========================================================================= Date: Tue, 31 Dec 1996 21:25:09 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: patr-iarchy/onization Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" > Now for "best >> male"? Anyone? >> >> Kathrine > >jean genet, anytime, anywhere, hands down.--md aw, what about James Schuyler? George Bowering. , 2499 West 37th Ave., Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6M 1P4 fax: 1-604-266-9000 e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 1 Jan 1997 00:29:45 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: William Slaughter Subject: Re: WCW QUOTE--- In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I'm away from my books and working from memory, but didn't Williams write: "The poem is a capsule wherein we wrap up our punishable _secrets_." I thought so. William Slaughter _________________ wrs@unf.edu On Tue, 31 Dec 1996, main wrote: > wcw: > "A poem is a capsule where we wrap our punishable selves." > > judging judgment, wcw's capsule might look like a moebius strip. > > dan featherston > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 1 Jan 1997 04:54:25 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rachel Loden Subject: Re: patr-iarchy/onization MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Charles Alexander wrote: > > At 09:44 PM 12/31/96 -0600, you wrote: > > Now for "best > >> male"? Anyone? > >> > >> Kathrine > > > >jean genet, anytime, anywhere, hands down.--md > > Are we speaking "all time" or 20th Century? I'm overwhelmed by the choices. > Genet for you, but for me, even in France, Mallarme just for that throw of > the dice & the book as spiritual instrument, or maybe Apollinaire, and even > Proust I have to go back to every few years. I think I'll just go back to > being overwhelmed. I don't think anybody wins hands down -- but up, perhaps? It's got to be up, definitely, for best male--check '96 logs for Tom Mandel on "angle of erection." Rachel ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 1 Jan 1997 05:57:45 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ron Silliman Subject: Es-vice president? "I loved that scene in which Doc H. and the scary bad guy are in the bar, dissing each other in Latin, and some galoot thinks they are speaking Spanish. (I guess your es-vice president would have thought so, too)." -- George Bowering If you're refering to Mr. Quayle, he once stated that the reason he had not traveled much to Latin America was because he did not speak Latin. I am curious about that prefix, tho. Ron Silliman ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 1 Jan 1997 10:56:19 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: POLLET@MAINE.MAINE.EDU Subject: Re: NPF/Sagetrieb needs Ron Johnson Photo Our long-awaited Sagetrieb 14.3 (in final proofing) contains a piece by Ronald Johnson (on Bunting/Briggflatts), a review of ARK by William Benton, and along piece by Peter O'Leary "ARK as a Spiritual Phenomenon." We want to find a good recent photo of Johnson for the cover. He sent us one from 1990 which we might be able to use if I can track down the photographer for permission, but we'd like a couple to choose from, and a more recent one if possible. Any volunteers, any leads? Back, Front, phone, pick a channel! Hope you all celebrated St. Sylvester's Day (Dec. 31)! Welcome to 1997. best, Sylvester Pollet ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 1 Jan 1997 14:20:23 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Thomas M. Orange" Subject: post-poetry In-Reply-To: <9701010502.AA18582@bosshog.arts.uwo.ca> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII i think henry posted a plea last week for responses to ron's questions about how to forge a poetry adequate to this post-ridden (-industrial, -modern, -capitalist, etc) age. two books i bought myself for xmas are providing interesting food for thought. michael coe's _breaking the maya code_ goes over the developments which led in the past decade to the decipherment of mayan hieroglyphs; and gerard genette's _mimologiques: voyage en cratylie_ (tr. thais morgan) recounts a history of cratylism (plato's character cratylus argues that words and things are not related to one another arbitrarily or through convention and use but directly, naturally, and correctly) as a kind of unthought of western language theory. postmodernism should be the moratorium of any future isms. so eager to historicize, we've posted ourselves right out of currency, right past contemporanaeity (this is peter osborne's argument in _the politics of time_). at the very least we are not post-anything but pre-something. we actually are behind and have a lot of catching up to do. personal computers, for example, have become so powerful and sophisticated in ten years (the xt-clone i still use was top shit in 1987) that they're beyond the needs and capacities of the average user, so that now network computers (basically an internet box) might be the answer. used to seem like we were in a period of baroque excess in need of a bach or ramon fernandez to come along with synthesis, blessed rage for order. or forge ahead with nothing in the napsack but irony and freeplay. no, i think going back, especially through modernisms, with a needle and thread, stitching together accounts anew, showing different figures in the fabric in different lights. like henry has been saying our take on (post) modernism needs to be supplemented by others (russian etc.) as for poetry, cheers to charles alexander for championing "un coup de des," which i still think is so unlike anything before or after it. go from yr standard alexandrines or blank verse to "un coup de des," and project forward a comparable revolution, and that's the poetry of the future. in prose, perform a similar projection with finnegans wake. what more can be done after these, well a lot of mucking around for sure. but until we can read beyond linear script... iconicity! and archive, archive, archive! amass, and let the search engines find the string. happy new year all, tom orange ______________________________________________ | Rien n'aura eu lieu que le lieu | | Nothing will have taken place but the place | | - Mallarme - | ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 1 Jan 1997 11:33:09 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: Es-vice president? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >"I loved that scene in which Doc H. and the scary bad guy are >in the bar, dissing each other in Latin, and some galoot thinks they >are speaking Spanish. (I guess your es-vice president would have >thought so, too)." -- George Bowering > >If you're refering to Mr. Quayle, he once stated that the reason he had >not traveled much to Latin America was because he did not speak Latin. > >I am curious about that prefix, tho. > >Ron Silliman Yep, that's the veep and the gaffe I was alluding to. But I catch your point on the prefix. Well, that's the way Dan told me it was spelled. I voted for "ex-" but he corrected me. I said oh come on. He said "I'll bet you a potatoe on it." George Bowering. , 2499 West 37th Ave., Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6M 1P4 fax: 1-604-266-9000 e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 1 Jan 1997 15:02:44 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Boughn Subject: Re: WCW QUOTE--- In-Reply-To: <961231191226_1789522595@emout05.mail.aol.com> from "Chris Stroffolino" at Dec 31, 96 07:12:26 pm MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > So, when William Carlos Williams writes--- > "For if the poem set out to punish the wicked and > reward the virtuous, it had better be on the basis of > fulfilled love rather than unfulfilled" (SE 207)-- > do you (dear open question interlocutor) agree? Chris, ain't it just a question of USING the poem--of an ordering around your own hard feelings--or not? You can do whatever you want, but I'd come down with WCW here, such a use makes for pretty uninteresting poems. I once heard a very famous poet, winner of mucho big prizes and dinero at SUNY Barfalo, not of this ilk, but who shall nevertheless remain unnamed, read a LONG poem trashing Philip Larkin, comparing him to a dog etc., all of it apparently having to do with some mano a mano bs boy bizness. Like who cares. Sooner or later the muse'll get you for that, even if the Gugeneheim-McArthur-Nobel folks go all weak in the knees for it. Mike mboughn@chass.utoronto.ca ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 1 Jan 1997 20:30:32 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: wheeler Subject: Re: Query In-Reply-To: <32c9e0f4475a010@mhub1.tc.umn.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Tue, 31 Dec 1996, maria damon wrote: > In message UB Poetics > discussion group writes: > > Susan, > > this may not be exactly what you're looking for, but Lee Edelman wrote > > an interesting book on Hart Crane's rhetoric called _Transmemberment of > > Song_ (Stanford UP, 1987. isbn 0804714134). She analyses his work through > > the lens of a set of tropes characterized by intentional distortions - > > links it up to the engineering theme in The Bridge (literally twisting > > it into shape). > > for what it's worth, lee edelman is a male type person. crane is a neologist;-- > "irrefrangible" or some such, don't have my book in front of me --is that what > yr after susan?--md > > Thanks. Edelman's helpful, but what I'm going for are those words that literal readers assume are just misused -- where even the associative connection is hard to place. Where a poet licenses a word seemingly forever, repeating it in a slightly off sense. Like Brodsky"s "chordate." -- Susan Can't recall the name of the major trope.... sheesh... > > help, anybody? It's a trope of exaggeration, distortion, etc. & while > > you're onto Crane, Paul Giles's book "Hart Crane: the Contexts of the > > Bridge" (Cambridge UP, 1986) has an incredible run-through on double > > meanings & puns in The Bridge. > > > > "Cheerios", Henry > Susan Wheeler 37 Washington Square West #10A New York, New York 10011 (212) 254-3984 wheeler@is.nyu.edu ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 2 Jan 1997 02:29:16 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: JDHollo@AOL.COM Subject: Re: POETICS Digest - 31 Dec 1996 to 1 Jan 1997 "Brodsky's"? "chordate"? ???????????????????? !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And a bite of heaven / in ninety-seven to one & all Anselm Hollo ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 2 Jan 1997 09:13:47 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Susan Wheeler Subject: Re: POETICS Digest - 31 Dec 1996 to 1 Jan 1997 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Alright alright alright. In his prose book Watermark and in several of the poems he uses "chordate" a host of times, referring to buildings and atmospheres as well as mammals. Apologies if this was taken as a lousy example. Susan Wheeler >"Brodsky's"? "chordate"? >???????????????????? >!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! >And a bite of heaven / in ninety-seven >to one & all > >Anselm Hollo > > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 2 Jan 1997 12:27:37 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel_Bouchard@HMCO.COM Subject: Re: WCW QUOTE--- MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: Text/Plain A "righteous" judge and a vindictive judge (both of which are at once annoying and dangerous). I use the word JUDGE because the action grounded by these two distinctions of love makes all the difference here. Did Williams believe in "tough love?" I would rather have read "For if the poem set out to CUT THE LAWN and TRIM THE HEDGES, it had better be on the basis of fulfilled love rather than unfulfilled," but Williams must have written these lines on a weekday and not a weekend. I would argue that Williams makes no bones here about poetry's apocalyptic function. It can read outlandishly today because the market for apocalyptic poetry is so depressed. When the market changes, the assets are redubbed "prophecy." You can have your wafer, you can eat it too (no teeth please), but then it's gone and whether you will return for more is up to you. This list will end tomorrow in a fiery surge. daniel_bouchard@hmco.com ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 2 Jan 1997 15:41:57 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: theory surge Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Would Ron Silliman please reiterate his claim to Henry that it's time for a theory of post-language writing? Jordan ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 2 Jan 1997 16:06:19 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Re: WCW quote Well--is it selves or secrets? ("we have no selves; we tell each other everything"-- carly simon) And Mike Boughn--thank you for your response. I think we read the quote differently--I was not suggesting that how dare WCW disclaim large bitter mean-spirited narrowminded (sons of tricky dicky?--sorry) poems trashing Larkin or Ashbery or Silliman or whoever--but was questioning or uncomfortable with what seemed to be an implication that one cannot write poetry from the point of view of unfulfilled love--that such is not valid, that one should ,say, wait until one is 40 and married or something until one can claim the "stable" authority of being a poet--- I fear such a taboo (though I wouldn't say it's WCW's fault) seems to have taken hold in many poetry interpretative communities, or "scenes" or "aesthetics" and that I rather wish to leave the possibility open that one may indeed USE one's frustration and unrequital--if that's all one "has"--to write poems, and explore that subjectivist gap in which one may punish one's own desire to punish others (etc. a kind of via negativa) without necessarily "taxing any private party" (satire--but satire, too, often gets a bad rap--one thinks of some dude in a powdered blue wig oh so witty oh so witty and privieleged and lacking pathos as if the two modes are incompatible )......chris ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 2 Jan 1997 16:25:55 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Boughn Subject: Re: WCW quote In-Reply-To: <970102160619_1290669140@emout01.mail.aol.com> from "Chris Stroffolino" at Jan 2, 97 04:06:19 pm MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Yeah, Chris, but in the quote you provided the fullfilled/unfullfilled love part of the proposition is tied to the question of (I don't have the quote here now) the question of using the poem to represent a moralistic world. Hence my response. He seems to be saying, yeah, it's ok, or it can work to represent the world in terms of good and bad if its from an experience of fullfilled love, an act of generosity, if you will. Otherwise it's just more of that old protestant mean streak, self-centered judgmentalism. Love is thus seen as transformative, even in relation to moralizing. I was trying to understand the relation of the two parts of the proposition, which don't seem to make sense to me if taken separately. Mike mboughn@chass.utoronto.ca ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 2 Jan 1997 19:34:18 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry g Subject: Re: WCW quote In-Reply-To: Message of Thu, 2 Jan 1997 16:06:19 -0500 from One often notes in a satirist - just as in a professional comic - a sort of conjunction of opposites - an ability to shock convention combined with its Janus-face - a sort of bedrock conservative trust in the order of things. So the talent to make & perform very bold poetry - to snarl & whimper & scorn & adore - is balanced by its antithesis - Baudelaire, maybe?? - Henry G (responding to Chris's strophes). ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 2 Jan 1997 22:59:49 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Herb Levy Subject: Subtextual winter in Seattle Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Although this series has yet to find it's Boswell (you may never learn how we dress or who attends), Subtext@Speakeasy continues. Here's the rundown for the next few months, curated by Laynie Brown. All readings begin at 7:30 pm on the third Thursday of the month at the Speakeasy Cafe, 2304 2nd Ave in Seattle's Belltown district. That arhythmic knocking sound is the pool players upstairs impatiently waiting their turn. January 16 Doug Nufer Susan Clarke February 20 Tom Malone Laura Moriarty March 20 Peter Gizzi Elizabeth Willis April 17 Danika Dinsmore Myung Mi Kim The Subtext Web site also continues, or at least abides, at: . Check it out, you'll love it. Or something. Bests, Herb Levy herb@eskimo.com ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 3 Jan 1997 00:53:10 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: main Subject: Re: WCW QUOTE--- In-Reply-To: <199701021728.MAA03406@krypton.hmco.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII daniel-- curious: how are you defining apocalyptic versus prophetic poetry, and how does 'the market' define this? best, dan featherston ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 3 Jan 1997 03:58:48 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Re: "tough love" WCW (the judge he holds a grudge) Yippee, the holidays are over! I saw CITIZEN RUTH tonight (and recommend it--Ruth's reply to her mother's question: "Just think what would have happened if *i* would have had an abortion?" is worth the price alone) Ruth, Dan Bouchard, rejects "tough love" (or is it "rough love") at one point.... Well, ONWARD, to Williams--- Open question, when shoplifting at the store (or swimming near the shore) where they sell (or where are anchored) ethical maxims, do you chose "JUDGE NOT, LEST YE BE JUDGED"? Now, let's say they're playing a muzak version of the DIRE STRAITS song that reminds you that "when you point the finger at someone because your plans went through, you got three more fingers pointing back at you"---but you may not have to hear it (because of the poetry walkman you're wearing and unheard sounds are sweeter...) and it may not inform the decision you must make.... Or do you CHOOSE TO JUDGE, choose to choose, choose to go...knowing that you may most likely be judged in return,(and are too impatient to wait for death) and maybe choosing to judge harshly because YOU want to be judged, or want people to ADMIT that they are judging as if somehow it's deeper, or more intimate than mere "unconditional love"? Judgment is often contrasted with perception.... but that distinction is largely linguistic (unless one does not ever feel like EYES are JUDGING)... judgment may be allowed to be irrational, provisional.... but it seems to me it is too often taken (mistaken) as final and binding (because interlocutors are queasy? or because they don't consider it to be as SEXY as I do?) "Make it easy on yourself" is another song they play on shore... "You made it there somehow"( Dylan) So, Michael---yes, WCW's point is certainly to criticize the ethical puritan vindictiveness that he feels ignores and denies the sensuous pleasures of the present and certainly i would not argue against him here yet I don't know if I can so easily translate his "fulfilled love" into "generosity" as you do. It may be what YOU mean, but I don't know if it's what HE means (of course, what YOU mean is more important to me anyway right now). For my own part, I would change the terms to something like "doubt" and "dogma" (even if this seems to sacrifice "eros" for the time being)--- I.e. "If the poem sets out to punish the wicked or reward the plants, it had better do so in the basis of DOUBT, in a spirit of PLAY, improvisation, DESIRE FOR love, truth, rather than on dogma, certainty, too rigid posturing." Fulfilled love (if not merely a "notch in a belt") would be "nice" but if we argue that it's NECESSARY as a PRECONDITION for judgment (or dialogue), then poetry (or poetics) becomes subordinated to "life" (an ideal pretending to be the real) and is reduced to a mimetic advertisement for a self, a ready made, that has no need for "poetic creation".....And although I do not want to outrule the value and beauty of such a mode of poetry, it does seem quite rare and one has to do something in the meantime, and attempting to write one's way OUT of "unfulfilled love" (as, say, Dickinson did--sometimes at least) may be as valid as an activity as writing FROM "fulfilled love", whatever that is...and one may even make moral (or at least ethical) claims in the process (and such claims need not be seen as mere trying to "drag you down in the hole that he's in") Chris--- (P.S. STILL NO ONE TO REPORT ON THE MLA RIDING PANEL yet?) ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 3 Jan 1997 09:55:29 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: Watch it Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" For the record: Mike Boughn says 'old protestant mean streak, self-centered judgmentalism' and Chris Stroffolino says 'ethical puritan vindictiveness'. Watch it, Jordan ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 3 Jan 1997 09:57:22 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel_Bouchard@HMCO.COM Subject: Apocalypso MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: Text/Plain >> curious: how are you defining apocalyptic versus prophetic poetry, and how does 'the market' define this?<< I don't want to impress definitions upon poetry through the statements I made yesterday (re: WCW quote). I mentioned poetry's apocalyptic FUNCTION (a function that the reader has to be willing to recognize, and not have forced upon them), not "Apocalyptic" as genre. A prophet (as defined by my company dictionary) is "a person gifted with profound moral insight and exceptional powers of expression." It is not unusual for poets to possess these characteristics, and for readers to find them reflected in the poets' work. But remember: prophets ("true prophets") sometimes communicate a message that its recipients have a strong distaste for. This is where the market enters. The "market" is a mood ring on people listening to the message. Deep blue indicates the utterance as off base. Scarlet indicates a stoning. Green means the message will be acceptable in another two generations or so. daniel_bouchard@hmco.com ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 3 Jan 1997 11:10:03 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Brian McHale Subject: Re: POETICS Digest - 31 Dec 1996 to 1 Jan 1997 In-Reply-To: Message of 01/02/97 at 09:13:47 from wheeler@IS.NYU.EDU Susan Wheeler: Is it the term "catachresis" that you're fishing around for? Brian ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 3 Jan 1997 09:27:18 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Herb Levy Subject: Shaviro reading in Seattle Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Oh, yeah, I didn't add this non-Subtext reading to that list I sent last night, but since there was some talk here about Steve Shaivro's Doom Patrols when it was only available online (& it still is, you find it and the beginnings of his new book book, Stranded in the Jungle at ), I should probably mention that Steve is reading from the newly non-virtual publication (perhaps the last US book by Serpent's Tail) of Dooom Patrols tonight at 7:30 pm at Elliott Bay Books. Herb Levy herb@eskimo.com ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 3 Jan 1997 13:35:18 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: Rothschild reads at Biblios Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" The legendary Dug Rothschild will be reading at Biblios Cafe this Sunday at 5 p.m., and not, as it is alleged in the poetry calendar, with Larry Fagin, either. Since the days are getting longer, and the weather has been kind in New York so far, why not come by and celebrate by listening. Biblios is on the edge of Tribeca, on Church Street between Lispenard and Walker. Jordan Davis ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 4 Jan 1997 19:58:35 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Bromige Subject: upcoming biblio reading Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Hals und beinbruch Douglas! db ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 3 Jan 1997 14:35:47 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tara Pauliny Subject: Re: Apocalypso Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" > curious: how are you defining apocalyptic versus prophetic poetry, and >how does 'the market' define this?< Dan, Laudatory applause for the response. I have a fortune teller fish I use for writing pieces that works within similar marketing confines. Each movement of fish is designed to extract & tell me what my emotional strata is & thereby livest my day accordingly. These are the one word emotions of a miracle fish-- whose every prophecy I find pleasurable for even the ones with negative connotations are saturated in some fishes of justifyable commodification, or archetypal loaves of feeding. Be well David Baratier ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 3 Jan 1997 12:03:57 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Shaunanne Tangney Subject: Re: Apocalypso In-Reply-To: <199701031457.JAA23630@krypton.hmco.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII i have missed most of this discussion (various reasons) but couldn't help but add what follows to the discussion. i am currently writing a dissertation on apocalypticism and postmodern american fiction. a key point to my work is that in the pomo apocalypticism is all about narrativity. prophets, or prophetic voices, are a very intriguing element in the tactic i've taken. what made me start to think in this direction was reading (for the 1st time) robinson jeffers, some 3 years ago--most especially the poem "Cassandra." i think it has something to add to the discussion at hand, and so i include it below-- best to all in the new year-- shaunanne CASSANDRA The mad girl with the staring eyes and long white fingers Hooked in the stones of the wall, The storm-wrack hair and the screeching mouth: does it matter, Cassandra, Whether the people believe Your bitter fountain? Truly men hate the truth; they'd liefer Meet a tiger on the road. Therefore the poets honey their truth with lying; but religion- Venders and political men Pour from the barrel, new lies on the old, and are praised for kindly Wisdom. Poor bitch, be wise. No: you'll still mumble in a corner a crust of truth, to men And gods disgusting. --You and I, Cassandra. --Robinson Jeffers, _The Double Axe_ On Fri, 3 Jan 1997 Daniel_Bouchard@HMCO.COM wrote: > >> curious: how are you defining apocalyptic versus prophetic poetry, and > how does 'the market' define this?<< > > > I don't want to impress definitions upon poetry through the statements I made > yesterday (re: WCW quote). I mentioned poetry's apocalyptic FUNCTION (a > function that the reader has to be willing to recognize, and not have forced > upon them), not "Apocalyptic" as genre. > > A prophet (as defined by my company dictionary) is "a person gifted with > profound moral insight and exceptional powers of expression." It is not > unusual for poets to possess these characteristics, and for readers to find > them reflected in the poets' work. > > But remember: prophets ("true prophets") sometimes communicate a message that > its recipients have a strong distaste for. This is where the market enters. The > "market" is a mood ring on people listening to the message. Deep blue > indicates the utterance as off base. Scarlet indicates a stoning. Green means > the message will be acceptable in another two generations or so. > > > daniel_bouchard@hmco.com > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 3 Jan 1997 16:33:31 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Re: Riding Away with the MLA In-Reply-To: <199701030503.VAA21949@email.sjsu.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII That virus that was cutting through the multitudes at the MLA (perhaps loosed upon us by Jonathan Yardley? did you read his column on that last day?) finally cuaght up with me on the way out of town, and I haven't been able to lift hand to read a book since (or to eat, for that matter), but wanted to post a footnote to the description of the Riding panel which I trust will soon appear here -- First Ridint panel I attended at an MLA differed in one substantial respect from this year's -- Riding herself sent a LENGTHY statement regarding her feelings about such a panel and required of the organizers that they read it to the assembled audience (who, in that day, amounted to about ten of us) -- It was every bit as knotty as any of her earlier writings -- Does anyone know if it's ever been published anywhere???? ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 3 Jan 1997 16:45:36 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: Watch it Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >For the record: >Mike Boughn says 'old protestant mean streak, self-centered judgmentalism' >and Chris Stroffolino says 'ethical puritan vindictiveness'. > >Watch it, >Jordan Yeah, John the Baptist was a Baptist, and so am I! George Bowering. , 2499 West 37th Ave., Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6M 1P4 fax: 1-604-266-9000 e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 3 Jan 1997 21:15:30 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gwyn McVay Subject: Re: upcoming biblio reading In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I love it that the Germans take the idiom a step further and break the person's neck as well--that's really flinging yourself into your work--! gm On Sat, 4 Jan 1997, David Bromige wrote: > Hals und beinbruch Douglas! > > db > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 3 Jan 1997 21:24:08 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: AERIALEDGE@AOL.COM Subject: Re: Riding Away with the MLA Notes from the Riding panel: . . . for what poets do is turn . . . a hoping cough idiotic defiance extrinsic <> inhering "vocabularistic promiscuity" fugis instinctual renunciation Xenos? fort-- get away no metalanguage / the death that gets you into culture "the ego's cathetic gliding" How came about it -------- thoughts "An Anonymous Book" babies are indoctrinated -- language is laziness -- "appearances do not deceive, if there are enough of them" "I am interested in generalities that mean something w/out instances" "poetry is the discharge of pieces of self" which is not against the wall Anarchism is enough systematizing the individual unreal ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 4 Jan 1997 02:08:31 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tara Pauliny Subject: Re: Riding Away with the MLA Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Aldon: Considering I'm unsure of which essay was spoken, these are all possibilities: Anarchism is not enough (book): Laura Riding (Gottschalk) Massachusetts Review 13: Response to critics Chelsea 35: Poetry Log Random Choices Chelsea 52: Judgement of one another Hope you have a mighty fine library somewhere near you. Be well, David Baratier ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 4 Jan 1997 09:27:06 +0100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "William M. Northcutt" Subject: cyber bookstores Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I know this has come up before, but, oops, I wasn't listening. . . Are there any bookstores on the web which carry a good stock of small press poetry pubs? I've tried the big Amazon, and they have a thumbnail's worth. Also, I remember at one point, or I think at least, Sun and Moon had a website, but I couldn't find it when I did a search yesterday. Do any of you have a url for it? Thanks, William ------------------------------------------------------- William Northcutt Anglistik I Universitaet Bayreuth 95440 Bayreuth email: william.northcutt@uni-bayreuth.de Tel: 49 921 980612 Fax: 49 921 553641 ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 4 Jan 1997 05:21:03 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ron Silliman Subject: Post-theory language writing? Yo, Jordan, That's not what I wrote, of course. What we need is a discourse about poetry (call it theory if you will, tho that implies some sense of unity when what's needed actually may be diversity, discussion and even disagreement) as it is TODAY. Which is to say, with a sense of whatever it was that was langpo taken as a (problematic) given, but also incorporating some other very important aspects of the universe, eg * The state of the world, post-USSR * The collapse of the left in the US (and Europe) as one (of many) consequences of the above * The collapse of theory (or at least the decline into dismal tenure infighting) * The social function of writing in a world in which capital is clearly more powerful than any state * The role(s) of technology in all of the above * The role of writing (and of language and language use) in relation to each of the above One obvious consequence of the above set of stuff that would need to be taken into consideration is the impact of internationalism--which can be seen in the influence of recent French writing in so many younger American poets (and not just the ones from Providence--Norma Cole and Cole Swenson, for example). Or the impact of Russian poets. Another would be the example (and importance, frankly) of this list and others like it. One of the distressing things about recent years has been that, outside of Chain and a very other venues (Witz, the NY Talk marathon), there have been few serious places beyond these lists to discuss poetry seriously that are not entirely within the bounds of academic institutions (and I'm quite aware of just whose server this message will sit). With the exception of those in the academy, there has been a virtual shutdown of theoretical work by poets in my own age group since, say, 1990. I'm open to any and all suggestions. Ron --------------------------------------------- >Date: Thu, 2 Jan 1997 15:41:57 -0400 >From: Jordan Davis >Subject: theory surge > >Would Ron Silliman please reiterate his claim to Henry that it's time for a >theory of post-language writing? > >Jordan ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 4 Jan 1997 08:06:32 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Alexander Subject: visual etc. Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I thought I posted the following to the Poetics List a few days ago, but it turns out I had a real snafu in my email addresses list, & I think I ended up posting it to Pierre Joris. Sorry, Pierre, it was not intended solely for you at all. charles Very busy lately, holidays & all, so just getting back to some thinking about Ron's & other's responses to my initial query regarding the relative absence of visual & other multimedia poetries within lang-poetry circles. Part of this is so hard just because one resists the labels, even (or maybe mostly) the lang one. But I rather disagree with Ron that visual poetry lacks attention to linguistics, which was/is so important to language poetry. I just think the linguistic emphasis may be elsewhere. For example, in Karl Young's work (it's a very broad body of work, and these comments don't apply to all of it) one encounters a visual surface at times like rubbings of language from building surfaces (I'm thinking of some of his screen-folds here, but of other works as well), giving a sense of the history of the presentation of language, complicated by his work's presentation of works in translation, thus involving a transference of language in both time (the historical dimension) and space (one culture to another). This can get quite complex and is, I think, very much "linguistic." And in Karl Kempton's work, much of which presents letters structured to make patterns/pictures, often the choice of letters quite consciously concerns the aural, visual, and historical properties of those letter forms. This too is linguistic -- and the patterns presented are sometimes based on sign systems from a variety of cultures, another linguistic consideration. And certainly in bpNichol's work, where words are sometimes transformed into pictures and back again, there is a broad commentary on the nature of language/linguistic systems. Even in one of Nichol's numerous translations of basho's famous haiku of the frog jumping into the pond, what seems like a simple picture of a line (the trajectory of the frog's jump) into an open circle, is actually, because of the conspicuous placing of that line on the bottom right-hand part of the circle, a giant uppercase letter Q. This may be stretching the concept of what is linguistic -- but is it really? I still would agree with Ron that much of what came to the forefront in some visual poetry anthologies (and particularly the Mary Ellen Solt anthology) was indeed quite static. But then within most of the poetry anthologies of any kind critiqued on this Poetics List over the last couple of years, I think that many of us would agree there is also a good deal of static work. It's also intriguing to me that Ron and others bring up Johanna Drucker's work, pretty much before the work of anyone else. I'm a friend and admirer of Johanna, but I think her visual poetry (if one wants to consider it as that rather than as artist's book or visual typography) is but one corner of a vast body of work. I do agree that her critical work is a beginning toward a needed body of theory regarding visual poetry/book arts/typographical art work, but even there I don't think what she or anyone else has done to this point in any way approaches comprehensive treatment of the field. In some ways the joy of book arts and visual poetry and sound poetry is that the work is so outside the academy (for the most part -- yet there are exceptions) that theory hasn't touched it much. Yet it's also so individualistic that I can't imagine a theory which could do it justice, although I do see a great need (and have called for it in numerous places) for more critical and theoretical approaches to such work. It may be in part because there isn't a great deal of writing (critical & theoretical) which might help us approach and understand such works, that far too little attention is paid to it. Visual poetry (as well as sound poetry, mail art, book arts, and other related practices, many of which are quite "linguistic") has resisted almost entirely being absorbed into any programs or schools or academies, which has perhaps benefited its ability to remain a valid and widely practiced underground art, but which has made it difficult for people to find and understand it. charles ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 4 Jan 1997 10:57:53 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Boughn Subject: Re: Watch it In-Reply-To: from "George Bowering" at Jan 3, 97 04:45:36 pm MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit >For the record: >Mike Boughn says 'old protestant mean streak, self-centered judgmentalism' >and Chris Stroffolino says 'ethical puritan vindictiveness'. > >Watch it, >Jordan Watch what, Jordan? Mike mboughn@chass.utoronto,.ca ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 4 Jan 1997 16:18:38 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: John Kinsella Subject: An observation In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII A slight sun-lift liberates though emphasises the cool drifts as blackbirds struggle and squirrels fetishise absence. The breeze sibilant camouflages its cut & bite and subterfuge yields like the lyric. I take no place in my centre and am merely informed, a second to an even greater hack called information. The great presses turn driven by the kilns of Fleet Street, the news is promising: the Lads will decline in 97 and insurance companies WILL undermine the premise of capitalism: come undone like the bonds of a hydrogen sulphide molecule exposed to reasonable heat. John Kinsella ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 4 Jan 1997 09:41:59 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Douglas Barbour Subject: Re: Dogma & judgement Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Re:From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Re: "tough love" WCW (the judge he holds a grudge) I always thought bpNichol put the case best in a palindrome in _The Martyrology Books 3 &4_"Coda: Mid-initial Sequence" : 'dogma I am god' heresy hearsay in the worst sense false pride who thinks to bestride the world because he feels crushed by it What else need be said? ============================================================================= Douglas Barbour Department of English Gentle and just pleasure University of Alberta It is, being human, to have won from space Edmonton Alberta T6G 2E5 This unchill, habitable interior (403) 492 2181 FAX:(403) 492 8142 Which mirrors quietly the light H: 436 3320 Of the snow, and the new year, Margaret Avison ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 4 Jan 1997 12:13:43 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: RaeA100900@AOL.COM Subject: Re: cyber bookstores The Sun And Moon url is www.sunmoon.com/ ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 4 Jan 1997 12:37:36 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: shoemakers@COFC.EDU Subject: Re: Dogma & judgement In-Reply-To: MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Douglas--That's a marvelous quote in your sig. Who is Margaret Avison and where does the quote come from? Happy New Year ev'rybody, steve On Sat, 4 Jan 1997, Douglas Barbour wrote: > Re:From: Chris Stroffolino > Subject: Re: "tough love" WCW (the judge he holds a grudge) > > > I always thought bpNichol put the case best in a palindrome in _The > Martyrology Books 3 &4_"Coda: Mid-initial Sequence" : > > > 'dogma I am god' > heresy > hearsay > in the worst sense > false pride > who thinks to bestride the world > because he feels crushed by it > > > > What else need be said? > > ============================================================================== > Douglas Barbour > Department of English Gentle and just pleasure > University of Alberta It is, being human, to have won from space > Edmonton Alberta T6G 2E5 This unchill, habitable interior > (403) 492 2181 FAX:(403) 492 8142 Which mirrors quietly the light > H: 436 3320 Of the snow, and the new year, > Margaret Avison > Steve Shoemaker ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 4 Jan 1997 11:54:44 -0600 Reply-To: maria damon Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: maria damon Subject: Re: Post-theory language writing? i agree, ron: and tho i myself write from the academy, i'm interested in precisely theorizing and facilitating practice (i guess, in short, providing a secondary but necessary discursive context for) of this kind of post-national poetix. i feel frustrated on a number of counts, some of which i've aired here, but heartened that others at least desire the same kind of discourses, even if we differ about what constitutes the poetic. maria d In message <199701041321.FAA05235@dfw-ix5.ix.netcom.com> UB Poetics discussion group writes: > Yo, Jordan, > > That's not what I wrote, of course. > > What we need is a discourse about poetry (call it theory if you will, > tho that implies some sense of unity when what's needed actually may be > diversity, discussion and even disagreement) as it is TODAY. Which is > to say, with a sense of whatever it was that was langpo taken as a > (problematic) given, but also incorporating some other very important > aspects of the universe, eg > > * The state of the world, post-USSR > * The collapse of the left in the US > (and Europe) as one (of many) consequences of the above > * The collapse of theory > (or at least the decline into dismal tenure infighting) > * The social function of writing in a world in which capital > is clearly more powerful than any state > * The role(s) of technology in all of the above > * The role of writing > (and of language and language use) > in relation to each of the above > > One obvious consequence of the above set of stuff that would need to be > taken into consideration is the impact of internationalism--which can > be seen in the influence of recent French writing in so many younger > American poets (and not just the ones from Providence--Norma Cole and > Cole Swenson, for example). Or the impact of Russian poets. > > Another would be the example (and importance, frankly) of this list and > others like it. > > One of the distressing things about recent years has been that, outside > of Chain and a very other venues (Witz, the NY Talk marathon), there > have been few serious places beyond these lists to discuss poetry > seriously that are not entirely within the bounds of academic > institutions (and I'm quite aware of just whose server this message > will sit). With the exception of those in the academy, there has been a > virtual shutdown of theoretical work by poets in my own age group > since, say, 1990. > > I'm open to any and all suggestions. > > Ron > > > --------------------------------------------- > >Date: Thu, 2 Jan 1997 15:41:57 -0400 > >From: Jordan Davis > >Subject: theory surge > > > >Would Ron Silliman please reiterate his claim to Henry that it's time > for a > >theory of post-language writing? > > > >Jordan > ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 4 Jan 1997 13:32:43 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: shoemakers@COFC.EDU Subject: post-lang theory MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Ron and Henry's recent posts have opened up huge territories, and I'll only try to reply from one particular angle. One urge that seems operative in the search for a post-langpo theory or description is simply the desire for something "other" than language, something for language to rub up against. In both Henry's "Providence School" model and the recent New Coast push this desire took a "mystical" turn. That's not quite where I want to go myself, but what I do want is something like a return to "the world." When Oppen talks about the world as this "fatal rock" or the "pure mineral fact," or when he says The self is no mystery, the mystery is That there is something to stand on. We want to be here. The act of being, the act of being More than oneself. he's stating basic propositions, giving basic reminders about the place from/in which we begin. This urge toward solidity, groundedness, a concern with *being*--a concern with the conditions of human habitation in the physical world (under pressure of technological change, formations of capital etc etc.) This is a direction often left unpursued by much langpo. There are always exceptions--say Leslie Scalapino in Way, or Kit Robinson in Champagne of Concrete--and these exceptions are among my favorite writings. Langpo in general has been important to me and figures centrally in my undestanding of twentieth-century poetry, so i don't want to caricature--but it's hard not to when you're trying explicitly to write of general trends. So: too often Langpo is ironized, textualized and flattened out, the poetic corollary of the structuralist and post-structuralist systematizings (Saussurean linuistics etc.). It seldom permits the kind of "earnestness," the concern for "truth" we find in work like Oppen's. What we need now, maybe--to return to the question of theory--is a poetic analogue to theorist-writers like Taussig or de Certeau, who favor a more "tactile" approach, trying to write their way into the nooks and crannies of the big systems and concepts, punching holes in the grid, turning blind corners to disappear into unmapped space etc. As writing, this is a return to an immanent and phenomenological mode a la Benjamin. Rather than irony as a function of knowing the big bad System is out there and we can't escape it, there is the knowledge that we live in, through, around, behind the system all the time and it still leaves us with all the same awkward, anxious, daily, beautiful dilemmas we've always faced. So if: Imagists>Objectivists>New American>Langpo>Worldpo??? (Oversimplified model, i know) how do we return to "the world" bringing with us all that L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E taught us? One immediate obection to all this will be the argument that language *is* how we live in the world, but I don't really believe this is the whole story. When Joan Retallack came here recently for a marvelous reading she quoted (either Austin or Searle, can't remember which) to the effect that "The dictionary contains all the distinctions we have cared to make." That's a great quote--and Joan seemed to be using it pretty approvingly, but she also corrected herself, saying that there are some, or perhaps a lot that *aren't* in there. That's what's fascinating to me--is why we constantly have to put the distinctions/words that *are* in there together in new ways, to try to get at the meanings that we feel but don't yet know how to say. Rubbing two words together won't make fire unless you can imagine the wood is there too. steve Steve Shoemaker ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 4 Jan 1997 13:53:55 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: AERIALEDGE@AOL.COM Subject: To the Larks "A" "theory" "of" [Post-Language] Writing or "To the Larks" The innumeration of the present conditions set forth by Mr. Silliman signify the sacral absurdity of the contemporary poetic quest. Given the increasing difficulties, not of understanding the (corporate) situation, but of negotiating it-- it is clear why there is not a voluminous literature on poetics _of the type he & his peers produced_ by those one might stipulate as "young." Still, it would be a mistake to consider the "young" unengaged with issues of poetics-- Mr. Bernstein's phrase in his Riding paper "for what poets do is turn" provides something of a description for what I see happening in much contemporary writing. I think there is some accuracy in characterizing those dubbed language poets as having taken as a or the main source of influence writers such as Stein/Zukofsky/the Williams of Spring & All etc. A reinterpretation of the modernist canon. I believe a similar phenomenon may be going on among the generation following language relative to the New American Poets (the Allen anthology). We do not "hate speech." Though some of us, rather boringly engage in it with regard to poets slightly older than us. When I hear it it strikes me as fourth-beer-talk whatever premise(s) it takes place on. To return to our story. This "return" to NYSchool, Blk Mtn, Beat, etc. poetics in the present leads to a more public poetry, (paradoxically with a smaller audience?-- this is yet to be seen), than that generally identified w/ language. The work of Lee Ann Brown, Kevin Davies, Stacy Doris, Ben Friedlander, Lisa Jarnot, P. Gizzi, Bill Luoma, Jennifer Moxley, Susan Smith Nash, Joe Ross, Chris Stroffolino, Mark Wallace, Elizabeth Willis, MANY others, all share a public inflection-- sometimes performative, often not, of speaking to/with/for an audience which is "accessible" -- not in any simplistic way, but nevertheless is a real event _in_ the work. Not to charge language with a complete absence of these concerns but the sense of audience in, say, much of _In the American Tree_ seems to me quite different. It perhaps assumed a level of information _because it could_ that it's not clear we can today. So the complexity does not go away, but takes another direction: Spicer's "poetry is for poets" (visible in Moxley's dedication: "To my Contemporaries") as opposed to or thrown in the pot with "no one listens to poetry." "For what poets do is turn. . ." One could also point to various social phenomena as driving this different sense of audience-- the academy is _not_ supporting poets as it did. & personally I'm intrigued by the idea of "cognitive limits" -- that what can be understood can be understood by most people-- this leads to a different kind of imaging of the poetic project, & of the place of community. It makes it, I think, even more important, & even more a real possibility. I've said elsewhere that with the exception perhaps of Fluxus, Language was the first avant-garde that included equal numbers of women to men. Of course there's no summation of what this means for the current generation but it is clear that this trend importantly continues & seems usefully to break down, though in other ways definitely participates in, the kind of metanarrative of influence relative to younger writers/langpo/new-amer I've *provisionally* presented above. When I hear the term "post-language" my first thought is "why don't we just call ourselves poets." Insist on the term "Poet" with a capital P, just as at another time not long ago it was useful to insist on the term "writer" as opposed to "poet." With a few years distance from that first preface to _Apex of the M_ one can see even more clearly the ways in which it was wrong while at the same time pointing to a necessary, even inevitable, generational differentiation. The degree to which it was proscriptive about these differences caused many to, rightly I think, laugh out loud. However it's unflagging faith in the value of the work being produced by new writers is touching, _&_ accurate. The point I suppose is that every & no writer escapes this kind of historical framing. Escaping it when the work is truly attended to. Eacaping into it? Two words-- Tom Raworth. Outside of these questions of generational generosity an issue in poetics that interests me these days is sense & nonsense. Marnie Parson's book _Touch Monkeys_ seems to me very good. It frames the issue relative to the genre of Nonsense (Carrol, Lear, etc.) & makes interesting use of Kristeva in reading Stein, Zukofsky, Hejinian, others. I'm less interested in the genre than in some crossing of Wittgenstein w/ Lacan/Kristeva/Zizek but it always comes out Buddhist. Though when/if I might come up with something presentable. . . Bob Mould at the Knitting Factory Feb. 8, two shows! Both Amygdala & Duende will be in the audience. --Rod ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 4 Jan 1997 14:46:54 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: watching the post Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Ron -- I don't know about the other givens you're giving, but Larry Price's theoretical writings (post-1990) have a lot to do with >* The social function of writing in a world in which capital > is clearly more powerful than any state and >* The role of writing > (and of language and language use) > in relation to each of the above I hope Larry won't mind my outing him this way. As for the other parameters -- internationalism, academia, language poetry, serious places to talk seriously... I love period pieces, but one has to live _somewhere_... and now I see Rod's said something. Guess I'll step off. Mike -- What to watch: don't equate 'protestant' with 'moralizing'. Thanks, Jordan ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 4 Jan 1997 11:57:44 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Peter Quartermain Subject: Re: watching the post Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Dear list: Two requests: ONE: At 02:46 PM 1/4/97 -0400, Jordan Davies wrote: > >I don't know about the other givens you're giving, but Larry Price's >theoretical writings (post-1990) have a lot to do with > >>* The social function of writing in a world in which capital >> is clearly more powerful than any state > >>* The role of writing >> (and of language and language use) >> in relation to each of the above Jordan (or anyone else):: could you this poor innocent a reference or two? Larry's writings are to be found where? TWO: For those of us who were jot at the MLA, the references to the Riding session are tantalizingly cryptic. SOMETHING apparently went on, off, or happened, or did n't, or got said, or denied, or insulted or praised.. Or did it? but WHAT? any enlightenment, anyone? Peter + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Peter Quartermain 128 East 23rd Avenue Vancouver B.C. Canada V5V 1X2 Voice and fax: 604 876 8061 + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 4 Jan 1997 15:21:17 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Alexander Subject: Re: To the Larks Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Rod -- Great post on the present/future of writing, poets as Poets, the insistence on new Poets writing it and differentiating their project, and more. Truly, "what poets do is turn . . ." One concern, though, in this thread. In this attempt to begin a grasping toward a theory of post-Language writing, is there some assumption that there is "a" theory of language writing. I think, to its credit, that there are many. And there must be many for the writing now & to come. Perhaps related in an overall body, but each with its separate address & function. charles ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 4 Jan 1997 19:03:56 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: AERIALEDGE@AOL.COM Subject: Re: To the Larks C. A. wrote: >In this attempt to begin a grasping toward a theory of post-Language writing, is there some >assumption that there is "a" theory of language writing. I think, to its >credit, that there are many. It seems to me if there is "a" theory of this writing, post-this-or-that, it is just that-- there are many. --Rod ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 4 Jan 1997 16:19:17 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Herb Levy Subject: Re: To the Larks Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Charles Alexander wrote: >One concern, though, in this thread. In this attempt to begin a grasping >toward a theory of post-Language writing, is there some assumption that >there is "a" theory of language writing. I think, to its credit, that there >are many. And there must be many for the writing now & to come. Perhaps >related in an overall body, but each with its separate address & function. I think "the" theory of language poetry IS that there are many theories of language poetry. That is, if there is "a" theory of language poetry at all. With luck this means there must continue to be a multiplicity of theories, rather than just one for any post- poetries. (I don't mean to resume the recent discussion about Zoocoughski by using the words in quotations.) Herb Levy herb@eskimo.com ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 4 Jan 1997 21:01:23 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Kellogg Subject: Re: Post-theory language writing? In-Reply-To: <199701041321.FAA05235@dfw-ix5.ix.netcom.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Marjorie Perloff's new book, _Wittgenstein's Ladder: Poetic Language and the Strangeness of the Ordinary_, is in some sense an anti-theory of the avant-garde. Or at least it uses Wittgenstein "against" theory and "for" avant-garde writing in interesting ways. My review-essay of this book, entitled "Perloff's Wittgenstein: W(h)ither Poetic Theory," will come out this month (so I hear) in _Diacritics_. It engages some of the issues Ron mentions (i.e., the collapse of theory, natch). I've made this offer before, but I'll make it again: anybody who wants an offprint, mail me backchannel and I'll send you one. Try to send me something of yours in return. Really, tho, everybody should read the whole issue. Cheers, David ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ David Kellogg Duke University kellogg@acpub.duke.edu University Writing Program (919) 660-4357 Durham, NC 27708 FAX (919) 660-4381 There is no mantle and it does not descend. -- Thomas Kinsella ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 5 Jan 1997 00:32:19 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: Dogma & judgement Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >Douglas--That's a marvelous quote in your sig. Who is Margaret >Avison and where does the quote come from? Margaret Avison is a great Canadian poet, probably the biggest modernist influence on the best Canadian poets, bpNichol, etc. You will find her work in the first run of Cic Corman's _Origin_, and her second book was published way back in about 1960 or a little later, by Norton in the USA, as a company tax dodge. George Bowering. , 2499 West 37th Ave., Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6M 1P4 fax: 1-604-266-9000 e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 5 Jan 1997 07:33:52 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ward Tietz <100723.3166@COMPUSERVE.COM> Subject: Re: post-theory It seems to me that there could be quite a lot of life left to theory, that is if we allow it to take different forms. The crisis in theory may be no more than a crisis in the forms of theory, which might only be a matter of more general and rapid medial changes that have overwhelmed our traditional means of cognition and response. What we probably need now is more non-written theory to supplement the more standard written variety. Gregory Ulmer has argued for a teletheory, a theory that uses video and other multi-media supports, but it could take other forms as well. Ward Tietz ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 5 Jan 1997 09:27:15 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Alexander Subject: Re: post-theory Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Intriguing ideas, Ward. Just as communication occurs in ways which are visual, musical, etc., why can't theory? charles At 07:33 AM 1/5/97 EST, you wrote: >It seems to me that there could be quite a lot of life left to theory, that is >if we allow it to take different forms. The crisis in theory may be no more >than a crisis in the forms of theory, which might only be a matter of more >general and rapid medial changes that have overwhelmed our traditional means of >cognition and response. What we probably need now is more non-written theory to >supplement the more standard written variety. > >Gregory Ulmer has argued for a teletheory, a theory that uses video and other >multi-media supports, but it could take other forms as well. > > >Ward Tietz > > ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 5 Jan 1997 13:47:54 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Boughn Subject: Re: watching the post In-Reply-To: from "Jordan Davis" at Jan 4, 97 02:46:54 pm MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > Mike -- > > What to watch: don't equate 'protestant' with 'moralizing'. > > Thanks, > Jordan Jordan: I was referring to the mean streak within protestantism, not to all "Protestants": cf Calvin for instance. I thought, perhaps wrongly, that after Hawthorne it was commonly assumed in many literate circles that that mean streak was a big part of the foundation of US culture ("The Maypole at Merrymount", "Young Goodman Brown", _The House of the Seven Gables_, _The Scarlet Letter_ etc.). Hence Ralph Reed, Newt, Falwell, etc. etc. all those weasly looking guys with squinty eyes, moral axes to grind, and big wealthy PACs. I certainly didn't mean to offend any one on the list. I knew George was a Baptist, but I thought it was the Molson Baptists. Best, Mike ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 5 Jan 1997 14:14:39 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Boughn Subject: Re: watching the post 2 In-Reply-To: <199701051847.NAA08530@chass.utoronto.ca> from "Michael Boughn" at Jan 5, 97 01:47:54 pm MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Interestingly, now that I think about it, Hawthorne posed the problem precisely in the terms WCW lays out in the quote Chris posted, i.e. what's always missing in those bleak, Hawthornian Puritan moralized landscapes is fullfilled love, not as we have come to limit its signification and as I hear Chris translating it, i.e. to some one, but as a mode of living. What Blake called a State, in this case Beulah, as opposed to, say, Ulro, the State within which, WCW implies, good poems cannot be written. For Hawthorne, I think it's safe to say, it was a problem of the failure of the American imagination to live up to the fundamental Christian values that it originally proposed to found itself on--love and the forgiveness of sin, as opposed to judgement and the punishment of sin, or perhaps fullfilled love as opposed to unfullfilled love. Mike mboughn@chass.utoronto.ca ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 5 Jan 1997 13:02:54 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: watching the post Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >I knew George was a Baptist, but I thought it was the Molson Baptists. > >Best, >Mike Used to be. But I went to Europe, just like henry James, and got sophisticated. Now I belong to the Bass Ale Baptists. George Bowering. , 2499 West 37th Ave., Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6M 1P4 fax: 1-604-266-9000 e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 5 Jan 1997 13:05:48 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: Hawthorne Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Yep, I remember, though, my long ago reading of Hawthorne's short stories (and jejeune essay I published on them) as being about the hassle of being an artist, whether in "America" or Europe, the question of the creator's sinful pride and the punishment that comes with it. That is certainly part of my youth, too, the puritan response to my starting in youth to develop an artist's personality (you know, staying in bed late etc.). George Bowering. , 2499 West 37th Ave., Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6M 1P4 fax: 1-604-266-9000 e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 5 Jan 1997 15:17:32 -0600 Reply-To: maria damon Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: maria damon Subject: adorno revisited sorry to bring this up again, but, adorno's character aside (tho i read the mandel thread w/ much interest and learned a lot), i was wondering whether anyone other than me reads his "no poetry after auschwitz" dictum to refer specifically to lyric poetry, as this is the genre that most preoccupies his attention elsewhere, and as this statement makes an enormous amount of sense to me --i.e. no context for the purely self-reflective, aesthetic object that glorifies the individual subject generating it and celebrated by it...? that is, beyond a statement mourning the demise of enlightenment culture generally, does it indict specific products of that culture --and by implication, suggest that there are other more appropriate modes of cultural (and within that, poetic) expression after 1945? i was on a panel at MLA on "ecstacy, history, and lyric subjectivity," where i talked about hannah weiner and wanted but was unable to develop the concept of her poetry as "anti-lyric" subjectivity, or "post-lyric" (post 1945 poetic) subjectivity, and this question was one i mulled over somewhat. any help wd be welcome. bests, maria d ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 5 Jan 1997 18:34:36 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: CFP: AIHA,30th Annual Conference (13-15 November 1997) (fwd) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Mon, 30 Dec 1996 13:37:01 -0600 (CST) From: Fred Gardaphe x5219 To: Anielsen@email.sjsu.edu Subject: CFP: AIHA,30th Annual Conference (13-15 November 1997) (fwd) Aldon, Good to see you at MLA; here's the call for papers I was telling you about; feel free to spend it out to places in cyberspace. Fred ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Wed, 11 Dec 1996 00:02:34 +0100 From: Marco Della Pina To: Multiple recipients of list H-ITALY Subject: CFP: AIHA,30th Annual Conference (13-15 November 1997) Date: Tue, 10 Dec 1996 07:35:32 -0600 (CST) From: Fred Gardaphe x5219 ------------------------------------------------ Call for Papers American Italian Historical Association 30th Annual Conference 13-15 November 1997 Cleveland, Ohio Shades of Black and White Italy-Africa-U.S. Conflict and Collaboration between Two Communities Deadline June 1, 1997 We invite presentations by researchers and scholars on any topic related to the general theme of the conference. Papers which focus on the relationship between African Americans and Italian Americans, as well as on the peoples of Africa and Italy are encouraged. Presenters are not limited to traditional forms of expressions or disciplines. Examining the varied relationships from artistic perspectives is encouraged. The conference is hosted by the Italian American Cultural Foundation (IACF) and will be held at the Holiday Inn Lakeside in downtown Cleveland. Hotel rates $79 + taxes, single or double Suggestions for entire sessions and panels are also welcomed. Those interested in serving as chairs of or respondents to panels, should notify the conference organizer before the June 1st deadline. Proposals for papers, presentations, panels and other participation should be submitted, along with a 200 word biography to: Mr. Joseph Ventura 11418 Edgepark Drive Garfield Heights, Ohio 44125 (216) 587-4973; fax (216) 663-1337 AIHA policy requires that presenters be members of the organization, but will suspend this requirement for accepted papers by those who do not wish to become members. All participants must be pre-registered for the conference in order to appear on the final conference program. Individual memberships are: Regular $35; Family $50; Students $15; Retired: $20. Checks should be made payable to AIHA and sent to Dr. Salvatore LaGumina, Department of History, Geography and Political Science, Nassau Community College, One Education Drive, Garden City, NY 11530-6793. Full conference Registration: Early bird--before October 12, 1997 $140 After October 12, 1997 $160 Registration Costs include two lunches and the annual banquet Full Conference without lunches $120 Full Conference only $100 Partial Conference Registration: 1 day $60; 2 days, $90; banquet only $75. Scholarships are limited. For more information call (216) 587-4973. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 6 Jan 1997 04:13:36 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: a boughn to pick (ULRO) But Jordan--I don't think neither Michael and I were equating PROTESTANT with MORALIZING (at least not in a positive sense, or even in a negative sense... nor was I (will not speak for Michael here) suggesting, unlike some people (who will remain nameless) that a sense of the ETHICAL in poetry means that "one supports the status quo.... but I see now that Michael has replied..... Michael...okay, Blake claims that good poems can not be written from the state of ULRO.... Yet, I would suggest that part of Blake's "genius" (if I may so use that term without somebody LAFFING OUT LOUD....although actually if they ENJOY that laugh, let them) was that he, especially in the 4 ZOAS, MILTON and JERUSALEM, actually did "give voice" to the ULRO impulse--but made it into a "character". I am very interested in the poetic freedom the more expansive mode of poetry afforded Blake--an ability to spend a lot of time enacting and exfoliating exactly the negative and vindictive and destructive and vengeful and painful and bitter and dark processes and relationships that his "better wisdom"---the unfallen Los--could exist as kind of implicit judge for. One of the questions is, DOES Blake actually "purge" such negativity, whether seen as "inner" or "societal"? ---Chris ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 6 Jan 1997 04:21:47 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Re: POETICS Digest - 4 Jan 1997 to 5 Jan 1997 RE Ron Silliman's post of questions (which I won't here articulate an answer--still waiting to see how he responds to Rod, etc.)--or should I say "assignments"-- He claims that the collapse of the left is a consequence of the breakdown of the USSR (in america as well as europe) I see that in europe, but HOW in America.... It seemed to me it was as collapsed b4 as after.... One could even appeal to the argument that now that the phony communism of the USSR is gone, that there's a hope for a new left more than there was before the "breakdown"..... (also, the "french thing" in us poetry seems to be waning... even providence has turned out Lisa J., Pam R (both with B D books), Jennifer M---who have very little in common with the Albiach/Palmer nexus (and now, say, Ange Mlinko).... well, i'll stop here. chris "i got sunshine on a cloudy day"---smokey robinson "Creating the effect of sunshine on a cloudy day over the area of a city block was something our budget didn't allow for"-- spike lee ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 6 Jan 1997 03:00:48 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ron Silliman Subject: Collapse of theory (a theory of collapse) Ward, I doubt that it's the forms so much (since I take it that everything human is, in some sense, theoretical, if we can but see it as such...even the anti-theory protestations of anti-intellectuals) as the fact that Theory (big T) as a social ensemble at some point stopped being about the desire to change the world (i.e., stopped seeing itself in relation to social movements) and quickly descended in being about ways to better the self (that next step increase, etc.). Perhaps a history of the work of Stanley Aronowitz, the union organizer (steelworkers, I believe) who has been one of the pooh-bahs behind Social Text (or, perhaps, Sokal Text), one of the major influences on Jameson and a good portion of the US left, might be illustrative. How is it that The Project went from changing the world to changing one's oil? Ron > >Date: Sun, 5 Jan 1997 07:33:52 EST >From: Ward Tietz <100723.3166@COMPUSERVE.COM> >Subject: Re: post-theory > >It seems to me that there could be quite a lot of life left to theory, that is if we allow it to take different forms. The crisis in theory may be no more than a crisis in the forms of theory, which might only be a matter of more general and rapid medial changes that have overwhelmed our traditional means of cognition and response. What we probably need now is more non-written theory to supplement the more standard written variety. > >Gregory Ulmer has argued for a teletheory, a theory that uses video and other multi-media supports, but it could take other forms as well. > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 6 Jan 1997 03:03:56 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ron Silliman Subject: Jim Gustafson Somebody told me that there was a message on this list by someone who was apparently writing an obit for Jim Gustafson, the Detroit area poet. If so, I missed it. Can this be true? Ron Silliman ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 6 Jan 1997 06:33:14 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Boughn Subject: Re: a boughn to pick (ULRO) In-Reply-To: <970106041336_1010348816@emout10.mail.aol.com> from "Chris Stroffolino" at Jan 6, 97 04:13:36 am MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > Michael...okay, Blake claims that good poems can not be > written from the state of ULRO.... > Yet, I would suggest that part of Blake's "genius" (if I may so use that term > without somebody LAFFING OUT LOUD....although actually if they ENJOY that > laugh, let them) was that he, especially in the 4 ZOAS, MILTON and JERUSALEM, > actually did "give voice" to the ULRO impulse--but made it into a > "character". No, Chris, I didn't say that. I think I projected those poetics on to Williams as a way of interpreting the quote you posted. And it's not, I don't think, a question with Blake of purging anything, as if you could "purify" this world. In Blake's cosmology, such an impulse itself would be ulronic, no? Your impulse sounds very similar to Blake's, though it seems to me he places more emphasis on understanding how that "darkness" can be located in a cosmology that sustains contention, the antithetical, as Jack Clarke called it. Altho' our Human Power can sustain the severe contentions of Friendship, our Sexual cannot, but flies into the Ulro. --_Milton_ 41: K533; E143 Mike mboughn@chass.utoronto.ca ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 6 Jan 1997 06:42:26 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Boughn Subject: Clarke book launch MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit On Februrary 15, 1997, Talking Leave Books Store, Just Buffalo, and shuffaloff books will co-sponsor a book launch for John Clarke's _In the Analogy_ (shuffaloff, 1997). John Clarke was a long time resident of Buffalo where he taught at SUNY at Buffalo for 29 years. A jazz musician and Blakean, Clarke, in association with Charles Olson, John Weiners, and Harvey Brown, was an editor of the _Niagara Frontier Review_, and with Fred Wah, George Butterick, and Albert Glover of _The Magazine of Further Studies_. In 1980 Clarke delivered the Lectures in Poetics at the New College of California which became _From Feathers to Iron: A Concourse of World Poetics_ (Tombouctou, 1987). During the 1980's Clarke performed "Skald Song" with bassist/percussionist Charles Keil, also of Buffalo. In 1989, he was named Ohio Poet by the Ohioana Library Association, and in 1991 he received the prestigious Artist's Fellowship in Poetry from the New York Foundation for the Arts. From 1989 until his death in 1992 he edited _intent.:letter of talk, thinking, and document_. _In the Analogy_ is the culmination of Clarke's life-work in poetry. The first volume was published by shuffaloff in 1991. The current edition includes all the poems from that book as well as an additional 5 complete books and part of a sixth. A ravishing translation of the sonnet into an american language modulated by an epic impulse, _In the Analogy_ astonishes with the range of its thinking and reference. This is John Clarke's final work, not finishing, though it never for a moment forgets that fact, but finally just stopped in its tracks. As Robin Blaser has written: "Here we are just plain after-the-modern (to use Olson's clear recognition and step around the pile-up of postisms) and at work. . . . A really, really good book!" The book launch, to be held at Talking Leaves Book Store at 7:30 PM, will include an open reading. Jack's friends and students are encouraged to read from his work, or to read work that he inspired. For more information, contact Michael Boughn at shuffaloff books (416.538.4532, mboughn@chass.utoronto.ca) or Jon Welch at Talking Leaves Books (716.837.8554, talklvbk@fcs-net.com). ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 6 Jan 1997 08:18:54 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Douglas Barbour Subject: Re: Margaret Avison Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" "Date: Sat, 4 Jan 1997 12:37:36 -0400 From: shoemakers@COFC.EDU Subject: Re: Dogma & judgement Douglas--That's a marvelous quote in your sig. Who is Margaret Avison and where does the quote come from?" Margaret Avison is a Canadian poet who appeared in Cid Corman's 'original' _Origin_ as well as canadian mags. & has published a number of books in Canada, although one, _The Dumbfounding_, was published by Norton in 1966. That quote is from "New Year's Poem," which first appeared in _Winter Sun_ (U of Toronto, 1960; McClelland & Stewart, [w/ _The Dumbfounding_] 1982). A deeply Christian poet, she is also one of our finest. George, who has written terrific essay on her work, might add something to this small comment. (Of course, New Year's being over, I have already changed my sig...) ============================================================================= Douglas Barbour Department of English University of Alberta in the rooms you live in Edmonton Alberta T6G 2E5 other people's books line your shelves (403) 492 2181 FAX:(403) 492 8142 H: 436 3320 bpNichol ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 6 Jan 1997 10:23:20 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Bernstein Subject: The Visual in Language Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >With luck this means there must continue to be a multiplicity of theories, >rather than just one for any post-poetries. -- Herb Levy writes, echoing Rod Smith, and also for me Charles Alexander's recent post on the "visual"... In the interest of emphasizing this multiplicity, but even more multiplicity of histories, I want to give a very different account of an interest in visual poetry and sound poetry from the 70s on than that of Ron Silliman's. Not only do I feel my work intimately connected to these projects, but one of the things Bruce Andrews and I wanted to do with L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E (the magazine) was to incorporate discussions of visual and sound work (domestic and foreign) into the discussion of the poetry to which we were committed, but which was rarely discussed in this context, and vice versa. Indeed, this was, what we thought anyway, a difference between our approach and that of others, who also placed their work in the contextof the New American Poetry, and it was also a difference (at least in emphasis) with many of the New American poets themselves. The resisitance to visual and sound work is very strong in the poetry precincts in which I travel, indeed for many of my favorite writers such concerns are quite alien. I don't criticize this partialness, it seems to me that poets, and other artists, are necessarily partial if they are to focus on what they can or need or want to do (poetry is all about resistance, a point too often elided in disucussions like this). However, for others of us, the concerns of visual poets, book artists, and sound poets were a concrete part of what we imagined we could do as poets, and also what we did. Certainly this was and remains the case (though each case is a different story) for Nick Piombino, Susan Howe, Bruce Andrews, Steve McCaffery, Ray DiPalma, Tina Darragh, Joan Retallack, Hannah Weiner, cris cheek, Johanna Drucker (one of whose typographically extravagant books I reviewed in the first issue of L=), and myself (to mention a few obvious folks); it is why Jackson Mac Low (among others) was such a crucial figure, and still is, for many of us (some of us) (me), not to mention why the anthologies of Jerome Rothenberg, which link up these often separated strands of the visual/verbal/vocal (to use a phrase of Bob Cobbing's) have been so significant. (Jerry made this relevant comment on this list on Oct. 29, 1995: "Concerning Jim Rosenberg's digression regarding concrete poets & Black Mountain poets, etc., let me just say that it doesn't correspond at all to my memory of all of that. What I recall is a relative indifference back & forth, with as much occasional hostility on one side as on the other & several notable crossovers.") I've always felt more affinity with many book artists and "visual" poetry than with most "contemporary" poetry; that probably goes without saying; then again the point probably does need to be made because the genre of poetry often tends to push up against, but resist, the upper limit of visuality and the lower limit of sonicality. Of course, Ron's ongoing engagement with the borders of "prose" leads into other, also fruitful, conjuncitons, syntheses, &c, one in which the visual marking often associated with poetry seem to disappear (they don't of course: they are only reconfigured, as Ron would be the first to note). (I recommend looking at Ron's very early _Mohawk_ to see another side of his visual interests.) It also seems to me that among the younger poets ("younger than me") whose work I read with the greatest engagement, this interest in the visual and acoustic domains in, about, around, and through poetry -- that in any case cannot ever be split off from poetry -- is quite strong. Certainly in Buffalo. Crucial, now (now is never "post" except in a secondary sense), in this respect (and so this is brings me to an directly respond to the question that is also floating around on the list) is poetry on the web, in which the visual dimensions are even more visible (they are always inescapable), for example choices of color, font and background, which many more writers are now confronted than in the past -- if not in HTML, then on their computers. --Charles Bernstein ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 6 Jan 1997 10:23:29 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Bernstein Subject: Re: To the Larks (incorporating "Riding") Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable I've been slowly catching up with the last month's posts, so will give something of a scattered response to several issues that have come up, in this and separate post. I. Riding Panel at the MLA Lisa Samuels, who it seems to me is the person doing the most interesting work on Riding these days, organized a panel on Riding's Prose. She gave an excellent "report" on Anarchy Is Not Enough, one of Riding's best, and certainly most bouyant, works. She was so convincing that she may have gotten a publisher to put the book back in print. Barrett Watten and I were the other speakers. Rod Smith wrote to the list: >Still, it would be a mistake to consider the "young" unengaged with issues= of >poetics-- Mr. Bernstein's phrase in his Riding paper "for what poets do is >turn" provides something of a description for what I see happening in much >contemporary writing. I thought that I would clip and send the paragraph from which Rod quoted from "Riding's Reason", my introduction to (Riding) Jackson's and Schulyer Jackson's Rational Meaning: Toward a New Foundation for Words, which will be published by University of Virginia Press this Spring. Certainly the paragraph brings up several threads of the past month: ***** After the publication of her Collected Poems in 1938 and two non-poetry books the following year, Riding published almost nothing for thirty years. In 1970, her Selected Poems: In Five Sets was published under the name Laura (Riding) Jackson. In the preface she explained her renunciation of poetry, saying that the craft of poetry distorted the natural properties of words and that the sensuosity of words blocked what she called, in her poem "Come, Words, Away", the soundless telling of truth that is in language itself. She puts it this way in "The Wind, The Clock, The We":=20 At last we can make sense, you and I, You lone survivors on paper, The wind's boldness and the clock's care Become a voiceless language, And I the story hushed in it =97 Is more to say of me? Do I say more than self-choked falsity Can repeat word for word after me, The script not altered by a breath Of perhaps meaning otherwise? =20 =20 The thirty-year pause in this life of writing, at least as reflected through a cessation of publishing, echoes the gap between George Oppen's Discrete Series (1934) and The Materials (1962). Oppen, just seven years younger than Riding, perhaps had not found a way to reconcile his left political commitment with his practice of poetry. But he did return to poetry, and with an epigraph that he could share with Riding: "They fed their hearts on fantasies / And their hearts have become savage." Riding, whose politics moved in the opposite direction from Oppen's, never returned to poetry, where meaning is always "otherwise" than intended, instead turning (for what poets do is turn) toward a way of meaning otherwise, that is not toward poetry but to a voiceless telling. The long poetic lacuna of these two "non-Jewish Jews" implicitly acknowledges the question later stated most famously by Theodor Adorno: can lyric poetry be written after =97 much less during =97 the systematic extermination of the European Jews? As far as I know, Laura (Riding) Jackson does not explicitly address this issue, but what she does say of 1938 and 1939 is significant: "Human sense of the human stood at last poised at the edge of an unignorable question about the human." Within this historical context, perhaps Oppen's commitment to a clarity and honesty ("that truthfulness / that illumines speech" ) that is expressible only though a highly delimited diction can be linked to (Riding) Jackson's recurrent concern for "right use" and "good sense" and frequent censure of what she experienced as linguistic violation. For the unnameable catastrophe of these years, with its rationalized but irrational logic of extermination, engendered a crisis of and for expression in which the abuse of language became inextricably identified with the abuse of the human. ****** To finally just append a response to Maria Damon. Yes I think Hannah Weiner can be understood as creating an "anti-lyric subjectivity", if not to say simply rejecting the lyric, as it has been known and practiced. I think also her use of a visualized prose, and moreover the enormous range of prose-format poems of the past thirty years, is also relevant in this= regard. --Charles Bernstein ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 6 Jan 1997 18:20:43 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: John Cayley Subject: Chinese Writing * Today * Number 2 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" *** Apologies for cross-postings *** IMPORTANT NEW PUBLICATION NOW AVAILABLE ABANDONED WINE Chinese Writing * Today * Number 2 selected & edited by Henry Y H Zhao & John Cayley foreword by GARY SNYDER "From a semi-fantastic tale out of Younghusband's expedition to Lhasa to a surreal delve in the language of scholarship; fantasy academies and subtle sexualities; exile anomie and bumptious confidence; from apartments in Berkeley to memoirs of harmless aesthetes trapped by the Cultural Revolution, this anthology is a window into the minds and lives of some of the world's finest young writers." - Gary Snyder (from the foreword) ABANDONED WINE is the second in a series of book-length biennial anthologies which present some of the best Chinese Writing Today. The stories, poems and essays in ABANDONED WINE are selected and translated from TODAY (Jintian) which became the best-known unofficial literary magazine in China. It was first conceived in 1978 and suppressed in 1980. After ten years of silence, it relaunched as a quarterly, opening its pages to Chinese writers throughout the world. Its reputation continues to grow, that of a literary publication dedicated to the enrichment of Chinese and world culture, today and in the future. pbk ISBN 0 948454 24 5 (ISSN 0968-4670) 314 pp, 20x13 Fiction by: Ge Fei, Bai Guang, Zhu Wen, Nan Fang, Hong Ying, Duo Duo, Xu Xiaohe, Liu Zili, Hu Dong Poetry by: Song Lin, Wang Yin, Xi Chuan, Zhang Zao, Bei Dao, Bai Hua, Duo Duo, Ouyang Jianghe, Dean Lu, Zhang Zhen, Han Dong, Ge Mai, Yang Lian, Zhong Ming, Yan Li, Hong Ying, Zhu Zhu, Hu Dong, Gu Cheng Belles-Lettres / Criticism by: Gu Cheng, Liu Zaifu, Yi Ping, Chen Jianhua, Lee Yu, D J Liu, Tang Jie, Zhang Zao, Huang Ziping Published in London, UK by: Wellsweep 1 Grove End House 150 Highgate Road London NW5 1PD Tel/Fax (+44 171) 267 3525 Email: ws@shadoof.demon.co.uk We can accept: 1) Sterling cheques drawn on UK banks 2) US Dollar checks drawn on US or Canadian banks 3) Eurocheques in Sterling. We cannot accept credit card payment. COST, per copy: GBP 8.95 / US$ 16.95 The book is heavy, so please do add the following for postage: Within UK: GPB 1.00 Europe (by air): GPB 2.00 US/Canada (by air): US$ 6.30 (GPB 4.20) Surface post not UK: US$ 3.00 (GPB 2.00) (These postal charges are for single copies. I can quote for multiple copy orders. If you order five copies or more at full price the postage is free.) - - - - - > John Cayley Wellsweep Press [in Chinese HZ: ~{?-U\02~} ~{=[i@3v0fIg~}] ^ innovative literary translation from Chinese ^ 1 Grove End House 150 Highgate Road London NW5 1PD UK Tel & Fax: 0171-267 3525 Email: cayley@shadoof.demon.co.uk http://www.demon.co.uk/eastfield/ < - - - - - ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 6 Jan 1997 16:19:44 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ward Tietz <100723.3166@COMPUSERVE.COM> Subject: Re: Collapse of theory (a theory of collapse) Ron, On a social level I'm sure you're right. I suppose the larger question, and you seem to imply it in your account of things, is about how to respond. I wish I knew how to respond on a social/political level, but I really can't say that I do. What I was trying to get at in my previous post was a need to respond (I probably should have been more specific) to what are, for me, problems in form. Despite the social role of theory I think there are specific and practical problems that can be addressed locally. I think we can identify things today which resist theory simply because the forms of theory we have don't accommodate them well. Most theory on electronic writing that I've read, for example, I haven't found very useful. It's not that I've disagreed with it, it's just that I found that the discursive form of it did not correspond very well with what was being theorized. A theory of electronic writing, and a lot of other things film, video, dance, etc., it seems to me, need demonstration as much as they need explanation. In the standard forms of theory demonstration is almost always left out. I think it's interesting that, theory, theoria, was not always even a form of writing. The word was used originally for a group of people, sent by a state, to confirm or witness events and perform rites. Only gradually was it taken up into writing as a means of accounting, more generally, for phenomena that were not present. So, in thinking about the form of theory, as first moving from a performative structure to a discursive one, it seems to me we could wonder about whether theory were capable of other transmutations. I guess I'm wondering if we could work out a presentational/demonstrative form for it and begin to develop a different kind of thinking. Ward Tietz ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 6 Jan 1997 20:14:57 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Alexander Subject: Re: The Visual in Language Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Thanks, Charles Bernstein, for the note on the visual. I had associated an intense interest in visual & sound work with L= magazine, and it had seemed like there is little such interest in later work associated with lang poetry. But certainly not "no" interest. And you remind me that, for many of the younger poets I know, there remains a commitment to such work. I have admired your own collaborations with Susan Bee. I just received word of a new book from Granary Books, Little Orphan Anagram, by Susan with Poems by you. Could you tell us anything about this work, particularly as, being a Granary Book, I imagine it's in an edition of such size & price that most of us on this list will not end up seeing a copy. Although perhaps not, as I know Granary has expanded its publishing activities in several ways, including recent publication of some of Johanna Drucker's earlier limited edition work in editions which should make that work more accessible. And just received here is Bruce Andrews's Ex Why Zee, which is primarily written texts of performance and collaborative works from the early '80's to the present. At first glance it looks marvelous, but I just received it a couple of days ago and haven't sat down and read the whole yet. Besides those you mention, Charles, I have always felt that Armand Schwerner's mix of visual systems and his idiosyncratic joining of visual poetry, sound poetry, dance notation, and more, was and is important to a number of writers. Also, the work of Dick Higgins & Something Else Press, and through it, a link to the work of Fluxus, always an energetic involvement of language with much else in the many worlds of art, not only visual and musical, but performative and more. Perhaps it is this willingness to expand the boundaries of language-based art (beyond what is commonly perceived as language) that I don't sense quite as much right now, although you are absolutely right to point out that a very great deal of work is going on in many computer-based and computer-accessed practices. charles alexander ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 7 Jan 1997 01:33:15 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Bromige Subject: what are we wearing & how do we theorize Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" herb levy sd "we may never know how each other is dressed" (or to that effect). i would enjoy knowing what our correspondents are wearing. navy blue cords, a blue shirt which is looked at more closely thin threads of white, black and blue, a flannel navy shirt over that, unbuttoned, white socks inside thick gray socks. i got most of it for xmas.and dr dean edell spectacles from longs drugs. theory can come in many shapes. it isnt always going to be singleminded essays much revised then read in silence (more or less) to an audience that may either discuss it afterwards (e.g. sf late 70s) or not (e.g. conferences that run out of time). Then to be published in anthologies or individual collections. these list postings taken altogether, for instance, with the hmu-factor of their intersections.what color is yr moodring today? db ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 7 Jan 1997 03:23:10 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ron Silliman Subject: Theors Responses to three posts: Chris, The "problem" of dating the collapse of the Left in the US (let alone elsewhere) is a little like determining which pre-hominid fossil gets to be called "human," australopithecus or whatever. Was it 1968, when the revolution did not happen here or elsewhere (and some of those elsewheres, such as Paris, Prague and Mexico City, had much more intense experiences that year than the did the US) and we got Nixon instead, our own version of Franco. Was it 1981, when Reagan took over (Modern Times Books in SF noted that leninist texts, include Lenin, Marx, Mao, etc, stopped selling almost overnight the minute Reagan was elected--that was 15 years ago)? 1989, with the fall of the Wall, Tienanmen and collapse of the Soviet State? Or, or, or? [[Certainly the power of a film like the late Jean Eustache's *The Mother and the Whore* or Tanner's *Jonah who will be 25 in the Year 2000* {translated into English by M. Palmer} have much to do with that sense of 1968 as a failed moment in history.]] I don't expect poets to solve the problems of society as a precondition for writing, but they are (in their own often transformed ways) some of the useful commentators into the human condition we can ever hope to have. On the decline of the "french thing" in US poetry, I don't know. I will note that Lisa Jarnot and Jennifer Moxley wrote two of the best books of 1996 (and if we wanted to start talking about what is going on NOW in US poetry, those books might be a good place to begin). > He claims that > the collapse of the left is a consequence of the > breakdown of the USSR (in america as well as europe) > I see that in europe, but HOW in America.... > It seemed to me it was as collapsed b4 as after.... > One could even appeal to the argument that now that > the phony communism of the USSR is gone, that there's > a hope for a new left more than there was before the > "breakdown"..... > (also, the "french thing" in us poetry seems to be waning... > even providence has turned out Lisa J., Pam R (both with > B D books), Jennifer M---who have very little in common > with the Albiach/Palmer nexus (and now, say, Ange > Mlinko).... > well, i'll stop here. chris ------------------------------------------------------------------ Charles, I appreciate your note and P.O.V. The list (see below) was, in fact, almost exactly the reason for my decision to divide In the American Tree into sections by coast. [Tho I recognize that it is, in fact, more complicated than that, what with Steve and cris (whom I'd only met once back then and had not read).] One thought to keep in mind is that during the 1970s and early '80s, the artists in SF who were most visible around venues that one also found poets tended to be Terry Fox, Tom Marioni, Jill Scott, Doug Hall, etc. Which is to say *performance* artists. The original impulse that led to the creation of New Langton Arts (and before it 80 Langton Street) was a series of performances, one a night for a month or so, on Bluxome Street, sponsored by someone around one of the galleries who was, literally, responding to their need to get these performances away from their spaces with their tendency to cause stains on the carpets. 80 Langton was a shared storage facility used by members of the SF Art Dealers Association. So that, with a few exceptions (Francie Shaw being the most visible in those days), the impact of the visual arts scene was most clearly present in the work, say, of Steve Benson and Abigail Child. By the time that Barrett had started writing for Art Week, things had of course changed radically. "Certainly this was and remains the case (though each case >is a different story) for Nick Piombino, Susan Howe, Bruce Andrews, Steve McCaffery, Ray DiPalma, Tina Darragh, Joan Retallack, Hannah Weiner, cris cheek, Johanna Drucker (one of whose typographically extravagant books I reviewed in the first issue of L=), and myself (to mention a few obvious folks); it is why Jackson Mac Low (among others) was such a crucial figure, and still is, for many of us (some of us) (me), not to mention why the anthologies of Jerome Rothenberg, which link up these often separated strands of the visual/verbal/vocal (to use a phrase of Bob Cobbing's) have been so significant." Charles Bernstein ---------------------------------------------------------------- Ward, I'm not certain that I buy the thesis that certain topics tend to be anti-theoretical (or that their forms tend not to lend themselves to that second order discourse). I do agree on the lack of usefulness in "electronic writing." I can't say that hypertext has improved much since it was invented by William Blake. I am aware of the origins of the term, its root in Theors as those emissaries were called. I think the more crucial question is the series of specifically professional moves that were made in, in particular, the 80s, first to a theory that saw itself as more interesting than anything on which it might comment (viz October, a mag that could stand for the Fall of Theory, or at least the Autumn), even as it never questioned its own phenomenon of Privileged Topics, Texts and Epochs. Lentriccia's move seems like an almost logical "next step" in light of that history -- that was a move someone was going to make and the only interesting question is why him instead of Fish or Greenblatt or Clifford, etc. It would be useful to take major texts by US theoretical writers, maybe in 5 year increments, and ask "what was the social project into which this writing saw itself fitting"? In the social sciences (as distinct from the "human" ones), in the 1960s the major mag (almost the only seriously theoretical one) was Studies on the Left, edited by students of William Appleman Williams largely in Wisconsin. That mag broke up (at virtually the same moment that SDS split over this same question) over the question of whether the purpose of historical and sociological discourse was to pave the way for a revolutionary political party. The subsequent mags started by its editors (Jimmy Weinstein at Socialist Review, Genovese at Marxist Perspectives) divided precisely on that line. Interesting to see that Genovese is now an active rightwinger (this is NO SURPRISE) and that Weinstein, who still talks a progressive line, has been one of the bete noirs of the Writers Union for all of the unpaid work at the heart of In These Times. >What I was trying to get at in my previous post was a need to respond (I probably should have been more specific) to what are, for me, problems in form. Despite the social role of theory I think there are specific and practical problems that can be addressed locally. I think we can identify things today which resist theory simply because the forms of theory we have don't accommodate them well. > >Most theory on electronic writing that I've read, for example, I haven't found very useful. It's not that I've disagreed with it, it's just that I found that the discursive form of it did not correspond very well with what was being theorized. A theory of electronic writing, and a lot of other things film, video, dance, etc., it seems to me, need demonstration as much as they need explanation. In the standard forms of theory demonstration is almost always left out. > >I think it's interesting that, theory, theoria, was not always even a form of writing. The word was used originally for a group of people, sent by a state, to confirm or witness events and perform rites. Only gradually was it taken up into writing as a means of accounting, more generally, for phenomena that were not present. > >So, in thinking about the form of theory, as first moving from a performative structure to a discursive one, it seems to me we could wonder about whether theory were capable of other transmutations. I guess I'm wondering if we could work out a presentational/demonstrative form for it and begin to develop a different kind of thinking. > > >Ward Tietz > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 7 Jan 1997 08:33:23 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry Subject: Re: post-lang theory In-Reply-To: Message of Sat, 4 Jan 1997 13:32:43 -0400 from Steve Shoemaker - I guess I had it coming, trying to put out a "school" of poetry based on a metaphysics - but I was actually promoting something very close to what you described in your interesting post. I wouldn't call a Peircean pragmatist realism exactly "mystical". There are in the Russian metarealists I referred to, some roots in Russian Symbolism & the symbolist movement in general, which could certainly be called "mystical" in the thirst for "another world", & devaluation of both ordinary reference functions of language & the "ordinary" world itself. But what I actually "called" for was a new poetry parallel to the border (defined, theoretically, by M. Epstein) between the "metarealists" (with their concern for poetic tradition & interest in "multidimensional" reality) & the "new acmeists" (with a focus on the "ordinary" world and the poem as a free entity functioning in this "present" world). To try to be brief, I think there are connections between the realism in Peirce (the physical & "intellectual" worlds are BOTH real, outside text & our formulations about them) & the direction you outlined. Look for the Providence School's new textbook, _Novum Organum Bubbleheadicum_, which will codify all the new extra-generational tendencies. (Univ. of Left Overbie Press, 1999). - Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 7 Jan 1997 09:04:19 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry Subject: Re: To the Larks In-Reply-To: Message of Sat, 4 Jan 1997 13:53:55 -0500 from Regarding Rod's interesting post - maybe the reason "the young" have not the same theoretical meta-explanations for themselves is that it takes a generation to absorb what's gone before AS POETRY (rather than as event, revolution, rumble). The metanarrative is in the work itself, as an absorption/re-turning/finding of what's been done. (hence the "call ourselves Poets" call). Beat, objectivist, Olson, NY, New Am, are still producing effects for which the crystallizations of theory are not yet ready. See page 4443 in _Novum O.Bubbleheadicum_ for fuller treatment. Later...- Prof. Iago Iamgodamn Dogma ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 7 Jan 1997 09:21:49 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ward Tietz <100723.3166@COMPUSERVE.COM> Subject: Re: visual etc. On Saturday, January 4th, Charles Alexander wrote, "For example, in Karl Young's work (it's a very broad body of work, and these comments don't apply to all of it) one encounters a visual surface at times like rubbings of language from building surfaces (I'm thinking of some of his screen-folds here, but of other works as well), giving a sense of the history of the presentation of language, complicated by his work's presentation of works in translation, thus involving a transference of language in both time (the historical dimension) and space (one culture to another). This can get quite complex and is, I think, very much "linguistic." And in Karl Kempton's work, much of which presents letters structured to make patterns/pictures, often the choice of letters quite consciously concerns the aural, visual, and historical properties of those letter forms." I agree with you Charles. I think a lot of this work offers a very different kind of "history of literature." Karl Kempton is probably one of the very few who is able to maintain a link back to the pattern poetry of the medieval period and earlier. Ward Tietz ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 7 Jan 1997 09:37:05 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: POLLET@MAINE.MAINE.EDU Subject: Mina Loy Art Show NYC Friday's NY Times (3 Jan.,A24) has a review of a show called "Surrealistic Pillow," much of the work from William Copley's collection. Man Ray, Max Ernst, Magritte, Duchamp, all the usual suspects, but also (quoting the Grace Glueck review) "Less Familiar are such works as Loy's 'Communal Cot' (1950), a prophetic collage-assemblage depicting people or parts thereof cocooned in rags and deployed on what appears to be a large expanse of pavement." The review contains a photograph (detail) of the work. Nolan/Eckman Gallery, 560 Broadway, at Prince St., SoHo, NYC,through January 25. Maybe someone in the city could see it & post a description? Sylvester Pollet, National Poetry Foundation, Univ. Maine, Orono ME ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 7 Jan 1997 10:18:29 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: Rock the vote (change th' oil) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Ok, Ron, but I'd have to guess that Duncan was more of an influence on Lisa Jarnot's book than any recent French writer was. "Often I am permitted to return to a salad bar..." Come to mention it, judgment has been a thorny issue in my subculture lately, and we're all bleeding from the sides. What could it possibly mean, to write or to read without rushing to judgment? Have I been drowning in prepared statement? I heard stories that there used to be a banner in St Marks Church that read 'Prohibit sharply the rehearsed response.' Was that the case, or were my interlocutors speaking allegorically. Does Response (which was my favorite book of the year, and Tilt by Gillian McCain was good, and Damon Krukowski's book was surprisingly good, and Lisa's Sea Lyrics, and Moxley's Verses, Moriarty's Symmetry, Smith's Theories, Ange Mlinko's Immediate Orgy and Audit, and who can forget The Little Golden Book of Lesser New York School Poets, ed. anon -- tho really it's readings right now that seem to be the locus of everybody's attention and activity, in New York anyway -- the list of best poems read aloud in NY in 96 would be different from the list of best books of poems -- the under-published Kim Lyons gave a couple of amazing readings, John Godfrey read twice, Rod Smith's reading at Poetry City may have topped his book..) that was such a long parenthesis I'll start again -- does this newer mode, which could be called 'response' (in sympathetic contrast with 'resistance'), which takes as its basis the effects of these disastrous shifts of the world's mood -- I mean its economics -- household, yes? -- on a particular person, a particular mind, or a few at a time, does that really represent a shift of scale from that of 'new sentence' writing? Couldn't it be seen as an _intensification_ of what was heretofore diffuse? Couldn't judgment really be about registering molarity? (Henry -- do not tell me that you've had all your moles registered since you were a lad. Thank you.) If you really are only talking about Lentricchia, Fish, Jameson, Ross, etc, then all I can say is whoops! Whoops, and why are you talking about them. Blame me, I voted for Anderson, or I would have, Jordan ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 7 Jan 1997 10:04:44 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Burt Kimmelman -@NJIT" Subject: Re: The Visual in Language Charleses et al., Let me remind us all of some of Paul Blackburn's work as well, which made some inroads toward the merging of the concrete and the literal. Burt ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 7 Jan 1997 10:45:57 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry Subject: Re: Rock the vote (change th' oil) In-Reply-To: Message of Tue, 7 Jan 1997 10:18:29 -0400 from On Tue, 7 Jan 1997 10:18:29 -0400 Jordan Davis said: > >Couldn't judgment really be about registering molarity? (Henry -- do not >tell me that you've had all your moles registered since you were a lad. >Thank you.) I guess you haven't heard the bootleg tape of my reading at Naked Mole Rat Theater in St. Paul, July 7, 1969. Not sure where you can order it now - used to have it under the counter if you said the password at that place on the West Bank (U of M, that is) - must be someplace in NYC - check around. It will recontrive all yr tropes through a lateral mole-mesh. - HG p.s. How DOES the audience respond to an inner left elbow mole? Blisters?? ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 7 Jan 1997 11:35:39 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: Re: Rock the vote (change th' oil) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Ah better a lateral mole-mesh than a _literal mish-mash_, I always say.. J ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 7 Jan 1997 10:11:14 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Bromige Subject: visuals in poetry (later 20th C, american) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" or take a look at the work of philip whalen. (i hear from laura moriarty that a new collected is soon to appear. norman fischer is reported to know about this. but there should still be copies of _On Bears Head_out there--it was a surprisingly large run.) db ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 7 Jan 1997 16:19:24 -0500 Reply-To: "k.a. hehir" Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "k.a. hehir" Subject: POETRY AWARD CANCELLED (fwd) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII happy new stuff , this forward is mainly for my fellow canadians on the list but i thought others may find it interesting as well. as one who sits on a seat that publishes 2 undergraduate poetry journals, this is quite an important development for the future of poetry. awards like this also help us youngsters get into grad-school too. cheers, kevin hehir ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Tue, 7 Jan 1997 02:05:06 -0500 From: John Barton Reply-To: CANLIT-L@infoserv.nlc-bnc.ca To: Multiple recipients of list CANLIT-L Subject: POETRY AWARD CANCELLED POETRY CATEGORY OF THE NATIONAL MAGAZINE AWARDS CANCELLED!!!! In my capacity as co-editor of Arc: Canada's National Poetry Maga- zine, it has come to my attention that the National Magazine Awards Foundation has cancelled the Poetry category of the National Magazine Awards. I was preparing to enter the work of four contributors to Arc from the past year, when I discovered that this category had been dropped. (By the way, there is still a fiction category.) I called the National Magazine Awards Foundation's office on December 30, 1996, to find out why the poetry category was cancelled and was told that the Foundation's board of directors, after much "discussion," decided to cancel the Poetry category due to what they have chosen to perceive as declining "interest" in the category. This was made "clear" to them by the dwindling number of entries submitted by magazines from across Canada as well as by private individuals (who may also enter their own work or the work of other poets whose work has appeared in Canadian periodicals). This "difficult" decision was apparently made with "much regret" and was "not unanimous." Based on my discussions with the Foundation's office staff, it is not clear to me that the Foundation has ever attempted to reverse the decline of entries, which has apparently been worsening over the past ten years. As the co-editor of Arc, I have never received any letters from the Foundation, urging Arc to submit. I also very much doubt that other Canadian literary magazines were ever similarly invited to submit entries. The Foundation also implied to me that they felt the $50. fee per entry (ie. if Arc had been submitting this year, we would have paid $200. to enter the work of four contributors for consideration) was perhaps outside the reach of the modest budgets of most literary magazines. I inferred from this comment (perhaps incorrectly) that the fee could not be adjusted to accommodate the straightened budgets of the literaries" because fairness must be maintained across categories and among equals. Ie. Canadian Geographic must be treated as fairly as Arc, even though it is unlikely the two magazines would ever compete in the same category. The Foundation also rationalized that there were many other poetry prizes for which poets could conceivably be eligible. I pointed out that there are few *national awards* for Canadian poets, especially ones where poets are honoured on the same stage as peers among other writers of other genres. I explained to the staff member to whom I was speaking (I am embarrassed to say that I cannot remember her name), that the award is very important to Canada's poets. It is highly regarded and considered to be a true honour. It is an opportunity for poetry to be honoured on the same stage alongside other kinds of writing. It is also important to the magazines that published the nominated and winning poets because it helps them to further develop their credibility, especially in the eyes of potential contributors, subscribers, benefactors (ie. the granting agencies). Also, to exclude poetry from the National Magazine Awards further marginalizes the genre and represents an insult from our peers whose support we will increasingly need as the funding for the arts deteriorates in Canada. If the Foundation wishes to appear indifferent to the state of the arts -- and the situation of poets in particular -- in Canada, it should be prepared to sustain a very embarrassing and well deserved black-eye as result of the cancellation of this category. Please call or write the National Magazine Awards Foundation to express your disgust with their decision: National Magazine Awards Foundation 109 Vanderhoof Avenue, Suite 207 Toronto, Ontario, M4G 2H7 416-422-1358 416-422-4762 (fax) Apparently, they have changed their minds in the past. A while ago, they re-instated the award for sports writing in response to opposition from the sports writing community. Part of your message to the Foundation should also be to do a better job of promoting the submission process and deadlines to the various communities that the awards serve. It is all very well for this Toronto-based, high-brow foundation to assume that the message is getting out to magazines both on the periphery of the country and at the margins of commercial publishing. It has also struck me as very poor planning that the awards submission deadline is usually within less than two weeks of the Christmas holidays. For commercial magazines that have paid staff, it might be more reasonable for them to meet such a poorly timed deadline. For magazines like Arc (and most literary periodicals) who are run by volunteers, it is more difficult -- Arc is run in our "off-hours," ie. outside our "regular" workdays in the "real" world. Happy New Year in these difficult times. Thanks for your interest. John Barton Co-editor Arc: Canada's National Poetry Magazine P.O. Box 7368 Ottawa, Ontario, K1L 8E4 ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 7 Jan 1997 12:03:43 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Bernstein Subject: Re: The Visual in Language Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Charles Alexander asks for some information on my new book with Susan Bee. In some way it=92s most like the book we did with Charles and Chax Press= about ten years ago called Fool=92s Gold, though it works with large page formats and plays with the frame of the bound book more than that one, which has an accordion-fold format. Here=92s what the prospectus for the book says: LITTLE ORPHAN ANAGRAM by Susan Bee, with new poems by Charles Bernstein Susan Bee has created a companion volume to her 1995 Granary Book, Talespin, transforming the genre of the illustrated book with her brilliantly colored, dizzylingly inventive, and poignant juxtapositions of new and found images. In this fin-de-siecle mix of fractured nursery rhymes, distressed mottos, riddles, and inscrutable sayings =96 Nonsense meets Folly on the road to Imagination. ***** As Charles speculates, Little Orphan Anagram is a limited edition book: there will be 35 copies and the 40 pages (20 spreads) of each book will be hand-painted by Susan. (The process involves collages [with poems and images] that are letterpress printed and then painted over.) For more information you can contact Steve Clay at Granary: scaly@interport.com. Steve will put some images of the book up at the Granary Website (http://www2.granarybooks.com) and also there will probably be some additional images put up at Kenny Goldsmith=92 visual poetry site (http://www.ubuweb.com/vp) =96 though not until next month. You can see= pages from Susan=92s Talespin at both sites. Meanwhile, for folks in NY Jan. 18, come to the opening: Susan Bee: Recent Paintings and a New Granary Book January 18 - February 28, 1997 Opening: Saturday, January 18, 5-7 pm ***Gallery Hours: Thurs.-Sat., 12-6 pm and by appt.*** Granary Books Gallery is pleased to announce a show of recent paintings and a new Granary Book by Susan Bee. Bee's paintings are collaged, mixed media works in oil and enamel paint that revolve around the figure as presented in movie posters of the 1940s and 50s as well as in paper dolls, postcards, and advertisements. These paintings involve narrative fragments in combination with multiple layers of paint. The collaged elements are embedded in encrusted, paint saturated surfaces. There is a tension between the narrative significations of the images and the abstract, formal qualities of the picture plane. In some of the paintings, the compositions involve decorative, organic arabesques and floral motifs. The paintings play out dramas and gender roles, psychic states, and visions. Little Orphan Anagram will also be shown.=20 *(*(*(*(*(*(*(*(**(*((**)*)*)*)*)*)*))*)*)*)*)*))*" Sylvester Pollet asks about the Mina Loy work in the "Surrealistic Pillow" show. I haven't seen this yet, but Susan tells me that there is one collage by Loy in the show, and that it is certainly worth seeing. Also recommended is the great New York Dada show at the Whitney, which has some great Duchamps, Man Rays, Stettheimers, &c., plus a terrific small section of visual/typographics poetry. While there is Man Ray's photo of Loy, and one of the cases has a magazine open to a Loy poem, there are no visual works by Loy in this show. *(*(*(*(*(*(*(*(**(*((**)*)*)*)*)*)*))*)*)*)*)*))*" >i would enjoy knowing what our correspondents are wearing says David Bromige As I write this post I am wearing a green sweater and brown corduroy pants (bought at the train station in DC on my way to the MLA, one of the hard-to-pass -on sales at a place called Structure), and black New Balance sneakers with velcro flaps (I don't see why people still wear laces, kind of like being stuck in Dos). Hm, Structure and New Balance ...=20 ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 7 Jan 1997 15:22:25 +0100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Miekal And Subject: Re: visuals in poetry (later 20th C, american) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Ive just joined the list so Im not sure if there is more to this thread then chiming in about visual/verbal lit. Our press, Xexoxial Editions has been publishing concrete, visual/verbal, collaborative, &xerolage since 1980. We carry the works of about 40 different poets from 15 different countries (including some folks I imagine that are on this list). Also, lets not forget Kamensky, the Russian zaum artist whose visual works he chose to call ferro-concrete 40 years before the concrete poetry movement even began. Miekal -- @#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@# Dreamtime Village website: http://net22.com/dreamtime QAZINGULAZA: And/Was/Wakest website: http://net22.com/qazingulaza e-mail for DT & And/Was: dtv@mwt.net ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 7 Jan 1997 14:30:58 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: AERIALEDGE@AOL.COM Subject: Re: To the Larks HG wrote >Regarding Rod's interesting post - maybe the reason "the young" have not the same theoretical meta-explanations for themselves is that it >takes a generation to absorb what's gone before AS POETRY But the other side of that is how strongly influenced people are by immediate predecessors. When I say younger poets are "going back" to the generation of the Allen anthology a lot of the ways of reading they're bringing with them are from the generation that followed the Allen anthology. It couldn't be otherwise. Luckily & of course these ways of writing/reading are quite varied. Nevertheless I think it interesting, even useful, to try & map these changes _when the mapping is understood as contingent_ -- as leading into the work -- rather than tacking or taxing it. The sheer number of interesting possibilities for writing now, in terms of form, influence, technology much less theoretical approach seem to me to be -- well, one might want to celebrate if there wasn't so much worthwhile to do. But then we do celebrate too. --Rod ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 7 Jan 1997 18:32:43 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: amato@CHARLIE.CNS.IIT.EDU Subject: Re: The Visual in Language Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" > (I don't see why people still wear laces, kind of >like being stuck in Dos). yeah but charles, mares eat oats and dos eat oats and little lambs eat ivy a kid'll eat ivy too wouldn't you? ----------- white tee, navy blue sweats, grey socks... (oh and yeah, black jockey underwear) feelin' comfy/// happy new year! joe ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 7 Jan 1997 19:13:03 +0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: KENT JOHNSON Organization: Highland Community College Subject: visual stuff Just to add a couple of names to the discussion of visual poetics: Some of Jed Rasula's first-power but neglected work and, much earlier, Kenneth Patchen. And actually what about the whole area of the "art book" which a number of the original zaum "poets" moved in (Marjorie Perloff has some great material on this in _The Futurist Moment_.) What parameters do we use to decide what realm we put such "books" in? Where does poetry stop and art begin? Or are we really speaking of a seamless continuum that we too easily split-up into expressive categories? For example, if we can have music with "just words" as John Cage showed, can we also have poetry "without words"? And what does it mean, and what purposes are served when we begin to call things by certain names? In calligraphy (the refined practice of it) there is supposed to be, as I can only barely understand it, a shimmering tension between linguistic sign and pure form that creates a brand new thing. Can we aspire toward something similar in spirit within the alphabet we inhabit? I ask these disjointed things knowing that there can only be speculation and no answer in the end. But that's the idea, right? Kent ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 7 Jan 1997 23:39:34 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Shemurph@AOL.COM Subject: Jeffrey Timmons and Others Reading - Scottsdale For those of you in the Phoenix/Tempe area, the Scottsdale Center of the Arts Poetry Series, now celebrating our 10th Season, is featuring a POETRY ARTWALK on Wednesday, January 8th, at 8:00 p.m. This is a FREE EVENT. Five writers have been commissioned to create original works in response to visual art on display. Works from the Chihuly "Baskets" and Desert Landscapes by Ed Mell have served as the visual focal points for tomorrow's program. Jeffrey Timmons (of this list), along with Meg Davis, Wanda Panduren, Rick Naguchi, and Dorothy Lykes, have been commissioned to read their new works. Hope to see any list members who live out this way! Sheila Murphy ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 8 Jan 1997 07:54:37 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry gould Subject: Re: visual stuff In-Reply-To: Message of Tue, 7 Jan 1997 19:13:03 +0600 from On Tue, 7 Jan 1997 19:13:03 +0600 KENT JOHNSON said: > >Or are we really speaking of a seamless continuum that we too >easily split-up into expressive categories? For example, if we can >have music with "just words" as John Cage showed, >can we also have poetry "without words"? And what does it mean, and >what purposes are served when we begin to call things by certain >names? In >calligraphy (the refined practice of it) there is supposed to be, as >I can only barely understand it, a shimmering tension between >linguistic sign and pure form that creates a brand new thing. Can we >aspire toward something similar in spirit within the alphabet we >inhabit? Some people can certainly "read" paintings the way others read poetry. (& maybe vice versa). Iconography and emotion. & on yr last question, the makers of medieval illustrated books thought so (I saw the Lindisfarne Gospels for the 1st time at British Museum last year). - ~HG~ ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 8 Jan 1997 08:30:03 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Boughn Subject: Re: visual stuff In-Reply-To: from "KENT JOHNSON" at Jan 7, 97 07:13:03 pm MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > names? In > calligraphy (the refined practice of it) there is supposed to be, as > I can only barely understand it, a shimmering tension between > linguistic sign and pure form that creates a brand new thing. Can we > aspire toward something similar in spirit within the alphabet we > inhabit? > Dave Chirot and I have been talking about Robert Grenier's recent work in very similar terms, right down to the unanswerable question(ing) (though Grenier's calligraphy would seem to push the whole thing toward the american, democratic rethinking of the aesthetic) (if not toward a reforming of penmenship programmes in the public schools!) Mike mboughn@chass.utoronto.ca ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 9 Jan 1997 00:37:54 +1100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Danny Huppatz Subject: The Visual in Poetry MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Re: Charles Berstein's comments on the Visual in Poetry, I have been involved in a project for the last three years in Melbourne (Australia) that works as an intersection between visual & textual languages. It began as a regualar artist-run gallery but importantly included writers (poets, theorists, fiction writers) in all decision making & running of the space. Each exhibition of visual included at least two different written texts in an attempt to create some kind of "intertextual space". It never really quite worked out as hoped, mostly because the audience were very much art world & so the written texts tended to be sidelined as merely "catalogue essays". Starting last year, I began inviting writers to produce installations in the gallery in an attempt to shift the textual further into the realm of visual art. Some of these have been very successful & overall the project has produced much collaborative work between artists & writers (though now the boundaries are blurring). Also, a friend of mine (an art theorist) is preparing a collaborative installation with a visual artist as part of a philosophy conference to be held in Melbourne later this year. I think this kind of shifting of territories can help "deterritorialize" writing (or "poetry") while at the same time losening up other disciplines such as visual art or philosophy. Plus it also serves as a link that can bring different communities together. Re what our correspondents are wearing: a blue batik shirt (unbuttoned) given to me by my grandmother years ago & a pair of boxer shorts i got for christmas with an image of a boxer dog & the words "down boy down" written all over them ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 8 Jan 1997 09:05:58 CST Reply-To: tmandel@screenporch.com Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: tmandel@CAIS.CAIS.COM Subject: Eustache film MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: Text/Plain; Charset=US-ASCII Ron or anyone else -- do you know where one can rent (or otherwise look at) "The Mother and the Whore" an extraordinary film I haven't seen in two decades. I have the idea that it may have somehow exited circulation. Tom ************************************************* Tom Mandel * 2927 Tilden St. NW Washington DC 20008 * tmandel@1net.com vox: 202-362-1679 * fax 202-364-5349 ************************************************* ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 8 Jan 1997 09:26:11 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Loss Glazier Subject: Re: The Visual in Language Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 10:23 AM 1/6/97 -0500, Charles Bernstein wrote: >Buffalo. Crucial, now (now is never "post" except in a secondary sense), in >this respect (and so this is brings me to an directly respond to the >question that is also floating around on the list) is poetry on the web, in >which the visual dimensions are even more visible (they are always >inescapable), for example choices of color, font and background, which many >more writers are now confronted than in the past -- if not in HTML, then on >their computers. --- In this context, and in addition to Kenny G's home page, I highly recommend a look at the EPC Gallery (accessible from the EPC home page) where a number of interesting and varied visual works abound including work by Bernstein, Raworth, a long calligraphic work by Mike Basinski, and my own pressing-HTML-into-service kinetic works are on display. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 8 Jan 1997 09:56:48 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: POLLET@MAINE.MAINE.EDU Subject: Mina Loy Art Thanks to Keith Tuma & Marisa Januzzi, who reminded me that there's a reproduction of Loy's "Communal Cot" in Last Lunar Baedeker, Conover 1982, plate 29. the detail in the Times showed only the central two figures in the top row. Conover gives the dimensions as 27"x46 1/2". Sylvester Pollet, NPF Univ. Maine ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 8 Jan 1997 10:13:13 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel_Bouchard@HMCO.COM Subject: Discourse & Theory, not sitting in a Tree MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: Text/Plain Isn't it strange to think Pound was disturbed as recently as 80 years ago by "the thought of what America would be like if the Classics had a wide circulation?" Poor Pound in his troubled sleep, dreaming of beautiful lilies in the land of vulgar acorns. Did he think an ennobled civilization would come from a populace with access to (and presumably reading) the Greeks and Romans? And then this civilization would help transform the world into a better place as HE imagined it? Or would it just be a nicer place to hang out? Pound must have thought his contemporaries were reading crap. I suppose the same could be said today. (Does this mean I share Pound's vision? And would that mean I have a future as a broadcaster in foreign land? Perhaps I could denounce a population for listening attentively to Jennings Rather Koppel without first having read Ben Bagdikian.) I agree that there is a need for discourse about poetry. I prefer not to call it theory, not because it implies a sense of unity but because it implies abstractions independent of particular things. Can you equate discourse and theory? Not in my dictionary. Calling for discourse today is wise but implying that it may necessarily be an extension of recent theory, or a continuation of "langpo taken as a (problematic) given" is ludicrous. Commence discoursing. daniel_bouchard@hmco.com ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 8 Jan 1997 09:53:41 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: amato@CHARLIE.CNS.IIT.EDU Subject: poetry, theory, discourse, etc... Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" what has, from the beginning, attracted me to language poetry, is, as i thought and continue to think, here were some folks who were thinking... however, i want to be sure to indicate just how presumptuous some of the exchange hereabouts might appear in the face of other poetic realities (and i'm not indicting or alleging or insinuating)... i mean, *my* posts too---i fret over this on a daily basis, each time my pinkies tickle these keys... there are lots and lots of (good and bad) poets for whom this list is a non-entity, for whom any number of poetic assertions in these spaces means absolutely zero... in spite of this, and for my part, i *do* believe that this list, and places like it, represent the single most important 'event' in poetry and poetics in the past decade or so (even more important, as i see it and in the long term, than the popular proliferation of slam scenes)... now i didn't say "most worthy" or some such---i said "most important"... but the significance of such an event (as this list) is that it further distances the present moment from past moments in which one school -- language poetry or any other -- could lay claim to defining, cavalierly, the present moment... which means that even my claim as to the significance of this list is subject to a scrutiny that it would hitherto not enjoy... now, nobody is being cavalier about things, i know... and it is true that a small group of folks can exert an enormous influence in historical terms... but again, a list such as this provides a way to check the motivations (institutional and otherwise) behind such influence, or at least to challenge same... with a *relative* chorus of voices that no other forum "we" have at our disposal seems to tolerate, let alone facilitate... in all, then: i find mself understanding, yet remaining somewhat uncomfortable with the ... proposal or provocation that some 'we' might now, almost premeditatedly, arrive at a new place for poetry/poetic---by, i assume, sheer force of will, insight, reach, what have you... a very seductive suggestion, but far as i've been able to ascertain, "we" have already arrived at a place (whether a measure of progress i cannot say) where contingency is understood in its fullest sense, and where the vagaries of history are permitted to play themselves out without our imposing, say, a neoclassical grid over same... for those who get off on the oracular: as a poet, one can say, "we have arrived here," but best to say it, as i see it---*here*, not over there someplace (this is a liability that, in my more critical moments, i've sweated interminably)... the logicians among you will note the (democratic) paradox ... here---i assert the intrinsic divisibility of a "place" in a peculiarly indivisible way... so (if i may): this place we're at, you and me and you and you and ..., would seem to be constructed upon an awareness of the tenuous nature of conceptual foreclosures... the conflicts that will likely be played out ("negotiated") wrt poetry and poetics will likely be played out on a day-to-day basis, as has pretty much always been the case... a list such as this foregrounds this actuality... which means that something new may well emerge, "we" may find ourselves someplace different, but that all's we can do is provide a ... climate conducive to same, to the enormous number of variables at work in our work ... all of which is not to say that a woman's or man's reach should not exceed her or his grasp... but i just don't think the time is ripe for the muse to descend, draw one's inspiration where one may... if, on the other hand, the... proposal or provocation is that we come together in a new or different way (for poets or writers, i mean) on the basis of shared political commitments (read "values" if you wish), even if we may find ourselves opposed in terms of our aesthetic commitments (read "values" if you wish), why then i'm all for it, speaking as a utopian (i.e., earthling)... by which i mean to suggest that the sorts of politics represented by our aesthetic practices should perhaps be more loosely, or more generously, constru(ct)ed than the politics we bring to other (public) spheres (which assumes the active presence of at least TWO public spheres)... declining, i think, though not reclining// best, joe ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 8 Jan 1997 07:57:50 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Re: clothes make de man In-Reply-To: <199701080558.VAA24615@email.sjsu.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Actually, Fish DID make that move earlier -- but since he did it at the MLA, rather than in the pages of a major mag, it didn't catch much attention nationally -- when asked by a befuddled audience member what he was going to do now that he had pronounced the death of theory, Fish told the assembled audience that he would return to his first calling as a Miltonist -- I invite you to read his subsequent books for insights on Milton -- David -- glad to see you here -- I'm still wearing the pajamas I donned when my fever shot over 103, but at this point, the fever having subsided, it's merely an affectation carried on in hopes of securing sympathy from my overworked wife -- Hope to see you on the coast soon -- ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 8 Jan 1997 10:18:34 -0600 Reply-To: maria damon Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: maria damon Subject: Re: two men sitting in a Tree bouchard rites: I agree that there is a need for discourse about poetry. I prefer not to call it theory, not because it implies a sense of unity but because it implies abstractions independent of particular things.-- i've been trying to work on this, not a "discourse" (at least i havn't called it this in my mind) but a workable vocabulary and "angle" of analysis that responds to poetries that are not easily recuperable as academic fetishes. thus i haven't really turned much of my attention to "language poetry" as such, but hav e, as marjorie pointed out in lastyear's corn skirmishes, paid close attention to some "language oriented" poetry and poets, such as spicer, stein, duncan and most recently, hannah weiner. this list has been central to my gathering information about weiner, and other matters; at the same time, it hasn't been as insightful about matters of popular and mass poetries, or folk poetry. this i attribute, perhaps erroneously, to the legacy of modernist aesthetic judgment and the seeming necessity to exercise that judgment. i was on a panel at the recent "rethinking marxism" conference with amitava kumar and peter hitchcock, both of whom read their own work in the context of a post-marxist analysis of the role of poetry/rant/spoken word in creating useful oppositional consciousness. it felt good to be in that environment, where poetry is alive but also socially contextualized --not, as reductive stereotypes of marxism or cultural studies would have it, subordinated to the status of sociological evidence, but enhanced in their liveliness by acknowledgment and invocation of community reception and production. yum yum. it was cool. my own offering suffered from being undertheorized, and, as always when i invoke bob kaufman's name, technical snafus: the video screen wouldnt work. anyway, that's my 2 zence on poetic discourse. bests and happy new year, maria d ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 8 Jan 1997 12:15:53 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Wallace Subject: "post lang theory and who's younger than you" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Actually, as Rod Smith and some others point out, there is already a fair amount of critical work being done by a variety of writers working on the variety of theories that might fall under the rubric "postlanguage" poetries, or just plan Poetry with a capital G (never could spell). The problem is not so much that this work does not exist but that the forums for its appearance are few and far between. WITZ and POETIC BRIEFS have been much involved, as have some issues of CHAIN and TEXTURE, and Ed Foster has also printed some articles with such concerns in TALISMAN. So, again, what's at issue, really, is not so much the lack of such work, but the LACK OF A FORUM IN WHICH IT MIGHT APPEAR SO THAT MANY PEOPLE WILL KNOW IT IS THERE. Indeed I want to pick up on some of the implications of Ron Silliman's recent posts about capitalism, academics, and the disappearance of almost all resources for poetry, and note that resources and publishing venues for innovative criticism of poetry by writers in the generation following language poetry are simply not THERE, beyond the ear-to-the-ground, practically nonexistent budgets of the above publications (my apologies to Ed if Talisman is financially doing well--none of the others are). It would be EASY, at this time, to put together a book-length collection of critical essays regarding "postlanguage" issues--what's missing is not the work, but a PUBLISHER with the resources to make such a project happen. At this time, of course, we're not even CLOSE to having any academic interest in this subject, beyond perhaps 3 or 4 individuals. Would it be good if there was such interest? One thing I noticed about the MLA is that the English profession is still wrestling with the notion of whether language poetry EXISTS. It was astonishing how dumbfounded a contemporary academic audience was at Joan Retallack's excellent poetry reading--no one in the audience even DARED ask her a question afterwards, except those of us who already know her. I'll leave it to Alan Golding to say whether I really did overhear a young academic challenging him, after Golding's fine talk on Bob Perelman's work, to say what language poets have done that hadn't already been done by Marianne Moore--I like Moore's work, but somehow I don't think that's the point here. 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: Wed, 8 Jan 1997 12:25:13 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gwyn McVay Subject: Re: "post lang theory and who's younger than you" In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Mark, in all fairness to that audience, she read a poem after "Icarus Ffffffalling"--I don't know the title, but it's from /Afterrimages/--in which the printed pages are divided in half vertically, and syllables from the top half are echoed in the bottom half. Given an audience that, almost by definition, isn't as familiar with her work as it ought to be, it seems natural that they'd have an easier time with that particular piece if they were seeing it on the page. Despite! despite! despite the fact that they ought to! etc. Gwyn ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 8 Jan 1997 11:51:45 +0100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Miekal And Subject: Re: "post lang theory and who's younger than you" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Mark Wallace wrote: > > Actually, as Rod Smith and some others point out, there is already a fair > amount of critical work being done by a variety of writers working on the > variety of theories that might fall under the rubric "postlanguage" > poetries, or just plan Poetry with a capital G (never could spell). Damn, I kinda feel like Rip Van Winkle out here in farm country. Like I wake up from a long sleep & there's a new rumor that the next movement is "post-language". Such a hodgepodge group of hyper-idiomatic writers & were genericizing our fine art by calling it "post-language"? Actually the discussion about theory is interesting to me as we are in the slow beginnings of getting our "school" off the ground, have led a bunch of WORDBANG! workshops with all the various mottly assortment of anarchists, grad students, eco-villagers, & lowlife that pull thru Dreamtime Village. Ive easily been able to get people exicted about the creative act, about writing thru writing, about inventing new words, new languages, sound & visual poetry but life here is anything but academic or constructed. I coldnt interest but few in the theory, the criticism, because quite simply for many of these folks, its talking about doing something, rather than being participant in the process itself. Life here has a lot more to do with fixing windows & planting potatoes & living the dream of the culture we have yet to imagine, thru simple action & attention to the processes. Miekal -- @#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@# Dreamtime Village website: http://net22.com/dreamtime QAZINGULAZA: And/Was/Wakest website: http://net22.com/qazingulaza e-mail for DT & And/Was: dtv@mwt.net ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 8 Jan 1997 13:16:14 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry gould Subject: discourse of potatoes Something to keep in mind is that poetics (discourse,theory) not only tries to parallel & augment what's going on, but it also travels in a diametrically counter direction. The working writer has so much varied technique & subject matter to absorb & deal with that the result is WICKEDLY idiosyncratic & personal. Meanwhile the chat lists (print or email) on various levels try to glean out what is done in common, what is characteristic, what is hip - always a group or grouping phenomenon!! Shucks, I ain't even gonna mention the... ZEITGEIST!!! (ie. as many in various contexts have pointed out, there are networks, & common approaches, & shared experience which are prerogatives for anything - see Jeff Hansen's essay in latest Witz on this - yet even within these networks nobody's gonna be interested unless it's NEW in some way, some new departure or crystallization. Each poem is like a successful equation or theorem...blahbiddy blah...) Anyway, whatever pre- or post- (come to think of it, these terms are really tied to a linear concept of time which may not be accurate) -theories are a-growing, they have to be built on a sense of poetry which opens up to what the individual artist is doing IN DEPTH. - Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 8 Jan 1997 10:44:42 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Bromige Subject: discourse & theory Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" perhaps this intriguing discourse has room for a slight piece of historical perspective. (I've just read Daniel Bouchard's latest posting, but i'm sure other postings inform my desire to respond here). The poetics & poetry of The New American Poetry appeared to some of us to lead inevitably to NOT writing about one's practice. Only the poem cd be the ground, and if there were critical points to be made, let them be made within, and as, the poem."Writing about" was a secondary, and therefore dispensible, practice. This is certainly why I (who enjoyed writing criticism) dispensed with it for some years. I think it's also the case that Clark Coolidge and Michaels Palmer and Davidson abstained, a;lthough they might have granted interviews as time went by. I think i recall arriving at sd conclusions on my own but rehearsing them with m palmer early on. Later, there came to be a term (mfgd at New College?), "analytic lyric," which to my mind (altho an ugly phrase) cd be applied to my practice from the word Go, and to that of the others named above, plus many more besides. The critique provided by L=A=N=Gpoets starting up in the early & middle 70s i felt (for the reasons given above) was mistaken. But coming to admire (at first, certainly, in the sense of "wonder at") their poetry, and getting to know them as persons, I began therefore to assimilate what they had to say "about". I saw that (a) there work was sufficiently different to warrant such "aboutness" and (b), more importantly, that they had registered this: if you dont describe yourself, other, alien beings will do it for you. Once this penetrated at least my thick skull, with a sigh of "its dirty work, but..." I wrote some things that werent poems. Clark and M Palmer gave many more interviews. M Davidson wrote brilliantly about other poets in ways that also helped define for us what he's at in his poetry. In the present, i find i'm much taken with (well, it's tout neuf to me) this listwriting. no doubt there will be those capable of abstracting theses from it and providing us with provocative books "about", and that will prove one kind of usefulness, but i enjoy it as the melee it is also. i'm glad for the appearance of company--its like new hampshire sans the third dimension. db this a.m. i'm wearing the same pants, which btw turn out to be not navy but black, the same genre of sockwear,the same navy overshirt, but whats under it is changed: a one-size-fits-all Teeshirt defining "compendium" that they give you when you read at that London bookshop. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 9 Jan 1997 08:35:08 +1300 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: DS Subject: wearing Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" nothing ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 8 Jan 1997 12:45:46 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Alexander Subject: Re: wearing Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" one horizontally striped cotton shirt, blue & gray, short sleeves over a long-sleeved plum tee-shirt (it's chilly here) blue jeans, sonoma brand, cheaper imitation of levi's speckled socks and saucony running shoes contemplating changing ear ring for the first time in more than a year to what looks like a hopi red blue and white with black lines and dot ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 8 Jan 1997 14:24:00 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Pritchett,Pat @Silverplume" Subject: Re: discourse & theory Comments: To: David Bromige MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Thanks for a great post, David. It helped to put things in perspective for me. My only other comment is: I am wearing a dark blue t-shirt, a blue corduroy button down shirt (with button down collar) and which the tag advertised as "teal": a color I'd always thought of as more substantially green though my wife assures me I am wrong about this. Dark blue Lee's jeans, very warm socks, and brown Merrill hiking boots which, let us be frank, are "da bomb," and of necessity feature laces. Patrick Pritchett ---------- From: David Bromige To: POETICS Subject: discourse & theory Date: Wednesday, January 08, 1997 12:53PM perhaps this intriguing discourse has room for a slight piece of historical perspective. (I've just read Daniel Bouchard's latest posting, but i'm sure other postings inform my desire to respond here). The poetics & poetry of The New American Poetry appeared to some of us to lead inevitably to NOT writing about one's practice. Only the poem cd be the ground, and if there were critical points to be made, let them be made within, and as, the poem."Writing about" was a secondary, and therefore dispensible, practice. This is certainly why I (who enjoyed writing criticism) dispensed with it for some years. I think it's also the case that Clark Coolidge and Michaels Palmer and Davidson abstained, a;lthough they might have granted interviews as time went by. I think i recall arriving at sd conclusions on my own but rehearsing them with m palmer early on. Later, there came to be a term (mfgd at New College?), "analytic lyric," which to my mind (altho an ugly phrase) cd be applied to my practice from the word Go, and to that of the others named above, plus many more besides. The critique provided by L=A=N=Gpoets starting up in the early & middle 70s i felt (for the reasons given above) was mistaken. But coming to admire (at first, certainly, in the sense of "wonder at") their poetry, and getting to know them as persons, I began therefore to assimilate what they had to say "about". I saw that (a) there work was sufficiently different to warrant such "aboutness" and (b), more importantly, that they had registered this: if you dont describe yourself, other, alien beings will do it for you. Once this penetrated at least my thick skull, with a sigh of "its dirty work, but..." I wrote some things that werent poems. Clark and M Palmer gave many more interviews. M Davidson wrote brilliantly about other poets in ways that also helped define for us what he's at in his poetry. In the present, i find i'm much taken with (well, it's tout neuf to me) this listwriting. no doubt there will be those capable of abstracting theses from it and providing us with provocative books "about", and that will prove one kind of usefulness, but i enjoy it as the melee it is also. i'm glad for the appearance of company--its like new hampshire sans the third dimension. db this a.m. i'm wearing the same pants, which btw turn out to be not navy but black, the same genre of sockwear,the same navy overshirt, but whats under it is changed: a one-size-fits-all Teeshirt defining "compendium" that they give you when you read at that London bookshop. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 8 Jan 1997 15:45:15 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Bernstein Subject: Re: Language in the Visual //Pound & the classics Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >I think this kind of shifting of >territories can help "deterritorialize" writing (or "poetry") while at >the same time losening up other disciplines such as visual art or philosophy. >Plus it also serves as a link that can bring different communities together. --writes Danny Huppatz I certainly find your project of great interest, but have to report, from a strictly New York point of view, that there is an unfortunately strong barrier between writers who foreground the visual dimension of their work and visual artists using verbal language in their work. The crossover points are artificially narrow: not that the folks coming out a poetry context aren't engaged with the visual artists who use words, but that the "art world" tends to ignore the "poetry" in its representation of this whole field of activity, focussing almost exclusively on figures whose base-of-operation is the art world. I would love to see a discussion of Lawrence Weiner linked to a discussion of Robert Grenier, but if that were to happen I bet it would be someone on this list who would write it and another on this list who would publish it. That's all well and good. But interesting to note lines where lines exist. (I realize that this is something that Wystan Curnow and Marjorie Perloff have both written about and worked to change; and I think also of Mary Ann Caws's lecture on Ian Hamilton Finlay and Tom Phillips at the MLA, both of whom are counter-examples of cross-over figures. Also Susan Bee and Mira Schor's special issue of New Observations, "Ripple Effects: Painting and Language", about about which I recently posted an announcement.) Thanks, Mike, for mentioning Grenier, someone whose work is often on my mind. I should have added him to the list I made in response to Ron Silliman's post on the visual in language, although, speaking of the 70s, I would have been thinking of Sentences, his radical refusal of the bound book in favor of a Chinese box containing texts printed on large-format index cards; or possibly his instance on nonproportional space type, as in A Day at the Beach (an insistence that echoes Duncan's). However, in recent years, his remarkable series of color handwritten poems have fundamentally challenged the stability of the alphabetic code, bringing the page as field of verbal investigation closer to, or overlapping with, drawing: a sort of holographic attention similar to Susan Howe's reading/viewing of Dickinson's mss. By the way, my list in my post was not a comprehensive list of poets doing "visual" work but a specific response to comments of Ron. In any case, I was glad to hear from Miekal And as his and Liz Was's work is quite relevant: many wonderful books etc. But I am sure they, and others like Karl Kempton, could well report something within "poetry" that I am speaking about within the "art world", and this was Charles Alexander's point I believe: poets primarily identified as visual poets publish and exchange work in relatively separate networks than poets doing work close to that but not primarily identified with the "visual". However, here there are MANY crossover points, such as And and Was's Xexoxial and Charles Alexander's own Chax. But often the projects are considered quite separate, even if parallel. ********************* and one more note -- >: Daniel_Bouchard@HMCO.COM >Subject: Discourse & Theory, not sitting in a Tree >Isn't it strange to think Pound was disturbed as recently as 80 years ago by >"the thought of what America would be like if the Classics had a wide >circulation?" Poor Pound in his troubled sleep, dreaming of beautiful lilies >in the land of vulgar acorns. Did he think an ennobled civilization would come >from a populace with access to (and presumably reading) the Greeks and >Romans? >And then this civilization would help transform the world into a better place >as HE imagined it? Or would it just be a nicer place to hang out? > >Pound must have thought his contemporaries were reading crap. But surely, of the many things Pound wrote that would make this point, this is an odd poem to choose. It's one of Pound's most sarcastic poems. As the note in Personae frames it -- The "learned judge" in a censorship case says he would allow an obscene reference in the classics that he would not allow in popular reading, since the readers of the classics are "comparatively limited [in] number" and I think by implication less likely to suffer the ill effects of such images and representations. And Pound's poem in the reply to that ... saying in effect that if that classics had a wild circulation they arouse the populace to a sexual high, not heighten their sensibilities (though I woulnd't necessarily won't to separate those two). ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 8 Jan 1997 15:36:57 +0000 Reply-To: ARCHAMBEAU@LFC.EDU Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Robert Archambeau Organization: Lake Forest College Subject: Re: The Visual in Language MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Those who have been following this thread might be interested to know that there will be a special issue of _Mosaic: A Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature_ devoted to literature and the other arts coming out sometime later this year (Sept. or Dec., I think). The journal is available at most university libraries. You can also advance order a copy from their web site: http://www.umanitoba.ca/publications/mosaic/sub.htm Robert Archambeau ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 8 Jan 1997 17:53:01 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Historically Riding Bernstein Dear Charles--thanks for the paragraph quote from your intro. which I am looking forward to almost as much as the Riding book. Since I am impatient to dialogue, however, I will risk "wrenching" the paragraph you quote out of context to ask some questions.... The idea of historicizing "The Wind, The Clock...." is fascinating. Her address to the "lone survivors on paper" does seem to suggest a kind of WASTELAND as a backdrop. And she did write about how she had turned to poetry as a kind of shelter. Such a reading certainly avoids the pitfalls of "self-choked falsity" or a kind of reading that would deign to be dragged down into the kind of relationship with a certain kind of reader the poem seems to posit as well as criticize, one who would see "self-choked falsity" as an imagined reader-as-follower, or even a flattering (conjuring) of the critic who wants to be flagellated. From one perspective, this could be seen as a disclaimer of "personal responsibility": (we all gather around NOTHING. NOTHING is what keeps us together. I am telling you I am telling you nothing. Therefore this "nothing" you may tell me I tell you may also be history, or may make you wish to TURN to hisotry, where the answers, my friend, are blowing in the wind no less than here-- no matter how hard "I the story" may try to become history) I.e. You seem to read her as saying "the story" is "history" Now the Oppen connection (which McGann tried to establish as well) is also interesting...... Riding's politics moved in an opposite direction as Oppen? In what sense do you mean this? There's an implication that Oppen's leftism and his return to poetry are related, while Riding's attempt to critique certain aspects of poetry from a seemingly genreless perspective may invoke a kind of "rightism?" Are you implying that Riding's "voiceless telling" does away with "poetic turning?" ---------- Back to the question of the HISTORICAL CONTEXT (the HOLOCAUST, etc.).... Has the historical context changed? Against the backdrop of the unameable atrocities of today. If the poet is to think globally and see (if not imagine) the human forces that seem to move history more than are moved by history and if we assume that history means POWER and carries an authority poetry doesn't and that poetry may wish to claim but can only do so by killing for history is a club more easily admitted to by killing (of course, when a poet says "kill" the poet may mean kill history and its hierarchies-- chief among these the hierarchy over poetry.... the way it lies like poetry, or only speaks the truth when disguised as poetry (or a dictionary for that matter). Then there's the kind of poetry that "contains history", I mean history as history, as if to find the HUMAN there Today, of course, there are more inclusive notions of history in circulation...but are they wide enough to contain poetry without threatening their status as history? Or there is literary history.... (sylvia Playth is, in many interpretive circles, criticized for her reduction of the horror of Nazi Germany to a Freudian "family romance" while others are said to be "in denial" about the "personal as the political" from a certain persepctive, history becomes a friendlier context, or habitation.... a way to make use of one's hell (Why bother, as Perelman wrote, except already bothered)..... There is a crack in the world (Waldman), not just in me. The historical world. We are no longer to be duped by the possibility that one can actually solve one's problems (Hence the oppen quote about fantasies and savagery), or become an "integrated personality" (FREUD being the OPIATE of the "middle classes" --or of the proletariat basking in their own fat of linguistic, conceptual confusion that mistakes themselves for the "middle class"--another example of doublespeak that attests for the need for Riding's dictionary).... A book that purports to be about "the mind" or "language" or "the possible" may "really" be about the historical wall the author bangs her head up against----or the historical wall poetry had this "nasty habit" of helping you forget to bang your head against. Remember it. Fight it. But don't fight fighting, Or don't beg begging Lest history hush you home to silence, considering what kind of hearing you'll get. (this is not "me" speaking) But things change. There USED TO be a left (as Ron reminds us). Now there isn't. Hope used to be "realistic." Yet nothing is realistic until real and nothing is real until history says it is(by killing it). There are many contexts. Many HISTORICAL contexts, even if we choose to operate linguistically within the workroom (or play pen) of history, ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 9 Jan 1997 04:45:01 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ward Tietz <100723.3166@COMPUSERVE.COM> Subject: Version Box I picked up a "Version Box" yesterday at the Saint-Gervais Center for video, computer-generated art and theater which I thought might be of interest to some people on the list. It's a limited edition catalogue/souvenir box, with work in English, French and German, from the participants of the month-long series of conferences and exhibitions on electronic literature and computer-aided/multi-media art that was held at Saint-Gervais in June. The box contains various objects, a CD-ROM and individual Mac/PC diskettes containing Michel Butor's "Immateriel pour un Don Juan", Robert Kendall's "The Clue", Philippe Bootz's "Icone", Jean-Marie Dutey's "Interface is Message", among others. Those interested in obtaining a copy can contact Simon Lamuniere at the Saint-Gervais Center. Addresses are listed below. Saint-Gervais Geneve 5, rue du Temple CH-1201 Geneva Switzerland Tel. (+4122) 908 20 60 Fax (+4122) 908 20 01 e-mail: sgg@sgg.ch http://www.sgg.ch The price of the box is $70, plus $10 postage. Here's a full list of the contents: Anthony Aziz / Sammy Cucher : Ozymandias(C) Patrice Baizet : polystirene expense (1,9 X 9,2 X 8,4) Jean-Pierre Balpe : un roman (extrait) Joachim Blank : Username: box Password: community Jean-Louis Boissier : Bifurcation 2 Philippe Bootz : Icone Urs Breitenstein : Il sole visto Michel Butor / Ambroise Barras : Immateriel pour un Don Juan Jean-Marie Dutey : Interface is message Ceal Floyer : staple / agrafe / ALLEMAND Rainer Ganahl : Shut down Valery Grancher : meaning Herve Graumann : ~20 punaises / thumbtacks / ALLEMANDs Laurence Huber : Casita (photo) Felix Stephan Huber / Philip Pocock : arctic circle Robert Kendall : The Clue Eric Lanz : manuscrit Marko Lehanka : jouet / toy / Spielzeug Christine Meierhofer : wire.objects Guenther Selichar : Who's afraid of blue, red and green ? Wolfgang Staehle / The Thing : Space Claim Herwig Turk : vergessen(C) Ward Tietz ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 9 Jan 1997 02:53:19 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ron Silliman Subject: Jean Eustache Tom, I wish that I did. Eustache, who was one of Godard's and Truffaut's assistant directors for much of his career, died in his early 40s from cancer, so didn't build up a body of work that ever got marketed as such. I know that he made at least one other feature, although I never got to see it. But maybe somebody has gathered films starring Jean-Pierre Leaud (sp?). There are a couple of film catalog type places around (one out of Chicago if I recall). In fact, didn't you have one lying around your house in Delaware last fall? I think that Jesse spilled some juice on it. Both Siskal and Ebert have web sites. Maybe one of them has tips on how to find hard-to-get films. I would sort of expect that. I must have seen that film 3 times, maybe 5. The scene in which the nurse runs off and J-P follows her and the 3rd woman lies on the mattress on the floor and just listens to a long Piaf number on the record player all the way through was a great lesson to me that I've carried over in my poetry (or tried to), about how art can modulate time and how one feature of great art is to s l o w i t d o w n. The first time I saw that film I identified with the J-P character totally. The last time, I thought he was an insufferable, narcissistic pig. I asked Eustache once why the flat owned by the woman who ran the boutique was so devoid of adornment on its walls. It was the one feature in that film that made it seem "unBerkeley," if you know what I mean. He replied that they didn't have money even for posters. Ron ------------------------------ > >Date: Wed, 8 Jan 1997 09:05:58 CST >From: tmandel@CAIS.CAIS.COM >Subject: Eustache film > >Ron or anyone else -- do you know where one can rent (or otherwise look at) "The Mother and the Whore" an extraordinary film I haven't seen in two decades. I have the idea that it may have somehow exited >circulation. > >Tom > > >************************************************* > Tom Mandel * 2927 Tilden St. NW > Washington DC 20008 * tmandel@1net.com > vox: 202-362-1679 * fax 202-364-5349 >************************************************* ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 9 Jan 1997 09:07:30 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: EJOYCE@EDINBORO.EDU Subject: Re: "post lang theory and who's younger than you" MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII Mark Wallace's concerns about lack of publishing venues for experimental poetry are valid, but I am wondering if the internet could offer plausible solutions to this problem. Marking up text and posting it is not difficult or terribly time consuming, and those of us who have access to academic sites can develop web pages extremely inexpensively. I note that no women have offered up their clothing on this thread. I'm wearing purple leggings, a flannel night shirt and a red zip-up sweatshirt (maybe this is why the women aren't talking!) Lisa Joyce ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 9 Jan 1997 09:59:41 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gwyn McVay Subject: fem poet wear In-Reply-To: <01IE054CK3B690MV0K@edinboro.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I haven't wanted to answer because what I've been wearing is such a cliche, particularly today: black turtleneck, baggy black jeans, black Doc Martens. I mean, it's just too, too. Gwyn ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 9 Jan 1997 09:42:39 CST Reply-To: tmandel@screenporch.com Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: tmandel@CAIS.CAIS.COM Subject: wearing MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: Text/Plain; Charset=US-ASCII blue button-fly levis bought too small when I went on a diet and told myself to fit into them or suffer the kantbequenchedness brown leather belt from telegraph ave. artisan (now back to a previously well-worn hole: it's a start) blue plaid flannel shirt over golden state warriors tee shirt (nostalgie de la boue) $6.99 quartz watch acquired at 18th/K in DC. Copies $800 Tag Heuer chronograph (file under "Theory") Fleece vest from stepson's closet (cold basement office) wool socks: wear'em year 'round. they keep you warm or cool as required. Vasque snow boots found with my daughters on either side of me on extreme sale in Chicago 4 Januaries ago on a break from sitting with my mom in the hospital as she recovered from pneumonia and was discovered recurrent with the cancer that 3 januaries later she died of crying out "wird niemand mir ein Holznarkose geben?" Holznarkose = wooden narcotic. I.e. "hit me on the head with a hammer; I've had enough." My mother had a grip and a salty sense of humor. A moment after she died (I was in the room) she wore everything, not even herself. Tom ************************************************* Tom Mandel * 2927 Tilden St. NW Washington DC 20008 * tmandel@1net.com vox: 202-362-1679 * fax 202-364-5349 ************************************************* ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 9 Jan 1997 09:32:08 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry gould Subject: Re: "post lang theory and who's younger than you" In-Reply-To: Message of Thu, 9 Jan 1997 09:07:30 -0500 from Seems like the lack or no of publishing venues, like the issue of teaching poetry in degree programs, are symptoms or effects of more general things, like, the question of status or cultural hegemony - who gets invited to the canon balls; or another one, the place of poetry in this culture in general; or another one, related to the first - what is good poetry? Huh? I think we've hashed these beans before! sd Villon from his comfortable electric chair. them's big questions! & I'm wearing a cowboy hat over a crewcut, the two-gun holster I won in a drawing (got to be on the show too, "Axel & his Dog, with Roundhouse Rodney", 12 noon every day), denim overalls & a flannel cowboy shirt and no shoes, and are the 60s here yet? - Hank Gould (the youngest of 17) ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 9 Jan 1997 09:54:59 +1000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Maria Damon (Maria Damon)" Subject: Re: wearing Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" mandel writes: blue button-fly levis bought too small when I went on a diet and told >myself to fit into them or suffer the kantbequenchedness > >brown leather belt from telegraph ave. artisan (now back to a >previously well-worn hole: it's a start) > >blue plaid flannel shirt over golden state warriors tee shirt >(nostalgie de la boue) > >$6.99 quartz watch acquired at 18th/K in DC. Copies $800 Tag Heuer >chronograph (file under "Theory") > >Fleece vest from stepson's closet (cold basement office) > >wool socks: wear'em year 'round. they keep you warm or cool as >required. > looks like most of you guyz...dress like cowboys. tho' wearing black jeans (ll beans size 8 petite, the only kind i've found that fit) myself today, plus pale pink turtleneck handmedown, thick lopi-yearn sweater knit by my sacred mother, and silver earrings from an indian friend. trying to find a nice way to dress for school this quarter.--md ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 9 Jan 1997 11:45:25 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Wallace Subject: "what they ought to" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Hi Gwyn McVay: Everyone here in D.C. is looking forward to your reading at Ruthless Grip Art Project next month (February 8, 7:30 p.m., along with British poet and visual artist John Havelda--consider this an "official" announcement). Your response to my post yesterday is intriguing--I'm particularly interested in what lurks (as you well know) inside such terms as "an audience who wasn't as familiar with Joan Retallack's work though they ought to be." The issue it raises for me is why exactly they aren't familiar. The most generous reading--and the one you're perhaps implying to some extent--is that for some reason or other, the individuals gathered for Joan Retallack's reading (excepting some members of the company) just had not been familiar with it before, and were they to be familiar with it, they would of course embrace it and be interested, because it is, clearly, incredible poetry. A more skeptical reading might see, however, a variety of political (on the literary level) reasons for the fact that Joan Retallack's work approaches being unknown (although that is now changing!), whereas Carolyn Forche, who read with her, continues to be one of the most read and well-known poets in the U.S. I'm not interested here in taking up an evaluation of Carolyn's work; some people in what might be termed "avant garde" contexts don't like her poetry at all, others do, and I myself have been impressed with her intellectual, poetic, and political "outreach" in various contexts. But the fact remains that economic, academic and other kinds of resources for poetry are often determined by what Charles Bernstein has called "official verse culture"--a culture that, however varied, tends to promote some types of poetry at the expense of others. Thus, a more skeptical reading might suggest that an audience gathered at MLA would in great measure not know Joan Retallack's poetry because mainstream poetry presses would for the most part simply not publish Joan's work. Is that situation changing, with her recent books appearing from Wesleyan, etc? Perhaps, and all to the good if it is. My own sense might be that the truth of the matter lies, in particular cases, somewhat between these more "generous" and "skeptical" poles. Some of the people present at that reading may come to a new appreciation of Joan's work, having been exposed to it. Others may continue to feel that it's not useful work because it doesn't express her emotions directly, talk about personal experiences, etc. But I would suggest, however, that what people know and what they don't know is often conditioned not simply by their individual tastes, but by what publishing culture (academic, "official verse" and its tenuously financed alternatives) makes available to them. Thus, the issue of who knows what about what becomes ideologically loaded--what people are "exposed" to, and what they will admit as relevant, are conditioned (though not determined) by cultural circumstances. 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: Thu, 9 Jan 1997 09:13:14 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: MAXINE CHERNOFF Subject: Re: Jean Eustache In-Reply-To: <199701091053.CAA02489@dfw-ix12.ix.netcom.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Facets Multimedia in Chicago has a huge and excellent foreign and difficult to find film rental service. Don't know their # or address but a phone call would solve that. They're located on West Fullerton Avenue. Best, Maxine Chernoff On Thu, 9 Jan 1997, Ron Silliman wrote: > Tom, > > I wish that I did. Eustache, who was one of Godard's and Truffaut's > assistant directors for much of his career, died in his early 40s from > cancer, so didn't build up a body of work that ever got marketed as > such. I know that he made at least one other feature, although I never > got to see it. But maybe somebody has gathered films starring > Jean-Pierre Leaud (sp?). > > There are a couple of film catalog type places around (one out of > Chicago if I recall). In fact, didn't you have one lying around your > house in Delaware last fall? I think that Jesse spilled some juice on > it. > > Both Siskal and Ebert have web sites. Maybe one of them has tips on how > to find hard-to-get films. I would sort of expect that. > > I must have seen that film 3 times, maybe 5. The scene in which the > nurse runs off and J-P follows her and the 3rd woman lies on the > mattress on the floor and just listens to a long Piaf number on the > record player all the way through was a great lesson to me that I've > carried over in my poetry (or tried to), about how art can modulate > time and how one feature of great art is to s l o w i t d o w n. > > The first time I saw that film I identified with the J-P character > totally. The last time, I thought he was an insufferable, narcissistic > pig. > > I asked Eustache once why the flat owned by the woman who ran the > boutique was so devoid of adornment on its walls. It was the one > feature in that film that made it seem "unBerkeley," if you know what I > mean. He replied that they didn't have money even for posters. > > Ron > > ------------------------------ > > > >Date: Wed, 8 Jan 1997 09:05:58 CST > >From: tmandel@CAIS.CAIS.COM > >Subject: Eustache film > > > >Ron or anyone else -- do you know where one can rent (or otherwise > look at) "The Mother and the Whore" an extraordinary film I haven't > seen in two decades. I have the idea that it may have somehow exited > >circulation. > > > >Tom > > > > > >************************************************* > > Tom Mandel * 2927 Tilden St. NW > > Washington DC 20008 * tmandel@1net.com > > vox: 202-362-1679 * fax 202-364-5349 > >************************************************* > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 9 Jan 1997 11:20:17 +1000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Maria Damon (Maria Damon)" Subject: brannen Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" anybody got jonathan brannen's e- and/or phone #? jonathan, are u stil on the list? md ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 9 Jan 1997 09:08:08 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Alexander Subject: Re: wearing Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Maria D. writes, "looks like most of you guyz...dress like cowboys." I haven't heard anyone mention any cowboy boots. And I live where cowboys live, and one wouldn't be caught without her boots. I think we're talking more of a grunge look here, one some of us have been sporting for 20 years or more although we do dress up now & then, one way or another charles ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 9 Jan 1997 12:15:25 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gwyn McVay Subject: Re: "what they ought to" In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Mark, For what it's worth, Carolyn Forche does use her position in the "official verse culture" to promote experimental poetries and is even, at staid and lumpy George Mason U., teaching a workshop next fall based on experimental poetries and poetics. Indeed, to be as crude as utterly possible about it, double-billing herself with Joan Retallack, which she does frequently, gets Joan readings at staid and lumpy venues exactly like the MLA itself, where more mainstream poets would normally be higher up the list of poets to invite. And, for what it's worth, about $12.95, I think, Retallack's /Afterrimages/ is on the shelf at my local (ack!) Borders, which also does a surprisingly good job of making available books by Sun & Moon and other, more querzblatz presses. So I take a positivist view on this one: all we can do is give such work more exposure in whatever ways possible--the small presses deserve a big salute--and in that way try to solve the problem of *how* people know a poet as a poet. Maybe the people who were stunned silent at the MLA will slowly, slowly, start to wonder, and do some investigating for themselves: a reaction of not knowing how to deal with a work is *still* a reaction to it, and one that may lead to an opening for the reader. Gwyn (thanks for the plug, d00d) ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 9 Jan 1997 09:19:34 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: MAXINE CHERNOFF Subject: Re: wearing In-Reply-To: <199701091608.JAA18505@pantano.theriver.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Instead of telling what we're wearing, we could combine a few recent threads (pardon the pun) and tell what we're signifying or how we're smelling. Maxine Chernoff ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 9 Jan 1997 11:32:23 +0100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Miekal And Subject: wearing / smelling /signifying MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit attire: zebra patterned drawstring pants, purple long sleeved shirt, me boot which I never tie (Im the one who started that fashion in the 70s you know). smell: potting soil, spinach quiche, aviary residue, with a patina of offic smell signification: Ive been potting plants, fixed spinach quiche for the crew & did my weekly chore of cleaning my bird room while Im sitting in the office writing about it. miekal who could never get up the gumption to adopt the "charles bernstein casual look" -- @#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@# Dreamtime Village website: http://net22.com/dreamtime QAZINGULAZA: And/Was/Wakest website: http://net22.com/qazingulaza e-mail for DT & And/Was: dtv@mwt.net ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 9 Jan 1997 11:39:45 +1000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Maria Damon (Maria Damon)" Subject: Re: wearing Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >Maria D. writes, "looks like most of you guyz...dress like cowboys." > >I haven't heard anyone mention any cowboy boots. And I live where cowboys >live, and one wouldn't be caught without her boots. ok ok, i ment the jeans, which, as i sd before, are still referred to in denmark as cowboy-pants. > >I think we're talking more of a grunge look here, one some of us have been >sporting for 20 years or more funny i never thot of u as a grundge type, more whole earthish. > >although we do dress up now & then, one way or another > >charles ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 9 Jan 1997 12:50:04 +0500 Reply-To: bil@orca.sitesonthe.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Bil Brown Subject: Re: wearing MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Or what you are smelling of "No ideas but in things" -- WCW Bil ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 9 Jan 1997 12:49:40 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Issa Clubb Subject: Re: Jean Eustache In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable re: le maman et la putain Searching the internet movie database (http://www.imdb.com) leads to this little nugget: http://www.worldnet.net/~mannoni/putain.html, a script in =46rench (annotated to tell you what was left out of the actual film). The first lines of the script are a pretty good advertisement for the film: ALEXANDRE. Tu peux me pr=EAter ta voiture ? VOISINE. Oui, bien s=FBr. Voil=E0 les cl=E9s. Tu sais o=F9 sont les papiers. ALEXANDRE. Oui. Tu n'en as vraiment pas besoin. VOISINE. Non. =C7a va. Tu sais, le clignotant gauche ne marche pas. Alors fais attention. Moi j'ai un syst=E8me, je m'arrange pour ne pas tourner =E0 gauche. ALEXANDRE. D'accord ; merci. =E0 bient=F4t, issa _________________________ Issa Clubb Voyager Art Dept. mailto:issa@voyagerco.com ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 9 Jan 1997 12:49:14 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gwyn McVay Subject: how we are smelling In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I am smelling only poorly. There was a flu and she had fallen victim to it, which means on the floor at its feet. With breached breath she slightly smelled some incense, which she had lit for her pewter Buddha, half-hoping. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 9 Jan 1997 11:58:03 +0100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Miekal And Subject: Re: Language in the Visual MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Charles Bernstein wrote: > By the way, my list in my post was not a comprehensive list of poets > doing "visual" work but a specific response to comments of Ron. In any case, > I was glad to hear from Miekal And as his and Liz Was's work is quite > relevant: many wonderful books etc. But I am sure they, and others like Karl > Kempton, could well report something within "poetry" that I am speaking > about within the "art world", and this was Charles Alexander's point I > believe: poets primarily identified as visual poets publish and exchange > work in relatively separate networks than poets doing work close to that but > not primarily identified with the "visual". However, here there are MANY > crossover points, such as And and Was's Xexoxial and Charles Alexander's own > Chax. But often the projects are considered quite separate, even if parallel. Reading this discussion on the visual in language continually reminds me of a discussion that Liz & I had with you & Bruce in the early 80s when we tried valiantly to pinpoint you guys on the boundaries of your own experimentations & while there wasnt more of a visual component with typography, layout, graphics, vispo, book design, interactivity. If I remember correctly the feeling was that you wanted your readers to have the text & nothing but the text so that all attention would be focused appropriately. Methinks that one of the things that has changed most since those times is the web & its intrincically visual nature, that desk top publishing to produce hard copy is not all that different of an act than producing web content & the multiplicity of intermesh between all possibilities, visual & textual, is only now starting to reveal itself via the electronic broadcast.... hope Im not chirping too much Miekal -- @#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@# Dreamtime Village website: http://net22.com/dreamtime QAZINGULAZA: And/Was/Wakest website: http://net22.com/qazingulaza e-mail for DT & And/Was: dtv@mwt.net ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 9 Jan 1997 13:16:30 +0500 Reply-To: bil@orca.sitesonthe.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Bil Brown Subject: Re: how we are smelling MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Incense. Incest. The smell of a room, with a cold (a WOMB, *SNIF*). and not to sound too popular or undernourised... with a view. Breached becomes BLEACHED, only in reference to Nirvana and a dead boy popularized almost as the Buddha, half-hoping, half-dead. Half joking when the time comes to smell again. Bil (This Thread is getting Silli,man) ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 9 Jan 1997 10:41:38 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Susan Wheeler Subject: The Visual in Language Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Re those who have been able to give some equivalence to language and to art in their work, an interesting case is Dieter Roth. Re attire, pjs and socks. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 9 Jan 1997 13:24:12 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: amato@CHARLIE.CNS.IIT.EDU Subject: inaugural poetry... Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" anybody know anything 'bout miller williams' work?... miller, you out t/here?... joe >Date: Thu, 09 Jan 1997 11:18:42 -0600 >Reply-To: d-perki@uiuc.edu >Sender: owner-chipub@listserv.acns.nwu.edu >From: David Perkins >To: chipub@listserv.acns.nwu.edu >Subject: Illinois at the Inauguration! >Mime-Version: 1.0 >X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.01 (Win95; I) >X-Listprocessor-Version: 8.0 -- ListProcessor(tm) by CREN >X-UIDL: 258dc7afeadf896b47209ee9c6d715cb > >Friends-- >Just wanted to share a bit of good news. One of our poets, Miller >Williams, has been asked to write and deliver the Inaugural Poem at >Clinton's Inauguration ceremonies on January 20th. We had a new >collection of his poetry due out in Fall of '97, but under the >circumstances decided to move the release of the collection (THE WAYS WE >TOUCH) up and include the inaugural poem in the collection. We've >designed a special, limited commemorative edition (gorgeous!) to start >arriving in bookstores shortly after the inauguration (that first >printing is already sold out)--with a regular cloth edition immediately >in the works. You can't imagine the flurry of activity down here in the >quiet amidst the corn- and soybean-fields. We have more information >about Williams and the collection on our Website (address below). Some >fun, huh?! > >-- >David M. Perkins >Director of Marketing >UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS PRESS >e-mail: d-perki@uiuc.edu >UIP Website: http://www.uiuc.edu/providers/uipress ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 9 Jan 1997 12:47:26 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Alexander Subject: Re: Language in the Visual Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" > >Methinks that one of the things that has changed most since those times >is the web & its intrincically visual nature, that desk top publishing >to produce hard copy is not all that different of an act than producing >web content & the multiplicity of intermesh between all possibilities, >visual & textual, is only now starting to reveal itself via the >electronic broadcast.... also, I think, Miekel, that the longer poets are poets they have a better acceptance of the fact that they are going to have to be involved not only with the text but with the means of getting that text to an audience. No big publishers are simply going to do it for them, at least for almost all of them. And many times this leads to an intertwining of mode of production with the text being produced, leading some of us to create works which engage in the relationship of text to visual/structural formats, in ways you have done, or in ways I have done, or in any of other myriad ways. It has also led many to an interest/appreciation in such production even when they have not engaged in it themselves. And now the web and other electronic possibilities are causing a new explosion in such possibilities. but I have never thought of Bruce & Charles as specifically disregarding the visual/tactile/structural presentation of texts as irrelevant in any way. I have rather always thought of those two as quite conscious that one never has "just the text." Either we have a physical artifact in our hands or in some way in front of us, or we have memory. At one time I became quite troubled by the life of books, their existence as closed & unused objects for probably 99% of their existence. But of course once one has experienced a book, it is always there, as memory. charles alexander ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 9 Jan 1997 15:02:25 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Peter Landers Subject: Re: wearing In-Reply-To: <199701091608.JAA18505@pantano.theriver.com> from "Charles Alexander" at Jan 9, 97 09:08:08 am Content-Type: text > > Maria D. writes, "looks like most of you guyz...dress like cowboys." > > I haven't heard anyone mention any cowboy boots. And I live where cowboys > live, and one wouldn't be caught without her boots. > i look down at my feet ... uh-oh :) i hope this doesn't make me a cowboy poet! Pete ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 9 Jan 1997 15:46:32 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Matthias Regan Subject: Re: inaugural poetry... Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >anybody know anything 'bout miller williams' work?... miller, you out t/here?... > >joe I don't know miller williams' work but if here or anyone else watching knows just how one ends up getting picked to read the inagural poem, I'd like to know. I mean, is it all connections or is it that you happen to be on the reading list of the president-(re)elect? Or are their certain codified criteria? What does the list think? What does a poet do or not do these days to be sanctified (maybe not the right word) by the state? Matthias Matthias Regan Northwestern University Department of Chemistry Phone: 847/467-2132 ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 9 Jan 1997 17:03:30 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: robert majzels Subject: Readings Announcement Montreal Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" In case anyone is wandering through Montreal in winter: Two evening readings (8pm) will be held at Bistro 4 (Saint-Laurent Boulevard corner Duluth) in Montreal: Gail Scott will be reading on February 7 and Erin Moure, Robert Majzels and Lola Lemire Tostevin will read on February 8th. Attendance is free and open to the public. The readings are part of a weekend workshop to be held from February 7th to 9th, 1997 by No fixed adDress, a Montreal workshop exploring new writing practices. Applications to participate in the workshops are welcome until January 18. For more information, contact: No fixed adDress Workshop coordinator Lazer Lederhendler C.P. 47620, Plateau Mount-Royal Montreal, QC, H2H 2S8 phone or fax: 598-5623 (9-5 weekdays only) e-mail: lazled@vir.com. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 9 Jan 1997 16:14:00 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Pritchett,Pat @Silverplume" Subject: Re: inaugural poetry... Comments: To: Matthias Regan MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Who's gotten the nod this time? I haven't heard... As far being "sanctified" by the State, I think it's something to be avoided. Poetry and politics make for very uneasy bedfellows in my opinion, though admittedly it's a complicated issue when we get into matters of federal funding for the arts, etc. I still remember how I cringed when Richard Wilbur was "laureate" and came out with that excerable cantata, "On Freedom's Ground." It was the same year that the disclosure was made about the Defense Dept. drafting a white paper for the invasion of Nicaragua. In other words, poetry that's used to celebrate the State in an official ceremony willy-nilly incurs for the poet involved a certain degree of complicity when it comes to matters of policy. What would be refreshing - and highly unlikely - would be to see a poet who read a critique of the Administration's policy toward Bosnia, gays, medicinal marijuana and the like. Patrick Pritchett ---------- From: Matthias Regan To: POETICS Subject: Re: inaugural poetry... Date: Thursday, January 09, 1997 3:53PM >anybody know anything 'bout miller williams' work?... miller, you out t/here?... > >joe I don't know miller williams' work but if here or anyone else watching knows just how one ends up getting picked to read the inagural poem, I'd like to know. I mean, is it all connections or is it that you happen to be on the reading list of the president-(re)elect? Or are their certain codified criteria? What does the list think? What does a poet do or not do these days to be sanctified (maybe not the right word) by the state? Matthias Matthias Regan Northwestern University Department of Chemistry Phone: 847/467-2132 ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 9 Jan 1997 17:23:15 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "John E. Matthias" Subject: True North/ND Review Stephanie Strickland's _True North_, the first winner of the Ernest Sandeen Poetry Prize, will be published next week by the University of Notre Dame Press. I think the book will be of great interest to readers on the list. Many people will know Strickland's previous book, _The Red Virgin: A Poem of Simone Weil_, which won the University of Wisconsin's Brittingham Prize in 1993. Molly Peacock describes _True North_ as writing "that sweeps text into hypertext" and Strickland as a poet who "tumbles her cornucopia of ideas and ideals out into what we might giddily call cyberpoetry--though she herself is calm, piercingly intelligent, and clear-eyed. Here comes our poetry for the 21st Century--and a brilliant poet who appears at just the right moment to be our guide." Sections of this book dealing with the life and physics of Willard Gibbs were chosen by Barbara Guest for the Poetry Society of America's 1996 Alice Fay Di Castagnola Award. Available at $14.95 from University of Notre Dame Press Chicago Distribution Center 11030 South Langley Ave. Chicago, IL 60628 I should also announce that the third issue of _Notre Dame Review_ is now in print. Contributors include Michael Anania, Mike Barrett, William Bronk, Kathy Fagan, Beth Ann Fennelly, Reginald Gibbons, Heather O'Shea Gordon, Jennifer Anna Gosetti, Corrinne Hales, Philip Holmes, Janet Holmes, Catherine L. Kasper, John Latta, Bret Lott, Cris Mazza, Gordon T. Osing, Robert Pinsky, Ira Sadoff, Hillel Schwartz, Michael Stephens, Richard Tillinghast, Linda Vavra, John Witte, and David Wojahn. Single copy price is $8.00; subscription $15.00. Order from: _Notre Dame Review_, Department of English, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN 46556. Publication is bi-annual. _NDR_ nos. 1 and 2 can be visited at our WEB site: http://www.nd.edu/~english/ndr/ndr./htm. Contributors to #1:Michael Anania, William Bronk, Julia Budenz, Michael Collins, Christopher Jane Corkery, Richard Elman, Jaimy Gordon, Mary Hawley, Seamus Heaney, Marilyn Krysl, Denise Levertov, Derek Mahon, Peter Michelson, Czeslaw Milsoz, Susan Neville, John Peck, Ernest Sandeen, Melita Schaum, Beryl Schlossman, Marci Sulak, Anthony Walton, David Wolinsky, Robert Olen Butler. Contributors to #2: Renee Ashley, Wendy Battin, David Black, Corinne Bliss, Fred Chappell, Stuart Dischell, Richard Elman, Edward Falco, David Katz, Jesse Lee Kercheval, Marilyn Krysl, Konstantinos Lardas, Gus Pelletier, Michael Perkins, Goran Printz-Pahlson, Barry Silesky, Stephanie Strickland, Kymberley Taylor, James Weil, Kathleen West. Sample copy price for #1 or #2: $6.00. John Matthias ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 9 Jan 1997 05:50:48 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: robert drake Subject: Re: True North/ND Review Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ... > >_NDR_ nos. 1 and 2 can be visited at our WEB site: >http://www.nd.edu/~english/ndr/ndr./htm. > that would be: http://www.nd.edu/~english/ndr/ndr.htm and Stephanie Strickland's work can be found at: http://www.nd.edu/~english/ndr/strickln.htm ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 9 Jan 1997 16:59:24 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Matthias Regan Subject: Re: inaugural poetry... Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >Who's gotten the nod this time? I haven't heard... miller williams apparently: I just saw it in a recent post of the same title as yours & mine > >As far being "sanctified" by the State, I think it's something to be >avoided. Poetry and politics make for very uneasy bedfellows in my opinion, >though admittedly it's a complicated issue when we get into matters of >federal funding for the arts, etc. [snip] What would be refreshing - >and highly unlikely - would be to see a poet who read a critique of the >Administration's policy toward Bosnia, gays, medicinal marijuana and the >like. O, (nodding) I agree. & such critiques are not I think easy to write--largely because of what we belive constitutes "poetry" (ie, not always "individual" voice and "the big picture" but usally at least one of these Romantic conceits is regarded as necessary; and of course these are not necessarily Romantic, going back at least as far as Sidney's "Defense..." But then again, some of the 15th & 16th C. poets wrote beautiful political poems: Wyatt, Raleigh--they weren't always towing the state line either & consequenes could be serious (the block) Still, I continue to wonder just how such things are decided these days. Can anyone name the last five inagural poets; maybe some conclusions may be drawn. Matthias (scribbling at the far edge of the work day) Matthias Regan Northwestern University Department of Chemistry Phone: 847/467-2132 ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 10 Jan 1997 07:04:32 +0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Schuchat Simon Subject: Re: inaugural poetry... In-Reply-To: <199701091924.NAA26065@charlie.cns.iit.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Whoa! Don't know Miller Williams' own poetry, but he is the translator of great Chilean antipoet Nicanor Parra. He teaches at the U of Arkansas, I believe, which would explain his selection. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 9 Jan 1997 15:44:35 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rachel Loden Subject: Re: inaugural poetry MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I think Miller Williams is the guy who taught Jimmy Carter how to write poetry. Not quite an actionable offense, but maybe it weighs heavily on his conscience. Nah. Rachel ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 9 Jan 1997 16:06:59 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ian Wilson Subject: * * * READING * * * Comments: To: Graduate Student Caucus of the MLA , CREWRT-L@lists.missouri.edu Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I'd to to announce and invite you all to the following: * * * * READING IN LOS ANGELES * * * * Ian Randall Wilson Denise L. Stevens Saturday, January 25, 1997 8 PM Barnes & Noble Bookstore 16461 Ventura BlvdEncino, CA (818) 380-1636 (corner of Havenhurst and Ventura Blvd.) --Open Reading at 7:30 / sign-ups 7:15 Ian Wilson iwilson@mgmua.com ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 9 Jan 1997 19:35:30 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Fred Muratori Subject: Re: inaugural poetry... Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >Whoa! > >Don't know Miller Williams' own poetry, but he is the translator of great >Chilean antipoet Nicanor Parra. He teaches at the U of Arkansas, I >believe, which would explain his selection. Yes, the poet's home state has much to do with the choice. Remember when Jimmy Carter asked his state-mate James Dickey to write an inaugural poem? It was called "The Strength of Fields," and was read at an event held after the oath of office was taken. Not too many people were aware of it unless they read the poem in the NY Times the next day. I frankly don't care who reads an inaugural poem -- I'm just glad to see that now and then a president will actually call some national attention to the art, however obliquely. You'd be surprised at how many people think that all poets are dead. Fred Muratori Reference Services Division Olin - Kroch - Uris Libraries Cornell University fmm1@cornell.edu http://fmref.library.cornell.edu/spectra.html ************************** "The spaces between things keep getting bigger and more important" -- Jon Ashbery ************************** ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 9 Jan 1997 19:41:02 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Carla Billitteri Organization: University at Buffalo Subject: Re: inaugural poetry... MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT >Don't know Miller Williams' own poetry, but he is the translator of great >Chilean antipoet Nicanor Parra. He teaches at the U of Arkansas, I >believe, which would explain his selection. Not only that, he's the father of Lucinda Williams--I'd take her records over any ten books of poetry in Bill Clinton's America. (Antipoetry excepted.) ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 9 Jan 1997 19:42:01 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Kellogg Subject: Re: inaugural poetry... In-Reply-To: <9701092146.AA22221@mercury.chem.nwu.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I _think_ Miller Williams is from Arkansas . . . Cheers, David ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ David Kellogg Duke University kellogg@acpub.duke.edu University Writing Program (919) 660-4357 Durham, NC 27708 FAX (919) 660-4381 There is no mantle and it does not descend. -- Thomas Kinsella ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 9 Jan 1997 17:06:46 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Bromige Subject: smelling Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" a word of warning. : when you're smelling. . . yes when you're smelling . . . the whole world smells with you! ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 9 Jan 1997 18:11:33 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Alexander Subject: Re: smelling Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Isn't smelling a kind of fish? oh no I think that is smelt At present I'm neither smelting nor smelling At 05:06 PM 1/9/97 -0500, you wrote: >a word of warning. > >: when you're smelling. . . > > yes when you're smelling . . . > >the whole world smells with you! > > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 9 Jan 1997 17:38:22 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Bromige Subject: inaugural poet Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" i myself am quite chagrined at the choice of miller williams to be the inaugural poet. i had laid several bets--on any one of the following four: robert grenier, charles bernstein, lyn hejinian and hannah weiner--and have dropped quite a bundle, let me tell you. i also thought i myself might get the nod, but figured there'd be so much income from residuals that it would easily cover my losses. actually, for a long time i figgered george bowering should do it, but then i found that canada isnt technically one of the united states. damn! ah well--I'm sure it'll be someone on this list's turn by 2000.culture is a trickledown effect. they asked frost in '62 and would have asked pound in '76 if he'd still been alive. david b ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 9 Jan 1997 18:35:04 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Herb Levy Subject: Re: Eustache film Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" According to the folks at Scarecrow Video (a local independent rental place with a great collection of tapes and laser discs from Eisenstein to Gary Hill), who I'd trust on an issue like this, The Mother & the Whore has not been released on video, even in France. I did just rent Cassavetes _Love Streams_ from them which I try to see at least once a year. I haven't checked in on this mail box for a while. It's nice to see that a jokey aside can be taken up by someone new to the list who was unaware of the original reference (Hi David) and become a new part of the protocol here. (If I were filch I'd think this was a meme.) I'm wearing a black, sort of chenille-like sweater over a red Band of Susans t-shirt, black corduroy pants, & I'm barefoot (my basement is heated). Bests, Herb >Ron or anyone else -- do you know where one can rent (or otherwise look >at) "The Mother and the Whore" an extraordinary film I haven't seen in >two decades. I have the idea that it may have somehow exited >circulation. > >Tom Herb Levy herb@eskimo.com ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 9 Jan 1997 19:36:57 MDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Christopher Alexander Organization: U of U Marriott Library Staff Net Subject: Re: inaugural poetry... ethink you hav t be from Arkansaw. -sas. ethought all poets *were* dead. no on se2cnd thought d go with th "codifed criteria." david bromige: y mean you didnt get pickt? damn, an eput in th solid word fr you ,my man. em really shockdt at theis. "god love a goose." howd y liek t read in 2000? er eve got a gret gig lined up at t Ugandan prime m,inisters ball--hets a smaller event, but-- .. christopher alexander, etc. calexand@alexandria.lib.edu "The second edition of this book consists largely of a reproduction of the first edition, with additional theorms and examples." --T.M. Macrobert, _an introduction to the theory of infinite series_ ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 9 Jan 1997 19:39:47 MDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Christopher Alexander Organization: U of U Marriott Library Staff Net Subject: wereing oh yss--and smellng like a rose. &nd signifyng nothing. & wearing--thin. .. christopher alexander, etc. calexand@alexandria.lib.edu "The second edition of this book consists largely of a reproduction of the first edition, with additional theorms and examples." --T.M. Macrobert, _an introduction to the theory of infinite series_ ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 10 Jan 1997 17:17:17 GMT+1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: wystan Organization: English Dept. - Univ. of Auckland Subject: Re: EyeRhymes Conference Comments: To: dbarbour@maildrop.srv.ualberta.ca Dear Douglas, New Year Greetings! Is it too late to make a paper proposal for the Eyerhymes conference? I'm interested in the similarities/ differences between the work of conceptual artists like the Americans Lawrence Weiner, Joseph Kosuth, and Jenny Holzer and the British artist Hamish Fulton, David Tremlett and language poets ( taking a pretty broad definition ) of this grouping. If its not too late I'll put together a rather tighter and longer paragraph than this. best wishes, Wystan ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 9 Jan 1997 23:33:57 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steph4848@AOL.COM Subject: Ebonix? Part 2. Comments: To: POETICS@UBVM.cc.buffalo.edu (Part 2- Ebonics?) Yesterday, for example, I was teaching with another writer, Margaret O'Schultz at the local Youth Guidance Center - "a correctional facility." We were in what was considered the toughest ward - 13 young men, many of whom I was later told, had committed murders, rapes, and armed robberies, etc. Margaret wrote the word MALE up on the blackboard and asked these students to create a "slang dictionary." One black guy jumped up, took the chalk and quickly jotted out fifteen different names which Margaret then asked him to divide between "positive" (partna, playa, nigga etc.) and "negative" (mark, snitch, etc.). Then there were words that sat in the middle like "street-sweeper" which I imagined to be a guy who was the ultimate drive-by gang killer. Within this group, particularly among the blacks, there was competition, argument and great pride in being able to come up with all these different words. When I sat down to work with their writing, several of the young men showed me their journals, freely said that they were poets, and gladly shared their poems with me, most of them in a rap mode. Except when I heard the depth of the pathos in the work -- the references to murdered brothers, cousins and uncles, the re-enactments of revenge, or second thoughts about misconceived and terrible acts, the loneliness of prison, "Not 'Rest in Peace'" someone said. "Rest in Pain", I temporarily thought this prison ward was a haven for poets and poetry. But my point about the dialect, black, Latino or Asian -- a point which has been demonstrated many times before by persons much more savvy than I -- is that these words and phrases, often forged from extreme experiences, will alter the grammar and dictionary of "standard English." I fully suspect, for example, in the not too far future, "street-sweeper" will be appropriated by the Army or Marines to name some demonic piece of killer machinery. Or, for example, another young man used the phrase "he's stacked" and explained it was about a dealer who carries large amounts of money. In another few years I can almost expect a President with a happy face to tell us not to worry, "the economy is stacked", or, on a contrary note, someone will say "the USA has lost its "stack." I don't mean to sound overly cynical about the way these words from dialect might evolve. Like most anything else, they will wear out. At the point of origin, however, the expressions are fresh and powerful. In both of these examples there's a highly loaded oxymoronic quality to their use. The terrible sound and cleaning function of an actual street-sweeper makes a terrifying counter-point to the sound of a machine gun fired repeatedly from a car moving slowly through a neighborhood while the gunner attems to clean out a rival gang. A man who is "stacked" with money conjures up real cash in bundles, rather than the non-tactile, abstract electronic transmissions of digital money. I find that the material of dialect to be rich and resonant - maybe in manner similar that I also find the language of Chaucer, Donne and other English writers of previous periods. I also know that whether called Ebonics, black English, or a dialect -- these words, phrases and intonations compel me to hear and see things that are variously provocative, beautiful, and sometimes right on the edge of volatile. The manner of use, which can border on a form of implicit preaching or public criticism, pushes me to listen to messages that all is not "proper" or "standard" in the world. And even though I'm alternatively fascinated and resistant -- not everything survives coming "over the pass" --I'm sure these provocation's test, feed and ultimately enlarge the vitality of the English language as well as all of our selves. ************************************ Stephen Vincent ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 9 Jan 1997 23:34:20 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steph4848@AOL.COM Subject: Ebonix? - Part #1 Comments: To: POETICS@UBVM.cc.buffalo.edu Dear List - I'm curious - given the strong interest in language here - why not attention has been focused on debate and issues of so-called Ebonics. In any case, I've written arelative short piece -- which I've broken into two posts -- about some of my thoughts and experiences here. I will appreciate your responses and critical feedback, responses. Thank you, Stephen Vincent Steph4848@aol.com Ebonics I find it astonishing the way in which people in this country become absolute experts on this issue of the appropriate or inappropriateness of black dialect. I wonder what would happen if all the sudden experts took equal concern and attention to issues of black housing, schools, jobs etc! It's amazing -- on the other hand -- how this issue of language pops the buttons. I suspect it goes down to the whole love/hate relationship between proper English and black dialect - the latter obviously often feeding the former. The ultimate mainstreaming of the word "cool", for example - let alone the influence of black dance and other mediums in shaping and contributing to much of the cultural fabric. Thirty years ago -- when I was in the Peace Corps -- I saw a somewhat similar argument from Euro/American university educated Nigerians. Many of them couldn't stand both the American and European lionization of Amos Tutwola's(Sp?) novels that were written in what was really a gentrified pidgin English. It wasn't that "the educated" were adverse to speaking pidgin - it was definitely a vital lingua franca that worked to cross both class and "the borders" of over 250 different indigenous language groups. Among this elite, Wole Soyinka clearly had no problem incorporating pidgin into his plays and novels. Pidgin's constant sense of poetic play with proper English made a rich satirical device for dissing the masters, African or foreign. But as a matter of creative writing, critical discussion, or any kind of public discourse in English--let alone issues of learning "proper English" as a means of both participating and competing in a global market place-- there was no question among people similar to Soyinka that to speak or write only in pidgin English would serve only to perpetuate colonialized relationships. At the same time I suspect pidgin English has become an area of formal study and significance.. Clearly, and perhaps similarly, in the context of the United States, it seems universally important - both from a human and educational point of view - for an English based system to acknowledge the distinct character of a "black English", or Chinese, Chicano and all the other dialect variations that may occur when these various linguistic systems collide with "standard" English. From a teaching point of view, I think it ought to be a two way street. The English teacher can use the knowledge of dialect to differentiate between different ways of saying similar or, perhaps, oppostional things. Such comparisons are a useful tool and, in a teaching context, can provide a decent acknowledgment of linguistic as well as other kinds of differences. Yet, at the same time, I think it equally important that those given the task of teaching "standard English" acknowledge that dialects have and will continue to end up contributing anything from a slight tonal nuance to a substantial change to what is considered "standard English." And such a point of view should be anything but a condescending gesture.. (cont. to Part #2 on separate post). ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 9 Jan 1997 16:21:29 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ian Wilson Subject: Re: * * * READING * * * Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I'd like to announce and invite you all to the following: * * * * READING IN LOS ANGELES * * * * Ian Randall Wilson Denise L. Stevens Saturday, January 25, 1997 8 PM Barnes & Noble Bookstore 16461 Ventura BlvdEncino, CA (818) 380-1636 (corner of Havenhurst and Ventura Blvd.) --Open Reading at 7:30 / sign-ups 7:15 Ian Wilson iwilson@mgmua.com ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 10 Jan 1997 01:08:35 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tenney Nathanson Subject: really? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" is this true??? i doan mean the evaluation jus the bare fac. I'd like to hear "Passionate Kisses" at the inauguration!!! t. >Date: Thu, 9 Jan 1997 19:41:02 -0500 >From: Carla Billitteri >Subject: Re: inaugural poetry... > >>Don't know Miller Williams' own poetry, but he is the translator of great >>Chilean antipoet Nicanor Parra. He teaches at the U of Arkansas, I >>believe, which would explain his selection. > >Not only that, he's the father of Lucinda Williams--I'd take her records >over any ten books of poetry in Bill Clinton's America. (Antipoetry >excepted.) ---------------------------------------------------------- tenney nathanson tenney@azstarnet.com nathanso@u.arizona.edu http://www.u.arizona.edu/~nathanso/ ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 10 Jan 1997 05:07:11 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Patrick Foley Organization: unorganized Subject: Re: inaugural poet In-Reply-To: Actually the appointment of an inaugural poet at all bugs me a little. We have these days someone we call a laurate, what we used to call consultant in poetry to the l.o.c., or something like that. It's Robert Hass for now. If it's not his job to write these things then what the fuck is his job? On the other side of the pond where they know a little more about this laurate business, Ted Hughes has to crank one out now & then for the Royal family doesn't he. Somebody having a birthday party and Ted has to _produce_! Maybe I remember wrong but I think Howard Nemerov had the job back when Maya Angelou ascended the inaugural dais. I'd rather have seen Howard and read _his_ poem in the Times the next day. And I'd rather see Hass than whoever this fellow is -- hell he might be a fine poet, I never heard of him. But there's Robert Hass barnstorming for poetry, writing his little column for the Wash Post, trying to get poetry back into the daily newspaper -- what an idea!? the man is nuts! Working his butt off for muse & country and what does he get? "No, no, this is an important occasion -- your invitation's in the mail, Bob, honest, a lot of people haven't gotten theirs yet ..." Pat ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 10 Jan 1997 06:49:17 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ward Tietz <100723.3166@COMPUSERVE.COM> Subject: Re: Ebonix? Steve Vincent, thanks for your stimulating post. The complication for language and literature, I think, in this case and in many others similar to it, is that the modern state still only recognizes and understands grapholects and in many instances we are forced to consider whether this actually facilitates or undermines culture. We know that it's only through grapholects that modern states and languages exercise power, but it has never been easy or perhaps possible to extricate literature from this mix. In a sense it's no coincidence that language instruction often goes hand in hand with literary texts; it's the way the state puts everything together so that culture and the state are continuous with each other, so that the state can control language, if it has to, in the name of culture, and then also culture in the name of language. Oral forms have always escaped this kind of control because language and "publication" have taken place in such very different ways. I heard an anecdote about storytellers in Indonesia recently where the state had been trying to record and transcribe the performances of some of them as a means of codifying its national literature. The storytellers considered this to be such a threat to the diversity of the forms that they work in that they all went on strike and refused to tell any more stories. Ward Tietz ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 10 Jan 1997 08:24:31 CST Reply-To: tmandel@screenporch.com Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: tmandel@CAIS.CAIS.COM Subject: Eustache MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: Text/Plain; Charset=US-ASCII I think I looked in the Facets catalogue for Eustache a couple of years ago and didn't find anything. I knew he died young; his other (first) feature was about dropout teenagers -- juvenile delinquents! (btw, tell Jesse not to worry abt the juice stains). It was good but not preparation for M/W which is really an incredible film. I'll look at the most recent Facets (in DE this weekend) and hope to find something. Tom ************************************************* Tom Mandel * 2927 Tilden St. NW Washington DC 20008 * tmandel@1net.com vox: 202-362-1679 * fax 202-364-5349 ************************************************* ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 10 Jan 1997 08:31:41 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Susan Wheeler Subject: Re: Ebonix? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" A question for the list: do those of you who are white out there steer clear of using "black standard English?" If not, is there some ambivalence about ownership and appropriation? How do you demarcate its use: vocabulary, grammar, etc.? Is there a gender-specific "standard English"? Is it more easily transgressed than an ethnically-based one? Any thoughts? The best piece I've seen on this via poems was Catherine Gammon's "Issues of Appropriation Penn Station, March 1991" in an old Ploughshares. Other recos? Susan Wheeler "And leaning asking from the car Cannot tell us where we are." Easy Knowledge, 1930, Auden ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 10 Jan 1997 08:30:43 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry g Subject: Re: inaugural poet In-Reply-To: Message of Thu, 9 Jan 1997 17:38:22 -0500 from inaugural sonnet from _Island Road_. Bill was interested but I hate crowds (vertigo). 16 The principle of the sword was benign & frozen an ice-word or presiding ray gone into deep night or frost mantle like wool over our eyes at the inaugural horizontal curved like a mirror a vertigo spiral the principle of the sword cuts clean & swallows its tale of America _A palm leaf divided the sky & lined the donkey road to the divided city._ But I shall always be faithful unto you, dogwood though I was untrue like a bad American shepherd weak & hysterical in a dead decade's light it's just the principle of the sword that tries like a royal finger to blot out all those memoirs made of sighs ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 10 Jan 1997 09:49:39 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: amato@CHARLIE.CNS.IIT.EDU Subject: Re: Ebonix? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" kudos to stephen vincent for opening up a vital area of controversy... i like everything you say about ebonix, stephen, and find the public hostilities toward it on the basis of "standards" regrettable... and in part the media's doing---i haven't seen any particularly good coverage... there were some odd publications came out during the sixties that addressed language cross-overs... in retrospect they look like antiques... i have one right here, let's see--- _play it cool in english_, by john dawkins and frank riessman (follet, 1967---evidently takes its title from langston hughes' "motto")... it's really a sort of workbook---for kids... it begins "this book is about hip words" some of the "hip words" include, like, LIKE... i mean, "like" used the way i've just used it, and also "i mean" used as in this sentence... it's amazing how many of the words/expressions come from "black english" (and street)... and how many have since found a very comfortable, noncontroversial place in our daily language... best, joe ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 10 Jan 1997 08:52:26 MDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Christopher Alexander Organization: U of U Marriott Library Staff Net Subject: Re: Ebonix? > ...the state can control language, if it has to, in the name of > culture, and then also culture in the name of language. Oral forms > have always escaped this kind of control because language and > "publication" have taken place in such very different ways. with regard to wards post--and that sort of cheering anecdote-- I'm wondering what people think about the possible effects of the state codifying (attempting to codify) "ebonics" (there, you see, its already begun--can you think of a smarmier, etc. ). as with the indonesian storytellers, we seem to be faced with the 'museum effect' here, where the taxonomy of a cultural form removes that form from (or at least impacts) the conditions of its production, has a reifying influence--"a threat to the diversity of forms"--that makes of their particulars a glass-eyed taxidermy project. "Here we have Myrmecophaga Jubata, the common ant bear..." my webster's (there's an irony)gives "taxonomy" as the "orderly classification of plants and animals according to their *presumed natural relationships*" (emphass addtd)--but any biology or botany I've read quickly drops the "presumed" in the name of 'pure' science. course I'm not predicting that "ebonics" will strangle language-- we know (we?) that language has a way of violently defying its tax8nomy--but there are troubling ramifications to official 'recognition'--authoritative characterization--in general. I'd expect that "ebonics" will provide what is possibly a necssary visibility [says doubtfully]--but at th cost of misrepresentation. "see, its alright--he saw it on the television." the 'purists' of language & arnoldian culture-philes are frequently (and rightly so) pooh-poohed, but only to the effect that difference is squelched and an official version of our movements given. "raise yr hand if you wanna be represented by the state--and repeat after me." c (really really not claiming access to the 'genuine') .. christopher alexander, etc. calexand@alexandria.lib.edu one sea - shell sea is calling from across the world ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 10 Jan 1997 11:49:56 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: robert drake Subject: Re: Ebonix? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" as always, i feel frustrated by having to rely on mass-media reports about this issue, rather than first-hand data... USA Today ran the following *edited* version of the board ov ed resolution--altho i distrust the editing, it's better than 4th-hand intepretations... anybody have access to the full text? lbd ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Text of the resolution by the Oakland Board of Education adopting the report and recommendations of the African-American Task Force: Whereas, numerous . . . studies demonstrate that African-American students as a part of their culture and history as African people possess and utilize a language described in various scholarly approaches as "Ebonics" (literally "Black sounds") or "Pan-African Communication Behaviors" or "African Language Systems"; and Whereas, these studies have also demonstrated that African Language Systems are genetically based and not a dialect of English; and Whereas, these studies demonstrate that such West and Niger-Congo African languages have been officially recognized and addressed in the mainstream public educational community as worth(y) of study, understanding or application of (their) principles, laws and structures for the benefit of African-American students both in terms of positive appreciation of the language and these students' acquisition and mastery of English language skills; and Whereas, such recognition by scholars has given rise over the past 15 years to legislation . . . recognizing the unique language stature of descendants of slaves, with such legislation being prejudicially and unconstitutionally vetoed repeatedly by various California state governors; and Whereas, judicial cases in states other than California have recognized the unique language stature of African-American pupils, and such recognition by courts has resulted in court-mandated educational programs which have substantiallybenefited African-American children in the interest of vindicating their equal protection of the law rights under the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution; and Whereas, the Federal Bilingual Education Act . . . mandates that local educational agencies "build their capacities to establish, implement and sustain programs of instruction for children and youth of limited English proficiency"; and Whereas, the interests of the Oakland Unified School District in providing equal opportunities for all its students dictate limited English proficient educational programs recognizing the English language acquisition and improvement skills of African-American students are as fundamental as is application of bilingual education principles for others whose primary languages are other than English; and Whereas, the standardized tests and grade scores of African-American students in reading and language arts skills measuring their application of English skills are substantially below . . . norms and that such deficiencies will be remedied by application of a program featuring African Language Systems principles in instructing African-American children both in their primary language and in English; and Whereas, standardized tests and grade scores will be remedied by application of a program with teachers and aides who are certified in the methodology of featuring African Language Systems principles in instructing African-American children both in their primary language and in English. The certified teachers of these students will be provided incentives including, but not limited to salary differentials. Now, therefore, be it resolved that the Board of Education officially recognizes the existence, and the cultural and historic bases of West and Niger-Congo African Language Systems, and each language as the predominantly primary language of African-American students; and Be it further resolved that the Superintendent in conjunction with her staff shall immediately devise and implement the best possible academic program for imparting instruction to African-American students in their primary language for the combined purpose of maintaining the legitimacy and richness of such language whether it is known as "Ebonics," "African Language Systems," "Pan-African Communication Behaviors" or other description, and to facilitate their acquisition and mastery of English language skills; and Be it further resolved that the Board of Education hereby commits to earmark District general and special funding as is reasonably necessary and appropriate to enable the Superintendent and her staff to accomplish the foregoing; and Be it further resolved that the periodic reports on the progress of the creation and implementation of such an educational program shall be made to the Board of Education at least once per month commencing at the Board meeting of December 18, 1996. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 10 Jan 1997 10:33:00 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Pritchett,Pat @Silverplume" Subject: Re: inaugural poetry... Comments: To: Matthias Regan MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Oh. Miller Williams. Duh. I'm turning 40 tomorrow and have been a bit ditzy all week (as well soaking my brain cells in a lot of single malt c/o of kind friends). As far as I know, there is no tradition per se of inaugural poets. JFK started it off with Frost and the practice seems to have begun and ended there until Clinton revived it with Maya Angelou as a way of conferring historical importance on his bad self. Does anyone know of such practices in the 19th Century? I'm sure there is a history of poetry/state occasions a/o alliances that would include both colonial poems written to celebrate conquest (i.e. destruction of Native Americans) and Whitman's "When Lilacs Last..." I agree that writing such a critique is easier sd than done. And while it's nice in a way to see poets of any stripe getting the kind of wide public recognition that an inaugural reading can bestow - based on the idea that what helps one poet helps Poetry in general - the business of inaugural readings seems both to flatter a certain image the culture has of itself as literate (while at the same time playing up to the royalist pretensions of "laureateship") even as it co-opts poetry's more vital role as a subversive force operating in the margins, an anodyne and/or riposte to the status quo, what Agee meant when we wrote about "the emasculation of acceptance." Patrick Pritchett ---------- From: Matthias Regan To: POETICS Subject: Re: inaugural poetry... Date: Friday, January 10, 1997 9:23AM miller williams apparently: I just saw it in a recent post of the same title as yours & mine O, (nodding) I agree. & such critiques are not I think easy to write--largely because of what we belive constitutes "poetry" (ie, not always "individual" voice and "the big picture" but usally at least one of these Romantic conceits is regarded as necessary; and of course these are not necessarily Romantic, going back at least as far as Sidney's "Defense..." But then again, some of the 15th & 16th C. poets wrote beautiful political poems: Wyatt, Raleigh--they weren't always towing the state line either & consequenes could be serious (the block) Still, I continue to wonder just how such things are decided these days. Can anyone name the last five inagural poets; maybe some conclusions may be drawn. Matthias (scribbling at the far edge of the work day) Matthias Regan Northwestern University Department of Chemistry Phone: 847/467-2132 ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 10 Jan 1997 09:46:05 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Bromige Subject: plunging in w/o knowing the whole of history Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" it's good to see herb levy's description of one trait it takes to be a poet--putting to a fresh use something that preceded him even if s/he doesnt know everything about how it got there. For after all, we are born into a world full of so many things, we'd die before we put a word to paper were we constituted otherwise. Good on you, herb! and thanks for the inspiration re-clothing. (navyblue sweats over navyblue swimsuit, the blue shirt describved some days ago, navy blue pullover--off for early swim at local outdoor pool, ice on the windshield to be scraped no doubt, but will just plunhe right in) db ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 10 Jan 1997 13:04:08 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry Subject: Re: inaugural poetry... In-Reply-To: Message of Fri, 10 Jan 1997 10:33:00 -0500 from WV Moody wrote a pretty interesting old-fashioned civic poem against US imperialism (newly hatched) - "Ode in Time of Hesitation". - HG ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 10 Jan 1997 10:43:55 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: william marsh Subject: Re: Ebonix? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" perhaps Emerson would serve as a good epigraph to this discussion: "The poets made all the words, and therefore language is the archives of history, and, if we must say it, a sort of tomb of the muses. For, though the origin of most of our words is forgotten, each word was at first a stroke of genius, and obtained currency, because for the moment it symbolized the world to the first speaker and to the hearer.... Language is fossil poetry." dialect = the new oral poetry? today's standard = fossilized slang messing with words = cracking the muse tomb etc. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 10 Jan 1997 11:12:28 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Re: ebonics and ivoronics In-Reply-To: <199701100504.VAA03428@email.sjsu.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Can't spel for any others, but one reason (aside from being deathly ill) that I did not mention the "ebonics" news here is my sense that the debate that was shaping up nationally had very little to do with the merits or actual content of the Oakland school board's (to my way of thinking) ill-conceived and poorly presented proposal [make that "speak" for "spel" up there -- I can't spell for others either! -- but will be back at my correctable keyboard in a couple weeks] -- AND the national debate has had even less to do with the actual speaking and writing practices of any real black students in American classrooms -- within five hours of the wire story's appearance, what Oakland proposed was being presented in the media as a proposal to teach "bad English," to teach "ghettoese" or, in Mary McGrory's Washington Post column, to legitimize "gibberish" -- What became immediately evident was that for most white writers in the national press, the term "black English" (always problematical enough in its massive reifications of whatever people already have in their head as a signfied for that term) was synonmous with "ghetto" language, street slang, bad English and gibberish. Eleanor Traylor was asked about this at the conclusion of the Toni Cade Bambara panel at the NLA, apparently because ebonics, like Farrakhan and O.J., is something that all black people must have a ready opinion about for the benefit of white interrogators -- as Traylor made clear to her audience that day, even if a student wants to write in Yourba, the writing has to follow rules -- and why would anyone assume that those rules would be "easy"? Still, and this is one of those few things that Eleanor and I agree about, she opined that this debate was nonsense and distraction from the real problems of public education -- I confronted a similar oddity three years ago at San Jose State -- the head of undergraduate education brought a proposal to the campus-wide committee to award BA level foreign language credit for "dialectal" students in "developmental" English courses -- That fell apart when I pointed out to the man in charge of our entire undergraduate program that the program had no foreign language requirement, and so his proposal would only have added hours to the BA programs of the students without gaining them any credit toward any program -- The real question for me remains, what do Americans hear in their minds when they think of the English of black people? None of my students (even in LA) sound like that Rap soundtrack that most writers of editorials seemed to have playing in their heads -- Those of us who were lingering in the Sheraton at the close of the MLA had the discouraging experience of watching ch. 7 news grabbing at any black person who happened down the hall trying to get the sound-bites they wanted for the evening ebonics news -- They aired five seconds of Hortense Spillers -- was she speaking a foreign language??? This has not been a debate about how black Americans do things with English words, nor has it been a debate about how to teach black American school children -- It has been a massive public venting of prejudices that BEGINS with the assumption that the people engaging in the debate already know what constitues black English (ebonics/gibberish -- with no spelling out of particulars in either case!) with continued apologies for my typing, here's a closing bit of good sense from Patricia Williams: Perhaps the real argument is not about whether ebonics is a lnaguge or not. Rather, the tension is revealed in the contradiction of black speech being simultaneously understood yet not understood. Why is it so overwhelmingly, even colorfully comprehensible in some contexts, particularly in sports and entertainment, yet deemed so utterly incapable of effective communication when it comes to finding a job as a construction worker? -------- colorless green ideas do be sleeping furiously --the sayings of King Fish ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 10 Jan 1997 14:44:01 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "John E. Matthias" Subject: Re: True North/ND Review >... >> >>_NDR_ nos. 1 and 2 can be visited at our WEB site: >>http://www.nd.edu/~english/ndr/ndr./htm. >> > >that would be: > > http://www.nd.edu/~english/ndr/ndr.htm > >and Stephanie Strickland's work can be found at: > > http://www.nd.edu/~english/ndr/strickln.htm Yes, that's it. Thanks for the correction. JM ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 10 Jan 1997 14:57:13 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "GRAHAM W. FOUST" Subject: Gwyn and Mark and Carolyn and Joan In-Reply-To: <9701100504.AA12156@osf1.gmu.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Aloha. Last spring, I taught a class at GMU on Merwin, Oppen, Celan, and Berryman. We began with Celan, and after the first assignment (selections from Breathturn), one student raised their hand and said that he didn't really like what he had read because it was "confusing as all get out." The class (and I) laughed, and when I asked him to clarify what he meant by "as all get out," he couldn't, and dismissed it as "an expression," that is, something that is learned, passed on, and through these practices, needs no defining. "Official verse culture" seems to enjoy handing us poems this way as well. "I know what art is, but I don't know what I like." So what interests me even more than an audience that "ought to be familiar" (Gwyn) is "clearly incredible poetry" (Mark). While Joan Retallack's work may be incredible, it is not, in any "official verse culture" sense of the word "clear" and this is probably the reason for it's not being taken as "credible" in that culture. Given that poetry is hardly mainstream even at its most mainstream, it is no surprise that people like to keep it safe, tidy, and sighing. That is, "clear" and recognizable as "poetry." They do this because they, for some reason or another, distrust it from the very beginning. People don't like people messing with "their" language. Therefore, the less messed-with it is, the better. This has been talked about a jillion times over, so I'll quit this one here. But if "experimental" poetry is dismissed as not living up to a certain "poetic standard," then what standards would some of those "avant-garde" poets be using when they say they don't like Carolyn Forche's poetry? Is it, perhaps, too "clear"? Wallace Stevens's "It must be abstract" followed by some nebulous " . . . if it's to be any good at all"? Then again, I rarely get into conversations about poetry that I don't like (and most of those usually happen by accident). Maybe we should talk more about that, although maybe that's a waste of good energy. At any rate, by the end of the semester, my class was having pretty heated arguments over who was "better": Merwin, Oppen, Celan, or Berryman. I tended to let these arguments continue for a while because I found them absolutely fascinating. I mean, here were 30 or so people, who, if they had been exposed to poetry at all, it was in their high school AP English classes (Eliot, Pound, Whitman, Dickinson) or Rita Dove, Charles Bukowski, Maya Angelou on their own (I did a little poetry "survey" on the first day of class). All, as we might say "mainstream"/canonized poets. (Plus Bukowski, I know, I know . . .) Obviously, the students HAD to read the four poets I selected (they had to write papers, attend class discussions, etc.), but they certainly didn't have to argue about their value as artists/writers. They could have just listened to me drone on and on . . . So, if we are exposed to something that moves us to speak (or irritated enough that something did not move us to speak, and therefore moved to speech in a different way), we will project some sort of "taste" to (and, in many cases, ON) those around us. I have read wonderful pieces on poets that I love by poets that I'm not all that crazy about: Louise Gluck on Oppen, Heaney on Celan and Beckett, Robert Hass on Robert Creeley. Given that these are poets writing on poets, I wonder if our own poetry (mine, yours, his, hers) is ever a decent reflection of our tastes in poetry. I wonder, too, if baffled silence is a negative reaction. Poetry can be and is, certainly, a political discourse. However, it is also an artistic discourse, which gives it (and us) the freedom to "contain multitudes." I can like Oppen AND Gluck (Oppen and Merwin for that matter), Joan Retallack AND Seamus Heaney, if I so choose. This doesn't necessarily mean that I have no standards or even "wackily ecclectic" standards. It means that I have been, in some way, moved by what these people have made. One danger in all this is that I'm more likely to be moved if someone's talking about something that I already like. But this has produced so many conversations and, through these conversations, many friendships. It's the way we work, so distrusting it completely is impossible. Another danger is that we begin to discuss whether or not people are being moved for the right reasons. Talking about art is a topic-centered discourse, while art seems to be (primarily) a person to person discourse (although the people involved are not necessarily specific at the time of the making). So what are we talking about when we talk about talking about poetry? Bests, Graham ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 10 Jan 1997 13:57:02 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: amato@CHARLIE.CNS.IIT.EDU Subject: Re: ebonics and ivoronics Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" aldon, nice post!... you've cleared up some of the mist surrounding the way 'ebonics' is playing itself out publicly... hope you're feeling better... best, joe ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 10 Jan 1997 15:10:11 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: Re: ebonics and ivoronics Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Oakland school system's been under attack for so long -- teacher's strike last year or the year before was broken, I believe -- no reason to make any more places Sarajevos -- I encourage each writer and publisher on this list to send books for free to the Oakland BOE for their school libraries -- OAKLAND UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT 900 High St Oakland CA 94601 510 836 8373 of course you may prefer to donate books to school libraries nearer to where you live... it's a somewhat empty patronizing gesture, to be sure, but at least one teacher I know there appreciates it. Jordn Dvis ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 10 Jan 1997 15:44:56 +0500 Reply-To: bil@orca.sitesonthe.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Bil Brown Subject: Re: ebonics and ivoronics MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Okay. I've been watching this discussion for awhile and I finnally have something to say: The issue is real, and I think important. I do want to say something in RE: to the FACT that AfroAmerican vernacular is NOT specifically an AfroAmerican phenomina. I am a Louisville native and was gradeSchooled here in public institutions. The education was lax, so if there was intellegence about you you would find OTHER ways of writing to get the shit you wanted across across. This later was considered "poetic writing" and it is the ONL:Y way I KNEW how to communicate thru writing. Then I went thru a process of transformation, thru a process of BECOMING, a process, that in & of itself was structured in vocal "scoring" of text as I heard it & how I thought it. What ppl call IBONICs is what I call written poetry. * * * I hope this isn't vain. I hope no one tries to confront me on this. The deal is: it has taken me a long while to decide MY way of speaking was PROPER and my way of WRITING was effectual. With EUROcentric thot out & out still the PRIME example of creative/expressive communication, anything I say that is differing makes ppl freak. Could it be that a learning disability is accually a revolutionary pre-cognitive association? bye bye Bil Brown ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 10 Jan 1997 15:49:23 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Bernstein Subject: turning left, turning right, tumbling (Re: Riding) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Chris Stroffolino, My essay on Rational Meaning, and the book itself, is too involved to summarize here so I'd rather you read one or both before I add much more. However -- > Riding's politics moved in an opposite direction as > Oppen? In what sense do you mean this? There's an > implication that Oppen's leftism and his return to > poetry are related, while Riding's attempt to critique > certain aspects of poetry from a seemingly genreless > perspective may invoke a kind of "rightism?" Oppen's politics are related to his poetic turnings just as Riding's politics are related to hers (one leading to return, the other to a final turn away). But more significant, at least in regard to questions of language, the political issues became, for both, fundamentally ethical questions. -- I am not being especially metaphoric or elusive about Oppen to the left or Riding to the right. These are declared allegiances as the 1930s came to a close. Notable in this respect is Riding's tract The Left Heresy in Literature and Life, co-authored by "ex-Communist" Harry Kemp. This was one of the two last books that Riding published in 1939; she didn't publish another book till the 1970 selected. > Are you implying that Riding's "voiceless telling" > does away with "poetic turning?" No, I am saying the opposite; but in saying the opposite I am certainly contradicting (or turning around again) Laura and Schulyer Jackson's claim, that "poetic telling" and especially poetic turning is no telling at all, but a falsity. Let me add one further note on this in the light of the recent discussion of dialect on the list (and thanks, Steve Vincent and Aldon Nielsen, for your posts). One of the problems with *Rational Meaning* is it's rejection of language change: it argues not for standard English but for the linguistic truth of the English of Spencer, with a deterioration ever since. This is an extreme position, but it is implicit in many of advocates of "correct" English, as opposed to "standard" or what I would prefer to call "conventional" English. This implicit, and false, idea of correctness comes up repeatedly in the review of the new "Fowler," for example, and is also a crucial if often tacit part of the recent public discussion of dialect. A great value of *Rational Meaning* is that it doesn't hedge on this argument. It shows what is behind much of the neoliberal posturing on this issue by its adamant rejection of a neoliberal facade. By the way, my essay on nonstandard English (the ideology of dialects), "Poetics of the Americas", written for Aldon Nielsen's forthcoming collection of essays, "An Area of Act": Race and Readings in American Poetry, is now available on line at the Modernism/Modernity web site (it's published in the M/M vol. 3 #3). You can find this at http://writing.upenn.edu/authors/bernstein HOWEVER: this is only good for those affiliated with an institution that has a subscription to Johns Hopkins Press's Muse project. If you would like to get an HTML file of this essay, but only if you can receive this as an attachment to an email, let me know **BACKCHANNEL** (bernstei@bway.net) and I will attach the file to my reply. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 10 Jan 1997 15:55:57 -0600 Reply-To: maria damon Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: maria damon Subject: Re: Gwyn and Mark and Carolyn and Joan graham faustus writes: > > At any rate, by the end of the semester, my class was having pretty heated > arguments over who was "better": Merwin, Oppen, Celan, or Berryman. I > tended to let these arguments continue for a while because I found them > absolutely fascinating. 1. celan. 2. tell us what was fascinating about these heated debates? md ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 11 Jan 1997 11:13:21 +1300 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: DS Subject: Re: Ebonix? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Isn't Ebonix a character out of 'Asterix', I think the wife of Ivorix? ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 10 Jan 1997 17:48:44 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Eliza McGrand- CVA Guest Subject: death and taxes i'm about to go off and do grossly overdue tax forms i can't pay and wrote the following. if i include it with the forms, do you think it will influence Them (the state, the organ of the state, the banks of the organ of the state) to slow their grinding...? ... would it be a performance-peice on the powers of the writer in the State? a shaky fist lifted to bless and curse its own powerlessness...? The Writer Pauses Before Entering Tax Square About to enter the Room of Taxes all is taut: a snowflake bounces across the trip of a tight wire; a cat shakes the rigid legs of a dead red squirrel then drags it off. I am that squirrel. My money's blood dried, my jaw in a rictus of debt. Each form is a shovel-full on planks of a grave too poor for a coffin, rubbings from a headstone not paid for. e. mcgrand ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 10 Jan 1997 18:23:43 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: robert drake Subject: Re: turning left, turning right, tumbling (Re: Riding) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" folks (like mself) who had been interested in reading charles' review of johanna drucker's _the visible world_, but who couldnt get to it earlier, will now find it on the "sample issue" pages of Mondernism/Modernity, at: http://muse.jhu.edu/demo/modernism-modernity/2.3br_drucker.html worthwhile checking it out while you can, as per discussions earlier this week... and releted, charles' hopepage at the epc is, of course: http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/authors/bernstein lbd >By the way, my essay on nonstandard English (the ideology of dialects), >"Poetics of the Americas", written for Aldon Nielsen's forthcoming >collection of essays, "An Area of Act": Race and Readings in American >Poetry, is now available on line at the Modernism/Modernity web site (it's >published in the M/M vol. 3 #3). You can find this at >http://writing.upenn.edu/authors/bernstein >HOWEVER: this is only good for those affiliated with an institution that has >a subscription to Johns Hopkins Press's Muse project. If you would like to >get an HTML file of this essay, but only if you can receive this as an >attachment to an email, let me know **BACKCHANNEL** (bernstei@bway.net) and >I will attach the file to my reply. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 10 Jan 1997 17:22:18 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: michael corbin Subject: Re: ebonics and ivoronics MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Aldon L. Nielsen wrote: (snip) . . . > she opined that this debate was nonsense and > distraction from the real problems of public education -- > > This has not been a debate about how black Americans do things with > English words, nor has it been a debate about how to teach black American > school children -- It has been a massive public venting of prejudices > that BEGINS with the assumption that the people engaging in the debate > already know what constitues black English (ebonics/gibberish -- with no > spelling out of particulars in either case!) > Indeed. These comments seem right on. There are many languages and language effects to be read through and into the palmipsest "debate" about ebonics. A couple of observations: I think the fear of 'state codification' profered by both 'liberal' and 'conservative' glossologists is something of a mauve herring. However, state (de)constructions of both the 'public' and 'education' are central to this speech competence. The post-reagan, neo-liberalism/clintonism has effectively immiserated urban institutions, particularly schools (cf. Jonathan Kozol's _Savage Inequalities_), while simultaneously conjuring the 'problems' of late 20th cent., advance-capitalist amerryca as 'other-ness', in particualre, *blackness*. I think it important to read ebonics in this new raced state-formation. The language of the 'new-federalism' (state rights, welfare block grants etc.) legislated by both democrats and republicans uses the rhetoric of local empowerment while assuming its irrelevence to change the racial-corporatist status quo. It is not surprising that folks will use various municipal gestures in the coming years (decades?) to assert a degree of self-determination. I think the federal take-over of D.C. public schools, indeed the take-over of D.C. is an exercise in meaning production for the new (world) order policing that 'ebonics' neo-logistically tilts against. The genuine state-corporate, post-internal-colonial, codified policing of language is conspicuous by its absence in the debate. To wit, the perversities of 'standardized' testing as a measure not only of linguistic competence but as a measure of schools 'productivity' and 'effective-ness'. And I don't mean to be critical of these 'tests' in the that hyper-real debate of whether or not they are 'biased'--of course they are--but rather in the Foucauldian sense of the by now wide-spread internalized desire by both individuals and institutions to *teach the test*: a pedegogy of normalization. The ebonics 'advocates' speak implicitly and explicitly against this juridicial regime. mc (new to the list, excuse any unintended redundancy) ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 10 Jan 1997 18:27:34 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Carla Billitteri Organization: University at Buffalo Subject: Re: ebonics and ivoronics MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT > Eleanor Traylor was asked about this at the conclusion of the Toni Cade > Bambara panel at the NLA, apparently because ebonics, like Farrakhan and > O.J., is something that all black people must have a ready opinion about > for the benefit of white interrogators of course her paper was about black english as a literary language, but the general point remains true about "interrogators" ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 10 Jan 1997 15:33:48 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Re: ebonics and ivoronics In-Reply-To: <01IE2305YHQA8ZEGB1@ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Traylor's paper was in fact about Toni Cade Bambara's essay on Black English of many years prior to Oakland/Ebonics ii I did not mean that the question was ENTIRELY unrelated to the paper, but that the question had little to do with the exploration of Bambara that had just been offered -- ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 10 Jan 1997 18:48:24 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Poetics List Subject: New and Improved Welcome Message MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Note that this new version of the welcome message includes the new listserv address. The new address is in effect now, so send messages to poetics@listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu Rev. 11-15-96 ____________________________________________________________________ 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. Cautions 4. Digest Option 5. Temporarily turning off Poetics mail 6. Who's Subscribed 7. The Electronic Poetry Center (EPC) 8. Poetics Archives at EPC 9. Publishers & Editors Read This! [This document was prepared by Charles Bernstein (bernstei@bway.net) and Loss Pequen~o Glazier (glazier@acsu.buffalo.edu).] ____________________________________________________________________ 1. 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Please do not send a message to the list asking for the address of a specific subscriber. ____________________________________________________________________ 7. 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. ____________________________________________________________________ 8. 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 ____________________________________________________________________ 9. 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: Fri, 10 Jan 1997 16:00:08 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Bromige Subject: BUKOWSKI Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Graham--but Bukowski doesnt need to be a parenthetical demurrer from a list of "acknowledged widely" or "mainstream"(what we call "maindrain" on the Britipoetlist). He's as predictable as donuts. The only cause of his being declared (by a New Orleans zine) "Outside of the Year" in 1962 was the raunchy nature of his subjectmatter. Later, as a public developed, his public persona became a cause de scandale, of course. But not formally nor in any other sense of "mens" did he trailblaze--he's really like rod mckuen but daring to be a person. He _belongs_ on that list you provide, and once more we see a strange unerring factor in halfeducated undergrads as they pick their poets. And this choice is absolute for a spell (at their age, I couldnt find enough Dowson to keep me alive). after all, theyre there to be further educated. I taught college for 25 yrs and based on what i met there would say that it were better poetry be not taught at all in high school rather than the way it usually is. . .so many of my students were poetry-damaged, unable to relax and let the capta sort itself out from the data.They cd only recognize a poem when it was in the missionary position. that a poem might be as opaque as a person, capable of many kinds of caress, much playful laughter, of brooding witholding silences,of orderly thought or persuasive choplogic, of trivial drivel, of witty observations--that it might even be a dreadful machine psychotic--they had not been permitted, though in their years of sturm und drang, to realize: it was a little problem with pretty or pretty awful pictures, and could be solved by identifying and then adding together its (not too) various elements. and the teacher had the answer.Well, the teacher has some of the answerS, let us hope! but so does the student. However, the finality of their taste cannot endure, if the vast range of excitements poetry offers can be indicated to them. please pardon my running on. its the wine i had with lunch. it wasnt just any wine. but the effect is no doubt indistinguishable. ah dove! ah buke! ah wilderness! db ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 10 Jan 1997 19:29:53 +0100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Miekal And Subject: Re: BUK MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" It seems to me that there are several different issues here: 1) why all the fuss by the honkie press? 2) how do you teach standard English to those who grow up speaking a different dialect? 3) the nature of and reasons for the distinction between language and dialect. 4) the uses of diversity. 5) the ideology expressed by the motion before the school board, which is a different issue than whether or not it's a good idea. And perhaps a hidden agenda on the part of the board. All of the above have received some attention from the list except 5. The School Board's proposal bears inspection. Languages, they claim, are "genetically based?" This looks like "Black Athena" redivivus. If this were true, there would be substantial grammatical similarities between Ebonics and the street French of Cote Ivoirien kids in Paris, for instance. There's lots of reasons to value and teach any dialect, but it shouldn't be necessary to teach bogus science to justify it. Salary differentials for teachers certified in "the methadology of teaching African Language Systems principles?" Aha! If ebonics is a language its teachers can cash in on some of the bilingual ed money instead of having to fork it over to all those other ethnics. But let's get real linguistically for the moment. There are versions of European languages that use West African grammatical elements and largely european vocabulary. Gulla, Haitian Creole, the dialect of Bahia in Brazil, _bozal_ in Cuba, etc. None of their grammatical structures resemble what's being taken to be American Black English (hereafter and forever to be known as Ebonics, alas!) as I understand the term. The grammar of Ebonics has, I think, far more to do with archaic English or Apalachian Mountain English than it does with anything coming from Africa. None of which reduces one iota its dignity, beauty, or usefulness as a means of communication or as a tool for teachers. Any more than does the fact that the Oakland board may have been partly motivated by less than noble impulses. It's not always the codification of the written language that has been the tool of power, by the way. More often, outside of China at least, it's been the codification of the dominant spoken dialect. Franco didn't want Catalans to speak Catalan even at home, Navajo kids got whipped for speaking Dine, Alsatians in this and the last century had to learn to speak French, then Hoch Deutsch, then French again. And any number of peoples who wrote no language have been forced to speak the master's language. The imposition of a common dialect for written communication is another matter. Journalistic literary Arabic, a case in point, is, I understand, no one's native tongue, although it has certainly come to function as a class marker, as post-Roman latin did until recently in Europe. But it also serves to make communication possible all over the Arab world--there would be no "Arab World" if one dialect had not become hegemonic for that purpose--but it has little effect on how people speak in Sana'a or Marrakesh. I myself speak Hebronics, which mightily confuses my wife, who speaks Apalachionics. A useful generic term for all dialects that are the result of imperialism might be colonics. Mark ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 10 Jan 1997 20:37:07 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Dan Raphael Dlugonski Subject: "post lang theory and who's younger than you" Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" One limit the internet has on work beyond the norm-spectrum is its more difficult to control spacing, or to get yourself a bigger page/width to work with. It's hard enough to deal with magazines with 8&1/2 by 5&1/2 (yes some mags do work closer to full page size, but these are few and a more expensive format to maintain.) what kind of technology (how can electronic media) be used to give a writer a bigger page to display/transmit work on/with (ironically, one of the best methods for sharing a longer lined poem is the old style broadside). shortening our line shortens our breath, shortens our vision/range. in normal pacific northwest style (i'm in portland OR, where are you?)i'm wearing a fraying aqua plaid wool shirt over a lgiht blue tshirt that says "inspired by actual events", blue jeans and american made sneakers. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 11 Jan 1997 07:07:20 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ward Tietz <100723.3166@COMPUSERVE.COM> Subject: Romansh & dialects Romansh, the Swiss language that's spoken in the canton of Grison, around St. Moritz, has been making somewhat of a comeback in the last few years. I heard on the news a few days ago that there's now a Romansh newspaper. In setting up the paper they were very particular about not favoring one dialect over another; each edition contains articles written in the language's five idioms. Ward Tietz ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 11 Jan 1997 04:12:23 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rachel Loden Subject: Re: True North MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit John E. Matthias wrote: > Stephanie Strickland's _True North_, the first winner of the Ernest Sandeen > Poetry Prize, will be published next week by the University of Notre Dame > Press. I think the book will be of great interest to readers on the list. [snip] >Sections of this book dealing with the life > and physics of Willard Gibbs were chosen by Barbara Guest for the Poetry > Society of America's 1996 Alice Fay Di Castagnola Award. I've been asked to make a small correction: Barbara Guest saw about half of the entire manuscript, parts of all the sections, not the Willard Gibbs poems in isolation. She chose it as a manuscript-in-progress. Rachel Loden ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 11 Jan 1997 04:57:28 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ron Silliman Subject: La Maman et la Putain Tom et al, The entire script (in French) of Jean Eustache's La Manan et la Putain is on the web at: http://www.worldnet.net.80/~mannoni/putain.html It's a well done site and I was surprised at how straightforward the French looks (as in "I can almost read that"). Wearing black sweat trousers, a red pseudo "long john shirt" under a deep purple Vanstar sweatshirt, which is what I usually wear in the mornings before I dress for work or whatever. Funky old docker shoes, nice wool sox. Ron >Date: Fri, 10 Jan 1997 08:24:31 CST >From: tmandel@CAIS.CAIS.COM >Subject: Eustache > >I think I looked in the Facets catalogue for Eustache a couple of years >ago and didn't find anything. > >I knew he died young; his other (first) feature was about dropout >teenagers -- juvenile delinquents! (btw, tell Jesse not to worry abt >the juice stains). It was good but not preparation for M/W which is >really an incredible film. > >I'll look at the most recent Facets (in DE this weekend) and hope to >find something. > >Tom > > >************************************************* > Tom Mandel * 2927 Tilden St. NW > Washington DC 20008 * tmandel@1net.com > vox: 202-362-1679 * fax 202-364-5349 >************************************************* > > ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 11 Jan 1997 10:22:11 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: robert drake Subject: Re: "post lang theory and who's younger than you" Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" dan on the web, the 
 tags can be used to preserve spacing... the
tradeoff is, the monospaced fonts most systems have available to to display
preformatted text are ugly.

