <jdavis@PANIX.COM>
Subject: against summer reading
I am leaning to the left against my summer reading:
a very large (1000 pages?) blank book, extraordinarily
popular delusions, The Life of Johnson, etc, and
what good poems it's making me flee to read--Frank
O'Hara's poem up in the subway, contrarian and
personist in the best of spirits, Karen Volkman's
national poetry series book _Crash's Law_
the presense of which can only mean
that Juliana Spahr's NPS book is preparing
to knock New York City over like the cardboard diorama
we know it is, oh and god! Laura Moriarty's
book _Symmetry_ thank you Rod! for sending it -
I've never seen anybody get knocked out the way
it happens all the time on tv, how does anybody
get any reading done when they own a tv,
someone like Melanie Neilson makes a poem
and the credit card offers, are they nefarious?
Do you find out about yourself when you consume
the endless electrons? It's something you can
turn on, the Baudelaire of you, but when you
find out the 'off' switch is symbolic at best,
a surrealist at most, a batter in a cage,
is she bored? Not Melanie but
the manic imperative, the one up
the street we'll have to go visit when they get
here, deferring to the expert light
of some characters we know, Ringo, Paul, John,
Morton, etc. That ought to be something exciting.
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 15:33:37 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Charles Alexander <chax@MTN.ORG>
Subject: readings/twin cities
A POETRY & MULTIMEDIA READING BY SPENCER SELBY & ERIK BELGUM
sponsored by Cross-Cultural Poetics and the College of St. Catherine-Minneapolis
SATURDAY, JUNE 15
ROOM 250
COLLEGE OF
ST. CATHERINE
MINNEAPOLIS
1:00 p.m.
SPENCER SELBY
Spencer Selby's books of poetry include Instar (SINK Press, 1989), Barricade
(Paradigm Press, 1990), House of Before (Potes & Poets Press, 1991), Sound
Off (Detour Press, 1993), and No Island (Drogue Press, 1995). His visual
poetry includes Stigma (Score, 1990), and Malleable Cast (Generator, 1995).
In the middle 1980's Spencer Selby began SINK Press in San Francisco, where
he still resides, and he coordinated the Canessa Park Reading Series from
1987 - 1993. In 1993 Selby created The List of Experimental Poetry/Art
Magazines, a noncopyrighted, freely circulating document that tracks over
250 publications around the world.
ERIK BELGUM
Erik Belgum's experimental fiction has appeared in over two dozen journals
since 1985. Most recently he has been seen in literary journals such as
Avec, Chicago Review, Red Bass, Central Park, Black Ice, and Caliban. His
fiction will appear this year in an anthology of experimental fiction from
the publishers of Avec, as well as in upcoming issues of Central Park and
Asylum Annual. In his Dictionary of the Avant-Gardes (1993), Richard
Kostelanetz called Belgum one of "the best of the younger writers of
fiction, let alone experimental fiction." Belgum's literary/audio/soundtext
works have been played throughout the United States, in concert, on radio,
and also recently on the CD audio magazine Aerial. Recent commissions
include spoken word pieces commissioned by the Dale Warland Singers through
a Jerome Foundation grant and another by Corn Palace Productions performed
at the Southern Theater in Minneapolis.
This reading is FREE and is held at the College of St.
Catherine-Minneapolis, 601 25th Avenue South (two blocks north of the 25th
Avenue/Riverside intersection).
Next Reading sponsored by Cross-Cultural Poetics:
June 29, 1:00 pm, Room 250, College of St. Catherine-Minneapolis
DAN FEATHERSTON
&
CHARLES ALEXANDER
For further information about Cross-Cultural Poetics readings and
publications, please contact Mark Nowak at 612-690-7747. Or e-mail him at
MANOWAK@alex.stkate.edu
I hope anyone on the poetics list visiting or living near here will come.
I'll post more before the June 29th reading.
charles alexander
chax press
chax@mtn.org
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 16:50:28 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jonathan A Levin <jal17@COLUMBIA.EDU>
Subject: clamdiggers (fwd)
This one's from Marisa Januzzi, whose machine apparently needs to be fed.
JL.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
It's Maine, so we're supposed to wear clam diggers, right Kevin?
(Dodie-- can I answer the post in person!?) If I ever finish my grades
I will be in Orono too, Kerouac paper, time recently unsettled &
rescheduled for undetermined reasons.
(Anyone looking for summer reading-- MEXICO CITY BLUES, SUBTERRANEANS,
TRISTESSA, OLD ANGEL MIDNIGHT, and VSIONS OF GERARD... are all truly
great, and this from someone who once couldn't read Kerouac for sexism...)
Maybe we should designate a poetics reef & then all go meet on it?
Re: LeSueur-- some of her stuff is available through SPD, including the
pamphlets (just got "Women on the Breadlines"). I'd love to hear more
about her being alive.
Does anyone know how much of Ronald Johnson's ARK has been collected
&where, besides PRIMARY TROUBLE? (&are his cookbooks as rich?)
Also, has anyone else read Emily Holms Coleman (esp. THE SHUTTER OF
SNOW)?
Ciao, & drowning in work, and on notice that my server is down after 10AM
tomorrow until Orono..... bleh!
--Marisa Januzzi
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 15:57:01 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jonathan Brannen <jbrannen@INFOLINK.MORRIS.MN.US>
Subject: Standing Stones Press Special Offer
SPECIAL OFFER TO POETICS SUBSCRIBER
Standing Stones Press Publications
Tom Ahern, _Skippy Taggart's Wife_
Curt Anderson, _Umbra_
Dennis Barone, _The Masque Resumed_
Jonathan Brannen, _Crunching Numbers_
Gerald Burns, _Probability and Fuzzy Dice_
Cydney Chadwick, _The Gift Horse's Mouth_ o.p.
Mark DuCharme, _Contractng Scale-
Peter Ganick, _IT OR S/HE_
Geof Huth, _To a Small Stream of Water (or Ditch)_
H.T. (Heather Thomas), _Circus Freex_
Stephen-Paul Martin, _Crisis of Representation_
Michelle Murphy, _The Tongue in its Shelf_
Sheila E. Murphy, _Wind Topography_
John Perlman, _Anacoustic_
Susan M. Schultz, _Earthquake Dreams_
Mark Wallace, _In Case of Damage to Life, Limb or
This Elevator_ (forthcoming, June 1996)
All publications are $4.00 or any four for $12.00
(postage included except on foreign orders).
Also available from Standing Stones:
Jonathan Brannen, Thing Is The Anagram Of Night (Texture Press, 1996), $6.00
nothing doing never again (Score Press, 1996), $8.00
SPECIAL OFFER TO POETICS SUBSCRIBERS: $3.00 each or FOUR FOR $10.00 !!!
Thing Is The Anagram Of Night (Texture Press, 1996), $4.00 and nothing doing
never again (Score Press, 1996), $5.00.
Plus a free copy of Gerald Burns Probability and Fuzzy Dice (upon request
and while supplies last) with any order !!! Offer good until July 15, 1996.
Very limited quanities of some titles.
Order from jbrannen@infolink.morris.mn.us
(I'll include the bill when I ship the order) or from:
Standing Stones Press
7 Circle Pines
Morris, MN 56267
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 17:01:33 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Chris Stroffolino <LS0796@CNSVAX.ALBANY.EDU>
Subject: Re: clamdiggers (fwd)
Well--someone told me one should pack a lot of BUG SPRAY for MAINE...
so I might hit someone up for this.
Didn't Emerson say something like
"If one goes for a walk in the woods, one must feed mosquitos"
(which I translate as):
"if one goes for a walk in a city, one must feed quarters to
payphones"----cs
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 17:32:28 EDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ken Edwards <100344.2546@COMPUSERVE.COM>
Subject: post language poetry, post modernist poetry, fakes
Ira Lightman wrote:
Ken, could you detail a few of the poets
here, as you say, who engage intelligently with
langpo, which books or poems?
(ie in the UK)
Well, first among them I would place Allen Fisher. He and I have had numerous
conversations about langpo type poets since, I think, the early 1980s, and I'm
indebted to him and to his vast book collection in this respect.
Cris Cheek (hi Cris!) has had strong transatlantic links for many years,
including with langpo.
Tom Raworth is notoriously US- and langpo-friendly -- one of the most open and
generous souls around. Maybe one of the few Brits who has actually influenced
the langpo scene at source.
Wendy Mulford has corresponded for many years with the grouping of poets around
Kathleen Fraser and Susan Gevirtz's How(ever) and is well acquainted with,
particularly, the women in the langpo camp and around it.
Maggie O'Sullivan has collaborated on a book with Bruce Andrews and reads avidly
in and out of langpo as far as I know. I'm particularly grateful to her for
introducing me to the work of current Canadian "experimental" women poets.
A number of the poets associated with the London SubVoicive/Writers Forum crowd
are knowledgeable about it. Among these I'd mention Adrian Clarke and Robert
Sheppard, who edited the Potes & Poets anthology of London poets "Floating
Capital" -- also Johan de Wit, Ulli Freer, Lawrence Upton, and of course Bob
Cobbing, also one of the least prejudiced guys around, who published that
Maggie/Bruce collaboration.
Peter Middleton is clearly keen on that stuff. So is Miles Champion, I'd say.
Finally Robert Hampson and I were probably the first to publish some of the
Americans, even before they were labelled "language", back in the 1970s. Lyn
Hejinian, Alan Davies and James Sherry made appearances in our long-dead
magazine Alembic.
Sorry to go on. Of course, this list isn't exhaustive. As for "which books or
poems", well I wouldn't presume to trace influences that closely -- you'll have
to decide.
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 18:45:29 -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: post language poetry, post modernist poetry, fakes
Dear ken Edwards---
Could you elaborate on Miles Champion. The little I've seen is interesting
and it was good to see your willingness to include him, while Ira, I
think, seemed less to......cs
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 16:42:21 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Herb Levy <herb@ESKIMO.COM>
Subject: Re: clamdiggers (fwd)
>Does anyone know how much of Ronald Johnson's ARK has been collected
>&where, besides PRIMARY TROUBLE? (&are his cookbooks as rich?)
Some large assemblage of Ark (perhaps all of it) is due imminently from
University of New Mexico Press. The cook books are great.
Herb Levy
herb@eskimo.com
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 17:28:42 +0100
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: Communications Decency Act
This is Dodie Bellamy. I received the following from another list I'm
subscribed to. It's not about poetics, but I thought it might be of
interest.
PHILADELPHIA (Reuter) -- In a ground-breaking decision on free-speech
rights over the Internet, a special U.S court panel blocked as
unconstitutional a new federal law prohibiting indecency on computer
networks.
The three-judge panel issued Wednesday a preliminarly injunction blocking
enforcement of portions of the Communications Decency Act, signed by
President Clinton Feb. 8, which prohibit the distribution to minors of
indecent or "patently offensive" materials over computer networks.
The court let stand prohibitions against obscenity and child pornography,
types of speech that are not constitutionally protected and were not
challenged by the act's opponents.
"The Internet may fairly be regarded as a never-ending worldwide
conversation," U.S. District Judge Stewart Dalzell, a member of the panel,
said in his opinion accompanying the decision.
"The government may not, through the CDA, interrupt that conversation. As
the most participatory form of mass speech yet developed, the Internet
deserves the highest protection from governmental intrusion," he said.
Also on the panel were U.S. District Court Judge Ronald Buckwalter and
Dolores Sloviter, chief justice of the Third Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals.
In its legal conclusion, the court said the blocked portions of the act
were unconstitutional on their face.
The injunction was issued in response to a lawsuit against the U.S. Justice
Department challenging the act. The challenge was filed by the American
Civil Liberties Union and groups representing libraries, publishers and the
computer on-line industry.
A Justice Department spokesman said the agency had no immediate comment on
the ruling.
The ruling sets the stage either for a trial on whether the act should be
permanently blocked, or a direct appeal of the preliminary injunction to
the U.S. Supreme Court under expedited provisions written into it.
"The court has reaffirmed what our founders 200 years ago bequeathed as our
greatest liberty, and that's free speech," said Stefan Presser, legal
director of the ACLU of Pennsylvania, which filed the original suit.
Bruce Taylor, chief counsel for the National Law Center for Children and
Families, which supports the act, said of the ruling, "I don't consider
this a setback."
The act has already heightened awareness of content unsuitable for minors
on the Internet, and prompted development of technology that will make it
possible to screen and block material for suitability for minors, he said.
Such technology will undermine arguments by the act's opponents that it is
impossible to enforce, he said.
In addition, he said, state laws already on the books can also be used.
"The states can do what this ruling said the federal government can't do
yet," he said.
The ACLU immediately posted the court's opinion and order, which total 177
pages, on its World Wide Web site, said Christopher Hansen, attorney for
the national ACLU. The address of the site is http://www.aclu.org.
In the event of a government appeal, Hansen said, "We'll certainly defend
the conclusion vigorously."
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 19:57:54 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Charles Alexander <chax@MTN.ORG>
Subject: Re: clamdiggers (fwd)
>Does anyone know how much of Ronald Johnson's ARK has been collected
>&where, besides PRIMARY TROUBLE? (&are his cookbooks as rich?)
I notice in the new Small Press Distribution Catalog that Gus Blaisdell's
Living Batch Press in Albuquerque has brought out the whole (I believe) of
Ronald Johnson's ARK. So contact SPD at 1814 San Pablo Ave., Berkeley, CA
94702. And on that SPD catalog check out the drawings of writers on the
cover, done by Gary Sullivan. High groove factor, as Gary might say himself.
Ronald Johnson's first southwestern cookbook is a classic. I know that there
is a more recent edition of that, and others, but I don't know about them.
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 20:10:53 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Charles Alexander <chax@MTN.ORG>
Subject: Re: clamdiggers (fwd)
>>Does anyone know how much of Ronald Johnson's ARK has been collected
>>&where, besides PRIMARY TROUBLE? (&are his cookbooks as rich?)
>
>Some large assemblage of Ark (perhaps all of it) is due imminently from
>University of New Mexico Press. The cook books are great.
apologies for repeating myself, but I wanted to make it clear. It's not the
University of New Mexico Press, it's a new press, LIVING BATCH BOOKS (many
of you I am sure know the long-lived Living Batch Bookstore in Albuquerque),
run by Gus Blaisdell, which has, according to the announcement in the Small
Press Distribution Spring 1996 catalog which just arrived, "just published
one of the extraordinary long poems of the past quarter-century in Ronald
Johnson's ARK. Early versions of Johnson's great, elegant long poem are all
out-of-print. This new book presents the full poem for the first time, a
true heir to Louis Zukofsky's "A," Basil Bunting's BRIGGFLATTS, George
oppen's and Lorine Niedecker's longer series, and Robert Duncan's PASSAGES
and STRUCTURE OF RIME, but with a music and architecture unique in American
poetry."
And more complete SPD ordering info:
1814 San Pablo Avenue
Berkeley, CA 94702-1624
tel. 510.549.3336
fax 510.549.2201
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 19:28:21 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Herb Levy <herb@ESKIMO.COM>
Comments: To: chax@tmn.com
Charles,
I'm sure you're right.
The SPD catalog hasn't shown up here yet & when I checked locally after
seeing a reference to Ark somewhere (?), the book store came up with it as
being from UofNM Pr.
In any case, I'm glad I don't have to wait much longer to read it all.
Herb Levy
herb@eskimo.com
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 23:12:27 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Romana Christina Huk <rch@HOPPER.UNH.EDU>
Subject: Alternative Accommodations for Assembling Alternatives
For those who wish to attend _Assembling Alternatives: An International
Poetry Conference/Festival_ (29 Aug.- 2 Sept.) but can't afford the price
of accommodation and/or meals, new options have been created that allow
for use of a local campsite or, for a more limited number, guest housing
with faculty and students in the area. Those who intend to camp and not
take meals with the group will only pay $15.00 per day ($60.00 for the
whole event); this includes transportation to and from the conference
site, and coffee/tea-breaks during the days, but does not include the
costs required by the campsite itself. They have given us rates at
approx. $18.00 per night per "couple" in a tent (it pays to double-up
with someone); the rental of any equipment needed is up to campers.
Further details can be retrieved by calling the campsite directly; do so
by asking about the "safari site"(!) reserved by Romana Huk at UNH for
the poetry conference/festival on the above dates: Lamprey River
Campground, 16 Campground Road, LEE, NH 03824; tel.: 603 659 3852. The
grounds have full Facilities (toilets, showers). Tents, however, are
hard to find for rent in this area, but Eastern Mountain Sports in the
local Fox Run Mall (603 433 4764) reports to have enough tents for
approx. 30 people camping in sets of two and three; they go for between
$25.00 and $30.00 for the full stint. To reserve any of these you must
act _soon_.
Those who intend to pay the full $270.00 commuter fee for taking all
meals with the group for these 5 days and 4 nights will be up first for
placement in people's homes (in order to help reduce their overall costs
and relieve our volunteer hosts' anxieties about feeding, etc.).
Anyone interested in either new option must still go through the
University Conferences Office to secure a seat at the conference itself
(which is very important given our limited space): Univ. Conferences
Office, Univ. of NH, 11 Brook Way, Room 121, Durham, NH 03824-3509; tel.:
603 862 1900; fax: 603 862 0245. If you wish to pay the commuter fee
to take all meals with the group, you will need a registration form from
the Office. Those who hope to be placed in guest housing must contact
myself, Romana Huk, conference organizer, as soon as possible; I can be
reached before 27 June either at this e-mail address or at UNH (603 862
3992). After that I leave for six weeks in England, cut off from e-mail,
I think (though I'll keep you posted). I can be reached either through
the Conferences Office (who can in a pinch fax or call me) or, after the
1st of July, I can be contacted by phoning Gonville & Caius (pronounced
"Keyes") College, Cambridge, England (44 1223 332400) and leaving your
phone number in a message for me to call you.
The conference/festival is developing beautifully despite funding woes on
all our parts. Its schedule begins at 2:00 with registration on the 29th
of August;at that time the book exhibit/sales area will be getting set
up, and the Great Bay Room (our largest) will, I hope, be hung and
otherwise transformed by artworks made in response to these poetries, if
we can get artists and the New England Center staff to agree on what
can be done to the walls. At 5:00 an informal reception will lead into
dinner at 6:00, after which we'll have our first night of performances in
the Great Bay Room. I'll be finalizing the readings in the next several
days; several of the most well-known will be on that night so it's not
one to be missed. The readings will be free and open to the public.
Remember that although our focus is the U.S., U.K., Canada and Ireland,
other poetries will be represented and become part of the conversation.
Among those thus far scheduled to give talks or performances are (and
this can't be a full list, so I'm about to choose randomly): Charles
Bernstein, Karen Mac Cormack, Sean O'hUigin, Tom Raworth, Carla Harryman,
Nicole Brossard, Maurice Scully, Allen Fisher, Rae Armantrout, Steve
McCaffery, Maggie O'Sullivan, Denise Riley, Joan Retallack, Peter
Quartermain, Marjorie Perloff, Peter Middleton, Bob Perelman, Juliana
Spahr, Jeff Derksen, Peter Gizzi, Miles Champion, Caroline Bergvall, cris
cheek, Catherine Walsh, Steve Evans, Miriam Nichols, Alan Golding, Trevor
Joyce, Kathleen Fraser, Rod Mengham, Barrett Watten, Abigail Child, Paul
Dutton, Lee Ann Brown, Ken Edwards, John Cayley, Jim Rosenberg, Steve
Benson, Wendy Mulford, Leslie Scalapino, Robert Sheppard, Fiona
Templeton, Loss Glazier, Louis Cabri, Andrew Levy, Philip Mead, John
Kinsella, Barbara Godard, David Bromige, Hazel Smith, Susan Schultz, John
Wilkinson, Mary Margaret Sloan, Nicholas Zurbrugg, Billy Mills, Linda
Kinnahan, Lynn Keller, Geoffrey Squires, Keith Tuma, Shamoon Zamir, Brian
Lynch, Christian Bok, Charles Altieri, David Annwn, Tony Lopez, Donald
Wesling, Burton Hatlen, and more.
In general outline, the conversation begins on Friday with discussion of
differing contexts and relationships of these poetries to institutions in
those contexts. On Saturday issues of poetic politics and imaginings of
the subject arise, as well as the relationship between these poetries and
their respective "mainstreams"; key problems of gendered and racial
difference arise as well. On Sunday new forms of electronic and
performance work enter in, and on Monday, our last day, almost all of it
comes back in talk about where we stand at the "millennium" (or don't).
On Sunday night we take a break from UNH's confines to have our dinner
and readings in Portsmouth, the area's cultural center on the water. This
will of course happen as part of the full conference fee paid by those
taking meals with the group; transportation will be provided for all,
even those not eating with the rest.
I hope that's enough information at the moment for those interested. I'm
terribly sorry to have to take off for six weeks: but again, after
the 27th you should be able to either fetch the details you need from the
Conferences Office or reach me overseas. My address there, if you don't
want to phone, will be : Romana Huk, Director, UNH Summer Program,
Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge CB2 1TA, England. It takes about a
week for letters to make it over. Remember to include your phone number
in correspondence.
And spread the news about the book exhibit! All presses are
welcome to contribute.
Wishing good summers to all of you,
Romana Huk
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 23:59:45 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Rod Smith <AERIALEDGE@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: clamdiggers (fwd)
Johnson's Ark's out just this week-- it's paperback, $25.00. It's not
published by New Mexico, but distributed by them.
Rod
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 13 Jun 1996 11:45:11 BST
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ira Lightman <I.Lightman@UEA.AC.UK>
Subject: Re: post language poetry, post modernist poetry, fakes
Ken, thanks for your rollcall of names, I'm extremely
grateful. Could I add to Chris' request, and probe a
little further: I will cease to push for books or poems
but could you specify a little how the British poets
you've cited and their American friends, beyond
mutual encouragement and citing of each other to
interested parties, have shown LangPo qualities
in their own work, along the lines I mentioned
in my original post:
"the attitude to language or presence, in any
number games, paragraph organisation, or
relation of page to page, or dual columns,
in the way that it is in any of the poets
mentioned" (eg, I mean, that the pastiche
of a voice of an Other actually bleeds into
and could be the voice of the poet)
Do any of them, for example, in your view,
write the New Sentence?
Chris, by the way, I would like to say
that I am impressed by the way that
Miles Champion borrows models from
LangPo, his book "Sore Models" was
borrowed from Kit Robinson's Ice
Cubes, for example. My worry is that
his work reminds me of several New
Zealand poets' use of the sonnet,
eg James Baxter or Vincent O'Sullivan,
in that what seems to me to be is
happening is a kind of stand-up comedian
Woody Allen nebbishy, or Peter Cook
cod-Shakesperean, voiceover draped
over the form. Whereas, Shakespeare's
sonnets, and Robinson's Ice Cubes,
seem to me to hang on ideas about
which the poet is really anxious,
upon which the poet's sanity and life
seem to rest, questions like "am I
a man unable to give in to the real
martyrdom of love" or "do my silly
relationship problems distract me from
action to improve my world" where this
is felt as a paradox of two conflicting,
equally *pressing" problems.
My personal difficulty with
Miles' work is that, unlike Rob McKenzie's
(and I should stress here that Rob is a
keen fan of Miles, so this my beef only),
he seems to have the "postmodern" embarrassed
thus flip take on earnestness about love (it's a
cliche, an overused word etc), and rarely
seems to be serious about anything. I don't
even find that in the great clown Ashbery.
I just worry that the general atmosphere of
send-up in Miles' work is what genuinely
endears him to Brits who hate and avoid
LangPo, who think that Miles, like Rodefer,
is using LangPo only to send it up - and I
know that isn't Miles' attitude, as his
estimable magazine that he edits does
sterling work presenting LangPo; so maybe
I worry *for him*, that he faces trauma
ahead in having to either junk LangPo
or offend some of his friends (not Ken,
not Chris, and not, incidentally, me).
Very best,
Ira
On Wed, 12 Jun 1996 18:45:29 -0500 Chris Stroffolino wrote:
>
> Dear ken Edwards---
> Could you elaborate on Miles Champion. The little I've
seen is interesting
> and it was good to see your willingness to include
him, while Ira, I
> think, seemed less to......cs
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 13 Jun 1996 08:30:54 CDT
Reply-To: tmandel@cais.cais.com
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Tom Mandel <tmandel@CAIS.CAIS.COM>
Subject: reading / listening to music
Has anyone read the Austrian writer Thomas Bernhard?
He's pretty great; I keep seeing his books on remainder tables in
english editions that must have their last resort in nw dc.
he is a great writer, really; a destructive constructivist. In his will
he forbade any further works of his to be published or printed in
Austria or that his estate accept any prizes or honors therefrom --
those who know me will know that to be good enough for me!
Music: I suppose everyone on this list knows the work of john zorn, but
I've been listening to his series of CDs with his band, Masada, and
they are great. esp. Gimel.
Pierre Joris's list of mostly european music was a gift from this list.
In return, let me ask whether -- assuming to head one's ears in a
different direction from Cage for a moment -- anyone knows the
music of Bohuslav Martinu? Or the recently revived music of Erwin
Schulhoff?
I'm preaching to the choir? Let me continue by assuming out loud that
many among you know the opera "The Cunning Little Vixen" by Janacek?
The Schubert piano trios? Totally great is Kurtag's "Hommage a R. Sch."
(Robert Schumann) collected with some other wonderful chamber pieces of
his and of Schumann on ECM 78118-21508-2 (why does it take so many
numbers?).
Also Ulstvoldskaya's complete piano sonatas played by Frank Denyer on
Conifer 75605 51262 2
Music for clarinet by poulenc or buddy defranco is good too.
Tom Mandel
*************************************************
Tom Mandel * 2927 Tilden St. NW
Washington DC 20008 * tmandel@1net.com
vox: 202-362-1679 * fax 202-364-5349
*************************************************
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 13 Jun 1996 14:37:33 +0000
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: cris cheek <cris@SLANG.DEMON.CO.UK>
Subject: Re: Alternative Accommodations for Assembling Alternatives
Hi Romana, well this sounds like the option I'm dying for.
Can I pay for the food, therefore eat with everyone and get into the guest
housing please?
If you can take me onto that it would help a great deal.
If it's a yes, do I still need to register, being one of your advertised
delegates? Do I need to call them. Sorry, but as an indieer-outsider it's a
touch confusing. Not your information, but our responsibilities.
Did you get my posts? WOuld you rather I talked about the range e-poetry
work? Got the feeling it wasn't what you wanted (although I'b be likely to
use slides / computer voice ala Hawking in my intervention ) tant pis.
Really looking forward to seeing you.
love and love
cris
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 13 Jun 1996 09:16:51 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Stephen Barker <sfbarker@UCI.EDU>
Subject: Re: POETICS Digest - 11 Jun 1996 to 12 Jun 1996
Please de-subscribe me from the list. Nothing personal, just too much. SB
At 12:00 AM 6/13/96 -0400, you wrote:
>There are 26 messages totalling 1015 lines in this issue.
>
>Topics of the day:
>
> 1. what matter who's speaking (6)
> 2. various cages - newspaper reviews
> 3. various cages - Europera 5
> 4. various cages
> 5. Miscellaneous stuff (2)
> 6. poetry reading
> 7. summary reading
> 8. against summer reading
> 9. readings/twin cities
> 10. clamdiggers (fwd) (5)
> 11. Standing Stones Press Special Offer
> 12. post language poetry, post modernist poetry, fakes (2)
> 13. Communications Decency Act
> 14. <No subject given>
> 15. Alternative Accommodations for Assembling Alternatives
>
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 00:00:32 -0400
>From: Rod Smith <AERIALEDGE@AOL.COM>
>Subject: Re: what matter who's speaking
>
>Tim wrote--
>>Cage's work is much more detached: there was little/no content to worry
>>about. With Beckett, there was always some amount of content, and pretty
>>damn depressing (& exciting...) content at that. At the same time, I
>>wonder if the lack of content isn't ultimately more depressing.
>
>Don't know what you mean by lacking content. How cld it be? Do you mean
>narrative? Also don't understand "playing in lack of selfhood." How cld it
>be? or not be?
>
>Rod
>
>------------------------------
>
>Date: Tue, 11 Jun 1996 23:45:51 +0000
>From: Joseph Zitt <jzitt@HUMANSYSTEMS.COM>
>Subject: Re: what matter who's speaking
>
>On 11 Jun 96 at 22:50, Tim wood wrote:
>
>> Cage's work is much more detached: there was little/no content to worry
>> about. With Beckett, there was always some amount of content, and pretty
>> damn depressing (& exciting...) content at that. At the same time, I
>> wonder if the lack of content isn't ultimately more depressing.
>
>Well, not for me. I love Beckett (have several settings of Beckett
>texts for voice and whatever sitting in drawers somewhere), but I
>don't find the "detached" Cage depressing at all. But then, I've
>never been much of a content fan (I get this image of the content
>hitting the...), and I find a lot of Beckett quite funny.
>
>(I get this goofy image of someone a hundred years down the line
>doing a paper viewing the Thoreau-based pieces that you and I are
>writing for Question Authority, The in the light of our respective
>views of Beckett and Cage... Maybe we gotta work Satie in somehow.)
>---------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, 12 Jun 1996 17:16:52 GMT+1200
>From: wystan <w.curnow@AUCKLAND.AC.NZ>
>Subject: Re: what matter who's speaking
>
>Dear Rod,
> Good posts. Your mention of Johns reminds me of the
>Beckett/Johns collaboration: FOIRADES/FIZZLES. Johns who is clearly
>creatively comfortable with both Cage and Beckett, can serves as a
>useful bridge figure here. Since for all three what content is is a
>question, it is not useful to compare them on the basis of how much any
>one of them has of it. Although, it is useful to see how putting the
>question is different depending on the art form in which it is put.
>And pessimism/optimism aside, the main thing is that putting content in
>question is a means of restoring the authority of the creative.
>... leastways it did that for me.
> Wystan
>
>------------------------------
>
>Date: Tue, 11 Jun 1996 23:38:25 -0700
>From: Herb Levy <herb@ESKIMO.COM>
>Subject: Re: what matter who's speaking
>
>I don't know of any direct connection between Cage's use of silence/nothing
>& Beckett's, but there is a direct connection between Beckett & Morton
>Feldman, who has earlier come up in connection with Cage.
>
>One of Beckett's last texts was "Neither" written specifically for
>Feldman's opera of the same name & in gratitutde for this text, one of
>Feldman's later pieces, for chamber orchestra, was dedicated, and titled,
>"For Samuel Beckett."
>
>>Regarding what people are reading, I've been going through Beckett's trilogy
>>(Molloy, Malone Dies (I'm on this), and The Unnameable), and I was
>>curious to see what sort of a legacy people think that Beckett's had upon
>>contemporary writing. Particularly, I was struck by the way that
"silence" and
>>"nothing" are such central terms at about the same time for Cage and
>>Beckett, but Cage seems to have mattered a lot more for querzblatian
>>types--am I wrong? If not, is the reason something like, they both
>>intuited the impossibility of big-S Selfhood, but what was an opportunity
>>for Cage was an intolerable threat for Beckett, and so he seems
>>rear-guard? Or were they talking about totally different things under the
>>same names?
>>It's fascinating to me how liminal Beckett seems--both totally
>>constructed and always seemingly on the verge of disintegration. But
>>does the construction belie the desperation? Or vice versa?
>>
>>Thanks,
>>John
>
>
>Herb Levy
>herb@eskimo.com
>
>------------------------------
>
>Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 02:39:04 -0400
>From: Charles Smith <CharSSmith@AOL.COM>
>Subject: Re: what matter who's speaking
>
>as to: "I was
>curious to see what sort of a legacy people think that Beckett's had upon
>contemporary writing. "
>
>For one, it's hard for me to imagine the writing of Clark Coolidge without
>the example & explorations of Beckett.
>
>Charles Smith
>
>------------------------------
>
>Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 00:24:50 -0700
>From: Herb Levy <herb@ESKIMO.COM>
>Subject: Re: various cages - newspaper reviews
>
>I have a lot of different things to say in response to the ongoing
>discussion of Cage here. I've split my comments on the Cage discussion
>into several parts, cause this one got to be pretty long. It's about the
>value of newspaper reviews.
>
>The following is based not only on my own twelve years producing and
>presenting concerts of post-Cageian (wait, I think there were two concerts
>which included works by Cage, so they weren't all literally post-Cageian)
>new music, but also on my serving as board member of the now defunct New
>Music America festival for six or seven years & on my reading of the press
>kits of countless composers and performers of new music, dance, etc. as
>well.
>
>Also this applies most particularly to the situation in the United States,
>but in my limited experience it doesn;t seem to be too different in much of
>the developed world.
>
>Clearly the content, tone, etc. of Page's review were abominable, but it
>was a review in a daily paper. It isn't an academic or artistic critique
>of Cage, it's a newspaper review & the rules are very, very different.
>Newspaper reviews don't really mean anything, it's simply not worth the
>trouble to take them seriously.
>
>I don't think that experimental writers are used to dealing with newspaper
>reviews very often, so I guess I can understand wanting to treat it as
>serious criticism, but it's simply absurd to do so. Newspapers don't carry
>arts criticism, they have entertainment reviews. If the fact that
>sometimes these reviews of entertainment are about events that you consider
>art confuses you, this is your problem & not the problem of the newspaper.
>
>
>No one (except the uncle who lives in the town in which you are unlikely
>enough to be reviewed & he just wants to know why you aren't calling your
>parents more often anyway) remembers newspaper reviews, they are strictly
>filler that is only useful to the artist if the information about any
>future events, recordings or publiations is accurate.
>
>Particularly (but not exclusively) when they are about "avant garde" work,
>EVEN when the review is positive, a newspaper review is almost always just
>as full of errors of fact as when the review is negative. In virtually all
>instances where a review is not incorrect, it has been cribbed from the
>press release & does not reflect the thinking of the reviewer.
>
>People who write reviews of the performing arts for newspapers, many of
>whom are great people and good writers, are almost never specialists in
>"experimental" work. Even in the rare cases in which they are familiar
>with this kind of art, they were hired to write about mainstream movies or
>classical music or best sellers. So you frequently read reviews of jazz
>concerts by someone who knows about painting, reviews of paintings by
>former sports writers, reviews of theater by someone who knows about
>classical music, etc.
>
>That's the way it is in the newspaper world. The idea is that anyone who
>is a journalist can write about anything, because they are trained to cover
>the five W's before the deadline.
>
>Also, in this climate, writers who are supportive of unusual kinds of
>events are often seen as partisan, and in the wonderful world of
>journalistic ethics, that often means that they are not objective enough to
>review something.
>
>Anyway, editors will rarely assign reviews of "experimental" work unless
>the performance is running for more than one night (as a kind of consumer
>report for those who might want to go after the opening night) & the editor
>usually assumes (usually correctly) that most of the "regular" people who
>read his paper would think that this event was a pile of crap, anyway.
>
>&, even if an experimental event is running for more than one night, an
>editor will usually only assign a review of work like this if 1) it is
>being presented by an organization he cannot otherwise ignore, 2) if there
>are no other arts events that week for a salaried reporter to cover or, 3)
>there was a preview of the event in a competing paper that he can't ignore.
>
>
>Is this depressing enough yet?
>
>I don't know of an equivalent resource for Cage, so let me suggest that
>someone go to the Merce Cunningham Dance Company Web site
>(<http://www.merce.org/> it's worth looking at anyway) & look up the tour
>history of the company. Then go to a good research library and look up the
>reviews in the daily papers for each performance/residency by the company.
>Count the ones that are factually accurate (don't expect them to be
>informed as to the aesthtic issues involved in what Cunningham et al are
>about) & let me know the percentage. I'll be very very surprised if it's
>higher than 10-15%.
>
>The fact that there's some coverage of the "experimental" performing arts
>in daily newspapers IS different than the usual case for "experimental"
>literary arts. But, because there's so little context for the work in the
>daily lives of most of the people who read these reviews, they are
>meaningless attempts at filling the space around the department store
>advertisements, and they are treated as such by most editors and writers.
>
>If you want to bang your head against this wall, you'd better believe that
>it has almost nothing to do with a despicable review by Tim Page, and
>everything to do with the general state of culture. The situation is so
>globally fucked up, that to get a wild hair up your butt about a literally
>stupid review seems like a misplacement of effort.
>
>The problem isn't that newspapers don't treat the avant garde with respect,
>it's that newspapers like the rest of the society we live in, don't treat
>any kind of art with respect, even the popular arts like television.
>
>& that's a whole other letter to the editor.
>
>
>
>Herb Levy
>herb@eskimo.com
>
>------------------------------
>
>Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 00:25:33 -0700
>From: Herb Levy <herb@ESKIMO.COM>
>Subject: Re: various cages - Europera 5
>
>Mark, have you heard Europera 5, on CD or in performance?
>
>I've heard a LOT of John Cage's music, I've heard the Europera 5 CD by the
>musicians for whom the work was created, as well as a local performance of
>the work, & I'd be quite hesitant to spend a lot of time defending the
>composition. There's plenty to be said about the work, especially in light
>of it's structural relation to the previous works in the Europera series.
>Plenty to be said, but, for many people, I doubt this would include "I
>really want to hear that piece again." I can think of hundreds of things
>(including hearing/seeing a performance of Europera 1& 2) that I'd rather
>do than to hear another performance of Europera 5.
>
>The work was made as a sort of small-scale performable version of the
>earlier incarnations of Europera: 1& 2, a major composition for extremely
>large forces (full orchestra, 19 singers, complex staging, lighting, etc.)
>in a very fully equipped theater (many opera houses aren't suited for the
>work, let alone more general theaters) & 3 & 4, already created for smaller
>performing ensembles. There's a discussion of the process of creating this
>piece in Musicage, the book of conversations between Joan Retallack & John
>Cage, that Rod has often refered to here.
>
>In many ways, Europera 5 is a minor work, & I don't think it's all that
>successful. Few of Cage's compositions that use other music as source
>material depend so much on the recognizability of the original for their
>effect. Even the other Europeras as denser, allowing for the awareness of
>other textures & structures out of the found material. In making Europera
>5 as sparse as it is, Cage was faced with the same problem that many
>composers who use digital samples of other music face, how to create
>something that is unrecognizably new, while using source material that is
>recognizably old. The excerpts in Europera 5 rarely overlap & are so much
>a part of the works from which they come that comparatively little synergy
>arises out of the mix. It seems like nothing so much as a poorly received
>radio station playing excerpts from various operas in sequence.
>
>Does Europera 5 deserve to be brutally & ignorantly savaged in a review,
>probably not? Does such a review of this work deserve an all-out shrill
>call to arms in defense against an embattled "avant garde"? Again,
>probably not.
>
>I really don't think that any stance which must defend all works under the
>rubric of the "avant garde" against all attacks is a useful one.
>
>In the case of Europera 5, there are simply other fights that are more
>important and other fights more likely to be won.
>
>
>Herb Levy
>herb@eskimo.com
>
>------------------------------
>
>Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 04:10:33 -0400
>From: Carnography <scrypt@INTERPORT.NET>
>Subject: Re: various cages
>
>mark wallace typed:
>
>>intellectual slander IS a significant litmus test of whether one
>>deserves respect.
>
>Or rather:
>
>Intellectual slander is the misdemeanor of critics.
>Its penalty is the loss of the reader's respect.
>The quickest way to regain respect: to acknowledge
>one's wrong and re-evaluate the object of slander.
>
>(Provisional Ethics 1-1)
>
>http://www.interport.net/~scrypt
>
>------------------------------
>
>Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 03:22:07 -0700
>From: Ron Silliman <rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM>
>Subject: Miscellaneous stuff
>
>Chris,
>
>No, I did not know Poulin, but yes, he did do BOA. The obit in the
>Times was so cloying, it was hard to fathom (odd for a publication that
>prides itself in its usual critical distance). Hart published a
>newsletter out of his home in Marin in the mid-80s that attempted to
>scold all of us barbarians for failing to understand the true meaning
>of modernism. By comparison to the fugitives, he was a progressive, but
>that was always the context the work seemed to seek out. I think I've
>noted here before that Robert Barlow, the poet-anthropologist who was a
>fellow traveler with the Activist Poets, was somebody whom Olson
>mentions trying to seek out while in Mexico, somewhere in the Mayan
>Letters.
>
>Orono folks,
>
>For those of us (and I suspect we are many on this list) who have, as
>yet, to see a single word explaining what this conference there might
>be or be about, we hope you will provide the in-depth coverage we are
>growing used to here. Details, detail, details!
>
>
>Summer Reading List...
>
>Just finished Carole Maso's Ava, which makes Beckett safe for PBS (that
>is, to be less snide, she uses the same pallet of devices, but does so
>to construct a decidedly unified, even romanticized, subjective whole).
>It brought up for me the whole question of recycled modernism, thinking
>of Alice Walker's uses of Faulkner in The Color Purple or Ondaatje's
>Hemingway in The English Patient. In each instance, the techniques are
>used to much more conservative ends than those for which they had
>originally been elaborated.
>
>The whole question of a poet's prose or a poet's fiction makes enormous
>sense to me, Wystan, from Joyce forward. I think that Primary Trouble
>is right on target to include Dodie Bellamy in its anthology of poetry.
>(Great selection too, by the way.)
>
>Next book is Langston Hughes' The Big Sea, which I picked up in SF last
>month.
>
>All best,
>
>Ron Silliman
>rsillima@ix.netcom.com
>
>------------------------------
>
>Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 09:02:18 EDT
>From: Daniel Bouchard <Daniel_Bouchard@HMCO.COM>
>Subject: poetry reading
>
>JOHN ASHBERY EATS FIDDLEHEADS
>
>You are invited
>to a poetry reading
>where five Boston cats* are blowing their poetry
> REAL HARD
>
>Ange Mlinko
>Damon Krukowski
>Sianne Ngai
>Daniel Bouchard
>Chris Stroffolino
>
>10 Oxford Street- REAR, Somerville, MASS.
>
>Monday, June 17
>8:30 PM
>
>Nothing has been so good
>since Wieners retired
>_____________________
>
>* OK, so Stroffolino is an Albany cat not a Boston cat (and soon to be a Jersey
>City or Brooklyn cat anyway) but such an opportunity for palimpsest rarely
>occurs.
>
>On your way to Orono (or just hanging around New England?) and want to start
>the week off right?
>
>Here's your opportunity to see/hear some real Boston.
>
>Call for details: 617-351-5792.
>
>
>daniel_bouchard@hmco.com
>
>------------------------------
>
>Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 09:29:42 +0100
>From: Kevin Killian <dbkk@SIRIUS.COM>
>Subject: Re: Miscellaneous stuff
>
>At 3:22 AM 6/12/96, Ron Silliman wrote:
>
>>Just finished Carole Maso's Ava, which makes Beckett safe for PBS (that
>>is, to be less snide, she uses the same pallet of devices, but does so
>>to construct a decidedly unified, even romanticized, subjective whole).
>>It brought up for me the whole question of recycled modernism, thinking
>>of Alice Walker's uses of Faulkner in The Color Purple or Ondaatje's
>>Hemingway in The English Patient. In each instance, the techniques are
>>used to much more conservative ends than those for which they had
>>originally been elaborated.
>
>
>Thanks Ron. Now I feel less guilty that I'm reading _House of Mirth_ right
>now rather than "keeping up."
>
>x,
>Dodie Bellamy
>
>------------------------------
>
>Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 12:31:12 -0500
>From: Chris Stroffolino <LS0796@CNSVAX.ALBANY.EDU>
>Subject: Re: what matter who's speaking
>
> Hey Rod---
> Is BRECHT part of the B-effect? It would seem that Bernstein in this
> schema would be more a CHARLES (more C than B) in terms of darkness,
> while Perelman would be more a BOB (B)--I've been thinking about the
> BECKETT connection with AKA (who brought that up?). It seems that
> AKA is less, er, "stream of consciousness" though than more Bruce
> Andrews-like in the way it reads. By Andrews like I mean, the emphasis
> is on the sentence (not emotional) rather than paragraph. Beckett's
> emphasis seems more on the accumulative rush effect.
> (again, i'm speaking primarily of the trilogy era Beckett...
> and I haven't read AKA in years....so I think I know what I'm going
> to read today......cs
>
>------------------------------
>
>Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 09:32:08 -0700
>From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" <anielsen@ISC.SJSU.EDU>
>Subject: Re: summary reading
>
>OOOPS! I'm actually getting to Maine Tues. night, as my panel is the next
>day -- will also be in gang reading Friday night -- maybe we should all
>wear colors!
>
>
>and today's reading:
>
>Juan Felipe Herrera -- _The Roots of a Thousand Embraces_ Manic D Press
>
>available from SPD -- it's great --
>
>------------------------------
>
>Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 16:19:56 -0500
>From: Jordan Davis <jdavis@PANIX.COM>
>Subject: against summer reading
>
>I am leaning to the left against my summer reading:
>a very large (1000 pages?) blank book, extraordinarily
>popular delusions, The Life of Johnson, etc, and
>what good poems it's making me flee to read--Frank
>O'Hara's poem up in the subway, contrarian and
>personist in the best of spirits, Karen Volkman's
>national poetry series book _Crash's Law_
>the presense of which can only mean
>that Juliana Spahr's NPS book is preparing
>to knock New York City over like the cardboard diorama
>we know it is, oh and god! Laura Moriarty's
>book _Symmetry_ thank you Rod! for sending it -
>I've never seen anybody get knocked out the way
>it happens all the time on tv, how does anybody
>get any reading done when they own a tv,
>someone like Melanie Neilson makes a poem
>and the credit card offers, are they nefarious?
>Do you find out about yourself when you consume
>the endless electrons? It's something you can
>turn on, the Baudelaire of you, but when you
>find out the 'off' switch is symbolic at best,
>a surrealist at most, a batter in a cage,
>is she bored? Not Melanie but
>the manic imperative, the one up
>the street we'll have to go visit when they get
>here, deferring to the expert light
>of some characters we know, Ringo, Paul, John,
>Morton, etc. That ought to be something exciting.
>
>------------------------------
>
>Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 15:33:37 -0500
>From: Charles Alexander <chax@MTN.ORG>
>Subject: readings/twin cities
>
>A POETRY & MULTIMEDIA READING BY SPENCER SELBY & ERIK BELGUM
>
>sponsored by Cross-Cultural Poetics and the College of St.
Catherine-Minneapolis
>
>
>SATURDAY, JUNE 15
>ROOM 250
>COLLEGE OF
>ST. CATHERINE
>MINNEAPOLIS
>1:00 p.m.
>
>
>
>
>
>SPENCER SELBY
>Spencer Selby's books of poetry include Instar (SINK Press, 1989), Barricade
>(Paradigm Press, 1990), House of Before (Potes & Poets Press, 1991), Sound
>Off (Detour Press, 1993), and No Island (Drogue Press, 1995). His visual
>poetry includes Stigma (Score, 1990), and Malleable Cast (Generator, 1995).
>In the middle 1980's Spencer Selby began SINK Press in San Francisco, where
>he still resides, and he coordinated the Canessa Park Reading Series from
>1987 - 1993. In 1993 Selby created The List of Experimental Poetry/Art
>Magazines, a noncopyrighted, freely circulating document that tracks over
>250 publications around the world.
>
>ERIK BELGUM
>Erik Belgum's experimental fiction has appeared in over two dozen journals
>since 1985. Most recently he has been seen in literary journals such as
>Avec, Chicago Review, Red Bass, Central Park, Black Ice, and Caliban. His
>fiction will appear this year in an anthology of experimental fiction from
>the publishers of Avec, as well as in upcoming issues of Central Park and
>Asylum Annual. In his Dictionary of the Avant-Gardes (1993), Richard
>Kostelanetz called Belgum one of "the best of the younger writers of
>fiction, let alone experimental fiction." Belgum's literary/audio/soundtext
>works have been played throughout the United States, in concert, on radio,
>and also recently on the CD audio magazine Aerial. Recent commissions
>include spoken word pieces commissioned by the Dale Warland Singers through
>a Jerome Foundation grant and another by Corn Palace Productions performed
>at the Southern Theater in Minneapolis.
>
>
>This reading is FREE and is held at the College of St.
>Catherine-Minneapolis, 601 25th Avenue South (two blocks north of the 25th
>Avenue/Riverside intersection).
>
>
>Next Reading sponsored by Cross-Cultural Poetics:
>June 29, 1:00 pm, Room 250, College of St. Catherine-Minneapolis
>
> DAN FEATHERSTON
> &
> CHARLES ALEXANDER
>
>
>For further information about Cross-Cultural Poetics readings and
>publications, please contact Mark Nowak at 612-690-7747. Or e-mail him at
>MANOWAK@alex.stkate.edu
>
>I hope anyone on the poetics list visiting or living near here will come.
>I'll post more before the June 29th reading.
>
>
>charles alexander
>chax press
>chax@mtn.org
>
>------------------------------
>
>Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 16:50:28 -0400
>From: Jonathan A Levin <jal17@COLUMBIA.EDU>
>Subject: clamdiggers (fwd)
>
>This one's from Marisa Januzzi, whose machine apparently needs to be fed.
>JL.
>
>---------- Forwarded message ----------
>
>It's Maine, so we're supposed to wear clam diggers, right Kevin?
>(Dodie-- can I answer the post in person!?) If I ever finish my grades
>I will be in Orono too, Kerouac paper, time recently unsettled &
>rescheduled for undetermined reasons.
>
>(Anyone looking for summer reading-- MEXICO CITY BLUES, SUBTERRANEANS,
>TRISTESSA, OLD ANGEL MIDNIGHT, and VSIONS OF GERARD... are all truly
>great, and this from someone who once couldn't read Kerouac for sexism...)
>
>Maybe we should designate a poetics reef & then all go meet on it?
>
>Re: LeSueur-- some of her stuff is available through SPD, including the
>pamphlets (just got "Women on the Breadlines"). I'd love to hear more
>about her being alive.
>
>Does anyone know how much of Ronald Johnson's ARK has been collected
>&where, besides PRIMARY TROUBLE? (&are his cookbooks as rich?)
>
>Also, has anyone else read Emily Holms Coleman (esp. THE SHUTTER OF
>SNOW)?
>
>Ciao, & drowning in work, and on notice that my server is down after 10AM
>tomorrow until Orono..... bleh!
>
>--Marisa Januzzi
>
>------------------------------
>
>Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 15:57:01 -0500
>From: Jonathan Brannen <jbrannen@INFOLINK.MORRIS.MN.US>
>Subject: Standing Stones Press Special Offer
>
>SPECIAL OFFER TO POETICS SUBSCRIBER
>
>Standing Stones Press Publications
>
>Tom Ahern, _Skippy Taggart's Wife_
>Curt Anderson, _Umbra_
>Dennis Barone, _The Masque Resumed_
>Jonathan Brannen, _Crunching Numbers_
>Gerald Burns, _Probability and Fuzzy Dice_
>Cydney Chadwick, _The Gift Horse's Mouth_ o.p.
>Mark DuCharme, _Contractng Scale-
>Peter Ganick, _IT OR S/HE_
>Geof Huth, _To a Small Stream of Water (or Ditch)_
>H.T. (Heather Thomas), _Circus Freex_
>Stephen-Paul Martin, _Crisis of Representation_
>Michelle Murphy, _The Tongue in its Shelf_
>Sheila E. Murphy, _Wind Topography_
>John Perlman, _Anacoustic_
>Susan M. Schultz, _Earthquake Dreams_
>Mark Wallace, _In Case of Damage to Life, Limb or
> This Elevator_ (forthcoming, June 1996)
>
>All publications are $4.00 or any four for $12.00
>(postage included except on foreign orders).
>
>Also available from Standing Stones:
>Jonathan Brannen, Thing Is The Anagram Of Night (Texture Press, 1996), $6.00
> nothing doing never again (Score Press, 1996), $8.00
>
>SPECIAL OFFER TO POETICS SUBSCRIBERS: $3.00 each or FOUR FOR $10.00 !!!
>Thing Is The Anagram Of Night (Texture Press, 1996), $4.00 and nothing doing
>never again (Score Press, 1996), $5.00.
>
>Plus a free copy of Gerald Burns Probability and Fuzzy Dice (upon request
>and while supplies last) with any order !!! Offer good until July 15, 1996.
>Very limited quanities of some titles.
>
>Order from jbrannen@infolink.morris.mn.us
>(I'll include the bill when I ship the order) or from:
>
>Standing Stones Press
>7 Circle Pines
>Morris, MN 56267
>
>------------------------------
>
>Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 17:01:33 -0500
>From: Chris Stroffolino <LS0796@CNSVAX.ALBANY.EDU>
>Subject: Re: clamdiggers (fwd)
>
> Well--someone told me one should pack a lot of BUG SPRAY for MAINE...
> so I might hit someone up for this.
> Didn't Emerson say something like
> "If one goes for a walk in the woods, one must feed mosquitos"
> (which I translate as):
> "if one goes for a walk in a city, one must feed quarters to
> payphones"----cs
>
>------------------------------
>
>Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 17:32:28 EDT
>From: Ken Edwards <100344.2546@COMPUSERVE.COM>
>Subject: post language poetry, post modernist poetry, fakes
>
>Ira Lightman wrote:
>Ken, could you detail a few of the poets
>here, as you say, who engage intelligently with
>langpo, which books or poems?
>
>(ie in the UK)
>
>
>Well, first among them I would place Allen Fisher. He and I have had numerous
>conversations about langpo type poets since, I think, the early 1980s, and I'm
>indebted to him and to his vast book collection in this respect.
>
>Cris Cheek (hi Cris!) has had strong transatlantic links for many years,
>including with langpo.
>
>Tom Raworth is notoriously US- and langpo-friendly -- one of the most open and
>generous souls around. Maybe one of the few Brits who has actually influenced
>the langpo scene at source.
>
>Wendy Mulford has corresponded for many years with the grouping of poets around
>Kathleen Fraser and Susan Gevirtz's How(ever) and is well acquainted with,
>particularly, the women in the langpo camp and around it.
>
>Maggie O'Sullivan has collaborated on a book with Bruce Andrews and reads
avidly
>in and out of langpo as far as I know. I'm particularly grateful to her for
>introducing me to the work of current Canadian "experimental" women poets.
>
>A number of the poets associated with the London SubVoicive/Writers Forum crowd
>are knowledgeable about it. Among these I'd mention Adrian Clarke and Robert
>Sheppard, who edited the Potes & Poets anthology of London poets "Floating
>Capital" -- also Johan de Wit, Ulli Freer, Lawrence Upton, and of course Bob
>Cobbing, also one of the least prejudiced guys around, who published that
>Maggie/Bruce collaboration.
>
>Peter Middleton is clearly keen on that stuff. So is Miles Champion, I'd say.
>
>Finally Robert Hampson and I were probably the first to publish some of the
>Americans, even before they were labelled "language", back in the 1970s. Lyn
>Hejinian, Alan Davies and James Sherry made appearances in our long-dead
>magazine Alembic.
>
>Sorry to go on. Of course, this list isn't exhaustive. As for "which books or
>poems", well I wouldn't presume to trace influences that closely -- you'll have
>to decide.
>
>------------------------------
>
>Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 18:45:29 -0500
>From: Chris Stroffolino <LS0796@CNSVAX.ALBANY.EDU>
>Subject: Re: post language poetry, post modernist poetry, fakes
>
> Dear ken Edwards---
> Could you elaborate on Miles Champion. The little I've seen is interesting
> and it was good to see your willingness to include him, while Ira, I
> think, seemed less to......cs
>
>------------------------------
>
>Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 16:42:21 -0700
>From: Herb Levy <herb@ESKIMO.COM>
>Subject: Re: clamdiggers (fwd)
>
>>Does anyone know how much of Ronald Johnson's ARK has been collected
>>&where, besides PRIMARY TROUBLE? (&are his cookbooks as rich?)
>
>Some large assemblage of Ark (perhaps all of it) is due imminently from
>University of New Mexico Press. The cook books are great.
>
>
>Herb Levy
>herb@eskimo.com
>
>------------------------------
>
>Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 17:28:42 +0100
>From: Kevin Killian <dbkk@SIRIUS.COM>
>Subject: Communications Decency Act
>
>This is Dodie Bellamy. I received the following from another list I'm
>subscribed to. It's not about poetics, but I thought it might be of
>interest.
>
>PHILADELPHIA (Reuter) -- In a ground-breaking decision on free-speech
>rights over the Internet, a special U.S court panel blocked as
>unconstitutional a new federal law prohibiting indecency on computer
>networks.
>
> The three-judge panel issued Wednesday a preliminarly injunction blocking
>enforcement of portions of the Communications Decency Act, signed by
>President Clinton Feb. 8, which prohibit the distribution to minors of
>indecent or "patently offensive" materials over computer networks.
>
>The court let stand prohibitions against obscenity and child pornography,
>types of speech that are not constitutionally protected and were not
>challenged by the act's opponents.
>
>"The Internet may fairly be regarded as a never-ending worldwide
>conversation," U.S. District Judge Stewart Dalzell, a member of the panel,
>said in his opinion accompanying the decision.
>
>"The government may not, through the CDA, interrupt that conversation. As
>the most participatory form of mass speech yet developed, the Internet
>deserves the highest protection from governmental intrusion," he said.
>
> Also on the panel were U.S. District Court Judge Ronald Buckwalter and
>Dolores Sloviter, chief justice of the Third Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals.
>
>
>In its legal conclusion, the court said the blocked portions of the act
>were unconstitutional on their face.
>
>The injunction was issued in response to a lawsuit against the U.S. Justice
>Department challenging the act. The challenge was filed by the American
>Civil Liberties Union and groups representing libraries, publishers and the
>computer on-line industry.
>
>A Justice Department spokesman said the agency had no immediate comment on
>the ruling.
>
>The ruling sets the stage either for a trial on whether the act should be
>permanently blocked, or a direct appeal of the preliminary injunction to
>the U.S. Supreme Court under expedited provisions written into it.
>
>"The court has reaffirmed what our founders 200 years ago bequeathed as our
>greatest liberty, and that's free speech," said Stefan Presser, legal
>director of the ACLU of Pennsylvania, which filed the original suit.
>
>Bruce Taylor, chief counsel for the National Law Center for Children and
>Families, which supports the act, said of the ruling, "I don't consider
>this a setback."
>
>The act has already heightened awareness of content unsuitable for minors
>on the Internet, and prompted development of technology that will make it
>possible to screen and block material for suitability for minors, he said.
>
>Such technology will undermine arguments by the act's opponents that it is
>impossible to enforce, he said.
>
>In addition, he said, state laws already on the books can also be used.
>"The states can do what this ruling said the federal government can't do
>yet," he said.
>
>The ACLU immediately posted the court's opinion and order, which total 177
>pages, on its World Wide Web site, said Christopher Hansen, attorney for
>the national ACLU. The address of the site is http://www.aclu.org.
>
>In the event of a government appeal, Hansen said, "We'll certainly defend
>the conclusion vigorously."
>
>------------------------------
>
>Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 19:57:54 -0500
>From: Charles Alexander <chax@MTN.ORG>
>Subject: Re: clamdiggers (fwd)
>
>>Does anyone know how much of Ronald Johnson's ARK has been collected
>>&where, besides PRIMARY TROUBLE? (&are his cookbooks as rich?)
>
>
>I notice in the new Small Press Distribution Catalog that Gus Blaisdell's
>Living Batch Press in Albuquerque has brought out the whole (I believe) of
>Ronald Johnson's ARK. So contact SPD at 1814 San Pablo Ave., Berkeley, CA
>94702. And on that SPD catalog check out the drawings of writers on the
>cover, done by Gary Sullivan. High groove factor, as Gary might say himself.
>
>Ronald Johnson's first southwestern cookbook is a classic. I know that there
>is a more recent edition of that, and others, but I don't know about them.
>
>------------------------------
>
>Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 20:10:53 -0500
>From: Charles Alexander <chax@MTN.ORG>
>Subject: Re: clamdiggers (fwd)
>
>>>Does anyone know how much of Ronald Johnson's ARK has been collected
>>>&where, besides PRIMARY TROUBLE? (&are his cookbooks as rich?)
>>
>>Some large assemblage of Ark (perhaps all of it) is due imminently from
>>University of New Mexico Press. The cook books are great.
>
>
>apologies for repeating myself, but I wanted to make it clear. It's not the
>University of New Mexico Press, it's a new press, LIVING BATCH BOOKS (many
>of you I am sure know the long-lived Living Batch Bookstore in Albuquerque),
>run by Gus Blaisdell, which has, according to the announcement in the Small
>Press Distribution Spring 1996 catalog which just arrived, "just published
>one of the extraordinary long poems of the past quarter-century in Ronald
>Johnson's ARK. Early versions of Johnson's great, elegant long poem are all
>out-of-print. This new book presents the full poem for the first time, a
>true heir to Louis Zukofsky's "A," Basil Bunting's BRIGGFLATTS, George
>oppen's and Lorine Niedecker's longer series, and Robert Duncan's PASSAGES
>and STRUCTURE OF RIME, but with a music and architecture unique in American
>poetry."
>
>And more complete SPD ordering info:
>
>1814 San Pablo Avenue
>Berkeley, CA 94702-1624
>
>tel. 510.549.3336
>fax 510.549.2201
>
>------------------------------
>
>Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 19:28:21 -0700
>From: Herb Levy <herb@ESKIMO.COM>
>Subject: <No subject given>
>
>Charles,
>
>I'm sure you're right.
>
>The SPD catalog hasn't shown up here yet & when I checked locally after
>seeing a reference to Ark somewhere (?), the book store came up with it as
>being from UofNM Pr.
>
>In any case, I'm glad I don't have to wait much longer to read it all.
>
>
>
>Herb Levy
>herb@eskimo.com
>
>------------------------------
>
>Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 23:12:27 -0400
>From: Romana Christina Huk <rch@HOPPER.UNH.EDU>
>Subject: Alternative Accommodations for Assembling Alternatives
>
>For those who wish to attend _Assembling Alternatives: An International
>Poetry Conference/Festival_ (29 Aug.- 2 Sept.) but can't afford the price
>of accommodation and/or meals, new options have been created that allow
>for use of a local campsite or, for a more limited number, guest housing
>with faculty and students in the area. Those who intend to camp and not
>take meals with the group will only pay $15.00 per day ($60.00 for the
>whole event); this includes transportation to and from the conference
>site, and coffee/tea-breaks during the days, but does not include the
>costs required by the campsite itself. They have given us rates at
>approx. $18.00 per night per "couple" in a tent (it pays to double-up
>with someone); the rental of any equipment needed is up to campers.
>Further details can be retrieved by calling the campsite directly; do so
>by asking about the "safari site"(!) reserved by Romana Huk at UNH for
>the poetry conference/festival on the above dates: Lamprey River
>Campground, 16 Campground Road, LEE, NH 03824; tel.: 603 659 3852. The
>grounds have full Facilities (toilets, showers). Tents, however, are
>hard to find for rent in this area, but Eastern Mountain Sports in the
>local Fox Run Mall (603 433 4764) reports to have enough tents for
>approx. 30 people camping in sets of two and three; they go for between
>$25.00 and $30.00 for the full stint. To reserve any of these you must
>act _soon_.
>
>Those who intend to pay the full $270.00 commuter fee for taking all
>meals with the group for these 5 days and 4 nights will be up first for
>placement in people's homes (in order to help reduce their overall costs
>and relieve our volunteer hosts' anxieties about feeding, etc.).
>
>Anyone interested in either new option must still go through the
>University Conferences Office to secure a seat at the conference itself
>(which is very important given our limited space): Univ. Conferences
>Office, Univ. of NH, 11 Brook Way, Room 121, Durham, NH 03824-3509; tel.:
>603 862 1900; fax: 603 862 0245. If you wish to pay the commuter fee
>to take all meals with the group, you will need a registration form from
>the Office. Those who hope to be placed in guest housing must contact
>myself, Romana Huk, conference organizer, as soon as possible; I can be
>reached before 27 June either at this e-mail address or at UNH (603 862
>3992). After that I leave for six weeks in England, cut off from e-mail,
>I think (though I'll keep you posted). I can be reached either through
>the Conferences Office (who can in a pinch fax or call me) or, after the
>1st of July, I can be contacted by phoning Gonville & Caius (pronounced
>"Keyes") College, Cambridge, England (44 1223 332400) and leaving your
>phone number in a message for me to call you.
>
>The conference/festival is developing beautifully despite funding woes on
>all our parts. Its schedule begins at 2:00 with registration on the 29th
>of August;at that time the book exhibit/sales area will be getting set
>up, and the Great Bay Room (our largest) will, I hope, be hung and
>otherwise transformed by artworks made in response to these poetries, if
>we can get artists and the New England Center staff to agree on what
>can be done to the walls. At 5:00 an informal reception will lead into
>dinner at 6:00, after which we'll have our first night of performances in
>the Great Bay Room. I'll be finalizing the readings in the next several
>days; several of the most well-known will be on that night so it's not
>one to be missed. The readings will be free and open to the public.
>
>Remember that although our focus is the U.S., U.K., Canada and Ireland,
>other poetries will be represented and become part of the conversation.
>
>Among those thus far scheduled to give talks or performances are (and
>this can't be a full list, so I'm about to choose randomly): Charles
>Bernstein, Karen Mac Cormack, Sean O'hUigin, Tom Raworth, Carla Harryman,
>Nicole Brossard, Maurice Scully, Allen Fisher, Rae Armantrout, Steve
>McCaffery, Maggie O'Sullivan, Denise Riley, Joan Retallack, Peter
>Quartermain, Marjorie Perloff, Peter Middleton, Bob Perelman, Juliana
>Spahr, Jeff Derksen, Peter Gizzi, Miles Champion, Caroline Bergvall, cris
>cheek, Catherine Walsh, Steve Evans, Miriam Nichols, Alan Golding, Trevor
>Joyce, Kathleen Fraser, Rod Mengham, Barrett Watten, Abigail Child, Paul
>Dutton, Lee Ann Brown, Ken Edwards, John Cayley, Jim Rosenberg, Steve
>Benson, Wendy Mulford, Leslie Scalapino, Robert Sheppard, Fiona
>Templeton, Loss Glazier, Louis Cabri, Andrew Levy, Philip Mead, John
>Kinsella, Barbara Godard, David Bromige, Hazel Smith, Susan Schultz, John
>Wilkinson, Mary Margaret Sloan, Nicholas Zurbrugg, Billy Mills, Linda
>Kinnahan, Lynn Keller, Geoffrey Squires, Keith Tuma, Shamoon Zamir, Brian
>Lynch, Christian Bok, Charles Altieri, David Annwn, Tony Lopez, Donald
>Wesling, Burton Hatlen, and more.
>
>In general outline, the conversation begins on Friday with discussion of
>differing contexts and relationships of these poetries to institutions in
>those contexts. On Saturday issues of poetic politics and imaginings of
>the subject arise, as well as the relationship between these poetries and
>their respective "mainstreams"; key problems of gendered and racial
>difference arise as well. On Sunday new forms of electronic and
>performance work enter in, and on Monday, our last day, almost all of it
>comes back in talk about where we stand at the "millennium" (or don't).
>On Sunday night we take a break from UNH's confines to have our dinner
>and readings in Portsmouth, the area's cultural center on the water. This
>will of course happen as part of the full conference fee paid by those
>taking meals with the group; transportation will be provided for all,
>even those not eating with the rest.
>
>I hope that's enough information at the moment for those interested. I'm
>terribly sorry to have to take off for six weeks: but again, after
>the 27th you should be able to either fetch the details you need from the
>Conferences Office or reach me overseas. My address there, if you don't
>want to phone, will be : Romana Huk, Director, UNH Summer Program,
>Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge CB2 1TA, England. It takes about a
>week for letters to make it over. Remember to include your phone number
>in correspondence.
>
>And spread the news about the book exhibit! All presses are
>welcome to contribute.
>
>Wishing good summers to all of you,
>
>Romana Huk
>
>------------------------------
>
>End of POETICS Digest - 11 Jun 1996 to 12 Jun 1996
>**************************************************
>
>
=================================
Stephen Barker
Associate Dean and
Interim Chair of the Department of Studio Art
School of the Arts
sfbarker@uci.edu
=================================
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 13 Jun 1996 09:25:54 -0700
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: NEW AMERICAN WRITING #14
In-Reply-To: <960612213227_100344.2546_EHQ103-1@CompuServe.COM>
NEW AMERICAN WRITING #14 is now available. The issue contains long
sections with commentary by Paul Beatty, Charles Bernstein, Gabrielle
Glancy, Lyn Hejinian, Brenda Hillman, Anselm Hollo, Paul Hoover, Art Lange,
Ann Lauterbach, Elizabeth Robinson, Susan Schultz, and Gustaf Sobin--poetry.
Stories by Gloria Frym, Michelle Carter, and Wendell Mayo.
Cover by Kenward Elmslie.
Order for $8 from NAW, 369 Molino Avenue, Mill Valley CA 94941, or get it
at your local bookstore.
Thanks,
PH and MC
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 13 Jun 1996 10:27:23 +0100
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--oportunity knocks
This is Dodie Bellamy.
I'm putting together Small Press Traffic's reading series for the coming
year, and I am open to suggestions.
I'm planning to continue our Small Press Partners reading series in which
we feature readers from targeted small presses. As part of this series
books from featured presses are reviewed in _Traffic_, the SPT newsletter.
The next issue of _Traffic_, which will be out in August, will feature
reviews of O-Books, Kelsey St., and Hard Press books. We are particularly
interested in small presses which have published writing by minority
writers working in nontraditional forms. Any presses interested in being
considered for this series should contact me.
Now that SPT is more firmly settled at New College, I want to return to
SPT's long-time (22 year) committment to promoting emerging writers. I,
for one, gave my first reading at Small Press Traffic. I'm considering an
Introductions reading series in which we pair a more established writer
with an up-and-coming writer. Also, I'm planning to re-establish our more
intimate Poetry and Prose series, which will serve two purposes: (1) to
provide readings for "younger" writers (younger not necessarily referring
to age) and (2) to provide a space for arranging more last-minute readings
for writers who happen to be coming to San Francisco. A number of writers
from out of the area contacted Kevin and me this past year, wanting
readings, and, we usually set them up with readings at other locations.
Now we will be able to offer them readings at New College as well.
So, any writers planning trips to the West Coast this coming year, and who
are interested in a reading while you're here, backchannel me or call SPT:
415/437-3454.
Thanks.
Dodie
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 13 Jun 1996 12:58:10 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Oren Izenberg <OREN.IZENBERG@JHU.EDU>
Subject: research query
In-Reply-To: <199606131616.AA05971@e4e.oac.uci.edu>
Can anyone help me get my hands on an issue of, I believe, Occident, with a
number of readings/reviews of Michael Palmer's SUN?
I would be happy to purchase it-- or pay for xeroxing, or simply borrow
it. Interlibrary loan is no help, and even the Library of Congress has
left me in the lurch.
Backchannel is fine-- I appreciate the help.
O.
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 13 Jun 1996 13:52:32 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Mark Wallace <mdw@GWIS2.CIRC.GWU.EDU>
Subject: hairs, and dead horses
Dear herb Levy:
Thanks for your post about the way reviewing on newspapers works.
I myself have worked on newspapers for about a decade, and the situation
you describe seems pretty accurate to me.
Of course, the circumstances are somewhat different when a
musician and art critic (like Tim Page, I understand?) who supposedly has
some respect outside the newspaper environment you describe decides to
take advantage of the environment you're speaking about in order to
assault someone's work. That's not a fucked-up and unchangeable world
press situation--that's someone who should know better acting like a jerk.
Of course, I wasn't really all that "angry" about it to begin
with--I just presented some rather choice paragraphs from that
foolishness. Then it seemed to me (and I may have misread intentions
here, so
for that I would apologize) that at least one person seemed to suggest
that the review actually was a reasonable and well-considered critical
position, and not the piece of bogus entertainment assault on art that
you have clearly said it was.
But I wonder--and here's my question for you--at what point do we
write off such things as irrelevant nonsense, and ignore them? That is,
do we only respond to people who speak about arts who are in the arts
environment, or do we make some attempt, however limited, to assert in
other contexts that
such behavior is unacceptable, whether anybody's listening or not? I
think letters to the editor are in some cases actually a good idea--there
may be someone who does see that letter who learns something they
otherwise might not. For instance, I've published several letters to the
editor in the past year, and have had students and even several
administrators at the places where I work (people who would otherwise
never read my work) not only tell me "way to go etc etc" but also that
they hadn't quite realized what the position of "the other side" might be.
I think it's actually a good idea to take on ignorance when one
encounters it, even in the newspapers, because in fact you never know who
might be listening. While I certainly enjoy the discussions of various
informed people on this list, I also feel something of an inclination to
try to spread that information around, whenever possible.
As to whether Europera 5 is a great Cage piece or not, the point
actually seems moot to me. I haven't heard it, but a number of people who
have have written me to say how much they like it. I didn't write a
letter to
an editor this time around (the debate has actually all been here), but
if somebody had, there is a possibility that someone else would have seen
that letter and thought there was perhaps some reason for going to see
the performance. They then could have decided for themselves.
mark wallace
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 13 Jun 1996 18:06:17 +0000
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From: cris cheek <cris@SLANG.DEMON.CO.UK>
Subject: Re: post language poetry, post modernist poetry, fakes
Hi, firstly apologies for my dirty conference washing being
fenced through this line. That's the downside of simply punching
the reply button. See some of you in New Hamshire then.
I've not wanted to get involved here on this topic.
The framing of movements gives me jip enough. So the 'lang-po'
(still that intrepid band of brigands from the water margins
who came to the aid of the oppressed with their deadly martial
skills) is a possibly useful short-hand beyond which specific
differences come into play. I tend more towards the account of
exchange and interaction between poetries operating in very
different political, social and cultural contexts in the cases
of UK and US. In that sense I agree with Ken, there has been a
liberal smattering of interaction between these poetries. I also
agree with the drift of Ira's push, the real pith behind which
lies a getting at different practices.
Ken's focii of connection aside, the overall
reaction towards writers such as Watten, Silliman, Harryman,
Benson, Hejinian, Bernstein, Andrews, di Palma, McCaffery, Ward,
Robinson, Perelman, Darragh, Inman, Seaton, Sherry, Davies, Mason,
Piombino (those who i first had any contact with and read during
the later 1970s) that i've experienced in England, has been a
mixture of suspicion coupled with denial, gradually mellowing
to grudging acceptance without tangible enthusiasm. Fairly typical
British retentive states. I'm not aware, on the qeustion of 'fakes'
that there are poets in the UK who claim to be writing, or to have
written, 'language' poetry ever.
For me, rather than specifically the Vietnam War, a defining
cultural politics was 1976 punk and reggae, (when i started publishing
in a kind of DIY fervour and incidentally first met Charles Bernstein)
and the election of Margaret Thatcher's Conservatives in 1979 (when,
effectively - after a period of intense collaboration in the US
around Baltimore - I published a biggish collection 'a present'
and then basically stopped publishing; what tiny things have been
in the past couple of years are a refurbishment of hope).
'a present' is a book that bears hallmarks of the interaction with
'language'poetry. There is a splice column piece, for example,
dedicated to Steve Benson to whose work I was drawn and felt close
through aspects of syntax of improvised speech in performance and
swerves of intimacy and distance in realtion to personalised everyday
perceptual materials as much as anything else. In fact Steve, Allen
Fisher and myself did a performance together in July 1984 'Assumptions
Table' (it's published in full in Sulfur 18).
I'm quoting from that piece deidicated to Benson in 'a present' (Bluff
Books,1980) - 'fume basic':
'fan in the rhythm of the fan dancing, dorsal tenacious
too obscure, finis. i ought explain. make out.
lob. naked. fish pass under grass reflection, into major
traffic. does oppose. some would. welcome laurel. have
a smoke. come closer than. save 10 cents. and, what
color are the. be possible. . . .
pulse out. pulse, skin. the somewhat breakwater form
from ocean lapping both, either. mean the leaves were
bruising each other and the smell was coming
into the house. my quivering n erves in my
direction turn, face - to the washing up. as yet,
as though we shave the different parts of each day
are unglued. the bonding lips kiss table. or waters
that fire imaginations'
There are here, elements of north american diction -
some of the twists of that vernacular, filtered through an english
heart. I would agree with Ira, no 'new sentence'. But then Ron
identified, correctly in my opinion, that 'new sentence' as being a
Bay area phenomenon.
In the absence of twentieth century British models for
performance writing / poetic practice that really turned me on (aside
from Ivor Cutler, Samuel Beckett, Tom Raworth, Tom Leonard, Allen
Fisher) in the mid 1970s, it was refreshing to find a concern with the
micro-politics of language, the de-constructive powers of syntax,
the re-generative humours of rangey and interrogative thought, that
did not have an overbearing tyranny of 'knowledge' as central to its
project.
Contrary to what might be received opinion, it's
been my pleasurable experience to find that Language writers
are some of the most humane and funny and rigorously perceptive
people that i know.
The work in UK writing is different. Issues of urban
collapse, neo and post-colonialism, 'centralisation' as parochialism,
cultural 'editing', everyday 'composition', re-integrating (navigating)
beyond the over-fetishised fragments of the over-binarised post-modern.
Signifier and signified simply won't do any more. Performance Writing
is what's happening here for me, for others that will not be so -
difference continues to be manufactured.
love and love
cris
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Date: Thu, 13 Jun 1996 16:24:41 -0400
Reply-To: Robert Drake <au462@cleveland.Freenet.Edu>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Robert Drake <au462@CLEVELAND.FREENET.EDU>
Subject: Re: post language poetry, post modernist poetry, fakes
>The framing of movements gives me jip enough...
likewise, i think... my british slang dictionary lists, under
"jip": "india ink" (yep, that fits), also "energy" (australian,
not as close but still)... care to help me update th entry?
lbd
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Date: Fri, 14 Jun 1996 12:40:02 GMT+1200
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From: Tony Green <t.green@AUCKLAND.AC.NZ>
Organization: The University of Auckland
Subject: Re: what matter who's speaking
Seeing W for Godot at Royal Court while still plagued with adolescent
acne is still memorable -- partly because I wanted to leave em to it,
let em wait, I wanted to
walk out, about three-quarters
of the way thru. Cdn't handle it.
Realised that was significant but took a while for it to register on
me. Perhaps that's why I liked Coolidge's work immediately on
encountering it.
Tony Green,
e-mail: t.green@auckland.ac.nz
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Date: Fri, 14 Jun 1996 14:04:23 GMT+1200
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From: Tony Green <t.green@AUCKLAND.AC.NZ>
Organization: The University of Auckland
Subject: Typo
Rod Smith mentioning Joan Retalack reminds me I found 3rd impression
of Strachey's translation of Freud's Traumdeutung (1957?)
p.207
"...........................................to a remark I had de
in which........................................................."
&
p.209
" ..................................opposition journalists made
okes over Count Thun's name............................"
best , and perhaps Rod or someone cd pass this on to Joan R.
Tony Green,
e-mail: t.green@auckland.ac.nz
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Date: Thu, 13 Jun 1996 21:32:53 -0700
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From: George Bowering <bowering@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: singnafump
> When one is stopped by a cop or a deconstructionist around YALE,
> all one needs do is yell "OPPEN YOU" or "OPPEN SESAME" and this
> can be quite seedy if novel...
Odd, the cultural differences. I just came back from Seattle (saw games 3
and 4), and heard a taxi driver shout at a civilian driver "Reznikoff you,
pal!"
..........................
"Silence, sole luxury after rimes . . ."
--Mallarme
George Bowering.
2499 West 37th Ave.,
Vancouver, B.C.,
Canada V6M 1P4
fax: 1-604-266-9000
e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca
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Date: Fri, 14 Jun 1996 06:05:47 -0700
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From: Herb Levy <herb@ESKIMO.COM>
Subject: dead horse hairs
Mark -
> But I wonder--and here's my question for you--at what point do we
>write off such things as irrelevant nonsense, and ignore them? That is,
>do we only respond to people who speak about arts who are in the arts
>environment, or do we make some attempt, however limited, to assert in
>other contexts that
>such behavior is unacceptable, whether anybody's listening or not?
It's not a matter of only speaking with the converted (which in the context
of Cage, or most any other "experimental" artist, is a very, very small
subset of "those who are in the arts environment"). There are simply more
productive ways to make a public space for the work we want to see and read
and hear, than getting your underwear in a knot about bad press. Most
readers won't remember a bad review they saw a week ago, especially if it
was about something they've never heard, read, or seen. They simply have
no reference point.
The people who are motivated one way or another by newspaper reviews are
usually those people who already have an idea what they think. Nobody's
mind gets changed, & to most people it looks like an insular catfight about
some esoterica, that isn't a tenth as important as where Dennis Rodman will
get his next piercing when the Bulls beat the Sonics, or, if it's
Wednesday, what's on sale at the supermarket.
It's much better to get actual new work in front of new audiences, people
who don't know if they'll like it. Performances in unusual public areas,
posting broadsides around town, getting things seen or heard on local tv &
radio, etc. Everyone exposed to new work in this way WON'T like it, let's
not kid ourselves, but some of them will and those folks may come back for
more & they'll pay for it.
To paraphrase something Ron Silliman has written several times to the list
and elsewhere, you build an audience one person at a time. & more than
anything it's the work itself that's going to build that audience, not
reviews, whether they're positive or negative.
I don't see much value in beating up on someone for having a different
opinion than you do. I don't agree with him, you don't agree with him, but
you're very unlikely to change Page's mind on this. He's an adult and he's
quite possibly heard lots more of Cage's music than you have, and no matter
how wrong you think he is, he has a right to his opinion.
Mark, you must know that Page is not the only person out there who does not
like most of Cage's music. These people are not all idiots, they just
don't like what they've heard. Hell, there are still people who think
Stravinksy's music is too weird, just as there are people, who otherwise
seem rational and intelligent, who think that Finnegans Wake, or Ulysses,
for that matter, are mistakes by a pretty good realistic writer, or that
Pop Art was nothig more than a wishy-washy sellout after the heroic vigor
of Abstract Expressionism, or that the early Beatles were better than the
early Rolling Stones.
I mean, I hope it's not news to you that not everyone on this list is
totally sold on the work of, say, Susan Howe or Bruce Andrews. I'm just
not ready to put these folks into re-education camps until they see the
error of their ways.
Rather than writing cranky letters to the editor (really far more than a
full time job, anyway), complaining about the reviewers who are already in
place, it makes more sense to me to try to cultivate writers or editors to
produce a context for alternative work. It's much more important to find
someone to give the work some kind of support than to get into a hissy fit
with the writers who dis it. Probably this can't be done in the Post, but
maybe there's someone at the Reader who'd be more open to the work on a
ongoing basis.
Besides, there are few newspaper reviewers that are hardline about this
kind of thing & you may find Page an unexpected ally later on, if you don't
piss him off. There's one reviewer in Seattle who had said almost nothing
positive about ANY music written in the last seventy-five years, until she
wrote a rave review of a performance of Morton Feldman's For Philip Guston
(four and a half hours of shimmering, rotating mobiles of melody), a
concert that I was surprised she even bothered to come to, let alone that
she'd love it.
So go figure.
Bests
Herb Levy
herb@eskimo.com
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Date: Fri, 14 Jun 1996 10:34:05 -0500
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From: Jordan Davis <jdavis@PANIX.COM>
Subject: cultivating good reviewers
I'm a fan of Neil Strauss's music reviews for the New York Times. Strauss,
editor of the sublime _Radiotext(e)_ anthology (check out especially
"Frequency Modulation or Fallen Man", a tribute to the inventor of FM),
covers everything from the local pirate radio to bhangra to Bruce
Springsteen, without resorting to cribs from the press release or even a
momentary waver from his calm intelligent enthusiasm for both the old and
great and the new and great. Strauss's prose is exceptional considering the
rate at which for most reviewers there tha Times' requisite cool slopes
into dorkiness, middling prose, and received ideas (torpor)--the retired
Frank Rich being the big exception. Rich's review of Sting in Three Penny
Opera is my standard for meanness; it begins like this--
'Returning home from the new staging of TPO, the theatergoer rushes to put
the original (1950s) cast soundtrack on the turntable. Not to relive the
evening's high points--there aren't any--but to reassure oneself that one
is among the living.'
What I would really enjoy is to encourage a very good book reviewer working
at a high circulation newspaper to read and write about poetry. All I do
now is glare at my Voice whenever Peter Schjeldahl uses the word 'poetry'
(triggering his subroutine about poetry being over) to talk about some new
catastrophe in art.
Jordan Davis
(That reminds me. I can think of a couple people who write in more public
places very well if only occasionally about poetry--Albert Mobilio and
Geoffrey O'Brien. O'Brien's piece on Susan Howe in the Voice six years ago
was responsible for building more audience for her work in New York than
anything that side of the Susan Howe issue of Talisman. And Mobilio's
much-missed magazine columns in the VLS were the most reliable way to find
out when Hambone was about to arrive--it's difficult to imagine the VLS
under its current benighted regime deigning to print anything about poetry
not written by or about poets published by the major houses--by which I
mean those famous poets Newhouse and Murdoch. So much for independence!)
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Date: Fri, 14 Jun 1996 10:41:34 -0400
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From: Michael Heller <hellerm@IS2.NYU.EDU>
Subject: Re: POETICS Digest - 12 Jun 1996 to 13 Jun 1996
In-Reply-To: <199606140403.AAA23819@listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu>
If some one has Rob Wilson's e-mail address, or if Rob is tuning in,
please post it to me.
Michael Heller
hellerm@is2.nyu.edu
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Date: Fri, 14 Jun 1996 05:31:18 -1000
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From: Robert J Wilson <rwilson@HAWAII.EDU>
Subject: Re: POETICS Digest - 12 Jun 1996 to 13 Jun 1996
In-Reply-To: <Pine.OSF.3.93.960614103959.20627A-100000@is2.NYU.EDU>
Michael,
Yes, I am out here in a lifeboat at and around and off Bamboo Ridge,
working to deform US cultural poetics inside a sovereign Hawaiian nation
inside the postcoldwar empire of the sign. Just in case you were
wondering, and the 'Dante boy' poetics is nowhere to be found. Send me
an email missive at: rwilson@hawaii.edu
to keep me posted on NYC developments and your latest forays.
Susan Schultz and the Tinfish gang (as we work amping up Tinfish #3 for
global [www] and local [sexy little chapbook, with new cover by HR editor
Sean MacBeth] call it the Death Of Captain Cook School of Global/Local
Poetics or, more simply, the PostLocal Local.
Hope you are doing well, Rob Sean Wilson
On Fri, 14 Jun 1996, Michael Heller wrote:
> If some one has Rob Wilson's e-mail address, or if Rob is tuning in,
> please post it to me.
>
> Michael Heller
>
> hellerm@is2.nyu.edu
>
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Date: Fri, 14 Jun 1996 11:32:02 -0400
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From: Rod Smith <AERIALEDGE@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: wild wild dead horse hairs
NOW HERB, the early Beatles WERE better than the early Stones, read a good
review the other day making just that point...
>I don't see much value in beating up on someone for having a different
>opinion than you do.
Yes, I'll go along with this.
>Rather than writing cranky letters to the editor (really far more than a
>full time job, anyway), complaining about the reviewers who are already in
>place, it makes more sense to me to try to cultivate >writers or editors to
produce a context for alternative work.
It seems to me part of the work of creating an audience IS writing cranky
letters to the editors. A better example than Page of the extremely
conservative views on the arts forthcoming from the Post is book reviewer
Jonathan Yardley. Sure, he has a right to his views, however noone with
opposing views (i.e. noone as far left as he is right-- & in some ways this
IS quantifiable) has any of the cultural capital this bloke's accrued.
Unfortunately, he does have an impact, which goes unchallenged, & if it's
unquestioned, people believe it-- just like the NYT version(s) of "history."
Obviously, it's not ok. I will agree with you that the most effective way to
change this is by going around them, "one person at a time." Yet, I do think
they have an impact on what people think. They make the work of building an
audience much harder.
Rod
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Date: Fri, 14 Jun 1996 11:45:55 -0400
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From: Eliza McGrand- CVA Guest <elliza@AI.MIT.EDU>
Subject: reviews -- a query about ethics, contexts, and consequences
i've been watching the thread about a harsh review, and wrestling with
a review i have to write a book of poetry (though not, jordan, for a
major venue!) for some time, and it finally occurred to me that this
list might be a good place to put the ethics and questions of the
problem out for discussion.
imagine you were given a bad book to review, the book of a writer
(poetry and academic) who has, heretofore, produced somewhat
interesting though not stellar work. imagine this writer teaches
creative writing, and has produced a "How-To" text (with someone else)
on writing although the writer's credentials are not strong. further,
the book to be reviewed has poems which even venture to lecture, for
example, on the importance of technique while the lack of same has
plagued every poem. the badness of the writing is such that you knew,
before you read the biographical sketch, that the writer must teach
creative writing to beginners because there are so many "ok everyone
i'm going to be creative here" lines, poems that make a great big
overwritten fuss about nothing, and overused and even trite phrases
and images.
but the writer also comes from a much under-represented sector of
writers (though none of the experience arising from that context is
explicitly present in the current book). further, the writer's
publisher is a small, underfunded press which has taken on a very
worthy publishing venture, one you wish to support and most off the
problems might have been cleared away had the book a bang-up editor
(which the press does not have the money to hire).
does one write the scathing blast which seems to work it's way into
every sentence (despite efforts to be moderate)? is there something
unendurabaly prissy about condemning another writer for not trying
hard enough and publishing a very very poor book while there exists
great writers under all sorts of pressure who don't publish until they
have work that is really worthwhile, silent sometimes until their
death.
imagine you are new to reviewing, aware that you might have the
overzealousness common to the fresh and idealistic, and almost
certainly are in a vulnerable position professionally -- is honesty
really important or effective here? does someone have to stand up and
say when something is really awful? should that someone be not
well-known writer? or, in retrospect, is one (at that stage) usually
happier about those chapters in which one is moderate, merciful,
and/or discreet? should david engage goliath, especially without an
omnipotent fixer?
i find myself thinking, on the one hand, of a writer's story of a
workshop where someone gave out a perfectly awful poem for discussion.
the group sat around for about ten minutes trying to give very
careful, serious, and ultimately not very direct suggestions on how to
improve the poem. finally a woman who had been silent the entire time
exploded, saying something like "i can't believe you all -- for ten
minutes you have been treating this poem as if it were really good.
but it is terrible, and it is an insult to this writer to patronize
him by not saying so."
but i also think of friends whose professional discretion make them an
incredible asset to any committee or group or project, aboutut the
strong reaction here to the negative article. and about herb's
feeling that reviews are not, ultimately, going to alter anyone's
opinion or guide them (though i disagree -- if a trustworthy source
pans a movie, depending on the direction of the critique, i might well
not go to it without some other strong motivation). there is also his
point that reviewers essentially are preaching to the converted, if
they are heard at all. what aboutthe possibility of reviews being
stained by reviewer's preferences -- what is a yardstick for knowing
when our distaste for something comes from distorting theoretical
loyalties rather than fundamental principles and basics of art?
have you ever strongly panned a text? if so, did you regret it later?
or did you feel a negative review was best? did it have unpleasant
consequences? if so, could you or would you have done anything to
mitigate them? so you wish you had tried? if there were no
unpleasant consequences from the negative review, was there anything
you did that might have helped avert them?
does any of it really matter -- are these reviews tempests in teapots
and not to be taken seriously?
e
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 14 Jun 1996 13:08:23 EDT
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From: henry gould <AP201070@BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU>
Subject: Re: wild wild dead horse hairs
In-Reply-To: Message of Fri, 14 Jun 1996 11:32:02 -0400 from
<AERIALEDGE@AOL.COM>
On Fri, 14 Jun 1996 11:32:02 -0400 Rod Smith said:
>
>It seems to me part of the work of creating an audience IS writing cranky
>letters to the editors.
Crank 'em out, fellas. BUILD them audience muscles!
>opposing views (i.e. noone as far left as he is right-- & in some ways this
>IS quantifiable) has any of the cultural capital this bloke's accrued.
>Unfortunately, he does have an impact, which goes unchallenged, & if it's
>unquestioned, people believe it-- just like the NYT version(s) of "history."
>Obviously, it's not ok. I will agree with you that the most effective way to
>change this is by going around them, "one person at a time." Yet, I do think
>they have an impact on what people think. They make the work of building an
>audience much harder.
Come here, you. I said YOU.
Gonna read you this sonnet - you, audience!
Listen up! Hey!
Come back here!
This art biz is righteous work, leftover!
You gotta rhyme it EVERY day in EVERY way!
DAmn the torpid newsbuzzers! Full beats ahood!
Hey - that's part a my poem! Get back here!
Gonna free your mind with my Venetian blind....yeah (c.f. early Trashmen)
- Henri leGoulash
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Date: Fri, 14 Jun 1996 13:21:49 EDT
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: reviews -- a query about ethics, contexts, and consequences
In-Reply-To: Message of Fri, 14 Jun 1996 11:45:55 -0400 from
<elliza@AI.MIT.EDU>
My advice
if you want the truth
is just shake the dice
outa both sides of yr mouth
thumbs down to some
thumbs up to the dumb
and if you think that's terrible
go check out a parable
- Hank the rank Think-Tank
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Date: Fri, 14 Jun 1996 14:12:28 -0400
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From: Carnography <scrypt@INTERPORT.NET>
Subject: Re: Typo
Tony Green typed:
> Rod Smith mentioning Joan Retalack reminds me I found 3rd impression
> of Strachey's translation of Freud's Traumdeutung (1957?)
>
> p.207
> "...........................................to a remark I had de
> in which........................................................."
> p.209
> " ..................................opposition journalists made
> okes over Count Thun's name............................"
You know, Perry Meisel often compares Strachey's translations of Freud to
_Mrs. Dalloway_ and now I know why. I don't know about Joan R., but you
*have* managed to forward this to Mr. Rothenberg.
Hardin
http://www.interport.net/~scrypt
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Date: Fri, 14 Jun 1996 13:16:00 -0600
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From: "Pritchett,Pat @Silverplume" <pritchpa@SILVERPLUME.IIX.COM>
Subject: Re: reviews -- a query about ethics, con
Comments: To: Eliza McGrand- CVA Guest <elliza@AI.MIT.EDU>
Hello everyone. I'm new to the List and will here venture a response to
Eliza's very pertinent query.
As a reviewer for various papers and mags, most recently the American Book
Review, for some years now, I will emphatically say that yes it does matter;
whatever the faults of the system, reviewing plays an important role in the
publishing/reading world as a whole which we can't seem to get along
without. Most of the time, as with the NYTBR, it seems like little more than
an adjunct (not to the Muse's diadem) but to the PR depts. of Random House,
S&S, et al. But intelligent, thoughtful reviews can boost sales of a little
known book and moreover, can mean a lot to a writer who has labored in
obscurity and feels rather isolated from things.
I try to keep in mind what Malcolm Cowley once told some students of his at
Stanford: Always remember that it takes as much hard work to write a bad
book as it does a good one. I have panned books in the past, sometimes
savagely (e.g. Bob Shacocis' "Swimming in the Volcano"). I feel it's
something I've grown out of. I no longer need the sense of vindication that
seems to be the natural response to a book which arouses genuine
indignation. Taking a tip from Auden, I no longer review books I don't like.
There's plenty of good ones which need all the support they can get. And
while this will probably strike some as corny and decidedly ante-postmodern,
I find that sincerity can make up for a plethora of other faults, while no
amount of artifice can take the place of honest intentions. Which opens up
another can of worms entirely about how we assess intentionality vis-a-vis
literary personas, etc.
You mention the intentions of the publisher: I find that to be irrelevant. A
work should be judged on its own merit. There are of course mitigating
factors and these can and should be mentioned to "soften the blow," if it
feels appropriate. What counts is the end result, though. Otherwise, there'd
be no end of "masterpieces", my own included.
It's the job of a reviewer to praise what he or she feels to be good and to
say what is bad, inferior or just doesn't work. DHL said all good criticism
is subjective. I would not shirk from calling a bad book bad. I just don't
go out of my way looking for them. Fortunately my various editors let me
pick and choose. The worst response I got from a bad review - it was a mixed
negative of Ginsberg's last book - was a crisp letter from a highly
respected poet which gave me serious food for thought. We have since become
friends. So go figure... Best advice: Reviewing is highly political, in one
sense, but should be practiced as though it isn't. It's a rare book that is
completely bad; somewhere there's bound to be at least the suggestion of an
interesing if poorly expressed idea, though not always. Find that and use
it. In the end, pulling punches does you no good and is a disservice to
writers everywhere.
----------
From: Eliza McGrand- CVA Guest
To: Multiple recipients of list POETICS
Subject: reviews -- a query about ethics, contexts, and consequences
Date: Friday, June 14, 1996 12:16PM
i've been watching the thread about a harsh review, and wrestling with
a review i have to write a book of poetry (though not, jordan, for a
major venue!) for some time, and it finally occurred to me that this
list might be a good place to put the ethics and questions of the
problem out for discussion.
imagine you were given a bad book to review, the book of a writer
(poetry and academic) who has, heretofore, produced somewhat
interesting though not stellar work. imagine this writer teaches
creative writing, and has produced a "How-To" text (with someone else)
on writing although the writer's credentials are not strong. further,
the book to be reviewed has poems which even venture to lecture, for
example, on the importance of technique while the lack of same has
plagued every poem. the badness of the writing is such that you knew,
before you read the biographical sketch, that the writer must teach
creative writing to beginners because there are so many "ok everyone
i'm going to be creative here" lines, poems that make a great big
overwritten fuss about nothing, and overused and even trite phrases
and images.
but the writer also comes from a much under-represented sector of
writers (though none of the experience arising from that context is
explicitly present in the current book). further, the writer's
publisher is a small, underfunded press which has taken on a very
worthy publishing venture, one you wish to support and most off the
problems might have been cleared away had the book a bang-up editor
(which the press does not have the money to hire).
does one write the scathing blast which seems to work it's way into
every sentence (despite efforts to be moderate)? is there something
unendurabaly prissy about condemning another writer for not trying
hard enough and publishing a very very poor book while there exists
great writers under all sorts of pressure who don't publish until they
have work that is really worthwhile, silent sometimes until their
death.
imagine you are new to reviewing, aware that you might have the
overzealousness common to the fresh and idealistic, and almost
certainly are in a vulnerable position professionally -- is honesty
really important or effective here? does someone have to stand up and
say when something is really awful? should that someone be not
well-known writer? or, in retrospect, is one (at that stage) usually
happier about those chapters in which one is moderate, merciful,
and/or discreet? should david engage goliath, especially without an
omnipotent fixer?
i find myself thinking, on the one hand, of a writer's story of a
workshop where someone gave out a perfectly awful poem for discussion.
the group sat around for about ten minutes trying to give very
careful, serious, and ultimately not very direct suggestions on how to
improve the poem. finally a woman who had been silent the entire time
exploded, saying something like "i can't believe you all -- for ten
minutes you have been treating this poem as if it were really good.
but it is terrible, and it is an insult to this writer to patronize
him by not saying so."
but i also think of friends whose professional discretion make them an
incredible asset to any committee or group or project, aboutut the
strong reaction here to the negative article. and about herb's
feeling that reviews are not, ultimately, going to alter anyone's
opinion or guide them (though i disagree -- if a trustworthy source
pans a movie, depending on the direction of the critique, i might well
not go to it without some other strong motivation). there is also his
point that reviewers essentially are preaching to the converted, if
they are heard at all. what aboutthe possibility of reviews being
stained by reviewer's preferences -- what is a yardstick for knowing
when our distaste for something comes from distorting theoretical
loyalties rather than fundamental principles and basics of art?
have you ever strongly panned a text? if so, did you regret it later?
or did you feel a negative review was best? did it have unpleasant
consequences? if so, could you or would you have done anything to
mitigate them? so you wish you had tried? if there were no
unpleasant consequences from the negative review, was there anything
you did that might have helped avert them?
does any of it really matter -- are these reviews tempests in teapots
and not to be taken seriously?
e
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 14 Jun 1996 11:57:05 CST
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: David Baratier <dave.baratier@MOSBY.COM>
Subject: voice reviewers
Jordan,
Perhaps the deterioration is because the Voice is free now from
currency and hasn't been spotted since late April in Manhattan
David Baratier
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 14 Jun 1996 15:07:07 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Carnography <scrypt@INTERPORT.NET>
Subject: Re: dead horse hairs
Herb Levy typed:
>To paraphrase something Ron Silliman has written several times to the list
>and elsewhere, you build an audience one person at a time. & more than
>anything it's the work itself that's going to build that audience, not
>reviews, whether they're positive or negative.
Lynne Tillman likes to talk about the pleasure she derives from people
who speak of their "audience"--of a pre-existing group of people who
are thought to gather for some new work of hers. A publisher says,
"but your audience!" She replies, "Before I publish a book, my
audience doesn't exist!" She also loves it when a colossal Hollywood
sequel flops and film people, who had thought that the film *already
had an audience*, are mystified.
All the best,
Rob Hardin
http://www.interport.net/~scrypt
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 14 Jun 1996 15:14:15 EDT
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Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: henry gould <AP201070@BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU>
Subject: Re: dead horse hairs
In-Reply-To: Message of Fri, 14 Jun 1996 15:07:07 -0400 from
<scrypt@INTERPORT.NET>
On Fri, 14 Jun 1996 15:07:07 -0400 Carnography said:
>Lynne Tillman likes to talk about the pleasure she derives from people
>who speak of their "audience"--of a pre-existing group of people who
>are thought to gather for some new work of hers. A publisher says,
>"but your audience!" She replies, "Before I publish a book, my
>audience doesn't exist!"
Maybe this is relevant:
Schubert on the water, Mozart in birds' clatter,
and Goethe whistling on a winding path,
and Hamlet meditating with anxious steps,
all counted the crowd's pulse, believed the crowd.
Maybe, before there were lips, there was a whisper,
and before there were trees there were leaves whirling,
and those to whom we dedicate this our experiment,
before the experiment, have accumulated eyes and noses and mouths.
O. Mandelstam, trans.Burton Raffel {though I like James Greene's better)
- H. Gould
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 14 Jun 1996 15:27:04 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Carnography <scrypt@INTERPORT.NET>
Subject: Re: reviews -- a query about ethics, contexts, and consequences
Eliza:
> does one write the scathing blast which seems to work its way into
> every sentence (despite efforts to be moderate)?
I try not to blast a writer who is doing anything even remotely
ambitious. I also consider the books that might be written
*after* the book I dislike--after the book I don't want said writer
to choke on first.
Best, I think, to save your harshest criticisms for private
conversations. Editors love harsh reviews and controversy, but
that's because they aren't signing their own names to such reviews.
Anger can give you amazingly clear vision, but your vision won't
necessarily be balanced. Personally, I still wince at the harshest
criticisms I've made in public. I hate discouraging people over trifles.
After all, in the words of Montaigne's medallion, "What do I know?"
> is there something
> unendurabaly prissy about condemning another writer for not trying
> hard enough and publishing a very very poor book while there exists
> great writers under all sorts of pressure who don't publish until they
> have work that is really worthwhile, silent sometimes until their
> death.
Not prissy, just misguided. Since the book is already published, slamming
it won't do anything for yet-unpublished books. You'd have to be an editor
at a publishing house for this sort of reasoning to apply.
> is honesty
> really important or effective here? does someone have to stand up and
> say when something is really awful?
Honesty is important. Tactlessness isn't.
> have you ever strongly panned a text? if so, did you regret it later?
> or did you feel a negative review was best? did it have unpleasant
> consequences?
See above.
if so, could you or would you have done anything to
> mitigate them? so you wish you had tried? if there were no
> unpleasant consequences from the negative review, was there anything
> you did that might have helped avert them?
Bottom line: I don't believe in discouraging other artists. I do offer
concrete criticisms and suggestions where I think they might be helpful.
But I don't believe I've ever said or written, "_.......__ sucks" unless
it was partly an ideological/sociological matter.
All the best,
Rob Hardin
http://www.interport.net/~scrypt
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 14 Jun 1996 15:49:33 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Fred Muratori <fmm1@CORNELL.EDU>
Subject: Re: reviews -- a query about ethics, con
From: Eliza McGrand- CVA Guest
>have you ever strongly panned a text? if so, did you regret it later?
>or did you feel a negative review was best? did it have unpleasant
>consequences? if so, could you or would you have done anything to
>mitigate them? so you wish you had tried? if there were no
>unpleasant consequences from the negative review, was there anything
>you did that might have helped avert them?
>
>does any of it really matter -- are these reviews tempests in teapots
>and not to be taken seriously?
>
>e
I've been reviewing poetry for various venues now for about 15 years, and
negative reviews are always harder to write than positive ones. They are,
however, in some cases necessary. What do I mean by "in some cases?" Well,
while I don't see the point in demolishing a first book by a new writer,
(I've seen some good -- if not spectacular -- fledgling poets get royally
whomped in big-name journals by big-name poets/critics, and it can really
hurt their future reception, no matter how good their subsequent work
becomes), there are lots of naked emperors out there, and I'd really like
to see reviewers give them a bit more in the way of honest criticism than
they're getting. In other words -- they should pick on poets their own
size. It's easy to trash Mr. or Ms. Whothehellizzat with a first book from
Cleveland State, but a Sharon Olds or a John Hollander or a Richard Howard?
Gulp. Forget about someday seeing your own work in _Paris Review_ (or
whatever mag the criticized or friend-of-the-criticized poet edits) if you
do. That's part of the problem: many reviewers are themselves poets, and
feel that they have to be careful about whose tree they shake. What I'd
like to see -- up front -- are admissions that the reviewer was a poet's
student (or teacher), or spouse, or departmental colleague, etc. When I see
best buddies reviewing each other's books, I'm inclined to take the review
just a little less seriously -- as little more than an extended blurb --
which is why I return review copies of books by people I'm more than only
marginally acquainted with, even if I like the work.