you can also use tables to force text to spread out across the page, by
specifying th width... define a single cell table and make it really big...

and ov course you could produce broadsides as graphic files--postscript
wd be th most efficient, gifs make for long downloads...

any of these solutions can cause problems on-screen, since it's hard to
scan if you have to keep scrolling left & right.  sometime the solution is
to suggest folks print the page, in landscape mode...  but i've seen the
limitation used to advantage, w/ really wide graphics laid out in panels
(almost like comic strips) which force you to scroll and use the progressive
display as a narrative device...

w/ ascii, yr stuck with the convention of indenting the subsequent breaks
in a long line, which _should_ be standard enough to avoid confusion... but
i still remember the college prof i had who insisted that all the linebreaks
in *howl*, as it appeared in the norton anthology, were significant--after all,
that was a definitive edition...

lbd

wearing longjohns, black sweatshirt, grey sweatpants, ragwool socks &
navy watchcap... baby its cold outside

>One limit the internet has on work beyond the norm-spectrum is its more
>difficult to control spacing, or to get yourself a bigger page/width to work
>with. It's hard enough to deal with magazines with 8&1/2 by 5&1/2 (yes some
>mags do work closer to full page size, but these are few and a more
>expensive format to maintain.)
>what kind of technology (how can electronic media) be used to give a writer
>a bigger page to display/transmit work on/with (ironically, one of the best
>methods for sharing a longer lined poem is the old style broadside).
>shortening our line shortens our breath, shortens our vision/range.
>in normal pacific northwest style (i'm in portland OR, where are you?)i'm
>wearing a fraying aqua plaid wool shirt over a lgiht blue tshirt that says
>"inspired by actual events", blue jeans and american made sneakers.
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 11 Jan 1997 10:45:14 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Brian McHale 
Subject:      Re: <*** NO SUBJECT ***>
In-Reply-To:  Message of 01/10/97 at 18:40:39 from junction@EARTHLINK.NET

Can't praise enough Mark Weiss's sensible & informed posting on dialects/stan-
dards.  This reminds us that it's not ALL ideology: somewhere out there are
real "facts" of language behavior, & at some point we've got to take our stand
on those.  Good to be reminded too of how "layered" everyone's language beha-
vior is.  "Hebronics" is a funny idea, but not JUST funny, in view of how deep-
ly Yiddish colors urban (Eastern mainly?) speech varieties.  And not just that
of Jews, i.e., it ISN'T "genetic."  (Or, in Hebronics: "Genetics it isn't.")

Brian
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 11 Jan 1997 09:55:50 +0100
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Miekal And 
Subject:      H=T=M=L
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Luigi:

What I do for variable spacing, & this is a hack if I ever heard of one,
is tiny transparent gifs of different pixel widths.  You can easily
create a small catalogue of a couple different sizes & paste in the
image tags in whatever combination necessary to give you the spacing
needed.

The problem with using gif or postcrpt to create a broadside is then
your content is neither searchable or hypertextable (actually I suppose
you could link graphics, but that feels clunky).

Miekal
Assistant Head NeverMind of the Post-Language Html Writers Guild
--
@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#
Dreamtime Village website: http://net22.com/dreamtime
QAZINGULAZA: And/Was/Wakest website:
http://net22.com/qazingulaza
e-mail for DT & And/Was: dtv@mwt.net
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 11 Jan 1997 10:16:46 +0100
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Miekal And 
Subject:      diss & theory
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit


Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Charles Bernstein 
Subject:      Recent Publications
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

>Also I really like the
>openposting feeling, that folks are free to publicize readings,
>publications, research projects whatever.  On one other list I was on
>there was debate that went on for a couple months about codifying
>subject header tags
-- says Miekal And, from the land beyond the universities

Personally, I'm sorry to have missed a months-long discussion of subject
header tags, but I'm a fairly dull person, or I have a strange sense of
humor, or both.

However, I have noticed all together TOO FEW listings of recent publications
by list participants. In fact I have been getting books and magazines
published by people on this list without seeing any announcements of them on
the list. So perhaps this will prompt more such postings: editors,
publishers: please send listings of recent publications including ordering
information. Individuals: please send information on any new publications.
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 11 Jan 1997 11:02:21 +0100
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Miekal And 
Subject:      The Internalational Dictionary of Neologisms (long)
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit

Since 1985 Xexoxial Editions has been collecting neologism thru the
various networks.  This summer, thanks to the eagle-eye persistence of
Autonomedia's Ben Meyers the first edition is almost ready for
printing.  We will also be posting an updateable online version of the
dictionary as well as soon as my html expertise reaches new levels.

Earlier in the week I had mentioned how even tho I couldnt get folks
here at Dreamtime to discuss poetics as such, I was continually amazed
how inventive & fruitful folks could be with a format like neologisms &
especially people who were not poets & writers persay.

Xexoxial will always be thirstily absorbing all possible neologisms &
invites Poetix List participants to submit their neologisms for
inclusion in the dictionary. Just to provoke & inspire possibilities I
include the outtakes from the workshop I did with the Summer School for
Designing a Society, directed by one of the grandfathers of computer
music, Herbert Brun this last July.  Id like to point out that the
majority of participants had no context for these creations other than
their imagination.


_______________________________________________________________

John Wright
caercifon-  ruins of a decaying fortress
preel-  cat rubbing against ankles
qweet-  surprise meeting someone
skume-  damo rubbish found under decaying porches (alt., skooge)
plocaire-    one who drops pens into a coffee can
whiloshar-  red-gold hair seen in peripheral vision
poont-  sigh of an old dog settling down
moome-  sound when you are with someone and you don�t know who it came
from
squatsploitation-  media recuperation of squats
ooawh-  exhalation under a waterfall

Lyx
blurgraf-  an electronic or digital manipulation of the look on the face
of a person attempting to define a new word
fnik-  the location of that tickly feeling in the nose that makes you
want to sneeze but you can�t
Klarman-  a military position in the Greek-German post wherein a bell is
rung continually at a gate for no apparent reason
pulinguise-  to surrender by withdrawal

Manni Br�n
fatzah-fatzah-  to give up on something you are writing, crumple up the
paper you are writing it on and throw it away (spoken mainly while
crumpling)
glubsh-  to swallow down mouthful after mouthful of food with no
expression on your face except a vacant stare
quierteln-  to quarrel in a petty, niggling way
slibble-  a mincing gait and at the same time, dragging your feet

Rishi Zutshi
friedship-  a relationship with a friend who likes you but doesn�t
manifest this when you need someone to
frindship-  the state of knowing that a friend likes you, while ignoring
any manifestations of their like, and consequently raining loneliness
upon yourself
fiendship-  the loneliness incurred from firndship

Herbert Br�n
raintrumor-  neighborly shower disregarding domestic truth
democradvocacy-  being for it
selfesteemengin-  dynamic upward mobilization
intrancendate-  well met though burnt through

Miekal And
agg-  the space in the egg not occupied by egg yolf or egg white
gis-  but not but
flishbat-  the look on people�s faces when they�re trying to think of a
word
Zentility-  in the fashion of a previous generation long forgotten
abrabro-  pertaining to but not including pertinence
haglet-  a child substituted at birth when the original body is not the
gender the parents want
futurcog-  hysterical intervention in the midst of an already hysterical
situation
terdic-  the fear of fear�s fear

Dan Silver
momute-  stop talking down to me
gravitude-  thank you of great extreme
tukar-  to travel in celebration
laward-  when things happen that break the law
slibock-  repeat, but make it understandable

Susan Parenti
frk-  a relationship to one�s pillow
tremm-  staring at a child�s beauty
schmalch-  a fulltime squelcher
schweeps-  to quietly avert one�s eyes from a woman�s hairy armpits
drvvv - to tremblingly feel another person�s presence and therefore
refuse- to look at them
exciexciexitatable-  an escalating state of excitement which forgets its
initial cause

Janell Kapoor
copsate-  cross between satiate and copulate
soilable-  compost material; all things appropriate for composting;
organic matter that helps build soil
autodoriac-  person who loves to indulge in their own body odors and
fluids
shescient-  letting people know that you have more informmation than you
plan on sharing with them, before you start sharing

Danielle Chynoweth
enundrighted-  the condition of not wearing any underwear
quitrn-  guilt about feeling guilt
orshew-  culturally enforced silence during sex
polyfricatosis-  the condition of frequently starting a sentence several
times altering the word choice slightly each time
blyzip-  a word or short phrase used alone as a reply to alter the
direction of a conversation

Ema d�Aite
lominal-  (adj.) describes any phenomenon that has changed how you deal
with a situation
borma-  (noun) a word or short phrase used alone as a reply to alter the
direction of a conversation

William Gillespie
schwythisms-  an unoriginal utterance which ends an original
conversation
sprugth-  a quiet autonomy
cat-  a hole in the sky from which multicolored flames pour down
pleg-  a writing exercise that didn�t do much for you
ur-  �I reserve the right to be silent�
pib-  a benign flow or lump
stug- a person you hate for no reason you find valid
pfrumpft-  the day after you run out of marijuana
amanapique-  a revelation which changes one�s entire life for
approximately a day
outgrabe-  to reach the pinnacle of despair in order to coerce someone
(Lewis Carrol)
splasmath-  a spectacular vision destined to be appreciated by no one
else (ie., a shooting star)
xi-  prefix indicating a noun is metaphorical, as in �throwing the
xi-baby out with the xi-bathwater�

Mark Enslin
stimp-  touching a sore to see if it hurts
embark-  preventing a project by fervent discussions of potential
objections
explurgitofloxk-  a serious, well-modulated filibustering vomit

Eric Hiltner
zeap-  almost a sneeze
zobot-  zombie robot
teep-  anti-tech subversive
pliert-  a unit of force when using pliers
bleer-  obnoxious and overused stare
peevate-  golden showers; to urinate upon another�s body
tarom-  a place where tarot cards are read
blamot-  one who blames him- or herself
kabor-  a chipped tooth that�s beginning to rot
donter-  antiwant

Dylan James
smoople-  a friendly exchange unit
pastu-  greeting indicating resumption of friendship as if no time has
passed
strunth-  to fall off a cliiiiiiiiiif
samiss-  a flat blue landscape in dream

Loba Chudak
numpfgrumec-  greeting one another by tenderly rubbing each other�s
noses

R�Becca Songbird
shirf-  to avoid the eyes of people in an elevator or on a bus
closh-  the sound of sinking in mud up to your ankles
haloic-  describes the happy state of exhaustion occuring after a day
spent naked in sun
lunsequo-  the feeling when you can�t concentrate on anything because
you�re sexually attracted to someone in the room

Sigfried Gold
momariant-  possessing sublime beauty almost unnoticeable due to its
proximity to a more ostentatiously beautiful thing

Maria Silva
straflict-  strategies to deal with conflict
guacala!-  quick expression to prevent children from getting shocked by
sticking things into electrical outlets
chiblusk--  the expression of surprise, fear and uneasiness that North
Americans have when Latino/as salute them with a kiss on the cheek

Hannah Dolata
bleent-  used to describe love for or between guinea pigs
tuslin-  to walk, skip, gallop, sing, oblivious to everyone else
bontulyp-  fear of farts
clidnt-  the candy that you always eat with your Grandpa

Larry Richards
slumbo-  pleasure arising from boredom
slivery-  a place for silver-producing materials
forework-  rituals prior to work
timeslew-  many clocks operating simultaneously, each with different
synchronizations
fo - (conj.)  not if
tist - (v.)  place in the now
                        (prep.)  of the now
ast-  (conj.)  and it
figgle-  to finagle by wiggling
matulate - (v.)  to squash under a mat
                                (n.)  a large mat with a handle

Marianne Shaneen
shnorgish-  the persistent heaviness when one is unable to come out of a
deep sleep
hushush-  the often painful feeling of being attached to and surrounded
by a dream one has had the previous night
memvation-  a continuously present feeling of being inspired by someone
that you rarely see

Zon Wakest  (8 years old)
fin-  the feeling of late at night
ginsoga-  not to worry about things
chince-  shoes that don�t fit
chees-  not to be cared for
noox-  short for nuclear bombs
naana-  banging on the door
lapea-  a thing without a name
olixa-  dead spirits

Eddie Nix
rhwilord-  1. one who believes she is being repressed; 2. a white coral
found between the teeth
fluprinate-  to repeat gurgly sounds loudly while others are watching TV
bupliptinome-  device for measuring the rhizomatic influence affecting a
given society
kraspird-  with the consistency of sperm
sbuntip-  the series of noises made immediately preceding orgasm
zyntax-  a new drug to help bring endings to relationships
expracricupe-  1. to spit out things you have not eaten; 2. to start a
car by rubbing melon in the carburator
sunblonp-  the tool used by the man in Navajo prophecy who would stop
the electricity
fraschish-  a future republican state of mind entered into by plugging
the penile gland into a toaster

Jonathan Chance
yollinupping-  hugging stone, trees, water, while yodeling
fromby-  1. memorial staff carved with names in dedication to a friend;
2. lovemaking position (alt. frombe)

Aaron Loeb
blifter-  blanket lifter
blarm-  a warm blizzard
crun-  crawling to a run

Anon.
flountain-  act of water flying from a source into or onto something
else
expite-  to take away spite
snickle - to laugh/giggle with mal intent
eek-  collective or individual I
smec-  to commit to a relationship between two or more people
spynd-  used to describe a relationship between 2 people where smec is
made and kissing occurs but one or more of the people involved is/are
not really sure of the future of the relationship

--
@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#
Dreamtime Village website: http://net22.com/dreamtime
QAZINGULAZA: And/Was/Wakest website:
http://net22.com/qazingulaza
e-mail for DT & And/Was: dtv@mwt.net
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 11 Jan 1997 13:17:48 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Michael Boughn 
Subject:      clothes
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

To hell with a message!