Still, reviews -- even mixed or less-than-favorable ones -- are very
important for any poet; they're part of the paper trail of existence,
confirmation that someone at least noticed another's attempt to contribute
to the culture.
P.S. One negative review I wrote was never printed. Turned out that the
editor of the mag was having lunch with the publisher, and inadvertently
let the person eyeball the review. He made such a row that the mag scrapped
the piece to appease him, even though the editor professed that the review
was civil and fair, and that she agreed with it. What's even more ironic
-- the author was dead and the press was really little more than a vanity
outfit. Go figure.
***********************
Fred Muratori "Certain themes are incurable."
(fmm1@cornell.edu)
Reference Services Division - Lyn Hejinian
Olin * Kroch * Uris Libraries
Cornell University
Ithaca, NY 14853
WWW: http://fmref.library.cornell.edu/spectra.html
***********************
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 14 Jun 1996 16:57:14 EDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ken Edwards <100344.2546@COMPUSERVE.COM>
Subject: post language poetry, post modernist poetry, fakes
Chris Stroffolino wrote:
Dear ken Edwards---
Could you elaborate on Miles Champion. The little I've seen is interesting
and it was good to see your willingness to include him, while Ira, I
think, seemed less to......cs
Miles' book from Carcanet is, as I posted before, called _Compositional Bonbons
Placate_. Great cover by Trevor Winkfield. Don't know how easy it is for you to
get Carcanet books over there -- probably SPD is the place. Miles also has a
chapbook from Cris Cheek's press Sound & Language, _Sore Models_. Later this
year, he will be included in a mini-anthology of four poets from my own press,
Reality Street Editions, probably to be titled _Sleight of Foot_.
Miles is an enthusiast for the work of Teds Berrigan and Greenwald, as well as
Raworth, Ashbery et al, all of whose influences I think can be discerned in his
work, which is oblique, fast-moving, amusing, uneven but definitely sparky.
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 14 Jun 1996 18:34:32 EDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ken Edwards <100344.2546@COMPUSERVE.COM>
Subject: post language poetry, post modernist poetry, fakes
Amen to Cris' post. I couldn't agree more. When I spoke of "intelligent
engagement" with language poetry by British poets, Ira, I did not mean slavish
imitation -- that wouldn't be very intelligent. Like Cris, I can think of none
of us who imitates language poetry or could be accurately described as a
language poet. But some are more open to foreign models than others. Also some
of the traits you discern in language poetry are independently discernible in
some of the poetry being originated here.
(eg quote "the attitude to language or presence, in any
number games, paragraph organisation, or
relation of page to page, or dual columns,
in the way that it is in any of the poets
mentioned" -- well, see Allen Fisher, passim)
Ira, I don't agree with your assessment of Miles Champion, that he is being flip
or embarrassed: rather I see in him an (engagingly boyish?) enthusiasm for life
and letters. He does imitate the objects of his enthusiasm from time to time,
I'll grant you, but that's no bad thing necessarily, as Ted Berrigan has pointed
out.
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 14 Jun 1996 09:24:17 +0000
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: cris cheek <cris@SLANG.DEMON.CO.UK>
Subject: Re: post language 'jip' definitions
Comments: To: Robert Drake <au462@cleveland.freenet.edu>
Hi Bob, re - 'jip',
if you've got a tendency in your back muscles for postural punishment and
every so often , or some days rather than others your back feels like it's
playing up you might say 'my back's giving me jip'.
I've heard the term used more in connection with physical problems or
procedural functions (my printer is giving me jip' than with interhuman
communication. But i guess, although I haven't heard this - other brits
here might testify - it's possible to say 'my boss is giving me jip'.
I've avoided the boss scenarios most of my life and don't intend to restart
now.
Certainly if you were using a nibbed pen with india ink and (as has been my
experience with nibbed pens from time to time) you were subjected to
uninvited blotting due to some malfunctioning aspects between the pen and
yourself, you might well say 'this pen's giving me jip'.
So in terms of the slang dictionary definitions that you offer - it would
be something like:
jip - adjectival noun. Non-exquisite interference, or niggling
awareness of energetic displacement, somewhat like an unintentional ink
blot (should such a thing exist). An irritating tending to focus away from
intention.
Not very satisfactory i know. Maybe others can add.
love and love
cris
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 15 Jun 1996 11:03:36 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Mark Wallace <mdw@GWIS2.CIRC.GWU.EDU>
Subject: Susan Howe and Samuel Beckett
Dear Herb Levy:
Well, actually it seems to me that the value of the work
of Susan Howe
or Samuel Beckett (or many others, maybe) is not only obvious, but
something that it would be pretty hard to argue against very
successfully. One can, I suppose, have reasonable questions about the
limitations of their work, but as to dismissing it entirely, I'm still
under the impression that that's an opinion I don't really have to
respect too much.
It's quite possible not to like John Cage's work, but to
blatantly and obviously misrepresent it seems to me is another matter.
Whether one likes Cage's work or not, to come to the conclusion that he's
doing "nothing" when he spent years elaborating what he's doing does not
seem a matter of opinion to me--I suppose one has the right to be of any
"opinion" one wants, but if it's blatantly and purposefully
disinformational, that's not an opinion that counts for much. Disagree
with Cage, sure, that's fine. But pretend as if it's okay to act as if he
never said anything at all? No way. I think I'll continue to be as angry
about that as I want to be.
Actually, I appreciate your recent comments, because it gives me
the wonderful opportunity to be a hard-liner again. One of the early
virtues of this poetics list was that it was a forum where one didn't
have to endlessly justify the basic value of avant garde poetry. Whatever
the limits and problems of that poetry, at least on this list one didn't
have to spend a lot of time stating obvious things like "well you know
Susan Howe's actually a pretty good writer"--one could assume that the
poetics forum was a place where something as obvious as that would be a
given. Perhaps you're right, and this poetics list is not such a place
any longer, but nonetheless I think I'm going to act as if it is.
I'm interested, I suppose, in all sorts of discussion about
poetry, but the underlying assumption that I see emerging, which is that
the value of this work has to be endlessly justified to others even when
they refuse to engage it seriously, as Tim Page has, seems to
me so much hogwash. I think I'm going to continue to assume that the
importance of John Cage's work is blatant and obvious, and if
someone else doesn't understand that, tough. A work of art can't defend
itself, I suppose, but actually it seems to me much more reasonable to
suggest that people on this list would justify themselves in the face of
Cage's work, or Beckett's. Does this make me an authoritarian postmodern
hard-line anti-relativist? With any luck it does. Newspapers, publishing
houses (and their reviewers and art critics, most of them anyway) need to
justify themselves in the face of works of art that have demolished their
most basic assumptions. That such entities ignore and, when questioned,
deny that they have this obligation is tantamount to an admission that
they have no defence, and that they should end their own existence as
quickly as
possible. They won't, I know, choose to end themselves, but morally,
there seems to be no question that they SHOULD. Such a position on my
part is not only completely REASONABLE, but the fact that it may not seem
reasonable suggests instantly the level of confusion and corruption that
marks the world I live in.
So (and this has been a lot of fun), anyone who thinks that Susan
Howwe, or Samuel Beckett, or John Cage, have not done significant work,
are WRONG and deeply confused, and obviously need me to tell them so.
"I have not yet begun to be an extremist"
Mark Wallace
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 15 Jun 1996 11:17:13 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Thomas M. Orange" <tmorange@BOSSHOG.ARTS.UWO.CA>
Subject: Freud:Woolf::Heidegger:Stein
In-Reply-To: <199606150407.AAA10103@listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu>
Funny, cuz I was reading Heidegger's "Letter on Humanism" the other night
and got the distinct impression that it was really Gertrude Stein speaking:
Thinking acts insofar as it thinks....But all working or
effecting lies in Being and is directed towards beings.
Thinking, in contrast, lets itself be claimed by Being so that it
can say the truth of Being. Thinking accomplishes this letting.
(tr. Capuzzi/Gray, _Basic Writings_ 1977 ed., 193-94)
Tom Orange
tmorange@bosshog.arts.uwo.ca
------------------------------
On Sat, 15 Jun 1996, Hardin wrote:
> Tony Green typed:
>
> > Rod Smith mentioning Joan Retalack reminds me I found 3rd impression
> > of Strachey's translation of Freud's Traumdeutung (1957?)
> >
> > p.207
> > "...........................................to a remark I had de
> > in which........................................................."
>
> > p.209
> > " ..................................opposition journalists made
> > okes over Count Thun's name............................"
>
> You know, Perry Meisel often compares Strachey's translations of Freud to
> _Mrs. Dalloway_ and now I know why....
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 15 Jun 1996 12:57:50 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: McGuire Jerry L <jlm8047@USL.EDU>
Subject: query about ethics
Hi, folks. Jerry McGuire, new to the list. I've been lurking for a few days to
get the feel of the thing--it's like just before the inkling-moment of a new
love affair, no?--and am hauled in by the thoughtful responses to Eliza
McGrand's questions about writing a negative review. My first feeling was
that these were generally so sharp that the topic was quickly tied off. But
here are just a couple more observations:
Eliza's predicament is so _specific_--a "bad" How-To book (is there any
other kind?) co-authored by a poet/academic whose prior work she
evaluates as "somewhat interesting though not stellar" (so from the outset
we're situated with reference not to an equal, but to a mediocrity);
much of the offensiveness is metapoetic biz about "technique" that seems
self-evidently knuckleheaded. And then there are the complications: the
writer is identified as belonging to "a much underrepresented sector of
writers" (I'm not sure what E.M. means by "sector" here, and it may matter),
and the book comes from a non-hegemonic press. Furthermore, Eliza says
she's herself as "new to reviewing" and professionally "vulnerable." Any of
these observations might lead a reviewer into trails of inquiry that would
be worth anyone's time.
It seems to me there's a contradiction between Eliza's atypical willingness
to ask these questions in the first place and her desire for the clarity felt
by her exemplary workshop assassin, who unambiguously declares an awful
poem not worth anyone else's time. (If I read Pat Pritchett and Rob Hardin's
responses properly, I'd say that they have both written hostile reviews
about which they've had some second, and possibly painful second, thoughts,
and so have I.)
All this points up the variety of motivations that enter into reviewing.
Some respondents think of it as a service performed for writers; but clearly
there are cultural, psychological, and professional gains at issue, too. One
reason to write a review is that it's more lasting, more respectable, and
more profitable (though not by much) than flaming. The review seems to me
a relatively _little_ thing caught in a web of institutional motivations
linking individual creative artists, the publishing industry, and the academy,
both in its management of culture and in its maintenance of internal
hierarchies of power. That Eliza claims to be (and no doubt is) "vulnerable"
is evidence that more than absolute declarations of objective worth are at
stake--and probably invite her nostalgia for tough talk. But the review that
is worth one's work is the one that sets aside the easy brutalities of the
institutional workshop (isn't it?) as well as evaluation, understood as any
kind of simple matter whatsoever, and that attempts instead to discuss the
text in relation to the contexts in which it's entangled. E.M. doesn't need
more clarity, she requires a determination to take her self- reflection
further, into institutional analysis. I think she needs to resist the
evaluative tendency, and her own hostile feelings, entirely. Unless it really
is just enemies' lists we're constructing in our reviews. (I think that if she
plugs the proper names from her review into the set of questions she
posted to this list, she'd be well on the way to writing a better review than
most of those we see or write).
I'm sorry I've gone on at such length--I'll try to be briefer from now on. But
one other thing I wanted to mention. Concerning Rob Hardin's claim that
"Editors love harsh reviews and controversy, but that's because they aren't
signing their own names to such reviews," I'm sure that's true for some.
But when I was processing (fond term) reviews for _College Literature_, I
and everyone else reading them were aware that hostility almost always
coincides with a slackening of precision, a strutting of careless
assumptions, and generally a bunch of ego-building exercises quite
detached from the task of exploring a text and committing oneself to a
reasoned position on it that others might respond to. And while we were
nearly as agreeable to negative reviews as positive, we always discouraged
hostility for its own sake, or for mere ideological and rhetorical
advantage.
All best--
Jerry McGuire jlm8047@usl.edu
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 15 Jun 1996 18:52:11 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Carnography <scrypt@INTERPORT.NET>
Subject: Re: query about ethics
Jerry McGuire typed:
> Concerning Rob Hardin's claim that
> "Editors love harsh reviews and controversy, but that's because they aren't
> signing their own names to such reviews," I'm sure that's true for some.
Spec:
1. Iconclastic academic magazines--here nameless because some of you
write for the same ones I do and I'd rather not argue about them in
public--and
2. Mainstream crossover magazines, such as _Spin_ and the _Village
Voice_--which, antithetically to _The Nation_, _The Baffler_ and _Z
Magazine_, torch individual artists while leaving commercial
bureaucracies and conglomerates unscathed. While there is always
an interest in being factually accurate and in avoiding lawsuits,
the eds I've known are usually interested in generating controversy
and sales without alienating their audience. The reviewee who suffers
is usually the last one who should: a moderately-known writer with a
certain degree of so-called underground success, or a new writer who
has published a first novel.
Often, writers get trashed in the service of fashion: the reviewer
has heard/read too much about a writer and therefore feels said writer
is due for a drubbing. Thus, the writer gets dissed for the same reason
that people once wore and stopped wearing green Levi's.
I'm not denying that editors discourage flaming, ie, mindless
vicious attacks. But in my experience, they do like rude dismissals
of writers who deserve far better. That is because most established
would-be downtown magazines like _The Voice_ endorse mediocrity no
matter what their politics might seem to suggest. And as I've said
before, the defining act of mediocrity is to refuse to acknowledge
good work.
All the best,
Rob Hardin
http://www.interport.net/~scrypt
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 15 Jun 1996 22:45:50 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" <anielsen@ISC.SJSU.EDU>
Subject: Re: re-evaluating values
In-Reply-To: <199606160407.AAA12227@listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu>
One part of Mark's post caught my eye immediately -- I agree that howe
etc. are wonderful writers, I agree that writers should not be dismissed
out of hand without serious consideration, and I agree that it's not a
good thing to misrepresent someone's work --
BUT I'm intrigues at the idea of Howe's value, for instance, being
"obvious." I think any number of presuppositions have to be in place all
ready to bring that obviousness into view -- and I think one of the
problems in a writer like Page is his unwillingness to examine his own
presuppositions -- Ideology is that which is taken for granted as
"obvious," as non-ideological, etc. --
intrigued, actually -- not intrigues at all -- already --
and despite what you may read in the _Washington Post_, one need not be
an absolute relativist to think this way --
But Mark, what really intrigues me is disagreements among people who, at
first blush, might appear to share several aesthetic assumptions --
what of the people, and there are some, who, say, think Cage's writing is
just hunky-dory, but who don't think it so obvious that Howe is a
wonderful poet -- (my own inclination is in the opposite directions, by
the way -- though I love Cage's music --)
how do we go about negotiating conflicts over the terrain of the obvious?
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 16 Jun 1996 07:43:05 EDT
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: Performance Writing
On Thursday, June 13, cris creek wrote,
"Performance Writing is what's happening here for me, for others that will not
be so - difference continues to be manufactured."
chris,
Could you elaborate on your understanding of performance writing and how it
relates to contemporary British work? I've gotten a sense tangentially from
some of your previous posts, but I'd be interested in knowing more.
It seems to me that the context and history of performance writing is quite
different if we compare, say American with European practice. In continental
Europe the link back to sound poetry and even for some, Fluxus-type actions, of
the '60s and earlier (I'm thinking here of the Wiener Gruppe, Doc(k)s related
artists etc.) is still more or less intact, while in the U.S. the notion of
performance is more strongly connected to performance art as it emerged and
developed in the '60s and '70s.
Does anyone else have any thoughts on this?
Ward Tietz
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 16 Jun 1996 07:55:45 EDT
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: hatchet job
Dear cris cheek,
I'm very sorry for the hatchet job on your name in my previous post. I somehow
got the h's and the r's all mixed up.
Yours,
Ward Tietz
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 16 Jun 1996 08:30:31 -0400
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: Gallery Blazes (fwd)
Thot the attached of some interest -- Pierre
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sat, 15 Jun 1996 20:35:20 -0700 (PDT)
From: { brad brace } <bbrace@netcom.com>
To: avant-garde@jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU
Subject: Gallery Blazes (fwd)
DALLAS - Three women were arrested Monday for questioning in
connection with the burning of at least one of two Art Galleries set
ablaze overnight, officials said.
The New Gallery of Art and the Gallery of the Living Curator were
set on fire in the town of Whiteville, about 40 miles east of Dallas, the
latest in a long string of blazes at art-galleries across the country.
Fire chief George Wood said police arrested three artists and were
questioning them about at least one of the fires. They were arrested on an
unrelated traffic offense at around 1 a.m. and their car matched the
description of witnesses who said they saw it parked outside the New
Gallery of Art shortly before it went up in flames at around midnight.
The blaze at the nearby Gallery of the Living Curator was reported
at around 3 a.m., after the three women were arrested, but foul play is
also suspected there.
``Both fires are considered to be acts of local vandalism,'' Wood
told a news conference. He said he hoped they were not linked to the arson
attacks against about 30 art institutions and galleries across the nation
in the last 18 months.
Gallery curators met with U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno on
Sunday to demand greater priority be placed on the investigation into the
fires.
Neither of the two Whiteville galleries was totally destroyed in
the latest blazes and nobody was hurt but the buildings suffered serious
damage. Residents told reporters they saw two young women running away
from the scene of the first fire.
__
--- from list avant-garde@lists.village.virginia.edu ---
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 16 Jun 1996 12:49:51 -40962758
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jim Rosenberg <jr@AMANUE.COM>
Subject: Handling the Verticals
Today I find the following line in Blaser's poem "Mappa Mundi":
"Olson once said he wished he could learn how to handle verticals
from Boulez ..."
If anyone can help me locate the source of this in Olson somewhere I would be
much obliged.
--
Jim Rosenberg http://www.well.com/user/jer/
CIS: 71515,124
WELL: jer
Internet: jr@amanue.com
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 16 Jun 1996 13:34:10 +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: Gallery Blazes (fwd)
Comments: To: Pierre Joris <joris@CSC.ALBANY.EDU>
I have a feeling that this may be a gag. I live in Dallas, and hadn't
heard of this, or of the supposed town of Whiteville. I think it's an
adaptation of news reports about the recent torching of churches in
Greenville (which is where the article says Whiteville is).
But quite possibly either everyone knew this, or I missed a real news
report.
---------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: Sun, 16 Jun 1996 17:19:40 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Chris Stroffolino <LS0796@CNSVAX.ALBANY.EDU>
Subject: Re: post language poetry, post modernist poetry, fakes
Pierre---
GALLERY OF THE LIVING CURATOR? (in CHRIST?)
is zitts right? it seems joke....
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 16 Jun 1996 20:18:19 -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: Re: Handling the Verticals
> Today I find the following line in Blaser's poem "Mappa Mundi":
>
> "Olson once said he wished he could learn how to handle verticals
> from Boulez ..."
>
> If anyone can help me locate the source of this in Olson somewhere I would be
> much obliged.
No doubt Olson said this to Blaser in person, or in a letter, but see
also Olson's 22 August 1951 letter to Creeley (vol. 7 of the correspondence,
p. 120):
When I go horizontal--literally fall, lacking, the standing-
up--
If I could once more write as vertical as I take it Boulez
has, in, that 2nd Sonata--as, indeed, I take it I did In Cold
Hell--which, by God, if I don't write that poem, I'll inscribe
(when somebody else but that prick Emerson prints it) "to
Pierre Boulez, for, his 2nd Sonata"
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 17 Jun 1996 14:51:55 GMT+1200
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Tony Green <t.green@AUCKLAND.AC.NZ>
Organization: The University of Auckland
Subject: Re: wild wild dead horse hairs
Stones vs Beatles (early) and an afterthot or 2:
It was jus that The Beatles new LP wd always come out 1 week earlier
than the Stones new LP, mid 60's, Christmas time year after year. The
Stones sounded raw, and looked nice and ugly, and beat, while the Beatles were so clean and tidy, ready
to meet showbiz of the time half way, it seemed. The STones maybe
gave an impression of being more dangerous (rightly or wrongly). The
Strachey translation was 1954, not 1957. And I wonder whether jip, as
in giving one pain shouldn't be sperllt "gyp". I never saw it
written down. Best
Tony Green,
e-mail: t.green@auckland.ac.nz
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 17 Jun 1996 00:27:23 -0400
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@ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU>
Subject: Re: The Twentieth Century
At 11:51 AM 5/30/96 EST, Burt Kimmelman wrote:
>I am slated to teach an interdisciplinary course called "The Twentieth
>Century World"; the course is global in scope.
I realize how fashionable it is to focus on the modern and the postmodern,
but I have to question if there is enough material here to sustain an entire
semester's course.
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 17 Jun 1996 17:43:44 GMT+1200
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: wystan <w.curnow@AUCKLAND.AC.NZ>
Organization: English Dept. - Univ. of Auckland
Subject: Re: wild wild dead horse hairs
Comments: To: t.green@auckland.ac.nz
Dear Tony,
Had the same thought re-the spelling: is it JIP or GYP? I
recall the word as a verb: the bastard gyped me!! That is ripped me off.
And as a noun: he gave me THE gyp. But not as an adjective.
Wystan
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 17 Jun 1996 18:00:49 GMT+1200
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: wystan <w.curnow@AUCKLAND.AC.NZ>
Organization: English Dept. - Univ. of Auckland
Subject: Re: The Twentieth Century
Comments: To: bernstei@ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU
>Date: Mon, 17 Jun 1996 00:27:23 -0400
>Reply-to: UB Poetics discussion group
><POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
>From: Charles Bernstein <bernstei@ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU>
>Subject: Re: The Twentieth Century
>To: Multiple recipients of list POETICS
><POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
>
>At 11:51 AM 5/30/96 EST, Burt Kimmelman wrote:
>
>>I am slated to teach an interdisciplinary course called "The Twentieth
>>Century World"; the course is global in scope.
>
>I realize how fashionable it is to focus on the modern and the
>postmodern,
>but I have to question if there is enough material here to sustain an
>entire
>semester's course.
>
O Charles, it's not like you to be so negative ...give the boy his head.
Burt, i've just curated this exhibition called THE WORLD OVER.Art in the
Age of Globalisation. If you are in the Southern hemisphere, get over
to Wellington--its on at the City Gallery there until August 11, and for
the Northern hemisphere folks, it opens on June 28th in Amsterdam, at
the Stedelijk Museum. And if you can't get to either, the website
should be up soon. I'll post it later.
Wystan, The Worldlywise.
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 17 Jun 1996 03:26:48 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@PANIX.COM>
Subject: Paul, Sail On
-
Paul, Sail On
If I gather up, will you bury me, will you bury me if I gather up
Your ambergris, your bronze helmet, your amber, your bronze
Swollen by river's wake by cavern opening cavern awakened by the river's
swell
Motivated by gutted reeds cut stuttered clay, read in gorgeous monuments
gone motivated
If I lie with you, will you lie with me, if I lay with you will you lay
with me
Near the pregnant cow near the gutted horse near the emptied house
by the coward's prayer
Through the dim dark night by the knight's despair by the armor there
If I wash for you by the river's edge and I wash for you by the same
edge of the river
Where down the river there is a gathering of knights and women, I think
they are celebrating Telipinu at the moment
Yes, I will lie with you, I will lay with you, I will sacrifice, you will
sacrifice
Your horse, your cow, yourself, against my golden hair, my eyes of blue
Sparkling in the waters pooling by the marshes, waters sprinkled
with blood, swollen with whitened
Bones you have slaughtered, your bones you have slaughtered
While I, while I
I'm leaving for Telipinu.
__________________________________________________________________________
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 17 Jun 1996 16:16:06 +0800
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Schuchat <schuchat@ARC.ARC.ORG.TW>
Subject: Re: The Twentieth Century
In-Reply-To: <1.5.4.32.19960617042723.006b2ab4@pop.acsu.buffalo.edu>
On Mon, 17 Jun 1996, Charles Bernstein wrote:
> At 11:51 AM 5/30/96 EST, Burt Kimmelman wrote:
>
> >I am slated to teach an interdisciplinary course called "The Twentieth
> >Century World"; the course is global in scope.
>
> I realize how fashionable it is to focus on the modern and the postmodern,
> but I have to question if there is enough material here to sustain an entire
> semester's course.
>
I presume, of course, that you will have to spend at least 60% of the time
covering the 19th century, in order to establish the context for
properly understanding the twentieth.
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 17 Jun 1996 04:46:38 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Chris Stroffolino <LS0796@CNSVAX.ALBANY.EDU>
Subject: Re: The Twentieth Century
"enough material"----
too much is definitely not enough.....
when i lack self-esteem, a self to confide in that
' is not JUST a brick wall, i wish i was better at generalizations....
ah, ubi sunt WCW's "universality of the local" when
one needs it....
sew what
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 17 Jun 1996 07:58:10 EDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: henry <AP201070@BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU>
Subject: Re: Susan Howe and Samuel Beckett
In-Reply-To: Message of Sat, 15 Jun 1996 11:03:36 -0400 from
<mdw@GWIS2.CIRC.GWU.EDU>
On Sat, 15 Jun 1996 11:03:36 -0400 Mark Wallace said:
>
> Actually, I appreciate your recent comments, because it gives me
>the wonderful opportunity to be a hard-liner again. One of the early
>virtues of this poetics list was that it was a forum where one didn't
>have to endlessly justify the basic value of avant garde poetry. Whatever
>the limits and problems of that poetry, at least on this list one didn't
>have to spend a lot of time stating obvious things like "well you know
>Susan Howe's actually a pretty good writer"--one could assume that the
>poetics forum was a place where something as obvious as that would be a
>given. Perhaps you're right, and this poetics list is not such a place
>any longer, but nonetheless I think I'm going to act as if it is.
You mean it's too bad it's not a cozy little nest anymore, where you
can pat each other on the back & not have to justify yourselves, like
those nasty newspapermen should?
>
A work of art can't defend
>itself, I suppose, but actually it seems to me much more reasonable to
>suggest that people on this list would justify themselves in the face of
>Cage's work, or Beckett's. Does this make me an authoritarian postmodern
>hard-line anti-relativist? With any luck it does. Newspapers, publishing
>houses (and their reviewers and art critics, most of them anyway) need to
>justify themselves in the face of works of art that have demolished their
>most basic assumptions. That such entities ignore and, when questioned,
>deny that they have this obligation is tantamount to an admission that
>they have no defence, and that they should end their own existence as
>quickly as
>possible. They won't, I know, choose to end themselves, but morally,
>there seems to be no question that they SHOULD. Such a position on my
>part is not only completely REASONABLE, but the fact that it may not seem
>reasonable suggests instantly the level of confusion and corruption that
>marks the world I live in.
The world is corrupt because it doesn't seem as reasonable as you are?
That doesn't follow. I have followed this thread with one eye open.
It seems to me that you are perfectly correct to respond angrily &
publicly to misrepresentations of an artist's work; also, to beg
to differ publicly with reviews or evaluations you think miss the mark.
What bores me is this eternal yeast of embattled-artist-selfrighteousness,
that would rather efface all newspapers from the earth than admit to
the contingency of culture-at-large. The FACT is, all you glorious
"audience-builders" out there have absolutely no control over
free aesthetic response - and that's ALL TO THE GOOD. You will
never solve the problems of debased & tamed cultural atmosphere;
but then again, maybe audiences should have to work a little to
achieve the experimentalist's heights; maybe masterpieces NEED to
hide themselves; and maybe art doesn't need so many so-called
defenders - it just needs searchers & finders. These opinions emanate
from one who understands very well the overwhelming dead weight
of our corporate sponsors. When the real poets come, you will
think you've entered a laughter-tornado, until you begin to weep.
The poem is a stone fallen from heaven;
no one will judge it. [O. Mandelstam]
- Henry Gould
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 17 Jun 1996 09:19:48 EST
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Burt Kimmelman -@NJIT" <kimmelman@ADMIN.NJIT.EDU>
Subject: Re: The Twentieth Century
Wystan,
Sounds great, but I'll have to settle for the web site, alas. As for
Charles, I guess his comment is the height of postmodernity or something.
Charles, you are kidding, of course, but then one has to ask why you bothered
to say anything of this sort, that is, that not enough has happened in the
twentieth century to warrant a substantial investigation of it. this is what
happens when we start to talk seriously about uncertainty, chaos theory,
langpo, hi-tech ethnic cleansing, and the like. To quote Creeley,
"and *and* becomes
just so"
Burt
(mr. enigmatic)
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 17 Jun 1996 09:47:38 -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: When the real poets come
Mark, Herny, Chas, C(h)ris, Steve, Marisa, Ann, Deirdre, Herb, Wystan, Joe,
Carla, Tan, Jeff, Bob, Simon, Pierre, Burt, Maria, Ed, Rod, Larry, Bill,
Juliana, Louis, Kenny, Garrett, Alan, Joe, Tom, Rob, Ken, Jorge, Fred, Ron,
Jerry, Dan, Dodie, Kevin, Marjorie, Michael, George, Tony, Ira, Romana,
Andrew, Jonathan, Ursula, Charles, David, Laura, Aldon, Daniel, Keith,
Eliza, Emily, Mike, Dave, Annie,
Is James Joyce really a great writer?
Jordan
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 17 Jun 1996 10:11:43 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "J.V. Kinsella (by way of Charles Bernstein
<bernstei@acsu.buffalo.edu>)" <jvk20@HERMES.CAM.AC.UK>
Subject: Equipage (UK) catalogue
EQUIPAGE / Microbrigade
a series of pamphlets of contemporary poetry
--------------------------------------------
Prices include p&p if ordered direct
TO ORDER FROM EQUIPAGE:
cheques payable to Equipage
C/- Rod Mengham, Jesus College, Cambridge CB5 8BL
24 April 1992
House Breaking Apart in Slow Motion by Geoff Ward
A5, 24pp, price 2 pounds
31 May 1992
The Nile by John Wilkinson
A5, 28pp, price 2 pounds
3 August 1992
Lative by D.S. Marriott
A5, 24pp, price 2 pounds
31 August 1992
Stair Spirit by Denise Riley
A5, 28pp, price 2 pounds
15 September 1992
Blue Screen by Tom Raworth
A5, 20pp, price 2 pounds
28 September 1992
Sliverfish Macronix by Out To Lunch
A5, 32pp, price 2 pounds
9 October 1992
Leaving by Stephen Rodefer
A5, 28pp, price 2 pounds
27 November 1992
Sand Poles by Ulli Freer
A5, 28pp, price 2 pounds
30 December 1992
Reasonable Distance by Alan Halsey
A5, 24pp, price 2 pounds
31 December 1992
Feuds by Rod Mengham
A5, 20pp, price 2 pounds
(The Equofinality book re-set, with new cover)
28 January 1993
Not-You by J.H. Prynne
A5, 32pp, price 2 pounds
19 February 1993
Satyrs and Mephitic Angels by Drew Milne
A5, 20pp, price 2 pounds
23 April 1993
Tense Fodder by Ian Patterson
A5, 24pp, price 2 pounds
23 April 1993
Alien Skies by Andrew Duncan
A5, 32pp, price 2 pounds
23 April 1993
C.C.C.P. 3
Programme & examples of current work by participants in the Third
Cambridge Conference of Contemporary Poetry. Poems by Thomas A. Clark,
Ian Davidson, Andrew Duncan, Allen Fisher, Ulli Freer, Barbara Guest,
Susan Howe, Billy Mills, Drew Milne, Alice Notley, Douglas Oliver,
Stephen Rodefer, John Wilkinson, Silvia Ziranek. Drawing by Stephen
Rodefer. Cover by Helen Macdonald.
A5, 24pp, price 2 pounds
24 July 1993
Strange Passage by Caroline Bergvall
A5, 28pp, price 2 pounds
29 August 1993
Four Poems by Michael Haslam
A5, 36pp, price 2 pounds
5 October 1993
The Edge by David Chaloner
A5, 28pp, price 2 pounds
13 November 1993
Lecture by Peter Riley
(poems)
A5, 28pp, price 2 pounds
26 November 1993
Viola Tricolor by Grace Lake
A5, 28pp, price 2 pounds
23 February 1994
Torn Off a Strip by John Wilkinson
A5, 36pp, price 2 pounds
25 February 1994
Survival by Tom Raworth
A5, 20pp, price 2 pounds
4 March 1994
Milk of Late anthology edited by Antonio Bellotti
Five poems by Stephen Rodefer; five poems by Tony Lopez; five pages of
'TM' by Ulli Freer; 'The Hungry Form' (study) by Caroline Bergvall;
'Kobro' by Rod Mengham; three poems by Christopher Cook; five poems by
Antonio Bellotti; cover by Gale Lickfold.
A5, 60pp, price 2 pounds
21 April 1994
Erasers by Stephen Rodefer
A5, 40pp, price 2 pounds
22 April 1994
C.C.C.P. 4
Programme & examples of current work by participants in the Fourth
Cambridge Conference of Contemporary Poetry. Poems & texts by Pierre
Alferi, Derek Bailey, Olivier Cadiot, David Chaloner, Simon Fell, Barbara
Guest, Michael Haslam, Peter Hughes, Fanny Howe, Grace Lake, R.F.
Langley, D.S. Marriott, Peter Riley, Jacques Roubaud, Iain Sinclair, Ben
Watson. Cover by Grace Lake.
A5, 24pp, price 2 pounds
20 May 1994
Her Weasels Wild Returning by J.H. Prynne
A5, 12pp, price 2 pounds
17 June 1994
How Peace Came by Drew Milne
A5, 28pp, price 2 pounds
29 November 1994
BLVD.S by Ulli Freer
A5, 32pp, price 2 pounds
29 November 1994
Turnpike Ruler by Out To Lunch
A5, 32pp, price 2 pounds
17 March 1995
Negative Equity by Tony Lopez
A5, 40pp, price 2 pounds
28 April 1995
C.C.C.P. 5
Programme & examples of current work by participants in the Fifth
Cambridge Conference of Contemporary Poetry. Poems & texts by Pierre
Alferi, John Beck, Steve Benson, Miles Champion, Joseph Guglielmi, John
Kinsella, Tony Lopez, Richard Makin, Rod Mengham, Christopher Middleton,
Maggie O'Sullivan, Anne Portugal, Geoff Ward.
A5, 28pp, price 2 pounds
28 April 1995
Bernache Nonnette by Grace Lake
A5, 24pp, price 2 pounds
28 April 1995
f):w3:d by Richard Makin
A5, 48pp, price 2 pound
1 May 1995
Psyche in the Gargano by Peter Hughes
A5, 24pp, price 2 pounds
1 November 1995
Pearl by Barry MacSweeney
A4, 28pp, price 3 (three) pounds
9 December 1995
Paul Klee's Diary by Peter Hughes
A5, 32pp, price 2 pounds
2 February 1996
Agile by Mas Abe
A5, 12pp, price 2 pounds
23 February 1996
The Radnoti Poems by John Kinsella
A5, 56pp, price 2 pounds
29 March 1996
Rilke's Duino Elegies
'barbarously recast' by Geoff Ward
A5, 24pp, price 2 pounds
27 April 1996
Prag by Keston Sutherland
A5, 12pp, price 2 pounds
27 April 1996
Spirit Level by Simon Perril
A5, 20pp, price 2 pounds
C.C.C.P.6
Programme & work by participants at the Sixth Cambridge Conference of
Contemporary Poetry
A5, 24pp, price 2 pounds
***************************************************
Microbrigade
------------
Publications in Print:
Chris Cheek, Cloud Eyes
Ulli Freer, Run the Disinfectant
Rod Mengham, Take A Bite
Aaron Williamson, Malediction
These publications are priced at 1 pound 25 pence (inc. inland p&p)
Equipage & Microbrigade Audio Editions
01 Tom Raworth, Big Slippers On (fourteen poems)
02 Rod Mengham, Speaking Tackle (nine poems)
c30 chrome tape 3 pounds inc. inland p&p
TO ORDER FROM MICROBRIGADE:
cheques payable to Microbrigade
C/- Ulli Freer, 7 Highwood Avenue, London N12 8QL United Kingdom
TO ORDER FROM EQUIPAGE:
cheques payable to Equipage
C/- Rod Mengham, Jesus College, Cambridge CB5 8BL
end of catalogue
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 17 Jun 1996 10:41:15 -0400
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@ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU>
Subject: "He's So Heavy, He's My Sokal" (song)
HE=92S SO HEAVY, HE=92S MY SOKAL
after Danny Kaye and Milton Schafer
Please, please don=92t Sokal me
Sokal the baby, Sokal the priest
But don=92t, don=92t Sokal me
I=92m laughing so hard I could cry
If I Sokaled you
You wouldn=92t like it
You wouldn=92t approve
If I Sokaled you
You=92d Sokal so hard you would split
O, O let go of my =91no=92
It isn=92t so funny you goof
Oh, no I=92ve misplaced the sunny
Stop or I=92ll fall up through the roof
But please, please don=92t Sokal me
Sokal the baby, Sokal the priest
Sokal your mother, Sokal your brother,=20
Sokal some other guy
But don=92t, don=92t Sokal me
I=92m laughing so hard I could sigh
Cut it out now, cut it out now!
I=92m historicized, I can=92t take it anymore!
Come on, beat it, get out of here!
You=92re symtomizing me!
I=92m practically reified!
Wait until I get you, you piece of =85.
Cut it out =92cause I=92m getting sore
And please, please don=92t Sokal me
Sokal the baby, Sokal the priest
Sokal your father, Sokal your sister,=20
Sokal some other guy
But don=92t, don=92t Sokal me
I=92m laughing so hard I could cry
=A9 1996 by Poets=92 Ludicrously Aimless Yearning (PLAY)
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 17 Jun 1996 10:46:17 -0400
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: Sonnet!: What to Name the 20th-century World-Baby?
Mark, Herny, Chas, C(h)ris, Steve, Marisa, Ann, Deirdre, Herb, Wystan, Joe,
Carla, Tan, Jeff, Bob, Simon, Pierre, Burt, Maria, Ed, Rod, Larry, Bill,
Juliana, Louis, Kenny, Garrett, Alan, Joe, Tom, Rob, Ken, Jorge, Fred, Ron,
Jerry, Dan, Dodie, Kevin, Marjorie, Michael, George, Tony, Ira, Romana,
Andrew, Jonathan, Ursula, Charles, David, Laura, Aldon, Daniel, Keith,
Eliza, Emily, Mike, Dave, Annie,
James Joyce
Jordan
__________________________________________
or,
early Stones > early Beatles > James Joyce
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Emily Lloyd emilyl@erols.com
"Fist my mind in your hand."-Rukeyser
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 17 Jun 1996 10:34:19 EDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Henry <AP201070@BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU>
Subject: Re: When the real poets come
In-Reply-To: Message of Mon, 17 Jun 1996 09:47:38 -0500 from <jdavis@PANIX.COM>
On Mon, 17 Jun 1996 09:47:38 -0500 Jordan Davis said:
>Is James Joyce really a great writer?
Well, a number of people have thought so, especially in the 20th century,
paradoxically. Nevertheless, Mr. Joyce himself always felt, and likewise
said, to many friends and acquaintances, and I quote: "Life and labor
bring their many and varied rewards as we journey on its highways and quaint
byways -- but the greatest aim in my life has been simply this: to be a decent
humming bean." - J-squared
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 17 Jun 1996 15:36:12 +0000
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: cris cheek <cris@SLANG.DEMON.CO.UK>
Subject: Re: wild wild dead horse hairs
And I wonder whether jip, as
>in giving one pain shouldn't be sperllt "gyp". I never saw it
>written down. Best
>
>
>Tony Green,
Gyp it is Tony, indeed. I worry about that spelling though, it having a
common with gypsy - and since one dictionary def. of gyp gives cheat and
swindler there seems to be heavy prejudice there. Hence the 'jip'.
love and love
cris
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 17 Jun 1996 11:22:10 -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: pcoet and tlooth
Pcoet an Tlooth wer waking don th' stree. Pcoet sad t' Tlooth, 'Come th'
rev'lution, w'll b seing th' ral pots.' Tlooth, sd, sad t' Pcoet, 'Bt hard
laugter torndo ccompanies r'volution. Don' th't scar yu?' 'Na! Jus wee
litle.'
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 17 Jun 1996 11:32:58 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Chris Stroffolino <LS0796@CNSVAX.ALBANY.EDU>
Subject: Re: Sonnet!: What to Name the 20th-century World-Baby?
the early stones are james
to the early beatles joyce......
should we rip off motown or should we rip off muddy waters
perhaps is the question?
so silly to take sides, of course,
though my heart of course with lennon when he
snaps at reporter in 1965 interview "the rolling stones
are NOT a protest group"---
the kinks? animals? etc. blow up the BINARY pretty much
or the zombies.
susan howe would not be dusty springfield in such a context
(neither would fanny)--but nor would she be charlie rich--
the pre-smaltzy famous charlie rich which is actually suprisingly
good on my tapedeck now and really challenging my prejudices and
making me redraw my mental conceptual map at least as much as
the world-baby ODORONO conference which I am off to now will
(in fact, just found out I MAY be able to see Hank Lazer's panel
now and that JOHN SHOPTAW cancelled out---which points me on a
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 17 Jun 1996 11:04:54 CST
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: David Baratier <dave.baratier@MOSBY.COM>
Subject: Re: when the real poets come
Jordan
Is James Joyce really a great writer?
In answer, yesterday I not only was allowed a glimpse of his magnitude
as a literary technician but also finally understood his grasp of the
oral tradition through the aged patrons of the Rosenbach Library in
Philly (which houses the original manuscript of Ulyssess) who sat
around most of bloomsday drinking free harp, guiness and delivering
Ulysses in 10 minute speaker, singer, mutterer, change-ups. To
contain such a multiplicity of voices within the reading of one text,
now I fully comprehend what you weirdo big-city avant-guardists are
talking about.
David Baratier
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 17 Jun 1996 10:54:56 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Charles Alexander <chax@MTN.ORG>
Subject: Re: When the real poets come
>Mark, Herny, Chas, C(h)ris, Steve, Marisa, Ann, Deirdre, Herb, Wystan, Joe,
>Carla, Tan, Jeff, Bob, Simon, Pierre, Burt, Maria, Ed, Rod, Larry, Bill,
>Juliana, Louis, Kenny, Garrett, Alan, Joe, Tom, Rob, Ken, Jorge, Fred, Ron,
>Jerry, Dan, Dodie, Kevin, Marjorie, Michael, George, Tony, Ira, Romana,
>Andrew, Jonathan, Ursula, Charles, David, Laura, Aldon, Daniel, Keith,
>Eliza, Emily, Mike, Dave, Annie,
>Is James Joyce really a great writer?
>Jordan
is he?
_______________________________________________________________
O
tell me all about
Anna Livia! I want to hear all
about Anna Livia. Well, you know Anna Livia? Yes, of course, we all know
Anna Livia. Tell me all. Tell me now. You'll die when you hear. Well, you
know, when the old cheb went furt and did what you know. Yes, I know, go on.
Wash quit and don't be dabbling. Tuck up your sleeves and loosen your
talktapes. And don't butt me -- hike! -- when you bend. Or whatever it was
they threed to make out he thried to two in the Fiendish park. He's an awful
old reppe. Look at the shirt of him! Look at the dirt of it! He has all my
water black on me. And it steeping and stuping since this time last wik. How
many goes is it I wonder I washed it? I know by heart the places he likes to
saale, duddurty devil! Scorching my hand and starving my famine to make his
private linen public. Wallop it well with your battle and clean it. My
wrists are wrusty rubbing the mouldaw stains. And the dneepers of wet and
the gangres of sin in it! What was it he did a tail at all on Animal Sendia?
And how long was he under loch and neagh? It was put in the newses what he
did, nicies and priers, the King fierceas Humphrey, with illysus distilling,
exploits and all. But toms will till. I know he well. Temp untamed will hist
for no man. As you spring so shall you neap. O, the roughty old rappe!
Minxing marrage and making loof. . . .
__________________________________________________________________
yes, i think so. at least, to me, he's great fun to read, and more
charles
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 17 Jun 1996 11:49:36 EDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Glover, Albert" <AGLO@MUSIC.STLAWU.EDU>
Subject: Re: POETICS Digest - 15 Jun 1996 to 16 Jun 1996
In-Reply-To: In reply to your message of Mon, 17 Jun 1996 00:04:22 EDT
I agree with Carla Billitteri's post about Olson's remark to Robin.
Anyone interested in the Olson/Blaser/Boulez 2nd Sonata confluence
might be interested in Robin's Bach's Belief, #10 of A Curriculum of
the Soul, available for $10 from Glover Publishing, RI 203 / SLU,
Canton, NY 13617
Looking forward to Orono reports.
Al Glover
aglo@ccmaillink.stlawu.edu
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 17 Jun 1996 13:01:09 EDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Goulding <AP201070@BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU>
Subject: Re: pcoet and tlooth
In-Reply-To: Message of Mon, 17 Jun 1996 11:22:10 -0500 from <jdavis@PANIX.COM>
On Mon, 17 Jun 1996 11:22:10 -0500 Jordan Davis said:
>Pcoet an Tlooth wer waking don th' stree. Pcoet sad t' Tlooth, 'Come th'
>rev'lution, w'll b seing th' ral pots.' Tlooth, sd, sad t' Pcoet, 'Bt hard
>laugter torndo ccompanies r'volution. Don' th't scar yu?' 'Na! Jus wee
>litle.'
Twas a way lighter wee doom the trialfather Pcoat duffered so: "Torn
ala nudo! Wheelye yon bakers, dozin in the ray! Spanner that spindial,
yeh spokeyed spoffer!" Beetred and bettered, Tlooth did sigh: "Quizzical
meat? Wrother bothy thy forktong and wed a buffalo tune!" Sodalitassled,
they onword dallied into the fernbread corn. - Hailie Goulding
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 17 Jun 1996 11:30:30 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" <anielsen@ISC.SJSU.EDU>
Subject: Re: everywhere the obvious was becoming less so
In-Reply-To: <199606170407.AAA08049@listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu>
One couldn't ask for better illustration of the points I was making --
what has to be in place for the "obviousness" of the gallery fires gag to
be apparent? For how many readers will the report of initical arrests of
artists as suspects track with the FBI's investigations of the
congregants of the churches burned? ("initial," not "initical etc. for
all "obvious" errors to follow) --
When the "authorities," having arrested people who have burned black
churches comment that they are not sure that racial motives were in play,
why is it not obvious to them that most white people (even in the South)
would probably have found a white church more readily at hand for burning
if simple vandalism were the intent? The L.A. Times this morning carries
a short follow-up on the obviously distrubed thirteen-year-old girl who
was arrested for one of the fires -- In the first line of the story they
report that the girl expresses anti-religious sentiments. They mention
that the authorities doubt that the girl was racially motivated, and they
report doubts that the girl knew that black people attended the church.
THEN they report that the girl also expresses strong anti-black beliefs.
If racism is not the motive in these fires, wouldn't we expect a
considerably larger number of white churches to be burning? Why is it
not obvious to most "authorities" and the press that this is so?
A troubling, but effective gag, that gallery story --
meanwhile, I'm off to Maine -- check in again with everybody in about a
week --
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 17 Jun 1996 13:02:29 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Steve Carll <sjcarll@SLIP.NET>
Subject: Re: When the real poets come
At 09:47 AM 6/17/96 -0500, you wrote:
>Mark, Herny, Chas, C(h)ris, Steve, Marisa, Ann, Deirdre, Herb, Wystan, Joe,
>Carla, Tan, Jeff, Bob, Simon, Pierre, Burt, Maria, Ed, Rod, Larry, Bill,
>Juliana, Louis, Kenny, Garrett, Alan, Joe, Tom, Rob, Ken, Jorge, Fred, Ron,
>Jerry, Dan, Dodie, Kevin, Marjorie, Michael, George, Tony, Ira, Romana,
>Andrew, Jonathan, Ursula, Charles, David, Laura, Aldon, Daniel, Keith,
>Eliza, Emily, Mike, Dave, Annie,
>Is James Joyce really a great writer?
>Jordan
Jordan:
Yes.
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
``````````````````````````````````````````````
Steve Carll sjcarll@slip.net
I listen.
I hear nothing. Only
the cow, the cow
of nothingness, mooing
down the bones.
~~Galway Kinnell
``````````````````````````````````````````````
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 17 Jun 1996 16:35:14 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Fred Muratori <fmm1@CORNELL.EDU>
Subject: Re: When the real poets come
>At 09:47 AM 6/17/96 -0500, you wrote:
>>Is James Joyce really a great writer?
>>Jordan
>
Great? Probably, but above all late, since in the world of letters to be
the former you must first be the latter, and the later the latter the
better.
***********************
Fred Muratori "Certain themes are incurable."
(fmm1@cornell.edu)
Reference Services Division - Lyn Hejinian
Olin * Kroch * Uris Libraries
Cornell University
Ithaca, NY 14853
WWW: http://fmref.library.cornell.edu/spectra.html
***********************
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 17 Jun 1996 20:28:20 +0000
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: cris cheek <cris@SLANG.DEMON.CO.UK>
Subject: Re: The Twentieth Century
which twentieth century?
whose twentieth century?
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 17 Jun 1996 18:07:53 -0400
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>
dear poetics:
Robert Kendall recently posted this to another list--
>Readers of this list may be interested to know of the recent
>publication of the late bp Nichol's collection of kinetic visual poems,
>"First Screening." These aren't hypertext, but some of them are
>decidedly nonlinear. The poems where written during the
>early1980s in BASIC on an Apple II and translated into Hypercard
>by the editors.
>
>Nichol was well-known in his native Canada, though most
>Americans don't know his work. These poems are witty and
>entertaining and it's astonishing that they were written so long ago.
>I wonder what else will creep out of the woodwork of the early
>days of personal computing.
>
>The publisher is:
>
>Red Deer College Press
>56 Ave. and 32nd Street
>Box 5005
>Red Deer, Alberta
>Canada T4N 5H5
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 17 Jun 1996 21:36:18 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Carnography <scrypt@INTERPORT.NET>
Subject: Re: The Twentieth Century
> At 11:51 AM 5/30/96 EST, Burt Kimmelman wrote:
> >I am slated to teach an interdisciplinary course called "The Twentieth
> >Century World"...
At 12:27 AM 6/17/96, Charles Bernstein typed:
> ...I have to question if there is enough material here to sustain an entir=
e
> semester's course.
Do any of you recall an old film called _The Twentieth Century_?
It was about a deluxe railroad train called, of course, The
Twentieth Century. The train was meant to exemplify progress and
perspective: in the characters' view, the world had reached its
apex, and technology and aesthetics had resulted in a perfect
marriage of hedonism and efficiency. And everytime something
went wrong with the Tintanicized train, someone would say:
"This can't be happening! This is the Twentieth Century!"
This is, of course, the usual criticism of the modernist's
flawed, cold future--though done amusingly well in this case.
But I love thinking of this film when people make sweeping
statements about art in the Twentieth Century.
=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=
=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=
=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7
If I were independently wealthy, I would create and fund
two or three organizatons dedicated to obscure and spurious
alchemical fads. One might be an organization dedicated to
teaching people how to generate precious metals inside and
outside the body: "Add to our natural resources and gain the
financial independence you crave!" Of course, I'd also hire
reporters to cover the organization's meetings, and also to
periodically interject:
"This can't be happening! This is the Twentieth Century!"
All the best,
Scrypt
President of SFIOICFCBK
(Society For the Invention of Obscure Interdisciplinary Comparisons
=46or the Courses of Burt Kimmelman)
http://www.interport.net/~scrypt
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 17 Jun 1996 22:02:13 -0400
Reply-To: Robert Drake <au462@cleveland.Freenet.Edu>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Robert Drake <au462@CLEVELAND.FREENET.EDU>
Subject: *Projectored Verse*; event in Cleveland
*PROJECTORED VERSE*: A READING EVENT
FEATURING SPENCER SELBY & JOHN BYRUM
The poets will read and project visual texts in concert...
sponsored by Burning Press & the William Busta Gallery
FRIDAY, JUNE 21; 7:30 pm
at the William Busta Gallery
2021 Murry Hill Rd. (in Little Italy)
Cleveland OH
SPENCER SELBY
Spencer Selby's books of poetry include Instar (SINK Press, 1989), Barricade
(Paradigm Press, 1990), House of Before (Potes & Poets Press, 1991), Sound
Off (Detour Press, 1993), and No Island (Drogue Press, 1995). His visual
poetry includes Stigma (Score, 1990), and Malleable Cast (Generator, 1995).
In the middle 1980's Spencer Selby began SINK Press in San Francisco, where
he still resides, and he coordinated the Canessa Park Reading Series from
1987 - 1993. In 1993 Selby created The List of Experimental Poetry/Art
Magazines, a noncopyrighted, freely circulating document that tracks over
250 publications around the world.
JOHN BYRUM
John Byrum's most recent books include Utter (with Arleen Hartman; Potes &
Poets, 1995), Orange (Generator, 1995), Black Fire (Burning Press 1995),
and Interalia (Leave Books). He has also appeared in numerous magazines &
anthologies; The Art Of Practice (Dennis Barone & Peter Ganick eds., Potes
& Poets Press) and Writing From The New Coast (O*blek magazine) among them.
He was a featured artist in the show Visible Language at the Sandusky Cultural
Arts Center eariler this year. He edited (with Crag Hill) the 1993 CORE:
Symposium on Contemporary Visual Poetry, and has published numerous books
under the Generator Press imprint, as well as Generator Magazine (issue #7,
in 2 volumes, "whydoyoudowhatyoudo?", is the most recent).
This reading is FREE
For further information, please contact the William Busta Gallery at 216-231-7363,
or luigi-bob drake at 216-221-8940 (or e-mail, au462@cleveland.freenet.edu).
I hope anyone on the poetics list visiting or living near here will come,
likewise those not on the list, and those nowhere near Cleveland, living or...
lbd
Burning Press/TapRoot Reviews
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 17 Jun 1996 19:08:19 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Herb Levy <herb@ESKIMO.COM>
Subject: Not exactly Re: Susan Howe and Samuel Beckett
Comments: cc: mdw@GWIS2.CIRC.GWU.EDU
Dear Mark Wallace,
Our differences seem to arise when we consider how this work is received in
the larger cultural community. I am able to imagine readers of poetry who
are serious about what they read (& others with similarly limited interests
in other forms of art), for whom the merits of experimental innovation are
far from obvious. You seem to discount this possibility.
In any case, let me suggest a different tack to take with Tim Page, that
may be the most effective in the long run. Call him at the Post, explain
that you disagreed with some aspects of his Cage piece & ask him to coffee
or a drink to discuss it. I think there are better than even odds that he
would take you up on it. Moreover, if you hung out for a while, you'd
probably find that you had more interests in common & that he probably
isn't an overall schmuck.
Looking back on our correspondence here (after a few days with my server
down), I think it may have been better if I had begun with whatever the
cyber-equivalent of such an approach might be.
Bests
Herb Levy
herb@eskimo.com
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 17 Jun 1996 22:13:14 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Carnography <scrypt@INTERPORT.NET>
Subject: Re: When the real poets come
Jordan Davis typed:
> Is James Joyce really a great writer?
1) Jordan Davis, you carcinogenic node on the cords of Irish
Lit. How dare you insinuate that your question is open to
question? There is a kind of ineffable greatness lent to the
work of anyone who is published widely and continuously for
decades. This is like asking whether or not Syndney Sheldon
is a great writer: damned straight he is.
I pray you'll stop wasting your time with such counterproductive,
go-nowhere questions and develop a taste for the Impressionists.
I say this not because I'm angry (I forgive you, darling) but because
I am worried about your spiritual and economic future. From the looks
of your comments, I'd say you were unhappy, confused, honey-blonde,
5'8" with a mole on your right shin, wearing a baseball cap with the motto,
*Don't even think about it* written across the brim, and given to long,
expensive tirades in that corner Seven-Eleven in Bend, Oregon, where
your comments suggest you may or may not exist.
2) Joyce? Yeah, _Chamber Music_....the old blind guy could sure crank
out the quatrains, huh? I mean, when when he was young and all.... Yeah,
he's great, like all those dudes were: Joyce, Flann O'Brien, Dickenson,
Keats, Thomas Jefferson, Synge, that guy Shakespeare, Thomas Edison,
Rikki Lake, Paul McCartney, Stockhausen, Lionel Johnson, Jeremy Irons,
Bunny Shane, that blonde guy in Soul Coughing, Robert Creeley, Alicia
Silverstone...
3) Thanks for your query, _[Jordan Davis]_. Our researchers are still
working on the possible toxicity of pollutants in the novels of Upton
Sinclair, but we'll get back to you as soon as we possibly can. Your
question is very important to us _[Jordan Davis]_. Please be patient
and stay on the line. (Sound of baroque music and line-static merging)
http://www.interport.net/~scrypt
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 17 Jun 1996 22:12:01 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Charles Alexander <chax@MTN.ORG>
As a friend and publisher of bp's work, I know he's not entirely unkown in
the States. He's Chax's best-selling author thus far, although it's true
that many of those sales have been in Canada.
Just a note to know that First Screening is only available for the Macintosh
computer.
charles alexander
>dear poetics:
>
>Robert Kendall recently posted this to another list--
>
>>Readers of this list may be interested to know of the recent
>>publication of the late bp Nichol's collection of kinetic visual poems,
>>"First Screening." These aren't hypertext, but some of them are
>>decidedly nonlinear. The poems where written during the
>>early1980s in BASIC on an Apple II and translated into Hypercard
>>by the editors.
>>
>>Nichol was well-known in his native Canada, though most
>>Americans don't know his work. These poems are witty and
>>entertaining and it's astonishing that they were written so long ago.
>>I wonder what else will creep out of the woodwork of the early
>>days of personal computing.
>>
>>The publisher is:
>>
>>Red Deer College Press
>>56 Ave. and 32nd Street
>>Box 5005
>>Red Deer, Alberta
>>Canada T4N 5H5
>
>
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 17 Jun 1996 23:57:52 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Carnography <scrypt@INTERPORT.NET>
Subject: Tintanicized
Tintanic (*adj8) (Amer.: *Titanic*, *Teutonic*, *Rin-Tin-Tin*)
1. Any failed Twentieth Century technological eidolon that is meant to be
futuristic, superior and friendly.
2. Any technologically-based public demonstration of power that fails.
Tintanicize (*vt*)
3. To be made ade part of the iconography of the Second World War, or of the
iconography of consumer/war technology in the Nineteen-Forties.
http://www.interport.net/~scrypt
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 17 Jun 1996 22:36:25 +0000
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: cris cheek <cris@SLANG.DEMON.CO.UK>
Subject: Re: When the real poets come
>On Mon, 17 Jun 1996 09:47:38 -0500 Jordan Davis said:
>>Is James Joyce really a great writer?
>
>Well, a number of people have thought so, especially in the 20th century,
>paradoxically.
People in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries thought that Joyce was
pretty terrific too - but that's just hearsay, ain't it?
love and love
cris
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 18 Jun 1996 01:06:51 +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: Not exactly Re: Susan Howe and Samuel Beckett
Comments: To: Herb Levy <herb@ESKIMO.COM>
On 17 Jun 96 at 19:08, Herb Levy wrote:
> In any case, let me suggest a different tack to take with Tim Page, that
> may be the most effective in the long run. Call him at the Post, explain
> that you disagreed with some aspects of his Cage piece & ask him to coffee
> or a drink to discuss it. I think there are better than even odds that he
> would take you up on it. Moreover, if you hung out for a while, you'd
> probably find that you had more interests in common & that he probably
> isn't an overall schmuck.
To chime in in agreement: Tim Page is responsible for turning me on
to a lot of New Music in the early eighties (I think -- my timesense
is lousy) through his broadcasts on WNYC. I also have a tape of a
very good radio interview he did with Cage back then, some of which
is transcribed in his book "Music from the Road" which has shown up
on remainder racks all over the place in the past few weeks. He's
also, if I recall, in charge of the Catalyst record label, which has
released several very good CDs of contemporary music (even if he did
try to tag his Cage disc as newage!).
---------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, 18 Jun 1996 09:12:37 +0000
Reply-To: William.Northcutt@uni-bayreuth.de
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Comments: Authenticated sender is <bts403@btr0x1.hrz.uni-bayreuth.de>
From: William Northcutt <William.Northcutt@UNI-BAYREUTH.DE>
Organization: btr0x1.hrz.uni-bayreuth.de
Subject: Joyce a poet
Dear Chris:
Joyce is not early Beatles.
He is acid-blot Beatles.
And he rules.
William Northcutt
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 18 Jun 1996 11:56:24 -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 vogue for Turgenev
Can anybody explain (contradict? support?) the recent vogue for Turgenev?
W. Alexander cites T. as an influence, I'm told, and R. Creeley has also
famously taken to T.
Curious in Hood River,
Jordan
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 18 Jun 1996 14:09:44 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Annie Finch <FINCHAR@MIAVX1.ACS.MUOHIO.EDU>
Subject: Re: reviews -- a query about ethics, contexts, and consequences
In-Reply-To: "Your message dated Fri, 14 Jun 1996 15:27:04 -0400"
<v01540b03ade76988d97d@[204.74.3.74]>
Dear Eliza,
Re the question of how to review work you don't think very good, I offer two
points to steer between:
1. It is necessary to be absolutely honest; probably it's even better for the
book's attention quotient if it gets an intelligently censurious review as
opposed to a generically approving one, and better for the small press as well.
If you can find a few things you like (perhaps only to say you wish the writer
had done more of them),t he press can always pull those out to quote if they
need blurbs. No point writing it if you can't be honest.
2. Undue negativity, out of proportion to the book's weight and impact (for
instance, bitter condemnation directed towards a young and unestablished
writer) is irresponsible and may very likely come back to haunt you.
If this seems a paradoxical couple of tenets, I'd suggest moving attention
quickly away from the book in question and towards the larger evils it
embodies for you. In this case, it seems that the book exemplifies some fo the
worst tics of the creative writing establishment in your view. Why not focus on
those, thus deflecting attention from the poor writer, who is perhaps as much a
victim as a perpetrator?
I just received a copy of the new American Book Review wherein I quite
seriously criticized a book on prosody, but largely by drawing attention to
the way the book's shortcomings reflect widespread misunderstandings. So far, I
haven't regretted it . . . . .
Good luck.
Annie Finch
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 18 Jun 1996 15:38:12 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jonathan A Levin <jal17@COLUMBIA.EDU>
Subject: Re: the vogue for Turgenev
In-Reply-To: <v01520d01adec8f198a8b@[166.84.199.56]>
Jordan,
Nothing to say about the Turgenev wave, such as it is, but I do recommend
Henry James's marvellous spate of essays on him, especially the last,
published in 1896 in the Library of the World's Best Literature (reprinted
all over the place). I think James liked Turgenev more than any other
writer, pound for pound. He also enjoyed his company a good deal.
Best--
Jonathan
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 18 Jun 1996 22:32:42 +0000
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: cris cheek <cris@SLANG.DEMON.CO.UK>
Subject: Re: Performance Writing
Hi Ward and all,
this question feels like it's got a large skid under it before i even start
delving.
My own sense of Performance Writing, shared broadly with
those few practitioners here with whom i have almost regular contact, is of
very much an emergent interdisciplinarity. Much like the gradual
highlighting of Performance Studies in Cultural Studies.
One of the difficult and delightful (simultaneously) aspects
of working in such a field, both as teacher and student, lies in the magpie
activity of grafting on influences and role models.
My sense of context and history in the UK, at present, is of
being grounded in a discourse of mainland European - north American - and
Carribean approaches, but far from exclusively so. There's a 'pick 'n' mix'
possible for the would-be. That includes the sound-text-sound, poesie
sonore practitioners, yes the Fluxus (and let's not forget Fluxshoe)
activity, and that which emerged, in the US (via the '52 Black Mountain
nonmatrixed event) into Happenings and Judson Church, while in the UK
becoming the Destruction in Art Symposium, John Bull Puncture Repair Kit
etc and Performance Art. Then there are the lettriste / situationist
strands and the Guy Debord - Asger Jorn 'derives' leeching into Doc(k)s
(and the work out of de Appel in Amsterdam in the 1970s, I'm thinking of
Ulysses Carrion and Michael Gibbs and Maurricio Nannucci, who amongst
others brought politicised conceptual art approaches to language) where
Julien Blaine and Ben Possett and the Italian nexus around Scassi mingled.
Then there are US performance or Live Art models, although you're right
Ward, they seem less interesting (from the point of writing - perhaps
being too embroiled in sometimes simplistic narration of nation and
identity, although with reason) than some of the European and Carribean
influences. Of course there's a host of rapping, as well as mapping,
figures to take on board.
Having said all of which, the obvious practitioners here at
present (including Brian Catling, Caroline Bergvall, Aaron Williamson, Gary
Stevens, Tim Etchells, Jools Gilson-Ellis, Orphan Drift, Stewart Home,
Donna Rutherford, Sticksman, Keith Jafrate, Jean Breeze, Linton Kwesi
Johnson, Bob Cobbing, Alaric Sumner) are mostly coming from a background in
poetry. There are some influences of LSD phase Wooster Group (now being
worked here by Goat Island from Chicago, who seem to be appreciated here
more than in the US). There is some revival of the Arte Povera aesthetic
going on now as i write (or we speak). But many of those working in
Performance WRiting have at least practical understandings of other art
forms. Music and Visual Performance would be the most obvious shared art
forms (highly appropriate for language, don't you feel?).
Let's name names of those whose work is in the pot: - Sophie Calle,
Jackson MacLow, Annette Messager, Ann Hamilton, Gary Hill, John Cage, Coco
Fusco, Michael Smith, Marcel Broodthers, Steve Benson, Alison Knowles,
Bernard Heidsieck, Yves Daoust, Carla Harryman, David Antin, bp nicol,
Steve McCaffery, Jean 'binta' Breeze, The Fabulous Troubadours, Henri
Chopin, Ellen Zweig, Eric Belgum, Spalding Gray, Gil Scott-Heron, Fiona
Templeton, Lee 'Scratch' Perry, Karen Finlay, Kathy Acker, William
Burroughs, Monique Wittig, Samuel Beckett, Laurie Anderson, Patty Smith,
Bengt Emil-Johnson, Larry Wendt, Pierre Schaeffer, Robert Ashley, Robert
Smithson, Jenny Holzer, Hazel Smith, Bob Marley, Shelley Hirsch
and many more . . . these are simply some pointers. A performance writing
practice can work a wonderfully broad pallette at present.
Sonic traditions and anti-traditions - visual traditions and
anti-traditions (i still like something of the parallel tradition suggested
in a lengthy exchange between Ron Silliman and Alfred Corn on CAP-L last
year) - performance traditions and anti-traditions - uses and abuses of
technological potentials.
ok - now we can go to the next stage.
love and love
cris
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 18 Jun 1996 18:42:06 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Gwyn McVay <gmcvay1@OSF1.GMU.EDU>
Subject: Re: Tintanicized
In-Reply-To: <v01540b00adebd78945ee@[204.74.3.74]>
Tintinicized: to be made into a Belgian boy reporter with plus-fours and
socks and a cowlick that never fall down.
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 19 Jun 1996 01:24:13 EDT
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: of the STRENUOUS TYPE
I came across this in Kant and thought it might apply to some of the more recent
polemics.
"Every affectation of the STRENUOUS TYPE (such that is, as excites the
consciousness of our power of overcoming every resistance ('animus strenuus'))
is 'aesthetically sublime,' e. g. anger, even desperation (the 'rage of forlorn
hope,' but not 'faint-hearted' despair)" (Kant in part I of the "Critique of
Aesthetic Judgement").
This seems to account for the appeal of a lot of "difficult" work, perhaps
preferably with the notion of "difficult" applying to the entire social context
of a work and not just its immediately apprehensible aesthetic.
I recognize that "a politics of form" is supposed to be able to absorb a
transcendent function into its own formulation of action and thought, but what
if this absorption has over-ramified, stalled, or is otherwise indigestible to a
larger society? Can we use the sublime to reconfigure a more inclusive
explanation?
Ward Tietz
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 19 Jun 1996 07:40:17 -0400
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: DROMO: Thomas Kuhn Dies (fwd)
Thot this wld inetrest the list -- Pierre
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 19 Jun 1996 10:15:23 GMT
From: John Young <jya@pipeline.com>
To: technology@jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU
Cc: deleuze-guattari@jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU,
dromology@jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU, pol-sci-tech@igc.apc.org
Subject: DROMO: Thomas Kuhn Dies
The New York Times, June 19, 1996, p. B7.
Thomas Kuhn, 73; Devised Science Paradigm [Obituary]
By Lawrence Van Gelder
Thomas S. Kuhn, whose theory of sclentific revolution
became a profoundly influential landmark of 20th-century
intellectual history, died on Monday at his home in
Cambridge, Mass. He was 73.
Robert Dilorio, associate director of the news office at
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said the
scholar, who held the title of professor emeritus at
M.I.T., had been ill with cancer in recent years.
"The Structure of Scientific RevoIutions," was conceived
while Protessor Kuhn was a graduate student in theoretical
physics and published as a monograph in the International
Encyclopedia of Unified Science before the University of
Chicago Press issued it as a 180-page book in 1962. The
work punctured the widely held notion that scientific
change was a strictly rational process.
Professor's Kuhn's treatise influenced not only scientists
but also economists, historians, sociologists and
philosophers, touching off considerable debate. It has sold
about one million copies in 16 languages and remains
required reading in many basic courses in the history and
philosophy of science.
Dr. Kuhn, a professor of philosophy and history of science
at M.I.T. from 1979 to 1983 and the Laurence S. Rockefeller
Professor of Philosophy there from 1983 until 1991, was the
author or co-author of five books and scores of articles on
the philosophy and history of science. But Dr. Kuhn
remained best known for "The Structure of Scientific
Revolutions."
His thesis was that science was not a steady, cumulative
acquisition of knowledge. Instead, he wrote, it is "a
series of peaceful interludes punctuated by intellectually
violent revolutions." And in those revolutions, he wrote,
"one conceptual world view is replaced by another."
Thus, Einstein's theory of relativity could challenge
Newton's concepts of physics. Lavoisier's discovery of
oxygen could sweep away earlier ideas about phlogiston, the
imaginary element believed to cause combustion. Galileo's
supposed experiments with wood and lead balls dropped from
the Leaning Tower of Pisa could banish the Aristotelian
theory that bodies fell at a speed proportional to their
weight. And Darwin's theory of natural selection could
overthrow theories of a world governed by design.
Professor Kuhn argued in the book that the typical
scientist was not an objective, free thinker and skeptic.
Rather, he was a somewhat conservative individual who
accepted what he was taught and appiied his knowledge to
solving the problems that came before him.
In so doing, Professor Kuhn maintained, these scientists
accepted a paradigm, an archetypal solution to a problem,
like Ptolemy's theory that the Sun revolves around the
Earth. Generally conservative, scientists would tend to
solve problems in ways that extended the scope of the
paradigm.
In such periods, he maintained, scientists tend to resist
research that might signal the development of a new
paradigm, like the work of the astronomer Aristarchus, who
theorized in the third century B.C. that the planets
revolve around the Sun. But, Professor Kuhn said,
situations arose that the paradigm could not account for or
that contradicted it.
And then, he said, a revolutionary would appear, a
Lavoisier or an Einstein, often a young scientist not
indoctrinated in the accepted theories, and sweep the old
paradigm away.
These revolutions, he said, came only after long periods of
tradition-bound normal science. "Frameworks must be lived
with and explored before they can be broken," Professor
Kuhn said.
The new paradigm cannot build on the one that precedes it,
he maintained. It can only supplant it. The two, he said,
were "incommensurable."
Some critics said Professor Kuhn was arguing that scieace
was little more than mob rule. He replied, "Look, I think
that's nonsense, and I'm prepared to argue that."
The word paradigm appeared so frequently in Professor's
Kuhn's "Structures" and with so many possible meanings
prompting debate that he was credited with popularizing the
word and inspiring a 1974 cartoon in The New Yorker. In.
it, a woman tells a man: "Dynamite, Mr. Gerston! You're the
first person I ever heard use 'paradigm' in real life."
Professor Kuhn traced the origin of his thesis to a moment
in 1947 when he was working toward a doctorate in physics
at Harvard. James B. Conant, the chemist who was the
president of the university, had asked him to teach a class
in science for undergraduates majoring in the humanities.
The focus was to be historical case studies.
Until then, Professor Kuhn said later, "I'd never read an
old document in science." As he looked through Aristotle's
"Physics" and realized how astonishingly unlike Newton's
were its concepts of motion and matter, he concluded that
Aristotle's physics were not "bad Newton" but simply
different.
Professor Kuhn received a doctorate in physics, but not
long afterward he switched to the history of science
exploring the mechanisms that lead to scientific change.
"I sweated blood and blood and blood, and finally I had a
breakthrough," he said.
Thomas Samuel Kuhn, the son of Samuel L. Kuhn, an
industrial engineer, and the former Annette Stroock, was
born on July 18, 1922, in Cincinnati.
In 1943, he graduated summa cum laude from Harvard with a
bachelor's degree in physics.
During World War II, he served as a civilian employee at
Harvard and in Europe with the Office of Scientific
Research and Development.
He received master's and doctoral degrees in physics from
Harvard in 1946 and 1949. From 1948 to 1956, he held
various posts at Harvard, rising to an assistant
professorship in general education and the history of
science.
He then joined the faculty of the University of California
at Berkeley, where he was named a professor of history of
science in 1961. In 1964, he joined the faculty at
Princeton, where he was the M. Taylor Pyne Professor of
Philosophy and History of Science until 1979, when he
joined the faculty of M.I.T.
Professor Kuhn was a Guggenheim Fellow in 1954-55, the
winner of the George Sarton Medal in the History of Science
in 1982, and the holder of honorary degrees from many
institutions, among them the University of Notre Dame,
Columbia University, the University of Chicago the
University of Padua and the University of Athens.
He is survived by his wife, Jehane and three children,
Sarah Kuhn of Framingham, Mass., Elizabeth Kuhn of Los
Angeles and Nathaniel Kuhn of Arlington, Mass.
[Photo] Thomas S. Kuhn
[End]
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 19 Jun 1996 07:47:28 EDT
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: Performance Writing
In-Reply-To: Message of Tue, 18 Jun 1996 22:32:42 +0000 from
<cris@SLANG.DEMON.CO.UK>
Re "performance poyets" you left out Lev Rubenstein of Russia, one of
the earliest, best, & most original. - Henry Gould
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 19 Jun 1996 07:56:56 EDT
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: of the STRENUOUS TYPE
In-Reply-To: Message of Wed, 19 Jun 1996 01:24:13 EDT from
<100723.3166@COMPUSERVE.COM>
On Wed, 19 Jun 1996 01:24:13 EDT Ward Tietz said:
>
>This seems to account for the appeal of a lot of "difficult" work, perhaps
>preferably with the notion of "difficult" applying to the entire social context
>of a work and not just its immediately apprehensible aesthetic.
>
>I recognize that "a politics of form" is supposed to be able to absorb a
>transcendent function into its own formulation of action and thought, but what
>if this absorption has over-ramified, stalled, or is otherwise indigestible to
>a
>larger society? Can we use the sublime to reconfigure a more inclusive
>explanation?
Maybe it's a way of getting a different angle on politically-loaded
aesthetics. Not for the purpose of de-politicizing but for seeing the
art/world situation more clearly. But if you're going to "use the
sublime" it would seemingly have to be done within a larger frame of
achievable form in art. Is the sublime in "difficult art" a kind of
dead-end self-destruct situation? Or can it be allied with an implicit
"coherence", a humane life-order or life-process? I think, believe it
or not, that there is something valid in the Coleridgean idea of organic
form - that art & biology share asymmetrical symmetries understood in
some way since the Egyptians at least. The sublime in this case would
correspond to the human awareness of death and the change in ethics
and metaphysics which this entails - & what distinguishes moral
human consciousness from instinctual drives & the vegetation per se.
If art is an asymmetrical life-process - not crystalline, not
purely symmetrical - aiming for coherences - well, maybe this brings
back a different concept of imagination than has reigned since
modernism. Style is a matter of emphasis - Dada throws the huge art
cabbage out the window; Klee plants it in the back of his head.
- Henry Gould
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 19 Jun 1996 04:54:06 -1000
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Robert J Wilson <rwilson@HAWAII.EDU>
Subject: Yes to the Sublime, No to the Beauteous
In-Reply-To: <960619052412_100723.3166_EHU60-1@CompuServe.COM>
Dear Ward Tietz,
Say yes to the aesthetics and politics of the/a (deformed) sublime, and
"no to the beautiful" (beauteous) sonnets of, say, Richard Lord Wilbur. I
could not agree more, nor less, with your "strenuous type" politics and
aesthetics of the deformed, de-bounded and de-legislated play of form,
from multi-centers and trajectories, not just (Emanuel) Kant or
(postmodernism explained to infants) Lyotard as ground of such languaging
activity. Regards from "that loveliest fleet of islands [Hawaii to Mark
Twain as "tourist-author"] that lies [lies?] achored in any ocean [as in,
say, Pearl Harbor as a work of the American sublime as nuclearized
Pacific?], Rob Wilson
On Tue, 18 Jun 1996, Ward Tietz wrote:
> I came across this in Kant and thought it might apply to some of the more recent
> polemics.
>
> "Every affectation of the STRENUOUS TYPE (such that is, as excites the
> consciousness of our power of overcoming every resistance ('animus strenuus'))
> is 'aesthetically sublime,' e. g. anger, even desperation (the 'rage of forlorn
> hope,' but not 'faint-hearted' despair)" (Kant in part I of the "Critique of
> Aesthetic Judgement").
>
> This seems to account for the appeal of a lot of "difficult" work, perhaps
> preferably with the notion of "difficult" applying to the entire social context
> of a work and not just its immediately apprehensible aesthetic.
>
> I recognize that "a politics of form" is supposed to be able to absorb a
> transcendent function into its own formulation of action and thought, but what
> if this absorption has over-ramified, stalled, or is otherwise indigestible to a
> larger society? Can we use the sublime to reconfigure a more inclusive
> explanation?
>
>
> Ward Tietz
>
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 19 Jun 1996 14:05:17 EDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Daniel Bouchard <Daniel_Bouchard@HMCO.COM>
Subject: ORONO
I waved goodbye this morning to Chris Stroffolino and George Hartley as they
began negotiating Boston's commuter traffic on their way to the conference in
Maine. I waited for the trolley to work, feeling really silly that my job
makes an academic conference look like an adventure.
What's the Orono conference all about anyway? I guess that most people
attending won't read this post for several days but I do hope there is some
significant reportage and details about the goings-on and readings that the
rest of us won't see or hear.
Why has the discussion slowed down so much recently? What are people doing--
WORKING?!?
daniel_bouchard@hmco.com
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 19 Jun 1996 15:51:03 CST
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: David Baratier <dave.baratier@MOSBY.COM>
Subject: fortune cookies
There was a post a while back where somebody wanted some FC Sayings. I
have found alternate possibilites for the same type of messages. A
friend returned from Italy and brought back Perugina chocolates, which
come with sayings in four different languages, centered around ideas
of love, sensuality and the body. The packaging for illegal drugs,
such as crack vials and heroin bags, quite often has prophetic sayings
printed on them: "happy days are here again," or "FPW unite." Caps of
Coca-cola often have: "sorry, try again" I offer these possibilites to
add to the work cause I would hate to see someone dredging up a tired
"fortune cookie" poem series after following O'Hara, Stroffolino, Lee
Ann Brown, etcetera.
David Baratier
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 19 Jun 1996 20:12:01 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Gwyn McVay <gmcvay1@OSF1.GMU.EDU>
Subject: help! must have Nomura
In-Reply-To: <Pine.OSF.3.91.960618184110.32590D-100000@osf1.gmu.edu>
Does anyone know whether "the 'moon' score" by Hitoshi Nomura is
available on CD, or if, for that matter, any of his other music is available?
Gwyn McVay
gmcvay1@osf1.gmu.edu
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 19 Jun 1996 23:58:46 +0000
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: cris cheek <cris@SLANG.DEMON.CO.UK>
Subject: Re: performance writers
Hi Henry,
you're right about Lev Rubenstein, of course. Prigov's pretty good as a
live act also. But the names weren't intended to be inclusive (think i
flagged that up). Just a smattering to get discussion going further.
The range of practice available for differing assemblages of influence is
what's striking.
love and love
cris
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 19 Jun 1996 21:23:48 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Poetics List <poetics@UBVMS.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Subject: How to temp. stop "Poetics" et al
at the risk of repeating this message for those who have it ...
Rev. 5-16-95
____________________________________________________________________
Welcome to the Poetics List
&
The Electronic Poetry Center
sponsored by The Poetics Program, Department of English, Faculty of Art &
Letters, of 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. The Electronic Poetry Center (EPC)
7. Poetics Archives at EPC
8. Publishers & Editors Read This!
[This document was prepared by Charles Bernstein (bernstei@acsu.buffalo.
edu) and Loss Pequen~o Glazier (lolpoet@acsu.buffalo.edu).]
____________________________________________________________________
1. About the Poetics List
Please note that this is a private list and information about the list
should not be posted to other lists or directories of lists. The idea is
to keep the list to those with specific rather than general interests, and
also to keep the scale of the list small and the volume manageable.
Word-of-mouth (and its electronic equivalents) seems to be working fine.
The "list owner" of Poetics is Charles Bernstein: contact me for further
information. As of May, Joel Kuszai is working with me to administer the
list. For subscription information contact us at POETICS@UBVMS.CC.BUFFALO.EDU
____________________________________________________________________
2. Subscriptions
The list has open subscriptions. You can subscribe (sub) or
unsubscribe (unsub) by sending a one-line message, with no subject
line, to:
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the one-line message should say:
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name to unsub)
We will be sent a notice of all subscription activity.
*
If you are having difficulty unsubscribing, please note:
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The most frequent problem with subscriptions is bounced messages. If your
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If the problem is low disk quota, you may wish to request an increase from
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____________________________________________________________________
3. Who's Subscribed
To see who is subscribed to Poetics, send an e-mail message to
listserv@ubvm.cc.buffalo.edu; leave the "Subject" line of the e-mail message
blank. In the body of your e-mail message type:
review poetics
You will be sent within a reasonable amount of time (by return e-mail) a
rather long list containing the names and e-mail addresses of Poetics
subscribers. This list is alphabetized by server not name.
____________________________________________________________________
4. Digest Option
The Poetics List can send a large number of individual messages to
your account to each day! If you would prefer to receive ONE message
each day, which would include all messages posted to the list for that
day, you can use the digest option. Send this one-line message (no subject
line) to
listserv@ubvm.cc.buffalo.edu
set poetics digest
NOTE:!! Send this message to "listserv" not to Poetics or as a reply
to this message!!
You can switch back to individual messages by sending this messagage:
set poetics mail
____________________________________________________________________
5. When you'll be away
Do not leave your Poetics subscription "active" if you are going to be away
for any extended period of time! Your account may become flooded and you may
lose not only Poetics messages but other important mail. You can temporarily
turn off your Poetics subscription by sending a message:
You can temporarily turn off your mail by sending a message:
set poetics nomail
& turn it on again with: set poetics mail
When you return you can check or download missed postings from the Poetics
archive. (See 7 below.)
____________________________________________________________________
6. What is the Electronic Poetry Center?
our URL is
http://writing.upenn.edu/epc
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 the burgeoning number of 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. The Center also provides information about contemporary print
little magazines and SMALL PRESSES engaged in poetry and poetics. And we
have an extensive collection of soundfiles of poets' reading their work, as
well as the archive of LINEbreak, the radio interview series.
The EPC is directed by Loss Pequen~o Glazier.
____________________________________________________________________
7. 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.
Or set your browser to go directly to:
http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/poetics/archive
____________________________________________________________________
8. 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. (Write file name, word processing
program, and Mac or PC on disk.) Send an e-mail message to the address above
to obtain a mailing address to which to send your disk. Though files marked
up with html are our goal, ascii files are perfectly acceptable. If your
word processor ill save files in Rich Text Format (.rtf) this is also highly
desirable
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.
Some announcements circulated through Poetics and the EPC have received a
noticeable responses; it may be an effective way to promote your publication
and we are glad to facilitate information about interesting publications.
____________________________________________________________________
END OF POETICS LIST WELCOME
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 19 Jun 1996 20:07:32 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: George Bowering <bowering@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: nonset form
Interesting point you made about the predictable form seeming to you a
remnant of performance, etc. Actually, though I used to be a real open form
guy, and of course prefer Olson to Lowell, I am more into predictable forms
now, but not traditional ones. I always set up, a la Oulipo, I guess, a
frame and try to work out of it. More so in fiction thatn in poetry, or
really in other ways. But for instance, one of my better poems took a Keats
poem and made a 14-section longish poem of it, eaCh line turned into a
section made of one sentence but three stanzas. I love it. Now I am
shrinking "Adonais." for unstance.
Haver also done silly things with acrostics, etc.
..........................
"Lifting belly is such an incident in one's life."
--G.S.
George Bowering.
2499 West 37th Ave.,
Vancouver, B.C.,
Canada V6M 1P4
fax: 1-604-266-9000
e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 19 Jun 1996 17:30:46 -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: bp Nichol's electronic poems (fwd)
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Robert Kendall <102012.1273@CompuServe.COM>
To: ht_lit <ht_lit@spiff.ccs.carleton.ca>
Readers of this list may be interested to know of the recent publication of the
late bp Nichol's collection of kinetic visual poems, "First Screening." These
aren't hypertext, but some of them are decidedly nonlinear. The poems where
written during the early 1980s in BASIC on an Apple II and translated into
Hypercard by the editors.
Nichol was well-known in his native Canada, though most Americans don't know his
work. These poems are witty and entertaining and it's astonishing that they were
written so long ago. I wonder what else will creep out of the woodwork of the
early days of personal computing.
The publisher is:
Red Deer College Press
56 Ave. and 32nd Street
Box 5005
Red Deer, Alberta
Canada T4N 5H5
--Robert Kendall
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/rkendall
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 19 Jun 1996 20:44:28 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: George Bowering <bowering@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: wild wild dead horse hairs
> The
>Stones sounded raw, and looked nice and ugly, and beat, while the Beatles
>were so clean and tidy, ready
>to meet showbiz of the time half way, it seemed. The STones maybe
>gave an impression of being more dangerous (rightly or wrongly)
In those days I always thought the Stones sounded like white English guys
trying to play music that came from Black USA, but not being able to stay
off the DOWNbeat, like a kind of electric marching band. They have got a
little better at it in their dotage.
..........................
"Lifting belly is such an incident in one's life."
--G.S.
George Bowering.
2499 West 37th Ave.,
Vancouver, B.C.,
Canada V6M 1P4
fax: 1-604-266-9000
e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 19 Jun 1996 20:47:47 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: George Bowering <bowering@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: When the real poets come
>>Is James Joyce really a great writer?
>
That subject is thoroughly discussed and answered in Flann O'Brien's _The
Dalkey Archive_.
..........................
"Lifting belly is such an incident in one's life."
--G.S.
George Bowering.
2499 West 37th Ave.,
Vancouver, B.C.,
Canada V6M 1P4
fax: 1-604-266-9000
e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 19 Jun 1996 23:00:56 MDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Louis Cabri <ldmcabri@ACS.UCALGARY.CA>
Subject: Re: pcoet and tlooth
In-Reply-To: <v01520d00adeb35a15cfd@[166.84.199.56]>; from "Jordan Davis" at
Jun 17, 1996 11:22 am
"Owing to inclement weather the social revolution occured in
poetry."
(adapted from Tucholsky)
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 19 Jun 1996 22:32:33 -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: Re: Child Prostitution (fwd)
This note is a telling reminder of how we continue to exploit the
children. The recent case of the Australian diplomats in Thailand and the
German Nationals who were trading in Thai children was a horrible
situation. But we Asians do exploit our own too, in an equal grotesque
manner.
Kim
>
> Hi everybody,
>
> This is a general message going out to all the Indians I know who are on
> the Net. As you can see, the list is pretty short so PLEASE PASS IT ON to
> other people, especially, but not necessarily limited to, other Indians.
> Now on with the message...
>
> There is a petition on the Net right now to stop child prostitution in
> India (Goa specifically). I don't know how many of you are aware of this
> problem, but I have done some reading on the subject and I can tell you
> that Child Prostitution is a huge problem in Thailand and Vietnam etc.
> and it is growing at an alarming rate in India as well. I could tell you
> many stories about it but I am trying to keep this message short so I'll
> leave out the details (If you really want to know more just e-mail me
> personally). Lets just say the situation is so bad that 6-year olds are
> being sold into prostitution for the equivalent of $2.50!!!!!!!!!!!!
> Kinda puts all our problems in perspective, doesn't it?? I think it is
> our duty to do what little we can to stop this inhumane brutality and
> suffering inflicted on children. I know you all are super-busy and stuff
> but what I am asking you to do will take less than 5 mins! (Actually it
> takes less than 1 min. speaking from personal experience!) I think you
> all can spare that much for a worthy cause...just watch 5 mins less of
> TV, eat lunch a little bit quicker, or heck, just walk a little faster
> from one class to the next! All right...enough preaching...here is what you
> can do to help:
>
> 1. Use Netscape or Mosaic to access www.goa.com
>
> 2. When there, click on "What is new" line (it will be flashing).
>
> 3. Read the screen. Sign the petition.
>
> 4. Sleep a little better knowing that you have done at least one
> good thing today!! :)
>
>
>
> If you don't have access to Netscape/Mosaic, or just don't want to deal
> with figuring it out, PLEASE let me know. I'll find a way to send you the
> petition.
>
> And please PASS THIS MSG on, at least to other Indians (to others too if
> you can. Many non-Indians have signed the petition which of course how it
> should be since injustice is injusticce, and no matter who is sufering,
> we should all be concerned). Thank you for your time. Hopefully this
> wasn't any inconvenience. Please e-mail me directly if you have any
> questions/comments/info.
>
>
>
> Bobby Singh
>
______________________________________________________________________________
_
>
>
>
>
>
--- from list postcolonial@lists.village.virginia.edu ---
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 20 Jun 1996 08:51:40 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Jordan Davis <jdavis@PANIX.COM>
Subject: oak oak
Owing to inclement weather, I found (in Yahoo) the following urls:
http://www.csam.montclair.edu/~ceravolo/
and
http://www.intac.com/~ceravolo/
These are web sites by respectively Joe Ceravolo's son Jim and his wife
Rosemary. Ceravolo, who died in 1988, was a great poet. Texts from all of
Ceravolo's books, including the scarce _Wild Flowers Out of Gas_ and _Fits
of Dawn_, are available at the Montclair site.
Okay!
Jordan
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 20 Jun 1996 09:55:39 EST
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Burt Kimmelman -@NJIT" <kimmelman@ADMIN.NJIT.EDU>
Subject: Re: How to temp. stop "Poetics" et al
You do mean etc. and not et al>, don't you?
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 20 Jun 1996 10:08:32 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Fred E. Maus" <fem2x@FARADAY.CLAS.VIRGINIA.EDU>
Subject: Re: wild wild dead horse hairs
In-Reply-To: <v01530510adee79323bce@[142.58.126.47]> from "George Bowering" at
Jun 19, 96 08:44:28 pm
>
> In those days I always thought the Stones sounded like white English guys
> trying to play music that came from Black USA, but not being able to stay
> off the DOWNbeat, like a kind of electric marching band. They have got a
> little better at it in their dotage.
>
I think this is really astute.
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 20 Jun 1996 13:15:26 -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: torque torque
While everyone's set to nomail, there's new mags aplenty--
Torque (ed. Liz Fodaski) is now perfect-bound--meaning meaning--and shining new.
Much non-transcendental post-lang lyric, good solid stuff, esp D
Kovacs,
B Luoma's 'Auto Gobbler'.
Arras (ed. Brian Kim Stefans) is number three'd, N Mackey J Retallack R Smith
and a calmly blow you away segment of R Fitterman's Metropolis not to
mention C Cantalupo and co.
Chain (eds. Juliana Spahr & Jena Osman) is split in two, a defence of poetry by
W Alexander, a genre rant (th' whole thing's on genreblur) by M Damon,
fun. Cool. Makes you wonder what the previous gang meant by the
'what's this new gang doing?' thing.
and of course Situation (ed. Mark Wallace), the most original thing out
there, consensus be damned. Looking forward to Happy Genius and MASS AVE
later this summer. (Shoot--I forgot to get a copy of Big Allis 7. More
later.)
JD
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 20 Jun 1996 16:56:54 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Bill Luoma <Maz881@AOL.COM>
Subject: Rilke
Howdy folks,
I'm looking for the title & book of a poem by Rilke that begins something
like this:
"I am all too alone in the world . . . "
and ends something like this:
"like a ship that carries me safely there ,,, the night."
???
much,
Bill Luoma
maz881@aol.com
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 20 Jun 1996 15:44:33 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: George Bowering <bowering@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: what matter who's speaking
Seems to me that in literature at least, Beckett has had a lot bigger
impact than has Cage. Cage is still in the space that he picked out, the
severe avantgarde, while Beckett won the Nobel Prize. I am talking about
breadth of reception here, not necessarily "influence" on composers of
whatever.
There are, in drama, and fiction made into drama, lots and lots of Beckett
productions onstage all over the world every night. Conferences on beckett
the playwright or Beckett the novelist, all over the world.
Curiously, they both wrote poetry, and curiouslt the poets who derive from
them, do not extend the stuff they did as poetry, but look on the poetry as
something they did on the side, as Picasso, for instance, did poetry on the
side.
..........................
"Lifting belly is such an incident in one's life."
--G.S.
George Bowering.
2499 West 37th Ave.,
Vancouver, B.C.,
Canada V6M 1P4
fax: 1-604-266-9000
e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 20 Jun 1996 15:49:34 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: George Bowering <bowering@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: what matter who's speaking
> Would any voice that deconstructs itself
>reductio ad absurdum do so with a cantabile lilt without _Ill
>Seen, Ill Said_?
Exactly. Or a number of other texts, starting with _The Unnamable_, and
thru things like the various monologues.
types--am I wrong?
>On the other hand, I believe you might be drawing a false parallel between
>two distinct philosophical choices. Beckett chose to focus on the
>individuated voice by stripping it clean; Cage often seemed to regard
>the voice as an egoic distraction, and performed chance operations, it
>would seem, to delete it completely.
Good reply. Remember when _The Unnamable_ came out? And we said okay,
that's it for the novel. Beckett has got rid at last of setting, character,
etc. Brings us to a voice so alone and so present in opur heads that we
cannot distinguyish it from our own, We hear a voice in our heads and it
must be our voice, because there are none of fiction's ways of distancing
it, onto a "character" or whatever. Then we notice that we cant stop it. We
cant go on, we think, but we go on, cant not, till death, and then someone
else has the voice in her head anyway.
t is because of me she bleeds
>
..........................
"Lifting belly is such an incident in one's life."
--G.S.
George Bowering.
2499 West 37th Ave.,
Vancouver, B.C.,
Canada V6M 1P4
fax: 1-604-266-9000
e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 20 Jun 1996 15:53:39 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: George Bowering <bowering@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: what matter who's speaking
>I seem to remember reading that Beckett's shift to plays was because the
>novels were too personal.
Yes, and then the producers keep taking his late fictions and putting them
on stage. There comes a point at which it is not useful to set up a
difference. Sometimes when I watch a fistion that is put on the stage, I
close my eyes and imagine that I am reading. Hmm. But then things such as
_Quad_ go in the other direction and create pure mathematiucal stage stuff
with narrative refused.
..........................
"Lifting belly is such an incident in one's life."
--G.S.
George Bowering.
2499 West 37th Ave.,
Vancouver, B.C.,
Canada V6M 1P4
fax: 1-604-266-9000
e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 20 Jun 1996 15:58:01 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: George Bowering <bowering@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: Susan Howe and Samuel Beckett
Well, without Samuel Beckett there would be no Susan Howe, eh?
..........................
"Lifting belly is such an incident in one's life."
--G.S.
George Bowering.
2499 West 37th Ave.,
Vancouver, B.C.,
Canada V6M 1P4
fax: 1-604-266-9000
e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 20 Jun 1996 19:03:48 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "k.a. hehir" <angelo@MUSTANG.UWO.CA>
Subject: Re: ding
In-Reply-To: <Pine.3.88.9606151027.A18226-0100000@bosshog.arts.uwo.ca>
Hello thomas,
you don't know me but i am an undergrad here at western and noticed your
name on the poetics list.
i would like to invite you to a reading this coming monday here in town
that i'm putting on. it is the first of what i hope will become a series.
the line up is --
Skot, Peter Jaeger, J.D. Crosato, Jason Dixon, Me, Carey Weinberg, Sydney
janet, and Paul Vermeersch.
The venue is The Brass Door Irish Pub, In the King's Inn. on King street
between Clarence and Richmond. There will be a sign.
Also Niniam Mellamphy will give an introductory note to get things going.
Game time is 8 thirty.
Hope you can make it.
Kevin Hehir
p.s.
would you happen to have Carolyn Guertin's eddress?
-- check the office door of ann mayer or sarah king for more info
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 20 Jun 1996 17:42:49 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Rachel Loden <loden@IX.NETCOM.COM>
Subject: Re: Rilke
Bill,
This is from THE BOOK OF HOURS (1905). As far as I know it doesn't
have a title other than the first line (something like "I am too
alone in the world, and not alone enough..").
Let me know if you'd like the whole (inadequately translated) poem.
Rachel Loden
You wrote:
>
>Howdy folks,
>
>I'm looking for the title & book of a poem by Rilke that begins
something
>like this:
>
>"I am all too alone in the world . . . "
>
>and ends something like this:
>
>"like a ship that carries me safely there ,,, the night."
>
>???
>
>much,
>
>Bill Luoma
>maz881@aol.com
>
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 20 Jun 1996 23:39:17 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "k.a. hehir" <angelo@MUSTANG.UWO.CA>
Subject: Re: ding
In-Reply-To: <Pine.3.88.9606201805.A17098-0100000@mustang-a.uwo.ca>
oops sorry, that was just supposed to go to Tom Orange but due to
inclement weather ended up on the list.
wish me luck.
with all this bad weather and everybody being away i expect the Cat in
the Hat to pop in any moment.
kevin
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 21 Jun 1996 06:24:52 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Carnography <scrypt@INTERPORT.NET>
Subject: Re: of the STRENUOUS TYPE
I came across this in Kant Generator Pro (I might have co-written the
module, but Mark Pilgim wrote the program) and thought it might apply to
some
of the more recent citations vis a vis polemics.
"By means of forcible braying before a blindfolded hod-pustule, the
ontological tusks of Yahweh would thereby be made to eschew our genital
stems, but the ad hominem retchings (and I guess we'll never know why this
is the case) have nothing to do with our flamelets. Because of the
relation between our accrued idiocy and the signified, the intelligible
polysemous man-gas in Dubuke yesterday would thereby be stuffed into the
head-box of, as I have elsewhere shown, jellied air, yet my painful rash
stands in need of abstraction. As is evident upon vigorous manipulation of
the steam-glands, our a posteriori craws can never, as a whole, furnish a
true and demonstrated science, because, like boredom, they constitute the
whole content for corrosive principles. (In national theology, let us
suppose that the exploded whoreshead, that is to say, Hegel, is the mere
result of the power of pure suppurating, a blind but indispensable function
of the Slaw.) No gimp could possibly deny that, in accordance with the
principles of our discorporate queries, the decussation of toes of human
reason depends on, in natural theology, our discorporate queries. The guys
should be careful to observe that worms in air-pores (and let us suppose
that this is the case) would thereby be stuffed into the head-box of worms
in air-pores, by means of forcible braying before a blindfolded
hod-pustule. On this matter, what has been said already should in any case
fend for itself.
"Since knowledge of the ad hominem belchings of human reason is a
priori, boredom, that is to say, gluttony, constitutes the whole content
for an acorn-snuffling scab. S. Ewing tells us that, uh, so far as I
figure, our flamelets, that is to say, tenets, occupy part of the sphere of
uselessness concerning the existence of the signified in general. What we
alone have noticed in that Cutesy's hell-hole is that the roots of our
undoing are just as necessary as our discorporate queries; therefore, our
discorporate queries (and it's pretty obvious that this is the case)
constitute the whole content for the dead beauties outside our loos. Our
indeterminacies would thereby be stuffed into the head-box of, on the other
hand, the abscesses. The insistent dents, even as this relates to our a
priori accrued idiocy, would be falsified. Has it ever been suggested
that, as is shown in the writings of Cher, the guys should be careful to
observe that there is no relation between our indeterminacies and a
stressful situation? In natural theology, our discorporate queries are
just as necessary as the infinite resources of Ro', because of our
painstaking ignorance of the conditions. Since knowledge of the ad hominem
belchings is a posteriori, the insertion of the ad hominem belchings of
human reason (and no gimp could possibly deny that this is true)
constitutes the whole content for insistent dentures, but the Vitreous
Humours would thereby be made to contradict, indeed, the signified.
"We thus have a pure potpourri of snails, but this need not worry
Schmeer. In my present remarks I am referring to the infinite resources of
Providence only in so far as it is pestered by shapely principles. This
could not be passed over in a complete system of insects, but in a merely
critical essay the simple mention of earwigs may suffice."
http://www.interport.net/~scrypt
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 21 Jun 1996 07:03:41 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Carnography <scrypt@INTERPORT.NET>
Subject: Re: Wildflower dead horse-hair-triggers
Boy, I really hate sending this to a group of literate poets and academics,
but here goes:
Disclaimer: If pedantic discussions of ancient pop
music bother you as much as they bother me, then skip
this missive.
=46red typed:
> >
> > In those days I always thought the Stones sounded like white English guy=
s
> > trying to play music that came from Black USA, but not being able to sta=
y
> > off the DOWNbeat, like a kind of electric marching band. They have got a
> > little better at it in their dotage.
I didn't want to get into this, because I don't particularly like the
Stones or the Beatles--the entire debate seems to frame boomer
self-importance. (It isn't as if perishable pop bands actually matter
unless you're trying to explore a decade via its superficial
soundtrack.) But as someone who has had to play exact versions of
Strawberry Fields, In My Life, She Comes In Colors and Paint It Black
on Karoake laserdisks, and as a white musician who has played on way too
many rock sessions, as well as in classical competitions, recitals, and
"more legit gigs than there are names for Satan" (as Christian X. Hunter
says about my tenure in NYC), I feel I might be able to provide a unique
perspective on this horrible, disgusting comparison.
> I think this is really astute.
Really? I think that anyone who misses the characteristic feel of
Stones recordings in general, and of R & B-inflected Brit Rock
in particular, is probably "whiter" (ie, more suburban) than Keith
Richards will ever be.
I, too, grew up having little respect for the Stones. In the early eighties,
I played with James Brown's ex-trumpet player, Thara Memory, and learned
P-funk almost as often as classical pieces. I thought people like the Stones
just couldn't play. But then, from 1988-91, I was forced to learn every
note, every timbre, every retardando and accelerando, of every single
keyboard part in every pop song I was assigned by Daichi Kosho.
(And so was every other New York studio musician who needed the money.)
Most of the music was unendurable pablum: Ashford and Simpson, hellish 70's
hits I'd managed to avoid hearing--those of Barry Manilow, for example.
(Forty grand a year? It doesn't matter. Kill me.) Some of it was instruction=
al,
such as learning the feel of roots country (melody is always behind the
beat) and the ad libs of Sam Cooke. But the music that I noticed most,
oddly, was
that of the Stones. Theirs was the only chart-friendly soundworld
sufficiently dissonant, sufficiently random, not to leave me feeling ill.
(An aside on the subject of sonnets: Have you ever noticed that Honky-Tonk
Women is in iambic pentameter? Check it out:
I met a gin-soaked barroom queen in Memphis
She tried to take me upstairs for a ride (etc, etc)
This is the kind of detail one could only notice while replicating Jagger's
inflections with a pitch-wheel on a Synclavier as Freddy Hubbard's bassist
asked about the phrasing and a stern man from Tokyo scowled and checked
his Swatch.)
I'd always thought Jagger couldn't sing worth shit, and that the Stones
didn't know how to work together. But now, faced with nothing but Stones,
Beatles and
Al Green for a period of months, I grasped the secret of BritRock as
opposed to straight R & B:
In straight R & B, musicians attempt to play together as tightly as
possible. Drums and bass function as one instrument, one thrust. In fusion
and lite tech-head jazz (as well as in obsessive metal), this can go too
far and lose
the feel in hyper-quantized exactitude. (Sometimes this is fun--as in early
Metallica, where the frustration of the listener comes from not being able
to find the downbeat in an asymmetrical pattern played horribly well by
impatient wind-up toys.)
But in R & B-inflected Brit Rock from the Sixties and Seventies, the feel
of a band comes not from everyone playing in the same pocket, but from each
different musician having his/her own pocket which rubs against the feel of
the other musicians. Mere inefficiency? It would seem so at first; but upon
closer examination, I learned otherwise. If you try to play rock with funk
exactitude,
it will just sound wrong.
All of these time-pockets are what create the sound of a brit-R & B
inflected band like the Stones or, for that matter, Led Zeppelin, or
even Traffic (whose song, "Empty Pages," I had the pleasure of hearing for
the first time and teaching to an eighteen-year-old who brought me the
recording to transcribe last month. (Yes, I'm making him learn Bach and
Bartok.)).