I'm wearing a black tuxedo, satin stripe on the pants, single
breasted, three button jacket, pleated white shirt with raised collar
and a ring tie with a onyx stud, and a collared vest. The shoes are
black wing tips (left over from my wedding). I've accesorized with a
silver and black Navajo bracelet and two ear studs--one diamond one onyx.

No joke.

Mike mboughn@chass.utoronto.ca
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 11 Jan 1997 13:24:50 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         robert drake 
Subject:      Re: H=T=M=L
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

dan wrote:
>One limit the internet has on work beyond the norm-spectrum is its more
>difficult to control spacing, or to get yourself a bigger page/width to work
>with. It's hard enough to deal with magazines with 8&1/2 by 5&1/2 (yes some
>mags do work closer to full page size, but these are few and a more
>expensive format to maintain.)
>what kind of technology (how can electronic media) be used to give a writer
>a bigger page to display/transmit work on/with...

oops, i fergot--  there's also the  tag: text between
those tags will not word-wrap based on screen width...


>What I do for variable spacing, & this is a hack if I ever heard of one,
>is tiny transparent gifs of different pixel widths.  You can easily
>create a small catalogue of a couple different sizes & paste in the
>image tags in whatever combination necessary to give you the spacing
>needed.
>
>Miekal

minimally less hacky is the special character " ", non-breaking space,
which has the advantage of displaying properly if someone is reading  w/
graphics turned off (which some reports claim is up to 50% of folks who
have to pay for their connect time)...

lbd
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 11 Jan 1997 12:57:03 +0100
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Miekal And 
Subject:      neologism redux
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

I forgot to mention that their is a downloadable version of the original
hypercard version of the Internalational Dictionary of Neologisms that
we distributed in the late 80s before the advent of the web.  It is at
Marius Watz's Computer Generated Writing Page.
http://www.hok.no/marius/c-g.writing/    It will require Hypercard 1.2
or better to activate.   M And
--
@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#
Dreamtime Village website: http://net22.com/dreamtime
QAZINGULAZA: And/Was/Wakest website:
http://net22.com/qazingulaza
e-mail for DT & And/Was: dtv@mwt.net
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 11 Jan 1997 14:53:37 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "Walter K. Lew" 
Subject:      Re: Gwyn and Mark and Carolyn and Joan

      I half-second Maria on Celan (I wd not want to argue that his
achievement was "superior" to Oppen's), but I'm mainly posting this as an
opportunity to express my deep gratitude to Pierre Joris for doing such
wonderful translations of Celan (as in _Breathturn_ [Sun & Moon Press]):  I
don't read German and what translations I'd seen before had not convinced me
of Celan's greatness, of which I am now thoroughly convinced.  I've heard
that the next volume of translations is also due out fr Sun & Moon--when can
I expect to order it?

Walter K. Lew
c/o Prof/ J. Chang
English Dept.
Boston College
Chestnut Hill, MA  02167
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 11 Jan 1997 14:45:12 +0600
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         KENT JOHNSON 
Organization: Highland Community College
Subject:      Listics

Miekal And's posting on The Internalational Dictionary of Neologisms,
compiled by Xexoxial Editions is wonderful--a wild-minded effort
very much in dada spirit. The possibilities for extension seem vast:
In fact, couldn't such a dictionary become the evolving
archive for a brand new dialect, out of which could arise a whole
library of shimmering, hermetic works?

Here's an addition to the IDN I'd like to offer:

_melnick_ *adj* Having, displaying, or marked by the qualities of
heroism in language. *v* In circles of poetry, an entering
into words that causes one to think and behave in uncommonly
incautious ways.

I think this new dialect should be called *listics*.


Kent
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 11 Jan 1997 16:37:43 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Loss Glazier 
Subject:      Re: H=T=M=L
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

        For folks who come from a graphics or a typesetting software
background, HTML is about as imprecise as it gets. Like trying to make
justified margins with a manual typewriter - and that's not really an
exaggeration at all.
        But you could "fix" your work. As if you freeze-dried it or placed
dried flowers in a clear plastic seal. That is, take a picture of it (gif)
or use a more graphically oriented reader (Adobe Acrobat?).
        One supposes that the technology will advance. But if you think of
it, it may be the unfixability that makes it workable. The pages come across
to so many different machines with so many different parameters maybe in
large part because the fit is sloppy and it will push, pull and give.
        Basically, HTML IS a very primitive markup scheme. And the economic
reality is that there hasn't been a motivation for mark-up that has any
degree of accuracy. The much-touted HTML+ offers more and we're all grateful
for that but realistically it's not a LOT more, wouldn't you agree? I mean,
who here has given much thought to SGML (the 'authoritative text' version of
HTML) and where will we find the creator of VPML (visual poetry markup
language)? (Here I'm only dreaming)
        If we want such things I think we may have to invent them ourselves.
Otherwise ... (You know I always wondered why it wasn't a standard feature
of basic word processing programs to type at any angle you wanted.)
------------------------------
At 01:24 PM 1/11/97 -0500, you wrote:
>dan wrote:
>>One limit the internet has on work beyond the norm-spectrum is its more
>>difficult to control spacing, or to get yourself a bigger page/width to work
>>with. It's hard enough to deal with magazines with 8&1/2 by 5&1/2 (yes some
>>mags do work closer to full page size, but these are few and a more
>>expensive format to maintain.)
>>what kind of technology (how can electronic media) be used to give a writer
>>a bigger page to display/transmit work on/with...
>
>oops, i fergot--  there's also the  tag: text between
>those tags will not word-wrap based on screen width...
>
>
>>What I do for variable spacing, & this is a hack if I ever heard of one,
>>is tiny transparent gifs of different pixel widths.  You can easily
>>create a small catalogue of a couple different sizes & paste in the
>>image tags in whatever combination necessary to give you the spacing
>>needed.
>>
>>Miekal
>
>minimally less hacky is the special character " ", non-breaking space,
>which has the advantage of displaying properly if someone is reading  w/
>graphics turned off (which some reports claim is up to 50% of folks who
>have to pay for their connect time)...
>
>lbd
>
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 11 Jan 1997 14:01:46 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Mark Weiss 
Subject:      Re: Listics
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

How anout "insinuendo?"


At 02:45 PM 1/11/97 +0600, you wrote:
>Miekal And's posting on The Internalational Dictionary of Neologisms,
>compiled by Xexoxial Editions is wonderful--a wild-minded effort
>very much in dada spirit. The possibilities for extension seem vast:
>In fact, couldn't such a dictionary become the evolving
>archive for a brand new dialect, out of which could arise a whole
>library of shimmering, hermetic works?
>
>Here's an addition to the IDN I'd like to offer:
>
>_melnick_ *adj* Having, displaying, or marked by the qualities of
>heroism in language. *v* In circles of poetry, an entering
>into words that causes one to think and behave in uncommonly
>incautious ways.
>
>I think this new dialect should be called *listics*.
>
>
>Kent
>
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 11 Jan 1997 16:59:19 +0100
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Miekal And 
Subject:      Re: Listics
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

One way at Dreamtime that we put neologisms to work is to come up with
words for phenomena that have yet to be lexified.  One could easily
imagine needing words on this PoEtIxZ list for things like:

a voyeuristic facinations with the dress of others

uncodifiable names to poetic movements that are rumoured to exist

the inproportionate ratio of writers to publishers & thus to readers

critical stances that are substantiated by ecologies of language as
opposed to academic constructs

professorial authority

the predisposition to forgetting the raw spirit of Logos once a poet
becomes tenured, famous or tokenized

the lineage of influences within which the writer places his/her self

books of poetry that have never been opened  (C Alexander must have a
word for this one)

linguistic phenomena that are synthaethetically beyond words

an easy way to abbreviate L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E

poetries of everyday life

the resolve with which the children of poets decide to become physicans
& attorneys

the magnitude to which the proliferation of small press literature will
soon exceed the metaphor of the Library of Babel in our lifetime

Miekal

25 below & 2 months till spring & 75 miles from a decent library






--
@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#
Dreamtime Village website: http://net22.com/dreamtime
QAZINGULAZA: And/Was/Wakest website:
http://net22.com/qazingulaza
e-mail for DT & And/Was: dtv@mwt.net
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 11 Jan 1997 17:26:59 +0600
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         KENT JOHNSON 
Organization: Highland Community College
Subject:      Re: Listics

Dear Mark:

What do you insinuate or innuate by insinuendo?

Kent


On January 11, Mark Weiss wrote in reply to my message below:

>How anout "insinuendo?"


At 02:45 PM 1/11/97 +0600, you wrote:
>Miekal And's posting on The Internalational Dictionary of Neologisms,
>compiled by Xexoxial Editions is wonderful--a wild-minded effort
>very much in dada spirit. The possibilities for extension seem vast:
>In fact, couldn't such a dictionary become the evolving
>archive for a brand new dialect, out of which could arise a whole
>library of shimmering, hermetic works?
>
>Here's an addition to the IDN I'd like to offer:
>
>_melnick_ *adj* Having, displaying, or marked by the qualities of
>heroism in language. *v* In circles of poetry, an entering
>into words that causes one to think and behave in uncommonly
>incautious ways.
>
>I think this new dialect should be called *listics*.
>
>
>Kent
>
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 11 Jan 1997 17:31:55 -0600
Reply-To:     maria damon 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         maria damon 
Subject:      Re: clothes

woo-woo, as we used to say.  what's the occasion?--md

In message  <199701111817.NAA19200@chass.utoronto.ca> UB Poetics discussion
group writes:
> To hell with a message!
>
> I'm wearing a black tuxedo, satin stripe on the pants, single
> breasted, three button jacket, pleated white shirt with raised collar
> and a ring tie with a onyx stud, and a collared vest. The shoes are
> black wing tips (left over from my wedding). I've accesorized with a
> silver and black Navajo bracelet and two ear studs--one diamond one onyx.
>
> No joke.
>
> Mike mboughn@chass.utoronto.ca
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 11 Jan 1997 17:33:32 -0600
Reply-To:     maria damon 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         maria damon 
Subject:      Re: Recent Publications

chas b sz:
> However, I have noticed all together TOO FEW listings of recent publications
> by list participants. In fact I have been getting books and magazines
> published by people on this list without seeing any announcements of them on
> the list. So perhaps this will prompt more such postings: editors,
> publishers: please send listings of recent publications including ordering
> information. Individuals: please send information on any new publications.
>
at mla i was pleased to see two of my "jewish" essays in print.  one,
"word-landslayt: gertrude stein, allen ginsbeg, lenny bruce," is in People of
the Book: 30 Scholars reflect on their Jeiwsh identity, ed. Shellley Fisher
Fishkin and Jeffrey Rubin-Dorsky; and "Jazz-Jews, Jive and Gender: the Ethnic
Politics of Jazz Argot," in Jews and Other Differences: The New Jewish Cultural
Studies, edited by the boyarin brothers, daniel and jonathan.  also, charles and
i both had essays in Modern Fiction Studies' special gertrude stein issue that
came o ut in the fall.  the renga-range qabal has some pieces in inter/face, an
electronic journal.  also, thanks to juliana spahr's suggestion, my piece on
Lenny bruce's obscenity trial and the jewish entertainer as cultural lightning
rod has finally been accepted --by postmodern culture -after 6 years in limbo
--and will come out in the january 1997 issue.--it feels funny to do this
--immodest or something --how 'bout we do it for eachother?--md
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 11 Jan 1997 17:34:26 -0600
Reply-To:     maria damon 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         maria damon 
Subject:      Re: <*** NO SUBJECT ***>

In message   UB Poetics
discussion group writes:
> Can't praise enough Mark Weiss's sensible & informed posting on
> dialects/stan-
> dards.  This reminds us that it's not ALL ideology: somewhere out there are
> real "facts" of language behavior, & at some point we've got to take our
> stand
> on those.  Good to be reminded too of how "layered" everyone's language beha-
> vior is.  "Hebronics" is a funny idea, but not JUST funny, in view of how
> deep-
> ly Yiddish colors urban (Eastern mainly?) speech varieties.  And not just
> that
> of Jews, i.e., it ISN'T "genetic."  (Or, in Hebronics: "Genetics it isn't.")
>
> Brian

i must say i disagree; the term "genetic" did not refer to biological genetics
but to linguistic geneaologies; the theory that Black American English (or what
ever you want to call it) is fundamentally an appalachian cognate rather than an
a west african derivative was, i think, refuted almost as soon as it appeared
some years ago (and as i recall, of course foggily so forgive errors) the theory
was not advanced by a linguist but by a literary southerner, a neo-agrarian as
it were.  so far, nielsen and corbin have offered the most interesting insights
on this matter.--md
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 11 Jan 1997 17:38:30 -0600
Reply-To:     maria damon 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         maria damon 
Subject:      Re: Listics

that wonderful word is not original; i heard it in a creepy movie, the ruling
class, starring peter o'toole as an innocent who gets turned into a jack the
ripper type.--md

In message  <199701112201.OAA15965@iceland.it.earthlink.net> UB Poetics
discussion group writes:
> How anout "insinuendo?"
>
>
> At 02:45 PM 1/11/97 +0600, you wrote:
> >Miekal And's posting on The Internalational Dictionary of Neologisms,
> >compiled by Xexoxial Editions is wonderful--a wild-minded effort
> >very much in dada spirit. The possibilities for extension seem vast:
> >In fact, couldn't such a dictionary become the evolving
> >archive for a brand new dialect, out of which could arise a whole
> >library of shimmering, hermetic works?
> >
> >Here's an addition to the IDN I'd like to offer:
> >
> >_melnick_ *adj* Having, displaying, or marked by the qualities of
> >heroism in language. *v* In circles of poetry, an entering
> >into words that causes one to think and behave in uncommonly
> >incautious ways.
> >
> >I think this new dialect should be called *listics*.
> >
> >
> >Kent
> >
> >
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 11 Jan 1997 17:41:38 -0600
Reply-To:     maria damon 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         maria damon 
Subject:      Re: Listics

i've long used the word "scrunchlings" to describe the delicious gunk left in
the pan after a roast; called "debris" i think in new orleans cuisine.  also a
"splitch" of coffee, just a little bit.

In message  <3ADF302BC6@student.highland.cc.il.us> UB Poetics discussion group
writes:
> Dear Mark:
>
> What do you insinuate or innuate by insinuendo?
>
> Kent
>
>
> On January 11, Mark Weiss wrote in reply to my message below:
>
> >How anout "insinuendo?"
>
>
> At 02:45 PM 1/11/97 +0600, you wrote:
> >Miekal And's posting on The Internalational Dictionary of Neologisms,
> >compiled by Xexoxial Editions is wonderful--a wild-minded effort
> >very much in dada spirit. The possibilities for extension seem vast:
> >In fact, couldn't such a dictionary become the evolving
> >archive for a brand new dialect, out of which could arise a whole
> >library of shimmering, hermetic works?
> >
> >Here's an addition to the IDN I'd like to offer:
> >
> >_melnick_ *adj* Having, displaying, or marked by the qualities of
> >heroism in language. *v* In circles of poetry, an entering
> >into words that causes one to think and behave in uncommonly
> >incautious ways.
> >
> >I think this new dialect should be called *listics*.
> >
> >
> >Kent
> >
> >
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 11 Jan 1997 17:44:55 -0600
Reply-To:     maria damon 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         maria damon 
Subject:      Re: Listics

miekal A, you know i adore you and cherish our collaborations but do i detect a
needlessly rigid opposition between "creativity" and "professoriality" in the
post below?  should i get prickly or grin and bear it?--your pal, maria
professorina

In message  <32D7B8AA.48DF@mwt.net> UB Poetics discussion group writes:
> One way at Dreamtime that we put neologisms to work is to come up with
> words for phenomena that have yet to be lexified.  One could easily
> imagine needing words on this PoEtIxZ list for things like:
>
> a voyeuristic facinations with the dress of others
>
> uncodifiable names to poetic movements that are rumoured to exist
>
> the inproportionate ratio of writers to publishers & thus to readers
>
> critical stances that are substantiated by ecologies of language as
> opposed to academic constructs
>
> professorial authority
>
> the predisposition to forgetting the raw spirit of Logos once a poet
> becomes tenured, famous or tokenized
>
> the lineage of influences within which the writer places his/her self
>
> books of poetry that have never been opened  (C Alexander must have a
> word for this one)
>
> linguistic phenomena that are synthaethetically beyond words
>
> an easy way to abbreviate L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E
>
> poetries of everyday life
>
> the resolve with which the children of poets decide to become physicans
> & attorneys
>
> the magnitude to which the proliferation of small press literature will
> soon exceed the metaphor of the Library of Babel in our lifetime
>
> Miekal
>
> 25 below & 2 months till spring & 75 miles from a decent library
>
>
>
>
>
>
> --
> @#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#
> Dreamtime Village website: http://net22.com/dreamtime
> QAZINGULAZA: And/Was/Wakest website:
> http://net22.com/qazingulaza
> e-mail for DT & And/Was: dtv@mwt.net
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 11 Jan 1997 17:59:13 +0100
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Miekal And 
Subject:      Re: Listics
Comments: To: maria damon 
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

maria damon wrote:
>
> miekal A, you know i adore you and cherish our collaborations but do i detect a
> needlessly rigid opposition between "creativity" and "professoriality" in the
> post below?  should i get prickly or grin and bear it?--your pal, maria professorina

Maria: I think it actually has to do with the Jungian subtext that
Miekal in his formative years dropped out of 4 colleges a total of 8
times & is still a freshman, & thus has always been denied the lifelong
dream of holding forth in front of subsequent undergrads. Since Im
incapable of theoretical rigor, I have to at least be allowed stance &
counterpoint.

--
@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#
Dreamtime Village website: http://net22.com/dreamtime
QAZINGULAZA: And/Was/Wakest website:
http://net22.com/qazingulaza
e-mail for DT & And/Was: dtv@mwt.net
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 11 Jan 1997 18:48:16 -0500
Reply-To:     landers@frontiernet.net
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Pete Landers 
Organization: SkyLark Publishing Company
Subject:      Re: H=T=M=L
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

use a table! check my site to see how this is done...
http://www.frontiernet.net/~landers/poetry.html

Pete
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 11 Jan 1997 19:09:47 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Dave Zauhar 
Subject:      Philip K. Dick and the SF Renaissance
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

SF in this case meaning San Francisco  and not science fiction
        Yesterday I was talking to a friend who's a science fiction nut,
and he asked me if I had ever heard of poets named Robert Duncan and John
Spicer. I said, sure, only it's jack spicer, why?  and he said that he
recently read in an old PKD fanzine that Dick once shared an apartment with
two poets named Duncan and Spicer.
        Is this true? Is this common knowledge?
        This is interesting to me because Spicer and Dick have both
asserted a notion of writing as something dictated from the outside:
Spicer's poet-as-radio is analogous to Dick's idea of getting his words
from outer space.

David Zauhar
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 11 Jan 1997 19:14:43 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Steph4848@AOL.COM
Subject:      Re: Ebonix

Before the list(ic) moves too far into new places, thank you for all the
responses to my post.

Cheers,
Stephen Vincent
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 12 Jan 1997 13:51:52 +1300
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         DS 
Subject:      no long johns down under
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

yesterday was so windy had to wear an anchor, but today i wear a t-shirt &
lavalava & am mid arguement about weather to go sailing or to the beach

dan
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 11 Jan 1997 19:16:43 +0100
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Miekal And 
Subject:      Re: H=T=M=L
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Loss Glazier wrote:
>
>         For folks who come from a graphics or a typesetting software
> background, HTML is about as imprecise as it gets. Like trying to make
> justified margins with a manual typewriter - and that's not really an
> exaggeration at all.
>         But you could "fix" your work. As if you freeze-dried it or placed
> dried flowers in a clear plastic seal. That is, take a picture of it (gif)
> or use a more graphically oriented reader (Adobe Acrobat?).
>         One supposes that the technology will advance. But if you think of
> it, it may be the unfixability that makes it workable.

Loss, your point is well taken, it is just this unfixability which
creates the textured presence of the web as we know it.



 The pages come across
> to so many different machines with so many different parameters maybe in
> large part because the fit is sloppy and it will push, pull and give.


I remember one time that I was driving fork lift in high school & I took
my copy of Michael Benedikts Anthology of Prose Poetry to work.  I put
it to the back seat of the lift & some point during the day its fell
into the engine & a whole new reading of these minced & chopped poems
was generated.


>         Basically, HTML IS a very primitive markup scheme. And the economic
> reality is that there hasn't been a motivation for mark-up that has any
> degree of accuracy. The much-touted HTML+ offers more and we're all grateful
> for that but realistically it's not a LOT more, wouldn't you agree? I mean,
> who here has given much thought to SGML (the 'authoritative text' version of
> HTML) and where will we find the creator of VPML (visual poetry markup
> language)? (Here I'm only dreaming)
>         If we want such things I think we may have to invent them ourselves.
> Otherwise ... (You know I always wondered why it wasn't a standard feature
> of basic word processing programs to type at any angle you wanted.)

There is a time wise relativity in the evolution of electronic
publishing.  When I compare the possibilities now with our early days of
Xerox Sutra when we did not even own a typewriter & all of our books
were "typeset" by getting magazines & cutting & pasting letter by
letter, I am quite grateful for such stoneagetronics as html.


--
@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#
Dreamtime Village website: http://net22.com/dreamtime
QAZINGULAZA: And/Was/Wakest website:
http://net22.com/qazingulaza
e-mail for DT & And/Was: dtv@mwt.net
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 11 Jan 1997 20:53:26 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         shoemakers@COFC.EDU
Subject:      Re: Listics
In-Reply-To:  <32D7C6A8.72D5@mwt.net>
MIME-version: 1.0
Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

flawdacity=the 2am courage to send into cyberspace after a too-long day
at the computer thoughts that you know will not seem so intelligent
and/or interesting in the morning

anybody remember that tall, skinny kinda goofy-lookin' comedian who did
the neologism thing in the 70s or 80s in a book called *Sniglets*, er
somethin' like that?


steve
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 11 Jan 1997 20:27:37 -0600
Reply-To:     maria damon 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         maria damon 
Subject:      Re: Listics

okay, but: i don't see you lacking theoretical rigor, and if i have anything to
say about it, you will soon be expounding in front of graduate students and
faculty. xo, md

In message  <32D7C6A8.72D5@mwt.net> UB Poetics discussion group writes:
> maria damon wrote:
> >
> > miekal A, you know i adore you and cherish our collaborations but do i
> > detect a
> > needlessly rigid opposition between "creativity" and "professoriality" in
> > the
> > post below?  should i get prickly or grin and bear it?--your pal, maria
> > professorina
>
> Maria: I think it actually has to do with the Jungian subtext that
> Miekal in his formative years dropped out of 4 colleges a total of 8
> times & is still a freshman, & thus has always been denied the lifelong
> dream of holding forth in front of subsequent undergrads. Since Im
> incapable of theoretical rigor, I have to at least be allowed stance &
> counterpoint.
>
> --
> @#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#
> Dreamtime Village website: http://net22.com/dreamtime
> QAZINGULAZA: And/Was/Wakest website:
> http://net22.com/qazingulaza
> e-mail for DT & And/Was: dtv@mwt.net
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 11 Jan 1997 20:30:42 +0600
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         KENT JOHNSON 
Organization: Highland Community College
Subject:      listics

It seems to me that one of the great things about Mikael And's post on
the Internalational Dictionary of Neologisms is that it creates a
brand new language-game space: one where signifiers become the
willful signified of the dictionary authors' intents. (that
signification stuff sounds old-hat--why not invent new words for the
whole kittenkabuddle of it). Obviously, a reversal of the
dictionay's directions is proposed by Mikael's et.al's project. The
possibilities of Mikail's proposal (especially in the hyper-context
of this medium) seem exciting to me, but I say this realizing that I
may be, as Mark Weiss and Maria Damon seem to imply, innocently
insinuating myself into a space where I'm out of place or over my
head? They may well be right, but hail, for waht its worth, to Mikhail
and his cabal.

Kent
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 11 Jan 1997 20:34:54 -0600
Reply-To:     maria damon 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         maria damon 
Subject:      Re: no long johns down under

In message  <199701120051.NAA25747@ihug.co.nz> UB Poetics discussion group
writes:
> yesterday was so windy had to wear an anchor, but today i wear a t-shirt &
> lavalava & am mid arguement about weather to go sailing or to the beach
>
> dan
>
listen weisenheimer, some of us are facing 14 below zero on a daily basis here
in the vast north country fair, where the winds hit heavy on the borderline. the
only thing we can do for fun is hang over the keyboard hoping for a good msg fro
m poetix.  what's a lavalava anyway, any relation to jetskis?--md
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 11 Jan 1997 20:44:29 -0600
Reply-To:     maria damon 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         maria damon 
Subject:      Re: Philip K. Dick and the SF Renaissance

In message   UB Poetics discussion group
writes:
> SF in this case meaning San Francisco  and not science fiction
>         Yesterday I was talking to a friend who's a science fiction nut,
> and he asked me if I had ever heard of poets named Robert Duncan and John
> Spicer. I said, sure, only it's jack spicer, why?  and he said that he
> recently read in an old PKD fanzine that Dick once shared an apartment with
> two poets named Duncan and Spicer.
>         Is this true? Is this common knowledge?

this is true and it is as common knowledge as anything about spicer and duncan.
actually i think he was the roommate of one (duncan?) while the other was
hanging out, that is i don't think spicer and duncan ever lived together, but
here's where kevin killian can step in and provide les faits durs.  paul goodman
too was in that circle; a few years ago i was convinced that goodman was about
to undergo a bit huge resurgency of interest from american studies and cultural
studies types but history has proved me wrong so far.  maybe in another few
years, when someone reallizes that the 50s had its intellectuals as well as its
wildmen.
>         This is interesting to me because Spicer and Dick have both
> asserted a notion of writing as something dictated from the outside:
> Spicer's poet-as-radio is analogous to Dick's idea of getting his words
> from outer space.
>
> David Zauhar
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 11 Jan 1997 21:47:16 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Gwyn McVay 
Subject:      Re: no long johns down under
Comments: To: maria damon 
In-Reply-To:  <32d84dce22d1674@mhub2.tc.umn.edu>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

Maria, a lavalava is a kind of lamplamp that's very enlightening if
you're plugged in to the right level of consciousness...

bloop,
Gwyn
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 11 Jan 1997 20:59:06 -0600
Reply-To:     maria damon 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         maria damon 
Subject:      Re: no long johns down under
Comments: To: gmcvay1@osf1.gmu.edu

In message  Gwyn McVay
writes:
> Maria, a lavalava is a kind of lamplamp that's very enlightening if
> you're plugged in to the right level of consciousness...
>
> bloop,
> Gwyn

ah..i forgotgot. sorry we didn't meet at mla.  does anyone have anything to say
about any events other than the riding panel?  how bout the live white boys'
panel?  how bout the readings?  i myself saw walter lew, kimiko hahn and heinz
insu fenkl read and enjoyed it.  i'd never seen kimiko or met heinz, both of
whose work i liked a lot.  walter read his old stuff from the early 70s which
was a treat, i hadn't heard those poems for almost 20 years and they were yummy.
also saw susan schultz, bob perelman and steve dickison there, as well as kathy
crown, organizer of the rutgers splash, and julie chang, whose article on asian
american poetry in MELUS is quite good.  saw ben friedlander on the panel i
"presided" at, the jewish cultural studies panel on nomadism exile diaspora, he
gave a wonderful close reading of a levinas lecture on "promised land or
permitted land" which was a tight, crafted, self-sufficient world of
argumentation through careful language.  kinda like a poem, duh... and i met his
father too. and carla b was there too.  saw arthur sabatini who told me about
the panel on slams, which i couldn't attend but wisht i woulda (as they say
here).  any other takers?--md
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 11 Jan 1997 22:35:54 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         robert drake 
Subject:      Re: listics
Comments: cc: au462@cleveland.freenet.edu
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

>It seems to me that one of the great things about Mikael And's post on
>the Internalational Dictionary of Neologisms is that it creates a
>brand new language-game space: one where signifiers become the
>willful signified of the dictionary authors' intents. (that
>signification stuff sounds old-hat--why not invent new words for the
>whole kittenkabuddle of it)...
>Kent

which reminds of another laborer in the neologos fields, ge(of) huth,
whose magazine _th subtle journal of raw coinage_ has fr years been
devoted to the new word, generally presented in their freshminted
forms & undefined... and in that vein:

     anticdote
     construsion
     exceptations
     farward (or farword)
     inchantation, inchantatory
     manifeisto
     poetential
     refision
     scatterlogical
     trancelate
     terristory


asever
lbd
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 11 Jan 1997 22:05:43 +0100
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Miekal And 
Subject:      Re: Listics
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="------------192959364FF8"

This is a multi-part message in MIME format.

--------------192959364FF8
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

> > maria damon wrote:
> > >
> > > miekal A, you know i adore you and cherish our collaborations but do i
> > > detect a
> > > needlessly rigid opposition between "creativity" and "professoriality" in
> > > the
> > > post below?  should i get prickly or grin and bear it?--your pal, maria
> > > professorina


I was digging thru my archives & thru the wonders of electro
'pataphysics I have rematerialized this very telling photo of Maria
Professorina at Age 6.  I have attached it as a GIF file, which is
viewable with photoshop on the mac & many windows formats. Suitable for
framing.

miekal
--
@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#
Dreamtime Village website: http://net22.com/dreamtime
QAZINGULAZA: And/Was/Wakest website:
http://net22.com/qazingulaza
e-mail for DT & And/Was: dtv@mwt.net

--------------192959364FF8
Content-Type: multipart/appledouble; boundary="----------ad46401675267D"; x-mac-type="47494666"; x-mac-creator="3842494D"; name="Maria Professorina at age 6"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Content-Description: Adobe Photoshop� 3.0 Document
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------------ad46401675267D--


--------------192959364FF8--
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 11 Jan 1997 22:33:11 +0100
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Miekal And 
Subject:      protolistics
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

robert drake wrote:

> which reminds of another laborer in the neologos fields, ge(of) huth,
> whose magazine _th subtle journal of raw coinage_ has fr years been
> devoted to the new word,


many of Ge(of)'s words are in the dictionary complete with definitions.
One other to mention in this vein is Michael Helsem of Dallas, TX who
has more than a couple hundred words in the dictionary, each exquisite
in their crystalline forms.

humming thusly, miekal
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 11 Jan 1997 22:50:40 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         David Bromige 
Subject:      etymology or the study of insects
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

"listen weisenheimer." i love it when a dame on the list tawks tuff!

& quotes dylan. listen, a lavalava is (1)more of an eruption than you'll
ever want to witness

(2)a shy person asking the way to the washroom

(3) a skirt a man can wear when it gets tropical enough
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 12 Jan 1997 22:52:14 +1300
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         DS 
Subject:      to whoever who recommended power
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Thankyou,

i am greatly enjoying 'The Goldbug Variations'
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 12 Jan 1997 02:14:51 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         David Bromige 
Subject:      listics
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

could we not enhance the meaning of a word by showing its employment in a
sentence? For example,
         surfered,
as in,
she surfered from minstrel tramps and dislikes of her.

Example two:
            sweatheat,
as in,
she scathed her sweatheat's mane in the arleady defacted tunk.

Example three:
              heavely,
as in,
Mother drank heavely.(or. Mother never drank heavely).

Example four:
             werter, and gridated,
as in,
This werter never gridated collage.

Example five:
             spanrods,
as in,
       Tow moanratic spanrods.

Example six:
            ares,
as in,
 Two cystals danegeld from here ares.


* * * * * * * *
+ + + + + + + +
* * * * * * * *

For fellow insomniacs at the ends of their tethers (otherwise i'd be
reading Habermas on Hegel along with the people who can sleep), let me
suggest another game:
     look for potentially interesting pairings on whatever bookshelves (or
portions of the floor) within easy view from where you sit at yr computer.

E.g.,
          Leonard Simon's _Dissociated States_ along with Francois
Dominique's publication _Quatre poetes chinois_

 Example two: Vallejo's _Trilce_ (the Eshleman tr.) along with
              Tony Lopez, _Negative Equity_

 Example three: Auden, _A Certain World_  along with
                Susan Gevirtz,_Domino: point of Entry_

 Example four: Ouspensky's _Tertium Organum_ along with
               George Lakoff, _Women, Fire and Dangerous Things_

 Example five: Piaget, _The Child's Conception of Movement and Speed_  with
               Augustine, _Confessions_ tr by Rex Warner.

 Example six:  Grenier, _Burns Night Heard_  along with
               Ovid's _Metamorphoses_ tr by Horace Gregory.

Contemplating these pairings, I think again how arbitrary pairings can
feel. Why this one and not that? Doesn't the gevirtz yearn to be next to
the augustine? and isn't that reciprocal? Doesn't the lakoff hanker after
the grenier, the grenier after the vallejo? What if ouspensky and leonard
simon were stranded together by bad weather in a distress-rate hotel nr the
airport in denver--would opposites pressured by propinquity seize
opportunity?

i'm afraid none of my pairings is remarkable enough to be what i was
looking for. Of course Beckett's _Worstword Ho_ is beside Kafka's
_Parables_. Other people's bookshelves would be a lot more entertaining.

well that inched me a little closer toward sleep. you come, too. the words
are ugly, dank and cheap. we are having them replaced with lively, bark and
leap. that is our error. they should be replaced with lulling, narc (otic)
and deep(endable).
 if i die before i wake
 savor the garlic on my steak.  db
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 12 Jan 1997 08:27:11 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Pierre Joris 
Subject:      Re: Gwyn and Mark and Carolyn and Joan
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Walter K. Lew wrote:
>
>       I half-second Maria on Celan (I wd not want to argue that his
> achievement was "superior" to Oppen's), but I'm mainly posting this as an
> opportunity to express my deep gratitude to Pierre Joris for doing such
> wonderful translations of Celan (as in _Breathturn_ [Sun & Moon Press]):  I
> don't read German and what translations I'd seen before had not convinced me
> of Celan's greatness, of which I am now thoroughly convinced.  I've heard
> that the next volume of translations is also due out fr Sun & Moon--when can
> I expect to order it?


Walter -- thanks for the kind words --  right now working on intro to
next volume of Celan(THREADSUNS) which is slightly behind schedule (my
fault) but should be out later this year. BREATHTURN, btw, so Douglas
Messerli told me yesterday, is being reprinted right now & shld thus be
available again soon. -- Pierre

--
=========================================
pierre joris   6 madison place   albany ny 12202
tel/fax (510) 426 0433 email:joris@cnsunix.albany.edu
http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/authors/joris/
http://www.albany.edu/~tm0900/nomad.html
----------------------------------------------------------------
Every poem is the anti-computer. Even the one
written by the computer.

Paul Celan
=========================================
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 12 Jan 1997 05:57:23 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Rachel Loden 
Subject:      the secret life of books
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

David Bromige wrote (in part):

> Contemplating these pairings, I think again how arbitrary pairings can
> feel. Why this one and not that? Doesn't the gevirtz yearn to be next to
> the augustine? and isn't that reciprocal? Doesn't the lakoff hanker after
> the grenier, the grenier after the vallejo? What if ouspensky and leonard
> simon were stranded together by bad weather in a distress-rate hotel nr the
> airport in denver--would opposites pressured by propinquity seize
> opportunity?

I'm so happy to hear that I'm not the only one loopy enough to have
thought of something like this.  At sixteen, with a huge stack of books
next to my bed, I used to worry about how _Our Lady of the Flowers_
would *feel*, lying under, say, _The Artaud Anthology_.  Was it a good
idea for _Kulchur_ 17, with Robert Indiana's "DIE" on the cover, to be
next to (the somewhat tender) _Kaddish_?  Things like that.  Oh, to be
young again.  Now I am so cavalier: what is _The Scum Manifesto_ (a true
curio) doing next to *anything*, let alone _The Beat Generation and the
Angry Young Men_?  What an insensate brute, what a real Bluto I've
become.

Wearing: shall I be the first on the list to admit to wearing a dress?
Blue cotton, thin from too many washings.  Tatami sandals.  A second
first (in the admissions dept.): plain gold band.

Rachel Loden
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 12 Jan 1997 08:52:00 -0600
Reply-To:     maria damon 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         maria damon 
Subject:      Re: Listics

And rites:
> I was digging thru my archives & thru the wonders of electro
> 'pataphysics I have rematerialized this very telling photo of Maria
> Professorina at Age 6.  I have attached it as a GIF file, which is
> viewable with photoshop on the mac & many windows formats. Suitable for
> framing.
>
> miekal


you rat!  you know i don't have the technology to see what yr saying about me!
no fair!==md
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 12 Jan 1997 09:04:11 -0600
Reply-To:     maria damon 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         maria damon 
Subject:      Re: etymology or the study of insects

>
> (2)a shy person asking the way to the washroom
>
i like this one best, oh red-suspendered one.
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 12 Jan 1997 09:09:49 -0600
Reply-To:     maria damon 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         maria damon 
Subject:      Re: listics

to rachel and david b: i've often noted the quaint pairings that come from my
having been almost strictly alphabetical in my organizing my bookcases.
foucault and st francis have to make conversation, st bonaventure, black elk and
boone&cadden's "engendering men," and best of all, dante and damon.  james
clifford next to lucille clifton, thom gunn next to jessica hagedorn, genet next
to dizzy gillespie.  a wonderful party!
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 12 Jan 1997 10:16:17 -0600
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         amato@CHARLIE.CNS.IIT.EDU
Subject:      Re: Listics
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

hey maria, you look CUTE...

miekal:  so nice to see you again in these parts, partner!... how about
(b/c i like puns as much as rick powers in _goldbug_)

        "gift"

to mean

        "unauthorized display of gif (or equiv.) files"

as in

        "maria was gifted"

or

        "miekal gifted maria [professorina]"

or

        "i'll gift you, my pretty"

(((we can also make application to the new
new
new hacker's dictionary...

///

best,

joe
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 12 Jan 1997 10:24:44 -0600
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         amato@CHARLIE.CNS.IIT.EDU
Subject:      Re: the secret life of books
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

rachel, ditto on the plain gold band, thanx for that!...

a most disturbing (for me) alphabetical pairing was endo and ellis (i was
looking for endo)... which led me to pick up _american psycho_... after a
few minutes on one knee there in the bookshop, i was (to put it mildly)
more than a bit stunned by the brutality of this latter...

anyway...

best,

joe
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 12 Jan 1997 12:02:11 +0100
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Miekal And 
Subject:      neuraListics
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit

amato@CHARLIE.CNS.IIT.EDU wrote:

>
> miekal:  so nice to see you again in these parts, partner!...
>
> best,
>
> joe


& Ive been feeling so isolated in my little ivory tower all these
years.  Actually the tower is more likely made out of mud, bird
feathers, tumeric, echinacea seed cones, handmade paper, old copies of
L=, broken glass, recycled time machine parts, disconnect notices,
soiled lingerie,

and a

periscope

for spying on new visitors

Miekal

Mr B has just informed me of my improper use of attachments.  I
apologize to anyone whose mailsystem got clogg�d.

as

in

they

clog id thur way cyberly w/hndsght


--
@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#
Dreamtime Village website: http://net22.com/dreamtime
QAZINGULAZA: And/Was/Wakest website:
http://net22.com/qazingulaza
e-mail for DT & And/Was: dtv@mwt.net
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 12 Jan 1997 12:09:58 -0600
Reply-To:     maria damon 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         maria damon 
Subject:      Re: Listics

yikes guyzies, you sure know how to work a girl's paranoia.--md

In message  <199701121616.KAA17177@charlie.cns.iit.edu> UB Poetics discussion
group writes:
> hey maria, you look CUTE...
>
> miekal:  so nice to see you again in these parts, partner!... how about
> (b/c i like puns as much as rick powers in _goldbug_)
>
>         "gift"
>
> to mean
>
>         "unauthorized display of gif (or equiv.) files"
>
> as in
>
>         "maria was gifted"
>
> or
>
>         "miekal gifted maria [professorina]"
>
> or
>
>         "i'll gift you, my pretty"
>
> (((we can also make application to the new
> new
> new hacker's dictionary...
>
> ///
>
> best,
>
> joe
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 12 Jan 1997 13:12:00 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Jordan Davis 
Subject:      Re: the secret life of books
In-Reply-To:  <32D8EDC3.1DEB@concentric.net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

Thank you David and Rachel for bringing this up just as I'm repairing my
bookshelves. No matter what interloper may show up elsewhere (say Valery
Oisteanu between Doug Oliver and Frank O'Hara) I can rest confident that
Rimbaud Rilke and Ritsos will be carousing until the house falls down

Jordan
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 12 Jan 1997 13:34:12 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Thomas Bell 
Subject:      Re: neologism redux De Basis
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

There is also a list of words I could live without ever hearing again.
There is also a language perverted by the media.

                   De Basis List

liberal (thanks to George Bowering a few months ago)
dysfunctional
new age
cyber
pewter mugs
age, ism or post-age
PC, pro, aunti
Power Jams
based on the real-life story
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 12 Jan 1997 10:38:07 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         dbkk@SIRIUS.COM
Subject:      the Mina Loy effect
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

Small Press Traffic presents

_Becoming Modern: The Life of Mina Loy_
a talk by Carolyn Burke

=46riday, January 17, 7:30 p.m.

Small Press Traffic=B9s _Talk Series_ continues with this presentation by
Carolyn Burke, who will discuss her new biography of the enigmatic
modernist poet Mina Loy, and discuss as well the travails of her
twenty-year research project, over four continents, on the trail of Loy.
London-born Mina Loy (1882-1966) was the intimate of William Carlos
Williams, Marcel Duchamp, Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, Joseph Cornell,
Marinetti, Djuna Barnes and Man Ray; yet despite her genius, beauty and
pizzazz she has--until quite recently--been almost forgotten, except for a
few dedicated =B3Loy=B2-alists. Her biographer, Carolyn Burke, holds a Ph.D.=
 in
literature from Columbia and is well known for her translations and
critical work on post-modern French feminisms, particularly Irigaray,
Cixous, Kristeva. A native of Australia, she now splits her time between
Santa Cruz and Sydney.

New College Theater
777 Valencia Street, SF
$5
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 12 Jan 1997 12:42:09 +0100
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Miekal And 
Subject:      Re: neologism redux De Basis
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
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--
@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#
Dreamtime Village website: http://net22.com/dreamtime
QAZINGULAZA: And/Was/Wakest website:
http://net22.com/qazingulaza
e-mail for DT & And/Was: dtv@mwt.net
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 12 Jan 1997 12:43:46 +0100
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Miekal And 
Subject:      Re: neologism redux De Basis
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Thomas Bell wrote:
>
> There is also a list of words I could live without ever hearing again.
> There is also a language perverted by the media.
>
>                    De Basis List
>
> liberal (thanks to George Bowering a few months ago)
> dysfunctional
> new age
> cyber
> pewter mugs
> age, ism or post-age
> PC, pro, aunti
> Power Jams
> based on the real-life story


no chance of redeeming cyber.  ive been using that word before cyber was
cyber & in fact created a concept in 1985 called the cyberpsychic
bulletin board which in my mind 12 years later was the web in its
Theordor Nelson infancy.
--
@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#
Dreamtime Village website: http://net22.com/dreamtime
QAZINGULAZA: And/Was/Wakest website:
http://net22.com/qazingulaza
e-mail for DT & And/Was: dtv@mwt.net
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 12 Jan 1997 10:52:57 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         dbkk@SIRIUS.COM
Subject:      The Retallack Effect
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

I've been thinking about Joan Retallack stunning audiences at the MLA.  She
stunned audiences too when she read in San Francisco this season for Small
Press Traffic--but in a totally positive way.  Many of the people in the
audience were not familiar with her work, and hardly any had heard her read
before.  Those who knew her work only by reading it were, I think, forced
into a new reading of it by the dynamism of her performance.

The audiences this past year at Small Press Traffic events have been a
dream come true--large, supportive, and enthusiastic.  But there was an
extra thrill to those readings where the audience was taking a risk in
coming to see readers they were unfamiliar with--and feeling a sense of
payoff, the excitement of a new discovery.  When the Canadian poets Erin
Moure and Lisa Robertson read, there was a sense of magic in the air.  I
think we're all shocked when we go hear something new and actually like it,
actually feel an opening to new possibilities.

While it's vital to support one's immediate community, it's so easy to get
into the rut of only hearing the same sorts of work over and over again.
When Joan read--when Lisa and Erin read--and when Kenward Elmslie read
Friday night--I got floods of compliments about their readings, so many
that I felt embarrassed: I wish I could be as good as they are, at reading,
at transforming an audience.

By the way, the first time I ever read in public was at a group reading at
the MLA.  It was the late 70s and there were like 200 people in the
audience, and I wore white painters pants, the kind with the loops on the
outer thighs.

Dodie
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 12 Jan 1997 12:55:05 -0600
Reply-To:     maria damon 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         maria damon 
Subject:      Re: The Retallack Effect

dodie rites
> I've been thinking about Joan Retallack stunning audiences at the MLA.  She
> stunned audiences too when she read in San Francisco this season for Small
> Press Traffic--but in a totally positive way.  Many of the people in the
> audience were not familiar with her work, and hardly any had heard her read
> before.  Those who knew her work only by reading it were, I think, forced
> into a new reading of it by the dynamism of her performance.
>
 i've only heard her read once, that time at orono (when you read too) and was
magicked just as you describe.  i also love her on the page.  what did we do to
deserve such pleasure?--maria d
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 12 Jan 1997 13:47:58 +0100
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Miekal And 
Subject:      whereas, merely lent the theme
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

felokalendria-- voyeuristic facinations with the dress of others

qrasificordon--uncodifiable names to poetic movements that are rumoured
to exist

zpeg-the inproportionate ratio of writers to publishers & thus to
readers

ecosophy-critical stances that are substantiated by ecologies of
language as opposed to academic constructs

professorial authority-professorial authority

prehistorlection-the predisposition to forgetting the raw spirit of
Logos once a poet becomes tenured, famous or tokenized

zeme-the lineage of influences within which the writer places his/her
self

papwrath-books of poetry that have never been opened  (C Alexander must
have a word for this one)

(!=?)- linguistic phenomena that are synthaethetically beyond words

ultex- an easy way to abbreviate L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E

urlip-poetries of everyday life

pocognik-the resolve with which the children of poets decide to become
physicans & attorneys

blent- the magnitude to which the proliferation of small press
literature will soon exceed the metaphor of the Library of Babel in our
lifetime



David Bromige rites:

could we not enhance the meaning of a word by showing its employment in
a sentence?


Hoarse with fashion, felokalendria preoccupied theory mottled there for
once more urlip. As youthling I lernt ultex as urliptoid & why not?
Inspisered by selfsame zeme, my 20 titles in this genre suffered
fingerless papwrath in the blent, narry blent I immodest.  By then as
all ways qrasificordon denatured pocognik son's muse songs. Where
ecosophy & professorial authority (!=?) one node at a distance, my days
with prehistorlection continue into my grayness.
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 12 Jan 1997 11:54:05 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         dbkk@SIRIUS.COM
Subject:      Dick and Spicer
In-Reply-To:  
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

This is Kevin Killian, returning to list after long Christmas slumber.

David Zauhar wrote, "Yesterday I was talking to a friend who's a science
fiction nut,
and he asked me if I had ever heard of poets named Robert Duncan and John
Spicer. I said, sure, only it's jack spicer, why?  and he said that he
recently read in an old PKD fanzine that Dick once shared an apartment with
two poets named Duncan and Spicer . . .  Is this true? Is this common
knowledge?
        This is interesting to me because Spicer and Dick have both
asserted a notion of writing as something dictated from the outside:
Spicer's poet-as-radio is analogous to Dick's idea of getting his words
from outer space."

Dear David, as Maria Damon has told you, this is basically a true tale.
Your friend of speaking of the rooming house at 2018 McKinley at Berkeley
where Philip K. Dick lived right after graduating from high school.  This
was in the autumn of 1947.  You can find most of the details in various
biographies of Dick.  Spicer, Duncan, and Dick all lived there at the same
time, though in different apartments.  For some reason there is no plaque
on the building.

I've been writing the life of Jack Spicer for many years & the mystery
continues, exactly the mystery to which you allude, how is it that Spicer
and Dick in later life came to such similar conclusions about the source of
writing!  Apparently, when asked to verify that he had known Philip Dick,
Robert Duncan denied ever knowing him to Dick biographers.  After he was
"famous," in the early 60s, Dick wrote a kind of cute letter to Duncan
asking if he remembered him, and Duncan wrote back and said, No,which hurt
Dick's feelings.  Privately, however, Duncan told several people he knew
Dick extremely well.  So that's another mystery.

Dick was the high school pal of Jerry Ackerman, who became Duncan's
boyfriend and was the inspiration for RD's "Venice Poem."  At the time of
his death, PKD was starting work on a new novel, "The Owl at Midnight,"
which was to be an semi-autobiographical account of his time at 2018
McKinley and his encounters with Duncan and Spicer and the other roomers at
the place.  Philip Lamantia lived there too, as did George Haimsohn--who
later achieved a fame of his own on Broadway no less, as the author of the
camp parody "Dames at Sea."  Haimsohn wrote, under a pseudonym, his own
account of the period, "The Battle between the Poets and the Painters,"
which was published in a notorious gay pulp porn paperback called "Carnal
Matters."  (Robert Bertholf has acquired a copy of this volume, which is
interleaved with photos of young naked boys having sex with each other, for
the Duncan archive at the Poetry/Rare Books Collection at U C Buffalo.)

Jack Spicer, who read avidly in science fiction, was familiar with Dick's
subsequent work.  One of Dick's novels in particular is actually quite
startling to those who know Spicer's writing, for it begins at the hot dog
stand at San Francisco's Aquatic Park, as do "After Lorca," "Admonitions,"
and "Lament for the Makers" (all books by Spicer).  The name of Dick's book
is escaping me now.... is it something like "Counter Clockwise World?"
Please, Dick aficionados, help me out here.

I've gone on long enough but you get the general idea.

--Kevin Killian
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 12 Jan 1997 12:53:23 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Charles Alexander 
Subject:      Re: the Mina Loy effect
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

Dear DBKK

Are these small press traffic talks being taped/transcribed & somehow made
available?

thanks,

charles

At 10:38 AM 1/12/97 -0800, you wrote:
>Small Press Traffic presents
>
>_Becoming Modern: The Life of Mina Loy_
>a talk by Carolyn Burke
>
>Friday, January 17, 7:30 p.m.
>
>Small Press Traffic=B9s _Talk Series_ continues with this presentation by
>Carolyn Burke, who will discuss her new biography of the enigmatic
>modernist poet Mina Loy, and discuss as well the travails of her
>twenty-year research project, over four continents, on the trail of Loy.
>London-born Mina Loy (1882-1966) was the intimate of William Carlos
>Williams, Marcel Duchamp, Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, Joseph Cornell,
>Marinetti, Djuna Barnes and Man Ray; yet despite her genius, beauty and
>pizzazz she has--until quite recently--been almost forgotten, except for a
>few dedicated =B3Loy=B2-alists. Her biographer, Carolyn Burke, holds a=
 Ph.D. in
>literature from Columbia and is well known for her translations and
>critical work on post-modern French feminisms, particularly Irigaray,
>Cixous, Kristeva. A native of Australia, she now splits her time between
>Santa Cruz and Sydney.
>
>New College Theater
>777 Valencia Street, SF
>$5
>
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 12 Jan 1997 15:08:13 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Steph4848@AOL.COM
Subject:      Armey, Newt & the Gaitlin Bros
Comments: To: POETICS@UBVM.cc.buffalo.edu

"And the talk, ((phone conversation secretly picked up by a cellular phone
conversation scanner between Gingrich, Tom De Lay, Dick Armey, & New't Lawyer
in which they premeditated and orchestrated the attack on the yet unreleased
findings of the House Ethics Committe) one of many that day, ended on a light
note. After the basic outlines of the statement the leaders would issue had
been agreed on, Rep. Dick Armey of Texas, the House majority leader, had
another suggestion for how Gingrich could handle the menacing accusation that
he had deliberately lied to the committee: 'I am not sure you are ready for
this, but you could quote Larry Gatlin and the Gatlin Brothers.'

  Gingrich asked, "Which one is that?"

  Armey warbled: 'I did not mean to deceive you. I never intended to push or
shove. I just wish you was someone that I love.'"   (New York Times, Friday
June 10).

Are there a few, somewhat loaded double-entendres in Dick Armey's
rhyme-capper here? If she (the Ethics Committee) is not working in your
favor, it's alright to abuse "her" and shove "her" down or out the door?
Interesting if its a nut-shell view of this group's (basically the Republican
leadership of the current Congress's) collective view not only of the Ethics
Committee, but the Government in general. Curious that the Government is
identified as a woman - is that the convention?  If "she" is not serving your
desires, shut her down.  Curious that Armey feels comfortable in basking the
save-Newt plot in honey-drip country mock sorrow. Nothing more securing than
a couplet under pressure.
I keep thinking the revelation of this tape provides at least a liberal glee
that might have been provided with the missing 22 minutes on Nixon's
Watergate tape.

Thank goodness for Kenward Elmslie at the Small Press Traffic this past
Friday evening. A sans pareil performance - Terrific poems, songs (not
without a few couplets) & such a generous soul.

In less than cold and cloud-sun-breaking-through San Francisco.

Cheers,
Stephen Vincent
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 12 Jan 1997 13:04:17 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Herb Levy 
Subject:      Re: Recent Publications, Hebronics, & Neologisms
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Maria & other list members involved in the various threads refered to in
the subject line may be interested in a recent recording by Zeena Parkins
that is based, in part, on texts in Rotwelsch, a Yiddish-based argot used
by Jewish gangsters Germany from the 14th century into at least the late
19th century.

The disc is called "Mouth=Maul=Betrayer" & it's in the often oddly curated
Radical Jewish Culture series on the Tzadik label.  The two compositions on
the disc are Maul, where most of the Rotwelsch is, & Blue Mirror, which
deals with Jewish gangsters in the US in the first half of the 20th
century.  These aren't narrative music theater pieces, so your sense of
their use-value may vary.

Gray boatneck sweater with turquoise lining, black cotton pants,
moccasin-toe ankle boots, mismatched socks.

Bests

Herb


Herb Levy
herb@eskimo.com
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 12 Jan 1997 15:28:47 +0100
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Miekal And 
Subject:      bp & the allness of poetryics sensate
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Ive been a might out of touch out here in Packerland & am wondering what
sweet & generous tidbits there might be on the web per bp Nichol
afterlife.  & has Martyrologies come out in something under one cover &
likewise has his visuals / his soundsongs been compedulated? (caution:
if we get on the longpoem thread i will never shutup) & terribly present
I wonder what the 1997 rendition of the 60s mimeo revolution that bp was
ganglialy in the midst of?

Miekal wondering how he will ever survive superbowlmania
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 12 Jan 1997 13:26:10 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "Aldon L. Nielsen" 
Subject:      Re: Recent Publications, Hebronics, & Neologisms
In-Reply-To:  
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

Or, maybe I should have titled it _Ebonics: Word Up_!

The printers didn't get the book to the Cambridge booth at MLA on time --
but now available from Cambridge University Press is

_Black Chant: Languages of African-American Postmodernism_
by Aldon Lynn Nielsen

paperback is $16.95

there's also a $54.95 cloth edition for the undownsized remnant

book is guaranteed to introduce you to at least one interesting poet
you've never heard of before --  Cover is actually suitable for framing
-- wish I could offer an accompanying CD ROM, but, to quote Melville once
more, dollars damn me --

love to all,,
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 12 Jan 1997 15:34:20 +0100
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Miekal And 
Subject:      Fetal Poetics
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit

Perhaps more than any theory any discourse I most wonder about the real
life dynamics of how poets on this list who either have children or are
in everyday contact with children breath their own poetic sensibilities
onward thru their children. & by drift & by deriv� maybe posters could
tag the nonadult headcount in their households.

Miekal who co-creates with 9 year old son Zon Wakest first began when he
took on the Mac SE at age 1 1/2.
--
@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#
Dreamtime Village website: http://net22.com/dreamtime
QAZINGULAZA: And/Was/Wakest website:
http://net22.com/qazingulaza
e-mail for DT & And/Was: dtv@mwt.net
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 12 Jan 1997 15:47:10 +0100
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Miekal And 
Subject:      on the words known as neologisms some web sites
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Spiritism--
http://www.ifi.unicamp.br/~xavier/questions/neol.html

Sample Neologisms from The Independent, Jan-Mar 1994--
http://radar.rdues.liv.ac.uk/newwds/ind941.html

Sample Neologisms from The Independent, Apr-Jun 1994--
http://radar.rdues.liv.ac.uk/newwds/ind942.html

Webgeist Glossary--
http://www.bsc.nodak.edu/~bjork/webgeist/gloss1.html

Lark's World of Made-up Words--
http://www.efn.org/~lark_w/neolog.htm

GENDER-FREE PRONOUN FAQ--
http://www.eecis.udel.edu/~chao/gfp/

Mitchell Szczepanczyk's Fun With Language WebPage--
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~szcz/

interactive lexicon by Karl
LaRocca--http://ariel.cobite.com/abf/abf/lexicon.html

Transhuman Terminology Sub-Page--
http://www.aleph.se/Trans/Words/

Root knowledge : The need for
neologisms--http://www.uio.no/~iroggen/Root_knowledge.html"

& with luck the hypertext verion of our own 3000 word Internalational
Dictionary of Neologisms should be up at our site in the next couple
weeks.  Still time to get those words listed!
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 12 Jan 1997 15:50:17 +0100
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Miekal And 
Subject:      Re: Recent Publications, Hebronics, & Neologisms
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
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Zeena Parkins is an incredible musician & I highly recommend her work,
have scene her perform with zorn, frith, cartwright & if memory serves
me I might even have seen her do something in the same noisy show as
Bruce Andrews at the improvisation series at the old Anarchist
Switchboard on 7th St.  Guess Bruce isnt listening to corrrrrrect me if
Im wrong.

Miekal And
The Driftless Academy of Botanical Apparitions
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 12 Jan 1997 16:08:24 +0100
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Miekal And 
Subject:      Having trouble with what to say in your next book?
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Having trouble with what to say in your next book?

By the beneficient grace of the esteemed Amendant Hardiker it is now
possible to push one button & create a new book in an unique language
ever 4 hours.  The PATALITERATOR is a clunky, smoke-spewing language
generator created in 1985 for the Macintosh computer. Anyone with a
minimal knowledge of hypertalk can tweak this little hummer to their
heart's delight.  All speech fragment fields are fully editable.
Hypercard 1.2 or better is required to operate it, no prior training
necessary. The file is 55k in length & can either be requested via email
or send a Macintosh floppy & an SASE to:

Xerbudox TechNeologies
Rt 1 Box 131
LaFarge, WI  54639
dtv@mwt.net
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 13 Jan 1997 05:58:34 +1200
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Tom Beard 
Subject:      Re: to whoever who recommended power
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

DS wrote:
>
> Thankyou,
>
> i am greatly enjoying 'The Goldbug Variations'

Just seconding Dan's thanks. It's a wonderful hybrid of _Godel, Escher,
Bach_ and _The Name of the Rose_ - I was lucky to pick it up for $5 at a
discount shop on Ponsonby Road, since I haven't seen it in the major
bookshops.


Tom.
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 12 Jan 1997 14:34:50 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         David Bromige 
Subject:      fetal poetics (a consequence of plain gold bands)
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

my 32-y-o son had to grow up in a house permeated with poets & nonetheless
attends KSW & other vanc'r readings. he used to write wonderful letters
when he was stalled in some shutdown harbor during his shrimpboat months,
but if he continues to write, i dont get to read it.

my 14-y-o daughter lives in-house & writes poetry. she enjoys giving
readings at which she is very good & i've availed myself of her talents a
couple times (she reads the straight lines above the lines in
"Lines"{HOHKong)). The phrases that escape her during wake-up calls are
family treasures but she wouldnt thank me for sharing. One thing she said
age 4 sticks in my mind: "the lamp is a suitcase." I think the
'pataphysicist poet Opal L. Nations was visiting at that time.

myself did not lisp in numbers but did ask age 3 for another ham sandwich,
this time w/o any bread & butter. the cognitive has remained my toy park.
db
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 12 Jan 1997 16:58:34 +0100
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Miekal And 
Subject:      sound poetry web site
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Narrative as Genealogy: Sound Sense in an Era of
Hypertext by Larry Wendt

http://cadre.sjsu.edu/switch/sound/articles/wendt/nghome.htm

in excerpt from the home page:

"In the late nineteen sixties, a group of Swedish artists working as
'The Language Group' of a recently re-organized chamber music society,
known as Fylkingen along with members from the Literary Unit of the
Swedish Broadcasting Corporation, began producing a new kind of
literary work for the tape recorder. It was a form of language art
realized solely for the audio domain -- either projected from a
loudspeaker, from the radio or in some similar sonic performance venue.
In the early nineteen sixties, Fylkingen began to introduce Sweden to
all kinds of artistic experimentation contemporary to the times such as
concrete poetry, FLUXUS,electro-acoustic music, what eventually became
known as performance art, and ways of working which were called
'borderline transgressors' since they were not easily categorized as
being in any one particular field of art. "
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 12 Jan 1997 18:37:05 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Dave Zauhar 
Subject:      Re: the secret life of books
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

>Thank you David and Rachel for bringing this up just as I'm repairing my
>bookshelves. No matter what interloper may show up elsewhere (say Valery
>Oisteanu between Doug Oliver and Frank O'Hara) I can rest confident that
>Rimbaud Rilke and Ritsos will be carousing until the house falls down
>

good fences make good neighbors
if the man next door is robert
frost. hell, my books by charles
henri ford and brewster ghiselin
want to move away, far away, to
different bookcases, but they can't:
william everson and allen ginsberg
invoke the gods and local customs
to keep the alphabet intact, so i
put blocks of wood around `the
complete poems of robert frost'
just to keep the peace.  `good
fences' and all that, you know

dave zauhar
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 12 Jan 1997 18:44:52 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         kaona 
Subject:      Re: no long johns down under
In-Reply-To:  
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

lavalava--keeps one hangin'...with discretion, of course.
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 12 Jan 1997 16:13:38 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Mark Weiss 
Subject:      Re: Recent Publications, Hebronics, & Neologisms
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

I need a break from typesetting and design (I'm preparing Rochelle Owens'
new and selected--an astonishing book) so let me tout a book that Aldon
Nielsen may not know(?) by a wonderful Trinidadi/Brooklyn poet:

        Mervyn Taylor, _An Island of His Own_

This is his first book, and it's done well, but the reviews (all of which
were such as to warm a publisher's heart) were, except for the raves in PW,
Booklist and LJ, in what are for most of us out-of-the-way places like the
Amsterdam News and Caribbean Writer. He promises me another manuscript, but
in the way of poets I think he's having a hard time signing off on it.

The book is available from Junction Press (that's me, hence the email
address). I still have maybe 50 copies of the first printing at $9.00. SPD
may also have a couple left. There will be a new printing probably later
this year, but paper prices having gone up considerably since the 1st was
published the price will rise accordingly. email me for details (I could
send a sample poem or two).

Incidentally, if you think it's hard getting the work around in the US try
distributing in the Caribbean. After sending 20 copies to the main bookstore
and distributor in Trinidad (they never bothered to pick the first one up at
customs; it was returned
1 1/2 yrs later in parlous condition. The second batch was hand delivered)
copies were put in the window. The lot was gone in seconds. There were no
new orders, and Junction wasn't paid for a full year (after many calls and
faxes). All this despite the fact that the newspaper that owns the bookstore
had given the book a full page review.
Random House can afford that kind of tsores (you see, I do speak hebronics),
but us little fishies go broke that way.

Hugs and kisses,

Mark

(lots of little fishies swimming up my street right now, and I'm wearing a
plaid flannel shirt, my well-broke-in 501s, a navajo belt mid a bissl
turquoise, and grey and white socks. Oh, yes, and I forgot the Guatemalan
hair tie for keeping my tresses out of my eyes. It's in the 50s outside, and
we're all huddled around the space heaters.)



At 01:26 PM 1/12/97 -0800, you wrote:
>Or, maybe I should have titled it _Ebonics: Word Up_!
>
>The printers didn't get the book to the Cambridge booth at MLA on time --
>but now available from Cambridge University Press is
>
>_Black Chant: Languages of African-American Postmodernism_
>by Aldon Lynn Nielsen
>
>paperback is $16.95
>
>there's also a $54.95 cloth edition for the undownsized remnant
>
>book is guaranteed to introduce you to at least one interesting poet
>you've never heard of before --  Cover is actually suitable for framing
>-- wish I could offer an accompanying CD ROM, but, to quote Melville once
>more, dollars damn me --
>
>love to all,,
>
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 12 Jan 1997 17:00:33 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Mark Weiss 
Subject:      Transmission of the poetry bug
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Paul Blackburn died when his son Carlos was two. I moved in with Joan and
Carlos when he was six, and I've been Daddy ever since. Joan had pretty much
left the poetry world, altho she still saw Harry Lewis and the Mulch crew
(they put out _Halfway Down the Coast_), Brad Stark and Paul Pines. It
happened that a lot of my pals were Paul's, as well, among them Armand
Schwerner, Jerry Rothenberg, Toby Olson, Rochelle Owens, Gerge Economou,
more distantly Clayton Eshelman, and probably half a dozen others who are
out there lurking on the list (sorry), all of whom were reintroduced to the
menage. So when I mentioned to Carlos that I hadn't met a real poet until I
was maybe 18 he dismissed the statement as another tall tale. Weren't all
daddies surrounded by poets?
During our bonding period Carlos and I would take walks together in Park
Slope, where we lived. I was, and am, in the habit of picking up odd pieces
of junk on the street, evaluating them, and sticking the keepers in my
pocket for later display. I particularly like rust and gunk--a fine patina,
as it were. Carlos would look up at me with an expression that seemed to
say, "This guy is really a freak, I wonder if he's dangerous. Mom's taste in
men, after all...," and I would explain to him what I thought was wonderful
about the particular rusty bolt thay had lost its cap or the small hieratic
flange from an obscure car part. Pretty soon he'd be scouring the street,
picking up objects for me to evaluate, and I would give  a detailed critique
of each bit of broken glass or twisted wire. Then one day he came home
dragging behind him the deliciously ruinous and filthy exhaust system of a
car--I mean eight feet of it. Joan froze with horror, but I was bursting
with pride, and it pained me deeply that, in order to preserve the domestic
tranquility, I had to tell him that while it was a great, indeed monumental,
find, it would be best if he restricted himself to smaller items. That was
the moment that I realized I had been teaching Carlos to violate the first
rule of Mommydom: you don't pick things up off the street. I swear I wasn't
trying to be subversive.
That was the beginning: for the rest of his childhood I couldn't build
shelves or cabinets fast enough to contain the collection that gradually
turned his bedroom into not so much an environment as an enormous three
dimensional collage.
We would do the same routine at museums (of course we didn't get to take the
stuff home--they tend to frown on that)--we'd tell each other what we saw in
each painting. I remember the turning point after which Carlos lost the
fidgets in such places--it was the Munk show at MOMA when Carlos was maybe 7.
His eye, I'd have to say, is much better than mine.
I had, unconsciously, been training him not only in "art appreciation," but
in the appreciation of detail and in the improvisatory construction of
realities out of referents from different, often warring, systems. True
bricolage, very close to the term's humble origins.
This first manifested itself in language when he was 8 years old. He had
been asked at school to write a story about space travel. Carlos wrote an
elaborate story, somewhat reminiscent of Howard Finster, about a trip to the
end of the universe. It's final sentence was "And at the end of the universe
there is a wall, and on the other side ladies are taking showers." The
ultimate mystery for a little boy. Gee, I wish I'd written that. His
teacher, very PC, made him change "ladies" to "people," but we changed it
right back.
Carlos is 28 and still writes poetry that often astonishes me. And he shows
it to me, which is more than I could do with my father.
Nature or nurture? Who knows?

Mark
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 12 Jan 1997 17:18:53 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         David Bromige 
Subject:      the wall at the end of the universe
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Mark--thanks for that final sentence from Carlos' story. It says volumes. db
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 13 Jan 1997 12:08:55 +1000
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
Comments:     RFC822 error:  Incorrect or incomplete address field found and
              ignored.
From:         Pam Brown 
Subject:      News !
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Charles Bernstein invited :
"However, I have noticed all together TOO FEW listings of recent publications
by list participants. In fact I have been getting books and magazines
published by people on this list without seeing any announcements of them on
the list. So perhaps this will prompt more such postings: editors,
publishers: please send listings of recent publications including ordering
information. Individuals: please send information on any new publications."

Thanks & here's some NEWS :

OTIS RUSH -
new double issue #12/13 1996 -296 pages
($25 Australian - that's cheaper in USD !! about 72cents Austn to $1 US )

includes, from Australia, Canada, New Zealand and USA -
Paul Violi, Gregory O'Brien, Pam Brown, Tony Towle, Basil King, Sal Brereton,
Cath Kenneally, Ken Bolton & John Jenkins, Janet Charman, Javant Biarujia,
John Forbes, Cassie Lewis, Emma Lew, Alan Wearne, Coral Hull, Laurie Duggan
and more!

OTIS RUSH  - Just what makes this magazine so with-it? - subscribe to find out !

Previous issues have included Jyanni Steffensen, Shiraishi Kazuko, Alain
Bosquet, Dipti Saravanamuttu, Adam Aitken, Barbara Hanrahan, Michel Butor,
Kris Hemensley, Anna Couani, George Alexander, Kenneth Koch, Gig Ryan, Pam
Brown, Ron Padgett, Linda Marie Walker, Laurie Duggan, S.K.Kelen, Harry
Mathews, John Kinsella, Bill Zavatsky, Hugh Tolhurst, Luke Davies, Bernard
Cohen, John Tranter, Jenny Bornholdt, Sergio Selli, Michele Leggott, Soh
Sakon, Jenny Watson, Ardegno Soffici, and many others...plus visual art
reviews & graphics...

Buy the LATEST issue for $25 (Austn) or subscribe and SAVE!! -
Subscription rates : (for FOUR issues) :
$60 (Australian) for individuals
$80 (Australian) for institutions
Send Name & address & cheque & starting issue number (issues 1 & 2 out of print)
To: OTIS RUSH MAGAZINE
    PO Box 21
    NORTH ADELAIDE
    SA 5006 AUSTRALIA
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 12 Jan 1997 19:43:14 +0100
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Miekal And 
Subject:      Re: News !
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

> OTIS RUSH -

aw shucks! no chris mann?

mA
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 13 Jan 1997 12:47:45 +1000
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Pam Brown 
Subject:      Re: News !
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

At 07:43 PM 12/1/97 +0100, you wrote:
>> OTIS RUSH -
>
>aw shucks! no chris mann?
>
>mA
>
>
Not yet ! But I didn't list EVERY contributor either...
Cheers
Pam
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 13 Jan 1997 13:43:05 +1000
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Pam Brown 
Subject:      Re: neologism redux De Basis
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

 And I'd like to add two examples of Australian journalese -

                downsize
                substantive    (meaning 'substantial')


        P.B.

 At 01:34 PM 12/1/97 -0500, you wrote:
>There is also a list of words I could live without ever hearing again.
>There is also a language perverted by the media.
>
>                   De Basis List
>
>liberal (thanks to George Bowering a few months ago)
>dysfunctional
>new age
>cyber
>pewter mugs
>age, ism or post-age
>PC, pro, aunti
>Power Jams
>based on the real-life story
>
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 12 Jan 1997 20:17:23 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Charles Alexander 
Subject:      Re: to whoever who recommended power
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

I read the book right after it came out, and was also enthusiastic about it,
but I remember being rather disappointed that it had, after all, to be
pulled into a rather tidy ending. I think I didn't want it to end at all.
But now, several years later, I can't remember what that ending was.

charles

At 05:58 AM 1/13/97 +1200, you wrote:
>DS wrote:
>>
>> Thankyou,
>>
>> i am greatly enjoying 'The Goldbug Variations'
>
>Just seconding Dan's thanks. It's a wonderful hybrid of _Godel, Escher,
>Bach_ and _The Name of the Rose_ - I was lucky to pick it up for $5 at a
>discount shop on Ponsonby Road, since I haven't seen it in the major
>bookshops.
>
>
>Tom.
>
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 12 Jan 1997 22:29:28 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Mustafa Ziyalan 
Subject:      *** Automic Piles! by Murat Nemet-Nejat ***
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

AUTOMIC PILES

by Murat Nemet-Nejat


is now accessible at

http://maxwell.njit.edu/merhaba/marmara/mr100302.htm


Contents:

*FIRST DAY: Historical Perspectives / **SECOND DAY: Early Days /  ***THIRD DAY:
The Mendes Heresy / ****FOURTH DAY: Fine Print of GAG and Our Present Political
System / Class Exercise: Life Expectancy of a Given Year (LEY), How to
Calculate It / *****APPENDIX: Other Fragments from Crickshaw Excavations
/ Giovanelli's Minus Plus Factor / Anaxomic Information-Analysis and its
Application to the Problem of Fear Immunization / The Problem of Back Seat
Intercourse: Interoffice Memorandum / The Secret Cult of Back Seat Fullers
(BAFs) / Mercy Fixers: from the Autostrada Cycles / The Temple of the Eternal
Shredder / The Parable of the Copying Machine and the Pneumatic Hammer / The
Location of the Department of Core Placers, DCP / Anxiety Charts: Procedure to
Collect Data / Inter-office Memorandum


You can e-mail your suggestions and submissions to
ziyalan@is2.nyu.edu

and forward this message
to persons who might be interested!
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 12 Jan 1997 23:30:14 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         William Slaughter 
Subject:      The Politics of My Heart
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
Content-Transfer-Encoding: QUOTED-PRINTABLE

Charles Bernstein has encouraged us all, once again, to announce our own
current publication events. Risking immodesty, then, in such a goodly
company, let me tell you all that I have a new book, just out, of poems
(and essays) having to do with China. It's called THE POLITICS OF MY HEART
and it's published by Pleasure Boat Studio, a new independent press on the
west coast.=20

You can order it either from PBS or from me for $12.95 (free shipping) in a
trade paper edition, ISBN 0-9651413-0-6, 96 pages.=20
                       =20
Pleasure Boat Studio
802 East Sixth
Port Angeles, WA 98362
Tel-Fax (360) 452-8686
E-mail: pbstudio@pbstudio.com

William Slaughter
2004 South Ocean Drive
Jacksonville Beach, FL 32250
Tel (904) 246-0496=20
Fax (904) 249-6050
E-mail: wrs@unf.edu

Pleasure Boat Studio has a home port on the World Wide Web
(http://www.pbstudio.com) where you can read excerpts from THE POLITICS OF
MY HEART.=20

What follows is the copy from the back of the book (to help you determine
whether or not you might be interested in it).=20
        =20
William Slaughter is a Professor of English at the University of North
Florida. He has been a Senior Fulbright Lecturer in China (1987-88) and
Egypt (1980-81). He is the author of Untold Stories (1990), a book of
poems, and the editor of Mudlark, an electronic journal of poetry and
poetics. His poems and essays have been published in magazines ranging
from Poetry to Exquisite Corpse, different worlds.=20

"The Politics of My Heart stands apart from all other China books that
have mushroomed in the West before and after the Tiananmen tragedy.
Neither academic nor journalistic, it is the pilgrim's progress of a
poet-scholar to the Gate of Heavenly Peace.=20
     =CA=CA=CA
"When William Slaughter arrives in Beijing with his 'peculiarly American
innocence,' he celebrates the New China being built out of 'old lumber':
'New China, new music. / I'll grow new ears, / learn to hear it.' With 'a
few small careful strokes,' he goes on to capture what he hears, not so
much new music as new anguish set off by old voices of wisdom. He becomes
one with Confucius and Laozi, he loves Xue Tao for her voice, he shares
freedom of expresion with Shen Congwen and Bai Hua within the Chinese
Wall. He falls hopelessly in love.=20
     =CA=CA=CA
"But, when machine guns and tanks turn the Gate of Heavenly Peace
overnight into the killing field, the pilgrim can only 'love it bitterly,
ironically.' China has gotten under his skin, and China hurts. How can he
not give voice to 'the lips that burn but do not speak'? The Politics of
My Heart will get under your skin too. William Slaughter's heart is heavy,
but his vision is undimmed: 'As the people in 'China get bigger, the
leaders get smaller. Until no stone is left, until they're not there. At
all.'
     =CA=CA=CA
"Most of all, the simplicity and lucidity of his verse, reminiscent of the
great classical poet Wang Wei, will go straight to your heart and haunt
your memory."=20

Wu Ningkun
Author of A SINGLE TEAR
New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1993

=20



                                =20
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 12 Jan 1997 22:37:57 +0100
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Miekal And 
Subject:      Re: The Politics of My Heart
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

William Slaughter wrote:
>
> Charles Bernstein has encouraged us all, once again, to announce our own
> current publication events. Risking immodesty, then, in such a goodly
> company, let me tell you all that I have a new book, just out,

what's wrong with immodesty, I thought Whitman put these worries to
sleep 150 years ago!

deep poetics from the Wisconsin Conservatory of Noise
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 13 Jan 1997 20:02:51 GMT+1200
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         wystan 
Organization: English Dept. - Univ. of Auckland
Subject:      Re: clothes
Comments: To: damon001@maroon.tc.umn.edu

oh, maria, don't you see? He did it for the listserv.
I have to say I'm moved. How like Mike to give the thread a touch of
class!

Wystan
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 13 Jan 1997 01:14:14 +0100
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Miekal And 
Subject:      Re: clothes
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

wystan wrote:
>
> oh, maria, don't you see? He did it for the listserv.
> I have to say I'm moved. How like Mike to give the thread a touch of
> class!
>
> Wystan

you know, this is why poetry is great, because on a poetics listserv
there is no such thing as off topic



OR





is






THERE?
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 13 Jan 1997 09:24:19 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Mark Wallace 
Subject:      clarity, clarity, who's got clarity
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

Hey Graham Foust:

        Welcome to the poetics list! Maybe you've been on-line for awhile
and I haven't noticed, but in any case, glad to see you here. Excellent
reading on Saturday night at Ruthless Grip Art Project here in D.C.--I'd
like, at some point, to hear more about your "extended sequence" poem of
six-line pieces that "didn't start out that way."

        I'm glad you noticed that I used the word "clearly excellent" so
cavalierly when describing Joan Retallack's poetry. After all, as you
point out, by what given standard except that of an "avant garde" minority
could Joan Retallack's poetry be called "clear"? Isn't it, therefore, a
bit of a rhetorical stretch to suggest that Retallack's poetry offers
anything that might be defined as "clarity"? Would it not be better to
suggest, per David Bromige's recent comment for instance, that it might be
better to describe Retallack's work as "opaque as a person"?

        I agree with all of that above, which is exactly why, I think, I'm
going to continue to use the word "clarity" when describing Retallack's
work. In fact I even find what David calls "opaque" to be perfectly lucid
and clear at times--perversely, perhaps, "opaqueness" seems pretty damn
clear to me, as clear, indeed, as a person. I suppose one might say I'm
being disingenuous, or relying on a "educated" point of view regarding
poetry, but nonetheless I feel I have the right to insist that what
constitutues "clarity" to me may not constitute "clarity" to you or to a
classroom of students--which is your point exactly, I think, just turned
the other way slightly, or maybe not... turned a way, that is, that
purposely confuses
or refuses the notion of "clarity" that, for instance, one's students
carry around like the Washington Post. But I'm "perverse" this way when
I'm teaching sometimes too--I repeatedly insisted to a Modern American
Poetry class I was teaching last fall that a lot of lines in Robert Frost
"just don't make any sense" (exactly like your students use of the
phrase "all get out," a phrase I've ALWAYS loved, and use like all get
out) whereas what could possibly be "unclear" about Gertrude Stein using
words like "no" and "a" and "since." Of course, sometimes my students just
thought I was a pleasant, if somewhat loony eccentric, but others started
saying that Gertrude Stein seemed to make sense to them too. One student
actually said "She's just so clear, it's all right there, you don't have
to figure out anything." I thought so too.

I guess my point, to the extent I want one, is that while one method that
makes inroads into problematic notions of "clarity" accepts student
notions of clarity and working from there, I've often found it just as
effective to appear as bemused by them as they are sometimes by me. I
wanted them to explain to me why Robert Frost was so clear if I couldn't
understand it, and lo and behold, they couldn't seem to agree whether
Frost was for or against building fences in that famous poem whose name I
forget. My impression is that he's overtly against them and secretly for
them, but that's another day...

In any case, it sounds like what you did with that student's expression
"all get out" was the kind of thing I like to do with all sorts of phrases
that seem "clear." I mean, if you want opaqueness, obscurantism, and utter
confusion, the Washington Post can be had for only a quarter. It's a shame
that clarity continues to be much more expensive.

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:         Mon, 13 Jan 1997 10:25:33 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         EJOYCE@EDINBORO.EDU
Subject:      Chris Stroffolino
MIME-version: 1.0
Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII

Chris, would you mind backchanneling me? Yours, Lisa (ejoyce@edinboro.edu)
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 13 Jan 1997 09:26:15 -0600
Reply-To:     maria damon 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         maria damon 
Subject:      Re: Recent Publications, Hebronics, & Neologisms

thanks herb, this looks deeply hot. will get my little fisties on it posthaste.
--md

In message   UB Poetics discussion group
writes:
> Maria & other list members involved in the various threads refered to in
> the subject line may be interested in a recent recording by Zeena Parkins
> that is based, in part, on texts in Rotwelsch, a Yiddish-based argot used
> by Jewish gangsters Germany from the 14th century into at least the late
> 19th century.
>
> The disc is called "Mouth=Maul=Betrayer" & it's in the often oddly curated
> Radical Jewish Culture series on the Tzadik label.  The two compositions on
> the disc are Maul, where most of the Rotwelsch is, & Blue Mirror, which
> deals with Jewish gangsters in the US in the first half of the 20th
> century.  These aren't narrative music theater pieces, so your sense of
> their use-value may vary.
>
> Gray boatneck sweater with turquoise lining, black cotton pants,
> moccasin-toe ankle boots, mismatched socks.
>
> Bests
>
> Herb
>
>
> Herb Levy
> herb@eskimo.com
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 13 Jan 1997 15:21:53 +0000
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         John Cayley 
Subject:      Hypertext/Cybertext/Poetext
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

        *** Please excuse the cross-postings ***

Those with 'Frames-capable' browsers and an interest in the conjunctions
indicated by this subject line may like to visit the Web-based hypertextual
version of an essay prepared for&after the 'Assembling Alternatives'
conference/festival in New Hampshire last autumn. To go direct to the
essay:

        http://www.demon.co.uk/eastfield/in/hcp000.html

and to visit 'in context':

        http://www.demon.co.uk/eastfield/in/intheory.html

All comments/criticisms on/of this essay, very gratefully received.

Best,

- - - - - >
John Cayley  Wellsweep Press [in Chinese HZ: ~{?-U\02~}  ~{=[i@3v0fIg~}]
             ^ innovative literary translation from Chinese ^
1 Grove End House  150 Highgate Road  London NW5 1PD  UK
Tel & Fax: 0171-267 3525  Email: cayley@shadoof.demon.co.uk
                           http://www.demon.co.uk/eastfield/
                                                 < - - - - -
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 13 Jan 1997 11:47:07 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Charles Bernstein 
Subject:      Ripple Effects on line
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Ripple Effects: Painting and Language, ed. Susan Bee and Mira Schor, about
which I previsously posted information, is now completely on line. Click on
New Observations **#113,** Winter 1996

http://plexus.org/newobs
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 13 Jan 1997 11:58:53 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Mark Wallace 
Subject:      AWP Chronicle
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

from Sharon Dolin's page one article in the December AWP, "Arguing Poetry:
How Contemporary Poets Write About Poetry":

        "After the more polarized stridencies of the eighties had fizzled,
a space might have been cleared for a more open appraisal of all of
poetry's possibilities. What astounds me as a third-generation free verse
poet and critic are the number of prose works by poets that are attempts
to celebrate, defend, or delegitimize free verse. Essays swing between
formalist attacks on free verse's authenticity as poetry, coupled with a
blatant desire to resurrect metrical verse as the one true poetry, and the
often fuzzy, impressionistic elaborations of a free-verse aesthetic. And
now, Language poets have entered the fray to launch their attack on free
verse, with formal verse being too far beyond the pale for them even to
mention. The question that keeps arising for me as I read the formalist
attacks as well as the free verse descriptions: Isn't it time for poets
to cease labeling free verse as merely poetry with a conspicuous absence
of meter or metrical consistency? No one would think of defining metrical
or rhythmical verse as "unfree verse," yet there is a growing tendency in
a recent spate of books by poet-critics to reframe the formal issues
surrounding free verse poetry in terms of metered verse. On the other
hand, isn't it also time for there to be a clearly elaborated poetics of
free verse?"
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 14 Jan 1997 00:28:25 +1200
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Tom Beard 
Subject:      Re: to whoever who recommended power
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Charles Alexander wrote:
>
> I read the book right after it came out, and was also enthusiastic about it,
> but I remember being rather disappointed that it had, after all, to be
> pulled into a rather tidy ending. I think I didn't want it to end at all.
> But now, several years later, I can't remember what that ending was.

Good, don't tell us :-)

At the stage I've reached in the book, a tidy ending would seem
difficult, so I'll be intrigued to see how he does it (although, like
you, I'm usually averse to tidiness). I was beginning to feel that
Ressler might do some sort of Slothropian dissolve.

Does anyone else find the two main sexual relationships compellingly
erotic, with their stuttering and thwarted desires? Maybe it's just me,
but I was surprised by their effect in what I was beginning to see as a
mainly cerebral book.

The writing sometimes irritates me, as it often seems to repeat the same
idea for several paragraphs, but I'm frequently struck by some pithy or
extraordinary phrase. I should write down some of the more aphoristic
sentences - they're rich and strange, and they do interesting things in
different contexts.

I'll probably have to go back and re-read Godel Escher Bach once I've
finished. Does anyone know whether Powers has mentioned Hofstadter
(?spelling? it's 5.30am) as a source or inspiration?


        Tom Beard.


(Wearing blue linen pants and a sandy linen waistcoat (both Country
Road) with a brown Hugo Boss belt and a locally-made white linen shirt,
the paua-shell buttons of which are a (possibly reluctant) signifier of
my residence in the Pacific. Everything is rather more rumpled than it
should be. My Bally shoes are sitting beside my desk, since my feet were
killing me, as they usually do at the end of a night shift. The sky over
the Hauraki Gulf is starting to shade from navy through green to gold,
and the outlines of the C-130s on the runway are now visible. I'm hoping
it won't be too hot today, so that I can get a decent sleep, and I'm
trying to decide whether the afternoon sea-breeze convergence will
produce any significant showers.)
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 13 Jan 1997 09:06:28 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "Aldon L. Nielsen" 
Subject:      Re: the clarity of excellence
In-Reply-To:  
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

recent exchange around Mark's comment on Joan's verse interesting from an
historic point of view as well -- MUCH discussion of clarity among Black
Mountain poets and fellow fellahin some two-three decades ago -- clarity
became the calling card of Creeley and others for a time -- but this was
not the clarity of transparency -- rather, precisely, clarity of language
in thinking with the objects of this world (the Zuk/Oppen influence most
_clear_ here) --

BUT, Mark's original post didn't claim that Joan's poetry was clear
(which I think it is), but that it is clearly excellent, an entirely
different sort of claim -- but that might reopen a very old argument on
this list, so I'll leave it there --
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 13 Jan 1997 11:55:21 -0600
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         amato@CHARLIE.CNS.IIT.EDU
Subject:      Re: to whoever who recommended power
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

tom, powers has read godel/escher/bach, was a physics major for a spell,
has a master's in english (as i recall)... worked as a programmer for a few
years in boston too... in many ways, he's certainly what you'd call an
autodidact...

joe, currently in thermal top, long grey jockey underwear, and another pair
of those grey socks
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 13 Jan 1997 13:06:30 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         AERIALEDGE@AOL.COM
Subject:      All those new books @ Bridge Street

Lot of interesting new stuff. "Stuff that stays stuff." Ordering information
at the end of the post. Thank you, Poetics, for your support.

1. _Walter Benjamin: A Biography_ by Momme Brodersen, Verso, $35. The jacket
copy says: "Widely acclaimed in Germany, Momme Brodersen's _Walter Benjamin_
is the most comprehensive and illuminating biography of Benjamin ever
published." To the best of my knowledge, this is an accurate statement.

2. _The Cold War & the University: Toward an Intellectual History of the
Postwar Years_ by Noam Chomsky, Ira Katznelson, R.C. Lewontin, David
Montgomery, Laura Nader, Richard Ohmann, Ray Siever, Immanuel Wallerstein, &
Howard Zinn, New Press, $25. "Where this will lead is hard to say."

3. _The Hunter Gracchus and Other Papers on Literature and Art_ by Guy
Davenport, Counterpoint, $25. "Facts are promiscuous. . ."

4. _Duchamp: A Biography_ by Calvin Tomkins, Henry Holt, $35. "All this makes
Breton sound a bit silly. . ."

5. _Robert Duncan in San Francisco_ by Michael Rumaker,
Grey Fox, $9.95. "All the fears of narcs and Vice Squad undercover agents, of
Jack Spicer, of my ambivalences toward Duncan, of the pressures of a new job
and a new life in a new city, all the uncertainties of what it was I needed
to be about, especially in my writing, momentarily vanished, as I gazed back
at Ebbe, listening to his sweet guitar and the even sweeter sound of his
voice as he sang."

6. _Drafts 15-XXX, The Fold_ by Rachel Blau DuPlessis, Potes & Poets, $12.
"An ear to the music, and a body for the energy of it, singing what cannot be
unquestionable song."--Peter Quatermain. "Living within / a place where
little noises / in wonder at their own skew / hang in the opening."

7. _The Music of Morton Feldman_ ed. Thomas Delio, Excelsior, $24.95. Lengthy
essays on a variety of Feldman pieces including a contribution by Cage. Most
noteworthy are three essays by Feldman: "Give My Regards to Eighth Street,"
"The Anxiety of Art," and "Some Elementary Questions."

8. _Wicker_ by Lyn Hejinian and Jack Collum, Rodent, $5. "kiss us-- / sudden
valley capitals / having burned our shadows / in a fit of madness / burn
these words"
5-line stanzas in which the last line is repeated as the second-line of the
next stanza. On the left margin each stanza is accompanied by a quotation,
such as: "But then everything cools out again. (Werner Heisenberg)"

9. _Jasper Johns: Writings, Sketchbook Notes, Interviews_, Museum of Modern
Art, $24.95. "An invisible drawing / made in the air. / Make a drawing /
behind your back. Make a stolen painting."

10. _3 of 10_ by Hank Lazer, Chax, $14. "This is the one story I can tell;
and it is not one." Collects "H's Journal," "Negation," and "Displayspace,"
in that lovely Chax production.

11. _Absence Sensorium_ by Tom Mandel and Daniel Davidson, Potes & Poets,
$14. "It's like this; if I'm to weep / I'll do it in a place you cannot
visit." Davidson & Mandel's collaboration takes the form of the renaissance
_silvas_, 7-line stanzas whose lines are 7 or 11 syllables.

12. _We Speak Silent_ by Hannah Weiner, Roof, $9.95. "oh very well dont hurt
yourself with anymore / funny words" -- "ALL WORDS DICTATED SILENTLY." Titles
include "Watten," "P Inman," "Page Paw / the polar bear" and "Bob Dylan."

13. _How I Read Gertrude Stein_ by Lew Welch, Grey Fox, $10.95. "His insights
are fundamental to our recognition of Stein as the bedrock genius she always
was for him." -- Robert Creeley. "The important thing, then, is the exciting
thing. . ."

14. Back in Stock: _Onward: Contemporary Poetry & Poetics_ ed. Peter Baker,
Lang, $29.95. Some of you had requested to be informed when it came back in.
& sorry, it's STILL a textbook so no discount/free shipping on this title.

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 # & expiraton date, we
will send a
receipt with the books. We have to charge for shipping out of U.S.

Bridge Street Books, 2814 Pennsylvania Ave NW, Wahsington, DC 20007.
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 13 Jan 1997 14:01:07 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Dave Zauhar 
Subject:      Re: AWP Chronicle
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Mark: 1) does the essay name any names, or is it just assumed that her AWP
readers know the enemies of poetry already?
      2) do you get hazardous duty pay for reading the AWP newsletter?

DZ

>from Sharon Dolin's page one article in the December AWP, "Arguing Poetry:
>How Contemporary Poets Write About Poetry":
>
>        "After the more polarized stridencies of the eighties had fizzled,
>a space might have been cleared for a more open appraisal of all of
>poetry's possibilities. What astounds me as a third-generation free verse
>poet and critic are the number of prose works by poets that are attempts
>to celebrate, defend, or delegitimize free verse. Essays swing between
>formalist attacks on free verse's authenticity as poetry, coupled with a
>blatant desire to resurrect metrical verse as the one true poetry, and the
>often fuzzy, impressionistic elaborations of a free-verse aesthetic. And
>now, Language poets have entered the fray to launch their attack on free
>verse, with formal verse being too far beyond the pale for them even to
>mention. The question that keeps arising for me as I read the formalist
>attacks as well as the free verse descriptions: Isn't it time for poets
>to cease labeling free verse as merely poetry with a conspicuous absence
>of meter or metrical consistency? No one would think of defining metrical
>or rhythmical verse as "unfree verse," yet there is a growing tendency in
>a recent spate of books by poet-critics to reframe the formal issues
>surrounding free verse poetry in terms of metered verse. On the other
>hand, isn't it also time for there to be a clearly elaborated poetics of
>free verse?"
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 13 Jan 1997 16:27:10 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Gwyn McVay 
Subject:      Re: AWP Chronicle
In-Reply-To:  
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

>>2) do you get hazardous duty pay for reading the AWP newsletter?

It gets worse, DZ. I *typeset* the motherfucker and *I* sure don't get
hazardous duty pay. We just got this exquisitely stupid article from a
gent who divides American poets into three categories: Expansive (which I
think is a typo for "expensive," free-verse confessional, and "Beat."

(muttering) The horror! The horror!

Missis McVay, she dead.
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 13 Jan 1997 15:10:18 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Charles Alexander 
Subject:      Re: AWP Chronicle
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

>Missis McVay, she dead.

rest in peace, dear mcvay

i had no idea of your sacrifices
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 13 Jan 1997 17:23:59 EST
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Ken Edwards <100344.2546@COMPUSERVE.COM>
Subject:      New from RSE

"However, I have noticed all together TOO FEW listings of recent publications
by list participants. "

sez Charles B. So here's one:

RSE 4PACKS No 1:
SLEIGHT OF FOOT

Miles Champion
Helen Kidd
Harriet Tarlo
Scott Thurston

A collection of lengthy selections (up to 18pp each) from four poets who had not
at the time of commissioning had a substantial book of their own published, and
who are working in the innovative and modernist traditions of other authors on
the RSE list. RSE hopes this will be the first in a series of similar
mini-anthologies showcasing younger and/or less well exposed poets.

Funding from London Arts Board/Eastern Arts Board gratefully acknowledged.

1-874400-10-5   5.00 pounds
200 x 120mm paperback   80pp

Those of you who were at the University of New Hampshire shindig last year will
remember Miles Champion, the man who reads five times as fast as Tom Raworth.
Harriet Tarlo was also there giving a paper, although she didn't read. They are
two of the brightest sparks on the UK poetry scene and are likely to be of
interest to many subscribers to this list. Scott Thurston (a young British poet
currently working in Poland) and Helen Kidd are also eminently worthy of being
checked out.

The 4Packs series is a new venture by Reality Street Editions. This first
volume, published in November in the UK, should be reaching Small Press
Distribution (510-549-3336) any day now and should retail at around $8 or $9. If
anyone running a mag would like a review copy please email me.

Ken Edwards
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 13 Jan 1997 15:09:00 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Mark Weiss 
Subject:      neologism?
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Poet I'm typesetting says the word "cremains"=what's left after cremation is
a certified, official word. I say she made it up. Anybody run across it before?

Mark, weary of eyeball
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 13 Jan 1997 18:57:29 +0100
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Miekal And 
Subject:      speech odometer
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Ken Edwards wrote:

>
> Those of you who were at the University of New Hampshire shindig last year will
> remember Miles Champion, the man who reads five times as fast as Tom Raworth.

even faster than mr bebop, Clark Coolidge?
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 13 Jan 1997 17:34:16 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "Aldon L. Nielsen" 
Subject:      Re: ebonics and Josh White
In-Reply-To:  <199701132309.PAA05964@hungary.it.earthlink.net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

_Village Voice_ for 1/14/97 has quite good short piece by Angela Ards
bringing some welcome perspective to Ebonics debates (along with some
less enlightening sidebars -- though I did enjoy the one where the
_Voice_ asks NY school kids what they think of all this) [[have also been
told that _Washington Post_ for 1/12 has piece on this subject by Robert
Hass -- haven't eyeballed this one myself yet -- but it should be up on
the _Post_ website now]]


AND same issue of _Voice_ has a good piece on the career of Josh White --
I had the very good fortune to meet White a few times around DC, where he
spent many of his latter years -- He continued to be a compeeling
performer, and he was always willing to share memories of the old NY
cabaret scene with a young pest --
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 13 Jan 1997 22:26:24 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         mgk3k@FARADAY.CLAS.VIRGINIA.EDU
Subject:      URL for MLA talk: The Poetics of Artificial Intelligence
Comments: To: ht_lit@consecol.org
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

http://www.engl.virginia.edu/~mgk3k/papers/poetics_ai.html

"The Poetics of Artificial Intelligence." On contemporary graphic design and
work by Elliott Peter Earls, Johanna Drucker, Darick Chamberlain, Charles
Bernstein.

--Matt
====================================================================
Matthew G. Kirschenbaum                       University of Virginia
mgk3k@virginia.edu                            Department of English
http://faraday.clas.virginia.edu/~mgk3k/      Electronic Text Center
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 13 Jan 1997 19:33:32 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Stephen Cope 
Subject:      address query
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Could someone backchannel Rachel Blau DuPlessis's e-mail address -- or
Rachel, if you're there, could you backchannel?

Thanks,

Stephen Cope
scope@sdcc3.ucsd.edu
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 13 Jan 1997 21:39:12 -0800
Reply-To:     jbrook@ix.netcom.com
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         James Brook 
Subject:      oakland ebonics resolution & correx
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Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

My thanks to Stephen Vincent for bringing discussion of Ebonics
to this group. Some have asked to see the language of the Oakland
School Resolution, so I went digging in the electronic files of the
San Francisco Chronicle. (You can search for other local articles
in the SF Chronicle and Examiner at this address: http://www.sfgate.com/
.)

What follows is the text of the original Oakland School Board
resolution on Ebonics. Bringing up the rear is an article on the
revised resolution from the San Francisco Chronicle.

Easy to see that the school board is afflicted by educationese,
a jargon that should not be taught to anyone.

But by far the most interesting news has to do with the weeks of
racist response on the part of whites, both liberals and conservatives
(at last, an issue that unites them!), and the squirming-with-discomfort
of middle-class African Americans who aren't too sure they want to
hear about differences in dialetic going back to Africa.

OK, the texts:

EBONICS RESOLUTION

         The Oakland School Board says its resolution on ebonics has
been widely
         misunderstood, especially on whether it calls for teaching
classes in ebonics. Critics said
         the school board members are muddying the debate by not
standing behind the resolution
         they passed.

         Here is the text of the resolution passed on December 18:

         WHEREAS, numerous validated scholarly studies demonstrate that
African-American
         students as a part of their culture and history as African
people possess and utilize a
         language described in various scholarly approaches as
``Ebonics'' (literally ``Black
         sounds'') or ``Pan-African Communication Behavior'' or
``African Language Systems'';
         and

         WHEREAS, these studies have also demonstrated that African
Language Systems are
         genetically based and not a dialect of English; and

         WHEREAS, these studies demonstrate that such West and
Niger-Congo African
         languages have been officially recognized and addressed in the
mainstream public
         educational community as worth of study, understanding or
application of its principles,
         laws and structures for the benefit of African-American
students both in terms of positive
         appreciation of the language and these students' acquisition
and mastery of English
         language skills; and

         WHEREAS, such recognition by scholars has given rise over the
past fifteen years to
         legislation passed by the State of California recognizing the
unique language stature of
         descendants of slaves, with such legislation being
prejudicially and unconstitutionally
         vetoed repeatedly by various California state governors; and

         WHEREAS, judicial cases in states other than California have
recognized the unique
         language stature of African-American pupils, and such
recognition by courts has resulted
         in court-man dated educational programs which have
substantially benefited African
         American children in the interest of vindicating their equal
protection of the law rights
         under the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States
Constitution; and

         WHEREAS, the Federal Bilingual Education Act (20 U.S.C. 1402 et
seq) mandates that
         local educational agencies ``build their capacities to
establish, implement and sustain
         programs of instruction for children and youth of limited
English proficiency; and

         WHEREAS, the interests of the Oakland Unified School District
in providing equal
         opportunities for all of its students dictate limited English
proficient educational programs
         recognizing the English language acquisition and improvement
skills of African-American
         students are as fundamental as is application of bilingual
education principles for others
         whose primary languages are other than English; and

         WHEREAS, the standardized tests and grade scores of African-
American students in
         reading and language arts skills measuring their application of
English skills are
         substantially below state and national norms and that such
deficiencies will be remedied
         by application of a program featuring African Language Systems
principles in instructing
         African- American children both in their primary language and
in English; and

         WHEREAS, standardized tests and grade scores will be remedied
by application of a
         program with teachers and aides who are certified in the
methodology of featuring African
         Language Systems principles in instructing African- American
children both in their
         primary language and in English. The certified teachers of
these students will be provided
         incentives including, but not limited to salary differentials.

         NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT

         RESOLVED that the Board of Education officially recognizes the
existence, and the
         cultural and historic bases of West and Niger- Congo African
Language Systems, and
         each language as the predominantly primary language of
African-American students; and

         BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Board of Education hereby
adopts the report
         recommendations and attached Policy Statement of the District's
African-American Task
         Force on language stature of African- American speech; and

         BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Superintendent in conjunction
with her staff shall
         immediately devise and implement the best possible academic
program for imparting
         instruction to African-American students in their primary
language for the combined
         purposes of maintaining the legitimacy and richness of such
language whether it is known
         as ``Ebonics,'' ``African Language Systems,'' ``Pan-African
Communication Behaviors''
         or other description, and to facilitate their acquisition and
mastery of English language
         skills; and

         BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Board of Education hereby
commits to earmark
         District general and special funding as is reasonably necessary
and appropriate to enable
         the Superintendent and her staff to accomplish the foregoing;
and

         BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Superintendent and her staff
shall utilize the input
         of the entire Oakland educational community as well as state
and federal scholarly and
         educational input in devising such a program; and

         BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that periodic reports on the progress
of the creation and
         implementation of such an educational program shall be made to
the Board at least once
         per month commencing at the Board meeting of December 18, 1996.

Ebonics Plan Toned Down In Oakland
School board expected to OK revision this week

San Francisco Chronicle - Jan. 13, 1997

Lori Olszewski, Rick DelVecchio, Chronicle East Bay Bureau

         The task force behind the ebonics policy that put the Oakland
schools at the center of a
         national cultural war announced yesterday that it will strip
the policy of its controversial
         language -- and the school board, for the first time, appears
ready to back the change.

         ``The debate is over,'' said Sylvester Hodges, a former school
board member who now
         heads the Task Force on the Education of African American
Students, which proposed
         the policy. ``We're moving to the next phase. . . . We hope
people understand that and
         will join us.''

         After a tense three weeks in which everyone from Rush Limbaugh
to Maya Angelou
         weighed in on the policy, the seven-member Oakland School Board
has indicated it will
         approve the changes at a special meeting Wednesday. The
compromise, an effort to quiet
         the national brouhaha, comes after at least 10 hours of
negotiations in the past two days
         and after weeks of meetings among the key players. None of the
players characterizes the
         move as backing down.

         As late as Friday, board member Toni Cook, who carried the
original resolution, said in
         an interview with The Chronicle that she was opposing changes.

         Cook said she reversed her position because the task force --
composed of Oakland
         residents and school district employees -- agreed to the
changes. Cook and other
         supporters of the task force did not want to appear as if they
were caving in to national
         criticism and big-footing the task force.

         CHANGES IN 2 AREAS

         The proposed changes in the resolution primarily involve two
areas -- the suggestion that
         such language is related to genetics and any phrases the public
took as meaning the
         schools would be teaching in ebonics.

         The task force deleted a phrase saying African Language
Systems, or ebonics, are
         ``genetically based'' and not a dialect of English. The new
wording: such African systems
         ``have origins in West and Niger-Congo languages and are not
merely dialects of
         English.''

         The group also recommended striking a clause that has been
widely taken to mean that
         the city's schools would begin teaching ebonics as well as
standard English.

         If the board adopts the changes as expected, the policy would
no longer refer to
         instructing children in both languages. It says the purpose of
recognizing black students'
         language differences is ``to move students from the language
patterns (students) bring to
         school to English proficiency.''

         The task force further suggests the policy is for
``facilitating the acquisition and mastery of
         English language skills, while respecting and embracing the
legitimacy and richness of the
         language patterns, whether they are known as `Ebonics,'
`African Language Systems,'
         `Pan African Communication Behaviors,' '' or something else.

         Another controversial passage of the resolution states that the
school board recognizes
         African- based systems as the ``predominantly primary language
of African American
         students.'' The task force now wants to take out the adverb
predominantly. The revised
         line: African-based systems are ``the primary language of many
African-American
         students.''

         GROWING COMMUNITY PRESSURE

         The agreement to compromise comes amid growing community
pressure for the changes,
         including public statements by school board members Ken Rice
and Robert Spencer
         urging changes to the language. New board member Jason Hodge
also had said privately
         he wanted the changes and would be going public with his
criticisms today if the board
         could not agree this weekend.

         The task force and the school board stressed they are still
behind the intent of the original
         resolution, to train teachers to respect ebonics and to help
the students who speak it to
         learn standard English. The task force is to present
Superintendent Carolyn Getridge with
         a financing plan by March 15 on how to expand the ebonics
teaching methods now in
         place in about 26 schools involving 3,600 students to more
schools as soon as this fall.
         The effectiveness of the ebonics program will be evaluated by
measures such as test
         scores and truancy and suspension rates, board members have
said.

         The task force also has a number of other recommendations on
how to improve black
         students' performance, such as recruiting more black teachers
and counselors, that have
         gotten lost in all the hoopla about the ebonics policy.

         Before the weekend, task force members had held fast to their
original resolution, as the
         school board and administrators struggled to convince critics
that the policy was vital to
         correct the failing performance of its African American
students. Oakland is the only
         school district in California where black students make up the
majority.

         A DISMAL RECORD

         The average grade-point average of the district's African
American secondary students is
         a D-plus, or 1.8. Of students who repeat the same grade, almost
two-thirds are African
         American.

         African Americans make up 53 percent of the district's 52,000
students but 71 percent of
         all students enrolled in special education.

         Despite the dramatic story told by such numbers, in the end it
appeared that no amount of
         talking around the ebonics resolution could fix the document
itself, with its ambiguities and
         sloppy phrasing.

         ``We'll not sacrifice our African American children for the
sake of politics,'' Hodges said.
         He said he is proud that the task force was the catalyst of a
national debate over black
         students' chronic underachievement.

         ``You've been the brunt of unfair and often racist attacks,''
school board President Jean
         Quan said of the task force. She said the proposed changes
appear to be a ``very fair
         attempt'' to clarify the resolution, adding that the board will
not retreat until all students in
         the district are proficient in standard English.


         REVISION TO POLICY

         Some of the changes made in the text of the proposed ebonics
policy by the Oakland
         schools task force:

         -- Before: ``Whereas, these studies have also demonstrated that
African Language
         Systems are genetically based and not a dialect of English.''

         -- Changed to: ``Whereas, these studies have also demonstrated
that African Language
         Systems have origins in West (African) and Niger-Congo
languages and are not merely
         dialects of English.''

         -- Before: ``Whereas, the standardized tests and grade scores .
. . will be remedied by
         application of a program featuring African Language Systems
principles in instructing
         African-American children both in their primary language and in
English.''

         -- Changed to: ``Whereas, the standardized tests and grade
scores . . . will be remedied
         by application of a program featuring African Language Systems
principles to move
         students from the language patterns they bring to school to
English proficiency.''

         -- Before: ``The Superintendent . . . shall immediately devise
and implement the best
         possible academic program for imparting instruction to
African-American students in their
         primary language for the combined purposes of maintaining the
legitimacy and richness of
         such language.''

         -- Changed to: ``The Superintendent . . . shall immediately
devise and implement the best
         possible academic program for the combined purposes of
facilitating the acquisition and
         mastery of English language skills, while respecting and
embracing the legitimacy and
         richness of the language patterns.''
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 13 Jan 1997 22:03:05 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Peter Quartermain 
Subject:      Arrivederci
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Hail and farewell to all:

Effective midnight Tuesday 14 January I shall be incommunicado by e-mail as
we scoot to Italy until May. Snail mail will snailishly work for those who
want; otherwise, see you around 15 May or so. I mean, talk to you. I mean,
email you, I mean
goodbye!

Peter
 + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
                             Peter Quartermain
                            128 East 23rd Avenue
                                  Vancouver
                                     B.C.
                                 Canada V5V 1X2
                           Voice and fax: 604 876 8061

 + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 14 Jan 1997 02:14:05 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Steph4848@AOL.COM
Subject:      Re: cremains

Mark Weiss asks:
"Poet I'm typesetting says the word "cremains"=what's left after cremation is
a certified, official word. I say she made it up. Anybody run across it
before?"

Dust into dust,
Ashes into ashes:
"cremains" in French is short for
"creative hands" -
of which I suspect in this situation,
 not likely.


Cheers,
Stephen Vincent
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 14 Jan 1997 02:55:46 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         SSchu30844@AOL.COM
Subject:      Re: to whoever who recommended power

I preferred  Richard Powers's _Operation Wandering Soul_ to _The Goldbug
Variations_, now that we're onto novels.  Every bit as erudite, but a little
less clever, if that makes any sense.
Susan
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 14 Jan 1997 00:15:47 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Franklin Bruno 
Subject:      Elmslie Reading?
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

        Could someone (Dodie?) post a little more detail about the recent
Elmslie reading?  How does he integrate the songs and the poems into one
performance?  Is the effect smooth or jarring?  Does he do mostly recent
work, or does it range over his long career?
        Just digested -The Champ- myself, still trying to decide whether a
cohesive narrative would emerge with closer/more numerous readings.

fjb
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 13 Jan 1997 15:09:00 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Ron Silliman 
Subject:      Cremains

>
>Poet I'm typesetting says the word "cremains"=what's left after
cremation is
>a certified, official word. I say she made it up. Anybody run across
it before?
>
>Mark, weary of eyeball


Mark,

I've heard it before. I think, tho, that it's the professional jargon
of morticians, which is a curious dialect.

Ron Silliman
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 14 Jan 1997 13:06:51 GMT
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Sherry Brennan 
Subject:      Cremains
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

No - I've seen it.  Check out the Celestis Webpage where they offer to send
your "cremains" into space on a missle.  I have the video for this company
which is a masterpiece of funeral home advertising and space, the final
frontier aggrandisement ... also, Tim Leary's ashes, I mean, cremains are
going up that way (some of them already went once on the space shuttle, I'm
told).  Sherry

>Date:    Mon, 13 Jan 1997 15:09:00 -0800
>From:    Mark Weiss 
>Subject: neologism?
>
>Poet I'm typesetting says the word "cremains"=what's left after cremation is
>a certified, official word. I say she made it up. Anybody run across it before?
>
>Mark, weary of eyeball


Sherry Brennan
Development Research
The Pennsylvania State University
(814) 863-4302
SAB5@psu.edu
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 14 Jan 1997 08:32:29 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Michael Boughn 
Subject:      Re: AWP Chronicle
In-Reply-To:   from
              "Gwyn McVay" at Jan 13, 97 04:27:10 pm
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

> It gets worse, DZ. I *typeset* the motherfucker and *I* sure don't get
> hazardous duty pay. We just got this exquisitely stupid article from a
> gent who divides American poets into three categories: Expansive (which I
> think is a typo for "expensive," free-verse confessional, and "Beat."
>
> (muttering) The horror! The horror!
>
> Missis McVay, she dead.
>

Maybe we should do renga essay from the list with our own categories
of contemporary poetry. I've always thought of American poets in terms
of poor, medium well-done, and sexually ambivalent, but I do realize
those are sort of arbitrary distinctions.