I learned other stuff as well. For one thing, the tuneless, whiny Jagger
turned out to be a master of phrasing. Even his tone-deaf sprechstimme
rubbed against the band in an effective, resonant way. Like Watts's
drag-ass time chafed Wyman's stiff-riffs, like Richard's inspired
slop cut into whichever relatively accomplished musician, Jones or Ronson,
provided a backdrop of silk to slash, so Jagger's out-of-tune phrases
gave a further edge to the sound of the band.
Additional notes:
1. Watts is the laziest drummer in the world--God forbid that he should
play an extra fill.
2. Richards is the sloppiest professional guitarist in the business, but
there's a reason he sounds as good as he does. Strangely, an engineer friend
of mine played me takes of Richards playing on an Expensive Winos track
before (stiff and pedestrian) and after (loose, dissonant, and all over
the place: redefining rhythm guitar) he shot up: it was one of
the best arguments for drug abuse I've ever heard.
=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=
=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=
=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7=A7
Now can you *please* stop mentioning these people, for Christ's sake?
Talk about Cage, Future Sound Of London, Luigi Nono, Butch Morris--even
the band Garbage, if you like. But I have to hear about the Beatles and
the Stones on nearly every day of my purgatorial studio life. Tomorrow,
I'm working with the guy who produced Lou Reed's Coney Island Baby. He's
brilliant, a dream to work with, and always gets exactly the piano sound
I want. But if he brings up Richards's feel *one more time* when we're
listening back to a sloppy guitar...
Culture Notes:
1. There is currently *another revival* of 60's pop in Britain--
not only the Beatles, as in (zzzz) Oasis, but also Stones mixed with punk,
as in the band Speedway, who just got signed to Atlantic Records last week.
Go to London and see for yourself: everyone is wearing small, round glasses
and lime-green or chartreuse suede Puma sneakers, for god's sake--what
is *wrong* with these people?
2. I could tell you stories about the Japanese sessions
I did, like the time they wanted a "non-skinny" black female singer to
"ape" Aretha Franklin, or when they told a rock engineer to do Barbara
Streisand because his last name was Jewish, or when they told me I should
play U2 because "Lobe Hahdin--that Irish name, correct?"
I could tell you about the time when the Karoake director stopped a
quartet featuring Alex Blake, yours truly, and Carl James to say to
J.T. Lewis, drummer for Herbie Hancock, Anita Baker, Ruben Blade et al:
"Why you no play funky? That is why we hire you! You got to remember
Africa!"
I could even characterize the Japanese company that hired us, Daichi
Kosho, as racist, when in fact they suffered not from racism but
from the same assinine *literal-minded* multiculturalism that trivializes
the common perception of musicians today. People are constantly assigning
so-called real inspiration to musicians based on skin color, gender,
education, lack of education, name-the-irrelevant D. H. Lawrentian
class-anxiety-based category.
Recently, an incredibly stupid Village Voice critic named Toure
tried to insist that Darius James's brilliant _That's Blaxploitation_ was
mediocre because James was *middle-class* and, supposedly, great African-
American art can only come from the *lower classes*. Needless to say, Toure
was blinded by his own suburban self-hatred. I've been to James's neighborho=
od
in Conneticuit, and it looks like the neighborhood in John Singleton's
first film--lower class--than the suburb I grew up in. On the other hand,
Toure himself is as middle-class as I am, hence his projection of mediocrity
onto Darius.
=46riends, there is nothing wrong with being from a suburb. There is nothing
wrong with an education and a lawn. Escaping one's roots is not nearly as
important as embracing them.
4. But that doesn't mean I intend to embrace ex-Beatles or ex-Stones.
Especially after a recording--when they probably stink to high heaven.
http://www.interport.net/~scrypt
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 21 Jun 1996 08:05:26 EDT
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: Wildflower dead horse-hair-triggers
In-Reply-To: Message of Fri, 21 Jun 1996 07:03:41 -0400 from
<scrypt@INTERPORT.NET>
On Fri, 21 Jun 1996 07:03:41 -0400 Carnography said:
>But in R & B-inflected Brit Rock from the Sixties and Seventies, the feel
>of a band comes not from everyone playing in the same pocket, but from each
>different musician having his/her own pocket which rubs against the feel of
>the other musicians. Mere inefficiency? It would seem so at first; but upon
>closer examination, I learned otherwise. If you try to play rock with funk
>exactitude,
>it will just sound wrong.
You're saying the Brits invented this? The Stones got it from early
blues, which is still looser & off-beat (or idiosyncratic) than anything
they did. And I have to agree with the first post on this, that
rock in general, including the Stones, added a more heavy-handed pounding
on the beat. Who's better than who...[sigh]. I applied for Mick Taylor's
slot and found Keith Richards a friendly guy to deal with. But I guess
they found a better guitar player, for them...
Sorry folks. Enough. Back to the nosenet.
- Henry Gould
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 21 Jun 1996 09:44:42 -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: William Carlos Speedwagon
If you try to play rock with funk
exactitude,
it will just sound wrong, it
will just sound
wrong, it will just
sound wrong.
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 21 Jun 1996 11:40:42 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Carnography <scrypt@INTERPORT.NET>
Subject: Re: Wildflower dead horse-hair-triggers
henry gould typed:
> You're saying the Brits invented this? The Stones got it from early
> blues, which is still looser & off-beat (or idiosyncratic) than anything
> they did.
Early blues is utterly different from what the Stones did. The Stones
*wanted* to be like early blues (not R & B) musicians, but what they
actually did involved inspired mishearing, as Harold Bloom might have
called it.
I totally disagree with you, and my opinion is based on weird professional
exactitude rather than speculation. I had to play Stones and Muddy Waters
verbatim--I mean microscopically--for absurdly anal Japanese producers.
They had the CD on one side and us on the other--"us" including bassist
James Gregory, who was in Richards's band at the time. Jimmy had *never*
had to examine Richards's playing on the level we did when we were covering
the Stones repertoire. Muddy Waters' rhythm section on "You Need Lovin'"
was cleaner than hell compared to the Stones.
Most jazz musicians understand Lightnin' Hopkins, Son House and all of
that. They *never* understand the Stones--and that's because the feel
and sound are utterly different. They don't understand a vocalist who
can't sing and a drummer who misses the beat. Listen to rhythm guitar
intro of "Gimme Shelter" and tell me that Richards sounds like a poor
man's version of Robert Johnson. The truth is, he sounds like Richards
and nobody else.
"Getting it wrong" is a saving grace of popular music and don't kid yourself.
House music from the early eighties gets its aggressive polytonality from
dj's mixing album parts together by bpm and forgetting utterly about harmony.
You can say it's disco gone wrong, but that's missing the point. Disco was
never as ugly, as aggressive, as early four-on-the-floor house.
With all due respect, I challenge the entire conservative construct
of your so-called ""original blues": who are you to say that the Brits
were doing it badly and incorrectly? I don't hear you complaining that
the origins of reggae are in an idiosyncratic interpretation of American
music, that the entire feel of reggae comes from Jamaican musicians "getting
it wrong." With all due respect, if you didn't understand the difference
between Stones feel and that of Robert Johnson (whom Richards dreams of
being but, luckily, isn't), then I'm not at all surprised you didn't get
the gig with the Stones. Failing to get a gig like that doesn't mean
you're a bad musician, but it probably means you didn't understand the
musical core, the secret, of the band for whom you were trying out.
It's completely cliche to talk about white musicians being stiff. If it
makes you feel like less of a whiteboy to do it, fine. But don't obscure
purely musical observations with a race/class perspective. Have you ever
had to cop Jagger, Billy Preston, Nicky Hopkins et al with such precision
that you can't even flam with the track and satisfy the producer? I had to
do it for years. I never wanted to be an expert on sixties feel, but
they paid me to become one. You might say you notice the (lack of)
difference between Stones and Johnson, but if the feel weren't different,
then why
would you be making a distinction? Aesthetically, and in several other
ways, the sloppiness and sonics are as different from Johnson as the Stones
are from Sonic Youth. Led Zeppelin were much more faithful to the blues
they copped than the Stones were. Simply put, the Stones weren't good
enough to cop Johnson, which is what made them better.
I say, if you're going to wax adamant about feel, then back up your opinion
with concrete examples. That's what I did in my earlier post. That's the
least you'd do if we were talking about prosody.
All the best,
Rob Hardin
PS: The Stones and the Beatles were just sixties pop musicians. They did
what they did well enough, but they don't deserve this much time and space
for praise or scorn. All they deserve is to be acknowledged for what they
did well.
http://www.interport.net/~scrypt
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 21 Jun 1996 11:44:04 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Fred Muratori <fmm1@CORNELL.EDU>
Subject: Ribot
Anyone know if _Ribot_ is still being published? Thanks.
***********************
Fred Muratori "Certain themes are incurable."
(fmm1@cornell.edu)
Reference Services Division - Lyn Hejinian
Olin * Kroch * Uris Libraries
Cornell University
Ithaca, NY 14853
WWW: http://fmref.library.cornell.edu/spectra.html
***********************
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 21 Jun 1996 12:02:42 EDT
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: Wildflower dead horse-hair-triggers
In-Reply-To: Message of Fri, 21 Jun 1996 11:40:42 -0400 from
<scrypt@INTERPORT.NET>
On Fri, 21 Jun 1996 11:40:42 -0400 Carnography said:
>Early blues is utterly different from what the Stones did. The Stones
>*wanted* to be like early blues (not R & B) musicians, but what they
>actually did involved inspired mishearing, as Harold Bloom might have
>called it.
Seems like you're reading a lot into what I said. Basically you're saying
what I said: the Stones, among other things, were into early country blues
- which has a lot of variation in the rhythms, partly because it doesn't
have a drum section, which to my un-microscopically-attuned ears, tends
in a lot of cases to tighten the rhythm into a simpler dance format.
I never said they weren't as good as their "originals", whether they
changed it through mishearing or whatever.
>I totally disagree with you, and my opinion is based on weird professional
>exactitude rather than speculation.
Let's get exact about our vocabulary. Speculation? I've been playing
and listening to both musics for 30 years, in about 8 different bands.
>
>"Getting it wrong" is a saving grace of popular music and don't kid yourself.
Kid myself? When or how did I raise this issue?
>
>With all due respect, I challenge the entire conservative construct
>of your so-called ""original blues": who are you to say that the Brits
>were doing it badly and incorrectly?
I don't disagree with you! Just don't remember saying anything of the kind.
With all due respect, if you didn't understand the difference
>between Stones feel and that of Robert Johnson (whom Richards dreams of
>being but, luckily, isn't), then I'm not at all surprised you didn't get
>the gig with the Stones. Failing to get a gig like that doesn't mean
>you're a bad musician, but it probably means you didn't understand the
>musical core, the secret, of the band for whom you were trying out.
With "all due respect", you're just being snide for the fun of it,
and don't deny it - because it IS fun. Yeah, too bad I didn't have
the Japanese microtraining of the earknobs. Actually, it was a matter
of ideology - Keith and I disagreed about theological issues. Ask
him about "Johnny-b-good" from 1975 - if his fried cells remember that
far back.
>
>It's completely cliche to talk about white musicians being stiff. If it
makes you feel less like a whiteboy... etc....
>purely musical observations with a race/class perspective. Have you ever
>had to cop Jagger, Billy Preston, Nicky Hopkins et al with such precision
>that you can't even flam with the track and satisfy the producer? I had to
>do it for years. I never wanted to be an expert on sixties feel, but
>they paid me to become one. You might say you notice the (lack of)
>difference between Stones and Johnson, but if the feel weren't different,
>then why
>would you be making a distinction? Aesthetically, and in several other
>ways, the sloppiness and sonics are as different from Johnson as the Stones
>are from Sonic Youth. Led Zeppelin were much more faithful to the blues
>they copped than the Stones were. Simply put, the Stones weren't good
>enough to cop Johnson, which is what made them better.
I'll be looking forward to your dissertation. But don't pin
your own rehash of cliches on me.
>
>I say, if you're going to wax adamant about feel, then back up your opinion
>with concrete examples. That's what I did in my earlier post. That's the
>least you'd do if we were talking about prosody.
Who's waxing adamant here? Hey, you may be right, since you've done all
the subatomic research. My pure speculation was that the Stones may
have sounded looser because that's what they heard in the people they
listened to, and it wasn't a totally new thing out of the head of Queen
Victoria. I said that in spite of that, the Stones & rock in general
still sounds "tighter" than SOME rhythmically varied early country blues.
Have I cleared that up?
>
>PS: The Stones and the Beatles were just sixties pop musicians. They did
>what they did well enough, but they don't deserve this much time and space
>for praise or scorn. All they deserve is to be acknowledged for what they
>did well.
I couldn't agree more. Let's throw some more money at them too.
- Henry Gould
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 21 Jun 1996 11:19:52 CST
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: David Baratier <dave.baratier@MOSBY.COM>
Subject: Pavement Saw winter 96/97
Pavement Saw #3 still has a few slots open for publication
before we pack it in & publish.
We devote a third of each issue to extremely short fiction
and prose. Send some work. The line-up at present is as
follows:
Featured writer: Sean Killian (extended poems which were discussed
in the maximus/minimalist panel at NYU talks
And new work by: Timothy Russell, Mark Wallace, Tracy Philpot,
Marck L. Beggs, Janet Bowden, Errol Miller, Michael Estabrook,
R. Kimm, Thomas Michael McDade, Joseph Semenovich, Daniel Green,
Alan Catlin, and many others...
Send 5 pieces or pages
Pavement Saw Press / 7 James Street / Scotia, NY 12302
or if you want the issue it's 3.50 for individuals, $6 subscription,
$10 subscription for libraries and institutions.
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 21 Jun 1996 12:54:08 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: McGuire Jerry L <jlm8047@USL.EDU>
Subject: fortune cookies
David Baratier mentioned yesterday that someone had queried for fortune
cookie text, if that's the word. I've been saving them for ages for an
exercise I do with my students, and will be happy to send my collection
along to whoever it was wanted them. Just buzz me back at
jlm8047@usl.edu
Yrs,
Jerry
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 21 Jun 1996 14:08:09 CST
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: David Baratier <dave.baratier@MOSBY.COM>
Subject: Re: ribot
They are still around, Paul sent me issue #3, & a recent note said
that he was expecting #4 in September
David Baratier
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 21 Jun 1996 12:18:15 -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@AZLINK.COM>
Subject: New Publication
Glad to report a new publication:
Way #2: THREE WORKS by Sheila E. Murphy
including
- Letters to Unfinished J # 66 - 80 (prose pieces)
- Watching Thorns (Meditation on the Work of Kevin Irvin)
- For the Loaded Funds and Gardens (16 pp. sonnet sequence)
Edited by Tom Beckett
Available for $6.00:
Tom Beckett
131 North Pearl Street
Kent, OH 44240
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 21 Jun 1996 14:56:02 CST
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: David Baratier <dave.baratier@MOSBY.COM>
Subject: Painted Bride submissions
The editors of Pavement Saw Press, Tara Pauliny and David Baratier,
would like to extend a cordial invite to any one on the poetics list
who would like to submit work to the Painted Bride Quarterly. We will
be guest editing a "film" issue (not our choice, yeah we know about
B-city) for submissions recieved up until *July 31st, 1996*. As
further clarification, we funderstand the concept of film to be linked
to a cinematic process of writing, NOT on poems about films.
Letters should be addressed to:
Painted Bride Quarterly
230 Vine Street
Philadelphia, PA 19106
Attn: Tara Pauliny and David Baratier
For folks unfamiliar with PBQ the journal has been around for well
over 20 years and has recently published Gwendolyn Brooks, John
Ashberry, James Tate, Charles Rafferty, Gary Fincke, Paul Violi, and
other major & minor publisher names. As a journal that hardly ever
offers representation of what Spencer Selby calls"experimental
writing" or others label "avant-guard" this should be worthwhile,
albeit rare, opportunity.
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 22 Jun 1996 09:51:18 GMT+1200
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Tony Green <t.green@AUCKLAND.AC.NZ>
Organization: The University of Auckland
Subject: Re: wild wild dead horse hairs
Hi, Cris Cheek, I had a backchannel conversation with Wystan abt the
jip/gyp spellings yesterday and came to the same conclusion, racist, short
for "gypsy". dyincu best
Tony Green,
e-mail: t.green@auckland.ac.nz
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 21 Jun 1996 17:55:14 -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: fortune cookies
david, 'twas me what requested fortune cookies. thanks for the
suggestions. i unnerstand yr concerns about more "tired poems", which is
why i tend to take naps before trying to write, need all the energy i can
get!
what i've got in mind isn't really another fortune cookie poem, or even a
horoscope series (chris s. has a chapbook of such that i rather like). if
i'd wanted to do a series of fortune cookie's i'd prolly make my own
cookies to go with the fortune (and then agonize over whether or not to eat
the damn things). i'm just using those for raw material.
of course, what i've got in mind isn't really in mind yet as the weather
conditions in albany and economic conditions in my pocket are ripe for
aviating.
happy landings! (and stoops and lawns, etc.)
eryque
> There was a post a while back where somebody wanted some FC Sayings. I
> have found alternate possibilites for the same type of messages. A
> friend returned from Italy and brought back Perugina chocolates, which
> come with sayings in four different languages, centered around ideas
> of love, sensuality and the body. The packaging for illegal drugs,
> such as crack vials and heroin bags, quite often has prophetic sayings
> printed on them: "happy days are here again," or "FPW unite." Caps of
> Coca-cola often have: "sorry, try again" I offer these possibilites to
> add to the work cause I would hate to see someone dredging up a tired
> "fortune cookie" poem series after following O'Hara, Stroffolino, Lee
> Ann Brown, etcetera.
>
> David Baratier
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 22 Jun 1996 00:59:44 +0000
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: cris cheek <cris@SLANG.DEMON.CO.UK>
Subject: Re: Wildflower dead horse-hair-triggers premonitions
So, hey hey hang on. I'm lost.
These extended metaphors have got me butch, close to riveting.
Doesn't most writing miss, as in re-embody, the beat of the previous feel's
embodiment, period - manufacture difference?
Don't the Stones (yeah Watts was as great as the underated Ringo as the
dead pan duo of master minimalist drummers) employ that classic teleology
of avant-garde strategies - reference, deference, difference?
Isn't that the crux for quertzblatz? The reference is easy but in itself
tricky, the deference gets stuck in the craw of the reference and the
difference is already scuppered?
Forget Speedway, name tells all. For topical lyrical and typical textures,
arguable here now, try Pulp (Jarvis Cocker was taken to the bosom of the
teen nation for upstaging Michael Jackson's Christian TV pomp and 'I Spy'
in bitter english tang from the runt of Thatcher's litter), and Tricky
(both 'Maxinquaye' and his new one under Nearly God - 'Heaven').
Yes yes to those quirky out crunch deranged harmonies of early house. And
then Robert Johnson comes along, hears Tricky and makes a record which
reminds somebody of Muddy Waters. Shame he couldn't learn to reproduce the
Tricky sound, correctly. But then Jim Hendrix never died, he hid out in
south-west Madagascar, I saw him only yesterday.
You might not consider this to be contemporary petry, but I can assure you
that in the pubs of Clapham this is what everybody is doing and calling
poetry. At least for the past week anyways. They talk epic chord
progressions for days.
'80. (CM.1.) 5.0 p.m. In Picadilly, crossing-sweepers have already got the
refuse into heaps - carpenters inside Simpson's are taking down seats -
there is a pile of dismantled barriers in a side street. Two ex-servicemen
with a barrel organ covered in a Union Jack are giving a superb performance
with spoons and plates in the middle of the road. The queue for the
Picadilly tube is four deep as far as the Popular Cafe'
(May 12th, 1937) from 'Mass-Observation Day-Survey'
love and love
cris
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 22 Jun 1996 21:40:18 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Chris Stroffolino <LS0796@CNSVAX.ALBANY.EDU>
Subject: Re: Painted Bride submissions
Good luck, Dave Baratier, with PBQ---I do, however, would like to
call attention to an earlier issue I "ghost" edited of same mag.
in 1992. Which DID publish many people who'd be familiar on this
list (Ashbery, Perelman, Retallack, Sean Killian, David Shapiro,
Yau, my review of Lisa Robertson, etc.). I think it's still
available for sale (issue #46)--If not, I think i got some
extra copies in a box somewhere. BE GOOD, Chris S.
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 23 Jun 1996 06:18:32 EDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ken Edwards <100344.2546@COMPUSERVE.COM>
Subject: Carcanet
I recently recommended a couple of Carcanet Press titles. Today I read that
their office was at the epicentre of the IRA bomb blast in Manchester last
Saturday. It appears that much of the 30-year archive has been destroyed.
Carcanet boss Michael Schmidt was quoted in the press saying laconically "We
have had crises before -- this certainly is a change from cash-flow problems."
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 23 Jun 1996 13:02:20 BST
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Peter Nicholls <P.A.Nicholls@SUSSEX.AC.UK>
Subject: Re: Alternative Accommodations for Assembling Alternatives
dear Romana: i've been holding to see whether the funding situation
will change here, but no hope, I'm afraid. But maybe we can meet up
when you're at Caius. I'm away for the last couple of weeks of July
and a few days in early August, but we may be able to connect if you
have time. mh home number is 01273-323526, and work 01273-678374.
The list of participants is staggering. You have done an amazing
job, and if I don't see you in August the very best of luck with it.
And thanks for thinking about my funding problems.
best wishes, Peter.
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 23 Jun 1996 10:19:16 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Joe Amato <amato@CHARLIE.CNS.IIT.EDU>
Subject: pmc reviews...
all: just a note to say that my review of jed rasula's _the american
poetry wax museum_ is now available at _postmodern culture_... here's the
url:
http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/pmc/issue.596/contents.596.html
my review is alongside ken sherwood's review of jerry r. and pierre j.'s
_poems for the millennium_... so i guess it's a poetry fest...
best,
joe
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 23 Jun 1996 22:54:14 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Loss Glazier <lolpoet@ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU>
Subject: 50s in Orono - the Reviews
Comments: cc: Maria Damon <mdamon9999@aol.com>
H O W L A N D
------------------------------------------------------------------------
I saw the best minds of my generation, deployed by mini-vans,
coffeeless, hysterical, rained on,
dragging themselves through the forested lanes at all hours looking for
101 Neville,
angelheaded readers burning for the fifties heavenly connection
to the dripping dynamo in the machinery of rain,
who lost meal tickets and many-panelled and saying hi sat up smoking
in the supernatural darkness of cold watery dorms floating
across the tops of trees contemplating Sagetrieb,
who bared their brains to slideshows in the Aud and saw
Mohammedan angels staggering in NPF hallways
illuminated,
who passed through the university with radiant cool eyes hallucinating
Poetics and Blake-light ecstasy among the scholars of
Tolson, Niedecker, O'Hara, & endles bunches o' guys,
who were expelled from their own academies for crazy & publishing
articles where certain words had equal signs between their letters,
who cowered in unshaven rooms in long underwear, burning their money
on meal tickets and listening to the SLAMS of doors thru the wall,
who got busted for genderism returning through Laredo
with a belt of hubris for New York,
who ate danish in academic corridors or drank turpentine coffee in Hilltop,
behind schedule, or purgatoried reading abstracts into night,
with dreams, with speeches, with waking nightmare references to rhyme and
meter and peter and endless halls, packs, and simpsons,
INCOMPARABLE great streets of shuddering words and lightning wit in the
mind leaping toward poles of Canada & Paterson & Liberia,
illuminating all the motionless world of the Web between,
Listserv soliloquies of halls, backyard green tree campus dawns, staggering
bleary-eyed for bone dawn rituals of eggs and toast ...
---
COMING to a listerv near you.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 23 Jun 1996 22:59:42 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Chris Stroffolino <LS0796@CNSVAX.ALBANY.EDU>
Subject: some questions from orono (tentative toe testing)
Though I can not offer a full report of even the fraction of the
official activity I witnessed and to some extent participated in
at the 50's poetry conference, I want to try to make sense here of
some of my impressions. In the first place, it was absolutely great
to meet y'all in person as it were. Unofficial events were really
fun. Fie on the rumours that academics are dry personalities!
(I'll elaborate on this later). As for content of the panels,
some of the issues that are "hottest" and most volatile in my
mind at present would include the RACE question. Aldon Nielsen
chaired a very good panel on Stephen Jonas, Russell Adkins (atkins?)
and Melvin Tolson. Very informative and provoking. It seemed the most
sensitive issues surrounding "race" however were tied in with
discussions on Frank O'Hara. Nick Lawrence (who i didn't see) and
Katherine M. Davis, Steve Evans and Ben Friedlander all dealt extensively
with the race politics involved in O'Hara's work. Though I do not
want to generalize about these three papers---which took different
positions on race and theorized O'hara's position to race quite
differently--after the smoke of intensity cleared I found myself
asking about the relation of the EROTIC to the question of RACE
POLITICS. In fact, the relation of the erotic to POLITICS in its
"broader" concerns became a large question that seemed to loom over
the conference as a whole and for the most part seemed to be answered
or theorized unsatisfactorily for me. Of the papers and speeches I saw,
with the notable exception of Rachel Blau Duplessis's excellant talk
about the sexual politics that informed Olson, Creeley and others,
most of the papers seemed to invert the old "THE PERSONAL IS THE
POLITICAL" battle cry. Perhaps invert is the wrong word. By "invert"
I mean that the personal address in the lyric poems of O'Hara and
Creeley etc was often read as a thinly veiled allegory of the artist's
struggle with the repressive climate of the 50's (Michael Davidson
here, but others). Thus THE PERSONAL IS POLITICAL, but it's not POLITICAL
as PERSONAL. In such formulations, the "personal" becomes marginalized
and is "revealed" to be an introjection of the "political." Basically,
there is no "personal" in such a formulation. The RELATIONAL sphere--
"the only reality is face to face" (or body to body, etc.), and the
erotic sphere can only PROPERLY be called POLITICAL if read in terms
of "larger" sputnitbeatnickcivilrightsafricanliberationidentitypolitics
(etc.) Perhaps this is the NATURE of a conference that is based around
an HISTORICAL ERA. I do not mean to absolutely INVALIDATE such modes
of thought. I was very provoked by these papers, but to open up a
question of race, specifically on O'hara, again (echoing a discussion
Aldon and I had a few months ago), I have a hard time seeing the
value in GLOBALIZING or generalizing from such erotic fantasies of
race relations (or racial fantasies of erotic relations) especially
when the questions of SEXUAL POLITICS (whether hetero or homo) seem
to be not touched on at all. The question of the politics of eros
too easily gets obscured. Furthermore, I sensed at times, a kind of
moralism (whether by apologists for O'hara's views on race as progressive
for his time or by more critical stances towards such views) that
marginalizes the specifically amoral (extra-moral qualities) that
O'hara's poetry so blatantly announces itself as (the thing about
the "tight pants" as a kind of Shellyean INTELLECTUAL BEAUTY or
Stevensian "jar"). What does moralizing a blatantly amoral poet
do? (such questions are not specific to O'hara--nor is O'hara ALWAYS
amoral--just USUALLY). What assumptions inform an academic urge
to "EXPOSE" one's sexual preference--one's "object choices."
I am genuinely curious here. Also worried about what I see is POSSIBLY
an academic urge for REVENGE against, er, "poetic license"--the "freedom
of the poet" etc--Revenge through creating a climate of critique that
if taken TOO SERIOUSLY by poets (realizing that "theory" does not
always "follow" "practice"--and that certain poets write a certain
way BECAUSE of the theoretical climate, and the "war" between "poetry"
and "theory" which I believe is still "not over") can become a TABOO
as if one shouldn't write about sex or love AT ALL anymore except in
the most goody-goody of ways and not dare saying anything that might
be perceived as racist or sexist etc. What IS racist, or sexist? The
fact that less than 1% of the people who gave papers at ORONO were black
(african-american) may have been the MOST RACIST thing about the
conference--at least as racist as the mostly DEAD POETS being discussed
(we can't change the past, but we CAN change the present). When we're
dealing with the subtlety of O'hara can a white person really determine
what is racist? Or what IS the point? The Gender question, however,
is different---1) because there were more women at the conference (though
still far less than men) and 2) because the poets of the 50's--again
as DuPlessis shows--or at least many of the male poets of that period--
did not seem to problematize gender very much at all----in fact, a poem
that was read from the Rothenberg Joris anotholgy became a hot site
of contention among many women in a conversation I witnessed. It was
a poem that it seemd was picked for its "humour" value--but the assumptions
that poem seemed to make about "little ladies" did not seem to be
questioned AT ALL. Yet, why do I consder the feminist critiques to be
more valuable than the race-based ones? Perhaps because WOMEN made
the former while WHITES made the latter. Well, surely that would never
hold up in an academic court. But, as the court jester, let me throw
it out and hope it will be taken seriously. Also, becase the feminist
critique PERSONALIZES the political in a way the racial critique doesn't.
In terms of O'hara (the poet for wom the strongest racial critiques
seemed to be made), I think as much can be learned (if academically
analyze we must!) from contextually race in terms of sexual politics.
Because he was gay, the feminist strategy of the MALE DOUBLE STANDARD
in terms of objectfying woman can not be levied as much. But how does
QUEER THEORY deal with a man objectifying another man? An open question...
And what ever happened to the "separate spheres"? I.e.--in one's
"political" poems, a very different attitude may present itself than
in one's "amoral, sexual" poems. Why does such an attitude seem so
discredited. I was talking to Paul Naylor about this seemingly MARKET
demand for "theoretical consistency" and its discontents. I thought
that Robert Von Hallberg actually made an interesting gesture in this
respect that can actually be quite revolutionary. He did a reading of
ROBERT HAYDEN'S "aspiration to universality." And read some poems by
Hayden that can be seen as, if not ENTIRELY ahistorical, at least not
entirely race based (though I would argue that even "those winter
sundays" is CLASS based. Yet, he also read some poems by HAYDEN that
were quite specifically UN-UNIVERSAL. Showing that hayden spoke from,
as, different "subject positions." The idea that a poet can speak
as a "human" at one time, speak as a "BLACK man" another time and
as a black MAN" another time--to name just three overlapping ones.
It seems each poem demands a different way of reading it. Of course,
I'm just fostering my own agenda that privileges poetry over theory
as such. ----
___________
This has gone on way too long (joe amato-esque), and barely scratched
the surface--but I hope some of these questions will be taken seriously.
(even if you gotta ASSASINATE ME BORROWED ORCHARDS). I also have notes
about Perelman's and Altieri's (to my mind) somewhat parrellel attempts
to question the cult of the avant-garde hip-straight division by arguing
that Rich and Plath respectively need to be taken at least as seriously
as Olson and Creeley and O'Hara. That's part of how I read their papers
anyway......(chris stroffolino
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 24 Jun 1996 03:29:28 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ron Silliman <rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM>
Subject: Stuff
Ken,
Are you suggesting that Carcanet was the intended object of the IRA
bomb? Or merely incidental?
Are any of the Oronians out there ready yet to report on the
conference?
All best,
Ron Silliman
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 24 Jun 1996 09:08:57 EDT
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: some questions from orono (tentative toe testing)
In-Reply-To: Message of Sun, 23 Jun 1996 22:59:42 -0400 from
<LS0796@CNSVAX.ALBANY.EDU>
On Sun, 23 Jun 1996 22:59:42 -0400 Chris Stroffolino said:
Also worried about what I see is POSSIBLY
> an academic urge for REVENGE against, er, "poetic license"--the "freedom
> of the poet" etc--Revenge through creating a climate of critique that
> if taken TOO SERIOUSLY by poets (realizing that "theory" does not
> always "follow" "practice"--and that certain poets write a certain
> way BECAUSE of the theoretical climate, and the "war" between "poetry"
> and "theory" which I believe is still "not over") can become a TABOO
> as if one shouldn't write about sex or love AT ALL anymore except in
> the most goody-goody of ways and not dare saying anything that might
> be perceived as racist or sexist etc.
This reminds me of something someone mentioned to me at another conference
(the Hoboken Russ-Amer conference). Elena Shvarts (loosely translated for
me by Tom Epstein) was saying she was interested in the concept of scandal
as the motive force of change in life. Her example was a very traditional
authoritative one : Jesus (the Master) washing the feet of his students.
People are scandalized by the immoral - but also by the threatening, the
different. And the two become confused. And so we have the scandal of the
scandalized (the main engine of literary canonization). Mandelstam wrote
that there are 2 kinds of literature - the official and the unofficial; the
first is trash - the second, stolen air. This is the 3rd level - the
scandal of officialization (or scandofishingfortroublization) - Henry Gould
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 24 Jun 1996 10:30:49 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Chris Stroffolino <LS0796@CNSVAX.ALBANY.EDU>
Subject: Re: 50s in Orono - the Reviews
loss----
i love "contemplating Sagetrieb"!----
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 24 Jun 1996 10:46:49 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Loss Glazier <lolpoet@ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU>
Subject: "50s in Orono - the Reviews"
Comments: cc: Maria Damon <mdamon9999@aol.com>
ANNOUNCEMENT:
"50s in Orono - the Reviews"
----------------------------
Maria Damon and I are soliciting reviews of this event. Post your review!
(Thank you Chris!) In addition, we've contacted a number of our best writers
in the field who will be filing reviews. There are some treats in store.
Reviews posted here also to become part of a web-based book (even a photo or
two). These will be something to look forward to... Stay tuned for more!
(Simply post your contribution! If you have questions or etc. about the web
book please contact us: (lolpoet@acsu.buffalo.edu) and Maria Damon
(mdamon9999@aol.com).
More soon ...
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 24 Jun 1996 10:59:26 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: george hartley <gehartle@MAGNUS.ACS.OHIO-STATE.EDU>
Subject: hailing Barry hailing
I have so much I want to say & respond to and congratulate regarding the
Maine conference, but I'll just start here with a response to Barry
Watten's now infamous presentation on hailing in the fifties. I think a lot
of things got lost in the characterizations of his talk that I heard.
1. NUDIES: Barry's talk was about interpellation, not about nudie pin-up
girls. How did the pin-up industry as it existed in the fifties work as an
interpellation process, & how was it related to other such processes? And
was it possible for the pin-up girl herself to stage her image in a
strategic way? This, it seems to me, was Barry's point.
2. AGENCY: Even if we discount the Betty-Page-as-performance-artist
element, we are still faced with the agency of the pin-up image as the
point of interpellation, as the locus of the gaze of the Other, as the
command to the viewer to accept a certain subject-position in relation to
the image. I am not suggesting in any way that this command (this call,
this hailing) is the same for everyone. Gender, generation, class,
education, and such will have complicated the particular "call" each of us
hears and either accepts or not.
3. IT'S NOT ME: the interesting thing about Barry's presentation was that
it forced the audience into the very point of being-hailed that he was
discussing. To take myself as an example, I was made uncomfortable because
I was being hailed as a male heterosexual voyeur at the same time that I
was being hailed as an intellectual at a poetry conference for whom such
images are calling me in a very different way. It was the tension between
the extremes of these simultaneous and conflicting calls that I found
interesting. And I'm sure we could multiply the various complex of calls as
we examine the reaction of each member of the audience. I was called on to
take on a certain identity in relation to the image--the image hystericized
me, made me ask of it, "Why me? What is it in me that makes me what you say
I am?"
4. HYSTERIA PRECEDES INTERPELLATION: This is where I want to intervene (at
great length) in Barry's presentation and add that, contra Althusser, the
effect of interpellation is not the subject but the subject-position; that
is, interpellation is not a process of subjectivity but of subjectivization
(the two moments must be kept distinct from one another). Since I have
already written on this topic at length (in a discussion of Zizek's
distinction between Althusser and Lacan) just two months ago, I'll paste
that earlier discussion here as two extended footnotes.
EXTENDED FOOTNOTE 1: The Subject versus Subjectivization
Representation is a material practice whereby ideology is endowed with a
material existence. According to the usual ("ideological") conception of
the relationship between belief and practice, belief precedes practice. We
kneel in church because we believe in God. In such a view every subject is
endowed with a consciousness, believes in certain ideas and not in others,
and freely acts according to his or her ideas. But Althusser is on this
question Pascalian: we believe because we kneel. This ritual of kneeling is
one of many which make up the material practice of what Althusser refers to
as an ideological apparatus. In this way "ideas" have disappeared as a
thing of the beyond while "their existence is inscribed in the actions of
practices governed by rituals defined in the last instance by an
ideological apparatus" (LP 170). Here is one way of elaborating on the
claim that ideas are already on the side of representation: there is no
ideology (representation) without the category of the subject:
I say: the category of the subject is constitutive of all ideology, but at
the same time and immediately I add that the category of the subject is
constitutive of all ideology insofar as all ideology has the function
(which defines it) of "constituting" concrete individuals as subjects. In
the interaction of this double constitution exists the functioning of all
ideology, ideology being nothing but its functioning in the material forms
of existence of that functioning. (LP 171)
Althusser fails to develop the full nature of this "double constitution,"
however, as he presents his theory of interpellation. According to his
theory, subjects are produced through interpellation, which is precisely
the function of ideology: the injunction for us to take upon ourselves our
symbolic mandate, to assume the subject-position provided for us by the
ideological call. Representation (the material practice of ideology)
constitutes the representing subject; that is, representation represents
the subject as the representing subject. Althusser describes this
ideological hailing of the subject as follows:
I shall then suggest that ideology "acts" or "functions" in such a way
that it "recruits" subjects among the individuals (it recruits them all),
or "transforms" the individuals into subjects (it transforms them all) by
that very precise operation which I have called interpellation or hailing,
and which can be imagined along the lines of the most commonplace everyday
police (or other) hailing: "Hey, you there!"
Assuming that the theoretical scene I have imagined takes place in the
street, the hailed individual will turn round. By this mere
one-hundred-and-eighty-degree physical conversion, he becomes a subject.
Why? Because he has recognized that the hail was "really" addressed to him,
and that "it was really him who was hailed" (and not someone else).
Experience shows that the practical telecommunication of hailings is such
that they hardly ever miss their man: verbal call or whistle, the one
hailed always recognizes that it is really him who is being hailed. And yet
it is a strange phenomenon, and one which cannot be explained solely by
"guilt feelings," despite the large numbers who "have something on their
consciences."
Naturally for the convenience and clarity of my theoretical theater1 I
have had to present things in the form of a sequence, with a before and an
after, and thus in the form of a temporal succession. (LP 174)
Rather than a temporal succession, however, interpellation, Althusser
contends, has always-already produced us as subjects: "Before its birth,
the child is therefore always-already a subject, appointed as a subject in
and by the specific ideological configuration in which it is 'expected'
once it has been conceived" (LP 176). But how is this interpellation into
subjects, this allotting of subject-positions, maintained? Through what
Althusser refers to as a "duplicate mirror-system." We are subjects only
through our subjection to the Subject-the Unique, Absolute, Other Subject,
what Lacan refers to as the Master Signifier. Without this radically
contingent externalized Other excluded from the round of subjectivity, the
subjects cannot be "subjectivized." What Althusser doesn't recognize here,
however, is that this excluded Subject is nothing but a stupid, senseless
thing filling the crack of the social, the radical negativity of the split
internal to Substance. Althusser describes the Subject in the following
terms: "God thus defines himself as the Subject par excellence, he who is
through himself and for himself ('I am that I am'), and he who
interpellates the subject, the individual subjected to him by this very
interpellation" (LP 179). The subject-Subject relationship is a
double-mirror relationship, according to Althusser, in the sense that the
subject needs the Subject (interpellation occurs through the Subject, Moses
is called by God to do His bidding, Moses recognizes himself as "Moses"
through this call) and the Subject needs the subjects (people were made in
the image of God, even in their debauchery when they function as the
"terrible inversion of his image in them"-the subjects are the Subject's
reflections). What Althusser does not acknowledge is the Hegelian
inflection of the Subject's self-relation in the claim "I am that I am."
What we have here in this Fichtean Subject (I =3D I) is the tautological
relationship of what Hegel refers to as the infinite judgment: this
statement of pure identity folds in on itself and opens up the abyss, the
radical negativity that characterizes the (Hegelian) subject, for the
reduplication of the I as subject in the I as predicate illustrates that
this Fichtean identity is nonidentical in that it cannot be both subject
and its opposite, predicate. I =3D I becomes I =3D not-I through this very
proposition of identity. The empty name of the subject is fleshed out with
nothing but its own empty name as its predicate. The Subject as such, then,
can never function as the point of self-reflection for the subjects, for
they can only become subjectivized-reflected (take up their
subject-positions) when the Subject-position is filled with some excluded,
stupid object (the king's body, for example, the broken body of Christ, or
the commodity functioning as the money-form). Thus Althusser's conception
of interpellation gives us a theory of subjectivization, but not of its
prior moment as subject-as-radical-negativity.
Subjectivization-interpellation is nothing but the attempt to cover over
the traumatic recognition of the abyss of subjectivity as such. The Subject
is thus identical in form to the infinite judgment or speculative
proposition, "I am that I am," but precisely through the nonidentity which
constitutes both.
As Zizek points out, the subject's congruency with the speculative
proposition is also behind Lacan's conception of the subject, a conception
which distinguishes Lacan from the post-structuralist notion of the
subject-position, whereby in the latter the "subject" is an effect of a
nonsubjective process. For Lacan, on the other hand, the subject is the
empty place to be filled by subjectivization:
To put it simply: if we make an abstraction, if we subtract all the
richness of the different modes of subjectivization, all the fullness of
experience present in the way the individuals are "living" their
subject-positions, what remains is an empty place which was filled out with
this richness; this original void, this lack of symbolic structure, is the
subject, the subject of the signifier. The subject is therefore to be
strictly opposed to the effect of subjectivization: what the
subjectivization masks is not a pre- or trans-subjective process of writing
but a lack in the structure, a lack which is the subject. (SOI 175)
What cannot be accounted for in Althusser's account of interpellation is
the failure of subjectivization. This failure is not just absolute failure
in the sense of individuals who refuse to heed the interpellative call
(Althusser's "bad subjects" who provoke the intervention of the Repressive
State Apparatus when the Ideological State Apparatuses fail); even in the
seemingly successful examples of interpellated subjects there remains a
traumatic, antagonistic kernel which resists symbolization. The point is
not that this failure refutes the theory of interpellation; quite the
opposite, this failure, this little leftover of the Real is
interpellation's condition of possibility. This failure is thus a necessary
failure, for without this point of negativity in the midst of the symbolic,
the space for the subject-position could never open up. This negativity,
this radical split of the social-symbolic is subjectivity itself. The
subject, then, opens up the space for subjectivization. The surplus object
resisting symbolization is the materialization of the abyss of
subjectivity, the subject which is internally split in relation to its own
incommensurable surplus object (the formula for which is Lacan's $=D7a). Thi=
s
surplus is the hook upon which the symbolic fastens itself in the process
of identification or interpellation. "The process of
interpellation-subjectivization is precisely an attempt to avoid this
traumatic kernel through identification: in assuming a symbolic mandate, in
recognizing himself in the interpellation, the subject evades the dimension
of the Thing" (SOI 181). Without this little piece of the Real, that thing
in me more than me, the symbolic is desubjectivized: thrown into the abyss
of subjectivity, caught in the vicious circle of radical negativity.
EXTENDED FOOTNOTE 2: Successful interpellation indicates that we have
accepted our symbolic mandate: we have taken on the identity presented to
us by the big Other. What is passed over in Althusser's theory, however, is
the hystericization of the subject which is at one and the same time the
necessary condition for and the reminder of the impossibility of
interpellation or subjectivization. The hysteric is both the precondition
for and the resistance to successful interpellation.
The initial moment of hystericization is the provocation of the feeling of
guilt. The symbolic order, the big Other, poses the questions, "What were
you doing?" "What is the meaning of this?" "Who is responsible for this?"
The response of the addressee of these questions is guilt and shame for,
even though the individual may be "innocent" and "ignorant," the form of
the question itself produces the scene of guilt. We are guilty even if we
have done nothing; in fact, we are guilty precisely because we can do
nothing. The question from the Other, then, is basically obscene in the way
it exposes the degree to which such questions are unanswerable. Such is the
real purpose of such questions: not to elicit a "true" answer but to reveal
the impossibility in the subject in relation to the Other as interrogator.
The only answer to these questions is the subject itself, the subject as
"the void of the impossibility of answering the question of the Other" (SOI
178). The subject does not have the answer; the subject is the answer to
this questioning-the answer of the Real. The question points to that object
within the subject, that innermost point of intimacy which Lacan refers to
as objet petit a. The question confronts us with the Thing inside us, the
object to which the big Other draws our attention but which can never be
symbolized, the object to which the Other draws our attention because it
cannot be symbolized, because the object itself is nothing but the
remainder or leftover of the signifying process itself, the horrifying
object which embodies our jouissance and thus both attracts us and repels
us at the same time, thereby producing guilt. This attraction/repulsion
relationship to the object inside us splits us: such is the constitution of
the split subject of desire as the answer of the Real to the question of
the Other:
The question as such produces in its addressee an effect of shame and
guilt, it divides, it hystericizes him, and this hystericization is the
constitution of the subject: the status of the subject as such is
hysterical. The subject is constituted through his own division, splitting,
as to the object in him; this object, this traumatic kernel, is the
dimension that we have already named as that of a "death drive," of a
traumatic imbalance, a rooting out. Man as such is "nature sick unto
death," derailed, run off the rails through a fascination with a lethal
Thing. (SOI 180-81)
This confrontation with the traumatic Thing is the subject as such.
Interpellation, on the other hand, is the attempt to avoid exactly this
confrontation. This is the difference between subject and subjectivization:
the subject is constituted by the negativity of the traumatic Thing which
is the remainder of symbolization; subjectivization-interpellation is the
avoidance mechanism in response to this Thing of the Real, the attempt to
outstrip our guilt. Interpellation functions as the identification of the
subject with the Law as symbolic order, the superego function which
maintains the illusion of social cohesion; hystericization functions as the
identification with the obscene side of the superego, the side which
demands that we "Enjoy!" and which constitutes both subjectivization as
such (as the avoidance of just this impossible demand) and the
impossibility of subjectivization (as the irreducible kernel of the Real at
the heart of the Symbolic which frustrates the illusion of symbolic
totalization).1
The hysteric, as we have then seen, is the subject constitutive of
interpellation. But the hysteric who remains despite this subjectivization
is the one who refuses this symbolic mandate, who refuses to be
subjectivized or interpellated. The hysteric, above all, seeks to maintain
his or her desire by continually deferring its satisfaction (at which point
it would no longer be desire). The hysterical response to any potential
solution to the deadlock of the subject caught between the attraction to
and repulsion from the Thing is to say, "No, that is not it!" The symbolic
mandate conferred on the hysteric would be such a resolution and must,
therefore, be resisted in deference to the object within, which this
mandate seeks to displace from view. As the inverse of the symbolic
mandate, however, the hysteric's act remains tied to the Symbolic (unlike
the psychotic whose total lack of identification dissolves any tie with the
Symbolic whatsoever).
The hysteric's basic act is the transformation or conversion of this
deadlock into its own embodiment, the symptom. The hysteric thus stages
what Zizek refers to as "hysterical theater": the hysterical symptom gives
body to the deadlock which cannot be symbolized. That which cannot be
spoken is converted into body language-just think of a nervous twitch or an
inexplicable paralysis whereby an unacknowledged psychic deadlock seeks
resolution through this body language: "What we have here is quite
literally a 'conversion': the figuration ('acting out') of a theoretical
impasse (of the 'unthought' of a theoretical position) and at the same time
the inversion best rendered by one of Hegel's constant rhetorical figures:
when, for example Hegel deals with the ascetic's position, he says that the
ascetic converts the denial of the body into the embodied denial" (FTK
143). Zizek explains the drive behind this inversion as follows:
According to Lacan, the fundamental experience of man qua being-of-language
is that his desire is impeded, constitutively dissatisfied: he "doesn't
know what he really wants." What the hysterical "conversion" accomplishes
is precisely an inversion of this impediment: by means of it, the impeded
desire converts into a desire for impediment; the unsatisfied desire
converts into a desire for unsatisfaction; a desire to keep our desire
"open"; the fact that we "don't know what we really want"-what to
desire-converts into a desire not to know, a desire for ignorance . . . .
Therein consists the basic paradox of the hysteric's desire: what he
desires is above all that his desire itself should remain unsatisfied,
hindered-in other words: alive as a desire. (FTK 143-44)
The hysterical subject who "does not know what he wants" desires the desire
of the Other. That is, the hysteric identifies with the gaze of the Other,
the point in the symbolic order from which the hysteric sees himself as
desirable. The hysteric does not identify with a subject-position in the
sense of taking on that particular symbolic mandate as the point of his own
desire (subjectivization) but as the point of the Other's desire. The job
of ideology criticism, then, is to identify the position in the Other which
functions as the desire which the hysteric desires to please.
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 24 Jun 1996 11:30:31 -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: "50s in Orono - the Reviews"
Colloboration POEM composed on BUS 210 en route to the
Heaths of Cadillac Mountain ("methinks the ground is flat"---KING LEAR)
by, I think, every bus member and read by Nathalie and Michael Bassinski-- (loss, i think you should publish this in your website too!)
EMPHASIZED BY GREEN IN THE POST-CONFESSIONAL CONSTRUCTIVIST RAIN
anthem for doomed youth like a truck stop siren
but she bought four burps and a bitch
so they decided simply to shut up and do it
oh, the flight of the candor
cantor
canteen
pass water
I have boring bees she sd.
and then came up from seeds
prune the main roads into wet curls
please don't sit on the waterbed of roses
Sometimes I look up and smile for a satellite photo
from the spiky (+++++++ untranslatable) of peg's toil
to the lathe booo mooose, buffy, now stuck in the zoo
green hat blue noise.
What whiteness like this whiteness,
what candor?
Bar harbor. Bah humbug!
Every toenail throbs like a sparkler.
Poems aren't found they are MADE
The first point is the nation from which the demon(?) dawn
may be seen the hive that is a mummy's mask
but only when viewed by a mummy
what thou lovest well in Maine?
lordly women to heaven overgiven
"I'll trade you a winter for two summers"
until the wall waits to window childlike
departures
I myself am smell/well/fell/dell/George
spilling its ashes(?) of jam at the MLA convention
(ALMS) and, with a scream, collecting coke bottles,
the armless cowboy ignites a marshmellow and mosies away
"old people should be forced to watch"
But what?
------------------------------(i don't know all the authors names)
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 24 Jun 1996 09:09:33 -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: KKK in Ann Arbor, MI (fwd)
Anyone was there? Gab.
--------------------------------
The following is the text of a June 23, 1996 letter sent to the Ann Arbor
News from Ann Arbor Organizing Against the Klan (A2 OAK)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
To the Editor:
Media coverage of the June 22 Ann Arbor counter-demonstration against a
Ku Klux Klan rally was both distorted and omitted almost all mention of
the widespread police brutality that took place against
counter-demonstrators. Ann Arbor Organizing Against the Klan (A2 OAK), a
community coalition of sixteen local groups and many individuals, wishes
to set the record straight.
There were numerous incidents of unprovoked police violence against not
only the 600 or more assembled counter-demonstrators, but also bystanders
and passersby. Tear gas was randomly shot into the crowd with no order
to disperse ever given. Protesters who did nothing illegal were randomly
maced. Several of the eight people arrested were beaten and maced while
they were already handcuffed and in police custody and were offering
absolutely no resistance at that time. One passerby who did not even
participate in the counter-demonstration was maced apparently for
questioning a police officer. Police maced a man holding a baby. A
puppy belonging to a counter-demonstrator was repeatedly and deliberately
kicked and maced. A woman organizer for A2 OAK was maced after the rally
was over as she was walking to her car; the police stopped their car,
rolled down the window and sprayed mace in her face. These are but a few
of the instances of police brutality that took place that day. In
reality, it was this widespread use of police violence that provoked
counter-demonstrators to anger, not the other way around.
In a highly revealing view of racism in the criminal justice system, of
the six white and two Black people arrested, all the white arrestees were
released on personal recognizance; the Black arrestees were forced to
post bond!
All told, 200 cops from several different police departments were
deployed to protect the KKK, a group whose history of murder and racist
terror are well-known. This deployment consisted of tens of thousands of
tax dollars spent on erecting fences around City Hall, blocking and
re-routing traffic, paying for overtime for the police, providing
transportation for the KKK to and from the rally site, and allowing the
KKK access to the second floor terrace of City Hall as a staging area for
their rally. Apparently one has to advocate genocide in order to be
afforded these amenities. This goes way beyond any issue of "free
speech." The police did everything possible to ensure that the Klan had
a successful rally. However, despite the unprecedented display of police
protection for these advocates of mass murder, including police
statements prior to the event calling on local citizens to avoid the
anti-racist demonstration, 600 plus people were able to successfully
drown out the message of hatred of the Klan and outnumber these fascists
by over 30 to 1.
Furthermore, the Ann Arbor News inaccurately reported that "protest
groups" had been threatening violence "all week" before the rally. This
is patently false. As a broad-based community and campus ad hoc
coalition of diverse groups and individuals - Black, white, Latino,
Asian, gay, straight, religious, non-religious, young and old - A2 OAK
encompassed a variety of political and tactical opinions. Our plan was
for a massive anti-fascist demonstration to be held at the same place
prior to the appearance of the Klan so that these proponents of lynching
and the torching of Black churches would think twice about organizing for
racial terrorism in our city. That would have been the least violent of
all the alternatives. Instead, the police thwarted this by militarily
blockading City Hall with fences and 200 cops menacing anti-racist
protesters, issuing provocative statements designed to scare potential
counter-demonstrators, and brutalizing protesters who courageously
resisted these police threats and stood up against a group organizing for
political power based on a program of genocide.
In view of this display of police brutality in Ann Arbor on June 22, A2
OAK demands the following:
1. Drop all charges against the eight people arrested.
2. The immediate unpaid suspension of those police officers involved in
brutalizing counter-demonstrators and passersby.
3. An independent investigation of overall police conduct and tactics on
June 22.
In addition, A2 OAK urges all member of the community to picket and pack
the preliminary examination hearing of the Ann Arbor 8 on July 3 at
12:30pm outside of 14-A District Court at Washtenaw and Hogback in Ann Arbor.
Paul Lefrak
Barbara Pliskow,
for Ann Arbor Organizing Against the Klan (A2 OAK)
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 24 Jun 1996 15:11:27 -0400
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: Query
In-Reply-To: <01I6A9QUXNZY8Y5HLB@cnsvax.albany.edu>
Does anybody on the list have Robnert Haas' snail mail address. If so
please contact me backchannel. Thanks -- 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: Mon, 24 Jun 1996 15:14:57 -0400
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: music info on web
Thot some on the list may be interested in the following www addresses
which a friend just sent me:
[stuff cut out].... these are URL's for Steve Lacy. The second one is his
discography.
http://www.imaginet.fr/~senators/
http://www.nwu.edu/WNUR/jazz/artists/lacy.steve/discog.html
This is the URL for the European Free Improv. page:
http://www.shef.ac.uk/misc/rec/ps/efi/ehome.html
Cadence also has a listing (albeit somewhat dated) on the web at:
http://www.nwu.edu/jazz/cadence/
"To feel is perhaps the most terrifying thing in this society"
Cecil Taylor 1975
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 24 Jun 1996 15:38:44 EDT
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: hailing Barry hailing
In-Reply-To: Message of Mon, 24 Jun 1996 10:59:26 -0400 from
<gehartle@MAGNUS.ACS.OHIO-STATE.EDU>
Hail, stupid, senseless Thing!
Hail, I-O-U big Unknown Idiotallergy!
Hail, obscene confusion of the Two into the One!
Hail, repro-constriction of the thrown Throat of the Subject!
Hail, lil a of the petty Fours!
Hail, Ex-plained Village of the Plains!
Hail, hysterias of the heterohomo Cities of the Plain old Scandal Histories!
Hail, and Farewell! Hello Again!!
- Henry Hale Gould
p.s.
Hail, word-mongers of the invio-labile!
Hail, droning of the Girlie Pics sad leftover feeling of Know-it-All Geritol!
Hail, Time Burp of the Latter Hailstorms!
Hail... Hail... Barristers of Barratrocious Bare-it-Alls!
Hail, snail mail - I'm coming!! Slow but Subjective!!
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 24 Jun 1996 16:15:34 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Chris Stroffolino <LS0796@CNSVAX.ALBANY.EDU>
Subject: Re: Query
Another QUERY---
Is Doug Messerli still on this list?
If he's not does anybody know his backchannel address?
And when are those GERTRUDE STEIN AWARD 1994-95 books coming out?
Chris Stroffolino
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 24 Jun 1996 16:50:51 EST
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Burt Kimmelman -@NJIT" <kimmelman@ADMIN.NJIT.EDU>
Subject: Re: 50s in Orono - the Reviews
Loss,
Admirably summed up! Will you see to it that Burt Hatlen et al. get a copy
of it?
Burt
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 25 Jun 1996 09:38:22 -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: AWOL: Five Island Press New Poets Series 4 (forwarded)
NB all prices are Aust dollars. enquiries/orders to awol@ozemail.com.au
>Mime-Version: 1.0
>Date: Tue, 25 Jun 1996 06:57:28 +1000
>To: awol@ozemail.com.au
>From: awol@ozemail.com.au (awol)
>Subject: AWOL: Five Island Press New Poets Series 4
>
>The following information has been posted by AWOL for Five Islands Press.
>Please address any enquiries to the contact number listed below.
>
>
>*****************************************
>
>You are invited to the launch of scarp & five islands press NEW POETS
>PUBLISHING PROGRAM 1996 - SERIES 4.
>
>Susan Bower Factory joker
>Lis Hoffmann Libido
>Peter Kirkpartrick Wish you were here
>Lorraine Marwood Skinprint
>Mark O'Flynn The too bright sun
>Duncan Richardson Aim at morning
>
>SYDNEY 6pm Thursday 27 June Gleebooks (upstairs) 49 Glebe Point Road Glebe.
>MELBOURNE 2pm Saturday 29 June La Mama 205 Faraday Street Carlton
>BRISBANE 7pm Friday 2 August Universal Joint Gallery, 11 Doggett
>Street Teneriffe
>
>For further information contact Five Island Press PO Box U34 Wollongong
>University 2500, Phone 042 213867, Fax 042 213301
>
>FIVE ISLAND PRESS titles are distributed by AWOL. If your local bookshop
>does not stock these titles they can be ordered through AWOL's smalll press
>distribution service.
>
>These titles are also avaialble through AWOL's Virtual Bookshop for $7.50.
>(set of 6 books $30.00, bound volume of all six titles $20.00). email AWOL
>for details
>
>
>AWOL
>Australian Writing On Line
>awol@ozemail.com.au
>http://www.ozemail.com.au/~awol
>PO Box 333 Concord NSW 2137 Australia
>Phone 61 2 7475667
>Fax 61 2 7472802
>
__________________________________
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, 24 Jun 1996 19:51:05 -0600
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Paul Naylor <PKNAYLOR@MSUVX2.MEMPHIS.EDU>
Subject: Oronomics
Just thought I'd chime in on the Orono conference, which was, for me, the best
academic conference I've attended. Most conferences make me think seriously
about returning to my career in auto part sales -- they typically seem to be
more about networking than connecting. Orono struck me as more about the latter
than the former: connections between generations (at least three, maybe four,
says Keith Tuma) and traditions (connecting not via some essence but, as
Wittgenstein would say, via family resemblances), between ways of writing and
reading and disseminating, etc. Since I don't live in or near a poetry hotbed
like Buffalo or San Francisco or Washington D.C., experiencing some of those
connections was as nourishing as it was exhausting.
My only suggestion is that next time we sell official conference underwear with
the names of the non-plenarians emblazoned thereon.
Paul Naylor
MAIL
SEND
in%"poetics@ubvm.cc.buffalo.edu"
in%"poetics@ubvm.cc.buffalo.edu"
SEND
in%"poetics@ubvm.cc.buffalo.edu"
in%"poetics@ubvm.cc.buffalo.edu"
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 24 Jun 1996 22:13:05 -0400
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@ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU>
Subject: LINEbreak@EPC
Martin Spinelli has been putting up on the EPC the first of the series of
LINEbreak radio programs that we made together over the past year. These
30-minute shows include readings as well as discussion. Already up are
interviews with Robert Creeley, Jena Osman, Ray Federman, Ron Silliman,
Cecilia Vicuna, Dennis Tedlock, Steve McCaffery, and Fiona Templeton. =
Another
twenty or so are in the works.
I believe that sound files on the web will fundamentally change access to
the archive of poets=92 reading their work. At this time, we realize we=
are
using formats that many of you will not yet have easy access to. But we
feel it is necessary to get this material in place for the time when=
playing
digital sound files will be more accessible. (Some time in the future, we
plan to distribute the program via audio cassette; however, cassettes are
not available at this time.) Our first choice, radio, is limited by the
culturally benighted attitude toward that medium by most commercial and
noncommercial radio operators.)=20
Martin has insisted that our first priority be to make available the best
quality sound possible. This he has done. The sound files take up a lot=
of
memory and take a long time to download. However, once you have done
this, you will have sound that is good as any recorded poetry I have ever
heard. Soon, it will also be possible to play our sound files with
RealAudio; that allows immediate playing at roughly telephone quality. I
think in the end this will be the most appealing way for most people to=
play
these files, but it would not be satisfactory as the only way to have them
available.
The world of sound files can be quite confusing. First off, you need to
have a sound card installed in your computer; that is, if it didn=92t come
with the computer, as it does on Macs and many PCs. You also need to have
speakers; most internal computer speakers are of course not going to be as
good as plugging in better speakers (I plugged my sound card into the same
mini speakers I use for my stereo system). (Martin notes that you'll need to
download the speaker driver (speak.exe) from our info page if you want to
use your internal speaker.)
The next problem is that sound
files come in different and incompatible formats (most commonly .wav and=
.au
and .mpeg); that means you have to have several different sound or media
players: (NAPplayer comes with Netscape (and plays .au files) and windows=
PCs
come with a "Media Player" (for .wav files). LINEbreak files are mostly in
.MPEG and that requires that you download a player for that, though the=
ones
we recommend for that will play some of the other formats as well. =
Finally,
you have to tell Netscape or your web browser what to do when you click on=
a
sound file: download to your hardrive or play as soon it loads up in your
RAM. We recommend that you download our sound files, as it may take four
hours to download a full 30-minute show (with a fast modem). But we have
also put up short files, mostly of single poems, and those take=
condiderably
less time. In any case, if you download to your hard drive, you can easily
play
the file over again, don=92t have to stay on-line, and can more easily=
record
it on a tape. If you don=92t download it to your hard drive, you get to=
play
it just while you are on-line (and have to pay attention to when it finishes
dowloading to RAM).=20
Martin has written very clear, step-by-step instructions on how to use our
sound files. These instructions are far more helpful that those provided by
the software manufactures. You will find these, and the programs, at
http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/linebreak
=20
One more thought about access. While few will have access to the=
technology
that makes these sound files available, our commitment here, is,
nonetheless, to creating at the greatest possible public access to these
sound files. We expect that schools at all levels, from lower schools to
universities, as well as public libraries, will acquire the technology to
gain access to such files (due to the increased commercializing of the Web,
not because material such as ours is available!). And we are committed to
making all these files, indeed all the material on the EPC, free and
unrestricted. This is a public space, even if only a small portion of the
public is able to enter into it. Nonetheless, given the scale of poetry in
North American, our collection of poets=92 voices promises to make such
material far more accessible than it has been in the past.
This activity is only possible because it is supported by a public
university and, perhaps more crucially, produced through the unpaid labor=
of
people committed to making poetry available in the newly emerging public
spaces of the Internet. (It helps, as with so many projects in the Poetics
Progam at UB, that we have small amounts for seed money and to cover some
cash outlays.) Martin Spinelli =96 who is not a poet, but a radio=
producer
and a graduate student at UB working on utopian thinking starting in the
19th century in the UK =96 has put in hundreds and hundreds of hours into
engineering, editing, distributing LINEbreak; he has also taken in upon
himself to learn about the possibilities of sound on the net.
=20
Please let Martin and me know what you think about LINEbreak =96 the shows=
or
the technology we are using to make them available.
=20
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 24 Jun 1996 22:16:35 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: David Kellogg <kellogg@ACPUB.DUKE.EDU>
Subject: my hero barry watten
You know it's time to change your .sig when someone you've only met over
email quotes it EXACTLY the first time he meets you. Well Chris
Strofollino was furrier than I thought, and the drinking was fine. Some
excellent papers, but some, including my own, indifferent or underthought.
Thank God nobody was there, the spouse of the other presented taking
furious notes. But the papers were not the point. The intellectual and
other conversation that surrounded them will sustain me for many weeks,
perhaps months. Hence my title. I wasn't at his talk so I can't comment
directly but the tone of the reponse by those who were offended seemed
astonishingly narrow. Thanks to George H. for his post. OKAY, well the
thing about the conference was Barrett Watten was always and everywhere
"on," ready to talk, and that's why he's my model for intellectual
engagement. It's not pro wrestling; it's the news. We'll see how long
that lasts. High point for me: Rachel Blau DuPlessis's excellent talk,
which I will abstract when I have more time. Also Bob Perelman's
revealing summary of Louis Martz's talk in conversation, which made me
doubly glad I didn't go. And meeting all of you, each of whom I adore.
Negative effect of the conference being sleep depletion, which I mean now
to correct. More elaborations later.
Cheers,
David
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
David Kellogg Duke University
kellogg@acpub.duke.edu University Writing Program
(919) 660-4357 Durham, NC 27708
FAX (919) 684-6277
The time is at hand.
Take one another
and eat.
-- Thomas Kinsella
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 24 Jun 1996 22:43:37 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: Oronomainia
I second Paul Naylor's sense of the conference. I too found it to be
one of the best I've ever attended. Extremely high quality papers
being read. Listening to Sharon Thesen's paper on the Olson-Boldereff
correspondence, I sat there certain that I was hearing about
research that would fundamentally alter the way we read Olson's early
work, especially the development of the Maximus poems. A brilliant
paper. As one plenary speaker (one of the T-shirted Elect)
remarked to me, the session papers were usually much better than
the plenary addresses.
For me, Ted Enslin's reading was extraordinary. I have lots
to learn from Ted's intricate musicality--a beautiful continuity of
Zukfosky's micro-musics and the current work of John Taggart. Many
many other gems at the conference--any naming will be incomplete,
idiosyncratic, etc. I too was moved to see that a number of younger
poet/critics have dedicated themselves to working with some older
folks to keep the writing alive, edited, in print--for me, most
movingly, Joel Kuszai's work with Mac Low's archives (of the 1940s
and 1950s) and Mark Nowak's work with Ted Enslin's poetry. Mark is
editing Ted's poems for a _Selected Poems_ from the National POetry
Foundation. (There are over 1800 pages of Ted's poems in print, not
counting his long works....)
Like Paul Naylor, I live in the hinterlands, so the learning at
events sustains me for many months. It also felt like Poetry Camp.
Breakfast at 7AM; last session or reading usually ending around
11:30, followed by the cash bar. Long days. So many high quality
talks it was impossible to be at all of them, even if one chose to
panel-hop to Lynn Keller on Guest, Joan Retallack on Mac Low, Ben
Friedlander on O'Hara, Aldon on Russell Atkins, Mark Scroggins on
Jonas, Maria Damon on Kaufman, Lorenzo Thomas on Tolson (surely one
of us can be effective in bringing Tolson's work back into print!),
and on and on. I certainly reached times when I could no longer
follow sentences, so went for a walk or took a nap. Ah, the dorm
rooms: the ceiling of mine adorned with glowing planets and stars
and comets.
In the aftermath of the Friday night group reading, a big snapshot of
writing now, I find myself mulling over the place, nature, and
preponderance of humor & satire in current poetry.
And the cold weather, the rain, the fog.... Now back in muggy
Tuscaloosa, heat index over 100, written interrogatories to do for a
pending lawsuit, lots of office correspondence, and a lobster-fueled
desire to read, read, write, read, write.
Oh yes, one interesting materialistic note: chief sponsor of the
event? Stephen King. I sure hope Loss's photo of King & Dorn turns
out....
Lots more to add, so, others, please do....
Hank Lazer
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 25 Jun 1996 00:50:19 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: george hartley <gehartle@MAGNUS.ACS.OHIO-STATE.EDU>
Subject: Boston review
I just want to thank Dan Bouchard for posting the announcement for the
Boston poetry reading of two weeks ago. I was in Massachusetts visting
family before driving up to Maine, & was delighted to go to my first
reading in my hometown (I wasn't active in poetry until grad school in New
Mexico). The Torras hosted the event in their house, & I so enjoyed their
hospitality & sense of Boston poetry history (and artwork on the walls).
The poets varied in style but were each charged and refreshing: Ange
Mlinko, Damon Krokowski, Sianne Ngai, Dan Bouchard, and a new good friend
of mine, Chris Straffolino (soon of Jersey City). Thanks, Boston!
--George
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 25 Jun 1996 00:49:20 +0100
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: Fashion Report, dateline Orono
This is Kevin Killian speaking. I know I was assigned to write the fashion
news of the Orono Conference, and Dodie Bellamy was going to assist, but
I'm sorry, Loss . . . there's too little to report. This was not the event
to send the designers of Milan and New York scurrying for another
profession. Everybody looked okay, but the weather was too hot, then too
cold, so what could we do? It was so cold I saw all these people formerly
with good sense descend on the Student Union and buy these terrible
oversized sweatshirts and sweat pants, etc., then they wore them in public,
and I couldn't blame them.
The only person who kept a style throughout was the mysterious Starr Black,
who kept appearing in one variation after another of an essentialist Starr
Blackness. Even if you didn't know her name, you know exactly who I'm
talking about and the kind of Ralph Lauren meets Alexandra Neel outfits she
wore. Those green mossy skirts and heather Fair Isle sweaters and the pins
and cameras. As far as I'm concerned she was the fashion triumph of the
week.
Runners-up: Roger Conover, resplendent in emerald green, his fringe of hair
tied back a la Hal Robins from the Church of the Sub Genius; Nick Lawrence,
dapper as a villain in an Edith Wharton novel; Sharon Thesen, who arrived
in the middle of the night in a slinky cocktail number from Vicky Tiel.
Here's Mr. Blackwell's final category: The Fabulous Fashion Independents.
This prize we award to two unidentified men seen one night at the dorm cash
bar extravaganza animated in complementary patchwork madras-plaid jackets.
Does anyone out there know *where* these jackets are popular or indeed
manufactured? I want one! E.T. call home! Speaking of origin, does
anybody know why those ethno-poetic guys all carry the same hippy bags?
Jerome Rothenberg, you're on this list, did those bags come with a gamelan
inside?
Fashion disaster? No question about it: the official conference T shirt
which, I see, has already been alluded to several times in previous posts.
On the front it says, you know, "National Poetry
Foundation/conference/American Poetry of the 1950s/June 19-23, 1996/Orono
Maine" and on the back it has a list of the twenty or so soi-disant
"plenary speakers"-no, not a list, a constellation, for each name mounts or
falls on its separate diagonal, all in this revoltingly un-designed plain
serif typeface, italics galore. From the moment I saw those T-shirts
neatly stacked on a long deal table, all folded in a variety of Maine
colors-Martha Stewart colors-I knew I had to have one. When you see it you
will rub your eyes thinking, "It had to happen!" Clever Bruce Campbell was
spotted wearing a T-shirt from a previous conference, must have been on
Pound, that said "Make It New" tempered with a line of bold Chinese
ideograms.
More later on more "heady" topics.
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 25 Jun 1996 03:42:28 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "k.a. hehir" <angelo@MUSTANG.UWO.CA>
Subject: Re: DING!
In-Reply-To: <adf51e7901021004ba98@[140.254.114.186]>
just returned from the first of what will now become a series of
readings. a hatfull of of ales on my head. poetry is alive and well in
londonOnt.(George the Spasms just filled the Gallery and I think they may
be a fitting house band).
,
We can only hope to be soo fresh so often.
a callow good-bye,
kevin hehir
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 25 Jun 1996 06:36:43 -0400
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: Web Del Sol (fwd)
Haven't had time to check this one out myself, but thought it would be of
interest to this list -- Pierre
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 25 Jun 1996 01:06:44 -0400
From: Diem Jones <djones5@osf1.gmu.edu>
To: awp-members@gmu.edu
Subject: Web Del Sol
>WEB DEL SOL
>
>The literary arts now have a locus on the World Wide Web at Web Del Sol,
the only Internet site dedicated to offering the best new American and
international writing from both individual authors and established literary
publications. The site also serves as a resource providing a comprehensive
link to the range of literary activities and information available on the Web.
>
>Web Del Sol seeks out experimental, literary, mainstream works from
throughout the world. Included at the site are poems, short stories, prose
poems, novel excerpts, essays, and interviews. The Web Del Sol project was
begun in November, 1995, posting only two or three short stories. In less
than six months it has expanded into an independent Web literary publication
and resource site to bring a wide variety of new and distinguished prose and
poetry to the Internet. Publishing collections of works by featured writers
such as Ilan Stavans, Michael Martone, Ben Marcus, Kristy Nielsen, and
Madison Smartt Bell, Web Del Sol includes background information that allows
the reader to learn more of the life behind the words.
>
>Web Del Sol also plays host to some of the world's finest literary
publications, including AGNI, The Literary Review, Artful Dodge,
Conjunctions, and Zyzzyva, creating home pages that give them a distinct
presence on the WWW to promote the writers and poets they have discovered.
In addition, WDS serves as a master one-stop jump for all other superior
quality literary arts publications on the WWW, among them Mississippi
Review, Ploughshares, Hootenanny, Missouri Review, Cream City Review,
Postmodern Culture, Creative Nonfiction, and Sycamore Review.
>
>As a comprehensive writer resource site, Web Del Sol provides links to
writing labs, writing programs, writer newsgroups, online bookstores,
references, an extensive list of news sources, and a complex of the latest
on-screen search engine forms including MetaCrawler and Snoopie.
>
>Web Del Sol will continue to stay in touch with the latest literary
developments on the Internet and elsewhere, culling out the best Web sites,
material, and writers for inclusion while striving to bring the literary
arts to the widest possible audience through promotion on the Internet.
>
The Web Del Sol address on the Internet (World Wide Web) is
http://www.cais.net/aesir/fiction
>
>**Note: the site is best viewed with Netscape 2.0+
>
>
>
=================================
WEB DEL SOL
http://www.cais.net/aesir/fiction
LOCUS OF LITERARY ART ON THE WWW
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 25 Jun 1996 07:55:39 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Steven Clay <sclay@INTERPORT.NET>
Subject: Granary Books Reception
If you happen to be in New York City Thursday June 27 you are invited to
attend a publication party for 5 new works published by Granary Books.
Please note that the reception is NOT at Granary but at EXIT ART - be sure
to use the 88 Crosby Street entrance (between Prince and Spring.) The
reception is from 6-8 and a good many of the artists & writers noted below
will be present. The books being celebrated are:
Holton Rower - NON
An artist's book in the abstract - materials run amok
Jerome Rothenberg & David Rathman - PICTURES OF THE CRUCIFIXION
- New poems with drawings by Minneapolis based artist David Rathman
Lewis Warsh - BUSTIN'S ISLAND '68
- Warsh's memoir of the summer of '68 . . . and after. Wonderful black and
white photographs of Ted Berrigan, Anne Waldman, Warsh, Tom Clark, Joanne
Kyger . . .
Ric Haynes - REJECTED FROM MARS
- psychological cartoon/nightmare - handpainted linocuts - 3 years in the making
Ligorano/Reese - THE CORONA PALIMPSEST
- based on their video installation-Walt Disney & R. Crumb meet Dan Rather
See you there.
See the Granary Books web site:
www.granarybooks.com
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 25 Jun 1996 09:30:02 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: george hartley <gehartle@MAGNUS.ACS.OHIO-STATE.EDU>
Subject: oops!
Sorry, Chris! I meant Straffaluna. I shouldn't type so late at night.
--George
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 25 Jun 1996 13:41:35 EST
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Burt Kimmelman -@NJIT" <kimmelman@ADMIN.NJIT.EDU>
Subject: orono thanks
It occurs to me to mention (at the risk of stating the obvious, perhaps)
that the overwhelmingly positive responses to the Orono conference being
posted here should also be duplicated in hard copy, with letter-head
when possible, and sent to Burt Hatlen and Sylvester Pollet so they
have a record for when they need to explain themselves to their
administration, grant funding agencies, etc.
Now, let me also take this opportunity to say electronically that the
conference for me (unfortunately I did not get there till friday
afternoon) was utterly thrilling and nurturing. I found the quality of
the work presented to be at the highest level all around, and getting
to meet so many people in the flesh was fantastic. Overall--and here
I must say that this seems typical of NPF--it is a real feat to be able
to have a conference that is warm and generally on a human scale and yet
that is criticaly rigorous. I only feel bad that I missed so very many
things that I wanted so much to catch, and that I did NOT get to meet some
of us on this list. But then, this is an embarrassment of riches, and
ultimately to be hoped for.
Burt Kimmelman
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 25 Jun 1996 13:52:04 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Mark Wallace <mdw@GWIS2.CIRC.GWU.EDU>
Subject: Jorge Guitar
Will Jorge Guitart please contact me backchannel, or will someone who
knows his e-mail address send it to me? I tried to find him on the
poetics address list, but his name is not there, and I'm wondering if
he's signed off.
mark wallace
/----------------------------------------------------------------------------\
| |
| mdw@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu "I have not yet begun |
| to go to extremes" |
| GWU: |
| http://gwis2.circ.gwu.edu/~mdw |
| EPC: |
| http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/authors/wallace |
|____________________________________________________________________________|
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 25 Jun 1996 16:48:13 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Mark Wallace <mdw@GWIS2.CIRC.GWU.EDU>
Subject: Joseph Ceravolo
Jordan Davis pointed out several days ago that a new Joseph Ceravolo
website has gone up, courtesy of his wife and his son. The samples there
are very interesting, and I can only wish that more was available. I
would have wanted to download the whole thing!
I'm wondering about other takes on Ceravolo's work. Although I think of
him mainly in a New York school context, the syntax of his work seems
more odd and torqued than is usual in that context, except perhaps for
O'Hara at his most wonderfully frantic. But Ceravolo's syntax seems more
distorted, although only at key instants--it seems almost a
language poetry-like attempt to foreground syntax in a way that disrupts
what appears to be a straightforward and simple meditation. Those
distortions add a new element to the quiet meditation that his work often
presents--one can't quite get back of the language to the world out
there, and the notion of meditation itself therefore gets called into
question.
Most of his books are long out of print--an under construction section of
the website says it will later feature locations at which all of
Ceravolo's work can be found. Anybody have any further input on where
those long-lost books can be found?
mark wallace
/----------------------------------------------------------------------------\
| |
| mdw@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu "I have not yet begun |
| to go to extremes" |
| GWU: |
| http://gwis2.circ.gwu.edu/~mdw |
| EPC: |
| http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/authors/wallace |
|____________________________________________________________________________|
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 25 Jun 1996 17:19:39 -0400
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: Sparrow for President
...and in the Elections column, Bob Holman passes along:
POET ANNOUNCES HIS CANDIDACY FOR REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL NOMINATION
"Revive the Party of Lincoln in the Revolutionary Spirit of Lincoln!" Cries
Sparrow
Mouth Almighty/Mercury Records Web Site to Monitor Campaign's Progress
The poet Sparrow, one of the stars of The United States of Poetry, will
formally
announce his bid for the Republican presidential nomination at noon on
Thursday, June 27 at a press conference to be held at the base of the statue
of Atlas in front of the International Building at 630 Fifth Avenue between
50th and 51st Streets.
Sparrow's announcement, cast into verse and available as audio, will also
appear in three parts for three consecutive weeks starting on Thursday, June
27. Every Thursday, you can find the new verse at
http://www.mercuryrecords.com/poets. Sparrow is the first in a series of
poets speaking out on topics inspired by the events of the election year.
Citing Percy Bysshe Shelley's assertion that poets are "the unacknowledged
legislators of the world," Sparrow has decided to run for the Republican
nomination out of his abiding affection for Abraham Lincoln, the party's most
illustrious member. "Lincoln was a Republican who loved the working man,"
Sparrow notes. He cites a speech written by then Congressman-Elect Lincoln in
1847: "Inasmuch as most good things are produced by labor, it follows that
all such things of right belong to those whose labor has produced them. But
it has so happened in all ages of the world, that some have labored, and
others have, without labor, enjoyed a large proportion of the fruits. This
is wrong and should not continue. To secure to each laborer the whole
product of his labor...is a most worthy object of any good government."
Sizing up Bob Dole, the Republican's presumptive nominee, Sparrow asks, "Who
is the more Lincolnesque, Bob Dole or I? Who is lanky, bearded, eccentric,
humorous, wise, Biblical, literary, radical and self-taught, and who is a
vicious imposter from Kansas?"
As the only poet in the race, Sparrow is demanding equal time on television
with the other candidates. "All the other poets are speaking prose--vast,
uninterrupted, listless, prosaic prose," he notes. "Only I am speaking a
flowing, lyric, olive-colored poetry."
His platform? It begins with "the near-abolition of money" and proceeds
with the declaration of a Jubilee Year, "a year when all debts are forgiven
and all slaves are freed."
Sparrow is represented by "Testimonial" on The United States of Poetry, the
widely-acclaimed soundtrack to the PBS tv series and the first release on
Mouth Almighty, Mercury's spoken word imprint. He created a sensation last
year when he picketed The New Yorker magazine, holding a placard reading, "My
poetry is as bad as yours." His work has since been published in that august
journal.
For more information, please contact Mercury Records, Media & Artist
Relations or Mouth Almighty Records:
Carrie Ross Bill Adler
Mercury Records Mouth Almighty Records
212-333-8173 212-645-0061
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 25 Jun 1996 21:39:20 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Gwyn McVay <gmcvay1@OSF1.GMU.EDU>
Subject: Susanne Levy
In-Reply-To: <2.2.32.19960624025414.006f5ac0@pop.acsu.buffalo.edu>
Does anyone out there in Poetics-land know the work of--or know
personally--Pierre?--the poet and artist Susanne Levy? According to what
little I could find in the files at the Nat'l Museum of Women in the
Arts, she was born in Basel in 1921 and now lives in Arnsbach. The work
of hers on display was /Toene der Stille/, a book of her poems with
design embossed into pure white handmade cotton paper. There are at least
two scholarly monographs about her, both published by Verlag Zuerich; she
has had tons of exhibits, both alone and with groups, all over Europe,
but seems to be pretty unheard of in the Benighted States. Her poems are
extremely reminiscent of later Celan, in the Breathturn/Atemwende time.
There's also an exhibit of 20th-century art there that includes Theresa
Hak Kyung Cha's *Passages/Paysages* and Nancy Spero's *Codex Artaud*.
Gwyn
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 25 Jun 1996 22:26:46 +0100
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: Jeremy Reed
This is Kevin Killian speaking. Listen, I have to review a book "Bitter
Blue" by Jeremy Reed, it says on the back of the book he is a British poet
with 8 volumes of poetry. I wonder if any British pals on this list-serv
can tell me anything about his poetry and or career or any strictly "back
channel" information about, well, you know.
This book is a mixed genre account of his drug intoxification and also
withdrawal and includes plenty of scoop on Anna Kavan as well.
Thanks in advance from,
An ignorant US reader
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 26 Jun 1996 01:03:21 EDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: JOEL LEWIS <104047.2175@COMPUSERVE.COM>
Subject: Re: Joseph Ceravolo
Actually a number of Ceravolo books are availible & in print. Gotham Books
certainly has copies of Millennium Dust, Transmigration Solo can still be had
from Coffeehouse, INRI is still availible from Swollen Magpie (which Charles
North, Paul Violi,etc) and, possibly, Spring in this World of Poor Mutts can be
obtaoined thru Ron Padgett(he was giving away copies at Joe's St. mark's
memorial. Only the very early chabooks are hard to find.
I knew Joe for a number of years and he strikes me as the great religous poet of
our time. The NY School connection is accidental. There is still much in
manuscript & a great long poem called Hell Gate of which there is a tape of Joe
reading it. I'm amazed that there are about 800 hits on his web site -- I don't
think any of his books sold that many copies. I still remember him at a festivak
honoring Williams, reading after Daniel Halpern. He read each poem twice "to
help you understand it", he said, but he could have read them 60 times to an
audience anticiapting more mewling melodramas of the singular self.
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 26 Jun 1996 01:47:30 -0800
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Christopher Filkins <filch@POBOX.COM>
Subject: LSD lsd l s d led sleds
Looks much better justified.
> >
> > > I
> > > had
> > > heard
> > > from my
> > > co-worker
> > > about a big
> > > problem today.
> > > It seems my kid
> > > and your kid, all
> > > of our kids have to
> > > worry about evil drug
> > > dealers giving out fake
> > > tattoos with acid in them.
> > > This is not a joke or rumor.
> > > This is a serious threat that
> > > must not be taken lightly. They
> > > have a blue star on them, but not
> > > all - some have cartoons or such on
> > > them. You must be very careful with a
> > > blue star tattoo because the strychnine
> > > can be absorbed into your blood from just
> > > handling the paper. This horrible thing has
> > > a reason to it - the dealers want LSD addicts
> > > to buy more after they are hooked. Symptoms you
> > > should watch for are: hallucinations, mood swings,
> > > uncontrolled laughter, drop in body temperature,
> > > dizziness or disorientation, severely dilated
> > > pupils, and severe vomiting. Some time - up
> > > to an hour, can pass between contact with
> > > the drug and onset of symptoms. If your
> > > child has fell victim to this heinous
> > > crime, you must take him quickly to
> > > a hospital. Children hare already
> > > died from this, LSD overdose is
> > > easy. If you see a suspicious
> > > person giving tattoos, foil
> > > wrapped especially, phone
> > > your police immediately.
> > > This is a real danger
> > > and is growing much
> > > faster than I can
> > > spread warnings
> > > alone. Thanks
> > > for reading
> > > this that
> > > I wrote
> > > about
> > > LSD
> > > !
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 26 Jun 1996 03:08:38 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ron Silliman <rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM>
Subject: Joe Ceravolo
Mark (et al),
The web is a perfect tool for the project that Joe Ceravolo's son seems
to be putting together--making an essentially "hard-to-find" poet's
work available to any and all. There had only been a few hundred hits
when I visited the other day, but I recommend it to everyone on this
list heartily (and, Loss, if it hasn't been done, set up a link from
the author's index at EPC forthwith).
http://www.csam.montclair.edu/~ceravolo/
There's a link from there to the site done by Ceravolo's wife, which
includes a short bio definitely worth reading. And Jim (the son)
responds quickly to email.
I've never seen Ceravolo's work in any context that wasn't clearly
associated with the NY School (with the exceptions of the two talks
I've given myself that focus in part on his work). Tho I never met the
man, I was told (by David Shapiro or Joel Lewis? Probably the latter,
tho I don't recall exactly) that Ceravolo was "puzzled" by "Migratory
Meaning" when it first came out in print.
You're quite right that his work does things that nobody else involved
with the NY School has done--the base seems very much to have been
surrealism and there's also a distinct zen air (tho whether that's
simply intuitive on his part, or whether he was interested in
non-western conceptions of life and art I can't say). To my knowledge
he never wrote or spoke critically on the subject of his writing -- I'd
love to discover otherwise. And it seems obvious that his reputation
"suffered" because he didn't hustle his work and generally fell into
the trap that befalls too many lyric writers -- virtually all of the
major critical writing post WW2 about the "parallel tradition" tends to
focus elsewhere (the notable exceptions being O'Hara and Creeley).
Now that the selected poems has gotten an excellent response, I suppose
we can hope for a collected.
All best,
Ron Silliman
rsillima@ix.netcom.com
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 26 Jun 1996 08:02:28 EDT
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: Martin Nakell whereabouts
Does anyone have an email or street address for Martin Nakell, who attended
the Hoboken conference? Please backchannel only to Henry_Gould@brown.edu.
Thanks - Henry
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 26 Jun 1996 08:44:44 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Loss Glazier <lolpoet@ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU>
Subject: Re: Joe Ceravolo
At 03:08 AM 6/26/96 -0700, you wrote:
>
>The web is a perfect tool for the project that Joe Ceravolo's son seems
>to be putting together--making an essentially "hard-to-find" poet's
>work available to any and all. There had only been a few hundred hits
>when I visited the other day, but I recommend it to everyone on this
>list heartily (and, Loss, if it hasn't been done, set up a link from
>the author's index at EPC forthwith).
>
>http://www.csam.montclair.edu/~ceravolo/
Ron and others,
Yes, this link is under way. Thanks!
I was a little disappointed that more of the work was not there. It gives
you a sense or flavor, of course, and that's good. It's always more
thrilling to see complete works - or complete texts of specific books.
I mean, let us *really* read the work ... that would be a true appreciation
of the work ...
(I also don't think it would cut into potential book sales.)
Loss
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 26 Jun 1996 08:48:11 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Loss Glazier <lolpoet@ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU>
Subject: Tender Buttons
Speaking of full text check out the Stein link at the epc
http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/authors/stein/
Loss
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 26 Jun 1996 10:04:49 -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: Re: Joe Ceravolo
Re Ceravolo and the NY School:
Kenneth Koch's _Poems 1952-1953_ from Black Sparrow (selections from which
appear in _On the Great Atlantic Rainway_, the 1994 selected) and Ashbery's
_Tennis Court Oath_ are some obvious antecedents.
A complete collected Ceravolo would run thousands of pages--maybe a
collected Books of would be better.
Peter Gizzi published in O-blek some poems from _Mad Angels_, Ceravolo's
last manuscript.
It should be noted that the Coffee House book is drawn mainly from _Spring
in this World of Poor Mutts_, actually a fairly difficult book to find--I
bought Columbia University Press's in-house library copy a few years ago.
Someone who seems to have inherited Ceravolo's feelings about syntax is Kim
Lyons; her book _In Padua_ is available from SPD.
Jordan Davis
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 26 Jun 1996 12:11:45 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Rod Smith <AERIALEDGE@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: Joe Ceravolo
Spring In This World of Poor Mutts can still be had in hardcover for $17.95.
The pb is out o' print. Believe we have one at Bridge St tho I'm at home so
can't say right now. SPD should have some left.
Rod
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 26 Jun 1996 11:26:47 +0000
Reply-To: Catherine.Wagner@m.cc.utah.edu
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Cathy <Catherine.Wagner@M.CC.UTAH.EDU>
Subject: Re: POETICS Digest - 24 Jun 1996 to 25 Jun 1996
Mark Wallace wrote:
> Most of his books are long out of print--an under construction section of
> the website says it will later feature locations at which all of
> Ceravolo's work can be found. Anybody have any further input on where
> those long-lost books can be found?
>
> mark wallace
I ordered Spring In This World of Poor Mutts and Transmigration Solo
by Ceravolo at a little local bookshop here--came up with a sweet
hardcover of Spring. Also got Transmigration Solo by Toothpaste
Press, a first edition. 100 were signed and numbered--I got number
9--this was at Xmas. A friend just got the signed number 30. I think
these have been sitting around in the basement at Coffee House.
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 27 Jun 1996 12:46:20 GMT+1200
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Tony Green <t.green@AUCKLAND.AC.NZ>
Organization: The University of Auckland
Subject: Re: LINEbreak@EPC
Hi Charles, LINEbreak Sounds a Great idea.
Tony Green,
e-mail: t.green@auckland.ac.nz
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 27 Jun 1996 13:37:55 GMT+1200
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Tony Green <t.green@AUCKLAND.AC.NZ>
Organization: The University of Auckland
Subject: logoparaphernalia
I been reading art history exams, wh reminds me of last year's words:
ursury remanscent collaspe ambigious connosoir golden hew
beuorgois a composto effect divinity & debuchary preportions
Cistene chapel polasters prolificity harminous Madonna
they have fleed Bacchus & Ariande illusionistical descrepencies
lumonious Bacchus & Andriane indomiateable Sistern chapel
ceerubs timbricity his pynchon for detail stripped pants
highten deciple deliminate confusement encaptilated
luxioarious howevery illuminous fictictious pilgramers
anthrometomorphes diadactic to illicit vagurities
Baachus & Ariadne Tinterotto & Titan glimp cherbs
Cruixifcation cinemagraphic monumentous delevopment scense
guesture boldging muscles optonimoised caterogise grandeoise
tranistory incoroparte swrill Bacillica atopped fascial
transcience fushion this story contains a story one in which is
sad perceptionally virtuosic sillouettes origonaly bueatiful
decripitude folliage exaburate a line of figs stretched out
across the picture plane Farasee the upmost importance foilage
porportion deapth
best wishes to all
Tony Green,
e-mail: t.green@auckland.ac.nz
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 27 Jun 1996 12:55:26 -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: AWOL: Inaugural Olympic Sports Poet 1996 (forwarded)
>Mime-Version: 1.0
>Date: Thu, 27 Jun 1996 06:38:53 +1000
>To: awol@ozemail.com.au
>From: awol@ozemail.com.au (awol)
>Subject: AWOL: Inaugural Olympic Sports Poet 1996
>
>The following message has been posted on behalf of Network Tennis
>Australia. Please address all enquiries to them at the contacts listed
>below. The AWOL email address should only be used to submit entries which
>will then be forwarded to NTA.
>
>You only have a few more days to enter!!!!!!!!
>
>
>*******************************
>
>Network tennis Australia (NTA) has launched a new poetry competition, to
>be awarded annually. In the year of the Olympic Summer Games it shall be
>known as the 'Olympic Sports Poet' award. In other years it shall be
>known as the '(Nation) Sports Poet award.
>
>This unique award has been created to celebrate & symbolise the powerful
>& exhilarating synergy that exists between sport and poetry and entries
>for the Inaugural Olympic Sports Poet 1996 are now being invited..
>
>
>
>
>Conditions of the Award
>
>
>Prize allocation is:
>
>Open section 1st prize $400, 2nd prize $200, 3rd prize $100.
>
>Olympic Sports Poet junior section 1st prize $100, 2nd prize $50, 3rd prize
>$25.
>
>
>
>
>Competition opens 1 May 1996 and closes 30 June 1996. Late entries will not
>be accepted.
>
>
>Entries can be submitted in paper copy to:
>
>Mail Network Tennis Australia,
>Sports Poet Competition,
>210 Annandale Street,
>Annandale NSW Australia 2038.
>
>Fax 61 2 5172466.
>
>Entries can also be emailed to: awol@ozemail.com.au or you may submit your
>entry through the Sports Poet web page
>http://www.ozemail.com.au/~awol/sportspoet.html
>
>
>The theme of the poems entered must be sport
>
>Entries must be written in English.
>
>The junior section is for poets 13 years or younger at 30 June 1996. Junior
>entries must be clearly marked and the the poet's date of birth must be
>included.
>
>Poems must not be under consideration by any publisher. Entrants requiring
>manuscripts returned or to be notified of the winners should enclose a SSAE
>. Overseas entrants should enclose an international reply coupon (entrants
>who submit poems by email will receive a post listing the winners).
>
>Competition judges are Les Wicks and Ron Pretty. The judges decision shall
>be final and no correspondence shall be entered into. NTA shall make
>changes to the judges panel in the event of a Judge being unavailable.
>
>The winners shall be announced in July/August 1996 and published in the
>Poets Union Inc magazine Five Bells soon after.
>
>
>NTA shall not be responsible for any loss or damage to entries and reserves
>the right to reproduce the winner's poem and other selected poems.
>
>
>
>
>For further information about these conditions please contact Network
>Tennis Australia on ph 61 2 556 2100, fax 61 2 517 2466.
>
>
>AWOL
>Australian Writing On Line
>awol@ozemail.com.au
>http://www.ozemail.com.au/~awol
>PO Box 333 Concord NSW 2137 Australia
>Phone 61 2 7475667
>Fax 61 2 7472802
>
__________________________________
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: Wed, 26 Jun 1996 23:25:45 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Tim wood <twood@CONNECT.NET>
Subject: Re: LSD lsd l s d led sleds
Christopher... the diamond (because my reader is designed to show
forwarded text in that color) actually showed up blue on my end...
subversive software I think. If this ever gets published, push for the
blue ink, most definately...
>> >
>> > > I
>> > > had
>> > > heard
>> > > from my
>> > > co-worker
>> > > about a big
>> > > problem today.
>> > > It seems my kid
>> > > and your kid, all
>> > > of our kids have to
>> > > worry about evil drug
>> > > dealers giving out fake
>> > > tattoos with acid in them.
>> > > This is not a joke or rumor.
>> > > This is a serious threat that
>> > > must not be taken lightly. They
>> > > have a blue star on them, but not
>> > > all - some have cartoons or such on
>> > > them. You must be very careful with a
>> > > blue star tattoo because the strychnine
>> > > can be absorbed into your blood from just
>> > > handling the paper. This horrible thing has
>> > > a reason to it - the dealers want LSD addicts
>> > > to buy more after they are hooked. Symptoms you
>> > > should watch for are: hallucinations, mood swings,
>> > > uncontrolled laughter, drop in body temperature,
>> > > dizziness or disorientation, severely dilated
>> > > pupils, and severe vomiting. Some time - up
>> > > to an hour, can pass between contact with
>> > > the drug and onset of symptoms. If your
>> > > child has fell victim to this heinous
>> > > crime, you must take him quickly to
>> > > a hospital. Children hare already
>> > > died from this, LSD overdose is
>> > > easy. If you see a suspicious
>> > > person giving tattoos, foil
>> > > wrapped especially, phone
>> > > your police immediately.
>> > > This is a real danger
>> > > and is growing much
>> > > faster than I can
>> > > spread warnings
>> > > alone. Thanks
>> > > for reading
>> > > this that
>> > > I wrote
>> > > about
>> > > LSD
>> > > !
>
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 27 Jun 1996 05:57:45 -0400
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: Why New York City Arrests Artists (fwd)
Somethiing I thought could be of inetrest to this list too -- Pierre
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 26 Jun 1996 08:33:24 -0700 (PDT)
From: { brad brace } <bbrace@netcom.com>
To: avant-garde@jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU
Cc: artlist@listserv.arizona.edu
Subject: Why New York City Arrests Artists (fwd)
Why New York City Arrests Artists
Robert Lederman 1996
New York City is in the midst of a social transformation in which the
City's "image" has become the deciding factor in all governmental
decisions. So-called "quality of life" is the new goal of City Hall's
policies.
Unfortunately, it's not the average person's life quality the present
administration is trying to improve. Concerns about individual rights,
small scale free enterprise and public space have been replaced by a cozy
partnership between corporate clients and City government. Corporations
and real estate interests are now viewed as the actual proprietors of our
public sidewalks, parks and streets. These interests see sidewalk displays
of paintings, and street culture of any kind, as an ugly blemish damaging
the exclusive appeal and market value of their properties and businesses.
Real estate associations and corporations desiring to gain absolute
control over public spaces have formed their own independent governments
or B.I.D.'s (Business Improvement Districts). These organizations act as
an unelected and unaccountable shadow government running key areas of the
City. They are authorized to collect special taxes ($42 million last
year), have their own police (often paid less than the minimum wage) and
are attempting to set up their own court system. The Fifth Avenue and
Times Square B.I.D.s, which dominate the entire B.I.D. scheme, financed
and built their own Community Court on 54th Street to handle quality of
life crimes committed in their vicinity more "efficiently". B.I.D.s have
been accused of "hiring goon squads" [see 1995 City Council Investigation
on B.I.D.s] to force homeless people off the streets. Distinctions between
business, police, and the court system blur as they become one continuous
enterprise.
Sidewalk art displays have been described by B.I.D. directors as magnets
for prostitution, pickpockets and crime. Artists are demonized as
"parasites" in order to justify eliminating them from the streets.
Previous to this new policy, artists' displays were seen as
non-threatening or as a cultural asset. New York City actually advertised
the presence of street artists in travel magazines. The police were
instructed not to arrest artists and that a visual artist selling his or
her own signed art didn't require a license, based on the First Amendment.
In 1993, when the City's B.I.D.s, led by the Fifth Avenue Association,
attempted to eliminate all sidewalk vending, artist displays were
reclassified as vending and a license became a requirement. Since the City
Council had previously frozen the total number of general vending licenses
at the 853 then in effect, a license was, in the City's own words,
"impossible for artists to obtain". Artists throughout the City were then
handcuffed and arrested and had their art confiscated for the "crime" of
not having a license. There is now a closed waiting list of over 5,000
applicants for a vending license; in some years, not one license has been
issued.
Fearing that an independent-minded judge might find such an unreasonable
licensing requirement for First Amendment protected expression
unconstitutional, the City has meticulously avoided prosecuting a single
artists' case in Criminal Court. None of the more than 300 artists
arrested since 1993 have been found guilty of a crime. While not found
guilty, artists rarely recover their confiscated paintings, which the City
illegally sells at a monthly Police Department auction or destroys.
When artists brought a Federal lawsuit against the City, representatives
of the B.I.D.s appeared in court and convinced a judge to rule,
contradicting 50 years of Supreme, Appellate and State Court rulings, that
visual art is not protected by the First Amendment. That decision is being
appealed.
The B.I.D.s view sidewalk art displays as a key legal obstacle to this
overall "cleansing" process. Successfully eliminating constitutionally
protected activities will set the stage to eliminate or substantially
restrict all street culture, public space and non-corporate expression.
In arguments before the 2nd Circuit Appeals Court the City claimed that,
"protection of business interests" was a prime reason for preventing
artists from showing art on the street. In fact, that is their only
"reason". Genuine First Amendment freedom is seen by many business
interests and landlords as a threat. If the average person is allowed to
use traditionally public spaces to communicate, advertise or sell their
creations, it threatens the business communities monopoly on these basic
activities. While politicians and corporations pay lip service to the
ideas of free enterprise, freedom of speech and equal opportunity, they
are trying to deny these same rights to the public.
City officials have made a concerted effort to suppress media coverage
about these arrests. Reporters researching this issue have been told that
their access to Police Department sources would be cut off if they
continued to cover the artists' story. Protest signs and petitions have
been confiscated from artist activists, and artists have been arrested for
handing out literature about the arrests.
Can New York City violate the constitutional rights of an entire class of
individuals and prohibit an entire medium of communication on public
property, simply because it pleases big business? While the number of
individuals directly affected by these arrests is small (there are fewer
than 200 artists selling their own paintings, photographs or
limited-edition prints on New York's streets) the social signifigance is
large.
The outcome of this issue will affect legal policies in U.S. cities for
years to come. At stake is free expression and the right of the public as
well as artists, to use city streets for communication. The following
court cases directly relate to this issue:
Piarowski v. Illinois Community College, 759 F.2d 625, 628 (7th Cir.)
-"The freedom of speech and of the press protected by the First Amendment
has been interpreted to embrace purely artistic as well as political
expression.". cert. denied, 474 U.S. 1007 (1985).
Serra v. United States Gen. Servs. Admin., 847 F.2d 1045, 1048 (2d
Cir.1988)"...artistic expression constitutes speech for First Amendment
purposes...".
Texas v. Johnson, 491 U.S. 397, 404 (1989)"We have long recognized that
its protection [the First Amendment's] does not end at the spoken or
written word."
414 Theater Corp. v. Murphy, 499 F.2d 1155 (2d Cir. 1974), [A case that
cooresponds to the licensing issue in this case.] "The forced
discontinuance of a first amendment right pending a protracted license
determination is itself a prior restraint, and involves irreparable injury
to the public's as well as the appellee's first amendment rights."
People v. Milbry, 530 N.Y.S.2d 928, 929 (N.Y. Crim. Ct. 1988) "Pictorial
artwork, as a form of self-expression, is certainly covered by the
guarantee of freedom of speech contained in both Federal and New York
State Constitutions."
People v. Lessin Rodriguez, 94NO58171 N.Y.Crim.Ct. 8/8/94 [a case of an
unlicensed general vending charge against a fine artist] "...because it's
not a crime...it is dismissed. The First Amendment protects it."
People v. Krebs 282 N.Y.S. 2d. 996 "Purpose and the thrust of the peddler
license ordinance...was not intended to strike down First Amendment rights
or subject proper exercise of free speech to municipal regulations or
police dictation."
["Speech" need not be in the form of words to be protected nor does it
need to be "political" or even have a specific message.]
Hurley v.Irish-American Gay and Lesbian Bisexual Group, No. 94-749, 1995
WL 360192 (S. Ct. June 19, 1995) The Constitution looks beyond written or
spoken words as mediums of expression...as some of these examples show, a
narrow, succinctly articulable message is not a condition of
constitutional protection, which if confined to expressions conveying a
"particularized message" would never reach the unquestionably shielded
painting of Jackson Pollack, music of Arnold Schonberg or Jabberwocky
verse of Lewis Carroll".
[Selling the tangible manifestations of speech in no way invalidates its
First Amendment protection.]
Virginia State Bd. of Pharmacy v. Virginia Citizens Consumer Council, 425
U.S. 748, 761 (1976) "Speech is protected even though it is a form that is
sold for profit, and even though it may involve a solicitation to purchase
or otherwise pay or contribute money."
United States v. National Treasury Employees Union No. 93-1170, 1995 WL
68442 (S. Ct. February 22, 1995) A ban on recieving honoraria,
"...unquestionably imposes a significant burden on expressive
activity...The honoraria ban imposes the kind of burden that abridges
speech under the First Amendment."
Joseph Burstyn, Inc, v. Wilson 343 U.S. 495 (1952) "That books, newspapers
and magazines are published and sold for profit does not prevent them from
being a form of expression whose liberty is safeguarded by the First
Amendment."
[Public streets are an appropriate forum for First Amendment protected
activities and have consistently been found to be the traditional locale
of free expression.]
See: Burson, 112 S. Ct. at 1850 ("Quintessential public forums" are
"parks, streets, and sidewalks."); Frisby v. Schultz, 487 U.S. 474, 481
(1988) (residential street is a public forum); United States v. Grace, 461
U.S. 171, 176 (1983) (public sidewalks forming perimeter of the Supreme
Court grounds are public forum for First Amendment purposes).