Mike
mboughn@chass.utoronto.ca
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 14 Jan 1997 08:20:50 -0600
Reply-To:     maria damon 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         maria damon 
Subject:      Re: Arrivederci

have a glorious time!--md

In message  <2.2.16.19970113215316.244fac4e@pop.unixg.ubc.ca> UB Poetics
discussion group writes:
> Hail and farewell to all:
>
> Effective midnight Tuesday 14 January I shall be incommunicado by e-mail as
> we scoot to Italy until May. Snail mail will snailishly work for those who
> want; otherwise, see you around 15 May or so. I mean, talk to you. I mean,
> email you, I mean
> goodbye!
>
> Peter
>  + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
>                              Peter Quartermain
>                             128 East 23rd Avenue
>                                   Vancouver
>                                      B.C.
>                                  Canada V5V 1X2
>                            Voice and fax: 604 876 8061
>
>  + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 14 Jan 1997 10:06:08 EST
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         POLLET@MAINE.MAINE.EDU
Subject:      cremains

Mark, et al--My mother-in-law died in New York City, March 1983. When we
were arranging things, the funeral parlor guy said "What do you want to do
with the cremains," and I stopped him right there & said "What did you say,
what was that word?" Sure enough, cremains. Can't remember now whether it
was Broadway or Amsterdam Avenue, Washington Heights area. So it's real,
or real funeralese. We had them shipped to Maine & set them loose on an
outgoing tide, with some apple blossoms.     Sylvester Pollet
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 14 Jan 1997 09:29:14 -0600
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         amato@CHARLIE.CNS.IIT.EDU
Subject:      Re: Arrivederci
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

ciao peter, safe trip, good health///

best,

joe
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 14 Jan 1997 11:13:28 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Eliza McGrand- CVA Guest 
Subject:      Re: cremains

re "cremains," if it isn't it ought to be.  does there seem, to anyone else,
to be something a little, well, compulsive about the degree to which
english has words for everything.  and not just a matter of a word for
EVERYTHING, but often, several...?

my sense with french, which is a less word-rich language, is that nuances
are conveyed in metaphoric argot...
e
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 14 Jan 1997 08:15:41 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "Aldon L. Nielsen" 
Subject:      Re: Elmslie Reading?
In-Reply-To:  <17E139643BF@113hum9.humnet.ucla.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

I;d like to hear about the reading too --

Years ago, when last I saw him, he sang his songs to the accompaniment of
a tape played on a boom box -- added yet more humor to the already wild
lyrics --
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 14 Jan 1997 10:00:28 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         David Bromige 
Subject:      Life Imitating Art
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Sherry Brennan's posting re "cremains" being sent into outer space will
recall to some the movie made of evelyn waugh's novel "The Loved One": in
the movie (tho not the book) this is precisely what is done. And the movie
must have been made as early as 1962, i think. db
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 14 Jan 1997 13:04:25 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "GRAHAM W. FOUST" 
Subject:      On a clear day, you can see a poem
In-Reply-To:  <9701140504.AA18643@osf1.gmu.edu>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

"Clarity alone can lead to freedom" -Barnett Newman
"Don't look at me, I'm ugly in the morning" - Faith No More

I wouldn't think you're "perverse," Mark, but rather "for verse," which
is why I posted to the list rather than asking the guy in the cubicle
next to me at work.  Clarity can be expensive, although we got it for
free on Saturday night when Sherry Brennan read her amazing poems at the
Ruthless Grip. Sherry had not done a reading in something like 10 years,
but what we got was certainly worth the wait.  Stunning lyric essays on
the unplummable by way of Youngstown and "the middle of nowhere."  Thanks
for bringing her down, Mark.

I think we probably agree on the importance of clarity, but like your not
necessarily wanting to have a point, I guess I don't want to have a clear
idea of what incredible is.  Demanding clarity doesn't always mean
demanding a prescribed KIND of clarity, so the issue of clarity is not
always, ahem, clear to me.  But as someone pointed out (I can't remember
who and I'm in Word Perfect now, sorry!), this could lead to an old and
messy discussion, so I'll leave it at that.

My real curiosity, though, is how we go about teaching poetry (and the
phrases which prompted my post, "should be familiar with" and "clearly,
incredible" sounded teacherly to me) to people who are not necessarily
knowledgeable about  even "mainstream"/canonized poetry.  When I taught
the Celan/Merwin/Oppen/Berryman class, I didn't look at these poets in
the context of more "official" poets (although we did read some prose:
_The Diary of Anne Frank_, Berryman's "The Imaginary Jew" and Denis
Johnson's _The Stars at Noon_), and I found that I didn't have to.  The
majority of the students came to enjoy, understand, and learn from all
four of these poets, and while they challeged some of my
assertions/opinions concerning all four, they never really went back to
"confusing as all get out" after about the first week.  Together, the
poets and the students made all kinds of sense all over the place (and a
lot of sense that I hadn't made myself yet).

By limiting my class to four poets, they were forced to deal with just
those four, and therefore those four poets received a serious semester's
worth of attention from thirty readers.  But is that a wise way to teach
an undergraduate poetry class?  I still don't know.  Sometimes it seems
like I was just plain lucky (classes are very dependent on the class
itself, and mine was a very engaged, very open group of students for the
most part).  It sounds like Mark's class worked just as well by comparing
Stein and Frost, although I've seen that lead to "well, you like Stein
better, I like Frost better, let's call the whole thing off," which
really prevents any forward progress from being made and is about the
most frustrating thing I've ever experienced as a teacher.

Poetry, as Jennifer Moxley says in her preface to _Imagination Verses_,
is not for the passive.  Nor, I believe, is it for the evasive, which is
where clarity comes into play.  But seeing as how these fixed
versions of what's poetry/sensible/clear and what's not (not to mention
rampant
passivity) are out there, how can we, as poets and teachers, best deal
with them directly?

Does concentrating our attention on a few poets really work?  Is it
helpful to go from Beowulf to Bei Dao in 4 months?  It's confusing as
all get out, I think.


Bests,

Graham
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 14 Jan 1997 09:47:11 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Christopher Reiner 
Subject:      Re: Elmslie Reading?
In-Reply-To:  
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

In L.A., we can find out for ourselves this Friday (1/17/97) (according to
the L.A. Times):

VENICE: Kenward Elmslie presents "Postcards on Parade," $7, Beyond
                        Baroque, 681 Venice Blvd., 8:30 p.m. (310) 822-3006.

Also, Beyond Baroque's message machine says something about a
"performance workshop" the next day.  I'm not sure what that entails.

--------------------------------------------------------

Chris Reiner
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 14 Jan 1997 13:18:49 EST
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         henry gould 
Subject:      Re: Life Imitating Art
In-Reply-To:  Message of Tue, 14 Jan 1997 10:00:28 -0500 from 

Is that procedure known as "cremartian"?

- Henry Gould

["nedge" : number of edges.  math neolo-abbreviation]
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 14 Jan 1997 12:32:34 +0100
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Miekal And 
Subject:      Re: On a clear day, you can see a poem
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GRAHAM W. FOUST wrote:


> My real curiosity, though, is how we go about teaching poetry

This assumes that poetry can be taught.

Miekal

who has on his flame-proof overcoat & kurdish oxhair hat

--
@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#
Dreamtime Village website: http://net22.com/dreamtime
QAZINGULAZA: And/Was/Wakest website:
http://net22.com/qazingulaza
e-mail for DT & And/Was: dtv@mwt.net
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 14 Jan 1997 12:35:40 +0000
Reply-To:     ARCHAMBEAU@LFC.EDU
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Robert Archambeau 
Organization: Lake Forest College
Subject:      West Coast Line
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Hope this reaches you before you leave for Italy (where I'll be going
myself this summer).

Received the British/Irish issue of West Coast Line today -- thanks so
much, its quite nicely done.  The check, as they say, is in the mail.

Best,

Robert Archambeau
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 14 Jan 1997 11:04:57 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         dbkk@SIRIUS.COM
Subject:      Re: Elmslie Reading?
In-Reply-To:  
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>In L.A., we can find out for ourselves this Friday (1/17/97) (according to
>the L.A. Times):
>
>VENICE: Kenward Elmslie presents "Postcards on Parade," $7, Beyond
>                        Baroque, 681 Venice Blvd., 8:30 p.m. (310) 822-3006.
>
>Also, Beyond Baroque's message machine says something about a
>"performance workshop" the next day.  I'm not sure what that entails.

After L.A.,  Kenward's also reading/performing in Seattle and Santa Cruz.

Dodie
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 14 Jan 1997 14:05:22 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Peter Jaeger 
Subject:      bp & the allness of poetryics sensate
In-Reply-To:  <9701130504.AA12080@bosshog.arts.uwo.ca>
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Miekal And wrote:
> Ive been a might out of touch out here in Packerland & am wondering what
> sweet & generous tidbits there might be on the web per bp Nichol
> afterlife.  & has Martyrologies come out in something under one cover &
> likewise has his visuals / his soundsongs been compedulated? (caution:
> if we get on the longpoem thread i will never shutup) & terribly present
> I wonder what the 1997 rendition of the 60s mimeo revolution that bp was
> ganglialy in the midst of?

Miekal,

Can't say much about bp on the internet, though Kenny G's ubuweb homepage
reproduces a couple of his early poems.  But on a related note, about two
years ago McClelland and Stewart published *An H in the Heart: a bpNichol
Reader*.  Ironically, though, Nichol claimed in a mid-80s interview
("Syntax = the Body Structure" in *Line*) that he would never publish with
the commercial press M & S.  While the editors, George Bowering and
Michael Ondaatje, should be commended for trying to bring Nichol's writing
to a larger audience, the book tends to decontextualize Nichol's work from
the type of challenge that his minimal forms and mimeographed ephemera
offered to commercial publishing.  Even the book's reproduction of Nichol
and Steve McCaffery's collaborative game for generating a contemporary
research title seems to come across more like a farce than as a challenge
to traditional reading habits, especially when it is taken out of the
context of the politicized discourse of a small press like *Open Letter*,
where Nichol's and McCaffery's research reports first appeared. It seems
to me that *An H in the Heart* gives us a socially normalized Nichol, a
kind of "classic rock" version reminescent of those easily digestible old
Viking Portable Faukners and Joyces.

Peter Jaeger (green wool shirt, comfy black cotton pants, desert boots
with mocassin-thin soles)
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 14 Jan 1997 12:18:42 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Tosh 
Subject:      Re: Elmslie Reading?
Mime-Version: 1.0
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>In L.A., we can find out for ourselves this Friday (1/17/97) (according to
>the L.A. Times):
>
>VENICE: Kenward Elmslie presents "Postcards on Parade," $7, Beyond
>                        Baroque, 681 Venice Blvd., 8:30 p.m. (310) 822-3006.
>
>Also, Beyond Baroque's message machine says something about a
>"performance workshop" the next day.  I'm not sure what that entails.
>
>--------------------------------------------------------
The workshop takes place on Jan 18.  10am to 5pm  It is a workshop by
Elmslie, and I believe the cost is $60.

Tosh Berman
TamTam Books
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 14 Jan 1997 12:31:33 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Mark Weiss 
Subject:      cremains
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Thanks to the list for the help on "cremains"--it hasn't made it to the OED.

Talk about feeling cut off from the well-springs of language!

Mark Weiss
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 14 Jan 1997 13:37:42 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Charles Alexander 
Subject:      Re: bp & the allness of poetryics sensate
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The quintessential Nichol bibliographer is jwcurry, who himself has produced
a number of small-sized pamphlets, some of them hand-rubber-stamped, by
Nichol & others. Curry's in Toronto, and I don't have his address at hand,
but someone here may have it. The situation of McLelland & Stewart
publishing Nichol is complicated as well because McLelland & Stewart
acquired Coach House Press in some sense, while leaving it a
semi-independence, I believe. Or perhaps it's just that they became the
distributor for Coach House. Does someone know for sure?

All of the Martyrology has been re-published in recent years, but not in
anything approaching one volume -- I don't imagine that would be possible or
desirable. Many other books are still in print, including Chax's art facts:
a book of contexts, which is a body of diverse works Nichol planned as part
of the trilogy including love: a book of remembrances, and zygal, all of
which he intentionally gave to different small presses; and later another
book which I think of as linked to these was posthumously published: Truth:
A Book of Fictions (art facts was also posthumous, although the manuscript
was completed and sent to me by bp just a few weeks before his death -- in
fact, it was the desire to publish this book and make it available as widely
as possible which transformed chax from strictly a limited edition book arts
publisher into a trade literary publisher as well).

Several years before An H in the Heart, As Elected (a selected works) came
out from Talonbooks, and I don't know if that is still available or not, but
I believe it contains more of Nichol's visual work than does An H in the
Heart, and I generally like it as an intro to Nichol, although it is a
rather poorly produced book whose pages yellow and fall out before much time
has gone by.

The marvelous Translating Translating Apollinaire by Nichol is available at
the Light & Dust Poets web site. The Nichol work's URL is
http://www.thing.net/~grist/l&d/bpnichol/lnichol1.htm
Much else of value is also available at this marvelous site put together by
Karl Young.

charles

At 02:05 PM 1/14/97 -0500, you wrote:
>Miekal And wrote:
>> Ive been a might out of touch out here in Packerland & am wondering what
>> sweet & generous tidbits there might be on the web per bp Nichol
>> afterlife.  & has Martyrologies come out in something under one cover &
>> likewise has his visuals / his soundsongs been compedulated? (caution:
>> if we get on the longpoem thread i will never shutup) & terribly present
>> I wonder what the 1997 rendition of the 60s mimeo revolution that bp was
>> ganglialy in the midst of?
>
>Miekal,
>
>Can't say much about bp on the internet, though Kenny G's ubuweb homepage
>reproduces a couple of his early poems.  But on a related note, about two
>years ago McClelland and Stewart published *An H in the Heart: a bpNichol
>Reader*.  Ironically, though, Nichol claimed in a mid-80s interview
>("Syntax = the Body Structure" in *Line*) that he would never publish with
>the commercial press M & S.  While the editors, George Bowering and
>Michael Ondaatje, should be commended for trying to bring Nichol's writing
>to a larger audience, the book tends to decontextualize Nichol's work from
>the type of challenge that his minimal forms and mimeographed ephemera
>offered to commercial publishing.  Even the book's reproduction of Nichol
>and Steve McCaffery's collaborative game for generating a contemporary
>research title seems to come across more like a farce than as a challenge
>to traditional reading habits, especially when it is taken out of the
>context of the politicized discourse of a small press like *Open Letter*,
>where Nichol's and McCaffery's research reports first appeared. It seems
>to me that *An H in the Heart* gives us a socially normalized Nichol, a
>kind of "classic rock" version reminescent of those easily digestible old
>Viking Portable Faukners and Joyces.
>
>Peter Jaeger (green wool shirt, comfy black cotton pants, desert boots
>with mocassin-thin soles)
>
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 14 Jan 1997 12:45:11 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Laura Moriarty 
Subject:      Re: Elmslie Reading?
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Was happy to have been at the Elmslie performance last Friday here in SF.
Kenward read first and then performed the song part of the program which
became a sort of endless finale - His relationship with the audience was
intense, but light - He really had us in the palm of his hand.

There is a continuous tone in his work from the poems to the songs of a
kind of dignified speechy camp. The roughness of the presentation - simple
headress, other modest props, the large postcards held up by a friend - the
music on a boom box, but timed quite precisely - is an effective and savvy
restraint.

The music was various - show tunes, torch songs, Country Western, Cajun and
his own songs(in these styles) - and Kenward's presence and attention as a
performer and his playful, evocative diction as a writer held it together
quite well - We gave him a standing ovation and there was an encore - I
think the environment of New College and the graciousness of the SPT series
- not to mention the great party after at Kevin and Dodie's - lent much
glamour to the already heady occasion.

(Btw - we have 3 tapes of Kenward Elmslie at the Poetry Center - 75, 83 and
90 - all available.)


Laura Moriarty
moriarty@sfsu.edu






>        Could someone (Dodie?) post a little more detail about the recent
>Elmslie reading?  How does he integrate the songs and the poems into one
>performance?  Is the effect smooth or jarring?  Does he do mostly recent
>work, or does it range over his long career?
>        Just digested -The Champ- myself, still trying to decide whether a
>cohesive narrative would emerge with closer/more numerous readings.
>
>fjb
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 14 Jan 1997 04:10:18 -0600
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         robert drake 
Subject:      Re: bp & the allness of poetryics sensate
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

>The quintessential Nichol bibliographer is jwcurry, who himself has produced
>a number of small-sized pamphlets, some of them hand-rubber-stamped, by
>Nichol & others. Curry's in Toronto, and I don't have his address at hand,
>but someone here may have it.

1357 Lansdowne Ave.
Toronto, Ontario
CANADA, M6H 3Z9


john curry's work, as a publisher & writer, is an inspiration, or has
been to me. a combination of lotech rubberstamp & xerox, craftsmanship
ala fine letterpress, and a keen literary/editorial sense...  he's
scrupiously documented a number of canadian experimental poets, in addition
to barrie, including the late david uu...

lbd
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 14 Jan 1997 16:38:11 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Field of Roses 
Subject:      Re: bp & the allness of poetryics sensate
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

>>The quintessential Nichol bibliographer is jwcurry, who himself has produced
>>a number of small-sized pamphlets, some of them hand-rubber-stamped, by
>>Nichol & others. Curry's in Toronto, and I don't have his address at hand,
>>but someone here may have it.
>
>1357 Lansdowne Ave.
>Toronto, Ontario
>CANADA, M6H 3Z9
>
>
>john curry's work, as a publisher & writer, is an inspiration, or has
>been to me. a combination of lotech rubberstamp & xerox, craftsmanship
>ala fine letterpress, and a keen literary/editorial sense...  he's
>scrupiously documented a number of canadian experimental poets, in addition
>to barrie, including the late david uu...


john presently resides in Ottawa. His new address:

jwcurry
#2 - 856 Somerset St. W.
Ottawa, Canada
K1R 6R7



Linda Charyk Rosenfeld
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 14 Jan 1997 13:38:07 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Shaunanne Tangney 
Subject:      Re: cremains
In-Reply-To:  <199701142031.MAA06190@greece.it.earthlink.net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

On Tue, 14 Jan 1997, Mark Weiss wrote:

> Thanks to the list for the help on "cremains"--it hasn't made it to the OED.

send it in; that's how dictionaries are "written," you know.  when i was
an undergrad some 15 yrs ago, i took this great course called "american
english" and we used to send stuff in to merriam-webster all the time.  in
fact, we were the ones who got hackey-sak in!

a side bar to cremains: i watched the wonderful japanese film _the
funeral_ last night, and i highly reccomend it.


best,
shaunanne
>
> Talk about feeling cut off from the well-springs of language!
>
> Mark Weiss
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 15 Jan 1997 12:45:36 GMT+1200
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         wystan 
Organization: English Dept. - Univ. of Auckland
Subject:      Forwarded: No Place To Go

From:          "Tony Green" 
Organization:  The University of Auckland
To:            w.curnow@auckland.ac.nz
Date:          Tue, 14 Jan 1997 09:40:21 GMT+1200
Subject:       No Place To Go
Priority       normal

Hi Wystan, Wd you be so kind as to forward the text below to the
Poetics List:

      Announcing the publication of

             NO PLACE TO GO

            a poem by Tony Green

                            __

A book designed and printed by Tara McLeod
at the Pear Tree Press in an edition of  15  copies
    numbered and signed by poet and printer.

Hand-printed from metal and wood types in many colours
 on pages that fold out alternately vertically and horizontally.

 The text is printed on various coloured recycled papers
 from Australia -- called "Outback"and mounted on black
"Outback". The cover is a thick grey card and the binding
                        is a black wire spiral.

Title page, nine text pages, colophon page. 206 x 230 mm
                  with pages opening to 540 mm.

        Price: U.S. $95 including postage and packing.

                Orders to:  The Pear Tree Press,
                                    124, Richardson Road,
                                      Owairaka, Auckland,
                                         New Zealand.




All the best,

Tony Green,
e-mail: t.green@auckland.ac.nz
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 14 Jan 1997 16:46:21 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Rachel Loden 
Subject:      cremains, cremora
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Borden's "Cremora" Non-Dairy Creamer is the stuff that creeps me out.
Right up there with Adolf's Meat Tenderizer in the supermarket twilight
zone.

Rachel
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 14 Jan 1997 17:57:01 -1000
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Gabrielle Welford 
Subject:      Hawaiians strive for unity on Maui (fwd)
Comments: To: egg-l 
Comments: cc: grow-l , mot-l ,
          e-grad ,
          poetics 
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

Though you all might be interested in seeing this.  gab.  (I'm back, as
you see...)

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 6 Jan 1997 17:20:23 -1000
From: Scott Crawford 

Hawaiians strive for unity

The Maui News
Sunday, January 5, 1997

By VALERIE MONSON

Staff Writer

LAHAINA -- The Native Hawaiian voices of Maui that weren't heard on Oahu
last month let loose with a cry of unison Saturday that most certainly will
echo around the islands.

``This was one of the best meetings I've attended in 20 years,'' said
Charles Kauluwehi Maxwell Sr., one of the organizers of the five-hour
gathering held in the social hall of Waiola Church. ``Maui is going to set
the trend as to how to be unified . . . Everything is going to snowball
from this.''

About 75 people were asked by Maxwell to ``leave their egos and
affiliations outside the door'' as they braved the downpour that pummeled
Lahaina most of the day. So those who walked in as members of Ka Lahui, The
Nation of Hawaii, the recently disbanded Hawaiian Sovereignty Elections
Council or any other organization became part of the group at hand and not
a separate faction.

The theme for the day was unity.

``Everybody was in one heart and one mind, I think,'' said Maxwell.

The meeting came about because of the disappointment experienced by Mauians
who attended a statewide conference on Oahu last month regarding the next
step in the sovereignty process. After the exhilaration of the results of
the Native Hawaiian Vote in September in which 73 percent of the
respondents said they wanted some form of self-rule, participants went to
Honolulu with high hopes of moving forward.

They returned discouraged, feeling they had not been heard.

So with another statewide gathering planned for Feb. 8-10 at Kualoa Park on
Oahu, Native Hawaiians of Maui Nui -- the ``greater Maui'' area of Maui,
Molokai, Lanai and Kahoolawe -- decided to take their own step forward
Saturday.

The very notice of the meeting caused a stir around the islands, according
to Maxwell.

``I had calls from all over the state asking, `What is this all about?' ''
he said. ``I said, `We're getting ourselves together.' ''

By the end of the day, no delegates had been elected nor official policies
etched in stone, but consensus was achieved on a number of things that
formed a mission statement of sorts.

Akoni Akana and Ed Lindsey both came up with several key goals that the
crowd unanimously agreed upon. Those in attendance enthusiastically
committed themselves to ho`olokahi (peace and unity) while pursuing
self-determination or sovereignty in some form and to get back their land
rights, their ocean rights, their birth rights as Native Hawaiians and
their water rights. They also dedicated themselves to the concept of Maui
Nui -- and not just Maui -- in decisions.

Akana, who said he'd never seen so many people at a sovereignty meeting on
Maui before, reminded his peers that conflicting factions only hurt
themselves.

``The government enjoys the differences -- they want us to be divided,'' he
said.

Lindsey concurred.

``We have not been able to play our Hawaiian card in this political process
because we're not united,'' he said. ``How are we going to proceed toward
working for the same thing, to come together, to accomplish the same thing?
We're not here to say, `I'm better than you,' we're all good. Who's our
worst enemy? Not them. Us!

``In Lahaina, there's development going on that's against us. The more we
milimili (move slowly), the more they're going to take. Do you want that?''

Everyone responded with a resounding ``No.''

Kekula Bray-Crawford supported the idea of unity, too, as long as diversity
was not lost in exchange.

``I want unity, but I also want to know about the differences,'' she said,
hoping everyone would be allowed ``to disagree and (know) why we disagree.''

``That's consensus, to me,'' she said. ``To find strength in diversity.''

Dana Naone Hall said her only interest in sovereignty ``stems solely from
my desire to protect the land, water and places important to our kupuna.''

Earlier, she said Hawaiians need to take advantage of the current mood in
high places on Oahu and Washington, D.C., before the political scene
becomes more hostile.

``Inevitably, the state and federal governments will be involved . . . ,''
she said. ``Are we at the point where we will seize the day and move
forward or will this process drag on until the political landscape changes?
The pendulum swings both ways, you know.''

Hall also recommended that when it comes time to decide on apportionment
for delegates, that a land base be used to determine the number of elected
representatives, not population. The fear, obviously, was that Oahu would
overwhelmingly control things if only population is considered.

Many Native Hawaiians opposed the vote last year because the state was
underwriting the costs and Gov. Ben Cayetano had appointed members of the
Hawaiian Sovereignty Elections Council.

As part of a response to that, Maxwell said a fund-raising concert will be
held Jan. 17 to earn money for anyone who would like to participate in the
February conference at Kualoa Park. Details about the concert will be
released later.

The group Saturday was not only a mixture of those affiliated with various
sovereignty organizations, but also a blend of age groups with articulate
young leaders of the future joining in along with the kupuna.

And it was kupuna Kealoha Camacho who may have made the most heartrending
observation about the urgency needed to spark the movement that started
more than 20 years ago.

``It can happen in your time,'' she said to those around her. ``For us
kupuna, we're makule (old) now. Our time has gone.''



--
  ___________________________________________________________
 |             Hawai`i - Independent & Sovereign             |
 |    exec@hawaii-nation.org     http://hawaii-nation.org/   |
 |___________________________________________________________|
"The cause of Hawaii and independence is larger and dearer than
the life of any man connected with it. Love of country is deep-
seated in the breast of every Hawaiian, whatever his station."
                     - Queen Lili`uokalani
_______________________________________________________________
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 14 Jan 1997 21:25:12 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Charles Alexander 
Subject:      recommend
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

I just wanted to put in a strong recommendation that people visit the light
& dust poets sight (http://www.thing.net/~grist/l&d/lighthom.htm) and check
out Robert Grenier's tribute to Larry Eigner. It takes a few minutes, but I
suggest looking at all 45 pages of this physically beautiful, moving work.

charles
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 14 Jan 1997 18:25:14 -1000
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Gabrielle Welford 
Subject:      Debating/Promoting Sustainability (FWD) (fwd)
Comments: To: poetics 
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 8 Jan 1997 16:05:56 -1000
From: Richard Salvador 

Aloha / Alii,

This may be of interest to members of all the three lists.  The
international community--all of us--have come a long way since Gro
Brundtland's international body of experts gave us _Our Common Future_.
With all the endless ontological differences being valorized in other
intellectual/philosophical traditions as the "proper" bases of peoples'
and nations' existences, I wonder how a "common future" can emerge from
all these.  But apparently, there have been successes at many levels.  I
tend to agree with this last point.  I haven't checked out "Inviting
Debates's" URL, but encourage all to participate in this discourse about
planetary ecological stewardship.

Mahalo for you time, and interests.


Richard Salvador
University of Hawai'i at Manoa
Honolulu, Hawai'i


>---------- Forwarded message ----------
>Date: Sun, 05 Jan 1997 10:50:28 -0500 (EST)
>From: Mike Nickerson / Inviting Debate 
>Subject: Turn Around Decade - Spun Out !
>
>        April 27, 1997 will mark a full decade since "Our Common Future"
>confirmed that the human family is living beyond the Earth's long-term
>ability to support us.  Thanks to the impeccable credentials of its
>authors, the World Commission on Environment and Development, this report
>ended years of official denial.
>
>        No one disputed the need for change - at first.
>
>        It was said at the time that we had ten years to turn civilization
>around and head for sustainability.
>
>        And turn around we did - twice!
>
>        The first turn around was a spectacular rise of public concern for
>the environment.  Recycling programs that had been put off for years were
>rapidly adopted, many attaining 90% participation within the first few
>months.  Information about environmental matters was everywhere.  Reduce,
>reuse, recycle was on everybody's lips.  With a little leadership an
>historic transformation of civilization would have taken root.
>
>        The currently powerful were not heard from at first.  Then, on
>October 19 1987, the day "Our Common Future" was tabled for discussion at
>the United Nations, enough financial dealers sold off shares in polluting
>industries to trigger the biggest stock market crash since 1929.  Soon the
>spin doctors were at work spinning the message of environmental sensitivity
>into that of sustainable development.  The focus shifted from concern for
>"drawing too heavily, too quickly, on already overdrawn resource accounts
>to be affordable far into the future without bankrupting those accounts."
>to the notion that we had to multiply industrial production ten fold to
>enable poorer nations to approximate western life styles.  Sustainable
>development, some espoused, was to stimulate sufficient development to
>sustain investment opportunities.  This second turn around paved the way
>for 'free' trade and economic globalization
>
>        The captains of industry accepted the advise that 'we don't have
>environmental problems, only public relations problems.'  The mechanisms
>for managing public opinion were employed and our governments are now
>dedicated to eliminating social and environmental constraints on
>development.
>
>        Will the mass media mark the tenth anniversary of "Our Common Future"?
>
>Not likely!  They are in the business of selling products not accommodating
>social transformation.  They sound a thunderous roar applauding perpetual
>economic expansion.  If we are to turn around and head toward an
>environmentally sustainable future, citizens will have to make their voices
>heard above the din of the mass media.
>
>        In "Horton Hears a Who", Dr. Seuss pictures a tiny world in great
>danger.  The only hope for the inhabitants was to join their voices
>together and call out as one.  Our circumstances are similar in that we
>have to make a call clear enough to be heard through the din of the mass
>media.
>
>        Citizens must know that there is an alternative to growing into
>oblivion.  Policies based on sustainability can provide for human need more
>effectively than those presently serving economic expansion.
>
>        This alternative introduces a spectrum of issues ranging from
>natural resources and pollution through equity and justice to the
>realization that there is far more to live for than material consumption.
>
>        The 10th anniversary of "Our Common Future" is an opportunity to
>make ourselves heard.  Please, help make sure it is not missed.
>
>        Inviting Debate offers a variety of materials and techniques for
>focusing public concern into an open discussion about the purpose of our
>economic system.  We'd like to hear from you.
>
>
>Inviting Debate
>sustain@web.net               http://www.cyberus.ca/choose.sustain
>P.O. Box 374, Merrickville
>Ontario, Canada, K0G 1N0
>(613) 269-3500
>
>
>           ////////////////////////////////////////
>           \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\
>             'If we don't change direction,
>                  we'll end up where we're going'
>           \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\
>           ////////////////////////////////////////
>
>
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 14 Jan 1997 18:26:07 -1000
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Gabrielle Welford 
Subject:      Tabasco hunger strikers may die (fwd)
Comments: To: poetics 
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

---------- Forwarded message ----------
>From: Alastair Wilson <100723.2363@CompuServe.COM>
>
>Tabasco refuse collectors on hunger strike may die
>Urgent solidarity needed
>
>Jorge Luis Alamilla Magan~a and Venancio Jimenez Martinez, the two Tabasco
>refuse collectors have now (January 7th,1997) been on hunger strike in front of
>the National Human Rights Commission for 84 days. Five other workers have been
>on hunger strike for 44 days and one of them, Agustin Vicente Sanchez has
>decided to stop taking any liquids as well. "If what they want is someone
>to die
>before they give in to our demands, I voluntarily offer my life for the sake of
>all my comrades and their families".
>
>Their health is very bad. They can barely speak or open their eyes. They have
>lost notion of time and suffer cramps in different parts of their bodies.
>Accoridng to one of the doctors they have reached a point were damage to their
>health could be irreversible. They could suffer permanent brain damage.
>
>The workers have recieved solidarity from many different social, political,
>trade union and human rights organisations. The PRD (main opposition party) NEC
>decided to fully support the workers' cause and their two main leaders, Manuel
>Lopez Obrador and Cuauhtemoc Cardenas visit the strikers everyday. The PRD has
>demanded the president's direct intervention in the conflict to no reply from
>Ernesto Zedillo yet.
>
>The demands of the workers are: reinstatement of all 336 refuse collectors
>sacked in Villahermosa (Tabasco), payement of the wages for the days of work
>lost, withdrawal of the 46 arrest warrants against them.
>
>They have been offered 190 jobs on casual basis and redundancy payements for
>another 110 workers but they have refused this "offer" and made clear that they
>want their jobs back.
>
>Urgent solidarity action is needed.
>Please circulate this appeal as widely as possible
>
>Send faxes of protest demanding immediate solutions to:
>
>Secretaria de Gobernacion
>Licenciado Esteban Moctezuma Barragan
>Fax: 525 521 27 63
>
>Letters of solidarity can be sent to:
>
>Broad Front of Democratic Struggle
>Calle Insurgentes n. 203
>Fracc. Insurgentes
>Ciudad Industrial Villahermosa
>TABASCO, Mexico.
>
>or emailed through:
>
>National Trade Union Commission,
>Party of the Democratic Revolution
>a la atencion de los trabajadores de la limpia de Tabasco
>joseluisr@laneta.apc.org
>
>Background information about the conflict:
>http://www.gn.apc.org/labournet/tabasco.html
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 14 Jan 1997 22:44:55 -0600
Reply-To:     maria damon 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         maria damon 
Subject:      Re: cremains

speaking of language and death, i had a short chat w/ the woman who teaches in
the room i teach in right before me:  she teaches writing for the health
sciences and sd she had students from all disciplines including mortuary
science.  when i expressed surprise that my university offered such a degree she
told me that when she'd been an english major u-grad 30 yrs ago or so, the
english dept was in the same building as the mortuary science dept.  someone put
up a sign that sd publish, pointing twoard the english dept, and a sign tht sd
perish, pointing toward the mortuary dept.

In message   UB
Poetics discussion group writes:
> On Tue, 14 Jan 1997, Mark Weiss wrote:
>
> > Thanks to the list for the help on "cremains"--it hasn't made it to the
> > OED.
>
> send it in; that's how dictionaries are "written," you know.  when i was
> an undergrad some 15 yrs ago, i took this great course called "american
> english" and we used to send stuff in to merriam-webster all the time.  in
> fact, we were the ones who got hackey-sak in!
>
> a side bar to cremains: i watched the wonderful japanese film _the
> funeral_ last night, and i highly reccomend it.
>
>
> best,
> shaunanne
> >
> > Talk about feeling cut off from the well-springs of language!
> >
> > Mark Weiss
> >
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 15 Jan 1997 03:12:22 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Mark Weiss 
Subject:      death
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Well, as long as I've inadvertently started this funereal thread...

Some years ago I was boarding a commuter flight from Boston to New York. As
I walked down the aisle to my seat past rows of unconcerned business people
in expensive suits reading their copies of the New York Times I was suddenly
and unaccountably overwhelmed with bitterness, and I said to myself, "These
people don't even know that they're about to die.
It wasn't until then that I realized I was afraid.
I found my seat between two other passengers. The flight started pleasantly
enough, but shortly after nightfall we hit some serious turbulence, and I
could imagine the plane suddenly tilting into a steep dive and screaming its
way towards the earth. At such moments I try to console myself that at least
the whole ordeal won't take very long--if I can control my panic for two or
three minutes it will all be over.
I had just come from a week at my girlfriend's commune, and I was filled
with peace and love; that's probably why I found myself thinking that our
last moments might be easier if my fellow passengers and I held hands.
I hadn't really looked at them til then. Neither of them seemed at all
concerned by the turbulence. To my left was a middle-aged woman who looked
like she ate steel bolts for breakfast. She used her newspaper was to create
a wall to discourage conversation. Definitely not the hand-holding type. To
my right, in the window seat, was an extremely neat man in his early
twenties. He wore a reddish tweed sport jacket,a dress shirt and tie, grey
slacks and highly polished brown shoes. He was immaculate. He appeared to be
one of those untouchable people who scatter the dust before them.
I mention all this because I was aware that there was something odd about
him, and it took me a few moments to home in on what it was. Then I noticed
his hands. They were clean. In fact, they were the cleanest hands that I had
ever seen. They were so clean that the thought of holding them was utterly
disgusting.
By now the turbulence had stopped, and the man and I began to talk. He asked
me what I did. I told him that I was studying in a training institute. He
said that he was, too, and I asked him which one. I hadn't heard of it,
which surprised me.
My world at the time was parochial enough that I assumed that, like me, he
was a psychotherapist in training, so when I asked him what he was studying
I expected him to tell me whether he was a Reichian, or a psychoanalyst, or
the like.
Mortuary Science, he answered.
That was it. That was why his hands and his whole being were so clean--he
had been soaking in formaldehyde. For a moment my gorge rose as I imagined
the smell of overpickled rats and frogs from high school bio lab.
Curiously, he wasn't at all embarassed by his profession, whereas I was
always wary of people's responses when I revealed my own.
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 15 Jan 1997 08:16:10 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Michael Boughn 
Subject:      Re: bp & the allness of poetryics sensate
In-Reply-To:  <199701142037.NAA00742@pantano.theriver.com> from "Charles
              Alexander" at Jan 14, 97 01:37:42 pm
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

> The quintessential Nichol bibliographer is jwcurry, who himself has produced
> a number of small-sized pamphlets, some of them hand-rubber-stamped, by
> Nichol & others. Curry's in Toronto, and I don't have his address at hand,
> but someone here may have it. The situation of McLelland & Stewart
> publishing Nichol is complicated as well because McLelland & Stewart
> acquired Coach House Press in some sense, while leaving it a
> semi-independence, I believe. Or perhaps it's just that they became the
> distributor for Coach House. Does someone know for sure?
>

Funny you should ask, as yesterday I was at the new (old) Caoch House
with Robin Blaser trying to get ahold of the old (new) Coach House in
order to get some of Robin's books for the reading tonight.

It seems that nobody knows nuthin, or at least what they claim to know
never pans out. M&S neither acquired CH nor distributes its books.
They were storing the inventory temporarily. McClintock has offered
the authors the option of buying their books. Otherwsie they'll be
remaindered. Some other small presses such as Talonbooks have acquired
some authors' inventory, but we were unable to locate any copies of the
Holy Forest in Toronto. M&S knows nothing, Canbooks claims to have
sent everything back to the authors, and McClintock never returned our
call. So who knows.

The good news is that Bevington and Coleman are moving ahead to
rebuild the new (old ) Coach House and they have the rights to bp's
stuff, so it will be in print.

Mike
mboughn@chass.utoronto.ca
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 15 Jan 1997 08:56:48 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Mark Wallace 
Subject:      what can be taught
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

Miekal And responds to Graham Foust's question about how to teach poetry
with the suggestion that Graham's statement "assumes that poetry can be
taught." But it seems a pretty good assumption to me, at least in some
cases. My own experience, to the extent I remember it, is that someone
taught me about poetry, and I'm grateful for it. I'm pretty sure I wasn't
born knowing all about it.

Mark Wallace
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 15 Jan 1997 08:58:19 -0600
Reply-To:     maria damon 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         maria damon 
Subject:      Re: bp & the allness of poetryics sensate

aha; i tried to order the holy forest for my class this winter and the "not
available" msg came back.  i knew ch had gone under and been resurrected but had
no idea this wd result in the downright unavailability of stock.  naive me.-md
>
> Funny you should ask, as yesterday I was at the new (old) Caoch House
> with Robin Blaser trying to get ahold of the old (new) Coach House in
> order to get some of Robin's books for the reading tonight.
>
> It seems that nobody knows nuthin, or at least what they claim to know
> never pans out. M&S neither acquired CH nor distributes its books.
> They were storing the inventory temporarily. McClintock has offered
> the authors the option of buying their books. Otherwsie they'll be
> remaindered. Some other small presses such as Talonbooks have acquired
> some authors' inventory, but we were unable to locate any copies of the
> Holy Forest in Toronto. M&S knows nothing, Canbooks claims to have
> sent everything back to the authors, and McClintock never returned our
> call. So who knows.
>
> The good news is that Bevington and Coleman are moving ahead to
> rebuild the new (old ) Coach House and they have the rights to bp's
> stuff, so it will be in print.
>
> Mike
> mboughn@chass.utoronto.ca
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 15 Jan 1997 09:02:37 -0600
Reply-To:     maria damon 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         maria damon 
Subject:      Re: death

nice post, mark weiss!  are there any mortuary scientists on the list who would
like to undertake to persuade us of the quotidien, normative nature of their
work?--md  ps or failing that, how 'bout educating us in some mortuary jargon in
addition to "cremains?"
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 15 Jan 1997 08:51:26 -0800
Reply-To:     doncheney@geocities.com
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Don Cheney 
Organization: UC San Diego
Subject:      running and reading
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

this morning, while doing my usual treadmill running
at the local "Family Fatness" gym in San Diego, i
had the unusual experience of reading the closed
captions while "watching" "good morning america."
reading tv while running or even just watching tv
while running was too much for me until just recently
as I've gotten used to running on a treadmill. before,
if i didn't pay attention to my running i'd falter
or skid on the machine.

anyway, reading closed captioned stuff can be very
funny. the best parts of course are typos or when
people transcribing don't know what the word is and
take a stab at it. the only quote i remember was:
"and our reporter, Jane Doe, will be leer to tell
you about it."

Don
--
visit Don Cheney's Home Page & Clean Neck Shop
http://www.geocities.com/~doncheney
doncheney@geocities.com
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 15 Jan 1997 09:04:53 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         MAXINE CHERNOFF 
Subject:      Re: death
Comments: To: maria damon 
In-Reply-To:  <32dcf18d121d715@mhub1.tc.umn.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

Maria:  There was a fascinating piece in Harper's, I believe, about a year
ago, I believe, in which a British mortician wrote about preparing his own
father to be buried.  Of course, there's also Jessica Mitford, but her
take is much different.

Maxine Chernoff

On Wed, 15 Jan 1997, maria damon wrote:

> nice post, mark weiss!  are there any mortuary scientists on the list who would
> like to undertake to persuade us of the quotidien, normative nature of their
> work?--md  ps or failing that, how 'bout educating us in some mortuary jargon in
> addition to "cremains?"
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 15 Jan 1997 12:00:16 +0100
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Miekal And 
Subject:      sustaining the lifethread
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Mark Wallace wrote:
>
> Miekal And responds to Graham Foust's question about how to teach poetry
> with the suggestion that Graham's statement "assumes that poetry can be
> taught." But it seems a pretty good assumption to me, at least in some
> cases.

Well, you see mark, I guess it depends on how & where you live your
life.  The only poetry class I ever had in my life was taught by a Poet
(with a capital P) named Doug Flaherty, who used words like "bone" &
"flesh" a lot in his writing.  I think Robert Lowell, Yeats & Ginsburg
were his things.  Back then I was into John Cage & Louie Z (ok & throw
in Olson).  I think what he taught me was that if you wanted to be a
poet go out there & sell yourself, every day until someone takes notice.

Very early on I decided that it was far more important to keep writing &
keep reading.  So I quit school (after one semester) & lived in the
library & wrote an 800 page long poem called Samsara Congeries, which is
my only work that has never been published.  This first hand involvement
with the text & its life taught me that the things I do to live my life
& make my art were inseparable, that going to school to "be taught" how
to write & what literature was deprived me of all the daily connections
that were my inspiration for writing to begin with.

Over the years I have met many many young folks who were incredibly
inspired to create great works while in the artificial environment of
the university but then they graduate, move out into the world (well a
lot of them never really leave the university) & are stunned to find out
that the farmer down the road cant quote Ezra Pound in his sleep.

We see it all the time at Dreamtime, young folks fed up with writing
programs, teachers, institutions, studio workshops & wanting to know
where their food comes from, how to build a decent shelter & what poems
to chant when your out in the garden weeding.

So while my own personal interests spans the gamut of things discussed
under the cover of this list, my efforts in teaching are much more
random, spontaneous & based on what is useful in everyday life.  I will
show folks how to make their own books, how to distribute, & overwhelm
them with the corpus of what has been created for them to sort out
themselves.  But you wont find me carrying on about the economies of
sentence structure in first generation language poetry.

My point is really quite brief. It what you bring yourself to, that
opens the lifelong journey of attending to language's collective
evolution. & learning to learn with in the context of your own life
experiences is far more remarkable than consuming teaching.

Miekal who if da levy would have ever made it as an english professor

My own experience, to the extent I remember it, is that someone
> taught me about poetry, and I'm grateful for it. I'm pretty sure I wasn't
> born knowing all about it.
>
> Mark Wallace

--
@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#
Dreamtime Village website: http://net22.com/dreamtime
QAZINGULAZA: And/Was/Wakest website:
http://net22.com/qazingulaza
e-mail for DT & And/Was: dtv@mwt.net
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 15 Jan 1997 13:06:56 EST
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         henry gould 
Subject:      Re: sustaining the lifethread
In-Reply-To:  Message of Wed, 15 Jan 1997 12:00:16 +0100 from 

Here's a little something to chant while out in yon non-artificial
rutabagaparadise:

How you gonna keep em   down on the farm
after they've seen the Net.
They can go around the block to the coffee shop
& surf the whole alphabet,
they can study all they want  on a spiderweb,
& even learn to scan
out of an old tin can!
O
how you gonna teach em   not to learn,
how you gonna lead em when they want to blab,
O
the grass is always greener in the cyber-lab,
over at the Universe-High-Tea....
O
                  (chorus of straw hats & overalls)
         gimme that old time manure,
         gimme that old time manure,
         gimme that old time manure,
         it's good compost for me!  (etc.)
- Hank ("Hayseed") Gould
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 15 Jan 1997 10:23:59 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         David Bromige 
Subject:      artificial environments
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

        mikael And (whose postings i have found consistently interesting
and on-target) has rather "set me orf" with his "in the artificial
environment of the university". Perhaps because i spent many years of my
life in the artificial environment of the university. but before that, i
spent considerable time in the artificial environment of a door-to-door
magazine salesman, and before that, in the artificial environment of an
invoice clerk for canadian pacific. Before that, i worked in the artificial
environment of a dairy farm; before that, in an artificial environment in a
publishing house. in my evenings and on my days off throughout these years,
i could often be ound in the artificial environment of a bar or a
restaurant, or the artificial environment of a poetry reading. Sometimes i
was asleep in an artificial environment. In infancy, i was in the
artificial environment of my parents' flat. Later, as my father's labors in
the artificial environment of newsreels brought increasing amounts of
artificial currency, their artificial residence became a house.

 we boys played our artificial soccer in various local parks and once when
injured i went to an artificial hospital. throughout these years artifical
food preserved some semblance of life (however artificially induced) in
your correspondent, and here i find myself today in the artificial
environment of cyberspace. db
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 15 Jan 1997 12:40:35 -0600
Reply-To:     maria damon 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         maria damon 
Subject:      Re: artificial environments

thanks db.  i'm  no fan of my current artificial environment, but my artificial
environment at hampshire college was dreamy.  my artificial environment at
stanford took some getting used to, but once i'd done my coursework and was free
to read and write by the manmade swimmingpool or in the faux-tuscan atmosphere
of the caffe verona, i was joyous most of the time.  artificial environments
that give the the time and space to feel myself existing are okay by me, though
if i have to be at school more than 3 hrs at a stretch or more than 2 days a
week i generally get sick, flu-ish symptoms.--md

In message   UB Poetics discussion
group writes:
>         mikael And (whose postings i have found consistently interesting
> and on-target) has rather "set me orf" with his "in the artificial
> environment of the university". Perhaps because i spent many years of my
> life in the artificial environment of the university. but before that, i
> spent considerable time in the artificial environment of a door-to-door
> magazine salesman, and before that, in the artificial environment of an
> invoice clerk for canadian pacific. Before that, i worked in the artificial
> environment of a dairy farm; before that, in an artificial environment in a
> publishing house. in my evenings and on my days off throughout these years,
> i could often be ound in the artificial environment of a bar or a
> restaurant, or the artificial environment of a poetry reading. Sometimes i
> was asleep in an artificial environment. In infancy, i was in the
> artificial environment of my parents' flat. Later, as my father's labors in
> the artificial environment of newsreels brought increasing amounts of
> artificial currency, their artificial residence became a house.
>
>  we boys played our artificial soccer in various local parks and once when
> injured i went to an artificial hospital. throughout these years artifical
> food preserved some semblance of life (however artificially induced) in
> your correspondent, and here i find myself today in the artificial
> environment of cyberspace. db
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 15 Jan 1997 12:47:07 -0600
Reply-To:     maria damon 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         maria damon 
Subject:      Re: sustaining the lifethread

miekal a rites

So while my own personal interests spans the gamut of things discussed
under the cover of this list, my efforts in teaching are much more
random, spontaneous & based on what is useful in everyday life.  I will
show folks how to make their own books, how to distribute, & overwhelm
them with the corpus of what has been created for them to sort out
themselves.  But you wont find me carrying on about the economies of
sentence structure in first generation language poetry.

well, that's my belief about teaching too; that it's basically about hanging out
and sharing stuff.  i've managed to put myself in situations, mostly as a
student, with teachers who do that.  as a teacher in a mega-bureaucratic
institution it's more of a challenge,but i manage to teach topics that draw
small enough bodies of students that we can in fact develop into a community for
the 10 weeks that we're together.  i also make a point of explaining that my
style is random and that the digression is the event for me, so i try to prepare
them.  moderate success.  it was very stressful to be considered lazy and
ineffectual by my colleagues before i had tenure (the place runs on calvinist
busy-oholism), but now who cares.--md
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 15 Jan 1997 10:58:10 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Mark Weiss 
Subject:      Re: sustaining the lifethread
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Boy, does that ever miss the point.
Here's how I learned to be a poet. I got hooked early on the awful stuff in
my mother's HS anthology. When I was in my teens I started looking for other
poets. I read a lot. I went to readings. In school I stayed away from
writing courses, but I read "the canon," and you know, you can learn a lot
from Ben Jonson or Milton. Other poets turned me on to their enthusiasms,
and we edited each other's work. For a while I roomed with Chuck Stein--we
would read at each other for hours across the crude lilac-colored coffee
table I'd cobbled together (sometimes by the light of a yellow light
bulb--it turned the table a ghostly white). I learned from older poets, some
of whom were incredibly generous with their time. I started a reading series
and a magazine--more and more poetry.
        And I dropped out of grad school and became a psychiatric social
worker. My "rutabagaparadise." I spent 15 years looking and listening like
crazy. I don't know how many of my underclass and working class clients I
helped, but they certainly helped me to another education.
        I love teaching, and I teach in writing programs on ocasion, but I'm
very aware that these programs are there primarily to provide jobs for the
likes of me--an MFA never certified anybody as a poet. When my students ask
me what they need to know to be poets I tell them "everything."
        The other day I heard a reading by a poet all of whose references
were to books. I got the references. But I wasn't surprised that although
he's read in college courses no one beyond the walls has ever heard of him.
If we hope to have some impact on the world we have to engage it.
        Olson began his last teaching stint at Connecticut by asking the
assembled students which ones were writing majors. They raised their hands,
and he tossed them out.
        Sometimes doctors or insurance lawyers or even farmers become poets.

        So here's my grand utopian fantasy and syllabus. Let there be a
universal draft after HS, during which young men and women, separated from
their normal geography and social class, learn about each other while
repairing the infrastructure ( the least racist institution in our polity is
the military). And let no one be allowed to apply for graduate school until
they are thirty or have been out of college for at least five years,
whichever comes first.
        Try them rutabagas.




At 01:06 PM 1/15/97 EST, you wrote:
>Here's a little something to chant while out in yon non-artificial
>rutabagaparadise:
>
>How you gonna keep em   down on the farm
>after they've seen the Net.
>They can go around the block to the coffee shop
>& surf the whole alphabet,
>they can study all they want  on a spiderweb,
>& even learn to scan
>out of an old tin can!
>O
>how you gonna teach em   not to learn,
>how you gonna lead em when they want to blab,
>O
>the grass is always greener in the cyber-lab,
>over at the Universe-High-Tea....
>O
>                  (chorus of straw hats & overalls)
>         gimme that old time manure,
>         gimme that old time manure,
>         gimme that old time manure,
>         it's good compost for me!  (etc.)
>- Hank ("Hayseed") Gould
>
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 15 Jan 1997 14:05:20 EST
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         henry 
Subject:      Re: sustaining the lifethread
In-Reply-To:  Message of Wed, 15 Jan 1997 10:58:10 -0800 from
              

Mark, I think they tried you're utopia over in China a while back.
Maybe you can call yourselves the "Well-Read Guards".  - Hank G.
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 15 Jan 1997 13:16:02 -0600
Reply-To:     maria damon 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         maria damon 
Subject:      Re: sustaining the lifethread

mark weiss writes:

>         Olson began his last teaching stint at Connecticut by asking the
> assembled students which ones were writing majors. They raised their hands,
> and he tossed them out.
>

i like your post very much mark but i'd like, without meaning to completely diss
one of the gods of the list, to suggest the possibility that in this case the
"writer" might throw "writing majors" out of his class because he doesn't want
any competition?
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 15 Jan 1997 11:17:38 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Mark Weiss 
Subject:      Re: sustaining the lifethread
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Actually, they tried part of it here once. They called it the WPA. Next time
you go to a state or national park you may wish to thank those kids of
yesteryear.


At 02:05 PM 1/15/97 EST, you wrote:
>Mark, I think they tried you're utopia over in China a while back.
>Maybe you can call yourselves the "Well-Read Guards".  - Hank G.
>
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 15 Jan 1997 11:17:43 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Mark Weiss 
Subject:      Re: sustaining the lifethread
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Actually, they tried it here once. They called it the CCC. Next time you go
to a state or national park you may want to thank those kids of yesteryear.

I have no expectation that I'll ever see my fantasy actualized. But I do
think that it merits better than a cold war riposte.

At 02:05 PM 1/15/97 EST, you wrote:
>Mark, I think they tried you're utopia over in China a while back.
>Maybe you can call yourselves the "Well-Read Guards".  - Hank G.
>
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 15 Jan 1997 13:53:07 +0100
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Miekal And 
Subject:      terrestial reclamation
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Goddess
did I put the crimson
veil in front
of the charging bull.

Before Maria
starts shaking fingers
at me &
never
talks to me
again

I should say
that my hands typed
artificial when I
meant to say

e s t e e m e d

I have taken the
liberty to search
& replace David B's
telling life story
with the proper
appellation.

Miekal who
still cant picture
David B in overhauls,
Banvel cap, & shit kickers
milking cows.  Who woulda
thunkit.

For those that want to
read more into more into mywords
than  my  well-intentioned mouthoffed brashness:

what I honestly am interested
in are evolved discussions of how the
act of poetry is sustainably designed
into everyday life. I choose the life of spending
my days creating an eco-village within
the remnants of an existing
150 year old dairy hamlet
because nearly everyone I know is
in there behind those cement walls
& florescent lights & very
few are out there in the front
lines of poetic terrorism.


By analogy, because the university
wanted to "teach" agriculture to farmers,
knowing most of them
would never go back to school, created
cooperative extensions, in each county,
& those ag extentions agents would
go farm to farm & introduce themselves
& offer information, support, networking.
The farmers were thus able to continue
milking but slowly change their
practices to more sustainabler methods
gradually over time.


Where did I learn about poetry really?
The overwhelming answer was by writing
& publishing & networking with literally
1000s of other writers, performance artists,
noisicians, plagiarists,  mail artists, language
poets, & small interactive arts organizations.
This is a way of life, not a curriculum that
I will graduate from & become a specialist.

Lyx (formerly Liz Was) & I am
homeschooling our son Zon.  He is 9
years old & not all that interested in learning
how to read (even tho he was into it when
he was 2),  he IS interested in collecting
animals skeletons & gluing them back
together, making a comic book to put up
at our website, learning the latin to the many
100s of plants that we grow here at Dreamtime
& he takes his turn cooking for as many as
25 people. He is precociously verbal & can
carry on a conversation with any adult on
any subject including chaos theory or the sentient
intelligence of avians.

I have tried to "teach" him how to read. He cries,
screams, throws books at me
(dont worry none of yours out there).
My observation is that the more I back
off & let him be, the easier more
naturally he learns to learn, to become
excited by ideas, to ask questions.
TO FIGURE IT OUT BY HIMSELF.
The more I become his companion
& the less I try to "teach" him,
the more our relationship becomes
a reciprocity of love & respect.

My tangled thread
is a reflexive navigation
thru what is not said
& what I see as a genuine
deep fear that poetry
will not not survive as
long as it remains separate
from all other creative
impulses known to
man.

--
@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#
Dreamtime Village website: http://net22.com/dreamtime
QAZINGULAZA: And/Was/Wakest website:
http://net22.com/qazingulaza
e-mail for DT & And/Was: dtv@mwt.net
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 15 Jan 1997 13:55:18 +0100
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Miekal And 
Subject:      e s t e e m e d  environments
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Perhaps because i spent many years of my
life in the esteemed environment of the university. but before that, i
spent considerable time in the esteemed environment of a door-to-door
magazine salesman, and before that, in the esteemed environment of an
invoice clerk for canadian pacific. Before that, i worked in the
esteemed
environment of a dairy farm; before that, in an esteemed environment in
a
publishing house. in my evenings and on my days off throughout these
years,
i could often be ound in the esteemed environment of a bar or a
restaurant, or the esteemed environment of a poetry reading. Sometimes i
was asleep in an esteemed environment. In infancy, i was in the
esteemed environment of my parents' flat. Later, as my father's labors
in
the esteemed environment of newsreels brought increasing amounts of
esteemed currency, their esteemed residence became a house.

 we boys played our esteemed soccer in various local parks and once when
injured i went to an esteemed hospital. throughout these years artifical
food preserved some semblance of life (however esteemedly induced) in
your correspondent, and here i find myself today in the esteemed
environment of cyberspace. db as detourned by ma
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 15 Jan 1997 14:53:42 EST
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         henry 
Subject:      Re: sustaining the lifethread
In-Reply-To:  Message of Wed, 15 Jan 1997 11:17:38 -0800 from
              

On Wed, 15 Jan 1997 11:17:38 -0800 Mark Weiss said:
>Actually, they tried part of it here once. They called it the WPA. Next time
>you go to a state or national park you may wish to thank those kids of
>yesteryear.

As I recall, the WPA wasn't mandatory.  Neither were the CETA projects,
like the one I managed (teaching kids to build solar greenhouses.  Some
things, by God, CAN be taught.  We sang Mao's poems--set to music
by Carl Sandburg, no less!--while we dug those foundation pits.
See my memoir, _The Need for Rutabagas_, Univ. of Left Overbie Press,
1982). - HG
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 15 Jan 1997 13:12:33 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "Aldon L. Nielsen" 
Subject:      Re: bleeding the lifthread
In-Reply-To:  
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

No, the WPA wasn't mandatory -- one could always choose to remain
unemployed and unpaid --

General Hershey had a nifty version of this for me back in my youth --
It wasn't mandatory that I leave the artificial environment of college to
do social work in upstate New York; I coould have chosen to be removed
from the artificial environment of university study for the artificial
environment of an American militrary base in Viet Nam --

I could and did study and write everywhere -- but it was a whole lot
easier to get what I needed for my work while attached to a college --

odd sense of what is and is not mandatory in the American economy
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 15 Jan 1997 13:14:55 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Mark Weiss 
Subject:      Re: sustaining the lifethread
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Let me go a little further into dreamtime. In France all males are supposed
to spend a year in the military. I'm hazy on the details, and I'm sure
there's a bunch of ways out, and I know from riding the metro for a couple
of years that the boys capitalize on the experience by becoming drunk as
mouffettes every weekend; I'm not sure that they do very much for the
defense of the realm. The Swiss require of virtually everyone a year of
service. And most parts of the US require 12 years of incarceration in
classrooms for the young and fidgety. All societies establish institutions
whose purpose is the socializing of the young, whatever their other
functions may be. It helps them through adolescence, serves as a mild
equalizer, and enforces the sense of membership in a community. Some
societies offer something in return. In those totalitarian countries like,
say, France, university education is a limited but free commodity, and
health care aint bad. England, too, altho they may have to start imposing
some fees that would be considered derisory at any US  school. As a result,
doctors, say, don't feel justified in becoming wealthy on the back of human
suffering.
Required service is more the rule than the exception in even the most
libertarian societies.
My idea of a five year hiatus has to do with a different kind of
exploration. Years ago I taught in the psych dept. at SUNY-Old Westbury. As
some of you may know OW is designed to meet the needs of kids from, ahem,
the lower social orders, and it does, or at least did, so (I have no idea
what the situation is now) pretty well. Our kids got a decent education. At
the end of each year the psych faculty would meet informally with the
graduating majors. This was a sort of rite of passage--we could now
socialize together. But of course we were more avuncular than sociable. One
faculty member recalled that when he was in our students' shoes his advisor
had suggested that a year off in "the real world" might be advisable before
applying to graduate school. "And he was right," this dunderhead allowed.
The scion of a family of enormous wealth, he had spent the year touring
South America, from resort to resort. He got a great tan. But our students
from the ghettos were somewhat nonplussed by his story.
We tend to live in gated communities. That prof had chosen a very expensive
one for his wanderjahr. A grad program in writing can be such a place. Five
unstructured years outside the gates, it seems to me, might make the
gatedness a little bit less tolerable. And what one had to report of that
time might be an interesting new criterion for entry.
But none of this will ever happen. Most Americans still think of even
universal health care as a commie plot.
I have to typeset now.


At 02:53 PM 1/15/97 EST, you wrote:
>On Wed, 15 Jan 1997 11:17:38 -0800 Mark Weiss said:
>>Actually, they tried part of it here once. They called it the WPA. Next time
>>you go to a state or national park you may wish to thank those kids of
>>yesteryear.
>
>As I recall, the WPA wasn't mandatory.  Neither were the CETA projects,
>like the one I managed (teaching kids to build solar greenhouses.  Some
>things, by God, CAN be taught.  We sang Mao's poems--set to music
>by Carl Sandburg, no less!--while we dug those foundation pits.
>See my memoir, _The Need for Rutabagas_, Univ. of Left Overbie Press,
>1982). - HG
>
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 15 Jan 1997 17:14:23 +0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Bil Brown 
Subject:      Re: sustaining the lifethread
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Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

>Boy, does that ever miss the point.
>Here's how I learned to be a poet. I got hooked early on the awful stuff in
>my mother's HS anthology. When I was in my teens I started looking for other
>poets. I read a lot. I went to readings. In school I stayed away from
>writing courses, but I read "the canon," and you know, you can learn a lot
>from Ben Jonson or Milton. Other poets turned me on to their enthusiasms,
>and we edited each other's work.

This is of course, the academy of hard-knocks. I can relate (although my
education is from writers at the Naropa Institute). Even at Naropa, I
decided long before I tried to get that MFA that it wasn't important to the
writing of poesy. It was a credential, and it was one that I have thus far
decided (after being 26 grand in debt) that I don't need.

Bernadette Mayer was the most influential my decision not to go on. NOTE: I
have gone back and forth with this decision often. Simply because being a
working class artist, I have to work in shitty jobs (typesetting of all
fucking things) to maintain myself if I DO NOT become an academic.

Bernadette said, "if you want to get something from a poet, go to that
poet." Somehow it resonated, very Poundian, and very Ginsberg. Did AG (or
anyone else, Creely for that matter) keep up with thier education AFTER
they were out of school. Somewhat, but not really.

. I learned from older poets, some
>of whom were incredibly generous with their time. I started a reading series
>and a magazine--more and more poetry.

THIS TO ME IS THE MOST IMPORTANT VEIW. If there is such a thing as
AESTHETICS it didn't start at the academy. It started with ppl like Clayton
Eshelman & Caterpillar, when someone goes way out of the fucking way to get
a couple of hundred bucks to make a little 'zine taht publishes friends &
the noteable writers of the day. Of course you're going to publish yrself &
then... yr notable too. It's pretty simple really. But the poetry HADS to
stand on it's own!!


>        I love teaching, and I teach in writing programs on ocasion, but I'm
>very aware that these programs are there primarily to provide jobs for the
>likes of me--an MFA never certified anybody as a poet. When my students ask
>me what they need to know to be poets I tell them "everything."

I do the occasional workshop to. Since I don't have an MFA at the end of my
name I have to use associations to get ppl to think (what was it a student
recently said about my bio -- "The REAL Thing"). Granted, an MFA doesn't
make a poet -- but it certifies a TEACHER to the large majority of ppl that
will pay you to teach. I can't teach in a University setting without it.
And, looking at the Formalist traditions STILL prevelant in arts education,
I think MORE of US should tech in UNIVERSITIES. (*BAD, BAD ACADEMIC* *Slap*
SLAP*)


>        The other day I heard a reading by a poet all of whose references
>were to books. I got the references. But I wasn't surprised that although
>he's read in college courses no one beyond the walls has ever heard of him.
>If we hope to have some impact on the world we have to engage it.

When I was in school, at Naropa again. Anselm Hollo was a real help with my
work and a real Knight when it came to defending it. I used references upon
references & it was a dense mesh of shit I couldn't get thru now if I was
paid by the hour to footnote it. I likened myself to Olson, or Pound, or
Waldman, or someone else that was in my head. I wasn't writing for anyone
else really, but I wanted everyone to read it. I think this is the
academics hell. Or some sort of Bardo situation that likens Hell -- if I
DIDN'T come out of the habit of delusionary verses & literary references I
think I would have gone a biot madder than I already am.


>        Olson began his last teaching stint at Connecticut by asking the
>assembled students which ones were writing majors. They raised their hands,
>and he tossed them out.

HAHAHAHA. I love this story. But methinks it was for a different reason
than what you are supposing. But a good *reference* none the less.


>        So here's my grand utopian fantasy and syllabus. Let there be a
>universal draft after HS, during which young men and women, separated from
>their normal geography and social class, learn about each other while
>repairing the infrastructure ( the least racist institution in our polity is
>the military). And let no one be allowed to apply for graduate school until
>they are thirty or have been out of college for at least five years,
>whichever comes first.

I agree. I think Bobbie Hawkins would agree. Most of us, as writers/poets
have not lived enough to write about anything in our twenties. So if that
is the beginning of our "life's work" then we are going to be referential.
No life, man. God that's pretty depressing.


I really thank you for your comments. No one ever seems to comment on
things like this when I write them, so I thought I would write you back...
in detail to get the point across. Issues like these are REAL to the
writers on this LIST.

Thank you.

Bil Brown
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 15 Jan 1997 17:22:48 +0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Bil Brown 
Subject:      Re: sustaining the lifethread
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<>

You are not the only poet out there that does not have an MFA that does not
want one & that does not need one to feel "certified" to teach.

I am a former Naropa student that when asked what my degree distinction was
answered, "um... educating the muse."

I think I am literate enough to be on this list, I know most of the ppl who
are the Buffalo-Cannon of disenfranchized poets & poetics. I read articles,
teach workshops. And wish I could teach in a University setting, but debt &
stucent loans keep me out -- so I teach in community centers & stat my own
programs, get readers like Anne Waldman & Carla Harryman out here... try to
do the best I can in a small community.

In Louisville, there are so few MFA grads that we are sought after like
doctors. Of course I opted not to get my MFA until I was thirty & a little
more mature finacially.

Right now I typeset to make my living.

I have to typeset now.


Bil Brown
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 15 Jan 1997 15:17:44 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "Jeffrey W. Timmons" 
Subject:      Re: sustaining the lifethread
Comments: To: Bil Brown 
In-Reply-To:  
MIME-version: 1.0
Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
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> >        So here's my grand utopian fantasy and syllabus. Let there be a
> >universal draft after HS, during which young men and women, separated from
> >their normal geography and social class, learn about each other while
> >repairing the infrastructure ( the least racist institution in our polity is
> >the military). And let no one be allowed to apply for graduate school until
> >they are thirty or have been out of college for at least five years,
> >whichever comes first.

ill pass on the grand utopian fantasy and the universal draft.  but id
like my twenties well-done and the garnish of experiences on the side
please.  the military the least racist institution?  if you believe
military.  sexism and gender-bias is a whole 'nother can of birds.

jeffrey timmons
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 15 Jan 1997 17:40:27 +0100
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Miekal And 
Subject:      Bern Porter
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New from Xexoxial:

HOLD ON TO YOUR HAT Interviews by Miekal And & others with Bern Porter
about the Institute of Advanced Thinking in Belfast Maine.  5.5 x 8.5,
75 pages, xerox handbound. Designed by Ben Meyers.  $8 for paper, $30
for hand-painted hardcovers & signed by the author.

Prepublication discount to Poetics list subscribers. $5 for softcover.

Here is couple pages from the book:

MA:  General education seems to have gone.

BP:  Well not only has it gone, but the BA degree, that catch-all
diversion, is now to be patched up within employable specifics, while
the methods we have noted fit almost immediately into an income return.
        Perhaps more significant than monetary results is the recognition
through achievement, as, for example, Ana�s Nin, who early had formal
assistance, read everything in sight, chose a master to work with and
for, and then took off�not only to produce, but to affect, influence and
be someone.

MA:  How does the Institute fit into all this?

BP:  Well I�ve given the history from the earliest times down to 1989,
where there are 32 of us, free of governments, free of academics,
consider all the problems I�ve listed, but concerned with, as I�ve said,
the 3 forms of education that I�ve just noted.

MA:  Is advanced thinking different from stream of consciousness
association, altered states?

BP:  Well, the word �advanced�, as the Institute employs it, means a
rejection, a complete rejection of all past methodologies, with an
obvious forward progression in a manner that the current press
technology calls �breakthroughs�. We�re interested in producing what are
called �breakthroughs�. But at the Institute, a breakthrough is
considered anything that�s obvious, rational and reasonable, as advanced
through the greatest possible number of people. The free systems of
education already cited�learning in the womb, learning at home, study
apprenticeship�the first two of these, by modern electronic means, are
fine examples.
        I would like to give some other examples here, but before I do so, I
would like to point out�people ask me what do you do when you are doing
advanced thinking?
        And the answer is, we are making the complex simple, that whatever is
reasonable and obvious we are undertaking�and we have developed out of
this what is called the Bern Porter Theory of Simplistics, which can be
reduced more or less as follows:   It is easier to complicate things
than to simplify them. This is a manmade truism; rather than make things
simple or obvious or reasonable we tend to mess it up and complicate it.
Whatever is reasonable we make unreasonable, whatever is obvious we
obscure, whatever is easy we make it difficult, whatever is difficult we
never make it easy and whatever is complicated we tend to make it more
complicated and whatever is complicated is never made easy. So whatever
is obvious is never done, whatever is reasonable is never done.
        These are the elements of Simplistics.
        So when you ask me what is advanced thinking then it reduces to making
the complicated simple. A very staggering example that�s going on right
now in Europe, in connection with this view of looking at old things in
a new way. There are countries in Europe who�ve looked at Marxism for 40
years, who�ve looked at Leninism for 40 years, now looking at old things
in a new way. People for 40 years have been bound up with the theories
of Marx, the theories of Lenin, theories of Stalin. And in physics we�re
looking at the ideas of Newton and Einstein.  Everything is now under
re-examination.
        These people in Europe after 40 years of looking at this old thing in a
new way, will suddenly look at socialism, they will throw out communism,
they will look at democracy, and they will add to, and build upon, and
build a greater democracy, as a result of looking at an old thing in a
new way.
        And this is a part of the Theory of Simplistics that we advocate and
develop at the Institute. Please, please, look at old things, old
attitudes, common things around you, and look at them in a new and fresh
way.
        Now a very classic example of this is our friend and honorary member of
the Institute, Buckminster Fuller. He lived on an island, his family
lived on an island off the coast of Maine for about 80 years. He was
schooled by ships going by, he would row out to the ships who were
taking out lumber and bringing in paper and salt and products that were
used in Maine.
        He looked at the globe, a sphere, a globe of the Earth, 12 inches in
diameter, he looked at it for years, and said �I�m tired of looking at
this thing. What can I do to it?� Well it turned out he said �I can cut
it up.� And it turned out since it was a sphere and a globe, a model of
the Earth, each section he cut up had to be a triangle. Having cut it up
into triangles, he laid the triangles on the floor flat and looked at
them in a fresh and new way, and to his amazement he could understand
the meaning of the equator, the tropic of Cancer, the tropic of
Capricorn, the north pole, the south pole, the relation of the lands to
the water; he could see the world and the continents in a new way. He�d
been hampered all his life by a globe, now suddenly the globe was
reduced to pieces and the pieces were flat on the floor, a flat surface,
two-dimensional. He was able then to see in a fresh way. This is for us
a very classic example of looking at old things in a new way.
        The people of Europe are now looking at old systems of communism,
Marxism and the rest, and are seeking a new way, what we call a
breakthrough.
        Another very interesting example is a solution to problems�take a
simple thing like gun laws, or guns, handguns. It is said nationwide,
worldwide, that handguns are a problem. Well if they�re a problem then
isn�t it obvious that you attack them by first not permitting their
manufacture anywhere in the world? Stop their manufacture. Then find
people who own them, actually go door to door and remove them. Either
their owners pay a fine or give up their handgun; and prevent, stop the
sale. Just remove handguns from all markets, from all use, and make them
disappear, just decree that they are a problem.
        Well obviously this will never be done.  Just the same as the school
system that I have advised, and the womb studies, probably will never
come about. This is typical of man in his continual desire, innate
desire to make messes. To make complicated what is already complicated,
and never, never to simplify.
        So in the case of the handgun, I�ve mentioned the globe, now we might
go on to a thing that�s called a 40- hour week. We have unemployment. We
have the trouble of what to do with our leisure time, and how to make a
livelihood, and the problem is what do we do about this. Well, the
problem is the 40-hour week, the 5-day workweek, holidays, weekends. In
short our present entire system of employment is eliminated. The 24
hours of each day and the 7-day week are divided into 3 shifts of 8
hours each. No one works more than 32 hours a week, that is, four 8-hour
periods, in a shift period of his choice, while production proceeds
continuously, full time, for 168 hours a week.
        When I was considering this, a 72-story skyscraper was being built
across the street. Under the present system, the site is literally
crawling with workers for 40 hours, then stops dead deserted for 128
hours. A total standstill, with nothing else happening except a guard on
watch, patrolling. Now under the plan of the Institute, the work would
proceed 168 hours a week, many workers would have employment, and the
building would be finished in one-fourth the time. And as a further
effect, the present pool of unemployed would be absorbed. Apprentices
would be training to fill in this and future needs, with every
able-bodied person having a paying job for 32 hours, but without
overtime. The resulting leisure hours would be obvious for each person,
opening a whole new range of possibilities. Where some critics would
suggest that crime, alcohol, drugs, auto accidents, thefts would
increase, the reverse would be nearly true, where suddenly people would
be finding time to do what they truly always wanted to do, but never
did, because they �had to go to work.� Hobbies would thrive, for the
healthy betterment of everyone. It�s interesting that in connection with
this time-rearrangement, one�s personal 24 hour day would best be
divided into four 6-hour segments for easy planning and survival, that
is, from six in the morning to noon, from noon to six at night, from six
at night til midnight, and from midnight til six am. And I think I�ve
mentioned that wherever this proposal would be carried out, the greatest
number of people would benefit. And this idea, as we offer it to the
world, is that we dissolve the present 40-hour week, we dissolve
holidays, we dissolve weekends, everyone has a job on a shift schedule
of his own choice, for 32 hours. We, of course, use up the surplus of
people who are unemployed, and put everyone to work in something he
truly wants to do.

Other books by Bern Porter published by Xexoxial include

The Last Acts of St Fuck You
My My Dear Me
Why My Left Lef is Hot
Xerolage 16

Xexoxial Editions
Rt 1 Box 131
LaFarge, WI
54639
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 15 Jan 1997 17:36:58 -0600
Reply-To:     maria damon 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         maria damon 
Subject:      Re: terrestial reclamation

hey miekal, what you call finger shaking is me defending myself against your
prejudices and cliches and assumptions about my inner life based on yours.  i
love your energy, your spontaneity, your truthfulness to your vision.  i support
your work and i have felt supported by you in some of my creative endeavors.  i
don't appreciate your need to indict or condescend to everyone who has chosen a
different path, or thru circumstances, ended up doing something other than
living at dreamtime village.  i'm sorry if you  feel publically scolded; for my
part, i feel  dismissed by a certain tenor of triumphalism in your
proclamations.

In message  <32DCD305.39B@mwt.net> UB Poetics discussion group writes:
> Goddess
> did I put the crimson
> veil in front
> of the charging bull.
>
> Before Maria
> starts shaking fingers
> at me &
> never
> talks to me
> again
>
> I should say
> that my hands typed
> artificial when I
> meant to say
>
> e s t e e m e d
>
> I have taken the
> liberty to search
> & replace David B's
> telling life story
> with the proper
> appellation.
>
> Miekal who
> still cant picture
> David B in overhauls,
> Banvel cap, & shit kickers
> milking cows.  Who woulda
> thunkit.
>
> For those that want to
> read more into more into mywords
> than  my  well-intentioned mouthoffed brashness:
>
> what I honestly am interested
> in are evolved discussions of how the
> act of poetry is sustainably designed
> into everyday life. I choose the life of spending
> my days creating an eco-village within
> the remnants of an existing
> 150 year old dairy hamlet
> because nearly everyone I know is
> in there behind those cement walls
> & florescent lights & very
> few are out there in the front
> lines of poetic terrorism.
>
>
> By analogy, because the university
> wanted to "teach" agriculture to farmers,
> knowing most of them
> would never go back to school, created
> cooperative extensions, in each county,
> & those ag extentions agents would
> go farm to farm & introduce themselves
> & offer information, support, networking.
> The farmers were thus able to continue
> milking but slowly change their
> practices to more sustainabler methods
> gradually over time.
>
>
> Where did I learn about poetry really?
> The overwhelming answer was by writing
> & publishing & networking with literally
> 1000s of other writers, performance artists,
> noisicians, plagiarists,  mail artists, language
> poets, & small interactive arts organizations.
> This is a way of life, not a curriculum that
> I will graduate from & become a specialist.
>
> Lyx (formerly Liz Was) & I am
> homeschooling our son Zon.  He is 9
> years old & not all that interested in learning
> how to read (even tho he was into it when
> he was 2),  he IS interested in collecting
> animals skeletons & gluing them back
> together, making a comic book to put up
> at our website, learning the latin to the many
> 100s of plants that we grow here at Dreamtime
> & he takes his turn cooking for as many as
> 25 people. He is precociously verbal & can
> carry on a conversation with any adult on
> any subject including chaos theory or the sentient
> intelligence of avians.
>
> I have tried to "teach" him how to read. He cries,
> screams, throws books at me
> (dont worry none of yours out there).
> My observation is that the more I back
> off & let him be, the easier more
> naturally he learns to learn, to become
> excited by ideas, to ask questions.
> TO FIGURE IT OUT BY HIMSELF.
> The more I become his companion
> & the less I try to "teach" him,
> the more our relationship becomes
> a reciprocity of love & respect.
>
> My tangled thread
> is a reflexive navigation
> thru what is not said
> & what I see as a genuine
> deep fear that poetry
> will not not survive as
> long as it remains separate
> from all other creative
> impulses known to
> man.
>
> --
> @#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#
> Dreamtime Village website: http://net22.com/dreamtime
> QAZINGULAZA: And/Was/Wakest website:
> http://net22.com/qazingulaza
> e-mail for DT & And/Was: dtv@mwt.net
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 15 Jan 1997 15:49:27 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Mark Weiss 
Subject:      Re: sustaining the lifethread
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Everybody's path is his/her own. And I'm sure as hell not calling any of
them "artificial." But we do tend to value the individual over the communal
to an extraordinary and I think unsustainable degree, and the place gets
less and less liveable--whatever place--as a result.
Look, poets--marginals of all sorts--have to live with all manner of
sometimes degrading ambiguities. The troubadors who sang for their supper at
Raymond de Troncavel's table no less, maybe more, than we. You do what you
have to, and I'm certainly not, from my somewhat privileged position (I
don't have to be a wage slave), criticizing anyone else's choices. I do
worry about the institution (all of them) and the society. And I welcome
other people's hairbrained solutions. I do know that when people work and
play and live together they're less likely to burn down each other's houses.
Or at least I hope so.
And I have to tell you, while my green undergraduates are fun to teach, the
"returned students" (often that means folks who were raising kids in their
late teens and twenties and never got to higher ed to start with) are a hell
of a lot more challenging. Like, they know a lot more that I don't.
I guess I knew this would be controversial. A lot of house cats never
criticize their baskets. And it may be that we/they/I sleep in the best of
all possible baskets.


At 03:17 PM 1/15/97 -0700, you wrote:
>> >        So here's my grand utopian fantasy and syllabus. Let there be a
>> >universal draft after HS, during which young men and women, separated from
>> >their normal geography and social class, learn about each other while
>> >repairing the infrastructure ( the least racist institution in our polity is
>> >the military). And let no one be allowed to apply for graduate school until
>> >they are thirty or have been out of college for at least five years,
>> >whichever comes first.
>
>ill pass on the grand utopian fantasy and the universal draft.  but id
>like my twenties well-done and the garnish of experiences on the side
>please.  the military the least racist institution?  if you believe
>military.  sexism and gender-bias is a whole 'nother can of birds.
>
>jeffrey timmons
>
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 16 Jan 1997 13:45:24 +1300
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         DS 
Subject:      Re: sustaining the lifethread
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

>
>At 03:17 PM 1/15/97 -0700, you wrote:
>>> >        So here's my grand utopian fantasy and syllabus. Let there be a
>>> >universal draft after HS, during which young men and women, separated from
>>> >their normal geography and social class, learn about each other while
>>> >repairing the infrastructure ( the least racist institution in our
polity is
>>> >the military). And let no one be allowed to apply for graduate school until
>>> >they are thirty or have been out of college for at least five years,
>>> >whichever comes first.
>>
>>ill pass on the grand utopian fantasy and the universal draft.  but id
>>like my twenties well-done and the garnish of experiences on the side
>>please.  the military the least racist institution?  if you believe
>>military.  sexism and gender-bias is a whole 'nother can of birds.
>>
>>jeffrey timmons
>>
>>

As someone still in my 20s i would chose prison over compulsory military
service without a second thought.

dan

(in New Zealand - you don't have to pay university fees if you are inside. I
would have food & board etc & could get stuck into that contemplated phd)
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 16 Jan 1997 13:46:33 GMT+1200
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         wystan 
Organization: English Dept. - Univ. of Auckland
Subject:      Re: sustaining the lifethread
Comments: To: dtv@MWT.NET

Dear miekal,
           I don't know about teachin people to poet but what about sore
pussy tats? As for the stunned farmers when will they ever learn?
           stay tort and lots of lavalava
             wystan
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 15 Jan 1997 19:13:00 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "Pritchett,Pat @Silverplume" 
Subject:      Re: sustaining the lifethread
Comments: To: DS 
MIME-version: 1.0
Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN
Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT

With all due respect, Dan: you must be plumb loco to make that kind of
statement. Or just uninformed.

All this talk about the university as "artificial" strikes me as absurd. How
is it any more artificial than the corporate environment? I'll state the
obvious here: culture = artifice - and it's better than living in the woods.
 A university *is* a corporation. It's designed to turn a profit by
producing a product - education. Or a facsimile thereof. That's what people
seem to objecting to here. Unfortunately, the idealism engendered by a love
of learning does seem to be often at odds with the bottom line. On the other
hand, I've read on this list someone rather melodramatically comparing the
university to a prison: try working at a life insurance company for a few
months. It'll suck the marrow right out of your soul!
 ----------
From: DS
To: POETICS
Subject: Re: sustaining the lifethread
Date: Wednesday, January 15, 1997 6:53PM


As someone still in my 20s i would chose prison over compulsory military
service without a second thought.

dan

(in New Zealand - you don't have to pay university fees if you are inside. I
would have food & board etc & could get stuck into that contemplated phd)
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 15 Jan 1997 18:01:37 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Mark Weiss 
Subject:      Re: sustaining the lifethread
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Who's talking about warfare? There are other forms of public service.

Nor is this a discussion of artifice vs nature--not on my part, at least.
But note in passing that universities don't actually make profits--that's
why they need grants and endowments to operate. (They do share with private
sector business the tendency of bureaucracies to try to become immortal.) In
most countries universities are paid for out of taxes, the same as freeways:
they're seen as a necessary part of the infrastructure.

It really isn't necessary to defend the universities and the life they
promote. While funding cuts happen, I don't think the institution is in any
danger of disappearing, and I'm far from proposing that we burn them down.
Some of my best friends are universities. Isn't anybody else out there
concerned about the interface or lack thereof with the rest of the
culture/society and the impact that may have on our lives as writers? Is to
ask the question the same as threatening to take away the goodies? (Reminds
me of the moment at the beginning of the Gulf War when I asked my students
to imagine the issues from Saddam Husein's point of view. They told me that
they couldn't do it because it would be unpatriotic)


At 07:13 PM 1/15/97 -0500, you wrote:
>With all due respect, Dan: you must be plumb loco to make that kind of
>statement. Or just uninformed.
>
>All this talk about the university as "artificial" strikes me as absurd. How
>is it any more artificial than the corporate environment? I'll state the
>obvious here: culture = artifice - and it's better than living in the woods.
> A university *is* a corporation. It's designed to turn a profit by
>producing a product - education. Or a facsimile thereof. That's what people
>seem to objecting to here. Unfortunately, the idealism engendered by a love
>of learning does seem to be often at odds with the bottom line. On the other
>hand, I've read on this list someone rather melodramatically comparing the
>university to a prison: try working at a life insurance company for a few
>months. It'll suck the marrow right out of your soul!
> ----------
>From: DS
>To: POETICS
>Subject: Re: sustaining the lifethread
>Date: Wednesday, January 15, 1997 6:53PM
>
>
>As someone still in my 20s i would chose prison over compulsory military
>service without a second thought.
>
>dan
>
>(in New Zealand - you don't have to pay university fees if you are inside. I
>would have food & board etc & could get stuck into that contemplated phd)
>
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 15 Jan 1997 21:09:33 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         shoemakers@COFC.EDU
Subject:      sustaining the list
In-Reply-To:  <32DD0857.8B2@mwt.net>
MIME-version: 1.0
Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

I've deeply appreciated the infusion of energy and new perspectives on the
list of late.  I also like the "sustainability" thread because the issue
of where and how one, a writing one, how *I* might draw sustenance from
the world/culture we live in is a crucial one.  But as we critique the
institutions around us (and they do deserve critique) i wld be happier
if we cld do it without reviving the old Academy vs The Real Thing
war that the list has been thru *so* many times before.  Some of us
are "in" the academy, some are "in" someplace else, some are half-in,
half-out, half-assed or just plain ain't sure -- but anyway you slice it
we'd be better off attending to each other's voices than making leaps
to judgment about world-views, assumptions etc. based on what we think we
know someone's wageplace.  Whew, don't know about you but i feel better.
Must be MLK day.  steve

Steve Shoemaker
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 16 Jan 1997 15:24:58 +1300
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         DS 
Subject:      Re: sustaining the lifethread
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

huh?

At 07:13 PM 1/15/97 -0500, you wrote:
>With all due respect, Dan: you must be plumb loco to make that kind of
>statement. Or just uninformed.
>
>All this talk about the university as "artificial" strikes me as absurd. How
>is it any more artificial than the corporate environment? I'll state the
>obvious here: culture = artifice - and it's better than living in the woods.
> A university *is* a corporation. It's designed to turn a profit by
>producing a product - education. Or a facsimile thereof. That's what people
>seem to objecting to here. Unfortunately, the idealism engendered by a love
>of learning does seem to be often at odds with the bottom line. On the other
>hand, I've read on this list someone rather melodramatically comparing the
>university to a prison: try working at a life insurance company for a few
>months. It'll suck the marrow right out of your soul!
> ----------
>From: DS
>To: POETICS
>Subject: Re: sustaining the lifethread
>Date: Wednesday, January 15, 1997 6:53PM
>
>
>As someone still in my 20s i would chose prison over compulsory military
>service without a second thought.
>
>dan
>
>(in New Zealand - you don't have to pay university fees if you are inside. I
>would have food & board etc & could get stuck into that contemplated phd)
>
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 15 Jan 1997 20:26:38 +0100
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Miekal And 
Subject:      sustaining the list  = (GARDEN THE EDGES!)
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

shoemakers@COFC.EDU wrote:

but anyway you slice it
> we'd be better off attending to each other's voices than making leaps
> to judgment about world-views, assumptions etc. based on what we think we
> know someone's wageplace.

on the ecobalance sustainability list Im boiled in bees because I
mentioned 4/4 music & 1 4 5 changes are derived from "dead white man's
culture"

maybe western aesthethic tradition is a better phrase?

miekal who has many neologisms for his lofty ideals

--
@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#
Dreamtime Village website: http://net22.com/dreamtime
QAZINGULAZA: And/Was/Wakest website:
http://net22.com/qazingulaza
e-mail for DT & And/Was: dtv@mwt.net
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 16 Jan 1997 01:50:10 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "Walter K. Lew" 
Subject:      Goodbye for a while

Dear Poetics List,
     I'm de-subbing for the next few weeks and wanted to thank everyone for
being great daily company.  Anyone who needs to get in touch with me can
still back-channel me at , since I will be checking in a few
times a week.  Messages and mail can also be sent to me:
c/o Prof. Juliana Chang
English Dept.
Boston College
Chestnut Hill, MA  02167
617-787-5633 (ph & fax)
     Special thanks to those of you who showed up at the MLA reading, such as
Maria D. and Gwyn McVay.  It was also heart-warming to talk with or hear
other list members--thanks Charles, Juliana, Jena, Aldon et al.  For
exploring the many new/forgotten old lifethreads of poesy--Keep it spinning,

Ciao for niao,
Walter K. Lew
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 15 Jan 1997 23:01:13 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         George Bowering 
Subject:      Re: bp & the allness of poetryics sensate
In-Reply-To:  <32D8F4FA.7A60@mwt.net>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Quickly:

Nope, there is no one-volume _Martyrology_ but there is that uniform
reprint set that Coach House Press did before it went under in 1996.

There is a gink at Simon Fraser University (where the bp papers are) who is
planning a bpNichol home page. His name is Carl. You ought to hear from him
on this list, I think. Carl Peters.

We are trying to get him to change his name to Pater Carlos Peters.




George Bowering.
                                       ,
2499 West 37th Ave.,
Vancouver, B.C.,
Canada  V6M 1P4

fax: 1-604-266-9000
e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 15 Jan 1997 23:50:49 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Carl Lynden Peters 
Subject:      Re: bp & the allness of poetryics sensate
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

hey this is pater carlos peters talking.

"yep." i'm planing a bpNichol home page.

i'm calling it "the house that bpNichol built." that's tentative.

maybe "words R us."

it'll have lots of dick tracy and pez dispensers!

all is one (bp)

c.
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 16 Jan 1997 01:25:41 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         George Bowering 
Subject:      Re: fem poet wear
In-Reply-To:  
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

>I haven't wanted to answer because what I've been wearing is such a
>cliche, particularly today: black turtleneck, baggy black jeans, black
>Doc Martens. I mean, it's just too, too.
>
>Gwyn

Just how baggy are them jeans?





George Bowering.
                                       ,
2499 West 37th Ave.,
Vancouver, B.C.,
Canada  V6M 1P4

fax: 1-604-266-9000
e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 16 Jan 1997 09:03:43 EST
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         henry 
Subject:      Re: bleeding the lifthread
In-Reply-To:  Message of Wed, 15 Jan 1997 13:12:33 -0800 from
              

On Wed, 15 Jan 1997 13:12:33 -0800 Aldon L. Nielsen said:
>No, the WPA wasn't mandatory -- one could always choose to remain
>unemployed and unpaid --
>
>General Hershey had a nifty version of this for me back in my youth --
>It wasn't mandatory that I leave the artificial environment of college to
>do social work in upstate New York; I coould have chosen to be removed
>from the artificial environment of university study for the artificial
>environment of an American militrary base in Viet Nam --
>
>I could and did study and write everywhere -- but it was a whole lot
>easier to get what I needed for my work while attached to a college --
>
>odd sense of what is and is not mandatory in the American economy

This gets right to the historical point, thank you Aldon.  I just get
leery when I here "utopia" & "5-yr military service" in the same sentence.
I know that ain't exactly what you said, Mark Weiss: I just get leery.
In my little burg, you'd be surprised how many of the serious community
projects are supported & underwritten by those "artificial institutions"
like colleges, churches, & community organizations.  At the core of it
must be some "utopia" of civic freedom, where somebody's trying to think
right about "where to send the kids."  & also letting "the kids" (see quotes)
figure things out themselves, without too much millenial thunder.
- Henry Gould
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 16 Jan 1997 09:48:41 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Gwyn McVay 
Subject:      Re: fem poet wear
In-Reply-To:  
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

George, they are not baggy enough to hide Derrida's /Glas/ down them, but
I could conceivably hide Wittgenstein's /On Certainty./ --Gwyn

On Thu, 16 Jan 1997, George Bowering wrote:

> >I haven't wanted to answer because what I've been wearing is such a
> >cliche, particularly today: black turtleneck, baggy black jeans, black
> >Doc Martens. I mean, it's just too, too.
> >
> >Gwyn
>
> Just how baggy are them jeans?
>
>
>
>
>
> George Bowering.
>                                        ,
> 2499 West 37th Ave.,
> Vancouver, B.C.,
> Canada  V6M 1P4
>
> fax: 1-604-266-9000
> e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 16 Jan 1997 09:58:53 EST
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Daniel_Bouchard@HMCO.COM
Subject:      Bern Porter, where have you been?
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: Text/Plain

This is wonderful!-- some real theory I can think my teeth into.  I've been
brainstorming and know I can apply this wonderful Theory of Simplistics to some
other problems afflicting our tormented world:

1) TEEN PREGNANCY: tell teenagers that sex is the cause of all babies in the
world as well as sexually transmitted diseases. To avoid having babies and
getting STDs, abstain from sex or use a condom. (wOw, that was Simple!)

2) PALESTINE/ISRAEL: tell all Palestinian and Israeli citizens that war and
fighting result in violence and death; then say that dead people cannot own
land, only "rest" in it.  To avoid an early rest, stop fighting and share
everything.  (I will fax this proposal to the respective Embassies right away!)

3) POLLUTION: Let all industrial manufacturers producing "bad things" (why
complicate matters with messy specifics?) know that these things are bad for
people. In order to live on a healthier, happier planet, stop making them.  (We
can save a lot of time by Simply e-mailing this message around the Internet for
a few years.)

4) PEOPLE WHO MAKE RUDE GESTURES IN A CAR: Initiate a massive publicity
campaign to notify all drivers of cars that there are certain gestures which
are rude. As the public is educated these gestures will cease. Recalcitrant
gesture makers can be stopped by someone going car door to car door, removing
them (fingers, tongues, whatever. . .)

This is a fine example of applied theoretical knowledge. Miekal, do I need to
send a check or something to The Institute for making use of The Theory?


daniel_bouchard@hmco.com

_____________________________
M. And wrote:

Another very interesting example is a solution to problems-- take a
simple thing like gun laws, or guns, handguns. It is said nationwide,
worldwide, that handguns are a problem. Well if theyre a problem then
isnt it obvious that you attack them by first not permitting their
manufacture anywhere in the world? Stop their manufacture. Then find
people who own them, actually go door to door and remove them. Either
their owners pay a fine or give up their handgun; and prevent, stop the
sale. Just remove handguns from all markets, from all use, and make them
disappear, just decree that they are a problem.
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 16 Jan 1997 09:09:00 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "Pritchett,Pat @Silverplume" 
Subject:      Re: sustaining the lifethread
Comments: To: Mark Weiss 
MIME-version: 1.0
Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN
Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT

Thanks for making that clear about universities, Mark. I'd venture to add,
though, that many major US corporations are sustained in the same way, i.e.
thru tax cuts, govt. subsidies, etc. etc.

Patrick Pritchett
 ----------
From: Mark Weiss
To: POETICS
Subject: Re: sustaining the lifethread
Date: Wednesday, January 15, 1997 8:08PM


Who's talking about warfare? There are other forms of public service.

Nor is this a discussion of artifice vs nature--not on my part, at least.
But note in passing that universities don't actually make profits--that's
why they need grants and endowments to operate. (They do share with private
sector business the tendency of bureaucracies to try to become immortal.) In
most countries universities are paid for out of taxes, the same as freeways:
they're seen as a necessary part of the infrastructure.
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 16 Jan 1997 09:54:30 -0600
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Karl Richter 
Subject:      Re: terrestial reclamation
Comments: To: maria damon 
In-Reply-To:  <32dd6a1a2dd1008@mhub1.tc.umn.edu>
MIME-version: 1.0
Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT

On Wed, 15 Jan 1997, maria damon wrote:

> hey miekal, what you call finger shaking is me defending myself against your
> prejudices and cliches and assumptions about my inner life based on yours.  i
> love your energy, your spontaneity, your truthfulness to your vision.  i support
> your work and i have felt supported by you in some of my creative endeavors.  i
> don't appreciate your need to indict or condescend to everyone who has chosen a
> different path, or thru circumstances, ended up doing something other than
> living at dreamtime village.  i'm sorry if you  feel publically scolded; for my
> part, i feel  dismissed by a certain tenor of triumphalism in your
> proclamations.

AMEN!!
Karl Richter
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 16 Jan 1997 10:45:04 EST
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         henry 
Subject:      Re: Bern Porter, where have you been?
In-Reply-To:  Message of Thu, 16 Jan 1997 09:58:53 EST from
              

On Thu, 16 Jan 1997 09:58:53 EST  said:
>M. And wrote:
>
>manufacture anywhere in the world? Stop their manufacture. Then find
>people who own them, actually go door to door and remove them. Either
>their owners pay a fine or give up their handgun; and prevent, stop the
>sale. Just remove handguns from all markets, from all use, and make them

Dan, Miekal, this is getting exciting - but there's an even simpler
solution I learned from my Grandpa (he was a city official in Minneapolis
during the bootleg era).  He would say (pipe in cheek, I guess)
"Just take all the Democrats, put em up against a wall, & shoot em."
We could do the same with gun owners!!!!

- Hank Gould, a.k.a. "Jack Spandrift, the hard-drinkin', tough-talkin'
cowboy po-yeti from Minneysoter" (saw "Fargo" finally last week.
Say, how ya doin'?  Have a nice day now!  Oh-oh... better call Marge...)
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 16 Jan 1997 11:09:01 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
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From:         Charles Bernstein 
Subject:      boundary 2 23:3
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Just got copies of the new issue of boundary 2 (volume 23 number 1 fall
1996), which includes the ominously titled "Charles Bernstein: A Dossier",
consisting of: a set new poems; an autobiographical interview by Loss
Glazier; and a conversation "On Poetry, Language, and Teaching" with Paul
Bove, David Barthomomae, Lynn Emmanuel, and Colin McCabe; and the writing
"Experiments" list. I believe that the dossier fully reveals my guilt (about
which I remain unashamed); my question is: what is the crime? (I've always
been very dense.)

boundary 2 is published by Duke University Press. Ordering information from
Box 90660 Duke University, Durham, NC 27708-0660 or 919-687-3653.
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 16 Jan 1997 10:31:37 +0100
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
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From:         Miekal And 
Subject:      slicker PO et TREE ICKS & the spaces undone
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Carl Lynden Peters wrote:
>
> hey this is pater carlos peters talking.
>
> "yep." i'm planing a bpNichol home page.

will there be interviews, photos, soundsamples, video clips? also itd be
great to see reproductions of some of that there visual poetry.  did bp
do any computer-generated visual works?

miekal who will try to shut up & take his cues from ms maria
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 16 Jan 1997 10:35:43 +0100
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
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From:         Miekal And 
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Charles Bernstein wrote:

 my question is: what is the crime? (I've always been very dense.)

your crime Mr. B is being a model l=a=n=g=u=a=g=e poet




Miekal & the skewtered inquisition
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 16 Jan 1997 10:54:26 +0100
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
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From:         Miekal And 
Subject:      Porter re Porter
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my apologizes if you already saw this, put this post seems to have not
gone thru--


From the back cover of
�where to go what to do when you are�
Bern Porter A Personal Biography
by James Schevill
Tilbury House 1992 Gardiner ME

b p b p b p b p b p b p b p b p b p b p b p b p b p b p

        A short, round-faced man with a drooping mouth walks slowly along a
downtown sidewalk in Belfast, Maine, his long white hair plowed straight
back in distinct furrows.  His hunched figure and frayed clothes make
him stand out among the scrubbed summer tourists.  Other people pass and
greet him by name: �Hello, Bern!�  At the top of main Street, he walks
across to the Belfast Post Office, heading directly for the lobby
wastebasket.  Here, he harvests a sheaf of catalogues and discarded
advertisements, produces a pair of scissors from a pocket, and begins
transforming this �junk� into art.
        Bern Porter has done this all of his life, finding art and meaning in
things other people ignore.  He was born on Valentine�s Day, 1911, in
Porter Settlement, near the Canadian border, in Maine�s northernmost
county, an area known for its timber, potatoes, and depth of snow.  He
spent his childhood cutting up newspapers, rearranging the words and
pictures, pasting them into books, and trading those books for eggs,
milk, and cheese.  As he grew older--attending Colby College and Brown
University (where he earned a degree in physics), working on the
Manhattan Project, then the Saturn moon rocket project--Porter continued
to make these �Artist Books,�  refining the idea into his singular
vision of Founds: combinations of mass media images and text that he
uses to reflect American culture as in a funny-house mirror: twisted but
true.
        In 1945 when the U.S. dropped an atom bomb on Hiroshima, he and his
fellow Manhattan Project scientists learned exactly what they had been
building, and the knowledge turned Porter away from military
applications of science toward art and culture.  Porter had begun
publishing many important writers at the time, including Henry Miller,
Robert Duncan, and Kenneth Patchen.  In 1947 he opened a gallery in
Sausalito, California, that exhibited what was new in abstract and
surreal art, as well as providing a forum for poetry readings and
performance art.
        In the late 1960s, Porter returned to Maine, ran, unsuccessfully, for
governor, and started his own �think tank� for �drop outs,� The
Institute for Advanced Thinking.  Entering his ninth decade, and still
living in Maine, he continues to publish new voices and create his
extraordinary books of �Founds.�

b p b p b p b p b p b p b p b p b p b p b p b p b p b p

for a bit of additional info check out andrew russ's free form site at:

http://www.phys.psu.edu/~endwar/porter.html


b p b p b p b p b p b p b p b p b p b p b p b p b p b p


Bern is one of the original mail artists.  He still responds to every
piece of mail he receives & you can meet him letterly at

Bern Porter
50 Salmond
Belfast, ME  04915

No telephone, no electricity (I hear) just rooms full of car parts & old
magazines & empty tin cans.
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 16 Jan 1997 11:42:36 +0600
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         KENT JOHNSON 
Organization: Highland Community College
Subject:      bern porter and modeling

Dear Miekal:

My parents were born and raised in Belfast, Maine and I spent much
time there visiting the gradparents. On one of my visits to
Belfast,
maybe 15 years ago, I attended a reading by Porter, at,
of all places, the Odd Fellows Hall on Main Street. There was a good
and variously-aged crowd there--perhaps 50-60 people--and since this
was winter, most had to be native residents (Belfast has developed
an arts scene fed by lots of immigration in the
past few years, but this was shortly after the chicken processing
plant had closed down, and before the town started creeping toward
the fate of neighbors Camden and Rockport). People listened very
attentively and applauded
politely after each poem. Porter had an "assistant" during this
reading, and during every poem this young man crawled around on the
floor commando-style or on all fours, weaving himself between
pPorter's legs. My memory is that there was some nervous laughter
at the beginning of the reading, but no sense at all of reproach from
the audience.

New England communities have a long traditionof being tolerant--even
protective--of their eccentrics, and this certainly seems to be the
case with
Belfast's attitude toward Porter. My grandmother told me once that
after his wife died, Porter was in the habit for some time of walking
around town in his wife's clothes. I remember asking my grandmother if
this didn't
cause people to laugh at him, and with thick Maine accent she replied
something to the effect that no, Bern has always been very different
but he is a genius and a decent man... I asked her why she thought
he was a genius and whether she had read his work. She said she had
read just a little of it and couldn't make heads or tails of it, but
that this, of course, was the way of genius. (I am doing my best to be
faithful to her words here!)

I remember reading in _Down East_ magazine (is that where I saw it?)
a wonderful article about the town gala party for Porter's 90th,
attended by hundreds. There was a parade to kick the festivities off;
Porter led the parade in regal dress and with staff, followed by
town firetrucks and ambulance. A lobster and clam bake followed inthe
park, I think, with games, civic orchestra, and so on.

Ah, that all avant-garde poets would be so dearly loved!


On a seperate note: What, more exactly, do you think that Charles
Bernstein "models"?


Kent
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 16 Jan 1997 11:54:54 -0600
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         amato@CHARLIE.CNS.IIT.EDU
Subject:      real worlds...
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with steve, i grow weary of rehearsing the academic vs. real world
argument... yet that it keeps resurfacing sez something about where we seem
to be (here i mean)... so it may be a tune that needs to be replayed every
so often, just to keep everybody's head clear...

strikes me that part of the problem is the way "university" is perceived,
even from within... i would like to say ("for once and for all") that there
is no SINGLE university construct... that many universities are in so many
ways rapidly becoming corporations is, for me, a given... but this reality
plays itself out differently on different campuses...  i would like to ask
folks who do not know better (fess up now!) to take my word for it, please
( !---this IS asking a lot, i know)... just as surely as one can offer some
tentative generalizations about the profession of the professoriate, one
can as well offer some concrete evidence that pertains to the incredible
disparities at work across the professoriate... i've posted too too much in
these regions to illustrate what i mean... for that matter, the term
"non-academic" bears some scrutiny too---it can (i say *can*) become a way
to cloak, if not privilege, one's vantage point...

hey:  right now -- just to go public with it in these parts, and at the
risk of appearing a bit self-saturated -- i'm seriously considering leaving
academe, at least for a short spell---mebbe a year, mebbe more... i am
honestly not quite sure whether this will in fact happen, but my mind must
be made up by may... and at my age, i'm fully aware of the extent to which
this jeopardizes my "career," so you might each imagine that even
considering such a move comes out of a relatively difficult set of
circumstances (which have in part to do with choices i've made, with my
refusal to 'play the game' according to hoyle)... in my particular case, i
understand quite well what i mean when i write "leaving academe"---that is,
i came 'here' from industry, pretty much knowing what my alternatives were
(even though i can't say as how i thought this profession would turn out to
be so goddamn REAL!)... and if i leave, i can say pretty much the same...
but my point is that my personal situation might be difficult to gather
'from the outside'...

so perhaps we all need to be just a bit less presumptuous about our
respective work-places... academics among us too---i mean, *we* tend, as
professors, to go on about grants, and sabbaticals, and conferences and
such like w/o always acknowledging the impact such chatter may have on
those less aligned with postsecondary institutions... we tend, that is, to
obscure the fact that teaching is, finally, a job---no matter how
rewarding, no matter how seemingly unconventional wrt other forms of
employment, or wage-earning... hell, *i* even find it off-putting, partly
b/c i don't have the pedigree (so to speak) that i know some of you,
however few, must surely have... i say this less out of envy than out of an
awareness, again, of just how disparate this profession is...

anyway, if each of us wants to talk both with those who are and those who
are not like us, we'll have to be a bit more explicit perhaps, and a bit
less hasty to generalize all the way 'round...

best,

joe
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 16 Jan 1997 11:59:11 +0100
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Miekal And 
Subject:      where are the bern porter action figures?
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KENT JOHNSON wrote:


kent: quintessential bern story.  I'll crab together a few of the
anecdotes of when bern got on a greyhound to our Church of Anarchy &
occupied our house for several weeks.  he did this 2 or 3 years in a
row. damn, those were the days.


>
> I remember reading in _Down East_ magazine (is that where I saw it?)
> a wonderful article about the town gala party for Porter's 90th,
> attended by hundreds. There was a parade to kick the festivities off;


for the record, it was his 80th,  there is a photo of him leading the
parade & he looks like the happiest man on the planet, dressed as the
Grand Monarch Preemptor of all that is Wasted & Unused & Artificial.

--
@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#
Dreamtime Village website: http://net22.com/dreamtime
QAZINGULAZA: And/Was/Wakest website:
http://net22.com/qazingulaza
e-mail for DT & And/Was: dtv@mwt.net
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 16 Jan 1997 12:11:19 +0100
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Miekal And 
Subject:      Re: real worlds...
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amato@CHARLIE.CNS.IIT.EDU wrote:

joe: if you leave the univerisitae you can always weary yourself up
north & dig spuds with the hippies.


>
> so perhaps we all need to be just a bit less presumptuous about our
> respective work-places...



whose talking about workplaces, I havent "worked" for money in 7 years,
I wanna know about the poetryies of life

>
> anyway, if each of us wants to talk both with those who are and those who
> are not like us, we'll have to be a bit more explicit perhaps, and a bit
> less hasty to generalize all the way 'round...


on most of the lists that Im on, "hasty generalizations" are  the
primary bait for setting off thoughtmunitions.  goddess I love chaos!

mr miekal

in sweats
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 16 Jan 1997 13:09:05 -0500
Reply-To:     Diane Marie Ward 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Diane Marie Ward 
Subject:      Re: bern porter and modeling
In-Reply-To:  <1D539D05E7@student.highland.cc.il.us>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

On Thu, 16 Jan 1997, KENT JOHNSON wrote:

> I remember reading in _Down East_ magazine (is that where I saw it?)
> a wonderful article about the town gala party for Porter's 90th,
> attended by hundreds. There was a parade to kick the festivities off;
> Porter led the parade in regal dress and with staff, followed by
> town firetrucks and ambulance. A lobster and clam bake followed inthe
> park, I think, with games, civic orchestra, and so on.

There is video of this celebration (23 minutes long from Cyclops in
Freeport Maine) entitled : Bern Porter's 80th birthday celebration -- it
was put together by Vanessa Barth and is a compact introduction to the
world of Bern Porter. The parade Kent mentioned hovers in my memory
whenever I hear  the name Bern Porter -- poet as king, walking with
staff, flanked by dozens of poets  1/3 , 1/4 of his age who benefitted
from the boundaries he pushed/ the ideals he stood for/against.
 The Poetry Collection at the Ste. University of Buffalo has a copy of the
video.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Diane Marie Ward
State University of New York at Buffalo
                                  "A poem must be a debacle of the intellect.
                            It cannot be anything else."  -- Breton & Eluard


=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 16 Jan 1997 14:11:37 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Jordan Davis 
Subject:      tunes to keep your head clear
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Lately I've been playing John Davis's songs "Here I Am" and "I'll Burn" to
keep my head clear. As I am trying to limit my budget for new recordings
this year, would you good people mind recommending some listening
materials?

Thanks,
Jordan Davis
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 16 Jan 1997 13:16:33 +0100
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Miekal And 
Subject:      Re: tunes to keep your head clear
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when I wanta clear my head i break out my old xenakis records & play
them really loud.

m
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 16 Jan 1997 14:45:05 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Romana Christina Huk 
Subject:      Re: M. Nourbese Philip
In-Reply-To:  
Mime-Version: 1.0
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I got an address for M. Nourbese Philip from someone on the line last
year -- can't recall from whom.  Need it again! Could "someone" back-
channel it to me?  Thanks a lot. Romana
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 16 Jan 1997 13:54:23 -0600
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Karl Richter 
Subject:      Re: tunes to keep your head clear
In-Reply-To:  
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On Thu, 16 Jan 1997, Jordan Davis wrote:

> Lately I've been playing John Davis's songs "Here I Am" and "I'll Burn" to
> keep my head clear. As I am trying to limit my budget for new recordings
> this year, would you good people mind recommending some listening
> materials?

I really dig Luscious Jackson's new record _Fever In Fever Out_:
irresistible poppiness with a trip-hop sensibility. Also, try out
Superdrag's _Regretfully Yours_: fun, Beatles-influenced guitar rock. I
haven't gotten hold of the album yet, but I'm dying to give The
Klezmatics' _Jews With Horns_ a whirl; they play traditional klezmer
music, the fiddle/accordian/brass dance music of eastern Europe (somebody
correct me if I got any of that wrong).

Anyway, that's my $.02....

Karl Richter
z8n25@ttacs.ttu.edu
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 16 Jan 1997 14:29:21 EST
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         POLLET@MAINE.MAINE.EDU
Subject:      LURKPUB OUTS SELF

OK, Charles, I figure I'd better do it. I Know I'm one of the lurkpubs you
had in mind. Some of the listers are on my mailing list already, or got
samples at the National Poetry foundation in June, or at UNH Assembling
Alternatives in August, but here goes:
     I started publishing poetry broadsides under the name Backwoods
Broadsides in 1978. In March 1994 I started a new series called the
Chaplet Series, modelled after Martha & Basil King's Northern Lights
International/Brooklyn Series, which was based on Michael Carlson's
Northern Lights Series (London), which was based on a Canadian series I
don't know the name of.
     The way I do them, folded 8 1/2 x 14" sheet, they'll take a long poem,
an excerpt from a huge one, or a whole lot of little ones like Jackson
Mac Low's Postcard Poems. I've mailed out 23 so far, 24 & 25 are at press.
Many are names that pop up on the list, e.g. Ron Johnson, Bern Porter,
Rochelle Owens, Peter O'Leary, Cid Corman, Dick Higgins, Diane di Prima,
James Laughlin, most recently a new long poem from Anne Waldman called
"a slice at that" and some Sanskrit translations by Andrew Schelling
called "Jasmine & Thunder."
     Photo-offset on good paper, hand stamped colophon, numbered editions
of 750. I charge a buck. But it's better to subscribe--I send out two at a
time, seasonally starting now. Subs are $10 yr, 8 issues ppd, back issues
$1. Add some for foreign postage. If that's more than you have, send $5 to
get started, or $2, or I give scholarships. But I do this all myself, no
support beyond subscribers. Send to:
     Sylvester Pollet
     Backwoods Broadsides
     RR 5 Box 3630
     Ellsworth ME 04605-9529
     USA
     I have all the back issues, though some are numbered overrun. Or you
can see them at libraries starting with "B" like the Beinecke, Brown,
Buffalo. Or bookstores coast-to-coast (Univ. of Maine & City Lights).
     There, I did it. Who's next?
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 16 Jan 1997 12:15:26 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Mark Weiss 
Subject:      Re: tunes to keep your head clear
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Think of it as Yiddish dixieland. As much a US as a European phenomenon.
Good time music.