Loper v. New York City Police Dep't, 999 F.2d 699, 704 (2d Cir. 1993), The
sidewalks of New York City constitute a public forum because they "...fall
into the category of public property traditionally held open to the public
for expressive activity."
Hague v. C.I.O., 307 U.S. 496 (1939) "Whenever the title of streets and
parks may rest, they have immemorially been held in trust for the use of
the public...Such use of the streets and public places has, from ancient
times, been a part of the privileges, immunites, rights and liberties of
citizens. The privilege of a citizen of the United States to use the
streets and parks for communication...must not, in the guise of
regulation, be abridged or denied."
Therefore, one must conclude that whatever exemptions, privileges or
special considerations given other First Amendment protected materials
being displayed, sold or given away on New York City streets must be
similarly afforded artists and their fine art. It can hardly be
constitutional or rational to arbitrarily deny First Amendment protection
to one expressive medium (visual fine art), while granting it to another
medium (books, baseball cards, used magazines and postcards, i.e. written
art is exempted from the licensing requirement).
We recently discovered that in 1982, the original wording of the licensing
exemption for book vendors was clearly and conspicuously attributed to the
First Amendment and free speech. In subsequent editions of the law, the
City Council's lawyers removed all mention of free speech as a way of
denying artists and other protected individuals the same exemption. Here's
the original wording which is only to be found in 1982 editions:
Local Laws of the City of New York For The Year 1982. #33 section 1:
Legislative declaration. The council hereby finds and declares that it is
consistent with the principles of free speech and freedom of the press to
eliminate as many restrictions on the vending of written matter as is
consistent with the public health, safety and welfare.
A note on the artists' Federal suit..... Joining the artists in their
Federal suit [Lederman v. City of New York 94 civ. 7216 (MGC) by filing
amicus briefs were The Museum of Modern Art, The Whitney Museum, The ACLU,
Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts, The College Arts Association, the N.Y.C.
Arts Coalition, The N.Y. Foundation for the Arts, art dealer Ronald
Feldman, art historians Irving Sandler and Simon Schama, and artists Claes
Oldenburg, Chuck Close, Jenny Holzer, Hans Haacke and David Hammons.
David Ross, the Director of the Whitney Museum of American Art, stated in
connection with this lawsuit, "We stand firmly behind the idea that art is
equal to other forms of expression and is as protected as speech".
[Christian Science Monitor 2/14/96, pg. 11] {also see Art In America,
March 96 pg 128, "New Allies for Street Artists"; N.Y. Times Metro sec.
1/24/96 pg.B1 "Street Art: Free Speech or Just Stuff?"]
The real estate and business organizations forcing the City to arrest
artists filed their own brief in Federal Court co- signed by The Fifth
Avenue Association, The SoHo Alliance, The Alliance for Downtown New York,
The Grand Central Partnership, The 34th Street Partnership and the Madison
Avenue Business Improvement District. The 30 page brief compares public
displays of fine art to, "...graffiti, litter and petty street crime..."
It goes on to state, "The sale of artwork does not involve communication
of thoughts or ideas" and warns of, "the dangers...of allowing visual art
full First Amendment protection". It sums up its position by claiming
that, "An artists' freedom of expression is not compromised by regulating
his ability to merchandise his artwork", and, "..the sale of paintings and
other artwork does not reach this high level of expression (guaranteeing
First Amendment protection)..."
Robert Lederman is president of A.R.T.I.S.T. (Artists' Response To Illegal
State Tactics) For information, to make a donation or to join A.R.T.I.S.T.
call: (718) 3692111 e-mail ARTISTpres@aol.com or visit our web site at:
http://www.openair.org/alerts/artist/nyc.html Photos of arrests, art
confiscations and demonstrations are available for publication. We welcome
all artists to join us in the street and to help protect First Amendment
rights.
__
--- from list avant-garde@lists.village.virginia.edu ---
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 27 Jun 1996 12:57:38 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Bill Luoma <Maz881@AOL.COM>
Subject: NYC Book Party & Reading
Listheads,
You are cordially invited to a book party hosted by Situations Press at
Biblios on Sunday Jun 30 @ 5:00pm for Lisa Jarnot's Sea Lyrics and Bill
Luoma's Western Love. Both books will be available at the party along with
Food & Drink.
Jarnot's Sea Lyrics are set as a series of smartian prose poems about Jack
London Square, Alameda, and buying jam in the early morning. I am is the
refrain. As much music as you can handle. "I am aimless and have several
new tattoos."
Luoma's Western Love is another series set as short lyrics spoken by cowboys,
jack rabbits, and saloon girls. Images by Charles Buckley. With a touch of
lesbos. "I played with the fur trappers while you were on the trail."
Biblios Bookstore
317 Church St.
NYC, 1blk below canal
212-344-6990
Hope to see you there.
Ordering information to follow.
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 27 Jun 1996 13:39:18 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Curt Anderson <cander@MTN.ORG>
Subject: The Runway Calls
I know a few of the subscribers to this list are also subscribers to Exile,
a hopefully humorous little newsletter out of Minneapolis/St. Paul that I
edit with the help of Gary Sullivan and Marta Deike. I've
decided to give up editing Exile to work on some other projects -- for
instance, my lifelong ambition to become a leggy supermodel. This may or
may not spell the end of Exile. Gary and Marta may continue it at a later
date. Thanks to all those who supported us for, yikes, almost four years,
especially contributors David Gilbert, Jonathan Brannen, George Albon, Eric
Malone, Anthony Schlagel, Erik Belgum and Johanna Drucker. Finally, thanks
to our subscribers. Good-bye and good books.
Curt Anderson
Curt Anderson
Cander@mtn.org
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 27 Jun 1996 09:20:52 -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: Joan Retallack
Does anyone who went to Orono (or anyone) have a phone number for Joan
Retallack or a quick and easy way to get ahold of her? Gab.
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 27 Jun 1996 18:48:28 -0400
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: Amazon.com
I just made the interesting (to me) discovery that this huge online
bookstore at http://amazon.com actually has small press poetry books! But
maybe you already knew that.
R.
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 27 Jun 1996 19:12:17 EDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: JOEL LEWIS <104047.2175@COMPUSERVE.COM>
Subject: Re: Joe Ceravolo (Silliman)
In my many phonecalls to Joe C. we seemed to never really talk about poetry.
Although he didi say once that he loved Leopardi. He also disclaimed the Chinese
poets as a source (as picked up on by the back cover of Spring....) of his
poetics.
His departure from the NYC scene seems to have something to do w/ performance
pieces he & his wife did at PoProject in early 70's-- I was too yung for that,
but folks told me that it involved the burning of incense & heavy Catholic
mysticism. To other friens he had long phone conversations on the bible. He was
really unaware of the "scene" in his later years & REALLY loved Ron's essay on
his work as it was the first kind of notice in many years.
Joel Lewis
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 27 Jun 1996 19:53:29 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Peter Quartermain <quarterm@UNIXG.UBC.CA>
Subject: Limitations
This is from quite a while back, but it's been nagging away at the back of
my mind for a week or more so I've decided to ask. On 15 June Mark Wallace
wrote in the course of the Susan Howe / Samuel Beckett thread:
"it seems to me that the value of the work of Susan Howe and Samel Beckett
(or many others, maybe) is not only obvious, but something that it would be
pretty hard to argue against very successfully. One can, I suppose, have
reasonable questions about the limitations of their work, but as to
dismissing it entirely, I'm still under the impression that that's an
opinion I don't really have to respect too much."
I'm sorry to quote at such length, but I want to keep the context pertty
clear. What I'm curious about is the concept of "limitations" -- what did
you have in mind, Mark, can you remember? what sort of assumptions underlie
the choice of that really interesting word? Is there some sort of model of
"perfection" that underlies this notion of limitation? or of political or
social "effectiveness"? or what? In the context it strikes me as an odd word
to use, since I would have though any argument "dismissing" their work would
invoke this sort of vocabulary. What do you think? Can you, Mark (or anyone
else for that matter) please enlighten me?
I know I'm just asking, but this is a prertty serious issue I think.
Peter
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
Peter Quartermain
128 East 23rd Avenue
Vancouver
B.C.
Canada V5V 1X2
Voice and fax: 604 876 8061
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 27 Jun 1996 22:04:33 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" <anielsen@ISC.SJSU.EDU>
Subject: Re: blame it on the lossa nova
In-Reply-To: <199606280404.AAA04571@listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu>
The Day Louis Simpson Died
It is 12:20 in Orono a Saturday
three days after Burt's greeting, yes
it is 1996 and I go get a lobster
because I will get off bus 320 in Bar Harbor
at 5:15 and then go straight to dinner
and I don't know the people I will feed with
I walk up the muggy street beginning to rain
and have a hamburger and a malted (Loss ate my lobster) and buy
an ugly FORMALIST to see what the "poets"
in "America" are doing these days
I go back to the bunk
and Ms. Perloff (first name Marjorie I once heard)
is so bored by the speaker that she doesn't even look up for once in her life
and in NEVILLE I go to a little session
featuring Maria with a diatribe by von Hallbeg although I do
think of "_____:____," trans. Joan Retallack or
Enslin's new sequence or "Moonscapes" or "The Edge of Time"
of Foster, but I don't, I stick with Maria
after practically going to sleep with quandariness
and for Loss I just stroll into Boardman
Hall and ask for "AD VALOREM CAGLI" and
then I go back where I came from to 402 Neville
and the student at the book table and
casually ask for _Niedecker: Woman and Poet_ and a copy
of Ronald Johnson's _Ark_, and a hurt book with his face on it
and I am sweating a lot now and thinking of
leaning on the john door on the first floor
while he recited endlessly from inside a stall
to the long-suffering Hank Lazer and everyone and I stopped breathing
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 28 Jun 1996 01:20:28 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Carnography <scrypt@INTERPORT.NET>
Subject: Re: Wildflower dead horse-hair-triggers
I've refrained from sending my response to Mr. Gould for three reasons:
1. Mainstream sixties bands aren't worth this much commentary, esp not
on a prosody list.
2. I wanted to reread my response to see if I'd been unfair.
3. Even though I wanted to respond to every point, I wasn't anxious to
quibble with a fellow musician (especially one who also cares about
prosody). Contrary to emphatic opinion--
>> With "all due respect", you're just being snide for the fun of it,
>> and don't deny it - because it IS fun.
--there is no pleasure to be had from taking a fellow musician down a
notch. The motivation for my first response was to defend other musicians.
Someone had claimed that 60's Brits were merely weak imitations of African-
American R & B. I don't like to insult musicians and I don't like it when
musicians are insulted.
(Speaking of which: Sidebar to Chris Creek, who said:
>Forget Speedway, name tells all. For topical lyrical and typical textures,
>arguable here now, try Pulp
Since this is musical texture we're talking about, the name tells nothing.
We've all heard Pulp, but you've never heard Speedway (unless you live in
London: they won't be recording their first album until mid-August). Be
patient--listen to one Speedway song before you relegate them to obscurity.
Otherwise, I agreed with your other comments.)
Therefore, I'm backchanneling my response to Mr. Gould alone.
I feel rueful enough doing this at all, let alone in public.
All the best,
Rob Hardin
-----------------------
http://www.interport.net/~scrypt
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 27 Jun 1996 23:48:55 +0100
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: General Report, dateline: Orono
This is Kevin Killian speaking. Hope my previous fashion report didn't
scare anyone off, but why else have there been so few reports from the
Orono Conference? Anyhow, I thought of some more things to say.
I wasn't spending all my time gazing rapturously at the scenery. I
actually did get to some panels, believe it or not. The most exciting one
was the panel on Frank O'Hara, in which this fellow from Penn, whose name
I did not write down, but who was very smart, spoke about O'Hara and Larry
Rivers and one being the ventriloquist for the other and how 6 weeks in
1959 were quite jam packed ones for O'Hara, and either the best time of his
life, or merely quite typical for any six weeks in his life. This talk
made me get into the idea of trying to figure out which six weeks of my own
life future critics will think was the most exciting, and I came to the
conclusion that they hadn't occurred yet. Then Ben Friedlander spoke about
O'Hara and the "race question," followed closely by Steven Evans on the
same topic-they built up the panel, moment by moment, into this
tremendously thrilling event like a horse race of ideas. Ben Friedlander
can write up a storm. Every sentence he spoke was like a poem. Listening
him speak I had the same feelings of awe with which I imagine Oscar Wilde
would regard Lord Alfred Douglas in their early days of first knowing each
other. I had simply never thought of O'Hara's work in this light and now I
am convinced. It was a stunning moment.
Dodie went to the panel where Joan Retallack rehearsed Jackson Mac Low's
"Virginia Woolf Poems," a reading through The Waves. I was not there but
heard plenty about this later and how great it was. Joel Kuszai gave a
rare look at Jackson Mac Low's early career, long before Kuszai was born.
Or Dodie either, practically speaking.
Amateur entertainment winners, Chris Stroffolino's barrelhouse piano with
Alan Golding and Joe Donahue singing, or shrieking, Lou Reed's "Walk on the
Wild Side," with Geoffrey O'Brien chirping in at the cue about "the colored
girls sing." It was this terribly Frank O'Hara masquerade of values and
atonality.
An Oscar to Rachel Blau Du Plessis's plenary talk about gender relations in
the 1950s, esp. her daring use of John Wieners' later "Woman" as the
exemplum of everything that went wrong with poetry's challenges as a result
of the social stratification of the period. The room went deadly silent
when she got to this part, a reaction I suppose to her daring to question
the all-male cast of John Clarke's plan for the "Curriculum of the Soul."
There, all of a sudden, en plein air, was this really weird fact that no
one had ever, I suppose, tried to make sense of before. In this paper,
Wieners came off very seedy, whereas in Michael Davidson's beautiful talk
given on a previous evening, he was the culture hero I have admired for so
many years.
Another plenary people were talking about was Alicia Ostriker's talk on
Ginsberg and Lamentations. I saw men and women coming out the hall, heads
shaking with admiration. I liked the Ann Charters talk a little, tho' I do
not think she should have named it "Charles Olson/Ann Charters/Herman
Melville." It just sounds silly.
The Niedecker panel I attended was very fine. Jenny Penberthy told us all
about the "For Paul" poems, which she kept calling the "For Pauls," in my
seat I was thinking, sounds like the Beatles. Those For Paul poems, JP
kept saying, are Niedecker's worst poems and they are horrible (she said).
Made me want to read them! How bad could they be? Susan Dunn's paper was
good, too, tho' like most of us she bit off more than she could chew! And
then Glenna Breslin spoke. Because I have been writing a biography, and
because, as Chris Stroffolino noted earlier, this was kind of a
personality-based conference, some of the very best papers were given by
biographers, and this was one of them. Breslin went to Fort Atkinson or
Blackhawk Island and tracked down this man, Aeneas McAllister, who had
known Niedecker as a young handsome sensitive stud. "He was young,
dark-haired, slim-hipped, with a sexy smile," said Breslin, studying a
photo of Aeneas, and I don't mind saying, I just about swooned. He and his
family lived next to LN in 1954 . . . she was fifty, he was 27 . . . nature
took its course . . . When Breslin's biography is published Hollywood
should make a film of this chapter with Jessica Lange as Lorine Niedecker,
and maybe Keanu Reeves as Aeneas, except I don't know if Keanu Reeves can
play the piano, because one night Aeneas was playing Beethoven on the only
piano on Blackhawk Island, and Lorine came to the door at midnight, tipsy,
blonde, disheveled, and said, "You play?" Maybe in 1954 these parts could
have been played--hell, WERE played--by Vivien Leigh and Marlon Brando.
Aeneas also described to Glenna Breslin the visit of Louis, Celia and Paul
Zukofsky to Wisconsin and how Lorine was subdued, and Aeneas took Paul on a
kayak trip and Louis & Celia came running out of the cabin and started
hollering, "Paul! Your hands! Your hands!" thereby spoiling the fun of
the young boy prodigy violinist. Louis: Harry Dean Stanton. Celia: Kate
Nelligan. Paul: Macaulay Culkin. Anyhow it was a great talk.
I didn't go to Sharon Thesen's talk but sure heard plenty about it, for
she, Thesen, is writing the life of Frances Boldereff, the mysterious woman
who befriended the youngish Charles Olson and influenced, understatement,
Olson's thought. And who is still alive, in Illinois or somewhere.
I did go to Barrett's talk. (For me a great thing about the conference was
its reunion aspect; I mean no one enjoys meeting strangers more than I do,
but I certainly enjoyed seeing my homeboys Watten, Friedlander, Perelman,
etc after long separation). At first I misunderstood the comcept of
"hailing." I thought Hailing, or Heyling, was some kind of contemporary of
Althusser, and being "Heyl"ed was an affectionate diminutive. Now I see I
was just plain dead wrong. Gee, do I feel dumb! Anyhow one woman got up
from her seat and said, "There is no 'moment of incest,'" and also she
thought that BW had committed a terrible wrong against all women and all
conference attendees. It was very dramatic and kind of sweat-making. And
this was because Barrett showed about thirty stills of the 50s model Betty
Page, in provocative 50s poses, often nude or in sexy bondage outfits,
meanwhile telling us with a more or less straight face that she, Page, was
in charge of her destiny and in control of her own sexuality. I don't see
why Page was freer from the objectifying gaze than any other photographed
woman of the 1950s. She just looks like she's enjoying herself, she
doesn't look terrified. So? However, the material about the elephant, the
sardine can, the family photo album of televised images of Duke Ellington,
and Joe McCarthy, put all this sex material into a certain context which
made it all make sense, at least on a poetic level. But how else can Lacan
be read, except as a great 1950s poet of the fractured thought and image?
Okay, so how about when I looked up from the cocktail party and crossing
the room, seeming to head exactly in my direction, I saw Stephen King, and
my heart stood still, but luckily circulation restored quickly and I got
out my pen and copies of two of his books and pestered Burton Hatlen until
he introduced us! I didn't want to say, "Mr King, I'm your greatest fan,"
because of the way Kathy Bates had made that innocent enough and very true
line into some kind of evil meconnaissance of obeisance in the film of
King's own book, "Misery." So I just, like, kowtowed and tried to hold my
own with Steve, as I call him now. You know, one on one, I'm a novelist,
you're a novelist--that kind of thing. Smooth as silk. Lucky the van
driver who picked us up from the airport had hinted he might be coming to
this banquet, and so, while everyone else was seeing the scenic glories of
Bar Harbor, I sneaked into the local bookstore and bought these books, so I
could say, "Oh, wow, I was just reading this on the plane" (a white lie if
ever I spoke one--or, a premonition, since I did read them on the way
home!) But I must have been a nightmare to him. There he was trying to
eat his lobster and I came up, dragging Dodie, and said to Steve, "Now that
you've signed my book, we're friends and here is Loss and he can take our
picture all together!" Then later he was trying to hobnob with Diane and
Jerome Rothenberg, and this time I dragged Peter O'Leary with me as I said,
"Look, Steve, I found another book by you that you haven't autographed!"
The sickly grin on his face turned white, then purple, like a cicatrix, but
he obliged. Everyone else at the entire conference acted like this
happened to them every day, as though daily they were always rubbing elbows
with the most talented thriller writer of all time. Well, I don't think so
and I'll be the first to say so.
I am sure I am leaving a lot out, but one more thing I wanted to say was,
a) it was great meeting all my net pals face to face, and b) thank you to
all who helped me get through the ordeal of my own paper. I couldn't
really think while I was there, I was so fretful, like the White Rabbit in
Alice, always feeling I was running late, and indeed I was, but everything
was all right on the night, altho' who would have thought that my 7 page
paper was far too long for the 20 minutes I had to cram it all in, but I
think I made too many jokes to try to alleviate for all the terror my
subject inspired in me, the misogyny and sexual anxiety of Jack Spicer, and
the Frankenstein-like stitches that hold together his 1958 poem, "For Joe."
I'm leaving so much out. I just wanted to write some of it down before my
memory takes it away from me, like a message in a bottle that might float
back to California someday. I had a great time, wish you were there!
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 28 Jun 1996 02:27:48 -0700
Reply-To: rloden@cris.com
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Rachel Loden <rloden@CRIS.COM>
Subject: Re: General Report, dateline: Orono
Kevin Killian wrote:
>
> An Oscar to Rachel Blau Du Plessis's plenary talk about gender relations in
> the 1950s, esp. her daring use of John Wieners' later "Woman" as the
> exemplum of everything that went wrong with poetry's challenges as a result
> of the social stratification of the period. The room went deadly silent
> when she got to this part, a reaction I suppose to her daring to question
> the all-male cast of John Clarke's plan for the "Curriculum of the Soul."
> There, all of a sudden, en plein air, was this really weird fact that no
> one had ever, I suppose, tried to make sense of before. In this paper,
> Wieners came off very seedy, whereas in Michael Davidson's beautiful talk
> given on a previous evening, he was the culture hero I have admired for so
> many years.
Any chance that these papers will be at the EPC? Or elsewhere?
Thanks to Kevin K. for the juicy report.
Rachel Loden
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 28 Jun 1996 07:30:59 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: blame it on the lossa nova
Aldon--
Bravo!
Hank
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 28 Jun 1996 09:47:10 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Loss Glazier <lolpoet@ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU>
Subject: Re: General Report, dateline: Orono
>Any chance that these papers will be at the EPC? Or elsewhere?
>Thanks to Kevin K. for the juicy report.
---
Dear Rachel,
We are preparing an online "book" with reviews of Orono (also photos
too I hope).
No plans were made for the actual papers partly because my sense is
that many/some of these are committed elsewhere.
But I do extend an invitation to any who are willing to put up their
paper to contact me. We're always interested in helping to circulate such works.
Loss
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 28 Jun 1996 17:15:08 +0200
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "William M. Northcutt" <William.Northcutt@UNI-BAYREUTH.DE>
Subject: Peter Dale Scott's Jakarta, and ...
I've had Peter Dale Scott's Coming to Jakarta for a while, but I'm just
getting to it in my stack. First impression is that it's a pretty incredible
poem, a pretty incredible book. I'd be interested to hear what any of you
think about it, old news as the book may be. Poetically, I suppose it's as
non-adventurous as poetry can get, but it's subject matter seems quite
powerful to me...
Meanwhile, I'm a bibliography addict, and I'd be interested in seeing lists
somewhat similar to the ones we did a while back, the bed-side reading
lists, maybe with a twist: perhaps we could post a list of 5-10 books that
we're either damned excited about, that we're reading at the moment, or that
we're trying desperately to get at:
My list:
Peter Dale Scott--Coming to Jakarta
Peter Nicholls--Modernisms
Alice Notley--the descent of Alette
Bob Perelman--The Trouble with Genius
David Lodge--Nice Work
Hugh MacDiarmid--Collected I
Ron Silliman--N/O
Djuna Barnes--Book of Repulsive Women (my students loved this little book)
Breton--Nadja
Mostly old news (that remains news).
Also, have any of you read Timothy Bahti's Ends of the Lyric??? Worth a read?
Nuff said.
William Northcutt
-------------------------------------------------------
Walter Benjamin: "Only a redeemed mankind receives the fullness of its past."
-------------------------------------------------------
William Northcutt
Anglistik I
Universitaet Bayreuth
95440 Bayreuth
email: william.northcutt@uni-bayreuth.de
Tel: 49 921 980612
Fax: 49 921 553641
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 28 Jun 1996 13:57:48 -0400
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@FARADAY.CLAS.VIRGINIA.EDU>
Subject: british women poets
In-Reply-To: <2.2.16.19960627191538.24e71034@pop.unixg.ubc.ca> from "Peter
Quartermain" at Jun 27, 96 07:53:29 pm
A friend of mine is looking for suggestions of British or Commonwealth
women poets of the 20thC to teach in an upcoming course, and i was rather
embarassed at how few names i cld summon off the top o' the noggin. Any
suggestions, for my own edification, and my friend's?
thanks, steve
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 28 Jun 1996 14:09:06 -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 Grammar of Fantasy by Gianni Rodari
from the Contents
Introduction: Gianni Rodari, Devil's Advocate as Patron Saint of Children
by Jack Zipes
Preface
2. The Word Hi
3. The Fantastic Binominal
4. "Light" and "Shoes"
5. What Would Happen If...
7. The Arbitrary Prefix
8. The Creative Error
9. Old Games
13. Making Mistakes in the Story
14. Little Red Riding Hood in a Helicopter
19. The Cards of Propp
20. Changing the Cards into a Fairy Tale with Franco Passatore
21. Fairy Tales in the "Obligatory Key"
22. The Analysis of La Befana
26. Stories at the Table
27. A Journey around My House
30. "Taboo" Stories
34. The Mathematics of Stories
39. When Grandfather Becomes a Cat
41. Imagination, Creativity, School
_The Grammar of Fantasy_ by Gianni Rodari, tr. Jack Zipes, will be
available soon from Teachers & Writers Collaborative. In the meantime,
there's www.twc.org.
Jordan Davis
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 28 Jun 1996 13:54:23 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: David Kellogg <kellogg@ACPUB.DUKE.EDU>
Subject: Re: Wildflower dead horse-hair-triggers
In-Reply-To: <v01540b00adf23ae9a6d7@[204.74.3.74]>
On Fri, 28 Jun 1996, Carnography wrote:
> 1. Mainstream sixties bands aren't worth this much commentary, esp not
> on a prosody list.
I didn't follow the earlier part of the discussion, but I had to ask:
POETICS is a "prosody list"?
Cheers,
David
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
David Kellogg Duke University
kellogg@acpub.duke.edu University Writing Program
(919) 660-4357 Durham, NC 27708
FAX (919) 684-6277
The time is at hand.
Take one another
and eat.
-- Thomas Kinsella
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 28 Jun 1996 11:29:57 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Steve Carll <sjcarll@SLIP.NET>
Subject: Beatle Bones and Smokin' Stones
At 01:20 AM 6/28/96 -0400, Rob Hardin wrote:
>1. Mainstream sixties bands aren't worth this much commentary, esp not
> on a prosody list.
Then he wrote:
> I don't like to insult musicians and I don't like it when
>musicians are insulted.
Wouldn't it be kind of insulting to a band (of musicians, presumably) to
dismiss them as not worthy of commentary? Not to mention reducing the
Beatles and the Stones to the status of "mainstream sixties bands" when both
have obvious importance outside those rather tiny confines. I left the
sixties when I was three and discovered the Beatles in 1978. Their music
has been a big influence on my person and my writing, and I'm sure that's
true for some other people on this list, which probably explains why the
topic came up at all. As for the Stones, they were making records not only
in the sixties, but also the seventies, eighties and nineties. Does anyone
call Miles Davis a "fifties jazz musician"? What criteria go into this
label? When the band started? The Beatles had their core
(John/Paul/George) together in '58, although they weren't yet calling
themselves "Beatles". When the band were making their best work? What
about _Some Girls_ ('78), _Exile on Main Street_ ('72), and _Sticky Fingers_
('71)?
**************************************
Steve Carll
sjcarll@slip.net
"Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on"
--Keatsy
**************************************
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 28 Jun 1996 14:42:46 -0400
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@FARADAY.CLAS.VIRGINIA.EDU>
Subject: Orono memories / Enslin poems
In-Reply-To: <v01520d00adf8b11534e6@[205.134.228.88]> from "Kevin Killian" at
Jun 27, 96 11:48:55 pm
Reading all this Orono reportage fills me with a mix of envy for what I've
missed and nostalgia for the Orono conference of, i think, '93, on
American poetry of the Thirties. That one had lots of great panels on
the Objectivists, as well as many others. I cld never reproduce all the
highlights but judging from recent posts the general air of conviviality,
intelligence, and exhaustion was the same at both conferences. It was
my very first conference, and only now, having weathered several MLAs can
i appreciate how wonderful it really was, especially the lively mix of
poets and critics, academics and "non-affiliated" enthusiasts etc.
Hell, my father even dropped by to hear my talk and some of the readings
and had a good time. And those readings *were* fantastic--Carl Rakosi,
Allen Ginsberg, Charles Bernstein, Barrett Watten, Joan Retallack and
many others. I'm *really* sorry to have missed the current round,
which brings me to Ted Enslin...
Hank Lazer's praise for Enslin's reading reminds of how stunning his
performance was when I brought him and Taggart to read here at the
University of Virginial in April 95'. I've long wanted to plug his
work on this list, so will take this chance to mention the two wonderful
sequences, "Autumnal Rime" and "Scriptural" that appeared across various
issues of Talisman and First Intensity over the last year or two.
Tremendous stuff, i think, and their high quality helps to clinch
Enslin's status as one of the most ridiculously neglected figures in
American writing. I'd also highly recommend a recent chapbook in his
more conventional mode, called Songs in the Key of C. I can't lay my
hands on this right at the moment but it's very handsomely done by, i
think, Bloody Twins press.
Thanks and praise to Mark Nowak for undertaking the Selected.
steve
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 28 Jun 1996 15:11:48 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Charles Smith <CharSSmith@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: Limitations
Peter,
I thought Mark Wallace's reference to the "limitations" of the work of
Beckett & Howe was nothing more than an acknowledgement that all writing
exists within some sort of limit, no matter how wide ranging. It might be in
terms of literary/social issues engaged, subject matter, form or technique.
Even the "totalizing" gestures of Pound & Olson move within perceptible
limits, don't they? Olson's 'limits are what we are all inside of'
acknowledges this, yes?
Mark?
Charles Smith
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 28 Jun 1996 15:47:56 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Rod Smith <AERIALEDGE@AOL.COM>
Subject: new Bernadette & & & @ Bridge Street
Here's another list of new stuff from Bridge Street Books. Thanks for all
those orders from the last one.
Bernadette Mayer's _Proper Name_ just out from New Directions: YES. Also
those ECW McCaffrey & MacCormack.
1._The Little Book of Unsuspected Subversion_ by Edmond Jabes, trans.
Rosmarie Waldrop, Stanford Univ Press, $12.95. "For living as for dying, we
will have used the same bobbin."
2. _Marine Snow_ by Karen Mac Cormack, ECW Press, $12.00. "This cut won't
heal these revolutions without you."
3. _Proper Name_ by Bernadette Mayer, New Directions, $13.95. I've had about
two weeks with an advance copy of this, it's a terrific book. Collection of
stories, prose poems, & poems. "I am not hynopompic list theorists."
Bernadette at her inventive bestest.
4. _The Cheat of Words_ by Steve McCaffery, ECW, $12.00.
"The crack is the heart gag / of consumer logic"
5. _Oulipo Laboratory_, texts from the Bibliotheque Oulipienne by Queneau,
Calvino, Fournel, Jouet, Berge, & Mathews. Trans. Mathews & White. Atlas,
$15.99. "The truth is that the Quarrel of the Ancients and Moderns is
permanent."
6. _Over-Sensitivity_ by Jalal Toufic, Sun & Moon, $13.95. "_This is the
shit._" --John Zorn. Toufic's a terrific essayist, as yous may know from
_Distracted_ &/or _(Vampires): An Uneasy Essay on the Undead in Film_.
7. _Information Inequality: The Deepening Social Crisis in America_ by
Herbert Schiller, Routledge, $16.95. "The picture is as clear as it
troubling." --Neil Postman. The other side(s) of this debate cld be
represented by Negroponte's _Being Digital_, Vintage, $12.00. Both books are
quite engaging.
8. _Tremble_ by C.D.Wright, Ecco, $20.00 hardcover.
"The public is in ecstacy."
Poetics folks receive free shipping on orders of more than $20. Free shipping
+ 10% discount on orders of more than $30. There are two ways to order.
1. E-mail your order to aerialedge@aol.com with your address & we will bill
you with the books. or 2. via credit card-- you may call us at 202 965 5200
or e-mail aerialedge@aol.com w/ yr add, order, & card # & we will send a
receipt with the books.
Bridge Street Books, 2814 Pennsylvania Ave NW, Wahsington, DC 20007.
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 28 Jun 1996 15:08:44 -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 <damon001@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
Subject: Re: british women poets
In message <199606281757.NAA52450@faraday.clas.Virginia.EDU> UB Poetics
discussion group writes:
> A friend of mine is looking for suggestions of British or Commonwealth
> women poets of the 20thC to teach in an upcoming course, and i was rather
> embarassed at how few names i cld summon off the top o' the noggin. Any
> suggestions, for my own edification, and my friend's?
>
> thanks, steve
lillian allen; louise bennett; jean "binta" breeze; ...etc--md
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 28 Jun 1996 15:10:06 -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 <damon001@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
Subject: Re: Beatle Bones and Smokin' Stones
In message <2.2.16.19960628112749.1e5fb150@pop.slip.net> UB Poetics discussion
group writes:
> At 01:20 AM 6/28/96 -0400, Rob Hardin wrote:
>
> >1. Mainstream sixties bands aren't worth this much commentary, esp not
> > on a prosody list.
is this a prosody list?--md
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 28 Jun 1996 15:13:00 -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 <damon001@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
Subject: Re: Orono memories / Enslin poems
In message <199606281842.OAA148462@faraday.clas.Virginia.EDU> UB Poetics
discussion group writes:
> Reading all this Orono reportage fills me with a mix of envy for what I've
> missed and nostalgia for the Orono conference of, i think, '93, on
> American poetry of the Thirties. ...
i missed the reportage, cuz i just subbed on again. i''ve tried getting the
june log from the listserv but it's too big for my machinery. cd someone post
me the relevant posts? then i'll add my own review/ bests, maria d
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 28 Jun 1996 17:10:04 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Loss Glazier <lolpoet@ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU>
Subject: Re: Orono memories / Enslin poems
Dear Maria, I'm hoping to have the online book of reviews up very soon! If
others need to catch up they can... Loss
---
At 03:13 PM 6/28/96 -0500, you wrote:
>In message <199606281842.OAA148462@faraday.clas.Virginia.EDU> UB Poetics
>discussion group writes:
>> Reading all this Orono reportage fills me with a mix of envy for what I've
>> missed and nostalgia for the Orono conference of, i think, '93, on
>> American poetry of the Thirties. ...
>
>i missed the reportage, cuz i just subbed on again. i''ve tried getting the
>june log from the listserv but it's too big for my machinery. cd someone post
>me the relevant posts? then i'll add my own review/ bests, maria d
>
>
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 28 Jun 1996 17:19:06 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Charles Alexander <chax@MTN.ORG>
Subject: Re: british women poets
>In message <199606281757.NAA52450@faraday.clas.Virginia.EDU> UB Poetics
>discussion group writes:
>> A friend of mine is looking for suggestions of British or Commonwealth
>> women poets of the 20thC to teach in an upcoming course, and i was rather
>> embarassed at how few names i cld summon off the top o' the noggin. Any
>> suggestions, for my own edification, and my friend's?
>>
>> thanks, steve
>
>lillian allen; louise bennett; jean "binta" breeze; ...etc--md
Just from very recent reading I would absolutely recommend Michele Leggot
(New Zealand) & Catherine Walsh (Britain). Good luck. -- charles
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 28 Jun 1996 19:57:12 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Loss Glazier <lolpoet@ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU>
Subject: Orono Reviews: Bar Harbor
HARBOR LOBSTER BAR NONE
For that waif of a plane to please make it to Bangor,
I promised not to hiss at New Critics but I said nothing
about table manners. In other senses, it=92s the place that is
material for example where=92s the moose and why am I
on this bus heading east? "Nature!" I spy and he points
to one=92s chest & thumps. We=92ve never been on a trip like
this the bus driver asking if it=92s really a bus full of poets.
Who knows? But I can assure you we talk plenty and
that it=92s part and parcel of the field trip medium to have
no idea where we=92re going, how long it=92s for, or even
what to do once we get there. Voila! We all know there=92s
momentum just being on a bus! Hail Aldon's patience with
camera lenses strewn on the seat. And the group conversa-
tion that gets us to Mount Desert Island. I kept calling it
a magical mist tree tour and how true! smack dab on top
of old Cadillac Mountain with Jerry past mutinous rocks
in a spitting hissy blind fog bank hiking on & on as if it
goes somewhere other than more fog until we=92re dripping,
cold and, glasses steamed, he turns to me and asks,
"(he says) vot em I doink here." It=92s cold, it=92s wet, but
we make it back and are sitting in the council section of
the bus (which we have named in order to advise the
driver whether to stop at the tourist information center)
& watch frigid poets tramping from foaming mist emerging
Lordy Shakespeare-like with occluded views of the island
tucked like severed heads under dripping elbows. Alas!
Back in & down the mountain we go. Bar Harbor not bad
for hilling around its musical instrument shop though the
town might more properly be named not Bar Harbor but
"Lobster Bar and Gift Shops". But here=92s a question for
the grammarian of gastronomic plights. Why is only ONE
of these red, lovely crustaceans supposed to satisfy you?
Is it an unwritten rule? Is that what it means to be
"civilized"? (Is this related to poems that rhyme?)
It=92s a question that=92s haunted me for years and I lean
towards Bob Perelman with this question and he says
=91go for it=92 so =85 (even the waiter does a double-take &
says =91TWO=92??) & the next half hour (Maria reading the
Bangor newspaper account of the Ph.D. bearing
invaders of the poetic state) all I experience is the
internal hiss of epicurean bliss. "Lobster be mine - a
Lobster for all time - Hell who needs a variable foot
when there are red claws like this to be cracked?
Somehow in my memory of it, these lines all rhymed.
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 29 Jun 1996 08:16:43 +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: Beatle Bones and Smokin' Stones
In-Reply-To: <2.2.16.19960628112749.1e5fb150@pop.slip.net>
I thought the 60s didn't end until 1974, with Nixon's resignation.
Miles Davis is a 50's jazz musician.
You are tagged with when you become famous (enter the media stream).
Centuries and decades are inexact, e.g., the 20th century began in
August 1914 and ended in December 1992.
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 28 Jun 1996 22:50:22 EDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: JOEL LEWIS <104047.2175@COMPUSERVE.COM>
Subject: Re: Orono memories / Enslin poems
Thanks for interesting report on Orono.
RE: your comments on Enslinn, I'd like to throw out a question to the
list. Enslinn, along w/ Armand Schwerner & Nathaniel tarn were all considerered
to be major figuires in the New Amercican Poetry, the subject of Special
Magazine Numbers, etc., etc. 25 years later, none of them are represented in amy
of the major NAP revison anthologies, in Silliman's words, "disappeared poets"
-- I'm not up on Tarn & Enslinn, but I know Schwerner's recent work & it is
still strong & interesting. What is the change. Has there been a paradigm shift
in taste, reading???
Puzzled in Hoboken, Joel Lewis
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 28 Jun 1996 22:25:05 -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 <damon001@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
Subject: oh no orono
yes it's all true, the conference was fantabulous. someone mentioned the
preponderance of males; yes the testosterroneous level was tres gratifying, i
got more male attention than i have in a while, and some of the other chicks
felt the same way (alicia tickled that the alter cockers thought she was "really
on to something" with her ginsberg stuff). had fun processing "the barry thing"
with many, including the watt himself, on a long bus ride in the mist, the cruel
wind and the rain. jumped up and down on top of mt cadillac thinking of bruce
springsteen. learish, very. loved hanging out w/ aldon, bob p, barry, michael
davidson, was thrilled by lorenzo thomas's talk and embarrassed by the paucity
of a presence of folks of color (yes i nailed burton on the way out and stressed
the crowded room's collective enthusiasm for a reprint of tolson, thanks for the
hot tip aldon), was blown away by the whaples/friedlander/evans o'hara panel.
must admit when i saw the author-based program my heart sank, but after that,
getting to the conference, was a steady climb to apotheosis; what a way to cap
off a sabbatical. Also grooved on hanging with armand schwerner, seeing marky
mark nowak again (he and hs wife carolyn are the best thing about the twin
cities), snapping pix of lossy loss and his double lobsters, camping for barry's
camera happy as a clothed clam, seeing rachel bdp again, and alicia, grooved
totally on the jewish american panel, twas funfunfun and full of yakking folks
tho i take exception to the separation of aesthetics from cultural studies that
emerged...enjoyed meeting those panelists too, maeera and steve fredman and eric
salinger...got a lot of needlepointing done. enjoyed also the groovicious
company of ronna johnson my roommate, kerouac scholar and womens studies heavy,
lily phillips, kathy crown, charlie "squeaky" altieri, ADORED joan retallack's
reading and her paper on mac low, asking the pedagogically useful q "what do we
do with an indeterminate text?" so basic, but so reassuring to students (and me)
that it is, after all, a legitimate question. am profoundly gratified by
marjorie perloff's apparent leftening up --stanford's influence? that pernicious
"cultural studies" ambience insidiously making her smarter and smarter and even
smarter? twas trippish meeting kevin and dodie, my e-comrades, and david
kellogg, my cult-stud ally on this here list. good to see walterkalaidjian, i'm
glad he's finally out of st cloud and at a real place, tho we didn't get to talk
in any depth about his work on trauma theory and the armenian genocide. always
good to see bob von hallberg who despite his self-inflicted role as the voice of
the liberal conscience is an extremely good guy, in my experience. The coffee
was EXECRABLE, burt, tho everything else was pretty swell to fab. Real whipped
cream in the salad/dessert bar, can't beat that. and good, rich, fruit
shortcake desserts. lobster was great, even got as much green stuff as i
wanted/could handle. showed victoria rosenthal how to eat a lobster, thus i
hope redeeming myself in ml's eyes (i had inadvertently insulted him within his
hearing at an earlier mla and was mortified). as i drove back down to boston,
the rothenbergs (diane at the wheel) passed me doing at least 80 mph on rte 95
in their spiffy little white rented mustang. loved jerry's "toiteen liddle ol'
ladies" routine. and had never heard dante read aloud in translation--only knew
of the prose translations, sinclair and singleton --thank you armand, paolo and
francesca and then brunetto latini, all those old favorites from the days when i
was smart... by the end of the conference, even the poundians from my department
were talking to me --no mean feat to create an atmosphere of such conviviality
that that could happen.
what else...lyn keller and i shared a delicious "sole marency" or something
weird-sounding like that in bar harbor, everyone else ate lobster except aldon
who ate rum and coke, enjoyed seeing my old grad school jack-spicer-robert-
duncan-special-collections-at-berkeley researching friend joe conte, and
confessing to him after all these years that as a chick i'd felt excluded from
the poetry clique...like the guys felt it would be indecorous to include me or
something...but we shared greenstuff and redstuff at the banquet, or at least
said we were going to, which is just as good. chaired a good session on duncan,
yum yum. let's see what else...oh yeah, as i told barry, i don't think people
objected to his talk because he showed girlie pix, but because there was a way
that the mastery, complexity and "rigor" (a word he used repeatedly) --which is
what made it a compelling talk --also seemed to hold at arms' length and
function as a disclaimer for the more charged elements of his talk --the
autobiographical cynicism, the mention of sexual trauma, the insistence on
"agency" (tho i don't think he actually used that clumsy word) --all seemed to
add up to something that was a brilliant performance but troubled in a way that
put the burden of "troubledness" on the audience, so that he was the cool,
in-control white male authority and those of us who felt troubled or questioned
the performance were hysterics. (not that this is what he said or even implied,
it was more of a dynamic that threatened to duplicate much power stuff that
cleearly and rightly troubled everyone including bw --kinda like lacan?). so, i
admired the performance and got much frm it but also felt it was incomplete, not
in the sense that an unmediated confession would make it complete, but somehow
--constituting his belief in betty page's power as itsself (the belief, not the
power) an object of inquiry might have made the presentation more even, richer,
more balanced...?... anyway...it was a charged event, and one that was useful to
process in the ensuing daze.
in the bus someone (barry? michael?) said there shd have been some attention to
song lyrics, and that we shd make a point of this at the next conference
(presumably on the 60s). george lipsitz wd be fun to hear on that subject. all
in all, it was dreamy, esp the whipped cream. sorry if i've left someone out...
so here i am back in mpls, it's 102 degrees out, why'd i come back? oh well,
it's kinda a nice laid back city, you can wear any old thing and people accept
it...esp in this heat...
love to all adored camaradoes and camaradas...md
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 29 Jun 1996 00:35:36 -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: Beatle Bones and Smokin' Stones
I've heard that one---the 60's started in 11-22-63 when kennedy died
and "i wanna hold your hand" was released in u.k. and the fifties
didn't start until 1955. but the difference between the fourties
and the fifties is minor in comparison unless the fourties started
BEFORE and/or at PEARL HARBOUR rather than when the boys came home
and tvs. etc. pushed women back into domesticity becoming suburban
and the car began ruining things.....
and the 70's--b--1974. d 1979 (when jimmy carter decided to part his
hair to the right rather than left?) or perhaps died when phil ochs
did--i.e. when carter got elected ("oatmeal man" gil scott heron)
but what were the 70s? the 80s were clearly the 80s all throughout
and they spilled over into 1992--and thne there was that brief euphoria
on the pumice of morons when GUITARS started dominating rock and roll
again and visions of canadian style health car plans danced in the
amerikan head.....brief, briefheart, cap n crunch....
----------------
c
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 29 Jun 1996 00:47:30 -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: oh no orono
yes, maria, song lyrics would be fun.............
________
okay, this is probably going to be my last posting on the
poetics list for awhile (unless INSOMNIA tonight turns me to
the comfort of the electron screen and the "immediate gratification"
a prose fiction writer accused "us" poets of recently that this
forum allows....
thank you all for a 20 month "virtual" community
(virtual vitriol?)
and if anyone wants to stay in touch i will be at:
464 Monmouth St. #6, Jersey City, NJ. 07302....
(201)-459-9254....
haven't figured out if it spells anything yet.....
love to all, chris s.
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 29 Jun 1996 18:49:42 +1200
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Daniel Salmon <dpsalmon@IHUG.CO.NZ>
Subject: Re: british women poets
Michelle Leggott, Roma Potiki
New Zealand
At 01:57 PM 28/06/96 -0400, you wrote:
>A friend of mine is looking for suggestions of British or Commonwealth
>women poets of the 20thC to teach in an upcoming course, and i was rather
>embarassed at how few names i cld summon off the top o' the noggin. Any
>suggestions, for my own edification, and my friend's?
>
>thanks, steve
>
>
Daniel Salmon
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 29 Jun 1996 08:59:26 EDT
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: Armand Schwerner
On Friday, June 28, Joel Lewis wrote,
"Thanks for interesting report on Orono.
RE: your comments on Enslinn, I'd like to throw out a question to the
list. Enslinn, along w/ Armand Schwerner & Nathaniel tarn were all considerered
to be major figuires in the New Amercican Poetry, the subject of Special
Magazine Numbers, etc., etc. 25 years later, none of them are represented in amy
of the major NAP revison anthologies, in Silliman's words, "disappeared poets"
-- I'm not up on Tarn & Enslinn, but I know Schwerner's recent work & it is
still strong & interesting. What is the change. Has there been a paradigm shift
in taste, reading???
Puzzled in Hoboken, Joel Lewis".
I only became familiar with Armand Schwerner's work a few years ago, so I can't
say much about his reception of 10 or 20 years ago, but I think one of the
things that probably contributes to his having been "disappeared," is that his
more recent work, at least initially, is just plain confusing. If you stay with
it this confusion becomes a richness, but my guess is that a lot of people don't
get that far.
Even when you realize that you are reading within a tradition of
academic/literary satire there are still quite a lot of elements that cannot be
gathered under that rubric. You begin to wonder after a while why such a
categorization was necessary in the first place, and I think that by itself, can
lead to a feeling of uneasiness.
The iconic material in the work is also difficult to place. The staging of it,
which relies on an unusual mix of satire, erudition and inventiveness, confounds
classification as "visual poetry," or "visual fiction." I think these
categories are becoming less and less useful anyway, but again placement within
a tradition becomes somewhat difficult.
Still I think Schwerner later work is not that anomalous. I think there are
considerable parallels to be drawn with Paul Zelevansky's work, say, and others
who are combining somewhat disparate material.
Ward Tietz
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 29 Jun 1996 09:23:27 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Carnography <scrypt@INTERPORT.NET>
Subject: Re: Beatle Bones and Smokin' Stones
At 11:29 AM 6/28/96, Steve Carll is rumored to have typed:
> At 01:20 AM 6/28/96 -0400, Rob Hardin wrote:
>
> >1. Mainstream sixties bands aren't worth this much commentary, esp not
> > on a prosody list.
>
> Then he wrote:
>
> > I don't like to insult musicians and I don't like it when
> >musicians are insulted.
>
> Wouldn't it be kind of insulting to a band (of musicians, presumably) to
> dismiss them as not worthy of commentary?
Apparently, you haven't been following this thread. The two bands
whose musicianship I defended were the Beatles and the Stones. Since
I opined that they were not worth discussing on a prosody list even
as I *defended* them, you would do well to notice the context
of the word *worth* before presuming insult.
In the context of this discussion, my "not worth this much commentary,
esp. on a prosody list" is vastly different from your "not *worthy* of
comment."
Also: by saying they were not worth discussing, I was politely suggesting
that I was not interested in being dragged into further discussions about
the Beatles and the Stones. (Someday, perhaps, my request will be honored.)
As to the context of "not worth this much commentary":
The overexposed are less worth commenting on than the underpromoted
precisely *because* we have been sufficiently buried in commentary.
Every moment spent talking about the overexposed is a moment spent ignoring
the underpromoted (those who are most in need of discussion and support).
This is a list devoted to discussing poetry, and poets are the least
exposed artists of all. And yes, sixties pop music can be relevant,
but Jesus Christ--you can discuss the Beatles with anyone anywhere.
> Not to mention reducing the
> Beatles and the Stones to the status of "mainstream sixties bands"
No one's "reducing" anyone's talent or influence. The Beatles and Stones
are mainstream sixties bands in the sense that 22 Brides, whom I've
recorded with, are an obscure nineties band, and PIL, whom I've played
with, was a conspicuous underground eighties band that crossed over.
The era in which a band breaks, the generation to which a band belongs,
is what defines it chronologically. Its popularity (or lack of it) is
what secures its niche.
> when both
> have obvious importance outside those rather tiny confines.
Keats, whom you quote, has an importance beyond his status as a Lake Poet
and a poet of the Romantic period. Would you say that history is incorrect
in calling him a poet of the Romantic Period? If so, then how does
his importance contradict the "tiny confines" of history?
> I left the
> sixties when I was three and discovered the Beatles in 1978....Their music
> has been a big influence on my person and my writing...and I'm sure that's
> true for some other people on this list, which probably explains why the
> topic came up at all.
Actually, the topic came up because people who span two generations were
talking about it. I was born in the sixties; another gentleman who was
posting mentioned having played in bands for three decades, if I'm not
mistaken. If you really feel that your generation (ie, mine, since
we were both born in the sixties) and the people on this list are the last
source of fresh insights on a well-explored subject, then it would seem
that boomers aren't the only generation that is guilty of self-importance.
> Does anyone call Miles Davis a "fifties jazz musician"?
Miles was recording with Parker before the fifties. However, the Miles
Davis Quintet was a fifties ensemble (even though their recordings
stretched into the sixties).
> When the band started?
No, when the band made their first important mark via recordings and
public performance, and what generation the band members actually belonged
to.
The Beatles were certainly a part of the sixties generation. To conclude that
they were incapable of musical development beyond the peak point of their
generation--let alone that their musical influence is insignificant--is
your own supposition and does not follow logically from anything that I've
said.
Furthermore, I would argue that we should talk about other artists precisely
because the influence of mainstream sixties bands is so pervasive. Oasis,
probably the least interesting band of the nineties, is an example of what
comes from obsessing over the Beatles for perhaps the billionth time. There
comes a time when dominating presences, however good, become dead ends: at
this point, it's safe to say that Elvis has left the building.
All the best,
Rob Hardin
PS: To everyone who asked, "Is this a prosody list?" I'd have to answer,
for me, it is. That's how it was introduced to me by Charles Bernstein
when I first met him: we spoke about prosody and musical notation (a
subject I'm far more interested in discussing than sixties bands). He
then said that I might be interested in this list.
http://www.interport.net/~scrypt
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 29 Jun 1996 12:31:55 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: William Slaughter <wrs@UNF.EDU>
Subject: Announcing Mudlark
ANNOUNCING MUDLARK
I have been a silent partner to the POETICS discussion for more than a
year now. My reason for breaking that silence is MUDLARK.
MUDLARK is an electronic journal of poetry & poetics that I edit and publish.
It is available (free) on the World Wide Web at http://www.unf.edu/mudlark and
by e-mail from mudlark@unf.edu. It can also be found in the E-Text Archive at
the University of Michigan and is linked to the Electronic Poetry Center at
SUNY-Buffalo.
MUDLARK No. 3, just out, is a 48-49 poem sequence called ARS POETICA by Gerald
Fleming whose work has appeared, for example, in THE AMERICAS REVIEW, FIVE
FINGERS REVIEW, INDIANA REVIEW, MICHIGAN QUARTERLY REVIEW, NEW LETTERS, PEQUOD
and PUERTO DEL SOL. Fleming edits BARNABE MOUNTAIN REVIEW. He lives in
Lagunitas, California.
MUDLARK, its readers tell me, is worth the time it takes. I'm hoping that you
will have a look at it. More than that, I'm hoping that you will read it.
__________________________________________________
MUDLARK NO. 4 will issue itself in early fall 1996. "A Conversation with Martin
Heidegger," a long poem by Van K. Brock in English and a translation of it by
Josef Pesch into German will constitute the whole of it. Van Brock is a
Professor of English at Florida State University, editor of INTERNATIONAL
QUARTERLY, and author, most recently, of UNSPEAKABLE STRANGERS (Anhinga 1995),
a collection of poems related to the Holocaust. Josef Pesch teaches at
Heidegger's own University of Freiburg.
MUDLARK NO. 5 will be made up of poems and essays from many different
hands...and is still open. I quote, and why not, myself:
As our full name, MUDLARK: AN ELECTRONIC JOURNAL OF POETRY & POETICS, suggests,
we will consider accomplished work that locates itself anywhere on the spectrum
of contemporary practice. We want poems, of course, but we want essays, too,
that make us read poems (and write them?) differently somehow. Although we are
not innocent, we do imagine ourselves capable of surprise. We read and answer
our mail.
In Mudlark poetry is free. Our authors give us their work and we, in turn, give
it to our readers. What is the coin of poetry's realm? Poetry is a gift
economy. One of the things we can do at Mudlark to "pay" our authors for their
work is point to it here and there, wherever else it is. We can tell our
readers how to find it, how to subscribe to it, and how to buy it...if it is
for sale. Toward that end, we will maintain A-NOTES (on the Authors) we
publish. We will call attention to their work.
__________________________________________________
MUDLARK No. 2 (1996)
THE RAPE POEMS by Frances Driscoll
Frances Driscoll's poems have been in MASSACHUSETTS REVIEW, NEGATIVE
CAPABILITY, PLOUGHSHARES, and WILLOW SPRINGS, among other places. Gillian
Conoley published "Island of the Raped Women" in VOLT and nominated it for a
Pushcart Prize. It won and Bill Henderson included it in PUSHCART PRIZE
ANTHOLOGY XIX (1995). "Wild Ribbons" originally appeared in VOLT, too, and
"Difficult Word" in 13th MOON. Black River Press did a chapbook of Driscoll's
poems, TALK TO ME, in 1987. She has an M.F.A. from the University of
Massachusetts, Amherst. In a poem called "Subsidies," Driscoll writes:
"Sometimes return is all anyone wants."
MUDLARK No. 1 (1995)
TWELVE OF ONE by Valerie Anthony
and A DOZEN OF THE OTHER by David Swoyer
Valerie Anthony is a playwright as well as a poet. She received an Individual
Artist's Grant for playwriting from the Florida Arts Council, 1994. Her play,
LAND OF THE DOUBLEWIDES, was produced at the Florida Studio Theatre in
Sarasota, 1995. She is presently a University Fellow in the English Department
at Florida State University. Anthony writes fiction too. From "Lash," one of
her stories: "There is only her breath and mine now, hanging in the air. Saying
things." The TWELVE Anthony poems, hanging in the air in MUDLARK No. 1, have
that same doubled breathing in them. "Saying things." ("Lash" is in the
current, No. 57, issue of EXQUISITE CORPSE.)
David Swoyer is a painter as well as a poet. His paintings hang in both private
and museum collections. For twenty-five years he has been a museum curator and
presently works in that capacity at the Museum of Arts and Sciences (MOAS) in
Daytona Beach, Florida. Swoyer is a Viet Nam veteran, "whose disability has not
made him independently wealthy but has given him a higher regard for excursions
to Canada." From "A Glitch in the Parable," a poem Swoyer has not abandoned:
"The time that remains depends / on the distance left to fall." The DOZEN poems
Swoyer has abandoned in MUDLARK No. 1 have their language lives in that
remaining time.
__________________________________________________
William Slaughter, MUDLARK
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 29 Jun 1996 15:19:52 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Rod Smith <AERIALEDGE@AOL.COM>
Subject: Re: british women poets
Maggie O'Sullivan!!!
There's _Floating Capital: New Poets from London_ ed. Clarke & Sheppard,
Potes & Poets, '91. Terrific book includes fewer women than other people,
however Virginia Firnberg, Val Pancucci, & Hazel Smith, as well as O'Sullivan
are there.
There's also a more recent anthology of British & American women
sperimentalists twas announced on the list a bit ago-- Fiona Templeton had a
copy at the Big Allis benefit, very snappy-- can't remember the pub. was it
Stride? Anyway, SPD & possibly other distributors are still waiting for it,
once it's here,
we'll all be happy.
Rod
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 29 Jun 1996 15:33:31 -0400
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: British Women Poets
Steven Shoemaker:
You ask about British women poets. There's a lot of good work now where
there used to be very little. When I edited _23 Modern British Poets_ in
the early 1970s it was not possible to include any women at all. That
seems amazing. Anyway, in practical terms, if this is to be a course taught
at an American university, availability of texts becomes something of an
issue. For mainstream poets, you might look at Linda France's _Sixty Women
Poets_ published by Bloodaxe. Bloodaxe also published Jeni Couzyn's _the
Bloodaxe Book of Contemporary Women Poets_, Carol Rumens's _New Women
Poets_, and some other anthologies, but the France book would be the most
useful at this point. It is available in this country from Dufour as are
most other Bloodaxe titles (and many other volumes from British and Irish
publishers: everyone should have a copy of their catalogue). The France
anthology, which includes Irish poets, begins with poems published after
1971, the year Stevie Smith died. It ranges from very well known poets like
Eavan Boland to poets born in the late 1950s and early 60s who are not
known here at all. Some of the poets you (or your friend) might want to
consider are: Sujata Bhatt, Eilean Ni Chuilleanain, Carol Ann Duffy,
Lavinia Greenlaw, Selima Hill, Kathleen Jamie, Liz Lochhead, Mebdh
Mcguckian, Ruth Padel, Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill, and Pauline Stainer. A few of
these poets also appear in Neil Astley's _Poetry With an Edge_ and the
anthology edited by Michael Hulse, David Kennedy and David Morley called
_The New Poetry_. I have written a longish review of these and related
books in my column on recent British poetry in _Another Chicago Magazine_
(No. 29, Spring 1995).
The problem with these Bloodaxe books, however, is that they pretty much
exclude experimental or linguistically innovative poetry by British and
Irish women. The recent anthology from Reality Street Editions (and Ken
Edwards should probably say a word at this point), _Out of Everywhere_,
includes work by Maggie O'Sullivan, Wendy Mulford, and Denise Riley, but
there are also a good number of Americans. A recent issue of _West Coast
Review_ (No 17, Fall 1995),edited by Peter Quartermain, contains some of
the same poets represented by different poems. And I believe there will be
new women poets in a special issue of _Talisman_ being edited by Ric
Caddel. The Brits on the list will have, I'm sure, other recommendations.
But maybe this is a start. Single volumes by British and Irish women that
I've been reading or re-reading recently include Magie Hannan's
_Liar,Jones_ (Bloodaxe), Denise Riley's _Mop Mop Georgette_ (Reality
Street), Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill's _The Astrakhan Cloak_ (with translations
from the Irish by Paul Muldoon) (Gallery Books), Pauline Stainer's, _The
Ice-Pilot Speaks_ (Bloodaxe),and Sujata Bhatt's, _Monkey Shadows_
(Carcanet). Anyway, there's a lot of activity & there's not much attention
being paid to it all over here. Romana Huk's conference/festival at the
University of New Hampshire should help things out. Are there any British
or Irish women poets on this list? If so, we don't hear from them. The
Dufour catalogue, by the way, is available from Dufour Editions, P.O. box
7, Chester Springs, PA 19425.
John Matthias
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 29 Jun 1996 15:39:16 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: British Women Poets
In-Reply-To: Message of Sat, 29 Jun 1996 15:33:31 -0400 from
<John.E.Matthias.1@ND.EDU>
To the lists of British women poets offered by Charles, Rod, Maria, John, and
others, I'd add Geraldine Monk and Elaine Randell--two of the best, I think.
Don't know how far back you all want to go--does anyone still read (as Duncan
did) Kathleen Raine? Mina Loy counts as British in some books.
Don't know too how the Irish poets (e.g., Catherine Walsh) feel about being
located next to the British poets in courses and anthologies. Perhaps Peter
Quartermain or Ric Caddel would know this.
Keith Tuma
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 29 Jun 1996 16:02:20 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: oh no orono
In-Reply-To: Message of Fri, 28 Jun 1996 22:25:05 -0500 from
<damon001@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
Well everybody's cheering about the Orono conference, and for good reason--lots
of excellent papers, seeing old friends, making new ones, attaching faces to
pixels, etc. etc. No one's mentioned Jerky the Moose yet, which many laughed
at and then proceeded to excoriate in conversation afterwards--"It's Saturday
Night Live" a poet-theorist said to me. But Dorn had already proleptically
remarked at dinner the night before--"It's about time somebody killed modern
poetry"--or some such, I can't remember exactly, and who knows if he was
serious.
My favorite moment was Henry Weinfield's remarking after the panel on the New
American Poetry anthology that well, really, Frank O'Hara had only three or
four poems worth remembering. It's not that I agree, but by that point in the
conference it was clear to me that part of what we were about was cheerleading
in the woods. Remarkable how much consensus--in poetic and political values,
in emergent canons--was in place at the conference. Whole realms of 50s
poetic production were written off as a joke--condescension that is, finally,
self-defeating. These are generalizations of course;there were exceptions;
Bob von Hallberg is one (he's not here on the list to respond to ex cathedra
pronouncements). Curious, too, how little the American poetry of the 1950s
was set in international contexts, at least in the papers I attended. Jerry
Rothenberg's plenary talk was an exception here. We are that provincial? (I
know, it was a conference on American poetry, but boosterism is boosterism.)
Maria D. has already remarked on the limits of the predominant author-focus.
I guess the best parties are populated mainly by friends--perhaps that explains
some of the misty ethos. Nevertheless, it was entertaining too to hear Barry
and Marjorie rehearsing political squabbles they've had before (I think) at the
cash bar after Dorn's reading. And no doubt productive disagreements were and
are ongoing. Would that they were more often out in the open, or not
impossible because the NPF tends to attract people like you and me, who mostly
agree as we take Olson down a notch or two and elevate Frank O'Hara a little.
Don't get me wrong--I liked many of the papers too (I won't discuss them here)
and learned a lot. And it was a blast not only to see old friends but to get
to experience for the first time the dignity of Kevin K. and Dodie B., the
unassuming earnestness of Paul Naylor, the laughter of you and you and you.
It's boiling here today too--this is my cold dip in the pool.
Keith Tuma
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 29 Jun 1996 14:27:15 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Herb Levy <herb@ESKIMO.COM>
Subject: Re: Amazon.com
Rae Armantrout writes:
> I just made the interesting (to me) discovery that this huge online
>bookstore at http://amazon.com actually has small press poetry books! But
>maybe you already knew that.
While it is amazing to search the Amazon catalog & find listings for many
in print & some forthcoming books that you've never seen on the shelves of
a general book store, they only have the biggest best sellers in stock.
They don't have a store, they've simply put a lot of catalogs online.
If you order something esoteric (not by Stephen King) from them they order
it from the publisher or distributor & send it to you when they get it in,
just like a "real" book store. But Amazon adds a few handling charges that
I've never seen at a "real" store, though.
Maybe the convenience is worth it for folks in towns with hopeless book
stores & maybe it'll get some business from people who've never heard of
SPD, etc.
Herb Levy
herb@eskimo.com
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 29 Jun 1996 11:40:51 -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: Re: British Women Poets
In-Reply-To: <POETICS%96062915545046@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Madge Herron is another. She appears (only place I've seen her) in a
volume called _Love Poems By Women_ which is very precious to me. Gab.
I never did find out if she's still alive, by the way, if anyone has a way
of discovering.
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 29 Jun 1996 14:59:04 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Steve Carll <sjcarll@SLIP.NET>
Subject: Extended Play
At 09:23 AM 6/29/96 -0400, Rob Hardin wrote:
>At 11:29 AM 6/28/96, Steve Carll is rumored to have typed:
>
>> At 01:20 AM 6/28/96 -0400, Rob Hardin wrote:
>>
>> >1. Mainstream sixties bands aren't worth this much commentary, esp not
>> > on a prosody list.
>>
>> Then he wrote:
>>
>> > I don't like to insult musicians and I don't like it when
>> >musicians are insulted.
>>
>> Wouldn't it be kind of insulting to a band (of musicians, presumably) to
>> dismiss them as not worthy of commentary?
>
>Apparently, you haven't been following this thread.
That's a mistaken assumption on your part, not to mention unnecessarily
insulting. You can make a point without being so arrogant, can't you?
>The two bands
>whose musicianship I defended were the Beatles and the Stones. Since
>I opined that they were not worth discussing on a prosody list even
>as I *defended* them, you would do well to notice the context
>of the word *worth* before presuming insult.
I'm fully aware of the context, and it still seems like an insult to me. It
is possible to insult someone you're trying to defend, ya know.
>In the context of this discussion, my "not worth this much commentary,
>esp. on a prosody list" is vastly different from your "not *worthy* of
>comment."
I think "vastly" is a bit hyperbolic, Rob.
>Also: by saying they were not worth discussing, I was politely suggesting
>that I was not interested in being dragged into further discussions about
>the Beatles and the Stones. (Someday, perhaps, my request will be honored.)
This is e-mail. Nobody can drag you anywhere you don't want to go. You
just have to keep your finger off that "Queue" key (or maybe you have one
that says "Send." Whatever.)
>As to the context of "not worth this much commentary":
>The overexposed are less worth commenting on than the underpromoted
>precisely *because* we have been sufficiently buried in commentary.
>Every moment spent talking about the overexposed is a moment spent ignoring
>the underpromoted (those who are most in need of discussion and support).
>
>This is a list devoted to discussing poetry, and poets are the least
>exposed artists of all. And yes, sixties pop music can be relevant,
>but Jesus Christ--you can discuss the Beatles with anyone anywhere.
That's what I thought I was doing. Plenty of moments to go around, too.
>> Not to mention reducing the
>> Beatles and the Stones to the status of "mainstream sixties bands"
>
>No one's "reducing" anyone's talent or influence. The Beatles and Stones
>are mainstream sixties bands in the sense that 22 Brides, whom I've
>recorded with, are an obscure nineties band, and PIL, whom I've played
>with, was a conspicuous underground eighties band that crossed over.
>The era in which a band breaks, the generation to which a band belongs,
>is what defines it chronologically. Its popularity (or lack of it) is
>what secures its niche.
>
>> when both
>> have obvious importance outside those rather tiny confines.
>
>Keats, whom you quote, has an importance beyond his status as a Lake Poet
>and a poet of the Romantic period. Would you say that history is incorrect
>in calling him a poet of the Romantic Period? If so, then how does
>his importance contradict the "tiny confines" of history?
History is inadequate in calling Keats a poet of the Romantic era. A
summation like that is a fine starting point for a further exploration of
Keats' work, etc., but when a phrase like that gets used as if nothing more
need be said about them, I would say it's reductive.
>> I left the
>> sixties when I was three and discovered the Beatles in 1978....Their music
>> has been a big influence on my person and my writing...and I'm sure that's
>> true for some other people on this list, which probably explains why the
>> topic came up at all.
>
>Actually, the topic came up because people who span two generations were
>talking about it. I was born in the sixties; another gentleman who was
>posting mentioned having played in bands for three decades, if I'm not
>mistaken. If you really feel that your generation (ie, mine, since
>we were both born in the sixties) and the people on this list are the last
>source of fresh insights on a well-explored subject, then it would seem
>that boomers aren't the only generation that is guilty of self-importance.
As I said, I remember how the topic came up, and your version of it doesn't
contradict mine. But I didn't say "our" generation was the "last source of
fresh insights" on anything. We're all capable of fresh insights, even on
so-called "well-explored" subjects, not because of what generation we belong
to but because we're human beings and we have minds that keep turning things
over. Some might characterize that last statement as indicating a sense of
self-importance, but let's at least be accurate about its nature. But the
reason I brought this point up is that the Beatles, and the psychedelic pop
song form they helped create, informs the poetics of at least one person on
this list (that I know of), thus validating their discussion in POETICS.
>> Does anyone call Miles Davis a "fifties jazz musician"?
>
>Miles was recording with Parker before the fifties. However, the Miles
>Davis Quintet was a fifties ensemble (even though their recordings
>stretched into the sixties).
But here again, Miles recorded a lot of stuff post-Quintet. Many people who
don't like the cool stuff but go wild for "Bitches Brew" might consider
Miles a sixties jazz musician. I think both these factions miss the big
picture.
>> When the band started?
>
>No, when the band made their first important mark via recordings and
>public performance, and what generation the band members actually belonged
>to.
And who decides these things? Or is there some natural consensus that I've
missed out on in my naivete? I might point out that according to these
criteria, PiL would be a seventies band, not an eighties one, since Lydon
and Levene were part of the English punk rock movement (roughly '76-'78),
and PiL's first two albums (1978 and '79) would seem to have to be
considered as important marks defining a "postpunk" approach. I think these
criteria are a highly suspect and not ultimately very helpful shorthand.
>The Beatles were certainly a part of the sixties generation. To conclude that
>they were incapable of musical development beyond the peak point of their
>generation--let alone that their musical influence is insignificant--is
>your own supposition and does not follow logically from anything that I've
>said.
So when you told Henry Gould that mainstream sixties bands are only
interesting in a cultural study of that era, it was way out of left field
for me to conclude that you were asserting that they're uninteresting in any
context other than a cultural study of that era?
>Furthermore, I would argue that we should talk about other artists precisely
>because the influence of mainstream sixties bands is so pervasive. Oasis,
>probably the least interesting band of the nineties, is an example of what
>comes from obsessing over the Beatles for perhaps the billionth time. There
>comes a time when dominating presences, however good, become dead ends: at
>this point, it's safe to say that Elvis has left the building.
I agree with you about dead ends, but you know what? I kind of like Oasis.
Their first album was derivative and bland; but _(What's the Story) Morning
Glory?_ shows a vast improvement in their ability to write pop songs with
nerve and verve. You and I both know that there are hundreds of less
interesting bands neither of us will ever hear of for precisely that reason,
and even in the realm of stuff that gets some exposure, what about Alice in
Chains, Toad the Wet Sprocket, and Counting Crows?
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
``````````````````````````````````````````````
Steve Carll sjcarll@slip.net
I listen.
I hear nothing. Only
the cow, the cow
of nothingness, mooing
down the bones.
~~Galway Kinnell
``````````````````````````````````````````````
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 29 Jun 1996 15:36:57 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: "." <imburgia@WHIDBEY.COM>
Subject: Re: LSD lsd l s d led sleds
------ =_NextPart_000_01BB65D0.D4233260
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
ARE YOU ANY RELATION TO RICK FILKINS OF TACOMA, WASHINGTON WHO GRADUATED FROM CURTIS HIGH SCHOOL IN 1968? SPIRITDOVE.
----------
From: Christopher Filkins[SMTP:filch@POBOX.COM]
Sent: Wednesday, June 26, 1996 2:47 AM
To: Multiple recipients of list POETICS
Subject: LSD lsd l s d led sleds
Looks much better justified.
> >
> > > I
> > > had
> > > heard
> > > from my
> > > co-worker
> > > about a big
> > > problem today.
> > > It seems my kid
> > > and your kid, all
> > > of our kids have to
> > > worry about evil drug
> > > dealers giving out fake
> > > tattoos with acid in them.
> > > This is not a joke or rumor.
> > > This is a serious threat that
> > > must not be taken lightly. They
> > > have a blue star on them, but not
> > > all - some have cartoons or such on
> > > them. You must be very careful with a
> > > blue star tattoo because the strychnine
> > > can be absorbed into your blood from just
> > > handling the paper. This horrible thing has
> > > a reason to it - the dealers want LSD addicts
> > > to buy more after they are hooked. Symptoms you
> > > should watch for are: hallucinations, mood swings,
> > > uncontrolled laughter, drop in body temperature,
> > > dizziness or disorientation, severely dilated
> > > pupils, and severe vomiting. Some time - up
> > > to an hour, can pass between contact with
> > > the drug and onset of symptoms. If your
> > > child has fell victim to this heinous
> > > crime, you must take him quickly to
> > > a hospital. Children hare already
> > > died from this, LSD overdose is
> > > easy. If you see a suspicious
> > > person giving tattoos, foil
> > > wrapped especially, phone
> > > your police immediately.
> > > This is a real danger
> > > and is growing much
> > > faster than I can
> > > spread warnings
> > > alone. Thanks
> > > for reading
> > > this that
> > > I wrote
> > > about
> > > LSD
> > > !
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=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 29 Jun 1996 18:11:40 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Joe Amato <amato@CHARLIE.CNS.IIT.EDU>
Subject: Re: Extended Play
hey steve, rob h., henry, you guyz: i don't know what in hell you're all
talking about sometimes, musicologically undisabused as i am, but i just
thought i'd stick my beak in here and observe that there's really no need
for you guys to be at one another... it happens that i've enjoyed the facts
you've been slinging at each other even while you've been slinging... why
not just riff?... i mean, i enjoy what you've each brought to the
conversation by way of insight...
and hey, i still like listening to foreigner for godsakes, so i'm not
coming from anyplace particularly snooty...
'for what its worth'//
best,
joe
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 29 Jun 1996 21:28:34 MDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Louis Cabri <ldmcabri@ACS.UCALGARY.CA>
Subject: the thing
In-Reply-To: <Pine.OSF.3.91.960629122951.2164E-100000@osprey.unf.edu>; from
"William Slaughter" at Jun 29, 1996 12:31 pm
Following, obliquely, & in too general terms, on Peter
Quartermain's post, it seems to me that the
point of taking "radical" poetry to theory (thinking of it that
way as C.B. has argued, rather than the other way around as
seems the obvious &
usual) is to want to find
continuously new ways of showing how and why poetry is political
and inherently social (but why this must be constantly shown says
a lot about one's 'location', too); in other words to keep that
problem of the
political open and alive (complex) as an issue of form, to show
poetry as
at once a fully "citational" & yet underdetermined matrix in relation to
the political. This
seems more of a challenge, & even more necessary, than to either
assert repeatedly that poetry's radicality is in some way obviously
political, or conversely to argue empirically that poetry's claims in
each instance fail to become politically revolutionary, Actual, so (goes
the implication) why bother thinking politically or
revolutionarily. I wrote this on screen; these "linebreaks" are
deletions & changes... Oh, for those who read Ernesto Laclau,
I've just found this interesting article, haven't read it yet,
but intriguing title - "Why do empty signifiers matter to
politics?"
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 30 Jun 1996 06:33:47 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Ron Silliman <rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM>
Subject: Zelevansky
Ward,
I'm always interested in the idea of people joining disparate materials
together, but I don't know the work of Paul Zelevansky. Can you get me
the 100,000 foot overview?
In a similar vein, there's a poem by one Haki Pok at the beginning of
the 3rd issue of Arras, just out (and a terrific mag, cover to cover),
but no mention of him/her either among the contributor's notes or even
on the list thereof on the back cover. Presuming that this is not a
pseudonym for the editor, Brian Kim Stefans (Hockey Puck?), can
somebody tell me more about this poet?
Re the disappearance, to whatever degree, of Enslin (please spell that
name right), Tarn, Schwerner et al, I would think this is a sign that,
say, Sulfur and its predecessor Caterpillar have not had the lasting
impact on the scene that its editor imagines. All of these are
interesting poets, but their relation to Olson et al is at some
distance (Armand really is part of the scene around NYC that originally
led to Caterpillar--he, Antin, Rothenberg, Kelly et al either "too
young" or too non-projective to get into the Allen anthology). In the
case of Tarn and Enslin, they've lived at some distance from those key
urban centers and really don't hustle their work as much as they might.
Nathaniel was in Hoboken the other week for the big Russ/American thang
and looked and sounded fine. His work with Grossman/Cape Goliard, which
originally brought out the Mayan Letters, Mayakovsky's How are Verse
Made, the first English translations of Victor Segalen and Nazim
Hikmet, LZ's "A" 22/23, Henri Lefebvre's Dialectical Materialism, was
one of the most intensely great editing projects of the past 40 years.
It's impact is still vibrating through the culture.
My favorite Enslin book is an early one: New Sharon's Prospect and
Journals. The long poems seemed too much to me to be exercises on the
line, fine for a hundred pages, but ultimately fading into a restricted
range of possibility. For pure studies of the ear, my own preference
has been, say, for Ken Irby, whose work does so much WITHIN the
individual line.
All best,
Ron
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 30 Jun 1996 13:41:43 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Bill Luoma <Maz881@AOL.COM>
Subject: CS & JC
Chris Stroffolino posted an error in his phone number. These are the true
specs below:
464 Monmouth St. #6, Jersey City, NJ. 07302....
(201)-459-9245....
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 30 Jun 1996 16:12:33 -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: of the whole art/spam two generations
Hi. What's the unconscious?
Jordan
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 30 Jun 1996 13:25:48 -0700
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Carl Lynden Peters <clpeters@SFU.CA>
Subject: Re: of the whole art/spam two generations
In-Reply-To: <v01520d05adfc9de976f2@[166.84.199.56]> from "Jordan Davis" at
Jun 30, 96 04:12:33 pm
> Hi. What's the unconscious?
>
> Jordan
jordan, -- what eliot was so afraid of
c.
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 30 Jun 1996 21:16:08 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: Commonwealth women poets
Hi all,
I'd just like to second (third?) the recommendations of Michele Leggott's work.
Another NZer whose work I find essential is Dinah Hawken, especially "Small
Stories of Devotion" - maybe she's not querzblatz enough for some, but I find
her poetry innovative and exciting nonetheless.
After mentioning Dinah, perhaps I should put in a word for the Canadian Phyllis
Webb - I know her chiefly for her influence on Dinah, but I assume she's well
known to the list.
Cheers &c,
Tom Beard.
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 30 Jun 1996 16:38:43 -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 <damon001@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>
Subject: Re: of the whole art/spam two generations
In message <v01520d05adfc9de976f2@[166.84.199.56]> UB Poetics discussion group
writes:
> Hi. What's the unconscious?
>
> Jordan
freud made it up, but it works for me
i pay it well.
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 30 Jun 1996 21:29:44 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: Extended Play
>But here again, Miles recorded a lot of stuff post-Quintet. Many people who
>don't like the cool stuff but go wild for "Bitches Brew" might consider
>Miles a sixties jazz musician. I think both these factions miss the big
>picture.
>I might point out that according to these
>criteria, PiL would be a seventies band, not an eighties one, since Lydon
>and Levene were part of the English punk rock movement (roughly '76-'78),
>and PiL's first two albums (1978 and '79) would seem to have to be
>considered as important marks defining a "postpunk" approach.
There are some of us who know Davis best via "Tutu" & "Doo-bop", or Lydon best
through "Open Up" with Leftfield. Does this make them 80s or 90s musicians? The
whole idea of nailing a musician or band down to what someone considers their
most "influential" decade seems silly. And does one count this by the time that
they recorded their most influential music, or the time upon which that music
had most influence? If the latter, then Kraftwerk would be an 80s or 90s band,
although they did most of their recording in the 70s.
Someone said that the 80s ended in December 1992 - what was the event that
caused this death? Is it something US-specific? Maybe in NZ we jumped from the
50s to the 80s in mid-84 with the end of Muldoon. A lot of it seems tied to
personal life changes - my 80s must have started in about '91, when I got a job
and was able to afford Armani, whereas everyone else was starting to wear
grunge. Maybe I'm still stuck in the 80s - I still prefer Frankie Goes to
Hollywood to Smashing Pumpkins, Versace to Stussy, and Bolly to Spirulina.
Maybe my 90s will start if I get made redundant.
Cheers &c,
Tom Beard.
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 30 Jun 1996 18:07:03 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Charles Alexander <chax@MTN.ORG>
Subject: Re: Zelevansky
>Ward,
>
>I'm always interested in the idea of people joining disparate materials
>together, but I don't know the work of Paul Zelevansky. Can you get me
>the 100,000 foot overview?
Ward will probably do this better, but I can give a little background or
overview. Paul Zelevansky comes out of the visual art/visual book field. His
most well-known work is The Case for the Burial of Ancestors, which indeed
invents a visual language, using what look like xeroxed & clip-art images to
make a somewhat readable visual text. There at least two and perhaps three
books in this series by now, and Zelevansky has made other visual books as
well. I think what he is doing is making glyphs, which is something entirely
different than Schwerner, who is translating invented glyphs. But the
comparison still made some sense to me, at least in part, as a reading of
either of them needs an openness to visual/literary invention and to a good
sense of humor. I believe that a few years ago American Book Review did a
two-issue special feature on visual literature which was co-edited by
Zelevansky and Johanna Drucker. Let me quote from Drucker's The Century of
Artists' Books (Granary Books, 1995):
"Not all uses of the book as a self-contained conceptual system are as
abstract or analytic as the works just discussed. An interesting contrast to
these are the books of Paul Zelevansky, The Book of Takes (Zartscorp, 1976),
The Case for the Burial of Ancestors (Zartscorp and Visual Studies Workshop
Press, 1981), Shadow Architecture at the Crossroads (CNC, 1988).
Zelevansky's works contain an entire universe of references, forms,
narratives, codes, and information. The three works are intimately related,
though each is distinct in form and functions independently. Offset printed
from originals made with rubber stamps, presstype, typewriter, and other
low-tech graphic items, the books make striking use of the potential of
these media to translate into tones of black and white. Zelevansky also
exploits the structures and conventions of book form to their fullest: the
momentum of the narrative is interrupted and fleshed out with other
information, visual material, jokes, puns, a rich array of graphic elements
which continually expand the world which Zelevansky is creating in the book.
One the one hand, these are closed systems, ones in which the significance
and meaning of the elements, is generated entirely from their relations to
each other. On the other hand, as Zelevansky says of his work, "the edges of
the page" are "the proscenium which contains the play" but "the screen is
porous between us."
There's more in Drucker's book, and she knows Zelevansky's work far better
than I do. But from what I know I would recommend a look to anyone.
Zelevansky is one of the pioneers in book arts/artists' books -- who has
influenced many people in useful ways. His language, which I see as
influenced by the lettriste movement as well as by rubber stamps and xerox
art and mail art, is a wonder. My own sense of Zelevansky's rather lengthy
forays into books which are, as Drucker says, "parallel universes structured
according to the rules of a symbolic language," is parallel to that of
Silliman's sense of Enslin's longer poems, that the books ultimately fade
"into a restricted range of possibility." But then, as someone recently
pointed out about limits or limitations, just about everybody's work has
some limits.
charles
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 30 Jun 1996 20:57:02 -0500
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Lisa Amber Phillips <LPHILLIPS@BINAH.CC.BRANDEIS.EDU>
Subject: Orono Others
This is my inaugural message to the POETICS list, but I feel as if much
of what I will say is actually a continuation of many of the amazing
conversations I had while at Orono. I'm not much of a rah-rah type,
but I was reeeeeelly blown away by the quality of the conference (no
mean feat to sustain that for five days), the high concentration of
people doing original research in their subjects, and the warm
atmosphere of camaraderie that was inclusive of a relative stranger
like myself. I don't know if anyone else had this experience, but
for me, coming from a small department where, as one of my profs so
astutely said, "few people are mad for poetry," the conference
experience was a heady combination of banquet and boot camp. All this
last week I've felt like Oliver with his bowl pleading, "Please, sir,
I want more." Instant community.
On to a few more utopic remembrances: meeting Kevin Killian and Dodie
Bellamy (again), meeting Roger Conover and Keith Tuma smoking outside the
stairwell while talking about theatrical suicides (I still don't quite get
it how Arthur Cravan is supposed to be a "metaphorical" suicide. Keith,
any insight?), meeting Michael Basinski, whose work I have admired for a
while, a post-cash bar beer and pistachio fest w/George Hartley, Chris
Stroffolino, Barret Watten, Al Golding, Star Black, Wendy Kramer, et al
(with Wendy punctuating the conversation with her amusing remarks about
pinup girls), staying up til 4a.m. chain-smoking and arguing with Dave
Kellogg, Chris Stroffolino and Wendy Kramer (I think I slept maybe 20
hours altogether the whole time I was in Orono), receiving the gift of
"Jhon the Animal Song" from Natalie Basinski (ringing in my head STILL
one week later), going to plenary sessions and listening to the voices
of people whose work I've read and admired for some years now, going to
poetry readings and being moved by the performances of people who I've
only ever experienced in print (or never read or heard of at all),
spending most of the Bar Harbor afternoon drinking beer in The Thirsty
Whale (and then only having ten minutes to eat our lobster at that
nifty '50s restaurant), not to mention meeting a battery of people
doing work on Mina Loy, such as Josh Weiner, Susan Dunn and Marisa
Januzzi (I know there were more, but I only met so many), and of
course, Keith Tuma and Roger Conover.
There were some sour notes, of course, but it doesn't reduce the
wonder of the experience for me; rather it gave me more to think
about after I left. For example, I wasn't at the Barrett Watten
talk on Betty Page, but I, too, was disturbed by what sounded like
a knee-jerk response from some feminist attendees, and particularly
bothered by someone's efforts to bring about some kind of "punishment"
for Watten (demanding the NPF give 'im a spanking or something). And,
of course, the commons food was execrable, which made me glad I brought
my big cooler of food instead of buying all those tickets. The
insistence of the bus drivers that we stop at that Visitor's Center
and the topof Cadillac Mountain (?) seemed pointless (although it
appealed to my surrealist sensibilities) on our Bar Harbor trip, and
all the more annoying since we only had a couple of hours in Bar
Harbor because of it.
I also wanted to bring up another small brouhaha from the Cage/Mac Low
panel on the last day of the conference, mostly because it's been
sticking in my craw all week. Someone made a comment about the Trillings
(re: the "Thrilling the Trillings" paper that was delivered at the
beginning of tha panel), and I believe Bill Howe responded with an
observation or opinion about Diana Trilling, which caused one of the
other attendees to tell him his view was "contemptible" (while smiling
at him and saying "no offense". No offense? Come on.) and that it
was easy for him to say, sitting there enjoying his "white male
privilege" etc. etc. This person then went on to say that it is white
middle class women who are the last to realize their oppression (as if
this makes them more oppressed and more victimized than non-white
women of poverty or the working class), AND that before the sixties
women didn't realize they were oppressed, AND that "young women of
today" don't realize they are oppressed: "They think they are free."
This of course places women like this particular person in the
small happy category of women from the sixties and seventies who
DO realize their oppression and are soooooo convinced that they are
the only ones with the 20/20 gender-vision. I was too stunned to
respond at the time (I had accumulated few hours of sleep in the last
several days, remember), but I can now, in a word: BULLSHIT. I
would be interested to hear responses from others who attended that
panel--some other perspectives would be valuable as I further sort out
my complicated feelings about it.
Anyhow, thanks to all the folks I met for their friendliness and
willingness to share their ideas. I should sign off now--I'm not
a big-bandwidth person ordinarily. I'd also like to wave in the
general direction of any Creative Studies alumni who might be on this
list (you know who you are) and ask, wuzzup?
Lisa Amber Phillips
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 30 Jun 1996 21:10:09 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Carnography <scrypt@INTERPORT.NET>
Subject: Re: Extended Play
I'm going to say this one more time: If you wish to continue this,
I'd appreciate it if you'd backchannel your comments to me personally.
There is no reason for people in UB P to be subjected to mere off-topic
quarreling. My final post to Henry was a notice that I wouldn't
be responding to previous posts in public out of courtesy. If you'd like
to attack me personally, ("arrogant," "insulting," etc) I suggest you
take it to email.
This current thread is a petty, impolite flame-war. Ethically, whomever
wins has already lost.
All the best,
Rob Hardin
-------------------------------
Steve Carll typed:
> >> Then he wrote:
> >>
> >> > I don't like to insult musicians and I don't like it when
> >> >musicians are insulted.
> >>
> >> Wouldn't it be kind of insulting to a band (of musicians, presumably) to
> >> dismiss them as not worthy of commentary?
> >
> >Apparently, you haven't been following this thread.
>
> That's a mistaken assumption on your part, not to mention unnecessarily
> insulting. You can make a point without being so arrogant, can't you?
That you've misunderstood the context my remark suggests that you
haven't been following the thread. This is a charitable supposition
on my part and suggests no insult to you. However, your attribution
of arrogance to me *is* "insulting." What is more, it is ad hominem and
does not address the facts or anything else.
> >The two bands
> >whose musicianship I defended were the Beatles and the Stones. Since
> >I opined that they were not worth discussing on a prosody list even
> >as I *defended* them, you would do well to notice the context
> >of the word *worth* before presuming insult.
>
> I'm fully aware of the context, and it still seems like an insult to me. It
> is possible to insult someone you're trying to defend, ya know.
Since you've failed to explain what "seems" like an insult to you,
it is impossible to take your inference seriously. Your use of the
words "you," "the" and "fully" might "seem" insulting to me with as
much justification or proof.
What is more, the "possibility" of insulting someone while defending
them is very different from tangible proof of insult.
> >In the context of this discussion, my "not worth this much commentary,
> >esp. on a prosody list" is vastly different from your "not *worthy* of
> >comment."
>
> I think "vastly" is a bit hyperbolic, Rob.
*Vastly* is not at all hyperbolic, because the very idea of dismissing
a musician's inherent value (which is what you've accused me of) is
vastly different from saying they are not worth discussing in a
particular context. Even if you have only a passing interest in
semantics, you should recognize this.
Also, your own accusations have, for the most part, been "hyperbolic"
or exaggerate: reading "insult" and "arrogance," for example, into flat
reponses is to resort to exaggeration instead of answering my point.
> >Also: by saying they were not worth discussing, I was politely suggesting
> >that I was not interested in being dragged into further discussions about
> >the Beatles and the Stones. (Someday, perhaps, my request will be honored.)
> This is e-mail. Nobody can drag you anywhere you don't want to go. You
> just have to keep your finger off that "Queue" key (or maybe you have one
> that says "Send." Whatever.)
1.) No, this is not merely email. This is a public listserv that goes out
to hundreds of people. Effectively speaking, you're addressing me in
public.
Also, people who write public posts and responses can, have, and do
drag others into pointless skirmishes. They do it by addressing others
personally and by consistently misinterpreting their statements
and intentions. Your posts are examples of that uncivil phemomenon.
2.) Also, the post in which you called me insulting was to a
response to a post in which I did not wish to fight with Henry
in public, and that I would backchannel my response to Henry
for that very reason. For you to have picked a fight with me
over that very post is unconstructive and pointlessly
antagonistic.
> >As to the context of "not worth this much commentary":
> >The overexposed are less worth commenting on than the underpromoted
> >precisely *because* we have been sufficiently buried in commentary.
> >Every moment spent talking about the overexposed is a moment spent ignoring
> >the underpromoted (those who are most in need of discussion and support).
> >
> >This is a list devoted to discussing poetry, and poets are the least
> >exposed artists of all. And yes, sixties pop music can be relevant,
> >but Jesus Christ--you can discuss the Beatles with anyone anywhere.
>
> That's what I thought I was doing. Plenty of moments to go around, too.
Actually, you were defending the Beatles (to someone who had already
defended them)--hardly the terrain of the underdog. By the time
the Beatles are underexposed, we'll both be dead from old age.
> >Keats, whom you quote, has an importance beyond his status as a Lake Poet
> >and a poet of the Romantic period. Would you say that history is incorrect
> >in calling him a poet of the Romantic Period? If so, then how does
> >his importance contradict the "tiny confines" of history?
>
> History is inadequate in calling Keats a poet of the Romantic era.
(By the way, your use of the phrase "inadequate in calling" is illiterate.)
> summation like that is a fine starting point for a further exploration of
> Keats' work, etc., but when a phrase like that gets used as if nothing more
> need be said about them, I would say it's reductive.
My use of the phrase "mainstream sixties artist" did not imply that
"nothing more need be said" about the Beatles in other contexts. The
use of the word "mainstream," ie, known and discussed, and "sixties,"
as in sufficiently documented, are not "reductive" (do not over-simplify
the subject). There was a point in the Nineteenth Century at which
very little that was new was going to be said about Lord Byron--not
for two or three more generations. At that point, people might have
said his poetry was "not worth" endless commentary on a mailing list
devoted to watercolors.
This does not mean that someone on that list who referred to him as a
"popular Romantic poet" would be oversimplifying. It means that the
relevance of the discussion was being questioned.
Furthermore, I was not giving UB Poetics some sort of ultimatim
about the subjects it may or may not address. I spoke of its
relevance while explaining why I did not wish to speak of it anymore.
Your paraphrase is yet another example of your persistent misunderstanding
of my motives and intentions.
> >> I left the
> >> sixties when I was three and discovered the Beatles in 1978....Their music
> >> has been a big influence on my person and my writing...and I'm sure that's
> >> true for some other people on this list, which probably explains why the
> >> topic came up at all.
> >
> >Actually, the topic came up because people who span two generations were
> >talking about it. I was born in the sixties; another gentleman who was
> >posting mentioned having played in bands for three decades, if I'm not
> >mistaken. If you really feel that your generation (ie, mine, since
> >we were both born in the sixties) and the people on this list are the last
> >source of fresh insights on a well-explored subject, then it would seem
> >that boomers aren't the only generation that is guilty of self-importance.
> As I said, I remember how the topic came up, and your version of it doesn't
> contradict mine.
You said, but you did not prove. Therefore your suppositions say nothing.
> But I didn't say "our" generation was the "last source of
> fresh insights" on anything. We're all capable of fresh insights, even on
> so-called "well-explored" subjects, not because of what generation we belong
> to but because we're human beings and we have minds that keep turning things
> over.
Keep believing that, Steve, and you'll never say anything new. What is it
exactly about being "human beings" and "having minds" that makes us
a priori original?
> Some might characterize that last statement as indicating a sense of
> self-importance, but let's at least be accurate about its nature. But the
> reason I brought this point up is that the Beatles, and the psychedelic pop
> song form they helped create, informs the poetics of at least one person on
> this list (that I know of), thus validating their discussion in POETICS.
See above and above and above. No one forbade you to post on any subject,
no one called for a vote on topics that ought to be banned, thus no
"validation" is required. I merely explained why I, personally, was not
publicly responding to Henry and why I did not choose to argue at length
over this subject. That you missed the context and responded publically
is one more proof that the meaning was lost on you.
> >> Does anyone call Miles Davis a "fifties jazz musician"?
> >
> >Miles was recording with Parker before the fifties. However, the Miles
> >Davis Quintet was a fifties ensemble (even though their recordings
> >stretched into the sixties).
>
> But here again, Miles recorded a lot of stuff post-Quintet. Many people who
> don't like the cool stuff but go wild for "Bitches Brew" might consider
> Miles a sixties jazz musician. I think both these factions miss the big
> picture.
So far, this is the most interesting thing you've said.
But I didn't characterize Miles Davis himself as a fifties musician
(though that label is far more accurate than "sixties"). I characterized
the quintet as a fifties ensemble, which is more specific.
It's an interesting question to ask about individual composers, isn't it?
Yet the discussion becomes a kind of etymological error detection when
applied to convenient historical appellations. It is usually considered
acceptible to refer to Stravinsky as a neo-classical modernist composer
despite his Russian Nationalist ballets, despite his later experiments
with dodecaphony. It is very possible that, at some point, the neo-
classical label will shift, as the significance of Woolf's _Orlando_
became, not a minor psychological fairy tale, as it was viewed by
earlier critics, but the early example of Magic Realism. This deferred
memory shifting of the canon is important and exciting. But earlier
references to her as a Bloomsbury psychological novelist were not
reductive in the context of general identification. Earlier critics
had no way of understanding or predicting magic realism. They only
wanted a way to identify Virginia Woolf's work.
A venomous attack over what, in your opinion, is an incorrect
critical term, seems venom misapplied.
> >> When the band started?
> >
> >No, when the band made their first important mark via recordings and
> >public performance, and what generation the band members actually belonged
> >to.
>
> And who decides these things? Or is there some natural consensus that I've
> missed out on in my naivete?
There is in fact a critical consensus at work. The Beatles are generally
referred to as a sixties phenomenon, Elvis as a fifties phenomenon,
and so on. If you wish to contest this, there is no point in shooting
the messenger.
> I might point out that according to these
> criteria, PiL would be a seventies band, not an eighties one, since Lydon
> and Levene were part of the English punk rock movement (roughly '76-'78),
The earlier activities of the musicians in PIL are not what define the
band chronologically. It is the period of the activity of the band
itself. The musicians, who were of varying ages, would be a second
consideration in this case.
Once again, have you never read a biography or book about such bands?
Their generations are constantly defined along these lines. What
would you ask biographers and historians to use in place of such
terms and why? How would the terms that you offered, whatever they
might be, prove less "reductive" than the ones used now?
> and PiL's first two albums (1978 and '79) would seem to have to be
> considered as important marks defining a "postpunk" approach.
This is a valid point, since PIL's first album and public performance
occurred in 78. Also, I regard their first two albums as the most
historically important ones (though Flowers of Romance is my favorite).
However, I'd argue that the focal point of their activity (78-93), and
of postpunk as a musical phemomenon, pivots on the early eighties. My
brief work with PIL occurred in 1985, after _This is What You Want...
This is What You Get_, so I'm probably myopic about PIL's history.
> I think these
> criteria are a highly suspect and not ultimately very helpful shorthand.
Literally speaking, all criteria are "suspect." But to attack the use
of historical criteria in general is less helpful and more "suspect"
than instances of such criteria.
> >The Beatles were certainly a part of the sixties generation. To conclude that
> >they were incapable of musical development beyond the peak point of their
> >generation--let alone that their musical influence is insignificant--is
> >your own supposition and does not follow logically from anything that I've
> >said.
>
> So when you told Henry Gould that mainstream sixties bands are only
> interesting in a cultural study of that era, it was way out of left field
> for me to conclude that you were asserting that they're uninteresting in any
> context other than a cultural study of that era?
1. You're paraphrasing a post that predates this discussion. What's
more, you're expecting me to address your hearsay as if it were a
quote.
2. A discussion of the musical worth of pop music in general
is not the same as a discussion of one pop musician's influence
on other pop musicians. Even as you paraphrase irrelevant
posts, you manage to confuse one category of comparison for
another.
> >Furthermore, I would argue that we should talk about other artists precisely
> >because the influence of mainstream sixties bands is so pervasive. Oasis,
> >probably the least interesting band of the nineties, is an example of what
> >comes from obsessing over the Beatles for perhaps the billionth time. There
> >comes a time when dominating presences, however good, become dead ends: at
> >this point, it's safe to say that Elvis has left the building.
>
> I agree with you about dead ends, but you know what? I kind of like Oasis.
> Their first album was derivative and bland; but _(What's the Story) Morning
> Glory?_ shows a vast improvement in their ability to write pop songs with
> nerve and verve.
I consider Oasis's second album to be musically and lyrically meaningless.
If that's songwriting nerve, then late Paul McCartney is shocking.
Competent songwriting and production? That I concede. But _Maybe_ (and
other songs on the album) is one of the most derivative Beatle cops
I've ever heard.
> You and I both know that there are hundreds of less
> interesting bands neither of us will ever hear of for precisely that reason
On the contrary: there are hundreds of bands we'll never hear on the
radio because they show *more* nerve and verve than bands like Oasis.
> and even in the realm of stuff that gets some exposure, what about Alice in
> Chains, Toad the Wet Sprocket, and Counting Crows?
What about them? You haven't said whether you consider these bands
to be examples of what is examplary or uninteresting.
http://www.interport.net/~scrypt
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 30 Jun 1996 21:45:41 -0400
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
From: Eliza McGrand- CVA Guest <elliza@AI.MIT.EDU>
Subject: comments on women today and oppression
re ms. phillip's dismay about a conference attendee's comments that
women today do not realize that they are oppressed and that white
middle class women are the last to realize they are oppressed, i can
very easily see much that might have motivated those comments and
agree. i have seen entirely too many anti-feminist slings recently,
as if one is being somehow radical and brave to trash all those dingy
feminists. and i can easily, only too easily imagine losing my temper
if i thought i heard yet another pseudo-daring slam on feminists.
people have been slamming feminists for hundreds of years -- white
master-owners; male husbands enjoying such privileges as beating a
wife with anything smaller than the circumfrance of their thumb, being
the only one in the partnership who can own or inherit land, being the
only partner who have a bank account or vote; men who can vote, own
land, have a bank account, work at any number of professions while
women cannot; men being asked to desist from disenfranchising women;
academics (male and female) who profess, as dale spender has pointedly
put it, that "you don't have to read women's literature to know it
isn't any good" in her book on sexism in literature; academics who
refuse to hire women in tenure track positions; academics who
consistently give lower marks and bad reviews to work by women, while
giving accolades to work of comparable quality by men; etcetera,
etcetera. it isn't, after all, so very new to slam feminists and
those who do so certainly aren't the sort of company i would like to
keep. perhaps mr. howe meant nothing disrespectful toward women. but
with the comments as reported, i have only too many painful
experiences which lead me to agree.
in other words, i can't say how many times i have heard some younger
woman tell me, often with a placating smile (as if being, publically,
a "good girl"), that SHE is certainly not oppressed and doesn't feel
women are oppressed anymore. she tells me this while she is typing,
filing, and scurrying away at a shit job for lower pay than men her
age and ability. she has also, often, just told me about the job(s)
she left because she was sexually harrassed, the boyfriend she lives
with who expects her to wash all the dishes, do the laundry, cook, and
clean, the same boyfriend who has perhaps just left her for a younger
prettier woman. she leaves work to paint one more painting that will
not get exhibited in a museum because although over half of the people
in art classes are women, less than a tenth of exhibited or reviewed
artists are women (and this situation exists for women writers, in
large measure as well -- have you ever noticed how in anonymous entry
contests, the winners are half or over half women, but in contests
where names are used, 1/5 to 1/3 of the winners are women?). and we
watch while a black or latino woman cleans the building around us and
tells us, if we ask, how she was an accountant at home, or how her
husband doesn't let her go home alone so she will have to stay here
and wait for him, or one of us in the room struggles to hide the
bruises from being beaten by an abusive partner while the residents of
rooms on all sides of us shut their ears since "he's her boyfriend" so
that makes it all right.
i am sick of hearing that women are not oppressed. i am sick of
hearing the very feminists whose damned hard work has gotten women the
right to vote, to hold about 3/4 more sorts of jobs than they used to,
the right to start a bank account without their husband's signature to
give them permission, and so on and so on jeered at, disowned, and
dismissed as they take on yet another painful, difficult battle for
the very women who will not stand with them, yet benefit by their
labor.
from this ground, such seeds as the comments you report seem only too
understandable.
and while i'm on my soapbox, i have found myself distanced and pained
by the numerous readings listed with no women writers, by the numerous
lists of admired writers with at best only one woman for every eight
men, and by the books and book lists with almost no women. the thread
on british women poets has been, to say the least, a delight and i'd
love to see more of the same.
women write too.
e
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 30 Jun 1996 21:42:43 CDT
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group <POETICS@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Comments: Resent-From: Joel Felix <U63132@UICVM>
Comments: Originally-From: Joel Felix <jfelix1@uic.edu>
From: Joel Felix <U63132@UICVM.BITNET>
Subject: Ronald Johnson Broadside (ad)
Poetics listers: your indulgence--
LVNG magazine inaugurates its Supplementals Series
with a broadside of Ronald Johnson's monument _in memoriam_ AIDS.
(Sidebar: Ronald Johnson celebrates this year the complete publication
of his long poem ARK, from Living Batch Press.)
****************************************************************
_BLOCKS TO BE ARRANGED IN A PYRAMID_
Then with a sweep
blindly eradicate
perception itself
afire with egress
pale stampede
into the darkness
caught at the throat
Chase remorseless
yield redbird perch
grayest tombstone
assembled Holy Ghost
chrysanthemumed
***************************************************************
The poem, comprised of 66 quatrains, or blocks, is printed in the shape
of a pyramid on a 19" by 25" broadside, in an edition of 366. 66 are signed
and numbered by the poet.
Printed June 1996
$10 per copy; $15 signed
The poet says of the poem:
"When these short quatrains began (sometimes swiftly) to come, it took
long months to understands this must be my Journal of the Plague Years. That
time AIDS began to kill more brave young, in a generation, than any other
war. It
was an elegy, an In Memoriam in effect, long bottled up...I came to imagine
these
as blocks of incised stone, which would be placed--as they seemed to be
about death
resurrection, first and last things--in a circle. Insistent they were, but not
necessarily connected. Then one day they seemed to crystallize into a pyramid:
even more fitting. A set of blocks anyone could assemble as an act of
remembrance."
Backchannel orders to
jfelix1@uic.edu
or,
LVNG
PO Box 3865
Chicago, IL 60654-0865
or call
312-278-8327
Thanks, and a throaty cheer for Poetics.