At 01:54 PM 1/16/97 -0600, you wrote:

>On Thu, 16 Jan 1997, Jordan Davis wrote:
. I
>haven't gotten hold of the album yet, but I'm dying to give The
>Klezmatics' _Jews With Horns_ a whirl; they play traditional klezmer
>music, the fiddle/accordian/brass dance music of eastern Europe (somebody
>correct me if I got any of that wrong).
>
>Anyway, that's my $.02....
>
>Karl Richter
>z8n25@ttacs.ttu.edu
>
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 16 Jan 1997 14:45:19 -0600
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         amato@CHARLIE.CNS.IIT.EDU
Subject:      Re: real worlds...
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

miekal, thanx for the invite!...

hey, work can be fun... but work is work too---by which i don't mean to
deny the poetry of same... but you're not saying that your life is without
work, right?... i mean, you gotta make bread, literal or figurative, no?...
though you are of course free to wrench "work" any which way, you're not
wrenching it entirely out of your life, i take it...

but if you say you are, why then i'm not quite sure where you're coming
from... i mean, work is such an important aspect of living (no protestant
work ethic intended or implied)... so if you tell me that work is NOT an
important aspect of your life, even in dreamtime village -- which latter as
i see it constitutes, among other things, a workplace, yes, just like my
apartment here in chicago -- why then i guess i'd want to hear more,
miekal...

best,

joe, navy blue sweats (ok, just washed) etc.
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 16 Jan 1997 14:45:24 -0600
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         amato@CHARLIE.CNS.IIT.EDU
Subject:      Re: tunes to keep your head clear
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

jordan, the only music keeping my head clear at the moment is mary
mccaslin... something about folk (and folk-rock) keeps me warm when it's
this cold...

best,

joe
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 16 Jan 1997 15:24:00 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "Pritchett,Pat @Silverplume" 
Subject:      Re: tunes to keep your head clear
Comments: To: Karl Richter 
MIME-version: 1.0
Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN
Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT

I'll second Karl's endorsement of Luscious Jackson. Them chicks is hot!
That's the only new music I've got hold of, though. It's pretty much old
Louis Armstrong (c. 1930) and old Johnny Cash lately.
 ----------
From: Karl Richter
To: POETICS
Subject: Re: tunes to keep your head clear
Date: Thursday, January 16, 1997 2:03PM

I really dig Luscious Jackson's new record _Fever In Fever Out_:
irresistible poppiness with a trip-hop sensibility. Also, try out
Superdrag's _Regretfully Yours_: fun, Beatles-influenced guitar rock. I
haven't gotten hold of the album yet, but I'm dying to give The
Klezmatics' _Jews With Horns_ a whirl; they play traditional klezmer
music, the fiddle/accordian/brass dance music of eastern Europe (somebody
correct me if I got any of that wrong).

Anyway, that's my $.02....

Karl Richter
z8n25@ttacs.ttu.edu
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 16 Jan 1997 13:40:33 -0800
Reply-To:     doncheney@geocities.com
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Don Cheney 
Organization: UC San Diego
Subject:      how about the word "crackpot"?
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my son maxwell who is in 6th grade got a sheet of feedback
from his teacher on his JUPITER report.

his teacher has been consistently critical about his choice of
words and phrases. so i'm reading down the list of the teacher's
remarks and come to "Do not use the word 'wacko' in your report."

i'm sure i'm responsible for corrupting max as i consistently
tell him when writing reports to write in his own words, his
own voice instead of copying down sentences from texts verbatim.
i tell him to put his own spin on the content. i ask him, what
does it mean to you? what is interesting about this to you?

what's funny is that i got in the same kind of trouble at his age.
my fifth grade report on the history of california intermixed
textbook history with pop culture slogans. my teacher did not find
this funny or post-modern or anything. she was pissed! i still
have the report and i think it's hilarious.

anyway, i guess maxwell's teacher is an improvement over my fifth
grade teacher. i got an F on my california history report and max
got an A on his jupiter report.

Don
--
visit Don Cheney's Home Page & Clean Neck Shop
http://www.geocities.com/~doncheney
doncheney@geocities.com
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 16 Jan 1997 15:28:13 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Charles Alexander 
Subject:      Re: bern porter and modeling
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

>
>On a seperate note: What, more exactly, do you think that Charles
>Bernstein "models"?
>
>
>Kent


My favorite image of Charles is one of him modeling a somewhat disheveled
flannel shirt (red & green if memory serves me) and a couple of days' growth
of beard, upon his return from a cabin in the Baboquivari Mountains in
southern Arizona to my home in Tucson. Somehow, even after the hour and a
half drive back to Tucson he managed to burst in still excited and say, "It
was fantastic." So it was also something about the look on his face he
modeled, and my new conception of "language poet mountain man."

charles
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 16 Jan 1997 18:17:07 +0100
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Miekal And 
Subject:      Re: real worlds...
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amato@CHARLIE.CNS.IIT.EDU wrote:
>
> miekal, thanx for the invite!...
>
> hey, work can be fun... but work is work too---by which i don't mean to
> deny the poetry of same... but you're not saying that your life is without
> work, right?...

no joe, Im saying that Im the house "husband" I stay at home Lyx
(formerly Liz) works freelance in schools teaching kids how to make
instruments out of found & recycled materials & teaching em
improvisation in music & language. so, yes I do work all day long making
dreamtime happen, but unfortuneately its never cut me a check.
we also live on very little money, $4000/year or so for a fambly of 3 I
think that's mighty frugal...tho cant think of anything Im jonsing for
except maybe one of those there artificial paradise(s).


 i mean, you gotta make bread, literal or figurative, no?...

onion bread, with herbs


> though you are of course free to wrench "work" any which way, you're not
> wrenching it entirely out of your life, i take it...

I would say Im chronically unemployable at a real world wage out here in
tractorland.


>
> but if you say you are, why then i'm not quite sure where you're coming
> from... i mean, work is such an important aspect of living (no protestant
> work ethic intended or implied)... so if you tell me that work is NOT an
> important aspect of your life, even in dreamtime village -- which latter as
> i see it constitutes, among other things, a workplace, yes, just like my
> apartment here in chicago -- why then i guess i'd want to hear more,
> miekal...
>
> best,
>
> joe, navy blue sweats (ok, just washed) etc.

--
@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#
Dreamtime Village website: http://net22.com/dreamtime
QAZINGULAZA: And/Was/Wakest website:
http://net22.com/qazingulaza
e-mail for DT & And/Was: dtv@mwt.net
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 16 Jan 1997 18:39:28 -0600
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         amato@CHARLIE.CNS.IIT.EDU
Subject:      Re: real worlds...
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

miekal, thanx for those clarifications!...

there are probably more alternatives out there than most of us would like
to admit... it's difficult to change horses after a certain point though...
anyway, unless you're born with a silver spoon someplace or other (and even
then) it seems like there's just no way to go w/o struggle...

best,

joe
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 16 Jan 1997 16:10:13 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "JNORTON.US.ORACLE.COM" 
Subject:      death
MIME-Version: 1.0
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One standard text on funereal terminlogy is Jessica Mitford's "The American
Way of Death."

John Norton

PS:  I was that passenger with the super-clean hands.
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 16 Jan 1997 16:06:01 -1000
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Gabrielle Welford 
Subject:      Re: subscribe (fwd)
Comments: To: grow-l 
Comments: cc: poetics , egg-l 
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

>
>Welcome to Women Organizing for Change, a Project of Women Leaders
>Online.  You will be receiving our e-mail alerts shortly.
>
>~*~*~*~ *~ Women Leaders Online ~*~*~*~*~
>~*~*~*~ Frequently Asked Questions ~*~*~*~
>
>Q. What is Women Leaders Online?
>
>A new non-partisan, non-profit 501(c)(4) organization dedicated
>to educating and mobilizing women over the Internet to:
>
>1. empower women in American society, the media, and politics;
>2. oppose the anti-woman Congressional agenda of the Radical Right; and
>3. recruit and support pro-woman candidates at all levels of government.
>
>Our goal, in other words, is to become the feminist antidote to the
>powerful Christian Coalition.
>
>Q. How will the organization accomplish its goals?
>
>Through our project called "Women Organizing for Change", we are
>building a national online network of one million feminist activists who
>will pledge to volunteer one hour per week to:
>
>1. contact their elected representatives;
>2. express their views in the media;
>3. organize local events to enable women to express their views;
>4. recruit and support progressive feminist candidates; and
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>
>Members of our network receive e-mail alerts with news, analysis,
>and suggestions for action. We also maintain a page on the World Wide
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>and the Radical Right. In addition, we plan to form state and local chapters.
>
>Q. Why a new organization?
>
>1. No other organization is solely focused on organizing over the
>Internet -- and the threat from the right is enormous.
>2. Women are the majority of voters and we can stop the Radical Right --
>but only if we organize effectively.
>3. The Internet is uniquely suited to organizing employed women,
>women at home, and especially students.
>
>Q. Who can belong?
>
>All women and men who share our goals, regardless of background or
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>
>Q. What does it cost?
>
>Basic membership, which includes regular e-mail alerts, is $25 per
>year, but no one will be turned away for lack of funds. Access to the
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>
>Q. What has the organization done so far?
>
>Since March 1995, members have taken action based on WLO alerts, on dozens
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>Under the leadership of Web Coordinator Laurie Mann, WLO has also built an
>award-winning web site. In July 1996, WLO announced its Women Organizing
>for Change (WOC) campaign, opened an election year office in Washington DC,
>enlisted the support of major women's organizations, and hired veteran
>activists Jeanne Clark (Executive Director) and Rhonda Lees, Esq. (Deputy
>Director). In August, WOC worked closely with Republican and Democratic
>activists who worked to advance women's issues at their party's conventions.
>WOC continues to work actively with other women's and civil rights
>organizations.
>
>Q. How Do I Join WOC?
>
>1.  Complete an online volunteer pledge form at http://wlo.org
>2.  Sending an e-mail to volunteer@wlo.org with the subject "volunteer"
>
>Donations can be mailed to Women Leaders Online at P.O. Box 57199,
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>Thanks.  We hope you will join us.
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>Please Post Widely!
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>PO Box 57199, Washington DC 20037
>Voice: 202-861-4730
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>
>
>----- End forwarded message

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
Daniel Zellman           Department of English
    dzellman@uic.edu        University of Illinois at Chicago
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 16 Jan 1997 19:24:38 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "Aldon L. Nielsen" 
Subject:      Re: real worlds...
In-Reply-To:  <199701170039.SAA29570@charlie.cns.iit.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

Signing off for a few days as I leave Boulder with its attendant
mysteries (and attendant press corps) to return to my "real" employments
at San Jose State -- U-Haul couldn't provide a truck with modem &
cellular phone, so I'll just have to listen to all of these poetry
reading tapes I've been making lately --

Speaking of publications -- Douglass Messerli handed me in D.C. a copy of
his latest _Stein Awards_ anthology, which makes for very good reading
indeed -- I've learned the names of a couple impressive poets previously
unknown to me already --  Looks just like last year's model in a new
color, so don't go thinking you've already got it --

Pat and others here abouts -- will be back in June and hope to see you
again then --
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 17 Jan 1997 00:52:31 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Steph4848@AOL.COM
Subject:      Re: Re.

It seems this list adrifting. Is it possible that folks might talk about real
books, poems. I don't mind the auto/bio/ etc. riffs but it wd also be nice,
maybe add a few sparks, if the focus cd turn to actual poems, lines etc. The
formalized thing. I been re-reading Tom Mandel's new book, PROSPECT OF
RELEASE which I find stunning. I'll probably pop out a review later.
I realize the "ragged right" craziness of E-mail limits the integrity of
presenting even the lines of an actual work, but even given the formal
challenge of that, this format/ forumn (academic or none) wd be welcome to my
eyes/ears/cranium. Not only who you/we are reading, but what. Proof, love,
war in particulars, etc.

Cheers,
Stephen
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 16 Jan 1997 22:26:48 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         George Bowering 
Subject:      Re: tunes to keep your head clear
In-Reply-To:  
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Driving back and forth between clinic and home today I kept playing my old
Kid Creole and the Cocoanuts tapes to clear my head. And sinuses.




George Bowering.
                                       ,
2499 West 37th Ave.,
Vancouver, B.C.,
Canada  V6M 1P4

fax: 1-604-266-9000
e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 17 Jan 1997 16:31:24 JST
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         John Geraets 
Subject:      ruse: add l and transpose s

Are there rules regarding the kind/s of writing in which this
exchange community shares an interest?--I mean in the sense of
ground rules. In what is it grounded? Or not, nothing. Is
language or post-language writing grounded?

Just wondering,

John
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 17 Jan 1997 01:07:15 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         George Bowering 
Subject:      Re: fem poet wear
In-Reply-To:  
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

>George, they are not baggy enough to hide Derrida's /Glas/ down them, but
>I could conceivably hide Wittgenstein's /On Certainty./ --Gwyn


Wow, pants full of discourse theory! I am wearing baggy lightweight jeans
right now, and looking around for a book. Damn! _A Nest of Ninnies_! Oh
hell, I think I'll read a page or two. "Alice was tired...."




George Bowering.
                                       ,
2499 West 37th Ave.,
Vancouver, B.C.,
Canada  V6M 1P4

fax: 1-604-266-9000
e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 17 Jan 1997 01:10:48 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         George Bowering 
Subject:      Re: slicker PO et TREE ICKS & the spaces undone
In-Reply-To:  <32DDF56F.7E12@mwt.net>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

>  did bp
>do any computer-generated visual works?
>
>miekal

On his first computer, an Apple II, bp did program a simple set of action
poems. One of those 5.5" diskettes. It was later made a commercial item by
Red Deer College Press, and is still available, I wd guess. In 3.5" disks,
but I dont know what format.





George Bowering.
                                       ,
2499 West 37th Ave.,
Vancouver, B.C.,
Canada  V6M 1P4

fax: 1-604-266-9000
e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 17 Jan 1997 08:31:00 CST
Reply-To:     tmandel@screenporch.com
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         tmandel@CAIS.CAIS.COM
Subject:      Tom Mandel / Marjorie Welish reading at Ear Inn tomorrow
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: Text/Plain; Charset=US-ASCII

Marjorie and I will be reading in NY tomorrow, at the Ear Inn.

That's Saturday January 18, and the reading starts at

2:30pm

(which I think is perhaps a little earlier than the usual starting
time?)

Anyway, if you are in NY please come.

The Ear Inn is located at 326 West Spring Street


Tom


*************************************************
             Tom Mandel   *   2927 Tilden St. NW
      Washington DC 20008   *   tmandel@1net.com
         vox: 202-362-1679   *   fax 202-364-5349
*************************************************
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 17 Jan 1997 08:59:15 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Pierre Joris 
Subject:      (H)ebonics
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Just as the thread on ebonics was dying down, this came through, via
Suzanne J. Levine, a great translator from yet another language. Some
shmerriment for the veekend. -- Pierre

Jewish English or "Hebonics"

The Encino School Board has declared Jewish English a second
language.  Backers of the move say the district is the first
in the nation to recognize Hebonics as the language of many
of America's Jews.  Here are some descriptions of the
characteristics of the language, and samples of phrases in
standard English and Hebonics.

Samples of Pronunciation Characteristics:

Jewish English or "Hebonics" hardens consonants at the ends
of words.  Thus, "hand" becomes "handt."

The letter "W" is always pronounced as if it were a "V".
Thus "walking"  becomes "valking."

"R" sounds are transformed to a guttural utterance that is
virtually impossible to spell in English.  It is "ghraining"
"alrgheady."

Samples of Idiomatic Characteristics:

Questions are always answered with questions.

Question:  "How do you feel?"  Hebonics response:  "How
should I feel?"

The subject is often placed at the end of a sentence after a
pronoun has been used at the beginning:  "She dances
beautifully, that girl."

The sarcastic repetition of words by adding "sh" to the
front is used for emphasis:  mountains becomes "shmountains"
turtle becomes "shmurtle"

Sample Usage Comparisons:

Standard English Phrase             Hebonics Phrase

"He walks slowly."        -     "Like a fly in the ointment he walks"
"You're sexy."             -              (unknown concept)
"Sorry, I do not know the time."   -      "What do I look like, a
clock?"

"I hope things turn out for the best."  -  "You should BE so lucky"
"Anything can happen."    -    "It is never so bad, it can't get worse"
--
=========================================
pierre joris   6 madison place   albany ny 12202
tel/fax (510) 426 0433 email:joris@cnsunix.albany.edu
http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/authors/joris/
http://www.albany.edu/~tm0900/nomad.html
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Everything that allows men to become rooted, through
values or sentiments, in _one_ time, in _one_ history, in
_one_ language, is the principle of alienation which
constitutes man as privileged in so far as he is what he is,
[...] imprisoning him in contentment with his own reality
and encouraging him to offer it as an example or impose
it as a conquering assertation. -- Maurice Blanchot
==========================================
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 17 Jan 1997 09:40:27 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Johannah Raney 
Subject:      music and dictionaries

Re: music -- Richard Thompson, Greg Brown, Bill Morrissey ($.06)

I am in search of -- verse, encyclopedia, or otherwise -- which in some
way catalog emotions/emotional concepts/ideas...  I realize that's extremely
fuzzy...but anything from the dictionary of received ideas to Henri Deluy's
Carnal Love...works that have a focus on articulating the abstraction of
dominating human concepts.  Particularly interested in finding works on
shame.  Any leads for a very broad request?

Johannah Raney
Cambridge, Ma
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 17 Jan 1997 10:30:08 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         robert drake 
Subject:      Re: (H)ebonics
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

>
>"Anything can happen."    -    "It is never so bad, it can't get worse"
>--

i thot it was:

"Anythink can happen."    -    "It is never so bad, it can't get verse"


lbd
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 17 Jan 1997 09:31:42 -0600
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         amato@CHARLIE.CNS.IIT.EDU
Subject:      lit...
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

i'm reading through both the _primary trouble_ and _premonitions_
anthologies of late, both of which i'm finding to be well-worth the price
of admission... i'll be using the _primary trouble_ anthology in an
american poetry class this semester, so it'll be interesting to see how the
class responds to the writing... i'm gonna jump-start the class by
beginning at the beginning, having a close look at that preface-poem by
william bronk, "the nature of musical form," see what sorts of insights
this poem generates...

far as single books of poetry:  i'm finally getting to hannah weiner's
_silent teachers remembered sequel_, which is remarkable in its way... and
celan's _breathturn_, which w/o pierre joris's exceptional introduction
(and for that matter translation) i probably wouldn't have a clue as to how
to read...

next up is rod smith's latest, _in memory of my theories_... and i keep
dabbling in and out of the rothenberg/joris _poems for the millennium_
anthology, which i find extraordinary... oh and i'm just about to finish up
alfred bester's _the stars my destination_, one of THE most amazing scifi's
i've ever laid my pinkies on...

alla these superlatives, i know---but then, that's why i'm reading this
stuff!...

joe
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 17 Jan 1997 10:39:41 EST
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         henry gould 
Subject:      Re: music and dictionaries
In-Reply-To:  Message of Fri, 17 Jan 1997 09:40:27 -0500 from 

On Fri, 17 Jan 1997 09:40:27 -0500 Johannah Raney said:
>Carnal Love...works that have a focus on articulating the abstraction of
>dominating human concepts.  Particularly interested in finding works on
>shame.  Any leads for a very broad request?

I can't recommend it, since I've only sniffed it (about 80 yrs ago) -
but maybe the _Anatomy of Melancholy_?  Just a guess...(& not exactly
a recent work...) - Henry Gould
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 17 Jan 1997 08:51:28 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Charles Alexander 
Subject:      Re: slicker PO et TREE ICKS & the spaces undone
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

At 01:10 AM 1/17/97 -0800, you wrote:
>>  did bp
>>do any computer-generated visual works?
>>
>>miekal
>
>On his first computer, an Apple II, bp did program a simple set of action
>poems. One of those 5.5" diskettes. It was later made a commercial item by
>Red Deer College Press, and is still available, I wd guess. In 3.5" disks,
>but I dont know what format.

It's a Macintosh format. I have one which Ellie Nichol kindly gave me, and I
believe that you're right and it is still available. Probably one could be
purchased from jw curry, whose address was posted on this list a few days
ago. But perhaps from other sources as well.

charles
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 17 Jan 1997 10:26:40 +0100
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Miekal And 
Subject:      Re: Re
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Steph4848@AOL.COM wrote:


 Is it possible that folks might talk about real
> books, poems.


well


the only "real" book


im reading


at this time


is Pat Califia's Public Sex

but maybe that

not be literary enuf to mention

here


miekal
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 17 Jan 1997 12:01:56 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Jordan Davis 
Subject:      Re: music and dictionaries
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

My understanding is that Kenneth Goldsmith's new book from The Figures is
the catalog poem to end all catalog poems... Kenny are you out there? Have
you announced this yet? -- Jordan
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 16 Jan 1997 15:41:21 -0800
Reply-To:     doncheney@geocities.com
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Don Cheney 
Organization: UC San Diego
Subject:      Re: tunes to keep your head clear
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Miekal And wrote:

> when I wanta clear my head i break out my old xenakis records & play > them really loud.
>
> m

for me : my head is clearest at spectacles that i enjoy : kid's birthday
parties, kid's soccer games, swap meets, etc.

of course, if i need to clear my head it's kinda hard to put together a
kid's birthday party or a swap meet at the drop of a hat. i meditate
(ie: just bring thoughts out and notice them).

as far as music goes, the meat puppets' UP ON THE SUN.

don
--
visit Don Cheney's Home Page & Clean Neck Shop
http://www.geocities.com/~doncheney
doncheney@geocities.com
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 17 Jan 1997 11:58:06 MDT
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Christopher Alexander 
Organization: U of U Marriott Library Staff Net
Subject:      Re: tunes to keep your head clear

> would you good people mind recom
> mending some listening materials?

when I want to clear my head,
I just go to one of Don's great
birthday parties.

actually, theres something
I really like about that--I havent
been to a birthday party since I

was about 12 (I guess most of us
get too embarrassed at about that
age to have more).

oh, but music: any Patsy Cline will do--well, almost any.  also
Art Blakey & the Jazz Messengers. theres a great Nat King Cole disk
of the earliest recordings (the name escapes me now)--much better, I
think, than his later work. also I listen to a lot of Sonic Youth.
..
christopher alexander, etc.
calexand@alexandria.lib.edu

"... The Anarchists' [national] anthem is an international
anthem that consists of 365 raspberries blown in very quick
succession to the tune of "Camptown Races".  Nobody has to
stand up for it, nobody has to listen to it, and, even better,
nobody has to play it."
          --Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 17 Jan 1997 11:11:36 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Steve Carll 
Subject:      Antenym 11 reading
Comments: To: poetics@UBVM.cc.buffalo.edu, mburger@adobe.com,
          kristinb@wired.com, chadwick@crl.com, cah@sonic.net, vent@sirius.com,
          cyanosis@slip.net, jasfoley@aol.com, peter_gizzi@macmail.ucsc.edu,
          olmsted@crl.com, andrew_joron@sfbayguardian.com,
          jet@interface.ic.com, zorlook@aol.com, tlovell@mercury.sfsu.edu,
          75323.740@compuserve.com, dmelt@ccnet.com, murphym@earthlink.com,
          john_r._noto@sfbayguardian.com, ortiz@uclink.berkeley.edu,
          kit_robinson@peoplesoft.com, jays@sirius.com, selby@slip.net,
          75477.2255@compuserve.com, ashurin@mercury.sfsu.edu,
          lisas@ncgate.newcollege.edu, bstrang@sfsu.edu,
          102573.414@compuserve.com, tubesox@sirius.com, acorn@sirius.com,
          mlangl01@ccsf.cc.ca.sf, rjm@merkle.baaqmd.gov, pendleton@frost.com,
          celeste@slip.net, eskiles@slip.net, ovenman@slip.net,
          leslie@researchmag.com, xerxes999@aol.com,
          ghabas@ncgate.newcollege.edu
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

The contributors' reading and publication party for Antenym 11 will be held
as an alternative to the Super Bowl on Sunday, January 26th at Canessa Park
Gallery, 708 Montgomery St. at Columbus in lovely downtown San Francisco.
Scheduled start time is 3:00 PM and the readers will be:

                Darin DeStefano
                Pat Reed
                Eric Selland

Admission is 5 dollars.  Hope to see you all there!


**********************************
sjcarll@slip.net        Steve Carll
http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mags/antenym
http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/ezines/antenym

In seed-
sense
the sea stars you out, innermost, forever.

                --Paul Celan
**********************************
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 17 Jan 1997 11:14:09 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Mark Weiss 
Subject:      Re: (H)ebonics
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Let me add that the transliteration of those sounds in hebonics (I prefer
hebronics) that goyim find hard to pronounce follows the standard
established by Weinrich in his _Modern Yiddish-English Dictionary_, the
final arbiter in such matters.

At 08:59 AM 1/17/97 -0500, you wrote:
>Just as the thread on ebonics was dying down, this came through, via
>Suzanne J. Levine, a great translator from yet another language. Some
>shmerriment for the veekend. -- Pierre
>
>Jewish English or "Hebonics"
>
>The Encino School Board has declared Jewish English a second
>language.  Backers of the move say the district is the first
>in the nation to recognize Hebonics as the language of many
>of America's Jews.  Here are some descriptions of the
>characteristics of the language, and samples of phrases in
>standard English and Hebonics.
>
>Samples of Pronunciation Characteristics:
>
>Jewish English or "Hebonics" hardens consonants at the ends
>of words.  Thus, "hand" becomes "handt."
>
>The letter "W" is always pronounced as if it were a "V".
>Thus "walking"  becomes "valking."
>
>"R" sounds are transformed to a guttural utterance that is
>virtually impossible to spell in English.  It is "ghraining"
>"alrgheady."
>
>Samples of Idiomatic Characteristics:
>
>Questions are always answered with questions.
>
>Question:  "How do you feel?"  Hebonics response:  "How
>should I feel?"
>
>The subject is often placed at the end of a sentence after a
>pronoun has been used at the beginning:  "She dances
>beautifully, that girl."
>
>The sarcastic repetition of words by adding "sh" to the
>front is used for emphasis:  mountains becomes "shmountains"
>turtle becomes "shmurtle"
>
>Sample Usage Comparisons:
>
>Standard English Phrase             Hebonics Phrase
>
>"He walks slowly."        -     "Like a fly in the ointment he walks"
>"You're sexy."             -              (unknown concept)
>"Sorry, I do not know the time."   -      "What do I look like, a
>clock?"
>
>"I hope things turn out for the best."  -  "You should BE so lucky"
>"Anything can happen."    -    "It is never so bad, it can't get worse"
>--
>=========================================
>pierre joris   6 madison place   albany ny 12202
>tel/fax (510) 426 0433 email:joris@cnsunix.albany.edu
>http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/authors/joris/
>http://www.albany.edu/~tm0900/nomad.html
>---------------------------------------------------------------------------
>Everything that allows men to become rooted, through
>values or sentiments, in _one_ time, in _one_ history, in
>_one_ language, is the principle of alienation which
>constitutes man as privileged in so far as he is what he is,
>[...] imprisoning him in contentment with his own reality
>and encouraging him to offer it as an example or impose
>it as a conquering assertation. -- Maurice Blanchot
>==========================================
>
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 17 Jan 1997 14:53:05 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Charles Bernstein 
Subject:      New Listserv address
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

I have gotten several questions about the new listserv address. The address
for subscribing and unsubscribing, for setting mail/nomail or digest, as
well as for "review poetics" (which gives you who is subscribed) is now

listserv@listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu

The "UBVM" address is no longer active! Part of the confusion comes for our
using the old listserv address in the "how to see who's subscribed" section
of the New and Improved Welcome Message. More improvement is just around the
corner. There are now about 450 people subscribed to Poetics.
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 17 Jan 1997 16:02:51 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "k.a. hehir" 
Subject:      Re: tunes to keep your head clear
In-Reply-To:  
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

yeah, i'm with george. it's friggin cold here and old steel pulse tapes
are rockin my walkman. roots rock reggae!
kevin


On Thu, 16 Jan 1997, George Bowering wrote:

> Driving back and forth between clinic and home today I kept playing my old
> Kid Creole and the Cocoanuts tapes to clear my head. And sinuses.
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 17 Jan 1997 16:02:20 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Kenneth Goldsmith 
Subject:      No. 111 2.7.93-10.20.96 Arrives
Comments: To: poetics@UBVM.cc.buffalo.edu
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Jordan Davis wrote:

>>My understanding is that Kenneth Goldsmith's new book from The Figures is
>>"the catalog poem to end all catalog poems..." Kenny are you out there? Have
>>you announced this yet? -- Jordan

Now, now, Jordan. Let's give credit where credit is due. Those are the
words of Mr. Bernstein. "No. 111 2.7.93-10.20.96" is due out on Feb. 7th
from The Figures, weighing in at 624 pages. There will be a book party at
the newly opened chic Soho Grand Hotel here in NYC on Friday, Feb. 7,
5-7:30. All in town are welcome to attend. Since there is no press release
written yet, here's the context from which that idea came--the full back
cover blurbs:


"The Borscht belt meets concept art in this delirious digest of obsessive
gaiety, this useless collection of perishable information, this wily
catalog of everyday life, this alphabetic bestiary of the ribs, joints,
sinews, and bones of language's alluring lore.  Kenneth Goldsmith has
written what could be the longest, and maybe the last, list poem of the
20th Century.  On the way, he has reinvented prosody-counting by 1, 2s, 3s,
and up-as he inventories the roaring rush of rippling, or is it ripping?,
words: inchoate yet coalescing, a fractal romp on just this side of virtual
reality."

                            -Charles Bernstein


"In Kenneth Goldsmith's "useless encyclopedic reference book," Oulipo
brilliantly meets the Millenium.  The text adheres strictly to its chosen
rules: all the phrases collected between February 7, 1993 and October 20,
1996 end in sounds related to the sound "R" and they are organized
alphabetically by syllable-count beginning with one syllable entries for
Chapter 1 ("A, a, aar, aas, aer, agh, ah, air...") and ending with a 7,228
syllable tour de force of astonishing proportions.  But, in the spirit of
George Perec and Jacques Roubaud, Goldsmith uses these "rules" to expose
the reader/listener/viewer to the marvels and vagaries of language in the
late twentieth century.  What we talk about, how we look at things, how we
actually communicate-Goldsmith's eye and ear for contemporary argot is near
perfect."

                           -Marjorie Perloff



"Musical before exhaustive, rhythmic before objective, Goldsmith's epic
litanies and lists bring to the textual tradition of conceptual art not
only an exploded frame of reference, but a hitherto absent sense of
hypnotic beat.  Under its deceptively bland title, "No. 111
2.7.93-10.20.96" attempts no less than a complete reordering of the things
of the world.  The work is also a weirdly constructed Baedeker to late 20th
Century American society, as well as a compendium for an autobiography of
the artist."

                            -Raphael Rubinstein, Art in America



ISBN 0-935724-87-7, THE FIGURES
$17.50

To get yr. hands on a copy, contact The Figures at (413)528-2552 or write
to them at:

The Figures
5 Castle Hill
Great Barrington, MA 01230

or through SPD or email me: kennyg@bway.net

+===============================================================+
Kenneth Goldsmith                  work: http://www.ubuweb.com
611 Bway, #702, NYC 10012
v.212.260-4081


----------> editor UbuWeb ViSuAL & COncReTE PoEtRy
                  http://www.ubuweb.com/vp <--------------------
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 17 Jan 1997 14:44:00 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "Pritchett,Pat @Silverplume" 
Subject:      Re: real worlds...
Comments: To: "Aldon L. Nielsen" 
MIME-version: 1.0
Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN
Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT

Travel safely, Aldon. I'll look forward to your return. There shld be groovy
goings-on at Naropa come June. Maybe they'll even have caught the real
killer by then, who knows?

Patrick Pritchett
 ----------
From: Aldon L. Nielsen
To: POETICS
Subject: Re: real worlds...
Date: Friday, January 17, 1997 2:18PM


Signing off for a few days as I leave Boulder with its attendant
mysteries (and attendant press corps) to return to my "real" employments
at San Jose State -- U-Haul couldn't provide a truck with modem &
cellular phone, so I'll just have to listen to all of these poetry
reading tapes I've been making lately --

Speaking of publications -- Douglass Messerli handed me in D.C. a copy of
his latest _Stein Awards_ anthology, which makes for very good reading
indeed -- I've learned the names of a couple impressive poets previously
unknown to me already --  Looks just like last year's model in a new
color, so don't go thinking you've already got it --

Pat and others here abouts -- will be back in June and hope to see you
again then --
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 17 Jan 1997 17:25:47 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         jarnot@PIPELINE.COM
Subject:      the poetry project newsletter
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Issue #164 (February/March 1997) of the Poetry Project Newsletter is now
available.  The issue includes:

An Interview with Alice Notley by Judith Goldman
Notes on Community by Jeff Derksen
An Essay on Ian Hamilton Finlay by Brian Kim Stefans
Plus: book reviews, regional updates, announcements, and the Poetry Project
Calendar.

You can get a year's subscription (4 issues) for $20 -- write to:

The Poetry Project
c/o St. Mark's Church
131 East 10th Street
New York, NY 10003

Recent back issues are also available for $5 --

#163-- an interview with David Henderson, reviews of Tan Lin, Bill Luoma,
Kathleen Fraser, Jim Brodey & Bob Kaufman...

#162-- an interview with Harryette Mullen, reviews of Bernadette Mayer,
Susan Howe, Tom Raworth, Paul Beatty...

Forthcoming in 1997--

#165 (April/May) will include an interview with John Godfrey, reviews of
Elinor Nauen, Juliana Spahr, Jonas Mekas, and more.
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 17 Jan 1997 16:45:00 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "Pritchett,Pat @Silverplume" 
Subject:      Re: lit...
Comments: To: amato 
MIME-version: 1.0
Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN
Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT

Joe,

That Bester book *is* brilliant, by gorsh. I re-read it this summer, then
found that Vintage was re-releasing it. I think Wm. Gibson had this book in
the back of his head when he wrote _Neuromancer_. Got the _Millennium_
anthology for my B-day and am loving it. Also, scored a used copy of o-blek
Spring 1993: Presentation, which features work by many of the folks on this
list and is a real joy. Other books I'm enjoying: Tom's incredible
_Prospect_, Bev Dahlen's Reading 8-10, and Edmond Jabes. I'm very excited
about Jabes and am curious to know what others on the list think of him as
he is new to me.

Patrick Pritchett
 ----------
From: amato
To: POETICS
Subject: lit...
Date: Friday, January 17, 1997 3:28PM


i'm reading through both the _primary trouble_ and _premonitions_
anthologies of late, both of which i'm finding to be well-worth the price
of admission... i'll be using the _primary trouble_ anthology in an
american poetry class this semester, so it'll be interesting to see how the
class responds to the writing... i'm gonna jump-start the class by
beginning at the beginning, having a close look at that preface-poem by
william bronk, "the nature of musical form," see what sorts of insights
this poem generates...

far as single books of poetry:  i'm finally getting to hannah weiner's
_silent teachers remembered sequel_, which is remarkable in its way... and
celan's _breathturn_, which w/o pierre joris's exceptional introduction
(and for that matter translation) i probably wouldn't have a clue as to how
to read...

next up is rod smith's latest, _in memory of my theories_... and i keep
dabbling in and out of the rothenberg/joris _poems for the millennium_
anthology, which i find extraordinary... oh and i'm just about to finish up
alfred bester's _the stars my destination_, one of THE most amazing scifi's
i've ever laid my pinkies on...

alla these superlatives, i know---but then, that's why i'm reading this
stuff!...

joe
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 18 Jan 1997 14:14:45 +1300
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         DS 
Subject:      Bowering - Stool pigeon
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Georgie, I'm not your daddy...

but its Coconuts

kind regards

dan
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 18 Jan 1997 14:20:40 +1300
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         DS 
Subject:      Re: sustaining the lifethread
Comments: To: "Pritchett,Pat @Silverplume" 
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

I dunno, here it seems you get cheap drugs, free chocolate, free gym
membership, sex on the weekends & a large golf course if you get the right
prison.

daNZ

At 09:09 AM 1/16/97 -0500, you wrote:
>
>Hi Dan,
>
>all I meant is this: as bad as the army etc must be (and that's bad), I'd
>take it anyday over a prison full of psychos, murderers and potential "ass
>bandits." I've known people who were raped in prison - it's very common, as
>I'm sure you know. No thanks, amigo!
>
>Cheers,
>Patrick
> ----------
>From: DS
>To: POETICS
>Subject: Re: sustaining the lifethread
>Date: Wednesday, January 15, 1997 8:28PM
>
>
>huh?
>
>At 07:13 PM 1/15/97 -0500, you wrote:
>>With all due respect, Dan: you must be plumb loco to make that kind of
>>statement. Or just uninformed.
>>
>>All this talk about the university as "artificial" strikes me as absurd.
>How
>>is it any more artificial than the corporate environment? I'll state the
>>obvious here: culture = artifice - and it's better than living in the
>woods.
>> A university *is* a corporation. It's designed to turn a profit by
>>producing a product - education. Or a facsimile thereof. That's what people
>>seem to objecting to here. Unfortunately, the idealism engendered by a love
>>of learning does seem to be often at odds with the bottom line. On the
>other
>>hand, I've read on this list someone rather melodramatically comparing the
>>university to a prison: try working at a life insurance company for a few
>>months. It'll suck the marrow right out of your soul!
>> ----------
>>From: DS
>>To: POETICS
>>Subject: Re: sustaining the lifethread
>>Date: Wednesday, January 15, 1997 6:53PM
>>
>>
>>As someone still in my 20s i would chose prison over compulsory military
>>service without a second thought.
>>
>>dan
>>
>>(in New Zealand - you don't have to pay university fees if you are inside.
>I
>>would have food & board etc & could get stuck into that contemplated phd)
>>
>>
>
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 18 Jan 1997 14:23:36 +1300
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         DS 
Subject:      Re: tunes to keep your head clear
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

At 11:58 AM 1/17/97 MDT, you wrote:
>> would you good people mind recom
>> mending some listening materials?


For head clearing i recommend 'A meeting by the river' Ry Cooder (&family)
with U M Bhatt, with a great 71/2 minute version of the ubiquitous figian
song Isa Lei

>
>when I want to clear my head,
>I just go to one of Don's great
>birthday parties.
>
>actually, theres something
>I really like about that--I havent
>been to a birthday party since I
>
>was about 12 (I guess most of us
>get too embarrassed at about that
>age to have more).
>
>oh, but music: any Patsy Cline will do--well, almost any.  also
>Art Blakey & the Jazz Messengers. theres a great Nat King Cole disk
>of the earliest recordings (the name escapes me now)--much better, I
>think, than his later work. also I listen to a lot of Sonic Youth.
>..
>christopher alexander, etc.
>calexand@alexandria.lib.edu
>
>"... The Anarchists' [national] anthem is an international
>anthem that consists of 365 raspberries blown in very quick
>succession to the tune of "Camptown Races".  Nobody has to
>stand up for it, nobody has to listen to it, and, even better,
>nobody has to play it."
>          --Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
>
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 17 Jan 1997 20:51:37 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         shoemakers@COFC.EDU
Subject:      Re: tunes to keep your head clear
In-Reply-To:  
MIME-version: 1.0
Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

Yeah, Don, Puppets' Up On The Sun is a fave album of mine--has a real
solar flair you might say--and i've been waiting for them to do something
as good ever since.  So far without luck.  A few times now i've heard
lame cleaned-up versions of their earlier stuff on the radio, suitable for
"Alternative-Radio-As-Marketing-Niche" framing.  As tuneful as "Sun" is to
my ear, i'm always amazed that that sort of stuff cldn't get played *as
is*.

steve
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 17 Jan 1997 20:56:51 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         shoemakers@COFC.EDU
Subject:      Re: tunes to keep your head clear
In-Reply-To:  <01IEAAEWUIBA99EUZ7@iix.com>
MIME-version: 1.0
Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

Pat sez he's listening to old Johnny Cash--has anybody heard the *new*
one yet?  The one before this--American Recordings--was good & scary.
steve
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 17 Jan 1997 20:06:56 +0100
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Miekal And 
Subject:      Re: tunes to keep your head clear
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

stick this on yr
computer when yr
mother's not lookin


NOISE HOUSE
by The Wisconsin Conservatory of Noise
800K floppy
Requires Hypercard 2.0 for the Macintosh

This hypermedia hiphop single cuts John Cage with Public Enemy with
movement by the Noise House Dancers.  Typography tumbles around the
page.  Hook up your Mac upto your stereo & crack it!



$6 plus $1 p/h from:


Autoceptor Experimedia
Rt 1 Box 131
LaFarge, WI  54639
dtv@mwt.net
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 18 Jan 1997 01:12:25 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         George Bowering 
Subject:      Re: No fish today
In-Reply-To:  <199701180114.OAA05729@ihug.co.nz>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

>Georgie, I'm not your daddy...
>
>but its Coconuts
>
>kind regards
>
>dan

I was thinking it was but I put in an a just in case.

Turnin' this town upside down--





George Bowering.
                                       ,
2499 West 37th Ave.,
Vancouver, B.C.,
Canada  V6M 1P4

fax: 1-604-266-9000
e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 18 Jan 1997 01:23:21 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         George Bowering 
Subject:      Re: Elmslie Reading?
In-Reply-To:  
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Ah you lucky people who have heard Elmslie read. (Or Schuyler, for that
matter.) I have never heard him, though I heard too late that a play was
produced in Seattle a couple years ago. Does anyone out there teach
Elmslie? How does one do it?




George Bowering.
                                       ,
2499 West 37th Ave.,
Vancouver, B.C.,
Canada  V6M 1P4

fax: 1-604-266-9000
e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 18 Jan 1997 12:33:10 -0800
Reply-To:     John Kinsella 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         John Kinsella 
Subject:      Requests & Ethics
In-Reply-To:  
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

I'm interested in hearing from anyone interested in "innovative" verse and
the pastoral poem. Particularly the possible political interstices and
oppositions with Language Poetry. I'm considering compiling an anthology
of both critical and "creative" work around this theme. Personally, I've
been looking at Lyn Hejinian's, Susan Howe's, and the Australian poet
Robert Adamson's work. At the moment I'm working on a critical book on the
Pastoral & Modernism in the Late Twentieth Century and see such an
anthology as a natural extension of this project.

Re any interesting poems. I'm reading heaps of interesting stuff for Salt
at the moment (Salt 9 should be in US and UK bookshops shortly - the first
issue to have true international distribution) but a piece that has
been particularly interesting in scope is Silliman's first section of his
K section of *The Alphabet*. And a batch of poems by Pierre Alferi which
could be described as being like a cross between John Tranter and Andrew
Duncan if they wrote in French. It astounds me how much great material is
out there.

A query. Has anyone heard what Blitza Bargeld is working on at the moment?


Yours
John Kinsella
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 18 Jan 1997 12:45:55 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         John Kinsella 
Subject:      by another name
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

That's Blixa Bargeld I was talking about. Though I'm sure he'd appreciate
the typo. And I've just discovered the Guardian weekend liftout features
Nick Cave and says Bargeld is working on a theatre project - "The
Execution Of Precious Memories". A weird coincidence.

Yours
John K
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 18 Jan 1997 09:26:35 +0100
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Miekal And 
Subject:      Re: Elmslie Reading?
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

George Bowering wrote:
>
> Ah you lucky people who have heard Elmslie read. (Or Schuyler, for that
> matter.) I have never heard him, though I heard too late that a play was
> produced in Seattle a couple years ago. Does anyone out there teach
> Elmslie? How does one do it?


He was even at Woodland Patterns & I couldnt get up the gumption to
drive across the state.  Never seen em either.



Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "Thomas M. Orange" 
Subject:      Re: tunes to keep your head clear
In-Reply-To:  <9701180504.AA06170@bosshog.arts.uwo.ca>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

lou reed metal machine music -- guaranteed to blow all the scleroses right
outta the ol' cranial cavity -- strict stereo separation means you should
either use headphones or what i like better -- unplug one speaker and play
side one, then switch speakers and play the same side again, then play it
again full stereo and enjoy how the two channels interlap.

cheers,
t.
 _____________________________________________________________
| Music is not yet written but is to be.                      |
| The preparation is long and of long intent                  |
| For the time when sound shall be subtler than we ourselves. |
|                     -- Wallace Stevens --                   |
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 18 Jan 1997 11:22:15 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "GRAHAM W. FOUST" 
Subject:      actual books
In-Reply-To:  <9701180504.AA26153@osf1.gmu.edu>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

-
Reading:  Martha Ronk's _State of Mind_, a short trip on a long pier.
wonderful west coast hoodoo.  U.S. OUT OF TERRA INCOGNITA!

Bei Dao's _Landscape Over Zero_, BD repeatedly destroys me and keeps me up
at night looking for missles.  I find myself returning to this book
several times a day.

Medbh McGuckian's _Captain Lavender_, latest book of whammy by Belfast's
finest.  The war is in the painting, and she's no radio traitor, I say.

and I just re-read David Antin's "Definitions for Mendy."  Yep.

Now playing:  George Jones/Elvis Costello-"Stranger in the House":  I
always found EC's solo version a bit cold.  GJ is just what this song
needed.  Violin that asks you nicely to weep.


Wilco-"Being There" LP:  I haven't stopped listening to this 2xLP since it
was released in October.  A monster:  feedback pianoed ballads, Beach Boys
stomp, and the usual sturm und twang.  Spinal Tap and Dimetapp.

Willie Nelson-"Spirit" LP:  not as fonky as "Shotgun Willie," not as
masterful as "Stardust," but the spare line-up (fiddle, piano, guitar) and
matador flavor give the old dog a new kick.  Just heard Willie on Fresh
Aire the other day, where he caually admitted that he wrote "Crazy",
"Nightlife", and "Funny How Time Slips Away" in one afternoon.  I need a
day like that.

James McMurtry-"Where'd You Hide the Body?":  Larry's kid's even bleaker
third album.  This one has a tuba though, on the opener, "Iolanthe."  A
few clunkers, but worth it for lines like "There'd be no last call if they
elected me king" and "I wrecked the El Camino/Woulda been DWI/So I just
walked off and left it/Layin' on its side."

all freaked out about clarity,

Graham
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 18 Jan 1997 09:59:55 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Douglas Barbour 
Subject:      Re: bp's computer poems + other books
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

George Bowering said:

"On his first computer, an Apple II, bp did program a simple set of action
poems. One of those 5.5" diskettes. It was later made a commercial item by
Red Deer College Press, and is still available, I wd guess. In 3.5" disks,
but I dont know what format."

It's called _First Screening_ & is (was?) available from Red Deer College
Press for Can $9.95, US$8.95 from rdc
56 Avenue & 32 Street  Box 5005
Red Deer  Alberta  T4N 5H5  Canada. My version is for MacIntosh (I dont
know if there's a version fo IBM, but there well  may be.

Also available from rdc:

Douglas Barbour _Story for a Saskatchewan Night_
Fred Wah _Music at the Heart of Thinking_ & _Alley Alley Home Free_

I'm hoping that this message gets to the list as I had a bunch of trouble
with my address seemingly changing on the listserve & thus not being
accepted. Ive gone through the changes I think will work. I wanted to send
another note on Fred Wah:

In the mode recommended by Charles Bernstein, I want to call attention to a
new book by someone many of you know:

NeWest Press recently published Fred Wah's first prose work, _Diamond
Grill_. Although I'm a member of the Editorial Board of NeWest Press, I
only saw the work after it was published, so I can tell you, with no sense
of conflict of interest, that it is simply terrific. A beautiful mix of
memoir, fiction, exact & precise memory-act, lovingly rendered life as
known in the senses. Those who know Fred's poetry will know how he works
with language, but here he has maintained the intensity of his poetry while
achieving a level of openness and more 'ordinary' (never in his case quite
what you expect) readerliness that will gain him many new readers (in fact,
_Diamond Grill_ has sold over half its run in just 3 months). I began to
read & couldn't put this down. Fred captures the essence of the small
Chinese cafes that are found in small towns all across the Canadian west, &
his own growing up in the cafe his father ran for years in Nelson BC.

The book is available in individual (not chain) bookstores across Canada, & from

LPC Group
1436 West Randolph Street
Chicago  IL  60607
Toll free ph: 1-800-626-4330
Toll free fax: 1-800-334-3892
(that may be for bookstores, but try it).

You wont be disappointed...

Doug

 =============================================================================
Douglas Barbour
Department of English
University of Alberta               in the rooms you live in
Edmonton  Alberta  T6G  2E5         other people's books line your shelves
(403) 492 2181  FAX:(403) 492 8142
H: 436 3320                                     bpNichol
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 18 Jan 1997 10:11:36 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Douglas Barbour 
Subject:      Re: music to clear the head
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Gosh, so much loud music being recommended, but I was glad to see Charles
Alexander get to jazz.

I certainly listen to Richard Thompson a lot, & Van Morrison's great live
in San Francisco double CD. But to clear the head?

Anything by Jessica Williams, perhaps the most exciting & complete pianist
(& terrific composer) to finally get some attention recently. A number of
fabulous albums are available from Jazz Focus records, a small company in
Calgary dedicated to releasing music by people the BIG companies havent
seemed to notice (& we know about that in poetry, dont we?)...

 =============================================================================
Douglas Barbour
Department of English
University of Alberta               in the rooms you live in
Edmonton  Alberta  T6G  2E5         other people's books line your shelves
(403) 492 2181  FAX:(403) 492 8142
H: 436 3320                                     bpNichol
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 18 Jan 1997 10:13:31 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "Jeffrey W. Timmons" 
Subject:      Re: lit: reading...
Comments: To: amato@CHARLIE.CNS.IIT.EDU
In-Reply-To:  <199701171531.JAA18472@charlie.cns.iit.edu>
MIME-version: 1.0
Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT

acker: blood and guts in high school
kundera: slowness
silliman: n/o

jeffrey timmons
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 18 Jan 1997 11:29:02 +0100
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Miekal And 
Subject:      Re: music to clear the head
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Douglas Barbour wrote:
>
> Gosh, so much loud music being recommended, but I was glad to see Charles
> Alexander get to jazz.

I bet the Meat Puppets would sound great overhead playing from
somebodies' tiny walkman headset.  Like tiny insects carving their
initials in the leg of your chair.

Miekal

who last night listened to Lyx play "Goodbye Porkpie Hat" on the piano &
thought of all youses clean heads.
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 18 Jan 1997 09:59:45 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Tosh 
Subject:      Re: music to clear the head
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Scott Walker's TILT
Anything by Serge Gainsbourg
Anything by Les Rita Mitsuoko
Soundtrack music from various Godard films (Japanese cd)
David Bowie's OUTSIDE
Anything by Billy Fury
Anything by Joe Meek

Tosh Berman
TamTam Books
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 18 Jan 1997 19:01:50 -0800
Reply-To:     John Kinsella 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         John Kinsella 
Subject:      Closure & The Pastoral (another Chapter of *Ethics*)
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

The Rabbiters: A Pastoral


That the Theocritan pick-up has been versed
in country things seems obvious, the velour
on the dashboard crazy with fresh air
rushing through the doorless cabin, the cursed
skies blackened by night. Though a moon lurks
somewhere and the spotlight cutting through
the burn-back of summer detects the jerks
of nerves and tissue - the rabbits out to chew
the burnt prongs of stubble, the halogens
conflagration fills the omni-screens
within their eyeballs - the crack and whine
of a triple two mocks its rituals, a sign
of fading influence in a field where gravity
is a neck chop and the poem is framed by levity.
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 18 Jan 1997 13:03:30 -0600
Reply-To:     maria damon 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         maria damon 
Subject:      Re: music to clear the head, actual boox

ali farka toure

boox:
hannah weiner, we speak silent
anna lowenhaupt tsing, in the realm of the diamond queen
jack spicer, collected boox (for class)
yeats, selected pomes (for class)
nathaniel mackey, djbot baghostus's run
various etymological handbooks
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 18 Jan 1997 13:08:34 -0600
Reply-To:     maria damon 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         maria damon 
Subject:      Re: boox

oh yeah one more actual book, the one i'm actually reading instead of having to
wade thru on on the floor picking my way to bed each night:

william harris, keeping the faith: a randolph phillips and the brotherhood of
sleeping car porters (for research on bob kaufman and labor --his father was a
pullman porter).  fun to learn something abt black labor history, about which i
know so little
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 18 Jan 1997 15:23:26 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Kenneth Goldsmith 
Subject:      Another One Bites the Dust
Comments: To: poetics@UBVM.cc.buffalo.edu
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

From today's New York Times--another one bites the gust (gotta love that
Whitney...)


January 18, 1997

Epilogue for Another Bookstore

By DINITIA SMITH


  NEW YORK -- Books & Company, the venerable Upper East Side bookstore that
has provided a home for a generation of writers, giving them space for
readings and allowing them to browse uninterruptedly amid its dark paneled
stacks, will close on May 31, its owner, Jeannette Watson, announced this
week. "We just cannot afford to pay the rent," Ms. Watson said.

  It is the latest in a series of independent bookstore closings in
Manhattan. On the Upper West Side alone, at least three independent
bookstores have closed since a Barnes & Noble superstore moved in in 1993.

  Nationally, the American Booksellers Association has estimated, some 50
to 60 independent bookstores shut down in 1996. And as the news of Books &
Company's closing spread through the literary community, the reaction was
dismay.

  "I'm heartbroken," said Cynthia Ozick over the phone last week. "What
does it tell us? That New York City can't support an independent
bookstore?"

  The reason for the closing, said Ms. Watson, is that business has been
bad lately. The building, on Madison Avenue at 74th Street, is owned by the
adjacent Whitney Museum of American Art, and Ms. Watson's lease is up.
"They were not willing to renew it on terms that were economically
reasonable for Books & Company," she said.

  The new lease provided for a rent increase that Willard Holmes, the
deputy director of the Whitney, called "a small percentage." Holmes added,
"It's unfortunate that they're not going to renew." Neither he nor Ms.
Watson would say exactly what the rent was, but rents for relatively small
spaces on Madison Avenue can be as high as $400,000 a year.

  Books & Company was founded in 1977 by Ms. Watson, the granddaughter of
Thomas Watson, the founder of IBM, and her partner, Burt Britton. Since
then, it has been a gathering place for writers, its antique air, its smell
of old books and creaking floors making it seem like a bit of London.

  When she opened her store, Ms. Watson, a divorced mother of a son, was
doing charity work. She had gone to Sarah Lawrence, and had always loved
books, so much, in fact, that her father called her "Madame-Nose-in-Books,"
she said.

  Still, her friends and family were surprised that the wealthy young woman
would want to tend store. Her father, Thomas Watson Jr. a former ambassador
to Russia, asked, "Why do you want to start a bookstore?' " Ms. Watson
remembers. "I told him I want to start something no one can take away from
me."

  For its first 10 years, the shop flourished. It was a place where
literary fiction got the best display, not the latest best sellers. Ms.
Watson called those years the Golden Age. "It was not unusual to a make a
$2,000 sale to one person," she said. "People had a tremendous amount of
money. They would buy expensive art books."

  Through its reading series, the bookstore introduced young writers, among
them Amy Hempel, Susan Cheever, Steven Millhauser and Edwidge Danticat.
Harold Brodkey met his wife, novelist Ellen Schwamm, there and called Books
& Company "symphonically important to me."

  Poet James Merrill even wrote a poem about the store for its 10th
anniversary:

  Ten years of browsing, and the shelves

  Mysteriously grow more packed

  Full of reflection, silver-backed ...

  Looking for books, we find ourselves.

  During those years, Ms. Watson met and married her second husband, Alex
Sanger, grandson of Margaret Sanger and president of Planned Parenthood of
New York City. They had two sons.

  But the last decade has not been kind to Books & Company. Real estate
values have driven many aspiring writers out of the neighborhood. The
superstores have come along, offering big discounts. And now there's
competition on the Internet. "You give your credit card number," Ms. Watson
said, describing Amazon.com, an Internet bookstore, "and the book comes in
two days."

  Ms. Watson resisted change. "We stayed old-fashioned," she said. She
never put in a computer. When customers called to request a book, Ms.
Watson herself would dash around the store looking for it. In an effort to
increase business, however, she did start a personal delivery service, to
any location in the city.

  For the last five years, said Ms. Watson, she has been putting some of
her inheritance into the place. "But a bookstore should not be a charity,"
she said. "It should be a business. I give money to charity." Sales picked
up at Christmas, she said, but it wasn't enough.

  Last year Ms. Watson started a publishing venture with Jonathan
Rabinowitz of Turtle Point Press in Purchase, N.Y. Their first book was a
reprint of Hannah Green's "Dead of the House," a coming-of-age novel that
the author, who died last year, had painstakingly worked on for years.

  "Just a beautiful book," said Ms. Watson. "We have to keep reprinting it.
We're sort of close to breaking even."

  She has discovered she loves publishing: editing, "working on the book
jacket," all the minutiae. And she will continue doing it after the store
has closed. In May, will come "A Journey With Elsa Cloud," a travelogue
about India, by Leila Hadley, a descendant of James Boswell.

  "This has always been my private club," Ms. Watson said of her store.
"It's an amazing way of getting to know people. I like to go through my
house charge customer lists: 'Oh, interesting! They're reading this!
They're sending the book to the White House!' I felt this thrill of pride.
My books are going all over the world. It's taught me not to judge people
simply by what they do. The doormen on Madison Avenue, for instance, have
an intense interest in books."

  There has been talk of a final reading. "But that would be too hard," she
said. "We'll have a final party, instead. We'll just invite everybody."




Copyright 1997 The New York Times

+===============================================================+
Kenneth Goldsmith                  work: http://www.ubuweb.com
611 Bway, #702, NYC 10012
v.212.260-4081


----------> editor UbuWeb ViSuAL & COncReTE PoEtRy
                  http://www.ubuweb.com/vp <--------------------
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 18 Jan 1997 16:20:02 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Thomas Bell 
Subject:      Re: Closure & The Pastoral (another Chapter of *Ethics*)
Comments: To: John Kinsella 
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

At 07:01 PM 1/18/97 -0800, John Kinsella wrote:
>The Rabbiters: A Pastoral
>

Intriguing. As someone who is admitedly relatively unversed in poetry
form I would appreciate more info on why this is a pastoral.
tome bell
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 18 Jan 1997 17:42:30 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Alan Jen Sondheim 
Subject:      Sonnet by Jennifer
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

--


Sonnet

Jennifer sat down on her frock. She had just read Alexander Graham Pope,
Rape of the Lock. She had written a poem And had to take stock. It was not
nice, about ice, and black winds howling Outside where she died. She knew
it was true but a bad poem because, she Said, it didn't capture the
rapture of the spray in the air there. She Wrote sitting on her frock by
the freighter by the dock. I'm sorry, she Said, but the freighter was
dead. I will be on the Net yet, she said, To her quarry the storm. She
cried and she cried. The ice was nice, the Rain a pain, the wind was
blind, the waves her slaves. She lied most of The time but in rhyme. She
knew it was a very very bad poem. She got up And went home. I'm home, she
said, I'm dead. I know it's so, said Jennifer Me.
1
2
3.
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 18 Jan 1997 17:43:00 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "Pritchett,Pat @Silverplume" 
Subject:      Re: tunes to keep your head clear
Comments: To: shoemakers 
MIME-version: 1.0
Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN
Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT

Yes - you mean "Unchained" also out from American. It's great. Like old sour
mash with a real bite. Almost a testimonial to his whole career - there's
something of the valedictory to it, though I hope in tone only.

Patrick Pritchett
 ----------
From: shoemakers
To: POETICS
Subject: Re: tunes to keep your head clear
Date: Friday, January 17, 1997 8:03PM


Pat sez he's listening to old Johnny Cash--has anybody heard the *new*
one yet?  The one before this--American Recordings--was good & scary.
steve
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 18 Jan 1997 18:51:09 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Patrick Foley 
Organization: unorganized
Subject:      Re: lit...
In-Reply-To:  <199701171531.JAA18472@charlie.cns.iit.edu>

Joe -- do also read _The Demolished Man_ which has also been reprinted
by Vintage. I read that one some years ago, but had never even _seen_ a
copy of _The Stars My Destination_ until this reprint. Bester also wrote
some terrific short stories, including a memorable parody of time travel
stories called "The Men Who Murdered Muhammad". Bester is legendary in
sf circles -- glad he's finally getting some wider exposure. NPR even
did an interview with Chip Delany for the occasion of this reprint and
ran it in prime time on ATC.

Pat

(I did my part, made it my "staff recommendation" at the B&N where I
work. My current rec is vol 10 of the Olson/Creeley correspondence! So
there's at least one bookstore in the country where you can get this for
30% off, not that this seems to be affecting sales much ...)
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 18 Jan 1997 19:39:39 -0600
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         amato@CHARLIE.CNS.IIT.EDU
Subject:      Re: lit...
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

pat, thanx, i will indeed look around for _the demolished man_... the npr
spot with delaney is where in fact i heard about bester...

keep up that good work at b & n!...

best,

joe
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 19 Jan 1997 13:47:05 +0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Schuchat Simon 
Subject:      Re: tunes to keep your head clear
In-Reply-To:  
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

if you can find them -- perhaps your nearest local Chinatown?  the
following are all recommended:

Cui Jian -- particularly the first CD, Yi Wu Suo You

Yenjingshe Yuedui (Cobra -- all girl rock & roll from Beijing)

& Wang Yong (formerly Cui Jian's lead guitar) solo album Samsara

that's for the mainland; from Taiwan,

check out Luo Dayu, any of his CDs (some are in mandarin, some in
Taiwanese, during last year's missile tensions he put out a CD where all
the tunes came from Japanese war songs)

& for something slightly older from Taiwan, any of Su Rui's CDs
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 18 Jan 1997 21:56:27 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         George Bowering 
Subject:      Re: etymology or the study of insects
In-Reply-To:  
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

>(3) a skirt a man can wear when it gets tropical enough

Ah! This is another explanation for Bromige's migration from B.C. to Calif.





George Bowering.
                                       ,
2499 West 37th Ave.,
Vancouver, B.C.,
Canada  V6M 1P4

fax: 1-604-266-9000
e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 18 Jan 1997 21:59:26 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         George Bowering 
Subject:      Re: the secret life of books
In-Reply-To:  <32D8EDC3.1DEB@concentric.net>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

>Wearing: shall I be the first on the list to admit to wearing a dress?


>Rachel Loden

Didnt Bromige already do that?





George Bowering.
                                       ,
2499 West 37th Ave.,
Vancouver, B.C.,
Canada  V6M 1P4

fax: 1-604-266-9000
e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 18 Jan 1997 22:06:49 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         George Bowering 
Subject:      Re: fetal poetics (a consequence of plain gold bands)
In-Reply-To:  
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

My daughter, 25, is a good poet and even better short fiction writer. Has
been in a few magazines and anthologies, named Thea Bowering, and done some
boffo readings. She is talented but not ambitious. Has a laptop hard drive
full of good stuff I peek at once in a while.Wrote a reply story to one of
my stories once, and just demolisht me!




George Bowering.
                                       ,
2499 West 37th Ave.,
Vancouver, B.C.,
Canada  V6M 1P4

fax: 1-604-266-9000
e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 18 Jan 1997 22:11:56 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         George Bowering 
Subject:      Re: News !
In-Reply-To:  
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

>"However, I have noticed all together TOO FEW listings of recent publications
>by list participants.

My most recent book is called (the publisher made up the title as well as
commissioning the book, so it aint my fault): _Bowering's B.C.: a
Swashbuckling History_, from Viking/Penguin in Toronto, Fall 1996. It is
selling pretty well, and has got a lot of good reviews and one bad one.




George Bowering.
                                       ,
2499 West 37th Ave.,
Vancouver, B.C.,
Canada  V6M 1P4

fax: 1-604-266-9000
e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 18 Jan 1997 22:13:12 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         George Bowering 
Subject:      Re: neologism redux De Basis
In-Reply-To:  
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

> And I'd like to add two examples of Australian journalese -
>
>                downsize
>                substantive    (meaning 'substantial')
>
>
>        P.B.

Well, these are used in Canada too, and probably in the USA.




George Bowering.
                                       ,
2499 West 37th Ave.,
Vancouver, B.C.,
Canada  V6M 1P4

fax: 1-604-266-9000
e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 19 Jan 1997 09:45:39 EST
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         simon@CVAX.IPFW.INDIANA.EDU
Subject:      Re: News !

I have a creative nonfiction/memoir piece, "Sweeper Women," in
the latest (it may not be on the shelves yet, I've only seen the
last latest, with Ron Silliman's poem) _Iowa Review._

I have a different creative nonfiction/memoir piece, "Gujerat,"
in the latest _Florida Review_.

Rachel Loden has a poem in this latest issue of _Florida Review_
as well, "On Beria's Lap".

(Is Gwyn McVay on this list?) Gwyn McVay also has a poem in this
_Fl Rev_, "Base Metals".

that's it


beth simon
assistant professor, linguistics and english
dept of english and linguistics
indiana university - purdue university
simon@cvax.ipfw.indiana.edu
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 19 Jan 1997 06:59:09 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
Comments:     RFC822 error:  TO field duplicated. Last occurrence was
              retained.
From:         Ron Silliman 
Subject:      Possibly, a job for a writer
Comments: To: cap-l@tc.umn.edu

Al Filreis sent this to the Writers House list in Philadelphia, but it
occurs to me that there may be other Pennsylvania-based poets on these
lists who would like to know of this position. (Anyone with this skill
set and a couple of years experience ought to making at least double
this in the computer industry, but that's another story.)

Ron Silliman

---------------------------------------------------------



Below you'll find information about a job with the Pennsylvania
Humanities Council. The job has been held by Dottie Schindlinger, and
I'm sure Dottie (phc@libertynet.org) would be willing to answer
questions you have.

------------------------------------------------------------------------


 EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT
 Supports the Executive Director and Assistant Director of statewide
cultural organization in development, government relations, and
administration. Requires excellent speaking, writing, and
organizational skills, and an interest in the humanities.  Work
involves phone contact, extensive correspondence, and database
management.  (Familiarity with e-mail and the World Wide Web
preferred.)  35-hour week.  Salary $20K with excellent benefits.  Send
letter and resume to Dr. Joseph J. Kelly, Executive Director,
Pennsylvania Humanities Council, 320 Walnut Street, Suite 305,
 Philadelphia, PA 19106-3892.
 __________________________
 Dottie Schindlinger
 Pennsylvania Humanities Council
 320 Walnut Street, Suite 305
 Philadelphia, PA 19106-3892
 800-462-0442 (PA only) or 215-925-1005
 E-mail:  phc@libertynet.org
 Website: http://www.libertynet.org/~phc

 The Pennsylvania Humanities Council is a private, non-profit
organization which serves as the Commonwealth's affiliate of the
National Endowment for the Humanities.  The PHC supports and conducts
public educational programs for adults who seek lifelong learning in
the humanities--history, philosophy, literature, and related subjects.
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 19 Jan 1997 09:58:57 -0600
Reply-To:     maria damon 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         maria damon 
Subject:      Re: neologism redux De Basis
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Responding to the message of  
from UB Poetics discussion group :
>
> > And I'd like to add two examples of Australian journalese -
> >
> >                downsize
> >                substantive    (meaning 'substantial')
> >
> >
> >        P.B.
>
my unfaves include "planful" --and "utilize" for "use."
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 19 Jan 1997 10:01:41 -0600
Reply-To:     maria damon 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         maria damon 
Subject:      Re: News !
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

what do youse guyzies think of the rubric "creative nonfiction"?  around here it
generally is a code word for "memoir."  so the mfa program here is trying to
replace the term with "literary nonfiction," i guess to convey a bellettristic
sense.--md

Responding to the message of  <009AE975.FE101ED8.40@CVAX.IPFW.INDIANA.EDU>
from UB Poetics discussion group :
>
> I have a creative nonfiction/memoir piece, "Sweeper Women," in
> the latest (it may not be on the shelves yet, I've only seen the
> last latest, with Ron Silliman's poem) _Iowa Review._
>
> I have a different creative nonfiction/memoir piece, "Gujerat,"
> in the latest _Florida Review_.
>
> Rachel Loden has a poem in this latest issue of _Florida Review_
> as well, "On Beria's Lap".
>
> (Is Gwyn McVay on this list?) Gwyn McVay also has a poem in this
> _Fl Rev_, "Base Metals".
>
> that's it
>
>
> beth simon
> assistant professor, linguistics and english
> dept of english and linguistics
> indiana university - purdue university
> simon@cvax.ipfw.indiana.edu
>
> .
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 19 Jan 1997 16:25:02 -0800
Reply-To:     John Kinsella 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         John Kinsella 
Subject:      Re: Closure & The Pastoral (another Chapter of *Ethics*)
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

It's an anti-pastoral. But not in the way an Oliver Goldsmith poem is.
Maybe you have to be an Australian with a poetic tradition that has been
largely second-hand English pastoral to get this. Or Douglas Barbour, to
whom the poem is dedicated (he's from Canada, another Commonwealth
country...).

Yours
John K
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 19 Jan 1997 12:09:00 +0600
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         KENT JOHNSON 
Organization: Highland Community College
Subject:      Re: tunes to keep yr head clear

*Papalotl: Transformaciones Exoticas*, by my former college
roommate Javier Alvarez, Mexico's most prominent young composer of
"experimental" music (tho "young" in quotes, too, since Javier has
reached 40!), available on cd from Saydisc in England.

Alvarez has been living in London for a number of years now, and his
music has been performed by leading orchestras and ensembles around
the world. *Papalotl* contains his most widely performed piece,
"Temazcal," a polyrhythmic tour de force for maracas and
tape, performed by Luis Julio Toro, perhaps the "non-folk" music
world's greatest maracas player (!).

And on "reading": _Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder_, a wonderous
history/meditation on the Museum of Jurassic Technology, by Lawrence
Weschler.

Kent
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 19 Jan 1997 11:29:42 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Charles Alexander 
Subject:      Re: News !
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Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

At 10:01 AM 1/19/97 -0600, you wrote:
>what do youse guyzies think of the rubric "creative nonfiction"?  around
here it
>generally is a code word for "memoir."  so the mfa program here is trying to
>replace the term with "literary nonfiction," i guess to convey a bellettristic
>sense.--md


Sometime about a year ago, Maria, I spoke to a "creative nonfiction"
final-year grad student at your institution. We began talking about some
poetry events and she said she didn't know much about "line poetry." I never
did quite figure out what she meant by that, but then we just talked about
poets and she had never heard of Charles Olson, Robert Duncan, or any number
of other people. And while I'm not very well-versed (forgive the pun) on
contemporary poets outside my own limited range, I did recognize the people
she mentioned, even if I couldn't claim to know their work well. But when we
got on to "creative nonfiction" I assumed that might mean essays of all
creative sorts, but she made it clear it did not include work like that of
Walter Benjamin (even the possibly 'lighter' essays like "Unpacking My
Books"), whose name she had also never heard. Now this person seemed
obviously energetic and intelligent to me, but we just simply couldn't find
a common ground. And while I did learn that "creative nonfiction" included
essays by Louise Erdrich, I still didn't get much sense of a definition,
practical or theoretical, of "creative nonfiction."

And I think, if anything, the term "literary nonfiction" might confuse
matters even more.


charles

ps: Maria, unlike just about anybody else on this Poetics list, your
messages are constructed in such a way that when I just hit "reply" on my
e-mail, my return message is directed directly to you instead of to the
poetics list as a whole, and I have to go through another couple of steps to
send to the list. Can you do anything about that? Or am I nitpicking here.

ca
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 19 Jan 1997 11:20:12 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Mark Weiss 
Subject:      what gets taught
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Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Charles Alexander's story about the noneducation of a writing student should
be shocking but is more saddening.
Charles may remember that when I lived in Tucson I managed to get myself one
poetry workshop at the university (but only because I was hired through
their extended university: in effect, the writing program got an extra
section without having to pay for it. They were otherwise distinctly
unfriendly to outsiders). The course was a required part of the
undergraduate major sequence, so I thought I should speak to the guy who
coordinated it to make sure that my students came out with what they needed
for the next step. He told me to teach what I wanted, so I told him that I
wuld be including reading and discussion of major poets. Among the classics
I would probably include some Marvell... He stopped me right there. He said
that the department tended not to teach "older poetry," as the students had
read that in HS. Understand, he was talking abt sophomores who were products
of Arizona public schools. "What do you teach them?" I asked, trying not to
sound incredulous. "We emphasize," he said grandly, "the contemporary
voice." Well, that got the old juices flowing, so I asked him who he was
talking about. "You know, Amy Clampitt, Jory Graham," and a half-dozen or so
more of that ilk. My kids got Spicer and Creeley and Schwerner and Williams
and Owens and Rothenberg--hosehold names were I come from, and everyone on
this list can flesh out the rest of my syllabus.
Later that year I was talking to some recent MFA graduates, among them the
the young woman who organizes the annual poetry jamboree. Turns out none of
them had even heard of Jack Spicer. They knew who Olson was by rumor, but
had never opened one of his books. And on and on, as my jaw dropped onto my
knees.
I gave the woman who organized the jamboree some books to read, and I had to
explain to her what she was reading. The upshot was that she invited one
poet who's on this list of the many I proposed.
There are exceptions: the grad students who hang around Tenney Nathanson and
Charles get a lot more, but neither of them were teaching workshops back
then (am I right, Tenney?).
Those of us on the whatever end (left) of poetry can fight among ourselves
all we want (it's probably good for us), but there's a big world out there
that doesn't even know we exist. And I'm probably exposing my own
inexhaustible naivete even to mention this.
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 20 Jan 1997 08:26:53 +1300
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         DS 
Subject:      Re: News !
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Is it in Gujarati?

>I have a different creative nonfiction/memoir piece, "Gujerat,"
>in the latest _Florida Review_.
>
>Rachel Loden has a poem in this latest issue of _Florida Review_
>as well, "On Beria's Lap".
>
>(Is Gwyn McVay on this list?) Gwyn McVay also has a poem in this
>_Fl Rev_, "Base Metals".
>
>that's it
>
>
>beth simon
>assistant professor, linguistics and english
>dept of english and linguistics
>indiana university - purdue university
>simon@cvax.ipfw.indiana.edu
>
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 19 Jan 1997 13:36:00 -0600
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         amato@CHARLIE.CNS.IIT.EDU
Subject:      Re: what gets taught
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

mark, what you flesh out so nicely is one of the reasons why those of us
who "do" work that requires works cited and such like need perhaps to
rethink our apparatus...

i'm tilting these days, in anything i write that invokes formally critical
apparatus, toward including a bibliography or equiv.... by which i mean a
list of works read, which permits me some latitude simply to LIST works
that i know my readers are not likely to have read... a list in such a
context becomes an extremely performative item...

it's stating the obvious, again---but after talking once with an otherwise
bright, talented and knowledgeable yale younger poet who hadn't heard of
williams' _kora in hell_ (and a number of other such writings), it became
immediately apparent to me that the failure was owing in large part to our
teaching institutions...

best,

joe
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 19 Jan 1997 15:06:11 -0600
Reply-To:     maria damon 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         maria damon 
Subject:      Re: what gets taught
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Responding to the message of  <199701191920.LAA21802@lithuania.it.earthlink.net>
from UB Poetics discussion group :
>
> Charles Alexander's story about the noneducation of a writing student should
> be shocking but is more saddening.

to charles et al: yes, this is my institution all right.  walter benjamin is
considered "theory" so if you like "cultural studies" or if you're a "marxist"
you read benjamin, but it is implicitly understood tht "creative nonfiction" or
"poetry" or "fiction" students for that matter have no interest in these matters
beyond a general indignation about injustice, which is easily rectified by
reading a few novels by Native Americans, Asian Americans, and African
Americans.  and you can pretty well predict whose work gets read and whose
doesn't.  nate mackey? kamau brathwaite? aime cesaire? who's that?  web du bois?
who?  wasn't he some kind of sociologist?  hey, what's a girl to do except hang
out on the poetix list.
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 19 Jan 1997 15:06:05 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Charles Alexander 
Subject:      Re: what gets taught
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Mark is of course right about the Tucson situation, although it always seems
possible here to find several or even a small "many" people who are
interested in the poets this list tends to favor. And it continues to
surprise me, here and in Minneapolis where I have lived recently, and I
imagine in lots of elsewheres, how easy it is to introduce others to poets
one likes, in readings or discussion groups or whatever, just by remaining
active. Just that, from that voice-centered MFA place, I have generally
found very little publicly active sensibility, rather a tendency to be the
writer in isolation and to value that. That said, I also have to say that of
course I know many exceptions to that, and I tend to value those who do get
publicly active, regardless of whether they read the same poets I do.

charles
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 19 Jan 1997 19:53:06 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Eliza McGrand- CVA Guest 
Subject:      creative semi-auto nonfictively produced-incoherent-with...

i have a couple of "creative non-fiction" / "semi-autobiographical" /
"memoir" - type of peices...

i think it comes from being intimidated by people who can remember dates.
you read these autobiographies with every moment neatly commissioning every
next Moment.  in a nicely disciplined string.

and then you try and write down something that happened holding exact
to the impressionistic blurs and morasses of reviewing what happened and
this second's impression vs. last week's interpretation vs. interpretation
while-it-was-happening, then realize you're not sure whether she said then
he said or he said then she said

then geez, you say, i better call it creative non-fiction or semi-autobio
or some damned mildly irresponsible thing god i must be getting old...
e
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 19 Jan 1997 18:07:19 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Rachel Loden 
Subject:      Re: the secret life of books
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George Bowering wrote:
>
> >Wearing: shall I be the first on the list to admit to wearing a dress?
>
> >Rachel Loden
>
> Didnt Bromige already do that?

My understanding was that Bromige had given up dresses for separates and
was last seen in a skirt-and-sweater combo, a la Lana Turner at
Schwab's.  No, George--I think you're suffering from repressed memories
of your own wardrobe that night at the Bide-A-Wee in Peekskill, when you
got carried away doing the mambo.  I can still smell the gardenia in
your hair.

Rachel Loden
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 19 Jan 1997 21:11:15 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         George Bowering 
Subject:      Re: the secret life of books
In-Reply-To:  <32E2D357.3837@concentric.net>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

You know, Rachel, I still have that gardenia. It is pressed between the
leaves of that book you gave me. Remember? The title is something about
"The Warm". That was the first time I had heard a person read beautiful
poetry while the instant coffee was cooling. Thank you, oh thank you.

About Bromige. Well, he can never make me forget Room 121!




George Bowering.
                                       ,
2499 West 37th Ave.,
Vancouver, B.C.,
Canada  V6M 1P4

fax: 1-604-266-9000
e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 19 Jan 1997 23:56:51 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Mark Weiss 
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Forgot to mention that I'm wearing the shroom teeshirt that my wife gave me
in memory of one of our earlier dates. Not a good thing to be caught in when
stopped for a speeding ticket.
Teeshirts can be dangerous.
We were driving along the north shore of the St. Lawrence from Quebec west,
checking out the churches in the villages along the way. As the Canadians
out there can attest, these churches are notable for their exceptional
ugliness--gothic revival set stone and institutional green trim, each more
garish than the last. They're very endearing.
As we entered the dingy industrial town of Cap-de-la-Madeleine we saw off to
our left on the bank of the river a veritable gothic volcano--it was a huge
gothic octagon with a pointed roof. We had to check it out.
It was surrounded by acres of parking lot, like a ballpark, but filled with
RVs. Crowds of mostly elderly people with folding lawn chairs were
converging on the church. We stopped to ask an old man what was going on. It
was Ascension, he said, and this was an important pilgrimage church. Why
didn't we take a look?
"But we're non-believers," I said, "just tourists."
"So are most of us," he said.
"But I'm not dressed appropriately." I was wearing a teeshirt and cutoffs.
He assured me it didn't matter.
But it did. As we walked towards the church I noticed that old women were
giving me dirty looks--but not in the eye, in the chest. I couldn't figure
out what was going on, so I turned to my wife to comment, whereupon she
burst into peals of laughter. I was wearing my mexican loteria teeshirt with
the topless mermaid on it.
Clothes do make the man/woman.
What does this have to do with poetry?
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 20 Jan 1997 02:26:43 +0100
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Miekal And 
Subject:      Re: what gets taught
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

maria damon wrote:

  hey, what's a girl to do except hang
> out on the poetix list.

in answer to yr
question, ms maria:

do earth-shaking collaborative writing with her online "associates"!

miekal
in the morning
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 20 Jan 1997 01:15:59 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         David Bromige 
Subject:      oh, alright (clothing)
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

        sheez. . . when are we gonna discuss poetry or sumpin'? i started
this clothing thread, and now i'm to be pesterd to death by loden &
bowering, hoist by my own petard, a word that does sound like an
underthing. ok, i'll come out, but lana turner is the wrong tree, rachel,
though thanks for thinking of me that way. i'm in something silver and
slinky, and gloria grahame is the dame i'd be. george is more the hedy
lamar "ecstacy and me" sort, you know. he and i used to go around vancouver
in drag before it was fashionable or even safe. but the night he insisted
we visit that male stripjoint . . .in future, communications of this order
might ought better be back-channeled. Lets talk about the sonnet. db.
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 20 Jan 1997 03:34:44 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Ron Silliman 
Subject:      quark this

My current unfavorite in the work environment I inhabit is the verb

attrit

as in "we'll attrit that department to 24 after the new system is up."

Some others include:

the verb "task" as in
"I have been tasked to prepare a white paper on strategy"

"install" as an adjective, as in

"revenue has remained flat while the install base has doubled"

"quark" as a verb, as in "quark that, please"

I hear this stuff every day. All professional jargons are full of it,
but the PC industry positively delights in it. When I worked in the
prison movement in the 1970s, there were some liberal architects who
were calling what's typically known as "the main yard" of their
institutional designs "detention gardens." An older institution like
San Quentin (dating back well into the 19th century), understands the
model somewhat better and calls this same feature "the quad."

Ron Silliman
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 20 Jan 1997 08:34:15 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Sherry Brennan 
Subject:      addresses
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

I'm looking for two addresses:

I'd like to reach Erica Hunt.  Does anyone have her address --or are you on
the list, Erica?  I'd appreciate an e-mail backchannel.

Also, a friend would like to get in touch with Bill Henderson, as in
pushcart awards.  Does anyone have an e-mail address for him?

Thanks.  Sherry


Sherry Brennan
Development Research
The Pennsylvania State University
(814) 863-4302
SAB5@psu.edu
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 20 Jan 1997 08:36:02 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Pierre Joris 
Subject:      [Fwd: A modest proposal]
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On a day of, yawn, speeches, here's one I can live with � Pierre
--
=========================================
pierre joris   6 madison place   albany ny 12202
tel/fax (510) 426 0433 email:joris@cnsunix.albany.edu
http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/authors/joris/
http://www.albany.edu/~tm0900/nomad.html
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Everything that allows men to become rooted, through
values or sentiments, in _one_ time, in _one_ history, in
_one_ language, is the principle of alienation which
constitutes man as privileged in so far as he is what he is,
[...] imprisoning him in contentment with his own reality
and encouraging him to offer it as an example or impose
it as a conquering assertation. -- Maurice Blanchot
==========================================

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Date: Sun, 19 Jan 1997 16:20:06 -0500 (EST)
From: Lucy Komisar 
To: PEN Listserv 
Subject: A modest proposal
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I know this is off topic, but Tony Kusner is a PEN member.


                  AND NOW, A WORD FROM SOME FELLOW AMERICANS

   By Tony Kushner

   Sunday, January 19 1997; Page C01
   The Washington Post



   Fellow citizens!

   No one could be more surprised than I, Anthony R. Kushner, that a gay
   Jewish socialist playwright could get elected president of the United
   States. Go know!

   Apparently the '96 presidential campaign was so entirely substanceless
   and boring only seven people bothered to vote: Bill, Hillary, Bob,
   Liddy, Perot, yours truly and my Aunt Martha. Bill, Bob and Ross each
   voted for themselves. Hillary wrote herself in. Liddy, I suspect, went
   into the booth but didn't pull the lever (she has plans of her own in
   2000!). Nader, Kemp and Gore were no-shows, and so, between me and
   Aunt Martha, we carried the day. My co-op building on the Upper West
   Side hasn't been so excited since the Yankees won the World Series. I
   plan to move the White House to my apartment because, let's face it,
   folks, you can't take someone seriously if he doesn't live in
   Manhattan.

   Mark Helprin refused to write this speech for me, so it doesn't have
   any of the measuring-my-self-against-the-cornfielded-horizon imagery
   that he wrote for Dole. I live in New York and have never seen the
   horizon. But thanks to C-SPAN for agreeing to cover my speech when
   none of the networks would bother. Long live cable TV, say I, and
   that's all I have to say about technology and information
   superhighways and the 21st century, except of course that I hope we
   make it to the 21st century. Three years to go still and it doesn't
   look good.

   Okay, I lied, I have one more thing to say about technology. I read in
   the papers a few weeks ago that Pentium had invented a computer that
   can do a trillion calculations a second or something like that. This
   seems great news to me -- now we have the number-crunching ability to
   have a planned economy. We already have a planned economy, but I think
   we need one that's guided by logic, decency and a sense of global
   developmental human needs, instead of the profit-maximization
   strategies of a couple of hydra-headed multinational corporations.

   First the substance thing and then, for the wrap-up, the vision thing.

   I liked Bill's school uniforms idea -- have you seen the way teenagers
   dress these days? Yuck! We could hire single mothers who have been
   thrown off welfare to sew them, since we have no other jobs for these
   people -- heck, maybe we could put their kids to work as well! A
   family kind of thing! I could sew very nicely when I was a boy, but of
   course I was a big sissy so maybe that wouldn't work for every
   formerly dependent child; the ones who are too butch to sew could do
   something else, like dispose of nuclear waste. In the New Jersey
   wetlands.

   Just kidding! What I think I'll do is cut the defense budget by half
   or more; pay our United Nations debt and then some; make Joycelyn
   Elders surgeon general and Lani Guinier attorney general; triple
   social services and the federal education budgets from kindergarten to
   graduate studies; stop the barbaric system of paying for schools
   through property taxes and finance the whole package by really
   clobbering corporate welfare queens, which as everyone and her dog
   knows, will bring in billions. There won't be a depression in reaction
   to this because I'm keeping Alan Greenspan -- I can't get rid of him:
   He's newly married and, besides, we all know he is the real Master of
   the Universe -- and Alan has agreed to fadiddle with interest rates
   and such to keep Wall Street abuzz, and if we see any corporate
   slacking, we'll nationalize ahead of schedule!

   I'll be raising everyone's taxes, which I expect you to pay without
   all this undignified, ungenerous whining. I am a tax-and-spend sort of
   evolutionary socialist these days, and if we all cooperate we can have
   a very nice country. The rich can still be rich but not nearly as
   rich; the poor will be much less poor, better fed and healthy and
   educated and housed; and the middle classes will find that even though
   their paychecks are smaller, there are all these great services Uncle
   Sam can provide, like mass transit and health care. Everyone gets
   health care; insurance and pharmaceutical giants be damned! Doctors
   and scientists will get paid well so they have no excuse for screwing
   up, and we'll just have to support this until our improved educational
   system and universally elevated standard of living have reconstituted
   us all as kinder, more connected creatures driven by love, generosity,
   joy and a desire for planetary survival rather than by our grubby
   private hoarding and primate paranoidal fears. AIDS care expanded and
   safe sex taught in every classroom, condom and clean needle
   distribution; and gazillions to stop the global AIDS pandemic, which
   is not over by a long shot. All that goes without saying, and it's
   about time!

   Forget the Balanced Budget, is what I'm trying to say. Who thought
   that one up? I don't know anyone on earth who isn't in debt. Forget
   "trickle-down," too, by the way. As Bob Dole reminded me over coffee
   yesterday, it's not a winner. Listen, someday there won't even be
   money, but that'll probably have to wait for my second term.

   Secretary of State Kweisi Mfume and I are deep in discussion about the
   international scene, doing all the obvious things, supporting
   democratic socialism or whatever looks better than gangsterism and
   psycho-nationalism in the Eastern bloc with meaningful financial aid
   packages instead of hoping that a few more McDonald's franchises in
   Budapest will do the job. We want tightened nuclear arms control and
   an end to the utter insanity of international arms marketeering, and
   that means you, too, France, Germany, Britain and South Africa!

   I have no idea how to finance this, but I'd rather admit that a
   civilization needs money than pretend that we can have one without
   money. John Kenneth Galbraith, Toni Morrison, Larry Kramer, lesbian
   activist and novelist Sarah Schulman, bell hooks and Alexander
   Cockburn are going to head a special investigation to find out where
   all the money went. I want to thank Prof. Raisa Gorbachev for her
   invaluable economics tutorials.

   Karen Finley is taking over the National Endowment for the Arts and
   Dr. Cornel West, the National Endowment for the Humanities; and I'm
   giving each of them the same budget as Raytheon spent on those Patriot
   missiles that didn't actually do anything useful over Tel Aviv. Public
   television gets a big raise, too, which I know will be great news to
   Henry Louis Gates and the folks at Dyke TV who will be taking over
   daily operations. For Health and Human Services secretary, I'm
   thinking, maybe Roseanne.

   I'm pardoning Susan McDougal just 'cause I like her style, and I want
   everyone to leave Hillary alone. It does take a village to raise a
   child! Kenneth Starr I'm hiring to begin investigating and prosecuting
   the Pentagon brass who couldn't be bothered to check out those
   soldiers exposed to chemicals in the Persian Gulf War -- wasn't that
   disgusting? Enough with the oversight committees already: These poor
   people aren't stressed, they're sick. Let's get down and dirty, Ken:
   Go after those malfeasant generals with the sharpest fang in your
   pit-bull armory. I expect you to work well with my new press
   secretary, Jimmy Carville. And thanks, Jimmy, for agreeing to divorce
   that Republican you married. I'll introduce you to some nicer, smarter
   women once you get back on track.

   Rehnquist, Scalia and Thomas have resigned in protest, thank God, and
   Jesse Helms has gone home to tend his little nutbush groves. Newt
   Gingrich, after you've done the manly thing and resigned in disgrace,
   can I have that necktie you always wear, the one with all the little
   books on it? Oy, such an intellectual! Your lesbian sibling, Candace,
   can bring it to me: She's invited to the inaugural festivities at
   Katz's delicatessen on Houston Street.

   Ihave many other plans: jailing tobacco executives, handing the FDA
   over to Pat Schroeder, kicking serious butt on environmental
   protection and enforcing pollution standards that actually cut
   pollution. Viva affirmative action, immigrant rights, a vastly
   expanded immigration and refugee policy, more supervision of police
   abuse and mandatory Spanish lessons in all public schools. Rep.
   Carolyn McCarthy will be in charge of my new draconian gun control
   laws, and Garry Trudeau's my new Drug Czar.

   Now for the vision thing: Go home and read Lincoln's first and second
   inaugural addresses. Look up the words in the dictionary you don't
   know. The mystic chords of memory. The better angels of our nature.
   With malice towards none, with charity for all, with firmness in the
   right as God gives us to see the right, let us finish the work we are
   in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have
   borne the battle, and for his widows and orphans, to do all which may
   achieve a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

   Thanks to Peggy Noonan for writing that, and, of course, thanks to my
   boyfriend, Michael, our new first lady. He and I will be burning the
   Defense of Marriage Act on the front steps of the Capitol, right after
   my Aunt Martha and I are sworn in.

   Join us!

   Tony Kushner is a playwright whose works include the Pulitzer
   Prize-winning "Angels in America."





--------------108549943A11--
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 20 Jan 1997 07:59:44 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Douglas Barbour 
Subject:      Re: Closure & The Pastoral (another Chapter of *Ethics*)
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Aside from making a point about his own poem, John Kinsella has a point
about settler countries in the commonwealth, as hisown work in the form
demonstrates: check out, if you can order it from Oz, his _The Silo: a
pastoral symphony_ & his latest (for a month or so I suspect), _Lightning
Tree_ [both from Fremantle Arts Centre Press] or _The Undertow: new &
selected poems_ [from Arc Publications in the UK]. Those of you lucky
enough to catch him on his recent tour of the US & Canada will have heard
him read some of these poems as well as talk about what he's doing with the
'genre'.
Then I begin to think about who does this in Canada: John Newlove, whose
early, minimalist, poems of farm life already break away from
pastoral-as-such, GB, at times, & maybe especially in sections of
_Autobiology_, Robert Kroetsch in parts of his ongoing poem, _Field Notes_,
especially _Seed Catalogue_; & there are more. Do some of Atwood's poems
count (I think so).
Robert Adamson, one of Australia's finest poets, certainly practices
anti-pastoral, even in a book probably seen as 'pure' pastoral by some
reviewers, the sharply etched & shifty _The Clean Dark_.
Bill Manhire has written a few poems I would call anti-pastoral-as-theory
(but not obvious about it), in New Zealand.

Most poems that fit this concept, in my fuzzy thinking this morning, would
seem fairly mainstream, but have something that undermines a regular
reading in them. I imagine John, who has obviously been thinking about
this, would present a much more complex argument...

Just off the top of my head...

 =============================================================================
Douglas Barbour
Department of English
University of Alberta               in the rooms you live in
Edmonton  Alberta  T6G  2E5         other people's books line your shelves
(403) 492 2181  FAX:(403) 492 8142
H: 436 3320                                     bpNichol
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 20 Jan 1997 09:04:32 -0600
Reply-To:     maria damon 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         maria damon 
Subject:      Re: oh, alright (clothing)

bromige rites:
 . . .in future, communications of this order
> might ought better be back-channeled. Lets talk about the sonnet. db.
>
don't you dare backchannel this thread; it's a ray of sunshine on a cloudy etc
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 20 Jan 1997 09:05:38 -0600
Reply-To:     maria damon 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         maria damon 
Subject:      Re: what gets taught

In message  <32E2C9AB.1E38@mwt.net> UB Poetics discussion group writes:
> maria damon wrote:
>
>   hey, what's a girl to do except hang
> > out on the poetix list.
>
> in answer to yr
> question, ms maria:
>
> do earth-shaking collaborative writing with her online "associates"!
>
> miekal
> in the morning

it's a deal, babe ps when're u coming to the tcs?
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 20 Jan 1997 09:07:55 -0600
Reply-To:     maria damon 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         maria damon 

weiss reites.
> Clothes do make the man/woman.
> What does this have to do with poetry?

everything.  the light went on for me when as an undergrad in the 70s i heard
the prof of my "radical criticism" course say, when you buy a jacket, yr buying
a set of relationships.
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 20 Jan 1997 08:10:57 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Douglas Barbour 
Subject:      Re: tunes to keep yr head clear
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

To change the tune slightly:

any of the many by the Kronos Quartet

also all 15 Shostakovich string quartets

everything I've found by either Carla or Paul Bley

all of Mingus (Yes, Miekal; & there's a terrific version of Pork Pie Hat by
Jessica Williams, too)

Monk

etc

 =============================================================================
Douglas Barbour
Department of English
University of Alberta               in the rooms you live in
Edmonton  Alberta  T6G  2E5         other people's books line your shelves
(403) 492 2181  FAX:(403) 492 8142
H: 436 3320                                     bpNichol
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 20 Jan 1997 11:16:26 CST
Reply-To:     tmandel@screenporch.com
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         tmandel@CAIS.CAIS.COM
Subject:      A nest of ninnies
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: Text/Plain; Charset=US-ASCII

George -- great to hear the name of the wonderful Ashbery/Schuyler
collab; haven't looked at it in years. Now *I* will take it down from
the shelf.

I listen to Neil Young to clear my head sometimes, sometimes to
Madredeus (I can't help it; I love their worldpop portugese).

Martinu is full of wondrous sound. Hear the Viola concerto some time.


Tom


*************************************************
             Tom Mandel   *   2927 Tilden St. NW
      Washington DC 20008   *   tmandel@1net.com
         vox: 202-362-1679   *   fax 202-364-5349
*************************************************
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 20 Jan 1997 09:59:10 MDT
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Christopher Alexander 
Organization: U of U Marriott Library Staff Net
Subject:      lilt

reading/just read

P. Inman: _Vel_, on O Books
     unbelievably good work--this has quickly become a favorite

Peter Ganick: _WOOL_, on Texture Press
Peter Ganick: _untitled parasite_, on Cricket Press but theres an
                                                 address etc for Juxta on the back?
     two very fine chapbooks--get them if you can

John Donne: _Sermons on the Psalms & Gospels_
     yess but the language is brilliant--I enjoy the sermons more
     than the poems, in fact--despite th are sermons

Bram Stoker: _Dracula_
     an old favorite

etc etc
..
christopher alexander, etc.
calexand@alexandria.lib.edu

"... The Anarchists' [national] anthem is an international
anthem that consists of 365 raspberries blown in very quick
succession to the tune of "Camptown Races".  Nobody has to
stand up for it, nobody has to listen to it, and, even better,
nobody has to play it."
          --Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 20 Jan 1997 12:24:01 +0100
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Miekal And 
Subject:      ZON�S NEOLOGISMS
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit

zon produced these in his learning session the other day, (preparing for
the permutations of speech in his lifetime).


ZON�S NEOLOGISMS    1-18-97

VIPERE - [v] Running over a cliff & not noticing you�ve fallen off the
edge, even as you�re in the air.

GINITE - [expression] �Goodnight� as said when someone doesn�t want to
got to sleep.

ZAAAMEE - [v] To play around with a gun when you�re not supposed to.
ex., �Please don�t zaaamee around my children.�

LISSEA - [n] A secretive gathering of girls, as when girls hang out
together & tell secrets & stuff.

ZYPIE - [adj] When somebody�s so crazy that�s they�re sort of normal

TUZ - [n] A kid who never wants to get into the bathtub or shower but
when they finally do they always absolutely love it.

SMOPE - [v] To hang someone over a cliff by a rope which is stretched
back along the ground and over a pot of boiling water whose steam slowly
unravels the rope, threatening to break & drop the person off the cliff.

FWPEA - [v] To run really fast and keep tripping but keep running.
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 20 Jan 1997 14:39:03 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Kenneth Goldsmith 
Subject:      Little Orphan Anagram
Comments: To: poetics@UBVM.cc.buffalo.edu
Comments: cc: sclay@interport.net
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Congratulations to List Mom Charlie Bernstein and Susan B. for a wonderful
collaboration on their new artist's book _Little Orphan Anagram_ just
released this past Saturday by Granary Books! It's got a gorgeous lime
green hard-bound cover filled with hand-painted illustrations by Susan and
glorious language by Charles. Each edition is unique as Susan painted every
single page by hand. A true work of art.

Check it out!

+===============================================================+
Kenneth Goldsmith                  work: http://www.ubuweb.com
611 Bway, #702, NYC 10012
v.212.260-4081


----------> editor UbuWeb ViSuAL & COncReTE PoEtRy
                  http://www.ubuweb.com/vp <--------------------
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 20 Jan 1997 14:24:41 EST
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Keith Tuma 
Subject:      building bridges

Miller Williams said thank you--like many a poet reading at a university
somewhere--so that the crowd would know his poem was over.  And shuffled off.
CNN didn't know whether to call him "poet laureate" or "inaugural poet."
Clinton seemed to like at least one line and was captured by the network with
that moony look he produces, eyes squinting and just a little misty, looking
up, jaw firmly set and the corners of his mouth turned down--oh afternoon
sublime and profound on the shining hill!  At least he understands something
of performance values!  Nearly made me weep, the whole scene, not just for the
spectacle of this poetry projected into national ceremony but because there
appeared to be real people sitting out in the cold.

So, from here, where it's warm as pixels, I ask you, citizens of Poetics,
which is it--Maya Angelou or Miller Williams?  Who will call Coolidge and
Fagin?  What do you make of it all?

Keith Tuma
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 20 Jan 1997 14:59:56 EST
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
Comments:     Converted from PROFS to RFC822 format by PUMP V2.2X
From:         ACGOLD01@ULKYVM.LOUISVILLE.EDU
Subject:      Mottram Conference

Alan Golding
Prof. of English, Univ. of Louisville
502-852-6801; acgold01@ulkyvm.louisville.edu

Does anyone have information on the gathering in honor of Eric Mottram that,
ifmemory serves, is planned for this early fall in London? (I've been browsing
the EPC to no avail.) (Hope it wasn't *last* fall!). Backchannel is fine.

Alan
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 20 Jan 1997 14:49:14 -0600
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         amato@CHARLIE.CNS.IIT.EDU
Subject:      Re: building bridges
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

keith, yeah, i found it sorta sad, and i ended up feeling sorry for
williams, fer chrissakes...

i mean, writing pretty strictly out of that aesthetic (for which i don't
"blame" williams)---an aesthetic that employs pronouns somewhat less than
self-consciously, and the only one presumably understood by the
population---it's difficult on such a day not to project backward and
forward, to give "us" something to think about in "historical" terms...
without complicating things by forcing the aesthetic moment to its
crisis... still, it seemed to me williams put it forth with some
humility...

i thought the prayer that followed was actually more... complicated in its
way, more suggestive wrt turmoil, conflict, etc...

anyway///

best,

joe
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 20 Jan 1997 15:53:50 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Steph4848@AOL.COM
Subject:      Names & books

Book suggestion:
but beautiful: a book about jazz
by George Dyer. (FSG/Northpoint. Northpoint, by the way, is now an imprint of
Double Take, the mag out of Duke. To add a little puzzle to it all, they are
using the logo of the Northpoint Press of Berkeley, that was also distributed
by FSG.

Anyway, in a curious mode de seance, Dier evokes the inside worlds of Monk,
Ben Webster, Ellington, Lester Young, Mingus, Chet Baker, Art Pepper, and a
few others. Dyer is English - and tho the language is driven, compelling,
there's a suspicion of the English exclusive obsession with the exotic
detail/circumstances of the lives and the art. The artist as disturbed bird
in the cage syndrome. Nevertheless, Dyer's obsession rings true. Ironically,
given the twists and turns around Adorno on this list before the hollidays,
the book is prefaced by an Adorno quote: "Producers of great art are no
demigods, but fallible human beings, often with neurotic and damaged
personalities."  A good read.



My favorite recent news appropriate name of the week:

Ebony Black

An eighth grader at a local school.


Cheers,
Stephen Vincent
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 20 Jan 1997 16:54:30 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Pierre Joris 
Subject:      Re: Mottram Conference
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

ACGOLD01@ULKYVM.LOUISVILLE.EDU wrote:
>
> Alan Golding
> Prof. of English, Univ. of Louisville
> 502-852-6801; acgold01@ulkyvm.louisville.edu
>
> Does anyone have information on the gathering in honor of Eric Mottram that,
> ifmemory serves, is planned for this early fall in London? (I've been browsing
> the EPC to no avail.) (Hope it wasn't *last* fall!). Backchannel is fine.
>
> Alan

 Alan -- the Eric Mottram gathering is still on & should happen in
September '97 in two places: London & a small village on the Welsh the
name of which escapes me now (Jeff Nuttall has moved back there a few
years ago.)  As soon as I have more info I will post it. -- Pierre
--
=========================================
pierre joris   6 madison place   albany ny 12202
tel/fax (510) 426 0433 email:joris@cnsunix.albany.edu
http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/authors/joris/
http://www.albany.edu/~tm0900/nomad.html
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Everything that allows men to become rooted, through
values or sentiments, in _one_ time, in _one_ history, in
_one_ language, is the principle of alienation which
constitutes man as privileged in so far as he is what he is,
[...] imprisoning him in contentment with his own reality
and encouraging him to offer it as an example or impose
it as a conquering assertation. -- Maurice Blanchot
==========================================
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 20 Jan 1997 16:20:14 -0600
Reply-To:     maria damon 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         maria damon 
Subject:      Re: ZON�S NEOLOGISMS

megacool

In message  <32E355B5.7925@mwt.net> UB Poetics discussion group writes:
> zon produced these in his learning session the other day, (preparing for
> the permutations of speech in his lifetime).
>
>
> ZON�S NEOLOGISMS    1-18-97
>
> VIPERE - [v] Running over a cliff & not noticing you�ve fallen off the
> edge, even as you�re in the air.
>
> GINITE - [expression] �Goodnight� as said when someone doesn�t want to
> got to sleep.
>
> ZAAAMEE - [v] To play around with a gun when you�re not supposed to.
> ex., �Please don�t zaaamee around my children.�
>
> LISSEA - [n] A secretive gathering of girls, as when girls hang out
> together & tell secrets & stuff.
>
> ZYPIE - [adj] When somebody�s so crazy that�s they�re sort of normal
>
> TUZ - [n] A kid who never wants to get into the bathtub or shower but
> when they finally do they always absolutely love it.
>
> SMOPE - [v] To hang someone over a cliff by a rope which is stretched
> back along the ground and over a pot of boiling water whose steam slowly
> unravels the rope, threatening to break & drop the person off the cliff.
>
> FWPEA - [v] To run really fast and keep tripping but keep running.
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 21 Jan 1997 12:07:09 +1000
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Pam Brown 
Subject:      Re: Closure & The Pastoral (another Chapter of *Ethics*)
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

And, John K., - there was "Country Country" by Denis Gallagher - published
in Sydney around 1979..and I've forgotten the publisher...but it'll be in
the libraries...and maybe some of Laurie Duggan's poems as well...

Cheerio
Pam

At 07:59 AM 20/1/97 -0700, you wrote:
>Aside from making a point about his own poem, John Kinsella has a point
>about settler countries in the commonwealth, as hisown work in the form
>demonstrates: check out, if you can order it from Oz, his _The Silo: a
>pastoral symphony_ & his latest (for a month or so I suspect), _Lightning
>Tree_ [both from Fremantle Arts Centre Press] or _The Undertow: new &
>selected poems_ [from Arc Publications in the UK]. Those of you lucky
>enough to catch him on his recent tour of the US & Canada will have heard
>him read some of these poems as well as talk about what he's doing with the
>'genre'.
>Then I begin to think about who does this in Canada: John Newlove, whose
>early, minimalist, poems of farm life already break away from
>pastoral-as-such, GB, at times, & maybe especially in sections of
>_Autobiology_, Robert Kroetsch in parts of his ongoing poem, _Field Notes_,
>especially _Seed Catalogue_; & there are more. Do some of Atwood's poems
>count (I think so).
>Robert Adamson, one of Australia's finest poets, certainly practices
>anti-pastoral, even in a book probably seen as 'pure' pastoral by some
>reviewers, the sharply etched & shifty _The Clean Dark_.
>Bill Manhire has written a few poems I would call anti-pastoral-as-theory
>(but not obvious about it), in New Zealand.
>
>Most poems that fit this concept, in my fuzzy thinking this morning, would
>seem fairly mainstream, but have something that undermines a regular
>reading in them. I imagine John, who has obviously been thinking about
>this, would present a much more complex argument...
>
>Just off the top of my head...
>
>==============================================================================
>Douglas Barbour
>Department of English
>University of Alberta               in the rooms you live in
>Edmonton  Alberta  T6G  2E5         other people's books line your shelves
>(403) 492 2181  FAX:(403) 492 8142
>H: 436 3320                                     bpNichol
>
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 21 Jan 1997 09:22:38 +1200
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Tom Beard 
Subject:      reading, hearing, wearing
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

reading:

The Gold Bug Variations - Richard Powers (nearly finished)
Musicality - Barbara Guest
The Ambiguous Companion - Tom Weston
The Creative - lecture by Robert Creeley
New & Selected Poems - John Forbes
recent issues of Emigre & Wired


hearing:

Dead Cities - Future Sound of London
In Sides - Orbital
Second Toughest in the Infants - Underworld
Rubberduck - a Windows program that emulates a Roland TB-303, real-time
filter-tweaking and all


wearing:

Cream linen pants and waistcoat
White shirt
Blue, white and bronze Armani tie


Hey, am I the first to admit to wearing a tie??


Gotta go.


        <>
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 20 Jan 1997 18:04:01 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         David Bromige 
Subject:      first tie-sporter?
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

no,, not the first. George Bowering is wearing a tie. Unfortunately, it's
all he's wearing right now. Fortunately, it's a very long tie. Er, at
least. . .
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 20 Jan 1997 16:14:40 -1000
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Gabrielle Welford 
Subject:      Abolition 2000 '97 Conference WWW (fwd)
Comments: To: postcolonial@jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU
Comments: cc: poetics , egg-l ,
          grow-l 
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sat, 18 Jan 1997 11:11:45 -1000
From: Pacific Impact 

Aloha:

Last week you received an invitation to join our discussions on the agenda
of the Abolition 2000 Conference being held in Moorea January 20 -28.  We
have uploaded a web site to host this discussion and provide more
information at:

   http://www.hookele.com/abolition2000

If you are unable to view the site please send your postings to our address
and we'll upload your message to the discussion.  Also send your letters of
encouragement if you are inspired through this week through our journal
postings and reports.  On the web site there is also a daily journal where
we'll be uploading stories, interviews, press statements, comments and
images.  For those on e-mail only - we'll be glad to send you postings,
just let us know.

WAYS TO PARTICIPATE ONLINE

1.  Join the online discussion group at:
http://hookele.com/abolition2000/abotalk

2.  Please try and keep the discussion to the agenda topics and reports

3.  Send E-mail support and comments on topic(s) to: freezone-tahiti@hookele.com

4.  Send faxes of support and comments on topic(s) to:  fax: +689 57 28 80
(this fax number may change once we're there and we'll post a note to that
effect).

5.  Become signatory to the Abolition Statement:

   http://hookele.com/abolition2000/abostatement.html

6.  Become a signatory of support for the Hiti Tau - resolution/declaration
which will be developed. (I'll provide more info on Hiti Tau, with ways you
can help, after we're present in Moorea.)

7.  Continue to return to the site each day to review discussions, list of
needs and reports from Abolition 2000 and Hiti Tau

8.  Distribute and activate your network on issues and resolutions you support


TOPIC FOR DISCUSSION

Decolonisation has been a hot topic/issue of discussion in preparation for
this conference.  The question raised in the earlier part of this month
which was raised by European and USA abolition members was: "Why Discuss
Decolonization?"  Soon you will find a thread archived in the Conference
Discussion Group with earlier comments by Abolition members and Pacific
Indigenous Peoples.  This discussion has been encouraged to continue for
growth and clearer understanding of our Pacific Issues.

AGENDA

HITI TAU is our Te Ao Maohi (Indigenous Peoples of Tahiti) host and will
open and close the conference and each day with appropriate protocol and
prayers.  Gabriel "Gaby" Tetiarahi is the head of Hiti Tau and will be
holding a conference at the same time as this conference.  Both conference
participants will join together for meals and will interact on common
agenda.

MONDAY - JAN. 20: ARRIVAL & REGISTRATION

TUESDAY - JAN. 21: PROTOCOL & SITE VISITS

WEDNESDAY - JAN. 22: OPENING CEREMONY of RECONCILIATION FOR NUCLEAR TEST
VICTIMS
    & PACIFIC NUCLEAR ISSUES

THURSDAY - JAN. 23: LINKING REGIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL NUCLEAR ISSUES
    CAUCUS: (a) Regional; (b) Indigenous Peoples; (c) Youth
        -    VISION - hopes and expectations for this conference
        -    review of Abolition 2000 Statement (point by point evaluation
of progress, problems, challenges)

FRIDAY - JAN. 24: ABOLITION 2000 WORKING GROUPS
    * Introductory reports from Abolition 2000 working group conveners
    - identify additional working groups (goal of day: action plans from
each working group)
    * Evening issue briefings (shipment of plutonium, ICJ opinion, lab
testing, etc.; videos)

SATURDAY - JAN. 25: BUILDING THE NETWORK - RESOLUTIONS & REPORTS

SUNDAY - JAN. 26: UNSCHEDULED TIME AND CLOSING CEREMONY
    *  Preparation for Monday press conference and Peace Vigil

MONDAY - JAN. 27: PRESS CONFERENCE & PEACE VIGIL IN PAPEETE (world invited)

PRESS CONFERENCE IN PAPEETE
    -  announcement of the results of the first independent health study of
        Polynesian test site workers and the outcome  of the Abolition 2000
meeting
    -  public signing of solemn declaration to mark the end of nuclear
testing and
        appeal for the abolition of nuclear weapons

DIRECT ACTION
    -  MARCH through Papeete with local youth, women's NGO(s) and church
        groups, trade unionists, etc.

*Exhibition of anti-nuclear artwork in Papeete (tentative)

TUESDAY, JAN. 28: SITE VISITS - FINAL NETWORK, STRATEGIC PLANNING - LOCAL
NEEDS/FUTURE

e n d
---

"Background Information on conference coordination and organization"

* The Abolition 2000 Interim Management Group (IMG), which manages
the operation of the Network between meetings, will oversee the
agenda and program.  Its members will meet frequently to assess
how the conference is going and make adjustments as needed.  Judy
Rubenstein has been retained by the IMG as a facilitator and
"ombudsman" (a person who people with complaints can come to).

* Simultaneous French/English translation will be provided during
plenary sessions, and there will be rapporteurs for plenary
sessions.  We hope to produce daily reports, in French and
English, for distribution to delegates.  If possible, these daily
reports will also be posted on the internet.

* The Abolition 2000 conference will deal with information
sharing, development of coordinated strategies, and
administrative management of the Network over the next year. We
anticipate that resolutions and proposals dealing with both
substance and process will be put forward during the conference.
Delegates are encouraged to present written proposals and
resolutions to the IMG before the Saturday plenary session.

* The Abolition 2000 Statement is the "glue" that holds the
Abolition 2000 Network together.  It represents a kind of
"contract" among the nearly 700 non-governmental groups around
the world who have signed it, and it is the starting point for
our common work at this conference.


* One day of the conference is devoted to working group meetings.
Abolition 2000 currently has 10 working groups. Additional
working groups can be formed based on participants' interests.
Existing working groups are: 1) Nuclear Weapons Convention;
2)Non-Nuclear Security Model for Europe; 3) Chernobyl and Nuclear
Power; 4) Media, Communication and Outreach; 5) CTBT and Beyond;
6) Fissile Materials; 7) Overcoming Nuclear Threats/Legal Issues;
8) Lobbying, Dialogue and Campaigning; 9) NPT PrepComs; and 10)
Newsletter.

___________________________________

P A C I F I C   I M P A C T   P E A C E
Kekula P. Bray-Crawford 
Ho`okele Hawai`i - HAWAIIANAVIGATION Co.
1135 Makawao Ave. No. 103-122 - Makawao, Maui 96768 Ka Pae `Aina o Hawai`i Loa
Malama Ala a ka Manu
___________________________________
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 20 Jan 1997 16:17:31 -1000
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Gabrielle Welford 
Subject:      Urgent Action Bulletin (fwd)
Comments: To: poetics 
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

MEXICAN LABOR NEWS AND ANALYSIS
URGENT ACTION BULLETIN - JANUARY 18, 1997

          APPARENT KIDNAPPING OF COMMUNITY ACTIVIST
               TEPOZTLAN, MORELOS, MEXICO
                    from Andrew Wheat
     Laura Berenice Medina Bocanegra, a community activist and
daughter of outspoken Tepoztlan leader Doctor Adela Bocanegra,
appears to have been  kidnapped late in the afternoon of Friday
Jan. 17, 1997 in the nearby city of Cuernavaca, where she works.
     The day of her disappearance, Ms. Medina Bocanegra sent a
fax from her office at the National Water Commission in
Cuernavaca. The fax said that two men had just followed her on
foot in Cuernavaca's main plaza. The fax also described three
vehicles that had followed her in recent days, including the
license plate numbers of two of these cars. One of the vehicles
(for which she provided a  license plate number) was
a patrol car of the State Judicial Police.
     Just before her disappearance around 5 or 6 pm, Ms. Medina
Bocanegra ducked into the Mexico Zacatepec bus station in
Cuernavaca to call home because she said she was being followed
again and felt threatened. When family members went to the
station  to pick her up, she was gone.
     The community of Tepoztlan has gained international
attention for the successful campaign it has waged to prevent
investors supported by Morelos Governor Jorge Carrillo Olea from
building a luxury development on the outskirts of their colonial
town. In retribution over the course of the last year,  Morelos
authorities ambushed a caravan of peaceful protesters, killing
one man; imprisoned Amnesty International Prisoner of Conscience
Gerardo Demesa Padilla for one year; issued arrest warrants
for dozens of movement leaders; and apprehended four other
Tepoztlan men on January 11, 1997 -- torturing at least two of
them.
     The case of Laura Beranice Medina Bocanegra is unusual,
however, in that no known warrant had been issued for her arrest
and State officials have initially said that she is not in their
custody. There is fear for her safety.

RECOMMENDED ACTION: Please send immediate
telegrams/telexes/faxes:
- expressing concern for  Laura Beranice Medina Bocanegra's
safety;
- urging that the license plate numbers she identified be
immediately
traced;
- urging that she be located and safely released to her family;
- urging that her presumed abductors be brought to justice;
- asking to be kept informed of the outcome of any investigation.

APPEALS TO:                                     (SALUTATION)
1) President of the Republic:                 (Sr. Presidente /
                                                  Dear President
Lic. Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de Leon
Presidente de la Republica
Palacio Nacional
06067 Mexico D.F.
MEXICO
[Telegrams: Presidente Zedillo, Mexico D.F., Mexico]
[Telexes: 170937 sppnme; 1774468 sppnme]
[Faxes: 011 52 5  515 1794 or 011 52 5 542 1648 (voice line: ask
'me puede dar tono de fax, por favor')]

2) Attorney General of the Republic:           (Sr. Procurador de
                                             la Republica/
                                             Dear Attorney)
Lic. Jorge Madrazo Cuellar
Procuraduria General de la Republica
Paseo de la Reforma y Violeta
Col. Guerrero
06300 Mexico D.F.
MEXICO
[Telegrams: Sr. Procurador de la Republica, Mexico D.F., MEXICO]
[Fax: 011 52 5 626 4419/ 011 52 5 626 4430]

3) Minister of the Interior:                  (Sr. Secretario /
                                                  Dear Minister)
Lic. Emilio Chuayffet Chemor
Secretario de la Gobernacion
Secretaria de la Gobernacion
Bucareli 99, 1er piso
Col. Juarez, 06699 Mexico DF
MEXICO
[Telegrams: Secretario Gobernacion, Mexico D.F., Mexico]
[Faxes: 011 52 5 546 5350]

4) Governor of the State of Morelos:          (Sr. Gobernador /
                                                  Dear Governor)
Governor of the state of Morelos
Lic. Jorge Carrillo Olea
Gobernador del Estado de Morelos
Palacio de Gobierno Cuernavaca
Estado de Morelos, MEXICO
[Telegrams: Gobernador Morelos, Mexico]
[Faxes:  011 52 7 311 3020; this is a voice line so please ask to
have the fax machine turned on.]

COPIES TO:
1) Daily newspaper:
Sr. Editor
La Jornada
Balderas 68
06050 Mexico D.F.
MEXICO
                    BACKGROUND INFORMATION
     The state of Morelos has long been the scene of human rights
violations allegedly carried out by the security forces, mainly
in the context of land disputes. Indigenous people and peasants
are most often the victims of this violence. The frequent
association of powerful landowners (caciques) with local
authorities seriously undermines the legal rights
of the peasants and places them at a higher risk of human rights
violations.

     A development company, in association with the governor of
Morelos, Jorge Carrillo Olea, has been attempting to build a
multi-million dollargolf course and houses on common land, land
which is regarded by the inhabitants of Tepoztlan as sacred.  For
months, local people, including women, children and elderly, some
of them members of the CUT, have organized numerous peaceful
actions in their struggle to stop the development.

     On 10 April 1996, following one of those peaceful
demonstrations, Marcos Olmedo Gutierrez was extrajudicial killed
by members of thesecurity forces.  More than a hundred arrest
warrants were issued against members of CUT and some arrests took
place.  Moreover, community activists, including minors, were
repeatedly subjected to threats and ill-treatment.

     One of those previously arrested, Gerardo Demesa Padilla, a
teacher, remains in prison as a prisoner of conscience.

     Amnesty International delegations visited Tepoztlan in June
and December 1996 and were able to interview some of the human
rights defenders, community activists and members of CUT who had
been ill-treated, threatened and imprisoned.  The delegation
confirmed the reports of violent repression against those active
in promoting and protecting human rights.

     For More Information, contact: trigo@juno.com

          END MLNA URGENT ACTION BULLETIN 18 JANUARY 1997
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 20 Jan 1997 20:21:24 -0600
Reply-To:     maria damon 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         maria damon 
Subject:      Re: reading, hearing, wearing

hey beard, what's emigre?

In message  <32E3E21E.1679@met.co.nz> UB Poetics discussion group writes:
> reading:
>
> The Gold Bug Variations - Richard Powers (nearly finished)
> Musicality - Barbara Guest
> The Ambiguous Companion - Tom Weston
> The Creative - lecture by Robert Creeley
> New & Selected Poems - John Forbes
> recent issues of Emigre & Wired
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 20 Jan 1997 16:44:53 -1000
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Gabrielle Welford 
Subject:      NCDAP Action Alert
Comments: To: poetics 
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

Sorry if this is a repeat.  I got messages saying it hadn't been accepted.
gab.
------------------------------------
NCADP ACTION ALERT
Issued:  January 15, 1997
Expires:  Februay 15, 1997

The Governor of Iowa is pushing to reintroduce the death penalty.  Given the
recent changes in the composition of the state house, he has a good chance
of succeeding.  Debate about his proposal is expected to begin in the state
senate in early February.  If it passes the senate, debate in the house will
start soon after.  The following is a message from our friends in Iowa:

        "With the November elections, the Republican Party gained control of the
State Senate (29-21).  The Democratic Party made gains in the State House,
but the Republicans remain in control (54-46).  There are 9 new senators and
21 new representatives.
        The governor, who was not up for reelection, is Republican.  Thus,
Republicans control both chambers of the legislature and the executive offices.
        The governor is once again pushing the death penalty.  He suggests that the
reason for Republicans gaining control of the Senate is because ant-death
penalty Democrats were opposed by pro-death penalty Republicans.
        The Republican leadership of the Senate and House have stated that they
believe there are not enough votes to pass a death penalty bill.  Death
penalty opponents must not believe a death penalty will surely be defeated.
        Iowans Against the Death Penalty and lobbyist from a variety of
organizations have been counting expected votes on the death penalty issue.
It appears that the vote in both chambers will be extremely close.
        It is expected that a death penalty bill will be introduced in the Senate
shortly after the legislative session begins on January 13.
        We need to have legislators hear from those oppose the death penalty."

Please contact at least one of the following Republican state senators:
Dennis Black, Don Gettings, Rod Halvorson, Steven Hansen, Wally Horn, Steve
King, Jim Lind, and Mary Lundby.
                The Honorable (Insert Name)
                Senate Chamber
                State Capitol Building
                Des Moines, IA 50319
                (515) 242-6108--Fax

Please let them know:
                --You have sympathy for victims of violent crime
                --The death penalty is not a deterrent
                --The death penalty is more expensive than life imprisonment
                --The death penalty (killing) is no way to show that killing is wrong
                --Any other information you deem useful.

        Also, please send letters of support and encouragement to The Honorable
John Redwine at the above address.  Senator Redwine is a newly elected
Republican who opposes the death penalty.

Letters to the editor should be sent also.  Each of the following newspapers
is located in a key congressional district:

Des Moines Register
Bok 957
Des Moines, IA 50304

Cedar Rapids Gazette
Box 511
Cedar Rapids, IA 52406

Waterloo Courier
Park and Commercial
Waterloo, IA 50704

Dubuque Telegraph Herald
Box 680
Dubuque, IA 52001

Quad City Times
124 East 2nd Street
Davenport, IA 52801

For more information, please contact:
                Steve Pohlmeyer  @ (319) 377-2473


Yours In The Sruggle,

Steven Hawkins
Executive Director
National Coalition to Abolish The Death Penalty
918 F St., NW #601
Washington, DC 20024
(202) 347-2411
ncadp1@nicom.com
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 20 Jan 1997 17:00:36 -1000
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Gabrielle Welford 
Subject:      Biogs of Contemp Women Poets
Comments: To: poetics 
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

St. James Press, Detroit, MI,  is seeking contributing
essayists for Contemporary Women Poets, a reference book scheduled
for publication in October 1997.  Biographical/Critical essays
will run approximately 300 words; payment will be $75.00 per
essay, with final ms. deadline of May 30, 1997.

Those interested in receiving a list of poets still available as
essay subjects should e-mail  Pamela Shelton, editor, at
pshelton@reach.com no later than January 30, 1997.
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 20 Jan 1997 17:10:58 -1000
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Gabrielle Welford 
Subject:      Re: Justice for Garment Workers II (fwd)
Comments: To: poetics 
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 20 Jan 1997 09:45:00 -1000
From: Julia Stein 

Justice for Garmenter Workers Literary Reading II
Midnight  Special bookstore
February 2, Sunday, 2-3:30
1318 3rd Street Promenade, Santa Monica,
310-393-2923
Luis Campos, poet, Poetry! (CD/casette, New Alliance Records)
Alexis Krasilovsky, video poet, creator, "What Memphis Needs" and
"Earthquake Haggadah"
Merrihelen Ponce, author of acclaimed autobiography "Hoyt Street"
Julia Stein, poet, author of "Desert Soldiers"
Edna Bonacich from Common threads will give an update on the UNITE camaign
        against Guess
and a Guess contract worker will speak.
Sponsor:  Common Threads

Guess Inc. sued "Justice for Garment Workers Literary Reading I" as part of
a large libel/slander suit against UNITE, the garment workers union, and
Common Threads, a women's support group dedicated to justice for garment
workers. You are invited to Justice for GArment Workers Literary Reading
II.

Julia Stein
jstein@laedu.lalc.k12.ca.us
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 21 Jan 1997 16:19:55 +1300
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         DS 
Subject:      Re: Abolition 2000 '97 Conference WWW (fwd)
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Gabrielle, I made an item on the Tahitian Hiti  Tau movement for New Zealand
tv during the anti nucleara protests last year. i am interested in hearing
more about what they are doing if you have more info.

Please backchannel (or whatever the term is) if it is of no interest to the
list.

Dan Salmon

At 04:14 PM 1/20/97 -1000, you wrote:
>---------- Forwarded message ----------
>Date: Sat, 18 Jan 1997 11:11:45 -1000
>From: Pacific Impact 
>
>Aloha:
>
>Last week you received an invitation to join our discussions on the agenda
>of the Abolition 2000 Conference being held in Moorea January 20 -28.  We
>have uploaded a web site to host this discussion and provide more
>information at:
>
>   http://www.hookele.com/abolition2000
>
>If you are unable to view the site please send your postings to our address
>and we'll upload your message to the discussion.  Also send your letters of
>encouragement if you are inspired through this week through our journal
>postings and reports.  On the web site there is also a daily journal where
>we'll be uploading stories, interviews, press statements, comments and
>images.  For those on e-mail only - we'll be glad to send you postings,
>just let us know.
>
>WAYS TO PARTICIPATE ONLINE
>
>1.  Join the online discussion group at:
>http://hookele.com/abolition2000/abotalk
>
>2.  Please try and keep the discussion to the agenda topics and reports
>
>3.  Send E-mail support and comments on topic(s) to:
freezone-tahiti@hookele.com
>
>4.  Send faxes of support and comments on topic(s) to:  fax: +689 57 28 80
>(this fax number may change once we're there and we'll post a note to that
>effect).
>
>5.  Become signatory to the Abolition Statement:
>
>   http://hookele.com/abolition2000/abostatement.html
>
>6.  Become a signatory of support for the Hiti Tau - resolution/declaration
>which will be developed. (I'll provide more info on Hiti Tau, with ways you
>can help, after we're present in Moorea.)
>
>7.  Continue to return to the site each day to review discussions, list of
>needs and reports from Abolition 2000 and Hiti Tau
>
>8.  Distribute and activate your network on issues and resolutions you support
>
>
>TOPIC FOR DISCUSSION
>
>Decolonisation has been a hot topic/issue of discussion in preparation for
>this conference.  The question raised in the earlier part of this month
>which was raised by European and USA abolition members was: "Why Discuss
>Decolonization?"  Soon you will find a thread archived in the Conference
>Discussion Group with earlier comments by Abolition members and Pacific
>Indigenous Peoples.  This discussion has been encouraged to continue for
>growth and clearer understanding of our Pacific Issues.
>
>AGENDA
>
>HITI TAU is our Te Ao Maohi (Indigenous Peoples of Tahiti) host and will
>open and close the conference and each day with appropriate protocol and
>prayers.  Gabriel "Gaby" Tetiarahi is the head of Hiti Tau and will be
>holding a conference at the same time as this conference.  Both conference
>participants will join together for meals and will interact on common
>agenda.
>
>MONDAY - JAN. 20: ARRIVAL & REGISTRATION
>
>TUESDAY - JAN. 21: PROTOCOL & SITE VISITS
>
>WEDNESDAY - JAN. 22: OPENING CEREMONY of RECONCILIATION FOR NUCLEAR TEST
>VICTIMS
>    & PACIFIC NUCLEAR ISSUES
>
>THURSDAY - JAN. 23: LINKING REGIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL NUCLEAR ISSUES
>    CAUCUS: (a) Regional; (b) Indigenous Peoples; (c) Youth
>        -    VISION - hopes and expectations for this conference
>        -    review of Abolition 2000 Statement (point by point evaluation
>of progress, problems, challenges)
>
>FRIDAY - JAN. 24: ABOLITION 2000 WORKING GROUPS
>    * Introductory reports from Abolition 2000 working group conveners
>    - identify additional working groups (goal of day: action plans from
>each working group)
>    * Evening issue briefings (shipment of plutonium, ICJ opinion, lab
>testing, etc.; videos)
>
>SATURDAY - JAN. 25: BUILDING THE NETWORK - RESOLUTIONS & REPORTS
>
>SUNDAY - JAN. 26: UNSCHEDULED TIME AND CLOSING CEREMONY
>    *  Preparation for Monday press conference and Peace Vigil
>
>MONDAY - JAN. 27: PRESS CONFERENCE & PEACE VIGIL IN PAPEETE (world invited)
>
>PRESS CONFERENCE IN PAPEETE
>    -  announcement of the results of the first independent health study of
>        Polynesian test site workers and the outcome  of the Abolition 2000
>meeting
>    -  public signing of solemn declaration to mark the end of nuclear
>testing and
>        appeal for the abolition of nuclear weapons
>
>DIRECT ACTION
>    -  MARCH through Papeete with local youth, women's NGO(s) and church
>        groups, trade unionists, etc.
>
>*Exhibition of anti-nuclear artwork in Papeete (tentative)
>
>TUESDAY, JAN. 28: SITE VISITS - FINAL NETWORK, STRATEGIC PLANNING - LOCAL
>NEEDS/FUTURE
>
>e n d
>---
>
>"Background Information on conference coordination and organization"
>
>* The Abolition 2000 Interim Management Group (IMG), which manages
>the operation of the Network between meetings, will oversee the
>agenda and program.  Its members will meet frequently to assess
>how the conference is going and make adjustments as needed.  Judy
>Rubenstein has been retained by the IMG as a facilitator and
>"ombudsman" (a person who people with complaints can come to).
>
>* Simultaneous French/English translation will be provided during
>plenary sessions, and there will be rapporteurs for plenary
>sessions.  We hope to produce daily reports, in French and
>English, for distribution to delegates.  If possible, these daily
>reports will also be posted on the internet.
>
>* The Abolition 2000 conference will deal with information
>sharing, development of coordinated strategies, and
>administrative management of the Network over the next year. We
>anticipate that resolutions and proposals dealing with both
>substance and process will be put forward during the conference.
>Delegates are encouraged to present written proposals and
>resolutions to the IMG before the Saturday plenary session.
>
>* The Abolition 2000 Statement is the "glue" that holds the
>Abolition 2000 Network together.  It represents a kind of
>"contract" among the nearly 700 non-governmental groups around
>the world who have signed it, and it is the starting point for
>our common work at this conference.
>
>
>* One day of the conference is devoted to working group meetings.
>Abolition 2000 currently has 10 working groups. Additional
>working groups can be formed based on participants' interests.
>Existing working groups are: 1) Nuclear Weapons Convention;
>2)Non-Nuclear Security Model for Europe; 3) Chernobyl and Nuclear
>Power; 4) Media, Communication and Outreach; 5) CTBT and Beyond;
>6) Fissile Materials; 7) Overcoming Nuclear Threats/Legal Issues;
>8) Lobbying, Dialogue and Campaigning; 9) NPT PrepComs; and 10)
>Newsletter.
>
>___________________________________
>
>P A C I F I C   I M P A C T   P E A C E
>Kekula P. Bray-Crawford 
>Ho`okele Hawai`i - HAWAIIANAVIGATION Co.
>1135 Makawao Ave. No. 103-122 - Makawao, Maui 96768 Ka Pae `Aina o Hawai`i Loa
>Malama Ala a ka Manu
>___________________________________
>
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 20 Jan 1997 17:52:46 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         duane davis 
Subject:      Re: Charles Bernstein's Crime

A few days ago, Charles Bernstein posted a note regarding the new
Boundary 2, letting us know, in a humorous way, that it includes some
material regarding him and his work. He noted that it includes some
poems, an autobiographical interview, a more conventional interview "On
Poetry, Language and Teaching" and the writing "Experiments" list. He
ended the post by noting that the "dossier fully reveals my guilt...;
my question is: what is the crime?" I've read through the material,
and, in the interests of internet conversation, am ready to give my
views on the "crime".

I am unsure of B's poetry. It is playful, diffident, relentlessly
"constructed," a made object (as, of course, is all poetry) that avoids
the sentimentalities of meaning as he strives very hard for an invented
syntax and grammar by which to chart the background radiation of decay
and dissolution that haunts our discourse -- the half-life of sense and
sensibility as it dissolves into noise. In the grand scatter of these
words, phrases, forms I can sometimes glimpse, if only by glint and
gleam, the general, if not implacable, heatdeath of all those small
economies we so fondly call "you" and "I"...

Yet it is with such relief to strike upon moments of coherence, even if
gnomic, in the poems, those passages where meaning lights up the
non-sense or a-sensical -- momentary stillings of the surrealist crush
of random words and phrases. Though, perhaps, not "random." They may
mean something to their author and they may mean something to someone
other than me.

But it seems, then, that this "meaning" is very casual and unconnected
from the words, almost accidental... How many of your readers can you
lose before you are no longer a writer, just a scribbler?

B argues compellingly and convincingly for difficulty and complexity,
for a writing that goes against the grain of conventional use and sense
-- both in poetry and prose. It is of note that his own prose is often
beautiful and measured and strikingly clear and direct. What, in fact,
is the relation of the two -- why are they different, or, why are they
so different? What does B seek in the poetry, what "experience" of
words and phrases, rhythms and forms... And then why write about the
poetry in prose? As though the poetry required a justification, an
explanation.

B asked, in his post, 'what is the crime' the dossier gathers evidence
against and of course he meant this in a humorous way and in the same
spirit of affectionate challenge I would submit that the dossier
collects evidence regarding B's efforts to destroy the evidence itself:
his testimony enacts the erasure of "meaning", a community property of
a certain value and for which the defacement of has always carried
certain penalties and censures.

B asks what the crime is... Next, we must ask what the sentence is.

Duane Davis
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 21 Jan 1997 16:26:50 +1300
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         DS 
Subject:      Re: Charles Bernstein's Crime
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Sententiousness.

 - a kiwi burd in a kiwi tree.


>B asks what the crime is... Next, we must ask what the sentence is.
>
>Duane Davis
>
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 20 Jan 1997 17:36:11 -1000
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Gabrielle Welford 
Subject:      AAVE (fwd)
Comments: To: egg-l , poetics ,
          grow-l 
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

From: LYNN EUBANK 

Dear colleagues,

We are writing in response to the massive bipartisan
attack that we have witnessed  against the Oakland School
Board's decision to recognize Ebonics, or African American
English (AAE). The Linguistic Society of America recently
passed a resolution in support for the board on linguistic
and educational grounds, but it has received scarce mention
in the media relative to the outpouring of mean-spirited and
ignorant assertions that claim AAE is "bad grammar,"
"slang," "a pseudo-dialect" and a "pseudo-language." Most
disappointing to us has been the reaction of the normally
liberal spokespersons who have managed to construe the
recognition of AAE as representing a potential threat and
handicap to the thousands of African American children in
schools. We are especially alarmed at the solutions being
proposed, which invariably seek to use shame and guilt at
the natural language learned from one's parents to "attract"
the children to the "standard d ialect."  This "real language"
is held up in comparison as "pure" and "grammatical,"
"logical" and "understandable," in complete and convenient
ignorance of decades of linguistic research that reveal the
emergence of a standard as historical and political artifact.

We can find no contemporary linguist who "grades"
languages or dialects. As the old saying goes, a language is
just a dialect with an army and a navy.  But it is true,
standard American English is the language of success and
power and economic opportunity, often called "the cash
language". There has been progress in fighting race
prejudice. We must not let language prejudice become
legitimate. Prejudice against American Sign Language as a
system of "dumb gestures" is being overcome, by studying
the intricacy of the sign system, so that we now see signers
on TV and 5yr-olds eager to learn their names in Sign. The
same effort should be made on behalf of dialects in the US,
including regional  dialects which are also the basis of
prejudice. The US is making some progress in extending our
collective vision of success to be inclusive of the way
different people look, but we need to incorporate tolerance
of language variety for successful adults.

So what are the real risks that African American children
face in the current United  States? From ignorance of the
dialect by teachers and officials: a substantial increase
in the likelihood of being stigmatized as "learning disabled"
and "language delayed" as they enter the school system.
Because of the media attention to this controversy perhaps a
million children who want to speak up in class discussion
will not speak in class this week. Speakers of other dialects
may be similarly inhibited. Evidence suggests that by fourth
grade many children go silent because they do not feel
welcome in their schools.

Psycholinguistic research has demonstrated the rich
system of phonological, morphological  and syntactic rules
known to AAE-speaking 5 year olds. These rules exemplify
the universal  principles true of all natural languages, with
the logical and semantic precision that is the crowning
achievement of the human mind. In addition, they have
mastered the language  particular properties of African
American English so crudely caricatured in the press: the
use of negative concord (NOT the same as "double and
triple negation"), the use of the unique aspect marker BE
(NOT "unconjugated use of be"), and subtle phonological
constraints on morphology. Finally, they are already
code-switching into standard dialect when circumstances
require it, in the recognition that not everyone shares their
dialect.

The Oakland School Board is to be congratulated for
recognizing these strengths and for recommending that
teachers be trained to encourage the transition to bidialectal
competence, not by the traditional and hate-ridden methods
of guilt and punishment, but by  linguistic education,
metalinguistic awareness, and pride in the linguistics skills
gained.

We are writing to express our embarrassment and
rage at the current situation, and we hope  you will join us
in extending a hand of support and encouragement to all
those people who use AAE as their natural language, those
who teach children who speak it, and those who have been
made to feel ashamed of once having spoken it.  If you
would like to share this letter with any other newsgroups or
colleagues, we urge you to forward it to them and add your
name as a co-signer.

Jill deVilliers, Smith College
Thomas Roeper, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Harry N. Seymour, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Co-signers:
Peter de Villiers, Smith College
Michael Walsh Dickey, University of Massachusetts,
  Amherst
Lynn Eubank, University of North Texas
Dr. Lynn Eubank, Chair
Graduate Studies in English
Department of English
University of North Texas
Denton, TX 76203
USA
EUBANK@TWLAB.UNT.EDU


Dr. Lynn Eubank
Division of Linguistics
Department of English
University of North Texas
Denton, TX 76203
USA
EUBANK@JOVE.ACS.UNT.EDU
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 20 Jan 1997 21:25:32 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "Jeffrey W. Timmons" 
Subject:      Re: oh, alright (clothing)
Comments: To: maria damon 
In-Reply-To:  <32e389804529420@mhub1.tc.umn.edu>
MIME-version: 1.0
Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT

in future
communications--
this order--
better back-
channelled:
the sonnet
sunshine ray
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 20 Jan 1997 23:44:23 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Thomas Bell 
Subject:      Re: quark this
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

you must be kidding, right?  or are we living in tiskittaskit world
as we approach the millenium?
tom bell


At 03:34 AM 1/20/97 -0800, Ron Silliman wrote:
>My current unfavorite in the work environment I inhabit is the verb
>
>attrit
>
>as in "we'll attrit that department to 24 after the new system is up."
>
>Some others include:
>
>the verb "task" as in
>"I have been tasked to prepare a white paper on strategy"
>
>"install" as an adjective, as in
>
>"revenue has remained flat while the install base has doubled"
>
>"quark" as a verb, as in "quark that, please"
>
>I hear this stuff every day. All professional jargons are full of it,
>but the PC industry positively delights in it. When I worked in the
>prison movement in the 1970s, there were some liberal architects who
>were calling what's typically known as "the main yard" of their
>institutional designs "detention gardens." An older institution like
>San Quentin (dating back well into the 19th century), understands the
>model somewhat better and calls this same feature "the quad."
>
>Ron Silliman
>
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 20 Jan 1997 22:51:40 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Herb Levy 
Subject:      Re: Elmslie in Seattle
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

George & others,

So you don't hear about it too late this time, Kenward Elmslie's reading as
part of the Rendezvous reading series in Seattle next week, January 28, at
New City Theater on the corner of 11th Av & Olive Street on Capitol Hill.
I don't know what time it starts, but I'll be back in time to hear it.
Perhaps one of the many Seattle lurkers can post some more information on
this.  (I don't think we're all out of town.)

Roulette t-shirt by Christian Marclay, gray herringbone tweed pants, &
black ankle boots with brown leather trim.  (I was the only person I saw at
the (absolutely amazing & well worth a trip) 101st Fort Worth Stock Show &
Rodeo last night who wasn't wearing jeans, but I don't have any.)

>Ah you lucky people who have heard Elmslie read. (Or Schuyler, for that
>matter.) I have never heard him, though I heard too late that a play was
>produced in Seattle a couple years ago. Does anyone out there teach
>Elmslie? How does one do it?
>>
>
>George Bowering.


Herb Levy
herb@eskimo.com
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 20 Jan 1997 22:51:54 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Herb Levy 
Subject:      Books & Tunes
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

I'm reading Doug Nufer's Never Again (a two hundred page manuscript with NO
word used more than once).  I just finished Brian Eno's A Year (better, or
at least more interesting, than I expected) & also have with me, but have
barely opened yet, Potocki's Manuscript Found in Saragossa; Mandel &
Davidson's Absence Sensorium; & Moxley's Imagination Verses (this last is
the Seattle reading group book for February).

I'm out of town, so I'm I'm not listening to too much that's not
work-related: tapes of various versions of 3-4 interactive computer pieces
by Martin Bartlett mostly, and the final mix of Suspended Music (Deep
Listening Band/Long String Instrument collaboration) out, finally, next
week.

I'm interested in the unmentioned, but noticeable, distinction between
using tunes to keep one's head clear & using tunes to clear one's head out.


I'm also hearing Cesaria Evora & John Zorn's Masada Chamber Ensembles/Bar
Kokhba, which probably fit in the first of these two categories.  I'm also
intermittently hearing a quirky & entertainingly corny tape of David
Mahler's Volunteer Park Conservatory Orchestra playing dance band music
from ca. 1900-1930 - not useful for either kind of clarity, though.

Otherwise I'm mostly just hearing radio which I hate almost everywhere I go.


Herb Levy
herb@eskimo.com
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 20 Jan 1997 21:13:53 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Mark Weiss 
Subject:      inauguration poem
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

So I thought, "who needs an invitation? What if I wrote my own inauguration
poem?" And in the manner of bad ideas itgrew like a family of rabbits until
I suddenly found myself writing retroactive inaugural poems for all of the
presidents who never had them. I would begin with Warren Harding. Something
about teapots. When it occurred to me that it had already been written. Do
you remember the song Marlene Dietrich sings in "Destry Rides Again?" "See
what the boys in the backroom will have..."

Whatever I'm wearing I should change immediately.
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 20 Jan 1997 21:57:28 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Marina deBellagente laPalma 
Subject:      poem
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Here is a poem for this polyvocal environment.

VOICES

The voices say various things.

They urge me to write something
pleasantly disconcerting,
that sounds as if it's been translated
from some indeterminate language.

They urge me to work
the inadequacy of language
the way a stubborn surfer
will work the waves
until they yield their gift.

So I plunge into fragments,
ready to expend on each one
my precious supply of energy;
ready to start again (each time
with a touching sense of hope),
willing to suspend temporarily
if not disbelief at least my despair.

Detecting how each of them is
my own, my very own perfect voice,
demanding to be taken seriously.


Marina de Bellagente LaPalma
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 20 Jan 1997 23:08:13 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Tosh 
Subject:      Re: AAVE (fwd)
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

English language is consistently expanding and changing.  So why is it now
such a big issue?  Why can't we have both _ standard English and regional
English?  I think they should teach standard English and acknowledge
regional conversational habits - but standard English is the main language
for communicating to other countries, etc.

Plus, why is there so much overly political announcements on this
particular listing? Not that I am against such announcements, but from
certain individuals that is all you get - very rarely do they comment on
poetics, etc. Just thinking out loud.

Tosh Berman
TamTam Books
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 21 Jan 1997 20:22:00 +1300
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         DS 
Subject:      Re: AAVE (fwd)
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

>English language standard English and regional
>English?  I think standard English and acknowledge
> standard English language I am against
>certain individuals they comment poetics, etc.
Just thinking out
>
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 21 Jan 1997 13:48:17 GMT
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Sherry Brennan 
Subject:      Poet to the President
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Is Bill Clinton in the real world; is Michael Jordan in the real world; am I
in the real world; is Dennis Rodman in the real world; is flesh in the real
world; are you in the real world; is the poet to the president in the real
world?  If I work am i in the real world? If I read am I in the real world?
If I write am i int he real world? IF I can't read am I in the real world?
Is "A Poem for Emily" which was written by the poet to the president in the
real world, which reads in part  - "sometime I know you will have them read
this / so they will know I love them and say so / and love their mother" and
ends "which is I stood and loved you while you slept"?  Does this make more
sense than what Duane Davis calls Charles Bernstein's "heatdeath of all
those small economies we so fondly call 'you' and 'I'"?  Is the poet a
better poet if he is in the real world?  How does he know he is in the real
world?  If he reads books is he in the real world?  If he doesn't read books
but only experiences the real world and then writes books is he in the real
world?  If he is a she and isn't a mother and isn't loved by the poet to the
president is she in the real world?


Sherry Brennan
Development Research
The Pennsylvania State University
(814) 863-4302
SAB5@psu.edu
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 21 Jan 1997 09:03:09 EST
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         henry 
Subject:      Re: building bridges
In-Reply-To:  Message of Mon, 20 Jan 1997 14:24:41 EST from
              

On Mon, 20 Jan 1997 14:24:41 EST Keith Tuma said:
>
>So, from here, where it's warm as pixels, I ask you, citizens of Poetics,
>which is it--Maya Angelou or Miller Williams?  Who will call Coolidge and
>Fagin?  What do you make of it all?

I thought Miller Williams expressed humane, hearty sentiments rather woodenly &
unrhythmically.  But it was clearly INAUGURAL.  I'll be more interested
when the poems are AUGURAL. - Henry Gould
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 21 Jan 1997 08:22:51 -0600
Reply-To:     maria damon 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         maria damon 
Subject:      Re: AAVE (fwd)

tosh: tell us more abt tamtam books.

In message   UB Poetics discussion group
writes:
> English language is consistently expanding and changing.  So why is it now
> such a big issue?  Why can't we have both _ standard English and regional
> English?  I think they should teach standard English and acknowledge
> regional conversational habits - but standard English is the main language
> for communicating to other countries, etc.
>
> Plus, why is there so much overly political announcements on this
> particular listing? Not that I am against such announcements, but from
> certain individuals that is all you get - very rarely do they comment on
> poetics, etc. Just thinking out loud.
>
> Tosh Berman
> TamTam Books
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 21 Jan 1997 09:30:26 EST
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         henry gould 
Subject:      Re: Poet to the President
In-Reply-To:  Message of Tue, 21 Jan 1997 13:48:17 GMT from 

according to the Times today (science section), we're all in the real
world - but it's a non-vacuum suffused in quantum foam - a vast sea
of virtual particles which actually become real in contact with
black holes.  Sound familiar?

- the real "Henry Gould" (heh heh. fooled you folks again...)
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 21 Jan 1997 09:46:36 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         David Kellogg 
Subject:      Re: building bridges
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

I didn't hear the poem at the time, but heard it later on NPR and saw it
read on the Lehrer newshour.  It's hard to tell which is worse, Angelou or
Williams, though I'd vote for Williams mainly on the basis of its awful
title, a reversal of Clinton's campaign book, _Between Hope and History_.  I
immediately went to my bookshelf and read John Ashbery's Bicentennial poem
"Pyrography" as a purgative measure.

In the paper this morning, I read that Williams is the father of the
country-rock singer Lucinda Williams.  So all is not lost.

Cheers,
David
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
David Kellogg                     kellogg@acpub.duke.edu
Box 90023, Duke University        (919) 660-4357
Durham, NC 27708                  FAX (919) 660-4381
http://www.duke.edu/~kellogg/

                    There is no mantle
                    and it does not descend.
                                 --Thomas Kinsella
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 21 Jan 1997 08:12:09 -0600
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Joel Felix 
Subject:      Re: Poet to the President
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

        Mr. President, will you buzz a state secret into my hot
ear?  I will strain to hear your trailing rasp before I'm grabbed
by secretive service, only having caught "the frequency is."
Can I call you Bill, can we play a round of poker with Kelsey
Grammer, and then would that be poetry, the return of the subject?
Our scene was better set by camera 5 but the program director
wanted my eyes as they misted on 3.
        Here is a hat's off to Sherry Brennan who touched me with a
cattle prod this morning, that completed circuit which I hold to
and "reply."  It's a fair bet this morning that all players are real,
at least as so as the play, or so I might suspect between glances
from the window to the tv to the computer screen.

JF

At 01:48 PM 1/21/97 GMT, you wrote:
>Is Bill Clinton in the real world; is Michael Jordan in the real world; am I
>in the real world; is Dennis Rodman in the real world; is flesh in the real
>world; are you in the real world; is the poet to the president in the real
>world?  If I work am i in the real world? If I read am I in the real world?
>If I write am i int he real world? IF I can't read am I in the real world?
>Is "A Poem for Emily" which was written by the poet to the president in the
>real world, which reads in part  - "sometime I know you will have them read
>this / so they will know I love them and say so / and love their mother" and
>ends "which is I stood and loved you while you slept"?  Does this make more
>sense than what Duane Davis calls Charles Bernstein's "heatdeath of all
>those small economies we so fondly call 'you' and 'I'"?  Is the poet a
>better poet if he is in the real world?  How does he know he is in the real
>world?  If he reads books is he in the real world?  If he doesn't read books
>but only experiences the real world and then writes books is he in the real
>world?  If he is a she and isn't a mother and isn't loved by the poet to the
>president is she in the real world?
>
>
>Sherry Brennan
>Development Research
>The Pennsylvania State University
>(814) 863-4302
>SAB5@psu.edu
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 21 Jan 1997 07:39:38 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Rachel Loden 
Subject:      new _no roses review_
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

FYI...

                         no roses review
                                #7

                      edited by Carolyn Koo
                         & Davis McCombs

                           NIN ANDREWS
                          BRUCE ANDREWS
                           STAR BLACK
                          W.K. BUCKLEY
                          CHERYL BURKET
                         WILLIAM DORESKI
                           PAMELA ERENS
                          RENEE GLADMAN
                          ARPINE GRENIER
                         PHILIP KOBYLARZ
                         MARYROSE LARKIN
                            JOHN LATTA
                           RACHEL LODEN
                       ELIZABETH MacKIERNAN
                        JENNIFER MARTENSON
                          WENDY McCLURE
                         MICHELLE MURPHY
                            EVE PACKER
                           KELLY RITTER
                          MARY ANN SAMYN
                           SPENCER SELBY
                         GIOVANNI SINGLETON
                          FIONA TEMPLETON
                           JOHN TRITICA

                         no roses review
                          150 Duane #8
                 Redwood City, California 94062

                      SUBSCRIPTIONS $12/yr
                        SINGLE COPIES $6
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 21 Jan 1997 08:32:40 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Marjorie Perloff 
Subject:      Pomogi!! (fwd)
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

I thought those of you who have friends among the Russian poets
(Dragomoschenko, Prigov, Parshchikov, etc) would be interested in writing
a letter as per the following which was sent to me by a lit prof at
Petersburg, Georgij Levinton.  You may ask, why should we care what
happens at Frankfurt but it's all interrelated and the cuts in Slavic
studies, now that the Soviet Union is no longer there and no longer
fashionable, are very sad.  Also the prospects of pan-German studies are
even sadder.

Marjorie Perloff

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 21 Jan 1997 09:14:23 -0500
From: Hubertus Jahn <106150.3321@compuserve.com>
To: Garrik Levinton 
Subject: Pomogi!!
Resent-Date: Tue, 21 Jan 97 17:40:58 +0300
Resent-From: "Georgij A. Levinton" 
Resent-To: perloff@leland.stanford.edu

Dear Garrik:

I am sending you the following in the hope that you may be able to garner a
bit of support (in the form of faxed-letters) from your University. The
matter is urgent and quite serious as it bodes ill for the future of all
Slavic studies in Germany. Please don't hesitate to spread the news in the
Petersburg scene. The Petersburg Jewish University has already reacted.

Thanks for your help, and best to Lara
Hubertus

The Institute for Russian and East European History at the University of
Frankfurt in Germany, is threatened with closure. This would mean the end
of all teaching and research on R/EE history in the city of Frankfurt and,
in light of other threatened closures, in the entire state of Hessen. It
would also mean that only Ancient and German history would be taught at
Frankfurt University.

We have been participating in a campaign to save the Institute, that has
thus far resulted in newspaper, televsion, and radio coverage, and garnered
the support of East European specialists from across Germany. Unfortunately
the history faculty has only reiterated its intention to cut the Institute.
For this reason, we are seeking to increase international pressure on
Hessen's Ministry of Science, which must approve any proposed cuts, and
have already received letters from the Petersburg Jewish University, the
Deutsches Historisches Institut Warschau, among others. We are urgently
requesting, therefore, that you write a brief letter (in English) in
support of keeping the Institute to the Ministry of Science. Please feel
free to write a group letter including other members of your department and
to distribute this letter further.

A word on the Institute:
        Staff: the chair (currently vacant), one assistant professor
(formally two), one librarian, one secretary, and apprs. 90 students of
history.
        R/EE Studies Program: Frankfurt is one of very few universities
with such a program (including literature, economics, and political
science). Professors from the other faculties have protested the cut in
history, but without success.
        Library: 35,000 volumes plus periodicals, with strong points on
Russian, Polish, and Eastern European Jewish history. It will be sold off
should the Institute be closed.
        Activities include an exchange program which has brought over 300
scholars from the CIS to Germany as guest professors and researchers.
        Former Chairs include Dietrich Geyer, Klaus Zernack, Dietrich
Beyrau

Reason for the Cut:
The Ministry of Science has directed that 70,000 DM be saved by position
cuts in the history faculty. The other historians (who have prevented the
vacant chair from being filled for three years in order to appropriate
funding and an asst. professor position for themselves), have decided to
cut the Institute not only to fulfill the directive and to avoid cuts
closer to home, but also to enrich themselves further: they will get the
"left-overs" (as the Institute is worth much more than 70,000): an asst.
professor position, librarian, secretary, and 20,000 DM annually for books
and research assistants. No Russian or East European expert has been
consulted, nor have any academic reasons been cited.

The letters are thus aimed at a purely political audience (the Minister);
possible issues to be raised include:
        The growing political importance of R/EE history after 1989/1991.
        The special importance of R/EE history in Germany in light of
National Socialism and the Second World War, the particular experience of
Eastern Germany after 1945, as well as the current process of European
integration.
        As the city with the highest percentage of "auslaendische
Mitbuerger," Frankfurt should not be cutting but expanding its outreach to
other cultures.
        The cutting of the Institute and the resulting emphasis on the
teaching of German history at Frankfurt University would send the wrong
message to students and German society regarding the importance of
multiculturalism and the integration of "foreigners."

Time is short--the decision should be made in the next weeks, and your
letters are urgenly needed. Please fax them to the following address (with
copies to us) as soon as possible.

Frau Staatsministerin Dr. Christine Hohmann-Dennhardt
Hessisches Ministerium fuer Wissenschaft und Kunst
Rheinstrasse 23-25
65185 Wiesbaden
Germany
Fax: +49-611-165766

And our fax: +49-9131-203136

Thank you very much for your support on this matter, which seems to be
turning into a test case on the future of our discipline in Germany.

Hubertus F. Jahn and Susan K. Morrissey
Universitaet Erlangen
Germany
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 21 Jan 1997 10:50:34 +0100
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Miekal And 
Subject:      Re: poem
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Marina, welcome to the list, or maybe youve been here all along in lurk
mode? I checked out yr wonderful webpage but there's too much to read in
one sitting.

mr miekal of the backest woods
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 21 Jan 1997 12:57:16 EST
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Henry Gould 
Subject:      music to clear yr head

Here's my favorite head-clearing music.  Or: Advertisements for My (Music)
Shelf.  This (along with 98 other sonnets) is forthcoming later this
spring in _Mudlark_ (http://www.mudlark.unf.edu).

92  HENRY'S BAKER (CHET)

                    _stay and we'll make   each day   a Valentine's Day_

Touring through Holland   one more time   you fell
through a window like   an evening angel   emptied out
into the valley of the blues  (the well
of the horizon   filled   with your lost trumpet).

Your craggy face was   hollowed long before
dragged from the harem   to the heroin
--quarters tossed halfway to   88s--  the score
is nothing-not-nothing (future-has-been).

My funny Valentine   her face has changed,
her hair   it's still the same   melodic thread
(your bread & wine)--    & it is so arranged
we never leave--   the river   flows ahead

into heart's mournful gulf   & stays,   sustains
your veiled demise   with victory   & peace.

- Henry Gould
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 21 Jan 1997 10:39:06 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Tosh 
Subject:      Re: AAVE (fwd)
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

>tosh: tell us more abt tamtam books.
>

TamTam Books is my little adventure into the world of making, sharing, and
producing 'books.'   I should have three titles out (hopefully) by the end
of this year.  They are:

Boris Vian's I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE
Guy Debord's Consid=E9rations sur I'assassinat de G=E9rard Lebovici

The third title is a little secret for now.

Tosh Berman
TamTam Books
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 21 Jan 1997 14:28:58 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         wheeler 
Subject:      Re: POETICS Digest - 18 Jan 1997 to 19 Jan 1997
In-Reply-To:  <9701200502.AA04428@is.nyu.edu>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

For John Kinsella re landscape/pastoral:
Kamau Brathwaite maintains that the shape of the landscape where the poet
grows up determines the shape of the poems -- a slightly different way of
admitting the "pastoral": therefore, his own poems derive from the
archipelago, Frost's from the tended woods, etc.  Don't know if he has
written on this; perhaps someone else on the list may -- but I have talked
with him about it a number of times.
Reading: Chester
Himes, Quality of Hurt & Plan B
still plowing through the last 6 months of journals/reviews including two
ace issues of American Speech (can't recommend it highly enough)
listening: Mingus' Epitaph and Revenge, and the Set it Off soundtrack.
Also just found that Merikanto Violin Concerto 2 which is pretty great.


Susan Wheeler
37 Washington Square West #10A
New York, New York 10011
(212) 254-3984
wheeler@is.nyu.edu
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 21 Jan 1997 14:42:57 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Mary Hilton 
Subject:      New Chapbook by Jefferson Hansen

New from primitive publications: "Why I Am Not  A Christian" by Jefferson
Hansen

An exploration of religion, thought, and what it means to be an inquisitor,
this work takes us on a demanding journey toward understanding.  The
means by which one gets there, however, challenge tradition and
complacency.  Jefferson Hansen himself writes:

"So the poem is a comic wrestle:  I as poet am too small and desperate to
'understand' the history -- which includes me -- in the traditional Western
sense of the word.  As Maurice Merleau-Ponty has pointed out, Western
philosophy aims to dominate being. The same can be said of some of its
most celebrated poetry.  This way of approaching experience not only
seems impossible to me, but also dangerous."

primitive publications is a press dedicated to bringing historically based
text toward a greater accessibility.  Published approximately six times a
year, the cost of one chapbook is $4.00, or $20.00 for six.  Titles include:

"A True Relation of the State May Last, 1616" Mary Hilton
"The Haunted Baronet" by Mark Wallace
"Lead, Glass and Poppy" by Kristin Prevallet
"Why I Am Not A Christian" by Jefferson Hansen

All checks may be made out to Mary Hilton and sent to:  primitive
publications, 1706 U Street, NW, Washington, DC  20009.  Inquiries and
requests to be put on the mailing list may be sent to the address above or
to e-mail address 74463.1505@compuserve.com  Submissions are
welcome.  Thank you!
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 21 Jan 1997 11:57:33 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Laura Moriarty 
Subject:      Re: Eustache
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Posted a querry about Eustache on a video librarian list I'm on. The reply:



>Date: Sat, 18 Jan 1997 16:35:49 -0800
>Reply-To: videolib@library.berkeley.edu
>Originator: videolib@library.berkeley.edu
>Sender: videolib@library.berkeley.edu
>Precedence: bulk
>From: milos 
>To: Multiple recipients of list 
>Subject: Re: Eustache
>
>Laura Moriarty wrote:
>>
>> A friend from another list is looking for Eustache's The Mother and the
>> Whore on video tape. Any clues?
>
>
>It is not available on video, has never been released, and apparently
>may never be; Eustache's son and heir, supposedly makes outrageous
>financial demands for video rights.
>
>It is distributed in film by NewYorker Films (212 247 6110)
>
>Best,
>
>Milos Stehlik
>Facets Video
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 21 Jan 1997 12:06:44 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Mark Weiss 
Subject:      Re: POETICS Digest - 18 Jan 1997 to 19 Jan 1997
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

How does he mean this? the "shape of the poems" in what sense? And does this
imply a constant that's hard to imagine for some of us shape-shifters?

For the record, Frost was an ersatz new englander--don't think he came from
tended woods. Does that mean that we can choose where we grew up?

(If the landscape of childhood is the standard against which all others will
be measured--a hill is what hills were there, anything bigger is a
mountain--what about those of us who grew up peripatetic, or at least
transhumant, feeding in different pastures winter and summer?)


At 02:28 PM 1/21/97 -0500, you wrote:
>For John Kinsella re landscape/pastoral:
>Kamau Brathwaite maintains that the shape of the landscape where the poet
>grows up determines the shape of the poems -- a slightly different way of
>admitting the "pastoral": therefore, his own poems derive from the
>archipelago, Frost's from the tended woods, etc.  Don't know if he has
>written on this; perhaps someone else on the list may -- but I have talked
>with him about it a number of times.
>Reading: Chester
>Himes, Quality of Hurt & Plan B
>still plowing through the last 6 months of journals/reviews including two
>ace issues of American Speech (can't recommend it highly enough)
>listening: Mingus' Epitaph and Revenge, and the Set it Off soundtrack.
>Also just found that Merikanto Violin Concerto 2 which is pretty great.
>
>
>Susan Wheeler
>37 Washington Square West #10A
>New York, New York 10011
>(212) 254-3984
>wheeler@is.nyu.edu
>
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 22 Jan 1997 09:45:18 +1000
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Pam Brown 
Subject:      Re: AAVE (fwd)
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

I know I've been around a long time....and sometimes I SOUND that way - but
- there was an Italian bilingual (English/Italian)poetry magazine in the
late 1970's/early 1980's called "tamtam" - the editors came to Sydney  &
attended readings...then published the stuff they liked...
I ran into them again at a weekend poetry festival in Verona in 1985...where
are they now ?   Is this the next incarnation...?

Cheers
Pam Brown
At 10:39 AM 21/1/97 -0800, you wrote:
>>tosh: tell us more abt tamtam books.
>>
>
>TamTam Books is my little adventure into the world of making, sharing, and
>producing 'books.'   I should have three titles out (hopefully) by the end
>of this year.  They are:
>
>Boris Vian's I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE
>Guy Debord's Consid=E9rations sur I'assassinat de G=E9rard Lebovici
>
>The third title is a little secret for now.
>
>Tosh Berman
>TamTam Books
>
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 22 Jan 1997 11:55:37 +1300
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         DS 
Subject:      neo...
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

>Funny with the ongoing ebonics & neologism conversations i should receive
>this unsolicited. Look particularly at No.11.
>
>y\ apologetically
>
>Dan
>.
>
>Sniglets -- TWENTY WORDS THAT SHOULD EXIST
>
>   1. ACCORDIONATED (ah kor' de on ay tid) adj. Being able
>to drive and  refold a road map at the same time.
>
>   2. AQUADEXTROUS (ak wa deks' trus) adj. Possessing
>the ability to turn the bathtub faucet on and off with your
>toes.
>
>   3. AQUALIBRIUM (ak wa lib' re um) n. The point where the
>stream of drinking fountain water is at its perfect height, thus
>relieving the drinker from (a) having to suck the nozzle, or (b)
>squirting her(him)self in the eye (or ear).
>
>   4. BURGACIDE (burg' uh side) n. When a hamburger can't
>take any more torture and hurls itself through the grill into the
>coals.
>
>   5. BUZZACKS (buz' aks) n. People in phone marts who
>walk around  picking up display phones and listening for dial
>tones even when they know the phones are not connected.
>
>   6. CARPERPETUATION (kar' pur pet u a shun) n. The act,
>when vacuuming, of  running over a string or a piece of lint at
>least a dozen times,  reaching  over and picking it up,
>examining it, then putting it back down to give the vacuum
>one more chance.
>
>   7. DIMP (dimp) n. A person who insults you in a cheap
>department store by asking, "Do you work here?"
>
>   8. DISCONFECT (dis kon fekt') v. To sterilize the piece of
>candy you dropped on the floor by blowing on it, somehow
>assuming this will `remove' all the germs.
>
>   9. ECNALUBMA (ek na lub' ma) n. A rescue vehicle which
>can only be seen in the rearview mirror.
>
>   10. EIFFELITES (eye' ful eyetz) n. Gangly people sitting in
>front of you at the movies who, no matter what direction you
>lean in, follow suit.
>
>   11. ELBONICS (el bon' iks) n. The actions of two people
>maneuvering for one armrest in a movie theater.
>
>   12. ELECELLERATION (el a cel er ay' shun) n. The
>mistaken notion that the more you press an elevator button
>the faster it will arrive.
>
>   13. FRUST (frust) n. The small line of debris that refuses to
>be swept onto the dust pan and keeps backing a person
>across the room until he finally decides to give up and sweep
>it under the rug.
>
>   14. LACTOMANGULATION (lak' to man gyu lay' shun) n.
>Manhandling the "open here" spout on a milk container so
>badly that one has to resort to the `illegal' side.
>
>   15. NEONPHANCY (ne on' fan see) n. A fluorescent light
>bulb struggling to come to life.
>
>   16. PEPPIER (pehp ee ay') n. The waiter at a fancy
>restaurant whose sole purpose seems to be walking around
>asking diners if they want ground pepper.
>
>   17. PETROPHOBIC (pet ro fob' ik) adj. One who is
>embarrassed to undress in front of a household pet.
>
>   18. PHONESIA (fo nee' zhuh) n. The affliction of dialing a
>phone number and forgetting whom you were calling just as
>they answer.
>
>   19. PUPKUS (pup' kus) n. The moist residue left on a
>window after a dog presses its nose to it.
>
>   20. TELECRASTINATION (tel e kras tin ay' shun) n. The
>act of always letting the phone ring at least twice before you
>pick it up, even when you're only six inches away.
>
>_
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 22 Jan 1997 12:00:02 +1300
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         DS 
Subject:      Re: POETICS Digest - 18 Jan 1997 to 19 Jan 1997
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Got Epitaph as a xmas present & am playing it right now - particularly like
- Percussion Discussion

dan
>listening: Mingus' Epitaph and Revenge, and the Set it Off soundtrack.
>Also just found that Merikanto Violin Concerto 2 which is pretty great.
>
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 21 Jan 1997 15:13:05 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Tom Vogler 
Subject:      Elmslie performance
Comments: To: Poetics Discussion 

Since K. E. has been mentioned several times lately, I'm posting this notice
of an upcoming *free* performance. Anyone in the Bay area (or anywhere else
within travel time) is welcome to come.

--tomvogler



*** Poetry Performance ***

*** Kenward Elmslie performs Postcards on Parade ***
    at Kresge Town Hall, Friday January 24, 7 PM


Kenward Elmslie, poet / song writer / opera librettist / entertainer,
will be making a rare west coast appearance with the one-man performance
of his musical play, Postcards on Parade. In his feature-length
entertainment, Elmslie will impersonate such characters as Kevin, a
post-card dealer seduced by erotic fantasies of Cheeky Kiki of
Wiki-Waki-Woo, a postcard sea-nymph, and, fresh from Fort Lauderdale, the
postcard dealers' nemesis: a light-fingered cross-dresser with delusions
of lipsynch mega-stardom--Regina, La Postcard Queen of La Breeze Marina.
All of Kenward's lyrics are set to music composed by Steven Taylor, with
taped orchestrations by Bruce Coughlin. As if this weren't enough, to
flesh out his play Elmslie has fashioned billboards of postcard-collages
to enhance and sometimes chafe against his lyrics. These postcards have
been recently exhibited by the San Francisco Institute of Art, and the
National Portrait Gallery at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington DC.

*This is the first time Elmslie will perform Postcards on Parade in its
entirety. PLEASE TELL YOUR STUDENTS, FRIENDS AND COLLEAGUES.*

Kenward Elmslie's lyrics have been sung by such performers as Fredrica
von Stade, Nat King Cole, Brenda Lewis, Mabel Mercer, Barbara Cook and
Estelle Parsons. He has written the librettos to many operas, including
Ned Rorem's Miss Julie and Thomas Pasatieri's Three Sisters. His operas
have been performed by the New York City Opera at Lincoln Center, Houston
Grand Opera, Washington Opera at Kennedy Center and the Seattle Opera, to
name a few.

Elmslie is one of the original "New York School" poets, a motley group of
writers living in Manhattan during the advent of abstract-expressionism,
including such poets as Frank O'Hara, John Ashberry and Barbara Guest.
His books of poetry include Circus Nerves (Black Sparrow), Tropicalism (Z
Press) and Motor Disturbance (Columbia University). His poetry has been
anthologized in Postmodern American Poetry: A Norton Anthology, The Poets
of the New York School (University of Pennsylvania), An Anthology of New
York Poets (Random House) and From the Other Side of the Century: A New
American Poetry 1960-1990 (Sun & Moon).

This performance is being sponsored by Chinquapin, with help from Peter
Gizzi and the Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Resource Center.

For more information, contact Macgregor Card at: macgregr@cats.ucsc.edu
or (408) 460-1301.
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 21 Jan 1997 17:19:11 -0600
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Matthias Regan 
Subject:      Re: POETICS Dig: Brathwaite/Frost/shapeofthepoem
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

[First, let me excuse myself for possibly jumping into an older discussion:
today is the first day my boss is out of the office, first day in weeks I've
had a chance to read the recent messages]

     Mark Weiss wrote [referring to Brathwaite & landscape influencing
poetic "shape":

How does he mean this? the "shape of the poems" in what sense?

     I have not read a lot of Brathwaite (but would read more given the
chance) and only a little about him (ditto), but I believe the shape
discussed is most often expressed in terms of length -- length of lines,
length of strings of sounds (ie, as determined by line length, sentence
length, clause length, breathing patterns of readers (imagined or
otherwise), probably other lengths); and I think poems have been discussed
in this manner before: was it Donald Davie who writes that he lost his
misunderstanding of and condecension to Whitman, Ginsburg and Olson when he
travelled across the N. American midwest for the first time? I think it was
Davie, but whoever it was, he was a British Man who confesses to previously
always thinking that N. American free verse's full (or full of emptiness)
pages were the result of a more purely intellectual/historical bucking of
the relatively gentle _via media_ of pentameter and trimeter verse.
     Derek Walcott, whose center of gravity is somewhere between Brathwaite
and Davie, but probably closer to Davie, has talked about the writing of
Stein, Hemingway and Faulker as  being less an attempt to portray their
landscapes in poetic form than an attempt to describe the attempt to do so.


>For the record, Frost was an ersatz new englander--don't think he came from
>tended woods. Does that mean that we can choose where we grew up?

     I disagree with your revision of the record, if indeed I understand you
correctly. Frost being here talked about as a poet, not a child. And who is
to say that a) where we grew up is "our landscape" and/or b) that one does
not choose their landscapes.
     My mother for example, who has lived in New Hampshire for 2/3 of her
adult life, grew up in Michigan. She has often said that when she first came
to New England, when she was about 20, she had the incredible sensation of
being comfortable in the landscape for the first time in her life. Not that
she'd felt out of place before, but she had never known how much she loved
the New England sense of distance, of order, etc.

     Of if you are objecting to "tended landscape": it most certainly was
"tended" in that it most certainly wasn't wild. Order abounds in those
woods, or once did.


     It is five o'clock. If I had more time I would pursue some thoughts
which perhaps the list can help me with, namely (briefly), what can be said
about the mimetic quality of poetry today? Do members of the list hold with
the (I think, inherently) mimesis that poetry must perform in order for it
to resemble anything (resemble rather than be about)? Or do people think I
have it all wrong? I'm not sure myself, and hopefully will be able to touch
on it more soon. Is or is not the mimetic capability of poetry a fundamental
assumption for any writer who uses formal methods to, for example, suggest a
political stance?


best,

Matthias

(dressed nattily in work attire; can't get enough of The Stooges or McCoy
Tyner but recommends to members of the list whose musical tastes seem
considerably less revolutionary than their poetic ones that they check out
the latest by The Krystal Methodists: "New World Odor" (not sure where to
get it: but Krystal Methodists does appear on a careful internet search);
reads voraciously but with little understanding the new _Canna_ by Geoffrey
Hill.
>
>

Matthias Regan
Northwestern University
Department of Chemistry
Phone: 847/467-2132
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 21 Jan 1997 17:04:15 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Tosh 
Subject:      Re: AAVE (fwd)
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

>I know I've been around a long time....and sometimes I SOUND that way - but
>- there was an Italian bilingual (English/Italian)poetry magazine in the
>late 1970's/early 1980's called "tamtam" - the editors came to Sydney  &
>attended readings...then published the stuff they liked...
>I ran into them again at a weekend poetry festival in Verona in 1985...where
>are they now ?   Is this the next incarnation...?
>
>Cheers
>Pam Brown


No, I never heard of them, but they sound great.  Who were some of the
poets in this magazine?  At first I am going to concentrate on French
titles, after that - who knows!

cheers,

Tosh Berman
TamTam Books
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 22 Jan 1997 13:35:33 +1000
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Pam Brown 
Subject:      Re: AAVE (fwd)
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

At 05:04 PM 21/1/97 -0800, you wrote:
>>I know I've been around a long time....and sometimes I SOUND that way - but
>>- there was an Italian bilingual (English/Italian)poetry magazine in the
>>late 1970's/early 1980's called "tamtam" - the editors came to Sydney  &
>>attended readings...then published the stuff they liked...
>>I ran into them again at a weekend poetry festival in Verona in 1985...where
>>are they now ?   Is this the next incarnation...?
>>
>>Cheers
>>Pam Brown
>
>
>No, I never heard of them, but they sound great.  Who were some of the
>poets in this magazine?  At first I am going to concentrate on French
>titles, after that - who knows!
>
>cheers,
>
>Tosh Berman
>TamTam Books
>
>
Hello Tosh -

Well...um...my memory's what they call a little bit "shot" I think...I can
remember keywords - you know, like "tamtam", & I can half-remember which
Australian poets  were published in it......but I might be able to find a
copy at home & let you know later on....

I was certain YOU would be able to tell me that YES you were the same mag...

Anyway,
Bye for now
Pam
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 21 Jan 1997 21:42:29 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Pierre Joris 
Subject:      Re: AAVE (fwd)
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit

Tosh wrote:
>
> >I know I've been around a long time....and sometimes I SOUND that way - but
> >- there was an Italian bilingual (English/Italian)poetry magazine in the
> >late 1970's/early 1980's called "tamtam" - the editors came to Sydney  &
> >attended readings...then published the stuff they liked...
> >I ran into them again at a weekend poetry festival in Verona in 1985...where
> >are they now ?   Is this the next incarnation...?
> >
> >Cheers
> >Pam Brown
>
> No, I never heard of them, but they sound great.  Who were some of the
> poets in this magazine?  At first I am going to concentrate on French
> titles, after that - who knows!
>
> cheers,
>
> Tosh Berman
> TamTam Books

Tam Tam magazine was edited by Adriano Spatola & Guilia Niccolai, poets
belonging to the post-"Novissimi" generation (Spatola was a member of
the Gruppo '63"). Both these poets have been published in English
translations � check out Red Hill Press. Paul Vangelisti & others have
translated them. Adriano died in 1988. BTW, both have poems in volume
two of the MILLENNIUM anthology. -- Pierre
--
=========================================
pierre joris   6 madison place   albany ny 12202
tel/fax (510) 426 0433 email:joris@cnsunix.albany.edu
http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/authors/joris/
http://www.albany.edu/~tm0900/nomad.html
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Everything that allows men to become rooted, through
values or sentiments, in _one_ time, in _one_ history, in
_one_ language, is the principle of alienation which
constitutes man as privileged in so far as he is what he is,
[...] imprisoning him in contentment with his own reality
and encouraging him to offer it as an example or impose
it as a conquering assertation. -- Maurice Blanchot
==========================================
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 21 Jan 1997 19:16:31 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "Aldon L. Nielsen" 
Subject:      Re: Take A Letter, Maria
In-Reply-To:  <199701210501.VAA28579@email.sjsu.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

Actually, I think it's A. Philip Randolph, unless you're reading about a
nother Philip all together --

seriously, though -- I happen at this very moment to be reading an old
bio. of Randolhp, and would love to compare notes with you on the book
you're reading --


AND EVERYBODY -- in the PBS American Experience I watched last night,
titled "You Don't Have to Ride Jim Crow," the reunited FOR freedom riders
recollected a respite when they visited Black Mountain College in the
midst of their battles to integrate the bus lines of the South -- this
around 1947 -- would like to learn MUCH more of this --
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 21 Jan 1997 19:24:38 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "Aldon L. Nielsen" 
Subject:      Re: Miller or Maya?
In-Reply-To:  
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

Not much to choose between there --

But, to judge from this 1957 photo I'm looking at (NY World Telegram),
Angelou was probably a much better night club entertainer than Williams
-- She's bare foot in the photo -- is that a touch of calypso
authenticity, or a sign of her past in Stamps -- Was she, as is reported,
the best calypso singer ever to have come from Arkansas?
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 21 Jan 1997 19:41:30 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Tosh 
Subject:      Re: AAVE (fwd)
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

I do know their work and they are fantastic.  Another one is Corrida Costa
(first name may be wrong), and he is really FANTASTIC.

Tosh Berman
TamTam Books
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 21 Jan 1997 20:05:16 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Franklin Bruno 
Subject:      Re: POETICS Digest - 19 Jan 1997 to 20 Jan 1997
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

What you see below is all I received of yesterday's list.  Could someone who
saved it please try to send it to me again?

P.S.  Elmslie's reading at Beyond Baroque last Fri. was one of the most
inspiring (in terms of creativity, skill, and sheer loopiness) performances
of -any- kind I've seen in a long time.  Nice and crowded, too.

fjb (who should be putting the P.S. after his initials, yeah, yeah)

>There are 39 messages totalling 1954 lines in this issue.
>
>Topics of the day:
>
>  1. the secret life of books
>  2.  (2)
>  3. what gets taught (2)
>  4. oh, alright (clothing) (3)
>  5. quark this (2)
>  6. addresses
>  7. [Fwd: A modest proposal]
>  8. Closure & The Pastoral (another Chapter of *Ethics*) (2)
>  9. tunes to keep yr head clear
> 10. A nest of ninnies
> 11. lilt
> 12. ZON
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 21 Jan 1997 23:06:12 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Steph4848@AOL.COM
Subject:      Re: Miller or Maya?

A. Nielson wrote:
"Not much to choose between there --

But, to judge from this 1957 photo I'm looking at (NY World Telegram),
Angelou was probably a much better night club entertainer than Williams
-- She's bare foot in the photo -- is that a touch of calypso
authenticity, or a sign of her past in Stamps -- Was she, as is reported,
the best calypso singer ever to have come from Arkansas?"

Unfortunately my Gallimard edition(?) of Genet's Les Noirs has passed from my
hands - but my recollection is that Maya Angelou - circa 1959 - was a highly
esteemed actress in the premier Parisian production of the play.  I suspect
there are people more expert than I on this list who can correct me if I'm
only imagining this. Anyway I want to suspect her earlier history is more
complicated than her poetry -- as well as her public personae -- of the last
couple of decades might allow.

Cheers,
Stephen Vincent
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 21 Jan 1997 23:10:44 -0600
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         KYLE CONNER/LRC-CAHS 
Subject:      Re: POETICS Digest - 18 Jan 1997 to 19 Jan 1997
In-Reply-To:  <199701212006.MAA21673@norway.it.earthlink.net>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

I think that the landscape in which one grows up certainly affects
the way one THINKS and perceives things.  As for as affecting how one
writes,  I suppose
this line of thought could be pursued.  I'm a thorough East Coaster
(Pennsylvanian,  to be exact),
and so KNOW dense forests, trees,  hills,  valleys,  modest mountains
(Appalachians) an ocean,  beach sand,  lakes etc. I would like to think
that somehow my thoughts are WOODED or shaded,  or something
irreplaceable about forests,  hills,  valleys.  There is a certain
built-in apprehension in living in a place where you can't always see the
horizon,  or can't see what's ahead of you 100 yards,  or what's over the
hill,  around the bend,  because some feature of the landscape is
blocking your view,  and so inherently extending your expectation or
patience of what the "land" will reveal or give you (this could relate to
 Lacan's "fort-das" stage (far-near) of child development where the kid can
throw and retrieve a toy,  showing that she is learning/exploring to  cope
with separation and the coexisting fear/anxiety and pleasure that it
produces.
        On the other hand,  when I stayed a few nights in Tucson on the
mandatory road trip across the country,  I was keenly aware of the
landscape and how it was VERY ALIEN to me,  being from ANOTHER PLACE. It
was ALL SAND.  I was mesmerized.  Sand and cactus,  mostly the stunning
Seguarros (the classic cactus shape) 15' to 25'!  To an East Coaster this
was incredible, being in the presence of what seemed like  vigilant
guardians. I was also confused by the
washes,  river beds that are dry most of the year until the rainy season
fills them.  I thought they were ugly,  scars in the land,  in the middle
of the town.
There was virtually NOTHING to block the view--this is what I noticed
first. I felt naked,  like something had been stripped away from my
mind.  I also felt disoriented, because of the lack of geographical
features,  or my ignorance of the knowledge of them or how to READ them
or lack of experience with them.  I started thinking about how growing up
in this exposed environment would affect the mind and perceptions.  Would
it tend to make people more unguarded,  more accepting of what they know
and what they have?  I have noticed a tendency in
people of the midwest to be more unassuming then East Coasters.  I wonder
if someone from the Southwest has a clearer perception of things
(whatever that means),
because of this clarity in the environment.  Of course this sounds like a
silly overgeneralization,  but there may be some truth in it.  Any
geosociologists/pschologists in the house?

Kyle Conner
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 22 Jan 1997 15:32:37 +1000
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
Comments:     RFC822 error:  Incorrect or incomplete address field found and
              ignored.
From:         Pam Brown 
Subject:      Tam Tam
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Thanks, Pierre Joris, for the Tam Tam information...& Tosh for prompting my
vague recollections & renewing my interest...I have the wonderful MILLENIUM
anthology & will look them up...

Cheerio for now
Pam
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 22 Jan 1997 15:35:55 +1000
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
Comments:     RFC822 error:  Incorrect or incomplete address field found and
              ignored.
From:         Pam Brown 
Subject:      Tam Tam the second
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

P.S. I like Guy Debord as well...have only read the helpful & always current
"Society of the Spectacle" and "Panegyric" (why '68 'failed')in
translation...all the best, Tosh, for future publications
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 21 Jan 1997 20:41:11 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Mark Weiss 
Subject:      Re: POETICS Dig: Brathwaite/Frost/shapeofthepoem
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

It's wonderful how thoroughly one can be misunderstood, even on simple
matters. Brathwaite is reported as saying that the "shape" of our poems is a
consequence of the "shape" of our childhood landscape. I have no idea what
this means, and perhaps this was a casual and careless comment of the kind
we all make in conversation--the testing of an idea not worth pursuing. But
I respect the man far too much to imagine that he means as a native of a
small island he should be expected to write in small, isolate lines or
breath-groups, whereas Whitman, a Long Islander, should write longer lines.
This seems to me to be patently absurd; I don't doubt that one's physical
surroundings may have an impact on the roominess of one's verse, but I
expect that that impact would be rather harder to define. I picked up
Brathwaite's example of Frost (an Iowan, as I remember, who moved to New
England when he was 40--but my memory may be faulty) because it seemed to me
to demonstrate the absurdity of any easy one to one correspondence.
I'm still curious what, if anything, Brathwaite meant.

By the way, some years ago I discovered Frost's final, unpublished corrected
version of "Stopping by Woods..." He had done away with that awful inversion
in the first line (it had always embarassed him) and the Edgar-Guest-like
end rhymes of the first couplet, and he had finally managed to come up with
the last line whose lack he had covered by repeating the penultimate. In the
process, he had made the poem far more truly representative of the New
England in which I spent many years of my life. The first couplet in this
version reads: "I think I know whose woods these are;/ They aint here now,
they're over thar." And the famous last couplet now reads: "The woods are
silent, dark and deep./ I guess I shoulda brought the jeep." Only the fame
of the poem, I would guess, kept Frost from publishing this revision.

By the way, the rural New England of Frost's day was, and in many places
still is, a landscape of failing, rusty milltowns and farms gone back to
unkempt, untended second-growth forest.


At 05:19 PM 1/21/97 -0600, you wrote:
>[First, let me excuse myself for possibly jumping into an older discussion:
>today is the first day my boss is out of the office, first day in weeks I've
>had a chance to read the recent messages]
>
>     Mark Weiss wrote [referring to Brathwaite & landscape influencing
>poetic "shape":
>
>How does he mean this? the "shape of the poems" in what sense?
>
>     I have not read a lot of Brathwaite (but would read more given the
>chance) and only a little about him (ditto), but I believe the shape
>discussed is most often expressed in terms of length -- length of lines,
>length of strings of sounds (ie, as determined by line length, sentence
>length, clause length, breathing patterns of readers (imagined or
>otherwise), probably other lengths); and I think poems have been discussed
>in this manner before: was it Donald Davie who writes that he lost his
>misunderstanding of and condecension to Whitman, Ginsburg and Olson when he
>travelled across the N. American midwest for the first time? I think it was
>Davie, but whoever it was, he was a British Man who confesses to previously
>always thinking that N. American free verse's full (or full of emptiness)
>pages were the result of a more purely intellectual/historical bucking of
>the relatively gentle _via media_ of pentameter and trimeter verse.
>     Derek Walcott, whose center of gravity is somewhere between Brathwaite
>and Davie, but probably closer to Davie, has talked about the writing of
>Stein, Hemingway and Faulker as  being less an attempt to portray their
>landscapes in poetic form than an attempt to describe the attempt to do so.
>
>
>>For the record, Frost was an ersatz new englander--don't think he came from
>>tended woods. Does that mean that we can choose where we grew up?
>
>     I disagree with your revision of the record, if indeed I understand you
>correctly. Frost being here talked about as a poet, not a child. And who is
>to say that a) where we grew up is "our landscape" and/or b) that one does
>not choose their landscapes.
>     My mother for example, who has lived in New Hampshire for 2/3 of her
>adult life, grew up in Michigan. She has often said that when she first came
>to New England, when she was about 20, she had the incredible sensation of
>being comfortable in the landscape for the first time in her life. Not that
>she'd felt out of place before, but she had never known how much she loved
>the New England sense of distance, of order, etc.
>
>     Of if you are objecting to "tended landscape": it most certainly was
>"tended" in that it most certainly wasn't wild. Order abounds in those
>woods, or once did.
>
>
>     It is five o'clock. If I had more time I would pursue some thoughts
>which perhaps the list can help me with, namely (briefly), what can be said
>about the mimetic quality of poetry today? Do members of the list hold with
>the (I think, inherently) mimesis that poetry must perform in order for it
>to resemble anything (resemble rather than be about)? Or do people think I
>have it all wrong? I'm not sure myself, and hopefully will be able to touch
>on it more soon. Is or is not the mimetic capability of poetry a fundamental
>assumption for any writer who uses formal methods to, for example, suggest a
>political stance?
>
>
>best,
>
>Matthias
>
>(dressed nattily in work attire; can't get enough of The Stooges or McCoy
>Tyner but recommends to members of the list whose musical tastes seem
>considerably less revolutionary than their poetic ones that they check out
>the latest by The Krystal Methodists: "New World Odor" (not sure where to
>get it: but Krystal Methodists does appear on a careful internet search);
>reads voraciously but with little understanding the new _Canna_ by Geoffrey
>Hill.
>>
>>
>
>Matthias Regan
>Northwestern University
>Department of Chemistry
>Phone: 847/467-2132
>
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 21 Jan 1997 22:45:15 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Tosh 
Subject:      Re: Tam Tam the second
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

>P.S. I like Guy Debord as well...have only read the helpful & always current
>"Society of the Spectacle" and "Panegyric" (why '68 'failed')in
>translation...all the best, Tosh, for future publications



Thank you for your good wishes, I need them!

Tosh Berman
TamTam Books
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 22 Jan 1997 05:20:47 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Pierre Joris 
Subject:      Re: AAVE (fwd)
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Tosh wrote:
>
> I do know their work and they are fantastic.  Another one is Corrida Costa
> (first name may be wrong), and he is really FANTASTIC.
>
> Tosh Berman
> TamTam Books

Corrado, Tosh, Corrado -- Corrida is is famous spanish episode con blood
& guts in the afternoon. But you are right, Corrado is a wonderful poeta
who has Italian duende -- Pierre
--
=========================================
pierre joris   6 madison place   albany ny 12202
tel/fax (510) 426 0433 email:joris@cnsunix.albany.edu
http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/authors/joris/
http://www.albany.edu/~tm0900/nomad.html
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Everything that allows men to become rooted, through
values or sentiments, in _one_ time, in _one_ history, in
_one_ language, is the principle of alienation which
constitutes man as privileged in so far as he is what he is,
[...] imprisoning him in contentment with his own reality
and encouraging him to offer it as an example or impose
it as a conquering assertation. -- Maurice Blanchot
==========================================
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 22 Jan 1997 05:24:42 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Pierre Joris 
Subject:      Re: Tam Tam
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Pam Brown wrote:
>
> Thanks, Pierre Joris, for the Tam Tam information...& Tosh for prompting my
> vague recollections & renewing my interest...I have the wonderful MILLENIUM
> anthology & will look them up...
>
> Cheerio for now
> Pam

ugh, Pam, they will be in vol 2 of MILLENNIUM, which won't be out until
the end of this year -- Pierre
--
=========================================
pierre joris   6 madison place   albany ny 12202
tel/fax (510) 426 0433 email:joris@cnsunix.albany.edu
http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/authors/joris/
http://www.albany.edu/~tm0900/nomad.html
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Everything that allows men to become rooted, through
values or sentiments, in _one_ time, in _one_ history, in
_one_ language, is the principle of alienation which
constitutes man as privileged in so far as he is what he is,
[...] imprisoning him in contentment with his own reality
and encouraging him to offer it as an example or impose
it as a conquering assertation. -- Maurice Blanchot
==========================================
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 22 Jan 1997 07:26:47 -0600
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Tom Mandel 
Subject:      Masada
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Herb Levy writes:

"I'm also hearing Cesaria Evora & John Zorn's Masada Chamber Ensembles/Bar
Kokhba"

I love Cesaria Evora -- more Portugese. I love the sound of that language.

Zorn's double CD is one of the most wonderful musical experiences I can
remember. I'm glad Herb mentioned it, and I want to underline his mention
and recommend to all.

Tom


Screen Porch
*************************************************
Tom Mandel            *   2927 Tilden St. NW
Washington DC 20008   *   tmandel@screenporch.com
vox: 202-362-1679     *   fax 202-364-5349
*************************************************
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 22 Jan 1997 08:19:37 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Diane Marie Ward 
Subject:      Re: Miller or Maya?
In-Reply-To:  <970121230610_1477446754@emout05.mail.aol.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

Maya Angelou performed (dancing, singing, acting, writing) in Israel,
Rome, Africa and elsewhere and was regarded for the attention she paid to
all of her arts. She was in  Les Noirs/ The Blacks
in an off-Broadway production but I am not sure about France -- but it is
probably a safe assumption that you are remebering her career correctly.

Diane Marie Ward
SUNY Buffalo

On Tue, 21 Jan 1997 Steph4848@AOL.COM wrote:

> A. Nielson wrote:
> "Not much to choose between there --
>
> But, to judge from this 1957 photo I'm looking at (NY World Telegram),
> Angelou was probably a much better night club entertainer than Williams
> -- She's bare foot in the photo -- is that a touch of calypso
> authenticity, or a sign of her past in Stamps -- Was she, as is reported,
> the best calypso singer ever to have come from Arkansas?"
>
> Unfortunately my Gallimard edition(?) of Genet's Les Noirs has passed from my
> hands - but my recollection is that Maya Angelou - circa 1959 - was a highly
> esteemed actress in the premier Parisian production of the play.  I suspect
> there are people more expert than I on this list who can correct me if I'm
> only imagining this. Anyway I want to suspect her earlier history is more
> complicated than her poetry -- as well as her public personae -- of the last
> couple of decades might allow.
>
> Cheers,
> Stephen Vincent
>


---------------------------------------------------------------------




=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 22 Jan 1997 08:47:24 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Pierre Joris 
Subject:      Re: Masada
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Tom Mandel wrote:
>
> Herb Levy writes:
>
> "I'm also hearing Cesaria Evora & John Zorn's Masada Chamber Ensembles/Bar
> Kokhba"
>
> I love Cesaria Evora -- more Portugese. I love the sound of that language.
>
> Zorn's double CD is one of the most wonderful musical experiences I can
> remember. I'm glad Herb mentioned it, and I want to underline his mention
> and recommend to all.
>
> Tom
>
> Screen Porch
> *************************************************
> Tom Mandel            *   2927 Tilden St. NW
> Washington DC 20008   *   tmandel@screenporch.com
> vox: 202-362-1679     *   fax 202-364-5349
> *************************************************

& I'll under-underline the pleasure of listening to Zorn (Masada Live
playing right now as I type). My latest amour fou is for Marty Ehrlich
and the Dark Wood Ensemble's "Emergency Peace" (a New Ear's present from
Don Byrd) -- gorgeous, haunting.

BTW -- Tom gave a great reading at the Ear Inn last Saturday -- a tour
de force of a poem! Thanks, Tom -- Pierre
--
=========================================
pierre joris   6 madison place   albany ny 12202
tel/fax (510) 426 0433 email:joris@cnsunix.albany.edu
http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/authors/joris/
http://www.albany.edu/~tm0900/nomad.html
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Everything that allows men to become rooted, through
values or sentiments, in _one_ time, in _one_ history, in
_one_ language, is the principle of alienation which
constitutes man as privileged in so far as he is what he is,
[...] imprisoning him in contentment with his own reality
and encouraging him to offer it as an example or impose
it as a conquering assertation. -- Maurice Blanchot
==========================================
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 22 Jan 1997 09:46:28 EST
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Daniel_Bouchard@HMCO.COM
Subject:      Frost: shave of the poem
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: Text/Plain

Frost's folks were Easterners. The family moved to San Francisco when Bobby was
still very young. Then his dad died. He and his mom (he then being about 11
years old) moved to New Hampshire and he graduated from a high school in
Lawrence MA (which, despite being a failed rusty milltown today--rusty, that
is, when it is not in flames) was a very thriving industrial town--Frost
graduated from high school there twenty years before one of the most famous
strikes in the country took place under the leadership of the Wobblies.

Anyway, he wrote, farmed and taught school then left with HIS family for
England just before he turned forty.  In England he wrestled with Ezra Pound; a
friendly activity among manly poets of their day.

Then he came back to the States, became an institutionalized cracker-barrel
poet, and won a lot Big Prizes, and died at 88.

Landscapes and poem shapes (polka dots and moonbeams) all have a connection in
poetry but I don't believe that one's childhood has very much to do with it,
unless say, a poet grows up in a landscape battered by war, or some other
situation that leaves indeliable marks on the psyche.

I grew up in a land of tri-colored pixels at which one stared for hours.
Alternating and direct currents flowed like clockwork. They say that place has
changed little since  left.

daniel_bouchard@hmco.com

_________________

Mark Weiss wrote:
 I picked up Brathwaite's example of Frost (an Iowan, as I remember, who moved
to New
England when he was 40--but my memory may be faulty) because it seemed to me
to demonstrate the absurdity of any easy one to one correspondence.
I'm still curious what, if anything, Brathwaite meant.

By the way, the rural New England of Frost's day was, and in many places
still is, a landscape of failing, rusty milltowns and farms gone back to
unkempt, untended second-growth forest.
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 22 Jan 1997 08:30:55 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Douglas Barbour 
Subject:      Re: Brathwaite/Frost/shapeofthepoem etc
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Well, Mark Weiss, I do think that revision is a hoot! (& I'd never ever
suspect you of being involved beyond your scholarly exegesis). Yet, I have
to wonder if there isnt some way to discuss at least some aspects of the
questions hovering about this thread.

I dont know that it enters in any direct way my poetry, but I do think that
growing up on the Canadian prairies had some kind of effect on my
perceptions. There's not much obvious change there, so you tend to
recognize minimal shifts. Does this have something to do with the music,
the art, & some of the writing i can connect with? I'm not sure how,
exactly, but I do think there's something happening in my responses that
could be said to derive from the early experience of a particular
landspace...

 =============================================================================
Douglas Barbour
Department of English
University of Alberta               in the rooms you live in
Edmonton  Alberta  T6G  2E5         other people's books line your shelves
(403) 492 2181  FAX:(403) 492 8142
H: 436 3320                                     bpNichol
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 22 Jan 1997 09:45:27 -0600
Reply-To:     maria damon 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         maria damon 
Subject:      Re: Tam Tam the second

oh yeah, thanks for the info on TamTam: looks exciting and tres worthwhile--md

In message   UB Poetics discussion group
writes:
> >P.S. I like Guy Debord as well...have only read the helpful & always current
> >"Society of the Spectacle" and "Panegyric" (why '68 'failed')in
> >translation...all the best, Tosh, for future publications
>
>
>
> Thank you for your good wishes, I need them!
>
> Tosh Berman
> TamTam Books
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 22 Jan 1997 11:18:14 -0600
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Matthias Regan 
Subject:      Re: POETICS Dig: Brathwaite/Frost/it's wonderful
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

I agree completely:

>It's wonderful how thoroughly one can be misunderstood, even on simple
>matters.

        More generally, I apoligize for a serious error in my message of the
same title yesterday: Hill's book is _Canaan_.


>Brathwaite is reported as saying that the "shape" of our poems is a
>consequence of the "shape" of our childhood landscape. I have no idea what
>this means, and perhaps this was a casual and careless comment of the kind
>we all make in conversation--the testing of an idea not worth pursuing. But
>I respect the man far too much to imagine that he means as a native of a
>small island he should be expected to write in small, isolate lines or
>breath-groups, whereas...

        Actually I did not say this, I said that Donald Davie (or someone)
suggested that the physical shape of his poems mimicked the "shape" of the
natural landscape in which they were written. I was careful not to apply
this directly to Brathwaite; nor did I "expect" him to write in any
particular way; at the same time, Davie's possibly colonizing and
undoubtedly rather condescending (to the circumstances of the N. American
poets mentioned) sense of "shape-of-the-land should appear in
shape-of-the-verse" might not necessarily be unknown to Brathwaite. I was,
perhaps naively, attempting to add a facet to the observations, not to smash
them. Perhaps as you say, Mark Weiss, the idea was never worth pursuing.

Here is a poem by Geoffrey Hill from the above-mentioned book. It is
partially in response to the Parliment selling a public graveyard to a
private buyer.

To The High Court of Parliment (November 1994)

Where's probity in this --
                 the slither-frisk
to lordship of a kind
as rats to a bird-table?

England -- now of genius
                  the eidolon --
unsubstantial yet voiding
substance like quicklime;

Privatize to the dead
her memory:
           let her wounds weep
into the lens of oblivion.


Matthias, the
        "patently absurb"
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 22 Jan 1997 10:15:03 -0600
Reply-To:     maria damon 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         maria damon 
Subject:      Re: POETICS Digest - 18 Jan 1997 to 19 Jan 1997

last spring, kyle, we had a resoundingly contentious discussion about
geo-sociopsychology, with much defending and complaining about the midwest (i
was one of the complainers, being a new englander first and then 7 yrs in
california).  you can revisit those lively debates thru the epc digest.  this
time around sounds more generous and nuanced, and more poetix-related, but i may
sit this round out cuz i was so active in the last one.--md

In message   UB Poetics
discussion group writes:
> I think that the landscape in which one grows up certainly affects
> the way one THINKS and perceives things.  As for as affecting how one
> writes,  I suppose
> this line of thought could be pursued.  I'm a thorough East Coaster
> (Pennsylvanian,  to be exact),
> and so KNOW dense forests, trees,  hills,  valleys,  modest mountains
> (Appalachians) an ocean,  beach sand,  lakes etc. I would like to think
> that somehow my thoughts are WOODED or shaded,  or something
> irreplaceable about forests,  hills,  valleys.  There is a certain
> built-in apprehension in living in a place where you can't always see the
> horizon,  or can't see what's ahead of you 100 yards,  or what's over the
> hill,  around the bend,  because some feature of the landscape is
> blocking your view,  and so inherently extending your expectation or
> patience of what the "land" will reveal or give you (this could relate to
>  Lacan's "fort-das" stage (far-near) of child development where the kid can
> throw and retrieve a toy,  showing that she is learning/exploring to  cope
> with separation and the coexisting fear/anxiety and pleasure that it
> produces.
>         On the other hand,  when I stayed a few nights in Tucson on the
> mandatory road trip across the country,  I was keenly aware of the
> landscape and how it was VERY ALIEN to me,  being from ANOTHER PLACE. It
> was ALL SAND.  I was mesmerized.  Sand and cactus,  mostly the stunning
> Seguarros (the classic cactus shape) 15' to 25'!  To an East Coaster this
> was incredible, being in the presence of what seemed like  vigilant
> guardians. I was also confused by the
> washes,  river beds that are dry most of the year until the rainy season
> fills them.  I thought they were ugly,  scars in the land,  in the middle
> of the town.
> There was virtually NOTHING to block the view--this is what I noticed
> first. I felt naked,  like something had been stripped away from my
> mind.  I also felt disoriented, because of the lack of geographical
> features,  or my ignorance of the knowledge of them or how to READ them
> or lack of experience with them.  I started thinking about how growing up
> in this exposed environment would affect the mind and perceptions.  Would
> it tend to make people more unguarded,  more accepting of what they know
> and what they have?  I have noticed a tendency in
> people of the midwest to be more unassuming then East Coasters.  I wonder
> if someone from the Southwest has a clearer perception of things
> (whatever that means),
> because of this clarity in the environment.  Of course this sounds like a
> silly overgeneralization,  but there may be some truth in it.  Any
> geosociologists/pschologists in the house?
>
> Kyle Conner
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 22 Jan 1997 10:20:51 -0600
Reply-To:     maria damon 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         maria damon 
Subject:      Re: Take A Letter, Maria

you are quite rite, aldon, i left out the initial A.  it's an interesting and
benignly easy read (no high theory, no "difficult" poetry). c.l. dellums (ron's
father?) was a key player.  randolph was not himself a porter, but a
high-profile socialist-oriented "race man" imported to help create a union.
there was tension between him and some of the porters involved in the organizing
drive (because he wasn't a porter, among other reasons, also, his seat was NYC
which took a sometimes belittling attitude toward other equally activist
chapters like oakland and especially chicago), but also a lot of cooperation and
mutually supportive strategizing.  its esp interesting cuz right now my U is ina
union drive so i'm learning a bit about the whole concept of "strategy," which
is foreign to my nature.--md

In message   UB Poetics
discussion group writes:
> Actually, I think it's A. Philip Randolph, unless you're reading about a
> nother Philip all together --
>
> seriously, though -- I happen at this very moment to be reading an old
> bio. of Randolhp, and would love to compare notes with you on the book
> you're reading --
>
>
> AND EVERYBODY -- in the PBS American Experience I watched last night,
> titled "You Don't Have to Ride Jim Crow," the reunited FOR freedom riders
> recollected a respite when they visited Black Mountain College in the
> midst of their battles to integrate the bus lines of the South -- this
> around 1947 -- would like to learn MUCH more of this --
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 22 Jan 1997 10:24:39 -0600
Reply-To:     maria damon 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         maria damon 
Subject:      Re: Miller or Maya?

aldon rites:
> Not much to choose between there --
>
> But, to judge from this 1957 photo I'm looking at (NY World Telegram),
> Angelou was probably a much better night club entertainer than Williams
> -- She's bare foot in the photo -- is that a touch of calypso
> authenticity, or a sign of her past in Stamps -- Was she, as is reported,
> the best calypso singer ever to have come from Arkansas?
>
to be fair, and stephen vincent already posted on this, angelou's main shtick is
not being a poet; she's a public intellectual of a less academic stripe than
cornel west etc, but she has combined an acting career with activism, and has
written a series of autobiographies that were mainstay reading for many way
before her current incarnation as inaugural poet #1.
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 22 Jan 1997 08:27:07 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "Aldon L. Nielsen" 
Subject:      Re: The Blacks
In-Reply-To:  <199701220502.VAA11969@email.sjsu.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

Not just Angelou -- the American cast of "The Blacks" (as it was billed
here) included the majority of the black American actors who would go on
to become known for their accomplishments on the screen in later years --
It was, by all accounts, an astonishing production --  I have seen
production stills -- does anybody know if any kind of recording was ever
made of that cast --

and even Angelou's prose is more interesting than those poems --

by the way, here is the unrevised first line of Miller Williams's poem,
retrieved from his wastebasket:

"We xerox America."
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 22 Jan 1997 10:49:46 -0600
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         amato@CHARLIE.CNS.IIT.EDU
Subject:      Re: Frost: shave of the poem
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

just reading carolyn heilbrun's new bio. of gloria steinem:  _the education
of a woman:  the life of gloria steinem_... most def. worth reading,
folks...

from the intro, which i think speaks to this question of place, person & memory:

"To compare Steinem's childhood with Charles Dickens's is to recognize a
phenomenon common to both, and probably common to many.  The months -- they
amounted to less than a year -- that Dickens spent in a blacking factory
reverberated throughout his life like a childhood assault, which indeed for
him they were.  As an adult he could hardly bring himself to speak of that
experience, even to his closest friends; he was able only to transform it
into the childhood adventures of his various characters.  Steinem's Toledo,
Ohio, years -- 1944-1951 -- were Dickens's blacking factory.  But, living
in a different time, she could speak of them, provided they could be
encapsulated in entertaining anecdotes; fearing the danger it might hold,
she walled off the pain of that time until she turned fifty.  For her,
Toledo explained everything, as for Dickens the blacking factory months
explained everything." (xxiii-xxiv)

i rather like this notion, that a particular period of one's life, lived
wherever or however, becomes a formative 'event' (kali may still be out
there---her book on formative traumatic events, _worlds of hurt_, certainly
relevant here)... it esp. appeals to me after having spent three years
mself working out such intensities, for a period of roughly eight years...
yes, landscape can be a major factor---constructed, certainly, i'll hedge
on the cognitive "view"... anyway, melville's whaling adventures (a year
and a half?) another example, but surely there are numerous authors whose
work reveals a preoccupation with a specific portion of their lives...

best,

joe
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 22 Jan 1997 11:04:33 +0100
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Miekal And 
Subject:      shapeofthepoem til may 68
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Douglas Barbour wrote:

, but I do think there's something happening in my responses that
> could be said to derive from the early experience of a particular
> landspace...


I favor the direction the lettrists & situationists went with
translating topography to text with all their many notions of
psychogeography & the drift.  & in particular (being a visualpoet & all)
how much of the creative work became maps of typography.

& actually for myself living in the landscape has replaced the need for
organized texts, that Im much more likely to play sax or make things out
of clay which is probably why I havent written a book in the 6 years Ive
been out here.

miekal

who wonders now that we know what everyone is wearing & what they are
reading & listening to, all that's left is sexual preference & favorite
foods.
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 22 Jan 1997 09:00:28 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Christopher Reiner 
Subject:      Toilet Pastures
In-Reply-To:  <32E61D98.1A38@cnsunix.albany.edu>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

From yesterday's Daily Variety (line breaks courtesy of my computer):

W.C. Fields Confounds Egypt's Censors

By Peter Warg

CAIRO (Variety) - Brush up your English or find a new job, Egyptian film
censors and translators are
being told.

The warning comes after a U.S. picture's reference to comedian W.C.
Fields was translated as "toilet
pastures," leaving viewers who could follow only the Arabic subtitles
wondering what in the world
the characters were talking about.

In another American film, "the computer is down" was rendered in the
Arabic subtitle as "the
computer is in the basement." Unfortunately, the scene made it clear that
the computer in question was
on an upper floor of a high-rise office building.

Though the subtitlers and censors were subjected to language exams before
their hiring, Dr. Gaber al
Asfour, undersecretary at the Ministry of Culture, has ordered retesting.
Those not passing muster
will be dismissed, al Asfour says.

In Egypt, foreign films screened in theaters or broadcast on TV are
subtitled, not dubbed. And when
it comes to cutting those pictures, censors look for scenes of sex or
violence to snip rather than
obscene dialogue.

Thus when the Vietnam war epic "The Deer Hunter" was recently shown on
Egypt's national TV, the
picture's steady flow of vulgarities was left intact; only violent scenes
were snipped. The movie's
swearing was either not translated, or else the words were bowdlerized.
"Go f--- yourself!" was
rendered as "you're not nice."
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 22 Jan 1997 09:24:43 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Mark Weiss 
Subject:      Re: Frost: shave of the poem
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Thanks for the corrective on Frost bio.

At 09:46 AM 1/22/97 EST, you wrote:
>Frost's folks were Easterners. The family moved to San Francisco when Bobby was
>still very young. Then his dad died. He and his mom (he then being about 11
>years old) moved to New Hampshire and he graduated from a high school in
>Lawrence MA (which, despite being a failed rusty milltown today--rusty, that
>is, when it is not in flames) was a very thriving industrial town--Frost
>graduated from high school there twenty years before one of the most famous
>strikes in the country took place under the leadership of the Wobblies.
>
>Anyway, he wrote, farmed and taught school then left with HIS family for
>England just before he turned forty.  In England he wrestled with Ezra Pound; a
>friendly activity among manly poets of their day.
>
>Then he came back to the States, became an institutionalized cracker-barrel
>poet, and won a lot Big Prizes, and died at 88.
>
>Landscapes and poem shapes (polka dots and moonbeams) all have a connection in
>poetry but I don't believe that one's childhood has very much to do with it,
>unless say, a poet grows up in a landscape battered by war, or some other
>situation that leaves indeliable marks on the psyche.
>
>I grew up in a land of tri-colored pixels at which one stared for hours.
>Alternating and direct currents flowed like clockwork. They say that place has
>changed little since  left.
>
>daniel_bouchard@hmco.com
>
>_________________
>
>Mark Weiss wrote:
> I picked up Brathwaite's example of Frost (an Iowan, as I remember, who moved
>to New
>England when he was 40--but my memory may be faulty) because it seemed to me
>to demonstrate the absurdity of any easy one to one correspondence.
>I'm still curious what, if anything, Brathwaite meant.
>
>By the way, the rural New England of Frost's day was, and in many places
>still is, a landscape of failing, rusty milltowns and farms gone back to
>unkempt, untended second-growth forest.
>
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 22 Jan 1997 13:12:55 EST
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         henry 
Subject:      Re: Frost: shave of the poem
In-Reply-To:  Message of Wed, 22 Jan 1997 09:46:28 EST from
              

On Wed, 22 Jan 1997 09:46:28 EST  said:
>
>I grew up in a land of tri-colored pixels at which one stared for hours.
>Alternating and direct currents flowed like clockwork. They say that place has
>changed little since  left.

All you so-called would-be cowboy poets - Bonanza's still on, on some
channels.  heh heh.

- Jack Spandrift, "the hard-drinkin, tough-talkin po-yeti from Brainerd &
Dernbard & thereabouts"
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 22 Jan 1997 14:07:36 EST
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         POLLET@MAINE.MAINE.EDU
Subject:      Backwoods Broadsides backlist

I've had a couple of requests to post the whole list of my Chaplet Series,
so here goes. All available:

1. The Dandelion Sutras / Sylvester Pollet
2. Every Moment / John Wetterau
3. River Songs / Kathleen Lignell
4. The Memory of the Wound / Petr Mikes
5. Outside the Circle / Elizabeth Pollet
6. Mad Songs / Theodore Enslin
7. Songfables and Songflowers / Robert Desnos tr. Carl Little
8. Stem / David Gordon
9. LUCA / Rochelle Owens
10. Eight Songs and Meditations / Carl Rakosi
11. 13/17 / Bern Porter
12. The Empty Space / James Laughlin
13. A Baker's Dozen / Cid Corman
14. Postcard Poems / Jackson Mac Low
15. Road Side / Ronald Johnson
16. Nashvillanelle / George Economou
17. Jascha Heifetz / Anna Meek
18. Gangsta Flix / Dick Higgins
19. 22 Death Poems / Diane di Prima
20. Writing / Anne Tardos
21. Watchfulness / Peter O'Leary
22. a slice at that / Anne Waldman
23. Jasmine & Thunder / Andrew Schelling
24. Others' Lines / David Giannini
25. A Wind Off The Sea / Lane Dunlop

Subscriptions $10 yr, 8 issues ppd. Back issues $1 ppd. Canadian bills are
ok--add a few for exchange & extra postage. Come to think of it, French or
Italian bills ok too. Somebody sent me Yen though, & I just sent them on
to Corman in Kyoto--he's always broke.
    Sylvester Pollet
    Backwoods Broadsides
    RR 5 Box 3630
    Ellsworth ME 04605-9529
    USA
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 23 Jan 1997 08:57:07 +1300
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         DS 
Subject:      Re: The Blacks
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

contrasts interestingly with poets in NZ who have been known to say
"we xerox zebras"


>by the way, here is the unrevised first line of Miller Williams's poem,
>retrieved from his wastebasket:
>
>"We xerox America."
>
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 22 Jan 1997 13:24:52 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         David Bromige 
Subject:      Shape/shape/Frost/N England
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Frost started out in california, as i recall the norton saying before I
dropped it from an 18th storey window into a deep sewage pond. But his poem
"Stopping by Woods" was written to be sung to a melody later used for the
song "Hernando's Hideaway" from the Broadway show "Lost in DB's Memory
Bank." The Latin beat of this tune reveal Frost's true colors. Hope this
clarifies. db.
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 22 Jan 1997 15:35:45 -0600
Reply-To:     maria damon 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         maria damon 
Subject:      Re: shapeofthepoem til may 68

> miekal
>
> who wonders now that we know what everyone is wearing & what they are
> reading & listening to, all that's left is sexual preference & favorite
> foods.
>
i never met a dairy product i didn't like, but beyond that, breadpudding w/
whipped cream, anything w/ whipped cream, rice and beans, organic baby greens,
crusty sourdough bread, les garcons.
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 22 Jan 1997 15:45:48 +0100
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Miekal And 
Subject:      hypermedia apprenticeship @ Dreamtime Village
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

WHERE ELSE CAN YOU LEARN HOW TO MILK A GOAT & PRODUCE AVANT LIT AT THE
SAME TIME?

dreamtime village needs a 1997 hypermedia apprentice


This position offers skills and experience in publishing, networking &
mail art, bookmaking, desktop publishing & hypermedia.  In addition to
the daily correspondence, photocopying, bookmaking, there are plenty of
specific projects to be tackled :  the neologism dictionary, an
electronic version of Dreamtime permaculture,  web page updates, posters
for events, issues of various magazines including Talkingmail &
Xerolage, new XE hardcopy catalogue, setting up of the Xexoxial archives
& a Dreamtime Library, & more.  We are also wanting to begin setting up
a more permanent bookmaking / paper arts studio in the school.
Hypermedia people should have basic skills on the Macintosh & be
familiar with quark, word, freehand or ilustrator, & hypercard.  Anyone
interested should be able to commit to at least 6 months, if not
longer.  Apprentices live on site in one of our houses, & are expected
to put in 20-30 hours/week in the office & participate in the daily
necessities like cooking,upkeep as well as weekly meetings.  Experience
with coop living & group process is helpful.  Cost is $100/month,
includes basic foods & a room.

FOR MORE INFO CONTACT:
MIEKAL AND or Liz Was
1-608-625-4619
dtv@mwt.net
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 22 Jan 1997 15:42:54 -0600
Reply-To:     maria damon 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         maria damon 
Subject:      Re: shapeofthepoem til may 68

> miekal
>
> who wonders now that we know what everyone is wearing & what they are
> reading & listening to, all that's left is sexual preference & favorite
> foods.
>
i forgot most impt moi-meme
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 22 Jan 1997 13:57:28 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         David Bromige 
Subject:      'TOILET PASTURES"
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Thanks for yr posting, Chris. reminds me of the idiom "out of sight, out of
mind" becoming via translation into whatever other tongue, "invisible
lunatic."

Before I "got" it, I was speculating that the phrase you make yr "subject,"
had originally been "Twilight Pastures", or "Toilet Postures." The latter
sounds more like Fields.

Praise be for the language that never sits still! db

re-Mikael And's suggestions for threads: I like to eat everything but spicy
food gives me the most trouble.
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 22 Jan 1997 14:00:14 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         David Bromige 
Subject:      Addresses: Steve Evans/Jennifer Moxley
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

anyone having an e-ddress for either Steve or jennifer pleae backchannel or
post thanks db.
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 22 Jan 1997 14:27:56 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         David Bromige 
Subject:      Toilet Pastures
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

george bowering has kindly backchanneled me (merci pour ca, georges) to
point out a possible ambiguity in my footnote, concerning food and sex. i
was only referring to food, and my comment anticipates a 22-city tour
during which i expect a number of listmembers to be taking me out to
dinner. plans for this are already afoot and should be complete by the next
century. I do look fwd to reading about other people's sexual preferences
(well, except for yours, george) but as for my own, to paraphrase lisa
robertson's terrific poem "The Device" (Hole #6), I choose not to speak
about them. hope this clears matters up before any harm is done. db.
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 22 Jan 1997 17:02:07 +0100
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Miekal And 
Subject:      greener Pastures
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

david:

if you put Dreamtime Village on your itinerary I'll cook you some of my
favorite indian dishes, say chicken coconut curry, some onion bread &
some tempura (which I forget the indian name of, maybe pakora) with some
tamarind dipping sauce & even make it without the hot. your reading
would be well attended by chickens, ducks, goats & we might even be able
to stir up a few humans.  if nothing else we could get maria to drive
down from the cities.

miekal who will venture to say his sexual preference is straight & poly
--
@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#
Dreamtime Village website: http://net22.com/dreamtime
QAZINGULAZA: And/Was/Wakest website:
http://net22.com/qazingulaza
e-mail for DT & And/Was: dtv@mwt.net
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 23 Jan 1997 12:16:10 +1300
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         DS 
Subject:      Re: greener Pastures
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

>
>miekal who will venture to say his sexual preference is straight & poly


as in poly - ester, - thene, - vocal, - andry, - chromatic, - dactic, -
nesian,  - tonal, - pod????

dan???
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 22 Jan 1997 15:27:30 -0800
Reply-To:     Brian Carpenter 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Brian Carpenter 
Subject:      Re: Elmslie in Seattle
In-Reply-To:  
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

On Mon, 20 Jan 1997, Herb Levy wrote:

> George & others,
>
> So you don't hear about it too late this time, Kenward Elmslie's reading as
> part of the Rendezvous reading series in Seattle next week, January 28, at
> New City Theater on the corner of 11th Av & Olive Street on Capitol Hill.
> I don't know what time it starts, but I'll be back in time to hear it.
> Perhaps one of the many Seattle lurkers can post some more information on
> this.  (I don't think we're all out of town.)

Just called up New City.  The reading begins at 8 (doors open 7:30), and
will be $5.  The man I talked to also mentioned that they are trying to
arrange a reading in Vancouver as well but was not sure about it yet.
Dats the scoop.

Tan corduroys, oversized mauve t-shirt (but a tasteful mauve), scuffed-up
gen u wine combat boots (my only fully waterproof footwear), black-felt
outbackish cowboy hat to keep my head dry from cumulo-nimbus.

Lastly, Lisa Gerrard's _The Mirror Pool_ to clear the head, Praxis'
_Sacrifist_ to clear out the head, and Material's _Hallucination Engine_
to muddy it up again.

Salud--

Brian (who wonders if this wardrobe info craze will lead to such things as
recipe swapping and gardening tips--I do recall mention of gardenia)
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 22 Jan 1997 17:46:34 +0100
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Miekal And 
Subject:      Re: greener Pastures
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

DS wrote:
>
> >
> >miekal who will venture to say his sexual preference is straight & poly
>
> as in poly - ester, - thene, - vocal, - andry, - chromatic, - dactic, -
> nesian,  - tonal, - pod????
>
> dan???

& to that I would add - amorous & -morphous

& recipes:  we have a great recipe at dreamtime for homepathic text
poisoning!
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 22 Jan 1997 18:16:00 +0100
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Miekal And 
Subject:      crossmedia beliefware
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

one of my favorite all time topics was mentioned in passing the other
day but Ive lost the note so I cant quote it.  but it has been the
origin of much whimsy & wonder to me since the very beginning of my
adventures in culturefuck many years ago. simply put, "why is it often
the case that artists & writers who very capably experiment & stretch
boundaries in their chosen idiom often have very mainstream tastes in
other media."  while the current music listening thread is certainly not
indicative of anyone's complete musical diet, I do have the feeling that
there are many here whose taste in dance, music, theatre, 2 & 3
dimensional, installation, performance art & film is not consistent with
their interest for the writers of this list...

one of the funniest examples I can think of is once Lyx & I attended a
performance by George Quasha & Chuck Stein in Milwaukee, I believe put
on by the incredible Woodland Patterns (or were they still called
Boox/Books at this time?)  The boys got up & blew us away with some
sound poetry pieces that were some of the most aural sonics I had heard
at that time.  When they were done some band came on & played Beatles
covers. As I remember we were provoked to a bit of poetic terrorism, but
that's another story.


Miekal who wonders why poets of all people cant spell his name right or
spell  x e x o x i a l  correctly.
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 22 Jan 1997 16:32:54 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         David Bromige 
Subject:      slepign
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

i dotn nkwo miekal wyh, tbu tpeso rea tonriousyl ousyl lepersls. as tish
stil rbase uot. rplnasleroy, i (got that one ok!) ttrabiuet it ot troepy
enigb a knid of phemorticala lisxedia verided ni prat rofm terilal if
undognosed lixsidea. hwat do theros knith?
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 22 Jan 1997 16:59:11 -0800
Reply-To:     doncheney@geocities.com
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Don Cheney 
Organization: UCSD
Subject:      Re: slepign
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Don Cheney writes:

i doubt the new york knicks work overtime miekal with to be announced
and pasta with pesto reeking tonsilitisly lousy (lepers on saturday
night live!). as tish still bases your overtime. on your rhinoplasty,
i (got that one ok!) traded your butt in and out of entropy and in and
in of pharmacology lexia truth isn't prats barking territorially
if undiagnosed dyslexia. has ways to dot the roses with knives?

David Bromige wrote:

> i dotn nkwo miekal wyh, tbu tpeso rea tonriousyl ousyl lepersls. as tish
> stil rbase uot. rplnasleroy, i (got that one ok!) ttrabiuet it ot troepy
> enigb a knid of phemorticala lisxedia verided ni prat rofm terilal if
> undognosed lixsidea. hwat do theros knith?

  -----------------------------------------------
    Don Cheney  --  doncheney@geocities.com --
   http://www.geocities.com/Paris/5791/main.html
  -----------------------------------------------
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 22 Jan 1997 19:04:34 +0600
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         KENT JOHNSON 
Organization: Highland Community College
Subject:      Re: name of great bookstore

On January 22, Miekal And wrote:
   >
> one of the funniest examples I can think of is once Lyx & I attended a
> performance by George Quasha & Chuck Stein in Milwaukee, I believe put
> on by the incredible Woodland Patterns (or were they still called
> Boox/Books at this time?)  The boys got up & blew us away with some
> sound poetry pieces that were some of the most aural sonics I had heard
> at that time.  When they were done some band came on & played Beatles
> covers. As I remember we were provoked to a bit of poetic terrorism, but
> that's another story.
>
>
> Miekal who wonders why poets of all people cant spell his name right or
> spell  x e x o x i a l  correctly.

Aha! I got you here, mikael! It's Woodland Pattern, with no "s". But
seriously, Karl Gartung and Anne Kingsbury's place has been for many
years one of the great venues in the country for new poetry and
music. One of the finest performance series in the country (and if
you write them, they'll send you their beautifully produced
schedules and promo broadsides), and surely one of the finest
collections of small press poetry anywhere. I once lived around the
corner from this magical place--I'm sure Miekal would agree with my
suggestion that anyone within a few hundred miles take a weekend
sometime to visit! I'll post the address tomorrow, or why don't you,
Miekal, if you've got it handy.

Kent
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 22 Jan 1997 19:30:16 +0100
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Miekal And 
Subject:      address & hours of great bookstore
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

KENT JOHNSON wrote:



>
> Aha! I got you here, mikael! It's Woodland Pattern, with no "s". But
> seriously, Karl Gartung and Anne Kingsbury's place has been for many
> years one of the great venues in the country for new poetry and
> music. One of the finest performance series in the country (and if
> you write them, they'll send you their beautifully produced
> schedules and promo broadsides), and surely one of the finest
> collections of small press poetry anywhere. I once lived around the
> corner from this magical place--I'm sure Miekal would agree with my
> suggestion that anyone within a few hundred miles take a weekend
> sometime to visit! I'll post the address tomorrow, or why don't you,
> Miekal, if you've got it handy.
>
> Kent
Woodland Pattern
720 E. Locust St.
Milwaukee, WI 53212
414-263-5001

Their hours are:
Tuesday - Friday 12-8
Sat/Sun 12-5

Their activities in promoting the experimental arts is unparalleled in
the midwest.  I believe they have been around for 20 years, & when ever
Lyx & I are weary of all the time we donate to Xexoxial or Dreamtime we
think of the unbelievable commitment that Karl & Anne have made to the
midwest cultural scene.  I first became familiar with a lot of the folks
on this list in the early 80s thru bookbuying binges there.  Where else
can you find a first edition Bob Cobbing with the original cover price?



M I E K A L   who wonders
why poets of all people cant
spell his name right
or spell
x e x o x i a l
correctly.
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 22 Jan 1997 19:31:36 +0100
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Miekal And 
Subject:      Taproot?
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Luigi,

Malok is here visiting & is wondering what of the next Taproot.  Whens
it coming out (talk about sexual preference!)?

mA
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 22 Jan 1997 20:20:59 -0600
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         KYLE CONNER/LRC-CAHS 
Subject:      Re: AWP Convention
In-Reply-To:  <2DF4A81F97@student.highland.cc.il.us>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

Does anyone know anything about the upcoming AWP convention in Washington
D.C.,  like when exactly it is?  I haven't yet been able to get my hands
on a current AWP newsletter.  I went to the convention two years ago in
Pittsburgh where Gerry Stern and Jack Gilbert read.  This was my
introduction to Gilbert,  who is someone who is greatly underread,  I
think.  Anyway,  I had a good time amid all the hoopla (even machine tool
conventions could be fun,  I think).  Anywhere where there's a lot of
people talking about poetry is bound to be stimulating in some way.

Kyle
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 22 Jan 1997 18:34:38 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Rachel Loden 
Subject:      how to proceed (was Re: The Blacks)
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
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Aldon L. Nielsen wrote:
>
> Not just Angelou -- the American cast of "The Blacks" (as it was billed
> here) included the majority of the black American actors who would go on
> to become known for their accomplishments on the screen in later years --
> It was, by all accounts, an astonishing production --  I have seen
> production stills --

One of those stills is on the cover of _Evergreen Review_ No. 19 (price:
$1).  Issue includes "How to Proceed in the Arts," by Frank O'Hara and
Larry Rivers, with this advice on sexual preferences:

1. Empty yourself of everything.
2. Think of faraway things.
3. It is 12:00. Pick up the adult and throw it out of bed. Work should
be done at your leisure, you know, only when there is nothing else to
do. If anyone is in bed with you, they should be told to leave. You
cannot work with someone there.

Rachel Loden
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 22 Jan 1997 21:49:17 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         robert drake 
Subject:      Re: Taproot?
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

>Luigi,
>
>Malok is here visiting & is wondering what of the next Taproot.  Whens
>it coming out (talk about sexual preference!)?
>
>mA

ahey, mykhol & maylock!

later, allways later... i am i ass-embling 'nother TRR even now, will be
again a double to make up fr lost times, had dreamed ov having it out this
month (but that was 2 months ago), but well underway, hopin th layout
coincides w/ a influx of money but sometime Real Soon Now...  seriously,
w.in thee month.  greetings to both ov yall, and well wiches...

lbd
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 22 Jan 1997 19:40:27 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Stephen Cope 
Subject:      Evora, Cape Verde, Music
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Great to see Cesaria Evora's name come up in this context -- I'd suggest
looking into Amandio Cabral also: he'd be hard to escpae in a serious
discussion of Cape Verdean music. Evora's interpreted a number of his
compositions, many of which are of a poetic value equal their musical
achievement. His lp's are hard to come by these days, but a collection has
been released on disc by Lusafrica (a Parisian label that releases mostly
music from Cape Verde, Angola, Senegal, and the environs of Lusophone (sp?)
Africa), distributed by Stern's in New York. Also recommended: Saozinha's
interpretations of Eugenio Tavares' poems, on a Brockton, Mass. label
operated by (and named after) the Mendez Brothers (Ramiro Mendez has
written a number of Evora's pieces and performs on some of her earlier
recordings). Tavares began writing in the late nineteenth century in Cape
Verde, where he also published a journal called "Cartas Caboverdeanas,"
that included various politcal (in addition to poetic) writings. He's
considered a major figure in Cape Verdean letters, devoted unequivocally,
as the liner notes put it, "to the cult of the Portugese language."

Speaking of such things: Jayne Cortez' recent recording with the
Firespitters is out - the poetry is, of course, worth it alone, but there's
an extraordinary cut featuring a Mandingo vocalist and some Mandingo
musicains that's been a soundtack for much of my thought lately...


Best to all,

Stephen Cope
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 22 Jan 1997 21:28:59 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Bradford J Senning 
Subject:      Re: Shape/shape/Frost/N England
In-Reply-To:  
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

On Wed, 22 Jan 1997, David Bromige wrote:

> Frost started out in california, as i recall the norton saying before I
> dropped it from an 18th storey window into a deep sewage pond. But his poem
> "Stopping by Woods" was written to be sung to a melody later used for the
> song "Hernando's Hideaway" from the Broadway show "Lost in DB's Memory
> Bank." The Latin beat of this tune reveal Frost's true colors. Hope this
> clarifies. db.
>
That "Broadway show" was/is _The Pajama Game_ ... fyi
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 22 Jan 1997 21:05:19 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Mark Weiss 
Subject:      Re: greener Pastures
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

-wog, -ana, -bius (back to the pastoral)

At 05:46 PM 1/22/97 +0100, you wrote:
>DS wrote:
>>
>> >
>> >miekal who will venture to say his sexual preference is straight & poly
>>
>> as in poly - ester, - thene, - vocal, - andry, - chromatic, - dactic, -
>> nesian,  - tonal, - pod????
>>
>> dan???
>
>& to that I would add - amorous & -morphous
>
>& recipes:  we have a great recipe at dreamtime for homepathic text
>poisoning!
>
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 22 Jan 1997 22:07:24 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         George Bowering 
Subject:      Re: Shape/shape/Frost/N England
In-Reply-To:  
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

>Frost started out in california, as i recall the norton saying before I
>dropped it from an 18th storey window into a deep sewage pond. But his poem
>"Stopping by Woods" was written to be sung to a melody later used for the
>song "Hernando's Hideaway" from the Broadway show "Lost in DB's Memory
>Bank." The Latin beat of this tune reveal Frost's true colors. Hope this
>clarifies. db.

Yep, there was a rush of poets who were writing lyrics for that song.
Another was A.E. Housman's poem (what was the title?) that includes

Oh I have Been to Ludlow Fair
and left my necktie who knows where

etc





George Bowering.
                                       ,
2499 West 37th Ave.,
Vancouver, B.C.,
Canada  V6M 1P4

fax: 1-604-266-9000
e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 22 Jan 1997 22:12:45 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         George Bowering 
Subject:      Re: Toilet Pastures
In-Reply-To:  
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

I would like to have it go on record that I have not communicated with
David Bromige about sexual preferences at any time.

Neither have we discussed Michael Hamburger or X.J. Kennedy.




George Bowering.
                                       ,
2499 West 37th Ave.,
Vancouver, B.C.,
Canada  V6M 1P4

fax: 1-604-266-9000
e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 22 Jan 1997 22:38:25 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         David Bromige 
Subject:      toilet pastures
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

ah. . .the witching hour approaches. . . and the west coasters bring their
insomnia to the list, while the east sleeps swaddled in a bright mantle of
snow. . . george, are you sure that wasnt you i was communicating sexual
preferences with? . . . then who the hell was it? . . i think "it happened
in peekskill" rachel knows where you left yr "shropshire lad" necktie. .
.ah, "and down       in love     ly muck i lay.". . .its as good as
"Ab.Fab." : straight Id. . . These hidden places where we congregate in our
pjs: hernando's hideaway, the love shack, and remember green door, whats
that secret yr keeping? (by the time i got to telegraph ave,that door had
been painted black.. . and then we were shown what someone thot was behind
the green door and the mystery vanished ). . .like the Georgia, george, in
our novel . . .like the Hotel Sylvia in "Who is Sylvia?". . . like the list
at the witching hour . .  as the rain sluices the imperium into the ocean.
. .leaving only our corny taste in music to paste upon distance
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 23 Jan 1997 09:18:05 +0000
Reply-To:     William.Northcutt@uni-bayreuth.de
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
Comments:     Authenticated sender is 
From:         William Northcutt 
Organization: btr0x1.hrz.uni-bayreuth.de
Subject:      Dorn
Comments: To: poetics@UBVM.cc.buffalo.edu
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7BIT

A while back, I remember there being some talk on this list about a
new part to Dorn's Slinger. Anyone know anything about this, or was
it just a narrrsty rumour?

William Northcutt

______________________________________________________
william.northcutt@uni-bayreuth.de

William Northcutt
Anglistik
Universitaet Bayreuth
95440 Bayreuth, Germany
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 23 Jan 1997 00:33:41 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Marina deBellagente laPalma 
Subject:      tamtam
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Re wonderful euro-inflected "language" poetry of the 70s ... Adriano Spatola
died some years ago; Giulia Niccolai is alive and well and writing -- I saw
her a couple of times this summer in Milano. She is, among other things, a
practicing buddhist, working sometimes at a place called, I believe, Center
for Tibetan Studies in Milan.

Marina deBellagente LaPalma
329 Pope Street
Menlo Park CA 94025
(415) 326-4981
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 23 Jan 1997 05:07:10 EST
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Ken Edwards <100344.2546@COMPUSERVE.COM>
Subject:      crime & punishment

"B asks what the crime is... Next, we must ask what the sentence is.

Duane Davis"

The sentence is a piece of writing that starts with a capital letter and ends
with a full stop (or not)

and Stephen Vincent said
" Dyer is English - and tho the language is driven, compelling,
there's a suspicion of the English exclusive obsession with the exotic
detail/circumstances of the lives and the art."

That writer's name is Geoff, not George Dyer. Some of us Brits _are_ capable of
listening to the musics without romanticising the lives, you know. However,
we're usually too reticent to tell folks what we're wearing.

Ken Edwards
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 23 Jan 1997 18:42:10 +1200
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Tom Beard 
Subject:      Re: shapeofthepoem til may 68
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
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> , but I do think there's something happening in my responses that
> > could be said to derive from the early experience of a particular
> > landspace...
>
> I favor the direction the lettrists & situationists went with
> translating topography to text with all their many notions of
> psychogeography & the drift.  & in particular (being a visualpoet & all)
> how much of the creative work became maps of typography.


This reminds me of an early poem by Michele Leggott ('Easter Island' I
think), with the topography of the Pacific being translated into the
typography of long, expansive lines. I seem to remember that editors had
great problems with it, either trying to squish it down to 8 points or
setting it sideways in their journals and anthologies. Her first
collection solved the problem by being set in a square format - a
pattern that she has followed in subsequent books. The other NZers on
the list would know Michele better than I, so correct me if I've got it
wrong.

I'm spending more time now thinking about landscape and its effects upon
one's thought processes - including poetry - since I'll soon be moving
back to Wellington after 2 1/2 years in Auckland. Just driving along the
motorways I start to notice the unique features of the place - why has
it never seemed strange to me that I drive through a mangrove swamp to
get to work?

Much of my writing when I lived in Wellington was affected by the
landscape and (particularly) weather, though rarely consciously so. It's
a place that forces one to notice the environment, even for someone like
me who thinks that 'the great outdoors' means 'al fresco'. And working
as a meteorologist has given me a certain mode of attention - weather
imagery is common enough in poetry, I suppose, but in retrospect I was
surprised to see just how much I used.

My childhood landscape, the 'Constable Country' of semi-rural Essex, is
also constantly present within me. The woods, pitiful remnants that they
are, seemed like ancient mystery to a 6-year-old, and were given an
extra edge by parental warnings to avoid the WWII bomb craters that
dotted the forest floor. Perhaps this is one of the reasons that I am so
attracted to Geoffrey Hill's poetry - 'Mercian Hymns' certainly
resonated with that early sense of place.


> miekal
>
> who wonders now that we know what everyone is wearing & what they are
> reading & listening to, all that's left is sexual preference & favorite
> foods.


Well, favourite foods include honeyed olives, Parmiggiano Reggiano,
manuka-smoked salmon with sour cream, rare vensison with blueberry
sauce, and strawberries injected with Cointreau; served with aged
Riesling, Pinot Grigio, Kumeu River Chardonnay, a rich Merlot, and Veuve
Clicquot demi-sec, respectively. But more often than not I settle for a
quarter pounder combo with sprite.

My sexual preference is for (female) Bulgarian poets, which
understandably narrows the range a bit.


        Tom Beard,


        (currently wearing an ill-judged and eponymous goatee, which I
         had hoped would make me look like Ethan Hawke, but am afraid
         might make me look more like Bud Bundy)
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 23 Jan 1997 07:31:56 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Brigham Taylor 
Subject:      Hernando Houseman
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

The poem that includes the lines

        Oh I have been to Ludlow Fair
        And left my necktie God knows where

is "Terence, This is Stupid Stuff" from _A Shropshire Lad_

Brigham Taylor
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 23 Jan 1997 05:54:51 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Ron Silliman 
Subject:      Snowy Woods

Bob Frost was born on the 100 block of Eddy Street, San Francisco, back
when the neighborhood right around there was still called St. Anne's
Valley (named for a small lake that no longer exists right at the
location of the Powell Street Bart Station only around 100 yards
away)--really that whole area of Market Street between 5th & 7th
streets used to be close to a swamp as late as the 1890s. Alice B.
Toklas was born on the 900 block of O'Farrell (uphill side of the
street--I think there's a multilayer parking garage there now), Isadora
Duncan was born at 510 Taylor -- the only building of the three that
still exists (and the only one also that is memorialized with a
placque). The Hotel Wentley at the other end of the neighborhood (and
from another era) is now the Polk-Sutter Apartments.

Here's one for Kevin & Dodie and you other San Francisco buffs, what
president was Golden Gate Avenue named for?

All best,

Ron Silliman

who wonders why Miekal thinks poets can spell
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 23 Jan 1997 08:54:26 -0600
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Tom Mandel 
Subject:      Marty Ehrlich
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Pierre Joris writes

"& I'll under-underline the pleasure of listening to Zorn (Masada Live
playing right now as I type). My latest amour fou is for Marty Ehrlich
and the Dark Wood Ensemble's "Emergency Peace" (a New Ear's present from
Don Byrd) -- gorgeous, haunting."

Is this the Marty who is married to Erica Hunt? Also, can you give label,
etc. info for the CD -- thanks.

Thanks too for...

"BTW -- Tom gave a great reading at the Ear Inn last Saturday -- a tour
de force of a poem! Thanks, Tom -- Pierre"

... it is always a fun adventure to read at the Ear Inn.

Tom


Screen Porch
*************************************************
Tom Mandel            *   2927 Tilden St. NW
Washington DC 20008   *   tmandel@screenporch.com
vox: 202-362-1679     *   fax 202-364-5349
*************************************************
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 23 Jan 1997 09:11:47 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "GRAHAM W. FOUST" 
Subject:      no address
In-Reply-To:  <9701230507.AA26222@osf1.gmu.edu>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

sorry to post this to the whole list.  can someone e-mail me the new
address for no roses review?

danke,
Graham
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 23 Jan 1997 09:27:44 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Pierre Joris 
Subject:      Re: Marty Ehrlich
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Tom Mandel wrote:
>
> Pierre Joris writes
>
> "& I'll under-underline the pleasure of listening to Zorn (Masada Live
> playing right now as I type). My latest amour fou is for Marty Ehrlich
> and the Dark Wood Ensemble's "Emergency Peace" (a New Ear's present from
> Don Byrd) -- gorgeous, haunting."
>
> Is this the Marty who is married to Erica Hunt? Also, can you give label,
> etc. info for the CD -- thanks.
>
> Thanks too for...
>
> "BTW -- Tom gave a great reading at the Ear Inn last Saturday -- a tour
> de force of a poem! Thanks, Tom -- Pierre"
>
> ... it is always a fun adventure to read at the Ear Inn.
>
> Tom
>
> Screen Porch
> *************************************************
> Tom Mandel            *   2927 Tilden St. NW
> Washington DC 20008   *   tmandel@screenporch.com
> vox: 202-362-1679     *   fax 202-364-5349
> *************************************************

Don't know if the gent is married to Erica Hunt. He quotes Lorca on
duende in his liner notes, so does have a sense of poetry... "Emergency
peace" is on New Worlds/Countercurrents (#80409-2); the personnel :
Marty Ehrlich clarinet, bass clarinet, flute, wooden flutes, alto sax;
Abdul Wadud cello; Lindsay horner bass; Muhal Richard Abrams piano on
some of the cuts. -- Pierre
--
=========================================
pierre joris   6 madison place   albany ny 12202
tel/fax (510) 426 0433 email:joris@cnsunix.albany.edu
http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/authors/joris/
http://www.albany.edu/~tm0900/nomad.html
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Everything that allows men to become rooted, through
values or sentiments, in _one_ time, in _one_ history, in
_one_ language, is the principle of alienation which
constitutes man as privileged in so far as he is what he is,
[...] imprisoning him in contentment with his own reality
and encouraging him to offer it as an example or impose
it as a conquering assertation. -- Maurice Blanchot
==========================================
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 23 Jan 1997 10:14:53 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Mark Prejsnar 
Subject:      Landscapes, poetry etc.
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

The ongoing discussion about landscape & shape of the poetry etc.  (Frost,
Brathwaite etc. etc.) is the most interesting (to me) in the couple of
weeks I've been around the list.. I'm fascinated that rural & suburban
physical landscapes have been mentioned, more than urban contexts.  I grew
up in about as pretty a rural landscape as I know in the U.S. (Stockbridge
MA, "the Berkshires")--but I feel that my work is more responsive to the
urban surround.  That certainly has something to do with having lived for
half a year in Sau Paulo, 9 years in Boston, six months in Denver--all of
them in rather gritty parts of town.  But more I think with the fact that
social & cultural experience, for me, seem more embedded in
post-industrial urban rust.  The jagged apartness, that I feel in our
culture, which gets involved a lot with the formal choices I make, seems
much like the feel of edgy city jumpiness those places can have.
Word-music derives from social feel.  That's always seemed to me true also
of the US poets I like.

Mark Prejsnar
Atlanta
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 23 Jan 1997 10:27:09 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Charles Bernstein 
Subject:      Re: Marty Ehrlich
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Marty Ehrlich is most definitely married to Erica Hunt, and they together
have two children: Madeline and Julius. Pierre and Tom -- you were both in
the same room with Marty and Erica on Saturday, at Susan Bee's opening at
Granary Books!
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 23 Jan 1997 10:23:54 -0600
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         amato@CHARLIE.CNS.IIT.EDU
Subject:      Re: AWP Convention
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

kyle, the awp conference this year is april 3-5 in washington d.c...

joe
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 23 Jan 1997 09:26:08 -0600
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Joel Felix 
Subject:      LVNG Supplemental "Book"
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

*A Run Thru the Dictionary* an artist's book of a poem by
myself is being offered by LVNG Magazine, Chicago, as Supplemental
Series #2.

The "book," designed by Catherine Wilson Felix,
is printed on clear acetates, bound on rings and comes
with a collage and containing box.

The "poem" is a slight of hand smoke and mirrors
ontological trick--a la Spicer, who pokes
his head in to remind that ontological tricks never
saved anyone. Ha Ha.

$15 (all goes to keeping LVNG inflated)

Make the cheque payable to Peter O'Leary and send to the
        PO Box 3865
        Chicago, Il 60654-0865

ps If anyone on this list would like a copy of LVNG just drop me
note--it's free.

Joel Felix
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 23 Jan 1997 10:41:42 +0000
Reply-To:     ARCHAMBEAU@LFC.EDU
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Robert Archambeau 
Organization: Lake Forest College
Subject:      Re: Landscapes, poetry etc.
MIME-version: 1.0
Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit

>  I feel that my work is more responsive to the
> urban surround.  That certainly has something to do with having lived for
> half a year in Sau Paulo, 9 years in Boston, six months in Denver--all of
> them in rather gritty parts of town.  But more I think with the fact that
> social & cultural experience, for me, seem more embedded in
> post-industrial urban rust.  The jagged apartness, that I feel in our
> culture, which gets involved a lot with the formal choices I make, seems
> much like the feel of edgy city jumpiness those places can have.


What fascinates me is the way that the kind of urban experience Mark
finds essential to his poetry has only been considered "poetic"
experience since, say, Whitman.  I recall Robert Pinsky giving a talk in
which he said that it took Baudelaire to make the city a subject with
which poets were comfortable -- now many poets seem to turn to
"post-industrial urban rust" as readily as poets turned to (and
sentimentalized) rough rural scenes in the wake of Wordsworth.  What I
wonder is this: who has make our suburbs, in all their atomization and
occasional tackiness, into the dominant landscapes of poetic
imaginations? How have suburban experiences of space shaped poetic
perception?  (I'm jumping into this thread mid-stream, so if this has
been covered, just backchannel me the posts).  As one who just months
ago was uprooted from his beloved Chicago to land (against all my
expectations) in the suburbs, I really do want to know.

Robert Archambeau
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 23 Jan 1997 08:40:42 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Brian Carpenter 
Subject:      Re: Toilet Pastures
In-Reply-To:  
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

> W.C. Fields Confounds Egypt's Censors
>
> By Peter Warg
>
> CAIRO (Variety) - Brush up your English or find a new job, Egyptian film
> censors and translators are
> being told...

This reminds me of an advertising shennanigan that occurred in China a
number of years ago.  Some American company selling some carbonated
beverage (I don't recall whom) advertised their product on billboards with
the slogan "Brings you back to life!"

Punchline is, this slogan was translated as "Brings your relatives back
from the dead!"


- Brianas Anecdotus
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 23 Jan 1997 10:57:59 +0100
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Miekal And 
Subject:      ear inn
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Who sets up the reading series at Ear Inn & how do I contact them?

miekal

who is hoping to travel a bit for the first time in 3 years
--
@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#
Dreamtime Village website: http://net22.com/dreamtime
QAZINGULAZA: And/Was/Wakest website:
http://net22.com/qazingulaza
e-mail for DT & And/Was: dtv@mwt.net
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 24 Jan 1997 00:51:54 +1200
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Tom Beard 
Subject:      Re: Landscapes, poetry etc.
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

Mark Prejsnar wrote:

> .. I'm fascinated that rural & suburban
> physical landscapes have been mentioned, more than urban contexts.

=2E.[snip]..

> social & cultural experience, for me, seem more embedded in
> post-industrial urban rust.  The jagged apartness, that I feel in our
> culture, which gets involved a lot with the formal choices I make, seem=
s
> much like the feel of edgy city jumpiness those places can have.

That 'edgy city jumpiness' has had an effect upon me, too, in that I
fiddled around for a while with a sequence I called 'Urban Songs'. NZ
has very little urban culture, being enamored (especially in Auckland)
of the suburban 'quarter-acre paradise', and even those of us who love
the city tend to go home our city-fringe villas (Grey Lynn &c) at night,
leaving the downtown streets to the street-sweeping trucks and a handful
of investors in apartments. Any rust is swept away into industrial
'parks' - there's very little real 'grittiness' to our central cities (K
road being about the only exception).

There is an urban feeling, but it seems to me only secondarily a
physical landscape, and primarily a mental, electronic and semiotic one.
We move into physical proximity, informational convenience and emotional
distance with our fellow city-dwellers, and it's that combination of
jumbled coexistence, rhizomatic linkage and 'jagged apartness' that
seems to me an interesting (and even necessary?) source of formal
choices for writing.

There's a strong movement in Wellington (mostly from Lower Hutt) to
rehabilitate the suburbs as a site for poetry. They're reacting to
Baxter's anti-suburban stance, and are trying to show that the suburbs
aren't entirely dull and soulless - unfortunately, much of their poetry
is exactly that.

I did make a conscious effort to avoid both Baxter's and the suburban
poets' projects. Leigh Davis is about the only local poet I can think of
who has written not so much 'about' as from the post-industrial city in
an even-handed and open manner (unlike David Eggleton's wearying rants).
I am ambivalent about the city (generic) - more so than when I started
writing the sequence - but I have to acknowledge that feelings of
exhileration and soaring ambition go along with alienation and
dislocation. The city is: a basement shop selling tapa cloths and web
browsing; a rave in an art gallery; a motorway through mangroves; taking
up coffee because hot chocolate isn't hip enough; exchanging URLs with
strangers; and passionate discussions about which is the best carpark in
town. Sometimes it hurts like hell, but I'd never live further than
walking distance from the centre.



        Tom Beard,
        Auckland/Wellington.


-------------------------------------------------------------------------=
---------

        _from_ Urban Songs



a breath
sharpens, nails draw
a taut & dreamy
    logo=97

    feed me
on image, _talk

to my machine_, you
could be client,
                 avatar
or agent,

I am motion,
     motion=92s shadow

takes me, sight
unseen


=97=97


raining through light, a face
behind its smoke

                 (a process
glitters)

days when you can taste it=97
the glory of concrete, a serif=92s
wink, signs that flicker
                         underfoot

nearly there, almost here
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 23 Jan 1997 11:23:16 +0100
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Miekal And 
Subject:      Re: CUPichuLAYshun
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Ron Silliman wrote:


> who wonders why Miekal thinks poets can spell

the new sentence breeds
breeds other words thot there already
already spelled one way once
once anaphora persists
persists the anagram
anagram the
the new sentence breeds
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 23 Jan 1997 10:06:06 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         william marsh 
Subject:      Mason Williams
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

i know there was much chatter about Miller Williams this past week,

but was there also talk recently of Mason Williams? can someone please
refresh my memory, or clue me in.

picked up his "FLAVORS" in a used book store the other day, and was amazed.

thanks

bill marsh
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 23 Jan 1997 13:35:21 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Eliza McGrand- CVA Guest 
Subject:      Re: Landscapes, poetry etc.
Comments: To: ARCHAMBEAU@LFC.EDU

"urban experience" has been a part of poetry back way farther than
whitman!  think of swift's "london," for example, or jane taylor's
"A Pair" compairing a spoiled british lordling with a painfully poor
mechanic in the city (~1801) or mary robinson's "City Scene" (both
swift and robinson's poems, by the way, were quick pastiches of images,
and, i believe, both were unrhymed).  the restoration poets, at least
r.h. lovelace and the earl of rochester, both had bleak london/city
poems.  and chaucer had some fine descriptions of london of his day
in _Canterbury Tales_.

most of these poems had a jagged, bleak feel, especially the robinson
and the swift.

and defoe's _Journal of the Plague Year_ in prose, as well as mary
shelley's _The Last Man_, include apocolyptic (sp?) descriptions of
cities -- living, despoiled, dying in the exudations of their own
waste...

good heavens, why this singular fixation on Whitman?  now that i think
on it, carl sandburg went on at great length about Chicago (though i'm
not sure if he did so before whitman) and certainly edward arlington
robinson's tillbury town, and master's spoon river anthology series get
in their swipes at ragged dry industrial landscapes...

i am wearing not black, which is unusual, but a sort of slatey blue pair
of leggings, shiny black boots, slatey blue socks, and a french hand-knit
turtleneck sweater in patchworked shades of dusty green and blue (a gift).
normally i would be upholding the tradition in black.
e
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 23 Jan 1997 12:49:15 +0000
Reply-To:     ARCHAMBEAU@LFC.EDU
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Robert Archambeau 
Organization: Lake Forest College
Subject:      Re: Landscapes, poetry etc.
MIME-version: 1.0
Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit

Two Very Academic Theses of My Own Devising

to be nailed to the doors of the nearest cathedral or writing program:

Thesis One:

 To sentimentalize the city and to denigrate suburbia and aesthetics
conditioned by suburban experience is, in a time of migration to the
suburbs, inherently a conservative position.  It is analagous to the
sentimentalizing or aestheticizing of rural landscapes in Romantic
poetry, with its accompanying denigration (as spititually bankrupt) of
the cities to which so many people were migrating.  In short, the
aestheticizing of the city represents a failure to encompass new
landscapes and new experiences.


Thesis Two:

 To aestheticize or sentimentalize suburban experience and to denegrate
by implication the potential to make art out of urban experience is to
make an art complicit with the dominant economic forces that have
created those suburbs.  To make an art that insists on, or relies on,
the diversity and richness of urban experience is to resist, in the
realm of representation, these forces.

Assignment:

Believe both of the above.  Or write a 1000 word essay pointing out the
internal contradictions and blindspots of either thesis.

An accompanying set of study questions, and an annotated instructor's
edition, are available for $49.95.
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 23 Jan 1997 13:58:41 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Eliza McGrand- CVA Guest 
Subject:      urban and landscapes -- found one! (taylor poem)
Comments: To: ARCHAMBEAU@LFC.EDU

isn't this a beauty....

A Pair  by JANE TAYLOR  (1806)

II.

Down a close street, whose darksome shops display
Old clothes and iron on both sides the way;
Loathsome and wretched, whence the eye in pain,
Averted turns, nor seeks to view again;
Where lowest dregs of human nature dwell,
More loathsome than the rags and rust they sell; --
A pale mechanic rents an attic floor,
By many a shatter'd stair you gain the door:
'Tis one poor room, whose blacken'd walls are hung
With dust that settled there when he was young.
The rusty grate two massy bricks displays,
To fill the sides and make a frugal blaze.
The door hanging, the window patch'd and broke,
The panes obscur'd by half a century's smoke:
There stands the bench at which his life si spent,
Worn, groov'd, and bor'd, and worm-devour'd, and bent,
Where daily, undisturb'd by foes or friends,
In one unvaried attitude he bends.
His tools, long practis'd, seem to understand
Scarce less their functions, than his own right hand.
With these he drives his craft with patient skill;
Year after year would find him at it still:
The noisy world around is changing all,
War follows peace, and kingdoms rise and fall;
France rages now, and Spain, and now the Turk;
Now victory sounds; -- but there he sits at work!
A man might see him so, then bid adieu, --
Make a long voyage to China or Peru;
There traffic, settle, build; at length might come,
Alter'd, and old, and weather-beaten home,
And find him on the same square foot of floor
On which he left him twenty years before.
--The self same bench, and attitude, and stool,
The same quick movement of his cunning tool;
The very distance 'twixt his knees and chin,
As though he had but stepp'd just out and in.

Such is his fate -- and yet you might descry
A latent spark of meaning in his eye.
--That crowded shelf, beside his bench, contains
One old, worn, volume that employs his brains:
With algebraic lore its page is spread,
Where _a_ and _b_ contend with _x_ and _z_:
Sold by some _student_ from a Oxford hall,
--Bought by the pound upon a broker's stall.
On this it is his sole delight to pore,
Early and late, when working time is o'er:
But oft he stops, bewilder'd and perplex'd,
At some hard problem in the learned text;
Pressing his hand upon his puzzled brain,
At what the dullest school-boy could explain.

From needful sleep the precious hour he saves,
To give his thirsty mind the stream it craves:
There, with his slender rush beside him plac'd,
He drinks the knowledge in with greedy haste.
At early morning, when the frosty air
Brightens Orion and the northern Bear,
His distant window mid the dusky row,
Holds a dim light to passenger below.
--A light more dim is flashing on his mind,
That shows its darkness, and its views confin'd.
Had science shone around his early days,
How had his sould expanded in the blaze!
But penury bound him, and his mind in vain
Struggles and writhes beneath her iron chain.

--At length the taper fades, and distant cry
Of early sweep bespeaks the morning nigh;
Slowly it breaks, -- and that rejoicing ray
That wakes the healthful country into day,s
Tips the green hills, slants o'er the level plain,
Reddens the pool, and stream, and cottage pane,
And field, and garden, park, and stately hall,--
Now darts obliquely on his wretched wall.
He knows the wonted signal; shuts his book,
Slowly consigns it to its dusty nook;
Looks out awhile, with fixt and absent stare,
On crowded roofs, seen through the foggy air;
Stirs up the embers, takes his sickly draught,
Sighs at his fortunes, and resumes his craft.
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 23 Jan 1997 13:56:16 EST
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         henry gould 
Subject:      Re: Landscapes, poetry etc.
In-Reply-To:  Message of Thu, 23 Jan 1997 13:35:21 -0500 from
              

On Thu, 23 Jan 1997 13:35:21 -0500 Eliza McGrand- CVA Guest said:
>
>i am wearing not black, which is unusual, but a sort of slatey blue pair
>of leggings, shiny black boots, slatey blue socks, and a french hand-knit
>turtleneck sweater in patchworked shades of dusty green and blue (a gift).
>normally i would be upholding the tradition in black.

Maybe not Paris today, but with all that slate you'll do for a small
French town, I'm sure.  Get out there & renew the urbs!
Henry Gould
wearing black jeans, brown shoes with a small hole in right sole,
a purple sweatshirt, a hawaiian luau type shirt, 2 socks (I think)
and a timex watch which is [(*&^(*%&$^$$%^#] always stopping.
also carrying a business card for Igor Bubnov, former 2nd Secretary
of Soviet Embassy in Washington, DC.  Might come in handy if I'm ever
asked to give a reading overseas.   - hg (alias "Bubba")
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 23 Jan 1997 11:09:10 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Mark Weiss 
Subject:      Re: Landscapes, poetry etc.
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Samuel Johnson, Blake, Dryden, Pope, Marvell in the satires. Not all of
Rochester's city poems are bleak, but those that aren't are pornographic;
Dryden is more celebratory than bleak except when he's writing political
satire.
Swift wrote city poems in rhyme, as well.
Aren't there latin city poems?

On the evolution of attitudes towards, Raymond Williams, _The Country and
the City_, although his focus is on the novel. One of my favorite books.

At 01:35 PM 1/23/97 -0500, you wrote:
>"urban experience" has been a part of poetry back way farther than
>whitman!  think of swift's "london," for example, or jane taylor's
>"A Pair" compairing a spoiled british lordling with a painfully poor
>mechanic in the city (~1801) or mary robinson's "City Scene" (both
>swift and robinson's poems, by the way, were quick pastiches of images,
>and, i believe, both were unrhymed).  the restoration poets, at least
>r.h. lovelace and the earl of rochester, both had bleak london/city
>poems.  and chaucer had some fine descriptions of london of his day
>in _Canterbury Tales_.
>
>most of these poems had a jagged, bleak feel, especially the robinson
>and the swift.
>
>and defoe's _Journal of the Plague Year_ in prose, as well as mary
>shelley's _The Last Man_, include apocolyptic (sp?) descriptions of
>cities -- living, despoiled, dying in the exudations of their own
>waste...
>
>good heavens, why this singular fixation on Whitman?  now that i think
>on it, carl sandburg went on at great length about Chicago (though i'm
>not sure if he did so before whitman) and certainly edward arlington
>robinson's tillbury town, and master's spoon river anthology series get
>in their swipes at ragged dry industrial landscapes...
>
>i am wearing not black, which is unusual, but a sort of slatey blue pair
>of leggings, shiny black boots, slatey blue socks, and a french hand-knit
>turtleneck sweater in patchworked shades of dusty green and blue (a gift).
>normally i would be upholding the tradition in black.
>e
>
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 23 Jan 1997 14:14:05 EST
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Daniel_Bouchard@HMCO.COM
Subject:      Re: Landscapes, poetry etc.
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: Text/Plain

Professor Rochambeau,

The Board of Deans, et al, suggests you take an immediate sabbatical in the
rural environment of Screamtime Village and ease the traffic flow (suburban,
etc.) making inroads on your imagination.



____________________________

Assignment:

Believe both of the above.  Or write a 1000 word essay pointing out the
internal contradictions and blindspots of either thesis.

An accompanying set of study questions, and an annotated instructor's
edition, are available for $49.95.
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 23 Jan 1997 11:21:03 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Mark Weiss 
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

I think middle-class suburbia has lots of poets, but probably few of us on
the list read them. They fill the establishment journals.

There is another kind of suburbia, and it's everywhere. There's Berkeley,
but there's also Richmond (is Oakland still a suburb), and there's
Scarsdale, but there's also Perth Amboy. I may be the only poet who's
written about Perth Amboy.
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 23 Jan 1997 13:27:56 -0600
Reply-To:     maria damon 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         maria damon 
Subject:      Re: urban and landscapes

benjamin on paris arcades and baudelaire is the best!  good to teach in
conjunction with o'hara.
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 23 Jan 1997 14:29:34 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Mark Prejsnar 
Subject:      Apples, oranges & form
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

All the postings since mine, about city & suburbia, were really
interesting & sharp.  But they mostly seem to be talking about descriptive
content...subject matter.  There's a mention of "sentimentalizing the city
and denigrating suburbia"...which sort of sounds like it must refer to my
posting.  What my posting tried to address 1. is mostly not a careful
"choice" of "subject matter;" but about how poets (including myself) come
to be influenced by their socio-experiencial context; 2. is a matter of
FORM not primarily subject matter....

Other folks are saying really interesting things, but they seem to think
they are addressing my post, & I don't see it that way.  Remember I was
responding to the Brathwaite comment about how the shape of a landscape
might affect the SHAPE of a poet's work..I sort of assume that "shape"
here is not something that is synonymous with paraphraseable descriptive
subject-matter (necessarily)

The final word on what I MEANT to say (I know I wasn't clear enuff) might
be to mention two very different poets who I think of as paradigmatic of
the sort of "city poetry" I meant to identify myself with.  I think they
write out of a late 20th century feel of how consciousness is molded by
the urban matrix of social being (which doesn't mean they "talk about"
cities):    Ron Silliman and Clark Coolidge

Mark P.
Atlanta
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 23 Jan 1997 13:37:57 -0600
Reply-To:     maria damon 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         maria damon 
Subject:      Re: Mason Williams

i remember seeing mason williams on the smothers brothers show, playing his
piece "classical jazz."  also he made some rapidfire collages of political stuff
that they showed on the show, which, suburbanite that i am and was, were amazing
to me, and i think pretty daring for 60s mainstream tv.  i remember him reciting
some of his poetry, but i don't remember the poetry per se.  whatever happened
to him?
md

In message  <1.5.4.32.19970123180606.006d497c@nunic.nu.edu> UB Poetics
discussion group writes:
> i know there was much chatter about Miller Williams this past week,
>
> but was there also talk recently of Mason Williams? can someone please
> refresh my memory, or clue me in.
>
> picked up his "FLAVORS" in a used book store the other day, and was amazed.
>
> thanks
>
> bill marsh
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 23 Jan 1997 13:47:07 -0600
Reply-To:     maria damon 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         maria damon 
Subject:      Re: Apples, oranges & form

mark prejsnar writes:
>
> Other folks are saying really interesting things, but they seem to think
> they are addressing my post, & I don't see it that way. ...

that's sort of the way POETIX works --many threads come into being tangentially
and take on a substance and trajectory of their own.  that's part of the
non-linear, pleasantly desultory nature of these discussions, some of which will
appear focused, some diffuse and digressive. welcome
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 23 Jan 1997 15:13:28 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Jordan Davis 
Subject:      Re: your mail
In-Reply-To:  <199701231921.LAA26548@serbia.it.earthlink.net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

Didn't Jane Bowles write about Perth Amboy in _Two Serious Ladies_?
JD

On Thu, 23 Jan 1997, Mark Weiss wrote:

> I think middle-class suburbia has lots of poets, but probably few of us on
> the list read them. They fill the establishment journals.
>
> There is another kind of suburbia, and it's everywhere. There's Berkeley,
> but there's also Richmond (is Oakland still a suburb), and there's
> Scarsdale, but there's also Perth Amboy. I may be the only poet who's
> written about Perth Amboy.
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 23 Jan 1997 15:16:56 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Jordan Davis 
Subject:      suburban practice, urban subject
In-Reply-To:  
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

In which case the suburbs would be the remote, the control --

And the city would be the programming --

which is totally neglected at this point, except in the good ol Bretonian
sense of love that decay

which I don't --

though I did love coming across a half-exposed Fleischmann's (sp?) ad at
the 34th st N/R/Path stop the other day, guy in sunday sailor outfit,
early 60s Jackiesque lady looking on -- set on a yacht at an urban pier --

can you live at home as if in a foreign city --

JD
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 24 Jan 1997 09:29:56 +1300
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         DS 
Subject:      Re: Landscapes, poetry etc.
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Or Melville's 'Tartarus of Maids'

dan

>good heavens, why this singular fixation on Whitman?  now that i think
>on it, carl sandburg went on at great length about Chicago (though i'm
>not sure if he did so before whitman) and certainly edward arlington
>robinson's tillbury town, and master's spoon river anthology series get
>in their swipes at ragged dry industrial landscapes...
>
>i am wearing not black, which is unusual, but a sort of slatey blue pair
>of leggings, shiny black boots, slatey blue socks, and a french hand-knit
>turtleneck sweater in patchworked shades of dusty green and blue (a gift).
>normally i would be upholding the tradition in black.
>e
>
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 23 Jan 1997 15:45:11 EST
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         henry gould 
Subject:      Re: Landscapes, poetry etc.
In-Reply-To:  Message of Fri, 24 Jan 1997 09:29:56 +1300 from
              

Not to mention Jack Spandrift's

BRIEF LAMENT OF THE DISORIENTED COWPOKE (w/twang plus uke)

Them lights! that blaze til dawn above   the lonesome skyscrapers,
Aw man - I think my eyes are    lonesome too -
For five or six lil twinklers,   far        apart,
& sky      so peaceful
That
I won' have to read about it     in
The papers...

- AVAILABLE ON CD from CowboyDust CD Supply Store, Red Flag Wyo.  (call
for message service - he only drops by at the end of the cattle drive)
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 23 Jan 1997 13:02:45 +0000
Reply-To:     ARCHAMBEAU@LFC.EDU
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Robert Archambeau 
Organization: Lake Forest College
Subject:      Re: Landscapes, poetry etc.
MIME-version: 1.0
Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit

>
> "urban experience" has been a part of poetry back way farther than
> whitman!  think of swift's "london," for example, or jane taylor's
> "A Pair" compairing a spoiled british lordling with a painfully poor
> mechanic in the city (~1801) or mary robinson's "City Scene" (both
> swift and robinson's poems, by the way, were quick pastiches of images,
> and, i believe, both were unrhymed).  the restoration poets, at least
> r.h. lovelace and the earl of rochester, both had bleak london/city
> poems.  and chaucer had some fine descriptions of london of his day
> in _Canterbury Tales_.
>
> most of these poems had a jagged, bleak feel, especially the robinson
> and the swift.


Sorry.  Should have said it was Whitman (and others in the mid 19C) who
made a _celbratory_ poetry about urban experience.  Which seems to be
something you agree with.  One could find exceptions.


R.A.
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 23 Jan 1997 16:56:44 -0500
Reply-To:     Mark Prejsnar 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Mark Prejsnar 
Subject:      more citification
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

Michael C.--
Thanks for that thoughtful post...
I don't think my work tends to be as immediately responsive to where I am
as that...

Oddly enough, I just picked up (2 hours before your post??) Elemenopy; &
have started reading it for the first time--I love it.  A certain range
between more placid & more "jangley" there, too, I feel.

Not surprisingly, I seem to like best things that jangle..

Mark P.
Atlanta
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 23 Jan 1997 13:49:55 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Mark Weiss 
Subject:      Re: your mail
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

I may be the only other ooet who's written about Perth Amboy.

At 03:13 PM 1/23/97 -0500, you wrote:
>Didn't Jane Bowles write about Perth Amboy in _Two Serious Ladies_?
>JD
>
>On Thu, 23 Jan 1997, Mark Weiss wrote:
>
>> I think middle-class suburbia has lots of poets, but probably few of us on
>> the list read them. They fill the establishment journals.
>>
>> There is another kind of suburbia, and it's everywhere. There's Berkeley,
>> but there's also Richmond (is Oakland still a suburb), and there's
>> Scarsdale, but there's also Perth Amboy. I may be the only poet who's
>> written about Perth Amboy.
>>
>
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 23 Jan 1997 16:14:02 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Michael Coffey 
Subject:      Apples, oranges & form -Reply
Comments: To: mprejsn@LAW.EMORY.EDU

mark p wrote:
"The final word on what I MEANT to say (I know I wasn't clear enuff)
might be to mention two very different poets who I think of as
paradigmatic of the sort of "city poetry" I meant to identify myself with.  I
think they write out of a late 20th century feel of how consciousness
etc"

one thing i have noticed over the years, in which i have lived mostly in
new york city though having been reared in a very small town in the
adirondacks, might have less to do with landscape than the way
particular landscapes are peopled. For example, in a new book  of
poems i have coming from Coffee House Press, I found that it was
structured as an opposition between a kind of text that was generated
from a city experience and another that was generated  by a revisiting
(and remembering) a rural community; and the differences in the style
and form and tone were quite distinct. The "city poems," if you will, have
a nervous and discontinuous flux, with a kind of energy seeking some
isometry, some stabilty, but constantly foiled; whereas the upstate, North
Country poems have a more  meditative, observant mood, in which the
poems find certain connections, discover them at times, by accident.

This was a source of amazement to me as i put the book together. It was
not premeditated, since I simply began by going through compositions of
the last two years and found these jangly, impersonal, somewhat
abstracted poems written here in New York City and these more pastoral
ones and personal ones written while visiting my mother and old friends
up in the mountains.

It is borne out, however, by my experiences with those places, and I
think a small-town community carries within it kinds of relations that a city
environment does not. These kinds of relations between people, where
everyone either knows everyone or knows someone who was related
to someone  tends to enforce (sometimes not successfully, sure) a
civility that is not found so often in a city, where the folks one deals with
day to day live in a kind of anonymity from one another and from you.
 As an example, two, really: when my father passed away, in the town
he grew up in, i took my mother around to the various places one has to
go to in the aftermath of a death: the knights of columbus, where he had
a life insurance policy; the motor vehicle bureau, to amend car deeds, the
social security office, etc. Every person my mother, in her grief, had to
deal with either knew her or my father or was a friend of mine, and
pleasantries were inevitably exchanged and the otherwise difficult
process of  taking care of such details was made warm and human. I
can only imagine how such a trek from place to place would go in new
york city, with total strangers.


  And secondly, once when i was visiting upstate, I read in the local
paper how a teenage boy driving a truck was drunk and  ran through a
flashing red light at a rural intersection at about six in the morning,
speeding home after a night of drink, only to be blindsided by another
truck, driven by his uncle. The boy died. It just shows you how even
random accidents are likely to involve someone you know.

I think the consequences of these differences are very pronounced
when it comes to narrative styles, or should be, but it certainly, for me,
extends to poetry as well.

This is surely why I got away from the small town life and why I will
probably return.

two samples, one from each side of the book, which is to be called 87
North, after the state highway that runs from NYC upstate, all the way to
canada

Rhythming, what was it?
Monk's thing:
"Rhythm-a-ning," at the Five Spot.
1958. Roy Haynes on drums
Johnny Griffin on tenor sax
Ahmed Abdul-Malik
on bass, nineteen
and fifty-eight.

No hepcat shit. No more.
Baldwin called Brando
a beautiful cat, then, when.

Monk on piano.
That's that.



Adirondack Sounds


I put the words in his mouth?
this image of myself,
my son at three years old.
I say to him

Cadyville, Saranac, Schuyler Falls.
Dannemora, Redford, Beekmantown.
Chazy Lake, pronounced chez Zee.
And he says them back to me,

eyes big, his tongue clumsy and sweet,
saying the names of towns of my youth.

I?m far from them now,
these syllables holding mysteries
of places people came to,
of how things were then.

I knew my own, Saranac,
without curiosity.
It was like my name.
But Cadyville was where the girls lived,

Schuyler Falls a forest cleared for playing ball,
Dannemora a prison town with tall, tough Irish,
Chazy just a cold, cold lake.

The places are on a map
I never need to study,
just hamlets to drive through.
The people that built them,

the sites there, now gone,
yielded to spells of indifferent offspring,
to places fallen down.
Still, Beekmantown

in my boy?s mouth
is a clear parcel of fields
farmed for stone and apples,
Redford the soft fold of our church.

He repeats them to me
as I ask, happy at the drill,
expecting something for his effort.
I give him my confused joy.

I say to him ?paradise,?
and hear the pure word.
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 23 Jan 1997 14:48:58 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Mark Weiss 
Subject:      Re: Apples, oranges & form -Reply
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Let me suggest that those of us raised in cities sometimes write thoughtful,
quiet, nostalgic poems about the old neighborhood. I even have one with my
kid as recipient of lore. He grew up in the city, but it was a different
neighborhood--and my old neighborhood was a different neighborhood, too.
And sometimes us homeboys also write poems jumpy with discovery about rural
places.

It may be the condition of the poet's life as well as some inherent geist
that informs the rhythm of the poems.


At 04:14 PM 1/23/97 -0500, you wrote:
>mark p wrote:
>"The final word on what I MEANT to say (I know I wasn't clear enuff)
>might be to mention two very different poets who I think of as
>paradigmatic of the sort of "city poetry" I meant to identify myself with.  I
>think they write out of a late 20th century feel of how consciousness
>etc"
>
>one thing i have noticed over the years, in which i have lived mostly in
>new york city though having been reared in a very small town in the
>adirondacks, might have less to do with landscape than the way
>particular landscapes are peopled. For example, in a new book  of
>poems i have coming from Coffee House Press, I found that it was
>structured as an opposition between a kind of text that was generated
>from a city experience and another that was generated  by a revisiting
>(and remembering) a rural community; and the differences in the style
>and form and tone were quite distinct. The "city poems," if you will, have
>a nervous and discontinuous flux, with a kind of energy seeking some
>isometry, some stabilty, but constantly foiled; whereas the upstate, North
>Country poems have a more  meditative, observant mood, in which the
>poems find certain connections, discover them at times, by accident.
>
>This was a source of amazement to me as i put the book together. It was
>not premeditated, since I simply began by going through compositions of
>the last two years and found these jangly, impersonal, somewhat
>abstracted poems written here in New York City and these more pastoral
>ones and personal ones written while visiting my mother and old friends
>up in the mountains.
>
>It is borne out, however, by my experiences with those places, and I
>think a small-town community carries within it kinds of relations that a city
>environment does not. These kinds of relations between people, where
>everyone either knows everyone or knows someone who was related
>to someone  tends to enforce (sometimes not successfully, sure) a
>civility that is not found so often in a city, where the folks one deals with
>day to day live in a kind of anonymity from one another and from you.
> As an example, two, really: when my father passed away, in the town
>he grew up in, i took my mother around to the various places one has to
>go to in the aftermath of a death: the knights of columbus, where he had
>a life insurance policy; the motor vehicle bureau, to amend car deeds, the
>social security office, etc. Every person my mother, in her grief, had to
>deal with either knew her or my father or was a friend of mine, and
>pleasantries were inevitably exchanged and the otherwise difficult
>process of  taking care of such details was made warm and human. I
>can only imagine how such a trek from place to place would go in new
>york city, with total strangers.
>
>
>  And secondly, once when i was visiting upstate, I read in the local
>paper how a teenage boy driving a truck was drunk and  ran through a
>flashing red light at a rural intersection at about six in the morning,
>speeding home after a night of drink, only to be blindsided by another
>truck, driven by his uncle. The boy died. It just shows you how even
>random accidents are likely to involve someone you know.
>
>I think the consequences of these differences are very pronounced
>when it comes to narrative styles, or should be, but it certainly, for me,
>extends to poetry as well.
>
>This is surely why I got away from the small town life and why I will
>probably return.
>
>two samples, one from each side of the book, which is to be called 87
>North, after the state highway that runs from NYC upstate, all the way to
>canada
>
>Rhythming, what was it?
>Monk's thing:
>"Rhythm-a-ning," at the Five Spot.
>1958. Roy Haynes on drums
>Johnny Griffin on tenor sax
>Ahmed Abdul-Malik
>on bass, nineteen
>and fifty-eight.
>
>No hepcat shit. No more.
>Baldwin called Brando
>a beautiful cat, then, when.
>
>Monk on piano.
>That's that.
>
>
>
>Adirondack Sounds
>
>
>I put the words in his mouth?
>this image of myself,
>my son at three years old.
>I say to him
>
>Cadyville, Saranac, Schuyler Falls.
>Dannemora, Redford, Beekmantown.
>Chazy Lake, pronounced chez Zee.
>And he says them back to me,
>
>eyes big, his tongue clumsy and sweet,
>saying the names of towns of my youth.
>
>I?m far from them now,
>these syllables holding mysteries
>of places people came to,
>of how things were then.
>
>I knew my own, Saranac,
>without curiosity.
>It was like my name.
>But Cadyville was where the girls lived,
>
>Schuyler Falls a forest cleared for playing ball,
>Dannemora a prison town with tall, tough Irish,
>Chazy just a cold, cold lake.
>
>The places are on a map
>I never need to study,
>just hamlets to drive through.
>The people that built them,
>
>the sites there, now gone,
>yielded to spells of indifferent offspring,
>to places fallen down.
>Still, Beekmantown
>
>in my boy?s mouth
>is a clear parcel of fields
>farmed for stone and apples,
>Redford the soft fold of our church.
>
>He repeats them to me
>as I ask, happy at the drill,
>expecting something for his effort.
>I give him my confused joy.
>
>I say to him ?paradise,?
>and hear the pure word.
>
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 23 Jan 1997 15:24:26 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "Aldon L. Nielsen" 
Subject:      Re: further on a certain A. Philip
In-Reply-To:  <199701232029.JAA26466@ihug.co.nz>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

The bio. I'm currently reading is Jervis Anderson's _A. Philip Randolph:
A Biographical Portrait_, now much dated (Randolph was still alive when
Anderson wrote it) --

My particular interest at this point has been Randolph's contacts, mostly
via _The Messenger_, with writers such as George Schuyler, Wallace
Thruman, Theophilus Lewis etc. -- Philip's mag. was an integral part of
the Harlem Renaissance publishing explosion, but, of course, took quite a
different position from Du Bois's _Crisis_ or _Opportunity_ over at the
Urban League -- also reading this for my other projects -- tracking
history of "Left" writing by African-Americans for context in my work on
C.L.R. James in America --

Anderson's book is really informative, but I know a lot more info has
been developed since '73, when he published it --
One of the early contributing editors was Ernest Rice McKinney, with whom
James had many battles in the next decade inside the American Trotskyite
movement --

After Claude McKay's "If We Must Die" appeared in Max Eastman's
_Liberator_, it was immediately reprinted uptown in Randolph's
_Messenger_ as well as in Cyril Briggs's yet more radical _Crusader_ --


anybody know of a more recent bio.?
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 23 Jan 1997 15:26:41 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Laura Moriarty 
Subject:      NEW RELEASE
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

I thought this might interest the list.

Laura Moriarty

>Date: Thu, 23 Jan 1997 14:08:02 -0800
>Reply-To: videonews@library.berkeley.edu
>Originator: videonews@library.berkeley.edu
>Sender: videonews@library.berkeley.edu
>Precedence: bulk
>From: TheCinemaG@aol.com
>To: Multiple recipients of list 
>Subject: NEW RELEASE
>
>*ANNOUNCING NEW LITERATURE RELEASE FROM THE CINEMA GUILD*
>
>THE BEATS: AN EXISTENTIAL COMEDY
>Focusing on the beat poetry scene of the late Fifties, this video
>is not a conventional documentary but a film poem which
>celebrates a colorful generation of American artists. During the
>Eisenhower Administration and the scourge of McCarthyism, a
>stultifying cultural period in America, a movement of self-styled
> free spirits,  centered in Venice, California, but which spread
>to San Francisco's North Beach and New York's Greenwich Village,
>united by their dedication to art and social nonconformity,
>spawned an artistic movement with a rich literary legacy. The
>film features such poets as Stuart Perkoff, Aya, Jack Hirschman,
>Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and Allen Ginsberg, who read their poems
>and discuss what it means to be a poet in America. The Beats,
>which also features other celebrities of the era such as
>filmmaker Shirley Clarke, Warhol superstar Viva and performer
>Taylor Mead, complemented by a jazz score by Si Perkoff, movingly
>re-creates the spirit of the beat era.
>Directed by Philomene Long
>1980, black and white, 60 mins., video
>Purchase: $79.95
>  "a gem of a movie that captures the magic of the beat generation
>and their continuing legacy".  -  The Los Angeles Times
>
>AVAILABLE FROM:
>The Cinema Guild
>1697 Broadway, Suite 506
>New York, NY 10019
>(212) 246-5522(phone) (212) 246-5525(fax)
>e-mail: TheCinemaG@aol.com
>website: http://www.cinemguild.com/cinemaguild (features our complete
>catalog)
>
>INQUIRE ABOUT OUR LITERATURE CATALOG.
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 23 Jan 1997 18:21:00 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "Pritchett,Pat @Silverplume" 
Subject:      Re: Apples, oranges & form -Reply
Comments: To: Mark Weiss 
MIME-version: 1.0
Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN
Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT

When we're talking about landscape & poetry aren't we really talking about
"the dialectics of inside/outside," as Bachelard put it? With the poem as
the form of mediation between these two? Seems to me "landscape" is simply a
figure of speech designating the way we perceive/appropriate experience.

Is this what you were getting at, Mark Presjnar (sic)?

Patrick Pritchett
 ----------
From: Mark Weiss
To: POETICS
Subject: Re: Apples, oranges & form -Reply
Date: Thursday, January 23, 1997 5:11PM


Let me suggest that those of us raised in cities sometimes write thoughtful,
quiet, nostalgic poems about the old neighborhood. I even have one with my
kid as recipient of lore. He grew up in the city, but it was a different
neighborhood--and my old neighborhood was a different neighborhood, too.
And sometimes us homeboys also write poems jumpy with discovery about rural
places.

It may be the condition of the poet's life as well as some inherent geist
that informs the rhythm of the poems.


At 04:14 PM 1/23/97 -0500, you wrote:
>mark p wrote:
>"The final word on what I MEANT to say (I know I wasn't clear enuff)
>might be to mention two very different poets who I think of as
>paradigmatic of the sort of "city poetry" I meant to identify myself with.
 I
>think they write out of a late 20th century feel of how consciousness
>etc"
>
>one thing i have noticed over the years, in which i have lived mostly in
>new york city though having been reared in a very small town in the
>adirondacks, might have less to do with landscape than the way
>particular landscapes are peopled. For example, in a new book  of
>poems i have coming from Coffee House Press, I found that it was
>structured as an opposition between a kind of text that was generated
>from a city experience and another that was generated  by a revisiting
>(and remembering) a rural community; and the differences in the style
>and form and tone were quite distinct. The "city poems," if you will, have
>a nervous and discontinuous flux, with a kind of energy seeking some
>isometry, some stabilty, but constantly foiled; whereas the upstate, North
>Country poems have a more  meditative, observant mood, in which the
>poems find certain connections, discover them at times, by accident.
>
>This was a source of amazement to me as i put the book together. It was
>not premeditated, since I simply began by going through compositions of
>the last two years and found these jangly, impersonal, somewhat
>abstracted poems written here in New York City and these more pastoral
>ones and personal ones written while visiting my mother and old friends
>up in the mountains.
>
>It is borne out, however, by my experiences with those places, and I
>think a small-town community carries within it kinds of relations that a
city
>environment does not. These kinds of relations between people, where
>everyone either knows everyone or knows someone who was related
>to someone  tends to enforce (sometimes not successfully, sure) a
>civility that is not found so often in a city, where the folks one deals
with
>day to day live in a kind of anonymity from one another and from you.
> As an example, two, really: when my father passed away, in the town
>he grew up in, i took my mother around to the various places one has to
>go to in the aftermath of a death: the knights of columbus, where he had
>a life insurance policy; the motor vehicle bureau, to amend car deeds, the
>social security office, etc. Every person my mother, in her grief, had to
>deal with either knew her or my father or was a friend of mine, and
>pleasantries were inevitably exchanged and the otherwise difficult
>process of  taking care of such details was made warm and human. I
>can only imagine how such a trek from place to place would go in new
>york city, with total strangers.
>
>
>  And secondly, once when i was visiting upstate, I read in the local
>paper how a teenage boy driving a truck was drunk and  ran through a
>flashing red light at a rural intersection at about six in the morning,
>speeding home after a night of drink, only to be blindsided by another
>truck, driven by his uncle. The boy died. It just shows you how even
>random accidents are likely to involve someone you know.
>
>I think the consequences of these differences are very pronounced
>when it comes to narrative styles, or should be, but it certainly, for me,
>extends to poetry as well.
>
>This is surely why I got away from the small town life and why I will
>probably return.
>
>two samples, one from each side of the book, which is to be called 87
>North, after the state highway that runs from NYC upstate, all the way to
>canada
>
>Rhythming, what was it?
>Monk's thing:
>"Rhythm-a-ning," at the Five Spot.
>1958. Roy Haynes on drums
>Johnny Griffin on tenor sax
>Ahmed Abdul-Malik
>on bass, nineteen
>and fifty-eight.
>
>No hepcat shit. No more.
>Baldwin called Brando
>a beautiful cat, then, when.
>
>Monk on piano.
>That's that.
>
>
>
>Adirondack Sounds
>
>
>I put the words in his mouth?
>this image of myself,
>my son at three years old.
>I say to him
>
>Cadyville, Saranac, Schuyler Falls.
>Dannemora, Redford, Beekmantown.
>Chazy Lake, pronounced chez Zee.
>And he says them back to me,
>
>eyes big, his tongue clumsy and sweet,
>saying the names of towns of my youth.
>
>I?m far from them now,
>these syllables holding mysteries
>of places people came to,
>of how things were then.
>
>I knew my own, Saranac,
>without curiosity.
>It was like my name.
>But Cadyville was where the girls lived,
>
>Schuyler Falls a forest cleared for playing ball,
>Dannemora a prison town with tall, tough Irish,
>Chazy just a cold, cold lake.
>
>The places are on a map
>I never need to study,
>just hamlets to drive through.
>The people that built them,
>
>the sites there, now gone,
>yielded to spells of indifferent offspring,
>to places fallen down.
>Still, Beekmantown
>
>in my boy?s mouth
>is a clear parcel of fields
>farmed for stone and apples,
>Redford the soft fold of our church.
>
>He repeats them to me
>as I ask, happy at the drill,
>expecting something for his effort.
>I give him my confused joy.
>
>I say to him ?paradise,?
>and hear the pure word.
>
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 23 Jan 1997 19:44:25 -0600
Reply-To:     maria damon 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         maria damon 
Subject:      Re: further on a certain A. Philip

the book i'm reading was published in 1977 and reprinted in 1991.  i''m sure
there's been more since then but i don't know of it.  has robin kelley written
anything on him, or is kelley's domain exclusively the south?

In message   UB Poetics
discussion group writes:
> The bio. I'm currently reading is Jervis Anderson's _A. Philip Randolph:
> A Biographical Portrait_, now much dated (Randolph was still alive when
> Anderson wrote it) --
>
> My particular interest at this point has been Randolph's contacts, mostly
> via _The Messenger_, with writers such as George Schuyler, Wallace
> Thruman, Theophilus Lewis etc. -- Philip's mag. was an integral part of
> the Harlem Renaissance publishing explosion, but, of course, took quite a
> different position from Du Bois's _Crisis_ or _Opportunity_ over at the
> Urban League -- also reading this for my other projects -- tracking
> history of "Left" writing by African-Americans for context in my work on
> C.L.R. James in America --
>
> Anderson's book is really informative, but I know a lot more info has
> been developed since '73, when he published it --
> One of the early contributing editors was Ernest Rice McKinney, with whom
> James had many battles in the next decade inside the American Trotskyite
> movement --
>
> After Claude McKay's "If We Must Die" appeared in Max Eastman's
> _Liberator_, it was immediately reprinted uptown in Randolph's
> _Messenger_ as well as in Cyril Briggs's yet more radical _Crusader_ --
>
>
> anybody know of a more recent bio.?
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 23 Jan 1997 20:01:43 -0600
Reply-To:     maria damon 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         maria damon 
Subject:      WINTER READING SERIES: "ALTERNATIVE" VERBAL ARTS!!
Comments: To: Beverly M Atkinson ,
          englfac@maroon.tc.umn.edu, engrad-l@maroon.tc.umn.edu,
          evadog@bitstream.net, london@bitstream.net, Riv-Ellen Prell
          ,
          chow@cs.umn.edu, dtv@mwt.net, manowak@alex.stkate.edu,
          belgu001@maroon.tc.umn.edu, Anna A Reckin
          ,
          Georgia L Sine ,
          coxxx012@maroon.tc.umn.edu, Carolyn L Montgomery
          

Dear All: please pass this information on to anyone you feel might be
interested, esp. large groups of writers, artists, students and faculty
throughout the twin cities area.

WRITERS__READING__

> This winter, several writers will be visiting the English Department in 207A
Lind Hall to read from, perform, or demonstrate their their work.  They are:

 MIEKAL AND (Wednesday, February 5, 3:15 PM)

 is a the co-founder of Xexoxial Endarchy, a non-profit artist-run multi-arts
 organization that includes Xexoxial Editions, publisher of experimental
 visual/verbal literature; Audio Muzixa Qet, an audio/video cassette label;
 Autoceptor Experimedia, specializing in interactive hypermedia for
 Macintosh computer.  As poet, composer, hypermedia and performance artist, he
 is the author of many volumes, including _Strategy for Wracking Hylic_,
 _The Missing Text of the Lost Tower_, and _Babbally_; as anarchist
 communard and permaculture explorer, he is the co-founder of Dreamtime
 Village in West Lima, Wisconsin.

 MARK NOWAK (Wednesday, February 12, 3:30 PM)

 is a poet who teaches Humanities at the College of St Catherine.  He edits
 _Cross-Cultural Poetics_ and the annual _North American
 Ideophonics_.  His book _The Pain-Dance Begins_ is forthcoming from Heat Press.

 CAROLYN ERLER (also February 12, 3:30 PM)

 is a textile artist and novelist.  She has taught at MCAD and the College of
 St Catherine.

 JONATHAN BRANNEN (Wednesday, February 19, 3:15 PM)

 is the author of the poetry collections _The Glass Man Left Waltzing_
 (Meow Press, 1996), _Thing Is The Anagram For Night_ (Texture Press,
 1996), and _nothing doing ever again_ (Score Press, 1995).  His short
 stories have appeared in Asylum Annual, Black Ice, Central Park, Fiction
 International and elsewhere.  He currently lives in Morris, Minnesota
 where he publishes Standing Stones Press.

 ERIK BELGUM (Wednesday, February 26, 3:15 PM)

 is the author of _Star Fiction_ (Detour Press, 1996) and _The Man Who
 Could Talk_ (forthcoming).  His work has been performed at the Walker Art
 Center, the Banff Centre for the Arts, and as a part of the series New
 Music Across America.  He co-edits the audio-journal _Voys_.

 GARY SULLIVAN (Wednesday, March 5, 3:15 PM)

 is the co-editor of Detour Press and author of _Dead Man_ (Meow Press, 1996).
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 23 Jan 1997 20:06:44 -0600
Reply-To:     maria damon 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         maria damon 
Subject:      Re: WINTER READING SERIES: "ALTERNATIVE" VERBAL ARTS!!
Comments: To: Beverly M Atkinson ,
          englfac@maroon.tc.umn.edu, engrad-l@maroon.tc.umn.edu,
          evadog@bitstream.net, london@bitstream.net, Riv-Ellen Prell
          ,
          chow@cs.umn.edu, dtv@mwt.net, manowak@alex.stkate.edu,
          belgu001@maroon.tc.umn.edu, Anna A Reckin
          ,
          Georgia L Sine ,
          coxxx012@maroon.tc.umn.edu, Carolyn L Montgomery
          

amendment, with address:

In message "maria damon"  writes:
 Dear All: please pass this information on to anyone you feel might be
 interested, esp. large groups of writers, artists, students and faculty
 throughout the twin cities area.

 WRITERS__READING__

 This winter, several writers will be visiting the University of Minnesota's
English Department in 207A Lind Hall, 207 Church St SE (West Bank) to read from,
perform, or demonstrate their work.
 They are:

  MIEKAL AND (Wednesday, February 5, 3:15 PM)

  is a the co-founder of Xexoxial Endarchy, a non-profit artist-run multi-arts
  organization that includes Xexoxial Editions, publisher of experimental
  visual/verbal literature; Audio Muzixa Qet, an audio/video cassette label;
  Autoceptor Experimedia, specializing in interactive hypermedia for
  Macintosh computer.  As poet, composer, hypermedia and performance artist,
  he is the author of many volumes, including _Strategy for Wracking Hylic_,
  _The Missing Text of the Lost Tower_, and _Babbally_; as anarchist
  communard and permaculture explorer, he is the co-founder of Dreamtime
  Village in West Lima, Wisconsin.

  MARK NOWAK (Wednesday, February 12, 3:30 PM)

  is a poet who teaches Humanities at the College of St Catherine.  He edits
  _Cross-Cultural Poetics_ and the annual _North American
  Ideophonics_.  His book _The Pain-Dance Begins_ is forthcoming from Heat
 Press.

  CAROLYN ERLER (also February 12, 3:30 PM)

  is a textile artist and novelist.  She has taught at MCAD and the College of
  St Catherine.

  JONATHAN BRANNEN (Wednesday, February 19, 3:15 PM)

  is the author of the poetry collections _The Glass Man Left Waltzing_
  (Meow Press, 1996), _Thing Is The Anagram For Night_ (Texture Press,
  1996), and _nothing doing ever again_ (Score Press, 1995).  His short
  stories have appeared in Asylum Annual, Black Ice, Central Park, Fiction
  International and elsewhere.  He currently lives in Morris, Minnesota
  where he publishes Standing Stones Press.

  ERIK BELGUM (Wednesday, February 26, 3:15 PM)

  is the author of _Star Fiction_ (Detour Press, 1996) and _The Man Who
  Could Talk_ (forthcoming).  His work has been performed at the Walker Art
  Center, the Banff Centre for the Arts, and as a part of the series New
  Music Across America.  He co-edits the audio-journal _Voys_.

  GARY SULLIVAN (Wednesday, March 5, 3:15 PM)

  is the co-publisher of Detour Press and author of _Dead Man_ (Meow Press,
 1996).
>
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=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 23 Jan 1997 20:49:35 EST
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Henry Gould 
Subject:      Re: Apples, oranges & form -Reply
In-Reply-To:  Message of Thu, 23 Jan 1997 16:14:02 -0500 from
              

Thanks Michael Coffey for city/country messages.  Here's a poem about
being in a small town (Norwich, CT - by the "Thames"), & going to a big
town (London, by the "Thames"), and size not making any difference - because
we inhabit "la citta qui Cristo e Romano" (or however it goes).

28
                 _near Norwich, by the Thames_

Trees merge with the darkness      coral, camouflaged
above the river,      quiet, smooth and ceaseless.
Hidden by nightfall,      stars, arranged
in the heavens,      drift      reflected there.

You tugged your sweater close around your dress
& let me wrap an arm across your shoulder as
the last of summer pulled us both downstream,
so adamant, so casual, unvarying, and calm.

Those fingers lifted to my shivering lips
were hidden in the darkness too      & now
my heartbeat mimics you
& stained with all this darkness, steps
toward some anonymous London afterlife,
incognito (the ache      of universal grief).

- Henry Gould   (forthcoming this spring (with 98 other sonnet/"sonnets")
@ _Mudlark_   http://www.unf.edu/mudlark)
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 23 Jan 1997 19:40:24 +0000
Reply-To:     jays@sirius.com
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Jay Schwartz 
Subject:      Re: Landscapes, poetry etc.
Comments: To: ARCHAMBEAU@LFC.EDU
MIME-Version: 1.0
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In 1994 I lived in a suburb of Boulder, Colorado called Gunbarrel.
Having been raised in the suburbs of Los Angeles and finding myself once
again in a suburban territory, I consciously attempted to devise an
aesthetic that could articulate my experience of this post-industrial
suburban landscape.  The experience taught me a lot about expression and
the context of artistic production.  The project- "Deaf Child Area"
ended up incorporating found paper into the text - the handmade books
were literally photocopied on top of paper and plastic I found in the
dumpsters of local greeting card factories, software firms, etc.

In terms of these two theses, I don't understand what is meant by
"aestheticize"- it implies some kind of reduction, along with the
denegration.  Both theses rely on negating, exclusive impulses.  I look
at Reznikoff's urban descriptions and find only opening to all kinds of
perception, no dismissal.  Perhaps the most interesting discovery in
burrowing through exurban/suburban material for me is that these
economic forces aren't dominant, are unstable, mulitudinous
economic/aesthetic scenarios.  I just had to look a little harder, at 3
AM in Safeway, Burger King at closing time, the empty parking lot at
dusk with the sound of bagpipes, the toxic joys of day old pastries and
Pespi.
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 23 Jan 1997 22:10:30 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Franklin Bruno 
Subject:      Re: Pepsi-Cola
Mime-Version: 1.0
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Brian Carpenter wrote:

>This reminds me of an advertising shennanigan that occurred in China a
>number of years ago.  Some American company selling some carbonated
>beverage (I don't recall whom) advertised their product on billboards with
>the slogan "Brings you back to life!"
>
>Punchline is, this slogan was translated as "Brings your relatives back
>from the dead!"
>
I never knew where it was from 'til now, but this line shows up in the song
"Come Alive" (1981) by the excellent British group Magazine:

"An asteroid kicked up the dust the dinosaur stubbornly bit
Man's brain was taken, the cortex stuck at an awkward angle on it
His first words were:
'What have I done to deserve the sun?
What have I done to deserve the rain?'
Pepsi-Cola, Pepsi-Cola brings your ancestors back from the grave"

Which also tells us which company it was.  Magazine's Howard Devoto (who was
also in the Buzzcocks early on) is, by the way, one of the 'rock' lyricists
whose work repays attention.  Nick Currie (a.k.a. Momus), John Davis, and
The Silver Jews' David Berman also pop to mind, in addition to some folks
that have been mentioned on this list previously.

UNRELATED MATTER:

Is there any chance that more list-members could make an effort not to quote
-all- of a long message that they're responding to, for the sake of those of
us who receive it in digest form.  Just repeat enough for context, maybe?
(Though of course we know that meanings accrete with each iteration.)

fjb
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 24 Jan 1997 10:20:31 +0000
Reply-To:     William.Northcutt@uni-bayreuth.de
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
Comments:     Authenticated sender is 
From:         William Northcutt 
Organization: btr0x1.hrz.uni-bayreuth.de
Subject:      Rezni's Holocaust
Comments: To: poetics@UBVM.cc.buffalo.edu
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Do any of you know whether Rez's Holocaust is still in print? I know,
I could look in Books in Print, but then, I'd have to wonder over to
the library, and then I'd have to lift my fingers to turn the pages,
not to mention that I'd have to actually pull BIP out of the
shelves...

William

______________________________________________________
william.northcutt@uni-bayreuth.de

William Northcutt
Anglistik
Universitaet Bayreuth
95440 Bayreuth, Germany
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 24 Jan 1997 08:00:27 -0600
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Tom Mandel 
Subject:      Marty Ehrlich
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I remember well meeting Marty at Susan's opening last saturday after my
reading at the Ear, and seeing Erica too -- for the first time in 5 or more
years.

N'yorkers should get to Granary Books at 568 Broadway across the street
from the downtown Duddenheim museum -- Susan's book is wonderful.

Tom


Screen Porch
*************************************************
Tom Mandel            *   2927 Tilden St. NW
Washington DC 20008   *   tmandel@screenporch.com
vox: 202-362-1679     *   fax 202-364-5349
*************************************************
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 24 Jan 1997 07:49:22 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Susan Wheeler 
Subject:      Brathwaite/shape
Mime-Version: 1.0
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>To: poetics
>From: wheeler@is.nyu.edu (Susan Wheeler)
>Subject: Brathwaite/shape
>Cc:
>Bcc:
>X-Attachments:
>
>In response to Mark Weiss's (sorry, I've lost his text with the Digest
entry): First off, had it been an isolated conversation with Brathwaite I'd
take it as casual or believe I remembered it wrong, but it was fairly
elaborated, and I had several conversations with him about this.  Secondly,
the "shape" of a poem was not limited to line-lengths.  I understood this to
mean in part his video-style (islands of fonts), clearly, but also ideas
about a mix of voices and the very structures of what he terms his "nation
language."  And the idea was not limited to the idea of the archipelago in
his understanding of Caribbean poetry, but also to the immediate landscape
of individual islands, its "development," the relationship to ocean/sky,
etc.  I would be reluctant to fault the idea for its associative rather than
logical links, and thought it might be an interesting counterpart to John
Kinsella's wholly different thinking on the "pastoral."
>
>Although as far as I know Kamau has not written about this theory in a
theoretical way (not in Roots; does anyone know his history of Caribbean
poetry?), it did bubble under portions of The Barabajan Poems, it seems to
me, which he was working on at about the same time that our conversations
took place.  From "my island" section, without the typographic dimension
(apologies):
>
>                                                5
>        This at least was a. this at last was a.  start: when God set out
to create the islands of th
>        (e) Caribbean, he skidded a duck-&-drakes stone from Barbados
(let's say) north through
>        Grenada, St Vincent, St Lucia, Dominica, & on through the Leewards,
Antigua, Barbuda,
>        Anguilla & . . curving as the stone we skidded curves . . Puerto
Rico hiss hiss Hispaniola
>        . Dominica & Haiti . Cuba . Caymanas & Cat & Guanahani...
>
>        But that was only the visible part.  When God created the islands
of the Caribbean, he al-
>        so did so with music; he must have! with sound: the noise that he
heard that gave cre -
>        ation shape.  Again, was it Milton's? or Lowell's Nantucket?
Beethoven's Fifth Trump?
>        Dvorak's New World? Peter Tosh/In the Beginning? Gustav Holtz' Planets?
>
>        And then I saw or rather heard it:   the pebbles of the pan, the
plangent syllables of blue,
>        the on-rolling syncopation, the rhythmic tidalectics:  and it was
the islands' own sound,
>        not taken or borrowed from no where else or if borrowed borrowed so
creatively it
>        becomes our own: & the irksome wonder / why so long?  why did it
take so long, take me
>        so long to come to this so natural so obvious so beautiful so
easily our own:
>
>                                                        the kaiso
>
>        So that when God created Caribbean, he took a pebble, skidded it
along the water w/ a
>        sound of our own & this is how it went:  his archepelago: my
vision: yr poem
>
>
>I got carried away, but perhaps this helps.
>Susan Wheeler
>
>
Susan Wheeler
wheeler@is.nyu.edu

37 Washington Square West #10A
New York, New York 10011
(212) 254-3984 phone/fax
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 24 Jan 1997 08:04:04 EST
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         henry gould 
Subject:      la citta - correction

Don't have Divine Comedy handy - & if I did probably couldn't find it -
(maybe somebody can help) but I think the line is closer to:

_nel Roma qui Cristo e Romano_  - "in that Rome where Christ is Roman"
(i.e., the heavenly city).
- HG
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 24 Jan 1997 08:24:23 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Michael Boughn 
Subject:      Re: Dorn
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William Northcutt, I tried replying to your question yesterday, but
the post seems to have been swallowed in e-space or otherwise
bushwhacked.

Anyway, yes, there was a somewhat contentious discussion of Dorn on
this list in Decmeber 1995. It was initiated by Ron Silliman's
comments and went on for a couple of weeks.

Best,
Mike
mboughn@chass.utoronto.ca
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 24 Jan 1997 08:08:10 -0600
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Tom Mandel 
Subject:      City 'n 'burbia
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Well, on this very list the other day someone mentioned Ashbery/Schuyler's
collaborative novel _A Nest of Ninnies_ -- a poem of suburbia you bet.

Tom


Screen Porch
*************************************************
Tom Mandel            *   2927 Tilden St. NW
Washington DC 20008   *   tmandel@screenporch.com
vox: 202-362-1679     *   fax 202-364-5349
*************************************************
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 24 Jan 1997 08:19:37 -0600
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Tom Mandel 
Subject:      a modest proposal
Mime-Version: 1.0
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*Lots* of messages on this listserv are created with the "Reply" function
of a piece of mail software. Result often is copying into one's message the
message to which one is replying. This can mean multiple copies of
sometimes very long posts are are in the mail received from the listserv
daily. IMHO this clogs the pipes, both digitally and mentally

Sometimes I guess it's helpful to have the stimulus with the response --
though the message title can fulfil that function most of the time.
Certainly it's sometimes useful to quote *a part* of the message --
specifically that to which one is replying. Most of the time what I see is
someone wants to add an opinion, and to it is appended a long post,
sometimes more than one, as this can easily nest multiple messages and
replies. Actually makes it hard to focus on the new stuff.

Something to think about in creating your posts to Poetics.

Tom


Screen Porch
*************************************************
Tom Mandel            *   2927 Tilden St. NW
Washington DC 20008   *   tmandel@screenporch.com
vox: 202-362-1679     *   fax 202-364-5349
*************************************************
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 24 Jan 1997 08:13:19 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Douglas Barbour 
Subject:      Re: Urban Songs
Mime-Version: 1.0
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Tom Beard

That's an interesting take on the non-downtown in Auckland & whatever
happens in Wellington (I'd expect long if loopy lines, since everyone there
musthave huge breath capacity from climbing hills all the time). But you
mention Leigh Davis as if he were still writing. Is this so? Has he done
anything lately? I never saw that first book, only stuff in anthologies & a
mag or two, but he was really doing something different there.

Nice twists & turns in your own.

 =============================================================================
Douglas Barbour
Department of English
University of Alberta               in the rooms you live in
Edmonton  Alberta  T6G  2E5         other people's books line your shelves
(403) 492 2181  FAX:(403) 492 8142
H: 436 3320                                     bpNichol
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 24 Jan 1997 12:12:18 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         GROBERTS@BINAH.CC.BRANDEIS.EDU
Subject:      urban environments
MIME-version: 1.0
Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII

The idea of "urban" poetry comes in part from the Humanist importation of
classical and continental ideas about the city.  In 1500 or so, London was
just a large village as far as natives and foreigners were concerned.
Sir Th More's Utopia introduces the concept of the metropolis in about 1518 (?)
but the influence on poetry is not felt till Jonson and Donne.  They are
the most experimental and consequential of poets of their generation: they
both were London-born-and-bred, and came from the lowest merchant classes.
Part of what makes their city-poems interesting to me is the way in which
they localize (not yet nationalize) generic approaches to the city-subjects,
languages, environments: they imitate Martial and Juvenal and Catullus, so
that they can talk about Fleet River and street-life in the official
verse-forms of the satire and epigram.  Jonson writes the first memorable poem
in English on a sewer, his grotesque and hilarious poem "On the Famous Voyage"
about two guys who on a lark row up a polluted waterway.  At around 1600,
city poetry was trying to appropriate indigenous folk discourses about the
place London (especially ballads and verse narratives) and trump them with
the authority of classical forms specifically dedicated to urban space.
By 1700, London is clearly the metropolis that urbanites of the previous
two centuries were trying to imagine, and in fact is well on its way to
becoming the planet's largest city, an unprecedented development.  City poetry
becomes more and more constructed with the topographic techniques of "rural"
genres such as the georgic: hence Swift's descriptions and more importantly
John Gay's "Trivia: the Art of Walking the Streets of London."  Although
Raymond Williams ground-breaking book has much to say about urban poetry,
he does not give enough attention to the importance of satire and epigram,
and ultimately, privileges pastoralism and its ideologies in his account of
how English poets built their poetic cities.  As some posting have suggested,
that strand of urban poetry uses an ocular-meditational rhetoric, but the
earlier and perhaps more interesting (to me) strand begins with a bodily-
kinetic-experiential rhetoric which of course is in play in the work of
O'Hara, Olson, et al, but goes way back to Donne and Jonson.  Hope this
hasn't been too pedantic...

Gary R
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 24 Jan 1997 09:25:29 -0500
Reply-To:     Mark Prejsnar 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Mark Prejsnar 
Subject:      Re: Apples, oranges & form -Reply
In-Reply-To:  <199701232248.OAA06528@sweden.it.earthlink.net>
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Actually I agree with Mark Weiss--yet another instance of me not conveying
what I wanted to say!  Yes, I never intended to suggest some kind of
poetic determinism.  I definitely write the way I do because I choose
to....I happen to associate it, in my own mind, with conditions I would
call those of the dissociated late capitalist city...But determinism, no,
that very definitely is not going on, for any of us.  If I thought it was
all determined for me before I went thru any work & development, I'd
hardly want to bother...

Mark Prejsnar
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 24 Jan 1997 09:30:48 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Mark Prejsnar 
Subject:      Re: Apples, oranges & form -Reply
In-Reply-To:  <01IEK8OFZ20I90NJXO@iix.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

Patrick---

Yes, I think that's a very good point...Still, it has to do in part with
something more involved than inside/outside; but I see your point, and
that's one component of the range of frames that we're talking about, I
think...

As I hoped to convey with the examples of Silliman & Coolidge, what I have
in mind is something about the lived quality of a contemporary form of
experience, made up of a number of different "structures of feeling"; and
how that can be explored thru different approaches to FORM.

On Thu, 23 Jan 1997, Pritchett,Pat @Silverplume wrote:

> When we're talking about landscape & poetry aren't we really talking about
> "the dialectics of inside/outside," as Bachelard put it? With the poem as
> the form of mediation between these two? Seems to me "landscape" is simply a
> figure of speech designating the way we perceive/appropriate experience.
>
> Is this what you were getting at, Mark Presjnar (sic)?
>
> Patrick Pritchett
>  ----------
> From: Mark Weiss
> To: POETICS
> Subject: Re: Apples, oranges & form -Reply
> Date: Thursday, January 23, 1997 5:11PM
>
>
> Let me suggest that those of us raised in cities sometimes write thoughtful,
> quiet, nostalgic poems about the old neighborhood. I even have one with my
> kid as recipient of lore. He grew up in the city, but it was a different
> neighborhood--and my old neighborhood was a different neighborhood, too.
> And sometimes us homeboys also write poems jumpy with discovery about rural
> places.
>
> It may be the condition of the poet's life as well as some inherent geist
> that informs the rhythm of the poems.
>
>
> At 04:14 PM 1/23/97 -0500, you wrote:
> >mark p wrote:
> >"The final word on what I MEANT to say (I know I wasn't clear enuff)
> >might be to mention two very different poets who I think of as
> >paradigmatic of the sort of "city poetry" I meant to identify myself with.
>  I
> >think they write out of a late 20th century feel of how consciousness
> >etc"
> >
> >one thing i have noticed over the years, in which i have lived mostly in
> >new york city though having been reared in a very small town in the
> >adirondacks, might have less to do with landscape than the way
> >particular landscapes are peopled. For example, in a new book  of
> >poems i have coming from Coffee House Press, I found that it was
> >structured as an opposition between a kind of text that was generated
> >from a city experience and another that was generated  by a revisiting
> >(and remembering) a rural community; and the differences in the style
> >and form and tone were quite distinct. The "city poems," if you will, have
> >a nervous and discontinuous flux, with a kind of energy seeking some
> >isometry, some stabilty, but constantly foiled; whereas the upstate, North
> >Country poems have a more  meditative, observant mood, in which the
> >poems find certain connections, discover them at times, by accident.
> >
> >This was a source of amazement to me as i put the book together. It was
> >not premeditated, since I simply began by going through compositions of
> >the last two years and found these jangly, impersonal, somewhat
> >abstracted poems written here in New York City and these more pastoral
> >ones and personal ones written while visiting my mother and old friends
> >up in the mountains.
> >
> >It is borne out, however, by my experiences with those places, and I
> >think a small-town community carries within it kinds of relations that a
> city
> >environment does not. These kinds of relations between people, where
> >everyone either knows everyone or knows someone who was related
> >to someone  tends to enforce (sometimes not successfully, sure) a
> >civility that is not found so often in a city, where the folks one deals
> with
> >day to day live in a kind of anonymity from one another and from you.
> > As an example, two, really: when my father passed away, in the town
> >he grew up in, i took my mother around to the various places one has to
> >go to in the aftermath of a death: the knights of columbus, where he had
> >a life insurance policy; the motor vehicle bureau, to amend car deeds, the
> >social security office, etc. Every person my mother, in her grief, had to
> >deal with either knew her or my father or was a friend of mine, and
> >pleasantries were inevitably exchanged and the otherwise difficult
> >process of  taking care of such details was made warm and human. I
> >can only imagine how such a trek from place to place would go in new
> >york city, with total strangers.
> >
> >
> >  And secondly, once when i was visiting upstate, I read in the local
> >paper how a teenage boy driving a truck was drunk and  ran through a
> >flashing red light at a rural intersection at about six in the morning,
> >speeding home after a night of drink, only to be blindsided by another
> >truck, driven by his uncle. The boy died. It just shows you how even
> >random accidents are likely to involve someone you know.
> >
> >I think the consequences of these differences are very pronounced
> >when it comes to narrative styles, or should be, but it certainly, for me,
> >extends to poetry as well.
> >
> >This is surely why I got away from the small town life and why I will
> >probably return.
> >
> >two samples, one from each side of the book, which is to be called 87
> >North, after the state highway that runs from NYC upstate, all the way to
> >canada
> >
> >Rhythming, what was it?
> >Monk's thing:
> >"Rhythm-a-ning," at the Five Spot.
> >1958. Roy Haynes on drums
> >Johnny Griffin on tenor sax
> >Ahmed Abdul-Malik
> >on bass, nineteen
> >and fifty-eight.
> >
> >No hepcat shit. No more.
> >Baldwin called Brando
> >a beautiful cat, then, when.
> >
> >Monk on piano.
> >That's that.
> >
> >
> >
> >Adirondack Sounds
> >
> >
> >I put the words in his mouth?
> >this image of myself,
> >my son at three years old.
> >I say to him
> >
> >Cadyville, Saranac, Schuyler Falls.
> >Dannemora, Redford, Beekmantown.
> >Chazy Lake, pronounced chez Zee.
> >And he says them back to me,
> >
> >eyes big, his tongue clumsy and sweet,
> >saying the names of towns of my youth.
> >
> >I?m far from them now,
> >these syllables holding mysteries
> >of places people came to,
> >of how things were then.
> >
> >I knew my own, Saranac,
> >without curiosity.
> >It was like my name.
> >But Cadyville was where the girls lived,
> >
> >Schuyler Falls a forest cleared for playing ball,
> >Dannemora a prison town with tall, tough Irish,
> >Chazy just a cold, cold lake.
> >
> >The places are on a map
> >I never need to study,
> >just hamlets to drive through.
> >The people that built them,
> >
> >the sites there, now gone,
> >yielded to spells of indifferent offspring,
> >to places fallen down.
> >Still, Beekmantown
> >
> >in my boy?s mouth
> >is a clear parcel of fields
> >farmed for stone and apples,
> >Redford the soft fold of our church.
> >
> >He repeats them to me
> >as I ask, happy at the drill,
> >expecting something for his effort.
> >I give him my confused joy.
> >
> >I say to him ?paradise,?
> >and hear the pure word.
> >
> >
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 24 Jan 1997 14:28:38 EST
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Rachel Blau DuPlessis 
Organization: TEMPLE UNIVERSITY
Subject:      Re: address query
In-Reply-To:  Message of Mon, 13 Jan 1997 19:33:32 -0800 from
              

hi stephen cope--my address is rdupless@vm.temple.edu. I think I am reading
an older message than the one to which I responded yesterday. We were rewired
and I did not turn off Poetics Listserv. With the predictable consequences.
In the NewWorld here where it's bliss to be wise; 'tis folly to be ignorant
I just mean the technology world. Rachel
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 24 Jan 1997 14:32:34 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "k.a. hehir" 
Subject:      commisions
In-Reply-To:  <199701212255.LAA17462@ihug.co.nz>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

with all that talk of miller williams and the commissioning of someone to
write/read a poem i thought i'd relay a strange request that came my
way.my mum has been attending a fitness class three times a week for four
or five years -Cathie's Fitness Class. I have no idea what they do but
i know they have fun and have become quite a tight group. now, Cathie has
got a job in the suit'n'tie world and today was her last class.  My mum
asked me to write a poem for Cathie as kind of a thanks. i have never met
her or experienced any kind of aerobic(sp?) work-out. so i did my best to
come up with something that would please a group of non-poetry types and
not embarrass me ma. it was tough. took me a few hours. complete with
rime. (you try pharmacist!)

any other similar anecdotes?

cheers,
kevin

P.S. anyone know how to get into the greeting card biz?

-mephistos,socks of darkness,jeans,children's festival t-shirt
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 24 Jan 1997 10:56:19 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         David Bromige 
Subject:      Address for Evans & Moxley
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

thAnks, everybody. I now have the e-ddress i wanted. db
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 24 Jan 1997 16:40:21 -0400
Reply-To:     shoemakers@cofc.edu
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         shoemakers@COFC.EDU
Subject:      you write what you eat
In-Reply-To:  <01IEK8OFZ20I90NJXO@iix.com>
MIME-version: 1.0
Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

It seems clear to me that the "apples & oranges" thread is
struggling to resolve, by way of "landscape," the recent "fave foods"
riffing with our on-going devotion to "poetics."  I had myself been
groping in vain toward such a rapprochement when I remembered Zukofsky's
famous determination to "make a calzone out of economics" and all made
sense...

steve
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 24 Jan 1997 15:29:32 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Charles Alexander 
Subject:      events, tucson
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

 Not too much to announce here on the poetics list, but

January 28, Tuesday, 8 pm, Dinnerware Gallery, Tucson
Talk by Bob Perelman
sponsored by Chax Press & POG

Chax will have a small pamphlet there of a poem by Perelman, The Masque of
Rhyme, which combines desktop publishing with certain elements of fine
bookmaking. Available for $4 plus two stamps (or cash equivalent) to anyone
on Poetics List, or, for that matter, anyone at all. Please just send the
payment and I'll try to get you a copy by return mail, after next Tuesday,
when the author will have a chance to sign copies.
Send payment to Chax Press at 101 W. Sixth St., no. 6, Tucson, Arizona
85701-1000. Call 520-620-1626 for information or email me. This is the first
event Chax Press is co-sponsoring since our move back to Tucson this fall,
and it definitely feels good.

Next up for events co-sponsored by Chax & POG (POG is a recently-formed
group of writers & others interested in poetry, poetics, and other artistic
practices) will be a mid-April reading & talk by Karen Mac Cormack and Steve
McCaffery. The dates & time are not set for that yet.

At that time Chax will also be releasing a new book by Karen Mac Cormack,
titled The Tongue Moves Talk. Please inquire if you wish to order this book.


January 29, Wednesday, 8pm, University of Arizona, Modern Languages Auditorium
Reading by Bob Perelman
sponsored by the Poetry Center at the University of Arizona
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 24 Jan 1997 22:07:32 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Marina deBellagente laPalma 
Subject:      from the rain belt
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

I'd love you all to  look at my website

http://www.well.com/user/lapalma

it has some poems & several poem-essays ("poesaggi"), including a piece
called "the home page as literary form".

It's what I did in 1995 after my last "traditional" (paper) book,
Persistence" seemed to be widely ignored.

my keyboard is dying  as i type this. I may be offline for a few days.


marina



Marina deBellagente LaPalma
329 Pope Street
Menlo Park CA 94025
(415) 326-4981
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 23 Jan 1997 20:43:13 +0100
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Miekal And 
Subject:      rural artifice
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit

Daniel_Bouchard@HMCO.COM wrote:
>
> Professor Rochambeau,
>
> The Board of Deans, et al, suggests you take an immediate sabbatical in the
> rural environment of Screamtime Village and ease the traffic flow (suburban,
> etc.) making inroads on your imagination.


If you do come, make sure you come for one of our monthly full moon
drifts (read deriv�) thru the uninterrupted unglaciated topography &
we'll howl at the moon.  They don't call it Screamtime Village fer
nuttin.
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 24 Jan 1997 10:40:59 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "GRAHAM W. FOUST" 
Subject:      back to bp
In-Reply-To:  <9701180504.AA26153@osf1.gmu.edu>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

recently saw Michael Ondaatje do a reading here in DC.  He talked a bit
about bp Nichol and read a poem for him etc.  While looking in the card
catalog at the Library of Congress, I noticed that bp has a Billy the
Kid book with a title very similar to Ondaatje's Billy the Kid book.  I
tried to fetch it, but someone has it checked out.

Can anyone fill me in on the deal here?  Are they similar works?

bests,
Graham
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 25 Jan 1997 00:49:06 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         George Bowering 
Subject:      Re: Hernando Houseman
In-Reply-To:  
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

>The poem that includes the lines
>
>        Oh I have been to Ludlow Fair
>        And left my necktie God knows where
>
>is "Terence, This is Stupid Stuff" from _A Shropshire Lad_
>
>Brigham Taylor

I know. It goes, in part:

Oh, Terrence, this is stupid stuff
It's time we laid off all that guff
And carry halfway home or near
Pints and quarts of Ludlow beer
My little horse must think I'm queer
To stop without a farmhouse neer
My horse is lovely, dark and deep
But I have miles to go before I sleep
etc





George Bowering.
                                       ,
2499 West 37th Ave.,
Vancouver, B.C.,
Canada  V6M 1P4

fax: 1-604-266-9000
e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 25 Jan 1997 00:50:54 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         George Bowering 
Subject:      Re: Snowy Woods
In-Reply-To:  <199701231354.FAA06598@dfw-ix4.ix.netcom.com>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Well, yeah, so now we know where Robert Frost was born. But what about the
good stuff? Where was George Stanley born?




George Bowering.
                                       ,
2499 West 37th Ave.,
Vancouver, B.C.,
Canada  V6M 1P4

fax: 1-604-266-9000
e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 24 Jan 1997 22:07:50 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Tenney Nathanson 
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

George--

you wouldn't want to trade tapes, would you?  I may not have too much that's
interesting to offer, but if you're interested or willing we could poke
around and probably find SOMETHING (I have only a dozen or so jazz CDs; a
whole lot of albums that generally sound shitty, but there are exceptions;
and a lot of tapes made from CDs that would probably copy pretty well [am
Dolby C but not Dolby S capable]).  anyway, I don't think I'm likely to
encounter or pop for the Dutch import, unless it turns up via Jazz Heritage
Society, but it sounds VERY nice.

best,

Tenney

>Date:    Tue, 24 Dec 1996 18:26:58 -0800
>From:    George Bowering 
>Subject: Re: Sanders
>
>>> But right now I am listening to a CD stuck in my Mac, Pharoah
>>>Sanders playing heartbreaking standard ballads like Coltrane once did, an
>>>eerie imitation.
>>>
>>
>>but who knows where or when?  what's the disc?
>
>This is "Welcome to Love", from Timeless, which is a Dutch company,
>recorded in France 1990, produced by some Japanese people. Stafford James
>on bass, Bill Henderson on piano, Ecclestone Wainwright on drums.
>
>Very smooth; a conscious imitation of Coltrane's album, "Ballads."
>
>
>>
>>(I've had my negative reactions to Pharoah Sanders, but still)
>>(I've had my positive ones too!)
>
>I have had a few reservations abt Pharoah, but he was a gink I liked right
>off; there was a bad time when he was playing Krishna-meditation-coriander
>stuff and getting played on the rock stations around 1970. But I heard him
>at Slugs' around then and he was great. Earlier he was moonlighting in
>Jersey as a Latino music player and even as a rock pl;ayer, and I have some
>of that stuff, only for documentation.
>
>But he is one of the great young ones, with Archie Shepp, etc. of the
>sixties who got "raised" to a big label, mainly ABC.
>
>
>
>
>George Bowering.
>                                       ,
>2499 West 37th Ave.,
>Vancouver, B.C.,
>Canada  V6M 1P4
>
>fax: 1-604-266-9000
>e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca
>
>------------------------------
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 25 Jan 1997 01:08:56 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         George Bowering 
Subject:      Re: Perth Amboy
In-Reply-To:  
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

I remember when all us kids were forbidden by our parents to read _The
Amboy Dukes_, and so we read it to shreds. It didnt seem very suburban to
me!




George Bowering.
                                       ,
2499 West 37th Ave.,
Vancouver, B.C.,
Canada  V6M 1P4

fax: 1-604-266-9000
e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 24 Jan 1997 09:36:48 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Joe Safdie 
Subject:      Re: urban and landscapes
Comments: To: maria damon 
In-Reply-To:  <32e7bb577520293@mhub1.tc.umn.edu>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

Maria,

Yes, and if anyone wanted to start a back- (or front-) channel discussion
group on the Baudelaire or some of Benjamin's other essays I'd love
to participate, having been obsessed for some years now with his
. . . knotted . . . brilliance as a way out of false dichotomies
(including, certainly, those that circulate on this list).

For example, his short essay on mimesis would be valuable for whoever it
was that asked about that a few days back (sorry, too lazy to check).

Joe Safdie
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 25 Jan 1997 15:07:32 +0100
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Miekal And 
Subject:      listserv addiction
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Sure is easy to realize how addicted I am to this list already, when I
had to go 36 hours without david b's witticisms, george b's color
commentary & all the serious chunks between.  I was beginning to think
you folks kicked me off for sumptin I said.

miekal who agrees that the excessive quoting is unnecessary for anyone
whose actually paying attention to what is being said.

& if any of you are interested in the hypermedia apprenticeship at
dreamtime get ahold of me in the sooner, because replies are starting to
come in & we probably can only take on 2 or 3...
--
@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#
Dreamtime Village website: http://net22.com/dreamtime
QAZINGULAZA: And/Was/Wakest website:
http://net22.com/qazingulaza
e-mail for DT & And/Was: dtv@mwt.net
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 25 Jan 1997 13:05:40 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Mark Weiss 
Subject:      Re: Perth Amboy
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Industrial suburb, working-class, gritty. Apollinaire's "zone." The kind we
forget exist when we think better-homes-and-gardens martha-stewart.

At 01:08 AM 1/25/97 -0800, you wrote:
>I remember when all us kids were forbidden by our parents to read _The
>Amboy Dukes_, and so we read it to shreds. It didnt seem very suburban to
>me!
>
>
>
>
>George Bowering.
>                                       ,
>2499 West 37th Ave.,
>Vancouver, B.C.,
>Canada  V6M 1P4
>
>fax: 1-604-266-9000
>e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca
>
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 25 Jan 1997 14:20:04 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Charles Alexander 
Subject:      Re: back to bp
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

At 10:40 AM 1/24/97 -0500, you wrote:
>recently saw Michael Ondaatje do a reading here in DC.  He talked a bit
>about bp Nichol and read a poem for him etc.  While looking in the card
>catalog at the Library of Congress, I noticed that bp has a Billy the
>Kid book with a title very similar to Ondaatje's Billy the Kid book.  I
>tried to fetch it, but someone has it checked out.
>
>Can anyone fill me in on the deal here?  Are they similar works?


No, not one bit similar. bp's is a short series of prose bursts about Billy.
Very irrevent, very poetic. Check it out. It's in another book of his
selected prose works, but I don't have my books with me now to give me the
reference. Anyone else?

charles
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 25 Jan 1997 16:50:14 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         GROBERTS@BINAH.CC.BRANDEIS.EDU
Subject:      billy the kid
MIME-version: 1.0
Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII

There is Jack Spicer's Billy the Kid, an intricate performance full of
adroit misdirection and missing erections:

Billy the Kid in a field of poplars with just one touch of moonlight
His shadow is carefully
              distinguished from all their shadows
Delicate
         as perception is
No one will get his gun or obliterate
Their shadows
*

Gary R
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 25 Jan 1997 17:22:49 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Alan Jen Sondheim 
Subject:      Calling Babylonians
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

oo


Calling Babylonians

(Cassite, 1750-1173 bce)

Hey, Na-zi Marduk!
Yo, Sul-pa-ud-du-nasir!
Hi-in-na-an-nu-um, ay!!!
Ha-ba-ia! Ha-ba-ia!
O O Abdi-Hi-ba!
Bel-a-na-ka-la-udammiq, nu!!!
Ah I-la-nu-u-tum! Ah I-la-nu-u-tum!
Oya In-dar-di-ia!!!!
Eeeee Ellil-mu-sal-lim, eeeee!
Ho Papsukal-ah-iddina! Ho Ho!!!
Oooo Put-ahi! Putahi!!
Heh Tu-na-mi-is-Sa-ah, yo!
O Zi-lim-mi-ga, ah!!
Rab-zi-id-qi! Rab-zi-id-qi!
Aaahh Ma-ni-e!
O O O Lu-ri-an-nu! O Lu-ri-an-nu!
Hmmmm.... Kur-sa!!
Oooo Il-lu-ki-ni-usur!
Hey Habaki!
Eeeya Dajan-Nergal!
Ho Ra-bat-Gula! Ho eeya!
Ah, Quisat-Sukal, ah...!!
Ha, Iri-ba-Istar! Ha, Iri-ba-Istar!
Hey, A-gab, hey!
O O O O O In-na-an-nu...! O O!
Ay, Tak-la-ku-a-na-Sar-pa-ni-tum!
Ay...

__________________________________________________________________________
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 25 Jan 1997 15:52:41 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Charles Alexander 
Subject:      Re: Calling Babylonians
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

thank you, alan jen sondheim, for "calling babylonians"
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 25 Jan 1997 18:57:58 -0600
Reply-To:     maria damon 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         maria damon 
Subject:      Re: commisions

we cd write cathie a range.

In message   UB Poetics
discussion group writes:
> with all that talk of miller williams and the commissioning of someone to
> write/read a poem i thought i'd relay a strange request that came my
> way.my mum has been attending a fitness class three times a week for four
> or five years -Cathie's Fitness Class. I have no idea what they do but
> i know they have fun and have become quite a tight group. now, Cathie has
> got a job in the suit'n'tie world and today was her last class.  My mum
> asked me to write a poem for Cathie as kind of a thanks. i have never met
> her or experienced any kind of aerobic(sp?) work-out. so i did my best to
> come up with something that would please a group of non-poetry types and
> not embarrass me ma. it was tough. took me a few hours. complete with
> rime. (you try pharmacist!)
>
> any other similar anecdotes?
>
> cheers,
> kevin
>
> P.S. anyone know how to get into the greeting card biz?
>
> -mephistos,socks of darkness,jeans,children's festival t-shirt
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 25 Jan 1997 17:32:36 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         dbkk@SIRIUS.COM
Subject:      Re: commisions
In-Reply-To:  
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

At 2:32 PM -0500 1/24/97, k.a. hehir wrote:
>with all that talk of miller williams and the commissioning of someone to
>write/read a poem i thought i'd relay a strange request that came my
>way.my mum has been attending a fitness class three times a week for four
>or five years -Cathie's Fitness Class. I have no idea what they do but
>i know they have fun and have become quite a tight group. now, Cathie has
>got a job in the suit'n'tie world and today was her last class.  My mum
>asked me to write a poem for Cathie as kind of a thanks. i have never met
>her or experienced any kind of aerobic(sp?) work-out. so i did my best to
>come up with something that would please a group of non-poetry types and
>not embarrass me ma. it was tough. took me a few hours. complete with
>rime. (you try pharmacist!)


So, where's the poem?  I'm sure everyone's just dying to read it.

Dodie

Oh Cathie's body brilliant and bright,
It's so good to work out with you tonight.
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 25 Jan 1997 17:52:31 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         dbkk@SIRIUS.COM
Subject:      "Little Men"
In-Reply-To:  
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Hi everyone, it's Kevin Killian.  I hope you'll all buy a copy of my new
book, "Little Men" (Hard Press).  It's terrific.  It costs $12.95 (US).

Carla Harryman wrote, "Like cut diamonds reflecting back their own breaking
points these tales speak the impossible as if the impossible itself could
be bought and sold as jewelry.  The palpability of Kevin Killian's
storytelling is perfect even if, as we bask in the paradoxical charisma of
it, the good guys have gone and stolen the jewelry for no reason...All this
pleasure of affront may be due to Killian's finessing of moiddle brow
culture unbto one of those secret toxic dumps, leaving us with a brilliant
and frightening phenomenonology of what's left."

I find this comment very wise and true.

Here's another wise one, from Robert Gluck:

"Kevin Killian writes like a bent angel who wants to inflict pleasure and
delectation.  His confections dissolve into sensation on the tongue.
Pleasure and safety are opposites, and these jumpy stories turn on the
moment when our hero sees the broader perspective--of someone who wants to
damage him.  Like Nabokov, Killian 'does' our culture in great writing,
with delicious style, generous and wicked.  His sheer conversance with all
departments of our civilization, and with the shapes a sentence and a story
can take, amount to a kind of performance art of its own."

Well, what do you know!  Anyhow as you have guessed, "Little Men" is a book
of stories.  Here's what they're about:

Kevin Killian, the author of "Shy" and "Bedrooms Have Windows," is injected
with sodium pentathol and forced to reveal his most intimate secrets to a
skeptical audience.  In Los Angeles, the ghost of Natalie Wood appears to a
dying fan.  An Irish transvestite hires a bellhop for a marriage of
convenience.  In San Francisco a drunken father (Kevin Killian) takes his
Gen X son (Josh Cherin) to the premiere of "Jurassic Park."  On Long Island
a group of Franciscan brothers stage a beauty contest for incoming
freshmen--the judgment of Paris.  In Steinbeck country an autograph dealer
forges mementos of Audrey Hepburn while seducing a muscle-bound ex-con in
orange undershorts.  On Halloween the boys from Hitchcock's "Rope" throw
their own party in the haunted house of Usher.  To steal the love of his
sister's scientist husband, a San Francisco weakling turns to steroids.  In
60's Manchester, David Smith falls under the spell of a strange married
couple, who read him Sade, and make him murder the one boy who really loves
him . . .

I have more to say about this too, but let's wait til after you've read the
book.  Thanks everyone!
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 25 Jan 1997 18:19:31 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Tosh 
Subject:      Re: "Little Men"
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

This book sounds like the 'book of the year.'  Where can one purchase a copy?

Tosh Berman
TamTam Books
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 25 Jan 1997 20:34:32 +0100
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Miekal And 
Subject:      Re: "Little Men"
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

dbkk@SIRIUS.COM wrote:
>
> Hi everyone, it's Kevin Killian.  I hope you'll all buy a copy of my new
> book, "Little Men" (Hard Press).  It's terrific.  It costs $12.95 (US).

Didnt I see this story line on X-Files?


just had to ask

Miekal who is trying his best to adhere to the dictum as soon as he
decides which
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 25 Jan 1997 21:38:57 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Dan Raphael Dlugonski 
Subject:      city in poetry
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

i grew up a mile from downtown pittsburgh, a mile from the university &
museum district, so i know urban: itis myorganic energy . even when writing
about wilderness or old growth i feel the urban charge of my raising.
and living these last 17 years on what used to be the edge of portland, long
an urban-rural edge ghetto (one of the highest percentage of corrections
systems veterans in portland) the setting provides me occasional poems
directly but always that urban awareness--encroaching ppopulation, mix of
d/m-iscommunication.
i think a develpment in current poetry is more of a mix of l=a=n=guage
poetry energies with the urban, to some extent a circle around to the
energies of new york school which, in my own woapred way, i see as a
tangential progenitor (ticularly ashberry) of l=a=n=guage poetry

dan

(having talked about clothes, and books, and movies, how about what we just
ate. i just had a warm slice of a bread (cross between egg bread and
coffeecake that my mother has made for decades, though this batch baked by
my 14 year old son). the trivialities soetimes engaged in in this line, the
attitude strutting at times. i'd be among the last to opt for strict
'poetics discussion, but gee if you have nothing to day then just listen to
others...
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 25 Jan 1997 22:46:55 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         David Bromige 
Subject:      hallmark cards
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

"anyone know how to get into the greeting cards business?" Yes. I had a
poetry-writing student who did this. The idea came to him in class one
evening.There was a silence after he had read aloud his new poem, and then
one of the other students sd,"You know, so-&-so, you should write for
Hallmark." He sd, "Do you think I could?" A month or so later, he came up
to me: "Congratulate me, I've got a job writing for Hallmark!" Apparently,
at his classmate's suggestion, he had contacted them, sent them samples of
his work, and had been engaged on some kind of freelance cottage-industry
basis. sorry i cant tell you what the pay was. But the gap between poetry
and greeting-cards writing is not necessarily unbridgeable, and we can all
take heart from this example. db
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 25 Jan 1997 22:58:51 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         David Bromige 
Subject:      Kevin Killian's bezazzful writing
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

I cant wait to get my hands on _Little Men_ . KK knows that fiction can
host the wildest imaginings. The precis of this book's seductive
juxtapositionings makes me yearn to be turning its pages right now. db
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 26 Jan 1997 00:59:55 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         George Bowering 
Subject:      Re: back to bp
In-Reply-To:  
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

> I noticed that bp has a Billy the
>Kid book with a title very similar to Ondaatje's Billy the Kid book.  I
>tried to fetch it, but someone has it checked out.
>
>Can anyone fill me in on the deal here?  Are they similar works?
>
>bests,
>Graham

They are not really similar, but those 2 poets were the same age and great
friends, and shared the Governor-General's award in poetry, for, I think,
1970. beep's book was included with a couple others of his because they
were so short. His title was "The True Eventual Story of Billy the Kid" if
I recall rightly. You will probably hear from Doug Barbour on this with
greater accuracy.





George Bowering.
                                       ,
2499 West 37th Ave.,
Vancouver, B.C.,
Canada  V6M 1P4

fax: 1-604-266-9000
e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 26 Jan 1997 01:05:28 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         George Bowering 
Subject:      Re: city in poetry
In-Reply-To:  <199701260538.VAA24814@trapdoor.aracnet.com>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Seems to me that one great poem that agonizes a lot about the shift from
pastoral America to the city is Crane's "The Bridge." It's the poem that
when I was 18 made me scurry back there and read Whitman, then scurry up
here and read "Paterson".




George Bowering.
                                       ,
2499 West 37th Ave.,
Vancouver, B.C.,
Canada  V6M 1P4

fax: 1-604-266-9000
e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 26 Jan 1997 01:13:12 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         George Bowering 
Subject:      Re: oh, alright (clothing)
In-Reply-To:  
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

> Lets talk about the sonnet. db.

Yeah, Bromige. I remember the night you were wearing a sonnet at the
marianne Moore reading. You wit! Everyone wondered why but I didnt wonder
why. She, by the way, was wearing two wristwatches. I asked her why; she
said one for NYC time, one for Calif. time. Ingenious!





George Bowering.
                                       ,
2499 West 37th Ave.,
Vancouver, B.C.,
Canada  V6M 1P4

fax: 1-604-266-9000
e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 26 Jan 1997 01:56:53 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         David Bromige 
Subject:      oh, alright (clothing)
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

                         DISTANCE, an E-Mail Rhapsody

((looking for poetry? delete instantly!))

12:59, 1:05, and 1:13; three more pit & prune-juice communiques from our
man in vancouver to console us for being condemned to peer into the
post-midnight dark. Already with thee, GB! If only! Put that tome upon the
table. . . bring that bottle over here. . .

The allusion to _Tender Is the Night_ leads to Gatsby, and I wonder if
listmembers often surmise from what manner of place GB emits? For I can
tell them, a mansion like that of Jay G--a dwelling where room opens into
room upon room in opulent geometries of being. A grand piano graces the
drawingroom, but the master of the house is more likely to be found at one
of his two state-of-the-art computers, unless in the den fretting over some
sporting event on the 26 inch screen. His pair of massive dogs--which GB
calls 'Great Dames'--loll in the hallway, an area big enough to park a Mack
Truck, dotted with statuary and suits of medieval armor. Up the grand
staircase to the many sleeping quarters, one relishes the paintings by
Canadian masters of the brush. Finally, the second storey is gained. One of
these rooms contains three chests of drawer, or chest of drawers, or maybe
chests of drawers, each one stuffed with unworn Hawaiian shirts, the kind
with wooden buttons.  Insert another coin and the tour will continue,
beginning with that portion of the upstairs, a suite of rooms, set aside
for my exclusive use when in Vancouver, with everything untouched--just the
way I left it on my mad dash to the airport, except for the stonewashed
(stonedwash?) jeans, now flapping around the limbs of the owner of the
Manse,--and the Old Haberdashers' necktie, a tie as long as its name, to
match his torso. And next to it, the Down Under Suite, where . . . but
first please insert your coin.

mike matthews a.k.a. Fee McPhrenzie, who is usually at work solving the
problems of the world, but after 1 a.m. devotes 15 minutes to the Memory of
Nonsense.
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 26 Jan 1997 05:08:36 -0800
Reply-To:     rloden@concentric.net
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Rachel Loden 
Subject:      Re: Hallmark cards
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

David Bromige wrote (in part):

> But the gap between poetry
> and greeting-cards writing is not necessarily unbridgeable, and we can > all take heart from this example.

Yes we can, so why not a line of po-mo greeting cards?  Poetry for the
masses, royalties for poets.  Here's a template (Niedecker for Xmas):

The mad stimulus of Gay Gaunt Day
meet to put holly on a tree

[graphic]

and trim green bells
and trim green bells

[open card]

This great eventual heyday
to plenty the hour thereof,
fidelius.

[graphic]

Heyday! Hey-day! Hey-day!

Merry Christmas!

[end]

I suppose that's more than enough for now,

Rachel Loden
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 26 Jan 1997 08:47:00 -0600
Reply-To:     maria damon 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         maria damon 
Subject:      Re: "Little Men"

In message   UB Poetics discussion group
writes:
> This book sounds like the 'book of the year.'  Where can one purchase a copy?
>
> Tosh Berman
> TamTam Books

amen!--md
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 26 Jan 1997 10:29:12 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Douglas Barbour 
Subject:      Re: back to bp
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

bp's little pamphlet, which was one of four that won him the Governor
general's Award back in 1980, is titled _The True Eventual Story of Billy
the Kid_. Its most recent appearance is in _An H in the Heart: bpNichol A
Reader_ edited by our own George Bowering & Michael Ondaatje (Toronto:
McClelland & Stewart, 1994); it also appeared in _CraftSlices_. As Charles
Alexander says, it is verydifferent, a kind of Steinian low-life take on
the pop-mythology,

It has been compared to Ondaatje's book, in Stephen Scobie's "Two Authors
in Search of a Character" (_Canadian Literature_, 54 [Autumn 1972]; _Poets
and Critics_ ed. George Woodcock [Toronto: Oxford UP 1974]; _Spider Blues_,
ed. Sam Solecki [Montreal: V=E9hicule Press 1985]).

=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=3D=3D=3D=3D=
=3D=3D=3D
Douglas Barbour
Department of English
University of Alberta               in the rooms you live in
Edmonton  Alberta  T6G  2E5         other people's books line your shelves
(403) 492 2181  FAX:(403) 492 8142
H: 436 3320                                     bpNichol



                       =20
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 26 Jan 1997 11:53:09 +0100
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Miekal And 
Subject:      Re: Calling Babylonians
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

alan:  great to see you unlurk mode, can you point all of us
post-babylonians to yr website(s)??

miekal who many years ago found alan's first record (I believe it was
called "th other tune"? ) at a rummage sale for 25 cents & it didnt even
have scratches, a classic precursor in the "difficult" listening genre.
--
@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#
Dreamtime Village website: http://net22.com/dreamtime
QAZINGULAZA: And/Was/Wakest website:
http://net22.com/qazingulaza
e-mail for DT & And/Was: dtv@mwt.net
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 26 Jan 1997 16:03:37 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "k.a. hehir" 
Subject:      Commissions
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

- you asked for it, so here it is

Of Sweets, Sweat and a Smile



We've dragged old bones from cozy beds
to be in the gym by nine.
An oddball crew of sleepy heads
for you to keep in line.

You make us sweat and groan and fight
for inches off our hips.
From every cake and sweet delight
that's left sugar on our lips.

We know we'll never have buns of steel
or tummys flat as glass.
But thanks to you, we enjoy each meal
then lose calories in your class.

May you meet, in this new job
a charming pharmacist.
A fitness buff, who's name is Bob
with a smile you can't resist.

So Cathie, it has been the best
while working out with you.
We have confidence in your success
in every thing you'll do!


                                kevin Angelo Hehir
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 26 Jan 1997 17:22:45 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Alan Jen Sondheim 
Subject:      Re: Calling Babylonians
In-Reply-To:  <32EB3777.69A3@mwt.net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

I've actually been unlurk (so to speak) for years here, just rare posts.
There are a couple URLS, other stuff -

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/~spoons/internet_txt.html
images: http://www.cs.unca.edu/~davidson/pix/
Tel. 718-857-3671 CuSeeMe: 166.84.250.149

love Alan, wry and tosted


On Sun, 26 Jan 1997, Miekal And wrote:

> alan:  great to see you unlurk mode, can you point all of us
> post-babylonians to yr website(s)??
>
> miekal who many years ago found alan's first record (I believe it was
> called "th other tune"? ) at a rummage sale for 25 cents & it didnt even
> have scratches, a classic precursor in the "difficult" listening genre.
> --
> @#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#
> Dreamtime Village website: http://net22.com/dreamtime
> QAZINGULAZA: And/Was/Wakest website:
> http://net22.com/qazingulaza
> e-mail for DT & And/Was: dtv@mwt.net
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 26 Jan 1997 14:28:25 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         David Bromige 
Subject:      Hallmark
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Good notion, rachel, go do it! line up permissions, bu card-stock, find a
printer, do yr own design, have em in the post-yuppie/new age stores in
places like Berkeley and Sebastopol and Los Gatos in time for xmas 97.

i noticed you posted at 5 a.m. I just heard a CW song on KPFA ("Back Forty:
The Hicks from Coast to Coast") the chorus of which runs "I have to wake up
every morning/ Just to say goodnight to you." Were you abt to try going to
sleep, or had you already gotten up? (I suppose i'm on the brink of
suggesting we now all disclose our sleep habits. But I'll stop right
there.)
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 26 Jan 1997 18:00:20 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "Aldon L. Nielsen" 
Subject:      Re: Hallmark
In-Reply-To:  
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

It's a hallmark of some sort of cosmic convergence, I suppose, that I too
was tuned to America's Back Forty listening to the same songs as David --
But I never did find out "Who the hell is Alice" --

Also discover upon my return that Utah Phillips now has a program on the
same station -- So there is some rest for the righteous --

Greeting Card wars of some time ago still available on Poetics archive --
Hallmark itself still in Kansas City -- The verse by the side of the road
is still by the side of the road --

little shaver,
aldon
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 26 Jan 1997 22:49:21 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Christopher Reiner 
Subject:      Witz Publications Received
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII"

Witz has always featured a "Publications Received" section, but because
of space limitations it has never contained as much information as I'd
like.  After Charles Bernstein's call for postings of publication
announcements on the Poetics List, I thought I'd take the opportunity to
post more extensive descriptions of the books and journals sent to Witz.
I'll do a few at a time, to avoid long posts.  For additional
information, please contact the editors ("snail mail" addresses provided
-- e-mail addresses usually unknown).  Apologies in advance if I mangle
the spelling of a name.


Magazines and Journals:

House Organ (number 17, Winter 1997), edited by Kenneth Warren (1250
Belle Avenue, Lakewood, OH 44107).  Work by Robert Yagley, Barbara Drake,
Cid Corman, Joel Lipman, Joe Napora, Fielding Dawson, Vincent Ferrini,
Kenneth Warren, Stephen Ellis, Owen Hill, D.E. Stewart, Tod Thilleman,
Martha King, Jesse Glass, Gary David, Albert Cook, Miriam Sagan,
Margueritte, Jack Hirshman.

#     #     #

Smelt Money (number 9), edited by Jim McCrary (P.O. Box 591, Lawrence, KS
 66044), no table of contents.  Contains work by Dave Baptiste Chirot,
Richard Kostelanetz, John M. Bennett, and an excerpt from Daniel
Davidson's _Product_, reprinted from the first issue of Stifled Yawn
(Winter 1990).

#     #     #

Lyric& (number 5), edited by Avery E.D. Burns (P.O. Box 640531, San
Francisco, CA  94164-0531), 135 pages.  The "Italian" issue, "Homage to
Guilia Niccolai."  Work by Catullus (trans. George Albon), Guiseppi
Ungaretti (trans. William Hawkins Cirocco), Eugenio Montale (trans.
Lawrence Venuti), Salvatore Quasimodo (two versions by Avery E.D. Burns),
Pier Paolo Pasolini (trans. William Hawkins Cirocco), Dario Villa (trans.
Duncan McNaughton & Dario Villa), Anna Casella (trans. Lawrence Venuti),
Gino Scartaghiande (trans. Pasquale Verdicchio), Kevin Killian, Amelia
Rosselli (trans. Lucia Re & Paul Vangelisti), Pier Paolo Pasolini (trans.
Pasquale Verdicchio), Spencer Selby (trans. Alberto Vitacchio), Franco
Beltrametti (trans. Duncan McNaughton), Milo De Angelis (trans. Lawrence
Venuti), Giovanna Sandri (trans. Guy Bennett), Albert Schieppati (trans.
Pasquale Verdicchio), Adriono Spatola (trans. Paul Vangelisti), Valerio
Magrelli (trans. Pasquale Verdicchio), Duncan McNaughton, Nanni Baestrini
(trans. Carla Billitteri & Martin Spinelli), Adriano Spatola (trans. Paul
Vangelisti), Dario Villa (trans. McNaughton & Raworth & Stein), Jolanda
Insana (trans. Pasquale Verdicchio), Guy Bennett, Elio Pagliarani (trans.
Kathleen Fraser), Corrado Costa (trans. Paul Vangelisti), Antonio Ria
(trans. with note by Duncan McNaughton).  Also, Paquale Verdicchio
interviewed by  Rodrigo Toscano.
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 27 Jan 1997 02:34:58 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Ron Silliman 
Subject:      Taking Heart, Giving Spleen

David,

The late Darrell Gray got a job with Hallmark right after his
graduation from Iowa City and, as I recall, did not care for the
conditions of his employment much.

I can imagine a line of greeting card valentines with texts from
Zukofsky. But then I can also imagine a second line, more acerbic, with
texts from Jack Spicer.

Ron Silliman
(having used lines from R. Duncan
on my wedding cake 10 years back)




>From:    David Bromige 
>Subject: hallmark cards
>
>"anyone know how to get into the greeting cards business?" Yes. I had
a poetry-writing student who did this. The idea came to him in class
one evening.There was a silence after he had read aloud his new poem,
and then one of the other students sd,"You know, so-&-so, you should
write for Hallmark." He sd, "Do you think I could?" A month or so
later, he came up to me: "Congratulate me, I've got a job writing for
Hallmark!" Apparently, at his classmate's suggestion, he had contacted
them, sent them samples of his work, and had been engaged on some kind
of freelance cottage-industry basis. sorry i cant tell you what the pay
was. But the gap between poetry and greeting-cards writing is not
necessarily unbridgeable, and we can all take heart from this example.
db
>
>------------------------------
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 27 Jan 1997 04:10:58 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Rachel Loden 
Subject:      Re: Taking Heart, Giving Spleen
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Ron Silliman wrote:

> I can imagine a line of greeting card valentines with texts from
> Zukofsky. But then I can also imagine a second line, more acerbic,
> with texts from Jack Spicer.

Ron will apparently tease us with these disappearing chiffon scarves of
his unexpectedly Victorian imagination, while being unwilling to truly
carry the banner on.  How disappointing!  I've shredded my prototypes.

As to why I'm awake at this hour, db: it must be the repeating nightmare
in which I'm wandering in Bowering Manor, bumping into statuary and
suits of armor.  There's a low growling, as though some sort of wild
beeste were holed up in the Down Under Suite.  I walk toward the sound,
turn the knob, and...wake up abruptly, with an eerie little voice saying
"Please insert your coin."?!

Rachel
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 27 Jan 1997 08:45:23 -0600
Reply-To:     maria damon 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         maria damon 
Subject:      Re: Taking Heart, Giving Spleen

rachel, yr magnificent!

In message  <32EC9B52.7A29@concentric.net> UB Poetics discussion group writes:
> Ron Silliman wrote:
>
> > I can imagine a line of greeting card valentines with texts from
> > Zukofsky. But then I can also imagine a second line, more acerbic,
> > with texts from Jack Spicer.
>
> Ron will apparently tease us with these disappearing chiffon scarves of
> his unexpectedly Victorian imagination, while being unwilling to truly
> carry the banner on.  How disappointing!  I've shredded my prototypes.
>
> As to why I'm awake at this hour, db: it must be the repeating nightmare
> in which I'm wandering in Bowering Manor, bumping into statuary and
> suits of armor.  There's a low growling, as though some sort of wild
> beeste were holed up in the Down Under Suite.  I walk toward the sound,
> turn the knob, and...wake up abruptly, with an eerie little voice saying
> "Please insert your coin."?!
>
> Rachel
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 27 Jan 1997 09:47:01 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         robert drake 
Subject:      addresses?
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

i'm looking for a couple ov address updates: for _upper limit music_
and for Steve Ellis/OASii...  email or pony express, and backchannel.
sorry to burden thee list.

asever
luigi



 =======================================================================
If you come into * linen, your time is thirsty because * ink saw some
wood intelligent enough to get giddiness from a sister. However, even
it should be smilable to shut * hair whose * water writes always in *
plural, they have avoided * frequency, meaning mother in law, * powder
will take a chance; and * road could try. But after somebody brought
any multiplication as soon as * stamp was out, a great may cords refused
to go through. Around wire's people, who will be able to sweeten * rug,
that is to say why must every patents look for a wife? Pushing four
dangers near * listening-place, * vacation had not dug absolutely nor
this likeness has eaten.--md 1915
 =======================================================================
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 27 Jan 1997 08:30:00 -0800
Reply-To:     doncheney@geocities.com
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Don Cheney 
Organization: Pinch Me Alfredo, Inc.
Subject:      truth in advertising
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

forget all those big-money tv ads during the superbowl,
one of the great advertisements happened on the radio.
it was an ad for budweiser and it asked the commentators
from the fox superbowl coverage, ronnie lott and howie
long, what was the most important thing they'd be
doing in relation to the superbowl. and both of the men
agreed that the most important thing was getting people
to buy 6-packs of budweiser before the game.

as my dad would say, i kid you not.

don

-----------------------------------------------
visit Don Cheney's Home Page & Clean Neck Shop
http://www.geocities.com/~doncheney
doncheney@geocities.com
-----------------------------------------------
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 27 Jan 1997 12:18:43 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Douglas Messeril 
Subject:      New Sun & Moon Titles
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

 Sun & Moon Press is proud to announce
 several new titles. As in the past, these
 are offered to Poetics List subscribers
 at a 20% discount. Send your orders to
 djmess@sunmoon.com or mail to
 Sun & Moon Press, 6026 Wilshire Boulevard,
 Los Angeles, California 90036
 We will bill you.

 Robert Bresson. NOTES ON THE CINEMATOGRAPHER

 Notes on cinema by the great French film director
 Robert Bresson. The second in the new Green Integer
 series of non-fiction works.

 $8.95

 Messerli, ED. THE GERTRUDE STEIN AWARDS IN
 INNOVATIVE AMERICAN POETRY 1994-1995

 The second edition of what we joyfully call
 the "gerties," this volume includes the work
 of nearly 100 younger and established American
 and Canadian poets, including Carla Harryman,
 Martine Bellen, Jena Osman, Ed Roberson, H.T.,
 Spence Selby, Richard Foreman, Peter Gizzi,
 Leslie Scalapino, Kenneth Irby, Stacy Doris,
 Bruce Andrews, Juliana Spahr, Guy Bennett,
 Will Alaexander, Kathleen Fraser, Diane Ward,
 Aaron Shurin, Cole Swensen, Ron Silliman, Gil Ott,
 Jackson Mac Low, Harryette Mullen, Myung Mi Kim,
 Tan Lin, Lynne Dreyer, Fiona Templeton, Mac Wellman,
 Lisa Jarnot, Elizabeth Fodaski, and many, many
 others.

 $14.95

 Dominique Fourcade. CLICK-ROSE
 Translated from the French by Keith Waldrop

 The second book published by Sun & Moon Press by
 the noted French poet, Dominique Fourcade.

 $10.95

 Paal-Helge Haugen. WINTERING WITH THE LIGHT
 Translated from the Norwegian by Roger Greenwald

 One of the most respected and noted of contemporary
 Norwegian poets, Paal-Helge Haugen's work is dark and
 lucid, a work about despair that sheds light on hope
 and possibility.

 $10.95

 Heimito von Doderer. THE MEROWINGIANS or THE TOTAL FAMILY

 In this hilarious satire of the ancient Merowingian line,
 von Doderer takes the Austrian novel into new dimensions
 of sublime ridiculousness. Never before translated into
 English, this represents the third von Doderer book pub-
 lished by Sun & Moon Press. Others are planned.

 $15.95

 You should also check out our web page, which will soon be
 updated. We still have the special "after Christmas sale"
 on several Sun & Moon titles. That site is

                 http//:www.sunmoon.com
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 27 Jan 1997 09:54:46 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Tosh 
Subject:      Re: New Sun & Moon Titles
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

> Sun & Moon Press is proud to announce
> several new titles. As in the past, these
> are offered to Poetics List subscribers
> at a 20% discount. Send your orders to
> djmess@sunmoon.com or mail to
> Sun & Moon Press, 6026 Wilshire Boulevard,
> Los Angeles, California 90036
> We will bill you.
>
> Robert Bresson. NOTES ON THE CINEMATOGRAPHER
>
> Notes on cinema by the great French film director
> Robert Bresson. The second in the new Green Integer
> series of non-fiction works.
>
> $8.95
>
Douglas and poetics people:

This is such a great book!  Great work in getting this book back in print.

Tosh Berman
TamTam Books
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 27 Jan 1997 13:58:39 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         AERIALEDGE@AOL.COM
Subject:      New Objects

3 new chapbooks from Object Editions:

_My Life in Politics or A history of N=A=R=R=A=T=I=V=E film_ by Tim Davis.

_adversities of outerlife_ by Judith Goldman.

_A Self-Guided Walk_ by Kimberly J. Rosenfield.

Beautiful letter press covers lovingly sewn. What's inside's what you should
know though. Each is $6. Order from Rob Fitterman at address below. However
you should also be apprised of:

_Object 7_ featuring Steven Farmer,
 + Larry Price, Celestine Frost, Jackson Mac Low, Judith Goldman, Michael
Friedman/Duncan Hannah, Hung Q. Tu, Laura Price, Steve Tills, Sheila E.
Murphy, & Chris Stroffolino. $7.

& some copies left of

_Object 6_ featuring Jennifer Moxley,
+ Rodrigo Toscano, Gail Sher, Brian Kim Stefans, Dan Farrell, Lisa Jarnot,
Nick Lawrence, Dierdre Kovac, W.B. Keckler, Robert V. Hale, & a portfolio by
Richard Baker.$7.

Orders to Robert Fitterman, Object, 7-13 Washington Square North #47B, NY, NY
10003. Checks payable to Robert Fitterman.
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 27 Jan 1997 14:34:56 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Eliza McGrand- CVA Guest 
Subject:      Re: commisions

once taut, once tight, twice blessed, employed
in city's bright with office noise
think of us, whenever you do
sweating to oldies and missing you

-- e, my entry
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 27 Jan 1997 15:04:24 EST
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
Comments:     Converted from PROFS to RFC822 format by PUMP V2.2X
From:         ACGOLD01@ULKYVM.LOUISVILLE.EDU
Subject:      Twentieth-Century Lit. Conference

Alan Golding
Prof. of English, Univ. of Louisville
502-852-6801; acgold01@ulkyvm.louisville.edu

In case any of you are interested, we're still looking for some folks to chair
panels at this year's Twentieth-Century Literature Conference, Feb. 22-24.
Areas that we still need to "cover" include both modern and contemporary
poetry (mostly, though not exclusively, American), film, postcolonial, and
Joyce. Featured speaker / readers this year are Bonnie Kime Scott, Tobias
Wolff, Meena Alexander. Listmates and fellow travellers who are scheduled to
come include Maria Damon, Chris Beach, Jena Osman, Kristin Prevallet, Mark
Scroggins, Chris and Debra Parr, . . . (if I've overlooked someone, apologies)

The person to contact is the conference director, Harriette Seiler, at
hmseil01@ulkyvm.louisville.edu.

Plus you get to see me, and what greater inducement could there be?

Scary thought for the day: that "The Gift Outright" is the best inaugural poem
we have.

Alan
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 27 Jan 1997 19:47:37 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Chris Stroffolino 
Subject:      Re: POETICS Digest - 25 Jan 1997 to Doug Messerli

Is Doug Messerli still on this list? If not, does anybody have his
address....? I hear the GERTRUDE STEIN AWARD book is out and am
curious.......(please backchannel)...Chris Stroffolino
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 27 Jan 1997 20:31:39 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Michael Boughn 
Subject:      HD
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Those on the list interested in HD should check out the HD Homepage.
Heather Hawkins and I have recently posted two reviews HD wrote in the
30's under the pseudonym Sylvania Penn. One reviews Edgar Guest's
biography of Whitman, the other Irving Stone's "biography in letters"
of Van Gogh. They provide a glimpse of HD engaged in rare critical
discussions of, in the one case, the American writing tradition and, in
the other, of representations of Van Gogh's "madness".

The URL is http://www.well.com/user/heddy/hdrevi.html

I'd love to hear any responses people have.

Best,
Mike
mboughn@chass.utoronto.ca
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 27 Jan 1997 18:12:45 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Rachel Loden 
Subject:      easier _no roses_
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

For ease in ordering the new _no roses review_, email the editors at
norosesrvw@aol.com


                         no roses review
                                #7

                      edited by Carolyn Koo
                         & Davis McCombs

                           NIN ANDREWS
                          BRUCE ANDREWS
                           STAR BLACK
                          W.K. BUCKLEY
                          CHERYL BURKET
                         WILLIAM DORESKI
                           PAMELA ERENS
                          RENEE GLADMAN
                          ARPINE GRENIER
                         PHILIP KOBYLARZ
                         MARYROSE LARKIN
                            JOHN LATTA
                           RACHEL LODEN
                       ELIZABETH MacKIERNAN
                        JENNIFER MARTENSON
                          WENDY McCLURE
                         MICHELLE MURPHY
                            EVE PACKER
                           KELLY RITTER
                          MARY ANN SAMYN
                           SPENCER SELBY
                         GIOVANNI SINGLETON
                          FIONA TEMPLETON
                           JOHN TRITICA

                         no roses review
                          150 Duane #8
                 Redwood City, California 94062

                      SUBSCRIPTIONS $12/yr
                        SINGLE COPIES $6
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 27 Jan 1997 21:52:37 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Alan Jen Sondheim 
Subject:      14 perfect lines, jennifer
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

4
about death being a handled thing
about humanity hammering out a home
about insistence and drudgery
about sweeping with a shot-broom
2
about those horse-killings down
there in the brambles
about extinctions things
with doubled chasm-heads, three-legs
1
about jennifers'ss pasting herself
in pies and strudels against docks
waterfowl biers in her transparent
head with burned watery quarks
0
boat-water round about these
blue parts fluorescent lemur


_____________________________________________________________________
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 27 Jan 1997 21:15:07 +0100
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Miekal And 
Subject:      Re: 14 perfect lines, jennifer
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

beau-
-tific
in-
sis-
-tent
ana-
phorix




noise in
speech the
sonnet sung,  Miekal
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 27 Jan 1997 22:27:05 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         David Bromige 
Subject:      address
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

luigi-bo drake:        anielsen@EMAIL.SJSU.EDU     will get you aldon
nielsen, editor of upper limit song.keep up the good work. db
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 28 Jan 1997 08:29:57 -0600
Reply-To:     maria damon 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         maria damon 
Subject:      Re: 14 perfect lines, jennifer

jennifer-alan s, yr the greatest! (what's your hebronic name?)--aha, that's
another thing we cd all share --what our names "really" are.  damon used to be
diamond until grandpa; maria is to be easily pronounced in english and danish.

In message   UB
Poetics discussion group writes:
> 4
> about death being a handled thing
> about humanity hammering out a home
> about insistence and drudgery
> about sweeping with a shot-broom
> 2
> about those horse-killings down
> there in the brambles
> about extinctions things
> with doubled chasm-heads, three-legs
> 1
> about jennifers'ss pasting herself
> in pies and strudels against docks
> waterfowl biers in her transparent
> head with burned watery quarks
> 0
> boat-water round about these
> blue parts fluorescent lemur
>
>
> _____________________________________________________________________
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 28 Jan 1997 08:14:29 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "Aldon L. Nielsen" 
Subject:      Re: Daimonics
Comments: To: maria damon 
In-Reply-To:  <32ee0d653e90009@mhub1.tc.umn.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

"Nielsen" used to be "Nielsen" -- though a first grade teacher, convinced
that I did not know how to spell my own name, forced me to write "Nelson"
on my name tag for parents' night, with exactly the consequences you'd
expect.  Cambridge more recently tried to make me a "Nielson," but we've
got that fixed --

More problematic is my first name, which was originally "Aldon," but
which people insist on pronouncing "All done" --  I will permit Alan
Golding to continue to pronounce it that way, as he's not a native
speaker (just kidding you All an), but will insist on having it my way
with all U.S. bred pronouncers -- (Danes seem to get it right for some
reason, despite it's having altered on these shores.)

Speaking of Scandanavics -- Swedish poet Werner Aspenstrom (you'll have
to imagine an umlaut over that "o") died in recent days -- Whatever the
merits of his verse (and I only read it in English translation, so
reserve final judgement), I always honored him for his stand in defense
of Rushdie when he was associated with the Nobel committee --
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 28 Jan 1997 11:22:38 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Alan Jen Sondheim 
Subject:      Re: 14 perfect lines, jennifer
Comments: To: maria damon 
In-Reply-To:  <32ee0d653e90009@mhub1.tc.umn.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

avi it is, goes back thankfully to the akkadian

alan
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 28 Jan 1997 11:30:31 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Brigham Taylor 
Subject:      More on the urban poetry thread...
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

One of my favorite miscellaneous statistics in my collection is that after
the fall of Rome, no city reached equal size-population-dimentions-density
until London in the early nineteenth century.  Any classicists out there
know of poetic evocations of ancient Rome??   Beyond the panegyric "Rome is
mighty and great" mode, I mean.

Brigham
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 28 Jan 1997 12:41:55 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         shoemakers@COFC.EDU
Subject:      Re: More on the urban poetry thread...
In-Reply-To:  
MIME-version: 1.0
Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

Well, this isn't quite what you asked for, but I've always been fond of
Pound's retro-modernizing impulse in "Homage to Sextus Propertius," as in:

My cellar does not date from Numa Pompilius,
Nor bristle with wine jars,
Nor is it equipped with a frigidaire patent...

and then a few lines further on, when he talks about "expensive pyramids
scraping the stars in their route," it seems he must be thinking of
modern "skyscrapers."  This, btw, is one of my favorite Pound poems,
very funny and witty, hilariously "archaeological" w/out excessive
obscurity.  steve

On Tue, 28 Jan 1997, Brigham Taylor wrote:

> One of my favorite miscellaneous statistics in my collection is that after
> the fall of Rome, no city reached equal size-population-dimentions-density
> until London in the early nineteenth century.  Any classicists out there
> know of poetic evocations of ancient Rome??   Beyond the panegyric "Rome is
> mighty and great" mode, I mean.
>
> Brigham
>

Steve Shoemaker
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 28 Jan 1997 13:48:00 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         AERIALEDGE@AOL.COM
Subject:      review of _Some Other Kind of Mission_

This recently appeared in _The Washington Review_. Written, of course, with
that audience in mind but perhaps of interest to poetics.

_Some Other Kind of Mission_, Lisa Jarnot, Burning Deck, $11. Available from
fine booksellers everywhere.

Lisa Jarnot is a great artist. You haven't heard of her? Why haven't you
heard of her? Because her chosen art form is poetry & poetry doesn't matter
in America.

Why doesn't poetry matter in America? I don't know.

Let's look at Jarnot's book & try & figure that one out.  _Some Other Kind of
Mission_ is a subtle, elegant, intelligent book. There are lots of animals in
it. There are ferrets, black birds, squirrels, blue terns, carp, crawfish,
pigeons, pigs, chickens, and rabbit. The animals are the words already in
your head that are alive. You can't explain them. You need to be reminded of
this.

Why doesn't poetry matter in America? Because in America everything is _for_
something. It must have a use. You are a person, you are alive, you can't be
explained; but you can be used. But you can use poetry, this poetry, to
remind you that you are alive. Here's some:

"i was at the walls in bars and they were speaking all around the field soil.
they retracted me to the farm my plan. fuck you. in chaos. the bus behind the
plan and dreamt of spoken but retracted. having only terns and the firs and
the clover clever here at the lamplight in the firs of having clover. all
around at having field soil in the chaos. retracted having only in the
meticules unlikely farm. shot down by the motorcade in light of next to
polar. in chaos, still retracted, at the plan of having dreamt."

What I mean to say is the use most people are put to in America doesn't
follow from their need, but rather from the needs of a small number of rich
people. This has always been the case but it's gotten worse again lately.
Remember:

"Outside the sky is hanging by the composition of he who eats eats first with
we will sell you. and this ever you, and ever this ever you, and ever of you
this and. my love speaks about the overpass. my love speaks about newark. my
love speaks through the merging traffic. especially with the radio on."

Jarnot's book is both more & less political than this review. It is in the
realities of its own being as a book, and remains a constant word-life that
doesn't have to justify itself to you or any other discourse. & so it is
absolutely political because it knows itself. & I will tell you itself is
better than America ripping you & me & everybody to death of course but not
without a life to choose first thank you & you can't now because they use
you, you have to live up to them, they don't let you be what you are or even
let you think about it with other people mostly when you're with other people
you have to do the bull they give you food for or else you're just too tired
or horny or something but they just use you like some goddamn swizzle stick
or something. Ya know?

But I don't want to stop at that because there are so many things in Lisa
Jarnot's book. So many things she's doing that the excerpts above don't
really show. They always want you to tell them what it is don't they. But
they don't understand when you show them. Are they just dumb?

Why do I say poetry doesn't matter in America? Well, one example is a new
book of poetry by Bernadette Mayer published by New Directions called _Proper
Name and Other Stories_. There are a few "stories" in the book but mostly
it's poetry, a lot of it is prose poetry, but there is also a fair amount of
poetry with line breaks. So, why did they call it stories? Obviously they
thought they would sell more if they called it stories. A lot of booksellers
seem to think poetry doesn't sell so they don't order it. Of course it
doesn't sell if they don't have it. I have worked in three bookstores that
did order poetry & it did sell, a lot. That's the story. By the Way _Proper
Name_ is an amazing book. & I'm not picking on New Directions as if I could
at least they have the sense to publish Bernadette Mayer.

Lisa has a lot of very beautiful visual poems in her book. Well, they're not
visual poems really but poems being visual as well as poems. I mean a lot of
visual poems are to look at but these are to read and to look at at the same
time. At the very same time. The visual poems bring you into the book & let
you be there in the book too. They are mysterious. I should use some bigger
words I suppose to convince you. The book is organized as an imminent
pastiche. It's locales are neither authorial nor excessive, rather the
learned ideology of generalized freedom is a coaxing device to carry the
abandoned and irreversible time (a kind of _pseudo-cyclical exchangeability_)
_within_ the perception's "fully equipped" quantitative equality. The
unconscious superego is "always meeting hermits on the phone." It helps you
live here: ". . .in your neighborhood and the street you cross is inner
truth."

--Rod Smith
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 28 Jan 1997 10:52:04 PST
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Jerry Rothenberg 
Subject:      Re: More on the urban poetry thread...

Someone might check on this, but there are indications that Tenochtitlan
(Mexico City today) was at the time of the Conquest the most populated
city in the world -- some way larger than London.  I don't know how this
would compare with ancient Rome (or London by the 19th), but just for
the record ...

JR
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 28 Jan 1997 11:02:31 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         David Bromige 
Subject:      Rod Smith's review
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Must respond right away to Rod Smith's excellent review of Lisa Jarnot's
book. Havent read the book (not even sure i'm getting her name straight)
but will now lay hands upon it a.s.a.p. But to appreciate much of what Rod
says, one doesnt need to have read the book: but to have read book_s_,
books of fine poetry for which this society finds no use. Ok, now, on the
britishpoets list, theres been much discussion of what to, as brainst(or
'd')reamers, abt our marginalization by the maindrainers (marvelous play on
"mandarins"), Some saying ignore 'em, others counseling tactical
intervention, etc. Provocative discussion. Anyway,as one who's for
intervention, I say why not try to reprint this review in one of various
(?) maindrain publications? Who knows--for some editor out there, the time
may feel ripe. db
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 28 Jan 1997 11:03:47 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Steve Carll 
Subject:      triple crown of poetry
Comments: To: poetics@UBVM.cc.buffalo.edu, AERIALEDGE@aol.com, Lppl@aol.com,
          jms@acmenet.net, BLUOMA@VANSTAR.COM, Marisa.Januzzi@m.cc.utah.edu,
          drothschild@penguin.com, Daniel_Bouchard@hmco.com,
          jarnot@pipeline.com, jdavis@panix.com, lease@HUSC.HARVARD.EDU,
          wmfuller@ix.netcom.com, fittermn@is.nyu.edu, daviesk@is4.nyu.edu,
          lgoodman@ACSU.Buffalo.EDU, mwinter@blue.weeg.uiowa.edu,
          I.Lightman@uea.ac.uk, DGARDNER@unistudios.com, eryque@acmenet.net,
          kunos@lanminds.com, levyaa@is.nyu.edu, sab5@psu.edu,
          cyanosis@slip.net, ninthlab@aol.com, mburger@adobe.com,
          kristinb@wired.com, cah@sonic.net, cyanosis@slip.net,
          jasfoley@aol.com, andrew_joron@sfbayguardian.com,
          jmcnally@postoffice.ptd.net, john_r._noto@sfbayguardian.com,
          103730.2033@compuserve.com
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It was a busy weekend for the poetry mavens of san francisco this weekend,
with three exciting readings in as many days.

It all started, as I remember it, on Friday night at new college, with Dodie
Bellamy welcoming Nathaniel Mackey into the space Robert Duncan used to hold
court in.  Mackey proceeded to bind us  in the spell of the Andoumboulou,
the prototypical humans we ourselves all-too-frequently resemble.  He read
from _School of Udra_, _What Said Serif_, and _Atet A.D._, a groovy Mystic
Horns Society epistle commissioned and then rejected for inclusion in the
JVC Jazz Festival Guide.  Some of the lines and phrases I caught were:

took to beng taken past the breaking point
desolate seed-pod, mother-in-law's tongue
as if by late light shaped
something a Sufi said in Andalusia
in oblique league with majesty
aspic allure
panicky butterfly, lyric escape
opaque pronouns, persons whether or not we knew who they were
seven-sided house said to have been left in heaven
"What does 'language is a fruit of which the skin is chatter' mean?" he asked.
rattled by wisdom's visit
an Ur-sound blew through our phones
I was the what-sayer:  whatever he'd say, I'd say, "So what."
gaze a ghost would give

Also witness to Mackey's entracing cadences were Steve Dickison, Tina
Rotenberg, Stephanie Baker, Rodrigo Toscano, Hung Tu, Renee Gladman,
Giovanni Singleton, Mary Burger, Pamela Lu, Jay Schwartz, Lauren Hudath,
Doug Powell, Robert Hale, David Larson and Aaron Shurin.

Afterwards there was crowding and smoking at the Elbo Room

On Saturday it was off to New Langton Arts on Folsom and 8th, where Kit
Robinson introduced Bill and Ted's Excellent Poetry Reading.  Bill being
Berkson, Ted being Greenwald, both being excellent.  Berkson went first,
reading from _Lush Life_ and diving into a short autobiographical story
about being a young autograph hound in New York in the 50's, waiting for
ballplayers outside hotel lobbies.  Also included was "Shelter", in memory
of Jim Brodey.  Some of Bill's gems included:

I can see where the sky takes a bend
I feel the finesse of particles
the strips in place are a snore of blue
"Sorry," says recorded time, "Didn't get it.  Lost my concentration."
ash is crystal.  ecstacy is near.
private mollusk and arachnid
midnight moonlight mobbed Dante's bridge
birds that freak in unison
worth mentioning?
amateur self always swapping cartoon bodies
one by one the prawns mounted the barfly's plate
the box pictures the box
do you recall the words for fog?

After a break in which many of us wandered upstairs to look at art made by
obsessives (and I mean that in an admiring way), we settled back down to
watch a video by Les Levine starring Ted Greenwald and Ted Greenwald as
poker sharks explaining the tricks of the trade.  Unfortunately, the wiring
from the VCR to the monitor was bad and the sound faded in and out, making
following the action a chore.  Luckily the real Ted Greenwald took his place
on the stage and picked up the slack.  Ted read almost without pausing
between poems, his foot keeping the beat as he delivered his work in
staccato rhythm.  Some of the endlessly permuted phrases were:

I be my own boss
I be my own police
honk when you leave your knees
"heart" as a verb
understands what inner workings?
boats planes trains telling it all
who would've thought self dissolves?
terrible modern flattery enters therapy
would you like to talk about it?
the calculations seem rotund
the figures round off
in need of multiple thighs
bored demi-smiles
can't imagine glass topic moving here

Audience members I recognized included Pat Reed, Alex Cory, Leslie
Scalapino, Laura Moriarty, Nick Robinson, Charlie Palau, Kush, Kenward
Elmslie, Kevin Killian, Dodie Bellamy and Lyn Hejinian.

Sunday at Canessa Park was the third leg of S.F. Poetry's Triple Crown, the
publication party for _Antenym_ 11.  Avery E.D. Burns, the guy with the
keys, was ill, and we didn't think we were going to get into the space for a
few minutes there, but Avery came through (though at times he didn't seem to
be all there, if you know what I mean) and we got started at 3:30.  After a
brief brain hiccup I was able to articulate some ideas on ontological
activism, the notion of bringing the question "what am I doing here?" out
for communal input and its transformation into "what are we all doing here?"
with its necessary corollary, "How do we wish to continue to be here?"  Then
Darin DeStefano read some new short poems, subtly twisting his words into
phrases like

amphibiously naked among stars
its softness wrecks my psychology so deftly
as if stones might begin ambiguously to song themselves
"The moon has become crazy over you, get on."
room after room of empty thumb
night chased me for hours
at 4:15 mother sends me to calm the bees

Instead of taking a break, we just plowed right through to Pat Reed, who
read her new handmade book called _Dawn Walking Shoes_, written at Green
Gulch Farm (a Zen monastery) in 1994, and moving on to some stories about
her Vietnamese ESL students.  Some lines from the book included

somewhere a small bell crimps the naked time
the trees fall through me
the blackbird's 3 notes start high and climb down
the sea-wave is a story of motion arriving at the beach

Eric Selland finishes us off with the complete _Songs_, his recently
completed series based on Japanese *tanka*, 5-line stanzas having the
syllabic pattern 5-7-5-7-7 (the resemblance ends there, he told us),
following that with stanzas read at random from his _Transparencies_, a long
work with a more complex architectural pattern  which I won't try to
describe.  Some of his lines were:

pointless a sky remains
empty no matter what not
gods who have escaped
border between tree and sky
the finite object becomes
still thought in the broken world
the substance of things
measuring the plenitude
not what I wanted to say

"That goddamn raven!  He's taken all my things!"

(OK, he didn't actually read that last one, but it's my favorite line from
the _Transparencies_, so I thought I'd share it)

The audience included Andrew Joron, Sheldon Forrest, Mary-Sullivan Roark,
Steve Dickison, Tina Rotenberg, Chris Daniels, Kristin Burkart and Lawrence
Fixel.  Afterwards some of us went to the Lotus Garden on Grant and
California for Chinese vegetarian feasting complete with moon cakes for dessert.

So I guess I won the triple crown, being the only one with the stamina to
absorb three days of poetry.  I cannot celebrate, however.  I got home to
discover _The X Files_ was already half over.  :-(


**********************************
sjcarll@slip.net        Steve Carll
http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mags/antenym
http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/ezines/antenym

In seed-
sense
the sea stars you out, innermost, forever.

                --Paul Celan
**********************************
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 28 Jan 1997 14:49:52 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "k.a. hehir" 
Subject:      whippet whirly word project
Comments: To: ru@execulink.com
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                              POETRYPOETRYpOetRee

                Emily Chung          Sam Pane
                      Annabelle Fell      Skot
            Ian Keeling             Rupauk Dey Sicar
                           hosted by
                      Kevin Angelo Hehir

       Tuesday Feb 4,1997                   Whippet Lounge
          8:30 pm                          at the Embassy Hotel
         Free                            732 Dundas ST. E
                       438-7127

      Very fine is my valentine very mine and very fine
                                           Gertrude Stein
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 28 Jan 1997 13:59:26 +0100
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Miekal And 
Subject:      Re: whippet whirly word project
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where on the planet is this happening?

m
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Date:         Tue, 28 Jan 1997 15:00:38 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Loss Glazier 
Subject:      urban poetry - mexico
In-Reply-To:  <9701281852.AA10600@carla.UCSD.EDU> from "Jerry Rothenberg" at
              Jan 28, 97 10:52:04 am
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I'll check on this but it's clear that when Cortes landed,
Tenochtitlan was certainly bigger than any city in Spain.

I do know that Teotihuacan, some centuries earlier and near
Tenochtitlan, spread over an area larger than ancient Rome at its
height, its influence spreading far into Central America.

Another thought is that on the Mayan side of things, American
literature started 500 years before English literature, as Dennis
Tedlock has pointed out in other venues.

A final note: Mexico City today is still the most populated metropolitan
area in the world.
---
> Someone might check on this, but there are indications that Tenochtitlan
> (Mexico City today) was at the time of the Conquest the most populated
> city in the world -- some way larger than London.  I don't know how this
> would compare with ancient Rome (or London by the 19th), but just for
> the record ...
>
> JR
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 28 Jan 1997 15:03:42 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "k.a. hehir" 
Subject:      Re: whippet whirly word project
In-Reply-To:  <32EDF806.6AE0@mwt.net>
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On Tue, 28 Jan 1997, Miekal And wrote:
> where on the planet is this happening?

this is happening in londonOnt. canada.
of course i realize that the only people on this list that will be able to
make this, i've already seen this morning. the reason i post is just to
let the
world know that near and far, things are going on - re -live-poetry.

another time, another planet,
kevin
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 28 Jan 1997 14:12:44 +0100
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Miekal And 
Subject:      Re: whippet whirly word project
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k.a. hehir wrote:
>
> On Tue, 28 Jan 1997, Miekal And wrote:
> > where on the planet is this happening?
>
> this is happening in londonOnt. canada.
> of course i realize that the only people on this list that will be able to
> make this, i've already seen this morning. the reason i post is just to
> let the
> world know that near and far, things are going on - re -live-poetry.
>
> another time, another planet,
> kevin

that's fine kevin, some of us even have very active imaginations...

miekal

chicken baking, boots untied, birds squawking fer their lunch

--
@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#
Dreamtime Village website: http://net22.com/dreamtime
QAZINGULAZA: And/Was/Wakest website:
http://net22.com/qazingulaza
e-mail for DT & And/Was: dtv@mwt.net
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 28 Jan 1997 13:23:11 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Laura Moriarty 
Subject:      readings (planning snafu)
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Pat Dienstfrey and Laura Moriarty will be reading at Diesel Books on 5433
College Ave. (3 blocks south of the Rockridge BART station) on Wednesday 28
January at 7:30

ALSO

Fanny Howe and Elizabeth Robinson will be reading at Cody's on Telegraph
Ave and Haste St. same night same time
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 28 Jan 1997 14:33:01 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Mark Weiss 
Subject:      Re: More on the urban poetry thread...
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no city in Europe.


At 11:30 AM 1/28/97 -0500, you wrote:
>One of my favorite miscellaneous statistics in my collection is that after
>the fall of Rome, no city reached equal size-population-dimentions-density
>until London in the early nineteenth century.  Any classicists out there
>know of poetic evocations of ancient Rome??   Beyond the panegyric "Rome is
>mighty and great" mode, I mean.
>
>Brigham
>
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 28 Jan 1997 15:06:08 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Mark Weiss 
Subject:      Re: urban poetry - mexico
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Hangzhou in China was over a million strong, Tenochtitlan is estimated as
high as c. 700,000. Dodge City Kansas would have been a metropolis in Europe
at the time.

At 03:00 PM 1/28/97 -0500, you wrote:
>I'll check on this but it's clear that when Cortes landed,
>Tenochtitlan was certainly bigger than any city in Spain.
>
>I do know that Teotihuacan, some centuries earlier and near
>Tenochtitlan, spread over an area larger than ancient Rome at its
>height, its influence spreading far into Central America.
>
>Another thought is that on the Mayan side of things, American
>literature started 500 years before English literature, as Dennis
>Tedlock has pointed out in other venues.
>
>A final note: Mexico City today is still the most populated metropolitan
>area in the world.
>---
>> Someone might check on this, but there are indications that Tenochtitlan
>> (Mexico City today) was at the time of the Conquest the most populated
>> city in the world -- some way larger than London.  I don't know how this
>> would compare with ancient Rome (or London by the 19th), but just for
>> the record ...
>>
>> JR
>>
>
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 28 Jan 1997 18:48:55 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Thomas Lecky 
Subject:      Re: New Sun & Moon Titles
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I would love to get a copy of:

>  Messerli, ED. THE GERTRUDE STEIN AWARDS IN
>  INNOVATIVE AMERICAN POETRY 1994-1995
>  $14.95

I will review it for Cups magazine too; they should be okay with that.

Please send it to me:

c/o William Doyle Galleries
175 East 87th St.
New York, NY 10128


Thanks for offering the discount to Poetics List members. I hope all these titles are
successful for you.

Best,
Tom

--
____________________________________________________________________________

Thomas Lecky
editor@qwertyarts.com
Qwerty Arts                                        http://www.qwertyarts.com
____________________________________________________________________________
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 28 Jan 1997 15:51:17 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Laura Moriarty 
Subject:      more reading snafus
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Pat Dienstfrey and Laura Moriarty will be reading at Diesel Books on 5433
College Ave. (3 blocks south of the Rockridge BART station) on Wednesday 29
January at 7:30.

This one in Oakland on the 29th, not the 28th as previously posted.

ALSO

Fanny Howe and Elizabeth Robinson will be reading at Cody's on Telegraph
Ave and Haste St. same night same time

This one is Berkeley, again, on Wednesday the 29th.
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 28 Jan 1997 15:34:32 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "Aldon L. Nielsen" 
Subject:      Re: urban poetry - Kansas
In-Reply-To:  <199701282306.PAA00093@norway.it.earthlink.net>
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Dodge City would have been a metropolis in Euorpe, if it coulda been.

yours in moral Earpitude,
aldon
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Date:         Wed, 29 Jan 1997 00:56:08 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Joshua N Schuster 
Subject:      Moxley/Brown readings
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                        THE WRITERS HOUSE PRESENTS

                a reading with:

                                LEE ANN BROWN

                                      &

                                JENNIFER MOXLEY


                        poetry reading on THURSDAY, Jan 30 at 5pm

                                ****************

                ON FRIDAY, Jan 31 at 5pm

                panel discussion: Brown speaking on "Ballad Notes"

                                  Moxley speaking on "Poetic Labor"

                                *****************

        ON SATURDAY, Feb 1, 2pm Bagels and Brunch with Brown and Moxley
-------------------------
Writers House
3805 Locust Walk, UPenn
Philadelphia, PA
215-573-WRIT
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 29 Jan 1997 10:25:32 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Nuyopoman@AOL.COM
Subject:      Nuyoricans in Kentucky

Nuyorican Poets Cafe Live! will be in Lexington at the University of Kentucky
on Friday and Saturday, 31-Feb 1. Samantha Coerbell, Magie EStep, Bob Holman,
Mike TYler.
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 29 Jan 1997 10:29:52 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Nuyopoman@AOL.COM
Subject:      REVIEW OF _sOME oTHER kiND OF mISSION_

Rod,

What a wonderful, blowsy, trippingly on the light review!

Will the Washington Post print "fuck"? They should print this!
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 29 Jan 1997 08:54:54 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Douglas Barbour 
Subject:      Re: Fred Wah's _Diamond Grill_
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Oops. When I told the list about Fred Wah's great new book from NeWest
Press, his first full length prose work, the biotext _Diamond Grill_, I
gave the wrong distributor for the US. It may well be found in certain
selected bookstores, but otherwise you should try

General Distribution Services
85 Rock RiverDrive  Unit 202
Buffalo  NY  14207-2170
Tollfree voice: 1-800-805-1083
Fax: (416) 445-5967

 =============================================================================
Douglas Barbour                    You must abandon poetry for you cannot
Department of English                                   forget it

University of Alberta              You must abandon poetry, it never existed
Edmonton  Alberta  T6G  2E5        You must abandon poetry, it has always been
(403) 492 2181  FAX:(403) 492 8142                      fatal
H: 436 3320                                        Bill Manhire
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 29 Jan 1997 11:28:31 +0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Bil Brown 
Subject:      Re: Nuyoricans in Kentucky
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>Nuyorican Poets Cafe Live! will be in Lexington at the University of Kentucky
>on Friday and Saturday, 31-Feb 1. Samantha Coerbell, Magie EStep, Bob Holman,
>Mike TYler.


Um... great. I think. More to my great state-of-mind. Please.

Bil Brown
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 29 Jan 1997 08:26:56 PST
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Jerry Rothenberg 
Subject:      san diego readings

For those in San Diego or in striking distance thereof, the forthcoming
readings in the New Writing Series (UCSD) include:

Wednesday January 29 4:30: Ruth Forman

Thursday February 6 4:30: Anselm Hollo

Wednesday February 12 4:30: Steve McCaffery & Karen Mac Cormack

Wednesday February 19 4:30: Hank Lazer

Wednesday February 26 7:00: Steven Cope, Samantha Goldstein, William
  Martin, Danny Mydlack.

All readings at the Visual Arts Facility Performance Space.

[Also on March 8 -- Saturday -- at the Porter Randall Gallery: a special
reading by Ed Sanders.  Details to follow.]
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 29 Jan 1997 12:43:16 +0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Bil Brown 
Subject:      Re: san diego readings
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>For those in San Diego or in striking distance thereof, the forthcoming
>readings in the New Writing Series (UCSD) include:

>
>Thursday February 6 4:30: Anselm Hollo


Jerry, say hello to Ansem for me...

Bil Brown
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 29 Jan 1997 09:54:01 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         william marsh 
Subject:      Re: triple crown of poetry
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  Berkson went first,
>reading from _Lush Life_ and diving into a short autobiographical story
>about being a young autograph hound in New York in the 50's, waiting for
>ballplayers outside hotel lobbies.

the Billy Strayhorn biography?  or any connection?
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 29 Jan 1997 11:05:53 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Mark Weiss 
Subject:      Getting the word out
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I want to revisit the subject of my last and maybe start a thread by
broadening the complaint (although veterans of the list may have been here
before).
As a neophyte publisher (5 books, but the pace is quickening) I have learned
that if you want to get the work into the hands of more than just friends
and family of press and poet you've got to get reviews. But all reviews are
not created equal: the ones that count most are Publishers Weekly, Library
Journal and Booklist (The Times would be nice, but who am I kidding?). They
review a very small number of books. They have--all three of them--picked up
two of mine. Guess what? the two that could be called conventional.
That's part one. Second topic: when a book gets reviewed by someone you
don't know. I've learned, the hard way, that a new book has to be
accompanied by a toolkit and user's guide, no matter how limpid the verse.
And that guide had better be written for readers with limited English. I
hate doing this; I've always thought that a poem or book should speak for
itself, although a recommendation is always nice. One of my poets, Mervyn
Taylor, I snagged for the press after hearing him read. Stephen Vincent came
to me when a friend handed me his manuscript. But here's what happens if the
user's guide isn't ridiculously detailed. One reviewer of a book of mine
noted that it consisted of two long poems and a serial poem (both the book
jacket and the press release told him that) and then proceded to review the
book as if each fragment of verse was independent of any overarching
structure. Sort of missing the point.
I think about this a lot as I wind down the design and typesetting phase of
getting out Rochelle Owens' New and Selected. It's a big book, and a big
investment for a small press, and it sure aint conventional. So I begin to
gear up to write a press release that is also an independent piece of
criticism on the subject of "why I like this book and think you should like
it, too."
Third topic: the natural audience. If there is a natural audience, one that
doesn't need a hard sell, I should think it would be the mass of poets who
want me to publish their work. I have a large pile of unreturned manuscripts
(I know, I know, I'll get to them). Most are dreadful, one will get a kind
note, all are inappropriate, and apparently so, for Junction Press. None of
these folks have read, or even looked at, any of Junction's books, and none
claim to have done so. This is true even for a couple of reasonably
well-known folks who should know better.
This rambles. I suppose my point is that I expect most books, poems,
performances, concerts, to be somewhere on a continuum between hohum and
embarassing. But I dive in for the occasional find that may change my life
and my practice in ways that I couldn't anticipate and that I neither sought
nor necessarily desired. A lot like writing.
And this might be the nub. We live in a fearful and self-restricting
culture, and we're trying to push the aleatory. What will happen to the
children if we teach them that there's a world beyond the prisons?


For the record, here's a list of Junction's five available publications.
Toolkit and guide will be included, along with free samples, in my
up-an-coming website.

Mervyn Taylor, _An Island of His Own_. $9.00. A very few copies left at this
price.
        Second printing will be higher.
Susie Mee, _The Undertaker's Daughter_. $9.00
Richard Elman, _Cathedral-Tree-Train_. $9.00
Stephen Vincent, _Walking_. $9.00
Mark Weiss, _Fieldnotes_. $11.00

Orders accompanied by check to: Junction Press, PO Box 40537, San Diego CA
92164. Add $1.50 postage and handling in US. Aliens--backchannel for terms.
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 29 Jan 1997 11:19:19 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Mark Weiss 
Subject:      Re: walkways
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Whoops! The following, Marjorie Perloff's note to BRITLIST and my reply, got
backchannelled to her. I meant it for UB List.

>Date: Wed, 01 Jan 1997 04:06:43
>To: Marjorie Perloff 
>From: Mark Weiss 
>Subject: Re: walkways
>
>This is all true, but limited. Part of the audience for any dance event is
the large number of young women who study dance, and a Merce Cunningham
performance is a celebrity event. Allen Ginsberg can also fill a hall. There
are lots of wonderful small dance companies slowly starving on grants and
their members' day jobs. Audiences at their performances are usually tiny.
The same for new music groups (and old--San Diego just lost its symphony
orchestra).
>More to the point, both performances sited are far more passive experiences
for the audience than listening to a meditative poem (See what the audience
composition is at a performance of, say, the Bach Partitas, on the one hand,
or an Elliot Carter piece, on the other). Attention to any live performance
is a learned skill, but I suspect that the learning curve, certainly for
non-poets, is steeper for most poetry readings, even well-staged ones.
>I love readings--I've run several series, I've broadcast them, and I'm not
a bad reader, myself. But I think of them primarily as an aid to and
propaganda for the performance that takes place in a subsequent private
reading. If the reader is to incorporate the poem into his/her own breathing
it's likely to be in solitude book-in-hand.
>For children who don't learn this experience at home the schools are the
only entrance. And they certainly foul up the works. It would help if
teachers loved poetry, but they are victims of the same system, and their
negative attitude is reinforced by the reactions of the kids to what passes
for a poetry curriculum.
>So that's the place to start--jazz up the curriculum, make the teaching
more verbal and performance-oriented, and send the kids home with poetry
appropriate to their age and abilities.
>And somehow get money to make this happen.
>
>At 08:28 AM 1/29/97 -0800, you wrote:
>>On audiences, performance/ poetry etc.
>>
>>I think Chris Cheek is quite right that poets today need to find their
>>audiences elsewhere --not in the standard format little collections of
>>"verse."  This last week I attended Merce Cunningham's most recent
>>performance in LA--or actually out in Glendale at something called the
>>ALEX Theatre.  It was packed.  The work was the 90-minute "The
>>Event"--brilliant and beautiful but not easy.  A few evenings later saw
>>local group Blue Fish, Red Fish from UCSD perform a Percussion Evening for
>>the Green Umbrella series--Cage, Varese, Steve Reich, Xynaxis
>>very young audience, very big crowd.  Enormous enthusiasm.  The question
>>then is:  why do dance and music events of this nature get so much better
>>an audience than anything involving the written word?  And I think the
>>answer is that schools have so destroyed the possible interest in poetry
>>kids naturally have by making poetry a vehicle for some sort of Great Idea
>>rather than a Sounding, that we have to start from scratch and make the
>>reading itself an art.  And here poets are often guilty--I have a real
>>phobia of the reading where the diffident poet walks in, black notebook in
>>hand, and acts as if he/she hasn't yet decided which poem to read, starts
>>leafing through the pages, changes his/her mind, reads something else,
>>hesitates, etc.  By this time everyone out there is falling asleep.  Also:
>>the anecdotes should be omitted, as in, "Now last year my wife and I found
>>a cockroach in the refrigerator and I thought....."    I swear I heard a
>>well-known poet introduce a new poem that way.
>>
>>So performance may mean no more that making the actual reading an EVENT,
>>not a secondary vehicle.
>>
>>Keith--I don't know anything about the Culler conference but suspect it
>>means "performativity" in an entirely different sense and that the lyric
>>in question will be Renaissance or Romantic.
>>
>>xxxx
>>Marjorie perloff
>>
>>
>>
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 29 Jan 1997 14:27:38 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Jordan Davis 
Subject:      Re: triple crown of poetry
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Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

That would be the title of Berkson's collection from Z Press. _Lush Life_
is pretty good. For 100% Berkson excitement go straight to _Saturday
Night_, the collection published by Tibor de Nagy. The good parts of O'Hara
with some Ashbery and Koch for the hell of it. J
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 29 Jan 1997 17:17:34 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         David Dowker 
Subject:      alterran relocation
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

re-ANNOUNCING (with new address):

(((((((((THE ALTERRAN POETRY ASSEMBLAGE)))))))))

1.0

Adeena Karasick, Andrew Joron, Lisa Samuels, Robert Mittenthal,
Sheila Murphy, John Noto, Hank Lazer, Charles Alexander,
William Fuller, Laura Moriarty, David Dowker, Christine Stewart,
Caroline Bergvall.

Editor: David Dowker

alterra@ican.net
http://home.ican.net/~alterra/
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 30 Jan 1997 01:18:05 +0000
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         cris cheek 
Subject:      sonic writing
Comments: To: Multiple recipients of list POETICS 
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

                     Monday 3 February 1997 at 7.30pm
                Drama Studio  -  University of East Anglia
                         Norwich, UK

                      sonic arts 3: the sonic voice

              electroacoustic writing for sound, text and voice
              featuring newly commissioned work
              siting computer voices by cris cheek

     'a partial site'

     + a birthday tribute for Jackson Maclow on his 75th

     + news sections from 'the canning town chronicle . . .'

     + cris cheek  /  Sianed Jones (live )

     + work by Monty Atkins

      5 pounds (concs 4 pounds, students 3 pounds)

     (apologies for cross-posting)
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 28 Jan 1997 21:57:52 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         George Bowering 
Subject:      Re: oh, alright (clothing)
In-Reply-To:  
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Bromige never left any stone-washed jeans at my hovel up here; in fact the
only pants I have ever seen Bromige wearing are those old floppy gabardines
in some awful coffee-with 2-percent-milk color, the kind of trousers you
remember seeing on your Uncle Vince on the front porch.




George Bowering.
                                       ,
2499 West 37th Ave.,
Vancouver, B.C.,
Canada  V6M 1P4

fax: 1-604-266-9000
e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 30 Jan 1997 00:01:51 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         David Bromige 
Subject:      oh, alright (clothing)
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

those are the pants i wear when i'm around george to make him feel less out
of his depth and more like he's visiting his Uncle vince!
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 30 Jan 1997 10:09:44 EST
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Daniel Bouchard/College/hmco 
Subject:      a Boston pub
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: Text/Plain

I'm pleased to announce the availability of the second issue of MASS AVE.
The featured poets are:

Valerie Hanson
Douglas Rothschild
Lisa Jarnot
Mary Burger
Marcella Durand
Drew Gardner
Eileen Corder
Dave Baptiste Chirot
Anselm Berrigan
Daniel Bouchard
Nava Fader
Kevin Varrone
Larry Price
WB Keckler
Dan Luft
Kim Lyons


Six dollars, includes mailing.
Make checks out to Daniel Bouchard.

Send to PO Box 230, Boston, MA 02117.



daniel_bouchard@hmco.com@smtp
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 30 Jan 1997 11:35:38 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Sylvester Pollet 
Subject:      hart crane & charlie mingus
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Three poets read with a jazz group Jan. 29, Bangor, Maine, Borders. Terry
Hunter, Kathleen (Lignell) Ellis, and I. They read Corso, Kerouac, langston
Hughes, Gwendolyn Brooks, etc. as well as their own stuff. I read mine plus
some haiku from Lane Dunlop, two poems of Paul Blackburn, and Hart Crane's
"To Brooklyn Bridge" with the group playing Charlie Mingus's "Nostalgia on
Times Square" behind it. That might be a first for this planet. Maybe even
a last, though it actually sounded pretty good. Good crowd, 30-40 people,
including a bunch of young kids, down to maybe 4 years old. The beat goes
on. One degree (F.) when I left, and six below this morning.

                Sylvester Pollet

Backwoods Broadsides            National Poetry Foundation
RR 5 Box 3630                   Room 302
Ellsworth ME                    5752 Neville Hall
04605-9529                      University of Maine
                                Orono ME 04469-5752

                                http://www.ume.maine.edu/~npf/
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 30 Jan 1997 11:29:20 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "Aldon L. Nielsen" 
Subject:      Re: hart crane & charlie mingus & sonny rollins
In-Reply-To:  
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

along these lines -- remember Sonny Rollins playing on "The Bridge" (not
to be confused with our memories of the reenactment in later decades for
SONY) -- then read Baraka's "The Bridge" -- while you're enjoying that,
take a peek at Baraka's "Way Out West" (another Rollins ref.) which just
precedes "The Bridge" in the recent selected --

On the drive West from Denver, I heard on radio the latest CD of the
Mingus Big Band -- pretty impressive renditions --
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 30 Jan 1997 15:33:19 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Mark Prejsnar 
Subject:      Re: Getting the word out
In-Reply-To:  <199701291905.LAA29253@cyprus.it.earthlink.net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

Mark---
I take it that you are trying hard to get Junction Books into libraries,
as you mention Pub. Weekly, Library Journal & Booklist.  These impact on
book retailers, I know, but not LJ so much...(or so I assume: I've been a
library professional for 20 years, but have only worked in the retail book
trade briefly, and not by choice).  Of course, if I were publishing an
interesting & impressive list like yours looks to be, I'd try hard to
contact the kind of folks that are on this listserv, that read the
non-mainstream poetry journals (so many new ones seem to be mushrooming
recently--my budget keeps me from seeing half of them!)
But I assume you've thought of that; and certainly the interesting poetry
journals have little space for reviews so you haven't that good a shot
with them, and promotional mailings via snail are probably far too costly
for you, considering the relatively small number of orders from
individuals you'd get in return.

So for marketing to individuals, or to try to get into a wider range of
bookstores, I can see that it's hard.

However, as a library professional, I feel that publishers like yourself
need to get into libraries across the country more; this is tougher than
ever, as we in the library world are among the first of all institutions
to get slashed by the budget cleaver, in times of extreme capitalist
recession/ depression.  But it is still possible to do something.  This is
a position I've advocated in our poetry publication here in Atlanta, Misc.
Proj., which I edit.  I'm repeating it here more as a general polemic to
the list as a whole than in response to your posting, because it's
something that has to be done not by the publisher but by concerned
readers & writers around the country.  This is to inundate our local
libraries with purchase requests for material like this.  Public libraries
are among the most heavily hit by budget cuts and also do not always want
to order from small publishers (sometimes profoundly stupid laws prevent
them from using all but a few mainstream book jobbers selected thru
competitive bidding, & in this way dissident material is entierly ruled
out).  Academic libraries are better, & since a fair number of people on
the list have some academic affiliation, I'd strongly plead that they
submit written requests to their institutions' humanities libraries,
asking that they purchase Junction & other nonmainstream
publishers...However, your local public library is very worth trying! Not
all are unable/unwilling to respond to these requests.  The idea is not to
ask that they pursue a particular publisher, but to request individual
titles that you would like to check out & use yourself once they are
cataloged...many libraries (most, I think) really want their users to give
them requests like this.

Altho' I'm not faculty at Emory University (nor a librarian: I have only a
BA degree) I've been accepted by our main library here as something of an
honorary poetry bibliographer; that is, they generally order what I
request from publishers like Potes & Poets, Sun & Moon, Roof, The Figures,
Talisman House, Zoland etc.  This is a somewhat special institution (often
called Coca-Cola University) because of the huge endowment from Coke's
main owning families, which has allowed an unusually healthy library
acquisitions budget, for this point in the economic crisis.  Still, we
could all do alot along these lines, and help to support non-mainstream
poetry in a way that goes beyond our limited personal budgets.  (And mine
is very limited, believe me!)

Mark Prejsnar
Atlanta
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 30 Jan 1997 16:30:57 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Thomas Bell 
Subject:      integration as hegemony?
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

The latest New Yorker has a story on August Wilson's June speech where
he "declared [American theatre is] an intrument of white cultural hegemony, and
the recent campaign to integrate and diversify it only makes things
worse....they needed integration the way they needed acid rain."
tom bell

very interesting story, but I think it will take me some time to figure out
how I feel about it.
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 30 Jan 1997 14:55:07 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Charles Alexander 
Subject:      masque of rhyme
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

I announced this rather casually in an earlier message, but will do so again
now, more officially:

THE MASQUE OF RHYME
A new chapbook by BOB PERELMAN
laser-print pages sewn into Chiri oriental paper wrappers
Hand titling on each copy by visual artist Cynthia Miller
Limited edition of 150 copies
Each copy signed by the author

Respondents on this list only who want this book, please send $4.00 plus two
stamps for mailing, or $4.64 with no stamps.

All others not on Poetics List: $5.00

For this small chapbook we will accept unpaid orders, to invoice later, only
from libraries and bookstores. All others please send cash or check made out
to Chax Press.

Send to:

Chax Press
101 W. Sixth St., no. 6
Tucson, AZ  85701-1000


If you have any questions please call 520-620-1626
or email to chax@theriver.com


thank you,

charles alexander
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 30 Jan 1997 14:37:38 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Charles Alexander 
Subject:      Re: Getting the word out
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Thank you, Mark Prejsnar, for your important message about getting books
from non-mainstream presses into academic libraries. I certainly hope people
follow up on your suggestions.

Charles Alexander
Chax Press
Tucson
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 30 Jan 1997 18:28:51 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Alan Jen Sondheim 
Subject:      Book announcement
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
Content-Transfer-Encoding: QUOTED-PRINTABLE

Being On Line, Net Subjectivity

This book is available from the distributors, and is published by Lusit-
ania.  I've been working on it for the past two years or so. It might be
of interest to you; the texts and artworks are fairly wide-ranging.

The post below includes the initial press release; I won't send out a
fuller description here.

Hope you find it of interest,

Alan

------------------------------------------------------------------------

The book Being On Line, Net Subjectivity, is just about here, and can be
ordered through the distributors. I'll send out a fuller description in a
week, but you can order now.

Much of the contents is from Cybermind and Fop-l participants and con-
tacts. The work was initially gathered about two years ago, with additions
and modifications until early summer. I wanted to include texts that would
not become dated, would comment astutely on "being on line," and would be
of literary interest as well.

The description below is a press release only. The full list of authors:
Honoria, Peter Krapp, Steven Meinking, Brian Carr, Ellen Zweig, Alan
Sondheim, Karen Wohlblatt, Fridrich Kittler, Andy Hawks, Rose Mulvale,
Doctress Neutopia, Douglass Carmichael, Mark Poster, Caitlin Martin, Tara
Calishain, Laurie Cubbison, Elizabeth Fischer, Roger Bartra, Martin Lang-
field, Angela Hunter, Andrew Libby, Jane Hudson, Nesta Stubbs, Charles
Stivale, Alexander Chislenko, Paula Davidson, Gregory Ulmer, Bernadette
Garner, Martin Avillez, Stephen Perrella, Regina Frank, Michael Current,
Daria Penta, Chris Keep, Deb Martison, Stephan Bugaj, Robert Kezelis,
Slavoj Zizek, and Virtual Martina.

If you want to order, please send to D.A.P. below; you can also call them
at the 1-800 number.

Please, also, pass this on to any interested parties.

Thanks, Alan

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
=09=09=09=09=09=09=09January 1997

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
=09=09=09=09=09=09=09CONTACTS:
=09=09=09=09=09=09=09 CAROLE ASHLEY
=09=09=09=09=09=09=09MARTIM AVILLEZ


BEING ON LINE, NET SUBJECTIVITY


=2E . . I existed on continuous rewrite.  I lived naked on the net.
=09=09=09         From =B3lol,=B2 a post by Alan Sondheim

Lusitania Press is pleased to announce the publication of Being on=20
Line, Net Subjectivity. This anthology addresses the exciting new=20
consciousness of the Internet, where identity is negotiated and love=20
is the pleasure of the text. The contents range from sexually intense=20
analyses of on-line writing to the =B3netwar=B2 of the Zapatistas.=20

Edited by Alan Sondheim, Being on Line, Net Subjectivity is conceived=20
as an exploration of the theory and practice of virtual identity as=20
well as its effects. Unlike many recent books on the Internet, Being=20
on Line focuses both on the promises of the technology and the actual=20
content being developed by users of this form of exchange.=20

Intermixed with the esoteric (=B3Monogamousbody=B2) and the absurd (=B3Are=
=20
you a Cyborg?=B2), are topics ranging from subjectivity and community to=20
the uncanny and netsex, presented in both theory and practice. Among=20
the thirty two authors are Angela Hunter, Ellen Zweig, and Nesta=20
Stubbs; net feminist Doctress Neutopia; anthropologist Roger Bartra;=20
and theorists Friedrich Kittler, Slavoj Zizek, Mark Poster and Gregory=20
Ulmer. Being on Line is richly illustrated by artists whose works are=20
related to virtual worlds. Four color sections present performance,=20
graphics and sculpture by Regina Frank, Peter Halley, Mike Metz, and=20
Alice Aycock. Being on Line includes Lusitania signature =B3editorial=B2=20
in comic strip format.

Being on Line, Net Subjectivity is 208 pages, with 16 pages of color=20
and 192 illustrated pages in black and white. In English and Korean.=20

_Being on Line, Net Subjectivity_
ISBN 1-882791-04-5
Paperback 7x91/2 in., 208 pages, 16 color, Price $15.00 U.S.

Also available in English/Korean is _Sites and Stations: Provisional=20
Utopias_ an anthology of articles and projects concerned with the=20
relationship between Architecture, Utopia and the contemporary city.=20
ISBN 1-882791-03-7
Paperback 7x91/2255 pages 34 color Price $15.00 U.S.

Books published by Lusitania Press can be ordered from D.A.P/=20
Distributed Art Publishers, 155 Sixth Avenue, 2nd Floor, New York,=20
N.Y. 10013-1507 or call toll-free 1-800-338-BOOK

________________________________________________________________________
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 30 Jan 1997 14:17:33 -1000
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Gabrielle Welford 
Subject:      Anthology of 19th-c American women poets "WMST-L DIGEST2" (fwd)
Comments: To: egg-l , grow-l ,
          poetics 
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

... an anthology of 19th-century American
women poets.  Production was delayed and there was some
confusion about who was publishing the US edition - _Books
in Print_ listed it as coming out from the wrong press!
But it is now out.  The title is _She Wields a Pen: American
Women Poets of the 19th Century_ and the US press (hardback
and paperback) is the University of Iowa Press.

I would be glad to hear privately from any who have
questions about the anthology.

Janet Gray
jsgray@pucc.princeton.edu
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 30 Jan 1997 16:45:46 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Mark Weiss 
Subject:      Getting the word out
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Let me underline Mark Prejsnar's suggestion, as following through on it is
vital to the survival of the culture of poetry.

I can solicit libraries all I want (and I do a lot), but finally it's the
customers' demands that move poetry books from the bottom to the top of the
librarians' wish-lists.

Too many good presses die, not for the lack of dedication on the part of
their publishers, but because of poor receipts and despair over getting the
books into the hands of potential readers.
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 30 Jan 1997 17:28:35 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         George Bowering 
Subject:      Re: urban poetry - Kansas
In-Reply-To:  
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

>Dodge City would have been a metropolis in Euorpe, if it coulda been.

How come you USAmericans name your cities after automobiles?

Dodge City
Lincoln,
Fargo
Pontiac
Malibu Classic




George Bowering.
                                       ,
2499 West 37th Ave.,
Vancouver, B.C.,
Canada  V6M 1P4

fax: 1-604-266-9000
e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 30 Jan 1997 20:36:54 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "Steven W. Marks" 
Subject:      Re: Getting the word out
In-Reply-To:  
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

Mark W---
First, I want to say that Mark P gives some good advice. You might also
want to contact CLMP and get their monograph on marketing your books to
libraries and to teachers as texts to be taught in their classes.

Second, I'm a reviewer (like many on this list, I'm sure) -- mostly
non-mainstream fiction/nonfiction and poetry titles. Reviews are important
in PW, LJ, etc, but so are reviews in smaller magazines even when they
come after pub dates. I'm certain you know that your backlist is what will
allow you to continue publishing.

As for the toolkit/user's guide, I try not to read them until I have read
the book. But then I will also read other books by the author or articles
about him or her before I begin writing my review. You have to tread
carefully here in my opinion. Some reviewers will be annoyed and even
angered by suggestions about how to read the book. On the other hand, I
don't mind reading press releases which give me some idea and sample of
the writing. For that matter, this often makes the decision about whether
I review an unknown book.

Needless to say, many reviewers have agendas. I know for myself that I am
as interested in getting published by a good magazine as the author was to
get published by a good publisher. I will also use a book or books to
advance an idea or introduce new poets or forms to mainstream
publications. This is where reviews overlap with essays and journalism. I
suppose what I'm saying is what you already know -- a review is subject to
a great number of variables. However, it's not all that bad. At one
magazine I review for, I'm given a choice amoung books my editor knows
that I will "understand." Of course, this doesn't mean that I will
automatically deem the work successful, but it does mean that I won't be
scared off or befuddled by the unconventional.

Best of luck. I'd like to know when your website is up.

Steven Marks

__________________________________________________
   Samples of reviews, criticism and poetry at

   http://members.aol.com/swmarks/welcome.html
__________________________________________________
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 30 Jan 1997 17:53:47 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         George Bowering 
Subject:      Re: oh, alright (clothing)
In-Reply-To:  
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

>those are the pants i wear when i'm around george to make him feel less out
>of his depth and more like he's visiting his Uncle vince!

That's not exactly true. Every time Bromige is around me he starts taking
his pants off! My wife tells me to be patient. She says she understands
these things. Says she used to work in London, Ontario.





George Bowering.
                                       ,
2499 West 37th Ave.,
Vancouver, B.C.,
Canada  V6M 1P4

fax: 1-604-266-9000
e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 30 Jan 1997 17:58:45 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         George Bowering 
Subject:      Re: hart crane & charlie mingus
In-Reply-To:  
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

> I read mine plus
>some haiku from Lane Dunlop, two poems of Paul Blackburn, and Hart Crane's
>"To Brooklyn Bridge" with the group playing Charlie Mingus's "Nostalgia on
>Times Square" behind it.

That's funny. I was teaching that "Proem" yesterday. Didnt have any music
back, though.




George Bowering.
                                       ,
2499 West 37th Ave.,
Vancouver, B.C.,
Canada  V6M 1P4

fax: 1-604-266-9000
e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 30 Jan 1997 18:00:54 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         George Bowering 
Subject:      Re: hart crane & charlie mingus & sonny rollins
In-Reply-To:  
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

>along these lines -- remember Sonny Rollins playing on "The Bridge"

The way I remember it from the time, he was playing UNDER the bridge. Maybe
he was doing both, or maybe in the re-enactment, the producers thought on
the bridge wd be more dramatic.




George Bowering.
                                       ,
2499 West 37th Ave.,
Vancouver, B.C.,
Canada  V6M 1P4

fax: 1-604-266-9000
e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 30 Jan 1997 22:53:33 +0100
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Miekal And 
Subject:      sounding alan
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Alan how can you doubt we would find your work of infinite interest.

Oops, maybe I shld speak for myself.


Miekal

there in front of the computer, day after day
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 30 Jan 1997 23:46:35 -0600
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         KYLE CONNER/LRC-CAHS 
Subject:      Re: jazz & amiri
In-Reply-To:  
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

Try listening to any cracking jazz and then read ANY Amiri-it's all
cracking.  Better yet,  see the man read LIVE.  He's a firecracker!  I
saw him read two years ago at Border's in center city Philly.  He was
reading from his then new selected on Marsilio Press,  which contains his
Y's/Why's/Wise series.  Each poem is dedicated to a jazz player,  and
Amiri elucidated this vocally by prefacing each poem with a frenetical
scatting out of a phrase from
said musician's  music.  It was incredible!  The guy was bouncing off the
walls,  putting as much energy into his sound quote as into his actual
reading of his poems.  It gives confirming perspective to Amiri's work,
knowing that he has always thought in a sound way-this is
obvious in the way his words crash and take the unexpected right
turn-"BangClash!" And he has also written extensively on the history of
jazz and black music.  It also helps elucidate the music he quoted:
Coltrane,  Miles, etc.  In their more frenetic soloing,  I get a sense
of struggling with expression in all those licks and turns (Coltrane's
sheets of sound) as if "If I can't get it THIS way,  then how 'bout
THIS way,  or THIS...",  and all that mad finger articulation and
extension.  The music becomes very physical,  almost solid,  as if a
physical manipulation of some dark mass of undifferentiated meaning that
is slashed at again and again by the musicians. And it seems Amiri works
at this too,  using sometimes hairpin juxtaposition of words,  sometimes
fusing words to make new ones,  scoring the poetry on the page,  always
creating an expression that is
sharp,  pointed,  and violently rhythmic.  His readings of his poems
really brought this to the foreground.
-Kyle Conner
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 31 Jan 1997 00:15:24 -0600
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         KYLE CONNER/LRC-CAHS 
Subject:      Re: integration as hegemony?
In-Reply-To:  <199701302130.QAA00380@smtest.usit.net>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

Thomas Bell writes:
"The latest New Yorker has a story on August Wilson's June speech where
he "declared [American theatre is] an intrument of white cultural
hegemony, and
the recent campaign to integrate and diversify it only makes things
worse....they needed integration the way they needed acid rain."
tom bell

very interesting story, but I think it will take me some time to figure out
how I feel about it."

Wilson's stance is that the more the black theatre,  or any minority art
form or cause,  is subsidized and supported by the white cultural
authority,  the more it is diluted and divested of its initial energy and
focus in being a seperate entity that does NOT share the goals and
ideologies of the ruling cultural authority. This dilution can be
measured largely in funding dollars and audience numbers. One of Wilson's
examples of white cultural hegemony (in NY) was a larger non-minority
theatre
bringing in black actors to do more black shows,  because it has been
discovered by these producers that black theatre sells to white audiences,
while getting funding for
it.  Meanwhile,  the smaller black theatres are watching as their already
small funding and audiences are leached by these larger,  more powerful
theatres.
        The delicacy of Wilson's stance in creating an all-black theatre
in America,  a theatre by,  for,  and about blacks,  is revealed when he is
critiqued for having his work produced by large non-black theatres,
such as
Yale Rep and on Broadway,  and when he receives numerous awards from the
so-called white cultural hegemony.  One could say he speaks from a
singular and privileged position.  The second half of the article is also
interesting,  and gets rather randy with the stories of the so-called
"Chitlin" theatre circuit,  which,  as Gates posits,  could be,  albeit
unexpectedly,  the all-black theatre for which Wilson asks.
 -Kyle Conner
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 30 Jan 1997 22:48:51 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         David Bromige 
Subject:      oh, alright (clothing & timing)
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

every evening at Bowering Manor the Master of the House, the port having
gone around the requisite number of times, insists on the guests removing
their nether garments! (those from the Down Under Suite are always the
first to accomplish this task.) Reluctantly, I comply, out of politesse,
not lickerishness. On the most recent occasion, sad to say, the Master
proved unable to complete what he had begun--his feet becoming entangled in
his pantlegs (it's probably thanks to them being pegged, a style popular in
Oliver, B.C.in the 50s), after a while he simply gave up and remained at
table with his pants around his ankles while the rest of us swam in the
East Pool and had all kinds of fun.
   I suppose this thread concerns memory. Like Keith Waldrop and myself,
when he eats a madeleine, george thinks of Proust; but unlike Keith, we
think of Alfred Proust,a Kitsilano pharmacist whose 'madeleines' were so
popular when those who are now in their sixties were in their forties, with
the faculty of memory about to sustain heavy damage. For myself, I always
remember George fondly.

   btw, george, i notice that yr postings, each done around 6 pm today,
were not delivered to my sketchy sunshine town until 10:15 pm. Is this some
kinda censorship--are you being kept off the net until the kiddies are in
bed?

London, Ontario? Tell us, Old Chep, what the Forest City has to do with the
compulsive debagging of oneself? Dragland, Davey and Dewdney always keep
zipped up, don't they?

george, have you announced yet on this list that we have a jointly written
roman a clef we'd like to see published?

are we writing another?  d
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 31 Jan 1997 09:26:30 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         robert drake 
Subject:      Re: Getting the word out
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Steven Marks writ---

>Needless to say, many reviewers have agendas. I know for myself that I am
>as interested in getting published by a good magazine as the author was to
>get published by a good publisher. I will also use a book or books to
>advance an idea or introduce new poets or forms to mainstream
>publications. This is where reviews overlap with essays and journalism. I
>suppose what I'm saying is what you already know -- a review is subject to
>a great number of variables. However, it's not all that bad. At one
>magazine I review for, I'm given a choice amoung books my editor knows
>that I will "understand." Of course, this doesn't mean that I will
>automatically deem the work successful, but it does mean that I won't be
>scared off or befuddled by the unconventional.

i fr one would *hope* that any reviewer wd have agendas; only complaint
is when those agendas are not clear (& ideally, articulated)...

but i'm not clear frm the above paragraph if yr equating "good magazine"
w/ "mainstream publication"...  there are plenty of good magazines running
reviews and substantial critical work--Witz, Poetry Project Newsletter,
Poetic Briefs, Mondo Hunkamooga, Chain, Texture, Compound Eye, Factsheet
Five, Dusty Dog Reviews, Small Press Review, my own TapRoot Reviews...
none of 'em "mainstream", & praps lacking th academic credability
of PW LJ NYTBR et al; but if getting books into hands that'll read 'em is
th objective i'd suggest that the more narrowly targeted smallpress reviews
will be more effective than the prestige jrnls.  because no matter how lauditory
th review, the majority ov the bookbuying public will still "be scared off
or befuddled by the unconventional."  if, on th other hand, the idea is to
sell
books, make sure the product is conventional--mickeyD is succesful
(economically,
not gastronomically) because the consumer knows that s/he will get exactly
th same thing everytime...

asever
luigi
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 31 Jan 1997 08:46:52 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Douglas Barbour 
Subject:      Re: pastoral perhaps?
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

You may all be intrigued to hear that CBC, the national broadcaster here,
on its flagship national news this morning, ran a story on THE biggest
cowboy poetry gsthering of all, in Elko, Navada. Partly because a number of
Canadian singers & 'poets' are performing there. And we heard some
examples: humorous rhyming couplets, representing, in a lighthearted
manner, the 'real life' of cowboy experience, running from an angry bear,
or working a horse, or whatever. There are a couple of things going on
here: this stuff is awfully popular (is it alsop 'populist'?); the kind of
people who do this & who attend these gatherings, think this is what poetry
is, & that when it can 'make sense,' 'tell a real story,' & so on, it is
'real' in a way that all that hi-falutin stuff doesnt. There's also a
nostalgia at work, I think, which means it re-presents a version of what
Robert Kroetsch called 'a dream of origins', but does so without any kind
of interrogative vision of social, cultural, ideologies in action. Is this
where 'pastoral' has gone?

 =============================================================================
Douglas Barbour                    You must abandon poetry for you cannot
Department of English                                   forget it

University of Alberta              You must abandon poetry, it never existed
Edmonton  Alberta  T6G  2E5        You must abandon poetry, it has always been
(403) 492 2181  FAX:(403) 492 8142                      fatal
H: 436 3320                                        Bill Manhire
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 31 Jan 1997 08:28:39 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "Aldon L. Nielsen" 
Subject:      Re: integration as hegemony?
In-Reply-To:  
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

I haven't read Gates's comments on the "unexpected" (are they also in the
_New Yorker_?) -- but this too wd seem to have been a coulda been rather
than a present possibility -- The Apollo is maintained after a fashion --
the Howard, however, never was reopened as the Howard Foundation proved
infirm (One might ask why none of those development dollars that rebuilt
commercial downtown DC were used to save that theater as an opearting
concern) --

Can any of you in Chicago inform me of the present status of the Regal
Theater?

and yes, Wilson's comments, however true, are odd to the extent that had
he not been picked up by the Yale Rep many years ago, he probably could
not get a hearing in the _New Yorker_ today -- which is more of a
negative comment about the _NYer_ than about Wilson's comments --
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 31 Jan 1997 08:17:51 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "Aldon L. Nielsen" 
Subject:      Re: jazz & amiri
In-Reply-To:  
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

Thanks to Kyle for that further etc -- BUT -- readers should get the
Third World Press ed. of _Ys_ to see how the sequence unfolds (THOUGH,
their version of the spouting whale that appears at the end of one of the
poems looks more like a flying mechanical caterpillar)

Best live performance of this work I've seen, out of many, was when
Baraka read it with the group Blue Ark -- the music was worked to the
verse better than anything he's done since his performances with David
Murray of many years back --

AND it would seem that George Bowering is truly George the Memorious if
he remembers Rollins playing under the bridge -- Crane also played under
bridges, but Sony did not want to appropriate that action for their ad
campaign --
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 31 Jan 1997 10:16:58 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Charles Alexander 
Subject:      Re: Getting the word out
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

>but i'm not clear frm the above paragraph if yr equating "good magazine"
>w/ "mainstream publication"...  there are plenty of good magazines running
>reviews and substantial critical work--Witz, Poetry Project Newsletter,
>Poetic Briefs, Mondo Hunkamooga, Chain, Texture, Compound Eye, Factsheet
>Five, Dusty Dog Reviews, Small Press Review, my own TapRoot Reviews...
>none of 'em "mainstream", & praps lacking th academic credability
>of PW LJ NYTBR et al

I thought that comment might be more about getting into magazines/journals
that pay reviewers at least a fairly decent fee. It is difficult making it
as a freelance writer, and even more difficult if one wants primarily to
write about literature and the arts. And if one can do so, and write about
topics germane to this list as well, I can only support her/him wholeheartedly.

charles
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 31 Jan 1997 09:36:06 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Mark Weiss 
Subject:      Re: Getting the word out
Mime-Version: 1.0
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Look, kids, I've been doing this for a while. I send out about 100 review
copies for each book, to all kinds of places. While there are exceptions,
unless the poet is already notorious or is easily identified with a category
of interest the books get reviewed by, a) friends and acquaintances of mine
or the author's, or, b) reviewers assigned by friends and acquaintances,
etc., who edit a given periodical. One way or another the books get
reviewed, although a hundred requests may yield 3 or 4 reviews, rarely more.
And the reviews that appear in the periodicals I like to read generate
almost no sales.
Think about it this way: I send a book to, say, Taproot. It gets a rave.
Three people buy it (that's a bonanza for a small press review). It's cost
me a freebie and postage to sell those three books. Not to speak of time and
effort.
The books do sell, eventually, some better than others, and I'm not about to
throw in the towel. I remain committed to printing the best, according to my
lights, that comes my way, without a glance at commercial viability, and I
do have a taste for the marginal, the good stuff that doesn't belong to any
club. But at 1000 copies per printing they do tend to clog the warehouse for
an inordinate amount of time, and it would be helpful if they generated
enough capital to pay for the production costs of the next one down the pike.
Which brings me back where I started. I don't share Luigi's pessimism (or
arrogance?). I think there are a fair number of potential readers to be
reached, although they may be a small percentage of the general book market.
They have been educated to not read poetry--maybe they can be uneducated. To
that end, I think that Mark Presjnar's suggestion is essential--bug your
librarian.
It's hard not to think about the economics of this game when you're faced
with the next bill from the printer.

At 09:26 AM 1/31/97 -0500, you wrote:
>Steven Marks writ---
>
>>Needless to say, many reviewers have agendas. I know for myself that I am
>>as interested in getting published by a good magazine as the author was to
>>get published by a good publisher. I will also use a book or books to
>>advance an idea or introduce new poets or forms to mainstream
>>publications. This is where reviews overlap with essays and journalism. I
>>suppose what I'm saying is what you already know -- a review is subject to
>>a great number of variables. However, it's not all that bad. At one
>>magazine I review for, I'm given a choice amoung books my editor knows
>>that I will "understand." Of course, this doesn't mean that I will
>>automatically deem the work successful, but it does mean that I won't be
>>scared off or befuddled by the unconventional.
>
>i fr one would *hope* that any reviewer wd have agendas; only complaint
>is when those agendas are not clear (& ideally, articulated)...
>
>but i'm not clear frm the above paragraph if yr equating "good magazine"
>w/ "mainstream publication"...  there are plenty of good magazines running
>reviews and substantial critical work--Witz, Poetry Project Newsletter,
>Poetic Briefs, Mondo Hunkamooga, Chain, Texture, Compound Eye, Factsheet
>Five, Dusty Dog Reviews, Small Press Review, my own TapRoot Reviews...
>none of 'em "mainstream", & praps lacking th academic credability
>of PW LJ NYTBR et al; but if getting books into hands that'll read 'em is
>th objective i'd suggest that the more narrowly targeted smallpress reviews
>will be more effective than the prestige jrnls.  because no matter how
lauditory
>th review, the majority ov the bookbuying public will still "be scared off
>or befuddled by the unconventional."  if, on th other hand, the idea is to
>sell
>books, make sure the product is conventional--mickeyD is succesful
>(economically,
>not gastronomically) because the consumer knows that s/he will get exactly
>th same thing everytime...
>
>asever
>luigi
>
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 31 Jan 1997 12:45:10 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Charles Bernstein 
Subject:      THE L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E BOOK (FWRD)
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

<<<{forwarded from Sotherin Illinois University Press)>>>


AVAILABLE AGAIN!

Forthcoming in April 1997 from Southern Illinois University Press--------

THE L=3DA=3DN=3DG=3DU=3DA=3DG=3DE BOOK

Edited by Bruce Andrews and Charles Bernstein

309 pages, 5=BD x 8=BD
paper, ISBN 0-8093-1106-2, $15 for Poetics Subscribers (regularly 18.95)


ORDERING INFORMATION----- =20

(Be sure to note special "Poetics List" price when ordering)

ADDRESS: Southern Illinois University Press
                     P.O. Box 3697
                     Carbondale  IL  62902-3697

PHONE:    800-346-2680
 =20
FAX:           800-346-2681

SHIPPING & HANDLING:  $3.50 + $0.75 for each additional book

(VISA, Discover, and MasterCard accepted.)

**************************************

"In 1978, a new magazine appeared on the American poetry scene.  The
magazine, strangely titled L=3DA=3DN=3DG=3DU=3DA=3DG=3DE, became during its=
 four years of
publication a main forum for a group of young writers keen to engage in
theoretical speculation and debate about their medium.  L=3DA=3DN=3DG=3DU=3D=
A=3DG=3DE
disappeared in 1981, but its name has lingered on, mainly as a means of
designating a higly varied body of work which was shaped by the emerging
protocols of the magazine."
      =20
 ----Peter Middleton
     CONTEMPORARY POETRY MEETS MODERN THEORY

**************************************

"THE L=3DA=3DN=3DG=3DU=3DA=3DG=3DE BOOK was instrumental, not simply to=
 laying a
foundation for an urgently needed new sense of writing but to vividly
articulating the muti-disciplinary and polytextual sweep of this writing's
core investigations."

----Loss Peque=F1o Glazier
    DICTIONARY OF LITERARY BIOGRAPHY

**************************************

"It is one of the first journals to extend directly from a concern for
language as a ground base for poetry and one of the few magazines to provide
an open forum for discussions of poetics by the writers themselves."

----Michael Davidson
    ARCHIVE FOR NEW POETRY NEWSLETTER

**************************************

"An essential source.  With its blend of voices and crisscrossing dialogues,
the book has an almost novelistic density."

----VOICE LITERARY SUPPLEMENT

**************************************

"Apropos favorite books of the past year's reading . . . I read more
absorbedly books like L=3DA=3DN=3DG=3DU=3DA=3DG=3DE . . . than I did much=
 else."

----Robert Creeley
    THE POETRY PROJECT NEWSLETTER

**************************************

"For over twenty years, in magazines such as . . . L=3DA=3DN=3DG=3DU=3DA=3DG=
=3DE . . .
this movement has given us a body of writing that may be the most
significant since the modernists."

----Hank Lazer
    THE NATION
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 31 Jan 1997 12:45:12 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Charles Bernstein 
Subject:      FRENCH WOMEN POETS (fwrd)
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

<<<{forwarded from Sotherin Illinois University Press)>>>

Available April 1997 from Southern Illinois University Press--------

SIX CONTEMPORARY FRENCH WOMEN POETS:
THEORY, PRACTICE, AND PLEASURES

Selection, Introduction, and Translations by Serge Gavronsky

144 pages, 6 x 9, illustrated
paper, ISBN 0-8093-2115-7,  $13.50 for Poetics List Subscribers  (regularly
$16.95)


ORDERING INFORMATION----- =20

(Be sure to mention Poetics List special price)

ADDRESS: Southern Illinois University Press
                     P.O. Box 3697
                     Carbondale  IL  62902-3697

PHONE:    800-346-2680
 =20
FAX:           800-346-2681

SHIPPING & HANDLING:  $3.50 + $0.75 for each additional book



**************************************

Serge Gavronsky introduces to American readers six of the best contemporary
French women poets: Leslie Kaplan, Michelle Grangaud, Anne Portugal, Jos=E9e
Lapeyr=E8re, Liliane Giraudon, and Jacqueline Risset.

**************************************

Although many practice the art, contemporary French women poets generally
have been vastly underrepresented in periodicals and anthologies.  In the
only anthology to feature avant-garde French women poets exclusively,
Gavronsky shows how Kaplan, Grangaud, Portugal, Lapeyr=E8re, Giraudon, and
Risset differ from their American counterparts.

Before presenting his translations of the poems, Gavronsky gives each poet
the opportunity to define herself in terms of major influences on her
poetry, distinctive traits in her writing, major themes in her work, and the
influence of gender on her art.  The poets also speculate about the relative
underrepresentation of women poets in French periodicals and anthologies as
well as about the form poetry might take in the twenty-first century.

The poems in this volume are simultaneously delightful, informative, and
combative.  They typify, according to Gavronsky, some of the main currents
of a poetics in the making, a poetics little known in the United States.  In
reaffirming women's involvement with poetry, Gavronsky believes that he has
"reconnected today's work with an immemorial tradition that, in France,
clearly goes back to [the] Middle Ages."

**************************************

Serge Gavronsky, born in Paris, is a professor in and chair of the
Department of French at Barnard College, Columbia University.  He has
published both French and English poetry in books, magazines, and
anthologies in the United States, France, and Italy.  A novelist and
literary critic, he has translated American poetry into French as well as
French poetry into English.




 =20
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 31 Jan 1997 12:50:19 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "Steven W. Marks" 
Subject:      Re: Getting the word out
In-Reply-To:  <199701311427.JAA13805@csu-e.csuohio.edu>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

On Fri, 31 Jan 1997, robert drake wrote:
>
> but i'm not clear frm the above paragraph if yr equating "good magazine"
> w/ "mainstream publication"...  there are plenty of good magazines running
> reviews and substantial critical work--Witz, Poetry Project Newsletter,
> Poetic Briefs, Mondo Hunkamooga, Chain, Texture, Compound Eye, Factsheet
> Five, Dusty Dog Reviews, Small Press Review, my own TapRoot Reviews...
>
By "good," I mean magazines like those you list as well as ones like
Another Chicago Magazine, Green Mountains Review, Boston Book Review,
American Book Review, etc.

I agree that targeted reviews are often far more effective for the
publisher than the prestige journals for the reason you state. A review in
one of the little magazines can start a buzz among potential buyers unlike
the bigger magazines. Of course, the most targeted review is a
word-of-mouth review. That's why I would agree with Mark P that
discussions on lists like this are so valuable. But then again, it's often
a review that begins the conversation.

Steven Marks

__________________________________________________
   Samples of reviews, criticism and poetry at

   http://members.aol.com/swmarks/welcome.html
__________________________________________________
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 31 Jan 1997 13:11:01 EST
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
Comments:     Converted from PROFS to RFC822 format by PUMP V2.2X
From:         ACGOLD01@ULKYVM.LOUISVILLE.EDU
Subject:      Rutgers Conference

Alan Golding
Prof. of English, Univ. of Louisville
502-852-6801; acgold01@ulkyvm.louisville.edu

 . . .lookin' for a room-mate for the "Poetry and the Public Sphere"
conference at Rutgers in April. Any takers?

Alan
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 31 Jan 1997 12:16:03 -0600
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Julie Marie Schmid 
Subject:      Re: Query: Performance and spirit
In-Reply-To:  <199701311427.JAA13805@csu-e.csuohio.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

Hi all--

I'm looking for any suggestions (books, essays, manifestos, whatever) re.
spirit possession, spirti doctors, getting the spirit, conjuring in
connection with performance and the performative. Also essays about spirit
possession and subjectivity.

Any ideas at all?  Thanks!  Feel free to back channel to me, if you'd
like.

Julie Schmid
jschmid@blue.weeg.uiowa.edu
Dept. of English
University of Iowa
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 31 Jan 1997 12:17:44 EST
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         henry gould 
Subject:      bk review (longish)

John High / (FROM) THE SASHA POEMS
Juxta/3300 Press, 1996
isbn 0964601737
($5.00 / orders to: 3300 Press, 300 Vicksburg St, Suite 5, San Francisco, CA
94114)


     _The Sasha Poems_ are a sequence of 32 prose poems, in a style which is
simultaneously terse, precise, visionary and exalted - as if (to make a jarring
comparison) Ernest Hemingway came back from the dead as St. Francis (or better,
an Eastern Orthodox mystic).  They represent a dream-journey or pilgrimage
through a real landscape - strangely silent and void of crowds, but thickly
peopled with animals, plants and stones radiating consciousness - a very
animate hobo path.  The poems are narrated by a voice that alternates and
blends the voices of father and very young daughter - as though daughter
were leading father on this visionary journey - learning to speak, write
and "make her book" - while simultaneously evoking the ongoing creation of
the "book" of nature/life.  Occasionally these voices are augmented by
a mysterious group of monks &/or other children accompanying them on their
way.  There is a pervasive aura of uncanniness & child-vision - of a spiritual
journey away from, or on the margins of, "the world", and into the poverty
and wealth of an overwhelming "transcendent" reality.

     This provides only the barest outline by which John High has
structured his work.  The framing of the journey led by the child -
or the tandem of child and "father" - supports a truly "poetic" prose,
in which individual sentences, paradoxically, don't "go" anywhere:
weighted with lyric fulness, a Blakean "innocence", the sentences
testify to a continual newness/strangeness - a "new creation" which
is also the "end" of the journey.  That is, they are suffused with
mystery.   Here is a brief excerpt:

     Three match sticks, a bottle of vodka, a chunk of black bread the
monks left behind as they savored the night.  Now that the monks, too,
were again wandering, the sky was difficult to locate.  These thick
mountains & waterfalls & skulls--human skulls embodied in our earth.
The dead come forth with the living.  Mother Goose beaming.  The monks
conversing among themselves as they incarnate the joy & darkness.
Almost human.  Remnants of a life, an orchard sun, the split cherry
unseen in the valley.  A quiet but not unrequited love singing among the
living.  O matchmaker, what informs this urge to be inside the cherry.
     The child edged up beside me.  The father not blue, still in this
trance he dreamed a monk into every stone, every piece of dust, every
imagined moon.  Later the child would translate this into her diary as
another nursery rhyme beginning, Hickety pickety my black hen, she lays
good eggs for gentlemen...
     Angel flakes falling on our furry heads!
(from "wild blue yonder, #30)

John High spent four years in Russia, and has translated the poetry of
Nina Isrenko and Ivan Zhdanov into english (a selected poems by Zhdanov
- an amazing collection, I might add - has just been published by
Talisman House).  He has managed to fuse a sort of bare, wild California-
gypsy landscape with a deep awareness of Russian poetic and religious
traditions.  The voice of these poems oscillates between a child's
first verbal steps and naive wonder, and a grown person's more salted
meditations - an oscillation on a continuum.  What emerges is both
a challenge and an invitation: to enter a reality of... how to
"paraphrase" it?  "Animate meaning."  This is not a solemn journey,
but full of humor and pathos.  Excerpts don't do it justice, but
here's another anyway:

    These sparrows no one beckons!  The angel picked a muffler from the
water, content to mimic the day.  If those who lead you say--Look the Kingdom,
it is in the sky__then the birds of the sky will get there first, the angel
heckled as a possum scampered by.  Since its own wings were burnt, the
angel again exploded in flames.  Though the mud itself was cool on our toes.
The field presently shrouded in an early autumn fog as a turtle turned in
the bush.  If the child had known flowers, she would have named them too
in our eternalistic pathos...Can you translate the silence, papa?  she
next inquired.
     This is the origin of many tests.  O gray hummingbird!  A birth
meandering along the road.  So many joys no one had mentioned to the father
before now.  _Jack be nimble, jack be quick_.  She laid the pages down
on the ground & called it a book.  The ants & approaching squirrels called
it a diary.
     This will be my book, papa.
(from "a map, a goose, & a fairy tale, #6)

Jim Leftwich, in his excellent afterword to this book, quotes Jung as
follows:  "It is therefore psychologically quite unthinkable for God to
be simply the 'wholly other', for a 'wholly other' could never be one of
the soul's deepest and closest intimacies--which is precisely what God is."
The excerpt above hints at some of the ironies present in High's use
of a somewhat undefined narrator.  The voice is both the child talking to
her papa, and the adult, "praying" to the father; & steeped into the plot
of this sequence is the absent presence of the "third" person: the wife/
mother (who is spoken of & to, but who is also absent).  There are some
theological ironies buried here.  "This will be my book, papa" - John
High has (perhaps) written some journal notes toward the _Book of J_.

This country has since its beginning been awash in marketable spiritual
and spiritualist commodities; but John High has based his premises too
firmly on a foundation of personal experience, poetic understanding,
and "paid dues" to fall into the circle of the ersatz.  A few weeks ago
I floated a prolegomena to a "Providence School" of poetry, based on
a (homemade) philosophical distinction between a metaphysical realism
on the one hand, and a postmodernist nominalism on the other; between
an experience-based "seriousness" on the one hand, and a pure aestheticism
on the other.  I named the current generation of Russian poets of the
"metarealist" and "neo-Acmeist" persuasions (as outlined theoretically
by Mikhail Epstein) as models in this endeavor.  It would be a disservice
to John High to ride my "theories" on the coattails of his writing; so
let me put this in a very conditional mode: IF there WERE a "Providence
School", John High's work - which offers a lyrical testimony to the mystery
of cosmic redemption (Mandelstam's divine game of "hide & seek") - and
a challenge to wash our eyes in a new vision of nature - John High's
SASHA POEMS would be one of the school's well-thumbed, well-read, oft-
cited and recited pleasures.  I hope others on this list will be
encouraged to take this eerie, beautiful, skilled, & gently-loping
journey too.

- Henry Gould
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 31 Jan 1997 15:53:56 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Fred Muratori Fred Muratori 
Subject:      Re: THE L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E BOOK (FWRD)
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

><<<{forwarded from Sotherin Illinois University Press)>>>
>
>
>AVAILABLE AGAIN!
>
>Forthcoming in April 1997 from Southern Illinois University Press--------
>
>THE L=3DA=3DN=3DG=3DU=3DA=3DG=3DE BOOK
>
>Edited by Bruce Andrews and Charles Bernstein
>
>309 pages, 5=BD x 8=BD
>paper, ISBN 0-8093-1106-2, $15 for Poetics Subscribers (regularly 18.95)
>

Well, it's about time.

-- FM

***********************
=46red Muratori                         "The spaces between things keep

(fmm1@cornell.edu)                     getting  bigger & more

Reference Services Division                                   important."
Olin * Kroch * Uris Libraries           - John Ashbery
Cornell University
Ithaca, NY 14853
WWW: http://fmref.library.cornell.edu/spectra.html
***********************
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 31 Jan 1997 15:17:29 +0100
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Miekal And 
Subject:      cold to warm
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Charles Alexander & other arizona homebodies

Me & the fambly are gonna be in Phoenix area March 3-12 scouting out a
possible southern base for Dreamtime 60 miles north of the city.  I know
this is quite a late time to try to set something up, but we could be in
the area with our books to set up & do readings (Zon can sometimes even
be coaxed to do his monster language!)  & text/performance.  & if there
is access to a macintosh projector I can bring a harddrive & present
some of my computer poetry & other hypermedia projects.

Got any ideas, contact or leads?

Miekal, Lyx & Liaizon


--
@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#
Dreamtime Village website: http://net22.com/dreamtime
QAZINGULAZA: And/Was/Wakest website:
http://net22.com/qazingulaza
e-mail for DT & And/Was: dtv@mwt.net
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 31 Jan 1997 15:24:04 +0100
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Miekal And 
Subject:      Re: oh, alright (clothing)
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

George Bowering wrote:
>
> >those are the pants i wear when i'm around george to make him feel less out
> >of his depth and more like he's visiting his Uncle vince!
>
> That's not exactly true. Every time Bromige is around me he starts taking
> his pants off! My wife tells me to be patient. She says she understands
> these things. Says she used to work in London, Ontario.

does that make mr bromige one of those beat poets, he wonders to
himself--


m i e k a l

with his pants on, ripped at the knees, boots off
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 31 Jan 1997 16:17:00 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "Pritchett,Pat @Silverplume" 
Subject:      Re: bk review (longish)
Comments: To: henry gould 
MIME-version: 1.0
Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN
Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT

Beautiful (and provocative) review, Henry. Thanks for posting it.
 ----------
From: henry gould
To: POETICS
Subject: bk review (longish)
Date: Friday, January 31, 1997 3:31PM


John High / (FROM) THE SASHA POEMS
Juxta/3300 Press, 1996
isbn 0964601737
($5.00 / orders to: 3300 Press, 300 Vicksburg St, Suite 5, San Francisco, CA
94114)


     _The Sasha Poems_ are a sequence of 32 prose poems, in a style which is
simultaneously terse, precise, visionary and exalted - as if (to make a
jarring
comparison) Ernest Hemingway came back from the dead as St. Francis (or
better,
an Eastern Orthodox mystic).  They represent a dream-journey or pilgrimage
through a real landscape - strangely silent and void of crowds, but thickly
peopled with animals, plants and stones radiating consciousness - a very
animate hobo path.  The poems are narrated by a voice that alternates and
blends the voices of father and very young daughter - as though daughter
were leading father on this visionary journey - learning to speak, write
and "make her book" - while simultaneously evoking the ongoing creation of
the "book" of nature/life.  Occasionally these voices are augmented by
a mysterious group of monks &/or other children accompanying them on their
way.  There is a pervasive aura of uncanniness & child-vision - of a
spiritual
journey away from, or on the margins of, "the world", and into the poverty
and wealth of an overwhelming "transcendent" reality.

     This provides only the barest outline by which John High has
structured his work.  The framing of the journey led by the child -
or the tandem of child and "father" - supports a truly "poetic" prose,
in which individual sentences, paradoxically, don't "go" anywhere:
weighted with lyric fulness, a Blakean "innocence", the sentences
testify to a continual newness/strangeness - a "new creation" which
is also the "end" of the journey.  That is, they are suffused with
mystery.   Here is a brief excerpt:

     Three match sticks, a bottle of vodka, a chunk of black bread the
monks left behind as they savored the night.  Now that the monks, too,
were again wandering, the sky was difficult to locate.  These thick
mountains & waterfalls & skulls--human skulls embodied in our earth.
The dead come forth with the living.  Mother Goose beaming.  The monks
conversing among themselves as they incarnate the joy & darkness.
Almost human.  Remnants of a life, an orchard sun, the split cherry
unseen in the valley.  A quiet but not unrequited love singing among the
living.  O matchmaker, what informs this urge to be inside the cherry.
     The child edged up beside me.  The father not blue, still in this
trance he dreamed a monk into every stone, every piece of dust, every
imagined moon.  Later the child would translate this into her diary as
another nursery rhyme beginning, Hickety pickety my black hen, she lays
good eggs for gentlemen...
     Angel flakes falling on our furry heads!
(from "wild blue yonder, #30)

John High spent four years in Russia, and has translated the poetry of
Nina Isrenko and Ivan Zhdanov into english (a selected poems by Zhdanov
 - an amazing collection, I might add - has just been published by
Talisman House).  He has managed to fuse a sort of bare, wild California-
gypsy landscape with a deep awareness of Russian poetic and religious
traditions.  The voice of these poems oscillates between a child's
first verbal steps and naive wonder, and a grown person's more salted
meditations - an oscillation on a continuum.  What emerges is both
a challenge and an invitation: to enter a reality of... how to
"paraphrase" it?  "Animate meaning."  This is not a solemn journey,
but full of humor and pathos.  Excerpts don't do it justice, but
here's another anyway:

    These sparrows no one beckons!  The angel picked a muffler from the
water, content to mimic the day.  If those who lead you say--Look the
Kingdom,
it is in the sky__then the birds of the sky will get there first, the angel
heckled as a possum scampered by.  Since its own wings were burnt, the
angel again exploded in flames.  Though the mud itself was cool on our toes.
The field presently shrouded in an early autumn fog as a turtle turned in
the bush.  If the child had known flowers, she would have named them too
in our eternalistic pathos...Can you translate the silence, papa?  she
next inquired.
     This is the origin of many tests.  O gray hummingbird!  A birth
meandering along the road.  So many joys no one had mentioned to the father
before now.  _Jack be nimble, jack be quick_.  She laid the pages down
on the ground & called it a book.  The ants & approaching squirrels called
it a diary.
     This will be my book, papa.
(from "a map, a goose, & a fairy tale, #6)

Jim Leftwich, in his excellent afterword to this book, quotes Jung as
follows:  "It is therefore psychologically quite unthinkable for God to
be simply the 'wholly other', for a 'wholly other' could never be one of
the soul's deepest and closest intimacies--which is precisely what God is."
The excerpt above hints at some of the ironies present in High's use
of a somewhat undefined narrator.  The voice is both the child talking to
her papa, and the adult, "praying" to the father; & steeped into the plot
of this sequence is the absent presence of the "third" person: the wife/
mother (who is spoken of & to, but who is also absent).  There are some
theological ironies buried here.  "This will be my book, papa" - John
High has (perhaps) written some journal notes toward the _Book of J_.

This country has since its beginning been awash in marketable spiritual
and spiritualist commodities; but John High has based his premises too
firmly on a foundation of personal experience, poetic understanding,
and "paid dues" to fall into the circle of the ersatz.  A few weeks ago
I floated a prolegomena to a "Providence School" of poetry, based on
a (homemade) philosophical distinction between a metaphysical realism
on the one hand, and a postmodernist nominalism on the other; between
an experience-based "seriousness" on the one hand, and a pure aestheticism
on the other.  I named the current generation of Russian poets of the
"metarealist" and "neo-Acmeist" persuasions (as outlined theoretically
by Mikhail Epstein) as models in this endeavor.  It would be a disservice
to John High to ride my "theories" on the coattails of his writing; so
let me put this in a very conditional mode: IF there WERE a "Providence
School", John High's work - which offers a lyrical testimony to the mystery
of cosmic redemption (Mandelstam's divine game of "hide & seek") - and
a challenge to wash our eyes in a new vision of nature - John High's
SASHA POEMS would be one of the school's well-thumbed, well-read, oft-
cited and recited pleasures.  I hope others on this list will be
encouraged to take this eerie, beautiful, skilled, & gently-loping
journey too.

 - Henry Gould
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 31 Jan 1997 18:17:30 -0600
Reply-To:     maria damon 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         maria damon 
Subject:      Re: Query: Performance and spirit

there's a short story by baraka whose name escapes me about a band playing at a
neighborhood workingclass black bar that gets everybody so hyped up they spill
out of the bar and take over the streets; it's not literally about spirit
possessoin (try Mumbo Jumbo for that) but abt art, politics, performance and
getting "carried away."

In message   UB
Poetics discussion group writes:
> Hi all--
>
> I'm looking for any suggestions (books, essays, manifestos, whatever) re.
> spirit possession, spirti doctors, getting the spirit, conjuring in
> connection with performance and the performative. Also essays about spirit
> possession and subjectivity.
>
> Any ideas at all?  Thanks!  Feel free to back channel to me, if you'd
> like.
>
> Julie Schmid
> jschmid@blue.weeg.uiowa.edu
> Dept. of English
> University of Iowa
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 31 Jan 1997 20:39:48 +73900
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Michael Boughn 
Subject:      Re: Query: Performance and spirit
In-Reply-To:  
              from "Julie Marie Schmid" at Jan 31, 97 12:16:03 pm
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

>
> I'm looking for any suggestions (books, essays, manifestos, whatever) re.
> spirit possession, spirti doctors, getting the spirit, conjuring in
> connection with performance and the performative. Also essays about spirit
> possession and subjectivity.

Try Zora Neal Hurston's _Tell My Horse_. One of the best things on
Voudon and possession I've ever read. And of course Ishmael Reed's
_Mumbo Jumbo_.

Mike
mboughn@chass.utoronto.ca
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 31 Jan 1997 20:40:56 -0800
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "Aldon L. Nielsen" 
Subject:      Re: ||||
In-Reply-To:  <199701291905.LAA29253@cyprus.it.earthlink.net>
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Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

Anybody out there know if Stephen Ellis is still at this address I had
for him in Jordan?